by M K Farrar
“Mae Dempsey screamed continuously for minutes until she passed out, did you know that? She lost almost two litres of blood and spent five hours in surgery. That blood was all over the path in front of the children’s playground and will probably stain for months to come. Don’t tell me you did that for no reason. What was behind it? Who was behind it? Why try to kill an innocent woman, saying it’s for Iran, but then never claiming it as being for Iran?”
The sixteen-year-old appeared to have the world on his shoulders. The corners of his mouth turned down, and he slumped in his seat, his chin to his chest. He fiddled with the hem of his t-shirt, not looking up.
“You didn’t really want to hurt her, did you?” Erica kept her tone soft. “Someone put you up to it.”
He didn’t reply.
“Yousef, if someone made you do what you did, they’re the ones who should be taking responsibility for it.”
“You don’t understand.”
She put her forearms on the table and leaned forward. “So, help me understand. I want to understand.”
“I had to prove myself. To show I am a man now, and I’m strong and brave enough to do God’s work.”
A chill went down Erica’s spine, and she glanced over to Shawn who returned her frown.
“Are you saying God’s work involved stabbing an innocent mother in the back?”
He stared down at his hands. “She’s an enemy to Islam.”
“So am I, Yousef. Does that mean I deserve the same?”
He didn’t reply.
Erica tried another tactic. “You said you had to prove yourself. To who? Surely not God? He would already know what kind of person you are.”
Again, he didn’t answer.
“Was it someone from school? Did they put you up to it? Or maybe a member of your family?”
“No one put me up to it.”
She tried again. “We know you weren’t working alone. There was someone with you. We have you on CCTV walking around the park with them. Who was that person, Yousef? You must see that they don’t care about you, whoever they are. Are they here now, defending you? No one has come for you. Not even a family member. We’ve been unable to contact anyone. The shop you were working at is closed, and those you were living with in the flat above have vanished. Did they know you were in trouble and that was why they’ve run? If they care about you, wouldn’t they have come here to find out if you were okay?”
“They couldn’t. They have greater plans for us.”
Erica did her best to hold back her frustration. He was talking in riddles. “Greater plans to do what?”
“To bring to light the suffering of Iranian people. To make Westerners understand what it’s like to be attacked in your own country.”
Ice ran through Erica’s veins.
“Are you talking about a terror attack? Were you proving yourself capable of taking part in an act of terror?”
He glanced down at his hands and nodded.
This was way out of her skill set. She didn’t deal with counterterrorism. But she’d managed to get the boy talking, and if she was to leave now to contact her colleagues in the Counter Terrorism Command, he might clamp down again and refuse to speak. What if the attack was planned in the next few days and Yousef refused to say anything more, and they managed to proceed with their plans? People would be killed, all because she’d made the wrong choice.
“Whatever it is they’re planning, it will involve people like Mae and Ellie Dempsey, you know that, don’t you? Only this time they might not be so lucky, and that blade will find its mark, and a little girl might be killed instead of getting to go home.”
He stared down at his clasped hands on the tabletop, and a tear ran down to the end of his nose and dripped off, hitting his fingers. Finally, he looked up at the clock on the wall.
“It might be too late.”
The unease she’d been experiencing for some time now deepened inside her. “What’s too late?”
“It’s going to happen at five o’clock.”
She checked the wall clock. That was less than an hour from now.
“What is?” she pressed him. “What’s going to happen, Yousef?”
“My uncles are planning an attack. They have knives and a couple of vehicles. They’re going to block the street and kill as many people as they can.”
Cold froze her heart. “A terrorist attack? You’re saying they’re planning a terrorist attack?”
“They don’t see it that way. They’re doing it to demand the release of Arab prisoners in Iran. They plan on taking hostages of anyone left alive.”
“Where is this attack going to happen?”
Yousef named a junction in central London.
“And what are your uncles’ names?” Erica asked.
“Hashem Abed, Javad Parsi, and Farhad Khadem.”
Farhad Khadem. Erica shot Shawn a look. The shop owner.
“There are others as well,” Yousef continued, “men they talk to, but I do not know their names.”
Erica turned to Shawn. “We need to alert the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command. Get hold of Gibbs as well. We’ll need him to authorise an armed response.”
“Is there time?” He checked his watch. “We’ve got less than an hour.”
Erica was already on her feet. “We’ll do it on the way.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
After alerting DCI Gibbs to what they’d found out, and leaving him to authorise an armed response, Erica and Shawn ran to the pool car and put the emergency lights on.
God, she hoped all her family were at home, safely tucked up, and hadn’t decided to nip out for a pizza or something. She desperately wanted to call Natasha, but she needed to make sure the correct authorities were in place first.
Shawn stamped on the accelerator and drove while she put out the calls to all the relevant departments. She was conscious that she was sending officers into a potentially dangerous situation—police officers had lost their lives doing less.
Will we get there on time? Or just a moment too late?
