by Alan Porter
5
Phillip Shaw had no interest in the video link that appeared on the right-most of his three screens, set exactly thirty degrees apart on a desk devoid of anything not directly connected to his home-made computer. He glanced at the link, scanned some of the chat, then went back to what he was doing.
A few seconds later an alert on the left screen caught his eye. His mother had specifically tasked him to watch his sister, and this screen was his window into her life. He’d cloned every device she owned and had a running log of her activity. At fourteen, she was never far from her phone or tablet.
He opened the mirror of her iPad and watched Esther click on the link to the video. A sub-screen logged her browser routing through a series of servers before the video itself opened.
It was a single-camera movie of a hotel, probably in London, though Phillip was not familiar with much of the city. For five seconds nothing happened, then a ball of flame and dust erupted from an opening at the foot of a squat tower. The camera shook in the blast, then settled again as the dust cloud advanced rapidly towards it and the building began to topple forwards. The image grew darker, obscured entirely, paused for a moment, then cut to a view of the collapsed building across the road.
Esther replayed the video, but Phillip had seen enough. He ran a trace to see who had sent her the link (it turned out to be her best friend and neighbour JoLynn, who was more than likely sitting right next to Esther at the time).
His sister was safe, no need for concern.
He turned to the right-hand screen and maximised the top-most of the dozen or so chat feeds. The Dark Web was alive with discussion of the bomb video. It had, apparently, been shot just an hour and a half earlier in central London. Speculation was rife as to who had managed to get round the almost fanatical security of the city to mount such an audacious attack.
It meant very little to Phillip. Although his flat on the Broadwater Farm estate was just a few miles north of the city, it might as well have been on another planet. What happened in leafy central London was of little concern to him. Indeed, what happened more or less anywhere off the internet grid was of little concern to him.
Phillip Shaw, eighteen, unemployed and unemployable, was just another black kid on an inner city estate that meant nothing to anyone until it caused trouble. And since the heady days of the 1985 riots, the Farm had not caused enough trouble to warrant attention from anyone.
Phillip had never run with the gangs of the estate. Like many of his contemporaries, his education was limited but he had no interest in gang life. He had his own interests. As he drifted away from school and faded from the attention of social workers and teachers, his entire world became computers. Loose acquaintances in the Waterboys sourced bits of hardware for him (some legal, most probably not), and he built ever more sophisticated machines. He learned to hack, to spy, to subvert the efforts of the authorities around the world. He sold his countersurveillance software for pocket money. A routine that bypassed Chinese governmental spyware might earn him a thousandth of a bitcoin, but there were a lot of Chinese customers and he now had a decent little savings account, at least in the virtual world he called home.
But wealth didn’t interest him. His mother didn’t know he had the talents to be rich or she might have insisted that they move to a better neighbourhood. Phillip couldn’t risk that. He felt safe in the Farm. He knew where he was. People planted bombs in other parts of the city.
If wealth, power, politics and the world in general didn’t interest Phillip Shaw, there was one thing he could never resist: a challenge.
The internet was alive with the bomb video and speculation about who might have been behind it. If no one knew yet, the video must have been carefully cloaked and whoever was behind the events just a few miles down the road was trying to stay anonymous. This was a challenge.
Phillip logged on to the Dem0nAg3nt board and started to gather his team together.
6
Leila Reid stopped her anonymous blue Peugeot 208 right in the middle of Kensington Road. Parking was never easier than in a crisis. The uniformed officers at the De Vere Gardens cordon had been satisfied with her explanation that she was with CTC, sent by Lawrence on a preliminary scouting expedition. They’d slid the barrier aside for her then turned their attention back to the crowds who were trying to see what was going on a hundred yards further up the road.
She walked towards the wreckage of the Park Hotel. A steady breeze blew along Kensington Road from the west, low and laden with fine dust. She’d seen the aftermath of bombs in southern Lebanon during her time with the Foreign Office, but this was different. There was none of the acrid ammonia smell that hung in the air hours after a kitchen-table IED had detonated. Here the air smelled of burnt rubber and concrete. All the fires were out but trails of smoke still emerged from deep within the rubble that had been the west wing of the hotel.
Lawrence had told her the explosion had been at the Embassy. It had been close to the Embassy, but not at it. Another lie to draw her interest? She should just to walk away, but she had already fallen into Lawrence’s trap. They both knew that if he could get her to come this far, she’d be caught.
It was 2.17pm. There were still four ambulances parked a little way further along the road, along with two fire engines and half a dozen police patrol vehicles. Three Territorial Support Group vans were parked at the far barrier. They would be there principally in their Counter-Terrorism support role, but someone in Scotland Yard was also anticipating trouble. The TSG officers present at the scene were fully equipped for riot control.
Several pop-up tents had been erected on the pavement opposite the hotel. White-overalled forensics techs scoured the pavement along the line of shops behind them, carefully sweeping broken glass and fragments of wood away as the walked. There were only two things they could be looking for: bomb fragments and body fragments, one to piece together the cause, the other to piece together the effect.
