by Kim Hughes
‘True.’
‘They also copied their encrypted communication from ISIS. These people don’t just learn from their allies. You know that.’
‘I do. I was just hoping they didn’t imitate shaped charges. What’s the fallout?’
‘Usual. Call for calm by the more moderate imams. Call for infidel blood by a few of the others. Not good. There’s a solidarity march planned for Leicester town centre tomorrow.’
‘And a candle-lit vigil tonight?’
‘Don’t be cynical.’
‘It’s hard not to be,’ said Riley. ‘It’s like there is a post-atrocity script everyone follows.’
‘And you suggest?’
‘I think someone is stirring the pot. Trying to get a reaction. Maybe trying to get the whole country up in arms. There’s plenty of people of all stripes who would like that.’ Riley clinked his beer bottles together. ‘I suggest we find the bombers on both sides and string them up by their bollocks,’ he said with feeling.
‘At least you know that one wasn’t aimed at you.’
‘There’s that,’ he admitted. Perhaps he would have to re-think that big bullseye that he felt was painted on his back. Not just yet, though.
‘Let’s stick with your bombs for the minute. You said you had a yellow and purple wire? Where is it now?’
‘It was in the VW,’ said Riley. ‘So it’s gone. Which is a bloody nuisance.’ Then he remembered a detail he should have mentioned to Scooby earlier. ‘There was a drone too.’
‘What kind of drone?’
‘I don’t know. The hovering kind. I took a photo of it. Which is on my old phone.’ Scooby seemed to have found something more interesting over Riley’s shoulder. He resisted the urge to turn and follow his one-eyed gaze. ‘Scoob,’ he prompted.
His friend blinked and turned his concentration back to Riley. ‘Yes, photo. Pass it over.’
Scooby took the mobile and pocketed it. ‘I’ll take a look.’
‘There was a drone at Nottingham too.’
‘Same type?’
‘I dunno. They all look the same to me.’
They both moved on to their second bottles. ‘I think you’ve pulled,’ said Scooby. ‘The girl at the bar.’
Riley craned his neck and the woman gave a small flash of a smile and turned away.
‘Friend of yours?’
‘I think she’s looking at you,’ Riley said.
Scooby held up his left hand and wriggled his ring finger. ‘Kryptonite.’
‘I’ve got Kryptonite written through me like a stick of rock,’ said Riley. He emptied his beer bottle. ‘I need another favour. But I’ll get another couple in first,’ said Riley, standing.
‘Just the one each,’ said Scooby. ‘Then I really must be going.’
Riley shouldered his way to the bar. The girl who had smiled at him was nowhere to be seen. He didn’t like women smiling at him for no reason. Not today. He looked around, but nobody was taking any particular notice of him.
Sometimes women just smile. It doesn’t mean anything.
Right now, he thought, everything meant something. When he finally got through the crush and managed to yell his order, he bought four beers, just in case, and then threaded his way back through a swaying, gesticulating crowd. He thanked his lucky stars he had bottles, not pints, because they would have been half-empty by the time he got back, given the amount of shoving and stumbling going on.
‘I said one.’
‘Maths was never my strong point,’ said Riley. ‘Cheers.’
‘What else do you need? And is it legal?’
‘Yes, of course it is. All I need is an address.’ And once he had it, then legality might take a holiday, but he decided not to mention that. A second slip of paper went across. Scooby looked at it, frowning. ‘Is that…?’
‘Melton Mowbray, yes.’ It was a would-be terrorist atrocity from the 1980s that had been thwarted.
‘Fuckin’ hell, Dom. George O’Donnell? A Big Daddy? Do you know what you’re doing?’
‘Just a house call. Can you get me it?’
‘I know how to get the address. He’ll be on a watch list. But—’
‘Scooby. Don’t ask. It’s safer that way.’
They chatted for another ten minutes, then Scooby took his leave, promising to get the address to Riley first thing the next day. He left Riley with two more bottles to finish. He could already feel his head swimming slightly. He needed to eat.
