by Mayo, Simon
He was trapped. He could walk out, of course. The nearest police station was only ten minutes away. But the murders in London had shown how threats were dealt with. Violently. Ruthlessly. The images of the blood-stained zebra crossing came again and he shuddered. His sisters were vulnerable. His family was just too big and sprawling; they couldn’t all just disappear into protective police custody. There were too many cells, too many citizens. He was the problem. Somehow he had to be the solution.
He pulled on some shorts and eased his way downstairs.
It was, as ever, immaculate. The house’s exterior was in as much need of repair as the rest of the street – subsidence cracks, rotting window frames, peeling paint – but its interior was more or less pristine. The narrow hall was swept and clutter-free, there was no post or junk mail on the mat. The two day rooms were comfortably furnished, dusted and well lit. The sofas had cushions, the tables had books. In the kitchen, an old gas cooker was newly cleaned; plates and mugs had been either put away or arranged in neat rows on a small Victorian dresser. There was an order here that the student had, in his early days, found encouraging. Now he knew whose order it was, it just seemed sinister.
Beyond the back door was a small paved yard. It was warm already. The student poured himself a glass of cold water. Shoeless, he paced the slabs. It was his prison-style recreation. In the early sunshine he circled the square hundreds of times. There was a freshness to the early morning, a brief respite from the stale summer soup of smells, but lately he hadn’t noticed. His mind was in turmoil. He knew his plan was too slow. He couldn’t rely on the IPS woman piecing his life together – she might never do it anyway. There was a cliff-edge approaching and unless he did something drastic and soon, it would take him and his family to destruction.
The student had finished his water a while ago but still he held the glass, still he paced. As the yard continued to warm up in the first sunlight of the day, he recalled the leader’s glittering certainty as he held the knife. There had been a different tone to his voice, a thrilled, almost ecstatic tightness to his words.
He suddenly stopped his pacing. His eyes were rooted on the freshly illuminated fence opposite him but he still saw nothing. He replayed the leader’s words. What had he said? ‘The closer we get to the enemy, the more likely their attacks on us.’
He raised a hand to his mouth. ‘Oh. OK.’ He looked around, as if noticing his surroundings for the first time. ‘That might work,’ he whispered to the yard. ‘That might just work.’
On his next lap, he paused at the far corner. The high garden fence here sheltered two exhausted-looking rose bushes, and behind them two purple flowering plants barely half a metre high. He crouched down. Fighting the rose bushes for sunlight had stunted the foxgloves – he couldn’t remember seeing them before. But he did remember the furious telling-off his mother had given him as a child when he had played with one. That they were poisonous. That he must never touch the velvety flowers. And that he should absolutely never put one in or even near his mouth.
He tried to remember the science. He thought three might kill him. One might do. With some leaves. He glanced back once. All curtains drawn, no one watching. He chose one of the tubular blooms, held it between his fingers, then used a fingernail to cut the stem. He placed it in his pocket, went inside the house and waited.
29
8.40 a.m.
FAMIE AND SOPHIE walked back to their room. The buildings alternated between suburbia and industrial trading estate. The roads were busy and the pedestrians hurried. No one looked at anyone else.
‘Kind of easy to feel anonymous here,’ said Sophie. ‘I like it.’
‘Welcome to Southgate,’ said Famie.
They walked a couple of blocks. The morning heat was already beginning to sting. Famie could feel her shirt clinging to her back. She peeled it loose.
‘I was thinking,’ said Sophie. ‘Don’t you think we should go to the police? They don’t need to know about the laptop but at some stage we need to talk to them.’
‘Have they spoken to you at all?’ asked Famie. ‘I’ve told them about my note leaver, of course. It’s filed with the extraterrestrials, I believe.’
‘Well, at least show them the phone number and the Telegraph then,’ said Sophie.
‘OK, that Hunter woman gave me her card. We can set up a meeting. But it’s Amal they’ll want to talk about. How many times did you meet him again?’
‘Five, I think. I’ve counted them. Fairly certain it’s five.’
‘Tell me about them. Tell me about him.’
