Ethereum

by N C Mander

  ‘I’m sure Commander Gambles,’ Edison referred to the Head of Counter Terrorism Command, ‘made all the right conciliatory noises about information sharing being of the highest priority.’

  ‘Quite. I pulled him aside at the end of the meeting to confirm that I’d be seconding Mo to the Met, but he was too worried about tailgating the Home Secretary from the room to pay much attention. Keen to have a cosy drink in the members’ bar with the Right Honourable Timothy Johnson, I'm sure.’

  ‘I wonder what particular problem Gambles wanted fixing. Johnson’s good at getting people out of scrapes,’ Edison spoke viciously. It was an open secret that Johnson had been the one to ensure the accusations against Hughes led to nothing more than a dismissal. By all rights, the man should be withering away in jail.

  Tanya shot Edison a warning look. ‘Best not to get into that, Edison. Anyway,’ she slipped seamlessly back onto the previous topic, ‘letting Commander Gambles know that Mo would be shadowing the investigation had been a courtesy. He was already at New Scotland Yard. Colchester had agreed, grudgingly, I’d point out, to his participation on the operational team re-investigating the Billingsgate body and the links to VIPERSNEST.’ She turned to Charlie, ‘You said you’d looked in on the investigation. Any news on the cell? What about the captain?’

  Charlie had no information on the missing captain, and Tanya soon realised that she could glean nothing further from him. ‘I better head home,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the drink, Charlie.’

  The two men watched as Tanya left. She was a tall woman and towered above many of the punters still milling around the bar. She looked back at them once she reached the door and waved before disappearing into the night.

  Edison breathed out heavily, and Charlie looked at him warily. ‘Everything ok, Eddie?’

  His friend meditated on the response for a while, staring into his near-empty glass as if the answer to the question would be found in the amber liquid that swilled there. ‘I’m fine.’ He paused. ‘But there’s something big afoot here, Charlie. I don’t feel as though I have a grip on it.’

  The pub was emptying quickly as the last orders bell sounded. The hubbub of evening drinkers was dying down, and Charlie evaluated how private their conversation was likely to be. ‘Shall we walk?’

  ‘Sure.’ Edison swallowed the last mouthful of his pint, and Charlie drained his glass.

  Summer had arrived in London, and the evening was warm. The two friends turned left out of the pub and passed under the shadow of the palace of Westminster, its sandy turrets lit up in the gloom. A uniformed police officer patrolled the pavement, and Charlie greeted him, as was his habit, ‘Good evening, Sergeant Jennings.’

  ‘Good evening, sir,’ came the reply. Edison always marvelled at Charlie’s knowledge of the Met’s junior ranks.

  They walked in silence until they reached Lambeth Bridge where Charlie picked up the conversation exactly where Edison had left it in the Red Lion. ‘You don’t need to have a grip on it, Eddie. You’re a field agent. Just a field agent, tasked with securing information. The bigger picture doesn’t concern you.’ He spoke softly and kindly, but his words were serious. Ever since his friend’s recall to the Service, he’d been worrying about the responsibility Tanya had foisted on Edison. Charlie knew that Edison would consume himself with the operation and potentially put himself in danger. His appetite for defending his nation was only matched by his passion for solving puzzles, and he had a track record of doing that by any means possible, often at the expense of his own personal safety.

  ‘I know, Charlie.’ Charlie looked sideways at his friend, Edison’s jaw was locked and there was tension written all over his face. ‘Whoever these people are,’ Edison went on, ‘they’re not just smuggling drugs. They’re bringing in people too. That guy, last year, he must have been one of their pawns. There’s big money changing hands. And we haven’t got a clue what their end game is. That’s not good Charlie. It’s really not good.’ He slowed and leaned against the wall, looking out over the river. The tide was high, and the reflections of the lights on Chelsea Bridge danced across the water, lapping against the concrete embankment.

  Charlie turned his back to the water, ‘Eddie, you’re doing your bit. You’re part of a big team. And you know there couldn’t be a better team on this.’

