High Pressure

by Sam Blake

  Who organised hoax bomb threats and then blew up a bus? Who did that?

  The restaurant that Marissa had visited was just a few doors down from the hairdressers.

  Brioni started there. A bell jangled over the door as she pushed it open, the smell of chemicals and hairspray immediately hitting her. The girl behind the reception desk looked her up and down as she stepped inside.

  Good start.

  ‘Hi. My sister Marissa Hunt was booked in here to get her hair done yesterday mid-morning. I was wondering if you could tell me if she got to the appointment. I just wanted to have a quick chat to whoever did her hair.’

  ‘Is there a problem? She was very happy leaving.’

  The girl was so busy being arsey, she hadn’t realised she’d told Brioni exactly what she needed to know.

  ‘I’m sure she loved it. It’s just that she’s gone missing. We think she might have got caught in the explosion from the bus on Oxford Street, but we’re not sure.’

  The salon was small, long and narrow with mirrors down both sides and wash basins at the far end. The two customers and stylists busy colouring their hair had heard every word. The stylist closest to Brioni reacted first, her hand flying to her mouth.

  ‘My God. I think I looked after her. She wasn’t a regular, just came in for a blow dry. God, that’s awful.’

  ‘Did she say anything about who she was meeting later? Anything at all about her day?’

  The woman apologised to her client and stood with the colour brush she’d been using in one hand, thinking.

  ‘She said she was going to lunch. She had her hair down when she got here, but she said it was so hot she wanted it put up.’

  ‘Did she say who she was meeting?’

  The woman shrugged. ‘We just talked about the weather.’

  A few doors down, the manager of the restaurant was a lot more helpful. He recognised Marissa’s picture immediately.

  ‘The beautiful lady – yes, she was here yesterday.’

  Brioni felt her heart rate increase, relief and trepidation mixing in equal measure.

  ‘Does she come here regularly?’

  ‘Sometimes – not very often, but she’s been before. Very polite, always smiling.’

  Well, that was something. Everything she’d seen of Mar’s life – the glances exchanged by the people who ran the soup kitchen, Anna’s interpretation of Steve’s comments – had suggested that she wasn’t happy. With Steve, at least.

  Brioni knew she had to handle the next bit carefully.

  ‘Who did she meet? I’m her sister. She disappeared yesterday after the explosion and we’re worried. Not all her friends know. We need to tell them and ask them to look out for her.’

  The manager shrugged. ‘She met a gentleman. They talked and had an appetiser. She had a glass of wine and then he got a phone call and had to leave, it looked urgent. He paid for everything. Then another man arrived – her husband, maybe, I think.’

  A man called Jacinta? Brioni rather doubted that. But Jacinta had been the name in Mar’s Google Calendar. A Jacinta there was no email from.

  What was that about?

  Brioni pulled out her phone. She’d got the photos ready on the bus.

  ‘One of these men.’

  The manager pointed to Steve immediately.

  ‘Him, yes, he came after. He said she needed to eat and to order.’ There was something about his tone and the expression on his face that told her exactly what he’d thought had happened. ‘She is very beautiful.’

  ‘Did she say anything about meeting the man before … about eating before – to her husband, I mean?’

  Had Steve known who she was meeting? Was this man ‘Jacinta’ or was she someone else entirely?

  Brioni didn’t want to jump to conclusions – perhaps this man had come in Jacinta’s place?

  The man shrugged expressively. ‘I didn’t hear their conversation, his voice was very low.’

  ‘Who booked the table? I’m really worried about her.’

  The man glanced at the booking diary, names and phone numbers written in pencil. He ran his finger down to 12.30.

  ‘What is your sister’s name?’

  ‘Hunt, Marissa Hunt.’

  He shook his head. ‘It looks like he booked. The table for two I have at 12.30, it’s not in the name of Hunt.’

  ‘Can you tell me his name? The man she met?’

  The man shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, you understand. He is a customer. I cannot give you details.’

