by Tanya Allan
“Come on,” said the man. “One more and we can get the hell out of here. I have to get the van back before seven this morning.”
The couple dragged something else from the van and lugged it out of sight round behind the hut.
A few minutes later, they returned, got into the van, and left with the man driving. Keira just managed to get the registration number.
“What were they up to?” Shannon asked.
“No good, that’s for sure.”
“Do you think they’re bank robbers hiding their loot?”
“No, I think these might be the people you spoke to me about; terrorists.”
“But one was a girl.”
Keira smiled in the darkness.
“So?”
“Oh, I see what you mean.”
“Come on, let’s see what they were hiding,” Keira said.
“Don’t you want to chase the van?”
“Why, even if I could find them by now, what good would that do me? Okay, I might find where they end up, but that doesn’t help us any. We need to see what they’ve been hiding.”
The girls picked their way to where the hut sat and then looked round the back. There was nothing apparent. The hut turned out to have strange openings at various places, the like of which she had never seen before.
The door was locked.
There was a plain sign carrying the letters; COS, No.6 Private.
“What’s that mean?”
“I don’t know, it could be something to do with the forestry commission or something. But they didn’t come in here, we’d have seen.”
“There’s fuck all else here!” said Shannon.
“It’s here, and we know it can’t be that well hidden because they were too quick.”
Twelve yards from the hut, amongst some trees, was a fresh pile comprising mostly of sticks, branches, evergreen needles and leaves.
Beneath the pile was a large rectangular piece of one inch thick plywood, which in turn covered a small pit, four foot by two foot by three foot deep. Shannon struggled to try to lift the plywood.
Keira pulled her out of the way, and used the torc to mentally shift it as it was. In the pit beneath it were two large, yellow, plastic containers.
The girls looked down at them. Keira lifted one out and Shannon took out her mobile phone to illuminate the label.
“What the fuck is NH4NO3?” asked the Irish girl.
Making no attempt to open the container, Keira replaced the container to where it had been, then she returned the ply, covering it over with the debris once more.
“Well?”
“It’s ammonium nitrate.”
“What’s that?”
“If you’d paid attention to what was going on up in the North over the last fifty years or so, you’d know. It was a favourite of the provisional IRA,” said Keira
“It’s a bomb?
“No, ammonium nitrate is a common fertiliser, but when mixed with fuel oil and sugar, it is a bomb. It needs some form of charge, like a detonator to go off. Compacted inside a vehicle or enclosed space, it can do a lot of damage.”
“How the hell do you know all this stuff?”
“I wasn’t always like this. I had a misspent youth; too many silly interests. I was a geek.”
“Some geek. So, can you just walk in and buy this stuff?”
“I don’t think so; as there must be some form of restrictions or a licence to buy it. We’ll have to check. Whether they’ve come by it legally or not, this is not a usual means of storing it.”
“So what do we do?”
“Now? Nothing; well, that’s not quite true, as I wouldn’t mind getting some sleep.”
Seventeen
Ben managed to get the van back before seven, after dropping off Shamin at their flat in Hayes, in the West London borough of Hillingdon. She had just enough time to shower and change before going to work. He was on the late shift, so he could come back and sleep before having to head off at one o’clock.
It was an area where their ethnicity would not stand out, as there was a multi-cultural population mixing very successfully. Just down the road was Southall, with a huge Asian community, of Hindus, Sikhs and Moslems.
Shamin worked as a psychologist with the Mental Health Team at Hillingdon Hospital. Everything was going to plan. The first of the ‘helpers’ was due to arrive by ferry at one of the channel ports within the next week or so, and the others by different routes from then on. There were six coming, each with a different specialism that would meld together into a good little team that would be capable of undertaking a variety of different tasks.
Ben found Britain was nothing like he imagined. Yes, the government seemed to spout the anti-anybody in the Middle-East (except the Israelis) rhetoric that bolstered his resolve, but the ordinary people were much the same as people everywhere. They weren’t the evil leeches he had expected them to be. There was a corruption within the society that he expected, but it was more a level of selfishness than anything else.
These people did not know the real meaning of want or need. The poor had cars and televisions and a roof over their heads. They had access to free medical care that most people he had grown up around could only dream. The poor squandered what funds they had on alcohol, cigarettes, drugs and gambling. Even those who received benefits wasted most of it. He failed to understand their mentality.
It was also far more expensive than he had expected. No wonder the people were so miserable, as they had to work really hard just to put food on the table. With the money they earned, they could live like royalty in some of the places he had lived.
He was also more than a little afraid of the police. On first glance, with their silly hats and absence of weapons, they seemed more like tourist attractions. But he had seen how they operated, and he was impressed by the speed with which they responded, and also the variety of specialists, including firearms, that appeared if required. It would not be good to underestimate them!
The one big fly in the ointment was Shamin’s father.
