Century of Jihad (7 page)

Lisa and Stuart entered the carpet store. Lisa wrinkled her nose as she entered; there was a musty smell in the air. There were a number of police officers present in the small and dimly lit premises. The landlord and the tenants were being held by officers in separate corners of the store. Lisa, with Stuart following close behind, approached the elderly, short, dark-skinned owner who was looking very confused, if not traumatised, by the situation in which he found himself. Lisa produced her Police ID for the man to see and addressed him in a soft enquiring tone.

‘Mr Talpur, I have a few questions I hope you can clear up for me.’ Lisa looked past the clutter of the store towards a small room. ‘Can we use your office?’

The man gestured with his right hand and they walked over to the small dingy room.

‘Please sit down, Mr Talpur. This shouldn’t take long.’

As the man sat down, Stuart closed the door. Lisa and Stuart remained standing as there was only one chair available in the small space. Lisa looked into the man’s eyes and gave a genial smile.

The man responded. ‘I hope I can help, Officer, but I’m not sure I understand what is happening.’

‘Your other two tenants are also here to help us with our enquiries. The other young man you have been renting one of your apartments to is implicated in the Regent’s Park tube bombing,’ Lisa explained gently.

The elderly man was visibly shaken on hearing this statement. ‘My God, how can this be?’

Lisa enquired, ‘Mr Talpur, how did you become acquainted with this young man? What name did he give you?’

The elderly man hesitated for a second, trying to rally his thoughts.

‘Khanza Mazari is the name he gave me. He replied to an advertisement I placed in a magazine. I had never seen him before that. He has been a tenant for about two months now.’

Lisa asked, ‘Are you aware of his movements during this time? Any of his comings and goings? Anything that appeared unusual, any visitors?’

The man, still apparently in a daze, replied, ‘I’m very sorry, Officer, I can’t say I saw much of him at all apart from when he came in to pay his rent. We never spoke apart from pleasantries. He never caused any problems. He was always respectful. I never saw any visitors come or go.’

Lisa listened attentively to the man’s responses and concluded the interview.

‘Mr Talpur, thank you very much for your co-operation. If you think of anything further which may help our enquiries, please call me.’

With that, she handed the man her card and Stuart opened the door. The elderly man shuffled out of the room. Lisa looked at Stuart.

‘Not a lot to be getting on with from that, but I’m sure he’s telling us everything he knows. Did you see him? He was in a right old state!’

Stuart agreed. ‘Yeah, poor old bugger. Not something you want to be involved in at that age. Shall I call in one of the others now?’

Lisa replied, ‘Yes, let’s get on with it.’

The two other tenants, both students, told the officers a similar story. Neither had any real contact with the suspect, nor had either seen a visitor to the suspect’s apartment. They were not aware of anything suspicious about the man.

Police checks on the landlord and his two student tenants produced nothing untoward.

Fayaz stood staring for a moment out of his office window in the extensively renovated, Grade II listed building that is the HQ of the British Security Service, or MI5. Thames House, a substantial building on the north bank of the Thames, is located at the corner of Millbank and Horseferry Road in Central London, overlooking Lambeth Bridge. The MI5 officer could see the lines of cars crossing the bridge, their headlights glaring in the darkness. Office workers were leaving their places of work and heading home to the outskirts of the city and to the surrounding counties. He reflected that, now the Christmas lights had been switched on, the streets of the capital would throng with Christmas shoppers and revellers well into the evening on a daily basis.

Fayaz Dhavi, aged forty-five and of portly build, was a senior officer in the Counter Terrorism Branch of the British Security Service, commonly known as MI5. His area of responsibility was Islamic extremists operating, or people suspected of operating in this capacity, in Britain. He was a British-born Muslim, his parents having moved to Britain from their home in Pakistan shortly after Indian independence and the partition of India and Pakistan into two separate and hostile states, divided by hostility between Muslim and Hindu. His father had subsequently done very well in his adopted country, building up a very successful textile business. Fayaz joined ‘Five’ on leaving university, where he had studied politics. At the time he was one of the few non-white, non-Oxbridge members of the organisation.

