by Nick Louth
‘This should have been disclosed to me in advance,’ Vikram King interjected.
‘New evidence has come to light,’ Cave retorted.
‘What evidence?’ King asked.
‘We’ll get to that soon enough,’ Cave said. ‘Now come with me.’
Cave led Wyrecliffe to the custody suite, where he was booked in by another sergeant, who took his personal details, phone, wallet, watch, belt and other personal items. He was then led to a cell, bare but for a plastic mattress.
‘Don’t worry,’ King said. ‘You’ll get bail, and I’ll have you out in a jiffy.’
The door was locked behind him with an ominous clang.
King was as good as his word. In half an hour, Wyrecliffe was seated in the familiar interview room, with the three officers and King. Cave then turned on the familiar reel-to-reel tape recorder, and reminded Wyrecliffe that he was still under caution.
Shah then summarised what Wyrecliffe had told her when he phoned to express his doubts that the woman on the video was Cantara al-Mansoor. ‘So, you believe that this woman, despite a superficial resemblance to Ms al-Mansoor, is actually somebody else?’
King turned to Wyrecliffe. ‘I advise you not to comment.’
‘I want to. It was the voice as much as the face. It just isn’t her.’
‘Let’s assume you are right,’ Shah said. ‘Why might jihadis recruit a suicide bomber and then have someone else do the job?’ she said.
‘You don’t have to answer that,’ King interjected. ‘You’re being asked to speculate about areas in which you have no knowledge.’
‘I’m interested in his opinion,’ Shah told King. ‘You’ll see why in a minute. So, Mr Wyrecliffe, why do you think someone else would be used?’
‘Easily. What if she lost her nerve? It must happen all the time. The prospect of imminent death can’t be easy to overcome.’
‘I agree. But why wouldn’t the new bomber use her own name?’
‘Because, as you pointed out, the ticket would already have been booked in Cantara’s name,’ Wyrecliffe said. ‘If it was, say, the day before, there might be no other way to get on that flight.’
Concannon jumped in. ‘Why would that particular flight be so important? There were no VIPs aboard, unless you happen to count a technical delegation from the Ministry of Overseas Aid. You could make the same political impact by blowing up any EgyptAir flight.’
‘I hadn’t really considered that,’ Wyrecliffe said.
There was a pause. ‘I think you had,’ Shah said.
‘I’m sorry, what do you mean?’
‘That particular flight on that particular day was important, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just any old flight from Heathrow to Cairo.’
Wyrecliffe shrugged, trying to project bafflement.
‘Mr Wyrecliffe, why didn’t you tell us that you had originally been booked on that very same flight?’
King’s exhalation was long and portentous. It expressed the significance of what had just been said. When Wyrecliffe didn’t immediately reply, Shah continued. ‘This is what we have just discovered. We checked not only everyone who had been on that flight, but those who had cancelled their bookings. Guess what? We found your name.’
‘I assumed it was just a frightening coincidence.’
‘A frightening coincidence? That a woman who was first in love with you and then, after your behaviour towards her, presumably hated you, would want to see you dead? That would be a coincidence? Or would it actually be a motive?’ Shah asked.
‘You don’t have to answer that,’ King muttered.
‘Of course, I have thought about it,’ Wyrecliffe said. ‘But I soon realised it was irrelevant. I hadn’t seen her for nine, maybe ten months when I booked that flight. There is no way she could have known I was booked on it.’
‘Really? Friends at the BBC might have told her.’
‘No one at the BBC knew. It wasn’t a BBC assignment. I was going for a job interview to work for a rival broadcaster. I had booked the flight myself.’
‘Maybe your computer was hacked’ Shah said.
‘Oh, come on,’ Wyrecliffe said. ‘I sent Cantara plenty of e-mails of apology after that terrible evening. You’ve seen them all. If she had wanted to find out my movements, she could probably have just replied to me, and asked. I would probably have told her. Why wouldn’t I?’ he shrugged.
