by Roger Pearce
‘What’s a Livebait?’ asked Slim as Gemma cut the call. It sounded like he was eating.
‘Code.’
‘What for?’
‘A coded bomb threat.’
Slim had his finger poised, ready for another call. ‘That’s just confusing.’
Gemma swung to face him. ‘Not now.’
‘Topaz’ was still bugging her, an infant tugging at its mother’s sleeve. She pushed away from the telephone desk to the Special Branch Registry terminal a couple of windows away, judging the distance and rotation to perfection. Logging on as she shifted into position, she found what she was looking for in thirty seconds.
‘Slim, or whatever your name is, don’t move from there.’ She rolled back to her desk and turned to face him. Mousy hair twirled from his crown like soft ice cream. ‘It’s going to be very busy in here, so get your arse in gear. Anything you don’t know, ask.’
Born in Romford, Gemma had spent her adult life gravitating west, stretching her vowels on the way. Slim had two podgy fingers deep inside a crisp packet and looked truculent as he extracted a final mouthful, spilling crumbs onto the mottled grey carpet. Gemma reminded herself to speak with John Kerr when this was over.
She opened her drawer, pushed the baguette aside and took out a laminated sheet of A4. The protocol for rapid dissemination of a terrorist attack was DEN, or ‘digital emergency notification’, a kind of virtual reality telephone tree using email or text. Gemma preferred the personal touch: to make absolutely sure the message got through she maintained her ‘personal code red schedule’, ringing key people to tell them the state of play. On Kerr’s advice she had also inverted the priority list, notifying field officers before management.
‘Jack, where are you, please?’ Her first call was by radio to Jack Langton, Kerr’s head of surveillance, who travelled everywhere by Suzuki.
‘Lambeth, coming into the Yard.’ Gemma could hear the whoosh of busy traffic as she repeated the message, then an immediate growl of acceleration as she told him the code word. Langton was taking the call seriously, too.
‘Okay, I’ve got four out and about, three mobile and Melanie on foot. Tell John I’ll starburst from Victoria until we get sorted.’
In a Starburst operation, surveillance officers fanned out from the focal point of a terrorist incident to deal with suspicious activity near the scene, or respond to eyewitness sightings in the fallout. ‘Also, Gemma, Topaz was one of our jobs, ninety-six, seven, something like that.’
‘I know. I just searched it.’
‘Alan will give you the detail.’
‘He’s going to be late in this morning. Oh my God’, said Gemma, remembering. ‘Jack, he’s coming from Victoria.’
Langton bounced straight back, his deep Geordie voice reassuring. ‘I’ll look for him.’
Alan Fargo’s extension in Room 1830 was the third on Gemma’s list but she was already dialling his private mobile, the number she knew by heart. It was engaged.
•••
Monday, 10 October, 12.43, Victoria Train Station
The dispatcher at the Yard assigned the highest grade to Gemma’s alert. Within sixty seconds firefighters and paramedics covering Victoria station had activated the joint contingency plan; less than four minutes from the initial call the evacuation of Victoria mainline station was being ordered over the public address system as railway staff streamed through the concourse to cover the exits. Deep underground, tube drivers announced that trains would not be stopping at Victoria, and passengers already surfacing were channelled into Victoria Street. The orders by loudhailer and tannoy were jumbled yet unmistakable, for Londoners always travelled beneath the shadow of terrorism.
The earlier flood of commuters had subsided to a steady stream, and they exited the station by several routes. Some were guided from the east perimeter into Wilton Street, or from the opposite side to Buckingham Palace Road. A few took the escalator to the upper level and hurried through the shopping mall towards the coach station.
The majority, the unlucky ones, settled for the familiarity of the front entrances, trailing through the bus terminus into the killing ground. Waiting patiently at the gate to Platform 12, between the Gatwick Express and Upper Crust, Elsie and Pauline Fargo were slow to move. Confused, rooted to the spot, the old lady clung to Pauline’s arm as over-amplified voices collided around her. In front of them the concourse stretched almost as long as a football pitch, but their Brighton train was already in the platform, only a few paces away. Pauline watched her mum stare longingly at the red tail-lights, as if they might still make it to the seaside.
