“Is that so?” Alexander murmured. He still held the gun to my head – still hadn’t decided.
“Look, Alex, kill her if you want. But that job’s next week, so you’ll have to get me a replacement sharpish, and a good one. We don’t want to let the Davis mob down.”
Samuel’s voice was casual, unconcerned. If he was trying to save my life, he was doing a very good job of making it look otherwise.
“Hmm.” Alexander twisted his mouth to the side, then slowly lowered the gun. I gasped with relief, closing my eyes to try to hold back the tears that shimmered, threatening to overspill. “On your feet,” he said.
My legs didn’t feel like they were working yet, but Zane was lifting me, my full weight supported by a fistful of my hair, so I scrambled to get my feet beneath me. I swayed slightly, but managed to stay standing when Zane released me. My eyes were locked on Alexander’s. He took both hands and placed them on either side of my head, then he leaned forward and softly kissed the spot where his gun had dug into my head. The skin throbbed slightly; I was going to have a bruise.
“I don’t like people plotting and scheming behind my back,” he said, addressing me, but making sure his words reached Samuel as well. “It makes me think they’re doing things they shouldn’t be. Understand?”
I nodded, one traitorous tear sliding down my cheek.
Alexander smiled, then his hand whipped up and smashed me across the face. He was still holding the gun.
My eyes rolled backwards in my head as I hit the ground for the second time. I was still conscious, but only just. The room spun, and when I clapped my hand to my face I could feel that the skin had split. Blood oozed over my fingers. I pulled my hood around to absorb the hot, sticky liquid, my eyes on the pristine carpeting. I didn’t look up, but I felt the light vibrations of the floorboards as Alexander walked away.
On my hands and knees, I crawled my way into a corner. And I stayed there.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Alexander kept me around because I had two skills he considered valuable. The first was my ability to get into – and out of – awkward places. I was small enough and agile enough to wriggle through windows or shimmy up walls, but more than that; I was invisible. Even with my tattoo, my piercings and my alternative haircut, I was inconspicuous. The eye tended to rove right over my head whenever anyone scanned a crowd. I could never work out if that was self-preservation, if they sensed I might be one of those contemptuous, easily aggravated teenagers who looked to cause trouble; or if it was because I was so defeated, such a nobody, that they couldn’t bear to look at me. Either way, my presence more often than not went unnoticed, and time after time I came back from errands for Alexander that I shouldn’t have.
The second skill was exponentially more valuable: I knew how to make bombs.
It wasn’t an innate skill, I wasn’t born with the ability to create chaos and destruction; but the inner workings, delicate connections and wirings, just made sense to me. I’d always been fascinated by puzzles: from connect the dots and mazes to Rubik’s cubes and sudoku. They were logical, rational. The answer was there, somewhere, if you just looked hard enough. In the turmoil of my life as a child – passed from parent to parent, foster home to care home – they were a comfort; they were something I could control, something I could fix. The complex, interlinking circuitry of a bomb was just another puzzle, another brainteaser to solve, only this time a deadly one.
Alexander had uncovered my talent quite by accident. At that time all of his terrorist bombings were planned, organised and executed by two men: Kieran and Patrick. They were Irish, and they’d done their apprenticeships trying to instigate a resurgence of violence in Northern Ireland. It was ironic that the first bombs they’d made were to separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK and now they were working to repair that fracture, but no one ever mentioned that fact. They were dangerous men.
They didn’t often visit Bancroft Road, preferring to keep a distance, receiving orders through intermediaries for whatever job Alexander planned for them next, and although that meant Alexander couldn’t control their every movement as he would have liked, he consented to let them work their own way, so long as everything ran like clockwork. It did, for a while, but then things began to go wrong. I don’t know if they started to get lazy, if they were skimming more off their fee by getting in cheaper components and explosives, or whether they didn’t realise quite who they were working for, but a job – one Alexander had gone to great expense to set up access to, buying blueprints and paying off security – went disastrously wrong. The bomb didn’t detonate and it was discovered. The neutralised vestiges found their way to the police and then, mysteriously but not surprisingly, to Alexander, and he was not pleased. The Irishmen were summoned.
