The Hackney Marsh Chronicles. No. 2. East Is West.

The Hackney Marsh Chronicles.

No. 2. East Is West.

     I’ve never been a big curry eater, but sometimes a Lamb Korma, Naan and a pint of cold larger really hits the spot. I don’t understand how anyone can shove the really hot stuff down – I’ve tried but you can’t taste anything with a bush fire raging in your gob and it can take several days and the contents of the local reservoir to put it out.

     I usually go to Jamal’s in Brick Lane in the heart of the East End of London Bengali district after I’ve been to see a film at the new multi screen job in Hackney Road. Cinemas really lack atmosphere these days without the stale smell of potpourri and fag smoke from the 1950s. Sometimes I think I smell the essence of that exquisite concoction when I drop into a modern cinema though I know it’s all in the mind and just a throwback from those old days conjuring up memories of daft cowboy films with bullets flying everywhere and the script getting in the way of the next gun fight. Disappointingly, the projector beam is nowhere near as visible now the blue haze has gone. But enough of that, I’m giving away too much about my age which of course is 29 and always will be.

     Jamal’s has been there for longer than I care to remember and over time the owner, whose name coincidentally happens to be Jamal, a Bangladeshi in his fifties, has become a kind of mate and we usually share a few laughs. Jamal is a big bloke with a large round face that always seems to be leaking sweat even in the middle of winter.

     “ello, ‘ark. How are you doin, innit? Caught many teeves or adulterers today, right?”
     “Not today, Jamal. Mind you, I’ve had my eye on you for a long time, what with the prices you charge. If that isn’t robbery, I don’t know what is.” I’d never met anyone who had a more foundation shaking laugh than Jamal’s.

     On this particular Saturday evening, I’d caught the late show and it was gone 12.30 when I finally got round to my usual cup of oil slick Jamal swore was coffee. 4 white blokes noisily entered the restaurant. All in their late 30s, I guessed they’d had more than just a few jars between them and decided they needed something to mop up all the liquid slopping around their systems. Jamal told them the chef was about to leave and that they were a bit too late for dinner but they managed to persuade him to keep the chef back for some starters and a main course and ordered yet more beer. Jamal went behind the scenes to the kitchen and voices were raised to shouting level as he persuaded his chef to start cooking again. Jamal brought out the starters and beers and told the blokes that the main course would take a bit of time, as he had to relight and heat the ovens again.

     When Jamal finally appeared with the main courses the four blokes decided they didn’t want them having consumed two lots of starters and a couple more pints each. Jamal wasn’t exactly acting like the proverbial green cheese jumping cow but didn’t make much of a fuss. At least, he didn’t until the men told him they were only going to pay for what they’d eaten and drunk. Jamal became instantly incandescent and started screaming at them in Urdu. One of the men got up and grabbed the front of his shirt having heard the English curses Jamal had peppered his rage with but another dragged the guy off repeating that there was no way they were going to pay for the main courses having had to wait so long.

     Jamal strode across to the door and locked it producing a mobile phone from his pocket. He pressed a key and shouted into the phone then stood with his back to the door and with arms folded across his chest. The four men put some cash on the table, stood up and demanded to be let out of the restaurant but Jamal stood his ground. Then he grinned and nodded towards the back of the restaurant. My gaze followed his to find about 8 large and pretty mean looking Asian men standing there. One of them had a baseball bat and none of them looked like they were about to wish anyone a happy birthday.

     “You pay now for everything, yes?” Jamal suggested to the four men.
     “No fucking chance.” said one of them bravely and in my opinion, insanely.

     What followed happened so quickly it’s difficult to remember all the details. The Bengali gladiators charged and they weren’t taking prisoners. Chairs, tables, plates of food, beer, and bodies went everywhere as they waded in. The four white blokes didn’t stand a chance and the Asians weren’t playing according to the Marquis of Queensbury’s rules, cricket rules or any rules come to that. They kicked and punched and gouged and the baseball bat flashed like Excalibur. The four men were thrown out onto the street and kicked and punched few more times where they landed. The guy with the baseball bat came striding back into the restaurant and grabbed hold of me by my hair, raising the bat above his head but thankfully, Jamal got to him just in time to stop him making crushed eggshell out of my skull.

     “No, Ramish. That’s ‘arkeney. He’s a mate, innit?” Visibly disappointed, and with the snort of a frustrated rampant bull, the guy with the bat let me sink back into my seat.

     It’s as well to remember if you’re going to order food in Brick Lane or the surrounding area and expect to get away without paying that all the restaurants are connected by a series of alleyways at the back and that all the restaurant owners know each other and help one another out as waiters or extra chefs when it’s really busy. They’re also connected socially, by family and by religion. This is a very friendly but tightly knit bunch of people who are fiercely protective of their own. It really doesn’t do to mess them about - unless you’re suicidal, which is perhaps an unfortunate expression in this day and age.

* * * * * * * *

Monday.

     “You have visitors. I told them to come back later but they insisted on waiting.” Dill’s fingers rippled delicately across her keyboard without interruption and she didn’t look round when she spoke, her concentration still fixed on her screen as I dragged my sleepy carcass into the office on that rather bleak October morning.

     A small, wizened, dark-skinned elderly man with a scraggy, white, moustache-less beard and a pillbox hat, more respectfully known as a Taqiyah, and which would have looked a lot better on Jackie Kennedy, sat in front of my desk. The man also wore a grey raincoat over his white Thobe (the long shirt thingy) Sirwai trousers, and cheap, Velcro fastened trainers. A young woman in a Hijab, shawl and ankle-length skirt sat next to him, her extraordinary beauty somehow enhanced by the tight framing of her face imposed by the scarf.

     “Good morning, I’m Hackney Marsh. What can I do for you?” I said in a completely fabricated merry tone. I offered the man my hand as I sat down and he tentatively reached out and touched the tips of my fingers with his own. Clearly not the happiest of bunnies, he didn’t return my smile. The young woman said something to him in another language and, without replying, he twisted round and took a long look at the partition that hid Dill from view, a positive signal that neither he or his companion were about to utter another word while there was another woman within a hundred miles of earshot.
     “Do you want to go and get some fresh biscuits, Dill?” I called, “Take as long as you like.” Dill’s fingers stopped rippling over the keys and I heard her get up and put on her coat. When she’d gone, I repeated my question.

     The young woman spoke in a quiet voice with not a hint of an East End accent, a clear sign she’s been born and brought up elsewhere:
     “Hello, Mr. Marsh. Thank you for seeing us. My name is Aisha and this is my Father, Ahmed Hilash.”
     “I’m pleased to meet you, Aisha. How can I help you?” I offered her my hand but she gave her father, who looked more like her grandfather, a nervous, sideways look and declined as if I’d offered her something obscene.
     “My Father doesn’t speak English. He would have come on his own but he needs me to translate.”
     “OK, that’s fine. Please go ahead.”
     “It concerns my Father’s nephew, Yusef,” she said.
     “Your cousin, of course.”
     “Yes.”
     “OK.”
     “My Father and his brother, Yusef’s Father, believe Yusef is involved with a radical Islamic group.”
     “What makes them think that?”
     “They say he’s changed. And he says things.”
     “What sort of things?”
     “Political things. Things about the British Government and the Americans.”
     “The troubles in Iraq, that sort of thing?”
     “I think so. I don’t really know. I only know what I’ve been told but I can see Yusef has changed.”
     “How?”
     “He wears traditional Muslim clothes all the time now. Before, he used to wear trendy stuff…jeans, pointed shoes, that sort of thing. He doesn’t hang with his old group of friends and he sold his car which was his pride and joy.”
     “A lot of young Muslim men have strong feelings about the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and so on, which is what it amounts to in their minds. It’s not surprising they get angry when they see what’s going on in the media. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve become radicalized.”
     “Yusef goes to meetings several times a week. And when he comes home he’s all fired up and excited and quite volatile.”
     “Where are these meeting held?
     “They used to be held in a small hall in Brick Lane which belongs to the Mosque.”
     “The one in Whitechapel?”
     “Yes.”
     “How do you mean used to be?”
     “Now, no-one knows where they meet now. I think the members thought they were drawing too much attention to themselves so now the meetings are held in a secret place.”

     It’s a corny old line I know, but I was captivated by the young woman’s presence. Whatever it was she radiated – and there was something - the urge to draw her was almost overwhelming but I managed to resist it reckoning that to suddenly produce my sketch book and start scribbling would not only alarm her but may have been a sign of disrespect or worse, like she might think I was stealing her virtue. The only reference I had for this probably absurd notion was the scene in David Lean’s film, Lawrence of Arabia, when Ouda abu Tayi, the Arab character played by Anthony Quinn, threatens a photographer with a scimitar for the very same reason. The old man sitting in front of me wasn’t an Arab, he certainly wasn’t Anthony Quinn and I doubted he had such a weapon hidden under his raincoat but that didn’t stop my imagination running riot.

     “Surly this is a matter for your family and your community in general?”
Aisha spoke to her Father in the foreign tongue again. He replied in a burst of agitation and she looked nervous.
     “That’s true but my Father and his brother are worried that Yusef will be arrested if we don’t do something about the situation. We all know the community is constantly under surveillance but we have to be sure who the perpetrators are before we can act.”
     “Your cousin won’t be arrested unless he’s broken the law,” I said, “Going to few meetings or even shooting his mouth off won’t get him arrested. This is, allegedly, a free country where you can more or less say what you like, within reason. Unless your cousin is deliberately stirring up trouble, causing people to riot or take up arms, as far as the law is concerned, he’s doing nothing wrong. Have your Father and Uncle tried talking to Yusef about his activities?”
     “My Uncle is in hospital. He has cancer. My Father has tried talking to Yusef but they just end up shouting at each other.”
     “What about the imams or clerics? Couldn’t they help?”
     “There are considered to be above that sort of thing. They see their job as being to translate the word of The Prophet. They don’t get involved in politics, even locally.” By her manner and tone it was clear the girl was intelligent and probably well educated.

     So much of Aisha was hidden from view and it struck me that the traditional clothes many of the girls like her wear have the opposite effect to what’s intended and actually make them more appealing. To me, the covering held an aura of mystery and intrigue, which in itself was attractive. It didn’t so much hide her femininity as project it. “OK,” I said, realizing I was staring at her, “What is it you want me to do?”
     Again she flicked a glance at her father. “The local families who have young sons whom they think may be involved in extremism feel the only way to solve this problem is for them to get together and face the members of what appears to be this radical group individually and use their combined strength to find a solution.”
     “And how do they propose to do that?”
     “In our community, the family unit is everything. It’s all-powerful. It’s where things like honour and respect are paramount. I know that may sound like a cliché, Mr. Marsh, but there are some traditional values that will never die, that must never be allowed to die, that hold us all together like a sort of glue, that in the end, protect us from losing our identity or our culture.” This was beginning to sound like quite a speech. The girl spoke with an informed intensity that bordered on the passionate but was at the seam time carefully controlled. She wasn’t reading from a script and she was very articulate. “As I said, our idea," she went on, "The idea, is that each member of this radical group will individually have to face the combined strength of people from all the families who have sons involved. That way the boys will not have the back-up of other group members to draw on and will be more open to persuasion that what they are doing is not only destructive to their own culture but will inevitably lead to disaster.”
     “And you - the families - think this will work?”
     “If the values we hold as a community mean anything to these boys then it has to. If it doesn’t work then it’s already too late and I – we - dread to think what the consequences may eventually be. They, the parents of these young men, have to try. It’s very important – crucial – that the identities of the group are made known to us. We have to be absolutely sure who they are so members of all the right families get involved.”
     “And just how are the family members going to get their sons to change their views?”
     “They’ll bring some very strong arguments to bear and they’ll have the weight of all our beliefs, family codes and traditions behind them.”
     “And suppose these young men refuse to buckle. What then?”
     “Then they will face the ultimate punishment.”
     “Which is?”
     “They will be outcast. Expelled from their families. Disowned.”
     “Surly all that would do is drive them further together as a group – cement their resolve to carry on with whatever it is they have in mind.”
     “I think perhaps you underestimate the importance of family in the Muslim community, Mr. Marsh, especially to young Asian men. To be outcast from your family is one of the most shameful things that can happen to any Muslim but even if there are some who reject everything to further their own misguided cause there will be those who don’t. If only one of them comes home, so to speak, it’ll have been worthwhile. It will give the families strength and belief that they can do something and that they still have a voice amongst the younger generation and they can keep trying.”
     “That’s very noble, Aisha, I only hope you’re right. So you want me to find out exactly who from your own community is involved with this apparent extremist group?”
     “Yes.”
     “You want a list of names?”
     “That would be good but actual pictures of those involved in the group somewhere together would be very helpful.”
     “That wouldn’t prove anything one way or the other. Pictures of a few people in the same place at the same time don’t mean they’re up to no good or up to anything for that matter.”
     “Some sort of film or video, then, with sound. It could almost be done on a mobile phone, though you would have access to better equipment, wouldn’t you Mr. Marsh?”
     “Maybe, but I couldn’t film things myself. Even if I find the group and where a meeting might be held, I couldn’t move amongst them. I wouldn’t exactly be welcomed with open arms. And if I find the group, how will I know it’s the right one? I wouldn’t imagine it would be the only one of it’s kind.” Aisha took an envelope from her bag and pushed it across the table, “This is Yusef. As you can see, he’s easy to recognize.” The picture was a head and shoulders shot of a good-looking young Asian man probably in his early twenties. He was smiling broadly and was distinguished by a narrow streak of white hair just above the hairline towards the left side of his forehead. Half his left eyebrow was also white. “He has a beard now but has never dyed the white piece of his hair or his eyebrow. He believes that is how Allah, peace be upon him, meant him to be and to change his appearance would be a sin against the one who made him.”
     “He’d certainly stand out in a crowd, but, as I said, someone else would have to do the filming, someone from your own community. I could supply the film equipment and instruct someone how to operate it though actually, all you need is a small digital video camera. I have one I could lend you. Maybe the person would have to infiltrate the group maybe by pretending to want to be part of it. It would have to be someone the group would know and trust whom they wouldn’t suspect. That’s a tough call. Do you think you could find someone like that?”
     “Yes. There are one or two people I can think of but I’ll need to think hard before talking to anyone.”
     “You certainly will. I do have one other slight concern. When it comes to a confrontation between the families and a group member will any other methods of persuasion be used apart from reason or argument?”
     “How do you mean?” I would’ve thought it was obvious but she was pretending it wasn’t.
     “I couldn’t and wouldn’t be part of anything that would lead to anyone being physically abused in any way whatsoever.”
     “That wouldn’t happen. We are not the violent people everybody seems to think, Mr. Marsh, despite what you may have heard to the contrary. We are not all bomb carrying martyrs as seems to be the popular view.”
     “We have to try and do something, and just as importantly, be seen to be trying by those within our community and those outside - especially those outside.”
     “I don’t think that’s as popular a belief as you imagine, Aisha.”
     “Really? Let me ask you something, Mr. Marsh. Have you ever had your face spat on in the street?”
     “I can’t say I have.” I knew what was coming.
     “I have, Mr. Marsh. And, believe me, you can’t begin to imagine what that experience is like. It’s the ultimate form of degradation and causes an indescribable pain. I don’t mean a physical pain, but a pain much deeper and that strikes at the very core of your being.”

