The Balance of Guilt

by Simon Hall

  Dan crossed a main road, patted his hair into place and tried not to notice the patches where it was thinning. He was almost at the police station. He began rehearsing what he would say when the inevitable finally happened and they met again.

  Heavitree Road police station is a slug of a building. Long and low, it bends around the thoroughfare from which it gets its name. Only a perfunctory patch of downtrodden grass outside the entrance softens its austerity, and even then not by a great deal. It has much the same soothing effect as trying to make someone comfortable as they’re tied to a post, waiting for the firing squad.

  The reception is just as unwelcoming, a less than fetching mix of concrete and plate glass. Adam was waiting there, pacing back and forth. He quickly took Dan’s arm and led him back out of the door.

  ‘We can’t talk here,’ he muttered. ‘The place is probably bugged.’

  They found a café, just down the road, towards the bus station. The chipped plastic tables were stained with the rings of scores of tea and coffee mugs. It would once have been filled with more smoke than an 80s pop concert, but now instead the doorway was circled with a throng of social lepers, all puffing away.

  Dan nodded to himself. For years, he had railed against the injustice of smoking being permitted in public places, his hair and clothes, eyes and lungs continually tormented by the foul fumes. The sight of the outcasts of the smoking ban never failed to cheer him. It was a spectacle best enjoyed in the cold months of howling wind and driving rain, but that time would come around soon enough. It was one of the few benefits of the winter.

  He bought a couple of cups of tea and carried them to a table at the back of the café where Adam had positioned himself. ‘Counter surveillance,’ the detective said meaningfully. ‘I want to be able to keep an eye on who’s coming and going.’

  Dan didn’t know what to say, so sat down and took out his notebook. A dusty rubber plant had been positioned on the windowsill, the place’s sole attempt at contriving a relaxed atmosphere.

  Adam was scanning around, his eyes constantly shifting from the door to the window. There was only one other customer inside the café, an elderly woman who was hunched over a newspaper, coughing gently to herself, oblivious of the world. The detective studied her carefully, then relaxed.

  ‘OK, I reckon we’re safe.’

  Dan also took a look around. ‘Err, yeah,’ he said. ‘I can’t spot any immediate deadly perils. That old woman looks a bad one, but if both of us stick together we can probably handle her.’

  Adam gave him a reproachful look. ‘Don’t joke. Things have changed. No one knows what’s going on, or who to believe any more. The case has become a smoke and shadows world.’

  It could only have been more melodramatic if an unseen orchestra had provided a sudden musical sting. Dan folded his arms. ‘Perhaps you’d better explain.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Adam took another quick look around, leaned forwards and lowered his voice to an almost imperceptible whisper. ‘The spooks have taken over.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The spooks. The spies. FX5. They’ve come in and taken everything over.’

  ‘But I thought you told me this was going to be a Greater Wessex Police investigation?’

  ‘Yeah, it was. And on the surface it still is. But that’s just for pride’s sake. The High Honchos have been overridden by the Home Office. The spooks are running the game now.’

  Dan braced himself and sipped at the tea. It was surprisingly good.

  ‘You don’t sound too happy about it,’ he said.

  Adam loosened his tie. He looked unusually dishevelled today, his dark hair spraying up in patches and the shadow of his beard pronounced. There was even a whisper of fluff on the shoulder of his suit, a rare sight indeed for a man so scrupulously proud of his appearance.

  Dan pointed to the offending material and the detective petulantly brushed it off.

  ‘Bloody right I’m not happy,’ he replied. ‘They dish out their orders, but don’t tell us anything. They get together in their little clusters for conflabs, but don’t ask any of us to join them. They’ve taken over everything. They’ve got their own people with John Tanton, their own interrogators with Ahmed and their own scientists looking at all the forensics stuff. We’re barely even the supporting cast. I wouldn’t be surprised if they try to get me making the damned tea.’

