by Roger Pearce
‘I’m working on the same for Victoria. Let’s see what Cheapside has to offer. I’m meeting the explosives guys at the scene in a couple of hours.’
Gathering bombs around her like others collected antiques, Polly Graham had demonstrated that every bombmaker in the world improvised in a singular way. To Polly, each twist of wire, sliver of circuit board and angle of screw was different; every timer and shred of detonator cord unique. She studied the way the explosive was packed and the container in which it was delivered. Her thesis was simple: every bomb left a signature as exclusive as an artist’s monogram or silversmith’s hallmark.
‘And you’ve spoken with Derek Finch, right?’
‘Why wouldn’t I? Everything through your Bomb Data Centre.’
‘So why is he telling everyone this is Irish dissident?’
She paused, then gave a little laugh. ‘Now you’re talking politics. Definitely not my area. Look, I’m saying the IRA have never used Semtex from that Czech consignment. The SA11 batch, as I told Melanie yesterday. Perhaps Finch isn’t listening. Maybe he knows something I don’t. Ask him.’ A couple of doors slammed. ‘You know what, John? I never had this crap when I was with the Army.’
In 2006 Polly had been deployed to Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, profiling booby trap bombs recovered by the Army’s engineers. In two long tours of duty, working day and night, she would dismantle every device recovered intact and, where the bomb had detonated, reconstruct mock-ups from the tiniest fragments. Over a career spanning three decades, Polly Graham had emerged from the shadow of her husband’s murder to become the UK’s expert in the analysis of improvised bombs. She had used her skill to identify dozens of terrorists for prosecution or elimination, scoring each success as a shot of revenge for her husband.
Kerr heard the engine start up. ‘I’m saying there may be a new kid on the block who hasn’t crossed my radar before. So you have to look further afield than the IRA, whatever Finch and Security Service are saying.’
Kerr frowned. ‘MI5? Has Toby Devereux been on to you?’
A sigh of frustration came down the line. ‘John, don’t let yourself get distracted. Find the intelligence. Let me follow the science.’
‘But we are talking different bombmakers here, right?’
‘Early days.’
‘From different terrorist groups?’
‘Patience, my friend.’ The diesel surged as Polly accelerated into the open. ‘If I come up with a signature you’ll be the first to know.’
Donna summoned Kerr just as Polly rang off. He found Bill Ritchie emerging from his personal washroom, shirt cuffs rolled back, shaking his hands dry. ‘First chance for a pee in two hours and the cleaner’s nicked the towel,’ he said, leaning against the conference table and massaging his temples.
‘That good, yeah?’
‘Commissioner twice, Home Sec, Mayor’s office. Non-stop. Everyone windy as hell. COBRAs coming out of my ears. PM and Home Sec racing each other back from their constituencies to take charge.’
‘What’s new?’ said Kerr, lingering by the door, ready to get out of his hair.
‘This,’ he said, wiping his hands on his trousers before reaching for his yellow legal pad. ‘Cabinet Office ordered a Silver Scrum for tomorrow night.’
‘Saturday? Really?’
‘Key experts only. Out of the limelight.’
‘Silver Scrum’ was Whitehall jargon for the Current Intelligence Group, a cluster of intelligence experts who prepared briefings for the high level Joint Intelligence Committee and Number Ten.
‘To achieve what?’ said Kerr. ‘Convince ourselves the IRA really have made a comeback?’
Ritchie sat down, slid a chair clear of the table with his foot and beckoned him closer. ‘It’s going to be a difficult one and I want you there with me.’
‘To persuade Toby Devereux of the alternatives, yes?’
Ritchie regarded him. ‘How’s Polly?’
‘On her way to Cheapside.’
‘Stay close. She’s the only voice of sanity around here.’
‘Polly says we should be looking in the other direction.’
‘I know. And you’re about to tell me you were right all along.’ Ritchie fell silent for a moment. ‘So can you raise Justin before the CIG?’
‘Not contactable,’ said Kerr, shaking his head. ‘Monday, earliest.’
‘Okay,’ said Ritchie, rolling down his cuffs with a glance at the clock. ‘But he’s good, yes?’
Kerr stood, replaced the chair and hunched his shoulders. ‘Justin’s fine.’