     There was a look in her eyes that’s difficult to describe - of sadness, understandably, but also a kind of defiant strength.

     Dill reappeared as I was showing the old man and the girl out. I’d told Aisha that I’d need a bit of time to think about what she wanted me to do and that I’d have to consider all the implications very carefully. She told me she understood entirely but hoped I would decide favourably and let her know as soon as I could. She’d written an email address on the back of Yusef’s picture.

     As they stood up to leave, Aisha towered above her Father. She was probably 5ft 6 but he was tiny and size wise looked like a child next to her, his head in its Jackie Kennedy hat just level with her shoulder. I closed the door behind Aisha and the old man, having already made up my mind I didn’t want to get involved.

     This particular case scenario was a little more than dangerous. The odd risk went with the job territory and was OK to get the adrenalin pumping and make life feel a touch more interesting than it actually was. I’d been threatened on numerous occasions, beaten up a couple of times, and even shot at once, albeit by a six-year-old boy wielding a plastic machine gun loaded with convincing sound effects. He almost scared me to death when he leapt out from behind the wheelie bins on the Kingsmead council estate in Hackney. Had that happened in Sao Paulo, the gun would have been real and I would have been coffin fodder. Come to think of it, the goings on in and around the Kingsmead Estate, Hackney E9 weren’t a million miles from those on the slum streets of Sao Paulo, guns becoming more and more commonplace lethal toys every day. But messing around with affairs of what was commonly referred to as ‘National Security’ had as much appeal as a Texas Evangelical sermon.

     But, business being business, I admitted to myself with not much difficulty that I was a mercenary bastard like everyone else, changed my mind and decided to proceed with the caution knob turned up to max. I tapped Aisha and email telling her I’d start to look into things.


Monday afternoon.

     Some of the rows of terraced houses in the streets off Brick Lane in the Spitalfields area of East London represent a kind of Mecca for to anyone with an eye for the fine things of life. Not that I think I’m above anyone else, but I consider myself to be fortunate in that drawing stuff as often as I do has taught me to look at things in a way that perhaps the average bod coping with all the usual problems life chucks at them doesn’t have time for. The proportions of the 4 and 5 storied houses, built by the French refugee Huguenots during the 17th and 18th centuries, are as perfect as it gets, the solid oak doors and large, delicately framed, impeccably placed windows, giving the buildings a unique elegance definitely missing from your average tower block or meandering council estate. Well, I think so.

     At risk of sounding like a Judith Chalmers travel programme, I have to say the buzzing, vibrant atmosphere of Brick Lane is a stark contrast to the adjacent corridors of Huguenot magnificence with its colourful hustle and bustle, cacophony of noise and multi-layered tapestry of smells. So there - keep up, Judes, old thing. Once a no-go area for white folk, Brick Lane is now the beating heart of the of London’s newest ‘place to be’, Shoreditch. The trendiest ad agencies, design groups and fashion houses have taken root there not to mention several prominent young artists, photographers, and their entourages. Clubs, café’s, recording studios, galleries, publishers, book and record shops have sprung up around every street corner and Shoreditch, the once run-down ghetto of the print trade is now bright, sparkling and alive – a bit like the best bits of Soho without the sleaze sprinkled with essence of Old Bond Street and South Molten Street. The Kings Road, Chelsea, it ain’t and, thankfully, would never want to be. In the end though, it’s all down to perception and there are those folk who think under its skin, Brick Lane, despite it’s ethnic charm, and eccentricity is still the drunk-infested crap hole it always was and, if I was honest, I’d have to agree, always will be.

     So a bloke wandering around with a camera and sketchpad is as acceptable a part of Brick Lane scenery as the odd tourist, juggler, street musician or alcoholic and provided I didn’t point the lens where it wasn’t wanted I was on pretty safe turf. I’m also fairly a well-known character to a lot of the Bangladeshis in Brick Lane, some of whom sometimes stop to take a gander at my drawings and pass comments, especially the younger ones, “That don’t look nuffink like our shop. That does look like my dad, though. Don’t let ‘im see it or ‘e might kill you. You’ve made ‘im look proper fatty, innit?”

     This was a tricky one. I didn’t even reckon I could chuck questions about radical groups at Jamal, especially remembering his friend with the baseball bat. There was enough paranoia in the community as it was. I mean how was anyone going to respond to a question like: “Hi there. Lovely day, what? I’m looking for a radical Islamic group and I‘ve heard there might be one or two round these parts. Can you point me in the right direction, old bean?” Even the mildest, most law-abiding Muslim was going to be very hacked off, and I wouldn’t blame them.

     But I had to start somewhere so I did call in on Jamal for a coffee and though the place was pretty busy he came and sat down for a few minutes. I threw caution to the wind and showed him the picture of Yusef,

     “Do you know this kid?” I said as casually as a known private investigator could get away with.
     “What’s ‘e done, innit?” Jamal said just as casually.
     “I don’t know that he’s actually done anything. His family think he may be mixed up in some sort of radical activities and want me to find out. It’s a bit tricky me asking questions around here about that kind of thing, if you know what I mean.”
     Jamal took a long look at the picture then flipped it back onto the table. Then he smiled. “If you was anyone else, I’d wish you to go fuck, but for you, ‘ark, I’ll ask a few peoples. How’s that be?”
     “That’s really good of you, Jamal. I’d really appreciate it. Like I said, there may be nothing to it, I just need to let the family know.” I guessed Jamal recognized Yusef on the premise that if he hadn’t and had still offered to help he’d have kept the picture.
     “No coppers, right?”
     “You know me better than that, Jamal. I only deal with the boys in flack jackets when I have to and then I keep it to a bare minimum.” I put the picture back in my pocket and Jamal changed the subject.
     “You see the football, last night?” and not waiting for a reply, “The ref should be minced up in my kitchen. No way was that a foul, innit? Geezer had procession of the bloody ball, right, plain as ninety pence. There’s a real danger of the bloody ‘ammers gettin’ regulated now. Still, serves ‘em right for buying that no good Brazilian, what’is name, from Man U?” His big laugh erupted like monsoon thunder and he got up and went back to work bullying his chef, “Got to get on, ‘ark. Nice see you, mite.”


Tuesday.

     It was a pleasant though chilly sunny morning and after strolling up and down Brick Lane a couple of times trying to appear nonchalant and probably not succeeding, I sat down on the pavement with my back against a wall in an open area where a few people lay out their wares on blankets and sit cross-legged amongst various bits of tat from glass jewelry to packs of tarot cards to ply their trade. A stack of dodgy-looking fake Vuitton luggage stashed against a heavily graphitized wall opposite caught my eye as did the tattooed salesman with the Pitbull Terrier hiding inside the Staffordshire Bull Terrier who’d just lifted its leg and peed over a suitcase while the bloke’s back was turned. I was instantly absorbed in the scene, my 4B pencil skating confidently across the page for several minutes, obviously relishing the prospect of entering yet another of my Leonardo zones. A shadow fell across the page turning my efforts a bit grey.

     “That’s really rather good,” said a cultured, English male voice somewhere above me, “ I’d give anything to be able to draw like that. Mr. Marsh? My name’s Church. John Church. Might we have a word?”
     A bright halo framed the speaker’s face, his features hidden by a sheet of intense backlight as I looked up shielding my eyes from the glare with a salute, “Do I know you?” I said at the dark shape.
     “I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure of an introduction but we know you, Mr. Marsh.”

Later.

     John Church was a good-looking young man as far as a heterosexual bloke like me could tell. I put his age around 30. With dark, well-groomed hair he had the kind of tan that came from frequent visits to far off foreign places, perfectly set off by a white Lacoste polo shirt worn over a muscular but trim frame. He displayed an even whiter immaculate smile, which never left his lips the whole time we spent in the café. We were no longer in Brick Lane. Church and his companion, a notably granite-faced looking zombie, had driven me to Limehouse to a crowded greasy spoon run by a pale, unhealthy looking and overweight middle aged white couple. Church’s car was a dirty maroon Ford Focus but judging by the aggressive throbbing of the engine it had something obscenely anti-social equating to a couple of hundred carthorses under the bonnet.

     Church wore Armani jeans and black Chelsea boots polished to a deep shine. His companion, a thick set slab of a zombie was clearly ill-at-ease in his remarkably un-designer dark blue suit, white shirt and tie, suggesting to me he was a military person who resented being out of uniform. He sat silent and po-faced in the chair next to Church and I didn’t think knocking out a quick portrait would be quite the ticket so I kept my elbows rested on the sketchpad.

     “I’m actually Inspector John Church of CO19,” he’d said on the way to their car, emphasizing the word inspector, “And this is Sergeant Peter Groombridge.” In the café, a fat waitress dumped three grimy looking mugs in front of us after wiping a few crumbs off the tabletop with a Salmonella laden dishcloth. "We could show you warrant cards but I’d rather not do that here, if that’s OK with you? We can go over the formalities later.” Confirmation of who these guys were wasn’t necessary. I’d come across so-called special ops people before and neither of them was acting.
     “So what do you want with me?” I said as if I didn’t know, spooning the single heap of sugar I allowed myself into what looked like worse coffee than Jamal’s. The only mystery was how the hell they’d got on to me so fast. Then I remembered the email I’d sent Aisha and immediately felt the cold breath of Big Brother on the back of my neck. He’d certainly been pretty quick off the mark, but then, as he had satellite technology that could swoop down and count the number of bogies in your left nostril, it wasn’t altogether surprising, though why Aisha or her Father and their email address should be on a CO19 list was a trifle worrying.
     “Everything’s cool,” Church said through his nauseatingly insincere smile, “We just want to chat over a few things, yes? Maybe get a few things straight in our minds?” I nodded a less than exuberant agreement; hopefully not giving away how turgid I was feeling that I had no choice but to sit there and tolerate these two goons. Not that either of them gave a monkey’s how I felt. Careful not to be specific about anything, Church continued, “As you can imagine, things are pretty tense in the old Smoke since 7/7 especially around Asian communities. I suppose you’ve got to feel a bit sorry for them really. They must feel they’re being persecuted – that they’re being watched all the time. I mean they’re not all bomb carrying martyrs like the general public seem to believe.” I remembered Aisha saying the same thing almost word for word but I doubted Church's conviction matched up to Aisha’s.

     "Most of them are as peace-loving as you and I and just want to get on with their lives, but there are those who definitely incline towards, shall we say, alternative tendencies, who for some reason, aren’t happy with the indigenous British way of life, though they live here and reap all the benefits, often quite literally, of a real democracy. Even if they’re born here and claim to be British, there are those who still want to change things and propel us all back to the Middle Ages, something I’m sure neither of us relish the prospect of.”

     I’d decided right from the off that wherever all this was leading the best policy was to say absolutely nothing. These guys were going the long way round to making some kind of point and all I had to do was sit tight until they’d finished. I’d never been a particularly political person believing politics was a game run by international crooks and that there wasn’t much point in getting too hot under the collar about this or that because the average punter couldn’t do anything about any of it anyway. As far as I could see, the world was a pretty fucked up place and I’d long decided to just try and make the best of it. This being the case, it was relatively easy to stay calm and relaxed while Pretty Boy Floyd rambled on.

     Church’s companion obviously hated being there as much as I did if that were possible and, by the look on his face, he hated me even more than he hated his blue suit. I just wasn’t his kind of guy and my usual fairly scruffy designer tramp get-up, knife and fork haircut and 2-day-old beard clearly weren’t his kind of thing. Then he wasn’t to know my suit was vintage 15 year old Armani from when Giorgio was at his peak and he probably wasn’t overly turned on by its cool linen potato sack statement, his peepers having been fixed on mine since we’d met with a stare that suggested he’d be more than willing to pick off my arms and legs as if I was some kind of nuisance insect, given the go-ahead by his companion.

     “You see, Mr. Marsh, as we’re always being reminded, we live in a multi-cultural society and that’s the way it is and is likely to stay, probably for ever and a day, and that’s fine, provided everybody in that society wants the same things, has the same values, morally and otherwise. Tolerance and peaceful harmony is what’s required, yes? It’s the only way we can all live together. But with so many different cultural values vying for pole position it’s very difficult to maintain any kind of status quo and blowing up a London bus and a few tube trains in the middle of the rush hour doesn’t exactly demonstrate the desire for harmony in my book, or yours, I reckon,” he paused briefly as if to give me time to respond but I didn’t even give him the satisfaction of a nod or the twitch of an eyebrow. “There are a lot of delicate situations that are being dealt with by extremely proficient people who know what they’re doing. There are certain balances, which have been put in place and maintained and which, if disturbed, could be catastrophic in ways that you can’t begin to imagine. What I’m saying, Mr. Marsh, it’s all best left alone for the good of all. That not only should one look before one leaps but better that one doesn’t leap at all. Do you see? Am I making myself clear?” I still didn’t move a muscle, sticking to my plan of appearing brain dead. “Good,” he assumed he had made himself clear, “Then that concludes our business. Good afternoon, Mr. Marsh. It’s nice to have met you.”

