Double Identity

by Alison Morton

  ‘We heard about the shower incident. Brilliant. That stupid bastard Robbins had it coming.’

  But Mel knew from looks shot at her from other tables that she hadn’t made a friend of every police officer in the room.

  * * *

  ‘No, I will not apologise.’ Mel stood, her hands clasped behind her, in front of Superintendent Fredericks’ desk. ‘He made a sexual advance and I defended myself. I would be grateful, ma’am, if your secretary would provide me with the correct form to file a complaint to your internal affairs department.’

  Behind her, Mel heard a suppressed chuckle that turned into a cough. Bloody McCracken. He was present as liaison officer, but Mel wished with all her heart that it had been Joanna Evans instead.

  ‘The other officer tells a different story.’ Fredericks frowned at Mel.

  ‘Well, he would. Adolescents always gang up together, especially when they can’t face the consequences of their own poor behaviour. It doesn’t alter the truth.’ Mel stared down at Fredericks. ‘I would have thought that a mixed unit would have a respectful, adult and professional attitude. I was mistaken.’

  ‘I cannot tolerate physical violence, even under provocation,’ Fredericks persisted.

  ‘And neither can you tolerate sexual harassment according to the regulations. It seems you are in an impossible bind, Superintendent.’

  ‘Don’t attempt to teach me my job, young woman.’

  ‘No disrespect was intended, ma’am.’

  ‘Very well, I’ll talk to Mr Stevenson. But you are on formal warning, Pittones.’

  Fredericks nodded at McCracken who opened the door for Mel.

  ‘Remind me never to get on your bad side,’ he said as they walked back along the dreary corridor.

  ‘That stupid bastard would have an unbroken nose if he’d kept his hands to himself and his foul mouth shut. How do the women officers here put up with it?’

  ‘They don’t use the wrong shower.’

  Mel stopped.

  ‘So half of us have to queue up waiting one by one while another available shower can’t be used? That’s pathetic.’

  Stevenson agreed.

  ‘Yes, ridiculous, but we are guests here, Mélisende, so please toe the official line.’ He looked up at her. ‘We’ll find you a secure place to sleep for a few days, but the sooner we close the enquiry and find new offices back in Brussels, the better.’

  18

  The night team had found nothing. They’d analysed CCTV and movements within the EIRS area of the Triangle Building. Now they were going through the record of every staff member on their floor and those above and below. Brussels Judiciary Police reported they’d sent their best detectives out to scour the area for witnesses, but nothing. And to cap it all, forensics had also provided a long list of nothing.

  ‘We have a full analysis, including input from Belgian Army bomb disposal’ Joanna Evans said in her morning report. ‘I’ll leave it on the information table for you to absorb it. Put briefly, while materials and instructions for bomb making are freely available, there are only so many places terrorists can obtain the finer items such as detonators.’ She paused. ‘Unfortunately, all the materials to make this one are generic, even the mobile phone unit which we think was used to set it off, obtainable in over forty countries. The milling and drilling, wires, contacts, solder, everything can be obtained in almost every hardware shop or carried out by the most basic engineering skills. In other words, we haven’t been able to identify the country, let alone the maker of the detonation device.’ She sat down and her shoulders drooped.

  Patrick Stevenson moved from the head of the table to the incident board. He removed his spectacles and scanned the room.

  ‘Depressing, of course, but they’re going over every tiny detail again. In the meantime, we grind our way through the other information, and as many times necessary until we find it.’ He directed a warm smile at Superintendent Fredericks. ‘In the meantime, we are immensely grateful to colleagues here for hosting us and providing invaluable support.’

  Fredericks nodded and eased her frown.

  ‘Questions?’ Stevenson paused.

  McCracken raised his hand.

  ‘Presumably the Triangle Building has, or had, some sort of detection system and countermeasures against bomb attacks?’

