Dark Winter

sash windows. The bow cut into the small pedestrian area the source had crossed when we followed him out of the station.

The shop on the right had sold kebabs, burgers and chips in a bygone age. Its cheap, luminous handpainted signs told us Jim used to be the boy cutting the finest chunks of meat off the spinning joint, but it certainly wouldn’t have been in this century. It’d been a long time since anyone had raised the metal shutters.

The shop on the left had been called MTC. Its front was covered with sheets of chipboard; the green sign above said it had been a booking office. It must have gone to the wall about the same time as Joe’s: the number to call for the best ticket deals in town didn’t even have an old national prefix.

We joined the three backpackers who were leaning against Boots’ window to shelter from the rain, scratching their heads as they studied an A–Z and got hassled by drunks and drug-dealers. Immediately left, between us and the McD’s over the road, the CCTV camera was pointing towards the ship’s bow, and no doubt had a clear view of the roads each side of it. I looked down at Suzy and she shrugged her shoulders. ‘He isn’t here. So what? His phone comes up without a number. Fuck him, let’s get on with it.’

‘Give it a minute, he could be out there somewhere, making sure we’re clear.’

Topping the bow of the brick ship was a tall belvedere tower, looking a bit like a lead-covered Moulin Rouge without the sails. In its heyday it had probably been the pride and joy of King’s Cross, but now it looked just like the rest of the building, covered in grime and pigeon shit, completely dilapidated. The sooner they dug it out and got on with the gateway to Europe the better.

I could see straight up Birkenhead Street. The CCTV was about 250 metres away, swivelling into a new position. Neon flooding from the fast-food joints glistened on the wet pavement the other side of the road, casting a pool of light across the dodgy-looking characters hanging around outside the amusement arcade. The only place that didn’t seem to have a light on was the police station at the corner of Birkenhead. It didn’t necessarily mean it was closed: who knew what was going on behind the mirrored glass?

I got out my moan-phone as Suzy played the girlfriend and cuddled into me. Two policemen in yellow fluorescent jackets came past and decided it was time to wake up a bundle in Boots’ doorway and move it on.

The Yes Man was as charming as ever, and I could still hear a load of other voices in the background. ‘What?’

‘We’re here. The car’s static along the eastern side of the British Library and we’re at the station looking at the target. The source isn’t here. You want us to lift him after this, find out what he knows?’

‘Negative. There’s no need, he’s not going anywhere. What can you see?’

‘No signs of life yet. We’ll give him another five minutes. Wait . . .’ A group of teenagers with too much illegal substance in them shouted their way past us and the two policemen eyed them knowingly as I got back to the Yes Man. ‘If he doesn’t show, we’ll bin him. Wait . . . is the signal still there?’

‘Of course,’ he snapped. ‘Otherwise I would have told you. Don’t forget, I want sit reps.’

The phone went dead and I powered it down. The Yes Man had to rely on us calling him: he would never make the call in case he compromised us, but it was always best to turn the thing off just in case.

Minutes were being wasted. ‘Fuck it, let’s go.’

As the police started following the teenagers, Suzy nodded and put her arm in mine. We walked out of cover and into the rain towards Pentonville. We weren’t going to cross just yet, but stay this side for the start of our 360 of the target. We’d do two recces: the first to get a general overview, the second for a close examination of locks and other detail.

We crossed the junction to the left of the station, and waded through the McFlurry cups littering the pavement outside the closed McDonald’s. Apart from MTC, the hundred-metre stretch of building was covered at street level all the way down to King’s Cross Bridge with the purple-painted chipboard I’d stood by when we first followed the source and his two mates from Starbucks.

Suzy smiled away at me, as you would that time of night, after a few hours together in a pub and a romantic walk home in the constant but now gentle rain. I looked up to the sky. ‘We won’t be able to get in from this side. You seen the street-lighting?’

She nodded. It was the same height as the tops of the windows on the second floor. They were in shit state, but these huge windows would let in enough light to cast shadows everywhere. For anybody on those first two floors, the street-lighting would provide illumination, but they’d have to keep below the sills, even during the day – especially as I could see straight through the first-floor windows to Gray’s Inn Road. They’d certainly be on hard routine, no smoking, no lights, no cooking.

Any movement would be easily spotted from the buildings on Gray’s Inn. The second- and third-floor windows on this side were a little smaller than the ones below, and I could only see enough of the two upper floors to tell it wasn’t an open space.

There was still no sign of life, no lights, no condensation, not even a window covered with net curtains or sheets of newspaper. Further down Pentonville there was a collection of two-storey buildings that were still being used; they made up the rear of the triangle, the stern of the ship. They probably dated from the sixties, and included a mock KFC and a radio shop. No doubt the owners had their fingers crossed that the developers would buy them out as well.

We crossed Pentonville and walked down to the base of the triangle, King’s Cross Bridge. Maybe there had been a bridge at one time, probably over a canal, but now it was about seventy metres of road linking Pentonville with Gray’s Inn.

We turned right, beneath yet another CCTV, and crossed Gray’s Inn as a police car and van, both full of uniforms, wailed behind us.

39

The CCTV camera in front of King’s Cross station was now pointing towards the British Library. Suzy grinned as she got to grips with another wad of nicotine gum. ‘Maybe they’ll take them down again when this place is all nice and shiny.’

‘About as much chance as Ken Livingstone getting a second term.’

The traffic splashed its way up Gray’s Inn as we checked the Boots shopfront again for the source. The target building made definite sense to me as an FOB [forward operations base]. The construction site probably wasn’t working at weekends, so there’d be no one overlooking from that side, even if they could see through the plastic sheeting. The shops this side of Gray’s Inn had office-for-rent signs sticking out from the floors above them, but it wouldn’t be too much of a problem to keep out of sight of anyone working in one of them over the weekend – especially if the ASU members confined themselves to a high room on the Pentonville side of the building.

I checked the bell pushes on the doors sandwiched between the shopfronts our side of the road. I wanted to try to see if any of the flats were residential, including the ones above Costcutter. Hardly any had a name on them, and those that did were scribbled on scraps of paper.

Even with CCTV everywhere, there were other factors that made it a good choice of FOB. In a hotel room there’d always be the risk of someone next door overhearing them prepare. With a rented room or flat, there are booking procedures, agreements, deposits, all that rigmarole to go through and potentially compromise. And they hadn’t had to force their way into someone’s home, take them hostage or kill them so that they could use the location; all they’d had to do was get in there and lie low.

I tried to imagine them inside, maybe in new sleeping-bags, eating more shit in trays. Did they pray before going on a job? Were they shitting themselves, or just totally focused? Were there any more women up there? Was their plan to kill themselves after the attack, or just move round the city for a few more days, contaminating fresh victims until they were incapable of going any further?

A couple of twentysomethings were making the best of their cans of Stella in the shelter of a shop doorway, with a young girl who looked like she was sleeping rough too. She was in ripped jeans, T-shirt and an old green nylon bomber jacket, and couldn’t have been more than a year older than Kelly. Her gaunt face was full of zits and her hair as wet and greasy as the pavement. She leant against an Evening Standard newsbox that headlined more SARS hysteria, as they swayed and she giggled. One of the guys said they should both get a blow-job after the favour they were about to do her. She took a swig from one of their cans.