A Fatal Game

by Nicholas Searle

  On the move again, thankfully. The three of them in the deployment car with the driver, keyed up. You couldn’t avoid being keyed up. If they were needed, Jon would lead them as they were called through the cordon. He hoped they wouldn’t be.

  They could hear the comms as the clandestine convoy, Romeo its unwitting leader, made its way along the planned route towards the ground. What could the hold-up have been? mumbled the two other shots. No idea, he said, though he thought he did know.

  A message came through: Romeo is not, repeat not, believed to be carrying. The driver turned the ignition key and took them to the next stopping point so that they remained within spitting distance of the retinue.

  Did she have time to pick up a coffee from the machine on her way up the stairs to the ops room? No, she decided, though she could do with one. She was much too on edge to divert en route. Maybe one of the others would be making a brew before it all began in earnest.

  She used her access card to open the door, and one or two people turned to look at her. Most, though, were concentrating on the action. It was hushed in here and the lamps were dimmed. The large room had several distinct areas. The head of the firearms team sat with headphones on at a table, his people around him. The surveillance was managed close by, coordinators keeping an eye on the overall picture. The Int Cell, where she was heading, was in another corner, staffed by police and her own colleagues, taking what feeds there were from technical and from the chatter on the airwaves and passing them to the command team at the centre of proceedings, on a slightly raised podium, presided over by the SIO in his expensive suit. The Int Cell seemed to have little to do; their work might well already be complete, bringing everyone to this moment. Rashid had been condensed to intelligence. There were small clusters of people at the fringes of the room, busy with tasks about which Leila knew nothing. There were rooms leading from the main ops room, where mysterious subsidiary activities were taking place, some, she knew, occupied by people with whom she worked.

  Most people watched the screens that were suspended from the ceiling and gave a confusing account of what was happening. There were further screens at desk level offering greater granularity, which juniors observed intensely, searching for anything out of place.

  She stopped for a moment to make sense of it. Gradually the moving mosaic of pictures started to come together. Each screen was labelled: Alpha (which was Adnan), Zulu (Abdullah), Bravo (Bilal) and Romeo (Rashid). A fifth screen showed the concourse in front of the stadium and on the sixth was a moving map on which dots representing the boys edged inexorably towards a common centre. The boys were making their way towards this point in their own ways. Bilal shuffled with a swing of his shoulders, Abdullah looked intently in front of him, Adnan strolled casually, his hands in his pockets, while Rashid’s gangly lope and nervous expression called out to her. The steady burble of the comms was calming.

  She saw George at the Int Cell table and waved to him. He nodded grimly back and she walked in his direction. Not long to go.

  In London, Stuart decided to pop up to the ops room for a while. Show one’s face, rally the troops, could do no harm. It must be about time.

  He crept in quietly. This was no command centre, he knew. No orders were issued here. This was now entirely in others’ hands, and he had no influence. The intelligence had been fed and the cards dealt. All that was to be done was to wait. He felt the tension in the murmuring. It would be surprising if there hadn’t been that additional frisson, given what had happened the last time.

  He walked to where he could get a better view. People turned, and he nodded beneficently. Someone offered him her seat, which he refused with a smile. He said nothing; and nor did anyone else.

  He was mildly surprised Jake Winter wasn’t there. He’d invested so much in the enterprise, nurtured his case, spent uncomfortable nights nudging the thing along, counselled his man. This had been Jake’s baby and Stuart had suggested he be here. It could be pique, Stuart concluded. It couldn’t have been pleasant for Jake to have been pulled from the action so late in the day. Jake hadn’t seemed the sort of person to store rancour, but one lived and learned. His absence wasn’t so great a loss.

  There was a bustle in the room as the Chief Constable, fully uniformed and wearing his cap, entered. He gave an easy, breezy smile and said amicably, ‘You’ve better things to do than to watch me,’ before strolling over to the central podium where Silver Control, the command team headed by the SIO, sat. There were quiet words and the SIO stood. Placing his hand on the man’s shoulder, the chief smiled as if he’d heard a good joke, and they walked slowly together towards the glass-walled conference room at the rear of the ops room. Time was creeping in the story told by the screens, the small figures converging on the centre of the moving map. Others Leila did not recognize arrived at the same time and scurried into the conference room. The chief’s staff officer went to the firearms group and whispered to the team leader. He stood and went into the conference room, too. The staff officer came over to the Int Cell table, approaching George. ‘The Gold team is just convening for a few minutes, sir. The chief wondered whether you might like to attend, as an observer.’ George stood, put on his jacket and shrugged at Leila.

  Leila stopped watching the screens. The men in the room were, it seemed, having a convivial conversation. They were smiling and there were occasional bouts of laughter to be heard. Then they became serious, leaning earnestly forward as the chief spoke. There were nods, and the men left in turn, hurrying back to their desks.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Leila.

  ‘They’re pulling the plug,’ said George. ‘The arrest team’s going in now.’

  She glanced at the screens and then her watch. The boys were at least five minutes away from the stadium. ‘Why?’

  ‘No idea,’ he said.

  ‘But –’

  ‘No time, Leila. I have to speak to London.’ He already had the phone in his hand.

