State Of Emergency: (Tom Buckingham Thriller 3) (17 page)

Two more rounds and Tom felt a hot stinging on the apex of his left shoulder. The shooter sprang up, smashed a knee into his crotch as he tried to recover from the pain and pushed past him into the hall. Then he was out of the front door. Gone.

28

01.00

Woolf met him on the landing, which was now choked with police. A couple of medics were looking after Helen.

‘I’m so sorry, Tom. Poor fuckers. What shit luck.’ Immediately the sympathy evaporated as professional necessity took over. ‘Any ID?’

‘Didn’t get the balaclava off him.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Thirty-five, forty maybe. Hundred and forty pounds, five ten. Fit, though – very agile, well versed at working in cramped spaces. A crap shot, luckily. No empty cases but the rounds should be embedded about the place. Not that it matters. I doubt the weapon has a history.’

Woolf nodded at the bedroom. ‘Better have a look.’

There was a very remote possibility that something in Jez’s work might have provoked this, but as he and Woolf stood there in silent resignation, Tom knew that whoever had done this had in all probability come looking for him.

‘Either they knew I did Randall or …’

‘… you’re a target because of your proximity to Rolt.’

Tom bent down, took out a pen and used it to pick up Jez’s Breitling, which had fallen on the floor beside the body. ‘Well, that rules out burglary.’

He glanced at the team who were swarming over the scene. This wouldn’t be secret for long. Woolf guessed what Tom was thinking. ‘Don’t worry, he’s decreed a total blackout.’

‘So he knows?’

As if on cue Tom’s phone buzzed. He showed Woolf the screen: Rolt.

Tom didn’t feel like talking to anyone, especially him, but Woolf urged, ‘Go on. See what he says.’

Rolt seemed surprisingly calm. ‘I just heard. I’m very sorry, Tom, and so relieved you’re safe.’ His voice sounded full of concern.

‘Well, thanks. Good of you to call.’

‘I’m going to deal with this situation, rest assured. And you’re going to have a guard round the clock. It’s all arranged.’

There was a new tone to his voice. How quickly the cloak of office had taken effect.

‘How exactly?’

‘They should be with you any minute. They’ll take you to a safe house and keep a close eye. I must get going. Stay safe.’ He rang off.

‘Better do what the man says.’

Three men appeared in the hall. The M&S suits, practical shoes and earpieces said it all. Tom glared at Woolf. ‘You knew about this?’

Woolf shrugged. ‘He’s the boss now.’

29

07.00
Terminal 3, Heathrow Airport

The wheels of the Airbus let out a sharp squeal as they touched the glistening tarmac and went from nought to two hundred miles an hour in one hundredth of a second. Either side of the runway a soft carpet of snow gave off a ghostly glow.

Jamal leaned his head against the window, peering out at the night. The engines roared as they reversed thrust to bring the aircraft down to taxiing speed. A mixture of relief and fear entangled inside him. Sleep had been in short supply as he’d made his way through the chaos of Syria into the comparative order of Turkey: whenever he closed his eyes, the memories flooded back, images that would stay with him all his life, as if they had been etched inside his eyelids, never to heal or fade.

‘Cheer up – nearly home.’

He looked at the woman beside him. She had given him a big smile as she’d sat down in Istanbul – the first smile he’d seen in months – then fallen asleep before they were off the ground. How deeply, how peacefully she slept. What must that be like?

He gave her a weak smile. She leaned closer. ‘I love my homeland, don’t get me wrong, but every time I get back to London I breathe a sigh of relief. Your family here?’

Jamal nodded.

She beamed. ‘Aaah. Are they coming to meet you?’

‘Maybe,’ he lied.

He’d once imagined a hero’s homecoming, his father proudly coming forward to embrace him now he knew what his son had achieved. His own naïvety shocked him. But he clung to the idea that he might find forgiveness, especially after what he had done for Emma.

The woman wasn’t waiting for him to elaborate. Her eyes were glazed with excitement. ‘My boy’s coming to fetch me. He’s a medical student – final year.’ She oozed pride and nodded emphatically, as if to underline that her son had stayed the course, and she somehow knew Jamal was a dropout. ‘And the Lord knows the world needs doctors.’ She put a hand on his. ‘He’s already doing shifts at A and E in Chepstow. Sometimes he’s on call up to thirty-six hours.’ She shook her head mournfully. ‘He says on Friday nights it’s like a war zone.’

