by Iain Cameron
It also gave Matt an appreciation of how Suzy spent her day. This was no two-bit skin flick destined for small arty cinemas or transferred to DVD a week after release. It was a serious undertaking. This he deduced from the number of people involved, the quality of the actors, and the amount of technology deployed. For sure, most of what was in the studio would be rented, but even then, it was still an expensive operation.
For a ten-minute spell, the actors stuck to the script and made few mistakes, making Matt feel like he was in a theatre. The illusion ended suddenly when someone stumbled over their lines, and it took a few minutes more before they got going again.
He stayed in the studio well into the afternoon. He knew what he was watching was a piece of fiction, but it was just the sort of thing he needed right now. When he walked outside and said goodbye to Suzy, he felt refreshed and ready to continue the hunt for Jonty Fleming’s kidnappers.
THIRTY-SIX
At eleven in the morning, Matt and Rosie arrived at a secure police station in west London. While the security at Twickenham Studios was designed to keep fans out, here it was to keep prisoners in.
‘What’s the latest on Kerem?’ Matt asked Rosie, as they walked into the reception area. ‘Is he able to receive visitors? I’m keen to meet him again, I can tell you.’
‘I’m sure you are, but I think it’ll take another day or two. He’s responding well to treatment, so they tell me.’
‘That’s a shame. I was hoping to hear he’d contracted a complication like gangrene or MRSA.’
She gave him a withering look, a mother’s reprimand to a naughty child. A minute or so later, an officer appeared and led them down to the interview rooms.
The prisoner was already seated when they arrived. This being a counter terrorism custody unit, he was chained to the desk, and behind him stood an armed guard. He wasn’t represented by a lawyer, not yet anyway, but the conversation, for this time at least, would be recorded.
Matt and Rosie had selected the youngest of the TFF crew captured at the Hackney house to interview, the guy they found sleeping on the settee. Logic being, even though he might be highly committed, as the young often were, he would also have the most to fear from a lengthy stay in prison.
Emir Solak was eighteen, but looked a lot younger. He had long, untidy black hair, a poor excuse for a beard, and was wearing the scowl of any young person who felt wronged and were banged up inside a police station. He spoke good English as he had been born in the UK, so there was no need for an interpreter.
‘Emir, I assume you know why you are here?’ Matt asked. Eliciting no response, he ploughed on. ‘You have been arrested on terrorism charges. In case you weren’t aware, these carry some of the heaviest jail sentences in the British justice system. If convicted, you could be looking at thirty, maybe forty years with no remission and no parole. You’ll be an old man before you see daylight again.’
‘It will be worth it, to further a just cause. We are an oppressed people…’ He continued with his radical diatribe for a few more minutes before Matt held up a hand.
‘No more, mate, you’re doing my head in.’
Emir’s words sounded incongruent when weighed against his background and his accent. He talked like a terrorist, the expressions coming out of his mouth were straight out of a terrorist’s handbook, but his age, where he had come from, and his accent, were that of a South London schoolboy, radicalised by thoughts of a Kurdish homeland.
‘How did you join the TFF?’
‘Join?’ he said, his expression incredulous. ‘Don’t be soft mate, you don’t join. This isn’t the bloody Boy Scouts or the Hackney boys’ choir. We get invited. We’re there with others who have the same commitment to the cause, and only if we have the qualities of a soldier who wants to fight for–’
Matt groaned. ‘Not again. Spare me the freedom speech, sonny. I’ve heard enough for one day. Who recruited you?’
Emir sighed and mentioned two names. Matt consulted his list, consisting of all the men arrested at the Hackney house and the house in Lambeth raided by Rosie’s team. He was pleased to see the names were on there and they were both in custody.
‘Who leads the group?’
Sultry silence.
‘Look sonny,’ Matt said, leaning forward. ‘Do you play cards?’
‘What?’
‘Do you play cards?’
‘What d’ya mean, like blackjack and poker?’
‘You know poker? Right. You’re two hours into a big game with over two grand in the pot. Trouble is, your hand stinks. You’ve got no pairs, no royals, little money, nothing. The options are, you can bluff or fold. Which is it?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Let me tell you, Emir, you’ve been dealt a crap hand. You’ve got no choices; you’re all out of luck. This is the last stop before you are sent to a high-security prison like Belmarsh. By then, everybody, and I mean everyone who knows you, the likes of your family, friends, and relatives, will disown you and try to forget about you. Even if they don’t, they will find it hard to remember what you looked like.’
Matt wondered if he’d overdone the hard sell, as Emir looked crestfallen. The false bravado had slipped off his face like a discarded hat.
‘If you cooperate,’ Rosie said, ‘we will make sure the judge at your trial is made aware of it. This should help to give you a shorter sentence.’
‘How do I know you ain’t bluffing, trying to stitch me up?’ he said through sniffling, doing his best to hold back tears. ‘We’ve been told we ain’t never to accept anything from the likes of you people. You’re all a bunch of liars and cheats.’
‘Don’t think of it so much like we’re giving you something,’ Matt said, doing his best to ignore the ‘liars and cheats’ jibe. ‘It’s more like, you help us, and we’ll help you. I call it cooperation.’
