State of Fear

by Tim Ayliffe

  Praise for Tim Ayliffe’s The Greater Good

  ‘Ayliffe delivers a taut, nail-biting page-turner, stamping his mark on the modern day Australian thriller.’ Better Reading

  ‘Bailey is charismatic, sarcastic and broken all rolled into one . . . a brilliantly written character starring in a cracking crime thriller.’ Herald Sun

  ‘Readers will not fail to enjoy the ride from start to finish.’ Good Reading

  ‘A crime thriller with the lot: murder, deceit, corruption and a hint of romance . . . Ayliffe takes you deep inside the worlds of politics and the media, with a heavy dose of international intrigue thrown in.’ Michael Rowland

  ‘An absolute cracker of a thriller.’ Chris Uhlmann

  ‘If Rake were a journalist, with a talent that equals his capacity to survive being beaten up, Bailey would be him.’ Julia Baird

  This book is dedicated to my Mum and Dad

  You can’t reach good ends through evil means,

  because the means represent the seed

  and the end represents the tree.

  Martin Luther King Jr, 1967

  CHAPTER 1

  London

  ‘Any questions?’

  John Bailey was standing behind a podium looking out warily over the packed conference room.

  ‘Anyone?’

  Bailey had been invited to Chatham House to give a speech about Islamic terrorism because his experiences as a former Middle East Correspondent were unique. He had been kidnapped and tortured by extremists in Iraq.

  Some of the people in the crowd looked even more relieved than he was that the speech was over. Most were already on their feet, heading for the exit where his editor from The Journal, Gerald Summers, was schmoozing with a woman from British intelligence.

  He stepped down from the podium and started weaving his way towards the back of the room. By the time he got there it was clear that something was wrong.

  ‘What’re you doing? Move!’ A man rammed his shoulder into Bailey’s chest. ‘Don’t go outside, it’s not safe!’

  ‘Take it easy, fella.’ Bailey patted the guy on the shoulder, trying to calm him down. ‘What’s happened?’

  The guy was already gone, pushing his way towards the other side of the room.

  Bailey turned his attention towards the commotion at the door. The people who’d left Chatham House were streaming back inside. Panicked, running from something, or someone.

  Bailey went against the tide, heading for the big blue door. Old habit.

  ‘Excuse me. Excuse me, please.’

  He made it to the entrance and hugged the doorframe until he spotted a gap, slipping outside into the dim afternoon light. A misty rain was falling, bathing the ground in a shiny slick, reflecting the grey sky above.

  ‘Get back! Get back!’

  A policeman was standing on the edge of the footpath, his hands outstretched, ordering people to move away.

  ‘Everybody, get back! Get back, now!’

  The cop was barking orders at the crowd while keeping one eye on the cause of the commotion on the edge of St James’s Square.

  A man dressed in a black hoodie and jeans, a woman kneeling at his feet.

  The man was holding her by the hair, yanking it backwards, and waving a large knife at the people who had decided not to run. His audience. Some of them had mobile phones, filming the violent scene unfolding in front of them. Others stood with mouths wide-open, feet frozen to the concrete, their fear sailing through the crowd like a rampant ghost.

  ‘Please . . . please. No.’

  The woman was desperately pleading for her life.

  ‘Shut up!’ The man screamed at her, before turning his attention back to the crowd. ‘For the bombs, the bullets and the occupation of our lands!’

  He had a thick North London accent. Bailey couldn’t quite make out the colour of his skin because of the shadow of the hoodie on his face.

  ‘Put down the knife.’ The policeman stepped towards him. ‘It doesn’t need to be this way. You don’t want to do anything stupid.’

  ‘You’re the criminal, not me!’

  Bailey recognised the woman on her knees. She had been at the conference, one of the earnest faces that had watched him deliver his speech. She looked like she was aged around forty. Black overcoat, navy suit, scarf torn away, lying on the road beside her.

  ‘Please, don’t do this. Please! I have children. I have –’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Don’t!’ The policeman edged closer. ‘Don’t do it.’

