by Roger Pearce
The bathroom, to the right of the bureau, continued the theme of waves and ripples. It was essentially a wet room with a wash basin, toilet and shower, separated from the living area by a wavy panel of frosted glass. Tanker dragged Bannerman there by his feet and pulled the bathrobe clear. The knife reappeared as he stood over Bannerman with one foot on his chest, then the blade sprang clear, its snap echoing off the tiles. Bannerman was starting to move again in a final clutch at life, so Tanker bent down, placed the knife carefully on the floor, stretched Bannerman’s arms above his head and waited for Cody to stand on his shattered hands. More sounds of torment gurgled in his throat, but fainter now. His legs began to thresh again, as if Cody’s cruelty had diverted his strength to the opposite extremity, so Tanker used the club to smash his right shin, the bone’s crack reverberating like gunshot.
The blade was a stiletto, with a tightly serrated edge. Holding it high in his right hand, Tanker straddled Bannerman’s waist, gripping him tight between his thighs. He cut quickly, a single downward slash on the right side of Bannerman’s chest, extending from the collar bone to the waist. As Bannerman’s whole body contracted in trauma Tanker attacked the other side, two slashes diverging from a point near the collar bone, then a third, horizontal line slicing through his left nipple to form a crude letter A. He was careful not to cut too deeply, for he wanted Bannerman alive.
The body was growing still and the eyes fading, so Tanker slapped him again and Cody leant round to the washbasin, splashing water from her cupped hands over his face. It slopped onto his chest, then stained the tiles in a dribble of diluted blood. Tanker made his central cut from the belly button, slashing upwards to the throat, then curving right in a swirl that matched the motif of the carpet. He completed the tail of the letter R in a deeper flourish that set off a final, useless revolt. Bannerman’s limbs went rigid and he trembled as if in an electric shock, the convulsion so violent that Cody lost her balance and Tanker felt his own massive frame lift for a second. Then everything changed again as the body fell quiet and his head lolled to one side, eyes wide open. Tanker smiled as he hauled himself to his feet and dropped the knife into the basin, happy that his victim had stayed with them right to the end.
The shower head was adjustable, fixed to a vertical steel rail secured to the wall by four evenly spaced brackets. Tanker took the waist tie from Bannerman’s robe and looped one end around his neck, rapidly tying it in a bowline knot. He dragged Bannerman beneath the shower, reached under his armpits and pulled him up while Cody hooked the other end of the tie around the highest bracket and passed it to Tanker. Raising Bannerman’s corpse with his left arm, Tanker took up the slack on the tie until Bannerman was hanging with his shattered toes just touching the floor. ‘Is it going to hold?’ said Cody, as Tanker tied the other end and tested the bracket.
Tanker ripped away the gag to release a gloop of blood and saliva that stretched like chewing gum before pooling around the drain.
‘For this skinny bastard? No problem.’
Cody disappeared for a moment to search Bannerman’s belongings. Through the frosted partition she could see the silhouette of his hanging body, a spectre, gently swaying as Tanker made his final aesthetic adjustments. There was no wallet or paperwork in the jacket, just cash and credit cards, and nothing but clothes in the holdall; only the phone was worth taking. She took from her bag a rectangle of cardboard the size of a cereal packet, folded down the middle, with a loop of string attached.
In the bathroom, Bannerman’s naked body was hanging with his head dropped to the right, and his face looked distended, as if it might explode at any second. Tanker had wiped excess blood from his chest to accentuate the IRA tattoo, and stood aside to rinse the blade and admire his handiwork. Cody unfolded the card, hooked the string over Bannerman’s neck, then loosened it until it hung around his thighs, leaving the artwork and his penis exposed. Printed neatly in red on the cardboard were three words: ‘find another scapegoat.’ She pointed her mobile, then reached forward to make final changes, tweaking Bannerman’s head until his bulging eyes stared directly at the camera.
‘Aren’t you forgetting something for your man?’ said Tanker as the camera flashed.
‘Shit,’ said Cody, searching in her bag. She took out a tangerine, wedged it between Bannerman’s teeth and took three more shots, like an estate agent searching for the best angle.