At first he had found his colleagues either patronising or, in some cases, hostile. However, with time and the changing world MI5 found itself operating in, post the collapse of the old Soviet Block, he found acceptance from his compatriots in their new operating environment against Organised Crime and Counter Terrorism. The fight against Organised Crime, particularly drug trafficking, which absorbed approximately ten percent of resources in the decade leading up to 9/11, was eventually pushed aside by the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, and the international terror campaign mounted in its name. The Security Service had taken over the lead role in Intelligence gathering in the fight against terrorism. The police were still running the investigations and executing the arrests, while ‘Five’ used its Intelligence gathering skills to good effect. The Service had developed finely tuned analytical skills and great experience, gathered over many years, in agent running, surveillance and the use of phone taps. With the change of direction, the Security Service had doubled in size and in the scope of its recruitment pool. These changes had proved extremely beneficial to Fayaz’s career and to many others in the organisation. Like many of them, he found himself rising rapidly through the ranks.

He turned to DI Ward. ‘Well, Russ. The investigation will take its usual course. Following leads. Some will be fruitful; others dead ends. We have lots of CCTV coverage in London, the biggest such coverage anywhere in the world, and that gives us an edge. You will soon have the DNA results and that should confirm, or otherwise, whether or not the man at the morgue did, or did not, reside at the Edgware Road address. We at ‘Five’ are checking the movements of the usual suspects. Unfortunately, thus far, we are not seeing anything unusual or of interest out there to connect with the bombing. GCHQ have noticed no increase in ‘’chatter” either. He may not have previously appeared on our radar. It could prove fruitful to check with the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre (FTAC). He may be known to them. We are, as you know, stretched rather thin on the ground. We can’t follow everybody who appears on our radar. We have more than two thousand suspects on our books at any time and, as you know, it takes a team of twelve or more people for round-the-clock surveillance on any one of those targets. So even with the help of the Army’s Special Reconnaissance Regiment and, of course, you people – ‘’the biggest gang on the street”– things do become rather stretched.’

DI Ward detected a hint of sarcasm in the man’s use of a term the Police sometimes used to describe themselves. He felt Fayaz was more than a little condescending towards the Police in these joint operations. He stared at the MI5 officer for a moment, his eyes focussed on a scar on the right side of the man’s neck.

‘We’ll just have to keep digging. Doing what we’re paid to do,’ muttered Inspector Ward.

Fayaz stared blankly but didn’t reply. Ward got up to leave.

‘Keep me up-to-date with developments, won’t you?’ Fayaz said, as the DI opened the door to leave his office.

‘Of course. Likewise.’ The detective replied.

While, contrary to popular perception, cooperation between the police and the Security Service was generally very good, the relationship between these two officers was one of mutual dislike. It was essentially intangible but it could, at times, affect communication between them.

After leaving Fayaz, DI Ward received an urgent call on his mobile phone from Ed Malone requesting that he join him on his return to the Yard.

‘I don’t want to discuss the details over the phone, but there have been some interesting developments since we last spoke.’

As Ward drove back to the Yard, he reflected on his meeting with Fayaz. He disliked the man; his supercilious manner. There was something about him that made Ward uncomfortable. He hoped that Ed’s team had made a significant breakthrough, but determined to keep his cards close to his chest as far as Fayaz was concerned. He was experienced enough to know that Fayaz would play the same game, indeed perhaps had already started. Knowledge is power.

Back at the Yard, DI Ward joined his team of detectives.

‘OK, Ed, what are these interesting developments? I hope it’s something good!’

Ed responded, ‘Three things. First, Forensics have confirmed that the DNA taken from our man at the morgue and that taken at the apartment match.’

‘Marvellous!’ Ward shouted.

