Beneath the Bleeding

by Val McDermid

  The first person still breathing that he came across was a woman, hair and skin turned grey by the dust. Her lower left leg was shattered, blood pulsing from the wound. Cross pulled the belt from her trousers and tied off a tourniquet above her knee. The blood slowed to an ooze. Her eyelids flickered then closed again. He knew the rules about not moving the injured, but if the fire travelled fast, she would be caught up in it. There was no real choice here. Cross slid his arms under the woman and lifted her, grunting with the effort. He stepped over debris, edging sideways till he came to an aisle. He laid her down carefully and went back for more, dimly aware that there were others joining him, some in the fluorescent jackets of the emergency services.

  He had no sense of how much time passed. All he knew was the dirt and the blood and the nausea and the sweat pouring down his face and the pain in his guts and the bodies, always the bodies. He worked alone and with others, shifting debris, giving the kiss of life, moving bodies and telling the injured the old familiar lies. ‘It’s going to be all right. You’re going to be fine. It’s going to be all right.’ It was never going to be all right again, not for any of the poor bastards caught in this shitstorm.

  And all the time he was working, he was feeling worse and worse. He put it down to the shock and the exertion. His guts were cramping so much that he had to leave the rescue a couple of times to find a toilet. His bowels emptied in a gusher of liquid both times, leaving him feeling weak and feverish. The third time he tried to return to the bomb site, a paramedic stopped him on the stairs. ‘No way, mate,’ he said. ‘You look terrible.’

  Cross sneered. ‘You don’t look so great yourself, pal.’ He tried to push past, but didn’t seem to have the strength. Baffled, he leaned against the wall, sweat pouring from him. He clutched his stomach as another spasm of pain shot through him.

  ‘Here, put this on.’ The paramedic handed him an oxygen mask and a portable gas cylinder. Cross obeyed. Shock and exertion, that’s what it was. He barely noticed the other man reaching for his arm and taking his pulse. But he did notice that the paramedic looked worried. ‘We need to get you to hospital,’ he said.

  Cross lifted the mask. ‘Bollocks. There’s people up there with serious injuries. That’s who needs to be in hospital.’ Again he tried to push past.

  ‘Mate, I’d say you’re minutes away from a heart attack. Please. Don’t give those bastards the satisfaction of adding another number to the list. Come on, humour me. Let’s walk down to the ambulances together.’

  As Cross glared at him, his vision seemed to blur and an arrow of burning pain shot from his gut to the fingertips of his left hand. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he roared, stumbling and clasping his shoulder. The pain fled as swiftly as it had come, leaving him sweating and nauseous. ‘OK,’ he panted. ‘OK.’

  Carol made it to A&E in time to catch one of the emergency ambulances being despatched to Victoria Park. As they raced through the streets, siren screaming and blue light strobing, she was on the phone. First to Stacey in the office, telling her to send the rest of the team to meet her at the stadium. Then to John Brandon. He too was in motion, pulled away from a shopping expedition with his wife, who now found herself trying to drive like a police driver without the advantage of lights or siren. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ he said. ‘I know your first instincts are to help preserve life, but I don’t want your team involved in the rescue and evacuation. We can’t forget this is also a crime scene. Forensic teams are on their way, and your job is to work with them to make sure they can collect and preserve as much as possible.’

  ‘Is it mine?’ she asked.

  ‘Only until the Counter Terrorism Command get here from Manchester,’ Brandon said. ‘They’re on their way. They’ll be with us within the hour. Then you’ll have to step away. But till they get here, yes, the command is yours.’

  ‘Will CTC take over the whole investigation?’ Carol asked, snatching at a grab handle as they took a corner on what felt like two wheels.

  ‘In effect, yes. You’ll be working to them. I’m sorry, Carol. That’s the way it is. They’re the specialists.’

