Hamad Farsi sat on a park bench as he ate his sandwich while browsing the internet on his phone. The call to meet up had come from Samir, a low-level snitch who had been providing the security services with local information for a few months. At first Farsi had blown him off, telling him he was too busy to meet, but Samir had insisted that he had big news that couldn’t wait. He’d refused to divulge it over the phone, so Farsi had been forced to take an al fresco lunch. There was a chance that it could tie in with their surveillance of Imran al-Hosni, though Samir wasn’t known to be one of his entourage.
Samir turned up five minutes late and took a seat next to him. The informant was young, barely out of his teens, and his gaunt expression suggested a dependency on recreational chemicals.
‘What’ve you got for me?’ Farsi asked.
‘Depends. How much did you bring?’
It was always the same with Samir. Now and again, he provided little jewels of information, but most of the time it was mere speculation and third-hand gossip. The only thing Samir had going for him was his addiction, which kept him coming back for more handouts.
‘I’ll give you fifty if it’s anything other than something you found on Facebook.’
‘Fifty?’ Samir moaned. ‘Come on, man, I need at least two hundred.’
‘Fifty’s all I got. You want it or not?’
Samir made a face like a child confronted with broccoli at lunchtime.
‘If it’s any good, I’ll be back tomorrow with another two, how’s that?’
Samir perked up slightly. ‘Okay, but if I have to wait, I want five hundred. I’m telling you, it’s really big.’
Farsi would have to run that amount past Ellis, and he wasn’t convinced that she’d be happy with the payment.
‘I can’t authorise that much, but you start talking, and if it’s anything we already know, I’ll stop you and you take the fifty. If it’s as big as you say, I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Oh, it’s big, man, but I’ve got these guys on my ass chasing me for money. I need to square them away, otherwise I can’t spend my time helping you out, know what I mean?’
Farsi knew exactly what he meant: he’d borrowed from drug dealers and they were demanding payment. These weren’t the kind of people who sent you letters threatening court action, either.
Farsi nodded non-committally. ‘Start talking.’
He could almost hear the informant’s brain working as he mulled over the options. ‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘You know Muhammad Khan, from Tower Hamlets?’
‘I think I’ve heard of him,’ Farsi said. In fact, Khan, the imam at the local mosque, was near the top of their watch list. Until recently, they’d had a man watching him, but he’d been pulled off that duty once their focus had shifted to Imran al-Hosni.
‘Well, he’s working on something huge,’ Samir said.
‘You already said that. I’m paying for details.’
‘Yeah, well, I don’t have them yet, but I’m working on it.’
Farsi rose to leave. ‘You’re wasting my time. Crawl back under your rock and don’t call me again unless you’ve got something concrete.’
‘This is big!’ Samir jumped up and grabbed Farsi’s arm. ‘Khan’s stopped talking to anyone. He’s closed himself off from everyone but a few of his closest mates. No-one can get near him anymore. And there’s a meeting set up for tomorrow night where he’s going to make an announcement.’
It wasn’t exactly the same communications blackout al-Hosni was undertaking, but it was enough to suggest that Khan had something planned. Whether or not it warranted resources was for Ellis to decide, but Farsi would need much more to go on than Samir had told him so far.
‘I want you to get into that meeting and let me know what he says,’ Farsi told him, handing over the fifty pounds.
‘Impossible! I’m not that close to him.’
‘Find a way,’ Farsi said. ‘If you get me a recording and it’s something we weren’t aware of, I might be able to stretch to a thousand. Otherwise our relationship ends here.’
The look on Samir’s face said he was hooked. Unfortunately, Farsi didn’t trust the snitch as far as he could throw him, and without the stipulation of an audio recording, Samir would likely turn up in a couple of days with a fabricated story to try to collect his bounty. Now that he’d spelt out the mission parameters, he would see whether Samir was up to the task.
‘Remember, I need a recording,’ he said as he turned on his heels. ‘Or the deal’s off.’