  ‘Indeed, as you have here. But the design and delivery of these improvised devices are limited only by the science and imagination of the perpetrator, so we don’t have a step-by-step guide to detect and disarm a device that any individual terrorist has invented. Many of the younger ones are engineering or electronics graduates these days.’ He shrugged. ‘Strangely, the effectiveness of IED jamming systems has caused many terrorists to regress to command-wire detonation methods. They are far more detectable, but of course, you’d have to be looking for them.’ He sighed. ‘Military forces and law enforcement colleagues from India, Canada, Israel, Spain, here in the UK and the United States are at the forefront of counter-IED efforts, as they all, sadly, have direct experience. Of course, we’ve shared information and requested their assistance, but it’s not always the fastest process.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Time to get to work. Any ideas, deductions or even wild card thinking, please let me know. I shall be all ears. Please bring anything to me in my new office, B18 along the corridor.’

  He picked up his laptop and two files and walked the length of the room, all eyes following him. He bent and whispered to Fredericks who nodded and followed him out.

  * * *

  ‘What are you doing? I thought we were going through the staff access lists again.’ McCracken sounded as truculent as he had the first day they’d met when he’d nearly arrested her.

  ‘Mr Stevenson said he’d welcome wild-card ideas,’ Mel said. ‘I was just jotting a few things down.’ Almost by instinct, she covered her notes with her forearm. He’d probably think she was mad.

  ‘Come on then, let’s see it. Or aren’t you sure about it?’

  ‘Of course, I’m sure about it. I just want to check some things first.’

  ‘Run it past me. I might be able to help.’

  Almost reluctantly, Mel released her arm and pushed the two sheets of A4 towards him. McCracken glanced at the diagram annotated with arrows and crosses, then studied the notes.

  ‘It’s all in bloody French!’ Several heads turned to stare at him and Mel.

  ‘Oh,’ she said in a voice several decibels lower than his. ‘Well, I was only making a few notes for myself.’

  ‘I suppose the boss will understand it,’ he grumbled.

  ‘You can come and listen while I show him.’

  Stevenson read through the notes while Mel stood in front of him. McCracken leant back against the wall, miffed, but glanced down at the papers from time to time.

  ‘It’s certainly a possibility,’ Stevenson said. ‘Sit down and explain how you reached this conclusion.’

  ‘We’ve all been looking at it as investigators,’ Mel began. ‘I thought I’d turn it round and work out an operation to plant the bomb. We’ve covered the streets, the internal access and corridors using CCTV and access records from swipe cards. Forensics haven’t given us any leads yet. The bomb materials would certainly have caused a full bag alert, especially the wires, and the detonator or detonators would have sounded an alarm. Ditto a bag with shielding. There is logically only one way in – the roof.’

  ‘But the roof has countermeasures and electronic shielding as Mr Stevenson confirmed this morning,’ McCracken said.

  ‘It does, but the physical security is light. There’s an open courtyard at each acute angle of the triangle plus a great enormous gaping circular garden in the centre. Not only that, the roof’s flat, there are countless roof lights, and inspection hatches for the AC units. I know there are cameras on the top, but with a bit of preparation my old unit could be on that roof without security getting a hint of it. Just imagine how easily a small stealth drone carrying engineered parts could do it. And
parts could be brought in over a time period and assembled in, say, a storeroom or cleaner’s cupboard.’

  ‘Christ!’ said McCracken and peeled himself off the wall.

  ‘But you would need somebody on the inside, Mélisende.’ Stevenson’s voice was hard as granite.

  ‘Yes, sir, you would.’

  After a moment or two, Stevenson picked up the two sheets Mel had given him, folded them in four and slipped them into his jacket inside pocket.

  ‘Is this the only copy?’

  Mel nodded.

  ‘Not one word of this to anybody else, please. No one.’

  * * *

  ‘So much for your wild card,’ McCracken said when they were back in front of the screens. ‘He didn’t buy it, and neither do I.’

  ‘Nobody’s asking you.’

  Mel was smarting enough from Stevenson’s rejection of her idea without McCracken wading in. She grabbed the mouse and shuffled it around the pad, sending the arrow off at manic speed to all corners of the enormous screen. Their boss wanted ideas; she’d given him one with all the details. Perhaps he couldn’t stomach the idea of a traitor and one who was prepared to kill. Well, wasn’t the EIRS about hard ideas and hard solutions?

