by Kim Hughes
He eased it into position, overshot, hit reverse, backed up six inches, and killed the engine. As it ticked and cooled he let out a relieved sigh. That was probably the worst part over. For him, at least. The evening was going to get a lot hairier for plenty of other people. And they deserved it. The people who had killed and maimed with impunity – or implicitly supported those who did – would now get a taste of their own medicine. He glanced over his shoulder at the wooden partition that separated him from the cargo compartment of the van. He had been briefed on what was in there.
The Munroe Effect, it was called. It was a way of turning a sheet of metal into a projectile. A hollow created in a lump of explosive which was then lined with metal had the effect of channelling the resulting blast in one direction. Hence the term ‘shaped charge’. It had been developed in Iraq to penetrate the armour of the US Army’s Hummers, where they were used to punch a hole into the side and release a stream of molten metal into the interior of a vehicle, cooking those inside.
It had been refined into something even more brutal, the device known as an Explosively Formed Projectile, EFP, aka the Kiss of Allah. The explosion would deform and fold a metal plate – usually, but not always, copper – into a crude rocket projectile or slug, travelling fast enough to pierce the best protective armour. Once inside a personnel carrier, the red-hot metal would ricochet around the interior, causing massive injury and death.
All this had been carefully explained to him by the RAF people. And that now it was not a kiss from Allah but a smacker from the white man’s deity. Jesus’s Love Bite, he chuckled to himself. Now all he had to do was arm the device and get out of there. He had a ten-minute window once he pushed the red button taped to the console. Part of the wooden fence had been cut through, the cuts hidden with sawdust and glue, and would offer no resistance to the lethal round that would be fired from the rear of the van. Of course, the van walls would have offered serious obstruction, which is why, just before the device deployed, the sliding door would automatically roll back, giving the shaped charge an easy passage to its target.
Coates’s finger hovered over the button, but he snatched it away when he heard the sound of a motorbike. He looked through his side window, watching the black-clad figure stop the bike just next to one of the metal shutters of the car wash. The rider raised a fist. This was his getaway. He touched the crash helmet on the passenger seat. He showed the palm of his hand in a return greeting and turned his attention back to the button.
He felt a sudden squirming sensation in his stomach. He had never done anything like this before. Coates was forty-five and had spent thirty of those years mouthing slogans about Pakis and ragheads. About deportation and white jihad. He had spent several weeks talking about this night with the RAF, but only now was the reality hitting him. They had warned him it might happen. They had instructed him on what to do, should his resolve waver.
Think of Nottingham. London Bridge. Manchester. Houses of Parliament. Madrid. Paris. Nice. Strasbourg. Think of those gangs of men grooming and raping our children in places like Rotherham and Bradford. Think: revenge.
Eric Coates waited until the familiar white-hot anger set his insides aflame again and he pushed the button. Immediately he heard the whine of an electric motor. The door was sliding open already. Yet he was told he had ten minutes to get clear. Malfunction. Someone might see the device and evacuate the building.
He looked with some alarm at the motorcyclist. But the rider had turned the bike to leave. As he reached for the door handle the automatic lock deployed and the catches went down with a snick like a rifle bolt.
‘Hey! Wait!’ Coates yelled, panic making his heart judder in his chest. He banged the glass with his fist. ‘Stop! Come back! Cunt!’
The realisation dawned that they were going to put him in the frame for this. They were going to leave him trapped in a van that had just been part of a terrorist attack on an Islamic target. A patsy. He leaned back and brought his elbow against the window with all the force he could muster, succeeding only in nearly dislocating it.
Coates screamed in pain, grabbed the crash helmet and began hammering at the windscreen with it, watching the world before him crack and star. That vision blurred as the Kiss of Allah deployed, far sooner than he had been told, destroying most of the rear compartment and buckling panels as it did so, causing the van to tip onto two wheels. His head whiplashed and smashed into the side glass, knocking him unconscious. Which was a blessing from whichever god was watching over him.
