First Response (12 page)

The man mumbled something and spittle peppered the table. Metcalfe caught a strong whiff of garlic. He looked at Molly and started to tell her to call the police but the man grabbed him by the wrist, his nails digging into the MP’s skin. Then something metallic flashed and Metcalfe yelped, fearing a knife. He ducked away but the man’s grip held firm and something fastened around Metcalfe’s wrist. The garlic smell was almost overpowering now.

‘
Allahu Akbar!
’ the man shouted. ‘Everyone do exactly as I say or we will all die here today!’

Metcalfe began to tremble. His face reddened with embarrassment as he felt the warm liquid around his groin and realised that he’d wet himself.

‘Bad news on the white-van front,’ said Sergeant Lumley. ‘The Birmingham police have spoken to the owner. In fact, they’ve seen the van. It’s still up in Birmingham, complete with the name of the plumbing firm on the sides.’

Kamran grimaced. ‘So they cloned the number?’

Lumley nodded. ‘Looks like it. And the even worse news is that number-plate recognition hasn’t turned it up. But the van is still out there.’ He pointed to his left-hand screen. Where there had been three CCTV shots of the white van, now there were four. The registration number of the fourth was different. ‘This van dropped off the bomber who is now holed up in the coffee shop near Marble Arch. According to the DVLA, this belongs to another firm up in Birmingham.’

‘They changed plates? Terrific.’

‘I’ve got both numbers flagged on number-plate recognition, but if they switched twice they can switch again.’

‘Which means we’re looking for a white van in London,’ said Kamran. ‘Needle in a haystack doesn’t even come close.’

Lumley’s phone rang and he answered it. He stiffened noticeably, then put his hand over the receiver. ‘It’s Downing Street,’ he said. ‘The prime minister.’

Kamran frowned. ‘What?’

‘The PM wants to talk to you.’

Kamran held up his hands. ‘He needs to talk to the commissioner. Or the deputy commissioner.’

‘No, he wants you. Asked for you by name.’

Kamran pointed at the receiver in Lumley’s hands. ‘Is that him? Actually on the line?’

Lumley smiled tightly.

Kamran sighed. ‘Better put him through, then.’ He took a deep breath to steady himself. His phone buzzed.

‘Line one,’ said Lumley.

Kamran took another deep breath and picked up the phone. ‘Superintendent Kamran,’ he said.

‘What’s the state of play, Superintendent?’ asked the prime minister. ‘Where do we stand?’

‘We have seven incidents now, sir,’ said Kamran. ‘The latest is a bus in Tavistock Square.’

‘I heard,’ said the prime minister. ‘That has echoes of Seven/Seven, doesn’t it?’

‘That may well be why that particular bus was targeted,’ said Kamran.

‘This is a nightmare,’ said the prime minister. ‘And getting worse by the minute.’

Kamran said nothing.

‘Their demands haven’t changed?’ asked the prime minister, eventually.

‘No, sir. They want the six prisoners released from Belmarsh and an aircraft fuelled and ready at Biggin Hill.’

‘That’s out of the question, obviously,’ said the prime minister.

‘The problem is there doesn’t appear to be any negotiating,’ said Kamran. ‘It’s take it or leave it. We accept their demands by six p.m. or they will all detonate their vests.’

‘Presumably you have snipers in position?’

‘All the bombers are inside, sir. I can’t guarantee that shooting will end the sieges without casualties.’

‘So what do you suggest, Superintendent?’

Kamran gritted his teeth. He had no suggestions to make. He was all out of ideas. ‘We have to start talking to them,’ he said. ‘Face to face.’

Waterman began to wave excitedly at Kamran. ‘We’ve identified the guy on the bus,’ she said. ‘You’re not going to believe this!’

‘I have to go, sir,’ said Kamran. ‘It’s a bit hectic here, as you can imagine.’

‘I’m heading into an emergency meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Superintendent. I shall be in touch once we’re done.’ The JIC was composed of the country’s top intelligence experts, including the directors of MI5, MI6, GCHQ, plus the chief of the Defence Intelligence Staff, with representatives from the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office. Kamran figured the PM could probably do with all the advice he could get.

The prime minister ended the call and Kamran went over to Waterman’s workstation. Murray was already peering over the MI5 officer’s shoulder. ‘What’s the story?’ asked Kamran. ‘He’s known?’