Emir asked about what discretion a judge would have in shortening his sentence, where he would be sent, and any visiting rights. Matt told him as best he knew and a few minutes later, it looked as though Emir had made a decision. Matt, though, wasn’t sure which way it was going to go.
They waited while the prisoner chewed things over. A further minute elapsed before he said, ‘his name is Yusuf Batuk.’
‘He’s what, head of the TFF?’
‘Yeah, the UK bit.’
Matt, a tad unnecessarily, pointed out his name in the list to Rosie. They both knew who he was. This was the supermarket owner who had left the sports holdall full of explosives at the Hackney house. While Matt and Rosie were engaged in the raid of the Hackney house yesterday morning, a simultaneous operation led by Joseph was also taking place at the supermarket owned by Batuk.
The team were initially delayed by an officious employee who denied them access to the rear of the supermarket. When that had been dealt with, there was a succession of rooms and dark corners to search. In the meantime, Batuk had taken refuge in a restroom and, in the confusion that ensued, he escaped by squeezing through a toilet window.
For a few minutes, they discussed how the TFF UK operation fitted into the overall TFF plans for a Kurdish homeland. What he and Rosie were looking for was how committed members of the organisation were, and whether there was a chance other supporters would try to re-establish the UK operation, given the security forces had dismantled the existing one.
Emir’s view was the TFF were seriously dedicated to the cause, but the HSA operation had effectively wiped them out. Even if they suddenly received better funding and more recruits, Matt was convinced they didn’t have enough time between now and the Lancaster House conference to set everything up. Once the conference was over, there would be no further use for a TFF operation in the UK. One box ticked.
‘It was a clever move,’ Matt said, ‘you guys selling drugs to fund your outfit. It’s a lot easier and I imagine generates a shedload more money than passing around collecting tins in pubs and coffee houses.’
With money like that they could buy whatever guns t
hey wanted on the black market. Plenty of people were involved in converting replicas to fire real ammunition, like the engineering business operated by the Richards brothers. Others were importing weapons from countries where the manufacture and general sale of armaments was still legal: US and Mexico, or places where weapons were freely available in countries which had recently been engaged in a war: Chechnya, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria.
‘I’m not cool with selling drugs, it’s like against the teachings of the Koran, but,’ he shrugged, ‘didn’t have much option, did I? Our brothers in Turkey are skint so they didn’t have any cash to send to us.’
‘What else did you do to try and raise funds, other than sell drugs?’
‘How do you mean, anything else? What are you trying to say, man? Think we was out pimpin’ or somethin’?’
‘I’m thinking here about kidnapping people for a fee.’
‘What are you on? No way.’
‘What about David Burke, the MI5 officer who’s been in all the papers?’
‘What, him? No way.’
‘Nice try, Emir, but I think you’re lying. I don’t like people who lie to me.’
He said nothing, looking sullen.
‘David Burke’s kidnap was a job you guys did for money, wasn’t it?’
He shook his head.
‘Somebody paid you a fee to kidnap him, I know they did. Who was it?’
He sat with his head in his hands, as if not wanting to hear the questions.
‘Emir, don’t hold out on me. We talked to the guy who drove his body to Epping Forest. He told us the TFF were involved.’
‘The slimy snake. Yusuf will cut his fucking throat, see if he don’t.’
‘We’ve got his van and our forensic people are going over it now. I think we’ll find traces of you in there. Will we?’
Matt was bluffing. The forensics guys had spent no more than five minutes in the van before giving up. LVR of Stockwell had done such a good job sterilising the inside no DNA traces would ever be found in there.
‘What you sayin’, man? You think I killed him?’
‘Did you?’
‘No way.’
‘Were you there when he was shot?’
He was silent for almost a minute. ‘Yeah,’ he said almost in a mutter.
‘Good enough for me.’
‘Good enough for what?’
‘To charge you as an accessory to murder.’
His face crumpled and for a moment Matt thought he was about to cry.
‘C’mon Emir, remember what I said; help me and I’ll help you. Who is it? Who paid you to kidnap David Burke?’
‘You deaf, mate?’ he said, his voice raised and his face streaked in tears. ‘We didn’t kidnap him. We was given him, to help our cause.’
‘Eh? Who gave him to you?’
He said nothing.
‘C’mon Emir, the van driver you despise will get a lighter sentence for helping us. You can do the same.’
‘You joshing me?’
‘No, straight up.’
He sat chewing his lip for half a minute.
‘It was some white bloke.’
‘Who?’
‘Suppose I can tell you, as I didn’t like the fucker. Simon Wood,’ he said, almost spitting out the name. ‘The same geezer who helped set us up in the drugs business.’
THIRTY-SEVEN
Matt walked into the reception area at HSA HQ. He was surprised to find the security guard still recognised him, as he hadn’t been there for a while. He found when he worked at the Met as a murder detective, and now at HSA, he functioned better in the field than behind a desk. Offices reminded him of his two pet hates: paperwork and pointless meetings. However, on days like today his presence couldn’t be avoided.
