CHAPTER 36
The first thing Kevin did when he awoke next morning was to phone Roger. “I tried to call you last night.”
“Worried I’d abandoned you, Kevin?”
“No. Where were you?”
“I was with Mr. Samoszewski.”
“Mr. Greg?” Kevin exclaimed.
“A quiet but interesting man, Kevin. A natural engineer who, out of sheer love of printing technology, set up a workshop beneath his garage.”
“I told you I smelled printing. Is he on our side?”
“Yes, and he is as innocent as the day he was born. He even showed me his workshop. High-tech printing was a hobby he started after he retired. He started by copying his own driving licence and printing it onto plastic. Somehow, others got to know. A man called Akram called, threatening to report Greg to the local council for not getting planning permission, for illegal construction, and all manner of official restrictions unless he helped them with some printing jobs.”
“Kooky Akram, Roger.”
“You know him?”
“It’s why I’m calling you.”
“Well, wait till I finish, OK? Where was I? It seems Akram is well connected with local councillors. Might we guess who, Kevin? Anyway, it got worse. The printing jobs increased and became more complicated. The threats became more sinister. Dalia was threatened, and Greg was in a dilemma with no one to turn to.
“He now makes new passports from stolen ones or blanks that I suspect you deliver. He knows it’s wrong, but what can he do? The threats are real. They sometimes follow his car to the hospital or the shops. Once, when Greg said he’d had enough, Akram forced his way into the house, stood over Dalia, and pulled a knife. Another time, when Greg was in the workshop, Akram arrived at the back door, went down into the workshop, and threatened to set fire to it. How would Greg like to explain the burned fake passports scattered around, let alone his hidden printing works?
“When I showed him the copies of the passports you’d picked up from Edinburgh, he went down to the workshop and came back with all six. He’d changed the photos. Sometimes he changes names or adds visa stamps. It all depends on instructions.
“He showed me a German passport that looked perfect to me, but Greg wasn’t happy. It was something to do with the technique he uses for re-stitching. He tried to explain, but I was lost. In her younger days, Dalia was an expert on invisible mending. She worked in a haberdashery shop and taught him something called reverse threading. Greg, Kevin, is a master of forgery that it’ll take some explaining unless we can prove he’s been doing it under duress. He even does printing under a microscope using a modified inkjet printer, but as he kept telling me, it was once a hobby. But then towards the end of the evening, I detected a new look in his eye, one of defiance and triumph. ‘There is no limit to technology,’ he told me.”
Roger, Kevin noticed, seemed uncommonly impressed by Greg. He’d never seen this side of him before. Normally, he behaved as if he’d seen, done, and knew everything.
“And while Greg was telling me all this,” Roger went on, “he was holding Dalia’s hand, and Dalia was trying to turn her head to see who he was talking to. So I found myself telling him about you and your mum and how we met in Scotland. He’d like to meet you Kevin. He makes delicious chocolate cake. We had cake and hot cocoa for supper. Aren’t you just a little jealous?”
Kevin didn’t hear Roger’s last few words because his mind had drifted. “What does Akram look like?” he asked.
“Greg assumes he’s Pakistani. He’s short, he’s untidy, and Greg says he leaves the gate open. Why? You know him?”
“I think Greg’s in trouble,” Kevin said. “It’s why I tried calling you last night.”
Roger listened in silence as Kevin described what he’d heard the night before. He ended with, “Accidents and fires were mentioned, but it was mostly in Punjabi. I might have been mistaken.”
“Mmm,” Roger muttered. “Describe the man Khan was talking to. This man Kooky.”
“His shoes are too big.”
“What are you talking about, Kevin?”
“His shoes are too big. They call him Kooky.”
“Greg described him as short and untidy and never ties his shoelaces.”
“That’s him,” Kevin said. “Kooky Akram was here last night, talking about Greg and accidents and fires.”