  Her heart sank. Come tomorrow, she and her detectives would be no more than gofers for those arrogant bastards in CTC who thought being the saviours of mankind gave them the right to walk over anybody and anything in their way. She’d had enough dealings with the Anti-Terrorism Branch and the Special Branch before they’d been amalgamated into the new, bespoke CTC. She knew they thought they were the lords of creation and that people like her and her team were put on this earth to do their grunt work. Bad enough that there were likely dozens dead from a terrorist bomb. Traumatic enough for her team without having to deal with a bunch of outsiders who didn’t know the ground and didn’t have to take responsibility for their actions. They wouldn’t be the ones left to mop up the consequences of shattered relationships among communities and between those communities and the ones left behind to police them.

  ‘Any figures yet?’ she asked, knowing it was pointless to complain to Brandon, as powerless in this as her team was.

  ‘At least twenty. There will be more.’

  ‘And the rest of the crowd? Where are we evacuating to?’

  ‘Contingency plans say the school playing fields further down Grayson Street. But I suspect most of them are putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the stadium. It’s going to be a nightmare, getting witness statements for this one.’

  ‘We’ll do our best. I need to go, we’re nearly there,’ Carol said, recognizing the swaying view through the windscreen. People were streaming past on either side, forcing the ambulance to slow to walking pace. It was like one of those war movies where an army of refugees were desperately fleeing the enemy.

  At last, they made it into the parking area behind the Vestey Stand. Already, the cars parked there were blocked in by police cars and fire engines. The ambulances were parked along the outside edge, ready for a quick getaway. Even as Carol jumped out, one of the other ambulances sped past them, blues and twos.

  From the outside, the stadium looked virtually untouched. There was a small hole in the outer skin of the towering stand, but it looked innocuous. The clues to what had happened here were elsewhere. Hoses from the fire engines and the stadium’s hydrants snaked along the ground and in through the turnstiles. Firefighters moved purposefully towards the stand, looking like astronauts in their protective gear. Paramedics hustled to and fro with assorted bits of kit. And in dribs and drabs, the injured, the dying and the dead were brought forth, carried and stretchered by paramedics and police.

  Carol could barely take it in. Bradfield looked like Beirut. Or Bangladesh. Or some other faraway place on the news. It looked like the aftermath of a natural disaster, everyone caught on the hop, nobody really knowing what to do but somehow getting done what was essential. People milled around, some purposeful, others less so. And at the heart of it, the injured, the dying and the dead.

  She pulled herself together. She had to find out who was in charge, gather her team and do what she could to secure the seat of the explosion. First, she fastened her ID on to the outside of her jacket. Then Carol approached the nearest uniformed cop. He’d just helped an elderly man with blood running down one side of his face into an ambulance and was about to head back to the stand. ‘Constable,’ she called, running the short distance over to him. He stopped and turned. His face was streaked with dirt and sweat, his uniform trousers filthy. ‘DCI Jordan,’ she said. ‘Major Incident Team. Who’s the officer in charge?’

  He looked at her with a glazed look. ‘Superintendent Black.’

  ‘Where can I find him?’

  He shook his head, ‘I’ve no idea. I’ve been up…’ he waved his arm towards the stand. ‘Match day, he’s usually up in the top deck. He’s got a cubicle up by the media centre. You want me to show you?’

  ‘Just point me in the general direction,’ Carol said. ‘You’ve obviously got more important things to do.’

>   He nodded. ‘You could say that. Take the end staircase all the way up. It’s the first one you come to on the left.’

  In the mouth of the stairwell, she came up against a young constable who looked completely terrified. ‘You can’t go up there,’ he gabbled. ‘Nobody’s allowed. It’s not safe, it’s not been cleared by the dogs. Nobody up there, the super’s orders.’

  ‘That’s who I’m looking for. Superintendent Black.’

  The young lad pointed to where two fire engines stood together in an L-shape. ‘He’s over there. With the fire chief.’

  Carol weaved her way across. People were sitting on the ground, parts of them bleeding. Paramedics moved among them, performing a primitive triage. Some they dealt with, some they sent to ambulances, others they summoned stretchers for. Waves of firefighters passed through, their presence somehow reassuring. It was the 9/11 effect, Carol thought. Since then, firemen with their chiselled, smoke-blackened faces and the deliberate walk imposed by their bulky gear had become iconic.

