Baptism

by Max Kinnings

  “Ed, we’ve found Conor Joyce,” said Calvert. “He lives on a houseboat on the canal in Camden.”

  Part of him had hoped that they wouldn’t be able to find Joyce. He could have been dead; he could have emigrated to Australia. But no, he was living not five miles away in Camden. Ed could either use this information and explore its potential or he could do the right thing and put his crazy idea out of his mind. More than three hundred people were facing death beneath the London streets. If he had found a way to save them—even if it was acutely hazardous—was it not right at least to investigate it? The situation was changing by the minute as the water rose in the tunnel. Howard Berriman’s words were fresh in his mind. Neither storming the train nor blowing a hole in the tunnel was an option.

  Ed didn’t even know that Laura Massey was in the room. But when she spoke, he could tell she knew exactly what he was thinking.

  “Ed, you need to switch off now. You need to try and relax and make your way down to the mobile command center. The cars are ready outside.”

  There was no point arguing with her. She was right. If he was still part of the negotiating team, if he was still honoring his oath to the force, then he would do what was expected of him and make the trip down to the command center and wait while the other negotiating cell tried to make contact with Tommy Denning and failed. But in the time it had taken for him to process the information that Conor Joyce was nearby, his priorities had changed and he knew that he couldn’t do what was expected of him because he knew that, if he did, everyone on the train would die.

  “Sure, Laura, we’re on our way.”

  As he listened to the others gathering their things and making for the door, he put his hand on Nick Calvert’s arm and it was enough of a sign for him to hang back. As Ed listened to the footsteps leaving the room, he turned to Calvert and said, “You need to do something for me.”

  “Oh Jesus, Ed, you can’t be serious about this.”

  “All I want to do is meet him and talk to him.”

  “Why?”

  “I just need to know that it can’t be done, that’s all. You need to get me to Camden now. We can say we got stuck in traffic or something on the way to the command center.”

  “Ed, you could cost me my job.”

  “Nick, under normal circumstances, I’d deem that enough to pull back but not today. There’s too much at stake. If it’s not possible—and let’s face it, it probably isn’t—then you can drive me to Leicester Square and we’ll sit and wait for them all to drown.”

  “Ed . . .”

  “You’re going to do it, Nick. I know you are. I can hear it in your voice.”

  Calvert emitted a bitter chuckle. “Oh shit. Look, I’ll get you there, you can talk to him. But that’s it.”

  “I want Frank Moorcroft with us and no one else.”

  “Jesus, Ed. You don’t want much, do you? How am I going to insist that it’s just us three in the car?”

  “I don’t know, we’ll think of something.” But just as Ed said this, his mind was elsewhere, diverted by the mention of a car. Since he had heard the woman shouting on the train when he was trying to negotiate with Tommy, something had been niggling at his subconscious and the mention of the car was enough for it to suddenly make sense. She had said something about the boot of a car. The woman was Maggie Wakeham, the train driver’s wife. Her children weren’t accounted for. Tragically, in the scheme of things, they were low down the list of priorities.

  As he took Calvert’s arm and they made their way from the room, Ed said, “I think I know where the train driver’s kids are.”

  1:27 PM

  Northern Line Train 037, first carriage

  “Listen to me, Tommy. What you’ve done here. Well, it’s not your fault, right? You’re ill, you need help. If you let us go now, the authorities can treat you. You’ll go to hospital and, when you’re better, they’ll let you out. You can get on with your life. You can get yourself a wife and have some kids.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “Come on, Tommy, just put down the gun and let us go.”

  Denning had hung the torch by a piece of string from a handrail set into the ceiling of the carriage. The light shone downward onto the surface of the water that was now above their knees. Watery reflections bounced and danced around the ceiling of the train. Tommy stood just outside the cone of light that shone down onto the water but there was enough peripheral light for George to see him raise up the pistol and fire more shots down the carriage, from where the desperate cries of the passengers were emanating. Bullets struck metal, pinged and clanged, and George thought of Maggie out there in the darkness in the next carriage.

  “Listen to them, George. Just listen to them.”

  George wasn’t having any trouble hearing the sounds; they were a constant torture, unavoidable. Sounds of desperation: shrieks, screams, bursts of manic shouting, sobbing, praying, children crying.

  “Tommy, it doesn’t have to be like this. Just let Maggie go. Let her save the children.”

  Denning was little more than a shadow in the darkness. As much as George tried to add whatever impact he could to his words, he couldn’t make eye contact with him.

  “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “But that’s it, Tommy, I do understand. I know what it says in the Bible. I learned the Ten Commandments at school. I can’t remember all of them but I can remember the most important one: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ It’s there in black and white in your holy book. ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Doesn’t that mean anything to you, Tommy?”

  “It means everything to me. It’s the word of the Lord.”

  “So let us go.”

  “You know I can’t do that. This is God’s work.”

  “But ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ Tommy. ‘Thou shalt not fucking kill!’”

