Siege

Fourteen

NEWLY PROMOTED DEPUTY Assistant Commissioner Arley Dale was bored and restless. She was chairing a meeting between community leaders and senior officers from Operation Trident, the unit that dealt with so-called black on black gun crime in the city. The meeting had dragged on for close to two hours now and absolutely nothing of any substance had been achieved. The community leaders were demanding action after a series of shootings in Brixton over the previous six months, while the Trident officers were demanding more cooperation from the community itself, and everyone seemed to be going round in circles, mouthing the same old platitudes. Arley, who had a reputation for banging heads together and getting things done, had tried her best to move things along but had now all but given up. She knew they had to have these meetings so that the Met could demonstrate its new, more caring attitude to minority groups, but as a DAC in one of the biggest police forces in the world she genuinely believed there were better ways of allocating her time.

She was also distracted. Twenty minutes earlier, her secretary, Ann, had interrupted the meeting to inform her that there’d been an explosion in the underground car park of the Westfield Shopping Centre. There’d been no further details available at the time, and Arley had asked to be kept informed as they came in. If the explosion turned out to be suspicious, then as the most senior officer of the Met’s Specialist Crime Directorate on duty she’d be heavily involved in implementing the Major Incident Plan in response.

The prospect of suddenly being flung into a major operation had Arley in two minds. On the one hand she relished getting her teeth into challenges, especially fast-moving ones, and it would be an excellent opportunity to prove her worth, having only been in the job less than a month. But on the other, she badly wanted to go home. She’d been away Monday and Tuesday on a residential course, had put in thirteen hours the previous day, and quite frankly, she was exhausted.

Surreptitiously, she looked at her watch as Genson Smith, a veteran Lambeth councillor with a longstanding grievance against the police, and a man who never tired of hearing his own voice, launched into another of his polemics. 4.35. If she could wrap this meeting up quickly she could be out of here by five and relaxing in a hot bath with a much-needed glass of Sauvignon Blanc by six.

The knock on the door interrupted her thoughts.

It was Ann, her secretary, again, and her expression was concerned. ‘Ma’am, you’re needed urgently.’

‘I’m afraid I have to go,’ Arley announced to the attendees, pleased at least to be leaving the room. ‘I’ll leave you in the capable hands of DCS Russell.’

Genson Smith looked extremely irritated, but Arley was out of the door before he could actually say anything.

‘The explosion at the Westfield has been confirmed as a bomb,’ said Ann when they were out in the corridor.

‘What do we know about casualties?’

‘So far we’ve got reports of six people injured, but no fatalities.’

‘Thank God for that.’

‘That’s not all,’ Ann continued.

Arley felt her heart sink.

‘There have been two more explosions at Paddington Station. Initial reports say they’re both bombs. The commissioner wants you in the control room right away.’

Arley had been with the Met for over twenty years. She was used to crises, and knew how to handle them. It was one of the reasons she’d risen so high. ‘I’m on my way,’ she said, knowing that the bath and the Sauvignon Blanc were going to have to wait, but already feeling the adrenalin as it pumped through her system, shaking her out of the torpor of the meeting.