‘Nope. They were too busy worrying that having a black man on site might lower the property value. Only thing missing from the reception I got was a burning cross and them breaking out their white hoods for me.’
‘I’ll be amazed if he doesn’t know we were there by now,’ said Porter. ‘He doesn’t know what we do though. Take a look at this.’
‘Playing show and tell?’ a voice over by the door said, and Porter turned to see Taylor Bell striding towards them, hands in pockets. ‘I’ve got something to share if I can join in.’
‘Ladies first,’ said Styles.
‘I kicked a guy in the balls once for calling me a lady,’ she said, deadpan.
Porter flicked from a stunned Styles lost for a witty comeback to Bell’s face just in time to see her crack a smile.
‘I’m just kidding,’ she said, patting him on the shoulder as she slouched into a neighbouring chair.
Styles went to hit play just as she finished with, ‘I didn’t kick anyone in the balls, I just punched him.’
She reached forwards and tapped play herself before either of them could respond. Porter couldn’t help but smile as he walked away to grab their coffees. Despite his better judgement, he was warming to her. Hard not to. She gave as good as she got. He’d admired the way she’d handled the EWP crowd yesterday too. Plenty would have relied on safety in numbers, not stepping forward and dealing with it from the front like she had. He fired off a text to Evie while he waited for the cups to fill.
Gonna be a late one tonight. Case picking up pace. Will explain later.
Not a lie as such. There was momentum in cases like this, a current that carried you with it like a river. Sometimes you hit shallows, but this felt significant, speeding towards something. The equivalent of a waterfall, knowing his luck. He would be late tonight, just not because of the case. Well, not this one anyway.
SKY NEWS BULLETIN
Monday afternoon
‘Breaking news in the wake of yesterday’s terrorist attack at the old magistrates court in Greenwich, we’re receiving reports of a series of racially motivated attacks across London. A contingent from the English Welfare Party has maintained a presence at the scene since yesterday. We go live now to Amy Fitzwilliam in Greenwich. Amy?’
‘Thank you, Asim. Yes, we’re hearing reports of a number of attacks within the last few hours. Mainly damage to property, but we’ve also had a serious assault confirmed. The victim has been identified as Zain Kassab, a Deliveroo rider, who was badly beaten in central London today by a group of men who dragged him off his bike. Mr Kassab was taken to hospital, where we understand he’s in a critical condition. Witnesses claim to have heard a number of racial slurs as the group attacked Mr Kassab. I’m here with EWP spokesman, Jeremy Hodgson. Mr Hodgson, what do you say to allegations that the EWP is using yesterday’s killing of Ross Henderson as an excuse to whip up hatred against certain ethnic groups?’
‘I’d say if people are reacting, it’s because they’re scared. I mean who wouldn’t be after yesterday?’
‘And what do you say to reports that EWP members assaulted a Deliveroo rider earlier today?’
‘Don’t know that they were any of ours what did that, but I’d say whoever they were, I’m sure they had their reasons.’
‘What about the racial slurs that witnesses heard the men shouting? What about the fact that three men beat one man bad enough that he’s in a critical condition?’
‘Like I said, miss, people are afraid. People will do all sorts to protect what’s theirs.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Styles and Bell had finished by the time he made it back upstairs with the coffees, Porter clocking the concentration on Styles’s face, like a kid trying really hard to pay attention in class.
‘Boss, you’re going to want to hear this,’ he said, taking a coffee from the cardboard cup holder Porter offered.
‘Hear what?’
‘This,’ Bell said, pointing to the laptop they’d just watched the clip on, ‘is your best bet right now. I spoke to my guy in American Intelligence, and he says this wasn’t the Brotherhood. No way.’
‘How can he be so sure?’ Porter asked. ‘Did he just sit down at dinner and ask them outright?’
