by Tony Salter
Dan
Rosa’s half an hour at the registration desk had ended up being more like an hour and a half, but eventually she was done.
‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘We weren’t expecting so many people to be interested.’
‘Maybe things are really starting to change?’ said Dan, watching as she piled up the boxes of pamphlets and forms.
‘Maybe?’ she said. ‘But, if you ask me, it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.’ She tried to pick up the tottering pile of boxes.
‘Let me give you a hand with those,’ said Dan. ‘Where do they need to go?’
‘They let us use a cupboard out back,’ said Rosa. ‘I’ll show you.’
They walked around behind the altar to a room full of wardrobes and storage cabinets. They were the last people to leave and Rosa carefully locked up the cupboard, before taking a look around the room.
‘OK. I think we’re done,’ she said, flashing him a cheeky smile. ‘Now what is it you wanted to talk about?’
After they left the church, Dan and Rosa went to an all-night coffee bar and sat chatting for hours. She was passionate, smart and opinionated. Dan learnt very quickly that his logic of I’m Canadian – Canadian’s aren’t racist – US Deep South racism isn’t my problem wasn’t going to get him far with Rosa.
She believed that it was everyone’s job to stand up and join the fight. Just because you weren’t racist didn’t mean that leaving the fight to the victims of racism was an acceptable option. By the end of the evening, Dan was a convert, and not only because he was becoming more in love with every breath he took.
They didn’t only talk about civil rights, they explored the differences and similarities of growing up in small-town Mexico and small-town Canada. They both described stifling, small-minded communities dominated by religion and net-curtain-twitching gossip and scandal. They’d both been in a hurry to escape and for identical reasons.
She even pretended to be fascinated by Dan’s work and, by the end of the evening, he’d convinced her to read The Brothers Karamazov, his favourite Dostoevsky.
He walked her home and was rewarded with a chaste kiss on the cheek and the promise of a proper date the following week.
Rosa and Dan had started dating and, for Dan, it was like being seventeen again. Rosa was a very well-brought-up girl and their relationship developed slowly and along very traditional lines. There was no chaperone, but there might as well have been.
Dan hadn’t minded. Even though he could still remember wanting her with an aching which threatened his sanity at times, it was worth it just to spend time with her. They were both busy, Dan with his PhD and Rosa with both her undergraduate studies and preparations for the March on Washington. Every spare moment they had was spent together.
By the time the day of the march arrived, there was a craziness in the air. Dan had handed in his final thesis, Rosa was on summer break and, if any preparations hadn’t been made by then, they weren’t going to get made.
Dan had rented a small, seedy hotel room with the last of his grant money and they arrived back there late in the evening filled with the euphoria of Martin Luther-King’s amazing speech and the mass adrenalin buzz of a crowd which was estimated to be a quarter of a million strong.
Neither of them had planned it, but the stars must have aligned for them. There was no thought of chaperones as Dan kicked the door closed behind him and they fell into each other’s arms.
After they came back from Washington, everything was different. Rosa moved into his small apartment and Dan got into the habit of pinching himself several times a day. It must be a dream. No-one had the right to be that happy.
Like most of his generation, he could still remember exactly where he’d been a few months later, on that fateful day in November 1963. He and Rosa had talked about driving to Dallas to see the President, but decided to take a day’s holiday instead. They would spend the day in bed, reading books and drinking wine like decadent Parisians. It would be easier to watch the motorcade on TV, anyway.
Dan had lost a bet – he couldn’t remember what it was about – and the penalty was to get up and make brunch. As he walked back into the bedroom carrying a tray piled high with pancakes, coffee and juice, he saw Rosa sitting at the edge of the bed, eyes wide and staring as though she’d seen a ghost. He put the tray down and ran over.
‘What is it?’ he said.
Rosa just pointed at the television where the same terrible images were looping over and over – an open car and a man collapsing into his wife’s lap. Like hundreds of millions of people around the world, Dan and Rosa sat silently, wrapped in each other’s arms, wondering if this was going to mean the end of everything good.
A single gunshot which changed the world and which changed Dan’s life.
‘Let’s get married,’ he’d said, later that evening as they were lying in bed. ‘Let’s do it now, before the world collapses.’
Rosa had kissed and hugged him for an age, her tears wet on his cheek. ‘Yes. Let’s do it. Whatever happens, we’ll have each other.’
‘Hey, you.’
‘Hnnnh.’ The bed was rocking, and he thought he would fall out
‘Dan?’
‘What?’
‘Dan, it’s me. Rachel.’
The rocking bed faded away, taking Rosa with it and Dan felt Rachel’s hand on his shoulder, gently shaking him back and forth.
He opened his eyes and blinked. ‘Sorry, Hon. I was asleep.’
‘No kidding,’ she said, sitting down next to him on the bench. ‘You were a long ways away.’
‘Yeah,’ said Dan, desperately trying to hold on to some fragment of his dream memory. It had been so real. Every smell, sound, taste and touch had been vivid and true. But now it was all disappearing into a black funnel, swallowed up by the aches and pains of the real world. He looked up at Rachel and smiled. ‘But I’m back now. How was your shopping?’