     The two of them got up and left without a handshake much to my relief. As they opened the door to go out, Church stood aside to allow a young girl with a pushchair into the café, his condescending smile still fixed on his chops like a Guy Fawkes mask. As they waited for the girl to pass, Groombridge shot me a stare that I guessed was supposed to fill me with fear and dread and have me looking under the bed at night but it only succeeded in confirming my opinion that he was a complete and utter lame-brained tosser. I did feel slightly nauseous but that was probably down to the coffee. I opened the sketchbook and began drawing the theatrically stone-faced idiot from memory. Then I ripped out the page and screwed in into a tight ball.

     Church’s threatening manner really pissed me off. Like Clark Kent, I’m a fairly mild mannered chappie unless I’m threatened or shouted at and then the dark side of me kicks in and I have a terrible temper when push comes to shove. Wait a minute. Wasn’t the ‘Dark Side’ in Star Wars? Whatever, I thought it was a crap film anyway. Now I was really curious to find out what was going on in the shadows of Brick Lane and in an act of probable lunacy and totally misguided heroism, I decided to carry on with my investigation. All I needed to do was to hold focus on the image of Aisha’s heavenly visage and everything would be fine. Church and his Toon could get stuffed.

Wednesday.

     “’ello, ‘arkeny? I’m Jamal, innit? I got the news for you.” The serene, but cringingly pretentious ring tone sound of Miles Davis’s ‘Milestones’ on my mobile had interrupted my concentration as I poured over yet another Dungeness drawing.
     “OK, Jamal. I’ll come right over.”

     The 55 ‘bus dropped me at Brick Lane and Jamal was chatting to a couple of locals in the sunshine outside the restaurant. He led me through to the back and up a flight of stairs to a small parlour, which smelled more of curry than the restaurant downstairs. We sat down at an old dining table similar to the one I owned and Jamal leaned forward eagerly and spoke as if he was a badly cast, poorly acted Russian spy from a Nineteen Sixties British movie.

     “I found Yusef along with his group,” he said confidentially.
     “Really?
     “Yeah. They hangin’ up in a big shed down by the Royal Albert Docks.”
     “Have you actually seen them or did you just find out where they meet?
     “Yeah, I bin there. I talked to them.”
     “You talked to them?”
     “Sure. They like to talk a lot - especially the geezer, Yusef. He’s very passionate, innit?”
     “So I’ve heard. I don’t expect you took any pictures?” I said facetiously.
     “No, I didn’t have a camera but they said I could any time.”
     “What? You asked them?”
     “Nah. Them what suggested it. They’re cool with it. Film too, if you want.”
     “What did you tell them, Jamal?” I suddenly remembered what Church had said about disturbing balances.
     “Nuffink, innit?”
     “You must have said something, Jamal.”
     “I told them I was interestin’ in what they was doin’ and that maybe I could help them get some publicity.”
     I could hardly believe what I was hearing. I’d credited Jamal with a bit more common sense. “Just how extreme are these guys, Jamal?”
     He leaned beck in his chair and folded his arms, “About as extreme as it is gettin’, believe in me. Anyways, they want to meet you.”
     “What? You told them about me?”
     “No. They already knew about you.” Again my mind vaulted back to the conversation with Church. These people really were as clever as he’d said. “Yusef says he knows all about his uncle’s visit to see you. He said you can meet him and the rest of the group at the shed.”
     “What, just like that? I’m not sure I like that idea. It’d be asking for trouble.” A worryingly vivid image of me on my knees and a masked bloke sawing away at my neck with a carving knife flashed up on my brain screen. “No, I really don’t think I want to do that.”
     “No worryin’. I’d be with you. I’m like keepin’ you company, innit? Bring your camera, right?”

Wednesday evening.

     The wasteland around the old Royal Albert Dock is the nearest thing to Dungeness without the sea. When I'm the right mood, the derelict buildings represent the Dungeness nuclear power station and the pylons the lighthouses. That’s the way I see it. If I need to draw and think or just draw and I can’t get to Dungeness I go to the Royal Albert Dock. I’d seen the old warehouse Jamal described as a shed dozens of times. As big as an aircraft hanger, a go-cart company used it back in the early Nineties but they went bust and the building was left to rot. We drove there in Jamal’s silver Mercedes C240, a pretty good indication that business for the average Brick Lane curry house was brusque to put it as mildly as Mutton Mughlai.

     It was 10.30pm when we arrived at the docks and the low, dark mass of the hanger looked a tad foreboding, a loose piece of corrugated roofing rattling in the wind giving the scene a definite Hitchockesque flavour. Even the scudding puffs of cloud, spot-lit by the full moon, looked to be getting away from the place as fast as they could. A few small windows showed there were lights on inside the building and it occurred to me that the place wasn’t a particularly good hideout, maybe even a bit obvious, which I then supposed would make it a pretty good hideout because it was so obvious as to be ignored. To be honest, my mind was reeling and rocking like a rickety old Margate big dipper as we walked towards the shed across the knee-deep grassland from the clearing where we’d parked the car.

     The only way into the old building seemed to be the way out and Jamal banged on the old fire doors with his fist. There was a lot of shouting going on inside and, as no one came, Jamal banged on the doors harder and gave them a hefty kick. The shouting stopped and after a few seconds the doors were shoved open. A scraggily bearded Asian youth in regulation Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat and the long shirt thingy stood in the doorway, the dim interior lights hardly spilling over his shoulder upon which he rested an aluminum baseball bat. This didn’t bode well, my mind recoiling back to the raging bull with a similar weapon in Jamal’s restaurant.

     “Yeah?” said the guy with the club not overdoing his message of welcome.
     “Ahmed, innit?” said Jamal.
     The youth’s face split into a wide grin, “Yeah, man. How-you-doin’, Jamal, dude?”
     The two exchanged a vicious high-five. “This is ‘arckeny, what I was tellin’ you bout, innit?” said an also beaming Jamal.
     Ahmad offered me his air-born hand, “Yo, ‘arkeny. ‘ow you doin, bruv?”
     I tentatively raised my own hand, which was met with the thunderclap of a slap from Ahmad’s bringing tears to my eyes. “Hi,” I managed weakly.
     “C’mon in, guys. Good to see yous, innit?” Ahmed pushed the doors wide open and ushered us inside the hanger. It was like walking into a giant fridge.

     The stale, dank air was freezing and our breath instantly became visible as air-born frost, and a foggy mist hung beneath the high ceiling. The place was huge and the concrete floor stretched at least as far as Africa. 50 or so Asian youths dressed in the same sort of garb Ahmed wore were spread about the place – some in a couple of groups at one end of the hanger, the others around the perimeter. Half a dozen small white paving slabs were positioned on the floor in a rough circle with another in the centre.

     “Jest a second. I’ll be right with you,” called a man’s voice from somewhere in the middle of the massive space, “Now, Mohamed, hit the fucker, for Christ’s sake.” I whirled round expecting to be taken out by the swipe of someone’s bat but there was no one there except Jamal, Ahmed having run to join the others. “This is your 3rd and last strike, Mohamed,” yelled the man’s voice, “Even if you miss, you gotta run. Here it comes, ya bastard.”

     There was a loud crack, which thankfully wasn’t my skull. and it was followed by a sharp echoing clang as something hit the metal ceiling, ricocheted across the rafters and hit the sidewall before plummeting to the ground. “Run, for fuck’s sake, Mohamed. What are you, made of lead?”

     A huge cheer went up from the gathering followed by a wave of ragged laughter, “You should’ve caught that Bataar. Your fingers bin dipped in something they shouldn’t have bin, or what?” The laughter reached a crescendo, “OK, take 5, you miserable bunch o’ losers. Yusef, take charge ‘o this rabble will yer. And no smokin’ in here. If you wanna kill yourself slowly, go outside.”

     The owner of the voice - American Southern States by accent, I guessed – a tall, laconic, white-haired guy in his late 50s/early 60s, ambled over to where Jamal and I were standing.

     Jamal slapped me hard between the shoulder blades, “Radical or what, I’m asking you?” he was grinning like the Walt Disney proverbial bloody cat that once belonged to Lewis Carol.

     The tall American, dressed in faded jeans a thick Levi shirt, and a baseball cap, his right arm already extended in greeting and his left dangling by his side in a catchers mitt, began announcing his arrival before he got to us, his voice carried forward on another frantic frosty cloud, “Gentlemen. Good to see you. How’re doin’, Jamal? Mr Marsh, I presume. Glad to make your acquaintance. Durrel’s the name. James P. Durrel. The P’s short for Peewee, though fuck knows where my folks got that idea. Reckon they thought it was some kind of joke. Bit like a ‘Boy Named Sue’, I guess,” by which time he’d reached us and began crushing all the bones in my right hand with his, “Jeesus, these wog bastards are a real pain in the butt sometimes. They may be good at cricket, and I have my doubts about that, but when it comes to a real ball game, they have about as much idea as they do how to fly.”
     “Better be a wog bastard than a Yankee areshole, innit?” said Jamal, and he and James P. Durrel began mock sparring, finishing with their arms round one another’s shoulders.
     “Mr. Marsh,” said Durrel, “This is one fuck of a great bunch of kids, I’m tellin’ yer. You won’t find a better bunch anywhere in this Godforsaken world.”

Later at Jamal’s.

     Bloated by more elephant sized curry courses than could have been healthy, Jamal, Jimmy Durrel, which he insisted on being called, Yusef and I sat at a corner table at Jamal’s lit by rather inappropriate romantic candlelight. A game of baseball was the last thing I expected when Jamal and I turned up at the hanger and I was still recovering from the shock. Jimmy hadn’t stopped talking from the moment we’d met and was still on full throttle, though somewhat smoothed around the edges by several slugs of Jamal’s dodgy whiskey from a bottle without a label.

     Jimmy was obviously extremely well-liked by the young Muslim men in the hanger and that fact that he took the Mickey out of them at every opportunity only seemed to enhance his popularity. They gave as good as they got, sometimes sailing pretty close to the wind, it seemed to me, but it was all good natured, the place echoing with raucous laughter the whole time. When the game, such as it was, was over, the gathering posed for group pictures with their American buddy at the centre of all the frivolity.

     It was a pretty strange sight, a weird trifle mix of cultures – Taqiyahs, Sirwais, Thobes, denim, baseball bats and catcher’s mitts, not to mention, rows of grinning teeth. I forgot my original nervousness at even having a camera with me and I entered into the spirit of things and enjoyed all the mucking about that went on in front of the lens. I’d love to have made a few drawings but there was no way this bunch would have kept still long enough and anyway, I was sure my fingers were frost bitten.

     “Were you ever in the army, Hackney?” Jimmy had said between onion bargies, “Hey, d’you mind if I call you Henry? No offense, mind, but calling you Hackney is a bit like you calling me Staten Island, or Maine, not that I’m from either of those places. I’m from South Carolina, for my sins, not that sins of any kind are tolerated there, and I sure wouldn’t want anyone calling me Carol, either.”
     “No, I wasn’t in the army, luckily for them. I’m too much of a coward.” I said, seizing a small gap in Jimmy’s verbal onslaught.
     “You’re very lucky you weren’t in some ways, but maybe not in others. Being in the army you get to see some wonderful places and to talk to some wonderful people that you might otherwise never do. I was a Marine - a voluntary killing machine, in other words. I joined up because I believed in my country and the freedom it stood for.

     "Ah, The Great American Dream,” his face opened into a wide smile and he shifted earnestly in his seat and pointed his finger at my own face, “It’s what drives most Americans but I often wonder what we’re all dreaming about and whether we’re all dreaming the same goldern dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald said, ‘The great American Dream is everyone else’s nightmare’. Maybe he had something there, but by all accounts he was a bit crazy, according to a lot of Americans. He lived most of his life and died in France. I guess you’d have to be crazy to do that. Not that I have anything against the French, you understand. Their women are beautiful and the wine’s pretty passable.
     “We’re a mighty peculiar bunch, we Humans, don’t you think, Henry? Do you know, most of the local churches in that precious state of mine are virtually at war with one another, parish to parish? It’s like every preacher thinks his interpretation of God and the bible is the right one according to his jumped up holier than fucking than thou sermons. Each Parish tries to poach worshipers from the next Parish like it’s some kind of competition. All that ‘love thy neighbour crap’ is a load of hot air. The church social network is all those dumb bastards have, the communities being so small and so far apart. There’s not much love for each other inside those communities either, which I guess isn’t surprising, Human nature being what it is.

     “You wouldn’t believe some of the petty bickering that goes on in some of those communities. In Irmo, near Columbia, where I grew up, a guy actually shot his next-door neighbour dead because of a row over the usher’s Rota at their local church. Can you believe that? Seems to me we’d all be a lot better off without these stoopid notions of some kind of God. Maybe we’d stop fighting each other, though there’d still be the greatest God of all to contend with. I’m talking about that nasty old bastard, O I L, of course. Funny he doesn’t have a white beard, don’t you think? He’s the worst of ’em all. He has more worshipers than any other God in history and he’s enhanced the lives of more people than any other God, if you call stifling the planet’s breath enhancement. And, true to form of the way you average God seems to work, he’s been responsible for more deaths than any other God in history.

     “He’s damned the lives of millions more than your average biblical prophet. Yep, good old O I L has quite a record when it gets down to having an effect on mankind and his past history, the present cataclysmic state of affairs we see today and a very dodgy looking future. But hey - each to his own. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion, yeah? That’s what democracy and freedom of speech are all about, ‘ain’t it? I mean if Yusef here wants to believe in Allah, then great. It doesn’t mean I have to share his views, does it? But I’ll tell, you what, Henry, I’ll fight to the death for his right to believe anything he damn well pleases.

     "If there is a God out there then great, and if there isn’t, then that’s great too. I may think Yusef and his crew are a load of fruitcakes for believing what they do, eh, Yusef?” He nudged Yusef on the arm, and surprisingly, Yusef grinned and rolled his eyes, “But as long as they don’t try and persuade me, they can believe anything they damn well like. Yusef thinks I’m gonna go to Hell when I croak for being a non-believer and for all I know he’s probably right, and if he is then I probably deserve it. I just bet he and the rest of his gang are really lookin’ forward to standing in front o’ me come Judgment day and pointing their little brown fingers and sayin’, ‘yo, we told yer so,’ right Yusef?”