Bell ignored his sarcasm. ‘First off, yes, he’s sure, and if he is, then so am I. Intel from his sources in the last year alone has prevented a dozen credible threats. And if that’s not enough for you, his contact has heard first-hand from the Brotherhood that they wish they knew who it was so they could thank them for their contribution to the cause. Normally these fuckers are crowing from the rooftops. Take it from me, if this was terrorism, it wasn’t the Brotherhood.’
‘Why would one group of terrorists let somebody else claim their glory?’ asked Styles.
‘Oh, this one’s sharp,’ she said to Porter. ‘They wouldn’t, Boy Wonder. That’s why Winter needs putting under the microscope.’
‘Does that mean you’re moving on, then?’ Porter asked.
‘You want rid of me already?’ she said, raising an eyebrow.
‘Hey, you stay as long as you want,’ he said, and meant it. ‘More the merrier.’
‘Well, I’m thinking your super would almost rather this was a terror attack than the shit show it’ll become if it turns out Henderson was murdered by one of his own countrymen. Milburn seems the sort to worry about the optics as much as the outcomes, am I right?’
‘More than you know,’ mumbled Porter. ‘Right, if you’re sticking around, let’s get the others together and bring everyone up to speed. Something tells me no one’s going home any time soon.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
As if there hadn’t been enough riding on the case before this, the sea of concerned faces told Porter they all understood the gravity of the situation. Any hint that they were even looking at Winter, rumours like that were fumes waiting to catch a spark, and the EWP had shown themselves as not the type to back away from conflict.
‘Gus, Kaja, anything from CCTV?’
‘Nothing concrete,’ Sucheka said, sounding disappointed in herself, like it was her fault.
‘But not nothing?’ Porter asked, reading between the lines.
‘Nobody came in from the front, we know that much. Doors were still locked when first officers arrived on the scene, so our suspects have to have used at least the same side, if not the same method of entry as Henderson.’
‘We have Henderson walking past the front about half an hour before he started broadcasting,’ Tessier chipped in. ‘He turns right, up Greenwich High Road, but we’ve got no coverage back there. You go far enough along and there are a few bars and a chippy that have cameras that catch passing traffic out front. Trouble is we don’t have a timeframe for the killers entering. Could have been waiting for him for hours, and hundreds of cars go past in that time.’
‘Question is though, if they were waiting for him, how did they know where he’d be? His mate Jason said that he didn’t even tell him or Elliott Kirk where he broadcasted from, so how would they know?’
‘He could have told someone,’ Dee Williams chipped in. ‘Just because he didn’t tell Jason, doesn’t mean he didn’t tell anyone else.’
‘So, who would he trust more than two of his closest friends?’
Porter reached into his jacket, an afterthought, and pulled out the picture he’d found of Henderson and the girl.
‘I found this in Henderson’s room,’ he said, holding it up for his team to see. ‘His folks never mentioned a girlfriend when we spoke. Meant to show them this but completely forgot when Winter started broadcasting, but she could just as easily be an ex. Either way, I’d like to speak to her. Well volunteered, Dee.’
Williams accepted the task with a sardonic smile.
‘It’s a valid question though,’ Porter said. ‘They had to know where he’d be, so did they have a heads up, or did they track him there somehow? Glenn, can you have a word with Tech? I want to know if there’s anything going o
n with his phone, any way they could have used that to track him without his knowledge.’
‘On it, boss,’ said Waters, ‘anything else for me?’ he asked, ever the keen one.
‘Yeah, you find anything worth sharing in the comments from the other Stormcloudz videos?’
‘Only that the guy had almost as many haters as supporters. All his content was taking potshots at the far right. He was all about human rights, freedom of movement, equal opportunities, those sorts of things. Calling for a second referendum, so he’s got the Brexit brigade gunning for him as well. Most of the nasty stuff is about his stance on immigration though.’
‘Any standouts we need to look at?’ Styles asked.
‘Yeah, if you’ve got nothing better to do for the next few months,’ Waters said, laughing a little too loudly at his own attempt at humour. ‘I haven’t even finished yet, nowhere near, and I’ve got over two hundred that threaten to at least hurt if not kill him in one way or another.’
