Timebomb (Paul Richter)

by James Barrington

  ‘That’s what Schneider believes.’

  ‘So who was the doppelgänger?’ Simpson asked. And, perhaps more to the point, what was his motive in blowing the whistle on these people?’

  ‘That’s where it gets really interesting. We’re quite certain it wasn’t just a neighbour or anyone who’d seen something suspicious in the building. Quite apart from anything else, if that were the case, there’d be no need for the man to hide his identity. It also looks as if Rolf Hermann was chosen deliberately. Immediately after the real landlord called at the police station, Schneider ran some checks on him. The man’s phone line had been deliberately cut, but Hermann probably wouldn’t even have known that, since now he virtually lives with his daughter because of his poor health.’

  ‘So even if the police had gone round to his house, they wouldn’t have found him at home?’

  ‘Exactly Whoever impersonated Hermann knew quite a lot about him and took some care to ensure the police wouldn’t discover the deception. He clearly wanted their assault on the place to go ahead. But the two facts that stand out are that the doppelgänger knew those men in the building were terrorists – or at least sitting on a small arsenal – and that he had the telephone number of the apartment. That has to mean he was somehow involved with them. And another check by the police seemed to confirm that.’

  ‘The rental agency?’ Simpson guessed.

  ‘Yes. As far as the agency staff can remember, the person who rented that apartment fitted the description of the doppelgänger reasonably well, but there were no CCTV cameras in the rental office, and none close enough to the building itself to be worth checking. According to the agency’s records, he gave his name as Heinrich Grunewald and he paid the rental and the security deposit in cash.’

  ‘So it looks as if the fake Hermann – let’s call him “Hermann II” – rented the place, moved his accomplices, or whoever they were, into it, and then blew the whistle on them.’

  ‘Yes, and finally he tipped them off that the police were right outside the door, to more or less ensure that the result was a serious fire-fight with multiple casualties.’

  ‘Is it just me or does that make no sense at all?’

  ‘It’s not just you, Simpson. Schneider has no clue what’s going on either.’

  ‘And have you? Has your devious mind come up with some half-way plausible explanation?’

  ‘Not really.’ Richter shook his head. ‘When you look at that sequence of events, it really doesn’t make sense. But if you forget how it happened and just look at what happened, perhaps there is a kind of twisted logic to it.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Three days ago, neither of us had even heard of Onex. Now, we have four heavily armed terrorists lying dead – and unfortunately the same number of police officers killed – but with no civilian casualties, and with whatever atrocity the gang was planning in Switzerland presumably stopped in its tracks. Then there’s Hermann II’s statement about seeing the so-called “shopping list” and the reference to “FRB London” on the same terrorists’ laptop, which was the reason you sent me there in the first place.’

  ‘So?’ Simpson prompted.

  ‘So as a result of this operation, a genuine terrorist cell has been eliminated and Britain has been warned about a possible attack over here. I think somebody’s trying to send us a message, a message that we would take seriously precisely because of what happened in Onex.’

  Simpson mulled that over for a few seconds. ‘Yes, I suppose that does make some sense. Do you think the Swiss will be able to get any useful intelligence out of that apartment?’

  ‘Probably not much. The living room was really badly shot up, not to mention having a grenade explode right in the middle of it. I saw the laptop – or what was left of it – and that was pretty much wrecked, too. They might find some other stuff in the bedrooms, I suppose, but I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting.’

  ‘Right. I hope you haven’t unpacked.’

  ‘Unpacked? What do you mean “unpacked”? You know I’ve driven straight here from Dover.’

  ‘That’s good, because you’re going on another little trip. Something rather like the incident at Onex seems to be going on in Germany as well, only this time there hasn’t been a tip-off from some phantom phone-caller. Instead, an off-duty police officer spotted what looked like possible preparations for a bank robbery, but the surveillance now seems to suggest it could be terrorist-related.’

  Simpson then briefly outlined what had happened in Stuttgart.

