The Last First Time

by Andrea Bramhall

  “You didn’t say you’d been up all night.” Kate held down the corner of one page so she could make out the approximation of handwriting on the paper. It wasn’t unusual for coppers to have bad handwriting, but this was on a level with the notoriously bad doctor scrawl.

  Stella shrugged off her coat and sat down next to Kate. “Slept too much in the hospital, probably.”

  The dark circles under her eyes told Kate a different tale. Had Stella been Gina, Kate knew she would have asked a few more questions and would have tried to draw her out to talk about what was clearly bothering her. But Stella wasn’t Gina, and she wouldn’t respond well to probing—no matter how gently—into her psyche. She covered Stella’s hand with her own and squeezed gently. “If you ever want to go down to the gym with me and beat seven shades of shit out of a punch bag,” she said and prodded her own chest with her thumb, “just let me know.”

  That was how they learnt to deal with shit.

  Kate tapped the pad. “And what’s this? I can’t read this crap you call handwriting.”

  Stella cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t even start, I’ve seen that mess you call a notebook. Most of those aren’t even words, Kate.”

  “So are.”

  Stella sniggered. “You sound just like Sammy when you do that.”

  Kate smiled. “She copied me.”

  Stella looked unimpressed. “Kids do that.” Pointing to the pad, she said, “Since we’re now uncertain of Mallam’s motives, I decided that we needed to re-examine each piece of evidence and intelligence he brought and for which we have no other corroboration.”

  “Good plan.”

  “The biggest section of this seems to be what we know about Ayeshydi. What did he tell you about him again?”

  Kate looked at her. Stella had never asked her to rehash intelligence just for the sake of it. Had the head injury affected how her brain—

  “I wasn’t at the meeting when Mallam briefed you all about him. I need to know what you know so we can cross reference how truthful he might have been about Ayeshydi’s history, if nothing else.”

  Kate felt a sense of relief that she hadn’t expected. Stella was a colleague, and she was quickly becoming a very good friend too.

  “Right, sorry. So, in a nutshell, he told us that Ishman Ayeshydi was twenty-eight, of Syrian descent. But Ishman was born in Leicester and raised in the UK, then went to train with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group in 2011. He came back to the UK in 2014. He had extensive weapons training in Libya at that time. They also suspect he went other places while he was there but never specified where. He’s been back for further training since then, they suspect.”

  “Where? Libya again?”

  “No. Apparently, passport control shows Ayeshydi leaving the UK, bound for Turkey. And like we both know, Turkey’s the number one crossing into IS-occupied Syria. Mallam said they could prove Ayeshydi was in the video footage of two beheadings in Raqqa and that they suspected he was trained to use the explosives out there.”

  “Do you have those dates?”

  Kate frowned, trying to recall if Mallam had said when that was exactly. He hadn’t. She shook her head. “He didn’t give us that bit.”

  “Okay. That’ll make it trickier, but I’ve got a friend who works for HMRC over at Manchester Airport. If he came in through there, she might be able to corroborate this part of the story and get us those dates at the same time.” Stella picked up her phone. “Damn it, I’ve not got enough signal in here.”

  “Backyard’s best.”

  Stella rolled her eyes and headed outside.

  Kate continued to study the timeline, but she wasn’t really seeing it. She was thinking about all the other things Mallam had told them and exactly what he’d left out. Why hadn’t she picked up on that? He’d given them info, but it had all been so vague. She spotted a sheaf of pages stapled together. A copy of the CV for one Zain Mallam.

  Good student, fluent in five languages, excelled at something called ‘asset manipulation’ while in training. Kate didn’t really want to think about what that particular phrase meant, but once she’d read it, it was hard not to. Asset manipulation. Getting people to do what you wanted them to do. And Kate was willing to bet that that wasn’t always what those people wanted to do. Nor in their best interests. She pictured Mallam. He must have been hiding some serious charm to have excelled at asset manipulation. Kate doubted he could have charmed a cup of tea out of her.