Eventually it was Pauline who took charge. Her brother would know what to do, but when she speed-dialled Fargo she got the busy signal. She took stock, telling herself to breathe slowly. People were barrelling through the main exit between Boots and the ticket office, and she imagined her mother being trampled beneath the human tsunami. To the right, in a much broader passage leading past the tube entrance between Vodafone and a bureau de change, things seemed less chaotic, with passengers eddying patiently around the entrance before funnelling to safety. She tried Fargo again as she led the way there, supporting Elsie as she stumbled on a stretch of uneven floor. Then they were in the open air, the rain cool against Pauline’s cheeks as she looked around for her brother, still believing he would come to the rescue.
•••
Monday, 10 October, 12.46, Strutton Ground
‘I’m going to be in Rome all next week, Dad,’ said Gabi. ‘It’s just Mum and me.’
Through the window of the café Kerr saw Alan Fargo cut diagonally across Victoria Street, taking advantage of the red light. He was carrying a dry cleaning bag, mobile clamped to his ear. There were sirens in the background, central London’s regular mood music. ‘That’ll be great.’ Kerr took a bite of his dessert. Carla had brought pancakes with melted chocolate and a croissant for Gabi. ‘What’s the forecast for Rome?’
‘Bugger the weather, Dad. I want you to join us.’
‘Robyn already mentioned it,’ said Kerr, still peering across the street. Fargo finished his conversation but seemed to have another call waiting. Kerr could see the agitation in his face as he propped himself against the Yard’s perimeter wall. After a few seconds he cut the second call, then immediately dialled again and hurried back along Victoria Street.
‘And?’
‘Think I’m tucked up next week.’
Gabi was also tracking Fargo now. ‘What’s the matter with Alan?’
‘Probably forgotten something,’ said Kerr.
‘Fly out for the day, then. Lunch. So we can be a proper family for a few hours. Is that too much to ask?’
‘Sure,’ said Kerr. There was a faint thump, the noise a tipper lorry makes hoisting a loaded skip on board, then a crisper sound like a pub discarding its empties. It sent a flock of pigeons flapping into the air from the green across the street. ‘I mean no, course it’s not. I’ll see what I can do.’
Gabi reached for his hand. ‘Promise?’
Fargo had stopped. He was staring in the direction of Victoria, his face ashen. ‘Did you hear that?’ said Kerr.
‘It’s a crane or something. There’s loads of construction going on. Try and make it Thursday. It’s her birthday.’
‘I know.’
‘Don’t lie.’ Gabi nodded towards Fargo. ‘Alan will cover for you. Or Jack, or Melanie. They always do.’
By now they both had a fix on Fargo, who was shouting into his mobile. Kerr gave Gabi’s hand a squeeze. ‘Hang on a tick.’ Pedestrians were turning to peer down Victoria Street and a market trader had stepped into the rain to stare, absently wiping his hands on a tea towel.
Then a motorcyclist was speeding towards them up Broadway, leaving the Yard to his left. Bike and biker were in nondescript black but Kerr immediately recognised Jack Langton. Kerr watched him swerve before the junction to mount the opposite pavement, scattering pedestrians at the bus-stop as he raced for Alan Far
go. Then Fargo was astride the pillion, head unprotected, the dry cleaning stuffed into his coat and his arms tight around Langton’s waist as they bumped off the kerb and shot out of view, the Suzuki’s roar smothering every voice in the café.
Kerr had switched his BlackBerry to silent when Gabi arrived. He reached into his jacket on the back of the chair, checked the screen and saw two envelopes and a missed call as he eased round the table. ‘Sorry, love, gotta go.’ He threw Carla a wave as he slipped a wedge of cash into Gabi’s hand. ‘Settle up for me, will you?’ He bent to kiss her. ‘Say hi to Mum.’
Chapter Four
Monday, 10 October, 12.54, Victoria Bus Terminus
Fin’s bomb detonated nine minutes early, just as the evacuation was reaching its height in a procession three or four deep. The sounds of the actual detonation did not reach Kerr. There was a crack and a blinding flash of light, followed by a roar and rattle like machine-gun fire as the nails raked everything in their path. Men and women dressed for the office were cut down as cruelly as soldiers before a firing squad, visitors clutching maps and cameras flattened like stalks of wheat in a storm.
