by Alex Gray
As she turned a corner, Shereen caught sight of a white car parked at the kerb, its familiar livery letting her know what it was. Police Scotland. Two uniformed officers sat in the front, and as she passed the car she could see that they were holding papers full of fish suppers. Her step faltered as the thought came into her mind.
She was free now. Free as a bird. She could rap on the window, make them look her way. Then what? Tell them about Asa? The woman blinked for a moment, remembering that feature in today’s Gazette. Didn’t it say that the police weren’t really interested? She looked more closely, hearing the laughter between the two cops, seeing one of them carelessly pop a chip into his open mouth. What would they see if she stopped? A big fat Jamaican woman wobbling as she leaned down beside their car?
Shereen carried on, a small sigh escaping from her mouth. And as she walked away, tears spilled down her cheeks, though she could not have said who it was that she was crying for.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
He wouldn’t be shedding any tears over the aftermath of his explosion. Doing the job well and having the desired outcome was all that mattered to Rob Worsley. Years of working with ex-military types hardened by their experiences had inured the explosives expert to any sort of empathy for the victims of his work. Mostly he had done jobs overseas, trained a few groups on the hillsides of Pakistan, set off bombs that had wiped out entire villages. But this would be a little different, he thought, looking at the blueprint of his plan. His name would never go down in the annals of history, but so what? In just a few short weeks he would have the satisfaction of knowing that he had undermined all that amazing and expensive security operation surrounding the Commonwealth Games to blow up the famous Parkhead Stadium.
Worsley grinned as he contemplated the outrage that would follow the explosion. How many of Glasgow’s citizens would mourn the royals rather than their beloved Celtic football ground? He glanced at the mantelpiece. Placed neatly behind a silver carriage clock was the envelope containing his travel documents. His destination after one big job had been Spain, a nice warm bolthole to escape the British weather, but this time he was going much further afield. The mad fool who called himself their leader had no inkling that Worsley and McAlpin had planned their escape route together. Dubai first, then Jo’burg and on to Nigeria, where the ginger-haired man had all those contacts. After that? Well, Worsley had several ideas of where he would like to spend his retirement, all of them far, far away from this godforsaken country.
He smoothed out the drawings, eyes darting across the meticulously detailed pages. It was a work of art, he thought proudly. And he deserved to be paid well for his part in the scheme. Not all of them were in this because of their ideals. Freedom from oppression indeed! He chuckled. That student, Number Six, he was typical of the sort of nutters their leader attracted, carried away on a wave of nationalistic fervour. Worsley shook his head and sighed. He certainly wouldn’t be hanging around to put his own mark upon the independence referendum. By the time the voters flocked to the polling stations he would be well away, hopefully on some sun-drenched beach.
Waiting was what they did best. Waiting in cars, watching windows and doors, looking at each and every person passing by. The man and woman seated in the front seats of the Vauxhall Corsa might have been weekend shoppers waiting for a friend to join them. There was nothing particular about their appearance that a passer-by would remember: Mr and Mrs Average, dressed in jeans and khaki raincoats, they stared out at the street with expressionless faces as though boredom had set in long since. In reality Kate MacDonald was an undercover officer of many years’ experience, her ability to merge into a crowd one of her greatest assets. Joe Hammond, the bald-headed man sitting in the driver’s seat, had been seconded from the Met. He had said little to the woman beside him after the briefing from Detective Superintendent Lorimer back at HQ. Joe knew how to take orders and follow them to the letter. The importance of the job had been impressed upon them, and both surveillance officers had been given some access to the intelligence that Drummond had supplied.
Last night other watchers had sat patiently outside McAlpin’s home in Bishopbriggs, a featureless semi-detached villa like hundreds of others in the housing scheme, except that it sheltered a man who might possibly be a terrorist intent on targeting the 2014 Commonwealth Games. This morning MacDonald and Hammond had trailed their quarry across to the east side of the city to the tenement flat where McAlpin had parked his white transit van and disappeared inside a close, two bulky carrier bags in each hand. They had noted the moment when he had set the bags down, fished keys out of his jacket pocket and unlocked the heavy main door. It was a little bit of progress. What he was doing there and why he had brought the van was a matter of interest to these officers, their hidden camera recording each and every one of McAlpin’s movements.
