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

by David Videcette

  But the window was double-glazed; there were two panes of glass. Only one had broken.

  Geoff groaned.

  ‘You little fucker… Let’s have another go,’ said Mike as he pulled the joystick back toward him and pushed it away again.

  Jake braced himself once again for the noise and force of a potential blast.

  The lance’s spike went cleanly through the second sheet of glass and into the flat.

  ‘Gotcha,’ said Mike, as he reversed the robot backwards.

  Jake’s sigh of relief was audible.

  ‘No explosions, good. Maybe your man was being straight? Let’s have a look inside then,’ said Geoff, as he began using the other joystick to move the mechanical arm on the robot.

  The arm moved up and toward the hole in the glass before pushing through and widening the aperture. There was a slight tangle with the net curtains, which had somehow been secured very firmly and snugly to the window frame, then suddenly Jake could see inside the flat – the screen on the wall of the van showing him in full colour the state of the living room.

  ‘Jesus!’ Jake exclaimed.

  18

  Tuesday

  12 July 2005

  1007 hours

  Victoria Park, Leeds, West Yorkshire

  The walls were regulation magnolia. A red patterned sofa sat on what appeared to be a blue and red carpet. Jake couldn’t really tell – mainly because the floor looked like a rubbish dump. There were bin bags full of stuff, boxes for mobile phones, rucksacks, plates with some odd-looking brown substance on them. Things were just strewn everywhere. It was a gigantic mess. A kitchen area off to the right of the living room looked just as bad.

  Jake was gobsmacked. This was an absolute treasure trove of evidence just waiting for them.

  ‘Wow. That’s going to take some work, Jake. We’ll have to take it slow – take it out piece by piece, item by item; each thing is a potential explosive risk.’

  Jake felt both elated and disappointed. He needed to know exactly what this place was.

  Lenny appeared at the back of the van. ‘Guv, found a witness as we were evacuating, says there was a group of men who rented number twenty-two – Asian guys, in and out all the time – says they were a pain in the arse with their hours. She saw them at about three thirty or four a.m. on the morning of the seventh. Reckons they were loading rucksacks into a small blue car. I think we’ve got the right place.’

  ‘Good work, Lenny. Get a written statement off of her, will you?’

  Lenny smiled, nodded and walked away from the van.

  ‘Geoff, how long before we can get an investigation team inside that flat?’ Jake asked.

  ‘I don’t know. We’ll need to check it’s safe. Then we’ll need the police photographer here to document everything. Then that ton of stuff in there will need to be removed and processed… I tell you what, rather them than me in that small place with a load of explosives equipment! I wouldn’t fancy storing and assembling all the different bomb parts side by side. What if it all went up in one go? What sort of idiot assembles all three parts of a bomb in one tiny flat?’ Geoff shook his head in disbelief and went off muttering to himself about the danger of explosives.

  Jake needed a coffee, maybe even something a bit stronger. There was a lot to take in. He was shocked by how much stuff was in there. Almost too much.

  He brought back three paper cups of double espresso from a small café around the corner. He’d also treated Geoff, Mike and himself to a bacon roll each. Jake was starving. It had been a long day already. Up at 0400 hours, briefing the search teams at 0445 hours. He’d not slept much the previous night anyway; he never did the night before a job, and this was probably the highest-profile one he’d done.

  Geoff and Mike were stood behind the EXPO van, finishing up their rolls.

  ‘I’ll get an exhibits team here; you’ll have to work with them. I want a photographer in there today – and maybe a sample of the brown substance from the plates that we saw on the floor.’ Jake sipped the hot coffee as he reeled off his requests. He was desperate to get started.

  ‘You can photograph from the window, mate, fine, but I’m going to have to clear a path inside through everything that’s on the floor. We need to be able to move around inside safely before I can let anyone in there. The place could be full of explosives.’

  ‘How long? Just give me an idea of how long,’ said Jake.