  Brioni smiled appreciatively, as if she understood completely. She hadn’t been able to read the name scribbled into the diary, but she had been able to read the telephone number, and one thing she was good with, was numbers.

  ‘Thank you so much. If he calls again, can you tell him she’s missing? He may not know.’

  Holding the number in her head, Brioni backed out of the restaurant as fast as she could without looking as if she was running.

  On the street she opened her phone and punched in the number, praying she had it right. She saved it. She needed to sit down and have a think about everything she’d learned today before she tried it. Would Anna be at her hotel yet? Brioni turned towards the Hogarth Hotel and began to walk, texting Anna, her thoughts flying.

  Steve had arrived to find Mar sitting in a restaurant alone.

  Had he known she was meeting someone – a man? Brioni wasn’t about to ask him outright. The restaurant manager had said the man she’d met was slightly older than Marissa, smartly dressed. And she’d smiled and laughed. She’d been happy.

  Chapter 28

  In New Scotland Yard, Mike Wesley was in his office, his desk crowded with discarded coffee cups. He hadn’t actually left since the first bomb had gone off, but was down to his last clean shirt so he’d have to think about getting home soon.

  He ran his hand through his hair and tried to focus on his screen, and the emails that had been piling up while he’d been in the incident room. He’d been running on adrenaline – they all had – but he needed to get his head down this evening and get some sleep, even if it was only for a few hours.

  Thank God Emma was back from uni and could keep an eye on Jake – not that, at sixteen, he needed much minding – but if food wasn’t periodically put in front of him, he would only realise he was hungry between breaks in Fortnite and then would go foraging for Coco Pops.

  It was at times like this he really missed Nancy. She’d been taken from them far too young. He’d thought his little family might fall apart when she’d been diagnosed, but in the end her death had brought them all together. They were solid now – a team.

  The summer holidays were always a bit of a nightmare. Being stuck in work 24/7 and abandoning Jake so soon after his GCSEs wasn’t great at all, although Mike was sure Jake barely noticed half the time. According to his sister, he was in the top four per cent of gamers in Europe, which perhaps made Mike feel less bad about the amount of time he spent online. He knew Jake had his sights set on a degree in computer engineering and could type at 140 words a minute, so it wasn’t all bad. And Emma was studying marine biology, her love of the sea fostered from their all too brief two-week summer holidays in Cornwall, where walks and rock-pooling were the wet weather alternative to the beach.

  Mike sighed; he’d thought he had everything ticking over nicely, and then this happened. He looked at his phone again, willing it to ring, and felt another part of his heart break away. He closed his eyes – loss was like an animal eating his gut from the inside out. He didn’t know if he could do this twice in a lifetime. The kids had been the thing that had got him through the last time. But this time he had to cope on his own.

  A knock on his door interrupted his thoughts.

  ‘Come in.’

  The door opened to reveal the Irish detective sergeant from Counter Terrorism whose name Mike kept mixing up – Darragh McShane or Shane McDarragh. He’d misremembered it the first time, which was never a recipe for success. In fairness,
it had been a fairly intense week. There had been other things to remember.

  ‘We’ve got news, sir.’

  ‘Fire away. We need something here.’

  ‘Forensics have come back with the initial analysis on the Transit van that went up outside the embassy. It’s looking like there was no bomb. They can’t find any evidence of a mechanism or explosives. What they have got is large quantities of –’ he checked a page in the file he was carrying – ‘calcium hypochlorite and trichloro-s-triazinetrione. Both are commonly used chlorinating agents. When they’re mixed in the right quantities, they’re highly explosive and toxic, and produce chlorine gas.’

  Mike leaned forward, his face creased in a frown. Right now he needed some good news, and finding out they had one less terrorist incident to investigate was the very best news

  Almost.

  A part of him ached inside, but he didn’t have time to get emotional. If forensics were right, it meant he could focus more resources on the Oxford Street explosion and find out what had really happened.

  ‘Sit down, run through it with me.’