‘What’s the problem?’ Sarah Thompson asked as she entered Ellis’s office.
‘I was hoping you could tell me. Is there something going on between you and Andrew that I should know about?’
‘It’s nothing,’ Thompson said, and immediately began wondering who had brought it to Ellis’s attention. Only Solomon and Small were in the same room, so it must have been one of them. Unless Ellis had been watching the feed from the detention area . . .
‘Why don’t you take a seat and explain it to me.’
‘I’d rather not,’ Thompson said. ‘It’s kind of personal.’
Ellis gestured to the chair anyway. ‘We’re in the middle of a serious situation right now, and I can’t afford to have you two at each other’s throats. Tell me this is something you can work out.’
Thompson took a seat, and as she did, the emotion that had been building up all morning finally overwhelmed her. The tears came first, followed by uncontrollable sobbing. She took a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose, doing her best to get herself together, but her body wouldn’t listen. For two minutes, she bawled into her tissue before Ellis came round the desk and placed her hands on her shoulders.
‘Take the rest of the day off. Go home, catch up on some sleep. We can discuss this tomorrow.’
‘I don’t want to lose him!’
The words were out of her mouth before Thompson could stop them, and Ellis strode back to her seat.
‘What makes you think that’s going to happen? From what I’ve seen, you’re the perfect couple.’
Thompson finally managed to stop the tears and she blew her nose once more. ‘Because I’m pregnant.’
Ellis sat back in her chair. ‘And what did he say when you told him?’
‘I haven’t. We were chatting last month and he made it clear he didn’t want children. If I tell him now, he’s sure to leave me.’
Ellis looked confused. ‘So why were you accusing him of having a thing for Malika? If you’re desperate to keep him, why start a fight over nothing?’
‘I don’t know!’ Thompson said, her voice louder than she’d expected. She took a couple of breaths and tried again. ‘I don’t know. I’ve just been feeling . . . strange lately. More emotional. I keep trying to imagine what he’d say, but every time it comes out different. Sometimes I think he’ll melt into my arms, others I picture him storming out of the house. I’m just so confused.’
‘How many weeks are you?’
‘Eight. I took a home test last week but only got confirmation a couple of days ago.’
‘You’re going to have to tell him eventually,’ Ellis said.
‘I know, but I’m scared of what he’s going to say.’
‘Trust me, I’ve known Andrew longer than you have. He’s a good man. I suggest you go and apologise for your earlier outburst and, when you get home, break the news about the baby.’
The advice made good sense, especially coming from someone she respected. Thompson took a couple of minutes to compose herself, then thanked Ellis and headed to the bathroom to fix her make-up.
A quarter of an hour later, she swiped open the door to the interrogation suite and stuck her head inside.
‘Andrew, can I have a word?’
She held the door open and let him into the other chamber, then closed it and pushed him up against the wall. Her lips met his in the hottest kiss she could muster, and when they parted, she nuzzled her face into his neck.
‘I’m sorry
,’ she said.
Andrew wrapped his arms around her and kissed her shoulder. ‘If that’s how you make up, we should fight more often.’
CHAPTER 20
Tuesday, 15 August 2017
Andrew Harvey waited impatiently as Malika flicked through the pile of images on the table. They’d identified more than fifty plastic surgeons operating in the London area, and the prisoner was looking through Street View images taken from the front and rear of each surgery.
Harvey suppressed a yawn and looked at his watch. They’d been at it for more than eight hours, though most of that time had been taken up with numerous breaks to tend to Jalal. In the moments when he’d been able to question Malika, details had been thin on the ground. He’d gone back over earlier questions in an effort to try to trip her up, but her story remained consistent, and he still didn’t have anything that could lead to the X3.
‘This might be it,’ Malika said, bringing Harvey back to life. She studied the photo again, then handed it to him. ‘Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s the one. I recognise the crescent moon cut into the door.’
