I flicked the telly on. On the rolling BBC News 24, some criminologist from Strathclyde University was opining that the Whitechapel killer was ‘a local man, in his early twenties, possibly unemployed with a string of failed relationships.’ Cheers, I thought. That helped.
Bang-Bang called from the bathroom. ‘Baaaaabe. When are we moving?’
I slumped. I summoned the energy to shout back. ‘I dunno! Why?’
‘Wellllll… wherever we end up, I’m in charge of installing security and a new door.’
I switched channels. Sky News was leading with “East End gripped with fear”. I switched off.
-
18.
The Colonel had his head in his hands. ‘Bloody Lennie! He told me but he never told me the sheer bloody amount!’
He’d signed off on the cash, though. I supposed he was being transported back to Northern Ireland and all those Irish liabilities they used to run as agents. He raised his head. ‘You tell him from me. This had better be the last time he gets into debt, or I will personally shoot him myself’
‘Isn’t that a tautology, boss?’
‘Don’t push it, Sabir.’
‘Sir.’ I vanished from his gaze.
On the way out I detoured into RPOC to drop off a file. Toots was there, setting up a projector. She handed me a card. ‘My sister, Tara. Also a Blackeye. She runs a women’s group in Tower Hamlets and she knows everyone. Look her up.’
I looked at the card. A name, a logo, a phone number. I started to ask questions but Toots shooed me away. ‘Anyway, get going. I’m briefing the Chief of Defence Intelligence in a minute, can’t have any riff-raff. Get gone.’
‘The Vice Admiral?’
‘Yes, the man himself. Go on. And call Tara. Today!’
I got gone.
19.
The rain spattered on the car windscreen. It was getting dark. We were parked outside Paddington station, facing away from the line of shops in case we needed to make a quick getaway. It was Lennie’s car. He was in the driver’s seat, flicking glances in the rear-view mirror at the brightly-lit shop that was our target.
I looked back. Bang-Bang was slapping a stick magazine into a machine pistol and checking its safety. ‘Ready babe?’
She nodded. I turned to Lennie. ‘Mate, you stay here. If you hear any shooting, just drive away.’
Bang-Bang and I climbed out of the car and slammed the doors. I popped the boot and retrieved a black holdall. I slammed the boot shut and we walked back down the station approach road, Bang-Bang clip-clopping along beside me in her inappropriate white stiletto heels.
We made our way through the pedestrian throngs towards the third shop from the right. Veena Bureau De Change. The Bureau De Change that was also the headquarters of Ruby Sundari, leader of the UK branch of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam.
We stopped in the shopfront light. “Veena Change Bureau / Gold and Silver” read the gaudy sign. I handed my pistol and my BlackBerry to Bang-Bang and she stowed them in her Claymore shoulder bag.
We stepped in and two goons approached us. Bang-Bang placed herself against the door jamb and looked out onto the rainswept traffic and the hurrying commuters. She was studiously ignoring the two guys. I knew that her machine pistol was under her right arm, concealed by her jacket. The goons stopped and looked at me. I could tell they knew about what she was carrying too.
I was closer. I spread my arms. One stepped forward and patted me down. He did it correctly – smooth strokes and bunching of handfuls of clothing. No skimping on the groin either, just in case I was packing something slim down there, like a Walther. Then he looked in the holdall I was carrying. He pulled out random blocks of money and riffled them. He rummaged around in the bottom of the holdall in case it had a false compartment. While this was going on, the other goon was running a non-linear junction detector over me, then the holdall. This would detect any semi-conducting circuitry, whether on or off.
The detector didn’t buzz. Finally the first one stood from his pat-down and nodded. I was clean. Good to go. I looked back, blew Bang-Bang a kiss. She grinned and went back to looking at the traffic. I was ushered through some bead curtains, down a pokey corridor which smelt of patchouli. We came to a door. The goon knocked in a pattern. There was a harsh response from inside in a language I didn’t know, and he opened the door inwards and gestured that I should go in. I went in.
A tiny, dark-skinned woman with very fierce eyes sat at a desk. Sunrise Radio was playing from a radio on a shelf. The radio was sitting on an active Sweepmaster F2800 counter-surveillance box. Its display was quiet. The desk was littered with money in every denomination you could care to name, and gold bullion in small ingots with strange stampings. She looked up. This was Ruby Sundari.
