First Response

SCOTLAND YARD, VICTORIA EMBANKMENT (the next day)

Kamran’s secretary put a mug of coffee on his desk, with a folder containing mail to be signed. He thanked her, picked up his pen and signed the letters one after another. When he’d finished he looked at the whiteboard on the wall to his right. He had fixed eighteen photographs to it. The top row were the surveillance photographs of the nine men wearing the suicide vests. Below them were the nine hostages. All had now been released and were back home with their families. The hunt for Shahid had been passed onto MI5 and GCHQ as there was virtually nothing that the police could do. They had no description or intel of any sort. All they had was his voice. So far GCHQ hadn’t been able to come up with a match, and neither had their American counterparts, the National Security Agency. It was a mystery, and so far as Kamran could see, it was destined to remain that way.

He picked up his mug of coffee and stood up, his back aching from the two hours he’d spent at his desk. He walked over to the whiteboard and sipped his coffee as he studied the top row of photographs. All nine had told the same story, pretty much. Abducted, masked and hooded, a suicide vest put on them, covered with a raincoat. A waistpack with a phone and written instructions as to what they were to do. The men had seemingly been chosen at random, other than that they were all Muslims. Eight of Pakistani origin, one Somalian. Cleanskins, more or less. Not one considered a threat to the state. The picture of Zach Ahmed was the only one not taken as a close-up. Ahmed had refused to co-operate: he hadn’t wanted to be photographed and had refused to give his fingerprints or a DNA sample. The picture on the whiteboard was the one that had been taken by the bomb-disposal officer through the window of the coffee shop.

He lowered his gaze and looked at the hostages. Another nine people, again seemingly chosen at random. Wrong place, wrong time. Except for Roger Metcalfe, the MP. He’d obviously been chosen because of who he was. He peered at the photograph of Mohammed Al-Khalifa, the man taken hostage at the coffee bar in Marble Arch. He frowned as he stared at the photograph. Something wasn’t right but he couldn’t quite place it. He scratched the side of his face as he stared at the photograph, then back at the one of Zach Ahmed. His frown deepened. He called through to his secretary in the outer office. ‘Amy, see if you can track down Kashif Talpur with the National Crime Agency. Ask him to come in as a matter of urgency.’

Two hours later, Amy showed Talpur into Kamran’s office. At first Kamran didn’t recognise the man: he’d shaved off his beard, cut his hair short and was wearing a dark pinstripe suit and a red-and-black-striped tie. ‘You’ve certainly changed your appearance since we last met,’ said Kamran, waving Talpur to a chair.

‘What happened blew my cover on the drugs operation, obviously,’ said Talpur. ‘In fact, it’s pretty much blown me for undercover work ever again. They’re deciding where to use me next as we speak.’ He shrugged. ‘Probably for the best. Undercover work takes it out of you and plays havoc with your private life.’

‘Do you want a coffee, water, anything?’

‘I’m fine, sir. Just a little confused.’ He gestured at the whiteboard. ‘I thought MI5 were handling the case now.’

‘They are. But SO15 is still involved and I had a thought or two that I wanted to run by you before I talk to Chief Superintendent Gillard. The day it all happened. Your instructions were to take a hostage, correct?’

Talpur nodded.

‘Any hostage? Or a particular one?’

‘Shahid said that as soon as I got on the bus I was to grab the nearest person. He said the driver was behind a screen so I should ignore him and just get the closest passenger. I grabbed a woman. With hindsight I should maybe have gone for a male but I wasn’t thinking too clearly at the time.’

‘And was there a key? For the handcuffs?’

Talpur shook his head.

‘We didn’t find one in the waistpack he gave you to wear, but I wondered if you had had a key and it was lost or thrown away.’

Talpur shook his head again. ‘There was no key.’

‘So if you’d had a change of heart at the time and wanted to swap the woman hostage for a man, you couldn’t have done?’

‘I’m confused, sir.’

‘I’m sorry, just humour me for a little while longer. You couldn’t have changed your hostage, once you’d made your choice?’

‘That’s right, sir.’

Talpur frowned as the superintendent walked over to the whiteboard and pulled off two photographs. He sat down again and pushed one of the photographs across the desk. It was of the hostage-taking at the coffee shop in Marble Arch, the shot taken by the bomb-disposal officer through the newspaper-covered window. The bearded Asian man in the vest could be seen close up, and behind him was half the face of his hostage. ‘This was the bomber in Marble Arch,’ said Kamran. He smiled ruefully. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t be calling him a bomber, should I? His name was Zach Ahmed.’ He pushed the second photograph across the desk. ‘This is a photograph of the hostage, taken after you were all off the coach. His name is Mohammed Al-Khalifa, an asylum-seeker from Sudan.’

Talpur stared at the two photographs. He nodded but had absolutely no idea what the superintendent was getting at.

‘If you look at the photograph of Mr Ahmed, standing just behind him is his hostage. And if you look carefully, you’ll see that it is most definitely not Mr Al-Khalifa.’

Talpur picked up the two pictures and looked at them in turn. The superintendent was right. The man in the picture taken through the window was in his early twenties. The head-and-shoulders shot taken afterwards was of a man in his forties. ‘He switched hostages,’ said Talpur.

‘Yes, he did,’ said Kamran. ‘But how could he have done that unless he had a key? And why did he have a key and you didn’t? In fact, keys weren’t discovered on any of the bombers.’ He grimaced. ‘There I go again. I really must stop doing that. But you hear what I’m saying. There were no keys. But clearly Mr Ahmed had access to one.’

Talpur put down the photographs. ‘Why would he change hostages? Like I said, I could imagine swapping a man for a woman, but why swap a younger man for an older one?’

‘How about we go and ask him ourselves?’ said Kamran. ‘Are you free?’

Talpur nodded enthusiastically. ‘Hell, yeah.’ He grinned. ‘Sir,’ he added.