He was just debating whether to abandon the undrunk beer, when a flash of sequins moved in opposite him. It was the girl from the bar. Short blonde hair, slightly turned-up nose, lips that might or might not have fillers in them, but certainly plump. ‘Hello.’ It was followed by a lopsided grin.
You’re a little bit pissed, he thought. Or doing a pretty good impression of it. ‘Hello,’ he said, although there was no real greeting in there. Just suspicious.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘This must seem weird. I know you saw me looking over, and I thought I should explain. I think you’re the father of one of my children.’
Riley blinked a few times, making sure he had her face in focus. He didn’t recognise her at all. But there had been a few nights… fuck, was he a dad twice over? ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, with a confidence that was, in reality, completely lacking.
‘Max, right?’
‘No, my name’s Dom,’ he said with some relief.
‘No, your son. Max. He’s in my English class. The one I teach.’ Her forehead wrinkled as she frowned. ‘I thought you were his dad. No?’
Riley burst out laughing. ‘No! Jesus. For an English teacher… you’ve got to learn how to phrase your questions more carefully. I don’t have a son.’
She considered this for a moment, rewound the conversation and put a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I see.’ She giggled. ‘No, no. I didn’t mean… that we had a son together. I was worried that you’d seen Max’s teacher out getting on it with her mates and would, y’know, be disapproving. Christ. Must have—’
‘Given me a moment, yeah.’ He held out his hand. ‘Dom Riley.’
She took it, a good, firm grip, and made an exaggerated shake. ‘Charlotte Keech. Charlie.’
He pushed one of the spare bottles across to her. ‘Fancy a beer, Charlie?’
* * *
Jamal stood outside the Tesco Express, finishing up the call with Muraski. ‘So Halo is a dead end,’ he said. ‘Unless you want to go to Damascus any time soon and knock on their door.’
‘I’ll pass on that,’ said Muraski in his ear. ‘But it could still be a front for the Iranians?’
‘Well, the Iranians supported Assad from day one. And they’re always looking for sneaky ways to trade. Halo could be a sanction-busting ruse. But it could also just be a business that sells components and asks no questions. There’s a few of those.’
‘I guess.’ He heard a stifled yawn at the other end.
‘You all right, Kate?’
‘Just tired.’
‘Where are you staying tonight?’
‘The delightful CitizenM. It’s not far and I need a good night’s sleep. Briefing about the Leicester bomb tomorrow first thing. I guess some of that will be heading your way?’
‘No doubt we’ll have a shufty. Look, I did as you asked and requested a TAP on Riley.’
‘And?’
‘There’s already one in place.’
‘What? Why?’
‘The car bomb in the Cotswolds? That was him.’
‘I knew it!’
‘Hold on,’ warned Jamal. ‘It was his car, I mean. He was the target.’
‘Oh.’
‘And he’s on the run.’
‘From what?’
‘At a guess? The people who are trying to blow him up.’
‘Christ.’
‘We’ll speak tomorrow. I’ve got to go. Goodnight. Get some sleep, girl.’
‘Girl? I will, boy. Night.’
Jamal switched o
ff the phone and let out a disappointed sigh. He always got it wrong with Kate. Just couldn’t get the tone right. It veered from too crude (the shower joke) to too prim (his attitude to drinking). And the DNA cock-up. There was very likely no significance to Dom Riley’s DNA being on the bomb. He had just wanted to phone her, play the big man. But she had run with it. He’d tried to tell her at the Polish place it was probably nothing, but she didn’t want to hear.
Despite pretending otherwise, he did remember her from uni. She was a bit of a wild thing for a while, running with a mostly female group that did ketamine and shit like that and seemed to never need any sleep. There were ‘hook ups’ but no real steady boyfriends. The liaisons in the group – known initially as The Beeches, after the hall that most of them lived in, which of course soon mutated to The Bitches – seemed pretty fluid.
There was a rumour of a second-year burn-out with Kate. The Bitches seemed to disband during year three and, although you could hardly accuse the former members of embracing sobriety, a new work ethic surfaced.
