by Jeff Gulvin
Boese worked into the night. He had secured the metal rack to the floor, just in front of the French doors that opened on to the balcony. He had had to adjust the shelving panels in order to create a better angle, but that had only been a matter of twisting a few screws. Tal-Salem and Pier-Luigi Ramas worked alongside him. Two large plastic sports bags were discarded on the couch and Ramas was comparing the lengths of pipe. So far they had fifteen sections. The glass they had brought up in the lift at two in the morning, after hiding it in the garage downstairs. Six by four; it had only just fitted. Now it rested, four sheets together with hinges and fastening brackets, against the far wall. A sealed length of copper tubing lay on the kitchen work surface.
Ramas was placing seals one-third of the way down the scaffold piping. Tal-Salem had a block of Czech-manufactured Semtex in front of him, which he was cutting and preparing into conical-shaped charges. On the far side of the room, thirty-five Iraco detonators were still individually wrapped. Boese moved to the window and looked out. The net curtains were pulled together, but he could still see the grey outline of the city beyond them. He turned once more to the rack and fixed another length of pipe at an angle of forty-five degrees.
‘When do we black out the window?’ Ramas asked him.
‘Just before we leave.’
Webb sifted through the evidence they had accumulated on Ismael Boese. His exhibits cage was open and Logan was messing about with the 7.62 Tokarev that Webb had confiscated a year ago, but as yet had not sent away for destruction.
‘Neat little gun,’ she was saying. ‘I never handled one before.’
Webb heard his extension ringing through in the exhibits office. ‘George Webb,’ he said when he got to it.
‘Mike Richards, Webby.’ Richards was one of the fingerprint team from SO3.
‘What you got?’
‘Your suspect was in that van.’
Denis Smith opened his front door, yawned and looked at the sky. He shivered, yawned again and zipped his jacket to the neck. He walked down the hill to where he had parked his van and fumbled in his pocket for the keys. Three men got out of a car across the road. Smith was still fishing for his keys when he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. He jumped and instantly balled his fist. Campbell McCulloch’s fleshy face stared down into his, long red hair and green eyes glinting like a cat.
‘Hello, Denis,’ McCulloch said. ‘I’m arresting you under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.’ Smith looked at Swann, who was standing next to McCulloch. He could see the butt of a gun bulging at his armpit. McCulloch read him his rights while Swann slipped plastic handcuffs over his wrists. They marched him to the car where DI Clements was waiting.
Swann drove very quickly, siren blaring, and McCulloch phoned ahead to the reception committee at Paddington Green police station. In the back, Clements ignored the prisoner, who sat stony-faced, having not said a single word. At Paddington Green, Swann pulled up the ramp beyond the security gates and stamped hard on the brakes. Smith lurched forward in his seat. The door to the custody suite was opened and DSU Colson stood there. He looked at Smith, face pressed right up against his, and then stepped to one side. Swann and McCulloch frogmarched him down the hall to the custody sergeant.
At the desk, Swann spoke softly to him. ‘Nice to have you here, Denis,’ he said. ‘Bet you didn’t expect it when you woke up this morning. Had your normal breakfast, did you? Weetabix and toast. You like Rose’s lime marmalade, don’t you, and it’s coffee and not tea.’ He shook his head at him. ‘You look a bit pale, Denis. Bet you wished you’d got home earlier last night now, don’t you. Playing cards in the week’s not good for you. And all that beer, six pints of lager on a Wednesday night, not to mention the whisky and coke.’
Smith stared at him, mouth slightly open and his eyes orbs in his skull. Swann patted him on the shoulder. ‘I need to tell you what’s going to happen to you. First of all, we’re going to take your clothes and shoes. Don’t worry, we’ll give you one of those paper suits I expect you’ve seen on the telly. Then we’re going to put you in a cell by yourself and somebody’ll want to have a look at you. They’ll want to tape your face and look at your hair for bits and pieces. OK?’
Smith looked at him but did not speak.
They strip searched him, then gave him the paper suit to wear. Samples were taken from his face with strips of sticky tape, and from his hair and the palms of his hands. They knew they weren’t going to find anything, but Swann wanted information when they interviewed him and needed him to be as malleable and frightened as possible. Four hours after they arrested him, they sat him down in the interview room, Swann across from him and McCulloch alongside. Smith had not requested a solicitor. He hadn’t said anything, not even asked to use the phone. He had been photographed and fingerprinted and they were preparing an identity parade for the manager of the van hire company.