  Among the injured, other fans wandered around in a daze. The police were checking them out, making sure they weren’t obviously injured, then encouraging them to leave the stadium area. All around her, faces in shock, eyes blank, lips bitten. She picked her way through the chaos, wondering how the hell she was supposed to treat this as a crime scene.

  To her amazement, she recognized one of the casualties. Staggering towards her, the familiar bulk of Tom Cross. She hadn’t seen him since he’d left the force seven years before, but he was unmistakable. He was grey faced and filthy, leaning on a paramedic who was clearly struggling under the weight. Cross caught sight of her and shook his head. ‘Just catch the fucking bastards,’ he said, his voice thick and phlegmy.

  ‘Is he OK?’ she asked the paramedic.

  ‘If we can get him to hospital in time. He’s been a proper hero, but he’s taken a bit too much out of himself,’ the man said.

  ‘Let me help,’ Carol said, trying to get Cross to lean on her.

  ‘Never mind me,’ he snarled. ‘Go and do your job. You can buy me a drink when it’s all over.’

  ‘Good luck,’ she called after him.

  When she finally reached the makeshift command post, she was already feeling overwhelmed by the task ahead of them all. She found Black and a senior fire officer poring over an architect’s drawing of the stand. ‘We’ve got the fire under control,’ she heard the fireman say. ‘Apart from the furnishings in the boxes, there’s not much that’s combustible.’

  ‘Something to be grateful for.’ Black looked round as Carol cleared her throat. ‘Can I help you?’ he said, his voice irritable.

  ‘DCI Jordan, Major Incident Team.’

  ‘You’ve come to the right place,’ the fireman said. ‘It doesn’t get much more major than this.’

  ‘It’s my job to work the crime scene,’ Carol said.

  ‘I thought CTC were on their way,’ Black said, frowning. ‘Surely that’s up to them?’

  ‘Until they get here, it’s mine,’ she said briskly. This wasn’t the time to get into a protocol wrangle. ‘Do we know what we’re looking at here?’

  The fire chief pointed to a small room on the plan. This is where we think it came from. My lads tell me it looks like there are human remains in there. So, the presumption is suicide bomber. We also think it was probably TATP, like the London tube bombings. It has a particularly distinctive signature.’

  ‘That’s all speculation, obviously. Until forensics and the bomb guys have been in there,’ Black added.

  ‘Where are forensics?’

  ‘Waiting for the all-clear to go in.’

  ‘Is the Bomb Squad here?’ Carol asked.

  ‘On their way. We’ve got a couple of explosives dogs going through the stands now,’ Black said.

  ‘OK. Get one of the dogs to clear the bomb locus, please.’ She smiled up at the fireman. ‘I’m going to need some protective gear for me and my team. And we’ll need someone to show us the way. Can you help us out?’

  ‘I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s not exactly safe,’ he said.

  ‘All the more reason for us to get what we can while we can,’ she said. The gear?’

  He looked her up and down. ‘It’s going to be a bit big on you, but you’re welcome to what we’ve got. Where’s the rest of your team?’

  ‘Give me a minute.’ Carol stepped to one side, aware that Black was pissed off with her assumption of control over the crime scene. She got her phone out and called Kevin. ‘Bring me up to speed,’ she said.

  ‘I’m five minutes away. I’ve got Paula and Sam with me. Chris is on her way separately, Stacey’s back at the office. She’s already calling in as much CCTV footage of the stadium approaches as she can get.’

  She told him where to meet her, asked him to brief Chris, then called the forensics team. ‘Be ready to roll in ten minutes,’ she said. ‘We’re going in.’

  The closer they approached to the site of the explosion, the warmer it became. Carol could feel the sweat plastering her hair to her head under the bulk of the oversized fire helmet she was wearing. The fire officer picked his way along the debris-strewn corridor. Behind Carol came a skeleton forensics crew, followed by her own team.