  The man raised the knife again, pointing it at the sky. ‘The war is here! Allahu Akbar!’

  He plunged the knife into the woman’s throat, sending a spray of blood onto the road, cutting deep, until the blood was rushing down her chest, transforming the colour of her dress from blue to purple. She slumped to the ground, a large pool of blood gathering around her head and shoulders in a dark, contorted halo. Bailey studied her face, her vacant stare, as the dark pool expanded, slowly, on the bitumen – the life flowing out of her – eventually touching the foot of her killer.

  The policeman turned back to the crowd of horrified onlookers, his face the colour of ash.

  ‘Get back, all of you!’

  He looked like he was fresh out of the academy. The poor bastard didn’t even carry a gun. Hardly any British police did. His only weapon was the heavy baton that he was clutching, tightly, in his right hand.

  He turned back to the man in the hoodie. ‘Put down the knife! This is your last chance. Put down the knife!’

  The man in the hoodie pointed at the small gathering of people on the steps at Chatham House. ‘You want to know about terrorism? Look at yourselves!’

  A grey BMW four-wheel drive skidded to a stop on the northern corner of St James’s Square. The doors flew open, four men jumped out, dressed in black with helmets, ballistic vests and semi-automatic rifles. Members of the London Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command known as SO15. The rapid response team whose sole purpose was stopping terrorists. Bailey knew these guys. He’d seen them take down a cell in London back in 2005. Within seconds, they were fanning out across the street, the butts of their rifles locked on their shoulders, fingers on triggers, muzzles pointed at the man in the hoodie.

  ‘Put down the weapon!’ one of them yelled.

  The bloke with the knife turned his head towards the guns now trained on him, then back at the people on the footpath.

  ‘You will all see! You will pay for what you do!’

  He was waving his knife at the people watching, some of them still filming. Videos that would later be used as cheap, effective propaganda by terrorist recruiters online.

  ‘For the last time, put down the knife!’

  The man lowered the blade, stepping over the woman’s body, moving towards the crowd.

  ‘You’re all slaves!’

  The armed police edged closer, their hundreds of hours of training ensuring that they moved as one.

  The man took another step towards the footpath, pulling his hoodie back off his head. Bailey was less than ten metres away. He had a clear view of his face. Young. Anglo. Red hair. Freckles. Barely a man. A crazed look in his bloodshot eyes. Bailey had seen eyes like that before. Militia fighters pumped up on amphetamines. Another place. Another time. The same hateful ideology.

  ‘Don’t do it, mate,’ the policeman with the baton in his hand said. ‘Just put down the knife.’

  ‘Don’t do it!’ Bailey heard himself call out.

  The young man looked at Bailey, like he knew him, holding his stare. Smiling.

  ‘Don’t,’ Bailey tried again. ‘It’s not worth it.’

  The man turned away, surveying the crowd until he found what he was looking for – a kid hold
ing a smartphone, filming the show. He lifted the knife again, shoulder height, and ran directly towards him.

  POP! POP! POP! POP! POP! POP! POP! POP!

  The police opened fire, their bullets pounding into his chest, the impact slamming him to the ground. They moved in quickly, one of them kicking away the knife from his hand, sending it scuttling across the road. There was no resistance. He was already dead.

  The policeman with the baton ran over to the woman on the ground. She still hadn’t moved. Down on one knee, he touched her neck, desperate for a way to bring her back to life. It was useless. Both carotid arteries had been severed. She was gone.

  ‘Bailey!’ A hand landed on Bailey’s shoulder and he spun around, startled.

  Gerald.

  ‘What on earth just happened?’

  Bailey said nothing, turning back to the two bodies on the road.

  The crowd started building again. People were coming back outside from Chatham House, the East India Club, the London Library and the other buildings that surrounded the square. He could hear the sounds of sirens in the distance. Getting louder. Closer.

  A policeman was talking to the kid with the smartphone, asking him about the video and if he had broadcast it live. The kid was nodding his head. He had. He didn’t know why.