He dumped the things he was carrying on an empty desk and walked downstairs. He then headed into the Research Department. This time, Siki wasn’t in a meeting, so he took a seat in his office after first bumping fists with the big man.
It was a big office, befitting the dimensions of its main occupant, with views over another anonymous block outside. Through the glass walls at the front of his office he looked out over his army of researchers, whose number had grown rapidly over the last few months. They had access to a myriad of databases around the world: the security services of the UK’s closest allies, government departments, and commercial research facilities. These were used by agents to track people, and locate vehicles and shipments. Siki’s team were also able to call on the services of super-fast computers and AI programs, capable of linking often disparate pieces of information, pulling it together and moulding it into something coherent and useful.
‘I believe congratulations are in order for taking down the Turkish terrorist group,’ Siki said. ‘Well done. I’d offer you something stronger than coffee, but it is only nine-thirty in the morning.’
‘Coffee’s fine.’
‘I also hear the PM is pleased, nay, beaming from ear to ear would be a better description. No way did he want his showpiece at Lancaster House interrupted by a bunch of radical extremists bent on disrupting it. In fact, I think if it does come off without a hitch and reaches a successful conclusion, it will be about the only bloody thing he will have achieved in his premiership.’
‘We aim to please.’
‘Don’t be so modest, you might receive a knighthood.’
He laughed. ‘Can you see me at Buckingham Palace? Please leave your weapon outside, sir. Why should I, when the walls inside the place are decked out with all those swords and spears?’
Siki laughed. ‘You don’t need the TFF to cause an international incident. You’re capable of staging one all by yourself.’
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’
‘What brings you down here, Matt? Life too tame on the second floor now you have all the bad guys in custody?’
‘We still have a few loose ends we need to tie up. I need your good people to find someone.’
‘Who?’
‘Simon Wood.’
‘Now, there’s a name I hoped I would never hear again. We wasted so much time looking for him in the past and came up with zilch.’
‘No one likes to be reminded of their failures.’
‘Including me, although I’m pleased to say, they’ve been few and far between.’
‘That was back in the day when the research group was only you and Amos plus half a dozen others. Now,’ Matt said, looking out over the sea of people, ‘you’ve got all of them.’
‘True, but what’s changed? Other than we have a larger team. Why do you think we might be able to find him now when he’s been so elusive up to this point?’
Matt removed a sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to Siki. ‘After interviewing one of the TFF crew, he gave us the alias Wood is currently using.’
‘Now you’re talking, I like aliases; I can do something with them.’
‘The reason this came up, is we believe the TFF were being instructed in the art of drug selling by the said drug dealer. By asking a few pertinent questions, I realised this wasn’t done over a Zoom call, Wood did the tuition face-to-face. I reckon, over the last year, he’s been back in this country several times.’
‘What? He was taking some risk.’
Matt nodded. ‘The reason I think he didn’t pop up in any of the early warning systems is because he must have had a passport, credit card, and other documentation in the name of this alias.’
‘If he has, we’ll find him.’
Matt left the Research Department and headed upstairs, leaving Siki and his team to work their magic. The original police hunt for Wood had cooled as they didn’t have the time or resources to search for yet another drug dealer, albeit a large and important one, but still one amongst many. It was assumed he’d fled the UK, and this was sufficient reason for HSA and the drug enforcement agencies to ease up the search.
The remaining hope was that he would be stupid enough to use a credit card or passport
in his own name at some point, which then would trigger alerts in various agencies around the globe. In Matt’s opinion, the words ‘stupid’ didn’t belong in the same sentence as ‘Simon Wood’, and it was no surprise to him that nothing had yet surfaced.
According to Emir, Wood had supplied funds to establish the TFF and develop them into a credible terrorist group. He asked them to kidnap David Burke, but they weren’t ready to do it, so Wood engaged the services of a criminal outfit. With David kidnapped, Wood handed him over to the TFF, who were instructed to kill him once they had extracted whatever information they needed. Why Wood did this still wasn’t clear. Did he have his own reason for disrupting the Lancaster House conference, or was this simply his twisted and convoluted way of getting back at Matt?
This in a sense had squared the circle over David’s murder; they just needed Simon Wood to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. Matt’s thoughts were now focussed on the latest kidnap victim, Jonty Fleming. The only assumption he could make was Jonty had been earmarked for the same fate as David. Amos had already been tasked with doing all he could to find him, by searching for all the addresses used by the TFF. However, even with most of the TFF operatives in custody, Jonty’s life was in danger with the last major TFF member, Yusuf Batuk, still on the loose.
Matt collected some papers from his desk and walked upstairs to Gill’s office. Gill was already seated, as were Rosie, and HSA’s Head of Operations, Kingsley Walsh.
‘Matt, it’s good to see you,’ Gill said. ‘Come in, come in.’
He entered the director’s office and took the spare seat.
‘How are you feeling after your run-in with the TFF torturer?’
‘I’m fine, thanks. No permanent damage done.’
‘That’s good to hear. What’s the latest on the man’s condition? I’m not conflating the two, suggesting you shot him in retaliation, but I’m sure it made you feel a whole lot better knowing he’s where he is. I know it would me.’