  She read on. A levels in sociology, politics, psychology, and law. Degree in law. Master’s degree, then a PhD in criminology. Out of education for less than a month when he signed up for a career in the security services. She checked the dates: First contact from Mallam, 9th of July 2005. Two days after the London bombing that had targeted the public transport system. Fifty-two people killed and almost eight hundred injured, by four individuals. The impetus for a young, patriotic Zain Mallam to stand up and defend his country, his people.

  It didn’t seem possible that a guy who took on this job under such circumstances would now turn against it. He was clearly a guy with a lot more experience and mettle than Kate had given him credit for. So where was he? Where was Zain Mallam?

  “Carly said she’ll see what she can dig up, but based on the fact we don’t have a date to work with, it might take her a bit of time for the searches to come back. She’ll call me back when she finds something.” Stella stood behind Kate and looked over her shoulders. “Anything interesting in there?”

  Kate shrugged. “Interesting, yes. But it raises more questions than it answers. I mean, this guy signed up to stop terrorists in the wake of seven-seven. Why the hell would he be involved with a bombing like this?”

  Stella sat down. “Seven-seven was a long time ago now, Kate. A lot’s changed since 2005.”

  “True. But…” She stared at the pictures on the table and scrabbled through them, trying to find the one she wanted. She grinned triumphantly when she slapped it down in front of Stella.

  Stella straightened the picture so she could see it head on. “A picture of Zain Mallam. And?”

  “By 2005, Zain Mallam had worked through his degree, his master’s, and his PhD. So that had to make him, what? Twenty-five, twenty-six by that time?”

  “Something like that. So?”

  “In 2005. Over a decade ago. He’s got to be pushing forty. Right?”

  Stella nodded.

  Kate tapped the image. “How old does that guy look to you?”

  Stella picked up the piece of paper and studied it intently. “Thirty, maybe. But that could just be the picture.”

  “Trust me, it’s not. It’s a very good likeness.”

  “So, you think that this isn’t Zain Mallam? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “That guy looks closer to twenty-five than forty.”

  “So, he could just have very good genes. Some lucky bastards do.”

  Kate had to concede that possibility, but still… “The pictures we have of Ayeshydi came from Mallam. Even if he is just a lucky bastard with good genes, you’re the one who said we needed to corroborate all evidence he gave us.” She fished through the pile of papers and pulled out the picture Mallam had handed out of Ishman Ayeshydi. The full beard didn’t hide the crinkle of crow’s feet at his eyes. “He look twenty-eight to you?”

  “I’ll make a call to the DVLA see if I can dredge up a picture of them both off their database.”

  “We don’t have a warrant.” Kate said.

  “He’s…a friend.”

  “A friend?” Kate asked.

  Stella’s answering smirk was rather lewd in Kate’s opinion, but whatever.

  “Right.” She waved Stella off as she stepped back outside to get signal again. Kate returned to staring at the pictures and Mallam’s CV, and increasingly, her off-the-wall theory was making sense to her. But that begged far more questions than it answered. Chief among them—if that wasn’t Mallam…who the hell was it? And where was the real Zain Mallam?
/>   “Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice,” Kate whispered to herself. The landline rang from its cradle on the kitchen worktop, and Kate answered it absentmindedly. “Hello.”

  “Gina?” the voice asked.

  “No, I’m afraid Gina’s not here. Can I help?”

  “Where is she?”

  “Who is this?”

  “None of your fucking business. Where is she?”

  “Listen, pal, if you’re not prepared to tell me who you are, then I’m not prepared to stand here and listen to you swear at me. So?”

  “Fuck you, whore bitch, she’s mine!”

  The loud bang resonated down the line and reverberated in Kate’s ear. “Nice talking to you too, mate.”

  “Who’re you talking to?” Stella asked.

  Kate jumped and whirled around, handset still in her hand. “Someone for Gina.”

  “And?”

  “He called me, and I quote, ‘a fucking whore bitch’, and apparently Gina’s his.”

  Stella’s jaw slackened, and her lips popped open in a perfect circle. She gripped the back of the dining room chair, then rested her forearms on it and her weight over it. “Well, I guess that rules Ally out of the equation.”

