Abdul come walking out. At first we thought he’d been hit, and then he lifted up one of the private’s SA80s and pointed it at us. His expression was totally calm, almost dreamy, as he started firing. I always remember that. He wasn’t a bad shot either. He hit one of my corporals who made the mistake of hesitating a couple of seconds because he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, before the rest of us opened up and finally shot Abdul dead.
‘When we got inside the sangar we found the two privates Abdul had been talking to lying on the floor. One of them, a Geordie called Peterson, was already dead. The other was this big Fijian with an unpronounceable name who we used to call Hula and, although he was in a bad way, he was still conscious. He told us that one minute they’d all been chatting away like good friends, and the next, Abdul had grabbed Peterson’s gun and opened up on them. No rhyme. No reason. Hula never made it. Neither did Abdul, so we never did find out what motivated him. Whether he was a sleeper agent all along, or whether the Taliban had got to him somehow.’ Cain shrugged. ‘Personally, I believe it was the former. Not that that matters to either Peterson or Hula. Either way they’re still dead. But the point of the story, that’s easier.’ He gave me a hard stare. ‘You can never be too careful.’
And that was what was worrying me.
Fifteen
11.22
Tina called Mike Bolt from an empty interview room. She’d asked the warder if she could smoke since the prisoners seemed to do so with impunity, but was told she couldn’t, which pissed her off no end.
‘Jetmir Brozi,’ she said when he picked up. ‘Apparently he was involved in procuring the weaponry for the Stanhope siege, and Fox reckons he may well be involved in the attacks today too.’
She gave Bolt a brief rundown of the details of the interview.
‘He’s sure the attacks this morning are linked, and by the way, Mike, it would have really helped me if I’d known there’d been a second bomb before I spoke to him. I felt a right fool when he told me about the Bayswater attack.’
‘I called you as soon as I had the chance, but your phone was on silent.’ He sounded stressed and tired, which wasn’t like him at all.
‘How many casualties have there been so far?’
‘Nine dead from the first bomb. Five from the two in Bayswater. The Bayswater attack was designed to take out police officers attending a flat where they’d traced the phone used to claim responsibility for the first explosion.’
‘So it was a sophisticated attack, and similar to the bombs set off prior to the Stanhope siege.’
‘Very much so. But that doesn’t mean they’re connected. Our one suspect is a British national of Pakistani origin. The ID he was carrying says he’s Akhtar Mohammed, aged thirty-one and married with three children. He’s not on any watchlists, but then neither were the 7/7 bombers. But the point is, nothing links this man to any previous attacks. I’ll get our people to find out what they can about Jetmir Brozi, but I reckon it’s going to be a long job to gather any evidence against him.’
‘We’ve got to do it though, surely?’
‘We’ll do what we can, but right now everyone in the Met is focused on what’s going on in central London. The terrorists are threatening a much bigger attack, and if their track record so far’s anything to go by, God knows what they could be planning. I need more from Fox. If he’s serious about cooperating, we need the names of everyone involved in these attacks. And we need them now.’
‘He wants to be moved to a safehouse first.’
‘We can’t do that, Tina. He’s an extremely dangerous and high-profile remand prisoner.’
‘He says his life’s in danger.’
‘Do you believe him?’
Tina thought about this for a moment, remembering his injuries. ‘Yes, I do. And after what happened to John Cheney, it’s possible the people he worked for are trying to silence him. If it’s OK, I’m going to stay round here to interview the man who attacked Fox. See if I can find anything out that way.’
‘Good idea. Keep me posted. And thanks, Tina. You’re doing a good job.’
They ended the call, and Tina put the phone back in her pocket, a familiar excitement in her gut.
Sixteen
11.28
Mike Bolt took a deep breath. It was a strange feeling being back working with Tina after all this time. He’d always had feelings for her. One time, four years earlier, when they’d last been working together at SOCA — the soon-to-be-disbanded Serious and Organized Crime Agency — he’d made a pass at her. They’d kissed, but things hadn’t gone any further, and it had ended up souring their friendship. As a result, she’d transferred back to the Met. Since then he’d stuck his neck out for her on more than one occasion, even though at times it had seemed as if Tina was on a mission of self-destruction, and it had almost cost him his job.
Most people, and not just those in the upper echelons of the force, thought Tina Boyd was bad news. And in many ways she was. She wasn’t a team player, and she did things her own way, often with very little respect for the law she was meant to be upholding, and that made her dangerous. Yet it felt good to have her on the team, even if it was only temporary. She’d squeezed a name out of Fox, which was something. Bolt had a vision of her grabbing him by the hair and battering his head on the interview room desk, demanding answers. It brought a smile to his face, even though he knew it wasn’t entirely outside the realm of possibilities. That was the thing with Tina. She always brought an energy to everything she did. She also brought something to Bolt’s own lonely life, a spark that had been missing a long time — although he preferred not to think about that right now.
He went down to the next floor and found one of his team, DC Nikki Donohoe, a fiery-looking woman in her late thirties with short, fashionably cut red hair and the first sign of a bump where her third child was, due six months down the line. Nikki was their IT expert, a woman with an uncanny ability to dig up any information, however obscure.
‘Hello, boss,’ she said with a tight smile. ‘Any more on the attacks?’
Nikki was usually a livewire, but like everyone else in London that morning what had happened had shaken her. Her two kids went to school barely a mile from where the last two bombs had exploded.
‘We’ve got a lead.’ He told her about Jetmir Brozi. ‘Drop everything and find out anything you can about him, particularly his current location.’
‘You think he might have something to do with the attacks?’ She looked hopeful.
‘Tina Boyd got the name from Fox, so it’s worth prioritizing.’
‘I’m on it,’ said Nikki, turning back to her PC.
‘So the Black Widow actually got something, did she?’
Bolt looked up to see DC Omar Balachi come into the room. Balachi was a tall, lean black man of Somali origin, in his late twenties, with finely sculpted features, who looked like he should be modelling sharp suits on the catwalk rather than wandering round in jeans, trainers and a hoodie, as he was now. He’d been with the team for most of the past year, and he was a good worker, albeit one with an attitude. He’d already made it known to Bolt that morning that he was annoyed that he’d spent so much of his time on the team doing donkey work while Tina had simply breezed in and been asked to interview the one man they’d all been wanting to talk to.
‘That’s right,’ said Bolt, turning to face him. ‘And I told you already, the reason she went there is because Fox insisted on it. I don’t like it either, but that’s the way it is.’
‘But you’ve still seconded her to the team.’
‘Temporarily yes, but only while she’s dealing with Fox.’ Bolt didn’t like having to justify his actions to members of his team — it set a bad precedent — but he knew what a sensitive issue this was.
Omar nodded slowly, clearly still not liking the situation. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ he asked. ‘With all this stuff going on, it seems a bit of a waste of time trawling through bank statements and phone records for the
