by Roger Pearce
‘Not that. I mean it’s Topaz for the actual bombs and Emerald for the negatives. They’re letting us know, just like before.’
They sat quietly for a moment, studying the TV pictures of carnage in the City, then Fargo bent down to shift a plastic laundry bag from the floor by Kerr’s feet. ‘The trousers I was supposed to collect on Monday,’ he said, looking away.
‘You sure you’re okay working on this, Al?’
‘Is it personal, you mean?’ Fargo blinked several times and nodded at Kerr’s chair. ‘Sometimes Pauline used to sit right there, remember? Helping me out?’
‘It was a treat all round.’
‘My sister loved every minute and it made Mum happy, too.’ Fargo’s eyes looked past Kerr’s shoulder as the door opened. ‘Here’s Mel,’ he said, then dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Of course it is. But everything’s fine.’
Melanie waved around the room and rolled up a chair, fixing Kerr with a long stare. ‘God, you look awful.’
In jeans with a white T-shirt and dark blue sweater, Melanie was fresh-faced, despite what she must have witnessed a few minutes earlier.
‘Anything?’ said Kerr.
Melanie shook her head. ‘Jack dropped me outside. They’re doing a final sweep further east, then coming back in.’
‘Apparently you’re going to tell me if this is Irish dissident or not.’
‘Am I?’ She ran her fingers through her hair, pressed flat by the motorcycle helmet, and glanced at Fargo. ‘Haven’t you…?’
‘We only got as far as the banks,’ said Fargo. ‘John, you know Mr Ritchie’s been pressing for info about the bomb make-up.’
‘Still waiting.’
‘Everyone’s being reticent. The explosives officers keep referring me to the Bomb Data Centre, like they’re obviously under orders. BDC says wait for Mr Finch’s official summary. But the gist is going to be that both bombs were plastic explosive, professional and positioned to cause maximum loss of life.’
‘CCTV of the bombers?’
‘No direct line of sight from any camera because of the buses moving between them and the station. They’re studying every image, obviously, so we’re still hoping for a match.’ He jerked a thumb at the window. ‘Especially if the same guys did the City.’
‘So is Finch going to say this is dissident republican?’
Fargo took a breath. ‘With the coded warning, Victoria bears the classic hallmarks of an attack by the Real IRA. That’s what my contact tells me.’
‘Which goes against everything Dodge has told us, plus the denials from Stormont – anyone seen Dodge, by the way? – and is obviously premature. But I can see you decided to dig a little deeper, Alan, right? Because it’s personal.’
‘Dodge called in sick,’ said Fargo, as Kerr reached across, took a chunk out of his cookie and held up the patisserie bag. ‘Still fresh. So which of you went to Porton Down without asking?’
Fargo began to speak but Melanie got in first. ‘You weren’t around. We were looking for you all day. I sent you a message about Justin.’
‘I got it.’
‘On international dialling.’
‘This is down to me,’ said Fargo quickly. ‘I couldn’t get away and Jack said he’d sort it when you surfaced.’
‘And?’ Kerr spread his hands, looking between them. ‘Did you track down Polly Graham?’
‘We had a chat in the ballistics lab,’ said Melanie, ‘and she sends her best. She examined the scene with the explosives officers first thing Tuesday and took away a vanload of stuff, plus photographs and video. Long story short, Porton have traced plastic explosive residues on a number of items. Semtex.’
‘Anything about the bomb make-up?’
‘Only to confirm two devices in separate waste bins beside the terminus. Multiple bombs makes it difficult to measure the explosive used in each, but they’re obviously working on that. Forensics here are still sifting for clues about the detonator, timer, circuitry, etcetera. Thing is, even without that, Polly’s preliminary readout doesn’t fit with the official story.’
She took the bag, quickly passed it around and reached in herself. ‘For starters, the Victoria explosive is traceable through the Czech maker’s tag. It’s called Semtex SA11, manufactured a couple of years ago, well within its shelf life and definitively not part of the cache seized in Belfast last year.’
‘And Dublin before that?’