  Darragh McShane pulled out the guest chair on the other side of Mike’s desk and put his files down on the edge.

  ‘We bought the van driver’s wife in. During the interview she mentioned he sometimes did nixers.’ The sergeant paused. ‘Sorry – odd jobs.’

  Mike smiled. ‘You’re OK, I’ve got Irish friends, I know what a nixer is. Also where the hot press is and what happens when someone has a figary. Keep going.’

  He thought of Anna’s mixed-up accent. She’d only just left, had popped in to see if he had any news.

  If only.

  McShane grinned. ‘Thanks, sir. Sometimes I think I speak a foreign language. So, our man was a landscape gardener, but a lot of the company’s clients are very high-end and he does a bit of pool work on the side.’

  ‘Swimming pools?’

  ‘Exactly. That’s what these chemicals are most commonly used for. The house he was heading for in Victoria has a pool – we’re contacting the owners now. It’s looking like he may have picked up the chemicals yesterday morning, and they’ve been stored in the back of the vehicle since then.’

  ‘And if he didn’t think to park it in the shade, the inside of the van would have reached some pretty extreme temperatures.’ Mike said, scowling.

  ‘Exactly. Forensics think one of the containers overturned. He had a ton of fertiliser and God knows what else in there as well. It was an accident waiting to happen.’

  ‘That will please the media – did you see this morning’s headlines? The Mail has him tarred and feathered already.’ The sergeant grimaced as Mike continued. ‘We’ll need to check everything – find other customers who he’s worked for, make sure the chemicals were in his possession for a practical reason.’ Mike paused. ‘And if they were, move the team’s focus to Oxford Street. We’ve still got people unaccounted for. We’ve got the videos from every number 13 bus on that route for the past month coming in, everything TfL can find. Whoever did this picked their moment, it wasn’t random.’

  ‘The tapes from the surrounding business premises have arrived. The lads are going through them now.’

  Mike nodded. The team knew what they were looking for: someone who was, statistically, more likely to be a young male – although that wasn’t always the case; someone travelling alone, likely to have a backpack or a holdall, but not much else.

  McShane was about to reply when the phone on Mike’s desk rang.

  ‘Won’t be a sec.’ Mike picked it up; he could feel his face tensing as he listened. ‘On my way.’ Mike hung up and looked at McShane. ‘There’s been another incident in Westminster. The whole area is going into lockdown.’

  ‘A device or a hoax?’

  ‘Only time will tell. Full briefing in an hour to bring everyone up to date.’

  Chapter 29

  As Brioni reached New Oxford Street, just around the corner from the Hogarth Hotel, her phone pipped with a text. It was from Anna.

  Traffic terrible. Another bomb scare. Looks like a hoax, check #LondonAttack. Had to do some messages. Will be at back soon, supper at 7?

  Brioni opened Twitter, searching for the hashtag. It was going mad, updating. A suspicious package near Westminster this time. All the roads had been closed. What had Anna been doing near there?

  Brioni paused on the corner of the street and closed her eyes for a moment. What should she do? She wanted to talk to the man whom Mar had been meeting, but who was he? Should she call? He’d probably just hang up. Had Mar told him she even had a sister?

  Questions ran through her head like tracer fire. Maybe the best thing was to text him, and then she’d go and wait for Anna. The Lighthouse Bar was air-conditioned and cool, and she could freshen up in the loo.

  At least, she could freshen up in the loo if she had her make-up. Brioni suddenly realised that she didn’t have her backpack. Her mind raced – where had she left it? On the bus? She half-turned to head back to the hairdressers … or had she put it down in the restaurant? Her stomach fell as she realised where she’d left it – at Steve’s house, under the dining table. She’d had so much on her mind she hadn’t even realised. She always kept her Oyster card in the pocket of her shorts, and she’d had her phone in her hand.

  What a fecking eejit.

