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

by David Videcette

  ‘You wanted it here? Past tense?’ asked Jake as he stared intently at Biaj.

  ‘Yes… wanted. Who are you and why do you need to know?’

  ‘I’m Claire Richards’ boyfriend…’

  Biaj paused for a moment.

  ‘The detective inspector who was suspended? Flannagan?’

  Jake nodded.

  A slight smile played across Biaj’s face.

  ‘I don’t think you should be here, Mr Flannagan. You are going to be in even more trouble now.’

  Biaj began to walk further on along the towpath and away from Jake.

  ‘Claire was on to you,’ Jake called after him, trying to grab his attention. ‘I know about you and Lawrence Congerton-Jones.’

  Biaj stopped and turned. ‘You know nothing!’

  ‘I know that you were both supplying drugs,’ replied Jake, bolder now.

  ‘So what?’

  Jake wasn’t getting the reaction he’d expected. He tried again.

  ‘Claire knew the bigger picture – she knew you wanted more people to deal to. She’d cottoned on to the fact that a huge mosque meant a larger customer base… That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?’ Jake asked.

  Biaj broke into a smile. ‘Is that all you’ve come here to ask me about?’ He chuckled. ‘A bit of drug dealing with a handler and a large mosque? Is that all you’ve got?’ He began to laugh uproariously in Jake’s face.

  126

  Thursday

  17 November 2005

  1545 hours

  East London wasteland, site of proposed mosque

  This was like a game of twenty questions, thought Jake. He didn’t know all the answers, but he knew enough to realise when he hadn’t got a bite. The drugs issue wasn’t even rippling the surface. Biaj clearly thought it was some huge joke.

  The stench seemed to be getting worse as the surrounding tidal rivers began to seep into the creek. Jake’s nose wrinkled at the smell. Biaj noticed. ‘That stink you can smell in the air. What do you think that is?’

  Jake shrugged his shoulders blankly.

  ‘It’s shit! What you can smell is raw sewage. Sixteen million litres of raw, untreated overflow sewage passes through that creek every year. It’s just the same as it was in Victorian times. The Thames is supposed to wash the sewage out to sea, but until the new tunnel is built, we are surrounded by shit. Can you see why no one wanted this land back in the nineties? That’s why the TJs bought it. Cut off by railway lines and a shit-filled river; land contaminated by hazardous chemicals and highly toxic acids from the derelict factories. All these poor people wanted was their own place, in this toilet, and you bastards wouldn’t even let them have that!’

  ‘This is about Tablighi Jamaat, isn’t it?’ Jake pressed harder to see if he could get a reaction. He was running out of places to go with his questioning. Biaj ignored him and began to walk away, but Jake needed answers.

  ‘Where’s Claire?’ he shouted after him.

  Biaj was some feet in front of him now, his back turned as he walked away. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ he called over his shoulder, waving the question away.

  The time for being a shrinking violet had passed. Jake closed the space between them suddenly with an instant burst of speed, like in his old athletics days, go on the ‘B’ of the bang.

  Biaj heard the footsteps. He spun around quickly, only for Jake to grab the collar of his jacket. His aim was to get in the Iraqi’s face, to shout aggressively, scare him a little.

  As Biaj twisted and pushed back, he lost his footing in the mud and slipped slightly from Jake’s grasp. They were closer to the water’s edge than Jake had realised. Biaj stumbled backwards, off balance, arms flailing wildly in the air as his feet missed the side. He plummeted downwards, landing almost waist-deep in the putrid smelling mud at the base of the creek.

  Jake looked down at the bank below him. It was covered with sheet metal to stop erosion, creating a sheer drop. The other side, backing onto an ancient sewage works, was edged with crumbling Victorian red brick. The jagged shapes he’d seen emerging from the water earlier were gone now, as the tidal currents swiftly flowed in.

  ‘Fucking get me out of here!’ bellowed Biaj as he writhed and floundered around. The wild movement served only to make him sink further into the mire that lay beneath his feet.

  Jake looked left and right. There was no one. His breath twirled up and into the evening gloom, descending quickly upon them now. It was almost dark. ‘I need answers before I can help you,’ replied Jake calmly, as he looked down from the creek’s edge.