The truth was, he had always fancied Kate, he just didn’t know how to get around the obstacle course she had set up around her. He’d been a little in love even back when she was the kind of girl his parents thought would suffer eternal punishment. He didn’t share his parents’ views on such things. Didn’t share much at all with them. Including what he did for a living. They knew he did something in security, but had no idea what. But they would surely be proud that, sometimes, he was chasing down the Muslims who gave Islam such a toxic name in the aftermath of events such as Manchester and Nottingham. Muslims who enabled the Leicester bombers to come out of their wormy hiding places and claim justifiable retribution when they blew the Islamic Centre apart. White trash.
He stepped into the Tesco and strolled the aisles, unsure of what to buy for dinner. He shouldn’t have another ready meal. He was eating too many calories late in the day, and he was putting on weight. He really didn’t want to be the size of his father by the time he was forty. He selected a salad, then put it back and went for pizza. It was quick, after all. Not as quick as emptying salad into a bowl, a voice murmured in his head. Tastier, though. He would walk to a station further down the line the next day to work it off. He added a couple of bottles of alcohol-free lager to his basket and went to pay.
Jamal turned right out of the Tesco and was just level with the estate agent, heading for the tube, when he noticed the group shadowing him on the left, walking in the road while he stuck to the pavement. Five of them. Hoods up, hands in pockets. He slowed. They slowed.
‘Got the time, mate?’ one asked.
‘Sorry, don’t have a watch.’
He quickened his pace but so did his new companions, three of them managing to curve around so they were in front of him. One of them turned and walked backwards. ‘No, but you got a phone, eh?’
They had been watching him make the call outside Tesco. He stopped. The five regrouped in front of him. He could make out something of their faces in the light from a baker’s window. Two white, two black, one Asian. A Benetton ad’s-worth of muggers.
‘The phone’s no good to you,’ he said truthfully. It had a double-code system as well as voice recognition.
One of the white lads stepped forward. There was something familiar about him. ‘Let’s have a look.’ He held out his hand and clicked his fingers. Jamal looked around for help. How could a street be so deserted on a Saturday night? Fight or flight? With the extra weight he was carrying, flight probably wasn’t an option. These lads could probably run like whippets. And fight? Over a poxy mobile he could replace within hours?
Jamal pulled out the phone and handed it over. The young man pressed the on button. The screen lit up. ‘Code?’
‘Nine-seven-six-three.’
The young man entered it. The screen glowed brighter and Jamal could see his spotty, ferret-like face more clearly. The kid looked delighted, but he had about two minutes before the next layer of security kicked in and the phone died for good. Oh, and before it did so, sent out an alert. ‘Safe. Credit cards?’
Jamal nodded at the phone. ‘Apple Pay.’
‘You hipster. Password?’
‘Deadmaus@5.’
‘Ha. Cool.’
Cool? What was cool about being robbed by a bunch of feral rats? As they turned to go, Jamal felt a flash of rage at this ‘taxing’. He glared at the Asian lad and said: ‘How can you run with this low-life scum, bruv?’
For once the word didn’t sound false on his lips. Then the lad slipped back the hood and he could see it wasn’t a bruv at all. It was a sis. A girl, no more than fourteen or fifteen.
‘What did you call us?’ the chief mugger demanded, pointing a finger into Jamal’s face. Jamal had him. This was the kid who had called him a ‘Paki’ the other night and told him to go home. Something snapped inside him at the realisation and Jamal punched the boy as hard as he could. A bone in his hand broke, but he was compensated by the bloody rose that bloomed over his opponent’s features.
The others stepped in and Jamal dropped the Tesco bag onto the pavement. There was the crack and fizz of a bottle breaking. Jamal clenched his fists – the right one already painful – ready to take whatever beating they would offer, prepared to inflict damage as best he could. As he let out a howl of anger to stoke his aggression, he felt a sting of pain, like a sudden stitch, and looked down, surprised to discover the Asian girl had stabbed him.