‘Evening, Mrs Sundari,’ I said. ‘I’m Riz. I’m here about Lennie.’ The radio wailed a Bollywood standard. I tried to guess the song, and failed.
Finally she spoke. ‘You had a gun?’
‘I did. I gave it to my wife before we came in. She also has a MAC-10 machine pistol in .45 ACP under her jacket. Thirty-round magazine, bungee cord over the shoulder, you know the drill. Although she’s only loaded 28 rounds in to avoid stoppages.’
She nodded.
I continued. ‘So, at the first sign of any crazy Tamil machete action, she’s got my OK to kill everyone in the shop.’
Her eyebrows rose slightly at this perceived crease in business. ‘Wouldn’t that be a touch noisy, Mr Sabir?’
I leant forward, time to push it. ‘You haven’t met my wife. She doesn’t, actually, care.’
She leant back and smiled the ghost of a sweet smile which I knew was anything but, ‘Your new young wife. The famous Bang-Bang Kirpachi, your faithful little killer attack dog, trotting along at your heels. That’s about right, isn’t it?’
I nodded slowly. I could see what she was trying to do. I said nothing. After a moment she broke the heavy silence.
‘There won’t be any stupidity. We’re here to effect a transaction. I’m sure your Lennie wants shot of us.’
I nodded. ‘Damn right he does.’ I heaved the holdall onto the desk. ‘£25,000 in used notes, gift of my office. That’s £20,000 on behalf of DCI Lennie George and to settle his outstandings plus £5,000 interest courtesy of us. He’s ours now. OK?’
She gave the holdall a cursory check. ‘The interest currently stands at £15,200.’
‘Tough. You’re taking the five large.’ I waited. Here was the impasse. I was standing before the most dangerous woman in London, a gang leader who held the literal power of life or death over everyone in the British Tamil community. And I was unarmed. I stared her down. If you showed one iota of weakness before these people, they’d roll right over you. You just had to roll back harder.
She dug inside the holdall, pulled out one block of notes and flicked through them. She nodded to herself, placed the block on the desk and swung the holdall to her side of the floor. She looked at me, unreadable. I waited.
‘He’s all yours, Mr Sabir. Tell him to never gamble again in any of our establishments. Ever.’
‘Thank you.’
I left the office and shut the door.
Outside in the shop, Bang-Bang was still leaning against the door frame, lazily popping bubblegum. The two henchmen were now glaring at her from the far side of the exchange desk. She grinned at me. ‘Alright babes? Dunno about those two at the far end. They’ve been remarkably quiet.’
I took her arm and guided her out onto the street. ‘Let’s go. Quiet like. We’ve got a quiz night to go to.’
She waved at the Tamils inside the shop. ‘Byeeeee!’
20.
An hour later we were making our way round the round tables in a very packed, art deco venue called the Troxy, just shy of the Limehouse Link. The event was called “Unshakeable: Dinner and Revival Night.” It was essentially Salafi, and had been set up by the big wheels from East London Mosque; IFE, MCB, the local university Islamic Society, the
Tayyibun Institute, and a whole alphabet soup of other outfits. We were faced with dinner, raffle, speeches, recitals, and believe it or not, a Salafi-themed quiz with prizes. Bang-Bang was convinced I’d do well in this and had got tickets weeks ago. I hoped she was winding me up but something told me she meant it.
We found our numbered, half-occupied table. I counted five empty seats. We sat, and the lights dimmed. I looked around at our fellow occupants. Some activists, a local councillor, a landlord. Precisely as it got dark, a lady in a very loose headscarf accompanied by two children and two young hijab’d women sat themselves in the empty seats. The headscarfed lady fixed me with a look. The children stood, dutifully, to either side of her, until she bade them sit. Ah, this must be Tara, Toots’ sister. I could see the family resemblance, but this woman had a lupine, bladelike smile. She spoke. ‘Salaam Aleykum. I’m Tara Khani. I’m with you from now on, as your… guide to this hunting ground.’ She grinned. Next to me Bang-Bang popped her bubblegum and snickered.
