ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A former Scotland Yard investigator with twenty years’ policing experience, including counter-terror operations and organised crime, David Videcette has worked as a Metropolitan Police detective on a wealth of infamous cases. He currently consults on security operations for high-net-worth individuals and is an expert media commentator on crime, terrorism, extremism and the London 7/7 bombings.
To find out more about David and subscribe for updates, visit: www.DavidVidecette.com
What if London’s 7/7 bombings were the greatest
criminal deception of our time?
DAVID VIDECETTE
The first title in the
DETECTIVE INSPECTOR
JAKE FLANNAGAN SERIES
The Theseus Paradox
Published by Videcette Limited
Copyright © Videcette Limited 2015
ISBN: 978 0 99342 630 8
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed, publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the author and copyright owners at Videcette Limited, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and copyright owners’ rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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www.DavidVidecette.com
CONTENTS
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Epilogue: The Facts
Appendix
Charity Support
FOREWORD
I went out to work on 7 July 2005, and two weeks later I came home wearing the same clothes and with fifty-six people dead.
The quest for the truth about the London bombings took years to unravel. Thousands of men and women played their parts in helping to unravel that truth, some of which was presented to a public enquiry. Yet, despite years and years of painstaking work, I still feel that we only ever scratched the surface of what really went on.
I was not a victim of the bombings, but in many ways my life was altered forever by that day too, along with a large proportion of the people I worked with on Operation Theseus. What started off as a normal day at work within the Anti-Terrorist Branch turned into a nightmare that still haunts me and many others.
The story you are about to read is fictional and so are the characters within it. I have drawn upon open-source research conducted over the last decade.
Angie, John and Nev – thank you for the confidence you had in me.
To Teena Lyons for her advice and to Caroline Sephton, without whom I could never have created this book. Caroline has helped me to understand myself and make sense of the things that have taken place.
Lisa, without your unwavering support, I’d not be here today.
And to my girls whom I love dearly – this is for you.
I can’t tell you the truth, but I can tell you a story. This is what happened during London’s summer of terror…
1
‘I can’t tell you the truth, but I can tell you a story…’
Thursday
7 July 2005
0301 hours
Dewsbury, West Yorkshire
It was dark and still, the
new moon barely visible to the naked eye.
Within hours, the sight of the bus’s twisted metal skeleton and the odour of the charred fibreglass shards ripped from its body would take full control of his senses, but for now all Jake could smell was the scent of the pollen that hung in the air after the long hot day.
‘And the host city for the 2012 Olympic Games… is… LONN-DONN!’ blared the news from the car’s radio, startling him. He reached for the volume control.
The female newsreader’s voice continued quietly, almost inaudibly, ‘…Following a nail-biting vote between Paris and London, shares of British construction companies rocketed with yesterday’s announcement that London would be the chosen venue for the 2012 Olympic Games. Mortgage lenders predicted property prices in the capital would soar, following an eighteen-month race that hinged on a knife-edge in the final voting stages…’
It was time. He could wait no longer.
Jake got out of the unmarked car, deadening the jangle from his keys as he made his way swiftly to the right property.
The rough red brick pulled at the skin of his arm through his baggy DKNY sweater as he clambered up, over and into the rear garden of an ordinary-looking, small, three-bedroomed Victorian home.
He crouched in the darkness of a large bush, looking for lights or movement on either floor of the mid-terrace.
Nothing.
All remained quiet on the sleepy, West Yorkshire street.
The shed and wheelie bins offered him scant protection as he sprinted up the garden toward the shabby back door. Standing as close to it as possible, he grabbed the faux-gold handle and tugged hard.
It was locked. Through the window he could see the key on the other side of the door. There was no time to mess about. With a quick swing from the hip, he slammed his jumper-covered elbow into a small pane of glass in the upper half. It broke easily with just a little thud – with practice, most windows did.
Jake was wearing two pairs of surgical gloves. He was well aware that sweaty hands meant fingerprint-ridge detail could travel through a single pair.
The entry was not an authorised one. He knew that at this stage he was on his own. The boss was going to take some placating, but only if Jake actually got round to telling anyone about his actions.
Normally, this sort of thing was just kept at a discrete level between line managers and operatives; only made ‘official’ if something was found. In those cases, retrospective steps would then be taken to give the impression that all was above board and legal.
This time, though, Jake hadn’t even told Helen in advance.
He knew there was something big going on here, even if he couldn’t convince the bosses yet.
Ten minutes earlier, he’d seen Wasim put a rucksack into the small blue car at the front of the terraced house – same time, same routine as the previous day. Only something had gone wrong the day before. Wasim’s pregnant wife had come running out of the house and grabbed her husband. She’d been holding her stomach. Wasim had gone back inside. Then both of them had gone straight to the hospital.
Jake now knew that Salma, Wasim’s wife, had experienced serious complications with her pregnancy, which had led to the loss of their unborn child. He had watched Wasim type a flurry of text messages shortly after Salma had grabbed him in the street. Major plans had clearly been altered yesterday. Jake could put in a RIPA request to see the content of those text messages, but it might take some weeks to get the stuff back from the mobile-phone company, depending on who the service provider was. Some were quicker than others. He could also ask the Security Service, but getting them to share it might be hard work.
Jake had picked the easy route this morning; the good old-fashioned way: get in, have a look around… and get out.
