‘It’s being kept under wraps. Cheney died before he could stand trial. If they lose Fox as well, it’s going to make the government, and this country, look like a bunch of incompetents. He was attacked by another prisoner armed with a homemade blade. He got a slash across the head and defensive cuts on his hands and arms, and ended up with a lot of stitches. But he managed to fight his attacker off and put him in hospital as well.’
‘Do we know why he was attacked?’
‘The other prisoner’s not talking. He’s Category A and violent, so it could be any number of reasons, but the timing, just days before a new bombing campaign, is the kind of coincidence that sets alarm bells ringing.’
Bolt absent-mindedly stroked the biggest and deepest of the three small scars that dotted his right cheek — the result of a car crash many years earlier. Because of his big build and closely cropped hair, they helped to lend him a thuggish appearance that was only partly offset by his incredibly blue eyes, and looking at him now, Tina remembered how attractive she’d once found him.
‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘Fox is a tough bastard, but the word is the attack’s shaken him up, so what he has to say could be useful. It might also be nothing, of course, and if he’s after immunity from prosecution, then he’s pissing in the wind. But I want to give it a shot.’
It struck Tina how little she knew about Mike Bolt these days. The building they were in now was a four- storey Georgian townhouse on a quiet residential Mayfair street, with a brand-new plaque outside the front door identifying the occupants as Lowe Robertson Real Estate. She’d walked through an open-plan office with a handful of men and women working on high-end PCs to get to the room she was in now, but the place was hardly buzzing with activity.
‘So, what is this place and how are you involved?’ she asked. ‘The last I heard you were working for SOCA.’
‘I’m in CTC now, working counter terrorism. I’m running a unit called Special Operations, but you won’t find anything about us in the brochures or on the Met website. We’ve been set up specifically to identify, locate and gather evidence against the people behind the Stanhope siege — the ones who bankrolled it, and provided logistical support to the terrorists.’
‘That sounds a lot more fun than what I’ve been doing these past few months. Fancy seconding me?’
Bolt smiled properly for the first time since Tina had walked into his office. He was, she thought, still a good- looking guy, perhaps even more so since he’d hit his forties. His hair had begun to turn from blonde to silver, and the lines on his narrow, aquiline features had become more pronounced, but the changes actually enhanced his appearance, and she wondered suddenly if he was still single.
‘It sounds a lot more exciting than it actually is,’ he said. ‘We do all the usual no-frills policework: sifting through available intelligence in-house, talking to informants, running taps and surveillance ops. But it’s a long job, and I’ve got to be honest with you, it hasn’t generated many good leads. The people we’re looking for aren’t known to us, and they’ve proved very adept at covering their tracks.’
‘I heard from various sources that the Stanhope siege was bankrolled by an unfriendly Middle Eastern government.’
‘According to sources within MI6, there was financial backing from Arab sources within the Middle East, and at a high, possibly governmental, level, but there was help for the attackers from within the UK as well, and given the fact that half the terrorists were white former soldiers it’s very likely that it came from extreme right-wing elements, and ones with money. That’s why Fox could be so important to us. I need you to find out what he has to say.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ said Tina. ‘But I want to be a part of your team. I’m not cut out for recycling low-level scumbags through the courts system, which is what I’m doing at the moment. Is there any way you can get me on board in a more permanent capacity?’
Bolt sighed. ‘The work we do here’s low-key and secretive, and I don’t want someone who’s going to go on a one-woman crusade for justice, put herself and everyone around her in danger, get her face plastered all over the media, and end up compromising all our work. I’ll be straight with you, Tina. You’re a hothead, and it’s got you in a hell of a lot of trouble in the past. That’s why you’re a DC in a small CID office.’
Tina had heard this all plenty of times before as she’d fought to get herself reinstated, but it still hurt coming from a man she’d once considered a good friend. ‘I’m still a good copper. You know that. And I get results.’ She leaned forward and looked him right in the eye. ‘Give me a chance, and you have my word that I won’t do a thing to compromise any part of your work. I mean it.’
Bolt stood up, looking uncomfortable. ‘I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, you need to get going. Interviewing Fox is top priority, and that comes all the way from the top. There’s a helicopter waiting at New Scotland Yard to take you up to the prison where they’re holding him. I’ll get one of our people to give you a lift over there.’
Tina got to her feet, feeling relieved and disappointed at the same time. She was glad to be in the thick of things again, but sad that her relationship with Bolt had become so distant. Theirs had always been a complicated one, yet he’d always stood by her when things had been tough. She owed him a lot more than he owed her, and it was a debt she knew she’d never be able to repay.
‘One thing before I go,’ she said. ‘A lot of people died in the Stanhope incident, and the inquiry to find out who’s behind it has got to be pretty major. So, why does this place feel so empty?’
‘We’re a small team. Manpower’s a problem these days. With all the cuts going on, and the resources they’ve pumped into the phone-hacking scandal, the Met’s running extremely low on detectives.’ He shrugged, seeing her expression. ‘I know, I don’t like it either, but that’s just the way it is. Also, up until about an hour ago, we’ve effectively been working on a hunch. We’ve always believed there was UK involvement, but there’s never been any proof. And there’s another reason too. The smaller the team, the less chance there is of a leak to the bad guys. The fact that a senior CTC man like John Cheney was working for the terrorists scared a lot of people. That’s why I’ve agreed to work with you, Tina. You’re a hell of a lot of things, and not all of them good, but one thing’s for certain: you’re definitely not corrupt.’
Tina smiled. ‘I’m flattered.’
They looked at each other, and something — a flash of their old friendship — passed between them.
‘It’s good to see you again,’ he said. ‘Considering what you’ve already been through this morning, you look great.’
‘It’s good to be back,’ she said. And she meant it.
Ten
09.50
There are no noble causes.
They tell you there are, but they’re lying. When they sent me to Iraq they said we’d be liberating a downtrodden people from the shackles of a brutal dictatorship, but all we did was destabilize the whole region and start a civil war that’s still rumbling on today, losing a lot of good people in the process. And in Afghanistan they said we’d be in the forefront of the fight against global terrorism, and helping to keep the streets of Britain safe for present and future generations.
Bullshit.
The streets are no safer because we went there. In fact, they’re probably a lot less safe. The world’s Muslim extremists — the kind we were supposed to be defeating — can come and go inside Britain as they please, safe in the knowledge that, thanks to the Human Rights Act and the parasitic lawyers who uphold it, they can’t be deported. And they hate us even more because of what we’re doing in Muslim countries. We’re international aggressors and domestic appeasers, which seems to me to be the worst kind of combination there is.
And the politicians who sent us to those Godforsaken countries are sitting pretty at home, eating their vol- au-vents, fucking their secretaries, and fiddling their expenses, while harping on about freedom and sacrifice and all that shit, even though it’s not them who’ve lost limbs in IED attacks, or seen their best mate’s brains splattered all over some dusty rock thanks to a sniper’s bullet.
I did two tours of Afghanistan and we didn’t change a damn thing. Not a jot. The moment western forces leave, the Taliban will be all over the country like a rash. And you know why? Because they don’t want our