     Still grinning, Yusef nodded. “Yeh. Whatever Jimmy. Whatever. He loves to talk, doesn’t he, Mr. Marsh. Bet you’ve never come across anyone so crazy before, right?” I wasn’t sure what to say so I just smiled inanely.
     “That’s the point, Henry.” Jimmy went on, passion oozing from him like blood, “I think they’re crazy – they think I’m crazy. But it doesn’t matter. We don’t have to kill each other over it. We can just play ball instead. We can hurl all the insults we like and it doesn’t matter. We can use up a whole load of energy and beat Holy fuck out of a little leather ball and just have one load of fun. No one gets hurt – unless you happen to be insane enough to get in the way of one of Yusef’s strikes. Then you’d better have a God who’ll help you, eh, my man?” I could see Yusef was getting fed up with being nudged.

     “Keep your elbows to yourself, Yank.” he said, his smile gone.
     “He loves me, really,” grinned Jimmy, “They all do.” Yusef’s smile returned like it had never been away and he rolled his eyes again. “I think they should be proud of their religion. They already are, of course, and they don’t need some old croak like me tellin’ them that. What I did suggest is that they wear their traditional dress on the pitch. That way they can be seen as a genuine Muslim league. Now that is something to be proud of.

     "Anyhow, they’re getting to grips with the noble art of ball play at long last. They’d better had. They’ve got a game coming up next month against some old army buddies of mine. They’re over here from South Carolina playing in a couple of charity games. They’re mostly wrinkly old has-been’s like me so maybe with a bit of luck and a tail wind, these young ruffians may have a chance, though I doubt it. What’s that they say, ‘it ain’t the winning, it’s the taking part’? The hell it is, Henry. The hell.

     "Anyway, I was talking about the army,” Jimmy hardly paused for breath and Jamal just sat there with a daft grin on his face, “The unlucky part for me was being involved in wars. That’s ironic, don’t you think? I mean fighting wars is what being a solder is all about, right? My first tour of duty was Vietnam between ’65 and ’68. That’s one hell of a beautiful country, Henry. If any country on earth can call itself God’s country, it’s Vietnam. And the people, they’re beautiful too. Trouble is, God wasn’t there when he was needed. I saw some dreadful things done to those people in the name of all the stuff the great Western democracies are supposed to believe in. Not just to soldiers but to defenseless women and children. Things that you just can’t contemplate would be possible for one Human to do to another.

     "But it’s not till you’re actually in a war that you start to wonder really about the whys and wherefores of anything. Not that you have much time to think about much when you’re in there because you’re scared shitless and too busy trying to stay alive, very often by killing the other guy before he kills you.” Jimmy helped himself to more whiskey from the bottle with no label.

     “Anyway, I stayed in the army for over 40 years. I even got promoted. ‘Major J.P. Durrel was the rank I held when I resigned. I could have waited a couple more years and retired honorably and lived pretty well on the pension but I decided to make some kind of fool statement and quit, for all the good it did. My gesture wasn’t really worth a gain of sand. Apart from me, nobody actually gave a shit. And do you know why I resigned? Why I made my big sweeping gesture? It was over pragmatism.

     “The last real action I saw was during what they now call the first Gulf War when that lunatic, Saadam Hussein invaded one of his neighbours and the so-called Coalition Forces went to their aid. ‘Desert Storm’, they called the invasion. It was no such fucking thing. Desert walkover was more like it. I got to know an English Captain who was part of the advanced force, the first wave of troops and armour to go in. He told me that the tanks in his regiment raced across the Kuwait desert like it was a Formula 1 Grand Prix. There was hardly any opposition whatever. They moved so far, so fast, that when they set up camp at the end of the second day, they were about 6 hours and 300 miles ahead of schedule and hardly a shot had been fired.

     "This English Captain told me one of his sergeants came to him in his tent in the middle of the night and woke him up to say they were under attack from artillery. The Captain asked the guy where the fire was coming from and the sergeant told him it was from behind. They’d got so far ahead that were in the firing zone of their own artillery backup. I mean, talk about friendly fire. It happens now and again but you don’t expect to get shot up the arse by your buddies back at the ranch.” Jimmy punctuated the sentence with hearty laughter.

     “My own company was in the second wave to go in and we got to Kuwait City having met no resistance at all. In fact, by the time we did get there it was all over and victory had already been declared. There were a lot of Coalition guys standing around wondering what the fuck they were supposed to do next. This same English Captain told me he wanted to show me something and he drove me down to the harbour. What he showed me was a wall. But it wasn’t just any old wall. It was a wall of bodies. It must have been 8ft high. We estimated there must have been 5 or 6 hundred dead Iraqi soldiers making up that wall. And I’ll tell you what they were freshly dead. So freshly dead, there hadn’t been time to clear them away. Blood was still seeping from some of them. And the Coalition forces were experts at clearing stuff away.

     "If you were to have followed the last line of military hardware across the Kuwait desert, you wouldn’t have known there had been a battle at all. Most of what there was of an Iraqi army had been wiped out by airpower as it retreated before any troop invasion took place. There were wrecks of trucks and tanks everywhere. It must have been a real mess. But that last line of the invasion force was all the clearing up equipment. Colossal mobile incinerators the size of 4-storied buildings were towed across that desert by giant earthmovers and all the wreckage was dumped inside those motherfuckers by huge mobile cranes and melted down as they went.

     “So what the hell happened at the harbour?” Jimmy’s habit of asking me questions before answering them himself was beginning to get on my wick, “I’ll tell you what happened. Those poor dead bastards making up the wall, had already surrendered when they were killed. They were probably overjoyed at the prospect of going home to their families. Near the wall was massive pile of weapons – rifles, handguns, light machine guns, and grenades, that kind of thing. So why had they been killed? Pragmatism, that’s why. It turned out that a whole amphibious force of Coalition marines had been launched from a carrier in the Gulf.

     "Their task was to hit Kuwait City Harbour from the sea and take out the Iraqi garrison stationed there. But when they arrived, the war was over and all there was, was a load of uniformed Iraqis standing around waiting for orders from the Coalition forces. The amphibious force arrived too late to carry out their mission. They couldn’t do what they’d been contacted to do which meant that the Coalition forces wouldn’t be able to present the Kuwait Government with an invoice. So you know what? They carried out their mission anyway. They killed those poor suckers in cold blood because it was pragmatic to do so. They weren’t men women and children like at My Lai. They were soldiers. So did that make their murder any more right? You can decide that for yourself.

     “The point is, in the 40 years I’d been a soldier, nothing had changed – nothing had been learned. I guess I was naïve to think anything ever would change. I didn’t quit the army because of all the brutality. All that’s done out of rage or hate or some other emotion more often that not. At least it’s felt, not cared about, but felt. But the taking of lives through pragmatism is much more cold-blooded, and calculated and more sinister.
I quit because there was no cause any more. There was nothing worth fighting for. There was no right, no wrong. No God on our side. No badge of pride like the uniform used to represent to me. There was no motivation. No direction. I joined out of some belief in what was right and what was wrong, however misguided. At least I had a reason for being there. Pragmatism took that away. You see, Henry, where there’s Pragmatism, there’s no morality of any kind and it’s that fact that makes pragmatism the most powerful weapon on earth. It also makes everything dull and predictable. There’s no buzz – no adrenalin rush with pragmatism.”

     Jimmy sat back and held up his glass before knocking back the remainder of the contents. "I just like the energy of these brown guys, their spirit their sense of fun. I even like some of their weirdness. It’s a bit of a pain when they stop for prayer sometimes, but I actually think it’s kind of nice. It gives me a few moments to reflect, if you like. A quick bit of meditation about the really important things in life is good for the soul. At least, it would be if we had one,” he nudged Yusef again but more gently, “It’s nothing new, of course, starting a baseball camp for Muslims. There are quite a few excellent professional Muslim players in the senior leagues back in the States. In Toronto, there’s a Muslim basketball club that goes by the name of ‘i-Slam’, you know, there’s like an ‘i’ then a dash then the word ‘Slam’? Now just how damn cool is that? And they’re good, Henry. But really good.”

     After a while, Yusef said his goodbyes and went home, making some comment about his family giving him bad time if he stayed out late or seemed to be enjoying life overmuch. We shook hands and he said he was pleased to have met me and that he hoped to see me again and that maybe I could go and watch the forthcoming game between the ‘Brick Lane Bats’ and the army vets.

     “We’re gonna kick arse, no question, Mr. Marsh. You’ll see.”

     When Yusef had gone, Jimmy carried on talking in a more subdued, less focused tone as the whiskey closed in and surrounded his brain, “I went back to Nam a few years ago and started a baseball team in a village near My Lai. The players weren’t bad. Actually they were a lot better than these ‘Brickies’ but somehow not quite as determined. Maybe they didn’t have Allah on their side like these guys do. We’re back in the den on Friday evening for another practice and boy do these fellas need it? You’re welcome to come along Henry. It would be good to see you there. These Brick Lane bastards need all the support they can get.”

Thursday afternoon.

     Aisha sat impassive and bolt upright in her chair as I told her about the Brick Lane Bats baseball team. There wasn’t a flicker of emotion detectable anywhere in her features. Occasionally she turned and said something in the other language to her Father next to her. He said nothing but looked confused and quite stern. I showed them both some prints from the photographs I took in the hangar and again there was no response. Aisha didn’t ask any questions and after 10 minutes thanked me for my time, wrote me a cheque, put the pictures into her shoulder bag and she and her father left.

     It had been a short case and, as with most of mine, an odd one but at least there’d been a happy outcome. I hadn’t upset any of Church’s precious balances; the young Muslims weren’t terrorists after all but just a crowd of proud, fun loving kids; Aisha and her father could report to Yusef’s father in hospital that his son wasn’t about to blow anybody up. Everyone was a winner.

Friday.

     Things were quiet. I had a meeting in Kingsbury, North London, with Neil Scott, my Jewish accountant. It would’ve been far more convenient to use someone based in the East End but I’d always used Scotty after my old friend, Tony Broadbent, gave me his name. Neil bore more than a passing resemblance to the late Bernie Winters, played guitar, was into country rock and loved America and everything it stood for. He also thought Australia and Australians were a waste of such a big boring space, and thought the whole place should be zapped with half a dozen nuclear bombs.

     I let Dill leave early having decided to take up Jimmy’s invitation and go and watch the baseball madness at the docks. I’d really warmed to Jimmy and his passionate demeanor and I found the Muslim boys quite fun too with their apparent, though I suspected, cynical, enthusiasm for baseball.

     It was close to 8 o-clock and pitch black by the time the trusty, rusty old Jag rumbled into the clearing near the hangar. There was no moon and if there was it must have been hiding behind the dense cloud. The inside lights were on as I tramped across the grass but the place was quiet. I reckoned the young Muslims must have been in prayer, or whatever they called it and when I got to the fire doors, I stopped and leaned my ear against them. I didn’t want to disturb anything by hammering my arrival in heavy Morse code.

     “GET DOWN ON THE GROUND ON YOUR FACE NOW!”

     I got down on the ground on my face right then. The Special Forces commands are legendary but this was the first time I’d heard one live and I’d have to say the effect was incredible. My legs buckled at the knees automatically and my body took control and threw itself forward. I landed like a flying bat in the grass, my arms and legs spread wide.

     “PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK NOW! DON’T MOVE AND DON’T MAKE A SOUND!”

     I did as I was told and a heavily booted foot was paced firmly against the back of my neck forcing my face into the grass, my mouth and nostrils filling with razor sharp blades of the stuff. Something was pushed against the side of my head. Without too much effort, I figured it was the muzzle of a firearm, or to put it another way, a fucking gun barrel. My wrists were jammed together and bound tight with something that cut into my skin and I yelled out.

     “SHUT UP!” I shut up. Someone leaned close to my ear. “What the fuck are you doing here, you scum?”
     “I came to watch the baseball.” I managed to burble through a mouthful of weeds.

     A hand was thrust under each of my armpits and I was hauled to my feet and thrown against the fire doors, my nose squashing and spurting blood in the process. I cried out again. Judging by the swiftness with which I reached my feet, there were at least two of the bastards, maybe more.

     “I SAID SHUT UP! Now I’m going to ask you again and I don’t advise you to take the piss. What are you doing here?”
     “Like I said, I came to watch the baseball.” The repetition didn’t with several screws loose go down too well and something struck me fiercely where it seemed to know my kidneys were located and I collapsed on to my knees coughing and spluttering in agony.
     “That’s enough, sergeant. Leave it.” I recognized the voice of Inspector Church - he of the sycophantic smile and Chelsea boots, and deduced immediately that my assailant had been his number 2, the sub human Sergeant Groombridge.

In the jag.

     "Are you feeling a bit better?” Church sat in the jag’s driver’s seat and I in the passenger’s.
     I took another swig of whiskey from the hip flask and coughed, dabbing a tissue at my bleeding nose with the other hand. “I don’t feel exactly top hole, it has to be said.”
     “I’m really sorry about all that.”
     “I get the feeling your sergeant isn’t quite so repentant,” I said, no longer giving a shit what Church or anyone else this side of Alpha Centauri thought about anything.
     “Sergeant Groombridge is a little over zealous sometimes but he’s good man. His heart’s in the right place. We did try and tell you not to get involved in these local shenanigans.”
     I seemed to have heard that old line about the over-enthusiastic psychopath who was actually as nice as pie once you got to know him in more than one rubbish film somewhere, and I’d always suspected the lovely sergeant didn’t actually have a heart but was an android with several screws loose, “As I told your ‘good man’, I came to watch some kids playing baseball.”
     “Is that what you really think is going on here? A game of bat and ball?”
     “That’s pretty much what it looked like to me.” I really wanted to push Church’s plastic smile down his throat but even if I’d had the bottle to try, which I didn’t, I knew I would’ve been cat’s meat as soon as I lifted a hand, “Anyway, where are they all? Have you and your chums chased them away?”
     “I really don’t think this is a time for jokes, Mr. Marsh. It may be as well if you took this situation a little more seriously.”
     “I wasn’t joking. I was invited to come and watch the team practice, so where are they? And what situation are you talking about?”
     He stared at me for a moment and for the first time since I’d first laid eyes on him he wasn’t smiling, “What do you know about James Durrel?”
     “Not much. I’ve only met him once. I know he was a major in the American Marines, that he was in Vietnam and the Gulf and he loves baseball. You haven’t answered my question. Where ab all de udders?” I said, suddenly sounding severely adenoidal through my blocked and probably broken nose.
     “We have one of them in custody.”
     “Ud de rest?”
     “They weren’t here,” Church said somewhat accusingly. “Lets just say, in light of certain information, it was expedient to round up the whole gang ASAP, but somehow, someone must have tipped them off. We only found one of them inside and he resisted arrest.”
     My nose had lost its numbness and now hurt like hell, “So whad are you saying? Ud what’s your interest in Jibby Durrel?”
     He didn’t answer my questions, “Maybe we should get you to A&E and get that looked at.”
     “I’ll live. I’ve been punched od de dose before.”
     “No one punched you on the nose. Let’s be clear about that.”
     “Doe? Introducig my face to a metal door at 90mph doesn’t coudt ded?”
     Church’s features tensed, “Look, Mr. Marsh. Take my advice and stay out of things that don’t concern you. I gave you more than a hint before but for some reason better known to yourself you chose to ignore me.

