Chapter 23
It was close to two hours before Hooley was able to get back to Newlove and, as he left to collect his friend, he asked Roper if he could get him anything whilst he was out.
“No, thanks. I’m too hungry to wait for you so I’ll go in a minute. There is one thing though. Could you ask the Detective Inspector about the attempted break-in a few days after the wife was found murdered? I can’t see any reference to it.”
“Yeah, sure, although I hadn’t realised there had been a break-in - must have missed that.”
He took his friend to a small pub off the beaten track; it was busy without being overrun, and they found a space at the bar which ran along almost two thirds of the pub before making a dog leg to the right.
They shared a bottle of sparkling water and Newlove remarked wistfully on the good old days.
“I know what you mean. This would have been the start of a lengthy session with no return until tomorrow morning, at the earliest. Mind you, I think my liver is probably quite grateful that things are a lot calmer nowadays.”
After half an hour Hooley was starting to apologise to his friend about the need to get back to work, which Newlove took in good spirit.
“I never expected to get any time in the pub, so this has been a bonus, and I am really grateful you guys are going to take a look at my case.”
Hooley tapped his forehead. “I almost forgot: Jonathan has a question. He wants to know what happened about the break-in.”
The DI had been about to swill the last of his drink and now stopped with the glass half-way to his mouth.
“Does he mean the one that happened after the wife was snatched?” Seeing Hooley nod he carried on. “How on earth did he know about that? I thought we’d done a good job of keeping that under wraps and I made sure that never got anywhere near the media.”
He looked so perplexed that Hooley had to laugh.
“It’s a funny thing about Roper: although he is a bit of a loner – actually, make that a lot of a loner - he does seem to have his own special array of contacts. There aren’t many of them, at least I don’t think so, but they all seem to be plugged in.”
The DI gave a rueful shake of the head. “Well, you can tell him the truth is we’re not sure what happened. A neighbour was adamant that he saw someone, dressed in what he described as a ninja outfit including face mask, lurking in the front garden.
“Our boys had left contact numbers after talking to everyone, so he rang, and we got a patrol car there within 10 minutes, but there was no sign of any break-in or an attempted break-in. It was double-checked in the morning and still nothing, so it’s a bit of a puzzle.
“The neighbour was adamant about what he saw so we’ve left it open, but it is, like the rest of this case, a mystery. Even when we get a line of inquiry it just goes nowhere. I’ve never worked a case quite like it.”
Hooley was back in the office and was telling Roper that there was nothing on the break-in.
“Stan was quite surprised that you knew anything about it at all. He said they had kept it quiet, mostly because they couldn’t make anything of it, and added that only a handful of people knew about what the neighbour had reported.”
As he spoke he watched Roper very closely and was unsurprised to see an enigmatic expression creep across his face. While he would never tell a direct lie, he was remarkably good at evading questions. Any suggestion he was connected to a private network of information was greeted with surprise.
“I hadn’t realised there was so much secrecy over it,” he said. “I thought I must have read it in the news, but I was obviously wrong. It does seem to be very interesting though. To have someone going back to the house reinforces the idea that a lot of planning went into the woman being taken.”
“How have you arrived at that conclusion, then? Stan’s been on the case for a while; he didn’t mention anything like that over lunch and he’s one of the most thorough and open-minded detectives you will meet.”
“Well, it was the suggestion that they think surveillance equipment was in the house that got me thinking; and we also have the witness who saw someone trying to break in. I’ve thought of various reasons why that might be and the most obvious is that they left something behind.
“It can’t have been something obvious, because the police have been all over that house, so maybe it was something very unusual. Do you recall that case we worked on where someone was using AI-controlled surveillance equipment?
“What if it was something like that - tiny, difficult to see and very specialised? It’s the sort of thing that can get left behind when people clear out.”
“OK. That’s an interesting theory, but does it take us anywhere?”
“Well I did think that if they had surveillance gear in there they needed somewhere to monitor it from, which means there is one thing you should ask the Detective Inspector; I’ve looked at that road on Google Street View and it’s not the sort of place where you could park a van for very long, not without it being noticed. So maybe there are some rental properties very close?”
Hooley wasted no time in calling Newlove and filled him in on Roper’s analysis. His news was greeted with a low whistle of appreciation.
“Funnily enough we have got a list of rental properties in that area. I wasn’t thinking exactly along the lines Roper suggested but I wondered if they had a base. There is a house almost opposite that is rented out to an offshore company. It was taken a few months ago and has another eight months on the contract.
“We’ve been trying to get hold of the company, but no success, and we’ve been in the property and found nothing. It is on my list of things to get around to, but I think it has just gone straight to the top.
“We’ll go through that place with a fine-toothed comb. The officers who first checked it out reported that the place was very clean and tidy, so someone has gone to a bit of effort - which makes me think there may be something to Jonathan’s idea.