SUNDAY
TWENTY-EIGHT
Barbara was in a deep sleep when, reluctantly, she felt herself rising into consciousness. She listened for the rustle of the duvet as Henry tried to scratch at his troublesome limbs. But all was quiet, apart from the soft snuffle from the nearby bed. Henry was fully occupied in the land of nod. Something had woken her, but it wasn’t a noise as such. A feeling. A disturbance in the atmosphere. It was that hour just before dawn, when the terrors of darkness gripped the heart. Soon the rising sun would lighten the sky and the monsters – guilt, regret, fear of the death that must be imminent for both of them – would creep back into the shadows. But at that precise moment, dread of night was still abroad.
She slid out of bed, back into the chill air, sacrificing some hard-won heat – the bedrooms of Dunston Hall could never be described as warm – padded across the carpet to the window, swished one side of the curtains back and looked out towards the lake. Its surface was silvered by moonlight, highlighting a series of small, concentric circles. Fish rising, she assumed. She heard an owl hoot and scanned the woods and the grounds closer to the house. Nothing on land appeared to move, apart from the dark shapes of rabbits on the lawn. The owl again. The rabbits, spooked by that sound or a movement, flicked their heads up, twitched and scattered. She shivered and felt a soft breath on her neck, as if someone had walked up behind and embraced her with phantom arms.
As she turned away from the window, she saw a dark silhouette, this one by the door. It was the draught from its opening which she had felt on her neck. She cursed Henry and his cans of WD-40. A few weeks ago, those hinges would have shrieked in alarm, but he had put them on his DIY to-do list. A beam of dazzling light shot out from the figure and played over her face. She instinctively looked away and closed her eyes to preserve her night vision. ‘Hello?’
‘Forgive me,’ said a soft voice. ‘Do not be frightened. I am not here to hurt you. Please do not do anything foolish.’ The torch was clicked off.
Foolish? Chance would be a fine thing. Barbara had often thought of having a lightweight pistol in the bedroom, as they had done in Moscow, but it had always seemed melodramatic in England, where shooting intruders was considered bad form. Now she regretted the decision. Especially as, if she could interpret the shadows correctly, the intruder was holding a gun on her.
‘Barbara? Sweetie?’ Henry stirred. ‘Is that you?’
‘Put the bedside lamp on, Henry. I think we have a visitor.’
He did so as he sat up, blinking like a mole rudel
y plucked out of the ground. ‘What’s going on?’ Then, finally taking in the situation, a burst of anger erupted from him: ‘Who the devil are you?’
Henry reached for the telephone on his bedside table and put it to his ear. He listened for a dial tone, then replaced the receiver. Must be dead, she thought. The mobile next to her side, of course, was worse than useless. Perhaps they should have installed that ludicrously expensive alarm and camera system a security company had offered them, with a guaranteed response – meaning humans would arrive – within twenty minutes. Or up to thirty, in their case, as Dunston was relatively remote. But, Barbara thought, perhaps it would have been a waste of money. A lot can happen in half an hour.
Aware that she only had a nightdress on, she crossed her arms over her breasts. With the extra light from the lamp, she was able to examine the intruder. The visitor was not a young man. By her quick estimate he was well into his fifties. Old for a burglar, she thought. The oldies tended to concentrate on safety deposit boxes and the like, didn’t they? He had short, greying hair, newly cut by the look of it, and was clean shaven. The pallor of his lower face suggested that the shave had been recent. He had thick, caterpillar eyebrows above chocolate-brown eyes and a strong, square jawline. He was, she decided, quite handsome. For a thief in the night.
Henry reached for the glasses he hated to wear and put them on his nose. He gave a sharp intake of breath. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ he said, as he focused on the trespasser holding a gun on his wife. ‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’
‘Hello, Henry,’ said the interloper casually, as if greeting her husband on the street or in the bank.
There was pause of four or five heartbeats as Henry composed himself before he spoke again. ‘Hello, Yousaf.’
TWENTY-NINE
Riley sat in the window of Charlie Keech’s flat, knees pulled up to his chest, watching the early morning light grow stronger, chasing the darkness and shadows from the street. He had been there since dawn was just a rosy promise on the clouds. Behind him, in bed, was Charlie, snoring softly.