     “Let me be more direct. Go home. Forget all about baseball and Muslim youths and especially James Durrel. You’re treading on very dangerous ground here. These are matters of a National and Governmental order. I could have you arrested but let’s just agree that you’ll forget all about what you’ve seen here tonight, walk away and get on with your life.”
     “The ground is a liddle soft udderfoot around here, I’ll grardt you,” I said, “but I wouldd’t have said it was dadgerous. Adyway, what hab you got against baseball? Is it perhabs dat it’s just dot cricket?”

     I didn’t really have time to realize my mistake of atrociously bad comic timing. Church sprang forward in his seat, his arm shooting out with the speed of the Alien’s inner jaw. He grabbed my hair and with his face an inch from mine, bared his teeth, though not in a smile this time. He hissed rather than spoke and I could tell he was a bit miffed. “Now you listen, Marsh, you squirming little faggot. Don’t fuck with me or you’ll never see the light of day again, believe me. Now go home in your poxey little car to your poxey little flat in your poxey little street, climb into your poxey little bed, hide yourself under your poxey, rancid covers and pray we don’t come after you. You’re a marked man from now on. You step out of line just once in future, and your miserable, poxey no-account life, as you know it, is over. Do I make myself clear this time? DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?”

     Gradually, Church released his grip on my hair, sat back and allowed his face to relax into a smile again. Then he winked at me, which in a strange way was more terrifying than the scene I just described, before bidding me goodnight, getting out of the car, closing the door quietly behind him and disappearing into a black hole, possibly his own.

Saturday morning.

     It’s great isn’t it? Your schnozzle gets thumped and you end up with two lovely black eyes. I looked like a panda with a strawberry for a nose as I examined my injuries in the mirror. Luckily my teeth had survived the impact. My mobile rang. It was Jamal.

     “Yusef’s in ‘ospital - the Royal London. They fink ‘e might die. The police ‘ad ‘im in their custard, innit?”
     “Jesus. What happened?” It didn’t take an enourmous stretch of the imagination to figure it out. “Which ward is he in? I’ll go over.”
     “You won’t get to see ‘im. e’s in a private room under armed guard, innit?”
     “I’m going anyway.”

Midday Saturday.

     The Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, is fronted by a formidable looking, dark grey Victorian building housing one of the finest medical centres in the world and with and its helicopter pad on the roof, it boasts an A&E department second to none. The hospital is where the famously tragic Elephant Man spent the final years of his life and where he still is, albeit as a skeleton. The hospital is also in the center of the area of East London where jack The Ripper plied his trade as butcher extraordinaire. It’s located almost opposite The Blind Beggar pub where in the late Sixties Ronnie Cray shot George Cornwell dead at point blank range for suggesting publicly that Ronnie was a fat poof. Ronnie, who at the time, was mixing with celebrities and members of the cabinet, thought he was above the law but found this not to be the case and spent the rest of his life in Broadmoor believing for most of it that he was actually a dog.

     Jamal was right. I couldn’t get in to see Yusef. By chatting up a couple of nurses I managed to find out where his ward was but there was an armed guard outside the door who told me admittance was only for close family and though the 1st floor ward had corridor windows, the Venetian blinds were closed. I was about to walk away when the door opened and Aisha came out. She was red eyed and when she saw me she started to cry. I stepped forward and she fell against me and sobbed into my shoulder. I took her to the cafeteria on the ground floor and bought her a glass of orange juice and myself a coffee and we sat in silence for a few minutes before finally she spoke.

     “He’s unrecognizable. Apart from the white streak in his hair I wouldn’t have known him. His head and face are puffed up like a pumpkin and both his eyes are black – what happened to you?”
     “It’s nothing,” I lied, “Black eyes are all the rage. It was just a little mishap.”
     “There seems to be a lot of it about.” she said, her acerbic wit totally out of Character, “Yusef’s nose is broken, his jaw is cracked, he has 3 broken ribs and is his left wrist is fractured. He’s a horrible purple colour. The doctors said he also has internal injuries, to his spleen they think.”
     “What’s the story? What do the police say happened?”
     “They said he fell down a flight of stairs,” she almost spat out the words.
     “Well, he might have. I’ve done that myself and my injuries were pretty similar,” she looked at me scornfully, “But I’m sure that isn’t the case,” I added hastily, “Does his Father know? Is he in the same hospital?”
     “I’m afraid I wasn’t altogether truthful, Mr. Marsh. Yusef’s father is ill but he’s not in hospital. He’s in custody at Belmarsh Prison. He’s been there for a year on terrorism conspiracy charges. He hasn’t been tried yet, of course. Any such development keeps being put off. I’m not sure if he knows about Yusef being here or not. His brother, my Father, used to be able to visit him but they’ve tightened security and now he’s not allowed to.
     “Have they charged Yusef with anything?”
     “I don’t know.”
     “Do you still think Yusef and the others are mixed up in radicalism after what I told you?”
     “No,” she said simply.
     “You could have knocked me down with a feather or a metal fire door when I saw all the baseball stuff going on but it looked pretty convincing to me.”
     “What I don’t understand is why Yusef was there at the hut when the police raided it,” she said searching my face for an explanation.
     “What do you mean?”
     “I spoke to him and warned him that there may be trouble. He didn’t say anything but I assume he got in touch with all the others including Jimmy Durrel, of course.”
     “So it was you who blew the whistle?”
     “I’m sorry?”
     “It’s just a figure of speech. It was you who warned the Brick Lane Bats about the raid?”
     “Yes.”
     “How did you know about it?”
     “I didn’t but a cousin of mine who’s son is in the team asked me if he could keep the pictures and I suspected he was going to show them to someone. I don’t know why I gave them to him. Maybe I thought if I refused it would have been an indication that I did suspect something. Later I confronted him and we had a row. He said he’d shown the pictures to the police and told them about the baseball team and where they practiced. He started saying things about Durrel and the boys that the police had told him, and that’s when I realized that something was going to happen. What I didn’t understand is why Yusef went to the hut when he knew the police would probably raid it. They said he was wired with explosives, Mr. Marsh.”
     "Yusef?”
     “The police said when they got there he was on his own standing in the centre of the shed. They said they warned him to lie down but he just stood there. Then he put his hand inside his the coat he was wearing. The sergeant I spoke to said they all threw themselves flat because they thought he was going to detonate a bomb. Nothing happened and one of the officers got up behind him and knocked him over. They say he was wearing belts of explosive inside his coat and that the detonator must have been faulty. Of course they arrested him.”
     “They’d have shot him,” she looked like I’d slapped her in the face, “If they’d suspected him of being strapped and wired with explosives, they’d have taken him out there and then.”
     “What are you implying?”
     “I’m not. It just sounds a bit odd. How did you find out Yusef was here in The London?”
     “A police woman came to see me. She said there had been an accident and that as Yusef’s next of kin I needed to be informed. The policewoman actually came to talk to my Father but, as you know, he doesn’t understand English. She also told me Yusef had been arrested and after I’d been to see him the first time the police took me to Paddington Green Police Station and interviewed me. During the interview they told me about the explosives. I really can’t believe Yusef would do anything like that.”

     “I doubt he did. Are you OK?” My hand was aching to reach out and touch hers but I promised it I’d nail it to the table if it tried anything.
     “Yes thank you. I just need to know Yusef’s going to be all right.”
     “He’s young and fit and strong-willed. I’m sure he’ll be OK.” My sentiment was about as convincing as Bill Clinton’s declaration about his relationship with Monica Lewinski.

     Aisha went back up to the ward to sit with Yusef again. She said he’d been drifting in and out of consciousness and that she wanted to be there as a friendly face if he came to properly. I went across the road to the Blind Beggar for a scotch or 3 and a beef sandwich. I couldn’t have taken on the legendary full roast. I just wasn’t in the mood.

Monday morning.

     “Hi, you must be Dill. How’re y'doin’? I’m Jimmy Durrel. Is Henry at home?” Jimmy looked over the top of the partition, “Henry, my man. What’s occurring? Holy shit! What in hell happened to you? You look like you’ve gone 10 rounds with Rocky Marciano.”

     I sent Dill on her usual diplomatic biscuit-buying excursion which she did after she’d poured Jimmy and I some of her excellent coffee and I made a note to hire her out as a coffee consultant to Jamal for an exorbitant fee. Jimmy looked very relaxed, casually crossing one leg over the other, setting his chair back on two legs and cupping both hands round his mug – the one with coffee in it, that is. “I’ve just been to the hospital to see Yusef. He’s doin’ OK. There’s quite an improvement since yesterday. He came round and he’s been talking. He even managed to shake my hand. Hey, Henry. What’s up? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

     “You mean you’ve been onto the ward? How did you manage that? They wouldn’t let me in and I’m not…”
     “Not what? A terrorist; a Jihad sympathiser; a crazy bomb maker; just what did that son-of-a bitch, Church, tell you? “
     “He didn’t paint you whiter than white. He didn’t say anything but he implied quite a lot just by the way he said your name.”
     Jimmy threw his head back and laughed, “Oh, Henry, Henry. If only you had the eyes to see what’s going on around you. John Church is a naive, stupid, ignorant fool. That’s what makes him so dangerous. You may have gathered that he and I have crossed paths before.”
     “No, it didn’t occur to me. I just thought he’d heard of you somehow and had studied your profile.”
     “It’s a small world, Henry, and every profession exists in an even smaller one, be it the world of science, the arts, commerce, the medical profession, education or the military. I mean I bet you know the names of every other gumshoe in Hackney and what they eat for breakfast, no?”
     “There are six others, only one of whom I’d trust to buy me a bus ticket without ripping me off.”

     Jimmy spread his arms wide, his left hand sweeping his coffee mug 3ft into orbit around his torso and back without spilling a drop. “There you go, Henry. I know all about John Church and his reputation and he thinks he knows all about me and mine. I first ran into him when he was a mercenary in Sierra Leone.”
     “He wasn’t a regular soldier then?”
     “They wouldn’t have him. Any tin pot shrink would spot his psychotic tendencies a mile off. I spotted it and I’m not exactly Sigmund Freud. I told my commanding officer I wouldn’t have him any where near any of my soldiers and he listened. It probably had something to do with the fact that I told him about Church beating the crap out of a 16 year old local Freetown girl because she wouldn’t let him have his evil way with her – evil being the operative word. Quite a few of the other mercenaries stayed clear of him after that one got out. He was quite fond of torture, too. Even the local pussy- cats weren’t safe.”
     “If he’s so twisted, how come he’s employed by the British Police?”
     “That’s a seriously moot point, Henry.”
     “And Church has never forgiven you for telling on him?”
     “It was common knowledge how unhinged he was. I just made it official, if you like. The notion of forgiveness doesn’t apply to things military. Revenge does, unfortunately.” You see, Henry, we confounded Yanks don’t tell you limeys everything. Why? Because it ‘ain’t in our interests to do so. Basically, we know a darn sight more about you guys than you know about us.

     “I was involved in some quite heavy shit during my later years in the service – stuff connected with the Whitehouse and the folks who live there.”
     “You mean the president?”
     “I’m not going to go into specifics, Henry. Lets just say I had an ear very close to the ground and I heard a lot of stuff, stuff that would make your hair curl. And when you’ve been that close in, you’re never allowed to leave. Not completely. You’re watched and monitored for the rest of your life. Not that that bothers me. Not any more.

     “I did leave the army for the reasons I described, but I still serve my country in the best way I know how. I’m an American so I talk about we. That doesn’t mean I condone what we do or what we’ve come to stand for in some people’s minds. I used to believe the USA stood for all the corny stuff like reason, truth and justice. But you know what, Henry? I don’t really give a shit any more. I just don’t feel anything like I used to. Except, that is, when I play ball. I’m on the side of baseball, Henry.

