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

by David Videcette

  All of that was lies, except the part about it being busy – but he coupled it with his best confused-looking face, which he hoped would do the trick.

  She shoved a new, boxed Nokia phone and a pile of lost property forms at him.

  ‘I need the forms done now!’ she barked.

  Jake looked down at the paperwork Maggie had handed him. The forms were going to take ages! There were dead bodies lying on London’s streets and in its Tube system and this civilian clerk wanted an hour’s worth of paperwork filling in? He waited until she was distracted by another officer and then departed quietly with his haul. He dropped the blank forms into a waste-paper bin outside her office as he made his way to the lift. He prayed that he didn’t have to wait fifteen minutes for one travelling down to the basement.

  The basement area of New Scotland Yard was one huge underground car park. Always jammed full of vehicles, it could often take half an hour just to get out of there. Today there were hardly any vehicles to contend with. The whole of the Yard were at the scenes, rushing home from annual leave or returning from the G8 summit up in Scotland. Jake found the silver BMW easily and sat in the car looking at a Branch team list that he’d picked up from the reserve office. It detailed all the officers’ names and phone numbers on it. Jake already knew whom he was going to call – someone he could bounce stuff off and whom he knew he could trust.

  He skimmed through the list until he spotted the name he was looking for… Detective Sergeant Leonard Sandringham.

  A career detective with more than twenty-five years of service under his belt, Lenny was a hard-working copper; one of the best Jake had ever worked with.

  They’d met when Lenny had been on the Area Crime Squad and Jake had been working on an operation involving the importation of drugs and stolen cars. They’d quickly become friends and not long after had both ended up working at the Branch, albeit on different teams.

  A slim, dapper silver fox in a tweed jacket, Lenny had two grown-up daughters and a long-suffering wife whom he adored. The day job had changed considerably during Lenny’s lifetime of policing – but his tales of noble cause corruption from earlier years on the force could still entertain.

  Jake plugged in the number listed and found that Lenny was currently on his way back from a camping trip in Devon. He’d cut it short after hearing the news about the attacks.

  They exchanged the usual pleasantries.

  ‘Have you got any plans for the next month, Len?’

  11

  Thursday

  7 July 2005

  2000 hours

  The flat above the sari shop, Whitechapel, East End of London

  Jake parked the BMW on double yellow lines. He needed some fresh clothes. The Def Leppard T-shirt and baggy jeans had to go.

  Upstairs in his flat, he grabbed a holdall off the top of the wardrobe and started to pack.

  The place was baking. It had been shut up and neglected for almost a fortnight. The spider plant in the bathroom looked close to death; unwashed teacups in the sink had grown mould.

  Jake looked out through the sash window. There was no sign of Ted on the extension’s corrugated iron roof.

  The flat sat in a row of severely neglected Victorian properties that housed retail space down at street level. The buildings, though distinguished in their time, had faded as they’d fallen into disrepair. The place had been his grandmother’s until she’d passed away six months previously. It was like being in a time warp with its carpet of dark brown and orange swirls and its avocado bathroom suite.

  After his grandmother had died, he’d moved in to look after the damn cat, Edwina. Jake had renamed her Ted.

  Both his grandparents had grown up in Whitechapel, both of Irish heritage. Jake remembered the stories they’d tell of how their families fled in the 1850s; the hatred for the English landowners who’d ignored the potato famine and continued to export nearly all of Ireland’s grain – creating a catastrophic situation out of a mere crisis.

  The Irish had flocked to the cheap accommodation in the slums of Whitechapel, with its thousands of prostitutes, numerous whorehouses and Jack the Ripper. His great-grandfather had worked in Whitechapel’s filthy slaughterhouses and butchers. Yet Jake’s grandmother had always joked that Whitechapel was still like living in a palace after you’d been reduced to sharing accommodation with your own livestock back in Ireland.

  Jake sometimes wondered if his love of bacon was in his DNA.

  ‘Ted, Ted!’ Jake shouted as he leaned out of the window and banged the side of the cat-food tin with a knife. Ted was coming back less and less lately; he was sure someone else was feeding her. Like all the women in his life, this feline had grown weary of being left on her own for long periods.

  ‘Ted, you little shit, where are you?’ he shouted wearily.

  He could hear the steady hum of the traffic. Car after car used the side street to try and dodge the gridlocked traffic attempting to head out of the city along the main road.

  It was still scorching outside. The rusty, corrugated iron roof below radiated heat into his face; it felt as though he were being slapped across the face by a sizzling frying pan.

  He closed the window and picked up his bag containing two of everything. It was time to leave. Ted would have to fend for herself again.

  He had a lot of driving to do – the M25 to Surrey to collect Lenny and his bags, and then back up to Leeds.

  12

  Friday

  8 July 2005

  2100 hours

  Greek Street, central Leeds, West Yorkshire

  The four of them stood on the edge of the dance floor – Lenny, Jake and the two new DCs he’d requested. The place was packed and the music thumped. Friday-night revellers wore short skirts and T-shirts, but Jake and his team were dressed like City boys in their suits and stood out a mile.