He had met him once, and there was a mutual dislike, almost to the point of hatred. Omar thought himself a traditionalist, with extreme western leanings and a capitalist’s heart. He even voted conservative in the last election!
Ben thought him almost more English than the English. He was more interested in status and success than anything else, not unlike many from Pakistan, if the truth be told.
However, he was not a devout Moslem, but followed the form for appearance’s sake. As a family, they did not have prayers, or follow the festivals. He was everything that was wrong with a British Moslem, but Ben could see that if they all went this way, radical Islam might die in Britain.
Not that Ben was a good Moslem, either. He could play-at with the best, but he knew that that is all it was. If Allah really existed, then the Moslems would not be relegated to the worst parts of the world and the state of Israel would never have been allowed to be formed.
Omar still wanted Shamin to make a ‘good’ marriage. In his eyes, that was to one specific man, but her mother wasn’t so picky. Oh, she didn’t want it to be Ben; that was for sure. She kept reminding Shamin that there were so many good doctors working at the hospital, so any one of them would do.
As Ben worked stacking shelves in Tescos, they could barely look down their noses at him. At least Shamin’s mother spoke to him, which is more than her father could bring himself to do. This simply had the effect of pushing Shamin closer to him, but it did not make for an easy and stress-free life.
Their flat was a two bedroom apartment above a parade of shops on the main Uxbridge Road. Hayes Police station was almost within sight on the opposite side further towards Southall. There were some useful shops in the parade, and room to park cars behind in the alley to the rear.
It was noisy and expensive, for what it was. Neither was a problem. Ben had been given sufficient funds to rent somewhere for six months at least. Now they were both working, most of tha
t money was still available for other parts of their plan. The most crucial positive feature was the lock-up garage behind the shops. It was important for them to have somewhere to store purchases for a brief time, before moving them somewhere safer.
Neither of them was a chemist or bomb-maker. There was a man due to arrive soon who was both. They had to acquire the necessary components, and then locate a safe location in which this man could go to work.
Shamin worked to identify a suitable target, while Ben sought the necessary components. He found that there were strict regulations on buying what was on the list. However, such was the corruption that there was always someone willing to supply whatever you wanted, for a price, and forget about the restrictions. He managed to buy two large, forty kilo containers of Ammonium Nitrate from an agricultural suppliers near Milton Keynes. The other components were less problematic; sugar and fuel oil. However, the detonators would be a real problem, which was why they were coming in with man number four from Belgium in a week’s time; hopefully in a crate of machine parts.
Their time was both amazingly dull and exciting. On balance, it was dull. Ben found his work dull in the extreme, but he needed to work not only to keep up an appearance of being normal, but also for the money. He still needed to eat, and although Shamin was paid a lot more, he couldn’t let her be the main breadwinner; his pride wouldn’t let him.
The exciting moments were fleeting and occasional. They realised that they couldn’t keep the fertiliser in the garage, so they looked for somewhere to hide it where it would be safe.
The hut in the woods miles away from London came to their knowledge by accident. Ben had few hobbies or interests outside of what drove him. However, he had one interest that he had possessed since he was a child. He recalled his mother telling him about birds, and showing him some marvellous birds that existed in places that man couldn’t, such as the sand grouse and others. He was an amateur twitcher; although he rarely admitted it. In all his travels, he even kept a diary listing the birds he saw, when and where. It was a cheap hobby, as it had so far only cost him the price of a pencil and a notebook.
On a break one day, he stood outside the Tescos, at the rear, while a couple of the other employees smoked their cigarettes. He watched some birds fly overhead. They were starlings, but a couple of collar doves stopped and rested on the top of the roof. He watched them, marvelling at their ability to adapt to whatever surroundings they happened to be in.
“Nice pair!” said another man. Ben turned and regarded him for a moment. He wore a name badge with ‘Barry’ on it.
“Yes,” he agreed.
“There’s a colony of parakeets that lives just the other side of the M25, in Buckinghamshire. Last winter they came this far east. I had them in my garden. They raided the bird table.”
“They’re not native, surely?”
“No; a pair was probably set free a few years ago and have bred in the wild.”
“Ah.”
“You’ve travelled a bit, what’s the most unusual bird you’ve seen?” Barry asked.
“I’ve seen lots. I think that I like the Abyssinian Roller best.”
“What’s that like?”
“Sort of like your Magpie in size and shape, but with blue and turquoise colouring. The male has a long tail.”
“Where did you see that?”
“West Africa; Ghana.”
“I didn’t think we got them this far north.”
So began a conversation pertaining to birds. Barry turned out to be a real twitcher, belonging to no less than three clubs in the area. His favourite one was the Chiltern Ornithological Society (COS) that operated out of Chesham Bois in Buckinghamshire. He told Ben about the various hides they had dotted around the region, plus shelters and other facilities for the members.
One weekend, while Shamin was committed to a family function, to which Ben was neither invited nor welcome, Ben accompanied Barry on a day out. This time it was to watch the Red Kites in the Chiltern Hills.