Harvey took the photo to the door, and when Sarah opened it, he stepped through.
‘I want to take her there to confirm that it’s the same place. Can you please arrange for an armed unit to meet us there?’
‘Will do,’ Sarah said. She turned to make the arrangements but Harvey called her back.
‘So what was all that about earlier?’
He’d wanted to ask her about it before, but Sarah hadn’t given him a chance before he’d had to go back into the interrogation room. Afterwards, whenever he’d stepped out for a break, Sarah had been upstairs, working on other aspects of the case.
‘Let’s talk about it tonight, when we get home.’
‘You can’t tell me now?’
Sarah looked at the others in the room. ‘No, later.’
She disappeared, leaving Harvey to wonder once again what the spat had been about. Unfortunately, he knew Sarah well enough to know that he wouldn’t be able to prise it out of her until she was ready, so he concentrated on the matter in hand.
He asked Solomon to take care of Jalal while Malika and he were away, and went back into the interrogation room.
‘We’re going now.’
‘Now? What about Jalal?’
‘It’s after four. We need to get to the surgery before it closes. Jalal will be well looked after. We should only be gone for an hour.’
He escorted Malika to the door, then asked the guard to take her back to her cell to get her coat. They returned just as Sarah appeared in the corridor.
‘Scrub that,’ she said. Then, to the guard: ‘Take Malika back to the interrogation room.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Harvey asked.
Sarah waited until Malika was out of earshot. ‘I asked SO15 to meet us there with an armed unit and they wanted to know what interest we had in a murder case.’
‘Murder?’
Sarah nodded. ‘Apparently the surgeon, Dr Kamal Bousaid, was found dead yesterday morning. The receptionist found him when she opened up. It looks like a professional hit.’
She described Bousaid’s death, the single stab wound to the neck that had severed his spinal cord. ‘It was meant to look like a robbery, but the way he was killed suggests he was targeted. Given that Malika was there on the day he died, I’d say someone was trying to cover their tracks. My guess is that the killer took the X3.’
‘What have the police got so far? Any suspects?’
‘Nothing. They checked CCTV covering the front of the building but all they saw was lights going on at around the time Malika said she got there. There’s nothing covering the back entrance, and that’s how they think the killer arrived and left.’
‘Then I’ll have a word with her and see if anyone else was there when she had the X3 removed.’
He rejoined Malika and asked who else had been present when she’d undergone surgery.
‘No-one, just me and the other three girls, plus the doctor.’
‘You didn’t see anyone else that night?’
‘No.’
It was yet another dead end, and Harvey was becoming increasingly frustrated with the way the case was panning out. Despite having the women in custody, they still had nothing more than two bodies and a tenuous link to Imran al-Hosni. If Malika didn’t come up with something soon, they might be forced to pull al-Hosni in for questioning, and no judge in the land would sign an arrest warrant on the basis of best guesses.
The door to the room opened and Hamad Farsi entered and placed a folder in front of Malika.
‘These are all the people we could find who have damage to their ear. Hopefully Malika can pick out the truck driver from the photos.’
Malika opened the folder to the first page and studied the photograph for a few seconds, then flipped over to the next mug shot. Harvey watched for signs that she’d recognised someone, but it wasn’t until the eighth page that her expression changed. She looked at the photo for at least a minute, then pushed the folder towards Harvey.
‘That’s him. He’s the one that drove us into England.’
‘You’re sure?’ Farsi asked. ‘Don’t you want to check the others?’
‘No, that’s definitely him.’
Harvey looked up at Farsi. ‘Do we know him?’
‘Anjam Shah. He’s a truck driver by trade, and frequents the same mosque as al-Hosni.’
‘Al-Hosni!’ Malika said, startling them both. ‘That’s the name Karim mentioned when I first met him. Imran al-Hosni!’
It was Harvey’s turn to ask if she was sure.
‘I’m positive. I recall it clearly now.’