Ed continued. ‘Second, they can confirm from the injuries he sustained in the blast that he was at the seat of the explosion. Third, young Lisa here has spotted our man on CCTV footage, standing at the entrance to the apartment just before his taxi arrives. It shows him taking delivery of a backpack. It was delivered by a man coming from the direction of the alleyway Lisa and Theo were observing from during today’s Op. He is wearing a hood, which covers most of his face. We can’t make any ID from this, so we are trying to back track his movements to see if we get a better view of him. Our suspect bomber disappears back into the entrance to his apartment. He reappears a few minutes later. It may just be my imagination but it looks like he may have put on weight in those intervening minutes. He walks casually to a litter bin and pushes the recently delivered backpack into it.’

Ward responded to the developments. ‘Excellent! You’ve all done outstandingly since the start of this thing. Keep up the good work. I’ll go pass this up the food chain.’

The air was crisp and cold as the shoppers, from far and wide, thronged in the streets of London’s West End in their quest to complete their Christmas lists. The bombing of a few days earlier had done nothing to deter them. After 7pm the crowds of shoppers started to thin out, but were replaced by an influx of revellers heading for the nightlife on offer in Central London and its West End – in the theatres, cinemas and nightclubs.

Tracy Cameron, a twenty-three-year-old from Rainham in Essex, had arrived at Oxford Circus Underground Station at 8pm with a group of five close friends on her ‘hen night’. Tracy was due to marry Colin, her childhood sweetheart, the following weekend. The six young women visited several of the pubs to the south of Oxford Street, becoming more and more jolly and loud as they made their way towards a nightclub one of the friends had heard about in North Row. At the club entrance the club stewards had appeared friendly and had joked with the girls. On entering the nightclub, the girls’ ears were assailed by the sound of the music as they jostled their way towards the bar. The girls had a few sips from their glasses and then four of them joined the throng on the club’s small dance floor.

At the entrance to the nightclub, a group of four club stewards stood shivering in the cold, winter night air. They were huddled in their heavy overcoats and gloves in a vain attempt to ward off the bitter cold. It was just after midnight and the club was full at this hour. It was just at the start of the Christmas festivities.

During the summer nights, scantily-clad young women would come out of the club to get some fresh air, usually accompanied with a cigarette. They would talk to the door staff, entertaining them with their banter and, sometimes, outrageous behaviour. But on these winter nights the men just stood talking amongst themselves, whiling away the hours.

The black BMW turned the corner at Park Street into North Row. The door staff watched the car drive slowly down North Row and stop, just opposite the nightclub. They could see the silhouettes of two dark figures seated in the front of the car. After a pause, the man in the front passenger seat appeared to lean into the back seat of the vehicle, pulling something bulky from the rear toward him in the front of the car. The interior of the car remained dark as the driver’s door slowly opened. The driver got out of the vehicle and stood looking across at the entrance to the club. Then the passenger door opened, and the other man got out. He was holding a backpack in his right hand, which he promptly threw over his left shoulder. The door staff watched the car and its occupants with a bored fascination. There was no other activity in the vicinity to occupy their attention – North Row being, essentially, a narrow back lane tucked away behind Oxford Street. The street was otherwise deathly silent. The two men slowly moved from the car and steadily walked across the road toward the entrance to the club. The door staff watched in silence. The men from the car simultaneously placed their hands into the right hand pockets of the dark, quilted jackets they were wearing, each pulling out an object which appeared to the now mesmerised door staff like pistols. The four club stewards stood transfixed, as the men raised the handguns, pointing them towards the entrance to the club. All this appeared to the stewards to be happening in slow motion. Then there were flashes coming from the muzzles of the guns carried by the approaching men. Loud cracks echoed around in the quiet setting; the whining and pinging of ricocheting bullets. The stewards were momentarily rooted to the spot, trying to take in what was happening. One of the door staff saw the head of a colleague explode before his eyes. The thudding sound, as the bullets hit the thick outer garments worn by the doormen and then tore into the flesh beneath, ripping asunder their internal organs. The four doormen now lay on the ground. Silence had returned to North Row. Three of the doormen were as still as the night air that surrounded them. The remaining doorman groaned. He was unable to move, the life now draining from his body. Looking up, he could see two dark figures towering over him as he lay helpless. One of the figures slowly raised his pistol and pointed it in the direction of the prone man. Another flash and a loud bang echoed down North Row. Then the silence returned.