With lights flashing and sirens blaring, they tore through London’s streets. Within fifteen minutes, they approached the junction, where Yousef had told them the attack was supposed to take place, and pulled over. They were the first to arrive, and everything looked calm. All around them, Londoners continued with their lives, unaware, commuters hurrying to catch their trains, tourists ambling around more slowly, camera phones held up in front of their faces. The arrival of the unmarked police car was barely worth a glance.
“Thank God,” she said. “We made it.”
Shawn left the engine running, just in case. “I’ll feel better when the Armed Response Vehicles get here.”
“Yeah, and the Counter Terrorist Specialist Firearms Units.” In London, CTSFO teams were always on standby to respond to a terrorist or major crime incident. “They won’t be far away.”
She checked the clock on the dashboard. It was one minute past five.
Could she hope Yousef’s uncles had called off whatever they’d planned? Perhaps they’d realised Yousef was giving himself up and decided it was too dangerous for them to go ahead.
Suddenly, from behind them, came the screech of car tyres against tarmac. The metallic crash of one vehicle hitting another filled Erica’s ears, and the car swung to a stop, blocking the road.
People turned, eyes wide, some lifting their camera phones to capture the accident, thinking they could be posting something to social media that would get them plenty of comments or likes later on.
But Erica and Shawn knew differently.
They both jumped from the car.
“Move!” she shouted to the bystanders. “Police! This area is being evacuated. Move it!”
Men climbed from the car that had crashed. She sought them for signs of a backpack that might contain a homemade bomb but didn’t see one. That didn’t mean one wasn’t there, however. It might be contained within the vehicle.
God
dammit. Where was the Armed Response Unit?
Shawn ushered everyone in the opposite direction as well. Some people didn’t respond, but others seemed to pick up on the fact that something wasn’t quite right and started to move, slowly at first and then breaking into a run.
In the direction Shawn was hustling people towards, another car raced directly at them at a speed that was far too fast.
It wasn’t stopping.
The second vehicle crashed into a parked car and skidded to a halt, blocking the road in that direction as well. People screamed, finally realising what was happening. More men climbed out of the second car, and Erica recognised one of them.
Farhad Khadem.
The man who’d climbed out of the first car approached a middle-aged man in suit standing outside one of the shops.
“Run!” Erica screamed at the man. She knew shouts of ‘stop, police’ weren’t going to make any difference to the attackers. They’d come here knowing the police would intervene eventually. While they probably hadn’t expected for detectives to already be waiting for them, they’d still want to do as much damage as possible before they were taken down.
She caught a glimpse of the weapon—a large knife, similar to the one Yousef had used on Mae Dempsey, only this one was strapped to the attacker’s wrist with tape to prevent it being knocked out of his hand. They meant business.
Distant sirens grew louder, but the attackers didn’t let it distract them. Each one seemed to fix on one of the pedestrians, and they took after their victims with single-mindedness.
ARVs—Armed Response Vehicles—pulled up on either side of the crashed cars. Authorised Firearms Officers jumped out. In their Pro-Tex ballistic helmets and protective body gear, Erica felt ridiculously exposed in just her suit.
“Police! Get on the ground, hands on your head, or we will be forced to shoot.”
It was chaos, people screaming and running in every direction.
The man didn’t pay any attention and lunged at someone running past him. The blade slashed across the other man’s waist, and he stumbled and fell.
Gunshots rang out, and the first attacker dropped to the ground.
Because of the mayhem, of people screaming and running, it was hard to tell who was a part of the attack and who were the victims. Shawn was helping a woman who’d been stabbed into one of the shops, while the shopkeeper gestured for people to take shelter inside the building.
Yousef had planned on being a part of this, or at least he’d been manipulated and groomed to the point of believing he had no choice but to be a part of it.
Erica tried to keep people moving, guiding them to slip out the side of the crashed vehicles.
They were trapped, the crashed cars blocking the road in both directions. On the other sides of the cars, the Armed Response Units and the uniformed police in patrol cars were also stopped, adding another layer to prevent more traffic or pedestrians from entering the area. But it meant Erica and Shawn were closed into the area of attack, unarmed.
Across the top of everyone’s head, she spotted Farhad Khadem dragging a young woman—a teenager—into a building. She remembered what Yousef had said about them taking hostages to demand the release of prisoners in Iran. If she didn’t act fast, that girl would become one of those hostages, and she might not make it out alive.
“Stop!” she shouted, breaking into a run after the man. “Police!”
In that moment she’d have given anything for one of the Glock 17 pistols the Armed Response Officers carried. Instead, she picked up one of the chairs that had been part of the outside eating area of the restaurant but had been knocked into the street.
Khadem was slow, due to having to drag a struggling teenager along with him. With adrenaline pushing her forward, she ran towards him, swinging the metal chair. He turned just as she reached him, perhaps sensing her coming, and she let out a yell of fury and the back rest of the chair collided with the man’s head.
He dropped his hold on the girl immediately, and she stumbled away.
“Go! Run!” Erica shouted at her.