‘There are other ways she could have found out. A contact at the other broadcaster, in the airline. There are always ways.’ Shah shrugged, as if conceding the point. ‘Whether you thought it a coincidence or not, you should have told us. The reason you did not, I suggest, is that it hints at a continued connection between you and Ms al-Mansoor, at least from her perspective. However she found out, it was relevant to her that you were on the flight. It could quite easily have been a partial motive. To know about it at an earlier stage would have been very useful.’
She looked down at the hefty file in front of her.
‘Before I came here this morning I had a case meeting with the director of the Crown Prosecution Service and his team. The subject of the meeting was you, Mr Wyrecliffe.’ Shah fixed him with a steely glance. ‘We agreed that there is clearly perjury, considering you have lied, repeatedly to us, and sometimes while under caution. But The Terrorism Act 2000 is more powerful. The director was very enthusiastic about the prospects of securing an easy conviction, based on what we have here.’ She hefted the file.
Wyrecliffe knew that this was now getting very serious indeed. The Crown Prosecution Service was responsible for the final decision on whether or not to prosecute him. In his peripheral vision he felt rather than saw King’s eyes widen in confirmation of the deepening chasm opening up beneath his client.
‘Let’s review this litany of untruths, shall we?’ Shah said. ‘One, lying about your movements regarding Ms al-Mansoor. Two, failure to disclose the key date of the suspect’s suicide attempt. Three, lying about your abusive sexual relationship with the suspect. Four, covering up the suicide e-mail the suspect sent you, which would prove an important record of her emotional connection to you. Five, failure to mention that you were booked on the flight on which the bombing took place.’
Shah leaned forward and looked straight into his eyes. ‘This is the most complex terror investigation that the United Kingdom has seen for years, on a par with Lockerbie and the 7/7 bombings. It involves the coordination of more than two dozen security, intelligence and police agencies not only in Britain, but in Egypt, the United States and elsewhere. We’ve logged over 12,300 man hours so far in this investigation at public expense. The lives of one hundred and seventy-six people were lost in that plane crash, ninety-three of them UK citizens or residents, caused by a bomb carried by someone who boarded the aircraft at Heathrow. Carried by someone you knew. In fact, as far as we can establish, you are the only person in this country who knew her intimately. And you Mr Wyrecliffe have obstructed our investigation. Indeed, following my conversations with the CPS, we even considered we could sustain a case that your lies were intended to pervert the course of justice.’
‘That’s rubbish…’
‘Lies that, under the full weight of the law, could lead to the maximum available sentence of life imprisonment. Still, under the terrorism charge we decided on you’d still be looking at five years.’
All the blood had drained away from Wyrecliffe’s face. ‘Look, I will admit…’
The lawyer’s hand closed over his. ‘Mr Wyrecliffe, can I suggest that at this stage it would be better if you didn’t actually admit anything.’
‘Okay,’ Wyrecliffe said. ‘I can prove that the bomber was not Cantara.’
Cave suppressed a chuckle.
‘I’m trying to help you,’ Wyrecliffe said. ‘To get a definite identification of who the bomber was.’ He sensed King shaking his head slightly, as if giving up on him.
‘Aren’t you merely trying to help yourself?’ Shah said. ‘If Ms al-Mansoor wasn’t the bomber,
then your relationship with her…’
‘I wasn’t having a relationship with her…’
‘…then your relationship with her isn’t relevant to an act of terrorism in which hundreds died. And is, consequently, of somewhat less interest to the press. Which is where your self-interest comes in.’
‘What about a DNA test? You could get a sample of DNA from the body in Egypt, and check it,’ Wyrecliffe said.
‘Check it against what?’ Shah said. ‘We don’t have a sample of her DNA. Do you have a lock of her hair or anything else that you didn’t tell us about? You did tell us that she had never visited you at home. Or were you once again lying to us?’
‘No, I wasn’t lying. She never came to either my family home or flat. But what about her old flat in Mile End Road?’