‘Same again. That stuff was ancient, probably from the Libya shipment from Gaddafi in eighty-six.’ She paused to bite the head off a gingerbread man. ‘Starving. Bottom line, there’s no suggestion any Irish dissident group had access to the Semtex used on Monday.’
‘Does Derek Finch know this?’
Melanie shrugged. ‘I don’t imagine Polly was giving me an exclusive. God, those poor people,’ she said as a flurry of voices drew them back to the TV.
Both channels had organised themselves by now, with reporters outside St Paul’s Cathedral and live coverage of office workers swarming from Canary Wharf, hurried along by police with loudhailers and the chilling news from Cheapside.
‘Any idea of victim numbers yet?’ said Kerr.
Melanie shook her head, still fixed on the TV screens. ‘Jack may have more. From what I saw before they sealed the street this is going to be even worse than Monday.’ She swung round to Kerr. ‘And that’s something else about this whole IRA thing. Mr Finch is wrong, isn’t he, about wanting to cause maximum casualties? Irish dissidents go for military targets or police. You know, look what they did to Mark Bannerman. Savage and unambiguous. But the IRA have always given a warning against civilian targets in London, enough time to get people away.’
‘Except when they screwed up,’ said Fargo.
‘Yet nothing like this.’ Kerr pushed his chair back. ‘I need to try Dodge again. Is he at home?’
Fargo touched his arm and glanced at Melanie.
‘Sorry, that’s not it,’ she said, flicking a crumb from her leg. ‘Polly did find a match. The Semtex used on Monday comes from a reserve stockpile nicked in France a couple of years ago. It was government owned, totally legit, stored just outside Marseilles. Their bomb disposal were using it to destroy munitions left over from the war. I suppose the Irish could have lifted it. In theory, I mean.’
Kerr frowned. ‘But there’s still plenty of Semtex stashed around Belfast. We know that from Dodge.’
‘Easy access,’ shrugged Fargo. ‘Why risk the English Channel and the Irish Sea when you can pop to the corner shop?’
‘I think these attacks are pulling us in the other direction,’ said Kerr. ‘The Euro’s waiting to freefall again and the blame game is as toxic as ever. Liaison have been telling us for ages that the collapse is still breeding extreme groups right across Europe. Look at the rhetoric. Banksters. Everyone still hates them. Brexit changes nothing.’ Kerr stole a glance at Fargo. ‘Can you get back to liaison, Al? Greece, to start with. Then France and Spain. Let’s get our heads together.’
‘Already on it. Gilbert in Paris just confirmed the Semtex theft. I’ve got a call in to Demitri.’
‘Good. Mel, I’ll give Polly a call later but I need you to tell me if Cheapside carries the same Semtex marker as Victoria.’
She nodded and offered him the last cookie. ‘So are we forgiven?’
Kerr murmured something and studied Sky News for a moment. ‘If European terrorists are hitting banks in London, why false flag it to the IRA?’
Fargo turned away to the screen again. ‘That’s a good question for Mr Finch, right?’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Friday, 14 October, 13.53, Betta Tyre and Exhaust, Old Oak Common Lane, Willesden
Bobby Roscoe’s workshop lay on a stretch of urban wasteland between Willesden Junction and North Acton stations, with the railway along the eastern border of Old Oak Common Lane separating it from the main road. To the other side of the lane was the historic site of Paddington’s old sidings and engine sheds, the whole sect
or now swallowed up by the mammoth Crossrail project. Betta Tyre and Exhaust stood between the two, set back from the thoroughfare beyond a decaying, weed strewn concrete yard large enough to turn heavy vehicles. A sloping placard in faded blue and green, with the B missing from Betta, gave the only clue that Roscoe was still trading, and these days he did not welcome new customers.
Thrown up four decades ago beside First Great Western’s metal boundary fence, the workshop was a cold, windowless structure of whitewashed breeze block beneath a sloping corrugated iron roof, the main entrance set at right angles to the road. With railway property each side and the Grand Union Canal a hundred metres to the north, Roscoe’s failing business was isolated and private, screened by a tangle of brambles and leylandii from anyone with business at the civilised end of the lane.
