by Chris Simms
Good question, Iona thought. A pile of recently dug earth? Bricks removed from a wall? A stack of strange-looking sacks with a timer on the top? ‘I don’t know. Just anything to indicate people have been down here.’
They skirted round the base of the wall, looking for any signs of recent disturbance. Nothing. An opening on the far side gave access to a smaller, lower room.
‘And in here?’ Elliot asked.
‘We’ve come this far,’ Iona replied, beginning to sense the search was pointless.
As they looked for anything suspicious, Iona became aware of the intense silence. It seemed she could actually feel it, pressing in from every direction. The desire to be out of the place was starting to grow. She gave a cough. ‘Well, seems secure enough to me. Sorry if I used up your time for nothing.’
Elliot’s torch swung round and his face showed faintly in its reflected glow. ‘Happy to head back?’
‘I am. Constable Davis?’
The spot of his torch drew closer. ‘Fine with me.’
As the electric light from the loading bay grew stronger, Iona felt relief starting to wash over her. By the time they stepped out of the tunnel itself, she could have pumped an arm up and down. She looked fondly at the bright bulbs above. ‘I feel like an explorer making it back to civilization.’
‘I know how you feel.’ Elliot smiled.
Up in the visitor centre, Davis relocked the door and removed a roll of anti-tamper tape from his pocket.
Iona watched as he started to carefully stretch a length of it across the door and its frame. Did Wallace, she asked herself, set me up for this? Thinking about it, he didn’t actually express any surprise at the tunnel’s existence – he just asked me how I knew about it. But why would he let me make a fool of myself?
She thought about the report from the Sub-Urban Explorers: Vassen’s interest in the tunnel system was real. Surely he and his mystery friend were planning something. She saw Elliot was arranging papers on the desk. ‘Do you know of many other tunnels beneath the city?’
‘Oh, yes,’ he replied, ‘it’s riddled with them.’
‘Like?’
‘The Duke’s tunnel.’
‘What’s that?’
Elliot sat on the edge of his desk. ‘It branched off from the River Medlock and ran under the city centre before ending at what’s now the approach to Piccadilly Station. It was used to transport coal from the Duke of Bridgewater’s mines at Worsely.’
Nowhere near here, Iona thought. ‘Is it still there?’
‘It had silted up by the early eighteen hundreds, after the level of the Medlock rose a few feet. Bricked up not long after.’
‘Any others?’
‘Victoria arches?’
‘Yup – I’ve heard about them. Any others? Ones near here?’ Iona asked.
Elliot thought a moment. ‘Not that I know of. I’ve heard mention of them stretching out from beneath the cathedral. And there’s a proper honeycomb under the campus of what was UMIST.’
What the Sub-Urban Explorers were trying to access, Iona thought. ‘What about,’ she asked, ‘one running beneath the length of Deansgate?’
‘Oh, that.’ Elliot shot a glance at Davis. ‘I don’t believe it. Surely a tunnel of that scale would be charted somewhere.’
‘But you’ve heard it mentioned?’
His eyes flicked to Davis another time. ‘Yes.’
She turned to the constable. ‘Have you heard anything about it?’
He shrugged. ‘There are copies of some old maps – I saw them at our command post.’
Iona turned to him. ‘Whose are they?’
‘Council ones, I think.’
‘And?’ From the corner of her eye, she saw Elliot had leaned forward.
‘All I can say is, anything deemed a potential risk has already been examined. Just like the one below us.’ He turned away to double-check the padlock and Iona gave a sigh, wondering exactly what the maps showed.
EIGHTEEN
Iona walked nervously along the corridor leading to the CTU’s main office in Orion House. After parting company with Constable Davis, she’d watched as he hurried off in the direction of Deansgate. Wherever the silver command post was that he’d come from, he’d be back at it well before she got to her desk.