Rachel pointed to the stack of carrier bags on the bench and arched her eyebrows. ‘I’m never going to fit all of this in the suitcases, but I had such fun. Everyone was so kind and helpful.’ She laughed. ‘You would have hated it.’
‘What, by pointing out that they’re paid to be kind and helpful? Stuff like that?’
‘Exactly,’ said Rachel. ‘Thanks for letting me go on my own. I hope you weren’t too bored.’
‘I was fine,’ he said. ‘I had my book … and I met a very nice young Spanish girl called Ramona.’
‘Really?’ said Rachel. ‘I leave you alone for less than an hour and that’s what happens. You’re incorrigible, Dan Bukowski.’
They sat quietly for a while, holding hands and sharing familiar, conspiratorial smiles.
‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ said Dan once the silence had come to a natural end.
‘That sounds serious.’
‘I guess it is. But it’s not just that.’ He shifted around further on the bench. ‘I’ve been thinking about things a lot over the past few weeks, and I’ve decided that I want to tell you about the years before we met.’
Rachel put her hand on his arm. ‘You don’t have to, you sweet man. I know it’s painful for you and we’ve managed this long without talking about it. We can let it lie.’
‘No,’ said Dan. ‘You’ve been so wonderful, right from the start. Accepting me with all my baggage. I know it hasn’t been easy and I owe you this.’
‘But I don’t want you to feel obliged …’
‘… I don’t feel obliged. I want to tell you. I want you to understand. I have to tell you about Rosa.’
Nadia
‘Hang on, Ed.’ Nadia’s phone was going crazy in her pocket. Beeping and buzzing as alert followed alert. She flicked through the messages but focused on one which she read three times. Ed was standing in front of a big map of Hyde Park and she tugged on his jacket. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Someone’s called in a suspicious package. At the sports club. It’s only a couple of hundred ya
rds from here.’
Nadia noticed that Ed was gasping by the time they got there, even though she’d slowed down for him. People should really keep themselves in shape.
There was a young man in a wheelchair waiting inside the gate. He looked like a soldier. He must be the one who’d called in.
‘Captain Wilson,’ she said, registering his crisp nod of recognition. ‘Nadia LaRoche.’ She held out her hand. ‘And this is Ed Bailey.’
The young man shook her hand and smiled. ‘Sorry to be a pain,’ he said. ‘Can I see some ID, please?’
‘Of course,’ said Nadia, handing over her police warrant card.
He looked at it and smiled again. ‘You’re not really police are you?’ he said.
‘More or less,’ said Nadia with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘Anyway, we’re up against the clock here. The ones with the hats and the blue flashing lights will be here soon. In the meantime, can you show me what you found, please.’
‘It’s in here,’ he said, wheeling himself ahead of them and through the double doors into the sports club. After pushing open the door of the disabled toilets, he pointed to the far corner. ‘Over there,’ he said. ‘I didn’t touch it, but I saw what it was and called it in.’
‘What is it,’ asked Ed.
‘Packaging for a detonator control unit,’ said the soldier. ‘We were briefed about them after the Americans managed to mislay a couple of hundred units in 2010. A favourite option for IEDs.’ He patted the armrest of his wheelchair and looked up at Nadia.
‘That’s a bad break,’ said Nadia, as she bent down and picked up the cardboard box with a pair of tweezers. ‘I’m sorry.’ She’d met quite a few veterans over the years and had always been impressed by the way they maintained that rugged humour after something so traumatic.
She held the packaging up to the light and beckoned to Ed. ‘You ever seen anything like this?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘but it’s definitely military and definitely American.’
Nadia turned back to the soldier. ‘You sure about this?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘A hundred per cent. I briefed my troop on them a few days before I copped it.’
‘And you think it might have been left by the guy who was in here before you?’
‘I think so. He was taking forever.’
Nadia held out her phone. ‘Is this him?’
‘Yes. That’s him.’
Nadia almost had time to ask herself where the hell the real police were, when two fully kitted-out SCO19 officers burst in, guns at the ready.
‘You’re late,’ she said, recognising the first one.
‘Good to see you too, Nadia,’ he said. ‘What’ve we got?’
‘Suspected detonator packaging,’ she said. ‘And confirmation that Snowflake was in here ten minutes ago. We’ve definitely got a situation, we just don’t know where. The camera routing has been patchy and unclear, so he might have been briefed on CCTV locations. Are forensics here?’
‘Outside,’ said the SCO19 officer.
‘Great,’ said Nadia. ‘Ask them to get on this straight away and ping me field fingerprints as soon as they can. I need to call this in.’
Ed followed her outside, tugging on her sleeve. ‘Nadia,’ he said.
‘Hang on,’ she replied. ‘I have to speak to David.’
‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘But before you do, you should understand that Unicorn is behind this. The technology, the preparation, avoiding CCTV, losing the tails … this is him. I know it.’
‘I believe you,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure how that helps though. We still don’t know where the target is, and we’re running out of time.’ She looked at him. ‘You know this guy. try to come up with something concrete we can work with.’