  Rashid felt calmer now. It was going to plan. He couldn’t see the followers he knew were there but their invisible presence was soothing. They’re there to protect me, at least partly, he thought. A few minutes more, that was all.

  19

  Jon

  The message to the car, and they were out on foot instantly. The car pulled away, the blue lights behind the front grille flashing. No siren. The surveillance team leader came to them, his baseball cap already on. They’d put theirs on too. Before they moved off, Jon spoke into his mouthpiece. ‘Confirming we’re going for a hard stop.’

  ‘Confirmed,’ said the voice of his ops room supervisor. ‘Take up a standby position and await further orders.’

  He signalled to his team that they should not yet take out their weapons. The surveillance team leader led them past her own people. As she did so she pointed them out silently. There was no one else in sight. They stopped suddenly and she pointed. From an angle they could see Romeo about fifty yards ahead. They waited for a moment and Jon told them to take out their weapons. All safetys were removed and they nodded to each other. Romeo was moving forward, and still the final order hadn’t been given. They had to move. The road dog-legged at the point where Romeo was now walking and he swerved to the left at the same pace, moving out of view. Jon knew the topography. There was an alternate, via a footpath that ran parallel and came out on to the next street.

  ‘Come on, come on, give the order,’ he muttered as he and his team sprinted in their rubber-soled boots. He signalled to one of his men to follow Romeo from the back while he and the third member of the team ran up the alleyway and turned sharp left into another, skirting the large plastic recycling bins. It was close to completely dark now. They stopped in the shadows near the end of the alleyway and took up position, listening to the running commentary of Romeo’s approach in their earpieces. ‘Come on, come on,’ thought Jon, or whispered it.

  ‘Handover of control to you,’ came the dry message from the ops room. All this would be recorded on hard di
sk for the audit afterwards. Force Internal Standards. Firearms Team Performance Review. IOPC, if it came to it. ‘Go.’

  He spoke to his team quietly: ‘Go, go, go.’

  Leila

  ‘Why?’ she wondered aloud as she watched the deployment, transfixed. George just looked at her. The images showed Rashid approaching the point where the officers waited. She couldn’t see them but knew they were there. Another officer was coming up fast behind him but he was oblivious, it seemed. She could see the automatic weapon the officer held. It would be a matter of seconds now. On the other screens similar flurries of action could be seen but she was interested only in Rashid.

  She hoped. All she had now was hope that throbbed like a muscle, pulsing in her brain, pounding in her chest. It was pared down to this: bare, sinewy, desperate hope. The alternative was panic. She hoped she’d see Rashid again shortly and knew she’d somehow have to control her emotion when – if – she did. She hoped Rashid would do all he’d been told, that he wouldn’t forget something in the heat of the moment. She hoped the officers wouldn’t be precipitate. She hoped she’d been clear enough with the officer she’d spoken to – his name had been Jon – to convey the right sense of Rashid. She hoped that Rashid was, in the end, not one of the bad guys.

  Abdullah

  Across the city, like the other three converging on the stadium, Abdullah trudged intently. He muttered to himself as he walked, knew he was muttering, did not even try to stop himself. He stared ahead at the ground as he gathered pace. Almost there. His head was bursting with ecstatic terror.

  He heard a noise directly in front of him and raised his eyes to the world, as if he were newborn and had only just discovered its existence. The sky was a luminous deep blue, punctuated with the glitter of the lights. He could hear the roar of the football crowd. In front of him stood a man wearing a cap with POLICE emblazoned on it, shouting at him, holding a gun with a flashlight attached to it, dazzling him.

  The realization was a slow burn with a sudden, abrupt arrival. A smile seeped on to his face and he reached inside his jacket. This was his moment. It’d been forbidden, he knew, but he’d had to. The knife had been his grandfather’s, a trophy from the war: a dagger as keen as the day it had been manufactured, its point lethally sharp, protected in its metal scabbard, a gunmetal grey swastika crafted on its hilt. He would have blood, even as this man screamed. Then, just as he felt the metal of the handle and before he’d begun to withdraw the knife, he felt an impact above his left eye and slumped.

  Bilal

  He heard the pops nearby. His path to the stadium took him within fifty yards of Abdullah’s and he understood immediately what was happening. It was not something he’d rehearsed, even in his head, even in his worst imaginings.

  He looked at the man who had appeared almost magically in front of him, shouting in English, which now seemed a language he could not understand. No doubt he showed his confusion. He sensed rather than comprehended what the man wanted and raised his hands before noticing the weapon pointing at him. He turned and began to run and felt a pain in the back of his head. But nothing more.

  Adnan

  He was trying to work out what the score was from the noise of the crowd but it was an impossible task. The sheer sound gave him that thrill, but he’d have to wait until he mingled with the departing crowd to find out what had gone on. Pity: there was nothing better than a game under the floodlights. The all-red Liverpool kit and the all-blue of City’s, on the bright green of the turf, all lit up. Cold night sky on which your breath formed clouds. Sparkle. Tension. Excitement. He dug his hands deeper into the pockets of the expensive leather jacket he always wore to matches.