The question in her mind was, how fast would the news of her error spread? Would raising an alert about a tunnel already checked and secured be a source of amusement for her new colleagues? Or were people too busy to pause and give her a hard time?
Two detectives stepped out into the corridor and started walking towards her. Anxiously, she kept her eyes on their faces and was able to see their expressions change as they realized who was approaching. One smirked as they passed her by.
Was that me? Was he grinning because of me? She paused with her hand on the office door. Well, I’m about to find out. She pushed it open to see that the office was a little busier than normal. A few uniforms on one side, a sprinkling of detectives at their desks. Several heads turned in her direction but no one seemed that interested in her presence.
Maybe I was worrying for nothing, she thought, as she made her way across to her workstation, searching for any yellow Post-it notes as she got closer. There was something in front of her keyboard. It was cylindrical and grey. No, not cylindrical. A cylinder cut in half. Cardboard tubes – the ones from the middle of toilet rolls. Three had been Sellotaped together. There was writing on the side: The Manchester and Salford Junction Canal. At the entrance to the miniature tunnel stood a little figure fashioned from Blu-tack. She looked about. Faces grinned back at her and people started to clap.
‘Nice work, Baby!’ someone called.
Laughter broke out.
‘She’ll boldly go where no man has gone before!’
‘Is it a badger? Is it a fox? No, it’s a human mole!’
Knowing she was bright red, Iona tried to smile. ‘Very funny, you lot. Ingenious.’
The laughter wasn’t dying down.
Gingerly, she picked up the toilet rolls and dropped them in her bin. ‘Were these things clean or do I need to wash my hands?’
An inspector – some huge guy with a squashed nose and cropped hair – paused as he passed her desk. ‘It’s your shoes you need to clean. Been exploring, have you?’
Iona looked down at her mud-spattered shoes and held up a hand in acknowledgement. Even Euan, the civilian support worker she got on with, was trying to suppress his giggles. She sank into her chair and went to stick the little Blu-tack figure on top of her monitor. Someone had trimmed the newspaper clipping down so it now read, Baby.
The laughter began to fade and she noticed a plastic case on the corner of her desk.
FAO: Detective Constable Khan, CTU. From: Manchester Operations Centre.
The CCTV footage, she thought, as her phone started to ring. ‘DC Khan speaking.’
‘Detective?’ It was Wallace, phoning down from the floor above. ‘Pop up to see me, would you?’
He was slouching in his chair, one hand draped on the edge of his desk, eyebrows half-raised.
‘Sir,’ Iona said, stepping inside.
He lifted a finger and pointed to the empty seat opposite him.
She crossed the room as quickly as she could and sat down, glad to tuck her dirty shoes out of sight.
‘Tunnel was clear, then?’ Wallace asked.
She nodded. ‘Yes, it was, sir.’
‘Good.’ He tapped his fingers. ‘I’m glad they only sent a constable along with the keys. We’ve all got enough on our plates as it is.’
‘Sir, I’m sorry. If I’d known its existence was logged, I wouldn’t have . . . wouldn’t have . . .’
‘Jumped the gun so badly?’
She caught his eye. OK, she thought. So I jumped the gun. But did you let me? ‘It just seemed that no one knew about it –’
Wallace sat up. ‘No. You assumed no one knew. Which is the type of thing that happens when you stray into an operatio
n you have no part in. Why were you down at the conference centre site, anyway?’
She gave a flustered shrug. ‘When I came out of the CCTV control room, it seemed to be an appropriate step – to, you know, check what I thought was a site at imminent risk of attack.’
‘Really? At risk from a student that – and here’s the assume word again – you thought was making a bomb?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘With a piece of equipment you assumed could be used to manufacture explosive material?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you much knowledge of explosives, Detective?’
‘Well, I did the course as part of my training. On how to recognize the different types.’
‘And what part would high pressure liquid chromatography play in making a bomb?’
She realized the university professor hadn’t actually confirmed the Frac-900 could be used to manufacture explosives. Damn. ‘I . . . I don’t know.’