  1:31 PM

  Camden Town

  Calvert was so tall that Ed could hear his shaved head scratching against the vinyl interior of the car as he steered them through the streets. Professor Moorcroft sat next to Ed in the backseat while Ed fired questions at him regarding the logistics of a controlled explosion in the service tunnel near to the location of the train. Knowing that what he had said to Ed regarding his hypothesis had set in motion a sequence of events that appeared to be rapidly running out of control, Moorcroft was modifying his original hypothesis with numerous caveats. When Ed asked him questions regarding the amount of explosives that might be required to open up a fissure between the tunnels, Moorcroft stonewalled him and refused to be forced into hazarding a guess.

  “Really, you have to believe me when I say that it would be a dereliction of duty if I were to allow you to cajole me into even offering an estimate.”

  “Come on, Frank, when you told us about the possibility earlier on, you were sounding a lot more positive.”

  “It’s really not a matter of being positive or negative per se. All I can do is respond to empirical evidence as it presents itself to me at any given stage. At this moment in time, I have to say that, having reflected on the logistics of the situation, I feel neither more nor less positive than I did before as to the feasibility of—”

  “Okay, sure.” Ed couldn’t face further bluster from the professor. It was getting them nowhere. The plan might possibly work. That was the best he was going to get from him.

  Nick Calvert had been silent since they had set off from the London Underground Network Control center earlier. He had insisted to the uniforms that it was an operational necessity that he commandeer a squad car for just himself, Ed, and the professor. Ed had been able to hear in Calvert’s voice his hatred of the deceit implicit in doing so. Ed knew that he was pressuring Calvert and Moorcroft into taking part in something that they didn’t feel happy with. But unless he was seriously deluding himself, he could also hear something in both their respective demeanors that meant that as crazy as they thought he was for even contemplating this course of events, they didn’t think that a positive out
come was completely unfeasible. Ed concluded his questioning of the professor and settled back in his seat. He didn’t want to use up all of his co-conspirators’ goodwill just yet. If he was going to do what he was planning, he would need as much of it as he could get.

  As for Conor Joyce, he had no idea what he was actually going to say to him when they met. What could he say to the man whose wife had died as a result of his negligence? No, it wasn’t negligence. Ed was all for self-laceration regarding the events of that day but it wasn’t entirely negligence that had made the Hanway Street siege turn out so badly. It was more like overconfidence. His failure to talk down the IRA hitman and his resultant death alongside Conor’s wife, Mary, had—aside from the lifelong disability that it had caused Ed himself—made him more diligent and cautious in subsequent hostage situations, something that had perhaps saved many other lives. Or was that just a way of making himself feel better about the whole thing? Perhaps there was some sort of ironic symmetry to the fact that today of all days he was going to come face to face with the man who represented his single worst professional failure to date.

  All Ed knew was that Conor Joyce might offer him a solution to the situation, a solution that was almost certainly illegal and most definitely went against all forms of relevant protocol.

  “Here we are,” said Calvert and Ed was snapped out of his thoughts as the car swerved to a halt.

  “You stay here, Frank,” Ed said to the professor. “We won’t be long.” Frank murmured in the affirmative and Ed opened the door and stepped out of the car onto the pavement, where Calvert offered him his arm. Ed took it and they made their way down the steps onto the canal towpath.

  As the first smell of the oily water reached Ed’s nostrils, Calvert said, “The uniform who’s with him said he was pretty pissed off to be detained with no reason given.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Apparently he’s threatening all sorts of legal action.”

  “I can’t blame him. Now listen, Nick, you just get me in to see him and then leave me to it. You don’t need to be involved in this.”

  “I’m already involved, Ed.”

  “You can cut me loose any time you want, Nick, you know that.”

  “I know.” It was a tone of voice that Nick Calvert probably employed with his children when they had disappointed him. It was not the tone of voice of a man who had reached the end of his tether and Ed was thankful for that. He was only moments away from meeting the man whose destiny had become so cruelly tangled with his own thirteen and a half years ago. It would have been so much easier if he had lived hundreds of miles away or had died some years previously. Ed would have known then that there was nothing that could be done. But with Joyce alive and living nearby, Ed’s hand was forced. There was no way that he could allow a chance like this to pass him by.

  They walked along the towpath and Calvert spoke to a police officer, before ushering Ed onto the deck of a canal boat.

  “I’ll be right out, Nick.”

  “Okay.”

  Ed listened as Calvert stepped back onto the towpath and struck up a conversation with the uniforms. The hatch into the cabin was open. Ed ran his hand along the wood and rapped his knuckles against it.

  “You’d better come in.” It was the same voice that had told him, “You fucking let her die,” all those years before. Now it sounded calmer though still possessed of an acute antagonism born of mistrust. Ed had never seen Conor Joyce in the flesh but remembered seeing a photograph of him. He had a short muscular figure with a square jaw and short hair, already gray by his forties. He had to be in his fifties now.

  “Hello, Conor.”

  Ed stepped forward into the cabin. Conor wasn’t going to provide him with directions or take his arm. There was an aroma on the boat that was unmistakably male. This was the home of a single man who had let things slide. The air was stale and inert. Tobacco smoke competed with greasy cooking and the odor of a man who didn’t pay as much attention to his personal hygiene as he might once have done.