‘He’s known all right,’ said Waterman, sitting back. ‘He’s one of yours.’

‘One of mine?’

‘Kashif Talpur. He works for the National Crime Agency’s undercover unit.’

Kamran’s jaw dropped. ‘What are you telling me?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think I can be any clearer,’ said Waterman. ‘He’s a cop.’ She pressed a button and a picture flashed up on her screen. A caption gave his name as Kashif Talpur and he was wearing the uniform of a Metropolitan Police officer.

For only the second time that day Kamran cursed. He looked at Lumley. ‘Joe, find out who Talpur’s governor is and get him in here right away,’ he said. ‘He needs to see what’s going on.’

The lunchtime rush was in full swing and Calum Wade was worked off his feet. To be honest, he preferred it that way. Working in a restaurant that wasn’t busy could be soul-destroying: the minutes ticked slowly by and you were always looking for things to do. But the hours between twelve and two always seemed to whizz by, taking orders, filling glasses, carrying food from the kitchen and empty plates back to be washed. Wade always thought of himself as a people person, which was the main reason he had chosen to work in the restaurant business. And it had been a deliberate choice, too. Most of his fellow waiters were doing it as a fill-in before they found the job they really wanted, but it had long been his first choice as a career. Wade loved restaurants, and had done since his parents had first taken him into Harry Ramsden’s fish and chips emporium in Blackpool. It had been the first time he had been served food by a waiter and he’d never forgotten the man who had put down the plate of fish, chips and mushy peas in front of him, with a sly wink.

Wade had studied computing at university, more to satisfy his parents than from any interest in the subject, and during all his holidays he had worked as a waiter. When he’d finally graduated – with a decent degree because, despite his lack of interest, he was actually quite good at the keyboard – he’d gone straight to London and found a job in a bistro in Southwark.

Wade loved the front-of-house part, the bit where he got to deal with customers. He didn’t enjoy cooking, and could think of nothing worse than standing in front of a stove all day. He enjoyed the company of chefs, especially drinking with them after hours or tasting something they had created, but he’d never had any desire to work alongside them. Chefs never really got to see the customers enjoying the fruits of their labour: full plates went out and, hopefully, empty ones came back, but they missed the whole process in between. That was the part Wade liked – watching people enjoy themselves, and sharing in the experience. He didn’t plan to stay a waiter for ever, though. His ambition was to be a maître d’ in one of the capital’s best restaurants. The Ivy, maybe, or Scott’s, but that was for the future. Today he was just happy to be busy.

He had finished taking the order of table eight, three suited businessmen he’d persuaded to try the sea bass special and upsold on the wine, when he saw the Asian man walk in through the door. He was young, brown-skinned, bearded, and wearing a cheap raincoat. Wade was pretty sure he was looking for work. At least a dozen people a day dropped in their CVs, but he still smiled professionally in case the man was a customer. ‘Do you have a reservation, sir?’ he asked.

The man didn’t say anything but he looked around as if searching for someone.

‘I’m sorry, we’re totally full,’ said Wade. ‘Or are you here to meet someone?’ The man didn’t seem to be listening. He was still looking around, deep furrows in his forehead. Wade heard someone behind him calling for a new bottle of wine. ‘We’re full,’ he said again. ‘We might have something in an hour, but I can’t promise.’

The man’s right hand lashed out and grabbed Wade’s. Then he clamped something metallic around Wade’s wrist. ‘What the fuck?’ shouted Wade. ‘Get the hell away from me.’

He pushed the man in the chest and he staggered back but the chain linking them snapped taut.

‘What have you done?’ Wade yelled. The man began to unbutton his coat but Wade yanked his arm with the chain. ‘Get this off!’

‘I can’t. I don’t have the key,’ said the man. He continued unbuttoning his coat and Wade stared in horror as the suicide vest was revealed. ‘Don’t push me again,’ said the man. ‘I don’t know what it takes to set this thing off.’

‘It’s a bomb,’ said Wade, his eyes widening.

The man nodded and finished unbuttoning his coat. ‘Yes, it’s a bomb, and if you and everyone else in here don’t do exactly as I say, everyone will die.’ His right hand slid inside his coat pocket and emerged holding a trigger with a Velcro strap. The man wiggled his fingers so that the strap slipped over his hand and the trigger nestled in his palm. ‘Just do as I say and everyone will be all right. Do you understand?’