     "When I play ball, nothing else matters. Not the States, not your quaint little old country, to grab a tired old cliché, not the starving millions, not global warming, the price of oil, Iraq, Afghanistan, Is fucking- rael, none of it. What I’m doing with those kids is for real. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter any more.”
     “Why?”
     “Because I’m dying, Henry, my friend.”
     “You sure are full of surprises, Jimmy, I’ll give you that. Are you ill?”
     “If you call pancreatic cancer and maybe 6 months at the outside being ill, then I guess you could say I was. When the Grim Reaper has left his final calling card, I want what I’ve started here to continue. It’s only one small building brick and amounts to fuck all in the great scheme of things but at least I can die believing I tried. I want you, Henry, to oversee the club when I’ve gone and keep it all going.”
     “You’re out of your mind. I don’t know anything about baseball.”
     “Neither do they, Henry, but that’s not the point.”
     “What is?”
     “It gives a few folk a good feeling.”
     “So does sex and killing people.”
     “I can’t argue with that. You’ve got me there, Henry. But this is a chance to have fun just for the sake of it while putting your middle finger up to the rest of the world at the same time. And you’re known around the community and the locals who know you think you’re an all right guy. You’re the best qualified guy I know to keep it all alive.”
     “I can think of better, saner ways of having fun.
     “The spirit of the thing works, Henry. The game itself isn’t important. Were they to start taking it seriously, the spirit I’m talking about would vanish. They’d become like just another football team and It has to someone from outside the community who steers the thing, otherwise it defeats the object.
     “I have to leave after the game. I’m going back home to end my days in Carolina. There are other reasons why I have to leave but I can't go into them right now."
     “D’you know how naïve you sound, Jimmy? I’ve got to be honest. I never heard such a load of old bollocks in all my life. Just what are you up to? There’s got to be something and whatever it is, I want to be a million light years away from it. Sorry, but I’m not the right person for the job.”
     “Just consider the proposition, Henry. Give me that.”
     “I have considered it.”
     “Consider it a little longer? Say, till after the game next month?”
     “It’s still on then.”
     “You bet. Yusef made me promise.”
     “Why did he go to the hangar when he knew there was probably going to be raid, and if you’re as untouchable as you say, why didn’t you go there?”
     “Would you take a bunch of kids into a war zone? That’s what it would have been – and with a lot of fired up, adrenalin pumped screwballs with their fingers on their triggers, it was a cake mix for disaster. As for Yusef, do you know what he was doing when those bastards got there? He was thumping balls with his bat. Just standing there at the plate and giving it rock all.”
     “Why, for heaven’s sake?”
     “He said he didn’t see why he should run when he hadn’t done anything wrong, He just decided to carry on as normal. He said he felt he had ‘good’ on his side and that good would prevail. Not Allah, but ‘good’. He said he felt untouchable. Quite ironic, don’t you think? I know just what he meant.”

     "This thing, small and crazy and downright stupid as it is – this half-baked load of nonsense of a bunch of fool kids rushing about and having a good time with a bunch of old fogies 3 times their age is something untouchable. It’s something that nobody, no matter how twisted and mean the politics are, can take away from them. And they can’t take it away from me either. Even after I’ve gone. And that way, I’ve won. We’ve all won. Surely you can see that, Henry?”

     He really was crazy. If he was ill, it was more in the brain than anywhere. But something about this old coot of a soldier from South Carolina appealed to me. I really liked him despite all the rubbish he spewed out.

     “Jesus, Henry! That’s me, you old son of a sea dog.” Jimmy leaned forward and grabbed the sketchbook. I’d been scribbling away almost without realizing it, “Can I keep this, Henry? You’ve really captured a moment in time there. God, what a handsome bastard I am.”
     “Sure.” I tore the page out and handed it to him.
“Do one other thing for me, Henry. Sign the fucking thing, will yer?”

4 weeks later.

     After a pretty shitty month trailing an alleged serial adulterer across Europe and Ireland and camping on a beach near the Dingle Peninsular within 500mm lens range of the small cottage he was staying in with his latest conquest and my tent being raided in the middle of the night by 3 men in balaclava masks and some fairly strong anti Brit Irish opinions delivered with all the lyricism 10 pints of Guinness apiece would produce, I was about to call time on being a private dickhead which seemed increasingly to be the right job description. This kind of surveillance was becoming the main stay of my chosen profession and I found it all rather tacky and boring not to mention dangerous in all kinds of ways that were not always the obvious, like getting pushed down a flight of stairs by one outraged female client or being offered as a dietary supplement to a male suspect’s pit bull.

     My campsite visitors’ proposition was very simple and succinct:
“Oim ainly gon ta sae this wonce, y’English bastard. Get the fock away from hire an’ dorn’t com buck if yer new wot’s good for eh. It’s only because it’s a Sondee an’ we’ve yet to go to muss that your miserable body’s still drawin’ fockin’ bret. No get fockin’ gone.”

     I had heard rumours that particularly fierce and deep rooted layers of republicanism still fermented in the depths of Counties Kerry and Cork but hadn’t taken much notice. They threw me out into the rain. They took my rucksack, my wallet, and the keys to the hire car. At least they had the decency to toss me my boots but only after they’d decided that my titchy little seven-and a-halfs wouldn’t fit any of them.

     Then they poured petrol on the tent and set fire to it and it blazed away like a proud beacon. They also took my camera and lenses which they proceeded to smash to smithereens with the small sledge hammer they just happened to have about their persons before chucking the bits into the sea while I trudged away from the scene wondering if the very rich lady from Bath who’d hired me would at least pay my expenses even though I couldn’t supply any pictures of her husband up to no good. Somehow I doubted it.

     It’s funny how conditioned your brain gets by some of the garbage piled into it by the daily media onslaught. Almost as a reflex, the balaclava masks of my newfound Irish friends immediately put me in mind of the Muslim boys back in Shoreditch and their Brick Lane Bats team. Had my assailants not had the foresight to take my mobile phone along with everything else, I would have called Jamal right there and then to tell him I’d be back for the game and to ask him to reserve me a seat in the main grandstand.

Take me out to the ball game on a freezing cold December Sunday
afternoon on Hackney Marsh.

     There were no grandstands of course, just a ring of people freezing their bits off standing around one of the 60 or so football pitches on the Marsh, including the Mayor of London and his entourage and a considerable number of security automatons obvious by their mechanical posture and visible lack of the possibility of involvement in any kind of fun anywhere in the universe. The Muslim V Yank Vets baseball game had been leaked to the local media and become a bit of a spectacle. Jimmy was fairly laid back about it and just grinned his usual grin when I met him at the pitch just before the game and I suspected he was probably responsible and had called in the information himself. As to the game itself, I had no idea what was going on though both sides seemed to be enjoying it all hugely and the crowd, mostly Muslims, were cheering and shouting for all their worth.

     Jamal told me the gung ho atmosphere in the hangar had been dampened 2 hours before the game began while Jimmy was giving the Brick Lane Bats their final pre match briefing. One of the players had brought news that Yusef’s father had died the night before having been transferred form Belmarsh Prison to Hospital and that the funeral was to be held that afternoon after the baseball game. Yusef had apparently managed to persuade his family that he should be allowed to play the game as a tribute to his father and he was notably and understandably quiet and sombre when he turned up late for the briefing. Jimmy had already advised the other players to leave him alone when he arrived and that his grief needed to be private. He took Yusef aside when he arrived and, putting his arm round the boy’s shoulder, had a quiet word.

     By the time the baseball game was halfway through, the crisp, freezing cold air had become filled with a near hysterical carnival uproar with everyone entering into the spirit of the thing, which I guess was what Jimmy had been rambling on about. Balls were pitched and slammed; bats were chucked aside and runs made; players slid and dived around the bases; the two referees, Jamal and an elderly American called Bob, argued continually, gesturing wildly and waving their arms about. Jamal knew less than I did about baseball and it was fairly clear whose side he was on, though everything was done in the best of humour – I think.

     The game reached a point where the Brick Lane Bats needed just a single run to win, though how anyone had come to that conclusion was beyond me. I couldn’t have said who’d scored what or when it was all so confusing and not a bit like the mixed rounders team I’d play in at my idyllic primary school when I was ten years old. Yusef, still bruised here and there, stepped up to what they called the plate, his bat held back at the ready and I noticed Jimmy standing on his own on the other side of the pitch talking to John Church.

     When the ball was piched, Yusef twisted his body to the side as he swung his bat. The resounding ‘thoing’ produced by aluminum bat meeting leather ball denoted a perfect connection and the ball arced high across the pitch and then seemed to change direction as if David Beckham himself had kicked it. It curved in the air and flew straight to where Jimmy and Church were standing hitting the CO19 inspector square on the forehead. He went down as if shot by a sniper. Yusef just stood there. He didn’t attempt a run, probably judging that if he had he would have been smartly introduced to a bullet from a Glock automatic.

     A huge, enthusiastic roar went up from the crowd but faded to as babble and quickly to silence as Jimmy knelt over Church’s prostrate body. Two paramedics from the nearby ambulance installed next to the pitch because of the health and safety regulations, ran over to where Church was lying and after a quick examination, started to administer resuscitation procedures. By the way one of them pumped his chest they were pumping his chest, it was obvious Inspector Church was not altogether quite the ticket, though I thought kissing him, as the other one seemed to be doing, was a bit over top.

     After about 15 minutes, Church was stretchered away to the ambulance, which was when the mayhem started. Then…

Back at the London Hospital.

     This was no ordinary headache and the bells ringing in my ears were no ordinary bells. How the hell did someone manage to get the whole of the Notre Dame belfry inside my skull? To add to the nightmare there was my old friend, Tony Broadbent, whose familiar features I would usually be pleased to see in front of my eyes, but which now appeared shrouded in an inappropriately angelic halo for a character of such questionable and dodgy dealings. I just wished he’d go away and take his confounded bloody bells with him.

     “Hello, Hack, old sport. Welcome back to the land of the living.” said the angelic apparition in perfect Everly Brothers Harmony with itself. “That was a close run thing, Henry, and I’m not talking about your silly game of American cricket.”

     Then Tony turned into a beautiful woman. I’d always thought he was pretty clever but this was the best trick he’d ever pulled and his chosen shade of lipstick was inspired. “Hello, Mr Marsh,” he said in Maddona’s voice – I mean the singer, of course, not the Mother of Jesus. “How are you feeling?” he/she said. It was obvious then that all was not well, especially me, as this was the stupid question they always asked on those daft TV hospital dramas after someone has just come round having had both arm and legs removed as the result of being run over by a burning bendy ‘bus. The next really wet phrase was usually; ‘“Don’t try to talk,”’ which I would’ve been grateful to hear but I was out of luck and it didn’t come.

Sitting up and taking notice.

     Madonna had sat me upright and helped me drink some lemon flavoured liquid through on of those plastic baby mugs with a spout in the lid and my throat burned like it was melting due to the breathing tube I’d had rammed down my gullet. Thankfully, I was in a single room and after writing something on my chart, Madonna left me with Tony who was sitting on a chair next to my bed.

     “That’s a very fetching paper gown you’re wearing, Henry, you must give me the name of your tailor when you’re feeling better. He has a great sense of humour. Not the sort of thing to wear when you’re having a quick cigar though.”
     “Always the wag, Tone,” my voice crackled like two sheets of sand paper being rubbed together and the pain graph hit the ceiling.
     “Just in case you’re wondering, Henry,” Broadbent said, “I haven’t been sitting here like a nun for the past 7 days waiting for you to come round. I kept in touch with the hospital and they told me when I called this morning you were showing signs of rejoining the living so I came over about half an hour ago. They’ve had you in what they called an induced coma for a week to reduce the swelling of your poor old brain box. Amazing what they can do these days, isn’t it?”
     “How did you know I was here in the first place?” I croaked.
     “I heard about your silly game of rounders on the grapevine and pitched up on the Marsh just as everything was kicking off, so to speak. If kickoff is the right term, which I doubt.”
     “It wasn’t my bloody game.”
     “Well, some of the Brick Lane locals I spoke to at the shindig said you were going to be running the club in the future.”
     “Bloody Jimmy Durrel.”
     “Who’s bloody Jimmy Durrel?”
     “Some crazy American ex-marine. He’s the one who started all this.”
     “If that’s the case, he got you shot. There was a very agitated, middle-aged yank I saw remonstrating with the security thugs. Would that have been him?”
     “If he was white haired, tall and suntanned and walked like John Wayne, then yes. How do you mean, ‘got me shot?’”
     “I didn’t notice his walk. He was behaving like a fantastically pissed off John Wayne though. As to being shot, you caught what’s commonly known as a bullet, my old friend. Or rather, it caught you – a glancing blow, luckily. It creased your scalp, as they used to say in the old westerns of our youth. Unfortunately, the girl in the niqab wasn’t so lucky.”
     “Which girl?”
     “People were calling the name Aisha so I assume it was her name. The buggers killed her, I’m afraid. You just happened to stray into the line of fire. It was the same old story. They claimed they thought she was a suicide bomber. Turns out she was no such thing. They did warn her, mind, but she just kept on walking towards the Mayor and his hangers on. They assumed she was all wired up under her anorak but she wasn’t of course. It all put the willies right up me, I can tell you. Put the willies up old Clive, too. You remember Clive, one of my minders? He threw me to the ground without so much as a by your leave and spread himself right over me like an 18 stone blanket. There’s loyalty for you.

     "Pretty weird, if you ask me. I mean, the girl must have known what they’d do if she didn’t stop in her tracks. Hey, Henry. You’re shedding tears, old chum. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Was she a special person in your life?” Tony replaced his smile with a badly acted look of sorrow but then his own eyes filled with water. For someone who was so ruthless, he was also an incurable softy. After a minute, I managed to get myself together.
     “No, she wasn’t anyone special. I hardly knew her. I just feel a bit vulnerable right now and my head hurts like hell. In fact all of me hurts like hell.”
     “OK, Henry. Maybe I should leave you for a while.”
     “I’d like you to stay a bit longer, if that’s OK, Tony.”
     "Whatever suits, Henry,” he said with a wink.