  “They fixed your face up pretty good, all things considered. You were in a right state when I last saw you.”

  “They did their best. I wish things had turned out differently that day.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “I’ll get straight to the point.”

  “You do that.”

  Conor’s tone was combative. He was conceding nothing. The police had invaded his home as they probably had done on a number of occasions over the years. He had constructed a wall around himself. Whether it could be broken down was something that Ed needed to establish. Fast.

  “I take it you’ve seen the news?”

  “Yeah, hottest day of the year. Might go sunbathing later.”

  “We’ve got a major terrorist hijack on the Underground. An armed gang has taken a tube train, they’re holding the passengers hostage and threatening to drown them by flooding the tunnel.”

  “Ah, I saw something about that. Nasty business.”

  “The hijackers are religious psychopaths.”

  “Islamic?”

  “No, Christian.”

  “Christian? Jesus.”

  “We think you might be able to help.” We? There was no we, it was his crazy plan and his crazy plan alone, but maybe it would sound more convincing if there was an air of consensus to it.

  “Really?”

  “The tunnel’s filling up with water. We’ve got less than an hour before the passengers drown. It appears that there’s a service tunnel that runs close to the tunnel in which the train is situated. If we can let off an explosion that will break through the adjoining wall then we might be able to drain off some of the water and buy ourselves some time.”

  It sounded totally ridiculous but there it was, it was done. The pitch was made. He wasn’t going to plead or beg; either Joyce would help him or he wouldn’t.

  Joyce chuckled to himself but it was a form of laughter entirely devoid of humor. Ed listened as he opened a packet of cigarettes, took one out, put it in his mouth, and lit it with a lighter that had to be a Zippo—the click the lid made when opened and the smell of the flame were unmistakable. He blew smoke around the cabin and Ed waited, knowing with every second that passed that the water would be getting higher in the tunnel and the passengers would be getting that bit closer to oblivion.

  Would he help them? Was he even able to help them?

  Ed battled his impatience, wrestled with an urge to prompt Conor for an answer. Fate had decreed that the paths of these two men should converge after all these years. But what outcome would fate decree for this furtive, desperate encounter? Joyce could so easily say no. Ed would be powerless as his final chance of saving the train sank beneath the water in the tunnel along with all those hundreds of people.

  “There are children on the train. Chances are there’ll be quite a few.” The emotional blackmail was heavy-handed and Ed winced at his own unsubtlety.

  “Children you say?”

  “Yeah, we don’t know how many but we’ve had reports there’s an entire class of them on a school trip.”

  “Mary and I were going to have kids. She was pregnant when . . . You remember that?”

  “There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think about what happened.”

  “Me neither.”

  Joyce’s voice was measured and devoid of emotion as he said: “I’d love to help you, Mr. Mallory, but the thing is this is your war, not mine.”

  “This is everyone’s war.” Ed’s voice was weak, almost childlike. “This is just a group of isolated religious lunatics and we need to stop them from murdering hundreds of innocent people.”

  “The same was said about me and my lot once upon a time.”

  Silence. Ed felt sick, numb. This was his last chance; it was their last chance—and it was slipping away.

  “If you’re not going to help me, Conor, I need to know now so I can try and figure out some other solution.”

  “It w
as good of them to keep your job open after what happened to you.”

  “I don’t think they wanted to. It hasn’t been easy.”

  “What I don’t understand,” said Conor after a deep lungful of cigarette smoke, “is why me? You need an explosion but instead of calling on the might of the British army, you come and see—sorry—come and find me. Me! Are you fucking mad?”

  “Maybe I am but the truth is I can’t get the go-ahead for the explosion. The powers that be say no. They can’t get the SAS into the tunnel in time. So if I don’t try and do something, there are going to be hundreds of dead bodies down there. So, there it is, I thought of you.”

  “You need a big fucking explosion on the London Underground and you want me to do it? And it’s unofficial. So even if we can save the people on the train and the explosion doesn’t kill them, I still go to prison.”

  “We can worry about your defense later. You can tell them that I made you do it. All I know is that we’ve got less than an hour to try and save those people.”

  Conor Joyce rubbed his forehead with the flat of his hand whilst he thought. Ed waited, his innards feeling empty and tremulous.

  “It was never me that set off the explosives. You do know that, don’t you?”

  Ed didn’t and he suspected that Conor didn’t either. He said it in such a way that Ed could hear a state of denial shrouding the words. But if that was his way of dealing with the past then so be it. It was unimportant now.

  “I just got them for others. I know that none of you lot believed that but it’s the truth. I was a sort of fixer, dealer if you like. I’ve got a vague knowledge of how to make the stuff go bang but that’s it.”

  Ed felt sure that Conor had much more expertise than that but he dodged the issue, not wanting Conor to lose the train of thought.

  “There’s no one else I can turn to.”

  “You’re not setting me up here, are you?” The antagonistic tone had returned. “I try and find you some explosives and you lock me up?”