‘Denis,’ McCulloch said in a genial tone. ‘You hired a van from Rent A Wreck in Mitcham using a false driving licence.’
Smith narrowed his eyes.
‘Yes?’
‘No.’
‘Ah, you do speak.’ Swann nodded. ‘There’s me thinking you were actually as dumb as you look.’
‘Hey.’ McCulloch touched him on the shoulder. ‘I’m talking.’ He looked again at Smith. ‘We know you did, Denis. Then you collected four sheets of heavy-duty glass from a place called Rayburn’s in Sutton. What I want to know—is what happened to it afterwards?’
Smith shook his head, looking from one to the other of them. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Swann was suddenly in his face. ‘Maybe you should get the brief now, Denis. You’re definitely going to need him.’
Smith flinched, half lifting a hand to his face.
‘You see, we can prove you hired that van and that you picked up the glass. You used a licence in the name of William Montgomery, who just happens to be doing fifteen years in Parkhurst. Tommy get the licence for you, did he?’
Smith did not reply.
‘Makes no odds whether you talk or not, Denis,’ Swann went on. ‘Not to us, anyway.’
He looked at McCulloch who leaned forward and said, ‘Might make a bit to you, though. You see, at the moment we can prove that doing what you did links you to a really nasty man called the Storm Crow. You ever heard of him? Like Carlos the Jackal, only worse.’ He smiled then. ‘He’s a terrorist, you see, which makes you an accessory to the murders he’s been committing. You’ll do at least fifteen years.’
Swann looked Smith in the eye then. ‘They like skinheads inside, Denis. Especially the big black guys called Suzie.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Terrorists do their time. Did you know that? There’s no parole and no remission. So when you walk down those steps in the Old Bailey, you won’t come out again till you’re forty.’ He stood up. ‘Get that lawyer, eh. Who shall we call—Mr Ingram, is it?’
Outside, Swann looked at McCulloch. ‘He’ll talk,’ he said, ‘when I’ve wound old Ingram up.’ He made the call himself and was put through straight away.
‘Mr Ingram. This is Detective Sergeant Swann of the Antiterrorist Branch. Remember me?’
At the other end of the phone, Ingram sat white-knuckled. ‘Of course I do, Sergeant. What can I do for you?’
‘I’m phoning from Paddington Green police station. We’ve got one of your Action 2000 lads down here, a Denis Smith.’
‘Sergeant, please. They are not my Action 2000 lads as you put it—and I don’t know any Denis Smith.’
‘Well, he knows you. We’ve arrested him under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and he wants you to come down and represent him.’
Ingram swallowed, air backing up in his throat. ‘Sergeant, as I’m sure you know, I’m not a criminal lawyer.’
‘Aren’t you? He seemed to think you were.’
‘I’m afraid he’s wrong. Now if there’s nothing else …’
‘When there is, I’ll come and get you.’ Swann put down the phone.<
br />
Back in the interview room, Swann sat down again with Smith. McCulloch had gone to get coffee for them and Swann folded his arms. ‘Ingram’s not coming, Denis. Says he doesn’t practise criminal law. Typical that, isn’t it. Serve the bloke on the street all these years and when you need him, he’s history. Had to get you the duty brief instead. Probably only be a solicitor’s clerk, but better than nothing, eh.’
Smith’s eyes had lost their arrogance. Swann squinted at him. ‘You want to talk to me, Denis?’
McCulloch pressed open the door with his foot and placed three coffee cups on the table. Swann took out his cigarettes and slid them across to Smith. ‘What d’you want to tell me?’
Smith blew smoke and rubbed one tattooed arm with his palm. ‘What d’you want to know?’
‘What you did with the glass.’
‘I just drove the van to a back street.’
‘Where?’
‘Whitechapel.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘Just left it. Went and had a cup of tea. Put a bet on.’
‘Where exactly did you leave it?’
‘Winthrop Street, behind Whitechapel tube. Left the keys up the exhaust pipe.’
‘For how long?’