‘Not a chance.’ Cave interjected. ‘I personally took the place to pieces. It had been refurbished after she left, ready for the next tenants. Nonetheless, we combed the carpets for hairs, we tested the bathroom, the kitchen. It’s not much fun dredging clumps of hair out from the shower trap or used tampons out of U-bends, believe me. Every scrap of DNA we found matched the couple who live there now. All that was two weeks’ work for six officers. I really don’t think we missed a thing.’
‘Did Ms al-Mansoor ever give you anything. A gift perhaps? A book even?’ Shah asked.
‘She gave me a bottle of brandy once.’
‘With a gift card?’
‘No. But she did send me a birthday card.’
‘Do you still have it?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘And the envelope?’
‘Not sure about that.’
‘There’s a much better chance with the envelope. She might have a trace of DNA in the saliva under the seal.’
‘I’ll look, but I really don’t think I have it.’
‘Okay. Here’s my offer,’ Shah said. ‘I’ll put the charges against you on ice, for now. But you must get us every scrap of information that might be relevant to the investigation. Find us a DNA sample of Cantara al-Mansoor, and we’ll ask the Egyptians for a swab from the perpetrator.’
‘Thank you. I’m very grateful, really I am.’
‘Mr Wyrecliffe,’ Concannon said. ‘Don’t think by this that we are under any illusions. You may have stopped wasting our time, which as I may remind you is a criminal offence, but we still think you are wasting your own. We know it was her. The security camera pictures at Heathrow do match those on the video. They are the same person. It was her passport, her credit card.’
‘Someone could have disguised herself…’ Wyrecliffe said.
‘I really don’t think so.’ said Concannon. ‘Yes, there are certainly cases of suicide bombers who won’t go through with a bombing. In Iraq, in Afghanistan and in Yemen. There really are quite a few. They are all car bombers, motorcycle bombers, explosive belt jobs at checkpoints. They don’t need to be carefully prepared because they are, if I may risk sounding callous, ten-a-penny. A bombing on an airliner is different. The bomber must be prepared well in advance, and be highly motivated. And if for some reason she did bottle out, there are hardly going to be a bevy of lookalikes primed to step into her shoes. No, I’m sorry. I’ve been a counter-terrorism officer for sixteen years. I know you cannot believe it was her. But it was. It really was. The battle you have to face, Mr Wyrecliffe, is not one of identity. It is one of acceptance. And perhaps of dealing with your own responsibility for what she had become.’
* * *
It was two days later when Wyrecliffe returned to Paddington Green. He was shown into a high-tech media suite on the third floor, which had a variety of wall-mounted screens for showing images to witnesses, and an internal window into a noisy and apparently busy open-plan office beyond.
He wasn’t accompanied by Vikram King because, this time, he wasn’t being interviewed. Wyrecliffe had requested to see the CCTV footage which supposedly showed Cantara’s movements through Heathrow for the EgyptAir flight. Shah had made it clear that the police didn’t have to share this intelligence with him, it was a concession to help move the investigation along. Wyrecliffe’s abiding conviction that it wasn’t Cantara was being humoured, but it was clear that political positions at a very senior level had already been taken. Consequently, today’s event wasn’t worth senior attention. Only Detective Sergeant Cave was there, with Concannon.
‘Let’s go in reverse order,’ said Concannon, dimming the lights and pointing a remote at a large screen TV. ‘This is the last picture, from the camera at the boarding gate.’ It showed, from a distance of five metres, a side view of a woman wearing a smart dark grey jacket, slacks, low-heeled shoes, glasses and a blue flowered hijab. She was carrying the red Puma sports bag and walking alone. ‘We think that is Cantara al-Mansoor’
‘It could be her, it’s hard to tell from this angle,’ Wyrecliffe said. She seemed to be looking down, as if sad or reflective.
‘As you can see it doesn’t give us much, facially. We’ve got others, along the corridor,’ Concannon said. ‘But note the bag.’
‘Yes, the one with the bomb in.’
‘Right.’ Concannon nodded at Cave.
The next images were from cameras back towards the duty free area. They showed the woman looking through duty-free items, sunglasses, cosmetics. She left without buying anything. From the back she really did look like Cantara. Same petite body, same hair. Wyrecliffe began to think that perhaps he was wrong, perhaps this really was Cantara. His heart sank.
