‘No one out the back there – everything looks fine. The van I’m interested in is parked in the garage. I’m going to need to seize it from you, Mr Patel, and take it away for forensic testing.’
It was a statement; he was telling him, not asking.
‘I also need to see the paperwork for the person who last hired the van, please.’ Jake was feeling reassured that he had made the right decision to break the window. This would have taken another twenty-four hours had he waited until the morning.
He gave the registration of the van to Mr Patel who went looking for the paperwork in a back office. Things were going to be tricky with the Reserve Room from here on in. Jake knew he hadn’t followed the right procedures; he’d need to wing it. He called them up to request that the van be taken away for testing and was immediately asked for reference numbers that related to the missing-persons report – a report which did not exist. Fortunately the operator accepted the line that Jake didn’t have the documents to hand and complied with the request to simply use his name instead.
The van held a mountain of potential forensic evidence and clues as to what had taken place. Testing it might show up who the men were eventually. Their DNA and fingerprints would hopefully be all over the vehicle. Perhaps a stray hair from the driver’s seat, cigarette butts in the ashtray, fingerprints on the mirrors. None of the men had appeared to be wearing gloves in the CCTV footage.
Most importantly, Jake wanted to know if there were traces of Claire in the back of the van. Was she dead or bleeding when they put her in the bag? Had she been struck and injured or even killed in the flat? Or was she still alive?
The forensics would take time though, a few days, a week, some of it maybe months – it certainly wouldn’t be quick.
It was the hire record that Jake wanted access to tonight. That’s why he had wanted the keyholder, Mr Patel, here, and why he couldn’t wait until the morning.
Mr Patel returned with the file.
‘Thank you, Mr Patel,’ said Jake. ‘Please put the file down. Don’t touch the paper inside.’
Mr Patel placed the file slowly down onto the desk and looked at it like it might be contaminated with Ricin.
‘It’s OK, Mr Patel. The documents inside will most likely have fingerprints on them. I just don’t want your fingerprints over the top of theirs.’
Jake put on the customary two pairs of surgical gloves as always, then picked up the file and thumbed through it.
The van had been hired under the name of Abdul Mahmood, a 22-year-old male from Ilford. There was a photocopy of a UK driving licence and a phone number at the base of the form. Jake copied the address and phone number onto a spare sheet of paper.
He placed the original paperwork into an exhibit bag and sealed it, just as two uniformed police officers arrived from the local station to escort the van to the forensic examination centre. He thanked Mr Patel and left. He had work to do. He had another lead; a name and an address.
Jake worried very little about the consequences of not doing things the right way, but he knew he was on very shaky ground here. He was supposed to be in Cornwall with Claire on leave. Instead, here he was in London, single-handedly investigating her disappearance and not a soul knew what he was really up to. Yet if he went through the normal procedures, he’d lose days, a week even. Time neither Claire nor he had to spare.
The bosses would pull Jake off the job straight away because of his personal involvement with the subject of the investigation. ‘Not professional,’ they’d say, and Claire would be dead by the time they’d finished writing the missing-persons report. Yes he was out on a limb, like he always was. But once he’d found her, they’d understand and pat him on the back.
102
Thursday
6 October 2005
1915 hours
Warrington Road, Ilford, Essex
The drive to the address on the hire record took less than ten minutes. Normally Jake would have done some research before turning up somewhere, got an idea about the people who lived at the address, had some sort of lead on what he might expect there. Usually he’d run the names through the intelligence databases first, through the PNC and past the Security Service. There was no time for that today.
Warrington Road, the street listed on the van-hire paperwork, was typical of the area: Victorian, terraced and turn-of-the-century. The beautiful period windows had all been ripped out to be replaced with white plastic UPVC and porches. But most importantly to Jake, the small front gardens were poorly concreted over in order to house lots of privately imported Japanese cars. In Jake’s world, this was a hugely important nugget of intelligence. A large expat-Pakistani community in Japan made their living buying second-hand cars over there, exporting them via family networks to Dubai and then, in the main, onto extended UK family and friends as grey imports.
Jake parked outside number forty-two and walked up to the UPVC porch. He could see a shoe rack just inside the door that held one pair of men’s shoes and several pairs of unused slippers, belonging to owners who were not present.
Jake might not have done any prior research, but there were some things he didn’t need profiling databases to tell him. The neighbourhood was predominantly Islamic.
The porch was not locked. Jake stepped inside and banged on the inner wooden door. It was answered by a Pakistani man in his mid-sixties, who wore a white shirt and black synthetic-looking cardigan.
Jake produced his warrant card. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Jake Flannagan, Metropolitan Police. I want to talk about Abdul Mahmood…’ he began.
The man showed no flicker of expression, but immediately attempted to close the door. Jake was wise to this trick. He’d had it done to him countless times before. He’d already slyly wedged his foot in-between the door and the frame without the resident noticing. The door hit his foot. The man pulled it open and slammed it back again, more aggressively this time. ‘Get out!’ he shouted at Jake.
