Authors: Chris Simms
She peered across at the brightly glowing lights of the student union building opposite. Dark and wet out here, warm and dry in there … It was tempting to scoot back across and rejoin Anna and Jess in the Union bar. Why not? She smiled. Friday night and that £175 wasn’t going to spend itself.
The few people also beneath the shelter started edging forward. Emily looked to her right. A number 252 was detaching itself from the slow-moving procession, indicator giving a friendly wink. I’m here, the flashes seemed to say. Time to take you home.
It drew up alongside the kerb and they started filing on, passes held up for the driver. To her relief, only a quarter of the seats were taken. She found herself an empty row, slumped into it and hugged her new laptop close. The windows were misted up and she cleared a small port-hole with one elbow, feeling the thrum of the engine quicken as the bus pulled away once more.
It was odd being at uni so far from home. Brighton was a good place: buzzing night-life, the breezy atmosphere you got from seaside towns. Manchester was different. Often, to her, it had a murky, lurky feeling. The people were friendly, on the whole. There were pubs, clubs, bars, cafés, take-away joints, cinemas and cool shops. Much more than in Brighton. But just beyond the glitter and hustle there were sides to the city that made you pause. Or quicken your step. An abandoned house with metal grilles for doors and windows. Narrow alleys choked by wheelie bins. Patches of waste ground enclosed by spiked fences. A bed of flattened cardboard boxes beneath a railway arch. Cobbles showing through crumbling asphalt. She couldn’t quite put a finger on it. If the city were a person, you’d never quite feel you knew him. And it was definitely a him. An outwardly friendly guy with an easy, confident smile. But look closer and you’d see a long-healed scar running across the lips. He was fun to be with, but you could tell he was also a bit of a rascal. And, sometimes, you suspected worse. Much worse.
The bus had got to Wilmslow Road, passing Manchester High School for Girls on the right. Then it was on to Palatine Road and Emily tinged the bell. The vehicle’s speed dropped, and as she made her way to the front, she saw no one else rising from their seat.
‘Cheers!’ she called to the driver, stepping down to the black and shining pavement. The bus trundled off into the night and, after putting her earphones in, she pulled her hood up and started making her way along Leardon Street to her shared house at its far end.
From behind a sprawling buddleia bush a man watched her go by. He saw she was fiddling with an iPod Nano, its distinctive white wire trailing up to the neck of her thick coat. He slipped through the open garden gate, double-checking the occupants of the house had been oblivious to his presence in their front garden. All the curtains were drawn.
The trainers he wore had been chosen for their quietness. Didn’t matter – she wouldn’t be able to hear a thing. He could hear the hiss-thunk of music coming from beneath that great hood. With purposeful steps, he closed the gap. From the jacket of his padded coat he produced a hammer and, the moment he was in striking range, he raised it high then swung it down at her head, both feet momentarily leaving the pavement. It connected with a muffled crunch.
Her legs instantly buckled and she collapsed down and to the side like a tower block being demolished. Her hood had slid half off her head and he could see her eyes were open. He slid the laptop’s strap off her arm. Did she need another? The hammer hovered for a moment. No, she was proper fucked. He continued on, laptop now hanging from his shoulder as the first tendrils of her blood made their tentative way across the cold, wet paving.
O’
Dowd remained silent, giving the entire room plenty of time to study the profile on the wall behind him.
Like everyone else, Iona looked at it in silence. Zara, aged seventeen. A face that was a shade too chubby for a teenager; the kind of skin made pale and pasty by, Iona guessed, a lifetime of cheap, poor-quality food.
She saw kids just like her every day round Manchester. Kids stuffing maxi size bags of crisps and swigging cans of Coke on their way to school. Kids without coats wandering the rainy streets at teatime. Kids clustered just inside the entrance to the Arndale, shrieking at the screen of their mate’s mobile phone. Kids whose parents probably worked long shifts for shit pay and then headed straight for the booze shelves at the nearest supermarket.
The girl’s eyes were still bright, though. And her smile revealed teeth that were white and well aligned. Care home kid? Iona wondered. Who could tell?
The same horrible running order ran beneath her photo. British passport. Eventually O’Dowd cleared his throat. ‘This girl exploded at a border crossing on the Israeli-Lebanese border five days ago.’