“I’ll let you know how we get on but it’s going to take a while. I’ll need a full scenes of crime team going through that place and I’m going to have to argue to get the budget for it and then the time needed.
“But Jonathan’s theory that there might have been a team of people in the house monitoring cameras and sound devices should give me exactly the ammunition I need when I go to the boss. He’s desperate for a result on this so hopefully he’ll sign off for what we need.
“I tell you what, there will be more than a glass of fizzy water in this if this gives us a result. You can tell Jonathan that his fan club just grew by one.”
Chapter 24
“Would it be helpful if I explained to you how a self-sustained fission chain reaction happens? It’s fascinating and quite amazing how they worked all this out in the beginning.”
“No, no, no…” Hooley could think of nothing he wanted less, and to get his point across he stuck his fingers in his ears. He and Roper had been batting this back and forth for most of the morning.
Roper was obsessing about the need to talk the DCI through the technical details. Hooley was equally determined to avoid getting drawn into a prolonged conversation about a subject that he had little interest in beyond the obvious: nuclear bomb… very bad.
“All I need to know is: how plausible is the threat from one of these devices? You and MI5 have raised this, so what’s a poor old copper like me supposed to make of it? It sounds terrifying, but is it ever going to happen?”
He looked over at Roper and noticed his complexion - or complete lack of it. He was extremely pale-skinned normally but when he was working flat out he seemed to go a whiter shade of pale.
He made the ill-advised decision to crack a joke.
“If it started snowing and you went outside you’d look like the Invisible Man: just your suit and hair showing.”
Roper treated this attempt at comedy with the contempt it deserved.
“I suppose you want what you like to call the ‘idiot’s guide
’ to all this?” He sighed heavily before carrying on. “Well the truth is that a suitcase bomb is more possible than I had thought. The last time I read about it was at school and then the argument was that it was just a fantasy and would need a technological revolution to come true.
“But if you think in terms of small, portable nuclear devices, then you are starting to talk about real possibilities. Some of the biggest changes have come in the electronics you need to get one of these to work - they’ve got a lot smaller, lighter and more reliable.
“Then the components needed have reduced in size and weight, so that all helps too. Maybe you might need a few suitcases to spread the load, but you could make it happen. In fact, the technology to do so has been around for a lot longer than I had realised.”
Roper paused and gave him an appraising look. “You do know more than you let on. Are you sure you don’t want all the technical details?”
“No.”
“Fine. Well, we also need to remember that someone trying to make a small bomb is probably more concerned with generating radiation since the explosive capacity will be relatively low. That’s why people talk about ‘dirty bombs.’”
“This is not doing a lot for my peace of mind.”
“There is some good news. Whatever method is used to create a device that can be detonated, it is going to need weapons-grade plutonium and that’s not the easiest thing to get. Even at the height of the Cold War, both sides were careful about who got their hands on that.
“Even today, with the technology far more widely available, it is still hard to find and those people who do have it tend to want to hold on to their stocks because it is so rare. There is one big unknown about all of this.” He stopped talking and looked directly at Hooley. The DCI thought it was never a good sign when he did that.
“You’re going to tell me something I’m really not going to like, aren’t you? Well, there’s no point in sitting on it.”
“The old KGB were said to have established buried weapons caches all over Western Europe. Most of those were traditional weapons and ammunition that would have been used to arm revolutionary groups, so very dangerous, but quite small scale.
“But it was also claimed that some of the stockpiles had nuclear potential. No one is quite sure what that means. It could be that we are talking about lots of different bits of equipment stored in lots of different places. Or it could be that they left entire weapons systems in place, ready to be used in action the moment they were unearthed.”
“Well you’re certainly managing to give me the shivers. How likely do you think it is to be true?”
“I don’t think anyone really knows, maybe not even the Russians themselves. I found some reports about a Russian defector who was claiming that the Soviets had “lost” some of their nuclear stockpiles. No one could decide whether to believe him, and in the end it was officially claimed that he was just bluffing to try and cause a bit of panic.
“It may be that there are nuclear stockpiles hidden away and someone must have the locations. But at the height of the Cold War both sides were operating on a strict need-to-know basis, so it may be only a small handful of people are now left who know the truth.”
“So how does this impact on what we know about the meeting between Maria Vasilev and Georgi Yebedev?”
“Again, that’s hard to try and deconstruct. If there are stockpiles, and she helped put the contents together, I doubt if she would have been involved in choosing the locations. From what I know the KGB kept the scientists well away from that end of things.
“But maybe she has been looking for information and recently found it. That could explain why there was a meeting. Maybe some of this stuff is here in the UK and is just waiting to be dug up and used here in London; it would cause panic.
“With the wind in the right direction you might be looking at millions of people being affected.”