Sophie hooked an arm in Famie’s. A row of canopied shops provided some brief shade.
‘He’s intense,’ she began. ‘Seth was so easy to talk to but Amal was cagey. Twitchy. Always suspicious. Guarded, I’d say, like he was considering every word before he said it.’
‘Was that just with you or was he like that with Seth?’
‘He was like that all the time. There was never any brotherly chat, no in-jokes, no family chat. Seth always seemed … on edge around him. And now I think about it, my arrival was usually the cue for Amal’s departure.’
‘And when he’d left, did Seth talk about him? How did he seem?’
‘He never mentioned him. Changed the subject if I asked.’
‘What a family,’ said Famie. ‘Did you speak at the funeral?’
‘No. I had some words ready, but …’ She broke off.
‘But you never needed them,’ suggested Famie.
Sophie nodded.
‘And I assume he didn’t know you were pregnant.’
‘Correct. But I hadn’t seen him for ages.’
Famie frowned. ‘How long were you and Seth together?’
‘Since January,’ said Sophie. ‘And all the times I saw Amal were in February and March. Nothing since.’
They walked a block in silence.
‘The police will want to know if he mentioned Islamic Jihad or religion or any of that,’ Famie said.
Sophie shook her head. ‘Never.’
‘They’ll also ask if Seth ever asked you for money.’
Sophie turned her head, eyebrows raised. ‘Yes! Did he do that with you too?’
Famie nodded. ‘Yup.’
‘I could never understand it,’ said Sophie. ‘He was twelve years older than me, earning much more than me and always on the scrounge. What was that about?’
‘God knows,’ said Famie. ‘But on the list of things I’d like to ask him about, it’s pretty low.’
‘And top of the list?’ asked Sophie.
‘How did you become such a bastard prick womanizer, I think.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Sophie.
They waited at a crossroads.
‘So is that a yes to the police meet?’
Famie pulled DC Hunter’s card from her jeans. ‘Sure. I’ll call from our penthouse suite. But first I’d like to rope in Sam and Tommi. You OK with that? We don’t need to tell them about the … about your condition.’
The lights changed, they crossed.
Sophie pushed her sunglasses to her forehead. She squinted at Famie. ‘Yes please, leave my “condition” out of it. And the laptop? Do we tell them about the photos?’
‘We tell them about them, yes. We don’t need to show them. Their imagination can fill the gaps.’
Famie did most of the talking. Sam and Tommi’s imaginations filled in the gaps. The women sat on Famie’s bed, the men on Sophie’s. The room’s one window had been opened as far as the six-inch catch allowed. The air was stale, the temperature high.
‘Is that the laptop?’ Tommi was pointing at Sophie’s drawstring bag. A black plastic corner protruded from the top of it.
Sophie nodded.
Sam’s mouth gaped open. ‘So … Seth and Mary? Really?’ he said.
There was a silence before Famie said, ‘I know. I’m thinking about her funeral too.’
‘But it’s like he was trying to humiliate all of us,’ said Sam,
‘like he was working his way through the team.’
‘Oh thanks,’ muttered Sophie.
‘Choose your words, Sam, for Christ’s sake,’ said Famie.
‘Sorry, Sophie, wasn’t thinking.’ Sam looked mortified.
Sophie acknowledged the apology.
‘And you haven’t deleted anything,’ said Tommi.
‘Not yet,’ said Sophie.
‘And there’s no reference to Amal.’
‘No.’
‘You still need to tell the police.’
‘We know,’ said Sophie and Famie together. ‘Tell us something we don’t,’ Famie added.
Sam fidgeted, then said, ‘OK. Well. Look, tell me if I’m out of order here, but is it time to ask whether everything we knew, or thought we knew, about Seth is wrong? That the peace-loving, campaigning journalist thing was a front. That he was involved with EIJ like his brother. That he siphoned money from everywhere to fund them. And that the Egyptian government hated him, not because of his human rights work but because they knew what he was really up to.’ He looked around the room. ‘Just a thought,’ he added.
‘And then the Egyptians killed him?’ asked Tommi, unconvinced. ‘Along with his team? Doesn’t make sense.’
