Barry Maitland - Babel

Praise for Babel

... as perfect a whodunit as you could possibly wish for. Sublime. Crime Time

Maitland gets better and better, and Brock and Kolla are an impressive team who deserve to become household names. Publishing News

Babel is thoughtful, erudite, humaneand highly entertaining. What more could a serious crime buff want? Sydney Morning Herald

... an instant and deserved winner from start to finish. There is no doubt about it, if you are a serious lover of crime fiction, ensure Maitlands Brock and Kolla series takes pride of place in your collection.
Weekend Australian

Maitland is a consummate plotter, steadily complicating an already complex narrative while artfully managing the relationships of his characters. The Age

Maitland has always been a notable spinner of mysteries, but his latest case continues to extend his range, depth, and mastery into Ruth Rendell territory.
Kirkus Reviews

Wow. This guy is good. Houston Chronicle

Maitlands puzzle becomes more complex by the zigzag, but its rapids are a pleasure to navigate. The reading is easy, the pace deliberate, violence minimal, sexual encounters are elided, the large multiethnic cast is engaging and even the least amiable characters reveal redeeming features. Los Angeles Times Book Review

Also by Barry Maitland

The Marx Sisters

The Malcontenta

All My Enemies

The Chalon Heads

Silvermeadow

The Verge Practice

No Trace

Spider Trap

BARRY

MAITLAND

babel

This edition published in 2008
First published in Australia in 2002

Copyright Barry Maitland 2002

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Maitland, Barry.

Babel.

ISBN 978 1 74175 535 0

A823.3

Set in 10.5/12 Adobe Garamond by Midland Typesetters, Australia Printed in Australia by McPhersons Printing Group

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Jim

Acknowledgements

This book was written before the terrible events of 11 September 2001, at a time when the story of Islam in Britain was less widely discussed than today. I am indebted to a number of people whose knowledge and insights helped me with that aspect of the book, as well as with the workings of the Metropolitan Police. In particular I should like to thank Clare Murphy, Shiblee Jamal, Kay Suters, Rollo Clery-Fox, Ashton Nugent Cleary Fox, Scott Farrow, Anna Farrow, Akbar S. Ahmed, Philip Lewis, Fred Halliday and, as always, Margaret Maitland.

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech...

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, whichthe children of men builded.

And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have allone language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing willbe restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, thatthey may not understand one anothers speech.

So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face ofall the earth: and they left off to build the city.

Therefore is the name of it called Babel.

Genesis, Chapter 11

Contents

I entered the camp on the Saturday morning with the French medical team. The situation was overwhelming, devastating. Survivors were still being discovered beneath the ruins of demolished shelters, and all of the effort was going into finding them. That and putting out the fires whose oily smoke hung heavy in the air, blotting out the sun. The dead could wait. They lay everywhere, abandoned to the flies, sickeningly mutilated, dismembered, burned, hacked and shot. Nurses and paramedics accustomed to treating war victims were traumatised. They broke down in tears or stumbled from scene to scene in a state of shock. Some heroic figures with stronger nerves took charge of the situation and organised work groups and allocated tasks. I joined a stretcher party ferrying those survivors that we could find out to the gates of the camp where a queue of improvised ambulances waited, but each time we returned my feelings of fear and revulsion increased. Finally I felt so contaminated by the horror that I became convinced that the insanity of what had been done there would infect my own reason. Deep in the camp I abandoned the team and attempted to find my way out. But I became lost and disoriented in the winding alleyways, and staggered from one part of hell to another. I came to a place where limbs, torsos, heads lay scattered in my path and panic engulfed me. Then I heard a voice, the voice of a child, though I could see no one. It seemed to be reciting something rhythmical, a nursery rhyme perhaps, or a prayer. I was transfixed.

Its source lay in the dark shadow beneath a black awning collapsed close to the ground. I knelt before it and looked into a small space and made out the figure of a woman, her head cradled in the arms of a small boy. I discovered that my feelings of terror and disgust had left me. I crawled into the space. The woman was quite dead, her stomach bearing terrible wounds, but her son, a child of eight years as I later established, was unhurt. I sat with him for some time, and told him that his mother was past help. He had fallen silent when I appeared, and I never heard him utter another sound. I promised to take care of him and finally persuaded him to leave his mothers body and come with me. He was very thin and seemed to weigh almost nothing as I lifted him into my arms. I carried him out of the camp, holding his face close against my cheek so that he would not see the sights that we passed.

D etective Sergeant Kathy Kolla felt a great weariness overwhelm her. She didnt want to appear obstructive, but the room was warm and she hadnt slept for so long.

Its all in my report. Youve read that? I really cant add...

Ive read it, yes, the other woman said gently. Its very objective. It must have been extremely difficult to write. But it doesnt tell me how you felt, how you feel now.

I feel now that my body is made of lead, she thought, heavy, dumb, grey. But she said, I felt mainly helpless.

Was that the most terrible thing about it? That you felt helpless?

Yes.

Abandoned?

Maybe. Towards the end.

That would be the time of the rape, would it? Such a gentle, supportive voice.