KILL ME IF YOU CAN (Dave Cunane Book 8) (43 page)

Afterword

Hudson-Piggott’s laptop was doubly protected by an impenetrable password and encrypted text. However Tony Nolan made cracking it a personal challenge. He worked on it in intervals while running Pimpernel Investigations so progress was slow even for the reconditioned brain. Still, Tony has more time on his hands now that Lee is attending a sort of boarding school/boot camp for young adults in an attempt to repair the defects of his education.

I believe Tony hired time on an American supercomputer to crack the encryption. He sFaid he’d crack it and crack it he did.

It was from Tony that I finally gleaned a few more details of the fate Hudson-Piggott had been planning for us all.

MOLOCH, actually called
Operation Restore
, was originally timed so that the radiation would begin hitting the ground just when afternoon prayers were taking place in the mosques of Northern England.  In the ensuing panic it was hoped, and no doubt arranged, that there would be ‘spontaneous’ attacks on the Muslim community: the long dreaded ‘backlash’.

The full awfulness of his plan comes out best in one page of notes among the many pages of his ‘operational plans’.

The De Facto Civil Disorder Planning Group

A group of senior civil servants, security officials and police began planning what would happen if there is a major breakdown in civil order in this country following a period of sustained Islamic terrorism. Incidents triggering this would be nuclear bomb in major city, dirty bomb, poisoned reservoir, massive armed attack on civilians at say football match, assault and assassination of several members of Royal family and/or government at once.

Their final recommendations were

1) Suspension of Parliament.  Interim rule by a special troika of soldier, security man, politician. Suspension of constitution.

2) Emergency Powers Act enabling detention without trial of many thousands of suspected Islamic militants and extremist Imams or of any persons who demonstrate sympathy for them including journalists and media figures

3) Interrogation of suspects using enhanced techniques

4) When Muslim community responds to this with massive rioting in urban areas, said areas to be cordoned off by army, police and ‘volunteers’.  Residents taken to special ‘concentration areas’ where they will be interned under increasingly severe conditions until they agree to return to their countries of origin or in effect renounce their allegiance to Islam

5) Timescale for these events 1 – 2 years.  Following the crushing of disorder there will be a supervised referendum to ask the electorate if they are prepared to indemnify members of the troika.

I believe that Lew was informed of this by Alban Pickering in the meeting at Bluewater and that when that meeting was followed by a visit from Hudson-Piggott and Lansdale, Lew knew his time was short. He’d held on hoping to glean more details and hence the word MOLOCH scratched into the table where the bastards tortured him.

Brendan Cullen attempted to investigate the recycling area and the house on Acheron Close. On both occasions he tried he was warned off by armed Ministry of Defence security men. His career didn’t suffer. He was promoted to Detective Superintendent very soon after. He still talks to me.

The police didn’t contact me, not even by a phone call. I never heard from Claverhouse again but guessed she’d been thoroughly debriefed by Sir Freddie Jones who must have decided it was best to let sleeping dogs lie. I believe he knows that I have Hutton-Piggott’s laptop. It’s my insurance. Certainly the great British public were never told anything about the attempt on their liberties. They will learn all about it if anyone interferes with me. Tony only has to press a button and every page will be on Wikileaks.

As for me, I’ve taken my family, my parents and Jan’s mum off to Italy for a protracted break at the Villa Arabella while builders make a start on the restoration of Topfield. Paddy’s already begun several minor improvements to the Villa. We intend to return to England for the birth of our baby. We like the Villa, especially the swimming pool overlooking our vineyard and the rolling Tuscan landscape.

The End

Other ‘Dave Cunane’ books in sequence

Red for Rachel

Nine Lives

The Reluctant Investigator:
shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger

Kingdom Gone

Boiling Point

Above Suspicion

Raised in Silence

Other Frank LeanNovels

Irish Jack’s Women:
  a murder investigation by renowned English railway  engineer
Joseph Locke
during the Irish Famine. One of Dave Cunane’s ancestors is involved in a minor role.

Asking For It
: pathologist
Professor Jack Preston
removes murderers before they provide him with victims to investigate

Murder in a Hollywood Motorhome
: an improvisational murder mystery play for 12 actors

Children’s Books

Haunted High School Series: children’s fantasy involving ‘special powers’. A boy stumbles on a long forgotten ‘force of nature’ with the power of speech. This invisible being decides that the boy, Peter Scattergood, is an ideal candidate for reform in preparation for some special task the purpose of which it doesn’t yet know!

(1)
    
Peter Scattergood and the Panic Horn

(2)
   
Peter Scattergood and the Owl King

(3)
   
Peter Scattergood and the Dark Force

Cover Photo   Manchester Town Hall from Brazennose Street © Frank Lean