The shock wave, hot as a furnace, reverberated off the station wall. It stopped the ancient clock above the arch but gained another pulse of energy for itself, tricking people, ripping the limbs from innocents beyond the terminus who thought they had escaped, who would have been saved had they ignored the call.
Fargo’s mother and sister almost made it. Six metres from the bomb a lump of dried mortar jammed a wheel on Elsie’s case, tipping it over, so they paused outside Rafal Eisner Capital Bank while Pauline rang her brother’s number again.
The explosion swept through the bank’s elegant frontage unimpeded, collecting them in its path as Pauline left her final voicemail. It also picked up a young shaven-headed veteran in an Afghan Heroes sweatshirt who had stopped to help Elsie, and a girl pushing her baby in a zipped-up buggy. The force blew them into the bank’s Reception and then, unforgiving, covered them in vicious green shards of glass.
Fin’s bomb created a neat circle of devastation, with vertical surfaces peppered by shrapnel and the sides of the nearest bus bulging grotesquely away from the blast. It shattered windows all around, raining glass onto the soaking ground where it glittered like hoar frost. The bomb killed the four men and three women directly in its path and tore away the limbs of a dozen others. Beyond them, survivors circled in slow motion, zombielike, clothes ripped away, blackened faces and bodies lacerated by nails and flying debris, their ears ringing in the silence.
Langton covered the eight hundred metres to Victoria station in fifteen seconds, overtaking two ambulances as he skidded into the terminus. The still air of the bomb’s aftermath had grown thick with converging sirens and a BMW 3 Series area car had been abandoned haphazardly by the terminus exit, doors wide open, blue lights still flashing. Nearby a crew stood beside their marked Vauxhall Astra, trapped by the walking wounded screaming for help.
Langton and Fargo rode straight past them into the carnage, tyres crunching across the blanket of glass and debris. They came to a halt less than five paces from Kenny’s bomb, engine idling as they took in the scene. Then Fargo was shouting into his ear, almost throwing the bike off balance as he dismounted. ‘Over there!’ he yelled. ‘That’s where they brought them out.’ They both stared at a twenty metre stretch across the terminus exit, the escape route that had become a death trap. The crew from the area car, a man and a woman, were already sifting through sagging flesh for signs of life, their hands crimson. A halo of blue lights encircled the terminus as emergency crews awaited clearance to enter the scene, so Langton guessed these two young cops were disobeying orders. He saw the male officer waving at Fargo. ‘You have to get back, mate,’ he shouted, but Fargo was bending over the victims and did not even look up.
Visibility restricted by his helmet, Langton found a man in a pinstriped suit clutching his part severed leg, so Langton made a tourniquet of his scarf around his thigh and yelled for a paramedic. The eyes of the dead stared back at him, glassy, surprised or reproachful in the instant before shutdown. ‘Alan, we’re too late,’ he said, taking Fargo’s arm as the white-faced cop threatened to arrest them.
Retreating to the motorcycle, Fargo pulled away from Langton and ran to the gaping hole that had been the front wall of the investment bank. The floor was completely covered in debris, but Fargo spotted his mother immediately. ‘Over there,’ he said quietly, as Langton appeared at his side. Elsie Fargo lay on her back, the sparkly brooch still attached to her collar. She looked peaceful, eyes closed, swimming with her dolphin in an ocean of broken glass.
A baby’s whimper led them to Pauline, lying dead beside an upturned stroller three metres away, half buried, her bloodied right arm limp across the cover. She must have spent her last moments crawling through glass to rescue the infant, for her hands and arms were badly lacerated. Langton crunched across the floor, calling for the baby’s mother, but the only sound came from the tiny, invisible trace of life deep inside the buggy.
‘Bomb! We’ve got a secondary!’ More shouting, this time through a loudhailer. ‘Everybody away. Clear the area now!’ Langton looked around as Fargo carefully extracted the child, the pink fleece clashing with her screaming red face.