Wade nodded slowly, dumbstruck, unable to take his eyes off the explosives and wires attached to the canvas vest under the man’s coat.

The man held up his right hand and shouted, at the top of his voice, ‘
Allahu Akbar!
Everyone stay exactly where they are. If anyone gets up everyone here will die! Listen to what I have to say and this will soon be over!’

Kamran walked over to the SCO19 pod, carrying two coffees. ‘How’s it going, Marty?’ he asked, as he handed him a mug.

Marty Windle smiled his thanks and sighed. ‘We’re stretched tight, Mo. Bloody tight. We get another one and we’re buggered, frankly.’

‘How many SAS men do you have now?’

‘Eight more have arrived and they’re on the way to support the ARVs. I do worry that we’ve got so many of them. I mean, we need as many guns as we can get but there’s a danger that they’ll take over. I’m not sure how well trained they are for hostage situations like this. They prefer to go in with guns blazing. As you know, we like to resolve our situations without firing a single round.’

‘They know it’s a Met operation,’ said Kamran. ‘They’re here in a support role.’

‘Yeah, so far,’ said Windle. ‘But that could well change as the deadline gets closer.’ He groaned. ‘I’m getting a bad feeling about this, Mo.’ He stood up and looked at the large screen on the wall that mapped out all the hostage locations. ‘Seven,’ he said, ‘and nothing linking them. Do you think they’ve been chosen at random?’

‘I can’t see how that can be because everything else has been so well planned,’ said Kamran.

‘But look at the range of places,’ said Windle. ‘A church in Brixton, a shopping centre in Wandsworth, a post office in Fulham, a childcare centre in Kensington, a coffee shop in Marble Arch, a pub in Marylebone, a bus in Bloomsbury. There’s no pattern at all.’

‘The geographical location is the pattern,’ said Kamran. He sipped his coffee. ‘They dropped the first one off at Brixton, then headed clockwise around the city. One every fifteen minutes or so.’

‘Which means one vehicle, obviously. But why do that? Why limit yourself? Why not have seven vehicles? Why not have the bombers all strike simultaneously like they did on Seven/Seven?’

‘This way is more efficient, maybe.’

Windle shook his head. ‘This way is more risky. Suppose something had gone wrong at the start. They’d all have been caught. Seriously, why put all your eggs in one basket?’

Kamran nodded thoughtfully. What Windle was saying made sense. A simple road traffic accident could have derailed the entire plan. If one of the vests had malfunctioned and detonated prematurely, all the bombers would have died. It would have made far more sense for them to travel separately. And there wasn’t much sense to the locations. The bus in Tavistock Square was perhaps a reference to the Seven/Seven attacks on London, and a church made religious sense. But a childcare centre? And a coffee shop just down the road from Paddington Green, one of the most secure police stations in the country? A post office? Yes, they were soft targets, but if this was an attack on Britain then why not pick targets that reflected that? There was nothing political about the locations that had been chosen and they did seem to be random. But, again, Windle was right – why go to all the trouble of planning a multiple suicide-bomber attack, then choose targets at random?

Sergeant Lumley hurried over, looking worried. ‘There’s another one, sir. An MP’s surgery in Camberwell. A couple of people managed to get out before he locked the door but the bomber’s holding the MP hostage.’

For the third time that day, Kamran swore.

The phone behind the counter started to ring again and the three post-office workers turned to look at it. ‘Do you want me to answer it?’ asked the Indian woman in a headscarf, who was the closest employee to Ismail.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Let it ring.’

‘You should talk to them,’ said the woman he was chained to.

‘I’ve nothing to say.’ He glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘They have just over five hours in which to release the ISIS prisoners. If they don’t …’

‘If they don’t, we all die?’

Hussain heard a vehicle arrive to the left and craned his neck to look out of the window. A large Mercedes van had pulled up behind two police cars, which were blocking the road to the left of the post office. The rear doors opened and uniformed police piled out. He saw movement at the window of one of the offices overlooking the post office and ducked back.

‘I told you, they won’t shoot through the window,’ said the woman scornfully.

The phone stopped ringing. It had rung more than a dozen times since Hussain had been in the post office.