THE THESEUS PARADOX: The stunning breakthrough thriller based on real events, from the Scotland Yard detective turned author.

by David Videcette

  Jake made the call back to London. ‘DI Flannagan calling. What’s happened?’ he asked, without waiting to hear who was on the other end of the line.

  ‘Sir – heard about your accident. Are you OK?’ asked the officer manning the phones.

  ‘I’m fine, fine,’ Jake lied. ‘What’s gone on?’

  ‘There’s been a terrorist attack. Four separate explosions – suicide bombers possibly – all at separate sites. Three Tube trains and a bus – large number of people dead and wounded.’

  ‘Who’s in charge down there?’ asked Jake.

  ‘Well, sir – it’s all a bit patchy at the moment. As you know, everyone and his wife was up in Scotland for the G8 summit. Tony Blair is flying back later today with two of our superintendents on the same flight. All of our cars are up there. Personnel and vehicles are on their way back but won’t get here until later tonight. You’re not exactly flavour of the month for writing the Audi off, sir…’

  ‘I’ll sort that out. Where’s DCI Helen Brookes?’

  ‘She’s at the scene of the bus bombing in Tavistock Square.’

  ‘I need her mobile number. I lost my phone in the accident.’ Jake took down the number and ended the call.

  He turned to the station officer who’d clearly been listening intently to the call. This was no place to have a private conversation, thought Jake.

  His head was still fuzzy; he needed to know the circumstances behind the crash.

  ‘I had a car accident on the M1 early this morning,’ he told the uniformed Millgarth officer. ‘I’ve been in hospital. Who would have dealt with that?’

  ‘I’d imagine the traffic department. Let me have a look on the system for you.’

  Jake watched as the officer called up the incident log on his PC.

  ‘Here you are, sir. Would you like to check the log yourself?’

  Jake sat down at the computer and read:

  0433 hours: Caller has found an Audi A4 overturned on the motorway. Driver unconscious but breathing. Ambulance called.

  0443 hours: Vehicle registration check shows car as Metropolitan Police vehicle: Met Control Room to be contacted.

  0445 hours: Met Police Central Command and Control say vehicle is used by SO13 Anti-Terrorist Branch. They will ask them to contact West Yorkshire Police.

  0455 hours: West Yorkshire Police traffic department on scene and dealing. Officer says simple accident, no other vehicle involved. Driver hit central reservation. Ambulance required.

  0505 hours: Ambulance on scene. Male driver (believed to be Detective Inspector Jake Flannagan of Metropolitan Police) is en route to Leeds General Infirmary.

  0630 hours: Leeds General Infirmary states Inspector Flannagan’s injuries are minor and not life-threatening. Officer remains unconscious. Met Police informed of officer’s condition. Met Police advise DI Flannagan has next-of-kin emergency-contact details recorded on file as wife, Stephanie Flannagan. Telephone number provided to hospital.

  Jake’s felt slightly sick as he realised that he was lucky to be alive.

  The stitches running across his arms and down his back were now beginning to bite into him. He needed to find somewhere comfortable to lie down; somewhere he could use the phone in private.

  8

  Thursday

  7 July 2005

  1310 hours

  Longthorne Oak Hotel, central Leeds, West Yorkshire

  Jake lay down on the hotel bed’s quilted, maroon counterpane and called his boss’s mobile. He was glad of the privacy.

  ‘DCI Helen Brookes.’

  ‘Helen, it’s Jake…’

  ‘Jesus, great time to write the car off, Jake! We were worried sick. What the hell were you doing?’ Helen sounded more than a little upset.

  ‘Helen, I think I know who did this.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘The bombings!’ Jake knew this was going to be difficult to explain.

  ‘Who? Not that lot from Leeds that the Security Service told you to leave alone? You were supposed to be visiting friends up there in Manchester. Don’t tell me you were working up there without permission, Jake! How did the car get written off?’

  ‘Helen. I need to explain some stuff to you…’

  ‘Jake, before you say any more, think carefully. Do you know what’s happened down here?’ Helen was always shrewd with what she shared with anyone.

