Locked and Loaded: A Riz Sabir Thriller Omnibus

by Charlie Flowers

  Finally the PC lit up, and one by one, all the other terminals started lighting up and croaking into action.

  She stopped, squinted, and then got her netbook out of her bag and started getting busy plugging stuff in again. Then she got her Samsung tablet out, fired that up, and plugged the internet glasses into a jack. She thought for a few seconds and finally brought out her smartphone, and arranged them all in a neat semi-circle on the desk. Blimey, I thought, this was serious. This was like NORAD going to Defcon One.

  After a couple of minutes she looked up from all the hardware and grinned at me. And I grinned at Lennie. If anyone could get a network working, it was Bang-Bang. The office was back on line. More to herself than us, she muttered ‘Thought so. It’s the old Lizamoon SQL injection hack.’

  I knew the basics of this. Someone had been tricked into downloading fake security software updates, or even the HOLMES 2 systems browser update. Once in, the malicious software would head straight for the office’s Microsoft SQL server architecture, and… zap.

  ‘But that’s good though,’ she continued, ‘as it’s quite old and I know how to track it… little bit of reverse pinging…’

  Lennie was sticking up photos onto the whiteboard and the wall using Blu-tack. We watched as he recreated the entire murder enquiry using the materials before him. Finally came the coloured string, wrapped round plastic push-pins. He turned and spread his arms. ‘Our enquiry. Take a good look, it ain’t going anywhere.’

  There was a small yip of delight from behind us. We turned. Bang-Bang clapped her palms together once and beamed. ‘He’s left his handle. OK, here’s how I’m gonna do it. Rocky here –’ she tapped the screen – ‘will find him on IMVU or Second Life, say he’s from Anonymous and congratulate him on the successful hack. Then Rocky will say he’s got some goodies for him on IMVU in the Mocha Lounge, or Pastebin, or whatever. I’ll be waiting. If I can get our boy into an Instant Message chat one-on-one, I can run a ping and trace his I.P.’

  On the screen, a manga thing jittered and jellied, waiting for fresh instructions to raise hell. I nodded. ‘Cool. Can you do that in IMVU? Pinging and that.’

  She grinned. ‘I can.’

  ‘What’s the bait?’

  ‘A whole bunch of CIA documents FlameLite took from Bagram when it attacked. They’re the real thing. It’ll be like candy for anyone from ZHC.’ She turned her netbook screen to reveal a PDF document reading “SECRET/NOFORN CIA REDCELL SPECIAL MEMORANDUM” over the Central Intelligence Agency crest.

  I nodded. Oh yeah, they’d love that. ‘You got that thing and those fucking raccoons under control again, I take it?’

  ‘Yep. They’re somewhere in the basement of the Pentagon. I spoofed my last IP and they think I’m in Benidorm, bless ‘em.’

  By 9am the whiteboard schematic now had some new faces and question marked silhouettes – Salahuddin aka Trevor; the unknown ZHC hacker; the Curry King; Islam4UK; al-Muhajiroun, which I had told them was the same thing, and a note reading “?”.

  Below that, cotton strings led away to the poor departed victims. Kelly Bowen. Fifi Blitz. Poor Helen Farmer who’d gone missing and been found in the lake. The photos of the scenes-of-crimes and the wounds hung there, seeming to accuse the viewer.

  But in front of the litany of death, Lennie seemed to be coming back to life. He was in his element. A proper office, with pads of paper, string, and phones. He was working like a madman.

  On the other side of the office, Lynne put a phone down. ‘And no extradition agreement with Bangladesh. How convenient for our man. Apparently he’s refusing to come back.’

  There was a little whoop from the corner of the office. Bang-Bang stood and did her little I’m-a-killer-fox dance. ‘Got him. He bit the IM chat. He’s on BT Internet broadband. And here’s the IP address.’

  Lennie clicked his fingers at the support staff. ‘Get onto BT.’ They jumped to it. Phones were smacked from their rests.

  Bang-Bang grinned even more widely and then her grin vanished as Lennie slid a form towards her. ‘This is a Section 22 form. It’s how we get customer details out of telecoms providers like BT.’

  She blinked. ‘What, you want me to fill it in?’

  Lennie laughed. ‘Yeah, go on.’

