Death by Design by Barbara Nadel

thought—’
    ‘No, I’m not your handler,’ Ayşe said. ‘I’m like you. I’ve been embedded here for nearly six months.’
    Six months! İkmen got wearily to his feet. How long did the Metropolitan Police want him to spend on this job?
    ‘I’ve a handler of my own,’ Ayşe said. ‘Now come on, let’s get you to the Rize. Oh, you’ll need this.’ She shuffled around in her handbag for a moment and then took out what looked like a blue credit card. ‘It’s called an Oyster card. It’s a pre-pay travel card like Akbil in İstanbul. We’ve put one hundred pounds on it for you. Use it on tubes, buses, the Docklands Light Railway.’
    İkmen took the card from her and put it in his pocket.
    ‘Does the rule about not smoking indoors apply to guest houses?’ İkmen asked as they crunched down the leafy pathway through the gravestones back towards Church Street.
    Ayşe, in spite of herself, smiled. ‘It’s a cheap Turkish pansiyon, uncle,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’
    The room the landlord Abdullah Yigit gave to İkmen was a little bit better than the one he’d had in Berlin – at least it didn’t smell. But the bedclothes were grey, the cupboards dusty and broken and the small sink was rough to the touch and heavily stained. But there was a small television, tuned to MTV. İkmen immediately changed channel to the main state broadcaster, BBC1. This he remembered from his first visit back in the 1970s. And although the presentation of the evening news programme he was watching now was much slicker than it had been back then, BBC1 news still possessed a certain gravitas that he liked.
    İkmen sat down on his bed, took an ashtray from the bedside cabinet and smoked as he watched TV. He kept the volume down not because he was worried about disturbing others (the kid in the room next door had been listening to full blast rap music when he’d first arrived – no one cared) but because he didn’t want anyone to know that he spoke any English. Any hope of success as a potential spy inside Ülker’s organisation depended upon that.
    Initially the news broadcast focused on the various conflicts in the Middle East as well as some rather gloomy economic forecasts for the coming six months. Then there was a feature on the new mayor of London, Haluk Üner. He was at a rubbish dump in a borough of east London called Barking and the mayor, together with a lot of rough-looking men in high-visibility jackets, was igniting an industrial incinerator.
    ‘I want the gangs who produce this counterfeit trash and use the money they make from it to kill others to know that their time in London is coming to an end,’ the mayor said as he flicked a switch to light the vast machine. He smiled at the men around him. ‘Half a million pounds worth of fakes up in smoke!’
    The men around him cheered. The piece then cut to Üner being interviewed outside the incinerator by a serious young female reporter.
    ‘So, Mr Üner,’ she said as she held the microphone up to his mouth, ‘are you happy with what’s happened here today?’
    ‘The destruction of an estimated half a million pounds’ worth of fake clothes, bags, watches and electrical goods?’ He smiled. ‘I’m delighted, Kirsty. And this is just the start! Londoners are hitting back. Through the good offices of the Metropolitan Police and through the “Condemn a Counterfeit” scheme I initiated myself whereby people can anonymously call my office and tell us about shops and businesses selling or making this rubbish, Londoners are fighting this menace.’
    ‘Mr Üner,’ the reporter continued, ‘what do you say to people who see this war you’re waging against the counterfeiters and their alleged terrorist masters as just window-dressing. I mean, it is well-known that you are Muslim and—’
    ‘Yes, I am a Muslim and proud of it,’ Haluk Üner said. ‘My parents came here from Turkey back in the nineteen fifties. I am both British and Turkish and I am