He was inside. He moved to the front of the house and stood in the small kitchen, surveying the jaundiced Formica units. What had Wasim been doing in here before he left? Jake had a quick scout around; everything looked normal – neat and tidy, nothing out of place.
As he bent down to begin scrabbling around in the kitchen cupboards, he saw it: two brown marks on the white linoleum floor in front of the washing machine.
All washing machines leaked water after a certain amount of time. It would run down and collect on the legs and feet, turning them rusty. When you pulled a unit out from the wall, the feet would inevitably leave marks on the floor, as per Dr Edmond Locard’s exchange principle: ‘Every contact leaves a trace’.
Jake touched the marks on the lino. They were wet. The machine had definitely been moved that morning. Before 0300 hours? Why?
He wrestled the machine away from the wall. A pipe was loose at the back. Taking out a kit from his pocket, he wiped the inside of the pipe with a cotton bud, then placed the cotton bud inside the vial.
He shook it. The entire vial turned brown instantly.
It was positive for HMTD. Hexamethylene triperoxide diamine – a highly explosive organic compound that lent itself well to acting as an initiator.
Wasim had a bomb.
2
Thursday
7 July 2005
0319 hours
Dewsbury, West Yorkshire
Jake had to stop him. Where was he headed? Wasim had left the house only minutes earlier. Surely he’d be relatively easy to spot at this time in the morning? He retraced his steps out through the back door and over the wall. Back in the Audi, he tried calling Helen on his mobile, but he couldn’t get a signal.
Wasim and his Nissan Micra had gone right at the main road that morning. Making an educated guess, Jake copied Wasim’s lead – accelerating hard in the direction of Leeds. Houses and trees slipped by as he sped down the road; there was no sign of the blue Micra anywhere.
He shouldn’t be here. He had broken into a house without permission. And now he was going to have to confess everything to his line manager with no proof but a swab test.
This was going to take a lot of report writing to justify. It was potentially job threatening. But no one had seen him. He didn’t have to tell anyone – and it wouldn’t be the first time. Maybe it was a good job he hadn’t been able to get a phone signal earlier? Jake made the decision not to call in and explain what he’d done. Not yet anyway.
On the approach to Leeds city centre, he realised that he had managed to make it all the way there without seeing another car. It wasn’t like London; this place went to sleep. He decided to double back and retrace his route.
As he made his way back along the dual carriageway, there it was – the Nissan Micra passing him, going in the other direction. Wasim was no longer alone in the car. There were three of them. Wasim had clearly made a detour to pick the other two up.
Jake floored the accelerator in the A4, knowing that the next junction was about two miles up ahead. The broken white dashes on the grey tarmac appeared to merge into one solid lane line, and the wind produced a high-pitched, tea-kettle whistling noise as it slipped past his car.
Jake turned back on himself at the roundabout, tyres screeching, and joined the opposite carriageway – now heading in the same direction as the Micra.
The road led directly to the M1 motorway. The 1.8-litre turbo engine roared as he pushed the Audi to its full capacity, trying desperately to close the distance between himself and Wasim. The speedometer hit 145 mph.
He was now back at the exact point he’d seen their car two minutes ago. His heart rate and adrenaline levels were climbing exponentially; they couldn’t be that far ahead of him. There was only one more exit at which they could pull off before they would hit the M1 going south.
He saw the tail lights of the Micra pass the final slip road without turning off.
They’d stayed on.
They were heading south toward London.
London? Why would they be travelling toward London?
Jake felt a sudden surge of p
anic.
He needed help. There was a radio in his vehicle but it was a Metropolitan Police surveillance one. It used a frequency not monitored by the West Yorkshire force; it was worse than useless to him here.
Instead, he grabbed his mobile and called 999, a more efficient route to get help when operating outside of his own area.
‘Hello, emergency, which service please?’ asked the female operator.
Jake knew there was no point outlining any details to the BT-employed operator. Information was only recorded after the call was switched to the relevant emergency service – any explanation right now only served to delay that process.
‘Police, police, I need police!’ Jake heard a note of fear beginning to rise in his own voice as he spoke.
‘Police, thank you.’
There was a pause as the system traced which area he was calling from and connected him to the right control room.
‘West Yorkshire Police, how can I help?’
Jake almost cheered when he heard the police call handler, relief washing over him.
‘I’m Detective Inspector Jake Flannagan of the Metropolitan Police Service Anti-Terrorist Branch, SO13. I require urgent assistance, M1, southbound.’ Jake paused, awaiting a reply.
But there was none.
‘Hello? Hello, can you hear me?’ Jake shouted into the handset.
There was no response.
He wrenched the phone from his ear and looked at the handset. The screen was blank. His battery was dead. How much of the call had the call handler heard? Had they heard any of it at all?
Jake was now travelling right behind the Micra. He could see Wasim looking at him in his rear-view mirror. They knew he was there. Jake had slowed from 145 mph to 65 mph and pulled in behind them. He might be in an unmarked car, but on a deserted motorway at this time in the morning there was no disguising that sort of driving behaviour.
Leaning across to the passenger side, he rooted around with his left hand in the glove compartment for his charger, before hunting in the passenger footwell. Where the hell was it?
It was decision time. What if they were delivering a bomb?
He had to stop them.
Abandoning the one-handed search for his missing charger, he dropped the dead Nokia phone onto the passenger seat beside him. It slid across the black leather and disappeared down the side.
THE THESEUS PARADOX: The stunning breakthrough thriller based on real events, from the Scotland Yard detective turned author. Page 1