Ritchie checked him by the door. ‘Donna reminded me about your promotion board,’ he said. ‘Want me to push it back?’ He slipped into his jacket, grabbed his notepad and followed Kerr out.
‘And that’s going to make me look better?’
Ritchie chuckled and gave Kerr’s arm a squeeze. He swung round to speak to Donna but she was already holding up a couple of clean white towels, neatly folded. He slowly shook his head. ‘Have you still got this place bugged, or what?’
•••
Friday, 14 October, 19.36, Hornsey Vale
Kerr arrived at Nancy’s Sergeyev’s house to the aroma of casserole and the chorus of ‘Hotel California’. He had invested half a decade and most of his salary in a classy refurbished top floor apartment five miles away in Islington, with beech hardwood floors, Amode furniture picked out by his daughter, and a balcony with a view of Chapel Market. He enjoyed his flat but loved Nancy, so personal treasures had begun to join his clothes on the journey across north London. On Easter Monday, four days after her decree absolute, Nancy had silently offered him Karl’s door key, and from that moment Kerr had embraced Nancy’s modest Victorian semi, with its Turkish rugs, log burner and children’s chaos, as his true home.
Friday was Nancy’s day off from the local GP surgery where she worked to boost the money Karl gave her. Dodging a scooter, green BMX bike and multi-coloured trainers, Kerr found her in the kitchen, flushed from cooking, a glass of Merlot on the table. She was barefoot, in a red stripy top with white leggings, and her dark hair was cut in a new bob. She slid his jacket off as she kissed him, scratching his stubble. ‘You look knackered,’ she said, waving the remote to switch off the muted wall TV, still looping footage from Cheapside.
‘Want me to get a shower?’
‘I want you to eat.’
Until her disastrous marriage to Karl Sergeyev, Nancy had maintained the photographic archive in Special Branch Registry, animating sterile reports with deadpan mugshots, stolen personal snaps and blurry surveillance images. Nancy understood better than most the importance of snatching downtime from a terrorist campaign; but the glass she poured Kerr was smaller than her own, as if she knew he would be called out before morning.
The kitchen lay at the end of the hall, next to the small dining room which was home to the ironing board and a perpetual mountain of clean laundry on the armchair, as well as children’s laptops rooted to the table. Above the original cast-iron fireplace hung Nancy’s latest watercolour of the railway arches on Walthamstow Marsh, a little lopsided. The family invariably squeezed around the stripped pine table in the kitchen and Kerr sat there now, reclaiming space from Amy’s half-finished stitching cards and a Spacebot.
He dropped his BlackBerry onto the table as Nancy dished up. ‘All quiet up there?’
‘They gave up waiting. Tom’s building a Lego monster or something.’ Nancy’s son was six, named after Karl’s Russian grandfather, Tomas, and a year younger than Amy. ‘Says you promised to help him?’
Joe Walsh was singing ‘One Day at a Time’ and Kerr turned up the volume. They clinked glasses and he smiled at her. ‘What would you like me to do?’
Nancy ran her fingers through her hair and frowned, still caught unawares by the change. ‘Find a few minutes to read up for that bloody promotion board.’ She swallowed some wine and suddenly looked serious, as if Bill Ritchie himself had been on the phone. ‘You’ve got two days
, John. That’s all.’
‘I’ve been swotting.’
‘Rubbish.’ She turned the sound down again and waved her fork at him. A piece of carrot fell off and dropped to the table. ‘Look, I’m asking you to play the game for once. Tell them what they want to hear.’
Kerr’s shoulders lifted. ‘Absolutely,’ he said, a second before his mobile rang. Robyn’s name was showing on the screen but he jabbed Ignore, hoping his hand had been quicker than Nancy’s eye.
‘I’m serious.’ Chewing fast, she leant over to give his nose a tweak. ‘Listen to me. Karl was bad enough. I don’t need two mavericks in my life.’
Kerr had just bought a new Espresso maker but they skipped coffee and went straight to bed, avoiding the creaks on the staircase and rolling aside Amy’s giant inflatable globe on the landing. They were just getting warmed up when Tom stumbled into the room with a handful of Lego pieces, but past the point of no return as Robyn’s name reappeared on his BlackBerry. This time Nancy beat him to the draw, reaching down to swipe it from the bedside table with her book and tube of moisturiser.