Asa looked out of the bedroom window. Her tattoo still felt sore from the activity of the previous night and even sitting in the hot water this morning hadn’t made any difference. Shereen had insisted on it, leading her into the steamy bathroom, helping her over the edge of the bath. The caretaker had poured salts of some kind into the water, swirling it around with her fat fingers while Asa sat there naked, legs drawn up to hide her shame.
Now all the Nigerian girl wanted was to wrap her arms around her body, but the plaster cast inhibited this. Still, the fleecy dressing gown Shereen had given her helped to retain the lingering warmth from the bath as she stood staring down at the street below. Asa saw that the white man’s van was there again. Surely he would not come into her room? Not so early? Her dark eyes took in the drab street; everything was so grey. Even that car across the street with a couple sitting in it was a dull metallic grey, the colour of guns. Asa had seen guns once, when the police had come to their village, big bulky things strapped to the officers’ belts. They had made the policemen seem bigger and fiercer, strutting around the beaten earth with polished boots as they looked down at the cowed faces of the villagers.
Last night Asa had heard a girl crying. It was the familiar keening noise she had often heard back home, one that evoked death and grief. The sound had come from the room across the corridor, next to the bathroom, but there had been no noise this morning though Asa had listened intently once the water from the taps had finished flowing. Shereen had talked incessantly, words that meant nothing to the Nigerian girl, as she had strained her ears to hear.
She remembered how the big woman had wrapped the bath sheet around her, folding her into a hug, careful not to press the damaged arm. Asa had looked at her once, seeing tears in Shereen’s eyes and something else: a look of regret, as if the woman was sorry for what had happened.
‘He’s on the move.’ Joe Hammond put the car into gear and watched as the big man swung his body into the cab of the white van. In seconds they were driving along the quiet street, then out into the traffic of the main thoroughfare heading back into the city centre.
‘What’s the betting he just goes back home?’ Kate said wearily.
Joe grinned. It was the same up here, then: surveillance teams everywhere probably put bets on their quarry’s next move, anything to alleviate the tedium of hours spent waiting. ‘A tenner says he’s off to Albion Street,’ he replied.
Kate looked at him through narrowed eyes. ‘D’you know something, or is that a random guess?’ she asked.
Joe laughed. ‘Just a hunch,’ he said.
‘Okay, you’re on,’ she replied, watching the rear lights of the big van as it braked at a junction.
McAlpin heard the ringtone as he stopped at the traffic lights. He listened, waiting for the sixth note to die away before indicating left. There was never a good time to have one of these meetings; sometimes the leader notified them all a day or two in advance, but often as not the mobile would ring out, a signal for the six men to convene at the prearranged destination. The phone beeped, and McAlpin lifted it up to read the text message. It gave an address on the south side of the city, a good
half an hour from where he was right now. Soon the plumber’s van was heading across the Kingston Bridge, a small grey Corsa in its wake, each of the two surveillance officers curious to know just where they were heading, the ten-pound bet quite forgotten.
‘Asa?’ Shereen had slipped into the girl’s room, locking the door behind her.
The Nigerian girl glanced up with dulled eyes then yawned and looked away again.
‘How’s the arm?’ Shereen asked, tapping her own arm to signify what she was saying.
The girl looked away again, avoiding Shereen’s stare.
‘How would you like to come into the kitchen? He came by to drop off the groceries. Fancy having some tea?’
The girl turned to look at her, alerted by the familiar word.
‘Tea? Come on.’ Shereen beckoned towards the door and unlocked it. ‘It’s just the three of us today. You, me and our new girl. No bloody men to annoy us yet.’ She grinned.