  A teenage punter with a smartphone, the unwitting producer of a terrorist snuff film.

  ‘Bailey?’ Gerald tried again. ‘Bailey, are you okay?’

  ‘Another one.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Another lost kid, brainwashed by these bastards.’

  ‘It’s a bloody –’

  ‘And that woman.’ Bailey pointed at the body a few metres from where the young man was lying, riddled with bullets, on the road. ‘She was here for the conference. I remember seeing her inside.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Gerald said. ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘No. I’m not.’

  Poor woman, thought Bailey. One of her last experiences was having to sit through his crappy speech on one of those uncomfortable red chairs.

  ‘I’ve got this covered, guys.’ Candice Simmons appeared beside them.

  Simmons was the young reporter Gerald had sent to London to replace Bailey after his breakdown. He knew her type and he didn’t like her.

  ‘I’ve already fired off a tweet and spoken to the desk.’

  ‘Thanks, Candice,’ Gerald said.

  ‘What’d you see?’ Bailey said.

  ‘Enough.’

  Simmons was ambitious. Bailey didn’t have a problem with that, as long as it didn’t get in the way of the truth. Not everyone was looking for the truth these days.

  ‘Like I said, I’ve got this,’ she said.

  ‘You can take the aftermath. The investigation. I’m going to tell people what happened.’

  ‘Now, hang on!’

  Bailey stared at her. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Inside.’

  ‘Then you didn’t see what happened.’

  ‘No, but videos will be online within seconds.’ She pointed at the crowd of people, many of them with heads bowed, staring into their phones. ‘I’m the correspondent and –’

  ‘And what?’ Bailey looked at Gerald, waiting for him to intervene.

  Gerald Summers was The Journal’s editor. It was his call.

  ‘What did you see, Bailey?’

  Too much.

  ‘Everything.’

  Bailey looked Gerald in the eyes, taking a moment to reassure his old friend that he had this.

  ‘Candice,’ Gerald turned to Simmons, ‘Bailey does the lead. The blow by blow on the ground. The first-person about the shit show that he saw.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Decision’s made. Get moving.’

  Simmons nodded her head and shot Bailey a fuck-you glare. There wasn’t time to argue. A policeman was preparing to say something to a small gathering of reporters who were already yelling questions from the footpath. Candice headed in their direction.

  ‘You sure you’re okay with this, Bailey?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ Bailey didn’t like what Gerald was suggesting. ‘What do you want? A thousand words?’

  ‘Whatever you need. Quick as you can.’ Gerald looked at his watch. ‘It’s the middle of the night in Sydney. I’m going to organise another print run for metros.’

  CHAPTER 2

  John Bailey never missed a deadline. Not when it mattered.

  Within an hour, Bailey’s eyewitness account had gone global. Job done.

  The bodies of the killer and his victim had already been removed from the road and the crowds were starting to disperse.

  It was time to go.

  ‘The only thing left is the identity of the attacker,’ Candice said. ‘I’ve got a source at the Yard on that front.’

  ‘Thanks, Candice. Give me a call if you need me.’ Gerald turned to Bailey. ‘Hungry?’

  ‘I just want to get out of here.’ Bailey stepped closer to Gerald so that Simmons was out of earshot. ‘And a friendly warning: I’m not up for the long debrief, okay?’

  Bailey had seen a lot of bad shit over the years as a war reporter bouncing in and out of places like Beirut, Jerusalem, Afghanistan and Iraq, and his post-traumatic stress disorder had a habit of rearing its ugly head. He may have been back doing the job that made him tick, but violence was his trigger. He knew it. Gerald knew it too.

  ‘Okay, mate,’ Gerald said. ‘Fine by me.’

  Bailey had also done enough talking for one day. An hour standing on his own in front of an audience at Chatham House was plenty. He’d been invited to talk to Britain’s security services about the world’s most wanted terrorist, Mustafa al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic Nation group. Gerald had said it’d be good PR for the paper and a good way for Bailey to debrief. Or, so he’d thought.