‘That’s racists for you,’ said Tessier.
Somehow Porter couldn’t imagine anyone threatening Tessier full stop, never mind being stupid enough to do it to his face.
‘I’ve split ’em into a few lists,’ said Waters. ‘Some of them are EWP members. Easy enough to spot. They’re the ones with the badge splashed all over their profiles or flashing their own tattoo. Then there’s a load whose profiles are set to private. Can’t see anything except their profile pic, and some of them don’t even have a face on.’
‘It’s a start. Stick with it, Glenn. The video of Winter isn’t enough on its own. He might have shot up our list, but we can’t rule out that this was inspired by him, rather than carried out by him. Not that he’d need to get his hands dirty personally anyway. More likely some of the idiots that follow him.’
‘Good place to start might be those two meatheads with him on the video,’ said Styles.
‘Good shout, Nick. Chances are we find them, we find him, and vice versa.’
‘So, we’re sacking off the terror angle altogether then, boss?’ Sucheka asked.
Porter paused for a beat. ‘I don’t think we can just yet, but based on what DI Bell has already shared, it’s looking less likely that’s where this is headed.’
‘What did the super make of that?’ she asked.
‘He doesn’t know yet.’
Porter didn’t think Milburn would take exception to having Winter and the EWP on the table as suspects, but he’d want something pretty bloody concrete before he went public with that. The threat on tape wouldn’t be enough on its own. They needed to get Winter in an interview room and see what kind of alibi he threw their way.
‘Kaja, was there anything else about the CCTV? We went off on a bit of a tangent.’
‘Yes actually. I’d already been thinking about how they knew he’d be there, so we went back a bit with the footage. A week in fact. Got a few others to help scan through it, and we saw two things. Firstly, Henderson had done a couple of previous passes.’
‘He’d been in the building already?’ Styles asked.
‘Don’t know about inside,’ she said, ‘but he’d taken that same route. His phone data backs that up. Probably just scoping it out, checking security, that type of thing. Second though, and this one is a bit more interesting, is who else we saw.’
‘Not Winter?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘but somebody else we already know. Here,’ she said, pulling her phone out, holding it screen out for the rest to see.
Jason McTeague.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Could be nothing, but Porter wasn’t a big believer in coincidences. He’d seen too many being the end of a thread, that when pulled, unravelled people’s stories. For McTeague to walk past the site of his friend’s murder forty-eight hours before it took place, in a city the size of London, when he lived fifteen miles away on the other side of the river, felt more than just chance.
‘Nick, I want you and Kaja over to his pub now. No cosy chat over the bar this time. I want him down here, sweating in a room when we ask him why he went for a stroll past a murder scene. Gus, Dee, have a second crack at finding Elliott Kirk for me. Glenn, you stick with the social media. I know it’s a ball-breaker, but it needs doing, and not much gets past you on that front.’
Waters perked up at the compliment, and Porter made a mental note to give the guy a break and throw him something more exciting the next chance he got. That kind of data trawling was the part they left out on shows like Line of Duty.
‘Everyone happy with that?’ he asked, avoiding looking at Waters in case the reality of yet more hours scrolling through angry rants had set back in.
‘What about me?’ Bell asked.
Truth be told, she’d been uncharacteristically quiet these last few minutes and he’d forgotten she was even there. Porter intended to have a pop at tracking down Damien Winter, and was toying with a second visit to the hospital to see if Kamau was showing any signs of recovery yet. Maybe even spend a little time looking into Jackson Tyler. She could help with the first but would be in the way with the second and third. No plausible alternative to her tagging along popped to mind though. He’d get creative when he needed to branch out on his own.
‘You can come with me, see if we can find Winter.’
‘I always knew you’d ditch me for a younger, better-looking model,’ said Styles, with a mock pout.
‘Nothing to do with your age, mate. She’s just got better banter than you.’
‘Harsh but fair,’ Styles conceded.