Sam held up his hands. ‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘You’re right. I’m just saying that it’s obvious we really didn’t know Seth at all. And that all our assumptions might be wrong.’
Famie’s head was reeling. ‘Agree with that last sentence, Sam. But I’m struggling with the rest.’ She massaged her temples. Might it be possible that she had been totally played? That when Seth had been attending protest meetings and rallies, he was actually working as some kind of spy? That the articles and blogs had been a front? She realized quite how unquestioning she had been. Seth had set out his narrative, told his story and told it well. She had lapped it up. Accepted it. Endorsed it. Even revelled in it. Christ, what an unholy mess this all was. Quite how much more of a shit was it possible to be?
Tommi pushed his glasses back up his nose, checked his watch. ‘OK, we can do this then.’ He took his phone from his pocket. ‘I took a call from Dave Coolidge in the New York bureau over the weekend. He wanted to catch up on how everyone was. How the investigation was going.’
Famie leant into Sophie. ‘He was based here a few years back. Good guy. Politics was his thing. American, British, European, wherever. He could probably tell you who the Belgian Foreign Minister is if you asked.’
‘That’s quite a party trick,’ said Sophie.
‘I told him about the weatherman stuff,’ Tommi continued. ‘He said he wanted to chip in. It’s five a.m. in New York but he’ll be at his desk.’
Tommi dialled a number, put it on speaker. The box room echoed to the single-note American ringing tone.
‘He’ll think I’m a dumbass for certain,’ said Famie.
The call was picked up after four rings.
‘Coolidge.’
‘Hey Dave, it’s Tommi again. Not too early?’
A rattling cough and laugh combined. ‘Ha! Been at it for an hour already. Great to hear you, Tommi. Good morning from New York. You have the famous and fabulous Famie Madden there with you now?’
Famie rolled her eyes, smiled. It had been five years, but the image in her mind was still strong. Black, Chicago, mid-forties, probably still stick-thin, certainly still bald. ‘Hey Dave,’ she called out. ‘How’s tricks?’
‘Hey, not bad at all, Fames, but listen, I just wanted to say first up how devastated we were and still are about your losses. You know the whole bureau here just stopped everything. Just so devastating. I remember working with Anita. And Seth of course. I’m so sorry.’
The four in the box room all glanced at each other.
‘That’s appreciated, Dave, thank you,’ said Famie. ‘I’m here with Sam Carter and Sophie Arnold who you never met but they’re top people. And Tommi says you know about my weatherman correspondence?’
‘He told me, yeah. Is this an official police line of inquiry, because that would be some story?’
‘Oh. No. That’s definitely a no,’ said Famie. ‘And not sure what it means myself just yet. We got a new message in the paper today. It said, “Freaks are revolutionaries and revolutionaries are freaks.” That’s it.’
There was a transatlantic pause, longer than just the satellite delay.
‘OK,’ said Coolidge, drawing out each syllable as far as it could go. ‘Well that’s certainly a Weatherman reference, but how it fits in with your story I have no idea.’
‘Go on,’ said Tommi.
‘Well the Weathermen, or Weather Underground – they had a number of names – are an American story and a black American story at that. We’re coming out of the sixties and into the seventies here. A pretty heavy time as you know. Vietnam. Black Panther. Riots. Nixon. All of that shit. Well the Weathermen were revolutionaries. They weren’t just antiwar, they were anti-everything, anti the whole American way of life. They said they were against everything that was good and decent in honky America. I got the quote right here …’ The rattle of a keyboard. ‘Here we go. “We will burn and loot and destroy. We are the incubation of your mother’s nightmare.” Not bad, huh?’
Sam whistled. ‘Good quote. And they did destroy, didn’t they? They turned pretty violent.’
‘Sure did,’ said Coolidge. ‘They set off bombs. Pretty small by today’s standards but bombs none the less. But they never killed no one, apart from themselves when they messed up the explosives one time. In Greenwich Village that was.’
Famie knew all this. She’d even read the quote. It was good to hear from Coolidge again but she knew she wasn’t getting anywhere.