  He stopped abruptly a dozen feet from the edge of a jagged crater in the floor. ‘There you go,’ he said. That’s what used to be the electrical junction room for the corporate hospitality boxes and the media centre.’

  Not much remained. The walls had been pulverized, the cables shredded and the pipework that had been buried in concrete had been transformed into shrapnel. The force of the bomb had punched outwards and upwards. The walls above had peeled back like the segments of an orange and she could see daylight through the gap. As Carol stared at the destruction, she realized that the red shreds and patches scattered at random over the remains of the room were human flesh and blood. Not much turned her stomach these days, but this was a sight that made her gag. She swallowed hard. ‘Can we get round to the other side?’ she asked.

  The fireman nodded. ‘From the other end.’

  ‘OK.’ She turned to the forensics team. ‘I want half of you to start from the other side. We want as much trace evidence as we can get, but I don’t want anybody taking risks. We’ll do as much as we can, then we’ll get the experts to build us some sort of platform so we can access the rest. It looks as if we’ve got the remains of a suicide bomber here, but let’s get as much material as possible so we can be sure whether there was one or more of them.’

  The white-suited technicians set about their business. Cameras flashed, tweezers gripped, bags were filled and labelled. Carol moved back to her team. ‘I want you to backtrack through the stand. We don’t know how he got in, but there must be security cameras. Paula, Sam-figure out where the access points are and start checking the footage. Kevin, stay here with the SOCOs, take a look at the scene and see what you can come up with. Chris, with me.’

  She headed back the way they’d come, Chris at her side. ‘Punters don’t get into service corridors,’ she said. ‘Somebody brought him in. We need to find the security staff and whoever was on duty in the corporate hospitality reception. He didn’t just walk in off the street with a rucksack bomb. Let’s see what we can dig up before CTC turn up.’

  It took them twenty minutes to track down the people they were looking for. The crisis evacuation plan provided a safe haven for stadium staff in the assembly hall of Grayson Street Primary. But nobody had keys for the school. At first, it had looked as if the staff were going to melt into the afternoon, but an enterprising turnstile manager had insisted they stay together and shepherded them quarter of a mile down the road to the Chinese restaurant where he liked to eat lunch. The owner had welcomed them with open arms and an avalanche of free dim sum. The only problem was that nobody knew where they were. Finally, Carol had managed to get a number for one of the hospitality receptionists and tracked them down.

  It took another twenty minutes to get the
bare bones of what had happened. Carol left Chris taking more detailed statements and she headed back to the stadium, making a couple of quick calls on the way. Even in the short time she had been away, things had moved on. The streets around the stadium were much clearer, and were being kept that way by the mounted division. A couple of low loaders were moving cars from the immediate vicinity of the stadium to make way for emergency vehicles. And in the middle of the Vestey Stand car park was the biggest caravan Carol had ever seen. The white trailer looked like a converted cargo container, with two rows of opaque windows along the side. Apart from a strip of black-and-white checks, like a police cap band, there was no identification. A single door in the end of the trailer was flanked by two black-clad officers in riot gear and helmets, semi-automatic pistols held across their bodies. It looked as if the cavalry had arrived. Carol headed for it.

  As she approached, both guards shifted, pointing their weapons towards her. Here we go. Bully boys and borderline sociopaths masquerading as our saviours. She pointed to her ID. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan. Bradfield Metropolitan Police Major Incident Team commander. Here to see whoever is in charge now.’

  One of them turned away and muttered into his radio. The other didn’t let his hard, flat stare lighten for an instant. Carol stood her ground, reminding herself that this wasn’t about her, it was about the injured, the dying and the dead. Don’t get angry. Don’t give them an excuse to sideline you even further. This is your patch, you have something to contribute. Don’t let them stop you doing your job.

  The one with the radio turned back and stepped closer, checking the photo on her ID against her face. ‘A few more grey hairs and a few more wrinkles,’ she said. His tough guy expression didn’t even twitch. He reached behind him for the door handle, pushed it open and indicated with his gun that she should enter. Biting her lip and refusing to give in to the temptation to shake her head in wonder, Carol did as she was instructed.