First Response

LAMBETH CENTRAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMAND CENTRE (3.10 p.m.)

Kamran put down the phone, amazed. ‘Well. Inspector Biddulph is on the spot and he confirms that Kashif Talpur is on the bus. Unbelievable.’

‘Has he spoken to him?’ asked Chief Superintendent Gillard.

‘He’s tried but as soon as he gets anywhere near the bus Talpur starts shouting that they’re all going to die. They shot some video close up and they’ll send it over. There’s a field phone near the bus now but no one expects him to use it. Oh, and there are children on the bus. Two schoolkids and a baby.’

Gillard shook his head. ‘How the hell does something like this happen? How do we end up with a suicide bomber working on the Met? What the hell’s going on with human resources? Don’t they look for signs that something’s not right?’

‘Inspector Biddulph said that Talpur was as straight as a die. Never put a foot wrong. And certainly wasn’t a fundamentalist. I’m checking to see if his family is okay. Give me a minute.’ He picked up a phone, rang through to Inspector Adams and asked him to come through to the Gold Command suite. Adams was there within a minute and Kamran introduced him to the chief superintendent. ‘Any joy with Talpur’s nearest and dearest?’ asked Kamran.

‘All present and accounted for,’ said Adams. ‘His parents run a shop out in Southall and they’re both fine. His sister is a nurse and she’s halfway through her shift, one brother is at university and the other’s at school.’

‘And we’ve had sight of all of them?’ asked Gillard. ‘There’s no possibility of coercion?’

Adams nodded. ‘They’ve all been spoken to, face to face. They’re fine. And none of them believe that it’s him. He’s shown no signs of fundamentalist leanings, not one.’

‘Maybe he just did a great job of hiding it,’ said Gillard. ‘He’s an undercover agent. That’s what he’s good at.’

‘But it doesn’t make sense, boss,’ said Kamran. ‘If you were ISIS or Al-Qaeda or whoever these guys are, and you had an asset like Talpur, you’d use him to your best advantage. You’d walk him into a police station or even Scotland Yard with a vest and you’d take out a dozen or so top cops. Why waste him on a bus?’

The chief superintendent lowered his head and looked at Kamran over the top of his spectacles. ‘Bloody hell, Mo, I hope you don’t ever go rogue on us.’

Inspector Adams chuckled but stopped as soon as Gillard turned to him. ‘What do you think, Inspector?’ asked Gillard.

‘You wonder why he won’t talk to his governor,’ said Adams. ‘If he’s gone fundamentalist, wouldn’t he want to say something? Make a statement?’

Gillard nodded. ‘There’s something very wrong about this, that’s for sure.’ He turned back to Kamran. ‘So, that’s six accounted for. Three to go. What’s the situation with the one at Marble Arch?’

‘It’s a coffee shop and he’s plastered the window with newspapers. There’s no CCTV footage of the inside of the premises and nothing usable outside.’

‘There’s CCTV all along that part of Edgware Road, especially around Paddington Green,’ said Gillard. ‘It’s long been known as a terrorist hot-spot — they even call it Little Arabia.’

‘There are cameras aplenty but he had his head down or turned away as he entered the shop. We have footage of the van dropping him off, but nothing to help with facial recognition. I asked the Silver Commander to see if they can get someone from the Bomb Squad to get close and take pictures. They did, but the quality isn’t great so we’re getting the pictures tweaked as we speak. We do know that there are at least fifteen hostages in the coffee shop.’

‘And the MP in Camberwell?’

‘Some decent shots taken inside the surgery by the hostages so we’re hopeful we’ll get something soon,’ said Kamran.

‘And the restaurant in Southwark?’

‘Some clear council CCTV footage. If he’s in the system, hopefully we’ll find him.’

‘That’s the problem,’ said Waterman. ‘They’re cleanskins. Not one of them was regarded as a threat.’

‘And what about links between them?’ Gillard asked. ‘Please tell me there’s something. A mosque, a website, a school they went to, a sport they all did, something that brought them together.’

‘There’s nothing so far,’ said the MI5 agent. ‘We can’t connect any two of them, never mind find a common denominator.’

‘But there has to be something, doesn’t there? This can’t be random. It just can’t be.’