Secured by a roll top metal door, the workshop had a narrow inspection pit to the left and was just wide enough to accommodate three cars parked closely together or a medium sized lorry, so long as Roscoe left the door partially open. Today it concealed a white Citroen Jumper van and blue Honda SH300 motorcycle. Against the darkened back wall, behind piles of retread tyres and new exhausts, Roscoe hid the secondhand MIG transformer, wire feeder and torch he used for his unofficial job as welder.
Roscoe had been adapting the van for three days with scarcely a break, strengthening the rear suspension and fitting extra load tyres. It looked used but clean, the exterior identical to the thousands of other Jumpers on the streets of London. Behind the white panels, however, Roscoe had welded a steel platform to the chassis and bolted on a right-angled triangular frame, its sloping edge designed to house the launch pad.
He had been making finishing touches to the frame when Fin and Kenny stole into the workshop from North Acton Underground station, and the interior smelt hot as he flipped his visor and immediately lambasted the younger brother for dumping his Canary Wharf device short of Dolphin and Drew’s satellite office. ‘You need to man up,’ he had snarled, red-faced and sweating as he cut the flame, threw off his gloves and set them to work, anger removing any doubts about their relationship.
The gloomy office in which Roscoe had hired the brothers three weeks earlier lay in the far right corner behind a grimy Perspex screen. It was just large enough for its battered captain’s chair and desk strewn with oil-stained invoices. Roscoe fidgeted there now in his blue overalls, the chair squeaking as he listened to live reports of the bombing on his Roberts portable radio and watched the brothers work in the yard, still seething at Kenny’s loss of courage.
They were building a shelter extending about a car’s length from the entrance, for Roscoe had concluded that, however secure the man-made perimeter of rail, road and water, the workshop was still vulnerable to airborne surveillance from a helicopter, fixed wing spotter plane or drone. Three days before the Victoria attacks he had supervised their construction of the oak frame, a giant set of goal posts with the feet buried in cement and the top secured to the workshop roof by five equidistant spars.
Now he watched as Fin, still in his suit trousers, cordless screwdriver clipped to his belt, balanced on a ladder against one of the spars and reached down to Kenny for the second of four black plastic corrugated sheets, each three metres long and the width of his outstretched arm. Fin slapped the other end to the workshop roof, adjusted the fit, roughly screwed it to the frame and repositioned the ladder for the last section.
The clatter reverberated through the workshop, increasing Roscoe’s agitation. He had just received his final orders for what his masters called ‘operational sequencing,’ and co-ordination was crucial. He checked his watch again, caught in the race between the running order and time. When he could wait no longer he took a packet of cocaine and a prepaid phone from the bottom desk drawer and walked out of the workshop, powering up the mobile. ‘It’s more than you deserve,’ he said, tossing the drugs at Kenny.
‘You never told us his one was a dud,’ said Fin from the top of the ladder. ‘It’s not fair. You should have said.’
Roscoe looked up at him, taken aback. ‘Disobey me again and you’re dead.’
‘From you?’ said Fin with a rough laugh. ‘I don’t fucking think so.’
The brothers had left their Glock pistols inside the workshop, perched on the saddle of the motorcycle. Roscoe walked round the van, grabbed the nearest and aimed at Fin’s head, eyes unblinking. He stood quite still for several seconds, arms locked, daring him to react, then kicked away the ladder and watched Fin scrabble for the cross bar, legs flailing. He let him dangle there, reading Fin’s eyes as he chose between confrontation and defeat, calculating whether he would make a move for the other Glock.
When he was quite sure, Roscoe lowered the pistol, walked out of earshot to the railway boundary and dialled.
•••
Friday, 14 October, 14.33, Derek Finch’s Private Office, New Scotland Yard
The sandwich bar in St James’s station closed early on a Friday but Bill Ritchie’s PA was just in time for a chicken baguette and tuna continental on brown, both with extra fillings because the proprietor fancied her. However busy their day, Ritchie always insisted that Donna steal an hour away from the office: it had become a tacit agreement, so she no longer offered to forego her break. Bombs in the City or calls from the top brass made no difference, and detectives ringing Donna to open a window in the boss’s diary, or social callers, would often find Ritchie’s voice at the end of the line. Unfailingly courteous, he never actually tampered with the diary: the parcel of time might be his, but the schedule belonged to Donna.