  Biaj continued to try to free himself, this time forcing his hands down against the mud at his sides as if to push it off himself, but the sludge just wreathed its way further up his arms. He began to panic, thrashing about with his whole body, as if in a frantic struggle to free his legs and lower body from the mouth of some filthy, oily beast.

  Jake looked on, saying nothing. Seeing the fear build. Listening to the cursing and hissing of anger as it turned into more scared cries for help.

  Biaj realised he was just wasting his energy, that it was no use. He was truly stuck. He stopped thrashing about. He was panting, out of breath. The stinking water was just a foot or so away now. Biaj watched as it lapped against the bank of mud where he was trapped, the water like the tongue of the beast whose mouth he was now caught in. It moved slowly, silently, softly as it crept closer and closer, higher and higher.

  ‘Fuck! Help me, the water…’ Biaj screamed through frenzied intakes of breath. ‘The tide, the water, it’s…’ Biaj began squirming around in the mud again, struggling ever harder to make the beast spit him out.

  Jake watched as the panic took hold of Biaj; he’d seen panic many times before. It was no use trying to talk to him at the moment.

  ‘… coming in… It’s coming in, the tide, it’s coming in, please help me… HELP ME!’

  Jake knew that the planning forms that Claire had left him were somehow crucial. He thought back to Shahid and how his flat above the sandwich shop had been rented for use as a bomb factory by the bombers, how they’d all been involved with Tablighi Jamaat, how the planned mosque was going to be built and run by a charitable arm of the same sect. Yet what good was any of that information if he couldn’t get the killer breakthrough, couldn’t create a penny-falls machine payout?

  Jake looked across the creek at the brownfield site opposite. ‘You wanted a seventy-thousand-capacity mosque… here?’ he said, repeating Biaj’s earlier comment, thinking out loud now. It was a rhetorical statement spoken into the dusk air. ‘You wanted… You “wanted” it – you can’t have it now, can you? Why?’ asked Jake.

  ‘Get me out of here and I will answer every question you ask – I promise!’ Biaj screamed, raising a mud-covered arm above his head.

  ‘No. You talk now, and I’d talk fast if I were you. What do you mean by you “wanted”?’ Jake asked, looking down at the now clearly terrified Biaj.

  ‘Compulsory purchase order… Today. Get me out!’ Biaj shouted as he began thrashing about again.

  ‘Compulsory purchase order, why?’

  The water was all around Biaj now, the muddy bank and weeds below its surface holding him firm in their grip as the levels rose around him.

  ‘Those fucking idiots… they fucked it up – did it a fucking day late, that’s why!’

  Biaj was out of breath again. He began muttering dementedly to himself in a language that Jake didn’t understand.

  ‘A day late’ – Jake played the words over in his head.

  ‘A day late’ was clearly important. More important to Biaj than any accusations of kidnapping, drug dealing or being in cahoots with his MI5 handler would ever be. Jake could feel he was getting close. What had happened a day late? What could possibly be more awful than the sum of those pretty serious misdemeano
urs? The penny-falls machine started whirring in Jake’s head again. A twenty-four-hour delay. Something important had been put off, but what?

  Delay.

  Late.

  Wait.

  ‘Having major problem. Cannot make time. Will ring you when I get it sorted. Wait at home.’

  Jake’s brain was in overdrive. There had been another death on 7/7 – the very first death of 7/7. Salma Khan, Wasim’s wife, had gone into hospital with complications and miscarried their unborn child. That had triggered a flurry of text messages from Wasim about a ‘major problem’.

  ‘Wait. Wait at home.’

  The hospital visit meant he’d had to abandon the original schedule.

  They’d carried out the bomb attacks twenty-four hours later than planned.

  Jake remembered watching the CCTV footage from the supermarket. Wasim had been pottering round with his trolley full of ice at 0520 hours on the morning of the sixth, shortly after he’d sent his text message telling the rest of the gang to stay at home. Fifteen bags of ice to keep the improvised explosive devices cool for another day. Wasim wasn’t rushing… he showed no panic… to him it was just a small detour, a minor diversion because his wife had gone to hospital and they couldn’t travel to London that day.

