‘Visiting my kid,’ I told him.
‘Stay where you are. I’ll be with you in five minutes.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘You know that meeting Cain was telling you about? It’s on. Now.’
He ended the call before I had a chance to reply, leaving me staring at the phone and wondering how he could only be five minutes away, unless he’d followed me here.
I put the phone back in my pocket and zipped up my jacket against the cold. I thought about calling Mike Bolt but something stopped me. I wasn’t sure what. Maybe it was just instinct.
Either way, it turned out to be one of the best moves of my life.
Twenty-nine
16.10
Tina stood in the doorway of Brozi’s house smoking another cigarette and stamping her feet in an effort to keep out the cold.
About two dozen uniforms had now arrived at the scene, their vehicles blocking both ends of the street as they milled about, waiting for orders. Brozi’s Lexus and the Land Rover Freelander she and Bolt had been in earlier were still in the middle of the road where they’d collided, waiting for the photographer to turn up and take some evidence shots of the dramatic scene. So far there was no sign of anyone from CTC or Islington CID. Tina wondered if, when the Islington guys did turn up, she’d see anyone she used to know. She hadn’t done a good job of keeping in touch with her old colleagues, which was a habit of hers. When she moved on, she tended to leave her past behind completely, as if it was something best expunged.
She turned and caught her reflection in the glass of Brozi’s front window. She was slimmer than she’d been in a while, courtesy of her obsession with the gym. Her hair looked different too. She’d dyed it jet black and had it cut short like it had been a few years ago — more to differentiate her from the woman whose photo had appeared all over the media after the Stanhope siege than because she liked the look, although it had begun to grow on her. She still looked attractive, but there was a hardness about her that seemed to become more pronounced year on year, as if it represented an accumulation of all the bad things that had ever happened to her. And Jesus, there’d been plenty of those.
A thought suddenly struck her just as she was about to start feeling sorry for herself. When Brozi had been threatening her and Bolt on the street with the gun, he’d had a mobile phone sticking out of his front pocket. But she didn’t remember seeing it when they’d arrested him. She hadn’t seen him drop it either, but then he could easily have done so when he’d been running away from her down the street.
Stubbing her cigarette underfoot, she called Mike Bolt, but he wasn’t answering, which she supposed was no great surprise under the circumstances. She left a message asking him to find out if Brozi had had a phone in his possession when he’d been nicked, then walked back down to the area where she’d wrestled him to the ground. A single drop of blood on the pavement marked the spot, and she wondered whether Brozi would try to press charges against her for assault.
If he’d thrown away the phone when he was running, it would be round here somewhere. He’d had the gun in his left hand the whole time so he’d have to have thrown the phone away with his right, meaning it would most likely be in the road or under one of the parked cars. She crouched down and looked beneath the nearest one. There was nothing there, so she looked under the next one, then the next, slowly retracing Brozi’s steps, pleased at least that she now had something to do, however mundane it was.
She’d been absorbed in this activity for several minutes when, out of the corner of her eye she saw a group of uniforms looking across at her. One said something and the others laughed, although they all looked away fast enough when she returned their gaze. She ignored them and continued her careful search, almost level with Bolt’s Freelander now, beginning to lose hope of finding anything.
Then she saw it. A newish-looking black iPhone, identical to the one Brozi had been using in his bedroom. It was on the tarmac beneath the bumper of a stationary van, about a foot from the kerb. Not exactly well hidden, but then Jetmir Brozi had been a man in a hurry.
Feeling a rush of vindication, she picked it up and switched it on. There was no password lock, as was often the case with criminals who were constantly changing their mobiles, and it was clear that Brozi hadn’t had it long because there were only six calls in the call log, all of them made in the past four days to different mobile numbers. The last call was the one Brozi had been making in the bedroom. He’d been speaking English then, even though she hadn’t been able to hear what was being said, but Tina had a feeling that the conversation might have been important. She checked the email section but it was blank, then almost as an afterthought, she opened the photos section.
There were two grainy shots of a man in profile coming out of a house. They weren’t the best photos in the world but Tina felt her heart jump, because she recognized the man in them instantly.
It was the man she’d seen run over by a lorry only a few hours ago.
The terrorist who’d bombed the coffee shop.
Thirty
16.25
Tina was still staring at the photo of the bomber when her mobile phone rang. It was Mike Bolt.
Briefly she explained to him what she’d found.
‘And are you absolutely sure it’s him?’ he asked when she’d finished.
‘I won’t forget his face as long as I live,’ Tina said, suddenly feeling vindicated. ‘So now we’ve got a direct link between Brozi and the bombers.’
‘That’s brilliant, Tina. Well done.’
‘You’re pleased with me now then, are you?’ she said, unable to resist having a dig.
He sighed down the other end of the phone. ‘It still doesn’t detract from the fact that your actions almost got us both killed, but it’s a great lead, there’s no question about that.’
‘We need to lean on Brozi fast.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘There’s only three and a half hours until the terrorists’ deadline, and I’d bet anything that he knows their identities.’
‘But we can’t. You know that. First of all, he’s going to deny the phone’s anything to do with him. We didn’t even see him drop it. And secondly, after what happened with him shooting at us, I’m not even allowed to see him in case it prejudices future proceedings. We’ve got a team from HQ coming over to interview him but they haven’t arrived yet, and nor has Brozi’s lawyer.’
‘So we’re just going to hang around until Brozi’s lawyer and the interview team decide to show their faces? Hoping that he might deign to cooperate with us?’
‘This isn’t
‘You’re not going to send me back to the prison, are you?’
She could hear the smile in Bolt’s voice as he answered. ‘It wouldn’t do any harm to have you out of the way, but no, I’m not. We’re going to set up a secure line at Islington and you can call him from there.’
‘I need to offer him something. Otherwise he’s got no incentive to help us.’
Bolt was silent as he thought about this. ‘Tell him we’re organizing moving him to a secure safehouse, but that it’s going to take another day or so to sort the paperwork.’
‘He won’t fall for that, Mike. He’s no fool. Let’s try to be a bit creative here. It’s clear from what’s happened that his info’s good. This isn’t a set-up.’
‘Right now, I haven’t got the authority to offer him anything else. I’ll speak to the commander but I doubt they’ll even contemplate moving him. It would be political suicide. Use your charm, Tina. You’ve got a name out of