  Edison acknowledged the truth in what he said with a grudging nod. Charlie pressed on, ‘You have to be part of that machine. You can’t be the hero every time.’ They were cautionary words, borne of thirty years’ insight of his friend’s psyche. ‘It’s the weekend. You need to get some rest. There’s nothing you can do until Monday, so go home, get some sleep, relax.’

  The pair retraced their steps to Westminster in companionable silence, and Charlie saw Edison onto an eastbound train before he headed south to Clapham to be greeted by his wife, who was fussing about the countdown to their family holiday in the Highlands.

  Edison rattled back toward East London. He pulled out his phone and sent a text to Kat – Fancy a drink over the weekend? He wanted to see her and not just because he hoped to learn more about the case. At Whitechapel, Edison turned his back on the busy Whitechapel Road and cut through the back streets to Bethnal Green. He observed the flat from a distance. It was shrouded in darkness but for a blueish light flickering around the drawn curtains of Tony’s room.

  He slipped his key noiselessly into the door, hoping to avoid conversation. He was tiptoeing up the stairs when he heard Tony’s door creak open. ‘Long day, Edison?’ came a voice from below. The television in Tony’s room was on and hummed in the background.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Edison, hoping to shut down the conversation. ‘Sorry if I woke you this morning.’

  Tony shrugged. ‘That’s ok. Where were you last night?’

  ‘Stayed with a friend. It’s late – I’m going to hit the sack.’

  ‘Do you have plans this weekend?’ Tony wasn’t ready to let Edison go.

  ‘No – need some rest. Will make it a quiet one.’ Edison paused then added, ‘What about you?’

  ‘Probably ought to see the kids. Maybe take them bowling.’

  ‘That’ll be nice.’ Edison didn’t know what else to say. ‘Well, sleep well.’ He turned and continued up the stairs. He didn’t relish spending the weekend holed up in the flat with Tony. There was something very odd about him, and Edison couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He was furtive, and Edison couldn’t help but feel like the murine man was watching his every move.

  ‘You too,’ Tony called after him.

  Edison closed his bedroom door, threw the contents of his pockets onto the table beside the bed and slumped onto it. His phone buzzed, and he juggled it in one hand, unbuttoning his shirt with the other. Sorry, Edison – he read the message from Kat with disappointment – Working all weekend. Need sleep when I can. Edison’s heart sank. He finished undressing and lay on the bed staring up at the ceiling. The flat was in a state of disrepair, and there was a damp patch expanding across the bedroom ceiling. Edison lay there for a while, trying to untangle the complicated mix of feelings knotted in his stomach. He wanted information about the case. He wasn’t sure he could wait until an unfixed date for that. But more than that, he wanted to see Kat. To hear her laugh and enjoy her company. Something stirred in his boxers. He rolled over and Ellie looked back at him. Guilt flooded his body, and tears pricked in his eyes. He crawled under the duvet and begged sleep to consume him. Eventually, after tossing in and out of dreams where his dead wife morphed into his present-day lover, Edison fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Chapter Nine

  1709, Friday 30th June, Brooks Road, West Ham, London

  Mo had passed on Kat’s intelligence to a sulky female PC. She had been overlooked for field work by her commanding officer for the fourth operation in a row. She had been left with responsibility for managing the incident room, and she wasn’t happy about it.

  ‘I’ll get the address to one of our street teams,’ she told hi
m, without looking up from her computer screen.

  ‘I’ll need to know which team, please,’ replied Mo, trying not to let his frustration get the better of him. After the long drive back from Grimsby, he was feeling crotchety, the early start and four-hundred-mile round trip catching up with him. The malaise that met him when he arrived at the Met’s headquarters did little to improve his mood. The policewoman raised her eyebrows as she reached for a radio. Mo listened as she rattled off a series of call signs and instructions. The radio crackled as they both waited for a response. Moments later, a disembodied voice replied, confirming receipt of the address and that his unit was moving there now. The brief exchange ended with the police constable spitting the words, ‘Nothing more. Out,’ into the handset and turning to look at Mo.

  ‘Detective Sergeants Hulme and Walsh are expecting you. They’ll be in an unmarked surveillance vehicle.’ She scribbled a number plate on a Post-it which she thrust in Mo’s general direction. As he hurried from the incident room, Mo considered her reticence to expand on his brief. It was most likely due to the institutional distrust for MI5 that Colchester carefully nurtured within his teams. This was going to be a tough gig, he thought.

