Biaj crawled slowly on his belly, hauling himself further up the board like a caterpillar as he carried on muttering, ‘Flash cars, watches, designer clothes and fancy lifestyles. I’m the man in the background that you can never touch. Friends in high places, friends with businesses, friends with money that make things happen. The people that will live near my mosque, they will rent their houses from my friends, but they will rent their souls from me.’
Jake looked into Biaj’s eyes. The fear was gone. His words were boastful. He was talking about the future. This wasn’t over for him.
Jake yanked the board as hard as he could, back up and toward him. Biaj lost his grip. As he did so, he was sucked back down into the water and back into the mud.
The water level was high now. Biaj’s head went straight under the surface of the creek. All Jake could see were his arms flailing about wildly as they broke the murky surface.
With all his might, Jake tossed the board like a caber into the deepest part of the creek, way out of Biaj’s reach.
A moment later, a face bobbed just above the surface, gasping for air. Biaj resurfaced again several times as if climbing an imaginary ladder, only to slip back down again below the gloopy black surface of the water, the weight of his Western jacket and Eastern robes sucking him down.
Jake stood there shaking, watching for what felt like an eternity, as the movements in the creek slowed. Bubbles began appearing from beneath the water as Biaj’s thrashing arms eventually became still.
Jake thought about how alone he’d felt chasing Wasim down the M1 on the morning of the bombings; how desperate he had been for some help; how no one would listen to him throughout the investigation; how broken the families were that had lost people, both those of the victims and the bombers; how he’d felt so low that he had to seek solace with a different woman at the bottom of a bottle every night, when really it was Claire he missed, and his family. How the victims’ families and even the bombers’ families had become more important than his own. How, even now, he wanted answers to the bombings… stupidly forsaking questions about Claire to find out the solution to the puzzle that had dogged him for so long.
The putrid water was motionless. Nothing moved; it was dark and still.
There were no more thoughts. And his mind was made up.
He turned and walked away.
129
Thursday
17 November 2005
1715 hours
East London wasteland, site of proposed mosque
Jake walked briskly back to the van, backed out of his parking spot and made a rapid getaway. He didn’t really know where he was going. He drove in a daze, the pennies still crashing down in his head. He pulled over onto some bumpy waste ground near to West Ham Tube station, put his head in his hands and wept.
Nothing they had done in the entire investigation would have brought them to this realisation – why the attacks had actually been perpetrated. Even the bombers themselves had believed their own personal motives were the reasons for the attacks. Jake still couldn’t believe what he’d heard. This act of terrorism had been created by an entrepreneur who would stop at nothing to create and rule his very own kingdom on a toxic island of industrial wasteland in the very heart of London.
He grabbed his mobile; he needed to call Lenny.
‘Hi, Jake, you OK? Where are you?’ said Lenny on pick up.
‘Lenny, listen – just trust me on this. Don’t worry about how I know but… we missed it. It was staring us in the face this whole time and we missed something…’ Jake was trying to get the words out as fast as he could.
‘Lenny. The attacks. They were meant for 6 July but they lost their baby. It was to stop the Olympics coming here. They wanted to keep the land. It was all about the land. Biaj had his own special development planned.’
‘Slow down. The Olympics? What do you mean? That happened the day before. The bombings took place on the seventh, Jake?’
‘Remember the emergency hospital visit? The text messages? The CCTV showing Wasim buying the ice just after dawn on the sixth? It was supposed to happen on the sixth! It was delayed. But it had all been designed to affect the Olympic voting, to stop London getting the Olympics.’
‘What the hell? So what was the point of going ahead with it then? Why not put a stop to it all after they knew they’d missed the deadline to influence the vote?’ asked an incredulous Lenny.
‘The bombers didn’t know – they just thought they were there to martyr themselves, kill others and make a huge religious and political statement. Biaj made sure they knew nothing about his plans. They were totally unaware that it was the wrong day and too late to influence the Olympic vote. So what are you going to do with them? They were bent on martyring themselves. If he hadn’t let them run with it, there was a risk to him in case they found out what he’d really used them for. You don’t train an attack dog and then use it to fetch your fucking slippers, Lenny, do you?’
‘But how did he get them to do it?’
‘I guess they were just angry young men. Kids who couldn’t stand the greyness of life. They needed absolutes. Their sect beliefs mean they regard this life as a “toilet”, that the next life is far more important. He played on that. They were just a bunch of depressed and misguided drug addicts before the TJs and Biaj got their hands on them. They give up their addiction to drugs and become addicted to a misguided and warped religious sect instead. It’s easy to fill young minds full of fanciful myths and visions at the crucial detox time. He harnessed their pain and anger. He used their utter belief in what they were doing, but he used it for his own entrepreneurial ends. It wasn’t terrorism, it was economics.’
‘Then why bother with a second wave of attacks on 21 July? What was the point?’