  Bailey was also the only western journalist to have talked face to face with Mustafa al-Baghdadi. It had been almost fifteen years since Bailey had woken up, tied to a chair, somewhere in Northern Iraq. The people sitting on the red chairs at Chatham House hadn’t come to listen to Bailey tell stories about how he’d been bashed and tortured. They were only interested in everything he could tell them about Islamic Nation and its leader.

  Mustafa al-Baghdadi’s violent militia was getting hammered by the United States and its allies in Syria and Iraq, where Islamic Nation’s so-called ‘caliphate’ was shrinking by the day. Mustafa had responded by taking his war to the cities and suburbs of the western world, orchestrating dozens of terrorist attacks – suicide bombings, gun massacres, stabbings – killing thousands of innocent people. Authorities everywhere were desperate to stop him.

  Bailey had told the audience that Mustafa would never stop. That despite all the killing, he believed that God was on his side. For Mustafa, the world was at the beginning of a centuries-long war. A battle for ideas. And his sickness was spreading.

  Gerald followed Bailey into the Piccadilly Circus Underground and onto the long escalator that took them under the city. At the bottom, they veered left into a dust-smeared tunnel and onto the first train that turned up on the Piccadilly Line platform, heading west.

  By the time they got off the tube at Hammersmith, Bailey was on edge. He hadn’t had a drink in ninety-two days and a whisky was all he could think about. The warm brown liquid used to calm him. Help him forget. Until he’d lost control.

  Bailey had barely spoken to Gerald since they’d left St James’s Square. His mind had been elsewhere, thinking back over what had happened at Chatham House. Something wasn’t right. It wasn’t just that a woman had been murdered, or even that Islamic Nation had already claimed responsibility for the attack. It was the look that the killer had given Bailey before he charged into a hail of police gunfire. Their eyes had met. A moment of familiarity. That smile. The killer had recognised Bailey. But how?

  ‘You did a good job back there,’ Gerald said. ‘With the speech, I mean. You did well with the speech.’

&n
bsp; Bailey turned left towards the river. It would be light for another hour or so, and the streets were bustling with people, many of them in a hurry to order that first pint at one of the pubs along the Thames. Drink away the sadness of another senseless killing on the streets of London. The story would have been plastered all over the internet by now, along with amateur videos of violence to shock and share. It’s all they’d be talking about. Again.

  ‘Bailey?’

  ‘Did I, Gerald?’ Bailey said, without breaking his stride. ‘Wouldn’t say it was the most memorable part of the afternoon, though. Would you?’

  Bailey was keeping a steady pace, without once looking at Gerald.

  ‘Okay, Bailey. I give up. Where’re we headed, then?’

  ‘A pub.’

  ‘You sure that’s a good idea?’

  Gerald had teamed up with Bailey’s partner, Sharon Dexter, to confront him about his drinking. It was mainly Dexter’s idea. Her ultimatum. Whisky had become the third wheel in their relationship. It had to go. Bailey knew that his life was better with Dexter in it, so he hadn’t put up a fight. He had been doing well these past few months. He’d even been to a few Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and got himself a sponsor.

  ‘Bailey?’

  Bailey stopped walking and grabbed Gerald by the coat, pulling him close. ‘Who gives a fuck about my speech!’

  ‘Bailey, I didn’t mean –’

  ‘I just saw a woman bleed-out on the street and a brainwashed kid gunned down! You want to talk about a fucking speech?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Gerald stepped back, palms in the air. ‘I was just trying to –’

  ‘Trying to what? What were you trying to do?’

  ‘I don’t know, Bailey. Maybe, get you to talk like a normal person? Get inside that closed mind of yours, check that you’re okay?’ Gerald paused, his voice softening. ‘We’ve been here before, mate.’

  Bailey let go of Gerald’s coat, patting the creases with his hands. ‘Yeah, well. Consider me checked.’

  ‘Really?’

  Gerald was one of the few people that Bailey listened to. He owed him more.

  ‘Really, I’m good.’