  *

  Brooks Road was a short walk from Plaistow tube station, past an Indian takeaway, dry cleaners and small supermarket. There was a terrace of 1970s brick-built houses on one side and a more modern development of low-rise flats on the other. At the far end of the street, a high-rise block of council flats rose seventeen storeys into the sky. Cars were parked occasionally along the length of the road on both sides. Among them, about halfway down, was a grey Ford transit van. Mo checked the number plate against the one the taciturn PC had given him, which confirmed that this was from where the surveillance team were conducting their observations. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and affected the swagger of a local. He walked up to the van and banged on the door, careful to mark out the very specific signal he’d been given to identify himself. After a short pause, the door slid back wide enough for Mo to get inside but not far enough for any bystanders to observe the raft of surveillance equipment packed into the back of the van. Mo was met by two plainclothes policemen.

  ‘You must be the spook,’ said one, his tone was friendly, and he held out a hand to Mo.

  Mo shook it and, matching the other man’s hushed tones, said, ‘That’s me. Mo Hussein.’

  ‘Doug Hulme,’ the first policeman replied, and twisting in the cramped conditions, he indicated his colleague, who had a pair of headphones on and was watching a computer monitor intently. ‘This is Nick Walsh.’

  Nick didn’t take his eyes off the screen but raised a hand by way of greeting.

  ‘So, what do we know?’ said Mo.

  ‘Absolutely sweet FA at this stage,’ said Doug, his frustration evident. ‘We weren’t far off when your tip-off came in, so we’ve already been here nearly an hour.’

  Nick sat back from the screen and removed his headphones, which he threw down in exasperation in front of him. ‘There’s no one there, I’m sure of it. Looks like you wasted a trip, Double-O Seven.’

  Mo shrugged and leaned over Nick’s shoulder to take a look at the screen. It showed a wide-angle view of the street outside the van, the picture centred on number eighteen. ‘What do you know about the neighbours?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Doug. ‘We saw the family who live at number sixteen arrive home from the school run about half an hour ago – think it was probably grandma in charge, older Indian lady with two kids in tow. At a guess, they must have been seven and nine. On the other side, a city type arrived in a suit and left in gym gear ten minutes later.’

  ‘Maybe grandma can tell us some more about who lives at number eighteen?’ Mo wondered aloud.

  ‘Our instructions are to wait for backup before we access the property. The chief is still waiting for a final bit of paperwork.’

  Mo pulled the door open and hopped out, saying, ‘I’ll be back in a bit.’ He disappeared down the road.

  Mo returned twenty minutes later, carrying a large brown paper bag and pretended to look closely at the numbers on the houses as he made his way along Brooks Road.

  ‘What is he playing at?’ said Nick to Doug, spotting Mo on the monitor screen. Nick shrugged and watched as Mo made his way up to the front door of number eighteen, where he knocked and waited for a while. When he couldn’t rouse anyone, he walked the short distance to number sixteen and rang the doorbell.

  The door was answered by an elderly woman matching the description Doug had given him. ‘Oh hello,’ said Mo. ‘Sorry to disturb you, love, but I have a delivery for number eighteen.’

  The woman looked at him and offered him a gummy smile. ‘I’m sorry, this is number sixteen. But are you sure it’s number eighteen you’re delivering to?’

  ‘Pretty sure,’ replied Mo, pulling a receipt from the brown paper bag, already stained with grease, on the top of which he had scribbled a few, illegible numbers.

  ‘Because they packed up and left in a bit of a hurry earlier today. Around lunchtime it was. A real racket they made, too. Woke the baby up. I couldn’t get her back down for hours.’

  ‘Oh, how strange. A biriyani and two kormas, garlic naan, pilau rice, the works they’ve ordered.’

  ‘Sounds like a lot for just the three of them, although they needed feeding up.’ The woman spoke with the ease of someone who spends their days in their own company, and Mo didn’t discourage her. ‘I wondered whether they were refugees when they arrived. They didn’t speak much English. Not that I spoke to them really, but I did run into one of them in the corner shop. He was buying them out of candles. I wondered whether they had the electric cut off. They weren’t here long, maybe a month.’

