Timebomb (Paul Richter)

by James Barrington

  ‘Here we are, sir,’ he announced. ‘Barney bought his supper right here, at a fish and chip shop. It’s only about five hundred yards from where he was killed.’

  Paul Mason moved across to join him. ‘That’s definite, is it?’

  ‘Yes. They knew him in the shop because every time he bought a meal there he would wait until they were on the point of closing so that he could ask for a discount and take whatever they had left. He was the last to be served that night: a chicken and mushroom pie and chips at half the normal price.’

  ‘And what time was that?’

  ‘They closed at about eleven fifty that night, which puts the time of his death a bit later than we originally estimated, probably between three and four in the morning. Apart from that, though, we’re no further forward. The door-to-door enquiries didn’t come up with anything very interesting either, so the only other information we have comes from a handful of people who saw Barney at various times that evening, when he was sitting begging on the street or in the shop doorways in Blue Town. As far as we can tell, the last people to see him alive that night were the staff of the chippie, at almost midnight.’

  ‘Surely he must have bought some alcohol somewhere that evening?’

  ‘Yes,’ Clark nodded. ‘He bought a bottle of cheap red at this off-licence here’ – pointing at another street in Sheerness – ‘at about seven thirty. We didn’t find a bottle at the crime scene, so I assume he drank it all and chucked away the empty.’

  ‘So,’ Mason mused, ‘we more or less know how he spent his last evening, but we still have no idea who killed him or why. I have a feeling,’ the DI added, ‘this will either be one of those cases that will get solved one day by somebody walking into a police station to confess, or else it’ll stay open for years.’

  Stuttgart, Germany

  Richter stood up and stared at the photograph. As with the others, the quality wasn’t particularly good, but the image was clear enough.

  ‘It’s almost full-face,’ Richter said. ‘How did you manage it?’

  ‘Our cameramen were given orders to photograph literally everyone who approaches the building along the pavement. If they just walk on past, the image is marked for deletion later, but if they enter the building the picture is enlarged and sent over here by email.’

  Are you absolutely certain it’s Morschel?’

  Wolff nodded decisively. ‘We got one good confirmed shot of him from a CCTV camera about three years ago, and a couple of our technicians have run a facial analysis program on the new image. That compares the bits of the face that can’t change – the distance between the pupils of the eyes, the triangulation between the eyes and the nostrils, that kind of feature – and then checks for a match in the database. That man,’ he tapped the photograph, ‘is Hans Morschel, no question.’

  ‘What’s his MO?’ Richter asked. ‘I mean, what kind of attacks does he carry out?’

  ‘We don’t know too much about him, and what information we have is fragmentary because our intelligence is derived from third-party and often unreliable sources. We don’t even know if “Hans Morschel” is his real name, but it does seem to be what he regularly calls himself. We think he’s either Austrian or German by birth, he’s about forty years old, and with some kind of military background, because all his activities are planned and executed meticulously.

  ‘As far as we’re aware, he’s a linear descendant of Andreas Baader in terms of his philosophy, meaning he’s a pure terrorist, and absolutely ruthless. The bigger the bang, the greater the destruction, the better he seems to like it. He’s suspected of having links to radical Islamic groups, but so far we’ve never been able to prove that. One oddity is that he usually tries to make his operations self-financing. On several occasions there have been bomb attacks in major European cities linked to bank raids at about the same time.’

  ‘Maybe in this case as well,’ Richter suggested. ‘Perhaps these guys aren’t planning a tunnel through the wall of the bank. Morschel might be intending to blow a hole into the vault instead.’

  Wolff didn’t look convinced. ‘That’s not his usual routine. Normally, he arranges a big bang somewhere, which attracts a lot of attention from the authorities, and while they’re busy picking through the rubble, a gang of robbers hits a bank fairly close by and cleans out the tills.’

  ‘Divide and conquer?’ Richter suggested.