I was in Alexander’s office – curled up on a sofa, quiet and discreet, there but not there – when they arrived. It was the middle of winter and it must have been snowing hard outside, because both men had unmelted flakes clinging to their hair and shoulders when they entered Alexander’s lair.
Zane let them in. Alexander remained sitting on another of the oversized sofas, twiddling something in his fingers. He refused to look at either of the bombers, but stared down at the thing in his hands like it was the most fascinating object in the world. Kieran and Patrick stood waiting, arms behind their backs, legs slightly apart like soldiers, or like pupils brought before the headmaster. They looked more annoyed than fearful, as if they thought this treatment was beneath them. One of them, Kieran, cleared his throat to let Alexander know he was there. I suppressed a grin. Alexander already knew.
“Mr Alexander, you wanted to see us?” he prompted, after his more subtle hint had evoked no response.
Alexander smiled down at his hands.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked, voice like velvet.
Kieran held his hand out for the object, but Alexander’s fingers tightened around it. He had no intention of giving it up, and after a few awkward moments Kieran’s arm dropped back to his side.
It was Patrick who spoke.
“It would appear to be the remains of a bomb,” he remarked, his tone sarcastic, his eyebrows knitted together in a scowl. Clearly he was unimpressed at the less than warm reception he and his partner were receiving.
“Yes, it is,” Alexander said, twiddling at the wires, making a little black box spin. “And do you know why I’m holding it?”
Silence.
The correct answer was because it hadn’t gone off, but neither man wanted to admit to that, because that would be tantamount to accepting responsibility, accepting failure.
Alexander drew the moment out several seconds longer, enjoying the way both men shifted uncomfortably.
“I’m holding it, because the police recovered the whole device, intact, at the scene. Now,” he paused, looked up at them for the first time. Kieran looked away, but Patrick held his stare. “Can you understand how that might present something of a problem for me?”
“There was nothing to link the bomb to us, or you,” Patrick shot back. I had to admire his bravery, but he was dicing with death answering back to Alexander. “We didn’t leave fingerprints, and the parts are untraceable.”
“I should hope not,” Alexander murmured, smiling coolly. “But it takes time and resources and contacts to set up access to a job like that. So when you mess up, I lose money, and I lose face.”
That was the real issue. Alexander was very careful about his reputation. He was known as a cold-hearted bastard, a good businessman, and someone who got things done. A botched job looked bad, it sowed seeds of doubt in the minds of his associates, made him look unprofessional.
“It won’t happen again,” Kieran assured him, glancing up briefly from the hole he was trying to burn into the carpet with his embarrassed and angry glare.
Alexander stood up. He was at least two inches shorter than either man, but they seemed to have shrunk during the length of the conversation.
“I want to know wh
y it happened this time!” He raised his voice, just a little, just to the volume of any normal conversation, but it was enough to make Kieran flinch and Patrick drop his gaze. He waved the device in the air. “Why did this not go off?”
Kieran shrugged. “I don’t know. Everything was set up perfectly. There was no reason for it not to detonate. Maybe there was a fault in the wire, maybe the C4 was bad, maybe—”
“Maybe, maybe, maybe,” Alexander hissed.
Kieran took the hint and shut up, his teeth coming together with an audible snap.
“Useless,” Alexander tossed the device over his shoulder. It landed lightly on the cushion beside me on the sofa.
Now that I could see it clearly, it was more obviously the inner workings of a bomb. There were several wires, all lines in different colours of rubber tubing, all leading to a little black box. Their other ends were exposed and frayed, with the residue of some pale blue substance the consistency of play dough sticking to the copper threading. I glanced up at Alexander, but he was still talking, the broad shoulders of his back to me. In one quick, decisive movement, I reached out and snatched up the black box. Still nobody turned to me.