Tara indicated the two young women who’d arrived with her. ‘This is Sunara, and this is Slooky. They’re also local. Sunara can translate Bengali for you and Slooky knows the area like the back of her hand.’ Sunara looked shy and reserved. And Slooky – I drew breath. Her face was rigid like a porcelain doll, as she’d obviously been the victim of an acid attack. The right side of her face was scarred, a black dead eye, lumpy nose and a fixed sneer. Her hair fell artlessly over it in an effort to conceal the damage. ‘She doesn’t talk much.’
‘Hello Slooky!’ Bang-Bang ran over and planted a kiss on Slooky's ruined face. Slooky beamed. Bang-Bang looked back at me. ‘We all love Slooky. Her family and the Brothers didn’t though. Slooky didn’t want to marry a Wahaabi, so they arranged to have acid thrown in her face. And Sunara – she’s a cool chica. She can come with us on the house-to-houses.’
One of the evening’s organisers bustled over, flapping his hands ineffectually. He was wearing a black turban and your average Wahaabi gear. ‘No… no we can’t have free mixi–’
Bang-Bang looked at him and spat two words. ‘Fuck off.’
Tara Khani stood up and cocked her head at him. She spread her hands. ‘You heard the sister.’
He retreated back into the crowd. Tara sat back down. ‘Land’s sakes. Cockney Arabs. OK where were we?’
I leant into the table. The Councillor sat back. He looked shocked. I spoke. ‘Right, sisters. What we have is this.’ I talked them through all the hare-coursing we’d had so far, and slid some documents their way. After five minutes we were all up to speed and then there was a tapping on the stage mike. It was time for the Salafi Quiz. Bang-Bang leant on me. ‘I’m relying on you here; talk me through this Wahaabit stuff.’
I laughed. ‘Easy when you follow in the way of the Prophet.’
Bang-Bang nodded to the table next to ours. ‘Is that the mayor?’
My God, it was. We were sat one table away from the Mayor of Tower Hamlets and his entourage. And he’d caught our eye. She nudged me. ‘Come on, this’ll be funny.’
She pulled me up and we wandered over and miraculously, two acolytes disappeared and made their seats available. And there we were me, Bang-Bang and the Mayor of Tower Hamlets. He was a tall, thin, angular man. Tall for a Bengali, with an expensively-styled high and tight haircut. Nice suit, too. He spread his hands. ‘The famous Sabirs!’
I nodded. Bang-Bang just started laughing. He carried on. ‘Rizwan. Thankyou for the donation to fix the Muslim Centre’s back door. You needn’t have.’
‘Well… I did need to. I broke it.’
Bang-Bang started sniggering like Muttlee and I kicked her under the table. She straightened up and started to make small talk with the Mayor’s wife. That in itself was a message. She’d left me on my own to do the business. The Mayor leant in to my shoulder. ‘God, I’m glad you two are on the team. This murder stuff is bringing us down by degrees. Reckon you can find them?’
I nodded. ‘We’re part of Lennie George’s office. I reckon we can.’
‘Good enough. The Islamists are doing my head in on our patch, what with their stickers and all kinds of nonsense. Fucking al-Muhajiroun, Riz. Sort them. We’ll catch up at the Muslim Communities Forum meeting.’
He handed me his card and patted my arm. ‘Anytime, all the time.’
Then he nodded to Bang-Bang. ‘The famous Holly Kirpachi! Tell me about Afghanistan!’
She cooed and started chatting to him and moving cutlery about on the table. Within a minute the whole table was rapt as she recreated the battle of Bagram and the escape to the embassy. I laughed to the ceiling. What an operator the mayor was. East End politics.
I went back to Slooky and Sunara and briefed them in on what we needed them for. In four days’ time we were all doing the second round of house-to-house enquiries and I wanted our own Bengali translators with us. I got the feeling that the local population might be holding things back from the cops that they might divulge to local girls. Who knew?
The night went on. Tara won a raffle prize, and I came second in the quiz. I had to laugh as they brought my own prize over. It was one of those miniature alarm clock mosques. Bang-Bang punched my arm and grinned. ‘Knew you still had it in you.’
21.
DAY FOUR
10am: We were in the state-of-the-art Tower Hamlets CCTV centre, down off East India Dock Road in the achingly posh steel and glass of the town hall. A lot of money had been pumped into getting the area covered for the Olympics, and they’d been sure to make the most of it. We stood before a huge wall of split-screen displays of various sizes, topped by a green digital wall clock. The screens flicked and switched between… everything. Parks, roads, the River Thames, Commercial Road. The arteries of London pulsed. Behind us were ranks of computer terminals.