‘Well, Detective. Most explosives I’ve dealt with – and I have a decade in the British Army behind me – are compounds. Different things, bonded together. Carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen. You remember seeing that grainy white powder on your course?’
Iona wanted to bow her head. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘What was it called?’
‘PETN.’
‘Correct. Pentaerythritol tetranitrate. An organic compound. What is liquid chromatography used for?’
‘Purifying proteins.’
‘Separating things out.’ Wallace tapped his fingertips together. ‘Not combining them. Stay back after class, Detective. It’s extra chemistry lessons for you.’
She glanced up but he wasn’t smiling.
‘It is,’ he said, ‘a classic case of two and two making five. You hear about a tunnel and believe only you in the CTU know about it. You hear about a piece of missing laboratory equipment and, just because the person you’re searching for had access to that piece of equipment, you leap to the conclusion he stole it. Then you make the further assumption the equipment is being used to manufacture explosives. Let that be a lesson, Detective. Don’t let your suspicions cloud your judgement.’
She felt like a schoolgirl. ‘Sir.’
‘Now, apart from charging round the convention centre – oh, and popping over to visit Vassen’s tutor in the chemical engineering department . . .’
She blinked with surprise. He’d clocked it. When I mentioned talking to Professor Coe earlier on, he knew I was glossing over things.
He waved a hand as if to say he couldn’t be bothered dealing with her minor act of deceit. ‘Where are you with the Mauritius link?’
‘I have the footage from outside the library now on disc. It’s waiting for me at my desk. I need to try and ascertain if the associate of Vassen is, indeed, the suspect in Appleton’s murder.’
‘Looked into the existence of any community from Mauritius in the north-west?’
‘No, sir. I haven’t had time.’
‘Well, you’re in luck, because I have. A simple search on Google has brought up a couple of interesting things. I bet you didn’t know there’s a football team made up of Mauritians currently living over here?’
Iona shook her head.
‘There is. The Mauricien Exiles. They play in the first division of the Bury Sunday League,’ he put a finger on a sheet of paper, ‘alongside other well-known teams such as Radcliffe Town, Bridge Tavern and Whitefield Wands. I also contacted The Border Agency on your behalf.’ He turned the uppermost sheet over. ‘They’ve provided me with some names of Mauritian passport holders living in the area. Over forty, as a matter of fact. Addresses included.’
‘Right,’ Iona said, leaning forward to take the sheets he was now holding out. ‘I don’t suppose any have the surname Bhujun?’
He snorted. ‘We should be so lucky. However, many of these people seem to be located in and around Bury. Never know, our guys may be lodging with one; the community doesn’t appear to be very big.
‘There’s a separate thing you need to know about.’ He looked straight at her. ‘We’ve received reports that a Muslim cleric with extreme views is now at a particular mosque in Bury. The Jamia Masjd on Oram Street. It’s not the first time this particular mosque has been associated with extremists. This particular cleric? The last time he popped up was in Wootton Basset, shouting abuse at the coffins of our boys being flown back from Iraq and Afghanistan. Calling them murderers of innocent Muslims.
‘What I’m wondering is this: could there be a connection? Might our characters from Mauritius be visiting this mosque? Because if they are, it will save us – sorry, you – one heck of a lot of hunting around.’
Iona was struggling to cope with the sudden change of tack. She cleared her throat. ‘I’m not quite sure what you’re asking me to do, sir. Set up camera surveillance on this mosque?’
Wallace laughed. ‘In the area where it’s located? They’d sniff us out in no time. Besides, there are no resources for that, Detective. Not at present.’
She remained silent, watching as her senior officer studied the ceiling above her.
‘The reports about the presence of this particular cleric are – as yet – unconfirmed. We could do with knowing if he’s really there. Better than that, we could do with knowing if he’s planning any kind of demo at the conference centre. It would be just his style.’
