by Kim Hughes
‘I thought you were sorted? With whatsisname. Tony.’
‘Toby. It’s his flat and, as my mother still says, it’s gone so pear-shaped you could make Babycham with it.’
‘I don’t understand that.’
‘Neither do I,’ she admitted.
There was a pause while Jamal considered whether he could help. ‘My brother Bilal is moving out of our place in a few weeks. Going travelling for six months. Be a spare for that long. Maybe longer.’
‘That might help. Where is it?’
‘Mortlake.’
‘Where’s that, halfway to Mordor?’
‘It’s just beyond Kew.’
‘I was hoping for London.’
‘It is in London, you snobby cow,’ he laughed. ‘Only about an hour on the train.’
Which meant an hour-and-a-half. People always pretended you could hop, skip and jump into the West End from their postcode.
‘When is it free?’
‘Two, maybe three weeks. Thing is, it’s our parents’ flat. No alcohol allowed. And no entertaining the opposite sex. They do spot raids.’
Would suit sober nun, she thought. Would Jamal express those caveats to everyone or just someone he remembered from university who liked a good time? ‘I think I need something sooner.’
‘Don’t you lot have safe houses all over London?’
There were, mainly in big anonymous complexes like the Barbican and Dolphin Square, or in places like Hounslow or Enfield. ‘Yeah, but those places are bugged to shit by the Snoops here. I don’t want my morning showers to end up on some Christmas compilation tape at their office party.’
Jamal sounded genuinely shocked. ‘Does that happen?’
‘There’s a rumour it did, before our time. Even so, they aren’t called Doggs for nothing.’
‘Only you call them that.’
‘Whatever. Either way, I’d never relax in the shower in case some electronic Norman Bates was eyeing me up.’
‘Thanks for that image.’
‘Delete it at once if you know what’s good for you.’
‘All set,’ said one of the techies, handing her a pair of Bluetooth headphones and pointing at the screen. ‘You can hear them, they can’t hear you.’
‘Jamal, got to go. Wipe that out of your mind, now. I owe you a drink. A soft drink, I mean.’
‘I’m free this evening.’
‘Pushy.’
‘Just for a couple of hours.’
‘I’ll think about it. I’ll see how the day pans out. Don’t forget the number for Riley.’
‘On its way. But you have to decide what you are concentrating on.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Is it Bravo-900 or an ATO’s stray DNA. There’s no link between them is there?’
‘No. You’re right. Headless chicken. Send the number anyway.’
‘Will do.’
‘Great. And I’ll get back to you on the flat.’ If she ever found herself living under the arches at Charing Cross maybe.
She turned her attention to the monitor. The screen showed a private room in the hospital. Janet Webb was propped up in bed, looking remarkably unscathed for a woman who had been close to a Semtex bomb. Sitting at the bedside was a female police officer and just out of the range of vision of her camera was another police officer, male. They were taping the interview and identified themselves as DS Susan Chatham and DC Chris Davies.
Chatham began by thanking Webb for her forbearance and apologised that this was likely to be just another in a number of interviews. Muraski drummed her fingers on the table, waiting to get to the meat of the session.
‘You see,’ Chatham was saying, ‘there is sometimes something called temporary retrograde amnesia, often triggered by trauma. So, in the first hours or days after an incident, the memory of what happened just prior to the event is hazy or non-existent. But subsequently small details might come back, things that may be significant.’
‘I understand,’ said Webb.
Muraski’s phone pinged and she glanced down at it. Incoming from Jamal.
‘Now, can we take you back to before the explosion, to your arrival at Sillitoe Circus and how you came to be there that day?’
Webb carefully went over the morning of that day, her voice only quivering when she described how she and her late husband used to drink in a pub that had been demolished to make way for the new development. She had a reasonable recollection of the other customers, but really only paid close attention to the waiter, a young ‘handsome foreigner’. There was a catch in her voice, when she recalled that he had died.