With nimble fingers I eased the cap off and peered inside. It was a fairly simple system; a switch to connect the circuit and set off the charge. I didn’t see a trigger, like a timing mechanism, but that was probably remote controlled so that whoever set it up would have time to get far enough away to escape the fallout of the blast – a few metres or a block, depending how much explosive was attached to the end. I did see what was wrong with it, though, straight away. It was fairly obvious.
“It’s been wired wrong,” I murmured.
“What?” A harsh Irish accent whipped out the word and I jerked my head up. I hadn’t meant anyone to hear me.
Patrick was staring at me, his upper lip curling in a sneer.
“It’s been wired wrong,” I repeated, a little louder. My cheeks coloured and I felt my pulse pounding in my throat. I was very aware that my presence in the room was supposed to be silent.
“Don’t be stupid,” Patrick snapped.
“How would you know?” His partner, too, was eyeing me with distain and dislike.
Alexander turned to me, raised one eyebrow questioningly. I knew that look. It meant I’d better be right, or I’d be sorry for opening my mouth. I was already sorry; but I was right, too.
“No, really. Look.” I held the little black box out for Alexander’s inspection, my fingers pointing to the mistake I’d spotted. “The wires come into these inputs, but the switch is linked to the wrong connectors. The circuit couldn’t complete, that’s why it wouldn’t detonate.”
“Let me see that,” Patrick snatched the device out of my hands, making sure to give Alexander a wide berth as he moved back to stand beside his partner. The two of them bent over it, examining their handiwork. After several seconds Patrick raised his head and stared hard at Kieran. “You idiot,” he whispered.
Alexander grinned wolfishly. He didn’t need to see the inside of the device for himself, the truth was written all over their faces.
“Well, that’s not a mistake I expect we’ll be needing to repeat,” he said. “You got an advance for the job, but as there was no boom, you won’t be getting the rest of your fee.”
Neither man looked happy with that, but they weren’t about to argue.
“See Zane, he’s in the basement. He’ll give you your next assignment.” Alexander lingered ominously over the final word, but Kieran and Patrick didn’t notice, they were too eager to get out of the room with nothing less than a hit in the pocket and an unhappy boss.
Alexander’s office wasn’t soundproofed, and a couple of minutes later I heard two muffled pops. Patrick and Kieran would not be doing any more jobs for Alexander.
I didn’t waste any time feeling sorry for them. I was under the spotlight now, uncomfortably so.
“Tell me how you knew there was something wrong with this.” Alexander had returned to the sofa, the device back in his hands, and he tapped me on the knee with it, punctuating each word. I watched the little plastic box bounce off my jeans as I wondered what the right answer was.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “It’s just… logic. Circuits are circles and switches are open or closed, and you can follow the connections round. It’s like a map or something.”
“Has anyone ever shown you how to build something like this?”
I shook my head, my innocence and my fear clear on my face.
“Hmmm.” Alexander narrowed his eyes as he looked at me, but his expression was thoughtful and calculating rather than angry.
Patrick and Kieran were the last two explosives agents Alexander brought in from outside. They had proved untrustworthy, and he wanted his finger more firmly on the pulse, wanted to oversee every part of the operation, from set up to implementation. He took to organising these forays into terrorism in-house, using as his operative someone he had total and utter control over: me. I was given a crash course in rudimentary bomb construction – which mostly consisted of someone taking me to an Internet cafe and keeping watch whilst I plugged searches into Google that would almost certainly flag up on the big brother communications monitoring the government claimed it didn’t do.
There was no time to practise. The first time I laid my hands on C4 explosive was my first job. It was a small target: nothing political, nothing to do with the ‘cause’. A small-time drug dealer had failed to pay his debt to Alexander. He’d had warnings, but the money had still to come in, so now it was time to send a stronger message. The man – I didn’t know his name – had a garage he used for ‘storage’: cannabis cultivation in reality. I was going to go and blow it up. Usually Alexander would have sent a lackey in to torch the place, but he thought it was an ideal opportunity for me to prove my worth.