Jake pushed the door hard with his hand, knocking the man backwards. He stepped into the hallway, his shoes still on. ‘I’m looking for Abdul Mahmood. Where is he?’
There was no response; the man looked confused.
‘Your son is Abdul Mahmood? Yes?’
‘He was… my son. He is dead…’
‘When?’
‘Last year, in Pakistan.’
‘How?’
‘Abdul died in an explosion. Him and his friend – December 2004. I’ve told the Security Service. I told them we are not interested in their money. Then they threaten us with the police…’
‘The Security Service have been here? Why?’
‘They tried to recruit his brothers as informants plenty of times. She said they would send the police if we didn’t do as they wanted. You don’t scare me…’
‘December 2004…’ Jake stopped mid-sentence; he suddenly realised that the date was significant. Wasim was in Pakistan at that time too.
The old man continued, ‘Those are Muslim lands he was trying to protect. I am proud he is dead. His brothers, hounded by the Security Service, are now doing jihad too.’
Jake was frozen. He needed time to think. What was going on here? Who hired the van if it wasn’t Abdul Mahmood? Someone using his licence?
‘Arrest me or get out of my house!’ the old man shouted, scrambling to his feet.
Jake turned around and walked out without saying anything else. The old man slammed the door behind him.
Jake got into the car. He sat there, his brain buzzing. The boy was dead. And so, it seemed, was that line of enquiry; Abdul Mahmood’s driving licence was being used by someone else. Another extremist? It was common practice when one went off to fight with the view of not returning that others would use the identity and documents for fraud and scams. It was exactly what Wasim had discussed in Crawley with the Crevice crew. The question now was who’d used
it?
Jake closed his eyes, replaying what had just happened with the old man over and over in his head. He looked at his notes. The mobile number for the person who’d hired the van was given on the sheet.
He changed the setting on his mobile to private so that it didn’t reveal who he was, and dialled the number shown on the hire form. A generic voicemail message played out.
Pre-pay or pay-as-you-go mobile customers were very difficult to trace. All paid up in advance, there would normally be no details of the subscriber held anywhere.
Jake pulled away from the house. He needed to visit someone who could help, someone who wouldn’t blow his cover.
103
Thursday
6 October 2005
2100 hours
M40 westwards
Government Communications Headquarters or GCHQ was known by Jake and his colleagues as the Cheltenham listening service because it was their job to monitor radio and microwave signals. Mobile phones to them were nothing more than radios at a basic level.
The five thousand staff there specialised in different disciplines of listening. These days a lot of it was actually visual, which meant they would monitor internet traffic too.
The journey to Cheltenham was slow going. Jake had decided against using his blue lights on the motorway. It was now getting to the point where he didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself than absolutely necessary.
Jake remembered driving at top speed with lights and sirens on for two hours solid during his training course, giving a running commentary to the instructor in the passenger seat of what he was doing, why he was doing it, what he’d seen and why he was reacting in a certain way.
For Jake, the commentary became a habit. He found it upped his concentration level when driving fast. He still did it in his head automatically. Sometimes he did it aloud to wake himself up. Especially if driver fatigue was taking hold, like now.
‘Approaching hazard. Junction. Mirror. Breaking. Hard. Too fast, Jake. Too fast. Got control of lane one at junction. Traffic stopped. That’s a nice arse on the left in the green on the pavement. Good spot, Jake. Control of lane two. Out into lane two. Mirror. Accelerate away from nice arse. Sadly…’
Two hours of driving lay ahead of him before he reached Cheltenham. He needed all the entertainment he could get.
GCHQ was housed in a swish, new circular building. Jake had been there once before. He had been amused to find out its nickname. Brilliant, he’d he thought, the Americans have the Pentagon and us Brits get the Doughnut.
The Doughnut had been open a year. It was the largest building project to house an intelligence agency anywhere in the world outside of the United States, but even then the place wasn’t big enough to hold all its staff.
Packed with computer servers holding information and data that had been collected day-in, day-out, each server – and there were dozens of them – could hold a petabyte of data. Just one petabyte was equivalent to eight times the entire word count of the British Library. The electricity needed to run GCHQ’s servers alone could power an entire city.
He had met Claire’s cousin, Kate Collins, a couple of times. He knew she did something fancy at GCHQ related to picking up signals from hidden ships and anti-aircraft stations. It was maths-based; he didn’t really understand it. He remembered chatting to her in the pub once, when she’d been staying at Claire’s. As soon as Jake had heard the word maths he’d switched off. She’d gone on about how special she was, about how she’d done this and done that. She was full of herself. Good-looking with a thick mane of very long and very dark brown hair, she spent a lot of time at the gym and on her appearance. She was fit and attractive, but Jake found her terribly dull and boring.
Kate had a confidence problem. Jake had seen it. She was desperate to be loved by a man. Other men saw it too. This meant she had a bit of reputation, according to Claire. Jake had seen her eyes looking him up and down. He’d never mentioned it to Claire.