  The door opened, a couple of men walked in and made for the counter. Both were wearing overalls splattered with paint. Adam watched them carefully.

  ‘Country bumpkins, that’s what the bloody spooks think of us,’ he continued. ‘They reckon we’re too backwards to run a proper investigation.’ He added a couple of choice obscenities, making Dan blink hard. Adam rarely swore.

  ‘Look,’ Dan said, to distract his friend. ‘Why don’t you tell me how the investigation is – or, at least, was – going. You must have got somewhere before the spooks came in.’

  ‘We were doing fine without them,’ came the haughty response.

  ‘So?’

  Adam sipped at his tea and took out his notebook.

  ‘Is this for me to broadcast, or just to know?’ Dan asked quickly.

  ‘The way I feel at the moment, for whatever you like.’

  ‘OK. Go ahead.’

  ‘Right. This is where we’ve got to so far. I reckoned we had the radicaliser in Ahmed, but now I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, first of all I was surprised at how fast we got him. Alison Tanton told us all about him, how John had been hanging around with him. How he’d seemed to change under Ahmed’s influence, started spouting some worrying things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Going on about western society. How depraved and despicable it was. How it needed to be punished. Just the sort of stuff that Ahmed believes. She gave us a description. We got his mobile number and traced it to Exeter. A cop spotted him and you know the rest.’

  Dan looked up from his writing. ‘Job done then, isn’t it? That sounds like it makes perfect sense. Ahmed radicalised Tanton, set him off to attack the Minster, then couldn’t resist coming along to see the results of his handiwork.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought – initially. But here are the problems. One, John Tanton himself. In what little he’s been able to say so far, he’s insistent it was all down to him. He says he made his own decisions about wanting to become a martyr, and that he found out how to make a bomb on the internet and built it himself.’

  ‘You don’t believe that though, surely? He’s too young, nothing like sophisticated enough. He’s been brainwashed.’

  ‘I think so, but let me give you our other problems. You know how Tanton seemed to lose his nerve at the last minute, dumped the rucksack and tried to get away before it exploded?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, here’s the bit we’re keeping nice and quiet. Just a few minutes before the blast, Tanton made a call on his mobile. It was a reasonably long one – it lasted for several minutes.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘Who indeed? The answer is we don’t know. But I reckon that call is the key to finding out who radicalised him.’

  ‘But surely you’ve got the number he called?’

  ‘Yep. We seized Tanton’s mobile. But the number is a pay as you go phone. There are no records of who bought it. They’re untraceable. All we know from the analysis is that whoever was using it was in the centre of Exeter when he took the call.’

  ‘So that’s why you’re looking for someone who was in the city at the time of the explosion?’

  ‘Spot on.’

  Dan debated whether to tell Adam what he’d learned earlier, about Kindle, the Imam and his minder all being in Exeter yesterday, but decided against it. He was learning too much interesting information. Far better to let the detective talk while he was in the mood. He could chip in with his own thoughts later.

  He took another sip of tea. ‘Regarding this call Tanton made. Any guesses what it w
as about?’

  ‘He won’t say. So – have you got any ideas?’

  Dan tapped on the table with his pen. ‘If he thinks he’s about to die … to his mum, to explain and say goodbye?’

  ‘No. We checked that.’

  ‘Any other close family?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any friends or girlfriends?’

  ‘No. We’ve checked all those. We’ve gone through all the numbers stored on his phone, and all his family and friends. It was none of those. The call was made to the mystery owner of this pay as you go mobile which was in central Exeter.’

  Adam looked at him expectantly. Dan felt a nudge of irritation. His friend was a great lover of the dubious art of delayed gratification, and it could be annoying.

  ‘I give up,’ he said finally.

  Adam’s face warmed into smugness. ‘Well, as there are no records of the conversation, and as Tanton won’t tell us, I can’t say for sure, obviously. But I can tell you the theory I’m working on.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘I reckon he was ringing his radicaliser. I think he was having second thoughts and needed a pep talk. Hence the length of the call. It can’t just have been – “Hello, I’m here and about to do it.” It must have been to fortify his courage.’

