First Response

LAMBETH CENTRAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMAND CENTRE (10.45 p.m.)

‘Well, that’s it, then,’ said Gillard, blowing smoke towards the Houses of Parliament. He was standing with Kamran on the terrace outside the canteen. ‘They were all in fear for their lives.’

‘The timeline fits, too,’ said Kamran. ‘Starting with Zach Ahmed and ending with Faisal Chaudhry, they were abducted, fitted with the vests and terrorised. They all tell the same story, pretty much.’

‘Plus they all have the same throwaway mobile phones and typewritten instructions. We’re getting them checked for DNA and prints but I’m guessing that Shahid won’t have left any traces.’ He blew a tight plume of smoke towards the Shard. ‘We need to find out where they were taken to,’ he continued. ‘They all give the same description of the factory or warehouse where they were held. I’m guessing somewhere in south London because that’s where the first drop-offs were. It shouldn’t be too hard to find.’

‘And we have a murder enquiry now,’ said Kamran. ‘How do you want to handle that?’

‘We’ll keep it within SO15 at the moment,’ said Gillard. ‘We’ll need to run a check on all Asian men who went missing over the past forty-eight hours, obviously.’ He took a long drag on his cigarette and blew more smoke towards the Thames. ‘I’m knackered, Mo.’

‘It’s been a long day.’

‘Yeah, we should call it a night. Start fresh in the morning.’

‘What about the men we’re holding?’

‘We have to let them go home,’ said the chief superintendent.

‘It might be helpful to keep them here overnight.’

‘In a perfect world, sure. But we know they were forced to wear those vests. They’re victims in this, and if we start to make it look as if they were anything but victims we run the risk of being seen as heavy-handed. We don’t want anyone alleging that we’re keeping them in custody because they’re Asian men with beards. A couple of them have already tried to play the race card.’ He took another drag on his cigarette. ‘No, we let them go home. But we keep them under observation, for the time being at least. Our main aim now is to find the location of that warehouse, to identify the victim and, of course, to track down Shahid. I don’t understand why he never got back to you.’

‘Maybe something happened that we’re not aware of,’ said Kamran.

Gillard smiled tightly. ‘Wouldn’t it be ironic if he got hit by a bus?’

‘There has to be some reason he hasn’t called,’ said Kamran. ‘He’d won. He’d got what he wanted. The prisoners were at the airport. So far as he knew, there was a plane there ready to fly them out. Why didn’t he follow through?’

‘Maybe he realised we were calling his bluff,’ said Gillard. ‘He knew we were about to send in the SAS and that would mean game over. The vests were fake so once we called his bluff he was out of options.’

‘But why didn’t he use real explosives?’ asked Kamran. ‘He obviously had the real thing because he killed the guy in the warehouse. How come that vest was real and the rest weren’t? None of this makes any sense.’

‘Go home and sleep on it,’ said Gillard. ‘I’ll tie things up here and see you first thing. And make sure you keep your mobile with you, just in case Shahid does call back.’ He patted Kamran on the shoulder. ‘You did bloody good work today, Mo. You should be proud.’

Kamran smiled at the compliment, but he wasn’t sure it was merited. He felt that somehow he’d been out-manoeuvred, that Shahid had got exactly what he wanted. The problem was, for the life of him Kamran couldn’t work out what that was.