  He’d have liked to be able to claim that he saw it coming. But he didn’t. Must have been Abdullah who sold them, was his first thought as the police officer faced him, tensed and ready, the weapon aimed at his head. He could sense there were two others, at least, dancing round him and probably more.

  ‘Take your hands out of your pockets,’ the man screamed.

  Now was as good a time as ever. It’d been a shit life, anyway. He shrugged, smirked and kept his hands where they were.

  Leila

  In the ops room she maintained outward composure, with difficulty. Calls would already be being made to the Independent Office for Police Conduct so that their investigations into three fatal shootings by police could commence. Would it be four? The SIO was furiously dictating his policy log into a voice recorder. The Chief Constable looked broken but would have to rouse himself for media conferences.

  George touched her arm. She turned to him, barely recognizing him.

  This was the end of it. This was the opposite of success. Three boys were dead and Rashid would be too, in a few moments. This was for sure: no one could risk letting him run now. Last time’s fuck-up was already in all their minds. So it had been supplanted by another fuck-up, just one that was more amenable to media spinning. Her certainty that Rashid was carrying neither explosive nor weapon, her faith in him, counted for nothing. What had happened? Had the police suddenly become twitchy for no good reason? Had one of the boys done something that raised the temperature beyond tolerable limits? Had new information, contradicting Rashid’s, been received? Was Rashid, after all, way beyond her belief, bad?

  They would now never discover the man orchestrating this, the sheikh. They would be no closer to him. Sooner or later this drama, on a different stage, would be repeated.

  Jon

  This was the moment. Jon led as they ran towards the subject and everything from here was on automatic pilot. They knew each other’s movements so well. They circled the subject and kept moving. Jon was directly in front of him and gave the challenge and instructions.

  This was Romeo. Rashid was his name. Christ, he was young in the flesh. He looked terrified, but who wouldn’t? Jon adjusted his position backwards ever so slightly while the other two danced on their toes, keeping mobile, alert, their focus on Romeo. ‘Look into my eyes,’ he said, and the boy tried to. The flashlight mounted on his weapon bore into the boy’s face, but he looked into Romeo’s eyes, to try to divine what was there. This harmless-looking boy. What was it Leila had said? The words from the briefings and manuals scrolled through his mind with supreme irrelevance: lethality, court proceedings, ethics, public safety, self-defence, justified homicide, double-tap, unreasonable force, preservation of human life, collateral damage. The instructions had been clear: the precautionary principle. We won’t let any of you be hung out to dry. We know how fine the balances are. We’ve lived it. We’ll back you all the way. That’s what the senior officers always said. For all he knew they might actually mean it.

  He fell back on training and instinct: the instinct that was trained and the instinct he felt for this fellow human being. He, Jon Brough the person, not Jon Brough the police officer and former SAS trooper accustomed to dispatching the enemy on the battlefield.

  Less than half a second could pass between the first challenge and the decision that had to be made, while the shock reflex took time to form in Romeo that would dissolve into his response. Yield or fight. Surrender or press an initiator. Jon Brough did not need half a second to decide.

  Rashid

  It happened so quickly he couldn’t piece it together. He didn’t see them until they were there, three of them, circling like crows. They weren’t in uniform but they wore caps with POLICE across the front. They were carrying guns and a light shone into his eyes.

  ‘Armed police,’ shouted one. ‘Hands away from your body, in the air. Look into my eyes. Keep looking into my eyes.’

  He raised his hands but he couldn’t look into the man’s eyes. The light was too bright. This was not how it was supposed to end.

  Author’s Note

  Anyone who has ever had a book published will know that it’s a long process. I completed my first draft of the first chapter of A Fatal Game in May 2017, just before the London Bridge attack. The ideas were in my head long befo
re that. I have no knowledge, beyond what I have read in the media, of the London Bridge attack itself; but I can’t argue that it, along with the many others of which I’ve been aware at close hand or more distantly, did not inform the narrative. I can say unequivocally, though, that it didn’t provide a singular stimulus for the book. The inquest arising from the deaths in the London Bridge/Borough Market terror attack of 3 June 2017 began in early May 2019 and at time of writing is due to finish at the end of July.

  A Fatal Game is not about any specific event or its aftermath. None of its characters represent any individual of whom I’m aware. What drove me to write this novel was the desire to imagine and portray the dilemmas facing those caught up in such events – whether terrorists, victims, survivors or those in law enforcement or the secret world – and how they deal with them. I was struck by the degree to which in such circumstances we all crave a certainty that is elusive if not illusory, but I wasn’t trying to make a point of any kind. Instead, I was trying to place myself in the position of each of the individual actors in this narrative and to see whether any answers – to anything at all – emerged. Not surprisingly, none did: just more and more questions and apparent paradoxes. Sometimes, though, questions begin to explain things, just a bit.

  My feelings for those who suffer as a result of such attacks are deep and heartfelt, and stem from a long career trying to prevent these things. A Fatal Game isn’t intended to make any statement other, perhaps, than to show sympathy for all of those involved: the victims, the survivors, the police, the spooks and yes, though it is painful to say so, the terrorists too.

  NS