  ‘Two or three days, all being well – assuming that we don’t find any viable devices as we clear the path. Your photographer can do some initial photos from the window – I’m not having anyone blown up on my watch,’ said Geoff sternly.

  19

  Thursday

  14 July 2005

  0330 hours

  Dewsbury, West Yorkshire

  The night was humid. They’d wound down the windows on the car to let in some air. Clouds that had locked in the day’s heat at sunset were now blocking out the light from the moon and there were very few street lights actually working in the dark, familiar cul-de-sac. The few that were gave off an eerie yellow glow in their immediate vicinity only.

  It was the third night in a row that Jake and Lenny had been sat in the BMW together. They’d decided against looking for an observation point in any of the houses. It was too risky; everyone knew everyone else in the street. It was bound to get out and back to their target – Wasim’s wife, Salma.

  They still had to have good vision though, so the BMW was the next best thing. Sitting in it hour after hour meant that they could ensure the street was clear and safe for the walker to go in. The walker was a West Yorkshire officer together with his dog Spike, a white West Highland terrier. Spike wasn’t specially trained and had no security or counter-terror skills; he was a prop and he belonged personally to John the police officer. Spike was the reason John was walking around the streets at 0330 hours – at least that was the cover story if anyone stopped to ask. Even Spike thought that was the real reason; they were just out playing ball, weren’t they?

  Anyone looking at the bloke and his dog in the street, as John kicked the tennis ball lightly along the ground, would most likely think the same.

  Spike was a natural. He hadn’t needed to practise his role on repeat for the past seven days like his owner had. John had stood at the side of an identical red Honda Civic upwards of a hundred times. He’d spent two days learning every inch of the underneath of the chassis to find exactly the right place to attach ‘the lump’.

  The lump was a small magnetic metal box that held a tracking device. It could tell you the car’s exact location at all times and how long the vehicle had been there. Best of all, it could do it all on its own. In remote mode you could even program it to send text messages to you to say it was moving. When it did, you could then log on to a specially configured laptop and watch its movements live on the computer from wherever you were located.

  The dummy Civic, which John had been memorising every inch of over the past seven days, was identical to the one that Wasim’s wife drove; identical to the one she’d been using ever since the bombings in London. It was too early to say if Salma Khan was involved in the atrocity or not. Had she hidden things? Perhaps more explosives? ‘Keep tabs on her, just in case,’ Denswood had said. ‘Know where she goes.’

  The risk was that if she were involved in the bombings, she might well be surveillance aware. With cars and people following her all the time, she’d be likely to spot them eventually and change her behaviour.

  So rather than tailing her day and night on foot themselves, they were putting a high-tech lump on her Honda Civic to track her movements.

  Jake had tried to source the exact equivalent of Salma Khan’s red Civic himself through the car-trade magazines, but he’d been unsuccessful. There was no time to waste and it was a hurdle that was beginning to get in the way of the investigation – so
he’d turned to long-time informant and notorious bad boy Zarshad Ali.

  20

  Thursday

  14 July 2005

  0345 hours

  Dewsbury, West Yorkshire

  Jake had known Zarshad Ali for the past five years – since his days on the Organised Crime Group.

  Zarshad had been a key informant of his on a major car-ringing investigation.

  The tentacles of the network Jake had been investigating stretched across Europe, the Baltics and Russia. Zarshad had been in charge of locating particular models of UK-based cars that the gang wanted to steal. He’d fronted up as a used-car dealer, trading from his council flat in Chelsea – when really he was a high-tech, vehicle-theft expert living the high life off the lucrative proceeds of his activities.

  Stolen cars had simply been a commodity for the gang; a low-risk cash cow for financing other illicit activities. Zarshad had been a small part of it, but an invaluable source of information to Jake.

  When they’d been struggling to source an identical car to practise with up in West Yorkshire, Zarshad had been the name that had immediately leapt into Jake’s head.