They washed the blood from their shoes, stuffed the gloves into a plastic bag and escaped by the stairs. Six minutes after murdering Britain’s Marathon Runner they were on the motorcycle again, sprinting across Queen’s Bridge to the Short Strand and safety.
Chapter Fifteen
Wednesday, 12 October, 19.27, The Fishbowl, New Scotland Yard
‘So is it deliver or collect?’
Mobile wedged under his chin, Kerr checked the time on his desktop. ‘I’ll pick it up on the way.’
‘You’ll be late home, you mean,’ said Nancy to the ping of another incoming email, Kerr’s third from Alan Fargo in less than an hour. He could hear the children racing down the hall. ‘Upstairs! Now!’
Kerr peered at the screen and smiled; he liked to hear Nancy talk about him coming home. ‘Only a bit. I have to drop by 1830 on the way out.’
‘Sure about that?’
‘Alan’s got info about Hammersmith I need to check.’
‘I’ll get them ready for bed.’
‘Can’t wait to see you.’ Nancy was teaching Kerr to cook, but tonight they had promised each other curry and sex.
‘They want you to read more Horrid Henry. Is Alan going to get through this?’
‘Yes. Non-stop work,’ said Kerr, reading Fargo’s message again. ‘Stuff like this.’
‘Send him my love. And don’t forget the movie.’
‘Got it,’ he said, and paused from transferring papers into the safe to grab a paperback from his desk.
Nancy was the ex-wife of Karl Sergeyev, now the Foreign Secretary’s close protection officer, and Kerr had been in a relationship with her for over a year, enjoying secret sleepovers at her three-bedroom Victorian semi in Hornsey Vale. Nancy had worked in the Special Branch Registry since leaving school, sacrificing her career a decade earlier for the charming Russian she had always known would cheat on her.
Separated, her life turned upside down, Nancy had finally found work as a GP’s receptionist to help pay the mortgage. As well as raising their two young children, she had joined a weekly art class and held onto her dwindling circle of girlfriends at the Yard.
‘And Alan will let Robyn know, right? If it’s anything important?’ Kerr could hear the children again, making mischief around her. ‘Not you.’
‘It’s okay, sexy,’ he said as he spun the dial, looking forward to being with her. ‘Home with you soon.’
•••
Kerr entered 1830 to find Alan Fargo sitting with Detective Sergeant Melanie Fleming, deputy to Jack Langton and leader of the Reds, the most experienced team of watchers. On the floor beside her was a charcoal Michael Kors tote bag holding a pair of black patent court shoes with a tacky parka and grey sneakers. Hair held back in a brown scrunchy, make-up removed, Melanie was barefoot in jeggings with an expensive silk blouse and pearls, having evidently altered her appearance on the surveillance plot.
‘Snapdragon?’ said Kerr. She looked a cross between Primark and Harvey Nicks, and he did a double take.
Melanie nodded. ‘He took the train from Rotherham so I stayed on him. Jack biked it down and we picked up again at Kings Cross.’ She pulled on one of the sneakers. ‘The meet was a café in Grays Inn Road. Contact a white female.’
‘Any trace?’
Melanie shrugged. ‘Jack thinks the whole thing may have been social.’
‘Good work, anyway.’
Melanie and Fargo were studying four A4 size photographs on a desk to the left of the door. This was the workstation Melanie had occupied with such impatience on a spell of recuperative duty, before being sent
on the undercover mission that had almost killed her. She took a DVD from the bag, The Americans, and slid it onto the desk. ‘You wanted this for tonight?’
‘Cheers.’ Kerr nodded. ‘Right, what have we got?’
Fargo’s hair was damp, and he had evidently showered, shaved and changed his shirt since their first session that morning. Despite nearly two days and nights on the case, broken only by TLC from Gemma and catnaps in her bed, he looked refreshed. Kerr peered at the dressing on the side of his neck. ‘Aren’t you supposed to keep that dry?’
‘It’s fine,’ said Fargo, releasing a whiff of Lynx as he reached out to rearrange the photographs. Three showed the innards of a single improvised explosive device, IED, taken from different angles. A fourth showed a single rectangular metal plate, blackened and distorted, with a jagged edge where one of the corners had been ripped away.