The red kites were a success story verging on a disaster. Back in the 1970s, it was discovered that the red kites were vanishing from the UK.
A few breeding pairs were introduced to the fringes of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, along the ridge that marked the western fringe of the Chiltern Hills.
Forty years later, the numbers had grown phenomenally to the point that the local farmers were threatening to shoot them, despite them being protected.
They were spectacular birds, looking like large birds of prey. In fact they were scavengers, normally after carrion rather than live prey. However, they were not adverse to taking young rabbits or the young of other birds straight from the nest.
One of the hide/shelters they visited was in the middle of woodland in which the kites were known to nest and breed.
Ben remembered the route and that there were no houses or farms anywhere near the shelter. The land was owned by the Forestry Commission, managed by Forest Enterprise, and given over to the local people for their restricted usage by bird watchers, a few horse trails and some public footpaths upon which dog-walkers and ramblers would walk. The actual woods in which the COS birdwatchers had access, were not given over to other groups, as the breeding pairs of Red Kites were protected and therefore public access was restricted.
It was a simple matter of opening an unmarked gate and driving down a passable track through the woods to get to an isolated shelter that was rarely visited by anyone other than a few bird-watchers. The Forestry Commission were not going to get round to harvest these woods for another ten years at least.
This was an ideal location to store stuff until they needed them. If found, then there was no way of linking them to the evidence, so it was safer than any garage in London where there was always a possibility of being watched from some building. Here there were no witnesses.
He visited the spot three times, on random days at random times. He never saw a soul. On the third time, he brought a spade and dug a pit, using a piece of plywood he found in the garage as a lid. He covered it over and left it.
A week later, he borrowed a van from a friend who ran a small grocers shop, promising to have it back before work on the next day. He and Shamin moved the fertiliser and drove out in the middle of the night to hide the containers in the pit. He noted that nothing had been disturbed, so he felt this was a foolproof location.
He arrived back at the flat, feeling very tired. To his dismay he saw a familiar Mercedes parked in the road outside the shops.
Omar, Shamin’s father, had a personalised number plate, so it was an easy car to recognise.
Sure enough, as he went up the stairs at the back, he saw Omar standing at the top waiting for him. He was a tall man, wearing a smart grey suit and silk tie. He was also overweight, and wore tinted spectacles. He wanted to look like a mafia boss, but looked like the fat shop owner that he was.
“Omar,” he said, not certain what to expect from the man
“I need to speak with you.”
This was the longest speech Omar had ever had with Ben.
“Come in then,” he said, opening the door to the flat.
The flat was neat and tidy; Shamin saw to that.
“Tea?”
“No.”
Ah, it’s going to be like that.
“What do you want?” he said, playing the same game.
“I want you to leave my daughter.”
“Why should I do that?”
“While you are with her, she will never reach her full potential.”
“Why don’t you allow her to judge that?”
Omar ignored him.
“How much will it take to persuade you to leave?”
“More than you’ve got, or ever likely to get. I’m not interested.”
“You must understand that I am serious. I do not want you around my daughter.”
“She’s an adult, and in this country as well as most other countries, what you want or don’t want is irrelevant.”
>
“I am prepared to give you fifty thousand pounds to leave her today. What do you say?”
“Go away.”
“Sixty.”
“If you went up to a million, I’d still tell you to fuck off. This is not up for negotiation.”
“You will find that you might regret saying that to me. I have friends.”
Ben went very still.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked, a dangerous edge crept into his words.
“I have friends who can make things very difficult for you.”
“Are you threatening me, old man?”
Omar looked uncertain for the first time in the exchange.
“Not at all, but if the word gets out that you are, how shall we say? A person who is not honourable? Then accidents happen.”
Ben looked away for a moment. The anger inside of him grew. He knew the feeling, and tried to control it. He watched as his hand began to shake.
He stayed silent, not daring to move. He could easily kill this man, but that could be disastrous.
“Well?”
When Ben replied, his voice was that of someone different. It was a cold voice, devoid of humanity.
“For every friend you have, I have a legion. Only my friends are not fat shop keepers, or business men in fancy cars and silk ties. My friends are warriors, fighting for the cause. Mark me well, old man, if you see me coming, you would be advised to walk in the opposite direction. The last man who threatened me was found in a well in Syria with his genitals in his mouth.
“For me, there is no such thing as an accident. They do not just happen. If I want someone to die, then I make it happen. I do not threaten, I make promises. There is a difference. Do you understand old man?”
“You can’t speak to me like that!”
“I will not speak to you again. Shamin is my woman. That is the end of the matter. I seek no blessing from you, but know that if you move to try to take her from me, you and all your family will die. That is my promise, not a threat. Now, go to your fancy car and don’t come back here again.”
Ben turned his back on Omar. He did not watch as the man left, but turned and closed the door quietly.