Hooley’s mouth had gone dry. “I don’t like to think about that. I can’t begin to imagine a bomb exploding, let alone the disruption it would cause. There would be mayhem.”
Chapter 25
“We can’t be certain about any of this.” As he spoke, Hooley knew he was trying to make the situation sound less frightening than it was. The trouble was that they might not have had any hard evidence, but Roper was convinced - and that was the next best thing.
The pair were briefing Julie Mayweather after she called them in for an update. This was the second time he had gone through what they knew, or suspected, and he wasn’t finding it any easier. A gloomy silence filled the room, in sharp contrast to the times when the three had animated discussions about the wildest theories.
Mayweather and Hooley were sitting down while Roper, full of nervous energy, was slowly pacing around. The DCI was staring off into the middle distance, a frown on his face, and his boss thought it highly likely this concern was mirrored in her own expression.
She watched Roper as he moved around. He looked very pale and his skin seemed more tightly stretched over his face than normal. She felt a need to reassure him.
“You’re quite right, Jonathan. You are quite right to raise this in the way you have. Just because we may not like what you are saying doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be listening to it. We need to examine every possibility so that we can be thinking about the right response.
“One thing I do have to ask. Assuming the worst, do you have any sense of what timeline we are operating to? Is this stuff already here, or is it on the way? We clearly need to start thinking about how this might be smuggled in.”
Roper sat forward, his eyes bright as he ran through his thoughts.
“My best guess is that they still need to bring it in and that is going to take a lot of planning. But I’m not sure about an alert. That might create panic and tip them off that we know.”
Hooley nodded. “My instinct would be to play it close for a while. You’re going to have to tell key people but we should try to keep it as limited as realistically possible. The government can raise the threat level warning without having to be specific.”
“What if one of these nuclear stockpiles is here in the UK already?” Mayweather wanted to know.
“I think that is the least likely option,” said Roper. “There are very few - a handful is the best guess, and it is highly likely that the majority are in the area covered by the old Soviet Union.
“There may be one or two in Europe at most, but the records indicate that they never tried to get into Britain. They didn’t need to take the risk. There are plenty of seriously isolated spots in Western Europe where something like that could be easily concealed and picked up again without risking witnesses.”
Mayweather had another question.
“How are they going to get the weapons-grade plutonium here?”
“It won’t be easy, but it won’t be impossible either; it just needs very careful planning. You don’t need a huge amount in terms of weight, just a few ounces. With proper shielding it still won’t be that large. Just bulky and heavy.”
Mayweather looked at Hooley. “Reminds me of our first case.”
“It does. Those were a worrying few days.”
Roper looked quizzical so she explained. “Brian and I first put the Special Investigations Unit together because of a case involving a Russian called Alexander Litvinenko. He was poisoned in central London - and it was always suspected the Russian state was behind it.”
“Yes, I have been reading about that recently because I wondered if there were links to our case. He was contaminated with polonium-210.”
“We didn’t know any of that at first, so we were visiting all the places where Mr. Litvinenko had been and picking up traces of radiation without realising it. Brian was among those who needed to be checked out.
“I was very concerned about him, and the rest of the team. We had a big test carried out here in these offices because of contamination. We had to keep it very quiet because it would have caused a lot of distress. As it
was they discovered traces all over London, as I recall. There’s something about being poisoned by something you can’t see which is especially frightening.
“In a way it is very similar to what happened in Salisbury, where the Russian spy and his daughter nearly died. No-one realised at first that they had been poisoned with a nerve agent.”
Hooley rubbed his hands together.
“When we realised the full implications of the Litvinenko case it caused quite a bit of panic. There was even talk about setting up those mobile decontamination units. The decision had to go right to the Prime Minister. In the end he was saved from having to do anything because the experts said you would have needed to come into direct contact with the polonium.”
Roper said. “Was it ever established how it got to London?”
Mayweather shrugged. “There were a lot of theories. It came here under Russian diplomatic immunity or was smuggled in from a container ship - as you know, there are many smuggling routes. Some even said they brought it in on a domestic airline flight from Moscow to London.
“In those days I don’t think the technology at our border controls was good enough to pick it up, although I think things are a lot better now.”
“This is fascinating, and I need to see your original files,” said Roper. “Now that I know you were both around, I will be able to ask you questions.”
Hooley made a “hah” sound.
“You can ask any questions you like, but I may not have all the answers you are going to need. Some things about that case will stay with me for the rest of my life. A lot of it I’ve just forgotten.”
He lapsed into silence until realising he was coming under an especially searching stare from Mayweather.
“I suppose I might as well tell you. My wife wouldn’t let me in the house for two days. I had to bring her a signed medical certificate that said I was totally clear of radiation before she would allow me through the front door. I had to stay at a local bed and breakfast.
(Jonathan Roper Investigates Boxset Page 52