  ‘Yes, that’s what it looks like. And Morschel doesn’t normally seem to bother about vaults, perhaps because getting them open takes time, and he likes to get in and out quickly. If his men can just get a few tens of thousands of euros, that seems to satisfy him, so that’s why we think the two events are linked.’

  ‘How many times has he done this?’

  ‘It’s difficult to say. We know of at least five occasions, but there could have been others.’

  ‘So what’s your prediction for Stuttgart?’ Richter asked. ‘Is he going to blow the bank?’

  ‘I doubt it. I think they’re just using this building as a safe house and it’s simply a coincidence that it also stands next door to a bank. My guess is that they’ve already identified some other target bank and where they’re going to leave the IED and pretty soon they’ll be leaving this property for the last time. If that snippet of conversation we heard earlier is accurate, they’re probably intending to position the bomb somewhere late this evening, detonate it tomorrow during the morning rush hour and hit a bank at about the same time.’

  ‘So what’s your plan?’

  ‘It’s obvious. We hit them first. I’ve got a squad from GSG 9 already on the way here. We’ll take these guys down this evening and try to seize Morschel alive. There are a lot of questions I’d like the answers to.’

  Chapter Six

  Wednesday

  Stuttgart, Germany

  ‘Where are they coming from?’ Richter asked. ‘The GSG 9 unit, I mean.’ He knew the unit had dropped the ‘Grenz-schutzgruppe 9’ – ‘Border Guards Group 9’ – back in 2005 as part of a renaming exercise.

  ‘Group headquarters,’ Karl Wolff replied. ‘That’s at Sankt Augustin-Hangelar, near Bonn. They’re flying to the city airport here by helicopter, and we’ve sent a couple of vans to collect them. One of the standing requirements is that GSG 9 must be able to reach any part of Germany within a maximum of two hours, so they have a fleet of fast cars and Bolko 105 all-weather helicopters permanently available to them.’

  ‘Our SAS have a similar arrangement,’ Richter said, ‘only they use a dedicated section of the Royal Air Force – the Special Forces’ Flight of 47 Squadron – and they’ve got souped-up cars as well. How many men are coming?’

  ‘I’ve asked for two SETs’ – the acronym translated as ‘Special Service Section’ – ‘which is ten men in all, plus their two officers, so a total of twelve. With only nine identified targets, and with the police officers we already have standing by here, that should be more than enough.’

  Richter nodded in agreement. ‘The target building’s a fairly confined space, and the last thing you need is too many of our guys milling about in there getting in each other’s way.’

  A little over an hour later, two unmarked vans pulled into the courtyard of the police station and a dozen casually dressed men climbed out of them, each carrying a large kitbag. Wolff went down to meet them and a few minutes later re-entered the briefing room with the GSG 9 personnel all following behind him. He introduced the rest of his team, and then came to Richter, whose identity caused several eyebrows to be raised. This resulted in a brief exchange in German between Wolff and one of the newcomers.

  ‘This is Rolf Altmann,’ Wolff explained. ‘He’s the senior GSG 9 officer, and somewhat concerned about you being here.’

  A tall, fair-haired man with unusually broad shoulders, Altmann switched to English and addressed Richter directly. ‘We’re used to working with the German police,’ he said coldly, ‘but this is not the kind of operation where we can permit outsiders.’


  ‘I hadn’t planned on joining in the operation,’ Richter snapped. ‘I’ve been sent here by my own section purely for liaison, in case there’s some link between this and a terrorist operation aimed at London.’

  ‘I understand, you were only supposed to be acting as a liaison officer in Onex, too,’ Altmann pointed out.

  Richter was getting a bit tired of everyone complaining about what had happened in Switzerland. ‘That was totally unexpected,’ he pointed out, ‘and I only got involved because the terrorists took out half their police officers in the first few seconds. If you check with Schneider, he’ll explain exactly what happened.’

  ‘I already have,’ Altmann replied, ‘which is why I raised the matter. This is our operation, and I expect you to take no part in it until we’ve secured the premises and restrained the occupants. Is that clearly understood?’

