Читать книгу The Common Enemy - Paul Gitsham - Страница 14

Imam Danyal Mehmud’s eyes were bloodshot and the shaking of his hands attested to the adrenaline he was running on. Karen Hardwick and Tony Sutton were seated in the imam’s living room, two streets over from the remains of the community centre. The air in the street still smelled of smoke. The house was a two-bedroom affair with a modest front room whose walls were covered in a mixture of family pictures and framed scripture.

‘Is that the Frozen fan?’ Sutton nodded towards a picture of a smiling infant in a light summer dress. She hadn’t been smiling ten minutes ago when her father had switched the cartoon off and sent her upstairs so they could speak in peace.

‘Yes, that’s Fatima. If I hear “Let it Go” one more time… she’s obsessed.’

‘My niece is about the same age,’ said Hardwick. ‘At least choosing a birthday present was easy this year.’ She paused. ‘Is the little boy in the picture with her the other victim, Abbas?’ Both children were dark-haired, with light brown skin and faces smeared with ice cream.

‘Yes, they’re cousins. My sister’s little boy. They’re almost exactly the same age.’

‘So that means Mrs Fahmida must be your grandmother?’

Mehmud nodded sadly.

‘I’m very sorry, I had no idea.’

The man in front of them was in his late thirties, wearing a white dishdasha over his jeans and trainers. By all accounts he’d been awake for pretty much the entire past twenty-four hours, comforting his congregation and, Sutton now realised, dealing with his own shock and grief. He was clearly running on adrenaline and little else, given that he was still fasting during daylight hours to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

‘Have you heard anything more from the hospital?’ asked Hardwick.

Mehmud shrugged helplessly. ‘Nani is in intensive care. They aren’t very hopeful. Abbas is poorly but stable. We are praying for his recovery, inshallah.’

Mehmud stood up suddenly as if filled with an energy he didn’t know what to do with.

‘I haven’t told Fatima anything yet. I’ll wait to see what happens in the next twenty-four hours or so. If he… well, she’ll be devastated. My sister and I are very close and Fatima and Abbas are like brother and sister.’

‘I realise that it’s been a trying time but could you take me through what happened that day,’ asked Sutton after a respectful pause.

‘We knew all about the BAP march of course, but I’d tried to persuade people to keep their heads down and not get involved.’ Mehmud shrugged. ‘Not everyone listened. We found out that the BAP were due to arrive about midday. It was easy enough to find their plans on the internet. We’d spoken about it the day before at Friday prayers. We had a higher than usual attendance; there were some brothers and sisters that I didn’t recognise.’

‘People from outside Middlesbury?’ asked Hardwick.

‘I think so. Not many, but I got the feeling that they weren’t there by chance.’

‘You think they’d arrived specifically to join the counter-protest?’

‘Yes. I tried to counsel against it – the last thing we as a community need is to be involved in violence, especially with the planning hearing for the mosque and community centre coming soon.’

‘So what happened on Saturday?’

‘There was an informal gathering here after dawn prayers. Some of the more fiery members of the congregation wanted to take part in the protest marches. A few went off to join in, but most stuck around until midday prayers.’

‘What happened then?’

‘A few more went to the protest and about half went back to lock up their shops and businesses. In the end there were about thirty, mostly women and children, who chose to stay here. I decided to lead by example and stick around.’

‘Why did they stay?’ asked Hardwick.

‘They were scared. There were all sorts of rumours on the internet about Muslims being targeted on the street or having their houses vandalised. All nonsense, of course, but I decided that anybody who wanted to remain was welcome.’

He closed his eyes briefly. ‘They should have been safe here. We locked the doors and there was a police car outside.’ His voice cracked and his bottom lip started to tremble. ‘But they weren’t, were they? We were trapped like rats.’

‘Tell us what happened inside the centre.’