I didn’t go alone. Though it wasn’t a difficult task – the garage was in a run-down industrial area and would be all but abandoned at the time of night we planned to visit – Alexander didn’t like the idea of me being out of his sight with a jacket full of explosives. It was also awkward to get to, and I couldn’t drive. It would have been easy enough to learn, Alexander owned countless cars and anyone could have taken a few hours to teach me the basics, enough to get me from A to B. But then I would be independent. Then I might be able to get away. Alexander’s reasoning stopped there, never considering that I had nowhere else to go.
Samuel took me. He was keen to become more involved with Alexander’s terrorist activities, and though this wasn’t anything to do with that, he knew where Alexander’s schemes for me were leading, even if I didn’t. I didn’t really know Samuel at that point. He had been in Cardiff for years, since before the wall was built and the Welsh Assembly fell apart, running his brother’s business deals in their hometown, some above board… some less so. But now that he was living in London, he was eager to carve out his own niche in Alexander’s world.
We drove there in total silence. Samuel didn’t speak, and I knew that with his brother it would be best to keep my mouth shut. I still didn’t know how alike they were, and how they differed.
“This is it,” Samuel said, coasting to a stop and motioning to a large metal gate. “Thomson’s garage is in there, number thirty. I’ll stay here with the car.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
I sounded like a frightened little girl, because that’s what I was. My eyes were huge in the dark, drinking in the sight before me. Thomson’s garage was curled away inside a rickety wall of corrugated iron. Floodlights glared down at odd intervals, creating bright pools of light and deep corners of shadow. There was no one in sight, but that didn’t mean there weren’t people – or dogs – lurking in the gloom.
Funnily enough I wasn’t worried about the bomb. There was no chance of me blowing myself up. I knew I had wired everything correctly. All that was left to do was attach the explosive in situ and set the timer. Simple.
Getting in and getting out
was what terrified me.
Samuel heard the nerves in my voice.
“Do you know what you’re doing with that?” he asked, indicating the small bag that I carried the bomb in.
“Yes,” I nodded, my voice a little stronger.
“It’s time,” he said.
I took one deep breath and then got out of the car. Samuel had killed the lights of the Ford Focus, but I felt the force of his eyes following me as I stepped round the front of the vehicle. The road was empty, but I still jogged lightly across it, eager to be in the shadow of the pavement. The padlocked gate looked the easiest access, but the telltale winking green light of a CCTV camera was mounted on one of the floodlight poles. Rather than risk being seen, if there was any security watching from inside, I walked along the fence a little way until I found a patch of darkness between two streetlights. I took a moment to stare left and right, making sure I wasn’t being watched by anyone other than Samuel, then vaulted the fence in one smooth movement. I landed on the other side, bending my legs against the impact and crouching down low to the ground to look around. Empty and silent.
Cautiously I made my way around the back of a long line of garages, pausing to peer down the narrow slit alleyways to read the numbers along the row opposite. Number thirty was right at the far end, tucked neatly into a corner. It had its own camera, hanging off the top left-hand corner and marking it out as different to the rest of the rundown storage boxes, but it was still the same construction, it still had the tiny window at the back; and that’s where I was heading.
The glass was black, reflecting the inky darkness inside. I picked up a rock from the ground and, holding my breath, smashed it hard against the pane. The glass shattered, and immediately a burning light began to glare out of the hole, streaming across the darkened wasteland behind.
“Oh Christ!” I hissed. Anyone looking out would be able to see that for miles around! Why the hell were there lights on?
Panicking, I jumped up and shuffled my way into the tiny hole I’d made. It was six inches by twelve inches maximum, and if I’d been ten pounds heavier I’d never have made it through.
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