A few seconds of stunned silence. Someone somewhere whispered, ‘That’s her?’
‘It is. A few among you may remember the incident being reported; it briefly made the news that day. Her identity, however, remained unknown until yesterday. Make no mistake, ladies and gents, this represents a huge and deeply worrying development. Girls like this – young, white, British, non-Muslim – do not become suicide bombers. They just don’t.
‘For those exact reasons, this girl was able to approach, completely unchallenged, the Israeli position. Soldiers even directed her away from the main crossing point. There are no survivors to verify how she seemed; the blast took out a good chunk of the border building along with four members of the Israeli Defence Force, including a major. Needless to say, there was little left of the girl – whose real name, it turns out, was Jade Cummings.’
Around her, Iona could see officers sitting slack-jawed in their seats. Someone said very quietly, ‘Holy shit.’
O’Dowd drew breath sharply through his nose and sat up straight. ‘OK, that’s your dwell time over. Time to re-engage brains. How do we know this girl’s identity? Serendipity, as they say. An officer with the Greater Manchester Police was returning from a diving holiday in the Red Sea. He saw a paper at Tel Aviv airport that contained a story about the bombing. Included was a photo of the girl’s face.’ O’Dowd grimaced. ‘When these types of bomb go off, it’s not unusual for the upward blast to take the head of the bomber clean off. Often it’s propelled a considerable distance. When the officer returned to work yesterday he happened to be on the team handling the investigation into the murder of Eamon Heslin. He was going through the profile of each girl and – bingo – there’s the mystery bomber he’d seen in the paper at Tel Aviv.’
Someone at the back gave a humourless laugh. ‘Hooray for holidays in the Red Sea Riviera.’
O’Dowd’s expression didn’t lighten. ‘The security services in Israel were contacted immediately; they were able to confirm our photo matched their head. So, our priority is now finding out how Jade Cummings came to be over in Lebanon with a couple of kilos of high explosive strapped to her body. Is there a link to the fact she was in care? Did she have any boyfriends, and if so, what were their ethnicity?’ He flicked to another slide: one with the photos of Shandy and Rihanna side-by-side. ‘We also need to find out what the hell is going on with these two. That will be made much easier if we can work out where this laptop came from. Obviously, Eamon Heslin can’t tell us that and cracking open the hard drive may take time.’
He sat back, interlinked his fingers and surveyed the room. ‘Any reports of muggings, break-ins or thefts from cars, public transport, offices or homes need to be pursued. Not just those where a Dell Latitude was taken – remember, due to the nature of this thing, the person probably won’t have made a report. But an incident may have been rung in by the security staff of an office building that was burgled, someone in a shared house, the attendant in a multi-story car park, British Transport Police if several passengers were robbed on a particular train, the list goes on.
‘If you examine the CCTV footage from when Teah Rice jumped, you can see a female figure trying to coax her back. She leaves the scene when Teah goes over the edge: Good Samaritan or friend? We need her found.’
He brought up another slide, this one with two sets of names. ‘Because of the multiple angles we’ve got to go at, I’m assigning two task forces for this investigation. First will be headed up by DCI Roebuck. It will be his normal team plus Detective Sergeant Everington, who I’ve pulled away from DCI Palmer. I’m giving you the profiles of Rihanna and Shandy – so you’ll be working their identities and trying to establish their current location. Your search will start with Stockport Social Services then go to Manchester’s, then the entire north-west and, if needs be, national. I also need you to cover the issue of where this laptop originally came from. Basically, you’ve got the events leading up to Eamon Heslin’s death.’
Iona stole a glance at a fellow member of Roebuck’s team. He widened his eyes a fraction in response: the task was going to be huge.
‘Second team, under DCI Sullivan, will be covering aspects following on from the death of Eamon Heslin – principally, the recovery of evidence from the murder scene and all necessary actions arising from what’s found. You’ve also got the Teah Rice thing. A few of you may have noted the absence of DS Chadwick and DC Grant this afternoon. They are en route to Croydon to interview Teah Rice’s relatives and social worker. OK, that’s it. Report to your respective DCIs who will let you know exactly what you’ll be doing.’
People started getting to their feet, conversations breaking out across the room.
