She motioned towards the handbag on the seat next to her. ‘It’s in there.’
He frowned. ‘You’ve brought it
‘I wanted you to see it as soon as possible. Listen,’ she added, looking round, unable to see the Asian man any longer, ‘I’m feeling a bit claustrophobic. Can we go somewhere quieter and more private? Please?’
He nodded. ‘Of course.’
Martha felt faint, the need to vomit even stronger than it had been when she’d first come in here, and she stood up unsteadily.
He stood up too. ‘Are you OK?’ He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Let’s go to my car. I’m parked up the road.’
She needed no encouragement. The room was spinning, and she could feel the beginnings of a panic attack — the first she’d had in years. With Wright holding on to her she hurried towards the fresh air and salvation.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said a voice behind them. ‘You haven’t paid for your coffee.’
Martha turned back towards the waitress at just the moment the bomb exploded, the force of the blast caving in the windows and the Plexiglas counter and sending jagged projectiles hurtling through the enclosed space at more than two hundred miles per hour.
The bomb — five kilos of PETN plastic explosive surrounded by the same weight in assorted shrapnel — was designed to rip to shreds everything in its immediate proximity.
Neither Martha nor Philip Wright had time to react, or even understand what was happening. Wright was struck in the left eye by an industrial railway bolt that immediately pierced his brain, killing him near enough instantaneously, while Martha saw a single, all-consuming white flash, heard a roar like a great wave crashing over her, and then a sixteen-inch-by-ten-inch shard of Plexiglas that until a second earlier had been covering the muffin cabinet sliced effortlessly through her neck as if it was butter, taking her head, and her secret, with it.
Four
08.06
DC Tina Boyd was sitting in an unmarked CID car just down the road from the home of a wanted burglar, who’d beaten his most recent victim with a hammer and then promptly skipped the bail he’d been given by some half-witted magistrate, when she heard the explosion — a huge, decisive boom that sounded like it was some distance away but was still loud enough to make the car vibrate on its chassis.
Her colleague, DC Clive Owen, who was trying not to stare at a couple of teenage schoolgirls, who might have been sixth formers if he was lucky, turned to Tina. ‘What the hell was that?’
From their position on the edge of an estate of modern mid-rise flats just west of Vauxhall Bridge Road, it was difficult to see too much, but as they looked in the direction of the blast Tina saw a thick plume of black smoke racing up into the sky between two buildings about half a mile away. ‘Shit. It looks like Victoria Station. We need to take a look.’
‘Hold on, we’re on surveillance here, and we’ve got a good plot. We can’t just up sticks and leave.’
Tina gave him a withering look. She’d only been paired with Owen for three days but already she could see he was a jobsworth who didn’t like putting himself out, or taking risks. The force was full of people like him these days. They knew all the rules and regulations but seemed to have forgotten how to actually catch criminals. Tina might have found him more tolerable if he’d actually looked a bit more like his movie-star namesake. At least then she’d have something to look at. But he didn’t. Nowhere even close.
‘Look, we’ve been sat here the last two days waiting for our fugitive to turn up at the first place he knows we’ll be looking for him, and he hasn’t made it so far. I don’t know what that tells you, but it tells me he probably isn’t going to arrive in the next five minutes.’
‘He might,’ said Owen firmly.
‘Well, if he does, then we’ll just come back and get him.’
Switching on the engine, Tina reversed out of the dead-end road they were parked in and turned north in the direction of the smoke. She could do with some action. Since being reinstated to the Met nearly a month earlier (for the second time in her career), and placed as a DC in Westminster CID, the highlights had been scarce. They were currently on what the borough’s chief super was calling a blitz on burglary, but there wasn’t much of a blitz about it. So far, all three burglars they’d nicked were currently back on the street, and their one big raid on the home of a major suspect, with the local press in tow, had turned out to be the wrong address. By the time they’d got to the right one — the flat next door — the guy had gone out the back window and disappeared into the early morning gloom.
‘It’s definitely coming from somewhere near the station,’ said Owen, peering through the windscreen, the radio in his hand. ‘What the hell do you reckon could have happened?’
The smoke was showing no signs of abating as it poured skywards, forming a spreading black cloud. Whatever it was, it was bad.
At that moment the radio crackled into life. ‘Attention all units,’ said the female operator breathlessly. ‘We have reports of an explosion at a coffee shop in Wilton Road, next to Victoria Station.’
Almost immediately another voice came over the airwaves. ‘This is PCSO 2049. We’ve just seen an IC4 male running away from the scene of the explosion. He’s heading east on Bridge Place in the direction of Belgrave Road. We’re currently giving chase on foot.’ The PCSO sounded knackered and Tina wondered if it was the overweight guy she’d seen occasionally down at the station. If it was, it was unlikely he’d be keeping pace for long.
The operator came back on the line. ‘Keep a visual, 2049, but do not apprehend. Repeat, do not apprehend. We are calling in armed back-up to make an arrest.’
‘Tango Four to base, we’re also giving mobile pursuit,’ said Owen into the radio. ‘We’re currently heading north on Tachbrook Street. ETA at Bridge Place, two minutes.’
‘Approach with extreme caution, Tango Four. Keep a visual but only intercept if you can confirm he appears unarmed.’
This, thought Tina, was the kind of bullshit that policework had been reduced to. Everything was about health and safety and risk assessments these days. You couldn’t just catch the criminals. You had to make sure you jumped through a dozen hoops and filled in all the necessary forms before you could actually finally get round to feeling a collar. It wasn’t really any wonder they were losing the war on crime.
‘All right, turn right up here,’ Owen told her. ‘Bridge Place is only a couple of hundred yards away. And for Christ’s sake, let’s be careful. I know what you’re like, and if he’s got a gun, I know it’ll be me, not you, who ends up with a bullet.’
Tina made a hard right, and found herself driving up a narrow residential road with an unbroken line of cars parked up on either side. She was feeling a real burst of excitement for the first time in months. To her this was what being a copper was all about. The chase; the adrenalin; the collar. If, like Owen, you weren’t willing to take a risk, then as far as she was concerned you should be working behind a desk.
‘There he is!’ Owen shouted, as an Asian man ran across the road in front of them fifty yards further on. He immediately grabbed the radio and reeled out an update on the suspect’s location to Control, while Tina accelerated towards the junction, not listening to the operator’s continued warnings to assess the situation before attempting an arrest.
And then, when she was barely twenty yards from the junction, a four-by-four pulled out from the side of the road, forcing her to slam down hard on the brakes, and flinging both her and Owen forward in their seats.
‘Jesus, get back, get back!’ yelled Owen as the woman driver sat staring at them with a face like thunder, her oversized car blocking the road. He pulled out his warrant card and waved it out of the window. ‘Police!’ he screamed. ‘Get out of the fucking way!’
The woman yelled back, clearly furious about something, and she wasn’t moving.
Bollocks to this, thought Tina, and jumped out of the car, leaving the engine running. She took off up the road at a sprint, knowing she was breaking all the rules, but not caring. A man had run away from a building just after an explosion. She’d like to think the fact that he was Asian, and possibly Muslim, had no bearing on her reaction, but she couldn’t help thinking that this could well be terrorist-related, in which case there was no way she could let him escape.