The sheet metal that had been placed in front of the shaped charge deformed exactly as predicted, burst through the wooden fence without a backward glance and punched a hole through the bricks of the cultural centre’s rear wall, showering those inside with sharp-edged flints of flying masonry. With the apparent accuracy of a top ten-pin bowler – actually more by luck than any judgement – it neatly decapitated the speaker at the lectern and continued on into the audience, fracturing skulls, cheeks and jaws, singeing hair and blistering skin and killing one further person before it thudded into a tiled section of the far wall and came to rest, leaving an acrid cloud of dust and smoke and the wails and screams of the injured in its wake.
Meanwhile, in the van, the deployment of the device had scorched, blackened and twisted the inside of the vehicle and ignited the petrol tank, turning the cab into an inferno that consumed Eric Coates within seconds.
TWENTY-SIX
Barbara Clifford-Brown took the two martini glasses and the alcohol out of the freezer. She uncapped the ice-cold vermouth and poured a few millimetres in each of the glasses. Then she swirled the liquid with a practised hand until it coated the inside of the cone. Any excess she tipped down the sink. Now she poured in the viscous gin nearly to the rim. Henry liked an olive, but she preferred a twist of lemon peel. Once those small details had been taken care of, she smeared the rims with lemon and placed the glasses on the tray, added a small bowl of mixed nuts, and went through to the drawing room.
Henry was sitting in front of the TV, feet on a small stool. The sound was down. He was waiting for the news to start. She placed the tray on the side table, lifted her martini and sat in the second armchair.
‘You are wicked, you know, sweetie.’
‘It’s just the one,’ she said.
‘You know I don’t mean about the martini. Poor Hector. I thought he was going to spit the Earl Grey all over the carpet when you told him it was drugged.’ He chortled at the memory, shoulders shaking. ‘Even I believed you for a moment.’
‘Well, I just wanted to warn him he wasn’t dealing with some senile old fools. That we still have claws.’
‘I am sure he appreciates that, my love. Especially you. Still the wildcat.’ He lifted his own glass. ‘Cheers.’
‘Cheers.’ She sipped, relishing the icy hit of alcohol. This must be what the rush of cocaine is like, she thought. She had never tried it. She had succumbed to an invitation to sample opium in the Far East once, but it had made her sick as a dog. No, a martini was as about as racy as she expected to get in her dotage. She had friends who had been forced to give up drinking for various medical reasons. She pitied them. She wanted to sail into the sunset of life with a stiff drink in her hand. A stiff something else would be nice, too, she joked silently to herself, although Henry was little help in that department these days.
‘I hate it when history comes back to bite you,’ said Henry solemnly.
‘My advice is to bite back. You did nothing wrong. We did nothing wrong. It’s not your fault. These days people are all too willing—’
She realised Henry wasn’t listening. He was fumbling with the TV remote. He managed to accidentally change channels before he got the news back on and increased the volume.
They watched in silence as the screen showed images of the ruined wreckage of a van, and the shattered wall of a community centre. A reporter, standing in the forecourt of a car wash, gave a summary of what had happened. A rocket attack of some descr
iption on an Islamic Centre. Two confirmed dead. Many casualties. Some seriously injured. No responsibility claimed. But local religious leaders say it is an attack on all Muslims. Condemnation from the PM.
‘This is how it starts,’ said Henry, his face hangdog.
‘What does?’
‘Civil war.’
Barbara gave a chuckle that had little mirth in it. ‘Sweetie—’
‘I know. It sounds melodramatic. But we have had civil war in this country before.’
‘In the seventeenth century.’
‘In the twentieth. Northern Ireland. A civil war in all but name. If the Muslims retaliate and then the far-right do the same…’
‘A cycle of violence begins,’ she said, now serious. ‘I’m sure they are on it. I hope Five has better people than that Muraski girl.’
‘I’m certain. She was an office junior, darling. Cobb is a decent cove.’ Cobb was DAT, Director of Anti-Terrorism, at MI5. ‘And the Met have some decent chaps.’