  Kate grumbled but had to agree. The woman’s cell had already been searched, her calls were being monitored, and she was in prison. The chances of her being able to orchestrate something like this and get a guy in to help her were, realistically…slim to none.

  “Has Gina had any other contact since the flowers?”

  Kate shook her head, then stopped. “She said there was something she needed to talk to me about, later after Sammy went to bed.”

  “So maybe.”

  “Maybe,” Kate conceded.

  “Call and ask her?”

  “She’s out with her mum and Sammy. I don’t want to worry her.”

  “So you’ll worry instead? That’s logical.” Stella might gripe about it, but they both knew she’d do the same if it were the other way around and Stella’s girlfriend, or rather boyfriend, was being stalked.

  “I’ll talk to her as soon as she gets in.”

  Stella shook her head and held up her hands, palms outward like she was surrendering. “Your girlfriend, kid.”

  “Not according to the guy on the phone.”

  “Yeah, well, I happen to think Gina has a say in it myself, and she’s definitely chosen you.”

  Kate’s cheeks burned, and she desperately tried not to think about Gina. She had to concentrate on work…stuff. There was tons of that to do. She scrubbed her hand over her face, then ran her fingers through her hair. “Come on, let’s get this done before she gets back with Sammy and the dog.” She tossed a sheaf of papers to Stella. “I printed each of us a copy of the full diary. I know how you like to scribble all over yours. Grimshaw e-mailed it to me last night, and apparently, the file has been corrupted, so he can’t hand it over to anyone else until it’s gone through the matrix again.”

  “Will he get in trouble for that?”

  Kate barked a short laugh. “They’d have to prove he was lying first. And I don’t know about you, but that guy scares me.” She shivered. There was something a little unsavoury, a little unwholesome about the scruffy genius of a crime tech. There was no doubting his brilliance. It was just the…personality…that went with it. And the arrogance of the man. But didn’t they say, the higher the IQ the lower the EQ? Well, the man had a 160 IQ. It said more than enough to Kate.

  “Are we sure we should be keeping this—whatever it is we’re actually doing—to ourselves?

  Kate sighed. “Good question.”

  “And the good answer?”

  “I don’t have one. Officially we’re both off duty right now, but officially or unofficially, it doesn’t really matter. Something is off here. Someone tipped off Ayeshydi that we were at the lock-up. It’s the only thing that makes sense. There’s no way the CTU team triggered it. They were moving away from the unit when it exploded. It had to have been detonated remotely. So, either one of the neighbours called Ayeshydi and warned him, not knowing that they’d be in the line of whatever measures he had in place to take care of it all, or someone else did. If it was someone else, but not Mallam, then who the hell was it? And let’s not forget the fact that Mallam is missing. He was stood in the safest possible place, looking away from the blast site, at his phone, and is now nowhere to be seen. You don’t believe in coincidences, Stella. Just the same as me.”

  “You’re right, I don’t. But if it was Mallam that tipped off Ayeshydi, then why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe there’s a link between them somewhere, and if we find that, we’ll figure out what’s going on here.” She rapped her knuckles on the table. “So let’s get back to work.”

  Stella scrunched up her nose and picked up her stack of paper, discretely nudging her coffee cup towards Kate.

  Kate bit her lip and ignored the blatant though silent demand for another brew.

  Stella faked a cough and nudged it closer still.

  Kate sniffed and continued to ignore the juvenile behaviour.

  One more cough and Stella managed to tip the cup over.

  Kate was very grateful she’d already drained it down to the scratched porcelain of the mug’s interior.

  “More coffee, Stella?” Kate picked up the cup and strode to the kettle.

  “Well, only if you’re making one.”

  “Child.” Kate spooned coffee into their mugs.