‘I think the 21/7 lot were just the backup crew. They had a number of different team leaders for the same job. I’m pretty sure a lot of the hydrogen peroxide that the 21/7 guys purchased was bought on 5 July. People change their mind, get arrested, have accidents. I think they were the B team. They’d already had two youngsters who’d blown themselves up during their explosives training in Pakistan. The ones on 21/7 were just the understudies, but once they’d all been trained, albeit to a lesser degree, they were left to their own devices. They were the perfect decoy, weren’t they? Tell them to go out and do it two weeks later, make it a copycat attack.’
‘A second wave of attacks, designed simply to take everyone’s eyes off the first?’ asked Lenny.
‘A stand-alone attack targeting the Olympic vote on the sixth – it would have looked too obvious, wouldn’t it? But in the end they missed the vote anyway, so no one noticed.’
‘It wasn’t al-Qaeda at all, was it?’ Lenny realised.
‘No. I think someone paid in drug money to use their camps, their trainers and their explosives-training people. The videos were passed to al-Qaeda after the attacks. They slapped all the graphics on the martyrdom videos months after they’d been filmed. Al-Qaeda are just a bunch of out-of-work freedom fighters, but they still need to earn a living somehow.’
‘But al-Qaeda claimed the attacks. They said they did it.’
‘Yeah, they tried to claim some sort of vague responsibility. But, Len, it was months after the event when they finally got their hands on those videos. Yes al-Qaeda said that it came under their banner, but two other groups tried to claim the credit for it in the meantime too! I bet Biaj was quite happy for al-Qaeda to get their hands on those tapes and take the limelight. He didn’t want anyone to tie him to the attacks. It was a cover-up so it couldn’t be traced back to him…’ Jake paused suddenly. ‘Lenny, I have to go now. There’s something I need to do.’
Jake put the van into gear and moved off. He was mesmerised by the rhythm of his own movements, changing gear, moving the rear-view mirror, moving the steering wheel; his mind a myriad of thoughts about what he had just he
ard as the dirty industrial backstreets of East Ham slipped past him.
‘It was all about land and a fucking money-making enclave!’ he shouted.
What was he supposed to do with what he had just been told? What he now knew? What he’d just done?
Biaj was dead.
He needed time to think. He was suspended from work. That had to run its course. Nothing he had just done would help that. He had to get back to work, had to keep his job. Jake admitting he’d been illegally watching the mosque, that he’d confronted Biaj, that Biaj had fallen into the shit-filled creek and drowned while Jake refused to help him – it would just make things worse. It changed nothing. Fifty-two people and four bombers were still dead.
Jake drove through Stratford town centre. The Olympics were coming. The mosque wasn’t going to be built. Nothing had changed.
Claire must have known. How? He still had no clearer understanding of where she was, what she was…
Locard’s theory. Every contact leaves a trace. Jake’s fingerprints and DNA were all over the van. The van was the only thing that connected him to Biaj, to the mosque site.
Jake drove northwards and into the heavily industrialised area that was set to become the Olympic park. Right now it was just full of scrap-metal dealers and brickworks. He knew a car park that was concealed by railway sidings. Travellers regularly used the place to dump their rubbish.
A cold mist was the only occupant of the otherwise deserted place when he arrived. Jake got out of the van and left the key in the ignition. He rubbed down the exterior with his sleeve, paying particular attention to the mirrors, handles and paintwork around the driver’s door.
Whilst camped out at the mosque site in the back of the van, Jake had spotted a can tucked under the Transporter’s front passenger seat. It had previously been hidden by Paul’s vintage mower, the one he’d disposed of at the dump. When he smelt it, Jake realised he’d struck lucky – it was petrol for the mower.
It was this petrol he now emptied over the van’s interior, throwing the empty can into the passenger seat through the open driver’s window. In Jake’s experience, vehicles always burned better if you left the windows open. They sucked in oxygen to feed the flames.
He lit a match and dropped it into the van. There was a sudden whoosh as the petrol and its vapour ignited inside. Flames flew out through the open windows as the initial blaze struggled for breath and life. Jake watched as the fire fought for its existence, consuming everything just to stay alive.
He imagined Biaj fighting for breath below the waterline, trapped in the mud and scrabbling about in the freezing, putrid water of the creek. The burning and tearing of his lungs as the water rushed in and pushed out every last piece of air from them. The terror that he must have felt trying to draw breath from nothing, so close to the site of his dream venture, almost in the shadows of the gleaming tower blocks of Canary Wharf.
He stared into the flames as they licked at the roof and reached from the open window, the fire trying to grab hold of anything else that it could.
For the second time that day, a luminous sight triggered in Jake a memory of religious scripture, yet this time the numbers 8:50 were reversed.
Psalm 50:8 – I bring no charges against you concerning your sacrifices or concerning your burnt offerings, which are ever before me.
Jake walked slowly onto a patch of wasteland, down the hill, away from the burning van and toward Stratford.
He didn’t look back.
Jake took the Tube from Stratford to London Bridge. His walk back to Whitechapel was filled with thoughts about what he should do next. His priority had to be finding Claire, but how? Maybe he could do some tracework on her missing iMac? The IP address of the computer might throw something up. But what if someone had already kicked over these tracks? Had the iMac even been used since she’d disappeared?