‘And women,’ prompted Barbara. ‘There’s that Olsen woman. Seems quite competent.’
‘Oh, yes. Still, I fear the worst. I’m glad we won’t be around to see what this country will become.’
‘Oh, I suspect we’ll be around long enough to see yet more changes we don’t approve of.’
The images on the television showed the interior of the community centre. The dark splashes on its walls looked an awful lot like blood.
Henry stared across at Barbara, the gin now sour in her mouth. He pointed at the screen. ‘I can’t help wondering, though. Is this all our fault?’
Barbara’s response was loud enough to mask the soft tinkle of glass breaking in the conservatory.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Riley had arranged to meet Scooby in a bar in King’s Cross, not far from the spruced-up Granary Square. He had booked into a nearby Premier Inn which had a secure storage area for the bike. He would have to buy a decent lock if he was going to keep using the Yamaha – it was the sort of bike that Herberts intent on petty crime liked to half-inch.
Riley positioned himself in a corner booth of the bar, which was mostly filled with tipsy, glassy-eyed millennials slugging back lurid cocktails. Their volume was substantial enough, but it was laid over the top with an ear-bleedingly loud soundtrack of R&B, majoring on Slowthai and Childish Gambino. He imagined it was clever marketing, because if you couldn’t actually hold a conversation the only alternative was to drink. Or maybe he was just getting old.
Scooby turned some heads when he entered, spotted Riley and crossed over to the booth. It wasn’t just the height – he was around six-four – or the fact that he was handsome in a chiselled, posh-boy way (even though he went to a comp in Nottingham). It was the eye patch. Scooby still had an eye under there. It just didn’t work. It was also prone to infection, which is why he wore the patch.
He slid in next to Riley and they bumped fists. ‘Christ, this your idea of a quiet spot?’
Riley smiled. ‘If you can’t hear me, then neither can anyone else.’
‘I wish I’d brought a Fisherman’s Friend. I’m going to have no voice left after this. Your car is all over the news. Or what’s left of it. That’s some serious shit you’re in, Dom.’
‘Tell me about it. That’s why I need your help.’
‘Okay, let me get a drink. Another one?’ Scooby asked, nodding at Riley’s empty beer bottle.
‘Sure.’
Riley watched Scooby use his height to jump the crush at the bar. He had been one of those soldiers who could have had a cushy war, safe behind the blast walls of Bastion. He was with the Royal Logistic Corps, making sure supplies – food, ammo, clothes, medicine – reached the troops at the forward bases. Frustrated at living a sedentary life and bristling at being thought of as a REMF (Rear Echelon Motherfucker), he had volunteered to go out with some of the convoys, despite knowing how hazardous road trips could be. He simply didn’t want to be labelled a REMF. On his third sortie his truck hit an IED and a splinter of metal, dislodged from the interior of the Ridgeback he was riding in, penetrated the eye and severed the optic nerve.
Now, he did the same sort of job for the Met, a civilian employee responsible for, as he put it ‘ordering the right number of truncheons’, even though they no longer called them that. It was a misleading description of his real role, which included assessing and recommending equipment new to the law enforcement market. The reason the Met had recently been given improved stab vests was down to Scooby, who had found some superb Brazilian ones and argued down concerns about cost. Scooby was part-owner of ProTek, a private security firm, specialising in close protection. Bodyguards, to the layman. He was a handy man to know.
Scooby came back with four beers and placed them on the table. ‘We’ll only be going back up again soon,’ he said, sliding back into the booth. ‘Might as well stock up. You know, I look at some of those girls and wonder how their parents can let them go out like that.’
That was a dad speaking. ‘How is Evie?’ Riley asked.
This was his daughter, fourteen, almost as tall as her father and head-spinningly beautiful. Scooby had been fighting off model scouts for about six months now. ‘She’s good. Decided to settle down to school work. Still have to tell her off about going out in her underwear, though. How’s Ruby? Did you get through to her?’
‘Eventually. She’s fine. For the moment. As you said, it usually takes a while.’
‘So what about you? You AWOL?’