  The attacks being carried out a day late hadn’t seemed the slightest bit important at any stage of their investigation, neither to Jake nor to the bombers themselves…

  Until now.

  127

  Thursday

  17 November 2005

  1602 hours

  East London wasteland, site of proposed mosque

  Jake was suddenly transported back in time to the morning of 7 July, sat in his car on that West Yorkshire terraced street, listening to the BBC replaying the news over and over again.

  The news from the previous day… the news from 6 July.

  ‘And the host city for the 2012 Olympic Games… is… LONN-DONN!’

  The pennies mounted up again and overlapped in Jake’s head to form a perfect arc. They were beginning to flow out of the machine like a waterfall, a crescendo of coppers crashing down faster than Jake could catch them in his cup.

  The attacks had been delayed on 6 July, a twenty-four-hour delay because of the complications with Wasim and Salma’s unborn child.

  Jake’s head emptied of all the useless pieces of information that he had been storing, like water flowing out. He looked down at Biaj; the water was chest deep and climbing now.

  ‘The delay. The sixth of July was the intended date for the bombings, wasn’t it? The bombings were delayed, weren’t they? How did we not see it? This was inspired by you?’

  ‘Please help me… I will tell you everything, I promise.’ Biaj’s panic had given way to uncontrollable sobbing. Tears flowed down his cheeks. The fight had gone out of him. He had stopped moving. He remained motionless as the creek’s wet tongue licked up his body.

  ‘Keep talking,’ said Jake, ‘and I’ll think about it.’

  Biaj was clearly desperate now – he began babbling at high speed. ‘No one knew. Not even the bombers themselves… They – they should have done it early on the morning of the sixth. But… but… but…’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘They didn’t know!’

  ‘Know what? They didn’t know what?’

  ‘They didn’t know it was pointless on the seventh, the bombings were pointless… they fucked it all up by doing it a day late.’

  Jake couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Why should the bombings have happened early in the morning on the sixth? Tell me! Why?’

  He remembered the note that Claire had left behind with the name Mohammed Biaj written on it. The note with the numbers two, zero, one and another two on it… Her handwriting had been sloppy, uneven and spread out. The numbers – he’d thought they were perhaps individual digits for a combination lock, but maybe they weren’t? Maybe they were meant to represent something as a whole?

  Biaj’s eyes glinted as he growled back. ‘London was a joke bid. Paris were the favourites. But London? It was a joke. Then they got serious. In – in 2003… I had to act.’ Biaj was beginning to shiver now, from the cold water that was all around him.

  ‘The Olympics? The bombings were supposed to happen before the Olympic vote took place?’ Jake was incredulous. ‘That was what you were targeting on the sixth? You didn’t want London getting the Olympics?’

  He thought back to the digits Claire had hastily scribbled on the piece of paper, two, zero, one, two. Of course! Claire’s numbers were meant to represent a year – 2012. The London 2012 Olympics.

  ‘International Olympic Committee. The report. Transport weak. London. Weak spot. That’s what the IOC said.’ Biaj was now talking in very short, sharp sentences. The freezing water was beginning to steal the oxygen from his body. ‘Please. Get. Me. Out!’

  The wet tongue of the tide was now lapping at Biaj’s fingertips, which he had pulled into his chest. He wrenched one of his hands free of the water. It was wrapped in reeds and covered in lurid green slime.

  Jake continued with his questions. ‘The attacks were designed to affect the voting? The voting on London’s bid. You did it to stop the Games coming here?’

  Biaj was in full flow now, as if he knew that the truth was the only way out. ‘Yes. The answer was simple. Fuck up the transport. Four bombs. 8.50 a.m. On 6 July. Three hours. Three hours before. Before voting. Before. Olympic votes. Before votes cast in Singapore.’

  Jake stood there listening to this petrified voice. A man who’d helped to murder more than fifty people and disable, disfigure, traumatise and injure more than seven hundred.