  Dan breathed out heavily. ‘Wow. That would have been some call. But fair enough, if he’s about to kill himself and others he might well need some comforting words. OK, your theory makes sense, but surely it points to Ahmed. He was here in Exeter. There’s good evidence from Alison Tanton that he indoctrinated John. And he ran when you lot descended on him.’

  ‘Plenty of people run when the cops come calling,’ Adam replied. ‘That doesn’t mean a thing. The other evidence is better. But there’s just the one problem. We seized Ahmed’s mobiles and neither was the number Tanton rang in that final call.’

  Dan was writing fast, struggling to keep up. ‘Sorry, you’ve lost me there. You said Ahmed’s mobiles? He had more than one?’

  Adam nodded. ‘Yep. When we arrested him, he was carrying a mobile in his jacket. But being the suspicious chap I am, something occurred to me about when we chased him into the shopping centre.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Think about it.’

  Again Adam waited, his face expectant. Dan just about managed to stop himself from growling.

  ‘I think it might be better if you just tell me,’ he said levelly.

  ‘His disappearing time.’

  ‘His what?’

  ‘When he ran into the shopping centre we were watching him on CCTV, or a cop had sight of him for almost all of the chase. There’s just one part when no one can see him. It lasts for about 40 seconds or so. Apart from that time he was always in view.’

  ‘So what was he doing for those 40 seconds?’

  ‘Exactly the question I asked myself.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  Dan sighed heavily. ‘Well – would he have disappeared deliberately? Could he have been sure he wasn’t being watched?’

  Adam nodded. ‘I think so. The CCTV cameras in the arcade are old-fashioned and very obvious. He’d have known when he was in sight of one. And he could see us chasing him. We weren’t exactly being subtle. He’d have known when he wasn’t being watched.’

  Dan swirled the remains of his tea and thought for a few seconds.

  ‘The only reason he could have needed to disappear was that he was doing something he didn’t want you to see.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Which would be – hiding, or getting rid of something. Something important.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  Dan sat forcibly back on his seat. Sometimes the temptation to throttle his friend could grow overwhelming.

  ‘Give me a clue?’

  ‘I don’t need to. I told you only a few seconds ago.’

  ‘Of course. His other phone.’

  ‘Exactly. I had the shopping centre sealed off and searched. The teams looked everywhere. In the gutters, the drains, the bins, the plant pots, the shops, the doorways, even the ceiling lights. The whole lot. Anywhere he could possibly have hidden something.’

  ‘And they found this other mobile.’

  ‘Bingo.’

  ‘Except it’s not the number Tanton rang?’

  ‘No. We’ve checked it. There are no records of any calls from Tanton’s mobile to it, either stored on the phone itself or with the phone company. It can’t have been that mobile which Tanton rang.’

  There was a silence. Then Dan said softly, ‘Quite a puzzle then.’

  ‘Yes. Very much so.’

  Dan massaged his temples, to see if it might persuade his brain to find inspiration.

  ‘And there was nothing else Ahmed could have hidden?’ he said. ‘Not another phone, or some notes, or a diary, or, well – anything?’

  ‘I had the place taken apart. There was nothing else.’

  ‘And what was on these phones of Ahmed’s?’

  ‘On the one we found in his pocket, only the names and numbers of a couple of family, sports clubs, taxi companies, restaurants, that kind of thing. We’ve checked them all. There’s nothing suspicious.’

  ‘So there must be something on the one he tried to hide.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And what’s on that one?’

  ‘Now that’s more interesting. There are eleven numbers stored on it, along with names. They’re all mobile numbers, no landlines.’

  ‘And you’ve tried calling them?’

  Adam rolled his eyes. ‘The thought had occurred to me.’

  ‘Sorry. I was just thinking aloud. So, who did the numbers belong to?’

