Brute Force

24

I hadn't seen a command wire earlier on. I didn't even know if there was a device. But if there was a command wire, there would still be somebody out there, watching and waiting for me to get into the car. Maybe the same guy who'd given Liam Duff the good news with a Black and Decker drill before finishing him off with a single shot to the head. Dom had checked out some pictures of the murder scene. He'd seen some serious shit in his time, but they had really turned his stomach.

I crawled out of the back door of the house, hugging the walls as I made my way to the front. I had a small torch I'd found in the fuse cupboard in my left hand and the kitchen knife in the other.

At the corner of the house I got down on my stomach and used my elbows and the tips of my boots to inch myself towards the car. Frozen water and mud seeped through my jeans and fleece, triggering some major league goose-bumps. Faster movement could give me away, and this way I had time to look and listen as the ice-cold wind rustled the grass and peeled a layer or two of skin off my face.

When I got to the car, I rolled onto my back and wriggled until my head was under the chassis. I made sure my fingers covered the lens of the torch before I switched it on. If I was being watched, it would be from the high ground the other side of the road, but I didn't want to make it any easier to spot me than I had to.

The beam brushed across it at once – a lunchbox-sized Tupperware container fixed under the driver's seat. Two big magnets had been stuck to the base with Isopon so it was quick to slap into position.

I still couldn't see a command wire. There was no antenna for a remote detonation.

I'd already shut myself off from the outside world. My entire focus was on this box.

There was a tiny hole with blackened edges in the lid of the container; it looked like it had been melted with a hot needle. A length of thin, eight-pound fishing line glimmered in my pencil-thin torch beam as it stretched from the hole towards the front of the vehicle. It was as taut as a bowstring; I didn't have to see where it went to know it was tied to a fish-hook that would have been snagged to the front offside wheel.

That meant I could rule out any remote detonation. There wasn't anybody on the hill. This device was going to explode the moment the car moved, and that pissed me off. There were innocent people involved here. The bomber might at least have had the decency to make sure he had eyes-on and killed only the intended target.

And the target had to be me: otherwise why place it under the driver's seat?

I wasn't going to touch it yet. I wasn't going to do anything for now but shine the torch around the semi-opaque Tupperware. It was fairly thin plastic, but the tiny beam wasn't strong enough to allow me to see inside.

The frozen ground numbed my back and hands. I found two more strands of fishing line, about three or four inches long, coming out of the other side. The priority had been to find out if it was armed, and how – and now I knew.

Every device has a safety catch. You place it, arm it, and then pull the safety pin. The three or four inches of fishing line would have started as just one or two, taped on the outside of the box to avoid them snagging. The fact that they'd been pulled meant the device was now rigged and ready to detonate. And any bomb-maker worth his salt would also have rigged an anti-handling device. Until I knew what kind this one carried, I couldn't cut the fishing line attached to the wheel and pull the box away.

I wriggled out from under the car and walked back to the house. Rummaging in the kitchen drawers, I kitted myself out with a dinner knife and a couple of cigarette lighters. Then I walked back to the car and went back to work.