Muraski leaned in towards the screen as Webb described the man with the rucksack: late twenties or early thirties, she thought, long dark hair, but she had no idea about ethnicity. No, she didn’t think he was Middle Eastern. Then she described a woman who arrived and left. Very beautiful, dark-skinned, but Webb wasn’t sure if that was a suntan or not.
‘Didn’t get a suntan in this country,’ muttered Muraski. Although she could have been to a tanning booth, she supposed. Neither of those were the man she was after, but that was hardly surprising. Bomb-makers made bombs. Not planted them. A talented creator of IEDs or suicide vests was a very valuable asset whose skills could be harnessed for many years. It didn’t make sense to send them for martyrdom.
As for ethnicity, obviously not every Muslim conformed to the Af-Pak stereotype and besides, there were always converts, like Samantha Lewthwaite, Al-Shabah’s White Widow, who were sometimes more fanatical than their masters. Germaine Lindsay, the 7/7 bomber who made a widow of Lewthwaite, was actually Jamaican and only converted to Islam in the early 2000s. It was one of the reasons Muraski had been involved in tracing the missing ISIS widows. Not all had seen the error of their caliphate ways. So perhaps Bravo-900 had found willing hands to help him make or plant his bombs. But where from?
On screen, Webb agreed to work with an e-fit artist to try and create images of the man with the rucksack and the mysterious woman. The male was certainly in the frame, as he had arrived with the rucksack that Jamal and others’ forensic tests had shown to contain the Semtex. The woman might be an innocent player. But there was also the secondary device to consider – who planted or activated that? The rucksack man or an accomplice?
How did that square with her theory that Bravo-900 was a lone actor? Could it be that he had been brought in by a homegrown group as Bomber-in-Chief? Muraski put that thought to one side. She knew she was falling into an old trap, making the facts support her pet theory.
Janet Webb asked for a cup of tea and the interview was suspended. Muraski took off the headphones and opened the message that contained Staff Sergeant Dominic Riley’s contact details on her phone. She typed the number in and heard it ring, thinking she was probably wasting both her and his time.
While she waited, she scrolled down the message Jamal had sent. It was several pages on the military career of Staff Sergeant Riley. Most of it was as expected, but the final paragraph on ‘Personal Circumstances’ was the one that made her let out a little yelp of surprise.
‘Jesus,’ she said to herself. She had just found a connection between a British Army ATO and Bravo-900.
NINETEEN
Riley lay on the ground as he watched Ruby run on tiptoes back to the school building, yelling, as he had instructed, for everyone to get indoors. His phone was buzzing in his pocket. He reached in and turned it off. Mobiles and bombs never mix. He could see Andy staring at him, wondering what the hell was going on. He ignored him and turned his head so he could get back to examining the device that some cunt had placed under his car. His car. Riley’s. The one he transported his daughter in.
He felt a throbbing behind his eyes, a precursor to a burst of fury. But it wasn’t the time for that. He kept his breathing steady, tried to stop his heart beating itself to death against his ribcage.
Skills and drills, pal.
At Nick’s prompt, he began to recap the correct response t
o the situation. Car bombs and truck bombs are known as VBIEDs: Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Devices. What Riley was looking at was an Under Vehicle Improvised Explosive Device. These could be set off by remote control – the key fob, for instance, or a radio/mobile signal or by a tilt/vibration switch. The latter used the kind of mechanism found in vending machines to stop them being tipped over or in pinball machines, where they prevent cheating by shutting the whole thing down. Or, like the one under Riley’s car, a simple unit you could buy on the internet from any electrical component supplier. When the vehicle, or part of the vehicle, moves – like the vibration of an old exhaust when the car starts up – the mercury flows within the glass container, bridges the terminals and, mercury being metal, completes the circuit. Current then flows to the detonator. Little boom.
Big Boom.
If not Goodnight Vienna, it was Hello Life-Changing Injuries.
Not only that, but it was entirely possible that there was an anti-handling device in there. Car-bombers often wired a second detonation switch to the interior light. The moment the driver’s door opens and current flows to it, the charge goes up.
Riley got to his feet as if he had been dropped into a swimming pool full of treacle. Easy now. The fall hadn’t done his ribs or his best Paul Smith suit any good at all, but he shunted that thought away. You don’t worry about a muscle pull or your wardrobe when you have an IED up your jacksy.
