Guilty as fuck.
Lewis rose and stood behind his desk, one hand holding his chair for support. The AC opened his door, left it wide. The armed police stayed outside, Hunter and the West Midlands officers followed the Assistant Commissioner inside. Famie stood in the doorway, Sophie and Sam at her shoulder. Behind them, a whole newsroom listened.
‘Assistant Commissioner?’ began Lewis. That was all he managed.
The AC read from a card. She spoke loudly, her audience stretched all the way back to the stairs. There were a lot of names. ‘Andrew Lewis. I am arresting you for the murder of Mary Lawson, Seth Hussain, Harry Thomas, Sarah Thompson, Brian Hall, Sathnam Stanley, Anita Cross, Tommi Dara, the Reverend Don Hardin, John Carney, Arnold Hall, Gill Gallagher, Tobias Smith and Paul Shilling. For carrying out acts of terror, and for attempted murder. And for being in the pay of a foreign country. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?’
Famie thought she would remember each word, every name. It was only a very short time since she had been accused of some of those murders. In the twenty-four hours since Coventry, she had learnt from Hunter that the inquiry was focusing on Lewis’s reporting in Chechnya, the possibility of faked stories and his subsequent recruitment by the FSB. The arrest was possibly premature but they feared his disappearance. His defection. It had to be now.
Lewis stayed standing, eyes glassy, unfocused. Said nothing. When the Assistant Commissioner was finished, she nodded at one of her officers. The ratchet and snap of her handcuffs played loud in the room. She steered Lewis to the door. He looked at the path that had opened in front of him. The route to the lifts was now lined on both sides by shocked, disbelieving staff. The line between the UK and City desks, one he had trod a million times before, had just become a gauntlet he had to run.
The AC went first, then Lewis. She set the pace. It was conspicuously slower than her arrival and just the right speed for every journalist present to eyeball their departing, traitorous bureau chief.
93
9 p.m.
LONDON POLICE ARREST INTERNATIONAL PRESS SERVICE BUREAU CHIEF
POLICE CONFIRM SUSPECT HELD IN WAKE OF UK TERROR ATTACKS
LONDON, June 15 (IPS) – London Police said arrest of IPS bureau chief Andrew Lewis was in connection with their enquiries into the British capital’s May 22 attacks and Thursday’s murders in Coventry.
Six people were killed and twelve seriously wounded in Coventry Cathedral, England.
After the pub, after the toasts to their departed friends, Famie cabbed it home. The driver recognized her, waived the fare. As soon as he drove away, she heard some of Max Richter’s music playing. She smiled. Charlie might not get her music taste but she tolerated some of the newer composers. The slow repetition of the ambient piano drifting from the flat was a sign that her daughter was home and had probably sorted food. Something she needed badly.
‘Chinese and Thai,’ called Charlie as Famie hauled herself up the stairs.
‘All of it,’ she said.
‘And a guest,’ said Charlie.
‘Oh God, no guests,’ said Famie. ‘I hate fucking guests.’
Laughter from the kitchen. ‘You’ll like this one.’
The food had arrived with Hari. Plastic containers of rice, green and red curry, shrimp soup, spring rolls and crispy duck filled the kitchen table. Pinot Grigio had been poured into tumblers. Famie embraced Charlie then Hari. She ate two spring rolls before speaking.
‘I think I might cry,’ she said.
Famie did cry. Afterwards, relief and alcohol worked their way through her self-control. She wanted to talk, they wanted to listen. Wanted to hear every extraordinary, speculative, prejudicial word that she had to offer.
‘They couldn’t tell me all the details in the debrief earlier, but they think he was turned in Grozny,’ she said. ‘That Lewis filed fabricated reports about a massacre in 2003. It made his name but turns out he just made figures and quotes up. The Russians got to him first. He became their agent. Paid to undermine the UK. All of his work is being re-examined.’
Charlie and Hari wanted her to keep talking. They let her eat. They kept silent. They served more duck.
‘Lewis hired Amal Hussain to run his cells. He was up for some mercenary work. The timing was perfect. He had discovered that his brother had been shagging his wife and nanny. As well as half of IPS. So he killed Seth himself. On that zebra crossing. That knife was his. While we all obsessed over Islamic terrorism, it was good old-fashioned fratricide. Family honour and all that shit. Once it was clear I’d been one of Seth’s partners, he came after me. Us.’ She waggled the fork between her and Charlie. ‘It was, they think, probably Amal who ordered the attack in Exeter, then the one that would have been on me, here. A moral crusade, you see. If he’d found Sophie in Coventry, he’d have killed her and her baby too. Niece or nephew. Whatever.’ She raised a glass to Hari. ‘Here’s to justifiable homicide,’ she said.
Hari sipped, stayed quiet.
‘The money thing, Seth’s borrowing, was probably a red herring. Seems he was a gambling addict who was just shit with money.’ Famie shook her head. Disbelieving still. ‘Two totally separate lives. And I only saw the compassionate journalist side. What an idiot.’
Her shoulders slumped, her fork held mid-air. A silence. Charlie was about to ask a question when Famie started up again.
‘Having set up the cells, he then set about exposing them. The whole point was to