Relief washed over Harvey like a tsunami. After two days of probing, he finally had something solid to work with, though he had no time to enjoy the moment. The X3 had been in the UK for more than four days, giving al-Hosni plenty of time to make his preparations.
Harvey picked up the folder and told Farsi to follow him. In the outer chamber, he asked Solomon to have Malika and Jalal returned to her cell.
‘I need you and Gerald upstairs in five minutes. We won’t be questioning her any further today.’
Harvey led Farsi up to the office and told him to assemble the team in the conference room, then knocked on Ellis’s door and entered.
‘It’s definitely al-Hosni,’ he told her. ‘Malika confirmed it.’
‘How did she know?’
‘Hamad mentioned the name just now, and she said that was the one Karim had used when he was talking to one of his men.’
‘Is it possible she’s just saying that to keep you sweet?’ Ellis asked.
‘No way. Hamad only mentioned his surname, but Malika knew his first name.’
Ellis digested the information for a moment. ‘Okay, how do you plan to proceed?’
‘I’m assuming al-Hosni isn’t stupid enough to have the X3 stashed under his bed, which means one of his acquaintances is in possession of it. We already have comprehensive logs of everyone he’s met over the last few days, but we’ll have to backtrack to follow the movements of each and every one of them. It’s going to take thousands of man-hours to go through all the CCTV coverage, so we’ll need everyone working double shifts.’
‘Do it. In the meantime, I’ll report in to Maynard. He’s been bugging me every hour for updates, so this should keep him happy for a while.’
Harvey left her to make the call and returned to his own desk, where he looked up the surveillance logs on al-Hosni. One file contained a list of everyone he’d been in contact with since Friday: more than thirty confirmed names. Hundreds of others had attended the mosque at the same time as al-Hosni, but those names would have to wait until the prime suspects were eliminated.
He removed his laptop from the docking station and carried it through to the conference room, where he found the whole team waiting. After hooking his machine up to the wall-mounted screen, he brought up a picture of the main target.
&n
bsp; ‘This is Imran al-Hosni,’ he said, looking up at the image of a man in his late forties sporting a long, thin beard. ‘He’s the imam at Stockwell Green mosque. One of our female prisoners confirmed that he is part of the X3 plot. It’s unlikely that he took delivery of the agent personally, but he’s certainly pulling the strings. Our task is to uncover the movements of everyone in this file over the last four days.’
The image on the screen changed to the list of names. ‘The surveillance logs show where and when al-Hosni met each of these people. Use that date stamp as a starting point and use CCTV coverage to track their subsequent movements. If that leads nowhere, look backwards from their meeting to last Friday. In particular, we’re looking for something changing hands. It could be as small as a paperback or larger than a briefcase, but chances are, one of these people has the X3, and it’s our job to find it before they can use it.’
‘Why don’t we just bring al-Hosni in?’ Gareth Bailey asked. ‘It sounds like we’ve got enough evidence to arrest him.’
‘We do, but we can’t guarantee he’ll talk. Our priority is finding the X3, and once we have it we can start pulling people in. Speaking of CCTV, Gareth, how did you get on with the A2 lorry search?’
‘There’s one vehicle outstanding. It failed to reach the second camera, so I checked the cameras on the off-ramps and there’s no sign of it there, either.’
‘When did you discover this?’ Harvey asked.
Bailey looked down at his coffee. ‘Yesterday evening.’
‘And you didn’t think to tell me?’
‘I didn’t want to come to you until I had something concrete to report.’
Harvey did his best to hide his frustration. ‘Please tell me you at least ran the plates.’
‘Of course! I’m not that stupid.’
Harvey bit his tongue. Chewing Bailey a new hole might make him feel better, but he needed everyone on board, not sitting in a corner nursing hurt feelings.
‘Was the name Anjam Shah by any chance?’
Bailey didn’t have to answer. The look on his face told Harvey all he needed to know.
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