by Jeff Gulvin
Webb carried his kit over and unfastened his bag. From inside he took a freshly sealed NBC suit and his respirator. Soldiers milled about them, some of them preparing to patrol the dirty line. Webb could smell food cooking as he stripped off his clothes. ‘Hope the army feeds us,’ he said to Tama. ‘They’re renowned for what they can produce in the field.’ He whistled as he changed, but underneath he was aware of the growing sense of unease. Bombs he could handle, but you just never knew with chemicals. He and Tania buddied up to get themselves fully suited. When they were ready, DPM tape round their wrists and masks squashed against the skin of their faces, they each produced their own bottle of pentyl acetate and checked to make sure they could not smell pear drops.
When they were ready, they moved out of the tent and up to the cordon tape that marked the dirty line, five hundred metres upwind of the farm. Webb looked across at the farm, as a group of suited figures started to walk up the cordoned approach path towards them. ‘Aye, aye,’ he said. ‘Something’s going on.’
The group got closer and went into the first decontamination shower. Webb could hear the water rushing off charcoal-lined suits. The word came from the tents that the crime-scene team could now enter. They would be briefed on the far side of the inner cordon. Webb and Tania picked up their tongs, nylon evidence bags and the other tools they might need. Webb stuffed the bags into the respirator case strapped about his waist and the tools in the breast pockets of his NBC smock. He glanced at Tania. Again they checked their respirators, then crossed under the tape.
They were met by the duty officer from Porton Down. He nodded to them and looked at the name tag under the plastic cover on Webb’s sleeve.
‘Webb?’
Webb nodded. The man showed his own name tag. Billings.
‘What’ve we got?’ Webb asked him. He spoke loudly, voice muffled through the respirator.
‘We don’t know. The contamination looks like it’s confined to the end shed over there.’ Billings pointed to the row of workshops standing in a line at right angles to the farmhouse. ‘There are marginal traces in the house itself, though. So far we’ve swabbed outside and done some atmospheric testing. We’ve got some positive readings, but they’re minimal.’
‘Nerve agent?’
‘We don’t know. The chaps you saw getting cleaned up have got what we think is the base crystal. There was a bottle of solution in there, nitric and hydrochloric acid, together with heating apparatus.’
‘What, just open in the workshop?’ Webb said.
Billings shook his head. ‘They’ve built a dirty room out of glass.’
Webb went very still. ‘How big is it?’
‘About eight by four.’
Webb looked at Tania and she stared back through the separated eyes of her mask.
Billings pointed out the approach path, between the two lines of orange tape. ‘That’ll take you to the front door of the house,’ he said. ‘There’s another one of us in there with the pathologist.’
They walked between the tapes and Tania leaned her head close so she could be heard through the respirator. ‘Glass, Webby. Eight-foot dirty room.’
‘I know, Tania.’
‘What d’you reckon?’
‘I don’t reckon anything till I’ve seen it.’
At the farmhouse door they were shown down into the wine cellar and Webb caught a glimpse of some of the labels on the bottles. Someone’s going to be very upset about this lot, he thought. Lights had been set up on cabling, running through the cellar and into the passage to the workshops. The trap door was closed and they opened it. The Porton Down man with them made sure it was closed again before he opened the first workshop door. Webb examined the foam sealer that had been stapled over the rim. ‘Someone knew what they were doing,’ he muttered.
In the second workshop they found the detonators, still packaged. Tania photographed everything while Webb took a closer look around. On the workbench he saw the PP3 batteries and the circuit tester, and then his gaze fell on an LCD Spanish clock with separate alarm display, squatting in a grey and black plastic box. Tania lowered her camera. ‘Oh, fuck,’ she said.
Webb laid out white paper sheets while they were dusting and placed the items for recovery on those, before wrapping each piece in three nylon bags and then labelling them. In the last room, they found the pathologist, bending over the dead man.
