I think I was dead, yes, I think I was. Viktor shuts his eyes and, with some difficulty, stops smiling.
43
The others are warming up somewhere, with cups of tea and blankets and gossip. But Ibrahim has work to do.
He has Heather Garbutt’s poem spread out in front of him. There is a secret in these pages, no doubt about that. A hidden message, artfully concealed. Who was Heather Garbutt afraid of? Who was going to kill her?
Deciphering Heather Garbutt’s poem and discovering that secret will take some time, Ibrahim is sure of that. He had wanted to talk the whole thing through with somebody, but Elizabeth, Joyce and Ron are not biting. They see it as a red herring.
He even tried Viktor, after they had dug him up again. You don’t get that senior in the KGB without knowing a few things about cryptography. But Viktor had taken a look, with dirt-stained fingers, then handed it back, saying, ‘No message here. Just a poem.’
As so often, Ibrahim’s is a lone voice in the wilderness. So be it, that is his cross to bear. The prophet is often unheralded in his own land. There will be apologies aplenty when he uncovers Heather’s message. He will nod, magnanimously, head bowed a little perhaps, as the plaudits rain down on him. He imagines the scene: Elizabeth is congratulating him （‘I was quite wrong, quite wrong’）， Joyce is handing him a plate of biscuits, while Alan sits in quiet, proud respect. Even Viktor will have to admit that Ibrahim has bested him.
He is lost in this reverie for a moment, and then the thought strikes him. Ibrahim knows exactly whom he should talk to. Someone who never judges him, someone who is always full of ideas. Someone who will help.
He looks at his watch. It is four thirty, which means that Ron’s grandson, Kendrick, will be out of school, but won’t yet be having his tea. The golden hour for any eight-year-old boy.
Ibrahim FaceTimes Kendrick. He is remembering the happy time the two of them spent together, spooling through hours of CCTV, looking for a diamond thief and a murderer.
‘Uncle Ibrahim!’ says Kendrick, and bounces on his chair.
‘Are you quite well?’ asks Ibrahim.
‘I am quite well, yes,’ confirms Kendrick.
Ibrahim outlines the task at hand. That there had been a murder a few years before Kendrick was born （‘Not another one, Uncle Ibrahim’） and more recently another murder in prison （‘Millie Parker’s mum is in prison, she was off school’）。 The lady in the prison, Heather Garbutt, not Millie Parker’s mum, had left a poem, which Ibrahim believes to be in code （a low, impressed whistle at this） and if Kendrick and he could decipher the code, they might find out just who had murdered her, and the whereabouts of a great deal of money stolen in a VAT fraud （a brief sidebar here, as Ibrahim explains VAT, having to start Kendrick off with the basic principles of universal taxation）。 They are now hard at it. Ibrahim has a brandy and a cigar; Kendrick has an orange squash （‘It’s less sugar, but you don’t even know when you drink it’）。
Ibrahim reads:
My heart needs to reel like the eagles at wing
It wants to be heard, like the blackbirds that sing
But my heart she is broke, cleft in two ’round the wheel
The eagle can’t fly, still my heart needs to reel.
‘Well, you see why this is interesting, Kendrick. Terrifically bad, technically, but interesting. Her heart wishes to reel like an eagle, she says’ – Ibrahim has sent Kendrick a copy of the text, and is reading from his own copy – ‘but two lines later that heart is “cleft in two ’round the wheel”。’
‘There are golden eagles and bald eagles, and black eagles,’ says Kendrick. ‘They eat mice. Do you know any other kinds of eagle? I don’t know any more.’
‘A goshawk is a type of eagle,’ says Ibrahim, and Kendrick writes this down.