  ‘That’s fine with me. I’m not paid enough to get involved in something like this.’

  Altmann sneered slightly, before turning his attention back to Wolff. ‘Right, let’s see what you have,’ he said and sat down while the Bundesgrenzschutz commander ran through the sequence of events they’d observed and the layout of the building.

  ‘So there are just the two entrances.’ Altmann stood up to study the aerial photographs. ‘One door at the front, which used to be the main entrance to the shop, and a single door at the rear. That makes things easier. You said there were ten occupants, including Morschel, but they’re rarely all inside the building at the same time. Presumably you want to grab all of them?’

  ‘Definitely, but if need be we can follow any still outside the premises and take them down on the street somewhere. The one we really want is Hans Morschel, and he’s still in the building, according to our last report from the surveillance team. A group of plain-clothes officers is on standby waiting to follow him, if he does leave.

  ‘Remember,’ Wolff added, ‘our main concern is Morschel. Nobody knows very much about him, but the mere fact of him turning up suggests that this plot of theirs is approaching its culmination. Our conjecture is that these terrorists have been working to his orders and have now completed whatever preparations he wanted. Since Morschel is known to be a planner and bomb-maker, his presence in the building presupposes he’s here to supervise the final assembly of their IED.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ Altmann acknowledged and returned his attention to the photographs.

  ‘Don’t forget that I want them alive if possible,’ Wolff reminded him.

  ‘We’ll do our best,’ the GSG 9 officer replied grimly, ‘but I can’t promise anything. The problem is there’s no obvious way we can mount a covert assault. To reach either door there are open spaces we would have to cross, and we must assume they’ll have lookouts posted on both sides of the building.’ He turned his attention to the architectural drawing. ‘There are no cellars,’ he said, ‘but I was wondering about the attics.’

  ‘I don’t think that will work,’ Wolff said, ‘because each shop unit is separated from its neighbour by a solid wall. Obviously we could dig our way through them, but we’d make so much noise that we’d be heard long before we were half-way there. I even vetoed the idea of inserting a spike microphone through the wall. It’s a quiet street, and the row of shops is set well back behind a wide expanse of pavement, so I think any unusual noise inside the property would become very obvious to the targets.’

  Altmann nodded slowly. ‘I think you’re right. It looks like we’ll have to do a classic two-door simultaneous entry, with lots of noise, stun grenades and maybe gas to disorient the targets. Right, I’ll work with my men and prepare an assault plan, then we’ll brief you and the other police officers who’ll be involved. Subject to any outside considerations, like local traffic conditions, we’ll aim to hit the building either early or mid-evening.’

  ‘You’ll close off the street?’ Wolff asked.

  ‘Yes, or rather the urban police will have to, but we won’t do that until we’re just about to go in. We mustn’t do anything that might alert the suspects. Right,’ Altmann finished, gesturing to his second-in-command, ‘let’s get busy.’

  Wolff nodded, then approached Richter. ‘Despite what you said earlier, I assume you would like to be present on the scene when the assault starts?’

  ‘Yes, of course, unless it’s going to be unacceptable to you, or cause problems with GSG 9.’

  ‘I don’t take my orders from them,’ Wolff growled. ‘They’re a bunch of primadonnas, and sometimes they act just like it. Unfortunately,’ he added, with a wry smile, ‘they’re a very effective and highly efficient bunch of primadonnas, so we have to allow them a certain amount of latitude. But as far as I’m concerned, you’ve been sent over here specially, and that means you ought to be present at the assault.’

  Wolff eyed him appraisingly. ‘As long as you’re there, you should be properly equipped. Before we leave the station, I’ll make sure you’re issued with body armour, a two-way radio and a personal weapon. Obviously I’d prefer it if you didn’t end up shooting anyone,’ he said, in an unconscious echo of Simpson’s parting remark in Hammersmith, ‘but I certainly don’t want to leave you unable to defend yourself.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Richter said sincerely, ‘and I promise to keep out of the way.’