     We spent the next ten minutes small talking with Tony cracking a few jokes trying to cheer me up but inevitably we arrived back at the subject of the Baseball game and it’s aftermath.
     “What the hell happened, Tony? It’s all so vague. I’d like you to tell me. Don’t spare the details.”
     “OK, Henry, if you’re sure. Here goes,” Tony sat back and folded his arms as if to strengthen the firmness of his expression, “Clive and I got to the pitch just as the match was coming to the end. I hadn’t expected such a large and jolly crowd, I have to say; there was quite a carnival atmosphere. Everybody seemed to be having a whale of a time. There were a lot of security bods about – I recognized one or two of them – even said hello to the bloke your young batsman took out. That was so hilarious watching John Church dropping dead.”
     “You know John Church?”
     “Fraid so. He’s a lower form of life - one of the nastier types of Bobby. Brain the size of a peanut. He didn’t snuff it, but hopefully he still has a worse headache than yours. A worthy but misguided group of medics at this noble establishment managed to resuscitate the blighter. He was talking to that poisoned dwarf, Ahmed Hilash, when I saw him.”
     “What? He was talking to Aisha’s Father?”
     “Who, Hilash? Hilash isn’t Aisha’s Father, or wasn’t. Hilash isn’t anyone’s father. He doesn’t have any children to my Knowledge. If he had, I’d feel really sorry for them.”
     “But he doesn’t speak English. Hilash, I mean.”
     Tony Shrugged, “Maybe Church speaks Urdu. He spent a lot of time in the Middle East after the first Gulf War.”
     “Why would Aisha say he was her Father when he wasn’t?”
     “Search me, old son.”
     “How come you know him?”
     “Hilash or Church?”
     “Hilash. I didn’t give a stuff about Church.”
     “That’s the Spirit, Hack. Hilash is a really nasty piece of work. Apart from suffering from small weasel syndrome, he’s responsible for bringing some of the most radical mullahs into the country from Pakistan and letting them loose amongst the Asian population, especially in Tower Hamlets. I know him because he’s one of my tenants. What he gets up to for a hobby is no concern of mine, but he can be an awkward little bugger when it comes to rules and regulations pertaining to the rights of tenants and sometimes drives me up the wall with his demands for this or that but he always pays his rent, as do all his associates, so I’m not complaining.”
     “What was he doing talking to Church? I would’ve thought he was high on CO19’s list of dangerous people seeing as they seem to be so paranoid.”
     “I told you, Hilash is one nasty little bag of puss and bones. He plays both ends against the middle. He gats paid by some of the madrasahs in Pakistan for finding ways of getting the Mullahs into Britain by avoiding the immigrations red tape and finding accommodation, and in some cases, cover for them.”
     “Accommodation with you, I take it, Tony.”
     “Not under my roof, Henry, at least not the one where I reside. Hilash also gets paid for fingering radicals for the security services.”
     “Don’t the radicals in the community see him as a traitor?”
     “No-one would dare point a finger at the little turd. He has very powerful friends abroad. Anyway, he gets away with it by only turning over those he says are not worthy of being true Jihadists.”
     “I don’t understand.”
     “What, when is a Jihadist not a real Jihadist?”
     “Something like that.”
     “When he stands out like a sore thumb, when he shoots his mouth off or when he plays baseball instead of making bombs. Basically, the bastard will turn in anyone who doesn’t tow the line. His line, that is. He has to be in control and if he isn’t allowed to be, he makes sure no one else is. He’s a sort of Islamic Bernie Ecclestone.”
     “How on earth do you know all this?
     “The biggest mistake you can ever make as a landlord is not to know your tenants inside and out. A lot of landlords just ignore the people living in their properties and let them get on with it. But doing that allows them to get organized in the way that clever little slug, Hilash, did and form committees and stuff like that. Before you know it, some bright spark gets hold of a lawyer and presents you with a writ for something and you end up in court. I’m careful not to let that happen. I’ve got my paid moles too and I know about most of what goes on in the communities where I have business interests. I don’t know everything that goes on, mind, just what I need to know about.

     “Anyway, I was telling you about events on the Marsh, not that there’s much to tell. The sequence went like this: Church hits the dirt, a load of dark suited zombies grab the young kid who’d hit the ball, the Muslim baseball team charge in, the old Yankees turn their marshal arts training to pretty good use and wrestle some of the goons to the ground, everyone starts screaming and shouting at a girl walking towards the Mayor and his entourage. A few more goons usher the Mayor and other dignitaries along the pitch towards the row of parked limos. As I said, the girl was dressed in a niqab. She also wore a quilted anorak over the top and suddenly the tall American with the white hair starts yelling and running towards her. And so do you, Hack, so do you.

     “Shots are fired, the girl changes religion suddenly by getting an instant ash mark in the middle of her forehead and turns into a rag doll, you keel over at the same time, Clive lands on top of me, and that’s that. Game over. Literally.”

Curry Flavour.

     “How’re you doin’, ark? How’s you head feelin’?”
     “I’m getting there, Jamal. At least, I think I am.”

     Jamal’s sweaty grin was a welcome sight and so, oddly, was the cup of oil slick he slid across the table. This was my first visit to Brick Lane since before the baseball game and I was still feeling like the aftermath of a plane crash. I’d been discharged from the hospital a week after coming back from the dead and spent the following two weeks in a small boarding house near Dungeness. I just wanted to lose myself and forget all about Brick Lane, Americans and people in general and the best way I knew to do that was to draw. Occasionally, my eyes filled with moisture as I cowered over my sketchpad and once I found myself sobbing loudly. Not that it mattered. Dungeness is a notoriously bleak and deserted place where in winter months and you can spend days without seeing another living soul except for birds of the feathered variety and the odd dog.

     It was easy to tell myself I’d been in love with Aisha but the truth was that I was in love with the idea of her. I’d only seen her a few times but there was a few thousand years of history in that face of hers apart from the stunning, deep natural beauty that would have knocked any man sideways. My sorrow was selfish, of course. Sorrow usually is when it’s to do with a sense of loss. I felt deprived that I hadn’t been able to get to know her better, that I hadn’t had time to get closer, not that there could have been much chance of that. But now even the dream had gone. All that was left was an unfulfilled fantasy.

     Jamal sat down opposite me, folding his huge hands on the table in front of him. “Are you back to working now?” he asked quietly.
     “Sort of. I went in to the office this morning and shoved a few papers about the desk but couldn’t settle so I thought I’d come round here for a bit of abuse.” Jamal grinned and gently nodded.

     Dill had been great, showing absolutely no signs of sympathy and reading to me from list of outstanding bills and unpaid invoices as if nothing had changed, as it clearly hadn’t.

     “So what’s been happening, Jamal?” the coffee tasted reassuringly as foul as usual.
     “Same old, ‘ark. Same old.”
     “What happened to Jimmy?”
     “Dunno, mite. I spoke to him after the funerals then he just went off somewhere. No-one’s seen him since.”
     “And the boys?”
     “Most of them have gone too. Maybe some abroad, maybe some to the North to where they have relatives livin’.”
     “Were any of them arrested?”
     “The relatives?”
     “The team members.”
     “No. I don’t think so.”
     “That’s a relief. It would have been a bit inappropriate for the so-called authorities to do that after they’d killed an innocent girl. That hasn’t stopped them before though. And what about Yusef?” Jamal shrugged.
     “Did Jimmy say anything before he left?”
     “A bit, not much. He said that the Church man warned him at the match not to try anything.”
     “What did he mean by that?”
     “Searching me. The Church man told Jimmy he knew what was going on.”
     “That’s all?”
     “Jimmy said that the Church man has gone back to Iraq to work for private security people.”
     “Perhaps they thought he deserved a holiday after all his hard work persecuting people,” My comment was lost on Jamal. “What do you know of Ahmed Hilash?”
Jamal’s smile vanished as if I’d smacked him in the face with a wet Halibut. “He’s a very dangerous geezer, innit?”
     “So I gather. Where does he live? I’m told he doesn’t have a family as such. At least he doesn’t have children, which is pretty unusual for any Muslim man, isn’t it?”
     “Maybe he don’t have a dick and if he does, I’m bettin’ it’s like a thimble and don’t work properly. He does have a wife. At least, he did have.”
     “Poor woman. Have you ever seen her?”
     “Sure. So you have.”
     “I don’t think so.”
     “You have,’ark. Aisha. He was married to Aisha,” then a second later: “You all right, ‘ark? You gone as pale as sheets, innit?”
     “I can’t believe it. How come a girl as beautiful as Aisha gets herself married to someone old enough to be her grandfather? Was it some kind of arranged marriage or what? The thought of that wizened little bastard pawing over her makes me want to vomit. And why did she tell me he was her father? None of it makes any sense.”
     “Not a lot of fings does make sense in this world, ‘ark,” was the most profound comment I ever heard Jamal make about anything.
     “This is all so confusing, Jamal. Aisha tells me Hilash is her Father and that, his Brother, Yusef’s Father, is in Hospital but it turns out he’s actually in police custody charged with terrorist offences. What the hell’s going on?”
     “You want more coffee, ‘ark?”
     “No thanks. Come on, Jamal. Tell me what you know. Please.”
Jamal sighed deeply and checked his heavily bitten fingernails. “Hilash spit on his own brother. He told the police Fisal was a terrorist.”
     Jamal probably meant ‘split’ though the word he used seemed to fit the bill. “And was he? A terrorist, I mean?”
     “No way, bruv. Fisal is a nice man, unlike his brother.”
     “So why did he do it, apart from being a bloody psychopath? How on earth can someone turn in an innocent person let alone a relative?”
     “To keep Aisha and Yusef apart.” My head began to ache again and put my elbows on the table and splayed my fingers across my forehead. “Aisha and Yusef was in lovin’ innit?”
     “I thought they were cousins.”
     “They would have been if Hilash was Aisha’s Father, but he wasn’t.”
     “I realize that now. So they weren’t related in any way, Aisha and Yusef?”
     “Nah. They only met when Hilash brought her to Britain from Afghanistan.”
     “She seemed an intelligent girl. Well educated, I’m sure. Why would she need to get hooked up with scum like Hilash?”
     “Because she was raped, Mr. Marsh.” I looked up to see Yusef standing next to the table. Gone were the Taqiyah and Thobe and the beard. He was wearing jeans and his hair was gelled and flicked into a spiky tuft in the centre of his crown. Also gone were the white streaks in his hair and eyebrow. Jamal shifted over on the bench seat and Yusef sat down. He offered me his hand. “How are you, Mr. Marsh? I don’t suppose you expected to see me here. You probably thought I’d gone off on some mad bombing campaign.” I didn’t know what to say as the thought had crossed my mind. “That isn’t the way, Mr. Marsh. Aisha taught me that. She was a very special person, you know – apart from the fact that I loved her more than life itself. She taught me so many things about life and the Muslim culture and it’s history.

     "She also taught me about Western culture as well. Oh, not just the usual things about the Americans and their funny ways and the Crusades and stuff, but she taught me about European art and Russian Culture and Music and Western Literature. The West has such a huge legacy but its people in general don’t seem interested. It’s incredible that only such a small minority appreciate what they have. I suppose all the woncerful culture of this country belongs to me as well as I was born here though I’m sure quiet a lot of people would dispute that any of it is my heritage.

     “I’m going to go to university. I got good A levels results a year ago but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Not until I met Aisha. Yes I loved her, Mr. Marsh. But not in the way you may think and not in the way her damned husband thought. We weren’t lovers. What we had was deeper than that. She was my best friend, and I like to think I was hers. She went to university herself in Karachi then in New York where she went to do a Master’s degree in History of Art and Philosophy. She was there at the time of 9/11 and after it was over she found herself outcast. Even her own friends rejected her like she had some kind of disease or something. Eventually she went home to Kabul just before the American invasion, which deposed the old Taliban regime. But, as you know, the Taliban regrouped and became much stronger in many ways by fighting a guerilla war, something they’re every good at.

     "They invaded Aisha’s village in 2004 while she was there visiting her family who were Shiites. The Taliban are Sunni extremists and all Aisha’s family were killed - her Mother, her Father, her Grandmother her two brothers and her sister. Aisha wasn’t in the village at the time and was warned by other locals not to go back despite the tragedy. She was traveling away from the area on the road alone not really knowing where she was going when she was picked up by some of the so-called security forces who were actually members of one of the warlord’s gangs who oppose the Taliban.
     "The Taliban are many things Mr. Marsh but they aren’t rapists like the warlords and their kind. The warlord’s people actively search for young girls for that purpose. These bastards beat and raped Aisha then held her captive so that they could abuse her at their convenience. In some factions of Islam, if a woman is raped she’s considered worthless and a disgrace. It’s not uncommon for fathers to kill their own daughters because of the so-called shame and Aisha’s fate was that she was to be stoned to death in a public square by Sunni women. Can you imagine that, Mr. Marsh? This is supposed to be the 21st Century. You wouldn’t think so sometimes, would you?”

     Yusef’s attitude and demeanour were disarming and unexpected. This wasn’t the popular view of how young Muslim boys were supposed to behave but then neither were they supposed to play baseball. Yusef was also remarkably cheerful for some one who’d been through hell and back during the past couple of months.
     “So how did Aisha come across Hilash?”
     “He was there in Kabul at the time of the rape and murders of local people. Aisha told me he was working for the Taliban. They paid him to find out where the Shiite families lived and point them out. But Hilash also worked for the warlords and their cutthroats when it suited him and some of them took him to see Aisha in her cell, which was a stinking, rat-infested cellar underneath a house in the village. He persuaded them to let him take her. He bought her from them, as if she was some kind of animal.

     "Hilash told Aisha he could take her out of the country but that she’d have to agree to marry him first. She told him she’d rather die but he convinced her that he knew other members of her family in other provinces and that if she didn’t do what he asked, they’d be killed. After what she’d seen done to her immediate family she agreed and that was that, Mr. Marsh. Aisha became Mrs. Hilash.

     “I first met Aisha in the Pharmacy in Bethnal Green where she worked. We just started to chat about stuff and got on really well. She could only really go out on her own when her husband was abroad, and we used to meet in the local library in Mare Street and go for long walks in Victoria Park and just talk. But what talk it was. We talked about everything: art, politics, religion, nature, the universe, ancient civilisations, literature, medicine, everything. Aisha used to say sometimes that we'd talked our way to the moon and back. She changed my life, Mr. Marsh. She opened my eyes to so many things. She was an amazing person in so many ways. She had so much to offer and so much to live for. The world’s a sadder place without her.

     “Somone must have seen us together and told Hilash. He beat her like a dog, Mr. Marsh, with his belt. You should have seen her, not that you would have been able to because that was about the time Hilash started making her wear the niqab whenever she went out. We managed to meet once more and she showed me the bruises on her face and arms. I told her that I was going to kill him for what he’d done to her but she convinced me that wouldn’t solve anything and she didn’t want me to end up in prison because of her. She said we couldn’t meet anymore but that we would always have what we’d shared together and that no-one could take that always from us.”
     “I’ve heard that expression before somewhere.”
     “Jimmy Durrel used it all the time. He used to tell us time and time again, that what we were inside couldn’t be stolen or changed no matter what anyone did to us. I believed that, Mr. Marsh. I still do.”

     This young man was almost too good to be true. Despite his unnerving calmness, it was obvious his passion ran pretty deep. Whatever it was that Aisha and Jimmy Durrel had, it came from the same pot of gold and they both had a curious ability to touch others with it like so much stardust.

