Red Crystal (30 page)

Wheatfield remained in the store for some time. Nick waited impatiently. Eventually Wheatfield emerged with a large packet of some product or another under his arm: a white packet brashly printed with what looked like a manufacturer’s name in bright red; with a gaudy green picture underneath. It was impossible to see exactly what it was.

Next Wheatfield went into an electrical shop. Then a small supermarket. Nick took the risk of peering in through the numerous cut-price posters stuck on the window. He spotted Wheatfield at the far end of an aisle, putting a large packet of washing powder into his basket. At the next aisle he appeared to have trouble finding what he was after, but after much searching finally picked up several packets of what could have been either sugar or flour, and came towards the checkout.

Nick moved away and waited up the street.

Wheatfield came out and, despite the obvious weight of the various packages, moved off fast, away from home, in the direction of Paddington. After a while the weight of the shopping slowed him down and, pausing to redistribute the bags, he carried on at a slower pace.

Suddenly Wheatfield stopped and took a long look round. Nick side-stepped into a doorway and peered out cautiously.

He swore under his breath.

Wheatfield had hailed a taxi and was climbing in.

Not another in sight. As Wheatfield’s cab drew away Nick ran to the next corner. Still no cabs. Only one, cruising round a corner two streets to the south. Nick put two fingers in his mouth and whistled hard. The cab braked and he sprinted towards it.

His lungs aching, he jumped in and shouted, ‘U-turn, right at the top and then go like hell. I’m trying to catch someone.’

The cabby held his tongue with difficulty and, executing the turn, went for the lights, which were red.

‘Jump them. I’m a police officer.’

Muttering hard, the cabby found a gap in the cross-traffic and swerved right into the Bishop’s Bridge Road. He shouted over his shoulder, ‘I’ve been waiting for this for twenty years.’

They roared across the next two lights, which were green, and came to the roundabout under the Westway. There was only one other cab in sight, heading east out of the roundabout towards Marylebone.

Nick realized that in his panic he’d forgotten to take the number of Wheatfield’s cab. Now he couldn’t be sure he had the right one.

They closed on the cab ahead. A single passenger was visible through the back window. They followed past the Planetarium and Madame Tussaud’s, then the cab slowed and turned right into Marylebone High Street. Half-way down it turned left into Weymouth Street and came to a halt in front of a small block of flats.

Nick told the cabby to stop a little further on. He looked back. It was Wheatfield all right. Paying off the cab.

Exhaling with relief, Nick reached in his pocket for some money. ‘You’re joking, mate,’ said the cabby, gesturing his refusal. ‘Worth a guinea a minute. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’

Wheatfield was going up the steps, taking a good look round before disappearing into the building. There appeared to be only the one entrance. It looked the sort of place to have a porter.

Nick gave it three mintues, then approached cautiously. The main doors were open, revealing an empty entrance hall. Nick strode in purposefully, looked around as if searching for someone, and said to the porter, ‘Just saw a friend of mine come in. Does he live here?’

The porter stared at him blankly and shrugged.

Nick demanded, ‘D’you know which flat he went to?’

‘Probably fifth floor, I would say. That’s where the lift stopped at any rate.’

‘You don’t know which number?’

The porter put on the air of having to deal with an idiot. ‘These are service flats. People come and go all the time. Always changing. How should
I
know?’

Nick found a phone box and called the office. He told Conway to get hold of the letting agent and discover who’d rented the flats on the fifth floor. Conway cut him short, quietly triumphant. ‘The boss has agreed to a proper job. Didn’t I say he would? Give me ten minutes and someone’ll be over.’

As he waited, Nick made an effort to keep a watch on the front entrance. He tried to memorize the description of each person passing in or out of the block. There were ten people in five minutes. By the time his relief arrived he couldn’t remember anything about the first eight.

He briefed the new man then set off wearily for home. For some reason he began to feel very hot. Within minutes he was sweating like a pig. It must be the flu. The thirty-minute Tube journey with a longish walk and nothing but an empty cold flat at the end suddenly seemed very unattractive.

He paused. Montagu Mews wasn’t far away. Ten minutes at the most. Would she mind? Surely not. They’d made a tentative arrangement to meet that evening. So he’d be a bit early. She wouldn’t turn him away; most women had some maternal instinct tucked away somewhere. He could do with a bit of tender loving care.

He was feeling distinctly shivery now. The walk was longer than he thought. By the time he reached the mews he was ready to drop.

He rang the bell. She wasn’t in. He considered going home after all, but the prospect was very depressing.

He checked the wall of the house for an alarm. No sign. The door had a single Yale lock: a fifteen-second job. He reached into his wallet and took out one of the four ‘loids’ – strips of celluloid – he kept there.

As the door yielded he listened for a hidden alarm, but there was none. He went in. Pausing only long enough to find a scrap of paper and leave a note on the stairs, he went straight up to the bedroom and undressed. Vastly weary, he climbed into the double bed and was instantly asleep.

C
ONSIDERING WHAT SHE
was about to do, Gabriele felt very calm.

She checked the contents of the parcels which Max had spread out on the table. Six batteries, two lengths of thin single-strand electrical wire – one in red, one in black – a pair of cutters, a soldering iron, a stick of solder, electrical tape, Sellotape, a roll of corrugated cardboard, six sheets of stiff white card, brown paper, small white plastic bags, string, six padded envelopes measuring ten by seven, a packet of wooden clothes pegs and a box of drawing-pins. Also a quantity of common garden weedkiller containing a high proportion of sodium chlorate, five bags of sugar, and one large packet of Surf soap powder. She rearranged everything in the right order, so that she could put her hands on the items as she needed them.