  * * *

  Kate ran her fingers through her hair, rubbed at her tired eyes, and sighed in frustration. Every page left her feeling unsatisfied as she got closer to reading the last page of Nadia Ahmed’s diary. The young girl was hopelessly in love with Ayeshydi and twisted with guilt at falling for her best friend’s husband. Add to the mix a father with more than a few issues of his own, and she was the perfect target for someone to brainwash, to groom, radicalise—whatever the hell you want to call it, those bastards did it to her. The pair of them prepared her to do things that were so far removed from her normal moral compass that Kate was almost ready to accept Mrs Ahmed’s statement had a grain of truth to it—Nadia was a victim of the true terrorists too. Almost. In the end, she had still made that final decision, she’d still pushed the button, and she’d still killed too many innocent people to garner Kate’s true sympathies. Because the girl she discovered in the diary, the one at the start, she didn’t exist by the time Nadia Ahmed had walked into the Ann Summers shop on the 12th of December.

  At the beginning of the diary, Nadia had been a normal, slightly naive seventeen-year-old girl, but she wasn’t a radical extremist. She didn’t sit writing in her diary night after night about the ills of the world. Nor did she pontificate over the injustices heaped upon her people. She moaned about her homework, about chores, about having to go to mosque. Complained about the clothes she was wearing, wanting to dress more like the other kids at school. The other British kids, rather than the other Asian kids. She wanted to wear jeans and get her ears pierced and leave her headscarf at home.

  She wasn’t born a time bomb waiting to go off. No, Nadia Ahmed had been crafted into one by men she trusted, men she loved and who she thought loved her.

  “Anything?” Kate asked.

  Stella shook her head. “Just the lock-up that you already blew up.”

  “Funny. Heard anything from either of your friends yet?”

  “I wouldn’t still be sat here reading if I had.”

  Kate nodded. “Just checking.”

  They sniggered, but neither bothered to look up.

  There were still a few pages left to read. But Kate found herself wondering what Saba Ayeshydi was like. Was she as naive as Nadia had been? Had she been coerced into this plot by her husband? Other family members? Or was she more extreme in her views than Nadia? Had she contributed to Nadia’s brainwashing alongside her husband? Did she know how Nadia felt about Ishman? There were just so many questions and too few answers. And they were gett
ing nowhere.

  Kate stretched her back out, swinging her arms over her head and arching over the back of the chair with a loud, satisfied groan. Rolling her head in circles, she asked, “What time is it, anyway?”

  Stella glanced over her shoulder at the clock on the oven. “Nearly half five.”

  “Really?” Kate twisted to look at the clock herself. “Jesus. Wonder where Gina and Sammy are? I thought they would have been home hours ago.”

  “Probably run off to the circus.”

  “I’d tell you not to give up your day job to pursue a comedy career, but given how you can get blown up on your days off, it still might be a better option for you.”

  “For that, you can make me another brew.” She pushed her cup across the table, looking for her sixth cup of coffee. It was thirsty work, reading all this teenage angst.

  The back door was jostled open, and Sammy and Merlin came tearing in a shower of sand, water drops, and noise in their wake. Merlin danced in circles around Kate’s legs, begging for attention, while Sammy dumped a carrier bag on the counter and ran over to Kate, wrapping her arms around her waist and clutching her tight.

  “Hiya, Kate,” Sammy said.

  Kate heard the distinct sound of a kiss against her side.

  Then Sammy was gone, following Merlin and tossing a ball for her to catch. So that’s how kids greet you when they get home. It was nice. It was a surprise, but it was definitely nice. She glanced over her shoulder in time to see Gina grinning at her, and Kate couldn’t help but wonder if she was going to get a kiss off another Temple woman.

  The wondering didn’t last long as Gina carried an armful of bags in with her, dumped them on the kitchen counter, and stood on her tiptoes to kiss Kate’s lips, quick and chaste.

  “Hiya, Kate,” she mimicked Sammy’s words and her voice.

  Stella sniggered, her eyes purposefully glued to the pages in front of her.

  Kate grabbed a dish towel and flung it at Stella’s head, smirking when it hit the target.

  “Hey.”

  Kate dipped her head for another quick kiss, enjoying for just a moment the sweet connection and the softness of Gina’s lips.

  Gina patted her on the arm and moved away a little, clearing her throat as she went. “I hoped you’d still be here. I brought dinner. There’s plenty. Can I tempt you to roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and veggies?”