  ‘So what’s the terrorist link?’ Richter asked.

  ‘Only a snatch of conversation they recorded on their parabolic mikes. Two of the suspects stood talking outside the building, and one of them mentioned the “big one in London”. The other one laughed and muttered something like “biggest bang since the war”. The problem was the Germans can’t be sure of the exact words, because of the distance of the mikes from the subjects, and there was a stiff wind blowing, and noisy traffic driving along the street. A whole bunch of fuck-factors, in short, but the BGS was still concerned enough to inform Five and Six.’

  ‘If the German police have called in the Bundesgrenzschutz they must be taking it seriously.’

  ‘And so is Vauxhall Cross. They want us to liaise with the BGS and, as you’ve already done such a wonderful job in Switzerland’ – Simpson gave Richter a withering look – ‘I’ve decided you can hop on a BA flight to Stuttgart tomorrow morning and give the Germans a hand.’

  He passed an envelope across the desk. ‘Your ticket and contact details for the plods in Stuttgart are in there. Don’t even think about asking to take a weapon. You’re going over there for liaison only just in case this German thing is anything at all to do with what happened in Switzerland. This time, if possible, try very hard not to kill anyone.’

  Chapter Five

  Wednesday

  Stuttgart, Germany

  The moment Richter stepped into the arrivals hall just after eleven that morning, he saw a broad-shouldered man with very fair, almost white, hair and wearing a dark suit, holding up a piece of A4 paper with the name ‘RICHTER’ on it and, below that, ‘BGS’. Richter walked over and showed his passport.

  ‘My name is Franz.’ The man spoke fluent English, but with the kind of accent that inescapably reminded Richter of all the caricature Germans he’d seen in old films. ‘Did you have a good flight?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really.’ Richter replied. ‘I flew British Airways,’ he added, as if that explained everything, which in many ways it did.

  ‘OK. The car is outside,’ Franz said. ‘You have any other luggage?’

  ‘No,’ Richter replied, his computer bag slung over his shoulder and an overnight case in one hand. ‘This is it.’

  The car was a dark grey Opel, a driver waiting behind the wheel. Richter stowed his bags in the boot and climbed into the back seat, Franz sat beside the driver in the front. The extra equipment fitted to the dash, including a two-way radio and a data-entry keyboard with a small screen above, immediately told him the car was an unmarked police vehicle.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Richter asked.

  ‘First to your hotel.’ Franz turned round in his seat. ‘You’ve been booked into the Holiday Inn, because it’s fairly close to the focus of the operation. Once you’ve checked in, we’ll head over to the police station, where we’ve arranged a briefing for you. I believe you were involved in that recent terrorist incident just outside Geneva?’

  ‘I was only there as an observer,’ Richter said. ‘And how did you know about that anyway?’

  Franz grinned at him. ‘The world of counter-terrorism is really quite small,’ he said. ‘The BGS has good connections with all the other European units, and I have several friends in the Swiss TIU. Wilhelm Schneider, by the way, sends his regards, and an apology for the misunderstanding that marred the end of your visit to Switzerland. He asked me to tell you that he’d managed to stop any further proceedings and he ass
ured me you’d know what he was talking about.’

  Richter nodded. ‘I know exactly what he means, and please thank him next time you talk with him.’

  Forty minutes later, with his overnight case and computer bag locked away in his room at the Holiday Inn, Richter entered a briefing room in a police station on the east side of Stuttgart, where the BGS had set up their local command post.

  ‘This is Mr Richter,’ Franz announced in German.

  At one end of the room were several pin-boards with maps and other graphics attached, with a couple of people standing staring at them. About half a dozen other men were sitting at computers which lined the side walls. The two men at the front of the room turned and moved towards the door. One of them, a short dark-haired man with a swarthy complexion, stopped in front of Richter, his hand outstretched. ‘Welcome,’ he said with a smile, in English almost devoid of any accent. ‘My name is Karl Wolff, and I’m the local Bundesgrenzschutz commander.’