     “He came to see me, Mr. Marsh.”
     “Who?”
     “Hilash. He bought a couple of his mullahs with him. He screamed and ranted and raved and told me to stay away from Aisha and that if I didn’t he send her back to where he found her which would have meant certain death for her. He called her dreadful names. He said she was filth and a slut and not fit to sleep with animals. As if that wasn’t enough, he told his CO19 friends that my father was planning some kind of atrocity and they arrested him. He told me he was going to do it and that if I wanted him to stay alive, I’d better never see or get in contact with Aisha ever again.

     "He showed CO19 pictures of my Father talking to radicals from Pakistan he’d smuggled into the country. Church and his bunch of wankers shoved them in my face when they had me in custody.

     “It was Hilash who introduced the radicals to my father. He wanted nothing to do with them but Hilash took photos of them together though in the pictures my Father is actually arguing with them. He was against any kind of radicalism but the pictures were enough for him to be arrested and accused of hanging with known terrorists and a load of other stuff they made up to keep him locked away. Hilash knew my Father was ill but he didn’t care. I can’t believe he did all that to his own brother. To think I used to call that bastard ‘uncle’.

     "Hilash forbade Aisha from going to the Baseball game but she told him she was going anyway and that she didn’t care what he did. She also told him she was going to talk to the Mayor of London and tell him what Hilash had been doing in the Brick Lane and Tower Hamlets Community – the power he had over residents and how he’d been importing Islamic extremists into the area and that neither he nor anyone was going to stop her.”
     “Did she know about the Brick Lane Bats all along?”
     “She was part responsible for it.”
     “How? I thought Jimmy Durrel started it.”
     “He did. But Aisha supplied him with the team players.”
     “This whole thing gets more and more confusing the older I get.” I said, feeling the bullet induced headache that I’d been told would revisit me regularly for the foreseeable future circling around above my cranium and beginning a landing approach.
     “Aisha literally bumped into Jimmy in Brick Lane,” Yusef continued, “There was a sudden thunderstorm and they were both running to get out of the rain. They collided and Aisha fell over and hurt her arm. Jimmy took her to the French style house where he was staying. It belonged to a journalist friend of his who was away on an assignment. She was wearing her niqab but Jimmy persuaded her to remove the facemask. Only Jimmy could have done that, Mr. Marsh.

     "Aisha stayed at the house for several hours talking with Jimmy about this and that and Jimmy told her about his idea of starting a Muslim baseball team. Aisha put him in touch with me. I’d never met anyone like him in my life. I thought he was crazy – I still do, but there was something about his craziness that really appealed to me, and the rest of the boys. You know what I mean, don’t you, Mr. Marsh? He didn’t have any inhibitions and took the piss out of us right away.

     "It was all a lot of fun - so different to what we’d been used to. He used to slag us off all the time, telling us we were useless but all that did was give us a fantastic desire to prove him wrong and win this daft game he’d arranged with all these old geezers from the States. We started meeting in a hall in Brick Lane where Jimmy tried to explain Baseball rules and how the bloody game worked how.

     "It was a real hoot. He had this old blackboard and chalk and he drew diagrams and stuff but all we did was chuck bits of chalk at him and call him a names. He used to encourage us to just let rip so we did.

     “Gradually, we got interested in the game. He used to fire questions at us about what he’d taught us and rather than get caught out we’d get smart so we could give the right answers, which was exactly what he knew we’d do. He really was bloody clever. After a couple of meetings he told us we needed a place to practice, somewhere we could work in secret till we were good enough to go public, as he put it.

     "Someone knew about the old, disused hangar and Jimmy got in touch with the previous owner who let us use it for nothing. So we disappeared. We went to ground. The only evidence that we were up to something was that Jimmy persuaded us to wear traditional Muslim dress which we thought was a naff idea to begin with, but like everything where Jimmy was concerned, we got used to it and began to quite like it.
     “Jimmy gave us a sense of absolute freedom to be who we were, Mr. Marsh. He showed us we didn’t have to conform to this culture or that, to East or West but that we could just be ourselves and that’s an amazing feeling - I can’t ell you how amazing.”
     “What about Hilash. Did he know about the ‘Bats’?”
     “He knew something was going on. The bastard has spies everywhere. Someone had told him that a group of young boys from the community had been put together for some reason but by that time, we’d already done our disappearing act. Aisha said he was almost beside himself trying to find out what was going on. He wanted part of the action, whatever it was.

     "If we’d been a load of Islamic radicals, he could’ve made money out of us by sending us to madrasahs in Pakistan for training and if we didn’t let him in, he’d make money turning us over to CO19. Either way he stood to gain. He threatened to beat Aisha if he found out she knew anything and was keeping it from him but by this time she was starting to rebel. She refused to carry on wearing the niqab and he wasn’t sure if she knew anything or not.”
     “She wasn’t wearing it when she and Hilash came to see me.”
     “Right. Getting you involved was her idea.”
     “How come?”
     “She was playing for time. She thought it would stop Hilash sniffing around if he knew someone, a professional, was in the business of tracking us down. She made up the whole thing about families being worried about their sons being radicalized and she told Hilash that she was going to organize the family committee thing that she outlined to you.”
     “You mean the stuff about so-called radicals having to face the force of a thousand reprimands?”
     “That’s right.”
     “I did think that was a bit far fetched. And I couldn’t see it working if young boys’ heads had already been turned.”
     “You were right, Mr. Marsh. It wouldn’t have worked. There is a lot of bad feeling towards what the British and Americans forces are doing abroad amongst young Asian men in the community, and once their course is set on the idea of Jihad, nothing can change it, believe me. Apart from anything else, it gives them something to do – something to be part of. It’s a lot more powerful than any old youth club activities and a bloody sight more exciting.
     “Aisha knew you’d find us. She’d done her homework and checked you out. You have quite a reputation, Mr. Marsh. She also knew you’d reveal to her and Hilash that we were just a harmless bunch of kids having fun though of course, she couldn’t tell Hilash that up front because she’d have to admit she knew about us all along. And she couldn’t tell you because you’d have had no motivation to look for us. She also knew she was taking a risk.

     "Either Hilash would back off and leave us alone or he’d he’d be furious about the baseball thing and try and put a stop to it one way or another. Having fun, even playing music is banned in parts of the Muslim world, Mr. Marsh, as I’m sure you know. Though as far as I’m concerned, the Taliban and people like them aren’t part of the real Muslim world. This was the real reason Jimmy wanted the team to be a secret until it would be too late for anyone to interfere and that it would work for the community on a sort of political level when it was made public then there would be no way anyone could close the Brick Lane Bats down. This was all despite the fact he said it was because he just liked to play ball.

     "Us just having fun wouldn’t have been Hilash’s motivation for stopping us. I think he saw in us a readymade group, which could be radicalized if the right influences were brought in and he had plenty of connections to help him do that.

     “So Aisha fixed for Hilash to meet with you knowing she’d be present as his interpreter, which she insisted on. He could’ve taken someone else with him but he’s a very smart bastard, is Hilash, and I reckon he figured you’d probably be more inclined to help because of Aisha than if you were just confronted by a couple of old gits with grey beards.” Yusef smiled and I felt myself redden; knowing the reprehensible Hilash had been absolutely right in his assumption. “Well, you know the rest, Mr. Marsh. Jamal here talked to me and I took him to the hangar where he met Jimmy and the others and saw us practice.”
     “I tell you, ‘ark, I never laughed so much in all my days, innit?” Jamal and Yuseff executed the now customary high five but I declined the invitation to join in, realizing what a boring old fart I was becoming.
     “Why did Aisha tell me Hilash was her father and not her husband?”
=     “I don’t know. I didn’t know she had. Aisha was a person of very great dignity, Mr. Marsh, as I’m sure you must have seen. I do know she was ashamed of being his wife, and to have to walk 10 paces behind him in public was almost more than she could bare.”
     “That’s a very old tradition. I thought it had largely died out.”
     “It still survives amongst some people, I’m sorry to say. Maybe Aisha thought it was easier and more normal if you thought she was his daughter. It’s lucky my uncle doesn’t understand English. If he’d heard her tell you that, who knows what he would have done? It would have been the ultimate insult for her to deny she was his wife for whatever reason. He was also insanely jealous of me and always suspected there was more going on between Aisha and I than there actually was so for her to start saying she wasn’t his wife would have confirmed his suspicions in his warped little mind. Lucky he didn’t know about Jimmy.”
     “Jimmy? What about him?”
     “He adored Aisha. We all did, but for Jimmy it was different.”
     “How?”
     “He was head over heals. I think he was from the moment he first saw her. Well, from the moment he got her to show him her face.”
     “So that’s what he meant.”
     “When?”
     “It was something he said about having other reasons to leave apart from going home to…did you know he was dying?”
     “Yes. He told me.”
     “Did Aisha know?”
     "I don’t think so but I never mentioned it in case she didn’t.”
     “Did she know how he felt about her?”
     “I really have no idea. I’m sure she had feelings for him too but I don’t know how deep they went. He did tell me he wanted to take her away somewhere but his illness stopped him from even considering it. D’you know, Mr. Marsh, I really miss the crazy old son-of-a-bitch, as he’d have said. I really miss Aisha, too. But one day, I know I’ll meet her again. And I’ll meet my Father again. As for Jimmy, I’m not sure about that. He’s not a believer, as you know, Mr. Marsh.” With that, Yusef shook my hand, slapped Jamal affectionately on the shoulder and left.

Reflections.

     I didn’t tell Yusef that I suspected Hilash spoke English. I didn’t think it would help him to know that the wizened little rodent heard her deny she was his wife publicly – well, to me anyway and maybe not in so many words. At that moment, she had probably sealed her fate. People like Hilash often pretend they didn’t understand the language of their host nation so that if and when they get into difficult situations with the authorities it’s easier for them to be evasive if interrogated. I was certain it was Hilash who told CO19 about the whereabouts of the Brick Lane Bats and not the father of one of the team as Aisha had told me, not that who did what mattered any more.

     I wondered if Yusef suspected as I did that Aisha knew the danger she was in when she started walking towards the Mayor and his bunch of dignitaries on the Marsh that day. She must have known what would happen when she refused to heed the warnings those bastards screamed at her and kept on walking. I also suspected she knew Hilash spoke English, even if he'd tried to hide it from her. She was after all married to the obscene little monster for worse or worse. In which case she also must have known what he was capable of doing when she denounced that marriage in my office. Her death could have been suicide.
     Her motives weren't all that clear. Maybe she felt trapped and could see no way out of her predicament. Maybe she couldn't stand the indignity of her marriage to Hilash any longer. Maybe it was some kind of planned demonstration of injustice and she’d calculated what an outcry there’s be after she was found not to be the bomber they thought she was after they'd killed her. Maybe she was in love with Jimmy Durrel but couldn't see a way of being with him. Maybe she did know he was dying. Maybe she was just as crazy as he was. It was all anybody's guess.

vThere were so many other things about the whole Brick Lane Bats episode that didn’t add up. I’d always been bothered me that Jimmy had persuaded the team to abandon their trendy gear and start wearing traditional Muslim gear. Encouraging them to be so demonstrably proud of their religious heritage just for the sake of it didn’t make sense. He would have known they’d stand out like a sore thumb, and would have especially alerted Church and his gang of patriarchal zealots. But then not a lot Jimmy was involved in made sense. It all made my head hurt more than just being hit by a stray bullet, which, it occurred to me in a moment of acute paranoia, maybe wasn’t such a stray.




      It wasn’t difficult to find where Hilash usually hung out. I knew he was in the house and I had to wait in the shadows for nearly two hours for him to appear but I’d have waited a year. It was 10.30 when he did show. He had his usual two mullah companions with him. They were no problem. They were fat and unfit and went down like a couple of swatted flies.

     Boy, was he scared? You should’ve seen his face. Judging by the sudden stink, he lost control of his bottle and glass, as you Cockneys say. I picked him up by his scrawny shoulders and shoved him against the wall. I told him I knew what he’d done, that I knew he’d told John Church that Aisha was planning to cause some kind of outrage so that when she showed up at the game the outcome was pretty certain, and that as far as I was concerned he might as well have well have pulled the trigger himself.

     I just wanted to scare the little shit so that he knew what it felt like for the people he’d helped destroy and watched being tortured. I told him his life wasn’t worth the paper I wiped my arse on but that I was going to let him live so that I could visit him again and then again and that I was going to make him wish he’d never been born.

     I don’t know if he understood me or not but I think he somehow got the point. Then I changed my mind and snapped his neck like a twig. This is my confession to Ahmed Hilash’s murder though I’d argue that I was doing a service to mankind. But the law is the law and rather than allow those bastards to look for anyone else to blame, I’d like you to show them this which, as you can see, is signed and dated at the bottom. They’ll find my DNA on the document I’ve enclosed and they can match it with what they find on that miserable scum’s body.

     I blame myself for Aisha’s death. If I hadn’t involved her in the baseball thing, she’d be alive now, and claiming some crap that it was all for the good of Humanity won’t bring her back. I put those kids at risk too. I knew that a load of trendy Muslim boys suddenly parading around in the traditional gear would draw attention especially from the likes of John Church. I knew he was over here and I wanted to make a fool out of him, and worse if possible. Why? Because the girl he beat up in Freetown was the daughter of a good friend of mine. She was a lovely kid but she grew up to be a nervous wreck and spent a lot of time in psychiatric wards.

     I do love playing ball, like I said, and I did love playing with those kids. Maybe my motives weren’t quite as noble as I made out, but I’d guess you knew that, Henry, being the cunning old sleuth you are. Like I said, I don’t feel much about anything any more. At least, I didn’t till Aisha came along.

     Enough said, I reckon.

James P. Durrel
December 20th 2008.

PS

Please find your wonderful drawing of yours truly enclosed. When the cops have finished with it, maybe you could frame it and give it to the Brick Lane Bats to remember me by – if they still exist. I won’t have any use for it where I’m going, which of course is nowhere.

As for what happens next, think of it as pragmatism.

It was a real privilege knowing you, Henry.
Yours,
Jimmy D.

     Two days later, a tall, white-haired American walked into a barrack room dormitory belonging to a security company in Feluga, Iraq, where several dozen privately hired soldiers slept. Under his camouflage jacket, he wore a belt containing blocks of triacetone triperoxide. He blew himself and those in the dormitory to pieces. Two of those killed were John Church and Peter Groombridge.