  Jake had spent a long day hard at work – putting together the start of the research packages in a small office he’d found for the team to use at Millgarth police station. Tonight it was time for a drink; he needed it after the couple of days he’d just had.

  ‘Did you hear what the Mayor of London announced today?’ asked Lenny loudly above the pulsating dance track. Jake was only half-listening to the conversation. Watching the dance floor and enjoying his drink were less taxing options right now. The two DCs shook their heads. ‘He’s pledged free tickets to the Olympics for those seriously injured in the bomb blasts,’ continued Lenny.

  Jake excused himself from a discussion about who’d pay for this initiative and made his way to the bar. He ordered a round of beers and a round of translucent shots in a variety of lurid colours. They looked foul, but he didn’t really care.

  The bar was the swankiest that Leeds had to offer. They’d been told ‘members only’ at the door, but this wasn’t London. Their warrant cards still got them into places. London door staff had become hostile toward police officers ‘briefing it’ to get in – the warrant card was often referred to as ‘ya brief’. Outside of London they were far more welcome. It was usually accepted that officers weren’t going to cause a fight and would probably help staff out if there was trouble.

  On his way back to the group, Jake spotted the Leeds football chairman, Ken Bates, in a shaded corner. He looked like Father Christmas in NHS glasses, yet the ladies appeared keen on him.

  The beer was cold, and already Jake was forgetting about the last few days. He needed to forget. Alcohol made him forget. Enough of it and he would almost forget that he’d been so close to stopping Wasim, about the body parts strewn across Tavistock Square.

  Life had felt hollow since he’d left his wife. Work was all he had, but at times like these even that made him feel lifeless inside. Jake missed his daughters and they were growing up so fast. All he managed of late was a daily phone call with each of them before bed – if he wasn’t doing something at work
that prevented it. Claire was barely ever available and the pressures of both their jobs seemed to preclude them from conducting a ‘nice, normal’ relationship.

  Their phone calls were often the prelude to his drinking, the drinking made him crave attention and the cravings and loneliness made him long to be close to a woman – any woman.

  Jake and his team downed more beer, incredulous that it was half the price of a London pint – even in this place, on the most expensive street Leeds had to offer. The alcohol was having its effect. Jake was now ready to take on the world. Not the world he took on by day; the world he inhabited by night. A world that had no problems, no terrorists, no high-ranking bullies warning him off, no ex-partners screaming at him for money, no girlfriends arguing about when they could or couldn’t spend time with him.

  ‘So how did you write that car off, guv? Tell us, we’re dying to know.’ DC James said, licking the overspill of beer off his hand.

  ‘Loose lips sink ships. If I thought you needed to know, you’d know.’ Jake winked and laughed as he said it. It was enough to convey the message that he’d been up to no good and to not ask again.

  ‘Anyway, that’s work. You know I don’t talk about work when we’re not at work. You’re guilty, DC James. I sentence you to buy more beer. Go! Buy me beer.’

  As Jake pushed James toward the bar, he spotted a familiar-looking brunette in a black rah-rah skirt out of the corner of his eye. She wore a black vest top and blue high-heeled sandals. Her chin-length bob was chestnut brown and wavy, identical to Claire’s – and, from a distance, her dainty facial features looked uncannily reminiscent of his girlfriend’s.

  He did a double take, fixing his gaze on her to check again who it was. She returned the attention she was getting with a huge grin in his direction.

  His heart sank. No, it wasn’t Claire.

  She continued to smile back at him. There was no denying that she was very attractive indeed… and that she was interested in him.

  Jake wiggled his hips in time to the music and the brunette laughed back at him. With their eyes directly on each other, she joined in the dance from the other side of the room. Stuart chuckled at the scene before him. ‘It’s like shooting gazelle with an elephant gun in here, guv – the women are gagging for it!’

  Jake turned away and ignored her, mid dance.

  ‘She wants you, Jake. What are you doing?’ asked Stuart, bewildered.

  ‘I’m unavailable,’ replied Jake, shrugging. ‘Anyway, we’re supposed to be keeping a low profile up here and I’ve been spotted by Dennis Wise already…’ Jake pointed out the former footballer, who was watching them. ‘Our cover is blown.’

  James had returned from the bar with more drinks. He burst out laughing when he saw the familiar figure looking at them.

  They drank.

  The DJ segued into another track. Jake recognised it as the same song that had been playing on the radio when he hit top speed heading south on the M1 the previous day. His mood darkened. The sudden realisation of what had happened to all of the people on their way to work that morning brought him crashing back down to earth.

  The drink always did that to him. Made him totally forget where he was, who he was, the situation he was in. Then something would happen and he would be standing back there in the present, angry at the world.

  He downed his pint. It didn’t taste great after the numerous fruit-flavoured shots still coating his mouth. His arm wobbled slightly as he put down his glass.

  ‘I’m done with this shit tonight. I’m going.’

  As Jake walked past the bar on the way to the exit, the song was still playing.

  His head was spinning and the bright lights from the dance floor hindered his vision. Was he drunk? What was he doing here? The brunette was no longer dancing across the room. Why had he come to Leeds? ‘Angels on the Subway’… Was that the song?