Asa stood up, her eyes on the hallway beyond the door. ‘Toi-let,’ she said, practising a word she had come to use often.
‘Okay,’ Shereen agreed. ‘Toilet first. Then you come through to the kitchen. His Nibs brought some cake with the groceries. God knows why. But let’s enjoy it while we can, eh?’
Asa wrinkled her brow. ‘Cake,’ she said, savouring the word, then nodding.
‘Aye, cake. Yum, yum,’ Shereen said, rubbing her huge belly and laughing.
As she waited outside the bathroom for Asa to emerge, it was hard not to imagine the other girl in the room next door.
Shereen gnawed at her lip, wondering if she dared risk it. Then, ‘Oh sod it,’ she muttered. ‘Why shouldn’t the poor wee cow have a bit of cake and tea as well?’ Taking a bunch of keys from her cardigan pocket, she opened the door next to the bathroom.
Shereen’s scream of terror brought Asa running out of the toilet to the big woman’s side.
She skidded to a halt, rigid with horror at the sight in the bedroom.
There, suspended from the light fitting on the ceiling, was the body of a thin dark girl, her neck twisted sideways, arms hanging lifelessly by her sides.
Chapter Forty
The man with the golden tooth chuckled as he replaced the handset. They were all the same. Thought they could do without him, then something happened and they were running to his door once again. The big dark-skinned woman had sounded tearful, but then most of them tried that trick, employing emotion as though it could budge the moneylender from his usual rates of interest. ‘Let one have a lower rate and they’ll all want it,’ he’d told that skinny wretch of a grandson who lived with him.
She would be round soon, she had said in breathless tones, as though she had been running. The man laughed out loud, the image of her overweight body swaying from side to side amusing him greatly.
Asa had never seen such fear in another person’s eyes before.
She followed the woman around the flat, still dazed from the sight that was now behind a locked door, watching as Shereen took various items from the food cupboard and shoved them into a large carrier bag. She had already packed some of Asa’s clothes and toiletries, talking and weeping as she pulled things out of drawers and cupboards, the Nigerian girl watching silently from the doorway, one ear listening in case footsteps heralded the arrival of either of the men.
They were leaving. There was no doubt about that in Asa’s mind. She might be unable to understand the torrent of words coming from the older woman’s mouth, but she could hear the high-pitched anxiety in her tone and read the frantic way she bustled about, throwing things into bags, hardly sparing the girl a glance.
‘Come. Now,’ Shereen said at last. These at least were words with which Asa was familiar, and the girl followed her meekly along the corridor and out of the main door.
Her heart beat wildly as she headed downstairs after the Jamaican woman, eyes large with terror lest they be waylaid before they had effected their escape.
For escape it was, Asa was in no doubt about that. She had seen the way Shereen had slammed the door of that room shut, recoiling from it as though the corpse might climb down from its wire and catch hold of her. Okonjo at least was absent from the flat, though where he had gone was a mystery to Asa; he seemed to be around so much of the time.
A shiny black car was waiting at the kerb and Shereen bundled the girl in, pushing their bags on to the floor then rapping out instructions to the driver.
Asa looked back as the taxi drew away from the grey pavement, the tenement buildings growing smaller as the vehicle gathered speed. Then they were absorbed into a fast-moving line of traffic, the driver skilfully weaving his way in between other vehicles.
She glanced at her companion. Shereen was holding on to a handle by the window, knuckles pale against the brown skin, her back rigid as she perched on the edge of the leather seat.
Where were they going? Asa wanted to open her mouth to ask, but there were no words for that question and she felt a well of frustration that their different languages created such a barrier between them. She was like a bird that did not sing, its silence making it vanish into the undergrowth, a lost thing prey to the dangerous creatures that sought to harm it.