‘Everyone!’ O’Dowd’s voice rang out above the din. ‘MI5 and MI6 are sniffing about – sorry, offering us every assistance. If we need it, we’ll take it. But let’s try not to. You lot all jumped through hoops to get into this unit. This is our chance to show everyone – including that lot down in London – how bloody good we are.’
Iona started making for the door when O’Dowd spoke again. ‘DC Khan? One moment, please.’
He started closing down his laptop as the room drained of people. Once they were alone, he nodded at the empty chair next to him.
She sat down and said nothing. Did I do something wrong? Am I in trouble? Is this because of the comment about the girls’ lack of make-up?
‘How are you finding things, Iona?’
She tried to conceal her surprise. It was the first time she’d ever spoken one-on-one with the super and now here he was using her Christian name. ‘Fine, sir. Good. No, not good. I love it.’
He smiled briefly. ‘And being in Roebuck’s team?’
Iona thought about her new boss, Peter Roebuck. She knew there were a few in the CTU who found his urbane manner irritating, she suspected because it hinted at a privileged life. In the preliminary meeting she’d had with him, he had been quick to mention that he’d been given a bursary to study at King’s School in Macclesfield. She knew the fact she’d won a sports scholarship to Manchester High School for Girls was on her file: it had been a slightly clumsy attempt on his part to find common ground. She looked O’Dowd in the eye. ‘No problem whatsoever.’
‘Good. Him and I go back a long way. He’s as straight-up as they come.’
Iona understood the implications of the comment. Unlike the last person you worked under, was what he’d really said. DCI Paul Wallace had been a racist snake who had left Iona to confront a terror cell without any back-up.
‘Obviously, the way things ended with Wallace …’ O’Dowd looked uncomfortable for the first time. ‘He was a popular man in the unit. Charismatic. Even with all the facts laid out about what he did—’
‘Sir, I understand. There’ll always be people in the CTU who’ll wish he was still here and I wasn’t. They’ll never admit it, but we both know that’s what they’d prefer. I can live with that.’
He gave her an approving look. ‘You’ll go far, Iona, trust me. Now, Peter has OK’d this. In the lounge downstairs, we have Philip Young – the student who brought in the laptop and carry case with the profiles.’
The lounge, Iona thought. The pleasant interview room for members of the public not suspected of any terrorist crime.
‘Understandably, he’s feeling anxious about what he might have stumbled across. We need to make him feel at ease, but not complacent. It’s a tricky one. Me? I’m a fifty-four-year-old with a receding hairline. You are the closest thing this unit has got to someone his age. You’re a maths graduate, yes?’
Iona nodded. My file really has been doing the rounds.
‘That’s also his subject. Where did you study?’
‘Newcastle.’
‘OK. Not sure what connections the city might have with Manchester. But you’ve got the maths. Now, he’s already been interviewed by uniforms. We need to sit down with him and see if there’s anything else in his head that’s useful. Are you OK with that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Excellent. And Iona? Just to be clear, he has no idea about the fate of Jade Cummings. Let’s keep it that way – for the time being, at least.’
P
hilip Young looked up from the sofa on the far side of the room. He was holding a copy of that day’s
Guardian
. Iona guessed it had been bought specially for him; it wasn’t the kind of thing you normally found lying around the building. She spotted a waxed cup from a proper coffee shop on the table before him. Someone had done their best to make him feel at home.
She didn’t think it had worked very well. There was a slightly queasy look on his face, like he was about to sit an important exam or be interviewed for a coveted job.
Appearance-wise, he was meticulously plain. Absolutely nothing made him stand out. Loose-fitting jeans and a baggy top. Drab blues and grey. A pair of black Adidas trainers. His hair – brown and straight – was parted at the side. Iona guessed Philip was aiming to get through his time as a student without attracting attention and then land a steady job and have a nice, quiet, respectable life. Shame he hadn’t been able to resist an unbelievably cheap laptop.
‘Mr Young,’ O’Dowd announced as they crossed the room. ‘Sorry to keep you. This is my colleague, Detective Constable Iona Khan.’
‘Hi.’ Iona smiled. As they’d come in, he’d looked surprised at the sight of her. She deliberately didn’t hold eye contact so he could continue his appraisal, aware that a petite female in her mid-twenties was far removed from the burly male officers who’d no doubt been dealing with him so far.