As she turned the corner, Tina saw him up ahead. He was a good forty yards away and running towards the Vauxhall Bridge Road, which struck Tina as odd, since it was roughly the direction he’d come from, suggesting he hadn’t spent much time planning his escape. He was already clearly slowing as he tired, so she was confident she could make up the distance between them.
But then he turned and spotted her and accelerated, disappearing up a side street. Tina went to the gym five times a week. Religiously. It was one of her few pleasures these days, and consequently she was very fit, and still young enough to be fast. She picked up her pace, going flat out now, and as she rounded the corner she saw that there was now less than twenty yards between them.
He looked back over his shoulder a second time, which was when Tina got a good look at him. He was youngish, probably early thirties, and smartly dressed in pressed trousers, black work shoes and a shirt and tie beneath his jacket. Which again struck her as odd. As did the look of pure panic on his face. Criminals sometimes looked scared when they were being chased by the forces of law and order, but not like this. This man seemed utterly terrified, as if he was a victim rather than a perpetrator.
‘Police!’ she yelled. ‘Stop now!’
He ignored her, kept running, his arms flailing in front of him. Two Lego-like blocks of flats loomed to her right and standing out in front of them was a large group of schoolboys watching the chase, several of them pulling out mobile phones and filming Tina as she ran past, gaining now. Fifteen yards and counting.
Akhtar’s lungs felt like they were about to burst. He’d been running ever since he’d left the coffee shop. In the sheer chaos of the situation he’d run right past his car, just as the explosion had hit, temporarily throwing him to his knees. Knowing he had to get away from the shop, he’d jumped to his feet and carried on running, his ears ringing from the sound of the explosion, before he’d realized his mistake. By that time it was too late. Two police officers had appeared on the other side of the road and had started chasing him. He’d thought he’d outrun them and then, suddenly, this woman in jeans and trainers was right behind him, shouting for him to stop.
He didn’t know how much longer he could keep going for. A part of him even wanted to give up, to throw himself at the mercy of the authorities. But there was no way he could do that now. As far as the world was concerned, he’d planted a bomb in a busy cafe. A bomb that had almost certainly killed many innocent people. He had to escape. There was no choice. There never had been.
There was a main road with flowing traffic directly ahead of him. If he could get across that, put a bit of distance between him and the woman, he might just make it. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he forced his legs to keep going, not even hesitating as he charged into the road. A horn blared as a car was forced to brake suddenly, and another much louder horn blasted to his left.
He turned and saw a lorry bearing down on him, its pistons hissing as its driver tried to stop.
But it was too late. Akhtar just managed to let out the first second of a terrified scream, throwing up his arms in a desperate protective gesture, before he was struck by a screaming wall of metal, and the whole world seemed to explode.
Tina saw it all. The car skidding as it swerved to avoid him; the man continuing to run across the road oblivious to the lorry coming the opposite way; the impact as the lorry struck him with a loud bang, sending him flying across the tarmac like a rag doll; and then the man being crushed under its wheels amid a futile wail of brakes.
It all happened in the space of a few seconds while Tina stood frozen with horror, wondering if there was anything she could have done to stop him, and knowing that once again she’d given her many enemies a stick to beat her with.
Five
08.18
The gunman was watching Sky News when the pretty young anchor interrupted the sports round-up to announce in serious tones that reports were coming in of an explosion near London’s Victoria Station. This was immediately followed by live footage from a helicopter of the view above the street in question showing a blazing shop front with people milling about outside, some of them clearly hurt, and several others lying on the ground. There were emergency services personnel on the scene but they appeared to be in short supply.
He switched off the TV. The job was done, but he took no great pleasure in it, even though the whole thing had been a huge risk and had required precision planning. The bomb had been powerful, and plenty of people were dead — cut down for no other reason than that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The outrage would be immense. Just as they wanted it.
Mika sat at one end of the sagging sofa, her head resting on one shoulder, a dark bloody hole in the centre of her forehead. She too was collateral damage, which was unfortunate. She’d done her job well, if under duress, but she knew too much to be allowed to live.
He took out the mobile he’d used to detonate Akhtar Mohammed’s bomb, and phoned the main switchboard at BBC Radio London. Clearly it was a bit early in the morning for them because it took a good minute before the call was answered by a male operator.
Speaking into the high-spec voice disguiser that made it impossible to detect either his age or ethnicity, he began his short prepared speech. ‘A soldier from Islamic Command just struck a blow against Crusader forces by detonating a bomb right in the heart of your corrupt capital city. The British Crusader government has until eight p.m. tonight to make a public statement promising to withdraw all its troops from Afghanistan and cease support for its American puppet government with immediate effect, or a far greater attack will take place somewhere in this country that will bring fire down on all your heads. Remember, the deadline is eight p.m. You have been warned.’
The operator started to speak but the gunman ended the call. He didn’t turn off the phone, though. Instead he wiped it down with a cloth and threw it on the sofa next to Mika’s corpse. He was pretty sure he hadn’t left any of his DNA inside the flat. On the two occasions he’d visited he’d always worn gloves and had tried to minimize his contact with any of the surfaces. To make doubly sure that the police had nothing to go on when they came to this place, though, he picked up a second backpack from behind the sofa and placed it in Mika’s lap. It too contained a bomb of similar destructive capacity to the one he’d given to Akhtar, but this one was on a timer, primed to explode at 10.35 a.m., which he’d estimated would be around the time the police arrived, having traced the location of the phone. A second bomb in the boot of a car nearby was primed to explode at the same time. Hopefully, between them the bombs would take out a few of the security forces; but even if they didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. The point of all terrorist campaigns is to sow fear and especially panic among the civilian population, and there was nothing more effective than apparently random attacks to do just that.
He took a last look round, one final check that he hadn’t left behind any telltale evidence, then put on a pair of glasses and a baseball cap, pulling it low over his face, and left the flat, keeping his head down against the cold February air, confident that even if he was picked up on the inevitable CCTV cameras round here, no one would recognize him.
Six
08.24
There was no denying it. Prison decor really was shit.
Prisoner number 407886, William James Garrett, better known to the international media by his codename Fox, sat on his bunk staring at the four grimy, pockmarked walls that marked the borders of his home, and wondered who on earth had decided to paint them lime green. The bright colours didn’t make him feel any more positive about his situation, as he was sure they were meant to do. They just gave him a headache.
Fox couldn’t stand prison. In his mind, keeping a man in a tiny cage without hope for the rest of his days but giving him glimpses of the outside world through TV and the net was far less humane than killing him outright. What surprised him was the number of men in the cells around him — men who were here for many years, and a few who
