The must-read new blockbuster thriller

by Tony Kent

  ‘That was Michael,’ he began. He was unsure how best to explain what was to follow. ‘He said that . . . well, he said that Daniel’s accident, that it might not have been an accident after all.’

  For a long moment there was no response. No reaction. Dealing with Daniel’s death had already left the family numb. This new information would struggle to gain a foothold.

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Deborah Lawrence – Daniel’s mother – broke the silence. ‘How is it . . . how . . . what?’

  ‘It’s a very long story.’ Hugh’s voice was flat. He took a deep breath and continued. ‘Michael says it’s related to Daniel’s job. Daniel was in interview with the man who killed Neil Matthewson. Now that man’s dead, Daniel’s dead, and Michael thinks it’s all connected.’

  Claire and Deborah looked on in confusion. Neither had the knowledge to properly digest what had been said. But someone else did.

  ‘Daniel saw McGale last night?’

  Of the few people in the room only Anthony Haversume knew the name Eamon McGale. He seemed to think for a few seconds before continuing.

  ‘I was told that McGale saw no one before his death. Certainly not a lawyer.’

  ‘That’s Michael’s point. That McGale was killed before he could speak, for fear of what he might say, and Daniel was killed for what McGale may have told him.’

  The room fell quiet once again. A hive of shock and disbelief. Once again it was Deborah Lawrence who broke the silence.

  ‘No.’ Her voice was firm but full of emotion. ‘This is ridiculous. This sort of thing doesn’t happen. Daniel died in a car accident and now Michael’s making some bloody conspiracy out of it because he just can’t accept it. I won’t hear of it, Hugh. I won’t hear of it!’

  Hugh Lawrence opened his mouth to speak as Deborah began to sob. To comfort his wife. The better-informed Haversume beat him to it.

  ‘I’m sorry, Deborah, but Michael may be on to something. The official line that McGale saw no one isn’t just for public consumption. It’s what we’ve all been told. If the powers-that-be thought it necessary to tell that lie, they’d think nothing of killing to preserve it.’

  ‘That’s why Michael wants us to leave.’ Hugh joined Haversume’s blunt honesty with some of his own. ‘Because he thinks we may be in danger from the same people.’

  ‘What?’

  Claire spoke for the first time. If anything could break through her grief it was a threat to what was left of her family. She turned to Haversume for reassurance.

  ‘But we don’t know anything. Nobody would come after us, would they?’

  ‘They might.’

  Hugh answered before Haversume could. His family needed to know everything.

  ‘Because they went after Michael.’

  ‘Michael? Is he OK?’ Claire’s voice was suddenly fired with passion. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s OK, Claire. He’s been fairly badly beaten but he’ll survive.’

  ‘But where is he?’

  Deborah’s voice this time. No less emotional. Michael was as much a second son to her as he was to her husband. ‘Is he coming to join us?’

  ‘I don’t know where he is,’ Hugh Lawrence replied. ‘He wouldn’t tell me. But no, he isn’t coming. Michael says he’s going to get to the bottom of this. He’s going to find out who killed Daniel.’

  ‘Michael can’t do that, Hugh! He’ll get himself killed!’

  ‘He should be with us. With his family. Once he’s here we can get help. We can get protection.’

  ‘No, Claire. No, you can’t.’ Haversume rose to his feet. ‘Michael’s right. If he comes to you he risks bringing this to your door. The way I see it, the less anyone knows about any of you the better. There has to be intelligence involvement in this; it’s the only reason they’d have lied to the likes of me. If they’ve killed Daniel and they’ve gone after Michael then none of you are safe. But I can help. I can arrange somewhere. Somewhere only I’ll know about. Where you’ll be safe until this is over.’

  ‘Are you joking?’ Claire seemed outraged. ‘You’re telling us to run and hide in the hope this goes away? To hope that Michael can keep himself alive and unearth some sort of government bloody spy conspiracy? This isn’t a film, Tony. And Michael’s not James bloody Bond. He’s going to get himself killed, and we’re either going to rot in hiding or be murdered ourselves.’