  ‘I know what’s happened. That was no ordinary accident I had…’

  She interrupted him. ‘I hear they found lots of nails on the road near your car, Jake – not to mention the ones stuck in your body from where you overturned the car. They said you had a blowout on the front tyres from the nails. That is how it happened isn’t it, Jake? That is what you were going to tell me, isn’t it? I need you back in London today, Jake. Tavistock Square. Please do not tell me about anything you’ve been up to in Leeds – OK?’

  The line went dead. She’d hung up.

  Jake lay on the bed of his hotel room, looking at the ceiling. It hurt to move. He’d been told that his line manager would not support him in claiming anything other than a simple car accident. It meant he couldn’t retrospectively get permission on the forced-entry job up at the house in Dewsbury. What a fucking mess.

  It was time to go and face the music back down south. He checked out, making sure to pay with his own debit card and not police funds. He was not here officially. He’d been told that. His head throbbed and the painful bruising across his torso gnawed at him as he walked the short distance to the train station.

  The train was packed with holidaymakers. The carriage was noisy as it trundled and jerked its way toward London. Jake read a couple of dog-eared newspapers he found in the luggage rack. Between the din of the excitable tourists unaware of the mess that awaited them in the capital, and the roar of the tracks beneath him, Jake knew there was no point trying to make polite conversation with anyone. They’d be lucky if they reached London before the rail network was shut down completely, he thought.

  9

  Thursday

  7 July 2005

  1607 hours

  King’s Cross, London

  It was bedlam. Much of the ticket hall and waiting area was being used as a makeshift field hospital to treat casualties. Train services were being cancelled left, right and centre. The Tube was closed. Jake knew he had to make his way over to the site of the bus bombing in Tavistock Square and was torn between that and helping the walking wounded. Outside, it was chillingly quiet. There was little traffic apart from the occasional wail of emergency-service sirens as response vehicles tore past.

  Jake trudged past Euston station. When he reached the square, it was cordoned off. They’d already erected huge barriers made from scaffolding and wood to prevent people from getting close to the scene. Jake flashed his warrant card and the uniformed police officer on the outer cordon allowed Jake entry to the street. At the inner cordon Jake met an officer that he knew from the Branch. He allowed Jake through, despite the Def Leppard T-shirt.

  Anti-Terrorist Branch officers were knelt down in a line in the road behind what was left of a red double-decker bus. They wore pale blue, disposable boiler suits and blue gloves to ensure that they wouldn’t contaminate the scene.

  The temperature was in the upper seventies Fahrenheit and humidity was touching ninety-five per cent. They must be sweltering inside those coveralls, thought Jake.

  This was standard Branch stuff. You got sent on a bomb course. They’d blow up a car. You watched. Then you picked up the pieces. You learned fast. You’d pick up every tiny fragment that you could find and pass it back to your team leader. It would get sorted into ‘plastics’, ‘metals’, ‘glass’ and ‘others’, there and then. The fragments and parts would eventually be assembled to build up a picture of the explosion. Very early on, officers picking up the tiny pieces could often get an id
ea of what the bomb consisted of by the spread and type of debris. This was very different from the course though; they had both blood and body parts to contend with.

  He spotted Helen stood on some steps surveying the scene. She waved and came over to greet him. Tall and slim, she was wearing her favoured, trademark outfit of an expensive black trouser suit with a white blouse underneath. Her long dark hair was swept up into a chignon.

  ‘How are you doing? How’s your head?’ Helen looked sombre. Her mood was different from when they had spoken on the phone earlier.

  ‘I’m OK. How many dead?’ asked Jake.

  ‘We think fourteen here. Difficult to say right now; not all the bodies are in one piece. We think one of them is the bomber himself.’ Helen ushered Jake back out through the inner cordon. She led him to the foyer of a nearby hotel that had been completely taken over by the Branch and their exhibits function.

