Dead if You Don’t

22

Saturday 12 August

17.00–18.00

Roy Grace looked at Bruno, trying to fathom out his son’s thought process.

He glanced back at the camera, then at the glass-fronted Control Room at the far end of the pitch. Come on, come on, guys, when are you announcing the evacuation, for God’s sake?

Then the words of his training came back to him.

Think the unthinkable.

The unthinkable was a bomb detonating at the city’s first Premier League game.

He was thinking hard about the guy in the red baseball cap, who had been looking around nervously, then had hurried from the stand, leaving his camera behind.

Thinking about all he knew of terrorist bombs from his training and from the International Homicide Investigators Association conferences he had attended in the USA over the years, many of them covering in detail terrorist bombing atrocities. One thing that had stuck in his memory was that every bomb needed a detonator. It could be a timer that fired a spark that detonated the device. Or a text sent to a receiver that would detonate it. Or impact. Or a motion sensor.

He did a fast assessment. Looked at his watch. It was less than five minutes or so since the man had left his seat. That ruled out a motion sensor that would set the device off — if it was indeed a bomb. More likely a timer or a text detonator. But the perp would want to be well clear of the stadium grounds before it went off. At five minutes, he would not be, yet.

He made a snap decision.

One he knew might cost him dear. Maybe his career. Perhaps his life.

The words of the former Chief Constable rang in his ears.

Whilst everyone else is running away from danger, we’re the people who run towards it.

‘Stay here,’ he commanded Bruno.

He left his seat, clambered past the rest of the fans in their row, and down the aisle. For a second, he studied the camera on the seat along from the older man and the small boy.

And saw the timer where the shutter-speed setting should have been.

Ticking down as he watched.

1.23

1.22

1.21