‘Robyn’s an eager beaver,’ she said as they recovered, stretching back on the pillows.
‘It’s nothing. Probably worried today might be connected to Hammersmith.’
‘You told me Alan Fargo was handling that side of things.’
Kerr took her in his arms. ‘She still believes it may have been meant for her.’
‘Was it?’
‘Don’t think so. Her or me, who knows? But she was the one just back from Belfast. It’s a good project.’
‘Human rights. Of course. And she couldn’t wait to tell you about it.’
‘It was a drink.’
Nancy sat up and plumped the pillows. ‘On a fucking houseboat? Do me a favour, John. It was a date.’
‘It was business. She’s Gabi’s mother.’
‘So if it’s so bloody platonic why didn’t you take her first call?’
‘Because I’m here with you.’ Kerr slid out of bed and wandered around the room collecting things; his BlackBerry had almost made it to the door. ‘Gabi’s dying to meet up. Keeps pestering me to introduce you.’
‘So why don’t you? Ashamed of me?’
‘Nancy, come on.’
‘Where were you last night that you couldn’t even get a shower and shave?’ Kerr was clutching a bundle of clothes and she made a grab for his shirt. ‘Or change this?’
‘Nowhere.’
Nancy lay back on the pillows, slowly shaking her head. ‘Don’t insult me with your secret squirrel bullshit, John. I’ve heard it all before, remember?’
The phone buzzed again and Kerr showed her Dodge’s name on the screen before she could react. Still naked, Kerr stood close to the bed, trying to make sense of the Irishman’s drunken slur, stock-still for an agonising minute as the dire reality crowded in on him. ‘Dodge, I need you to stop right there… Where are you?… Listen to me. Get yourself to the office…No way, take a taxi…Go to the Fishbowl and wait for me…Not a word to anyone…Yeah, half an hour tops.’
He cut the call and bent down to kiss Nancy’s forehead. ‘Sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘Look, I’m with you, sweetheart,’ he murmured. ‘Never been more serious in my life.’
Nancy reached between his thighs and gently pulled him to her. ‘You coming back?’
‘Of course. Where else would I go?’
Chapter Twenty-Six
Friday, 14 October, 21.17, The Fishbowl
Deeply preoccupied, half-sprinting for his car, Kerr collided in the dark with Nancy’s next door neighbour, walking her Jack Russell on a long lead. He apologised, disentangled himself, folded himself into the Alfa and skidded away, flicking the blue light on the dash the second he cleared Nancy’s street. Dodge’s hot intelligence was grave, but his garbled delivery alarmed Kerr even more. In all their years working together, not once had Dodge sounded so tanked up, anxious and defensive. The message was starkly simple, yet the words had poured down the line in a jumbled rush, like pieces of a jigsaw. In all their critical agent cases, Dodge had never let drink do the talking, especially over something as terrible as this.
However, it was the trickle of wretchedness beneath the news that troubled Kerr most, the despair he had recognised before in operatives depressed by overwork, lonely and unsung, reeling on the brink. Since 9/11 two frontline Special Branch officers had taken their own lives, by rope and shotgun, their voices unheard, every plea for help undetected. Forty-eight hours ago he had rebuffed Melanie’s warning about Dodge, and now, because he had learnt to spot the red flags, his carelessness hurt even more.
Dialling as he swung left into Stroud Green Road he caught Melanie in 1830 with Alan Fargo, searching Mercury for the next day’s non-Irish surveillance targets. ‘Have you seen Dodge?’
‘He’s sick,’ she said.
‘He’s on his way in by taxi. I want you to call me when he arrives and tell me where he goes.’
A pause. ‘How about I just meet him in Back Hall?’
‘Without him knowing. He’s coming to see me in the Fishbowl but might go to the source unit first.’
‘To his own office, you mean,’ she said after another gap, her voice flat with sarcasm.
‘I want to know if he checks any files.’
‘You’re asking me to sneak on Dodge?’
Kerr braked hard at the junction with Seven Sisters Road before accelerating through the red and swinging right towards Kings Cross. He was less than a mile from the terrorists’ safe house in Finsbury Park.
‘Something’s wrong. I’m worried about him.’
‘Yeah. Finally,’ she said, her words laced with ‘told you so’ recrimination.