  There was silence for a few minutes as Bang-Bang concentrated furiously and filled in the blanks. Eventually she put her hand up. ‘What’s a SPOC?’

  The whole office laughed. Lennie shot back ‘Single Point of Contact. Just put DS Rich’s name down.’

  Bang-Bang continued writing. ‘God, for the good old days when I could just use boltcutters on ‘em.’

  ‘Yeah, welcome to what we have to put up with.’

  Darkness fell and the office dispersed to their cars, and bomb-bursted out into the neighbourhood, on various tasks. Ours was surveillance. Lennie had taken it upon himself to approve Bang-Bang’s mad plan.

  We met the tech team down at a building site in Aldgate. Bang-Bang had got there ahead of me, and was being fussed over. She spread her arms as the techies fitted her with the covert comms gear, and she indicated her streetwalker getup of pelmet skirt, knee-highs and white go-go boots. ‘I’m calling this, Tarte Moderne.’

  We laughed.

  They’d picked her out the “Dark European” colour covert earpiece and she giggled as she wedged it into her left ear and tapped at it. We looked. It was practically invisible. Good. The rest of the kit was standard. A Sonic Communications neck-loop style microphone and inductor, hooked into a MTH800 Airwave radio in the small of her back, and a remote press-to-talk wire and switch which ran down her right-hand jacket sleeve.

  ‘How’s it feel?’

  ‘Dunno. Takes getting used to. I’m gonna have to be careful about my jacket riding up and people seeing the radio.’ She pecked my cheek and sauntered away, and she was gone.

  The senior tech pressed a switch inside the van, and keyed a radio mic. ‘Holly can you hear this?’ Some whistling came over the speakers. She was whistling the theme from Peter And The Wolf. ‘Very funny, Holly. Give me two clicks to indicate you can hear us OK.’

  Click-click.

  The evening progressed uneventfully. Bang-Bang wandered to the southern end of Watney Street, acting the tart, and then meandered over to Sutton Street. Several men approached her there but she brushed them off. Her plan appeared to be to bounce between the three predicted ambush locations, and… and who knew what? We were all armed, we were all keyed up. All around us, in a stifling net, plainclothes and uniformed officers were being tasked to all sorts of stuff. I went to my hire car. I’d decided to cruise the mean streets and see what I could see.

  37.

  I joined Bang-Bang at 1am. I left my car parked outside the meat bazaar opposite Shadwell DLR and walked over to the bright splash of light where everyone congregated at this late hour. Bang-Bang was at the chicken shop door, smoking a cigarette and talking to some taxi drivers in the cab rank about urban legends. She nodded at a guy in a Fred Perry sweater. ‘This guy here, babe, he’s EDL, and he reckons it’s the Muslims doing it to create fear, and, get this, apparently there’s also an EDL sniper at large.’

  I made an “I’m astonished” face. ‘Really now.’

  ‘Yeah. Really.’

  ‘Seen any wolves tonight, Holly?’

  She giggled. ‘Naaah. The blood-red Louboutins must have scared them off. Either that or the gun. Right. I’m gonna spend from now till dawn bimbling between the three ambush sites. Wish me luck and hunting!’ She checked her kit and sauntered off north towards the A13.

  The nearest cabbie, an Asian fella, spoke. ‘Is that your Mrs then?’

  I sipped my tea. ‘Yep.’

  ‘She’s nuts.’

  ‘This we knew.’

  ‘Aren’t you worried about her… you know…’

  I shook my head. ‘Nothing she can’t handle.’ I did worry though. But I’d be damned if I was going to tell him.

  ‘You don’t worry? Really?’

/>   ‘Really. She’s killed more people than the Ripper ever will.’

  He blanched. ‘What?’

  The EDL cabbie chipped in. ‘She’s OK. We all know her. OK for a Muslim, that is.’

  I looked in his direction. ‘Cheers, I’m sure.’

  He raised his tea. ‘Anytime.’ His people carrier radio was playing Harry Belafonte. The Banana Boat Song. It seemed apposite. ‘Oh well chaps, back to work. That sugar cane don’t cut itself.’

  Above us, a train whined into the station. My earpiece hashed then gave three bleeps in quick succession. ‘Riz, Raggydoll here. Got you at Shadwell tube. Got Bang-Bang at Dellow Street.’