  Canterbury, Kent

  Detective Chief Inspector Dave Richardson didn’t seem perturbed by Mason’s lack of progress. In fact, he was slightly surprised that the DI and his team had managed to positively identify the body washed up at Reculver as quickly as they had. Many of the ‘floaters’ – as the bodies found bobbing around in the Thames Estuary were irreverently referred to – remained unidentified for weeks or even months, and some were never given a name at all.

  The longer the corpses remained in the sea, the less chance there was of a successful identification, simply because of the natural decomposition, greatly exacerbated by the bloating and abrading effects of salt water in constant motion and, not least, the inevitable depredations of marine creatures. Certain species of fish, and crabs in particular, were notably non-specialized in their diets: they’d eat pretty much anything they could find. After about a week or ten days in the water, most bodies would be so appallingly disfigured that a pathologist would need to examine the shape of the pelvis just to determine even the sex of the victim.

  Their chances of identifying the dead tramp had been good because his face and body were still largely undamaged, but poor simply because he was a tramp. So Richardson was pleased that at least they had a name. It was just a pity that the name was pretty much all they did have.

  ‘So what else have you done, Paul?’ he asked, as Mason finished explaining what they’d found out on Sheppey.

  ‘We’ve had the local plods doing house-to-house enquiries,’ he said, ‘but I’m not very hopeful, just because of where the killing took place. It’s really isolated out there, at least after the shops close. We’ve also put up boards asking for anyone who saw or heard anything unusual that night to contact us. That might generate something.’

  ‘It might,’ Richardson agreed but he didn’t sound convinced either.

  ‘Apart from that,’ Mason finished, ‘I don’t think there’s a lot more we can do. We’ve still no idea about motive, unless Barney witnessed something he shouldn’t have.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘The DI thinks it might involve smugglers,’ Clark chimed in.

  ‘Really?’ Richardson asked, puzzled.

  ‘No, not really,’ Mason countered. ‘It’s just that nothing much else makes sense. Our victim was a penniless tramp in his seventies, so all the usual motives go straight out of the window. He wasn’t murdered for his money, since he hadn’t got any, or by his wife, because as far as we know he hadn’t got one of those either, and I think we can probably rule out a sex killing. So what’s left? The way he was murdered looked pretty professional to me, which means I don’t think we’re after a gang of teenage tearaways. So about the only othe
r possible motive is that he saw or heard something that made him dangerous to someone, and they decided to remove that risk permanently.’

  ‘So you mean he might have witnessed something, some other crime, that we don’t know about yet?’ Richardson suggested.

  ‘Exactly And my guess is that it’s something serious. We’re not looking at a burglary or anything like that. But if Barney happened to see maybe a couple of men disposing of a body, or a gang-rape, something like that, it would begin to provide a motive that makes sense.’

  ‘Nothing’s been reported?’

  ‘Nothing yet,’ Mason agreed, ‘but if we receive any reports of a missing person in north Kent, I suggest we look at them very carefully.’

  ‘Nothing from forensics, I suppose?’

  Nothing useful.’ Mason shook his head. ‘We’ve got a tarpaulin, an old hat and a heavy walking stick, all of them probably belonging to Barney. He was definitely hit on the head with the stick, and DNA traces on the hat and tarp also suggest that he’d owned them for some time. The only other thing worth mentioning is what we didn’t find there.’

  Richardson looked interested. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘Almost every reported sighting of Barney, being a fairly frequent visitor to Sheerness, mentions him carrying a haversack around with him. We’ve got various descriptions of it: dark grey or brown, and it might have been ex-army He always had it slung over his shoulder if he was walking about, and he used it to lean back against when he was begging in a doorway.’

  ‘You think the fact that it’s missing is significant?’

  ‘No, not really. I certainly don’t believe somebody killed him just to steal it. No, I think whoever murdered him there just threw it into the sea, or else tossed it into a skip. If it turns up, we’ll look at it, obviously, but otherwise I don’t think it’s worth searching for.’