‘Hour and a half, maybe.’
Swann thinned his eyes. ‘Then you went back?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And?’
Smith shrugged his shoulders. ‘And nothing. Van was where I left it. I got the keys from the exhaust and took it back.’
‘The glass?’
‘Glass was gone.’
Byrne and Logan were sitting in the leg-att’s office in Grosvenor Square. They had just received copies of the latest submission from Harrison. Still photos from the infrared video he had taken in Jakob Salvesen’s office. Logan leafed through them, brow furrowed, and handed each one to Byrne. She saw the chart on currency union, the books by Hal Lindsey and the stuff from the top drawer, the meal receipt with the scribbled paper beneath it. Byrne looked through each one in turn. He came to the bomb scene and frowned. The images weren’t very clear, but he recognized them. ‘Think we better show these to the guys at the Yard,’ he said.
Swann briefed the team on the interview with Denis Smith. ‘Coughed,’ he said. ‘Gave up Tommy Cairns. Told me it was Cairns who set up the van hire, gave him the driving licence and everything. We’ve got enough to pull him now. We can get a Section 18 on his address and the builder’s yard. You never know—we might find Frank Cairns’s shoes.’
‘What about the glass?’ Colson asked him.
‘I think it’s somewhere in the City.’
At that moment Byrne and Logan came in and made their apologies. Byrne looked at the bomb-scene photographs pasted up on the wall and he nudged Logan.
‘Bring in the Cairns brothers,’ Colson was saying, ‘and Oxley and Bacon. Oh, and bring in Ingram too. Ask him why every time we speak to him, he speaks to Tommy Cairns. And I want Legion patrols, all over the City.’
‘Sorry to interrupt, Bill,’ Byrne said, ‘but we’ve just picked up a fresh report from our UCA in Idaho.’ He took the photos from the envelope and passed them across to Colson.
‘This is the Soho bomb scene,’ Colson said.
Byrne sighed heavily. ‘I think we’ve established our link.’
Swann stood with Webb. ‘How the fuck did he get them?’
‘Press syndication library. About a tenner apiece.’
Swann looked sharply at Byrne then. ‘Salvesen’s employing the Storm Crow,’ he said.
‘Looks that way, doesn’t it.’
‘So nick him.’
‘We can’t. He hasn’t committed any felony. All we’ve got is Bruno Kuhlmann in his compound and these photographs.’ He looked at Webb. ‘You said just now, George, anyone can pay for them.’
Colson stared coldly at him. ‘And in the meantime we’re hunting down a chemical bomb.’
Byrne looked helpless. ‘Even if we did bust Salvesen now,’ he said, ‘it won’t make any difference. Boese’ll carry on, Bill. Once he starts something, he always likes to finish it.’
John Henry Mackey sat in his trailer in Hagerman, Idaho, and watched the sport on HBO. At his feet lay his huskies and on the wall two high-tension bows were hanging. He had been checking through some of his legal papers, because the cops had stopped him again for speeding. He found what he was looking for and smiled. Those motherfuckers didn’t even know their own law. He’d stand up in front of the judge and stick them with it. Title 18 of the United States Code: ‘If no person or their property has been injured, no crime has been committed.’ He had hit nobody, he had trespassed on nobody’s land and he had damaged nothing. He’d have his day in court.
The telephone rang and he jumped. His mind had been elsewhere and he was wary of the phone at the best of times. He had been one of those ready to march on Congress in September ’94, and had stood with Jesse Tate at the eighty-one-day Freeman stand-off. He was absolutely certain the Feds had tapped his phone.
‘Yeah?’ he said when he finally picked it up.
‘John Henry?’
He frowned, a softly drawling voice he didn’t recognize. ‘Who’s this?’
‘Friend.’
‘How’d I know that?’
‘You don’t, but you gotta trust me. I can’t talk for long because I know they listen. I seen Russian tanks being freighted through Buffalo, Wyoming, just last Tuesday.’
‘What’s your name, friend?’
‘That don’t matter, John. But you gotta know something—the Feds are watching Jake Salvesen. They got an undercover agent in Passover, Idaho, and they’re about ready to jump his ass. You’s a friend of Jesse Tate, John. I know you got respect for him. Get a hold of Jesse and tell him before it’s too late. The people of this country ain’t gonna take no more Waco or Ruby Ridge.’