  ‘Have that.’ I turned to the cabbie. ‘And now we’re all covered by snipers. Don’t you feel safer already?’

  There was another burst of bleeps. ‘Calamity for Riz. Wave for me. Who are all those fat blokes.’

  I laughed and raised my arm. ‘They’re OK. Thermal OK?’

  ‘Wait one. Thermal camera is OK.’

  ‘Good. Moving now.’

  Click-click.

  I walked to the corner, feeling Raggydoll and Calamity’s rifle sights on me and everyone else. A good feeling. I knew they’d be moving from estate to estate, and vehicle to vehicle, keeping a loose net around us. Not perfect, but good enough.

  I paused at a garish green poster. It showed a pair of eyes glaring in a car rear-view mirror and read “If it’s not booked it’s just a stranger’s car”. Something more to think about. And another chance to ramp up the paranoia in the neighbourhood, I thought. I headed out onto the main road. To my right, cement mixer lorries rumbled past on their way to the Barratt Homes site by Aldgate tube station. Slowly but surely, huge posh blocks of flats were rearing up. The work never stopped.

  I drove the streets and the estates north of Cable Street for hours, and by 4am I was parked under the arches on Cannon Street Road, gazing blankly through the windscreen, when my phone started going mental. Texts, emails, and a phone call from Bang-Bang. I answered the call first. ‘Riz hun. I’m at the sports centre on the Highway. Ambush Three.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  A pause. ‘Oh yeah, I’m fine. You need to get down here and look at this.’

  38.

  DAY NINE

  The dawn light was dirty and spent. It seeped over the vast block of the sports centre and cast dark shadows into the park. The centre’s main doors were open. I screeched the car to a halt in the cramped car park and raced in, pistol drawn. I could smell chlorine. I shouted. ‘Holly!’

  A call came from up the stairs. ‘Up here babe. First floor.’

  I ran up the stairs, two at a time.

  The far end of the pool was a charnel house. I could smell the blood from here. I leant in to look, and immediately wished I hadn’t. The body’s eyes had been taken out. The corpse looked like it had been dropped from a thousand feet and splattered onto the marble; there was so much blood and tissue. It slicked the walls of the pool, invaded your very thoughts as you looked at it. There was no excusing this. This was sick.

  Bang-Bang was sitting nearby with her pistol in her lap. She was smoking a cigarette. She nodded at the far end. ‘Aaaand another one for us. Fresh kill, too.’ She looked away in disgust and I came to sit beside her. Her hand was shaking ever so slightly as she drew on the cigarette. I knew that body language. She was furiously angry.

  I watched the scene get locked down. The power was off in the building and the cops were finding their way around with any lights they had to hand. One of them was reduced to using the light on his phone. Not ideal.

  The cigarette smoked in Bang-Bang’s hand. The butt would have to come with us. Nothing would be allowed to contaminate the crime scene. I watched as Lennie and the team swarmed in, stopped, and got on their radios and mobiles. There was a second commotion as they realised that the fire escape doors had been propped open with a breeze block. This entry and exit had been planned.

  Bang-Bang spoke in a low voice. ‘Doll… this guy. This guy is one step ahead of us. How’s he doing it? We’re in the most camera’d up borough in the world and all the cameras and the databases go down. Then he kills someone in a public place, like this. It’s almost like he’s doing it deliberately. Or, getting some kids to do it for him.’

  I thought. ‘I don’t know. Kids. I don’t know. But I think we should start looking at the big cheeses in the neighbourhood.’

  She rubbed her eyes with one hand and looked up at me. ‘You mean the dons?’

  ‘Yep. I mean the dons. Al-Muj. The Curry Kings. Or, King.’

  ‘Good. I think the team has forgotten that this bastard killed my friend. You know what I have to do.’

  ‘Avenge that.’

  ‘Damn right.’

  Lennie walked back to us. ‘Have either of you two touched anything here?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. And without being funny, Lennie, don’t ask for our dabs or DNA, because you’re not getting them.’

  An ambulance had arrived in the car park outside. The crew piled out and then stood around, looking useless. Radios squalled. The forensics people arrived next.

  The body was carefully bagged under the harsh lights. And then, inevitably, the ambulance crew’s effects were seized, under protest. The small, grim mundanities of a murder scene unfolded.