Nor did you waste time thinking Who? Or Why? You concentrated on one thing: nobody is going to die here. He hadn’t come across a trembler switch of any description in Afghan. Car bombs, yes, where the boot was filled with fertiliser. But they didn’t need anything as sophisticated as a tilt switch. The Afghan National Army – through misplaced pride – often tried to defuse any device themselves. They had lost a lot of brave undertrained men that way.
How sensitive was the tilt? Would a door opening set it off? A boot slam? An exhaust vibration? Or would it only do its lethal job when the VW actually moved. He wasn’t going to hang around to find out. Nor would he be crawling under the car cutting wires. That was the sort of macho mistake the Afghans made. This was a job for a robot and a controlled explosion to disrupt the whole mechanism – the majority of car bombs viewers see safely detonated on the news were actually the result of a smaller charge set by ATOs, rather than the main charge going up. No heroics. No Hurt Locker bullshit. When he said to himself nobody was going to die, he included himself.
But here, he was off duty, with his daughter, for Christ’s sake. This felt personal.
Later, mate. Save it.
Once Riley was at what he considered a safe enough distance, he began to windmill his arms like a madman trying to fly. ‘Everybody back inside! Now! Do not get in your cars!’
The small clusters of parents, staff and pupils still in the car park turned to look at him, some in alarm, others with pity in their eyes that he had likely flipped.
‘Please! Go back inside, there is the danger of an explosion. Do not go near your vehicles.’
He was level with the ex-tank man now. ‘Andy, did those AA mechanics go near any other car?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Not good enough. Someone would have to check every vehicle, just to be certain. ‘Is there another exit for cars?’
Andy pointed to the left of the house. ‘Deliveries and service entrance. What’s—?’
It was no time to mince words. ‘There’s a bomb under my car,’ Riley said, cutting him short. ‘Help me get everybody inside.’
Andy found a voice that must have come in handy when trying to communicate over the Rolls-Royce diesels of a Challenger tank in the desert. It came deep from his diaphragm and it sounded as if he had swallowed a megaphone. ‘Ladies and gentlemen! Your attention, please! This is an emergency! Everybody inside for your own safety! Please move away. Do not—’
Riley turned as he heard the roar of a big engine, a growl followed by a thrum that vibrated the chest. He located the sound, a few rows of cars over. One of the modern five-litre V8 Mustangs. Hugely impractical in the UK, they certainly made a statement: the owner likely had a very small cock.
‘Jesus. Hey! Hey! Stop.’ Riley began to weave through the parked vehicles. He heard the wheels spin and sharp stones arced into the air. The bright orange Mustang backed out of the space and headed off towards the main gate, fast enough that it was a waste of time Riley trying to follow. He bent down, picked up a large pebble, and threw it ineffectually after the fastback. As it reached the road, the driver engaged launch control and the big Ford took off in a wheel-spinning fishtail.
The air pulsed with the thrum of the big exhaust. Riley felt like he could see it, like ripples in the water, as the wavelets spread out and engulfed his car.
‘Oh, shit,’ he said under his breath.
The light was brief and bright and stabbed into Riley’s retinas. The boom that followed was surprisingly muffled, although Riley felt the heat of the explosion on his face. His VW looked like the donkey from that old Buckaroo game, kicking as it rose into the air, emitting a screech of broken metal, and rolling onto its side, the interior filled with fumes that bled out of the smashed window. A shower of safety glass fell around it like ice particles. Flames began to lick around the interior. There goes my wire, he thought. It wasn’t worth risking a secondary for that. He stayed where he was.
Pretty sensitive tilt switch then, said Nick.
Whether because it was sideswiped by the blast wave or because the driver panicked, the Mustang lost it on the turn out of the gate. The rear wheels broke away from the asphalt, and it spun, sending the two-thousand-kilo muscle car ploughing backwards across a ditch and into the fence opposite the school gates. It came to a halt with the front wheels off the ground, spinning uselessly in the air.