His body was lying prostrate on the floor, naked now, having been carefully cut out of the NBC suit, which was piled in a black plastic bag. Webb moved closer. The flesh was pale, rigid almost over the bones. The man’s face was bloated, burned about his mouth and nose. Blood was smeared dark and congealed round his eyes. His mouth was open a fraction with the thickness of his tongue protruding. He knew it was pointless asking the pathologist anything. The body would be wrapped in three nylon body-bags and then carried to the perimeter line where it would be decontaminated. Then it would be placed in a sealed casket and shipped by helicopter to Porton Down. Only after they had carried out X-rays and a full autopsy under contamination conditions, would they pass any information back.
He left the dead man and turned to the glass room, then he paused and crouched again by the doctor. ‘I want to photograph his fingerprints while you’ve got him like that,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a digital camera.’ The doctor nodded and Webb motioned to Tania, who knelt down beside the dead man and set about assembling the equipment.
Webb watched her for a moment, then looked at the eight-foot glass room with the workbench and the heating equipment. Bottles of nitric acid, bottles of hydrochloric acid; he left them for the scientists. Everything he touched, he did so with tongs, working hard not to brush against anything. He turned to the other workbench and examined the shaped charge: Semtex, not very much, looked about two ounces or so to him. On the floor the dead man was still clutching the piece of scaffolding pipe. Webb bent to the pathologist once more. ‘Can you get that pipe out of his hand?’ he asked.
He nodded and curled back the fingers with a cracking sound. The pipe fell loose and rolled on to the floor. Webb bent gingerly over it. He could not use the tongs, it was too big and heavy. Tania looked at him. Webb felt sweat on his brow for the first time. His paper suit started to stick to him under the charcoal-lined outer. He pressed his lips together, and carefully, just holding the ends, lifted the scaffolding pipe.
It was a mortar or bomb casing of some kind. He stood it on its end and checked the conical Semtex charge. Designed to fit the pipe and force maximum blast pressure at the trajectory. Mortar. He shone his torch inside the piping and saw what they had planned to do. Halfway down was a barrier, what looked like a bung made of plastic or nylon and heat-sealed into place. They were planning to pour the solution into the pipe and seal the top. The shaped Semtex charge would be pressed into the other side of the bung and a detonator into that. A chemical dispersal-mortar bomb that would make the subways of Tokyo look tame. He looked at the glass again and checked its gauge and thickness. It measured exactly the sizes he had in his mind, imprinted there from a receipt found in Queen’s House Mews.
‘George.’
He didn’t hear her.
‘George.’ Tania came alongside him. She was holding the discarded respirator. ‘Look.’ She had unscrewed it and showed Webb the inside. He bent his head, not seeing anything at first, and then he realized the fine mesh filter had been hacked to pieces. Deliberately. The mask would have been totally useless. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said.
He looked back at the stiffened corpse and took a moment to recover himself. This was as evil a thing as he’d witnessed. He’d seen the shattered and burned remains of innocents in bomb scenes, women, children with their clothes and flesh burned off by the searing heat of the blast wave. That was cynical, cowardly. But this was systematic evil, doctoring a respirator to see if the poison you’ve perfected works.
He knelt down once more by the body and spoke to the pathologist. ‘Any ID on him,’ he asked, ‘when you cut hi
m out of the suit?’
The pathologist shook his head.
Webb straightened up again. ‘We’re going to check the house. We’ve got what we can from here.’
‘You’ll never be able to do a fingertip search,’ the pathologist told him. ‘When we’ve finished, they’ll burn it down.’
‘I know. Don’t worry. We’ve got most of what we need.’ Webb looked at the body one last time and noticed a signet ring of some kind on the third finger of the right hand. He had seen the like before, many times, in the Foxhole bar at Eastcote barracks in Ruislip. It was a US varsity clasp ring. He leaned close to the doctor again. ‘I want that ring,’ he said.
‘Be my guest. Try not to damage the finger.’
Webb took a set of slim wire cutters from his pocket and fed them under the back of the ring. He snipped it off and used the tongs to pick it up and place it in one of the smaller nylon bags. He then placed that bag in another and then that in yet one more. Three layers of nylon between him and the contaminated ring. He turned to find Tania looking at the dirty room.