  ‘We’ve found some identification that belongs to a guy from Leeds at the scene, Jake. The ID was loose – not near any of the bodies. It’s like it was dropped deliberately. I’m told that there are Leeds IDs found in similar circumstances at all of the other scenes too.’

  ‘Shit.’ Jake sighed and placed his head in his hands. If only he’d been able to stop their car.

  ‘Who are they, Jake?’ asked Helen.

  ‘A primary-school teacher and some of his friends. Two of them came up in Operation Crevice in Crawley sixteen months ago. We followed them back to Leeds – you remember? We talked about it again last Monday with Denswood?’

  ‘Why were you up there? Why now?’ demanded Helen.

  ‘I went up to Manchester to see my friend, like I said I would. Then I thought I’d just have a little trip across the Pennines – see what they were up to. Straight away I could tell there was something weird going on. They were using anti-surveillance in everything they did… it was just a hunch really, intuition.’

  Helen grimaced. ‘We’ve got to keep this quiet, at least for now. You had no authority to be up there. We’d both be up shit creek if this got out. Who else knows you were snooping around up there?’ she asked.

  ‘No one.’

  ‘OK, it never happened – you know nothing more than the Security Service have told you. ‘They are the lead. Not you!’

  ‘But, Helen, I was so close this morning…’

  ‘Not close enough, Jake. What am I supposed to say? “A rogue cop saw this coming but didn’t tell anyone”? The Security Service has primacy. They call the shots. You were told to lay off. How do you know that your snooping around didn’t provoke this?’

  ‘Oh for goodness sake, Helen! Give it a rest!’

  They might be great colleagues and good friends, but Jake wasn’t about to take that sort of comment lying down. ‘There’s something not right, Helen! You’ve only got to look at the transcript of the conversation they had with the Crawley lot. What were the Security Service thinking when they assessed it? Those guys were up to their ears in it. The whole thing stinks!’

  ‘We can’t say anything, Jake. You know how it will be made to look in the media, don’t you? This is the Security Service’s fuck up – not ours. If we say anything, this becomes our mess. It’s theirs. They decided not to do anything, or to let him run – for whatever stupid reason that was. It’s their reason and their mess. I don’t want to talk about it again. You let them lead. Understood?’

  A part of Jake knew that Helen was speaking sense. On the other hand, a part of Jake was immune to sense in all its forms, because often he ran purely on instinct.

  ‘OK,’ he replied reluctantly. ‘So where do you want me?’ he asked, gesturing toward the bomb site.

  ‘The scenes are being dealt with. They’re difficult because of the bodies.’

  ‘I saw the seagulls waiting for their opportunity when I went in a minute ago…’ He winced.

  ‘Yeah, the rats down in the tunnels are causing the same problems.’ Helen shook her head. ‘Awful, just awful.’

  ‘Any idea of the total numbers dead and wounded yet?’

  Jake had seen speculation on the rolling news whilst in hospital, but he’d not really been in a state to absorb much of it.

  ‘Information is sketchy, Jake – we’ve no fixed idea at the moment. There’s still a lot of confusion… we were told six explosions on the Tube to start with, not three. The trains were between stations when the bombs went off and casualties were all over the place; people emerging from both stops. We weren’t sure at first if there’d been an explosion at each one. We’ve got officers constantly in contact with all the hospitals, but more and more injured are turning up, reporting every hour… We’re pretty sure there are at least fifty dead – maybe a thousand walking wounded.’

  ‘What sort of explosive was used?’

  ‘We don’t know, yet… Look, all this Leeds photo identification we’ve been finding – it was dropped in plastic bags away from the blast seat – far enough away to remain intact. We’ve got gym memberships, student cards and driving licences – and on top of that we’ve got your West Yorkshire exploits and suspicions.

  ‘I’m pretty sure we’re going to need you back up north. Take a right-hand man with you; I want you to be the forward-planning party for anything we get up there. I don’t know when that will be, but once the decision is made, I want you to be ready to roll on Operation Theseus.’