‘Bomb Data Centre forwarded these while I was in the shower. This is the lab’s reconstruction of Hammersmith, with a mass of text on the email to explain everything. Most of it vaporised in the explosion or ended up in the river, but a piece of steel fell back onto the tarmac.’ Fargo pointed to the fourth photograph. ‘They think it’s the base of the bomb, here, length twenty-six centimetres.’
‘Which is?’
Fargo reached for one of Melanie’s court shoes. ‘Roughly that.’ Fargo indicated various symmetrical marks on the base plate. ‘The lab used the holes and indentations to map the likely positions of the timer, circuit board and detonator, then rebuilt the bomb. You can see patches of solder here and here.’
‘But only a best guess,’ said Kerr, unconvinced.
Fargo crossed to his own desktop and scrolled down the screen. ‘They also found a piece of wire burnt onto one of the bridge suspension chains, still with its insulation and a speck of solder at the end. Plus fragments of battery wedged in a lorry tyre, blue shreds of plastic, probably the timer, and a sliver of circuit board. Oh, and a piece of magnet with traces from the underside of the Polo.’
‘Explosive?’
‘Yes. PETN on the base plate.’
Kerr peered at the closest photograph. ‘So who made it?’
Fargo locked his screen and rejoined them. ‘Not the IRA. Every bomber in the world leaves a profile, right? A signature way of doing things? These materials don’t fit any IRA device going back to the early seventies.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘They checked every terrorist group. Real IRA, al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, ISIS and hundreds of others. No forensic or engineering match to any known device in the world. Hammersmith looks unique.’
Kerr frowned. ‘But how can they be so sure, just from that lot?’
‘It was fitted with a trembler.’
‘What?’
‘A booby trap.’
‘Okay. So what’s new?’
Fargo selected one of the reconstruction images and picked out a steel ball the size of a marble. ‘This piece tore through the roof of the 209 bus, split the driver’s face open and embedded itself in the front chassis.’ Fargo traced this finger across the photograph. ‘It was soldered to the end of a beam spring, just here, designed to trigger the bomb at the slightest movement, the instant it made contact with the steel plate. Except in this case the trembler activated the timer, not the detonator.’
‘Saved your life,’ said Melanie.
‘And this design,’ said Fargo, collecting the photographs together, ‘really is unprecedented. They used a very sophisticated piece of engineering against you…’
‘…or Robyn.’
‘…or Robyn. But the only common feature between that and any other known device is the explosive.’
‘What about Victoria?’ said Kerr, intrigued.
Fargo shook his head and Kerr saw the grief etched into his face. ‘It looks like we’re, you know, hunting two different sets of operators here. We’ve proved a negative, really.’
‘Okay. Tell them thanks, Alan, yeah? And get some rest.’ Kerr gave Fargo’s arm a squeeze. ‘Promise?’
Waving the DVD at Melanie in thanks, Kerr remembered the paperback he had brought her from the Fishbowl, Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Recently he had begun encouraging his team to share books and films to ease the tedium of long nights on stand-by. ‘Enjoy,’ he said, dropping it into Melanie’s bag and heading for home.
He was at the door by the time Melanie spoke. ‘Actually, have you got a minute?’ Kerr turned, eyebrows in a question mark. The cybercrime desk was empty because the officers had left for an overnight at GCHQ, but three of Fargo’s crew were still working at the far end of the office. Melanie gestured to the reading room. ‘In here?’ Fargo was already logging on to Mercury. ‘You, too, Al.’
Fargo rarely allowed sensitive documents to leave his control. Officers who needed to brief themselves on 1830 product had to use the reading room, a corner space so cramped that Fargo, last in, had to close the door before he could pull his chair from the table and sit down.
Kerr sneaked a glance at his watch and looked between them. ‘So?’
Melanie cleared her throat. ‘Have you seen much of Dodge lately?’
‘Yes. He’s put on weight, never stops talking and thinks I don’t know he smokes in the office.’
‘What I’m saying is, have you noticed anything different?’
‘None of us are feeling particularly good after what’s happened,’ said Kerr, with a glance at Fargo. ‘We need sources and right now Dodge is the main man. I’d expect him to be preoccupied.’