  ‘The way we crack this is through solid police work.’

  ‘Well, that’s worked so far, hasn’t it?’ she retorted. She blinked hard and readjusted her focus to the figures going through the Triangle Building security barrier on the Wednesday, three days before the bombing. McCracken called out names as she clicked each one through. She looked away after ten minutes to give her eyes a second’s rest. When she looked back, she spotted a sturdy young man with a small backpack going through at 09.03, according to the time and date stamp.

  ‘Oh, there’s Billy Duchamps. At least I think it is.’ She clicked back and zoomed in. ‘Yes, I’m eighty, ninety per cent sure. Wonder what he was doing there?’

  ‘Who’s he, when he’s at home?”

  ‘A Canadian colleague of Gérard’s. He’s one of those people who thinks he’s hilarious but isn’t. I haven’t seen him since before Gérard was… was killed.’ She swallowed.

  McCracken frowned at his list.

  ‘There’s no Doocham here.’

  ‘It’s spelt D-U-C-H-A-M-P-S.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Give me the list.’ She didn’t wait but snatched it. McCracken was so ignorant; he couldn’t spell even simple stuff. But she saw no sign of Duchamps, only a Lucas Boulting at 09.03. She sharpened the picture and hit ‘Print’. McCracken was already summoning up the bag scan footage.

  ‘There’s nothing obvious here, except what looks like a plastic box containing a sandwich. Strange, when you think of the loads of places you can get food in here. Unless he’s got one of these stupid food fads. Otherwise, it’s just paper, phone, laptop and a couple of pens. I think we need to have a closer look at him.’

  * * *

  ‘Guillaume Saint-Croix Duchamps, known as Billy, born Montreal, Canada thirty-seven years ago,’ Joanna Evans read from her iPad twenty minutes later. ‘Financial trader deals mainly with private clients worldwide. Resident for nine years in Hackney, London.’

  ‘Bet it’s one of the poshed-up bits,’ McCracken muttered to nobody in particular.

  ‘No family here,’ Evans continued with a momentary frown at McCracken. Stevenson nodded at her to continue. ‘Offices off Bishopsgate, two other associates with him in a limited partnership, Gander Moore Associates. One warning from the Financial Conduct Authority for lack of transparency a year ago, but they’ve had it quashed on appeal. All taxes up to date, although Duchamps had a personal penalty notice from the HMRC for late filing for the last financial year. Estimated personal annual income over £200,000. Uncorroborated report of gambling debt.’

  Mel raised her hand. ‘He was an associate of my late fiancé and I know he was an enthusiastic poker player, but I didn’t think of him as a risk taker. Gérard thought he was more of a plodder.’

  ‘Bit of a cliché, gambling debt, but I think we should go and have an unfriendly chat with him,’ McCracken said and shrugged on his jacket.

  ‘No, Inspector,’ Stevenson said. ‘That won’t be enough. Duchamps entered the site of a terrorist incident under a false name three days before the attack. We are well beyond a chat, unfriendly or otherwise.’

  19

  Mel slouched down in the front passenger seat of the silver BMW. Four out of five cars on the road were this boring colour. Despite the cold air outside, she was sweating inside the protective vest. She finished the energy bar that was lunch and took a swig of water from her bottle. McCracken was fiddling with his phone, waiting for the troops from the City of London Police. She pushed the tinted glasses back up her nose. A black van appeared each end of the road, parked and disgorged black-clad figures, also with protective glasses, who walked in silence close to the granite panelled wall to take up station each side of the glass doors leading into the building. Like Mel and McCracken, they were only armed with nightsticks. The radio crackled.

  ‘Right. We’re on.’ McCracken was out of the car as he spoke the last word. He nodded to the first figure on the left of the door. The squad poured in followed by McCracken and Mel.

  ‘Police!’ he shouted. ‘Stay exactly where you are. Don’t touch any phones, bells or alarms. Hands on the surface in front of you.’ The two women on the reception desk didn’t move. Their faces were frozen, mouths half-open. Two officers from the second squad leapt over the security turnstiles, moved round behind the desk and gestured the women to stand back. The turnstile gates retracted.