‘Do you have any continuous video, so I can see her walk?’
Concannon shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. You have to realise that even one-second video sampling eats up a gigantic amount of data storage. There are 4,016 cameras at Heathrow alone, if you include the car parks, and each stores 86,400 stills every day, one per second, 24/7. We’re talking terabytes of data here, even with the heavy compression ratio on these images. And it all has to be stored in a searchable form for three months before being overwritten. Where there is extra storage capacity, as technology improves, we have pressed for longer storage times rather than denser time-sampling. That might change though, now we’ve got Gait Analyzer.’
‘What’s Gait Analyzer?’
‘It’s a new American software, and potentially a huge timesaver for police services round the world. It works on the principle that we recognise people at a distance not by their faces, but more by the way they walk. We all have a particular gait. From a sufficiently good sample, the software can recognise and store the movement pattern as a template. Gait Analyzer looks at hip movement, pacing speed, as well as height and spine pitch. It can then scan millions of hours of digital CCTV footage in a few minutes, looking for matches. The summary report just throws up for visual checking the closest matches, less than one per cent. The potential man hours, and thus staff costs, saved are incredible. You imagine how much time we currently have to spend just watching CCTV images trying to identify people. It’s a terrific improvement over other covert biometric methods, such as facial recognition, which could be masked by sunglasses or hoods.’ Concannon laughed. ‘Of course, we can’t get too excited. Gait Analyzer is only in beta version at the moment, and it’s not great with women. A change of heel sizes confuses it. But in five years every airport and railway station will have a few cameras with the density of sampling to allow a gait analysis.’
‘It’s Orwellian,’ Wyrecliffe said.
‘Absolutely,’ he said, without a trace of irony. ‘The CIA were quite prescient on this. Since 2007 all US Federal prisoners have had a gait sample recorded as well as DNA, which can be stored for future use.’ Concannon rubbed his hands together, enthusiastically. ‘Right. Let’s get to the camera directly above outbound passport control in Terminal Three. It’s probably the best resolution we’ll have.’
The image, from almost vertically above, showed a hijabed head, slightly averted, with spectacles slipping down her nose. He ran through six or seven images, none of which
showed much of her face because of the angle.
‘Do you have a better angle?’ Wyrecliffe said.
‘Probably.’ Concannon ran the images backwards, which had the woman walking backwards like a jerky puppet.
‘Stop,’ Wyrecliffe said. The woman had looked upwards and her eyes were visible. ‘Now zoom in.’ This time Wyrecliffe could see. Her eyes were in fact brown, as were Cantara’s, and the spectacles looked right. But something about the face beneath was wrong. The shape of the mouth, the size of the nose. ‘It doesn’t look like Cantara. It’s somebody else.’
‘So you say.’
‘Could you trace her all the way back to where she set off from?’
‘Ideally, yes. It has been done before, with some of the 7/7 bombers. You need some luck, and we didn’t have it this time. We tried to find her on cameras in the car parks. We couldn’t see her on any of the Underground cameras or the Heathrow Express, so we think there was a vehicle set-down. But it wasn’t on the apron set-down area. Alternatively, she may have come by bus. There’s a CCTV blind spot just by the bus stop. Some buses have cameras, but some don’t. We are currently checking those. With this amount of data to check, even a simple change of headscarf, shoes and glasses might fool us. But as of now, this is where the trail goes cold.’
‘What’s the first picture you have of her?’
‘It’s this,’ said Concannon. ‘Before she checked in her suitcase.’
The woman was emerging from behind a Thomas Cook bureau de change, wheeling a small black suitcase and the red bag.
‘We didn’t catch her walking into the terminal building and we think this is why. There is a public convenience behind the bureau de change, and we don’t have a camera there. But that is where we think she changed her appearance.’
‘That’s it then! It was someone trying to look like Cantara.’
‘Or it was her, trying to make sure we couldn’t trace her back to her point of departure.’
Wyrecliffe sighed. ‘Okay, what about the suicide video? Have you been able to enhance it?’