‘Storm Crow, isn’t it,’ she said.
Swann and McCulloch drove to Consett to speak with Caspar & Gibbs, the estate agents in charge of Healey Hall Farm. The press were now milling about the outer cordons in their droves. Swann saw every conceivable newsman: BBC, Tyne-Tees, Grampian, Granada, Sky. The radio reporters were all there and so were the newspapers.
He wondered how long it would be before somebody tried to break the cordon. The evacuation had been swift and few people were affected. This was a remote corner of the country and the population within the downwind hazard was minimal. The news coverage had been limited, a chemical spillage had been noted, but then John Garrod had been recognized and had to give a statement. However, the evacuation had been managed sensibly and quickly with very little panic, soldiers from Catterick and Kielder with trucks to load people into. They had been moved beyond the hazard line and set up in an array of small hotels and community centres, a few thousand at most.
They drove into Consett and Swann wondered how Webb was getting on at the scene. It was nearly six now and the streetlights were on. Grey skies, not dark yet, but a fresher wind than there had been and the definite threat of rain. The doors to the offices of Caspar & Gibbs were closed and locked. A whole gaggle of newsmen were camped on the pavement. Swann could see lights inside and he rapped on the glass. Nobody came. He rapped again and held his warrant card up to the window. He saw a man looking nervously from the rear office. Swann knocked yet again and the man finally came forward. He was waving Swann away, when he saw the warrant card and opened the door. The newsmen heaved and Swann and McCulloch blocked them and eased inside. The man locked the door again. Swann flapped his warrant card against the glass and waved the press away. They ignored him. He shook his shoulders and turned to the man who had let them in—portly, in his fifties, balding head gleaming under a film of sweat.
‘Detective Sergeant Swann,’ he said. ‘Scotland Yard.’
The man led them into his office, where he offered them seats in leather chairs and poured out coffee. Swann glanced about him—spacious, leather desk, more like a solicitor’s office than an estate agent’s. The man was the Caspar of Caspar & Gibbs and he sat down heavily in his chair.
‘Feel like I’m under siege,’ he said. ‘What with that lot out there, and you’re the second lot of policemen I’ve had here today.’
‘Locals?’ Swann said.
‘Ponteland.’ He fished in his pocket for a card and passed it across. ‘DC Newham.’
Swann noted the number.
‘Scotland Yard,’ Caspar said. ‘Antiterrorist Squad?’
Swann nodded briefly.
‘I saw your commander on the TV just now.’
‘The farm,’ Swann said. ‘Who rented it?’
Caspar opened the top drawer of his desk and fished out a copy of the lease. He pushed it towards Swann.
‘American student. Richard Gravitz III.’
Swann picked up the document. ‘What was he doing over here?’
‘Ph.D. Minerals, I think. Something to do with rocks, anyway.’
‘How did he pay?’
‘International money order. Full six months in advance. Sterling.’ He shook his head. ‘Best tenant we’ve ever had. That farm is not cheap, Sergeant. It’s over two thousand pounds a month.’
Swann looked up at him. ‘Who owns it—the farm?’
‘Ah, now that’s delicate. We have one very upset individual.’
‘I’m not surprised. He’s about to see his country pile razed to the ground.’
Caspar leaned forward. ‘He’s got a wine collection that’s worth a fortune. I don’t know how the insurance company will view it. Not only that, but the farm’s been in his family for years.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Down your way, actually. Solicitor, which is bound to make matters worse. He’ll probably try and sue us for letting to undesirables.’
‘His name?’
‘James Ingram.’
By eight o’clock that night Webb was finished. With no IED to disrupt things, the farm lights had been used and the approach path from the inner cordon was lit with spotlights. He and Tania had been completely through the house and it was clear from the downstairs shower that someone had washed off there. The water had drained into the mains and the information had been passed on to Northeast Water, but nobody else. Now they were busy sampling the sewerage for signs of contamination.