‘Sorry, sir. If cameras are out, are you asking me to visit this mosque in an undercover role?’
Wallace’s gaze dropped to her face for a moment before he broke eye contact to check something on his screen. ‘Would you be comfortable doing that?’
Iona swallowed. The shift in focus – from trying to trace Vassen to investigating a mosque in Bury was so sudden. Wallace was talking about a covert visit. ‘I’m. . . . I’m not sure, sir.’
‘Thing is with this tunnel, Detective. It’s a minor blip – something the team will rib you about for a while. It would be forgotten a lot faster if we could get you doing something of real significance.’
Her mind seemed to be stalling as the implication of his comment sank in; the search for Vassen and his accomplice wasn’t really important. It had been trivial, inconsequential; a task for the baby of the team. But now he was offering her something worthwhile. A way to redeem herself in everyone’s eyes. ‘But – for a start, I’m not a Muslim. I’ve never even visited a mosque.’
He hunched a shoulder. ‘You wouldn’t be expected to deliver a sermon, Detective. We know this mosque allows women in through a separate entrance to the men. You could probably see if this particular cleric is there. Maybe get wind of what he’s up to. Have a think, OK? In my view, it would be a very productive use of your time. Especially if this pair from Mauritius are also linked to it. That would be something worth our attention.’
She couldn’t get over how everything had been flipped on its head. ‘And the tunnels, sir? That’s no longer a priority?’
‘Detective, if you’re dealing with vermin, would you prefer to trap them once they’re running around in your kitchen, shitting in your cupboards and spoiling your food – or would you prefer to find their nest and deal with them there?’ He bared his teeth in the semblance of a smile. ‘It’s the same with these types. Better to track down where they’re operating from – in Bury or elsewhere.’
Iona nodded uncertainly. ‘What should I do with the CCTV footage? Is it worth trying to confirm whether the person outside the library is the one suspected of killing Appleton?’
Wallace thought for a moment. ‘Yes, it is. At the least, it will give us an up-to-date image of him. You’ll find that useful if you decide about looking into the Bury thing in more detail.’
You mean sneaking into a mosque, Iona thought. One with apparent links to extremists. Her legs felt a little shaky as she stood. ‘I’ll get on to it, sir.’
His attention had switched to the documents on his desk. ‘Don’t take too long letting me know what you decide,’ he muttered.
He sighed, head staying down. ‘The canal? Detective, there are many, many concerns relating to the security of the convention centre.’
She nodded, aware she was now hovering in front of his desk.
He glanced up, but only as far as her stomach. ‘That is all, Detective.’
‘Sir.’ She retreated towards the door, wondering whether he’d just deliberately avoided her question.
NINETEEN
Back in the main office, Iona was relieved to see the most of the day shift’s desks were now deserted. She glanced at her watch. No wonder, it was getting on for half-six.
She headed over to her workstation and sat down. The message light on her desk phone was blinking so she lifted the receiver and pressed the button. Professor Coe’s voice on the line.
‘Yes, hello . . . Detective Khan. It’s Professor Coe from the university. Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. The colleague I mentioned has been extremely busy.’
Iona leaned back in her chair. I know what’s coming, she thought.
‘He’s not aware of any method of explosives manufacture where the Frac-900 could be of any use. I won’t bore you with the details, but the process involves combining, not isolating, elements. I hope that’s of some use and . . . I wish you success, with your investigation.’
Yeah, thanks, Iona thought, replacing the receiver. If only you’d got back to me a bit quicker. Letting out a sigh, she looked at the little Blu-tack figure on her monitor: its legs had buckled and the thing had keeled over on its side. Know how you feel, she thought, reaching for the CD case the CCTV control room had sent over.
As the disc began to whirr in her computer, she studied the handwritten note that had been placed inside the case.
As requested – footage from outside Central Library, 17 September, 1.45–2.05 p.m. Not included: footage from the tram platform.