  Jake nodded. He was pleased. Helen was placing her trust back in him.

  ‘Operation Theseus?’ he asked.

  ‘Yep. They’ve randomly assigned us a name for this job already. Theseus. Firstly a tragic Greek myth, and secondly a failed World War II mission.’

  ‘Jesus. Is this the third time lucky or what?’

  ‘Well, with your antics we’re sure to be doomed from the start,’ replied Helen. ‘Get to the Yard, Jake. Get a new car. Take whoever you want with you. Keep a low profile up there for the time being… and no maverick decision-making of your own. Everything comes through me. OK?’

  Jake tried to hide the rueful look on his face. He hoped Helen had not seen it. ‘Of course, guv’nor.’

  Promotion above the rank of inspector was more about whom you knew and how well you toed the party line. Jake knew he was never going any higher than inspector because the only line he ever toed was on the athletics track, crouched in the hundred-metres blocks, waiting for the starter’s gun.

  10

  Thursday

  7 July 2005

  1822 hours

  New Scotland Yard, Westminster, London

  Jake arrived on the sixteenth floor, home of the Anti-Terrorist Branch Reserve Room. The room was filled with an assortment of computer terminals and was the single point of focus for people requiring anything from a check on the Police National Computer through to a team of people ‘on the hurry up’.

  Welcome to Roley’s empire, thought Jake as he walked up to the little cashier-style window. Roley ran the Reserve Room and held all the power when it came to owning and allocating resources. You never upset Roley. If you did, you’d end up bottom of the pile for anything that he might be able to push in your direction. If you wanted a car, Roley held a pool of cars. If you wanted a pen, Roley had a box of pens. But of course Roley was the one who decided whether you got the basic or the super-deluxe model.

  Roley looked up from his desk on the other side of the small window as Jake peered through.

  ‘Alwight son?’ This was his favourite greeting.

  ‘Head’s a bit sore but I’ll live – I need a new car and a new phone.’

  Roley chucked a bound book with a blue plastic cover through the hatch at him. It had a set of car keys in it. Jake looked at the front of the book to see what sort of car it was – a BMW 3 Series. Fine. The blue cover meant the car had been fitted with blue lights and two tones. Extras would include a radio, bigger batteries to run the extra electrical eq
uipment and upgraded brakes, if he was lucky. He’d driven many a vehicle fast, then experienced the all-encompassing fear that came from hitting the brake pedal at 100 mph to be met with the dreaded smell of burning.

  ‘Try not to write this one off, son,’ Roley said with a smile. ‘Phones are with Maggie in the office.’

  Jake walked down the corridor and into the concrete stairwell. Maggie’s office was on the floor below.

  She was a cantankerous civvy in her sixties with a nasty, old-fashioned perm. Civilian employees – those who’d come from outside the force – were deemed the lowest in the gene pool at Scotland Yard. Maggie ran the stationery store and ordered anything that needed ordering – provided you had filled out the right form, in the right way, with the right coloured pen, in triplicate, with the right authorisation signature. She was a stickler for the rules. She made Jake’s blood boil.

  ‘Take one pen – not the whole damn box!’ she was shouting at a DC, as Jake walked into the office.

  Jake hated anyone’s rules. He hated Maggie’s rules more than most.

  As he walked over to her desk, he noticed that she was sporting her favourite orange woollen cardigan that everyone said smelled of mothballs.

  ‘Hello, Maggie – how are you?’ Jake forced a cheery smile just for her benefit.

  She didn’t reply. That wasn’t unusual.

  ‘That’s a nasty bump on your head,’ she said eventually, looking up over the top of her half-rimmed glasses at him.

  ‘Car accident this morning, lost my work phone… I need a new one, please.’

  ‘I can only do exchanges. You know that. If it’s been lost, I need a superintendent to authorise it before giving you another one.’

  ‘Malcolm Denswood authorised it – said he was going to call you as he can’t get in to sign the form right this second. It’s a bit on the busy side out there as you might know, Maggie… He’s not rung you?’