  ‘Stupid. Idiots. Couldn’t even blow themselves up. On—’ Biaj gasped in a lungful of air ‘—the right day!’

  ‘So London won the vote when they shouldn’t have? The bombs were supposed to dissuade the IOC members from voting for London and take the Olympics elsewhere?’ Jake shouted.

  ‘Yes! NOW HELP ME!’

  Why, thought Jake. Why force the Olympics to move elsewhere? What could be important enough to Biaj?

  128

  Thursday

  17 November 2005

  1640 hours

  East London wasteland, site of proposed mosque

  As the light above them finally faded, the realisation dawned on Jake.

  He felt the information flowing out of his head like a waterfall.

  The rice packets, the Groom-Bates saga, the lump on the car… it was all nonsense. Nothing they’d done in the entire investigation would have brought them to this point. The creek continued to fill.

  ‘You didn’t want the Olympics here because… because… they need this land! The whole thing has put the kibosh on your mosque! It means your fucking great big mosque won’t get built! The games are coming to London and you won’t get your planning permission. The Olympics coming here has meant you’ve been served with your compulsory purchase order. They need this land to build on for the Games, and that’s what’s going to prevent your huge mosque!’ Jake stared down at Biaj – disgusted with the man looking up at him. ‘All those people died for planning permission for… for… your place of worship?’

  The water was up to Biaj’s neck and beginning to lap at his chin. ‘Get me out…’ he shouted.

  Biaj was going to drown if Jake didn’t help him. A couple of paces up the towpath, Jake could see a plank of wood, an old scaffold board. He ran to retrieve it. It looked about long enough to hook Biaj out of the water. He moved back to the spot where Biaj had fallen into the creek and leaned down, holding the wood. There was a sudden spark of life in Biaj. He held up his hands for the board.

  ‘I will help you,’ said Jake, ‘but you finish it. You finish telling me now.’

  Biaj realised he needed to keep talking, and fast. He began speaking at three times his
normal speed. ‘The mosque. Just one part of my Islamic city. The draw. A new enclave. Jamaatis, TJs. Thousands of them. Starts ball rolling. Money. Lots of money. Power. Control. Influence over the area. Influence over people in it.’ Biaj paused, sucking in lungfuls of air again before continuing. ‘A new headquarters, my new global HQ. My version of TJ. Houses, businesses, schools. People need goods and services.’

  Jake nodded. ‘You mean like slum accommodation, protection money, fake passports, dodgy visas, ropey insurance, drugs? And the vast riches that those things create come straight back to you? That’s what this mosque is about?’

  ‘Yes. Help me! Get me out! Please!’ cried Biaj.

  ‘No. You tell me it all, NOW! Then I get you out!’

  Biaj was struggling to keep his head above the waterline. He was thrashing about with his hands, trying to reach for the board, which Jake had left frustratingly just out of reach. His skullcap had fallen off, his white robes were being held by an invisible vacuum, sucked down by the effluent and mud.

  ‘The Tablighi Jamaat headquarters in India?’ asked Jake. ‘They never sanctioned this?’

  ‘No! Elders believe in simplicity. We live life the way the Prophet did. Peace be upon him. We brush teeth with twigs. Cut beards to same length! I don’t care what they want! This was to be my extravagant masterpiece!’

  ‘This was a sect-wide plan?’

  ‘No! It was me… Me! My friends. We duped everyone. Now help, help! HELP ME!’ screamed Biaj at the top of his voice.

  Biaj was still desperately trying to extricate himself from the bottom of the creek but he was taking in gulps of water now as the level rose around his chin.

  ‘You duped everyone?’

  ‘Yes… you police, the bombers, the trust, I even duped al-Qaeda!’

  Jake pushed the scaffold board down to Biaj. Biaj grabbed it with both hands and started pulling himself up as Jake held onto the other end.

  ‘Why here, why now?’ asked Jake as he watched Biaj steady himself and gradually pull himself free from the mud. He began to slowly inch his way up the board. He craned his neck and looked up at Jake as he spoke. ‘A global city like London with a prime location like our site? I could have taken power here. Created my own headquarters and my own walled city.’