Distracted for a moment, she hadn’t noticed that the man still had the knife strapped to his hand, and he lunged for her—
Something solid hit her left side, throwing her to the ground. She hit the concrete hard, jarring every bone in her body. Her teeth had caught her tongue and she tasted blood. What had happened?
She twisted towards Khadem, expecting to find him looming over her with the knife, but instead Shawn was standing there. His eyes were wide in horror, and he was half bent, the man’s knife embedded in his side.
The bang-bang of gunshots smacked against her eardrums, and then Khadem was falling backwards, taking the knife with him.
Shawn gave a strange ‘ugh’ and slumped forwards, his knees folding. His hand went to the place on his side where the knife had penetrated, and when he lifted it back off again, his palm was painted red.
“Oh my God. Shawn!”
Khadem was dead on the ground, and all around them, the Armed Response Officers took down the other terrorists as well.
Erica crawled towards Shawn, yanking off her jacket. She bunched it up to press it against his wound.
He looked at her and tried to raise a smile. “Well, shit.”
“Shut up. You’re going to be fine. Keep pressure on it.” She lifted her head and screamed, “Police officer down! I need a paramedic over here!”
All around her was chaos, and as she sat with Shawn cradled in her lap, and paramedics running towards them, all she could think was: Please don’t die...’
Chapter Thirty-Six
“You scared the shit out of me, you know,” she said as she walked into the hospital room where Shawn was lying in one of the beds.
“Did you bring me grapes?” Wincing, he sat up slightly to greet her and clocked what was in her hands. “And flowers?”
Get well cards from much of their department crowded the small side table beside his bed. Erica had added her one, too, signed from both her and Poppy. She’d almost been tempted to not tell Poppy what had happened—especially because of the way in which they’d lost Chris—but Erica knew kids had a way of finding these things out. Even if she hadn’t come across something on the internet or heard something on the news, one of the kids at school, or even one of her cousins, would have mentioned what had happened, and not preparing Poppy in advance would have left her confused and upset and out of her depth.
“The doctors made me leave the bottle of whiskey outside,” she joked, perching on the side of his bed.
“Irish or Scottish?” he asked.
“Irish.”
“Now you’re talking.”
She grew serious. “You really frightened me back there. I thought I was going to lose you.”
“It’ll take more than a terrorist attack to get rid of me, Swift.” He threw her a grin.
“Stop it,” she told him. “I mean it. When you were stabbed and there was blood everywhere, I was so scared. I can’t lose anyone else from my life, Shawn, and especially not you. You know how much you mean to me.”
The smile softened, and he reached out and took her hand. “I didn’t, Erica, but I think maybe I do now.”
She didn’t let go of his fingers. “Good. I know it’s...complicated...but I couldn’t imagine you dying without me telling you how important you are to me. I don’t want to have to try to figure out how to get through each day without you in my life as well.”
“I understand. It’s not been long since Chris, but you know I’m here for you, whenever you are ready.”
They smiled at each other, holding eye contact, the silence saying more than words ever could.
Shawn switched topics, moving onto easier subjects. “How are the victims?”
“All alive, thank God. A couple are going to need further surgeries, but they should be all right.”
“If you hadn’t got Yousef to talk, a lot of people would have died. It’s only because Armed Response
was there so fast that they didn’t.”
“It haunts me, the possibility that we could have missed it. All those people...”
He squeezed her hand. “But we didn’t. You didn’t. You knew there was something more to what Yousef did than just a random attack.”
“I don’t think he’s a bad kid, you know. He just got dealt a really shitty hand in life. It’s such a waste of a promising life.”
The uncles—of which only one, Hashem Abed, was actually blood related to Yousef—were on the counterterrorism watch list. They used him, knowing he wasn’t being observed.
“He stabbed a mother in a park,” Shawn reminded her gently.
She sighed. “I know. And he’ll serve time for it, and for his involvement in the terror plot. No one looks kindly on these boys.”
“Should they?”
“I thought you would be more sympathetic. You got out of a tough upbringing.”
“Maybe that’s why I’m not so sympathetic—I know it’s still possible to make a choice, even if it feels impossible at the time. And anyway, I got out of a life of low-level crime. I wasn’t plotting terror attacks on innocent people.”
“I just wish there was a way to get to these kids sooner. If we could spot them being groomed earlier on, maybe we could stop it, and we could prevent a whole generation of potential terrorists being raised.”
“The world is never going to be a perfect place, Erica. We’re all just doing the best we can.”
He was right, of course, and she would continue doing the best she could, with her family by her side.
“Well, I hope you’re going to be out of bed soon,” she said, teasing him again. “You can’t lie around doing nothing all day.”
“Don’t tell me—there’s a case that needs my attention.”
She grinned at him. “There will always be another case, and you’d better be around to help me with it.”
“Anything for you, Swift.”
THE END
ENJOYED The Child Catcher? Don’t miss out on book five of the Erica Swift series, The Body Dealer, which is available to order from Amazon today! Keep going to learn more! Sign up to M K Farrar’s newsletter so you don’t miss out on any news of freebies, sales, cover reveals and new releases!