  The phone call a week ago had been short and sweet. The best type for an informant handler in Jake’s book.

  ‘Zarshad, it’s Jake. You OK?’

  ‘Yes, guv’nor – what’s up?’ Zarshad had sounded surprised by Jake’s call.

  ‘Nothing’s up. I need a car, need you to locate one for me urgently. But I want a legit car with full UK paperwork, not nicked. You’re not authorised to steal one – do you understand?’

  Registered informants could be authorised by the police to break the law. You had to be crystal clear with them what you wanted, otherwise it could quickly end in tears.

  ‘Course I understand, guv’nor. What car you after?’

  ‘I need a 2001 Honda Civic, five door, 1.6i VTEC SE.’

  ‘Fuck me – that’s a bit specific, ain’t it? That’s the sort of order I get off the bad boys when they have dodgy paperwork for a motor. What do you want that for?’

  Car manufacturers made minor changes to their model line-ups. You had to get the exact same type and year of car, otherwise the chances were that the spot in which you wanted to place the lump might not be there, or would be filled with a bracket you weren’t expecting.

  Jake ignored Zarshad’s request for information about why he needed the car. ‘Look, I need it by the end of this week. There’s £500 in it for you, plus the cost of the car.’

  ‘End of the fucking week! That’s two days away… you must be having a fuckin’ giraffe?’

  ‘Do you want me to give the five hundred quid to someone else, Zarshad?’

  ‘Nah, nah, nah. Alright. Leave it with me.’

  Zarshad had come up trumps and had an identical car by the following morning. It had cost the Branch £5,000, plus Zarshad’s £500. The practice model was now safely back in a secure garage at West Yorkshire Police HQ in Wakefield, where John the walker had spent hours practising fitting the lump on it, in readiness for the real thing.

  ‘Looks good. Coast is clear. You’re good to go – OP over,’ Jake spoke into a radio mike in his hand. The lead from the mike led up the inside of his jumper sleeve to a hidden radio unit in a special covert harness on his body.

  ‘Received. I’m go, go, go now,’ John said into an identical radio unit several streets away. The message reverberated in Jake’s covert earpiece.

  John and Spike came into view as they rounded the corner from the top of the road. Both seemed at ease. The street was clear. It was looking good.

  John deliberately kicked the tennis ball underneath Salma’s red Civic. Spike went bounding after it but waited by the driver’s door, unable to squeeze his body underneath. It was perfect – unlike the last two nights. The first night a taxi had pulled up in the cul-de-sac delivering someone home from a late night out. The second night someone had switched on a light in the house as John walked up to the car.

  Everything had to look exactly right or the risk of compromising the whole job was too great. It all had to appear completely natural and fluid. Tonight, third time lucky, it did.

  John lay down next to the car. He was fitting the lump, but for the benefit of anyone else who might be watching, he was getting Spike’s ball.

  Jake’s heart was pumping so hard he thought his head was going to explode. This was the riskiest bit. John was at his most exposed. This was the point during a job at which, if it went wrong, they were fucked. They might be dealing with killers, mass murderers even, who might have guns.

  It took seconds but it felt like minutes before John stood up and held Spike’s ball aloft for show, just in case someone was watching. Spike bounced up and down, clearly excited that his owner had managed to get it. John threw the ball and walked away from the car, whispering into his microphone, ‘It’s on. All good. Repeat, it is on. Going back to my van. Stand down, stand down.’

  ‘Fucking good job. Well done!’ said Jake into the radio.

  ‘Top man,’ Lenny said to Jake, as Jake started the car and pulled away.

  ‘She’s ours now, whatever she does – she’s fucking ours to watch,’ said Jake jubilantly.

