Bombproof (21 page)

How long before they identify Dessie’s body? Then they’ll come asking questions because everybody knows the Dobermann works for him. The answer is to distance himself from his old mucker. He could spread a rumour that he and Dessie had fallen out. Tell people Dessie had been skimming the till.

Nobody who knew Dessie is going to seriously believe something like that, but Plod might suck on the worm if Murphy baited the hook the right way.

Suddenly, he sees a new possibility. Sooner or later the rozzers are going to link the Old Bailey job with the bombing. And when they realise what’s missing from the evidence room, they’ll think Ray Garza hired someone to get his son acquitted. Enter Dessie Fraser, more useful dead than alive.

Sami Macbeth is the only problem. The kid could screw up a one-car funeral.

A decision works its way into Murphy’s eyes and he lets out a deep breath through his nose. Stubbing out his cigar, he carries his Scotch through the patio doors and across the lawn, Gabriel is jacketless, sleeves rolled up, polishing the Jag.

‘We’re taking a drive.’

‘Where to, boss?’

‘If you knew that you’d be as clever as me.’

36

Bob Piper is sitting in a mobile control room, a Winnebago parked in Wardour Street opposite an Angus Steak House. Spread across a table, weighted down with coffee mugs, are building plans for the Red Emperor restaurant and adjoining buildings, along with satellite images of the surrounding streets. The clarity is remarkable showing individual trees, vehicles and TV aerials.

A few years back a woman in the Netherlands spent an afternoon sunbathing topless on her secluded rooftop patio and then discovered images of herself, near-naked, posted all over the internet because a Google satellite 300 miles above the earth captured the moment.

Piper is studying the satellite images with the head of SO19, the specialist firearms command, and a major who heads the army bomb disposal unit.

Thermal imaging cameras trained on the restaurant show six people inside. Each appears as a white shadow on a dark background. Individuals have been given codenames based on his or her location. Sami Macbeth is Target Alpha. Right now he’s located near the connecting door to the kitchen. Four hostages are located in the body of the dining area, well away from the front windows. One hostage is in the storeroom, a troublemaker perhaps, separated from the others.

Listening devices will be in place within twenty minutes. Technicians are slowly drilling through the walls from the adjoining cake shop threading microphones into position.

Piper tilts back his swivel chair and stretches his arms above his head, making his shirt pull tightly across his chest.

What is Macbeth hoping to achieve? If he does have a bomb, why hasn’t he detonated it? Maybe he’s bluffing. Maybe the bomb failed to go off or he bottled out.

Now he wants to take a van. It won’t happen. Piper can’t let a possible suicide bomber go on a joyride through the West End with hostages. No chase scenes. No slapstick.

Piper has to stall him. Make excuses. Give in to the small demands. Sound reasonable.

Normally, the longer the siege goes on, the better it is. Not this time. In the next twelve hours a decision has to be made, Piper’s decision. They have to find a way of isolating Macbeth from the others. Then they could detonate a water bomb against the joint wall and blow a man-sized hole into the Red Emperor. One team could go through the front door, another through the hole. They could reach the hostages in fifteen seconds, all except the one in the storeroom.

The biggest question mark concerns the possibility of booby-traps. If Macbeth does have a bomb, he could have rigged it to explode if there is any attempt to free the hostages. The explosive used in the Tube bombing was TATP, homemade and volatile. Any percussion blast from a water bomb could trigger a chain reaction.

The hotline is ringing. It’s the Commissioner. Piper makes eye contact with his senior men, who watch and listen.

‘With all due respect, sir, we don’t need the SAS.’

Piper sucks in his cheeks. His mouth has gone small.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘No, sir.’

‘My full co-operation, sir.’

Fucking SAS! So what if they abseil off rooftops and swing through windows? They’re glory hounds. Headline hunters. They’re like piranhas - they only attack when they smell blood in the water.

This is all because of de Menezes, thinks Piper. One dead Brazilian and the Commissioner heads for the tall grass.

The others are waiting for instructions.

‘How do you want to proceed, sir?’

‘We let him have the van.’

37

Sami feels like it’s the first day of his life and not the last one. It’s a fluttering deep in his diaphragm, a feverish excitement mixed with fear. He’s pacing the dining room, trying to picture what he has to do.