He peered into her eyes.
You have no idea what a war zone looks like
, he wanted to say. But he didn’t. What overwhelmed him was this mother’s pride and love for her son. He knew of women like her and sometimes he had wished his own mother was as proud of him. But he had never given her cause to be. Whatever she felt she had to keep to herself: that was how his father wanted it. He felt something welling inside him and she must have sensed it because she let her hand drop onto his.

He flinched. She frowned, glanced down and saw his fingers were purple and swollen. She moved her hand away. ‘Have you been in a fight?’

‘Frostbite.’

The ride on the bike and the trek to the border had taken its toll. The woman stared back, mystified, searching for a follow-up question, then perhaps deciding not to go there. Instead she beamed again. ‘Well, you’re safe now. Home sweet home.’

Home. He had never realized how much he would miss it. Everything he had taken for granted, even railed against as decadent and corrupt, now seemed uniquely precious. All that he had previously kicked against he saw now as something to be treasured: the most mundane things, like traffic keeping to the correct side of the road, postal collections and deliveries, fresh milk on the doorstep … all these now seemed like wonders of the world.

As the plane came to a halt on its stand there was a ripple of clicks as everyone undid their seatbelts, but an announcement from the captain asked them to remain seated for a few minutes while airport security boarded the plane. The cabin staff moved down the aisles pacifying those desperate to get off. A pretty stewardess glanced at Jamal, then quickly looked away. He watched through the window as the jet-bridge was manoeuvred into position and docked with the plane. As soon as the door opened, two uniformed police with MP5 carbines appeared at the door. With them was a third man in a hoodie with a shiny shaved head and small eyes. He looked more like a villain than anyone in law enforcement. Jamal tried to tell himself that their presence was some new measure on account of heightened international tension but, deep down, he knew there wasn’t anything normal about this.

The three came purposefully down the aisle, the bullet-headed one in the lead, his eyes sweeping the rows of seated passengers. Then they locked on Jamal. ‘Okay, Jamal, let’s not make this any harder than it needs to be. Put your hands on top of the headrest in front of you and stand up.’

Jamal just stared at him.
He knows my name.

At first Jamal didn’t react. The armed pair closed round Bullet-head, who sighed. ‘Do it now.’

He had kept his voice low as if he was trying to draw as little attention to himself as possible, but there was no point. The entire cabin was watching in stunned silence, the passengers in the rows ahead craning round to see what was happening as one of the armed cops gestured to the two other passengers in Jamal’s row to move. The woman beside him shrank back, her hands masking her face as if she was about to be tear-gassed. The man in the aisle seat next to her, a young Caucasian no older than Jamal, gave him a look of disgust as he rose and moved out of the way. The Turkish woman remained glued to her seat, paralysed with fear. Bullet-head reached in and grasped her arm as if to lift her out of the way. She pushed him off and rose of her own accord, her shocked gaze still fixed on Jamal.

‘Last chance, Jamal.’

‘Okay, okay.’

He put his hands on the headrest and struggled to his feet. He had faced a lot of weapons in Syria, and had grasped enough about them to know that, unlike most firearms, the MP5s the police were carrying could be used inside the cabin: their mags would be loaded with low-velocity ceramic rounds that stayed in the target’s body or would disintegrate if they hit any hard surface. All the same, they would be used only as a last resort. What worried Jamal more was the yellow Taser that Bullet-head had in his hand.

He’d known that, as a returnee from Syria, he was likely to be detained at Immigration, but he hadn’t expected police to come onto the plane all tooled up. He told himself to do as they said and not give them an excuse to use the Taser.

‘Stay there. Keep your hands on the headrest.’ Bullet-head sounded almost matter of fact, as if this was just routine.

Jamal took a breath. Okay, be calm. They were probably pulling in everyone returning from Syria. He had his story – the true story. He had the film safely secreted. He could explain, and they would understand. They must. Maybe he’d even be thanked for what he’d done. That was what he’d told himself over and over on the brutal journey back. That was what would make it all worthwhile.