  21

  Friday

  15 July 2005

  0830 hours

  Dudley Hill police station, Bradford, West Yorkshire

  It had been a long week of unsociable hours and the hard work was only just beginning. Jake stifled a yawn as he read out to Lenny the latest forensic update from Scotland Yard: ‘Preliminary tests indicate that some form of explosive compound has been found at the flat in Victoria Park, though at this stage we are unable to identify what the chemical make-up of the compound is or how it has been manufactured. It is however accepted, given what has been found inside so far, that the flat has been used to at least partially manufacture this explosive compound and that the construction of improvised explosive devices was carried out there…’

  ‘So it’s the bomb factory? Good job!’ Lenny looked pleased with himself.

  ‘It’s a place they used to make some sort of explosive, Lenny. I don’t think it’s the icing on the cake, myself. In fact, I’m not even certain we have the ingredients for the cake sorted yet. Don’t get too excited,’ Jake cautioned.

  Lenny said nothing.

  They were sitting in Dudley Hill police station in Bradford. The latest developments in the case meant the Yard had decided it needed a long-term investigation team up in West Yorkshire. Bradford was to be their far less glamorous base from here on in. The Dudley Hill building was newer, but it meant they were now located in the middle of nowhere, not in a city centre. It also meant they were having to fight for desk space with West Yorkshire’s homicide team.

  ‘So how are we doing with the other stuff, Len?’ asked Jake.

  ‘Well, the searches of the houses are well underway. We’ve taken mobile phones and computers belonging to the suspected bombers – and clothing from their wardrobes is being tested for explosive residue. We’re also expecting to match fibres to the Victoria Park flat.’

  It remained slow going up in West Yorkshire. They were still taking things out of the Victoria Park address one by one, photographing them, and then packaging them up to send down to London for DNA and fingerprint testing. They’d carried out several small controlled explosions on material from inside the flat – stuff so volatile that they couldn’t move it safely. In total they were searching six residential homes up in West Yorkshire, plus the Victoria Park flat.

  What’s the other news from London?’ asked Lenny.

  ‘I spoke to Helen. The bomb scenes down there are almost finished with from a forensics point of view. The streets and underground tunnels have been cleared of dead bodies, limbs, organs and debris. We’re left with four separate bomb scenes with four suicide bombers carrying rucksack bombs; a
death toll of fifty-two people not including the bombers themselves, plus hundreds more injured. And they’ve found a car at Luton Central railway station that they travelled south in, containing fifteen incendiary devices. They’re calling it the largest criminal investigation ever undertaken.’

  Jake had been told that upwards of two thousand staff had been subsumed by the enquiry back in the Major Incident Room in London, and half of the fourteenth floor of New Scotland Yard had been allocated to it. The scale of it was colossal.

  Jake wasn’t going home for some time, he knew that much for sure. He hoped Ted would be all right.

  ‘How’s it going with that witness, Lenny? The old girl you spoke to on Tuesday up at Victoria Park?’ asked Jake.

  ‘She’s a bit on the woolly side. She says she saw some men acting strangely. But from what she’s told me, I’m still not sure if it was strange or if it was just very annoying for her at the time. It’s tough to get any sharp detail out of her because none of what she saw seemed that important when it actually happened. Five days later and she’s not sure if she’s seen four or six men, one or two cars, maybe even a woman?’

  As a good investigator, Jake knew that not everything witnesses saw could be relied upon – it needed corroboration. Nonetheless, it was possible, a maybe. Maybe the old woman was right. Maybe there were others who had helped the bombers.

  22

  Sunday

  17 July 2005

  2036 hours

  Longthorne Oak Hotel, central Leeds, West Yorkshire

  Jake’s phone vibrated. He glanced down at the Nokia handset. Claire’s mobile number lit up the small screen.

  ‘Hi, how are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Not too bad.’ She sounded edgy. ‘We need to meet.’

  ‘You OK? What’s up?’

  ‘Can’t tell you by phone – in person only.’

  ‘I can’t get away, Claire – it’s manic up here. Why can’t you tell me by phone? It’ll have to wait at least a few days unless you can come up here?’