The phone died then and Mackey held the receiver loosely in his hand for a moment. He crossed to the window and peeked through the drape. The exterior lights were on as they always were and if anybody was out there, the dogs would let him know. The voice rang in his ear, fear in it, desperation. Unknown caller in the night—maybe it was some kind of trick. He dismissed it, sat down again and went back to his beer. But it wouldn’t leave him, the voice breaking in on his thoughts. Then the phone rang again.
‘You’re sitting there thinking on what I said, John Henry. I know it. The thing of it is, we don’t have a whole lotta time. But I know you’re nervous. When you talk to Jesse, you tell him this: when the crow flies, he sees everything beneath him.’ Again the line went dead. Mackey got out of his chair.
He drove the seventy-five miles from Hagerman up through Shoshone to Passover. It took him an hour and a half and he kept his eyes skinned for cops. On the seat next to him lay a .357 Magnum, just in case. He had been to the Salvesen ranch just one time, when Jesse invited him to join in an open training day the year before. Salvesen had impressed him and the facilities were excellent. He turned off the highway and bumped his truck across the cattle trap. ‘No Trespassing’ signs were everywhere. The track was over a mile long and then he saw the lights of Salvesen’s compound. God Almighty, the man was well set for when the shit hit the fan. Two armed men stopped his truck. He knew them, Drake and Wingo. ‘What’s up, John Henry?’ Wingo said. ‘What you doin’ out here in the middle of the night?’
‘I gotta see Jesse and Mr Salvesen and I gotta see them now.’
Salvesen wore his white suit and sat behind his desk with his arms loose and his hands in his lap. Jesse sat across from him, his face set and cold.
‘That’s exactly how it went, Mr Salvesen,’ Mackey was saying, ‘and then he called back.’
‘What did he say the second time?’
‘Oh, like how he knew I’d be suspicious, but he said to tell you something about a crow.’
‘A crow?’ Salvesen sat bolt upright, both fists on the desktop. ‘What did he say about a crow?’
‘S
omething about it flying. I can’t recall exactly. When the crow’s flying, it can see most everything.’
Salvesen’s eyes were pinched now, lips a white line in his face. He snapped his fingers at Jesse. ‘Check. Check now. Now, I tell you. Do it now.’
Jesse was out of the chair in a flash. Salvesen sat back and rested one balled fist against his teeth. He no longer seemed to see Mackey.
‘So I did right to come out here, Mr Salvesen,’ Mackey said.
Salvesen looked at him then with a cold light in his eyes. ‘What do you think, John?’
Mackey stared at him: his face had changed, darker, the thoughts furrowing great lines in his brow. Again Salvesen looked up. ‘You need to get home, John. Be ready. Don’t you know the hour is late.’
When Mackey had gone, Salvesen still sat there, and then his gaze fixed on the papers on his desk. Opening his drawers, he took every note, every scrap of paper and piled them into the metal dustbin. He took the map from the wall and the charts and the writings and threw them in after. When he was done, he opened the sliding door and placed the bin outside. Then he threw in a match and watched it burn.
23
ON THE TWENTY-THIRD floor of Liddesdale Tower, Boese watched while Ramas and Tal-Salem painted the window black. When the paint was dry, Boese himself took the roll of detonator cord and set about wiring up the glass. Movement sensors were mounted on the walls. Each of the thirty-five metal pipes had been sealed inside, one-third of the way down, and then sealed again at the top. They were fixed on the metal rack like pipes from an organ and pointed at an angle of forty-five degrees to the window. Inside the four-inch pipes, pressed against the nylon bung was a two-ounce conical-shaped charge. An Iraco detonator had been inserted in each one, with the wires extending down into a four by two wooden box. Boese set the last of the micro-switches on the lock clasp and then they packed their bags.
Outside in the hallway, Ramas kept watch while Tal-Salem sealed the door and keyhole with black waterproof sealant. When that was done, they descended one by one in the lift and went their separate ways. Boese, grey-haired, with a straggly beard and dark suit, limped into the Barbican tube station, leaning heavily on a cane. He passed an armed, watchful police officer and took the Circle line to Paddington.