They think he’s a terrorist. They’re frightened of him. He’s frightened of them. He has to use these facts rather than run away from them.

Lucy moves across the restaurant, her footsteps so small and light they barely make a sound.

‘Did you really blow up that train?’

‘No.’

‘But you
are
a terrorist?’

Sami shakes his head.

Lucy looks at him incredulously. She wants an explanation.

Sami shrugs. ‘I was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people.’

‘Today?’

‘Today … three years ago … it’s the story of my life.’

Lucy waits for more. Sami struggles to explain.

‘Have you ever been blamed for something you didn’t do and no matter how many times you deny it, nobody will believe you?’

Lucy nods. ‘I had a teacher who said I plagiarised an essay. She failed me. I tried to argue with her, but she wouldn’t look at the paper again.’

Sami can see how this might be upsetting. ‘How long ago did it happen?’

‘Four years.’

‘That was unfair, but if you look back and be brutally honest, maybe there were times when you got away with stuff. You either didn’t get caught or maybe someone else got the blame for something you did.’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘I’m saying that luck doesn’t even itself out. For years I’ve been waiting for things to rebalance, to even up. I’m just plain unlucky.’

‘You’re making excuses.’

‘Think so. I’ve been over it a lot of times, a lot of nights. I spent nearly three years inside, staring at the walls of a prison cell, thinking maybe there was something I did wrong that I can’t remember - some fuck-up or careless mistake like selling a dodgy car or not dipping my headlights at night. Did I kill someone accidentally? Is someone like Persephone riding around in a wheelchair or missing a father because of something I did. Because if there’s not - if I’ve done nothing to deserve this life; if I’m getting kicked from Camden to Christmas for no fucking reason, I’d become a very bitter bastard. Unforgiving. I might even want to kill someone or to kill myself.’

Lucy raises her chin slightly and narrows her eyes. ‘You don’t punish innocent people just because you’re unlucky. Sounds like you’re trying to correct yesterday’s mistakes. It can’t be done. Mark them off. Make a new start.’

‘You’re a pretty smart cookie for someone your age.’

‘I’m twenty-one.’

‘You look younger.’

Her hair is cut short and trimmed across her neck in a straight line. Sami wants to reach out and touch it. Lucy moves first, taking his hand. Squeezing it.

‘They’re going to kill you.’

‘I’ll be all right.’

‘They’ll shoot first and do the numbers later.’

‘You watch too many films.’

‘You could negotiate - give yourself up to someone famous.’

‘Like who?’

‘Glenda Jackson.’

Sami laughs. ‘They’d shoot both of us.’

‘You don’t have to die.’

Sami looks into her eyes and away. Then he opens his palm as though releasing an invisible bird and watches it flutter away.

38

It takes Ruiz twenty minutes to get from Fleet Street to Covent Garden. He walks with a limping gait, straightening his left leg and swinging his right leg through. If he concentrates really hard he can almost walk normally, but why bother? The limp doesn’t embarrass him or make him feel self-conscious.

His mobile vibrates in his pocket.

‘Have you seen the news?’ asks Miranda. ‘They’re saying Sami Macbeth has a bomb.’

‘I know.’

‘Should I do something?’

‘Nothing you can do.’

‘Something must have happened. I talked to him. He was adamant about not going back inside.’

‘Sit tight. I’m here now.’

Chinatown is sealed off, wrapped up in police tape and barricaded with concrete blocks that can thwart a vehicle packed with explosives. Police are guarding the perimeter, keeping sightseers and onlookers at bay.

TV crews have set up cameras on top of broadcast vans and telephoto lenses point from the windows of upstairs flats. Reporters are complaining about being kept so far away from the siege. They want access. Footage. Drama.

Ruiz pushes his way through.

‘I need to see the boss,’ he says to a senior sergeant.

‘Who are you?

‘Vincent Ruiz. I’m a former DI.’

‘You picked a bad time, sir.’

‘I got some information.’

The sergeant ducks under the police tape and talks into his shoulder blade, pressing the button on a radio. He nods. Nods again. He motions Ruiz to follow him.

They walk along Shaftesbury Avenue and pass through a second checkpoint. A mobile control room has been parked in Wardour Street. Commander Bob Piper is bent at the waist, studying a TV screen. He straightens, turns, taking a moment to study Ruiz over the top of a coffee cup.