He had never been slow to make decisions, but there were times when things needed a bit of thought before he handed out the tasks. And this was one of them. The surveillance report had come back about the flat in the East End and one part of him wanted to send a squad car over there. Now. Right now. He bit his lower lip as he mulled over the various consequences of this. McAlpin might be using that flat as a base where the terrorist cell hung out, but it was the first time they had seen him there, he reasoned. On the other hand, the bags of groceries might be for men who were holed up there.
‘One wrong move and the entire operation will collapse,’ Drummond had warned him. So should he send a car over there or leave well alone? Intelligence told him that McAlpin had been seen entering a detached house on the south side, an address not far from the detective’s own home, something that had made Lorimer’s eyebrows rise. Criminal activity was never somewhere else, he reminded himself; scratch the surface of any veneer of respectability and you’d find the same human weaknesses beneath.
He heaved a sigh. It was down to the surveillance team to watch and listen. He would let them keep an eye on the East End flat, but that was all he could do. His remit within Police Scotland included fighting organised crime but the man from MI6 had a greater say in this matter: the life of Her Majesty took precedence over any ongoing investigation that a mere Glasgow cop was carrying out. It was almost midsummer now and there were signs everywhere counting down to the day of the opening ceremony. The detective super thought back to the previous year, when he and Maggie had been making tentative plans to join the melee of people heading towards Parkhead. And then the bomb near Drymen had exploded, destroying any ideas he might have had about being a mere spectator at the Commonwealth Games.
‘He’s on the move again,’ Kate said, fastening her seat belt as Joe started up the Corsa once more.
The big ginger-haired man had emerged from the red-painted doorway of a 1950s bungalow overlooking Rouken Glen Park, one hand on the mobile phone pressed to his ear, the other holding the keys to his van. The video camera zoomed in on his face, capturing the expression of anxiety, the furrowed brow where beads of sweat made his pallid skin shine.
Something was up and neither officer needed to say a word to confirm this: the man’s body language told it all.
McAlpin broke off the call with a curse then gazed round him as though searching for inspiration. The two officers exchanged a glance. If McAlpin made a move, someone needed to cover his steps, and it would be down to them.
‘Grey Corsa,’ the man remarked as he twitched the net curtains, watching the car move away from the kerb and follow McAlpin’s big white van. Behind him nobody spoke.
He had anticipated something like this happening. But as the leader of the cell let his hand fall, he made su
re his face showed no signs of the inner turmoil he was experiencing.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said, turning to address the four men around the old-fashioned walnut dining table. ‘It seems we have to consider that one of our number has fallen.’
‘He’s in a tearing hurry,’ Kate remarked as the van sped around the roundabout and headed back into the city.
‘Nice to know what he’s been called away for,’ Joe replied.
‘Or from?’ Kate shrugged.
‘Ach, it could be a genuine call-out. Blocked drain or something.’
Kate nodded. The old bungalow was in the name of a Mrs Soutar, a widow in her eighties. That much they had gleaned since McAlpin had entered the house, their colleagues back at base ready with as much information as they needed. Kate watched as the transit van gathered speed. Probably a blocked drain or something right enough, she told herself. Someone would check McAlpin’s landline in any case, to see if anyone had telephoned for an emergency plumber.
Rob Worsley left the small white house and turned left. His own car was parked two streets away, hidden discreetly from any prying CCTV cameras. The explosives expert bit his lip. Having McAlpin deselected was a blow right enough, but as far as the cell was concerned the man had already done his bit. He would continue with the work, but from now on there was no way the big man could attend meetings.
Worsley cursed under his breath as he walked along the tree-lined avenue. McAlpin was just too bloody obvious: all those tattoos, and that thatch of red hair! How did he think he could have avoided detection? His thoughts turned to their leader, a mild-mannered fellow who would easily be lost in a crowd; just the sort that was needed for a game like this. Like Worsley himself, a harmless-looking white-haired pensioner. But this particular pensioner had made arrangements with Kenneth Gordon McAlpin, arrangements that he had no intention of changing once the job was done.