With a clearer view around the TSG vans now she saw a number of S52 neo-Nazis were beginning to congregate beyond the barrier. ‘Solidarity 52’, a loose affiliation of disaffected former members of the English Defence League, Combat 18 and the BNP, had already decided this was a terrorist attack. And there was only one breed of terrorists these days.
Two uniformed officers emerged from the tavern directly across the road from the hotel and walked away towards a mobile incident truck parked by gates of the Embassy. Fine dust covered everything, and the ground crunched minutely as Leila picked her way through the debris towards the hotel.
The western end of hotel’s five-storey tower had collapsed downwards and backwards into the subterranean parking garage and spilled across the entrance to Kensington Palace Gardens. A fire service ladder unit was parked close to the building, its ladder extended over the wreckage. Search and rescue were working their way upwards around the rubble, stopping, listening, moving on; a crane parked at the cordon fifty yards further along Kensington High Street was waiting to do the heavy lifting when the rescue of survivors turned to the search for bodies. At the moment the two German Shepherd sniffer dogs clambering over the building indicated there were still people to rescue.
A black man in civilian clothing jumped down from the back of one of the ambulances and walked towards the entrance ramp to the underground car park. Leila followed him. Something about him didn’t fit.
‘Hey, wait,’ she called. He turned towards her. ‘You police?’
‘No. Private security.’
‘Then you can’t enter the building. This is a crime scene.’
‘TSG know I’m here. And you are?’
‘Here to see what the hell’s happened. What do you know?’
‘I know we’ve got eight confirmed dead, forty-something serious injuries. It could have been a lot worse considering the location.’
‘Most of the blast was contained underground by the look of it.’
The man nodded. ‘There’s still about thirty hotel r
ooms we’ve not been able to enter yet,’ he said.
‘What about the Embassy?’
‘They’re not talking to anyone.’
‘Foreign soil. If they don’t want their casualties counting towards our totals, that’s fine. Were you here when it went off?’
‘Over in the park. I’m Ruth Morgan’s body guard, Gavin Byers.’ He held out his hand. Leila ignored it.
‘And Miss Morgan’s where now?’ she said.
‘I left her at the Palace.’
‘Good.’ She nodded.
‘I’m going back inside,’ Gavin said. ‘You want to come along?’
‘I’ll catch you up if I need to. Just want to get a feel for the place first.’
Gavin took a hard hat from the back of the fire tender and stooped into an opening at the foot of the tower.
It was obvious that this had been a bomb. The rooms immediately above the car park entrance had collapsed, but the east side of the building was largely undamaged. Had this been a gas leak in the underground facility, the rolling ignition of gas would have directed most of the blast out of the openings in the building, and probably wouldn’t have caused much in the way of structural damage at all.
But Byers was right: as far as deaths and serious injuries were concerned, it could have been a lot worse. If the bomb had been detonated at street level rather than underground it would have caused carnage.
She walked on a few yards towards the corner of the building. The blank, windowless wall that faced the Embassy of Israel on Kensington Palace Gardens had fallen outwards across the tree-lined road, crushing the sentry boxes but absorbing the bulk of the blast, leaving the Embassy itself intact apart from a few broken windows.
Despite the collapse, the entrance ramp to the car park was not entirely obscured. On the left was a service entrance for trucks serving the hotel. On the right, where Gavin Byers had gone, was the public vehicle access. That suggested two possibilities. Either this had been a truck bomb – which meant it could have been a home-made fertiliser bomb despite the unfamiliar smell, or it was a smaller, high-grade car bomb.
She took out the monocular and scanned the inside of the structure again. There were blast marks on the rear concrete wall down and to the right of the car park. A wheel, lying flat and attached to a suspension arm and stub of axle was the only evidence of the car that had been parked in that spot. Whatever else remained of it was buried.
It was the vehicle that had carried the bomb.
Leila backtracked through the rubble and dust and entered the main lobby of the hotel. A trail of blood led from the stairs on the left across the tiled reception area. The wide desk was strewn with fragments of rubble and dust and sheets of paper had been swept into a pile at its foot. All the lights were off. Avoiding the blood, she walked around the end of the desk.
A uniformed police officer approached from the bar as her shoes squeaked on the polished floor.
‘I need to see a guest list,’ she said.
‘Who are you?’
‘Detective Sergent Reid, Counter-Terrorism,’ she said.
‘Then you’ve got the list. Commander Thorne requisitioned it…’ he glanced at his watch, ‘… two hours ago.’
‘OK, I haven’t been in the office for a while. Can you tell me anything about who was here? Military personnel, foreign dignitaries, anyone who might have been a target?’
‘There wasn’t anyone. This is a top tourist hotel, not a diplomatic club. Mostly Japanese and American visitors, a few Brits.’
‘Any idea of casualty figures?’
‘In here? Five room staff are missing, three confirmed dead, fifteen serious injuries, about thirty minor walking wounded.’
‘Guests?’
‘Mostly staff. Whoever did this picked the quietest time. Most departing guests had left and incomers don’t generally check in until after two. Those staying over multiple nights would already be out and there were no conferences booked until one o’clock. There are only two keys unaccounted for from the entire west wing.’