‘Porter!’
A loud voice cut across the office. Only one man bellowed like that in here. Porter saw Milburn in the door to his office, beckoning him with a finger.
‘DI Bell, you as well, please.’
Porter dismissed the rest of the team, sending them scurrying off to their allotted tasks.
‘My gaffer couldn’t be louder if he swallowed a megaphone,’ Bell said as they wandered towards Milburn’s office. ‘Yours has him beat though. Who needs hand driers in the loos when you’ve got hot air on supply?’
Porter smiled at that one.
‘Careful,’ she counselled. ‘That’s twice I’ve caught you smirking at one of my jokes. Any more and people might start to think you like me.’
She walked into Milburn’s office ahead of Porter, and a thought flashed briefly through his mind as she turned to look at him. Was she flirting with him? No, Styles always said he was crap at reading people outside of a work context. If he thought she was, chances are she was trying anything but. All the same, he felt warmth in his cheeks. Could just as easily be anticipation of updating Milburn, seeing how his boss reacted to news that might not fit his current world view.
He had the super pegged as basically a good guy at heart, just one who lost sight of what really mattered at times. Politics over people. Porter wasted no time, keen to get away from the station, to see what he could shake loose. He’d have to shake Taylor Bell loose first though. He ran Milburn through Bell’s intel about the Brotherhood, watching his boss’s face with interest, seeing a surprising lack of reaction. Bell echoed her assurances about the validity of her sources, and Milburn stayed uncharacteristically quiet until after Porter showed him the footage of Winter and Henderson.
Milburn sat back, hands folded, resting on a paunch that seemed to grow bigger every time Porter set foot in the room.
‘What have you got in play at the moment then, Porter?’
Porter ran him through the assignments he had just dished out, emphasis very much on Winter and McTeague now, adding in Bell’s offer of staying with them. Unlikely as it now looked that the Brotherhood were behind this, Porter wasn’t one to dismiss possibilities, no matter how small. If this took a turn back in that direction, for whatever reason, they’d need her expertise. If it didn’t, she’d be a useful extra body until she got pulled back by her own chain of command.
‘So, here’s what I’m thinking,’ Milburn said finally. ‘The press is
expecting daily updates thanks to the terror angle. If we don’t give them that, they’ll fill the void with their own speculation. If we discount it completely, that won’t satisfy them without knowing who we’re looking at now, which we can’t share yet. I’ll schedule the next one for tomorrow morning, say the usual stock statements about pursuing all leads, can’t comment further at this stage, etc. What we can’t do yet is take the terror part off the table.’
‘Sir, with all due respect, people are panicking out there. Overreacting. We’ve already had the EWP marching on a mosque, and the Islamic centre that went up in flames. There’s no telling what might happen if Winter keeps whipping up his halfwits with his stupid sermons.’
‘If we confirm it wasn’t the Brotherhood, we might as well tell Winter we like him for this,’ Milburn said, sterner edge creeping in.
‘And if it was just one man, working alone, you might be right, sir, but Winter calls the shots for too many men who’d like nothing better than to drop a match in a mosque. Risks of us saying nothing massively outweigh those of him thinking he’s in the frame. If he thinks we suspect him, he’s less likely to do anything stupid or order anyone else to do it for him, and if it was him, we’ll get him some other way.’
‘And what about the risks of taking terror off the table and it turning out that you’ve got this all wrong?’
You’ve got it wrong. No we in this equation if things went tits up.
‘Sir, for what it’s worth, I agree with DI Porter’s assessment, and my intel is reliable, so …’
Milburn sat forward quickly in his seat, no mean feat for a man of his size, belly pressing up against the edge of his desk.
‘Is it one hundred per cent, DI Bell? Would you be willing to stake your career on it, because rest assured that’s what you’d be doing. We go public with what you’re saying, both of you, and it goes the other way? I’d be looking for another job, and I’d make damn sure I dragged the pair of you out the door with me.’
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