  Mo shifted the paper bag in his grasp and looked again at the receipt. ‘Oh, you know what, it’s my boss’s dreadful handwriting – this says twenty-eight, not eighteen.’

  ‘Ahhhh, that explains it.’

  ‘So sorry again to have troubled you, love,’ Mo apologised again and headed up the road. The grandma at number sixteen watched him go before closing the door. Confident he was well out of the line of sight from her sitting room window, Mo crossed the road and returned to the transit van.

  The door opened as he approached, and he hopped in to be met by Doug and Nick who looked at him, waiting for an explanation. ‘House is definitely empty. Three residents made a hasty departure earlier today.’

  ‘Shit. We just missed them,’ said Nick. ‘Impressive detective work though, Bond.’

  ‘What’s more impressive is that you’ve managed to bring us dinner,’ said Doug, eyeing the brown paper bag, from which the smells of an Indian curry were beginning to permeate the van.

  ‘Help yourselves,’ snapped Mo, perturbed that Doug didn’t seem more concerned that a group of suspected terrorists had slipped through their fingers. ‘Just pass me that receipt for my expenses.’ As they tucked into the takeaway, Mo asked, ‘When are you expecting backup?’

  Doug looked at his watch, ‘Around six thirty. It’s just gone six, so not long.’

  Nick had half an eye on the CCTV, and as they polished off the last of the poppadums, a large police van swung around the corner and pulled up outside number eighteen. ‘Looks like the cavalry’s here,’ said Nick and pulled back the door as the first of the armed officers descended from the newly arrived van.

  Mo watched the black-and-white pictures from the van as Nick briefed the head of the armed unit. A further four armed police, all wearing substantial body armour, emerged and swiftly positioned themselves around the entrance to number eighteen. Mo spotted his new friend at number sixteen drawing back her net curtains and peering out. With a firm kick, one of the officers broke down the door, and they trooped into the house. From the safety of the van, Mo watched the drama play out without sound, but could imagine the shouts of, ‘Armed police, stay back!’ that would precede each move. The lead officer reappeared minutes later and spoke to Nick. Nick
looked round to the van and beckoned to Doug. Mo followed him over the road and saw all the colour had drained from Nick’s face. Doug introduced the armed unit head to Mo as Sergeant Jake Ducker.

  ‘Your lot are going to have a field day with this,’ Ducker said. ‘You’re clear to come in. Forensics are on their way.’

  Mo filed in after Doug and Nick. The house was dimly illuminate by the light that filtered through the grime-ridden net curtains. The party moved through the front room which was sparsely furnished with a dilapidated sofa, a television propped up on a crate and a single rug that Mo recognised, based on its odd angle, as a prayer mat, positioned to face Mecca. No one had turned on the lights, and Mo quickly realised why as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom. In the kitchen, into which they had come, stood a large table. On the table were boxes of nails and screws, a dozen boxes of candles, batteries and packets of gelatine. To the uninitiated, it looked like a random selection of homeware, but Mo knew immediately that they had discovered a bomb factory.

  ‘They must have taken most of the stuff with them when they left,’ said Ducker, shining a torch at the items on the table. ‘There’s no sign of any detonators or other explosives, but we shouldn’t risk a spark from the lights. They’ve left the stuff that’s easy to get hold of.’

  Mo slipped out of the kitchen and up the stairs. There was little to see. Off the cramped landing were two bedrooms, one with a single mattress, the other a double, and a bathroom. A copy of the Quran lay next to one of the mattresses, but there was nothing else that would help identify the occupants of number eighteen Brooks Road.

  Nick leapt up the stairs just as Mo came out of the bathroom. ‘Find anything, Double-O Seven?’

  ‘They may have left in a hurry, but they’ve left very little behind,’ said Mo.

  ‘I’m sure forensics will be able to find something,’ said Nick. ‘Not sure there’s much more we can do until they’ve got their swabs into the place. Doug and I are calling it a day. I’d suggest you do the same. You look dead on your feet.’