She said, ‘Go and empty the Surf packet.’

While Max was gone she went to a holdall and removed the plastic container which she had been keeping in the fridge at the mews house. She opened it and took out six detonators. These she laid on the table.

With care she then removed the contents of a second box: two tubes, about ten inches long, each marked ‘Nitramite 19C’ and stamped with the French manufacturer’s date and identification codes. The mixture consisted of TNT and ammonium nitrate, extremely powerful when detonated, but safe to handle under normal conditions.

She put the sticks of explosive on the far side of the table, next to the batteries and wires, but well away from the detonators.

Almost ready now. As a final preparation she tore two pages out of
Strike Back!
and taped them to the table where she could read them easily.

Max returned with the empty Surf packet which Gabriele placed on the floor. Handing Max the sugar and weedkiller, she motioned him towards the kitchen. She followed with a piece of paper and taped it on to the wall just above the work surface. On the paper were written the quantities of weedkiller and sugar to be weighed and mixed together in five separate batches, four small and one large. She pushed five plastic mixing bowls and the kitchen scales towards him. ‘Take your time, mix the stuff well, and leave it in the bowls. And when you come in, don’t speak to me or disturb me in any way.’

She returned to the main room and began work.

The important thing was not to rush it. With five devices to make it would be tempting to cut corners. That was the way to blast herself to pieces.

She decided to start with the simplest job. The four small packets.

First she made the initiators – the triggers that would fire the explosive. She took a wooden clothes peg and cut two lengths of red wire ten inches long. She made a small hole in each of the two jaws of the clothes peg, and pushed a wire through the hole from the outside. She stripped the end of each wire and wrapped it round the pin of a drawing-pin which she pushed firmly into the wood. When the clothes peg was clamped shut the two drawing-pins touched and contact was made between the two lengths of wire. She sprang the peg open and shut several times to make sure the drawing-pins always made good contact.

She made three more of these devices, then slid each inside a padded envelope and fixed them firmly in place with strong tape. Next she cut four rectangles of heavy card to fit inside the envelopes. As she put each card into the envelope she slid it between the jaws of the clothes peg. In this way, the card prevented contact between the two wires.

She got up and went into the kitchen. She found Max bent over the scales, spooning minute amounts of sugar back into a packet. She was pleased to see that he was doing the job with care.

He had completed three batches of the sugar-weedkiller mixture and these she took back to the table. She poured each batch into a white plastic bag and thrust a detonator into the centre of the crystals. With the wires from the detonator trailing out, she then sealed the bag with Sellotape, and slid it into the padded envelope on top of the card, being careful to keep the wires to one side.

Now, all that remained was to connect the various components to a battery.

She paused. She’d watched one of the Lotta make a similar letter bomb in Turin, and she’d practised it without explosives, but this was the first time she had done it for real.

She wired up the device until, if it weren’t for the card, she would have a complete electrical circuit: one wire of the detonator to positive terminal on battery; negative terminal to clothes peg via red wire; clothes peg (second red wire) to second wire of detonator.

Max brought the last batch of sugar and weedkiller and she completed the last envelope.

There were now four small bombs in front of her, consisting of trigger, detonator and explosive. She sealed the envelopes.

When an envelope was opened and the card pulled out the circuit would be completed, the charge from the battery would fire the detonator – which would make a suitably frightening
bang!
– and the sugar mixture would go up in a sheet of flame complete with smoke.

Under normal circumstances it shouldn’t kill anyone, but then it wasn’t designed to.

She put the completed envelopes into the holdall, along with the things she no longer needed – the spare envelopes, cards and clothes pegs. The empty mixing bowls went back to the kitchen.

She relaxed for a moment.

So far so good.

Now the large parcel. This was different. This would very definitely kill.

She moved some of the items on the table nearer to her. Then after reading the instructions carefully, she began work.

First she taped the two HP2 batteries together and wired them together in series. Next she soldered a short length of red wire to the spare positive terminal, and a longer length of black wire to the negative.

Using insulating tape she strapped the two sticks of Nitramite together, and then strapped the batteries on to the sticks. From now on it was essential that the two wires leading from the batteries never touched one another, so she taped them on to the explosive, but as far apart as possible, the red running up to the top of one stick, the black to the bottom of the other.

So far it had been easy. Now the tricky part. She took a detonator and connected one of its wires to the red wire leading from the battery.

She now had half a circuit. The two loose wires must on no account come into contact with each other, otherwise the electrical charge from the batteries would fire the detonator, and that would be that.

She stretched the wires well apart and, to be doubly safe, wrapped some insulating tape round the one from the detonator which she would remove only at the last moment.

She paused. The operation had become oddly unreal. She had imagined having to make an enormous effort to create something like this. But it was incredibly easy. Apart from an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach, she had no fear. Instead she felt a curious detachment, as if this device would have come to exist anyway, without her help.

Max appeared from the kitchen, carrying a large bowl of the weedkiller and sugar crystals.

At that moment the telephone rang. Max gave a visible start. The bowl jerked in his hand and some of the mixture spilled on to the carpet.

Gabriele hissed, ‘For Christ’s sake!’ and, getting up, took the bowl from his hands. She said impatiently, ‘Answer the phone!’

Max picked it up. He turned to her. ‘It’s Giorgio.’