Nadia called David, desperately hoping he would have some inspirational insight to lead her to Snowflake. She could tell straight away he had nothing to add; they were both stuck in the same circular groove, frustrated and panicking, but powerless to move forward. Meanwhile the certainty of an attack grew and grew.
Nadia was normally a clear decisive thinker under pressure – shooting Stu Ronson was evidence of that – but she was emotionally and physically exhausted. As she spoke to David, she could feel her mind turning to mush, important thoughts and ideas floating out of reach like dandelion seeds in a summer breeze. The whole time they were speaking, Nadia had a nagging feeling she was missing something. Something which would give her the clue she needed.
After she’d come out from undercover, Nadia had travelled the country, retracing Snowflake’s life in the hope that someone from his past would be able to help find him – or at least give her some useful intel. Apart from his friend in Birmingham, no-one had seen or heard from him, in most cases not for years. His father had refused to speak to her; his son was apparently “dead” to him after he’d dropped out of university.
His mother had been more helpful, telling her how her son had been bullied, not least by his father, and how she’d always known he was too clever to stay at home. She’d shared stories of how he’d been reading by the age of three and about his precise, beautiful drawings; she’d been close to tears as she described the way his father had hated and resented his son’s intelligence and how he’d once gone so far as to throw Snowflake’s only book in the fire. It was a sad story – not so unusual – and she clearly blamed her husband for everything which had gone wrong afterwards.
Nadia had also found a few of his old school friends to speak to and had built up a picture of a bright young man, going up to Oxford full of hope and insecurity – mixed with some anger and bitterness, but nothing out of the ordinary for a working-class Asian boy from Manningham who wasn’t good at cricket.
She replayed the conversations over and over in her mind, but there was nothing there which could help her as she stood in Hyde Park watching the precious minutes tick away.
11:42
Jim
‘Excuse me, madam.’
‘Yes. What is it?’ The woman was from somewhere in the Middle East and had that way of talking that made people feel like servants. She wasn’t one of the strict ones, all covered in black felt. Or at least she wasn’t one of the strict ones when she was in London. Who knew what they got up to back home?
A few years earlier, Jim had read somewhere that almost fifty per cent of Victoria’s Secret’s sales were in Saudi Arabia. Almost certainly a bullshit statistic, but there might be some truth in it and he’d enjoyed imagining what might be going on under all of those tent-like burkas.
‘I’m sorry. Could you ask your daughter not to climb on the glass fence, please? It’s dangerous.’
‘He’s my son,’ she said, now talking to him like a servant who’d stolen the DVD player. She wasn’t bad looking, but a sneer is never pretty, especially when it’s directed at you. ‘Can’t you tell the difference between a boy and a girl?’
‘I’m sorry, madam,’ said Jim, feeling his blood pressure soar. ‘My mistake. But if you could do as I ask, please. It’s dangerous to climb on the glass as you can see from the sign.’
The woman pushed her designer sunglasses up onto her headscarf and looked at him with disdain. ‘Do you really not have anything more important to do? Shouldn’t you be checking for terrorists rather than wasting your time harassing six-year-old children?’
Jim took a slow, deep breath, turned and walked back to his chair, leaving the outraged woman muttering behind him. If she didn’t stop the bloody kid, he’d tell Will to go over and sort her out. He couldn’t be bothered.
His father had fought at El Alamein and had brought back a capful of stories about the ‘bloody rag heads’. They weren’t all bad, according to his dad, but it was hard to keep an open mind these days, what with everything that was going on. And the brazen cheek of the woman. ‘Checking for terrorists?’ It was her bloody lot behind all of the trouble in the first place. Who did she think she was?
He wasn’t in the mood for that sort of hassle.
The day had started badly and his thoughts had been racing since he’d got back from the exhibition. He was half-tempted to ask Will to cover for him while he went to check and see if that really had been Shuna standing in front of the photograph. She’d probably be long gone, but the shape of her face in profile was stuck in his mind.
He had always processed images slowly, especially if they were at the edge of his vision. Half-seen images would gradually come into focus as time passed, even half an hour or an hour afterwards. It was like a face emerging from old-fashioned developing liquid as the photographic paper floated back and forth.
He’d needed to make a conscious effort to manage that delay when he was in the army. There were times when it was useful, but not on watch duty where sharpness and quick decision-making were critical.
The more he thought about the woman in the exhibition, the more certain he was that it had been her. What were the odds of that? And what if she hadn’t left already and decided to come into the hall?
The terms of the restraining order had been crystal clear; he wasn’t under any circumstances to be within a hundred and fifty yards of her or any of her family. How did that work if he was stationary? Was he supposed to get up and run away, leaving Will to defend the Empire against the horrors of six-year-old jihadis?
He still wanted to see her. Even if the bitch had ruined his life. She hadn’t really meant to. It had just been the way things had turned out.
In any case, it wouldn’t hurt to give Will a heads up.
‘Hey Jim. What’s occurring?’ Will’s attempt at a Welsh accent was a mess and Jim couldn’t stop himself smiling.
‘All good,’ said Jim. ‘Just stretching my legs.’
‘What was that with you and the tasty woman in the headscarf,’ said Will. ‘Were you making a move? I knew I was right about you.’