  Bang-Bang lit another cigarette she shouldn’t have. ‘Murder. I dunno why they called an ambulance. She’s in bits.’

  ‘Formalities.’

  Lennie got back on his phone. Bang-Bang had made her way back down the stairs and outside into the car park. I joined her, quietly, so as not to alert Lennie’s lot. She walked away from the ambulance and stopped. She was looking around her. I touched her shoulder. ‘What do you see?’

  She just held her hand out for silence. She turned slowly, and then turned the light on her smartphone on, and cast it over the tarmac of the car park. Then I saw it. Bloodied footprints, by the wall of the centre. We’d been so focused on the horror upstairs, we hadn’t seen the prints and drips and little splashes outside, stealing away in the gloom…

  I thought about shouting up the stairs and decided to be discreet. I rang Lennie. ‘Mate. Check outside, in the car park. There’s a lot of blood. We’re following.’ I hung up.

  We followed the splashes, right onto The Highway, and along the pavement, under the looming sports centre sign, and then right again into St George’s gardens. I turned my own flashlight app on and swept the path with the light. And drew breath. There was an enormous, brazen smear of gore, right here in the gloomy park. I looked at Bang-Bang. She looked at me.

  We followed this new smear through the park, past the embedded tombstones, down into the grim blue light. And below the mural of the battle of Cable Street, the smear became an obscene twisting struggle… and then it just stopped at the road’s edge. I walked to the kerb and looked around. Thin air.

  But over in the railway arches, a car workshop and a fruit and veg wholesalers were opening, oblivious. I’d had enough of this. ‘Holly darling – wait here.’

  I returned from the car workshop with two cans of red spray paint, and we made our way down through Watney Market and the skeletons of the stalls, onto Commercial Road. We walked past an Evening Standard billboard that read “EAST END GRIPPED BY FEAR”. I’d seen that issue. It had led with all the local schools being shut, and an artists’ depiction of the Ripper that could have been anybody in a hoodie and scarf.

  On Commercial Road, the morning’s traffic was beginning. I looked up at the billboard outside the Iceland supermarket. It was getting light. The air was azure. I spoke to Bang-Bang. ‘Pressuring, pressuring… it’s what you said earlier.’

  She looked around. ‘I’m all out of ideas. What you got in mind?’

  ‘Watch.’

  OK, I said to myself. I hoisted myself up onto the low wall under the billboard and started spraying. After five minutes I had what I wanted and stood back. Cars were already slowing to look. Bang-Bang started laug
hing and clapped her hands. ‘Oh, our killer is gonna love that!’

  We both stepped back to gaze on the gaudy lettering that read “AMATEUR” right across the billboard, and a bright red arrow that pointed towards the murder scene within. I flung the last empty can under a barrow and strode off back down the market. Bang-Bang caught up with me and took my arm. She was still giggling and shaking her head. ‘You do have your moments, Sabir.’

  I turned to her and put on an Alec Guinness voice. ‘“Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool and that is the test of generals.”’

  She started cackling that laugh. I apologised. ‘Sorry love, I’m getting big-headed. Anyway. Lawrence of Arabia said that and he was usually right.’

  ‘So was that back there your irrational tenth?’

  ‘I reckon it was, yes.’

  My phone rang. Lennie. ‘We’re by the mural. We can see it.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think he dragged something to, or from, a car.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  A pause. Lennie spoke. ‘Sorry about any misunderstandings back then.’

  ‘No skin off our noses, Lennie.’

  ‘I’ve just got off the phone to the Super. We’re authorising round-the-clock surveillance on Salahuddin, aka Trevor.’

  I perked up. I could get Trevor’s home address, phone number, and car details via my phone, just by logging into KTS’s database. We kept files on all known UK terror suspects and their families. I replied. ‘Good. Need us?’

  ‘Definitely.’ He paused. ‘We need you for something special.’ He explained. I took it all on board. Yeah, we could do that. ‘Alright Lennie. See you in a minute.’

  I rang off then phoned Fuzz as we hurried back through the market to the sports centre. ‘Fuzz ukhti. Yes I know what time it is. Mobilise the gang. Get Mishy. I need a surveillance op at this address… got a pen? OK – Flat 21, Harpley Square, Globe Town E1. Starting when? Starting now. Me and Holly will see you there.’