Bullet-head spoke again in a monotone, clear and firm. ‘Do you have anything in the seat pocket or the overhead rack?’

He shook his head. He had left his few belongings in Aleppo.
Don’t argue, don’t resist. You have nothing to fear
, he told himself. To some people he would be a hero for what he had done. That was what Emma Warner had promised him. She would see to it that his story was told. She had given him her lawyer’s personal number. He would help him. They let you make one call, didn’t they? More than anything he wanted to speak to his sister, the only one of his family who would not have given up on him. But that would have to wait as Bullet-head wrapped plastic cuffs round his wrists and they closed with a rapid rasp.

He walked in single file between the two armed cops, Bullet-head bringing up the rear, but after they got to the aircraft door and stepped onto the jet-bridge, they took a sharp left through a narrow service door. The night air smelt of aviation fuel. They led him down steep steps to a waiting armoured van, where another two armed policemen stood guard. The cold bit into his face as he descended, stinging his chapped skin. At the bottom of the stairs he was searched and the pack of gum, passport and the few coins he’d saved for coffee at the airport were all placed in a transparent plastic bag. Then the two uniforms each took an arm and propelled him towards the open back doors of the van. Inside, another mesh door led to what looked like a cage with a small row of seats. It stank of disinfectant with an undertow of something worse.

‘Stand still.’

One grabbed his cuffed and frostbitten hands ready to place him in a seat and belt him up. His whole body jerked as the knifing pain flashed through them. He stifled a yelp as he pulled them back towards him.

‘Don’t try to be clever, all right?’

He was doubling up with the pain.

Bullet-head was in no mood to mess about. ‘Okay, have it your way.’

Something jabbed his arm. He shuddered uncontrollably and collapsed in a heap on the floor of the van. Bullet-head glared down at him. ‘You’re gonna wish you’d never come home, Sinbad. You are well and truly fucked.’

30

08.00

The bullet-headed cop introduced himself as Detective Inspector Brian Dawes.

‘But you can call me “sir” for short.’ He let out a staccato laugh.

Jamal made no response. He kept his eyes trained on the wall just above the cop’s head. The room was painted a dismal grey, evidently designed to discourage any glimmer of hope.

‘And over there is Detective Constable Chantal Richmond. If it offends you that there’s a woman in the room, tough titty.’ Dawes gave a low growl of mirth.

Out of the corner of his eye Jamal saw the DC close her eyes for a second, whether from the bone-dry atmosphere of the room or from long-suffering frustration with Dawes’s brand of humour he couldn’t tell. Her hair was very close-cropped and her eyebrows seemed to have been painted on. She stayed by the door, leaning on the narrow ledge below the window grille, her arms folded, her eyes trained on him. There was no clock and neither of them wore a watch that he could see.

He had lost all sense of time. After he was Tasered he had offered no resistance. He had barely slept or eaten in twenty-four hours and was utterly exhausted. He had been in the van for some time before they unloaded him. They had made him strip, then done a full body search and found the memory card. He had started to explain what it was but they weren’t interested in hearing his side. The card was spirited away without comment.

As the armed cops stood by, a medic had bathed his frostbitten hands and wrapped them in thick bandages that rendered his tender fingers almost useless. Jamal tried to explain about the damage but was told firmly to remain silent. He had been given tomato soup to drink through a straw, and a triple dose of Nurofen for the pain. His clothes and shoes had all been taken away. He sat there in a thermal vest and long-johns under a blue jumpsuit. The disposable slippers on his feet did nothing to insulate him from the icy cold floor.

Dawes didn’t seem in any hurry. He leafed through a large file on his lap, whistling faintly to himself. ‘Right, Jamal, let’s go over some details, get a few things straight. You call yourself Al Britani, but your actual surname is Masri, correct?’

Jamal nodded. ‘I don’t call myself Al Britani any more.’

Dawes looked up, his eyebrows raised, twirling his pencil between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Your father’s name is Amir. Mother’s name …’ he frowned at his notebook ‘… Samba?’

It was wrong but Jamal didn’t correct him.

‘Just to keep you in the loop, Mr
Al Britani
, your family will also be taken in for questioning.’ He gazed down again at his scrawl. ‘Mani, Azil and Namir, your brothers …’