  He’d had the chance to change things yesterday. He’d messed it up. His phone wasn’t charged. How had that happened? If he’d been able to communicate with the call handler, would all those people now be dead?

  If he hadn’t been looking at his handset, would he have been able to avoid the nail bomb?

  Had he been drunk the night before? Forgotten to charge his phone? Fuck the drink. He hadn’t seen his daughters in two months; couldn’t remember the last day he’d had off to spend with Claire. He’d been too busy at work. Had he been drunk the night before he told his ex-wife it was over? Forgotten what marriage was like because he’d been too busy at work to try? Drowned himself in drink because he was too scared to be a father – agonising over when he would get the chance to do the growing up he needed to do himself?

  This song was driving him crazy. The Angel. That was near King’s Cross. The King’s Cross – scene of one of the bombs.

  ‘Hello,’ he heard a female voice call across at him. Jake looked up. It was the brunette in the black rah-rah skirt. She was heading toward him. He wished it was Claire. He needed her there; needed her to make him feel better.

  Before he had a chance to reply she’d grabbed him at the shoulders – and, reaching up, began kissing him passionately on the lips.

  She tasted of stale beer, of cigarettes.

  He suddenly saw black smoke. He pulled away. Looked at her. But there was nothing. There was no smoke.

  Did he really want to be with this woman? His drunkenness was making him confused. She grabbed his hand and smiled conspiratorially, leading him past the bar toward the toilets. There were no words but they both knew where they were headed and why. They slid into a cubicle and she locked the door behind them.

  Once the door was secure, she faced him, kissed him, unzipped his flies, then turned her back and bent over the toilet, pulling up her skirt as she did so. She looked exactly like Claire from behind. He yanked aside the black thong underneath. Then he was inside her.

  What was he doing here? He hated himself. He hated that he was drunk. Again. Using anonymous sex as a conduit to feel something, anything.

  He had hold of fistfuls of her hair as he drove into her from behind. He was being overly rough. She was screaming, ‘Harder, faster!’

  It was angry sex. The fury in Jake welled to the surface. He didn’t understand it. Bitterness coursed through him.

  He began swearing at her, ‘Fucking dirty bitch!’

  Jake was lost. Who was he? Who was this girl? Why was he taking his anger out on Claire’s Yorkshire lookalike in a piss-stained cubicle? She probably would have fucked any man that had shown her the slightest bit of attention in that club – he was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

  Maybe he should have listened to Helen’s words of warning?

  He stopped. Pulled out.

  The girl turned and looked at him, confused.

  ‘What the fuck did you stop for?’ she shouted.

  Jake did up his flies.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said as he left the cubicle.

  ‘Come back here, you stupid wanker!’ she called after him, slurring her words.

  Drunken sex with a drunken stranger wasn’t the answer to his problems tonight.

  He hated himself. Helen was right.

  He had to get out of the place.

  13

  Tuesday

  12 July 2005

  0545 hours

  Holbeck, Leeds, West Yorkshire

  ‘Just tell me what’s happened to my fucking brother! Where the fuck is he? Why the fuck do you want to come in here and search our house?’

  Karim Rahman edged closer to Jake as his anger built, so that they were almost nose to nose. Jake could feel the spittle hit his face as Karim shouted in it.

  Karim was the elder brother of Asif Rahman, the eighteen-year-old suspected of blowing himself up on the number thirty bus in Tavistock Square.

  Jake stepped backwards – the
re were times for fighting and there were times when physical confrontation just made things worse.

  They were standing in the living room of the terraced family home in Holbeck. Karim was waving his arms about animatedly as he squared up to Jake. Karim’s mother was sat at a table in the corner sobbing, whilst his father – a dark-skinned Pakistani man in his sixties with white hair and a white beard – shouted at the top of his voice at a uniformed police officer in the kitchen.

  ‘Bloody police! You bloody… you bloody come round here… we report our son missing and you do nothing. Then you come round here and want to search our house… you bloody fuck off!’

  When Asif had failed to return from a trip to London the previous week with his friend Wasim, Mr Rahman had called the police and reported his son missing.

  The whole family had just been dragged out of their beds by a firearms team who’d smashed open the front door. Mr Rahman was wearing a pair of beige cotton pyjama bottoms and a white T-shirt.

  ‘What are you fucking gonna do to us?’ Karim shouted in Jake’s face.

  Attitude breeds attitude. It was easy to get caught up in the heat of the moment, easy to rise to their level of anger – most people would get angry at police with guns running up and down their stairs and shouting at them at 0500 hours. It was easy to feed off the adrenalin pumping around everyone’s veins at this intrusion. None of that would help matters though.

  Jake took another step back from Karim and raised his hands in front of him.

  ‘Please calm down. I can explain. Please sit down in the chair.’

  Jake spoke in a low, composed voice. Karim wouldn’t be able to hear what was being said if he kept shouting at Jake. It was a tactic Jake had used many times before – get them to come down to your level – a calmer level.

  ‘I don’t want to fucking sit,’ Karim retorted – but the shout had gone from his voice.

  ‘I can explain to all of you… May I sit down?’ Jake turned to ask Karim’s father who was now silent and looking at him from the kitchen.