Kate lived near her father, a retired Royal Navy admiral, on the outskirts of Cheltenham. He’d wanted sons and had made no bones about the fact that he was disappointed in fathering only girls. He’d never spent much time with them as they were growing up. Jake wondered how much that had impacted on Kate’s confidence issues and her decision to track down hidden ships with her obviously gifted, maths mind.
It was almost 2300 hours when Jake pulled into the cul-de-sac where Kate lived. The estate had been built in the eighties. Yellow bricks, white UPVC windows and a parking bay in front of the house, with her Ford Fiesta sat in it. Neat and efficient; a bit like Kate herself.
As she answered the doorbell, Jake deduced that she must have just been to the gym from the cropped sports top and three-quarter-length, Lycra leggings she was clad in.
‘Jake?’ Kate looked shocked to see him.
‘Hi, Kate, can I come in? Need to talk to you.’
Kate stood to one side, confused. ‘Yes, sure. It’s late, what’s going on?’
Jake walked past her into the spotlessly clean living room and sat down.
‘What’s happened, Jake? It’s Claire, isn’t it? What’s happened to her?’ Kate’s face was ashen.
Jake got straight to the point. ‘Claire is missing. I think she’s been kidnapped.’
104
Thursday
6 October 2005
2305 hours
Fiddler’s Green, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, near GCHQ
‘What the fuck?’ was all Kate could say.
‘She was supposed to meet me in Cornwall. She didn’t turn up. I drove back, couldn’t find her. To cut a long story short, the last few days I’ve been retracing her steps. Done my own investigation. I think she was taken from her apartment building by someone in a van.’
Jake decided to leave out the part about the small bag.
‘Oh my God!’ Kate was visibly shocked.
‘I need your help, Kate.’
‘Yes, whatever you need. What can I do?’ Kate sat down in an armchair across from him in her neat living room and leaned forward with her palms upwards. Jake sensed from her body language that she was genuinely concerned. He needed to know that she really and truly wanted to help before he could move on.
‘This is all confidential. I know I can trust you. I don’t know who’s done this, but it seems that there might be some connection to her work, possibly terrorist extremists. I don’t know how they located her address, but they have. It’s also possible that someone at her work is involved. We need this whole thing to be kept quiet. Don’t let her work know that I know.’ Jake omitted the part indicating that no one at his work knew about this either.
‘Wow. You think the Security Service has been infiltrated?’ asked Kate.
‘The van that was used to take Claire was hired using the driving licence of a guy who died in an explosion in Pakistan in December of last year. Someone at the Security Service has been talking to the family; his father told me that. And now Claire’s missing. I don’t know who I can trust or who or what the problem is. That’s why I’ve come here. It’s why, as family, I was going to ask you to help rather than use the official channels at this stage.’
Kate looked down at her bare feet, clearly in thought. She said nothing.
Jake continued. ‘I want to know more about who this guy was that died in an explosion in Pakistan. I need you to run the phone number used to hire the van through your systems for me, and tell me what you have on it.’
‘It’s a big ask, Jake.’
‘I know. I don’t have many other ideas. I could go back to London, make everything official and hope that someone picks up the pieces quickly?’
‘What do you mean official? Have you not properly reported her as missing yet?’
Jake sighed. ‘No – they’ll take me off the case because of our relationship. I can’t have that
happen. Not when I have leads to follow!’
‘Have you checked her mobile phone location with the cell-site data?’
‘Her mobile phone, purse and car keys are in her flat. She’s not just gone off with someone else… that’s not what this is. She’s been taken properly, Kate. Kidnapped. They’ve taken her and her computer.’
‘Why her computer?’
‘I don’t know, maybe she had something on it linked to why they took her?’
‘OK. I’ll do it.’
‘Great. When?’
‘Tomorrow morning, when I go in. First thing,’ said Kate.
‘Can I wait here, maybe stay the night, and you can give me the response personally rather than use phones or email?’ Jake didn’t want anyone listening in, but he was also tired after the drive and he sorely need to crash.
‘Of course. It’s a one-bedroom though.’ Kate looked him in the eye a little too long as she finished the sentence. It was a mannerism she shared with her cousin. A look he’d seen from Claire many times.
‘The sofa is fine, Kate. I snore, so you wouldn’t want me to top and tail with you.’ Jake decided to make a joke of it to avoid any awkwardness.
Kate laughed. ‘Let me grab a shower and some bedding for you. I’m still in my gym kit, for goodness sake!’
Jake watched as the lithe, Lycra-clad figure bounded off upstairs. He heard the water running and smelled expensive bathroom products wafting down in clouds of steam.
Kate returned carrying pillows.
‘I have some wine in the fridge. Night cap?’ she asked Jake, who was still slumped on the sofa.
She was wearing an indecently short robe and her hair was wet. Jake couldn’t take his eyes off her long brown legs.
She leaned over and placed the pillows behind him. He could smell her conditioner.
THE THESEUS PARADOX: The stunning breakthrough thriller based on real events, from the Scotland Yard detective turned author. Page 29