He nodded. His eyes weak, unfocused. ‘I guess we have to believe that.’
Chapter 70
The overhead monitor showed that the train would be arriving in one minute.
As I looked up at it a train clattered into the platform. Jubilee Line. False alarm.
It was very warm. One of those days you get in May which are like a glorious early summer and I was wearing polarised aviator sunglasses against the brightness of the sun.
Finchley Road is an open-air station. From there to all destinations west, the Tube is actually overground. It is at Finchley Road station heading east that the Metropolitan Line enters the tunnel network. The underground labyrinth connecting all parts of London. The Jubilee Line train left. Thirty seconds later the Metropolitan Line train came in.
It was crowded, particularly for a Sunday. But there was a big concert on later at the O2 Arena, the re- formed Take That were headlining and thousands of people were heading east for it.
Harlan Shapiro and I stood up as the train pulled to a stop, and headed to the door which opened opposite the seat we had been told to wait at.
Harlan Shapiro stepped aboard.
I scanned the carriages and what faces I could see I didn’t recognise. The doors closed and the train began to pull out.
I let the carriage go, then jogged alongside the train and leapt in between two of the carriages where there was a small gap for the guard to walk through.
The train picked up speed and as it went into the tunnel the lights dimmed and it became dark.
My feet flew from under me and I fell backwards towards the gap.
Chapter 71
Luckily someone had opened the window on one of the doors.
I managed to grab its top edge before I was sucked under the train.
I pulled myself upright and opened the door. A group of middle-aged women looked at me, startled. I smiled apologetically and tried to make my way through.
It wasn’t easy. I wasn’t sure what I’d hoped to achieve by getting on the train but I couldn’t just do nothing. I’d made a promise first to Hannah Shapiro and now to her father, and I intended to keep it. I made my way about halfway down the carriage when the train stopped briefly, as it often did on this stretch of track. I walked on to the end of the carriage and it started up again.
I looked through the windows between the carriages but there was no sign of Hannah or her father. I opened the door again, apologising to the people who had to move out of the way. I considered flashing them my card but decided against it. Given the circumstances, it was probably best not to let people know who I was or who I was working for.
I worked my way down through the next carriage. It was just as packed as the others. Mainly women – a lot of them in their thirties or forties. Dressed a lot younger and giggling like schoolchildren on their way to their first concert.
What would happen if the kidnappers detonated the explosives didn’t bear thinking about.
I had been entirely rational in my reassurances to Harlan Shapiro. But logic was one thing and human emotion another, and emotion was a far stronger force than logic. As I was just about to find out.
Chapter 72
Peter Chappel was a forty-five-year-old ophthalmic optician with a small practice in Chesham, a quiet Buckinghamshire market town set amidst the rolling natural beauty of the Chilterns.
His premises were on the High Street and, although it was a Sunday, he had come into his shop to sort through some paperwork and receipts that he needed to send off to his accountant for the quarterly VAT return. He had an elderly female assistant who worked with him, but as often as not he would find himself coming into the shop on his day off to catch up with the admin.
He put all the receipts together into a large white envelope, sealed and addressed it, walked through to the reception area and left it on his assistant’s desk to go out in the morning post. He was ahead of schedule but Peter Chappel was a man who paid attention to detail.
He walked back to his examination room. It was windowless, with an old-fashioned roll-top desk in the corner that he used for an office. He unplugged and picked up the laptop that was sitting on the faded green leather and deliberated for a moment.
It was a few minutes past three o’clock and Peter Chappel made a decision. Pulling at an eye-test chart, he swung it out from the wall to reveal a safe behind it.
He put the laptop into the safe, closed the door and spun the dial. Then he put the eye chart back in place and bustled back out through reception.
He picked up a couple of carrier bags that he had left by the front door and then went out onto the street, putting them down again so he could lock the door behind him.
He looked at his watch again and set off for home. He was a little late but not much and he certainly didn’t want to miss any of the fun. Luckily he lived just a hundred yards or so away from his shop in Punch Bowl Lane. Quite appropriate, Peter Chappel thought to himself as he strolled quickly along Red Lion Street – there was no show without Punch, after all, as the old saying goes.
Chapter 73
Tom Challoner had worked for the Underground for thirty years.
He was a stationmaster and would be retiring in the autumn. At ten minutes past three he was sitting at his desk taking what he considered a well-earned tea break, timing himself as he finished The Times crossword.
The shock waves from the explosion shattered the window of his office and knocked him from his chair to lie unconscious on the floor.
Near Edgware Road Tube station, Kirsty Webb was sitting at her desk in one of the CID offices at Paddington Green. Cursing the ever-increasing bureaucratic demands that meant she and her colleagues spent more time doing paperwork than they ever did out on the street solving crimes. Or trying to.
She had given up on the paperwork an hour ago and had been working on a presentation that she would be giving in a few days’ time in Manchester. She had been shortlisted as one of three final applicants for the new post in the newly created division. Each of them had to give a fifteen-minute talk. A case study of a successful murder case on which they had worked.
Kirsty had wanted to give her presentation on the ‘Ring-Finger Murders’ as one of the red-top papers had named them – a title that had been taken up by most of the broadcast media. But she had been sidelined on the case because it had been taken over by the serial-crimes unit and she found herself relegated back to donkey work. Taking statements, filing reports, dead-end policing.
She put her pen down, picked up a sheet of paper with random thoughts and doodles on it, screwed it into a ball and was about to throw it across the room into a waste-paper bin when a call came.
She looked at the caller ID, then across the room to where a couple of male colleagues were discussing