When he arrived home, Jake was surprised to see that the lights were still on in the sari shop. He was about to walk up the stairs when he heard a voice behind him.
‘Hey, I think this is for you.’ He turned to see the young girl from the sari shop standing behind him.
She was holding a postcard. ‘It’s got 26 Caroline Street as the address and not 26a, but it starts “Dear Jake”, so I’m guessing it must be for you?’
‘Thank you.’ Jake took the single piece of card from her.
She smiled and returned to the shop’s entrance, switching the lights off and pulling down the shutters.
Jake glanced at the small piece of card. It was the type of postcard you could get from any British seaside town, with a photo on the front and space for writing on the back.
The image on the front was a familiar one. It was of the harbour at St Austell. He flipped the card over. A message had been scrawled out in blue pen; it looked messy and rushed. He recognised the handwriting instantly – it was Claire’s.
Dear Jake,
I’m fine. Will explain everything over some tea and scones with cream. Meet me in the place you waited for me that morning by the harbour.
X
Jake felt a sudden surge of emotion. She’d been watching him that morning while he waited.
She’d not tried to contact him in person – maybe she was aware that he might have been followed? She’d shunned using any electronic method to make contact. Whether because of family difficulties or work reasons, she’d been in hiding. The postcard had been deliberately sent to the sari shop so that it circumvented any trace and intercept that the Post Office had been asked to put on his address by the police or the Security Service.
Clever girl.
As Jake turned to close the door, Ted bolted in and began rubbing herself round his feet and legs. He picked her up and she purred loudly. He kissed her on the head and tickled her behind the ears.
‘Come on, Ted, let’s have cuddle on the sofa, just me and you.’
Tomorrow he would get the train to St Austell, eat scones and wait.
EPILOGUE: THE FACTS
(All times given as British Summer Time, BST)
Tablighi Jamaat
The Tablighi Jamaat movement has been banned in several countries, where it is viewed as an extremist, fundamentalist and separatist sect. It is known that Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, two of the 7/7 bombers, had previously worshipped at Tablighi Jamaat’s European headquarters in Savile Town, Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. Several other prominent extremists have been shown to have links to Tablighi Jamaat, including Muktar Said Ibrahim, leader of the failed 21/7 bomb plot in 2005; the failed shoe bomber, Richard Reid; several of those involved in the 2006 transatlantic-airline plots; John Walker Lindh known as ‘the American Taliban’; and Kafeel Ahmed who died from burns whilst trying to set off a car bomb at Glasgow airport.
HISTORY
1865 Abbey Mills chemical works in the Lower Lea Valley is built to produce sulphuric acid. The site of chemical works for more than one hundred years, substances such as manure, animal fat for candles, oil and kerosene were also processed on the land.
1994 The Lower Lea Valley is included in the East Thames Corridor study area and earmarked for regeneration in a study entitled Regional Planning Guidance for the South East.
Also in 1994, a review of International Olympic Committee members shows that London is the only British city capable of competing on an international stage and attracting enough votes to win an Olympic bid.
1995 Following three consecutive unsuccessful bids to host the summer Olympic Games (Birmingham tendered for 1992 and Manchester for the 1996 and 2000 games), the British Olympic Association decides that London is to be the site of the UK’s next bid.
1996 An eighteen-acre piece of disused, brownfield land on the site of the former Abbey Mills chemical works in West Ham is obtained by the Anjuman-e-Islahul Muslimeen of London UK Trust, a charitable-trust arm of Tablighi Jamaat.
Cut off from
the surrounding area by Abbey Creek and the Channelsea River to the east, the District Line Railway to the south and the Jubilee line to the west, the area can only be entered by a single access point, Canning Road, from the north. The site is purchased from RTZ Chemicals for a reported figure of £1.6 million. (On an unconnected note, RTZ goes on to become Rio Tinto and exclusively provides the metal to produce the 4,700 gold, silver and bronze medals at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.)
May 1997 The British Olympic Association begins work on a fourth bid – this time for London 2012.
1999 The first of an ongoing series of applications to use the Abbey Mills site are lodged by the Tablighi Jamaat charitable trust, arousing intense opposition locally.
15 December 2000 A confidential report is submitted to the Government by the British Olympic Association about London’s bid for the 2012 Olympic Games. East London versus West London options are assessed.
October 2001 Temporary permission is given for the Abbey Mills site to be used as a place of Tablighi Jamaat worship for five years. It is believed that plans for the proposed mosque are first agreed in principle in a deal between Newham Council and Anjuman-e-Islahul Muslimeen. Yet the Newham Unitary Development Plan also places the area within one of its ‘major opportunity zones’.
November 2001 Four main potential Olympic Games 2012 sites in East London are analysed in a report.
January 2002 The Lower Lea Valley, East London, is assessed as the host site in a specially commissioned report. The plan for 2012 focuses on the regeneration of a five-hundred-acre swathe of land there, in one of the most deprived areas of the UK.
THE THESEUS PARADOX: The stunning breakthrough thriller based on real events, from the Scotland Yard detective turned author. Page 37