The tuna was for Donna’s opposite number in the Bull’s private office, three floors down from hers. Barbara Santer was in her early forties with two children at primary school and nowhere to call home. Never married to her partner of a decade, deserted six days after New Year, she had returned to the Yard when her money ran out before Easter, a common law wife devoid of rights and still reeling from the shock.
The two women spoke several times a day and met every Friday for a sandwich or salad. Barbara was darkly attractive but looked permanently exhausted, in need of a makeover and a fresh start. She had inherited an office that was cramped, soulless and untidy, with files and binders covering every surface. A giant map of the world filled one wall, with the top right corner flopping over Russia and the Southern Ocean filled with post-it notes. Barbara’s desk curved around the far right corner, with a twenty-two inch computer screen, a wall calendar stuck at August and a dusty artificial orchid with a broken stem. Office and occupant looked equally cheerless, and today Donna could tell she had been deeply affected by the events of the past five days, distressed by the bombings and troubled at being so close to counter-terrorism’s front man.
In the body of the room was a tiny coffee table with a pair of low easy chairs, but the two friends always found it more comfortable to eat at Barbara’s desk. They went through the usual my-turn-to-pay banter while Barbara cleared the spare office chair of papers and made a show of hunting for her purse. As her friend poured the coffee Donna recognised the same maroon sweater over a tired cream shirt, the front stretched and bobbled from repeated wear. The dark grey trousers were shiny on the bottom and short on the leg, and something had snagged her tights just above the right ankle.
The Bull’s management style was poles apart from Bill Ritchie’s: Barbara had to field three calls as she unwrapped her sandwich, then blew out her cheeks and slumped back, exasperated. Ignoring her protest, Donna leaned across and diverted the phone to Reserve, rolling her chair closer for a sneak view of Barbara’s computer. The screen was split between emails and Finch’s calendar, so Donna secretly nudged the space bar to prevent it from locking.
‘What does he think you live on? Air?’ she murmured, nodding at the closed interconnecting door.
‘He’s still out, charging all over the place,’ said Barbara, unfolding a paper napkin. ‘I saw him on TV from the City about two hours ago, then nothing. Everyone’s trying to
get hold of him. I’m only his bloody diary secretary, after all.’
Barbara Santer had been drafted in from the Yard’s small witness protection unit on the fourteenth floor three months earlier, upon the overnight departure of her predecessor. Her developed vetting status qualified her to work for Derek Finch, and she had endured sexual harassment almost from day one. Having disclosed next to nothing about her private life, Barbara concluded he must have had access to her vetting papers, for he seemed to know everything about her situation, especially the fact that she was newly single and staying with her mother. Finch’s predatory conduct was a hot topic between the women, though Barbara always refused to take things further. ‘You think anyone’s going to believe me over the head of department?’ she had said early in their friendship. ‘Take it from me, people like him do whatever they want.’
‘Not these days.’
‘Donna, I got rid of one shagger for another. What’s new?’
For both women the past week had been frenetic, an administrative whirlwind of meetings, briefings and calls from Home Office, MI5, Northern Ireland Office, the Cabinet Secretary and the Commissioner. With no knowledge of the government machine’s impenetrable Who’s Who, Barbara had been ringing her more experienced friend every day for advice and support.
Donna wiped her mouth with the paper napkin and steered the conversation to work. ‘How’s he been since Victoria?’
‘Rubbish as ever. I blanked him again Friday afternoon when he asked me out for a drink and he’s practically ignored me ever since. It’s even worse now the pressure’s on and he’s tired.’ Barbara blew out her cheeks and nudged the computer screen. ‘He never gives me enough info to keep a proper calendar. If I schedule something he barges in and cancels it. Sometimes doesn’t even tell me. I’m blanking callers all the time because I never know where he is, whether he’s coming or going. This is the most shit manager I’ve ever worked for. And I’m so sorry about letting your boss down on…when was it?’