  ‘I won’t be leaving this to Michael,’ Haversume replied. ‘And I certainly won’t rely on him playing the hero. There are people in the intelligence community with absolute integrity, Claire. People I know well. I’ll contact them and when I do we will have some of the very best operatives in the world on our side. They’ll flush out whoever is behind this and you will all be safe. Michael too. But for now you’re not. For now, Michael can take care of himself. And I can take care of all of you. Please let me do it.’

  Daniel’s family were united in silence. Just minutes ago they had nothing but their grief. That had changed. Now they had to run.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Joe Dempsey drank in the details of a devastated Lonsdale Square. He could sense the usually tranquil feel to the place, so rare in the heart of London. To see that torn apart was a crime in itself.

  A presence at Dempsey’s shoulder broke into his thoughts. Alex Henley had joined him. They had managed two more drinks before news of the Islington bomb had broken through the blanket McGale/Matthewson coverage.

  The pictures that had appeared on the screen were all too familiar. The smouldering remains of a car, unrecognisable from the violence of the explosion. Surrounding vehicles damaged beyond repair. Nearby homes wrecked by debris and detritus. All typical of the bombings Dempsey had investigated in his career.

  Such images had become common in mainland Britain in the last two years with the resurgence of Northern Irish terrorism. But, coming so soon after the Trafalgar Square shooting, Dempsey and Henley reached the same conclusion: two terrorist attacks in such quick succession were unlikely to be unconnected.

  Within minutes of the news report they were hailing a black cab on the streets of Westminster. The journey to Islington took little more than fifteen more. An hour earlier the roads had been jammed. Now they were almost empty, as if the traffic had cleared for the urgency.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Henley shouted.

  Dempsey turned and followed the assistant commissioner’s gaze. He knew immediately what had caused the outburst. Three young officers were setting up a cordon to keep the public away from the scene. The purpose was to avoid contamination. But they were doing more damage than they were preventing as they trampled over possible evidence.

  Dempsey allowed himself a smile as Henley produced his Metropolitan Police identification and took temporary control of the scene. The shock on the faces of the local police as a senior officer tore into them amused him. But there was no time for entertainment. Instead Dempsey turned to the best source of information at any crime scene. The bystanders.

  One person in particular caught Dempsey’s eye. An elderly woman at the front of the crowd. Her location told him that she had been one of the first on the scene. If she arrived late she would have been at the rear, too frail to push her way through.

  Dempsey approached the crowd and flashed his DDS credentials. Meaningless to a public generally unaware of his agency’s existence, but at this point any sign of authority would have an effect. He scanned the crowd. Just for a moment. Then his eyes settled on his target.

  ‘Did you see anything, madam?’ Dempsey asked.

  ‘I did, yes. It was horrible!’

  The elderly woman replied without hesitation, without asking who her questioner might be. She seemed to revel in the opportunity to tell her tale. Dempsey could tell that it was not for the first time. She continued.

  ‘I was sitting in my flat when I heard the bang. I live over there, on the second floor. Number 28C. The, erm, the green windows.’

  ‘Wha
t did you see?’ Dempsey moved her along. He had no time for superfluous information.

  ‘Well it wasn’t what I saw. Not at first, anyway. It was the bang. Deafening. I didn’t know what to think. But then I went to the window and I looked out, and I saw young Michael from number eighteen standing there, by the burning car. Next to him, on her knees, was a woman. Then he picked her up but before he could go inside a man on a motorbike came out of nowhere and started shooting. Michael and the girl only just managed to get out of the way.’

  Dempsey listened. Every word added to the picture.

  A car bomb alone could be a simple terrorist attack, if there was such a thing. A residential square was hardly a typical target, but he had dealt with stranger. A car bomb followed by a motorcycle gunman, however? That was something altogether different.

  That was a professional hit.