It was while looking at that, praying the occupants were unhurt, that Riley spotted the hovering drone, and felt the cyclopean gaze of its single lens turn on him. He took out his phone and snapped it for no good reason other than the feeling that two could play at that game. The machine hung in the air for the moment, buzzing like a particularly malevolent bee, before banking away and heading for a line of distant trees.
Riley turned his attention back to the ditched Mustang and the people possibly trapped inside.
TWENTY
Kate Muraski made a call to the Clifford-Browns as soon as the Janet Webb interview had terminated for the day. The poor woman had added very little to the overall picture, but perhaps her memory would improve over the next forty-eight hours or so. They also might get somewhere on the e-fit pictures. Although, in her limited experience, that would be a first.
A head poked in just as she was about to punch in the Clifford-Browns’ number. Roger Altrincham, one of the Russian bods. She felt a pang of envy. Altrincham, who had just sailed past fifty without a streak of grey in his cropped dark hair, had started at the very bottom and worked his way up. No fast-track college degree bollocks for him. So, she had to respect him as the real deal: a proper career spook. ‘Sorry. We have this booked.’ He pointed at the wall clock. ‘Ten minutes.’
‘That’s all I need,’ she said, and he disappeared after flashing a tight, humourless smile which suggested it would be best if she didn’t overrun.
She tapped in the Clifford-Browns’ number and started a silent mantra: Please let it be Henry, please let it be Henry.
‘Hello?’ said Barbara.
Damn it…
‘Mrs Clifford-Brown. Hello. It’s Kate—’
‘I know very well who it is,’ said Barbara with a frostiness Scott of the Antarctic would have recognised. ‘I thought I’d made it clear that I didn’t want you bothering my husband again.’
‘I know, but—’
‘Ever.’
Muraski tried her trump card. ‘Eto vopros natsionaljnoj bezopasnosti,’ she said and, although she was well aware she had no need to translate it for the older woman, added: ‘It’s a matter of national security.’
Barb
ara actually laughed and her voice softened. ‘I know what you’re trying to do, Miss Muraski. Play on an old woman’s memories. But I do miss the language. I was never very good at it, personally. Henry was more fluent. And it might be a matter of national security, but it is ancient history.’
‘Not that ancient. It’s about the man Yousaf Ali.’ AKA Bravo-900.
‘I know nobody of that name.’ She was back to steel-trap mode.
‘Your husband does. And I have further information now, since my visit. It seems that—’
‘It seems that you don’t listen, Miss Muraski, which is a very poor attribute in your line of work. You noticed the rather peculiar layout of the hall? Of Dunston Hall?’
That wrong-footed Muraski. ‘I suppose so.’
‘There is, as you will have seen, a west wing – our part of the house – and an east wing, but no central section. The story is that the original owners, the Crowboroughs, were landed gentry fallen on hard times. But they still had royal connections and every so often Bertie, the Prince of Wales, used to come and stay. He’d put Lillie Langtry in the pub down the road. The Crown. You must have passed it.’
‘I think so,’ Muraski said impatiently, wondering what this had to do with anything.
‘But then Bertie would eat them out of house and home. He’d shoot or ride all day, then come back here expecting a slap-up dinner with fine wines and brandy for himself and his considerable retinue. You can’t send the Prince of Wales a bill. And even if you could, he probably wouldn’t pay it. Ask his tailors. I think they’re still waiting. One shooting season he sent word he was coming up for a weekend. So, the Crowboroughs replied that they had suffered a small fire and they couldn’t possibly expect the Prince of Wales to put up with the smell and the smoke damage. Bertie replied that he was sending his architect up straight away to assess the damage and help with repairs. So, the Crowboroughs panicked. There had, of course, been no fire. Well they could do something about that, they thought. They went into the main drawing room and tried to singe the curtains.’ She gave a crackly laugh. ‘Whoosh. The entire drapes went up. They tried to put it out, but it took hold. The whole central section of the house burnt down, leaving only the two wings. When the architect arrived from London, he looked at the smouldering ruins and said: “You call that a small fire?”’