  ‘Guillaume Duchamps?’ McCracken barked at the older receptionist.

  ‘S-second floor,’ she gasped.

  ‘Access?’

  ‘Contactless.’

  McCracken held his hand out and the woman dropped a plain white card with a blue corner into it.

  ‘Stairs?’

  The older woman pointed. The younger one was shaking.

  Mel was first through the stairwell door and barrelled up the concrete steps. At the floor door, she stopped and waited for McCracken and half a dozen troops. They unhitched their nightsticks from their belts. He nodded and they were through into the pile-carpeted lobby. The lift door pinged and three more officers ran out. One stride to Duchamps’s office. At the glass door inscribed ‘Gander Moore Associates’ in gold lettering, McCracken waved the white card near the wall reader unit, shoved the door open. Half a dozen unbelieving faces stared at them.

  McCracken pointed to the three doors to the side of the open plan area. Pairs of officers peeled off and burst through the doors. Within two seconds, they emerged with three men, one of whom Mel recognised as Duchamps.

  ‘The rest of you, up against the windows. Now!’ At McCracken’s command, they came to life and scuttled over to the plate glass overlooking Bishopsgate. One didn’t – a middle-aged woman dressed in a tweed suit styled from the 1950s. She marched up to McCracken without hesitation.

  ‘You can’t come barging in here willy-nilly. This is a professional office.’

  ‘Move over to the window with the others, please, madam.’

  ‘I will not. I am Barbara Winters, practice manager. Show me your warrant. And you can remove those sunglasses, young man, when you’re talking to me.’

  Mel gave her guts for standing up to a load of tough police juiced up for a raid. McCracken’s mouth tightened. He showed her his ID and handed her the search document which she read, then she grunted. McCracken beckoned one of the female officers, pointed to the woman and flicked his wrist. The police officer grasped the tweedy woman by the arm and guided her firmly in the direction of the window. The older woman shrugged off the officer’s grip and glared at her, but marched over to the window, her face the incarnation of thunder.

  ‘Duchamps?’ McCracken whispered to Mel. She pointed at the curly-haired man carrying twenty more kilos than he should standing in front of the middle side office. ‘Guillaume Duchamps
,’ he said in a much louder voice.

  Duchamps looked startled. He looked left and right, then pointed his finger at his own chest.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Come over here, please.’ McCracken sounded impatient.

  ‘Are you arresting m-me?’ The trader was sweating and touched the base of his neck where a tie should have been.

  McCracken smiled. Not a nice smile.

  ‘Not yet. You’re helping the police with their enquiries for the moment.’

  * * *

  The prestigious glass door of Gander Moore Associates looked much the same as usual fifteen minutes later, except for the sheet of white A4 taped to it with ‘Closed’ written in felt-tip pen. Double the number of people sat at their desks; the half in everyday clothes looked terrified, the half in black uniforms looked determined. To the side, other officers were loading computer towers onto a large cage trolley. They’d already removed two tall cabinets of files into the anonymous removals van blocking the street below. More were to follow.

  Mel stood by the window of Duchamps’s office. Her hair was piled up under a cap and she still wore her tinted glasses. Billy Duchamps hadn’t recognised her. McCracken wanted it to be a ‘surprise’ for later, he said. A City police specialist tapped away at Duchamps’s desktop computer with the trader stuttering over passwords and security protocols for cloud access. McCracken lounged in the chair opposite Duchamps, staring him down whenever he glanced up. Duchamps seemed cowed by the harsh face of law and order, something his softer, privileged lifestyle had rarely encountered.

  An officer appeared in the open doorway with a fraying but intact heavy-duty bag stamped with ‘Royal Mail’, and a wodge of brown paper bags, and offered them to Mel. She nodded her thanks, pulled on a pair of latex gloves and started to clear noticeboards, postcards, filing trays and magazine racks. She picked a small paper bag from the selection and stretched her hand out for USB keys and mini power packs in the desk tidy. Duchamps jerked his head up and half rose, his eyes staring down at the pieces. Then he sank back. Mel exchanged a glance with McCracken, but he said nothing.