  ‘Did you see what set off the car bomb?’ Dempsey asked.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Like I said, it was the bang that made me look out the window. Anyway, like I was telling you, Michael went—’

  Dempsey stopped the story by raising his hand. He was not yet ready to move on. He turned to the other men and women in the crowd.

  ‘Anybody else see what set off the bomb?’

  No answer.

  ‘No one saw?’

  Still no answer.

  ‘What about the car itself? Any of you know who it belonged to?’

  Dempsey thought he already knew the answer, based on what he had just heard. The same elderly witness confirmed it.

  ‘Yeah,’ she replied. ‘That’s Michael’s car. That’s why it was parked outside his house.’

  Dempsey looked down at the speaker. She was going to be his best source. That much was clear.

  ‘OK. Tell me what happened next.’

  Dempsey listened as the woman described what she had seen. None of it surprised him, up until she described the fight between the resident and the gunman.

  ‘Sorry, but this Michael guy? He took on the motorcyclist?’

  ‘For a few seconds he did, yeah. And he got an awful leathering for his trouble. Knocked all over the place until his dog – great big thing – jumps on the fella with the gun. Which is when Michael and the girl ran to the bike and rode off.’

  Dempsey did not respond as the story tailed off. He was mentally re-arranging the woman’s confused syntax into a coherent account. Only when he had a picture clear in his own mind did he go further.

  ‘And did the gunman follow them?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  The elderly witness seemed conscious of the attention as she delivered her well-rehearsed tale. She also seemed to enjoy it.

  ‘I mean, he fought with that dog for a bit. So I reckon they were probably long gone by the time he got it off of him, poor animal. By then there was a lot of people coming out of their houses or shouting from the windows. And someone must have called the police by then, too, cos he took off in a hurry.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘On a different bike. One of those ones that are always parked on the corner. He done something to make it work and he rode off. But too late to have gone after Michael, I think. Him and his young lady were long gone.’

  Dempsey took in all the information the elderly informant could offer. It was a lot, but it still missed much of what he needed to know.

  ‘What do you know about Michael?’ Dempsey asked. ‘His full name? Job?’

  ‘Nothing, really. He’s an Irish lad in his thirties. Good-looking blond fella. Always very pleasant. But that’s about it. I don’t even know his surname.’

  ‘I do.’

  A voice from the crowd cut through the background noise. Dempsey took a closer look. The speaker was a well-dressed, middle-aged man.

  ‘His name’s Michael Devlin. He’s from Northern Ireland and he’s a barrister. Lives alone, keeps himself to himself.’

  ‘So how do you know him?’

  ‘We sometimes speak when we’re walking our dogs.’

  ‘Do you know anything else about him?’

  ‘No, not a thing. Like I said, he’s pretty private.’

  Dempsey scanned the crowd one more time.

  ‘Does anyone else know anything more about him?’

  No response.

  ‘Anyone see anything this lady didn’t?’

  No response.

  Dempsey nodded. It was as expected, and it was enough. The two witnesses had told him more in just a few minutes than an undirected examination of the crime scene ever would. Dempsey thanked them, turned his back and headed towards the police cordon.

  A flash of his DDS identification took him past the manned perimeter, into the scene. Here he was far from alone. A stream of forensically trained crime scene investigators were moving back and forth, scouring every inch of debris for evidence. Dempsey stopped one of them and took a pair of blue forensic gloves. Put them on and left the examiners to their job.

  He edged past a convoy of white suits and walked into what remained of Michael Devlin’s ground floor. The scene was strikingly familiar. Interior bomb damage, caused by an exterior explosion. Dempsey had already known that this was the case. Typical of a residential car bomb. Little else could be learned inside. He spent a few more minutes there regardless, surveying the debris. Half-destroyed photographs littered what was left of the room. None seemed to be of value.

  Dempsey turned his attention elsewhere.

