First Response

LAMBETH CENTRAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMAND CENTRE (3.52 p.m.)

Chris Thatcher took off his headphones. ‘Well, that was interesting,’ he said to Sergeant Lumley. ‘I’m thinking he ended the call before we could get any meaningful trace.’

‘He knows how long it takes to get a fix on a mobile.’

‘That’s not why he ended the call, though.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Gillard, taking off his headphones and putting them on the desk.

‘It threw him that we’d made contact with his man in Wandsworth. He didn’t know that had happened. Hardly surprising because there are no TV cameras in the shopping centre. You told him something he didn’t know and that unsettled him.’

He stood and began to pace slowly up and down as he gathered his thoughts. ‘You see, up until then he was totally in control. You could hear it in his voice. Some tension, yes, but not fear. He sounded like a man in control. We heard it all the time when we were dealing with the Somalian pirates. They know the score, they know that the ships are insured, so it’s almost as if they’re following a script. They play their part and we play ours. The money is handed over and the ship and the crew are released. The pirates would sound angry but it was an act. They knew how it would end. They were never scared because they knew that no one would be attacking them.’

‘So Shahid knows he’s going to win? Is that what you mean?’ said Gillard. ‘He’s confident?’

Thatcher stopped pacing. ‘He’s calm, as if he knows how this is going to end.’

‘Well, I wish I did,’ said Gillard. ‘Because the way things stand, I’ve no idea how it’ll pan out.’

‘Perhaps I should rephrase that. He thinks he knows how it will end. Everything is going to plan. At least, it was until he discovered that you had spoken to his man in the shopping centre.’ He went over to his desk, picked up his cup of camomile tea and discovered it was empty. He put it down. ‘Shahid clearly knows what he’s doing. Everything has been planned down to the smallest detail, which is why that small deviation from his plan threw him. The question is, what is he working towards? What is he so confident will happen?’

‘Presumably that the prisoners will be released and his men fly off to who knows where,’ said Gillard.

‘So why is he concerned about you making direct contact with the bombers?’ said Thatcher. ‘We saw that, too, when Inspector Biddulph tried to make contact with his man on the bus. There was real fear, then, remember? And the man in the coffee shop in Marble Arch, papering the window so that he can’t be seen. This has all been about isolating the bombers so that we have to negotiate with Shahid.’ He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Maybe Shahid is the only one who knows what’s happening. It’s completely his show. The bombers are the chess pieces and he’s masterminding the game.’

‘You mean he hasn’t told the bombers the full story?’ said Kamran.

‘It’s possible they don’t know what he’s planned, yes.’ He took off his spectacles, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and began to polish the lenses. ‘This is what concerns me,’ he said. ‘Shahid is confident that everything is going exactly as he planned. You can hear that in his voice. My worry is that what he’s planned isn’t the release of the prisoners, but that right from the start his aim has been to kill as many people as possible.’ He finished polishing his glasses and put them back on before forcing a smile. ‘I just hope I’m wrong,’ he said.