immigration?'
Wilbraham smiled uneasily. 'I assume that Chatham House rules apply tonight?'
Darke shrugged and looked pained, as though his honour had been doubted. 'Just a rough figure.'
Sophie Topping: 'Don't be naughty, Magnus.'
Wilbraham: 'Well, you have to understand that seventy-five per cent of births in London last year were to mothers who were not themselves born in this country.'
Indira Porterfield: 'Speaking as someone also not born in--'
Spike Borowski: 'You want beautiful football, you cannot make team from all English players.'
Olya: 'Yes, Tadeusz is paying much taxes.'
Roger: 'Yes, I'd love some more. Lance, where d'you get this burgundy?'
No one was prepared to listen; and a look of quiet relief came over Richard Wilbraham's face as the clamour of received ideas made it impossible for Darke to pursue his questioning.
In the rear carriage of a westbound District Line train, Hassan al-Rashid was sitting with a packed nylon rucksack on the floor between his feet. He wore a navy blue woollen hat, anorak, jeans and climbing boots with thick socks underneath. He had shaved in order to look less threatening and he held his right hand firmly in his left. What could that hand desire, he thought, that he gripped it so tight?
Now that the end was approaching, now that he had actually put himself on rails towards his destination, he felt calmer. The train would carry him to Waterloo, and then a second train would take him on to Glendale, where the others would be waiting. They'd be excited, he imagined; they'd punch each other on the shoulder, touch flesh and reassure, like rugby men before a game. He was looking forward to seeing his friends. It was a fine thing they were doing: a clean deed in a foul, befuddled world.
He clung to the words of the Koran that promised eternal life to all martyrs for the simple reason that the words of the Hadiths, the collections of traditional wisdom from the Prophet's life, were considerably less comforting. They made no bones at all about the fact that suicide was a sin and that the sinner would be doomed to repeat the act for ever in the afterlife. Hassan tried not to think about the Hadiths.
In order to attract no suspicious glances, he stared straight ahead, though not too fiercely. He tried to look tired without being zonked; unwilling to engage with others but only because that was the way of the city. Above all, he tried to look unconcerned. He was sure his clothes must help: everyday, anonymous, but clean and of decent quality, chosen for their ability to make a curious glance bounce off them. He was Mr Londoner personified, a transient in a private daze whose every pore said, Leave me to my own small world, my virtual life: respect, and don't come near.
The train went so fast. Who was driving this thing? They were already out of Essex and rattling through the old East End - Stepney, Bow, Mile End, once the cockney, now the Muslim, heartland. Hassan breathed in tightly as he thought of the narrow streets above his head with the halal grocers and the market barrows, loan sharks and hijab drapers. Could they form the hard-core base, the foundation, of a second caliphate? Would they be strong enough?
This driver was pitiless. Why such a rush? On, on, now into the financial world at Monument - then Cannon Street and Mansion House where the kafirs worked at fever-pitch twelve hours a day, shouting into telephones, hoping by their frantic betting to transfer some coins from one fund to another ... Woe betide every backbiting slanderer who amasses riches and sedulously hoards them, thinking his wealth will render him immortal! By no means! He shall be flung to the Destroying Flame ...
For three years at college, Hassan had changed train on to the Northern Line at Embankment, but a glance at the A to Z told him the best stop for Waterloo Bridge was Temple, a pleasant station with flower sellers outside and the river just across the road. Salim had told them not to enter Waterloo by Tube as the mainline stations had too many CCTV cameras.
Ready to walk the final ten minutes of his journey, Hassan passed his Oyster card across the reader, replaced it in his pocket, though he'd have no further use for it, and emerged into the night.
John Veals was not enjoying the Toppings' dinner party. He spent most of the main course sending and receiving text messages from Kieran Duffy, holding his