‘Technically. But I’m fucked if I’m letting them lock me down.’
‘But if you’re the target…?’
‘Then I should be out there drawing fire.’
Scooby shook his head. ‘This isn’t Afghan.’
‘No, it’s fucking not,’ Riley snapped back, pointing with the neck of the beer bottle. ‘Not yet. And we’ve got to stop it becoming like bloody Afghan.’
‘You all right, Dom?’ Scooby asked, the concern heavy in his voice.
Riley realised he had been shouting. The booze had gone straight to his head. He needed to eat something. ‘Yeah. Sorry. It’s the thought of Ruby, you know, having to deal with this shit. And me not being there for her.’
‘You ever think of trying to give it another go? With Izzy?’
‘For Ruby’s sake?’
‘Yeah. It’s rough. Not having a dad.’
‘Tell me about it.’
Scooby grimaced. ‘Sorry. But you had your grandfather, eh?’
‘And Ruby’s got me.’
When Scooby didn’t answer, Riley prompted him. ‘What?’
‘I don’t know,’ his friend said. ‘Just, given your job. It won’t give a girl a sense of security, will it? Not when people go putting bombs under your car.’
‘Which is why,’ Riley said through gritted teeth, ‘ I am trying to find the fuckers.’
‘And then? You’ll give up with the bombs? No, I didn’t think so.’
‘To answer your original question, no. I don’t think it would work with Izzy. It’s too late.’
To Riley’s relief, Scooby let it drop. ‘Where are you staying?’
‘In a hotel, locally.’
‘Not ideal.’
‘I paid cash in advance.’
‘That helps. But you’re still on a database. You want me to get some security over?’
‘Not for me, no. The fewer eyes on me the better as far as I’m concerned. I’ll move.’
‘Where?’
‘Don’t worry, somewhere I’ll be safe.’
Scooby reached into his pocket and slid a phone over the table to him. ‘Let me know, eh? Number is on the back. Pay as you go. I topped the credit up. And put my number in. You need to set up the thumbprint security.’
‘Thanks.’
‘And don’t use any other handsets, eh? Five’ll get you ten that’s how you were dicked. Unless there’s a team tagging you.’
‘I don’t think so. But I can’t be certain.’ He pushed a piece of paper acros
s the table. ‘This is where Izzy and Ruby are staying. Willow Grange. It’s a country house hotel. Can you get some of your guys down there?’
‘I can get some of my gals down there, which might be even better.’
Riley nodded. A brace of female CPOs would be preferable. ‘Great. The second address is my grandparents. Can they all go there tomorrow? Then I can scoop them up once I know it’s safe.’
‘Will do.’
‘And bill me.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, my girls don’t come cheap.’ He was channelling Groucho Marx now.
‘Glad to hear it.’
‘Give me a minute.’
Scooby left to find a spot where he could hear enough to make a call. Riley used the time to set up the new phone and activate the credit card.
When Scooby came back he said: ’Done. Two of my best. Lisa Baxter and Jackie Dawson will be on their way within thirty. Top-flight female PPOs.’ Personal Protection Officers was what bodyguards liked to be known as, just in case someone confused them with bull-necked bouncers.
Riley felt a little of the tension leave his body. ‘Thanks.’
Scooby held up his phone to show the BBC news feed. ‘I’m guessing you haven’t heard about the Islamic Centre, then?’
Riley had a good idea what was coming, but he said: ‘No. Go ahead.’
Scooby gave him the edited highlights of the attack on the community meeting in Leicester, and the latest theory about the modus operandi used in the incident.
Riley banged the table with the flat of his hand. ‘Christ almighty. Who claimed it?’
‘Real Albion Front. RAF. New kids on the execution block,’ said Scooby.
‘The far right don’t use bloody projectile charges,’ said Riley. ‘Do they?’
‘There was that soldier convicted of stockpiling weapons for the coming race war. One of those neo-Nazi nutters. National Action, was it? Remember? He and his mates had an arsenal that included some crude mortars and a couple of homemade RPGs.’