The introductions are short. He’s a busy man, under pressure, and he isn’t going to invite Ruiz to sit down or offer him a coffee.

‘The guy inside is called Sami Macbeth?’

‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

‘He was released on parole three days ago. Now he’s looking for his sister.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘He called me. He wanted my help.’

‘You know anything about a bomb?’

Ruiz shakes his head. He tells Piper about the drug den in Whitechapel and Sami’s meeting with Tony Murphy. Piper isn’t taking notes. He’s not interested in what happened yesterday or the day before.

‘Where would Macbeth get a bomb?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe he’s bluffing.’

‘Tell that to the people on that train.’

‘My ex-wife is Macbeth’s parole officer. She says he wants to go straight. Maybe he’s caught up in something and can’t get out.’

‘And your ex-wife is a good judge of character, is she?’

He’s being sarcastic. Ruiz doesn’t bite.

Piper is getting tired of the conversation. ‘No offence, Mr Ruiz, but I can’t rely on your ex-wife’s intuition. I have CCTV footage of this guy running from the scene of a bombing. I have his admissions. I have a call from an Al Qaeda splinter group claiming responsibility. And I have five hostages inside with families and friends and the rest of their lives to live.’

‘Let me talk to him.’

‘Go home, Mr Ruiz. It’s not your concern.’

Ruiz is a civilian now. That’s why Piper is calling him ‘mister’. He’s letting him know that he has no authority any more.

Piper signals a DC. ‘Escort this gentleman back to the perimeter.’

The phone is ringing. The Commander picks it up. Ruiz can only hear one side of the conversation.

‘You can have the van … one hostage … give me time to clear the roads.’

39

Bones McGee is dressed in dark clothes, carrying a black zip-up holdall, which looks as though it might contain his gym gear. Instead it holds a Blaser R93 single shot, straight pull, bolt action rifle, with a ten shot magazine packed with soft nosed 308s.

It’s a sniper’s rifle with a vibration absorbing aluminium stock and a two-stage trigger. The 600mm barrel is made of thermally distressed, fluted steel. It’s black. It’s beautiful. It can blow a big fucking hole in things.

Bones has been five times full bore rifle champion in the Met’s annual shoot-off. It would have been six times if the organisers hadn’t allowed a ring-in from the FBI to enter. He was so full of Beta Blockers he rattled. Said he had a heart condition. Bullshit.

He reaches the police cordon and flips open his badge. Makes a joke. Keeps walking. The Shaftesbury Hotel has been evacuated and the foyer is forlornly empty. He presses the intercom. A security guard answers.‘The place been searched?’ asks Bones.

‘It’s empty. Everybody’s cleared out.’

‘I’m here to make sure. Open up.’

The guard appears, studies his badge and unlocks the door. Bones asks about rooms overlooking Shaftesbury Avenue.

‘You want to see one?’

‘I want to use one.’

The guard shows him a floor plan on the computer. ‘How’s it going out there?’ he asks.

‘We’ll get the guy.’

Bones takes the lift to the fourth floor and follows a corridor, counting down the room numbers. He swipes an entry card and a green light blinks.

Tossing the holdall onto the bed, he stands at the window and gently parts the curtains by an inch. The Winnebago below him must be the control room. Raising his gaze, he has a view down Macclesfield Street to the heart of Chinatown.

The Red Emperor restaurant is bathed in light, which reflects off the gold lettering above the awning. The street outside is empty except for a white van parked in the adjacent lane.

Bones takes a set of binoculars from the bag and puts an ear jack into the shell of his ear so he can hear the police chatter. Scanning the skyline, he can pick out a handful of dark shadows lying prone on the rooftops or crouching behind walls and chimney pots.

The poor bastards must be freezing, lying in the open with one eye glued to the scope and a finger curled inside the trigger guard. It’s only going to take a shot over their heads and they’ll all hit their triggers.

He unzips the holdall from stem to stern and assembles the rifle, something he can do in the dark or blindfold. Running his forefinger along the barrel, he dips his head so he can sniff the metal and gun oil. Then he clips the barrel onto a bipod and aims it through the window, which is open a crack.