‘I mean before that. The past few weeks. He’s strange. There’s something wrong. Tell him, Al.’
Fargo immediately looked awkward. ‘I bumped into Dodge in Back Hall yesterday, wanted a quick word about Mercury. It’s just that he came across as…distracted, you know? Looked like he wanted to say something, then completely blanked me. But I put it down to…well, I suppose he may be embarrassed about my situation. It’s probably nothing.’
‘No, Al, it is something, and we’re not helping him by keeping quiet. Helen Farr told me she caught him on the phone this afternoon and he looked like a ghost.’
Kerr felt a spark of irritation. ‘So you’ve been asking around, yeah?’
‘Actually, no,’ said Melanie. ‘He was really off with Helen, and Dodge is never like that. Waved her away, then dashed out without telling anyone or leaving a contact number, which is obviously a complete no-no on the source unit. And what about his drinking?’ she continued before Kerr could interrupt. ‘When did any of us see Dodge hammered? The total pro, hollow legs, last man standing, brain on red alert while everyone else falls over. Couple of weeks ago I turned up late for a leaving do in The Albert and found him outside in the street completely slaughtered. Had to light his cigarette for him. Wouldn’t let me take him home and God knows how he ever made it.’
Kerr looked her in the eye. ‘Finished?’
‘Fact is, he’s breaking enough rules to sack himself,’ said Melanie. ‘We all love Dodge to bits but he’s losing his grip. And you know what the Job’s like with drink these days. I’m right, aren’t I, Al? There’s something bad going on here.’
‘Or he’s a middle aged man who’s mislaid his mojo,’ said Kerr. ‘Domestic trouble, perhaps. It happens. And we shouldn’t be having this conversation.’ For a moment he silently regarded Melanie, still rebuilding her own marriage since her undercover mission. ‘How is Rob, by the way?’
‘We’re good. Thanks.’
‘So I’ll watch out for him,’ said Kerr, pushing his chair against the airvent, then easing sideways as his mobile rang. It was Ritchie’s office. ‘Donna?’
‘Are you still here?’
‘What about you?’ he said, instinctively checking his watch again. ‘It’s almost eight.’
‘Boss wants to see you. It’s urgent, John.’
‘Okay.’ Fargo was already standing to make way for him. ‘Can I go now?’ he said, as Melanie stayed in her chair.
‘Talk about D
odge getting home that night, where does he live?’
‘Ruislip.’
‘Wrong. That’s the one we know about. Three bed semi near the church and that lovely green, right?’
Kerr shrugged at Fargo, still squeezed against the door. ‘We helped him move in.’
‘And twenty-six West Drive is still his registered address. But he moved three weeks ago to Harrow.’
‘Melanie, you’re out of order.’
‘Two bedroom apartment, first floor refurb in an old private school. Gated, secure, and v posh. I checked and it was going for seven two five and a half.’
‘And your point is?’
‘Ruislip was rented, John. So where did Dodge get that kind of money?’
‘And what makes it right for you to spy on one of my deputies?’
‘I’m telling you he’s got a problem,’ said Melanie. ‘Someone has to.’
•••
Slipping the disc into his jacket, Kerr called Nancy on his way round the corridor. ‘I’ve got it.’
In the background, he could hear one of the children calling his name. ‘And the bad news?’
Kerr’s BlackBerry vibrated, and the name on the screen grabbed his attention. ‘Commander wants a quick word.’
‘I’ll get them to deliver.’
Nancy cut the call, making it easy for him to pick up from Washington DC. ‘Rich?’
‘How you doing, my friend?’ The voice was upbeat, for Rich Malone, former regional security officer at the US embassy in Grosvenor Square and Kerr’s most trusted contact across the pond, always sounded like the bearer of good news.
‘What’s up?’ said Kerr.
‘I heard about Alan and, hey, we’re truly sorry. Tough break.’ Malone even made condolence sound like his Boston Shamrocks had just scored. ‘How soon can you get over?’ he continued, before Kerr could reply.
‘What have you got?’
‘Can you talk?’
‘Of course.’
‘I can imagine it’s all hell breaking loose over there, right? Listen, I have intel for your ears only.’