  ‘Paul Richter. I’m a sort of rep for the British SIS.’

  ‘You’re rather more than that, I think.’ Wolff’s smile broadened. ‘We heard about what happened in Onex.’

  Richter was beginning to wonder if there was anyone who didn’t know about the shoot-out near Geneva.

  ‘It was only supposed to be a liaison visit,’ he explained, ‘but things got rather out of hand.’

  ‘From what I’m told, if you hadn’t stepped in, the result might have been a lot worse. Wilhelm Schneider speaks very highly of you.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it.’

  Wolff quickly introduced him to the other members of his team, finally gesturing to Franz.

  ‘And you’ve already met Franz Kelle. Now, what exactly have you been told about our operation here?’ Wolff said, waving Richter to a seat at the front of the room.

  ‘Only that the local police believed they might have detected preparations for a bank robbery, but then a few words recorded during their surveillance made them decide to call in the BGS. Those remarks seemed to refer to a terrorist operation involving London, which is why I’m here.’

  ‘That’s a fair summary.’ Wolff picked up an extendable pointer and turned to face the map of east Stuttgart pinned up behind him. ‘We’re here,’ he indicated, ‘and this building over here is the bank in question. Now,’ he said, and shifted the pointer to an aerial photograph of a large square building, ‘this is an overhead view of the bank itself, and this long oblong structure attached to it is a row of empty shops with storerooms above.’

  ‘They’re all empty?’ Richter asked. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘The area is scheduled for redevelopment and, apart from the bank, the whole lot will be pulled down in about four months. With the end-date getting closer, leases on the shops are obviously much less attractive. The last property was vacated about a month ago, and they’ve all remained empty since. Then a local police officer spotted men carrying boxes into this shop here’ – he indicated the property immediately adjoining the bank – ‘and that made him wonder. The police checked with the landlords, and they confirmed that they hadn’t leased the property to anybody, so they knew that at the very least these people were trespassing.’

  ‘Anyway after warning the bank manager, our men fitted microphones against that wall of the vault and began their surveillance operation. That didn’t yield anything interesting until they caught that brief snatch of conversation.’

  ‘The “biggest bang since the war”,’ Richter quoted.

  ‘Exactly that and something to do with London. Now,’ Wolff continued briskly, ‘we’ll obviously be taking these men down, but not immediately. We decided to keep watching them for a while longer to see if we can glean any other intelligence that might help identify their actual target. The other concern,’ he added, ‘is that if we strike too soon we might not get all of them.’

  ‘How many of them are there in the building?’ Richter asked.

  ‘We’ve spotted nine different individuals in all, but they keep on coming and going, and usually there are only three or four on the premises at any one time. When we do eventually go in, we might have to run two operations in parallel: one to take down the group inside the building and the other to arrest those still out on the streets somewhere.’

  ‘And of course they could have external links as well,’ Richter suggested. ‘These people normally set up multiple cells, and the last thing we’d want to do is take out a single cell without having established any idea where the other ones are located.’

  ‘Quite. Now, you’ve probably not heard, but the Swiss technical experts today finished their examination of the laptop found in the apartment at Onex. They got nothing from it, unfortunately, as the damage to the hard disk was too severe. In fact it had virtually disintegrated.’

  ‘What about the rest of the apartment?’

  ‘According to Schneider, they found very little inside the flat. It looked as if those men were just using it as a doss-house, because there was almost no personal information to be found in it anywhere. Three of the dead men were of European appearance, but the fourth was dark-skinned with Arabic features, which might indicate some kind of an Islamic link, and they all carried false Dutch passports. About the only thing the Swiss could do was send off their fingerprints to Interpol for checking, but there’s no guarantee they’ll already be on file anywhere.’

  Canterbury, Kent

  ‘That was the DS at Sheerness,’ Dick Clark put down the phone and turned to look at Mason, ‘with an update on Barney.’