‘I’m about ten minutes away,’ he said, weaving through crawling traffic at the Nag’s Head junction.
‘I’m not…’
‘Hold on.’ He swerved to the wrong side of the road and cut a sharp left, racing south for the straight, fast stretch of Caledonian Road.
‘…John, I said I’m not happy about this.’
‘I want you there with me. In the Fishbowl. He’s going to need plenty of black coffee. And can you get hold of Jack? It’s going to be an all-nighter.’
Melanie was waiting for him in the underground garage with Styrofoam coffees in a cutout tray. ‘He went straight up to see you,’ she said, heading for the spiral staircase. ‘He’s there now.’
Kerr held open the door. ‘What’s he doing?’
‘Sobering up.’
They found Dodge hunched in the darkened Fishbowl, his broad back disturbing the blinds. He sat forward when Kerr walked in, legs wide apart, suit jacket scrunched in his hands. ‘I’m sorry, John,’ he slurred, suddenly noticing Melanie. ‘I couldn’t not…I had to tell you.’
‘Stay put,’ said Kerr, flicking the blinds closed as Dodge began to stand. The tiny room smelt of sweat and sick, so he left the door open.
Melanie eased the lids from the cups. ‘I’ve already tried that,’ said Dodge, as Kerr gently pressed a coffee into his chubby hands.
‘Drink it,’ he said, squeezing behind his desk.
Dodge shifted to make room for Melanie on the chair beside him. He looked a complete mess, his tie trailing from his jacket pocket, his shirt front peppered with specks and stains. As Melanie took his jacket and folded it over the back of her chair he raised his head to look from one to the other. ‘Sorry, guys,’ he mumbled. ‘Couldn’t take the risk.’
‘It’s alright,’ said Kerr, sloshing coffee onto the desk as he mishandled his own cup. ‘Dodge, you just told me they’re going for the Bank of England tomorrow.’ He glanced at Melanie, cramped beneath Dodge’s hefty shoulder with her hand resting on his arm. ‘That’s basically it, right?’
‘Right.’
Kerr plucked Wednesday’s copy of the Guardian from the waste bin and laid it over the spill. ‘Tell me again. Exactly as you remember it.’
‘I only saw him for
a wee while, five or six minutes. He says the people who did Victoria and Cheapside are going for the Bank of England tomorrow.’
‘Saturday?’ frowned Melanie. ‘But the City’s empty at the weekend.’
‘Symbolic,’ murmured Dodge. ‘That’s what he told me.’ Dodge took a sip of drink and the surface trembled in his hand, as if someone was blowing on it.
‘What about the rest? Time? Place? Type of device?’ said Kerr. ‘Does he know the attackers?’
Dodge balanced the cup on the floor between his feet with exaggerated care. ‘I’ve only got the target. That’s all.’
Kerr regarded him for a moment, dissatisfied. ‘So let’s have chapter and verse on the source.’
‘He gave me a name. Roscoe. Bobby Roscoe. But don’t waste your time,’ said Dodge, as if expecting one of them immediately to run a check. ‘He’s no trace in Registry. But it has to be a false ID. A man like this will definitely have a criminal record.’
‘Or terrorist. When’s the next meet? I want to be there.’
Dodge fell silent, but Kerr could smell his breath from across the desk. ‘What does his contact number tell us?’
‘Refused.’
Kerr stared in disbelief. ‘So why didn’t you nick him?’
‘I was on my own.’ Dodge pulled at his handkerchief and a pile of change clattered to the floor. A couple of pound coins plopped into his coffee.
‘Leave it,’ he said as Dodge bent down. ‘What does he look like?’
‘Thirties, about your height. Clean-shaven, no distinguishing marks.’ Dodge shrugged. ‘Your manual worker type…but educated. English, but not from here. Up north, but don’t ask me where.’
‘You’ve just given me Everyman,’ said Kerr, unable to keep the sarcasm from his voice.
‘I’m doing my best.’
‘So let’s rewind things,’ he said, as Melanie looked daggers at him. ‘What do we have? A walk-in?’
‘Phone-in.’ Dodge breathed deeply, exhaling another stale breeze that ruffled Kerr’s face. ‘On the landline.’
‘A cold caller.’ Kerr looked at Melanie again, silently sipping her coffee, her arm still pressed against Dodge. ‘But you were sick today.’