‘It’s hard to see how that fits with what’s happening here,’ she said.
‘Agreed,’ said Dave. ‘I don’t think it does.’
Famie shrugged. ‘So why are we doing this?’
The rattling cough again. ‘Because, Ms Madden, you might not have a big hippy-led underground organization on your hands but it sounds like you do have someone who thinks he or she is a Weatherman. Or is with other Weathermen. And they’re sending you notes. Someone who thinks the struggle – the violent struggle – against the West, against imperialism, needs to continue. Of course he or she could be a freak. But then …’
‘He could be a revolutionary,’ said Famie.
‘Or both,’ said Coolidge.
‘Or both,’ conceded Famie.
30
10.05 a.m.
THE STUDENT AND the woman were on the dead drop. Another cell had requested it, he didn’t know which one. He didn’t know how many other cells there were, but they had been told of a growing movement. The leader spoke of grand schemes, and the London attacks of 22 May had proved the citizens’ potency. Their communication with other cells was deliberately, purposefully cumbersome, so each drop was significant, every message mattered.
There was an envelope to pick up. The leader had appeared agitated, wondering out loud if he should get it himself, before deciding at the last minute that the risks for him were too high. His fear of attacks ‘from the forces of oppression’ increased by the day. He had tested each room with his Geiger counter. Each random ‘click’ that came from its speaker made him jump.
The student had the car, the woman had been told where to go.
The leader had made much of her being a martial arts trainer and had insisted on them all learning karate punches, elbow and hand strikes. Today she wore a loose white polo shirt and blue joggers. Her black hair was now shaved on the sides almost as closely as the leader’s. A homage maybe. The student wondered if they were sleeping together but had noticed no overt displays of affection. Today, she smelt of shampoo and cigarettes.
Sometimes the woman was friendly, other times not. Occasionally she appeared interested in his life, most of the time she didn’t. His main contact with her was always the martial arts classes.
The sessions were brutal. She said she taught her own mix
of fighting styles from around the world. They were taught the ‘Four Pillars’ from the Russian Systema Spetsnaz: breathing, relaxation, body position and movement. There were six ‘levers’: elbows, neck, knees, waist, ankles and shoulders; each one could incapacitate. From the American Marines she taught them hand-to-hand combat. Never staying head-on with your enemy, moving at forty-five-degree angles to either side to increase your chance of landing a blow. From tantojutsu in Japan she taught them to aim for the squishy parts of the body, where to cause maximum pain. Around the shoulder blades, kidneys, the sweet spot between the ribs.
The student was starting from scratch. He had never fought anyone before, never needed to, never felt the need.
She taught him the horse stance from Indonesian silat, mimicking the posture from stallion riding. He learnt joint-locks and chokeholds from Brazilian jiu-jitsu, then how to use side control, pinning the leader to the floor by lying across his chest. ‘Use your levers!’ she had shouted. The student had dug his elbows into the leader’s hips until she had told him to stop. When the leader retired (hurt, presumably, thought the student) she had one more trick up her sleeve.
The woman was in jogging bottoms and a loose T-shirt, the student in running shorts and a football top. His ‘games kit’, she called it. Her hair was loose, her eyes wide and her smile broad. It made him nervous.
‘You’re about to enjoy yourself,’ she said, taking the horse stance, crouching low.
She threw a white plastic knife to him. He caught it.
‘Come at me,’ she said. ‘Stab me somewhere. Anywhere.’
He had tried to play it cute. He kept his off-hand close to his chest for defence, he kept swirling his bladed hand to keep her guessing. She was still smiling. Her stance remained casual; her arms were raised and her legs were firmly planted but she managed to make it look patronizing. He felt sweat dripping into his eyes. He tried to blink it away but his vision blurred. The student wiped his eyes with his sleeve, and that was that. She lunged. He felt her foot hook behind his, lift sharply, and he toppled to the ground. As his head hit the mat, she was on him. The woman sat astride his waist, then worked her way up his body till her knees were locked in his armpits. He felt paralysed, pain searing across his chest.