The staff were re-running videos from the times and areas of the attacks on various sections of the enormous wallscreens. In the far corner of the control centre, some Counter-Terrorism Command staff were also looking at slightly different re-runs. They were staring glumly at video from the area of the bomb attack. I nudged Bang-Bang and murmured ‘apparently the main park camera was pointing the wrong way the whole time. Who’da thunk it?’
She giggled. ‘They don’t look too happy about it, babe.’
We went and stood before the wallscreens as they flicked from view to view. The CCTV manager was talking to Lennie. ‘There are three industry standard recording resolutions: D1 is best quality; Half D1, also known as “Field”, is medium; and CIF is the lowest quality. The seized shop DVR stuff was CIF. Not the greatest start.’
Lennie pointed at the screens. ‘How many cameras have you got in the neighbourhood?’
The manager looked pleased at the chance to rattle off more figures. ‘Roughly 250 street cameras, in this Borough. I’m not counting your own police cameras, TFL cameras or our CCTV cars.’
Bang-Bang tapped at a nearby screen and looked dubious. She was looking at a freezeframe of a hooded, anoraked figure. He was hugging his arms around himself and walking away from the area. He was wearing white trainers that glowed in the low-light TV capture. I was staring at one that was running a loop of the feed from the junction of Cannon Street Road and Commercial Road during the second attack. On this one, a figure loped away from the camera. He was also hooded, and maybe scarved, or black. This time he seemed to be wearing dark shoes, it was difficult to tell in the blur. The display read “THCCTC 01:23:28 13/04/12”.
Behind us, Lennie was conferring with the staff. Suddenly the hairs on my neck bristled. I turned to them. ‘Gait!’
‘You what?’ said Lennie.
Bang-Bang started giggling. I continued. ‘Gait! Gait analysis. That’s what we want here.’
Lennie breathed out. ‘Oooookay… I see where you’re coming from. Gait. We have a guy on our books that can analyse that. Gimme ten.’
The clusters of staff conferred. Screens blurred and rewound. They knew what to look for now. Lennie came back into
the main room from a side office. ‘Just made a call. I’ve got HOLMES 2 working on all the CCTV footage. We can describe the video clips and pour it all into the hopper and see what comes out.’
This was good. I’d forgotten that it had that capability. Bang-Bang grinned. ‘It’s all about the metadata, baby.’
Lennie continued. ‘About the gait.’
I turned. ‘Yep?’
‘It could work. Our man’s viewed some clips. First look says it’s different clothes but may well be the same guy.’
‘Clothes… can you match the shoes?’
He shook his head. ‘Just trainers is all we can see. Not sure which brand.’
Bang-Bang stopped giggling. She pointed at a freezeframe. ‘What… is that?’
We gathered to look. A poster…a silhouette. Lennie spoke first. ‘Print that and get your coats everyone, we’re going to take a look.’
22.
‘Is there some sort of sticker war going on?’ I was looking at the rash of flyers and stickers spreading up the walls and street furniture. We’d convened at the location. It was right under the Martian gaze of the council camera at the junction of the A1261 and Domino’s Pizza. All around us, the traffic on the arterial roared, jammed and flowed.
The poster read “EDL Sniper About To Go To Work” below that standard old sniper silhouette the Provos used to use. And below that, was a YouTube channel URL and a QR code. I caught Bang-Bang’s eye and she nodded, stepped forward and snapped the QR code with her smartphone. She cocked her head and watched the screen like a raven watching for an earring.
‘Hah! Look, guys–’ she turned the smartphone screen towards us. A video jittered into life. A balaclava’d man in an EDL polo shirt was assembling an L86 Light Support Weapon on a workbench. We watched as he finished putting it together. He stood back and folded his arms. A title came up. “EDL SNIPER. COMING DOWN YOUR ROAD. YOUR LOCAL PAPERS HAVE BEEN WARNED. IF THE RIPPER ISN’T DEALT WITH BY THE END OF THIS WEEK, I AM COMING.”
Locked and Loaded: A Riz Sabir Thriller Omnibus Page 44