  The woman from behind the counter ambled over and gathered up their empty mugs. Adam waited until she was back at the till, then said, ‘That’s the real puzzle. Four are genuine numbers. But the names in the phone don’t match the owners. And they claim to never have heard of Ahmed. We’ve checked them out. They all seem entirely innocent. There’s a businessman from Hull, a housewife in Aberdeen, a student in London and a hairdresser in Bath.’

  ‘And the other seven numbers?’

  ‘Unobtainable. We’ve checked with the phone companies. They’re not working numbers. They haven’t even been assigned to any mobiles in the past.’

  Dan wrote all that down and let out a low whistle. ‘So what do you make of that then?’

  Adam shrugged. ‘No idea. That’s partly why I wanted to talk to you. You’ve got a weird brain for all this cryptic stuff. You solved the riddles in those other cases.’

  The thought of the two most recent investigations they’d worked on together made Dan shudder. He didn’t want to go back there. Neither had exactly been enjoyable, nor anything approaching a triumph. Far from it.

  ‘He’s hidden something,’ Dan said slowly, wondering where the words were coming from. ‘Ahmed’s hidden something in the names or the numbers, or maybe both, and it’s something very important. That’s why some are real numbers and others aren’t, and why none of the people know him. There’s some kind of message or code in there, disguised in all the letters and numbers.’

  Adam stood up. ‘I thought that’s what you might say. So let’s go have a look at it.’

  Dan got up too, hesitated, left a tip, then made for the door. The woman behind the counter gave a nod of appreciation.

  ‘Is he clever, this Ahmed?’ Dan asked.

  ‘I think so. Does that bother you?’

  Dan tried to hide his smile. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think you prefer it that way. Your vanity wouldn’t be satisfied with a nice easy case to crack.’

  Dan didn’t bother arguing. They knew each other well enough by now. As they walked back towards the police station, a memory intruded.

  ‘Partly?’ Dan said.

  ‘What?’ Adam replied.

  ‘Just a few minute
s ago. You said the business about Ahmed’s phone was partly what you wanted to talk to me about. So – what was the other part?’

  ‘Ah, that. I was going to mention it.’

  Dan felt his pace slow. ‘It’s Claire, isn’t it? Is she in the station? Is that it?’

  ‘No, it’s not Claire. Nothing to do with her.’ The detective sounded puzzled. ‘I think she’s out on inquiries.’

  Dan wondered if he managed to disguise his relief. ‘What then?’

  They were only a hundred yards from the police station. Adam stopped and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  ‘It’s the spooks,’ he said. ‘I’ve mentioned to them about you coming to help out on the case.’

  ‘What was the reaction?’

  ‘I have no idea. It’s impossible to tell. They don’t really show reactions. It’s like working with robots. They’re impossible to read.’

  ‘What did they say then?’

  ‘They said they wanted to see you. So, come and meet them.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘But do me a favour, will you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just remember this. I’ve seen it before, and I don’t want it to happen to you.’

  ‘What?’

  Adam gave him a knowing look. ‘Don’t get too excited, just because you’re dealing with spies and it feels all mysterious and sexy. Keep your cool.’

  Dan just managed to stop himself chuckling. ‘Come on Adam, I’m on the TV most days. I’ve interviewed celebrities and government ministers. I’ve been at the centre of some of the biggest police investigations the country has ever seen. There’s not much I haven’t taken on and come through. I think I can handle a couple of spies without too much trouble.’

  ‘It’s just a warning, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, thanks for the thought, but don’t you worry yourself. I’ll be absolutely fine.’

  Chapter Nine

  DAN FOLLOWED ADAM ALONG a couple of long, dim and narrow corridors. Heavitree Road police station was cursed with that artificial smell of pine which comes from the disinfectant of choice of the great majority of cleaners of public buildings. The only break in the scent came when they passed the cell block and it was not a welcome one; waves of the reek of stale vomit assailed them.