In the open to the right he could see a black Range Rover with tinted windows, one of the SO15 bomb disposal vehicles. In the terminus, an unprotected bomb technician was trotting from a garbage sack at the far end, calmly waving the rescuers away.
Langton took the tiny bundle and waited for Fargo to remove the brooch from his mother’s body. ‘There’s another one,’ he said gently. ‘We have to get out.’
The rescue teams were rushing from the scene as they emerged into the rain, where an inspector clutching a roll of tape tried to send them into Victoria Street. ‘That’s my bike over there,’ said Langton, pointing.
The inspector wore rimless glasses, the lenses smeared by dust mixed with raindrops. ‘Leave it.’
‘We’re in the job.’ Langton handed him the baby and nodded at the wrecked bank. ‘She’s the only survivor in there.’
Jack Langton was a head taller, intimidating in his helmet and leathers, but the cop looked like he wanted to dump the baby and punch him. ‘That’s a crime scene. What the fuck were you doing there?’
He sounded officious, but it was obviously the stress talking. ‘Saying goodbye,’ said Langton, curling one arm around Fargo and pushing the cop aside with the other.
When Langton started the Suzuki, Kenny’s bomb was nine seconds from detonation; had Fargo stumbled or delayed another instant, they would have been eviscerated. It exploded as they accelerated out of the bus lane, the shock wave scorching Fargo’s bare neck as it chased them down the street.
Chapter Five
Monday, 10 October, 13.07, New Scotland Yard
Mobile on the go, resisting the rubbernecker’s urge to follow the sirens, Kerr had raced back to the Yard in less than three minutes. He removed his jacket to shake off the rain as he returned the security officer’s nod of recognition and paused to locate his warrant card. Kerr and Shavi had known each other for years, but a terrorist incident always brought everyone out in a rash of extra ID checking, as if the Yard was facing imminent attack. The bomb scanner inside had obviously been reconfigured, too, with the dimly lit corridor now a cavern of red lights, beeps and body searches as external visitors waited for clearance.
Tension was also crackling through the Back Hall, the main reception area, with all the phones on the go and front desk staff taking extra time to issue passes. It was not a good day to visit the Yard. Kerr recognised a knot of secondees to a Met celebrity inquiry, young homicide detectives diverted by allegations of geriatric rape. In identical trench coats and Italian shoes they checked texts and made calls, competing for updates on the tragedy half a mile up the road.
Kerr swiped himself into the lobby. It was grab-a-sandwich time and a crowded lift was just leavi
ng. ‘Hold it,’ he called to a sea of deadpan suits clutching paper bags. The front man pretended to search for the button but Kerr already had his foot in the gap. Squeezing into the crush, he faced the doors for the silent ride to the eighteenth floor, his breath misting on the brushed steel.
In search of accurate information Kerr headed straight for the Fishbowl, his BlackBerry vibrating and chirping. The floor was quartered into open plan offices around the lift shaft and Kerr’s working space occupied the far corner of the unit that watched returning ‘foreign fighters’, radicalised British men and women suspected of planning jihad on the streets of London.
The Fishbowl was a glass partitioned former store room only slightly larger than a prison cell. It was crammed with Kerr’s desk, laptop and landline, two additional chairs, kettle from home and emergency bottle of rum from Jamaica. A narrow safe protected his Glock 19 automatic pistol and ammunition. Nothing about the room was regulation, and Facilities had decided that even the floor area exceeded his entitlement. The Square Foot fascists had been on his case all summer, until silenced by Alan Fargo with evidence of offenders in their own department.
Kerr had caught the texts and missed messages on the run back to the Yard, returning Gemma’s call from the exact spot Fargo had occupied moments earlier. By the time he folded himself behind the desk, cleared his BlackBerry and opened his email he had a clear picture of the events leading up to the bombings. Had Kerr been in danger of underestimating the catastrophe, the figure who suddenly darkened his door removed all doubt. Dark hair dishevelled, crash helmet cradled in his right arm, Jack Langton had removed his neck warmer and held it against the side of his throat, from where a streak of blood curled around the knuckle on his wrist.