The men from Porton Down, however, were satisfied that there had been no actual spillage inside the far workshop. Their swabbing had revealed no signs of liquid and they were rapidly coming to the conclusion that the leakage had been in the form of a gas. They still had a number of tests to do on the area and the cordons and army presence would stay in place for at least forty-eight hours. Webb and Tania left the outbuildings and walked back through the fields to the decontamination tents. They had been working in the suits for over three hours; the recommended limit in any one spell was about half an hour. It was fully dark now, though the sky was lit up and the landscape upwind of the farm had a strangely lunar quality, dominated by the luminous bubble tents where the decontamination process was going on.
They arrived together and were met by two soldiers in full NBC gear. They passed over their evidence bags which were put through the three-tent process first, and then each of them went into the shower. Freezing cold water all over them, still completely suited, standing on duckboard in the metal trays with the run-off to a single pipe.
When the first shower was over, they patted themselves down with paper towels which they dumped into bins for incineration, then each of them was assisted by one of the suited orderlies. The orderly unwrapped the DPM tape from around Webb’s ankles and wrists and then pulled the rubber overgloves back to halfway. He loosened off the collar tapes and the smock at the waist, and, for the first time in three hours, Webb felt air flow over his skin. Then it was the second shower, colder it felt than the last one. Again, Webb patted himself dry and walked along the duckboard to the next tent. He could see the pale moon through the roof, distorted by plastic and the glare of lights from the ground.
The next orderly cut his smock up the front with shears and told Webb to stand with his arms out in a crucifix position. The man loosened the sleeves, then told him to turn round. He did so and placed his arms behind him like a bad swallow dive. The orderly pulled the jacket down his arms in two pieces and the rubber gloves came with them. They were all placed in a bin beside him. The jacket came away inside out, so that any contamination on the material stayed there. Next, Webb had the trousers loosened and pulled halfway down. The white paper suit was black with charcoal and stuck to his flesh like glue. He sat on the chair provided and the orderly cut the laces on the rubber overboots. They, too, were discarded and then the trousers came off the rest of the way, once again inside out. The only thing that Webb wore now was the paper suit and his respirato
r. The orderly unzipped the suit and peeled it off him inside out. His body, naked and shivering now, was black with running charcoal.
He moved along the duckboard and into the final shower. This time soap was provided and he washed every inch of his body in freezing cold water. He washed his hair three times and shivered all the way through it. He washed the outside of his mask thoroughly, then took it off and washed the inside. This was the only piece of the suit he would take with him when he left the tents.
At last it was over and he was dried and back in his own clothes. Exhausted and hungry, he and Tania took the truck to the outer cordon and could smell cooking from the army field canteen. Soldiers were everywhere, the press camped not far away. Webb looked for familiar faces and saw Swann standing with another man, smoking a cigarette. Swann spotted him, dropped the cigarette and ground it under his heel.
‘What’ve we got?’ he asked.
Webb looked gravely at him. ‘The glass from Queen’s House Mews.’
He took Swann’s arm, walking him slightly apart from the mass of soldiers and police officers around them. ‘Chemical mortar bomb, Jack. Scaffolding pipe and conical-shaped charge. About two ounces of Semtex. Packs of Iraco dets and LCD Spanish clocks.’
‘Definitely the glass?’
‘Almost certainly.’ Webb looked at him then. Swann’s face was pinched. ‘What?’ he said.
‘I figured as much.’
‘Why?’
‘Guess who owns the farm?’
‘I haven’t got a clue.’
Swann looked in his eyes. ‘James Ingram. Leader of the British Freedom Party.’
Swann drove them back to London. The commander had ordered a parade call at 7.30 a.m. He dropped Webb at home and then Tania. By the time he crawled into his own flat, it was two in the morning. He grabbed three hours’ sleep, showered and dressed and was at his desk by 6.30. He had not seen the kids; they and Annika had still been asleep, so he might as well have been away for the night. Webb came in at 6.45, looking red-faced and refreshed. Colson had been at his desk since six o’clock apparently. He was on the telephone when Swann had walked past his office to get coffee. Gradually the rest of the squad filtered in and Colson came down to the squad room.