  The incident room at Canterbury had been set up only the day before, and the paucity of information on the boards so far was worrying both Mason and Clark. They had pictures of the dead man and the spot where he was found at Reculver, others of the sea front at Sheerness, and also a large-scale map of the area with these two locations marked on it. And that was pretty much it, because it was virtually all they knew about the victim. They had no clue about his family, even if he had one, or any acquaintances. One of the most bizarre aspects of the case was that the people who probably knew Barney best were the Sheerness police, and even they had almost no information about him.

  ‘What have they got for us?’ Mason asked.

  ‘Not a lot. The lab’s now confirmed that the blood and hairs found on the walking stick at Sheerness did come from the same body we found at Reculver. Yesterday afternoon they dragged The Ghoul himself over to the crime scene on Sheppey He hummed and hawed a bit, but they finally got him to agree that the killing probably took place there, and he put that in writing earlier today.’

  ‘So we know what happened, and where it happened,’ Mason replied, ‘so the only two questions that need answering now are who killed him and why.’

  ‘They’ve run the victim’s fingerprints through the system, and they found a match,’ Clark added. ‘That isn’t too surprising, as we know the Sheerness plods had picked him up for disorderly conduct a few times, but there’s almost nothing else known about him.’ Clark scanned the notes he’d made during his telephone conversation. ‘His name was Edward Holmes, aka Barney, age about seventy-two.’

  ‘What do you mean, “About seventy-two”?’ Mason queried.

  ‘He’s given the Sheerness boys three different dates of birth at various times, and that’s the average figure. He’s been arrested in the past by several officers in Kent, and also a few in Essex, but only for the usual drunk and disorderly. There’s nothing that suggests he wasn’t just a harmless old tramp.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘They’ve organized a door-to-door, as you requested, but they’re not very hopeful. The area where Barney was killed is almost entirely a commercial district, so unless there was another late-night dog-walker or courting couple or something like that, we’re not going to find out much that way. They’ll also check all the late-night shops and takeaways. We know he ate pie and chips that evening, about three or four hours before he died, so we presume he bought them somewhere in Shee
rness. That might give us a fairly accurate time and confirm a location. But that’s about it.’

  ‘This case really bugs me,’ Mason said thoughtfully, staring at the boards. ‘I mean, that poor old sod’s entire possessions added up to fifteen quid and change, and by all accounts he was just a completely harmless old drunk, not really bothering anyone. Nobody benefits from his death, and I just can’t see any motive that makes sense. So why did somebody decide to almost cut his head off?’

  ‘Maybe it was a gang of teenagers after all,’ Clark suggested. ‘I know we discounted that possibility earlier, but perhaps some of the local thugs decided to elevate their game a step above merely beating him up. I mean, they’re an odd lot on Sheppey.’

  ‘They may be,’ Mason shook his head, ‘but I don’t think that’s the answer. If it was just a teenage prank that went a long way too far, you’d expect a different kind of injury on the body.’ He picked up the report of the autopsy faxed to them from Maidstone that morning. ‘Briefly, what we have here is three separate injuries inflicted at about the time of his death. These are a single large bruise on his lower abdomen, consistent with a hard kick or a punch, and a severe blow to the left side rear of the head, which we now know was administered with his own walking stick. Finally, his throat was slashed with a sharp, long-bladed knife, most likely single-edged. The Ghoul thinks it might have been a large pocket-knife, and his killer probably administered a single cut, from side to side.

  ‘Every other mark on the body was either the result of Barney habitually sleeping rough, or was received postmortem. If this was genuinely some kind of “tramp-bashing” incident, you’d be more likely to encounter multiple bruises and perhaps even the odd broken bone. And if they had then decided to cut his throat, there would probably be multiple jabs, not just a single stroke.

  ‘To me these injuries suggest a deliberate and efficient method of killing. A kick to drive the breath out of him, the blow to the head to knock him unconscious, and to finish him off they slit his throat.’