‘It was pretty tense. As the protests got more violent the BBC started to cover it and there was loads of activity on Twitter. We moved the older children upstairs with some toys and the rest of us stayed downstairs to watch the telly.’ His voice hardened, and for the first time an edge of anger crept into his tone. ‘We still thought we were safe. There was a police car up the street, and all of the action was happening in the town centre. Nobody told us the police car had…’ He stopped, unable to continue the sentence.

‘We haven’t been able to get inside the centre yet,’ said Sutton, ‘so you’ll have to help us with the layout. Where were you watching TV?’

‘In the kitchen area, out the back. As you enter through the front door there are shelves for footwear and some sinks for ablutions, straight on is the kitchen, to the left the musallah, the prayer hall.’

‘And where are the stairs?’

‘To the right of the entrance.’

‘And what do you have upstairs?’

‘There are several rooms. The largest is a function room, then there is a storeroom, some bathrooms and another couple of rooms that we use for wedding guests to get changed etc.’

‘Did you know everybody?’ asked Hardwick.

‘Yes, the visitors had all gone off to the march.’

‘Did you see anybody strange hanging around outside?’

‘There were a few brothers outside, but they left eventually.’

‘What do you mean by brothers?’ questioned Sutton.

‘Other Muslims.’

‘How did you know they were Muslims if you didn’t know them?’

Mehmud blinked. ‘Well, they were dressed in thawb with full beards and well, you know, they were Asian.’

Sutton decided to move on.

‘When did you realise the building was on fire?’

‘About two-thirty we heard breaking glass out the front. I told everyone to head into the musallah, since it doesn’t have any windows. However, as we went into the hallway, we saw that the area in front of the door was on fire. I told the women to go through the kitchen and leave through the back door, whilst me and the men ran to get the children.’

The man’s eyes took on a faraway cast.

‘The mats in front of the stairs were starting to catch, so I sent the rest of the men upstairs whilst I tried to put the blaze out with a fire extinguisher. And then my wife came back through to tell me that the back door wouldn’t open.’

He closed his eyes briefly and his voice dropped to a whisper.

‘I didn’t know what to do. We couldn’t stay downstairs and I couldn’t put the fire out. So I sent them all upstairs to join the others. We’d called the fire brigade and I figured they’d be able to rescue us from the top floor more easily.’ His voice broke slightly. ‘The smell was horrible. Some of the shoes had caught fire and there was thick black smoke everywhere. Nani couldn’t get up the stairs unaided though, she’s almost ninety, I had to carry her. By the time we got to the top floor she’d passed out and Abbas was having an asthma attack.’

He looked imploringly at Sutton. ‘Did I do the right thing? Perhaps I should have gone and tried to force the back door open instead. Then she could have got out. But if I’d done that, maybe we’d have ended up trapped downstairs.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Sutton softly, ‘but I do know that your quick thinking made a big difference. You bought everyone valuable minutes for the fire service to arrive.’

It was the best he could offer.

Mehmud smiled his thanks.

‘Before we go any further, do you have any thoughts about who might be responsible?’

For the first time since they’d arrived, the man’s politeness slipped.

‘Bloody obvious, isn’t it? A coach-load of fascists and Islamophobes turn up in the town centre and distract the police, then we get torched. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist.’

‘We’re keeping an open mind at the moment,’ said Sutton, cautiously.

Mehmud took a deep breath. ‘Of course, you’re right. I apologise.’

‘Have you had any other incidents recently?’ Hardwick took over.

Mehmud shrugged helplessly. ‘Some graffiti appeared a couple of nights ago. I didn’t have any paint to cover it up. Before that, nothing really. We get on pretty well with the neighbours. I know that some of my brothers and sisters have been insulted in the street, especially if they are wearing the veil, but Middlesbury is a lot better than some places. The community centre hasn’t been attacked in years, not since nine-eleven or the London bombings.’

Sutton looked at his notes. ‘Can you remember what night the graffiti appeared?’

He thought for a moment. ‘Wednesday night or Thursday morning, I think. We hosted a meal after sundown to celebrate breaking the day’s fast. I locked up about midnight and there was nothing on the wall then.’

The same night the CCTV cameras had been vandalised.