  The remains of Michael Devlin’s car were almost unrecognisable as a vehicle. The front was a mangled, blackened mess. Only the remains of its four wheels helped distinguish what the smouldering wreck used to be.

  Three white-clothed forensic investigators were in and around the car. Dempsey flashed his credentials to the closest.

  ‘What do we know?’ Dempsey asked.

  ‘No doubt it was a bomb. No car goes bang this bad without one.’

  ‘Any idea what started it?’

  ‘Best bet is the detonator was connected to the ignition and that it went up when the engine turned over.’

  ‘You mean there was someone inside?’

  ‘Still is. Only now he or she is melted into the driver’s seat.’

  Dempsey was surprised by the information. He leaned down and looked inside. The forensic investigators were better than him. Dempsey could not make out a driver’s seat, let alone that it had been occupied.

  He looked up.

  ‘What about the other seats? Anyone in them?’

  ‘Doesn’t look like it. Driver only, as far as we can make out.’

  Dempsey responded with a nod. A gesture more confident than he currently felt. Someone had been driving Michael Devlin’s car at the time of the explosion, but it had not been Michael Devlin. That much was clear from what the neighbour had told him. But if it was not Michael Devlin, who was it?

  And what, Dempsey thought as he glanced up from the car and towards the damaged CNN van that was still next to it, has that thing got to do with this?

  He returned his attention to the car. The same forensic examiner was standing by.

  ‘Have you found any sign of the bomb mechanism?’ Dempsey asked.

  ‘Not from the portion of the vehicle we’ve been able to examine.’

  ‘Where’s left?’

  ‘Just the underside. We can’t go under until the chassis has been secured. Health and safety regulations.’

  ‘Is it solid?’

  ‘Seems to be. But that’s not the point. We still have to wait for the engineers.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Dempsey replied.

  Dempsey dropped to the floor by the vehicle’s side. From there he checked the integrity of what was left of the frame. It seemed unlikely to collapse. Satisfied, he turned onto his back and edged his way underneath the chassis.

  The under-frame of the car seemed strong. More intact than the devastated upper body. The damage was still catastrophic, but from here Dempsey could make out a number of important details. Details that should n
ot have been there. The remains of a two-inch-square sheet of magnetic metal carried the telltale scars he was looking for.

  The confined space between the car and the road made it difficult to manoeuvre. It took Dempsey the best part of a minute to reach into his front trouser pocket and remove a small utility lock-knife. It took longer still to slide the knife between the car body and the magnetic plate. Dempsey had no choice but to take care. Too much force and he could find himself pinned to the floor by a two-tonne wreck.

  Minutes passed as he prised away with the lock-knife. Finally the plate broke loose, its magnetic force now clinging it to the blade. With no room or light to examine the sheet more closely, Dempsey had no choice but to inch his way out from under the vehicle.

  He gripped the knife in his hand as he got to his feet. The light in the square was artificial but blinding. More than enough to reveal the details that Dempsey had expected to see on the recovered item. It was not a lengthy examination. The first glance had been enough.

  ‘What have you found?’ Henley had seen Dempsey climb back to his feet and had watched as he examined the metal plate.

  ‘Mercury tilt switch,’ Dempsey replied. He handed the knife to Henley with the magnetic strip still attached. ‘Have your guys examine it.’

  Henley held the knife up. Took a few seconds to consider what he was looking at. Finally:

  ‘This is military ordinance, right?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Then what the hell is it doing at a civilian crime scene?’

  ‘Because this isn’t a civilian crime scene, Alex.’ Dempsey’s voice was low. What he was saying was for Henley’s ears only. ‘We were right. This is Turner.’

  ‘You really think that?’

  ‘I don’t think anything. I know it’s him.’ Henley looked around at the devastation that surrounded them, before Dempsey spoke again. ‘It’s best if it’s recorded that you found the tilt switch, Alex.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Henley had no need to question why. Dempsey had already explained that although he was officially barred from the investigation, this was just a front to allow him to continue unimpeded. A necessary political lie.