‘So it wasn’t an assassination.’
‘It was meant for the Embassy, wasn’t it? This was as close as they could get.’
‘Maybe. That’s what I’m here to find out. Thank you.’
She picked her way back across the reception and out onto the main road. In the shade of one of the forensic tents she stood looking at the collapsed building. This wasn’t an opportunistic crime. The infantile mentality of the average lone-wolf terrorist mitigated against their being able to source the kind of explosives that did this. They had neither the contacts nor the patience. But the alternative didn’t make any sense. The Embassy had suffered minimal damage and there had been no high-profile guests in the hotel. There had been very few guests on site at all.
So why had the bombers planned such a sophisticated operation with no clear target?
7
Leila arrived at the Operations Room in New Scotland Yard a few minutes after three o’clock – outside the one hour window in which she was to give DCI Lawrence her answer, but in time for all but the introductory summary of the Tactical Command briefing. A dozen people, including James Thorne, Counter-Terrorism’s Commander, and Mark Ross, the civilian head of CTC’s internal hi-tech division, were seated around the large table. Another Detective Sergeant, Keith Butler, was talking quietly on a mobile phone in the corner. On a screen on the far wall was a still image from a CCTV camera inside the hotel car park. Leila stood just outside the open doorway. No one paid her any attention.
‘So that’s the situation on the ground as it stands,’ Thorne said. ‘The PM has stressed the need to get solid information quickly on this one. As you know, this is a particularly sensitive time. Politically, the optimum outcome would be for this to be a lone wolf strike. But until we get solid forensic data on the type of explosives used, we have to consider all possibilities.’
‘We can rule out chapati flour,’ Leila said. ‘This was a professional job. Probably PX.’ Twelve pairs of eyes turned on her.
‘DS Reid,’ Thorne said. ‘How did you get in here?’
‘Charm?’
DCI Lawrence held his hands up. ‘I asked her to take a look, see what her gut told her.’
‘DS Reid is not currently operational,’ Thorne said.
‘Fine,’ Reid said. ‘I’ll leave you to it then.’
‘Just a minute,’ Lawrence said. ‘Have you been to the site?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘This isn’t the main event. There’s another attack coming.’
There was a moment of embarrassed silence, then Commander Thorne stood up and addressed Leila directly.
‘Unless you have good evidence of that, that is exactly the sort of speculation we can do without. The reason you’re not currently active is your inability to think before you speak.’
‘We do need to consider the possibility,’ Lawrence said.
‘It’s more than a possibility,’ Leila said without breaking eye contact with Commander Thorne. ‘So do you want me on board or not?’
‘Sit in on the briefing. We’ll talk later.’
Leila took a chair and sat away from the table, close to the door.
‘OK,’ Thorne said. ‘Let’s start with the bomb. Mark, what have we got?’
Mark Ross opened a file on his laptop and sent the images to the large display screen. ‘No delivery trucks entered the building in the forty-five minutes prior to the explosion, and none have entered that have not also left. We do have this.’ He brought up an image of a Volvo V70 turning into the parking garage. ‘NCP use number-plate recognition on the entry and exit to the car park. Although we’ve not been able to rule out other vehicles, this is the only one that came back as having a false number plate. CV55 GXA is a V70, but not this one. The registered owner’s confirmed that his is parked in his drive in Middlesborough with a blown head gasket.’
‘The time-stamp says seven thirty-eight this morning,’
Leila said. ‘It had been there for four and a half hours. So we’re looking at a timer.’
‘Yes and no,’ Lawrence said. ‘Mark and I have reviewed the CCTV footage in light of a new piece of evidence. The PM has sent his schedule in, showing that he had a meeting with the Embassy at 1pm. His car would have driven right by the garage.’
‘So why did the bomb go off at noon?’ Thorne said.
‘Because of this woman.’ Ross sent another image to the screen. It showed a dark-skinned woman wearing a head-scarf, walking down the ramp into the garage. He brought up three other images showing what was clearly the same woman, from several different angles, walking east along Kensington High Street.
‘What makes you think she had anything to do with it?’ Leila said. ‘Apart from racial profiling.’
‘We’ve tracked her back to High Street Kensington tube station,’ Ross said. ‘We never once get a good look at her face. She knows the locations of every camera.’
‘And we can’t trace her back beyond the tube,’ Lawrence said. ‘We’re working on the assumption that she altered her appearance on the train or somewhere in the station. We might get lucky and find something, but right now, it looks suspicious. Plus, a few seconds before the explosion, the camera closest to the parked V70 is disabled. We know from other cameras that no one else entered the garage, either from the street or the hotel, in the two minutes leading up to that moment.’
‘Circumstantial at best,’ Leila said. ‘It makes no sense that she’d go back to the bomb an hour before it was due to go off.’
‘No, it doesn’t. But the meeting between the PM and the Israelis was only finalised at ten this morning, two and a half hours after the car entered the garage. We think the bomb was always set to go off at noon, but they saw a better opportunity once they knew the PM would be in the vicinity an hour later. She went back in to delay the detonation but accidentally triggered it instead.’
