checking a radio. ‘Seen Rosie?’ he asked.
‘On the range,’ said Sutherland. ‘He’s not happy with the sights on his Glock.’
Swift turned on his heel. He heard the cracks of 9mm rounds as he went down the stairs to the range, single shots, evenly spaced. He barged through the door and saw Rose firing at a bullseye target ten metres down the range. Rose was in his black overalls, wearing orange ear-protectors.
‘Rosie!’ shouted Swift.
Rose carried on firing. When he’d emptied the magazine he pressed the button that brought the target closer so that he could see exactly where his shots had gone.
Swift walked up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. Rose pulled off his ear-protectors. ‘What?’ he said.
‘Where’s Marsden?’
Rose frowned.‘He’s with BTP this afternoon. They want him undercover on Operation Wingman. Why?’
‘We’re in deep shit,’ said Swift. ‘Deep, deep shit.’
The Palestinian pulled the door to his bedsit shut behind him and walked slowly down the stairs. He heard loud rock music from one of the rooms on the first floor. Whoever was living there played music all day long and well into the night. Some nights the Palestinian had been unable to sleep but he had never gone down to complain. He hadn’t wanted to draw attention to himself. He just hoped that whoever was in the room would be at King’s Cross station at five o’clock.
At the bottom of the stairs a glass door led to the street. The Palestinian pulled at it but it wouldn’t open. Then he realised he had to press a button to unlock it. He stared at it. It was exactly the same as the one on his vest. It was an omen, he decided. An omen that everything would go as planned. ‘
The sky was overcast, another good omen. He had to wear the coat to cover the vest and it would have looked out of place on a warm, sunny day. Allah was smiling on him because what was about to happen was Allah’s will.
The streets were busy with afternoon shoppers. Music blared from an open window. Reggae this time, not rock, but it was just as offensive to the Palestinian’s ears. He walked past a travel agency, whose windows were plastered with posters offering cheap holidays – one for two weeks in Israel. The Palestinian shook his head sadly. Why would anyone want to holiday with murderers? he wondered. Had the Nazis offered package holidays to their extermination camps? London was full of tourists, coming to spend their money in a country that aided the persecution of Muslims. It was time to show those tourists that they would have been better to stay at home.
He walked under a railway bridge and a train rattled overhead, making him flinch. Brakes squealed with the sound of a tortured animal. He walked along a street filled with market stalls selling cheap clothes, flimsy luggage and counterfeit batteries. Most of the shops catered to the Afro-Caribbean community, supermarkets with open boxes piled high with vegetables the Palestinian had never seen before, butchers offering halal meat, posters advertising phonecards to make cheap calls to Jamaica and West Africa. The Palestinian moved through the shoppers, trying to avoid physical contact with those around him.
He turned right on to Brixton Road. He was only yards from the tube entrance. He was so busy with his thoughts that he didn’t see the two men blocking his way until he had almost bumped into them. He mumbled an apology and tried to step to the side, but a hand gripped his right arm just below the shoulder. He looked up to see two big black men. One had dreadlocks tumbling from under a red, green and yellow woollen hat. The other was shorter but wider, with a large medallion on a thick gold chain. Both stared at him with undisguised hatred.
‘Give us your mobile,’ said the man with dreadlocks.
‘Excuse me?’ said the Palestinian.
‘I don’t want your fucking apology, I want your fucking phone. You speaka da fucking English, don’t you?’ He pushed the Palestinian in the chest and he staggered back against a shop window. He was facing a bus stop where half a dozen housewives and old men stood with bags of shopping. They didn’t intervene: they knew from experience that it brought only grief and a trip to the local Accident and Emergency department.
The Palestinian was confused. ‘I understand English, but I don’t have a phone.’
‘Everybody’s got a fucking phone,’ said the shorter of the two men. He pulled a small knife out of his pocket, a shiny blade with a brown wooden handle. ‘Now, give us your fucking phone or I’ll stick you.’
‘I don’t have a phone,’ said the Palestinian. ‘Please, I have to be somewhere.’
‘Give us your wallet, then.’
‘I don’t have a wallet,’ said the Palestinian. He had nothing in his coat pockets and only a handful of coins in his trousers, just enough to buy his tube ticket to King’s Cross. He had been told to carry nothing that might identify him.
The Palestinian tried to push between the two men. ‘Excuse me, please,’ he said. The knife flashed in and out and he felt a searing pain in his side. He gasped.
‘You fucking Arab piece of shit,’ hissed the man with the medallion. He stabbed the knife into the Palestinian’s side again. And again. The Palestinian staggered back against the window and it rattled from the impact. He felt blood flow under his vest and his legs went weak. He tried to reach under his coat so that at least he could die with honour, with glory, but his arms were like lead.
‘Think you’re better than us, do you?’ hissed the man with the knife. The knife struck again, in his chest this time. The Palestinian’s breath gurgled in his throat and he sank to his knees, a red mist falling over his eyes. His last thoughts were of the shame he would bring upon his family when they heard he had died in the street, that he had failed in his mission, that he had died for nothing, murdered by an infidel for not having a phone. He slumped forward and slammed face down on to the pavement, bloody froth spilling from his lips.
Shepherd took a drink from his plastic bottle of water, sat down under a map of the Underground system and stretched out his legs. He had been walking around Piccadilly Circus tube station for the best part of an hour, moving from platform to platform. His radio was clipped to the back of his belt under his leather jacket and there was a microphone inside his right cuff.
Nick Wright, Tommy Reid and four other British Transport Police undercover officers were on the same frequency, as were Brian Ramshaw and a controller at the Management Information and Communications Centre in Broadway. She was monitoring the CCTV cameras at Piccadilly Circus, where Wright and a female BTP officer were with Shepherd, Leicester Square, where Ramshaw was with Reid, and Tottenham Court Road, where the rest of the BTP officers were staked out.
‘How’s it going, Stu?’ asked Wright, through the earpiece.
‘Bored rigid,’ said Shepherd.
‘You can pop up for a coffee,’ said Wright.
‘Maybe later,’ said Shepherd. The BTP had wanted Wright and Ramshaw on the operation because they had seen Snow White and her crew up close. But they’d decided not to stake out the Trocadero again in case the steamers recognised any of the undercover officers. Four new BTP undercover officers were hanging around the amusement arcades while the officers from Wednesday’s operation were in the tube system. Shepherd was wearing his leather jacket, blue jeans and a grey pullover. Wright had been more creative and was dressed as a priest, complete with dog collar and a shabby document case with the name of an East London church stencilled on the side.
Shepherd folded his arms, and felt the Glock hard against his left side. He couldn’t get over the fact that armed police were going up against teenagers, but Shepherd couldn’t forget how the boy had casually knifed the little girl. There had been no fear in his eyes, no regret. He’d smiled as he stuck the blade into the child’s flesh. Shepherd wasn’t happy about being taken off ARV duties, but he was glad to have another crack at the Snow White gang. This time he’d be quicker off the mark.
Eric Tierney had seen it all on the streets of Brixton. On a good day it could be a heart-warming, lively place, vibrant in its ethnicity. On a bad day it was a cross between a third-world slum and a war zone. Over the six years that Tierney had been a paramedic, he’d tended teenage boys with bullet wounds, twelve-year-old girls after back- street abortions, drug overdoses, young men who’d had pub glasses thrust into their faces, underage prostitutes who’d been slashed with razors. On a bad day, Brixton was the closest thing to hell that Tierney could imagine. But
