The female anchor was now discussing the ramifications of this with one of Sky’s reporters who was standing outside 10 Downing Street, while on the bottom of the screen the news ticker gave the latest on the casualty toll: seventeen dead, including four police officers and a civilian killed in the second attack, and sixty-eight injured. A separate breaking news headline stated that there would be a press conference at Downing Street at 3.30.
Watching it reminded Fox of the chaos he and the other terrorists had inflicted on London fifteen months earlier. He’d felt like the king of the world then, an all-powerful lord of life and death, knowing that the whole world was watching him.
And now he was caged like an animal in a shitty little prison cell with lime-green walls, and his moment of glory was little more than a faded dream from another life.
With a sigh, he got up from the bunk and walked out of the cell. He’d petitioned the governor earlier to release him from solitary confinement and, surprisingly, permission had been given. It was recreation time in the wing now, and he was free to come and go as he pleased for the next two hours. The governor liked the prisoners to be able to mingle. He felt it made them less likely to be aggressive if they weren’t cooped up in their cells the whole time, and in this, Fox had to admit, he was right. He appreciated the small pleasure of being able to stretch his legs — to walk, and think — even if it was in a confined space. This was the first day since the attack by Eric Hughes that he’d been allowed to do it. Hughes, meanwhile, was still locked up in a separate wing as he’d been the one armed with the shank.
A table-tennis table in the central atrium surrounded by a cluster of tables and chairs provided the focal point for the prisoners when they were given the chance to socialize. Devereaux was already sitting at one of the tables, furthest away from the two screws who stood keeping an eye on things. Muscular and intense, with big staring eyes, and a tattoo of a grinning black skull covering most of his face, Devereaux looked like something out of a horror film, and gave off the air of a man only ever one step away from exploding. With a lot of prisoners, this kind of posturing was just show, but Devereaux was different. He was, as the judge who’d sentenced him put it, ‘pure, unadulterated evil’. Currently serving a whole-life tariff for the double murder of two underage prostitutes he’d kidnapped, raped and partly eaten a decade earlier, both screws and prisoners tended to give him a wide berth.
Fox nodded at one of the prisoners playing table tennis, a huge former white supremacist known as Lenny who was one of the softest men in there, and approached the table where Devereaux sat alone, an unlit cigarette sticking out of his mouth.
‘Got a smoke?’ asked Fox, who’d taken up a ten-a-day habit out of boredom since arriving in prison.
‘Sure,’ grunted Devereaux, both the skull’s mouth and his own mouth moving in perfect time as he pulled a tin of roll-ups from his pocket and put it down on the table.
Fox leaned forward to take one. ‘Everything ready?’ he whispered.
‘Sorted,’ answered Devereaux. ‘What time, again?’
‘Six forty-five exactly,’ said Fox, his lips hardly moving.
He got up and walked away, putting the roll-up in his mouth, thinking that it was ironic that at a time when smoking inside public buildings was banned, prisoners could still smoke in their cells. The moment he got out of this place, though, he’d give up on the spot.
Which, if all went according to plan, was now only a matter of hours away.
Twenty-seven
15.29
‘What the hell do you think you were doing in there?’ demanded Bolt, staring at Tina in exasperation rather than anger. They were standing out on the pavement, just down from Brozi’s house, and out of earshot of the dozen or so officers who were in the process of sealing off the street in both directions, while Brozi sat in the back of an arrest van. ‘I told you to get out of the house. It was one simple request, and you ignored it.’
Tina took a deep breath, dragging air into her lungs. Her heart was still banging away in her chest, the adrenalin yet to dissipate, and she was experiencing the occasional wave of nausea. She wiped sweat from her brow, hoping she wasn’t going into shock. Having a gun pointed at you at point-blank range, knowing that if the person pointing it pulled the trigger you’d almost certainly die, was a truly terrifying experience, even for someone like Tina who’d been on the wrong end of too many guns in her time, and who’d actually been shot twice. There’d been times in her life when she’d been so angry and disillusioned with everything that she’d wanted to die — when she’d taken major risks because, in the end, the consequences hadn’t scared her — but now wasn’t one of those times.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Bolt, putting a hand on her shoulder, his exasperation turning to concern.
‘I’m fine.’ She brushed his hand aside, not wanting his pity. She knew she was the one in the wrong. ‘I just wanted to check his PC, that’s all, and fit a keystroke tracker.’
‘Well, you almost got us killed, Tina. Don’t you understand that? Or do you just not care?’
‘Of course I care. I was doing my job.’ She pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her jeans pocket and lit one, conscious that her hands were still shaking.
‘But you weren’t. That’s your problem. You don’t do your job. You do what you think’s right, and ignore the consequences, and the rules.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Christ, I wish I’d never taken you on.’
His words stung. ‘I found a lead on his PC,’ she said with a calmness she wasn’t feeling. ‘It was an email in the drafts section written in Albanian.’
‘How do you know it’s a lead if it’s in Albanian?’
‘Because it was in the drafts section of an anonymous hotmail account. That’s how these guys communicate when they don’t want people listening in, isn’t it?’
‘Not good enough, Tina.’
‘Come on, Mike. We’ve got plenty to charge Brozi with now. He’s just shot at us, and he’s obviously up to his neck in illegal stuff, so he’ll almost certainly cooperate. This is the guy who Fox said organized the weaponry for the Stanhope attacks, remember? Who therefore has access to PETN, the explosive used in the bombs this morning.’
Bolt sighed. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see what the investigating officers say, won’t we?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean we’re going to have to bring in another team from CTC to interview him. We can’t talk to him now. Not after he shot at us. Now, instead of trying to find the people behind the bombs this morning, we’re going to be stuck at the local nick making statements.’ He looked at her with a mixture of irritation and sadness, and shook his head. ‘I’m going to Islington so I can start getting things moving, just in case he does want to cooperate.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Stay here and make sure no one goes inside the house until SOCO arrive.’
‘You’re putting me on guard duty?’
‘Just be thankful you’re still on duty at all,’ he said, and with that he turned and walked away, leaving Tina wondering once again whether she’d messed up everything.
Twenty-eight
15.55
Of all the things I lost on the day I attacked Alfonse Webber, the worst, by far, was my family.
My marriage hadn’t been the best in the world, but then whose is when you’ve got a young child and a stressful, time-consuming job? But up until that moment, we were still doing OK. I loved my wife; I loved my daughter. I think they both loved me.
But clearly the bond between Gina and me wasn’t as strong as I’d thought because our marriage didn’t