  Brioni looked at the time on her phone. She was sticky and exhausted, but it was only six o’clock. She could get over to Highgate and pick it up before she met Anna. It had her house keys in it, her wallet and her passport. Holy fecking God – how had she travelled halfway around the fecking world and never lost anything, and the minute she got to London she turned into some sort of ditz?

  She texted Anna back:

  Just realised left backpack at Mar’s house. Will go collect, meet you at hotel. Might be a bit late.

  When she sat down with Anna, Anna would help her decide what to say in her text to the man Mar had met. And Brioni wanted to get Anna’s impressions of Steve and the house, and go through her photographs. She needed to be somewhere private for that.

  Brioni hauled herself off the glass wall of the bank that she’d been leaning on and headed for the Tube station. Thank God it was close. She checked the Tube map app on her phone. The Northern Line ran straight to Highgate from here, it would only take about fifteen minutes to get there. Steve hadn’t looked as if he was planning on going out today, so hopefully he’d still be in. And Brioni realised she’d forgotten to ask him for his mobile number, too, so the trip wouldn’t be a total waste of time.

  Highgate was winding down into the weekend as Brioni left the station and headed towards Oliver Avenue. She couldn’t face the heat and fumes on the Archway Road, so she turned off it to walk along a residential street, children’s voices carrying as they played and laughed in gardens, the smell of barbecues wafting into the road. Happy families in happy houses.

  The 1950s Tudor-style semis with their red brick and mock beams were replaced with Victorian yellow brick and plasterwork as she turned into Mar’s road. It was a lovely area, the perfect family street.

  Brioni stopped outside Steve’s house, hesitating for a moment. She really wasn’t in the mood to see him again, to have another awkward conversation. But she needed her bag. One of the black jeeps had gone – Reiss’s, maybe – but the other was still parked in the drive.

  Brioni went up to the front door and knocked. She checked her phone while she waited, looking at the #LondonAttack hashtag again. It looked like another hoax, but the police had cordoned off the whole of central London, causing traffic chaos. They were right – there could easily be another bomb scheduled to go off. Everyone knew it, but it didn’t stop them giving out. The bombers picked the worst possible time of day to maximise their threat.

  Brioni felt her breath catch, tears threatening. On a Friday evening, pubs and restaurants were heaving with people enjoying the end of the working week and the start of the weekend. People like Mar hanging out with fri
ends, meeting up with sisters they hadn’t seen for a year.

  Brioni looked up from her phone, realising that it was taking Steve a long time to open the door. She rang the bell and lifted the art-deco-style chrome knocker again. The sound reverberated around the house. Impatiently, she took a step off the doorstep. The upstairs windows were still open to whatever breeze they could catch, so he definitely hadn’t gone out. Had he looked through the spyhole and decided not to answer?

  Brioni leaned over the shrubs under the living room window and put her hands around her eyes, shielding the light so she could see inside. The TV was on, Wimbledon’s grass courts huge on the wall, as if you could reach into them. Was he in the kitchen? Peering in, Brioni looked down through the living room into the kitchen. It was empty, but the patio doors were open; perhaps he was in the garden and couldn’t hear her. Jumping out of the flower bed, Brioni tried knocking on the door again.

  She couldn’t go home without her bag, so he’d just have to open the damn door.

  No answer.

  Maybe she’d have to try around the back?

  As she’d come up the drive, she’d noticed a side gate, the wood smartly varnished. Heading around the front of the house, she pushed it, not expecting it to open, but it gave way easily under her weight. It had obviously been left off the latch and oiled recently, unlike the gate in her shared house.

  God, that had been creepy – that feeling that someone had been there watching her from the garden, the sound of the latch falling.

  She still didn’t know if it had been real or all in her imagination.

  Pulling open the gate, Brioni headed down the passage, and rounded the end into the garden.

  And froze.

  Something was hanging from the branch of the gnarled old apple tree at the edge of the deck. The trunk was partially blocking her view, but she could see exactly what it was.

  A body.

  A man’s body, dressed in pale chinos and a blue shirt. Below him was one of the high stools from the kitchen, lying on the grass on its side.