Nick Oldham - Instinct

‘Yeah — you’re a great counsellor.’ Baines had always been intrigued by Henry’s often convoluted love life and had been severely disappointed when he’d remarried Kate and it had ground to a halt. ‘However,’ Henry said, ‘back to more pressing matters.’

‘Ah, yes, this young lady.’

‘What can you tell me?’

Baines pursed his lips. ‘Dumped here from a car. Beaten about the face, but looks like strangulation, could be with a scarf judging from the indentations in her skin. I’ll have a clearer idea later, obviously. Female, sixteen to nineteen years, white, well nourished

… sad.’

‘Time of death?’

‘Hmm, always a bit of a finger in the wind at the scene, but I’d say she’s been here about six or seven hours. Could have been killed up to seven hours before that.’

Henry totted up the figures. ‘So, maybe dumped here around midnight and murdered sometime between six p.m. and then?’

Baines shrugged. ‘Best guess at the moment. More conclusive tests at the PM.’

‘Fair enough. Are you available to carry that out today?’

‘Yes.’ Baines glanced around. ‘Based on what I still have to do here… three o’clock this afternoon OK?’

‘Splendid.’ Henry turned to Rik, who had listened to the conversation and said, ‘Mother?’ Rik nodded. ‘Then we pull a team together.’

‘What was all that about?’ Bill Robbins threw the unmarked Vauxhall Insignia around the streets of Blackpool north.

‘All what?’ Donaldson gripped the hinged handle above the passenger door.

‘I half-heard something between you and that Beckham guy. I was lurking,’ he explained.

‘Interdepartmental rivalry, I guess. Which I don’t mind in the least, but not at the expense of safety.’

‘You mean the added-on bit.’

‘Yep — but even then you weren’t told everything.’

‘Nature of the beast,’ Robbins said. ‘We accept it to a degree. It’s the way spooks operate. Anyway, how come you’ve turned up for this charade? Us arresting a couple of would-be terrorists on what appears to be a purely speculative basis — uh, nothing new there — seems pretty low down the ladder for a guy like you. I thought you went after the bigwigs? Like the man himself, old OBL, cave dweller.’ He glanced sideways.

‘Ahh, briefings,’ Donaldson said fondly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Like we said, they don’t always reveal all.’

‘As far as I can tell we’re pulling in a couple of lads who are up to no good, then had an extra warning they could be dangerous.’

‘More complex than that. Sometimes the little-wigs open up the path to the bigwigs.’

‘Explain yourself.’

Donaldson regarded Bill. He had known him a while now, been involved in various investigations with him and found him sound and reliable. Dour, but likeable. ‘If I do, and you blab, I’ll have to kill you — you know that?’

‘Only if you get in the double-tap first.’

‘OK — for your ears only. The two men — lads really — that you’ve been told to pull in have just recently returned from an extended trip to Yemen. They’ve been on extensive training and indoctrination courses.’

‘Brainwashing?’

‘Fundamentalism… so, yeah, brainwashing. Also probably trained to use a variety of weapons and how to make bombs.’

Bill swerved at this revelation like a cat had just leapt in front of the car. ‘They didn’t quite tell us that.’

‘No.’ It was a wistful word.

‘So really they’ve told us fuck all.’

‘Because if it comes to nothing, it’ll all be played down…’

‘Which is why it has to look like a routine stop-check.’

‘And if something is found, then they’ll be whisked down to Paddington Green police station in London and interrogated.’

‘Interviewed, you mean?’ Bill said.

‘Interrogated.’

‘OK.’ Bill got the less than subtle hint. ‘So they’ve been trained — does that answer why you’re here, Karl?’

‘Do you recall the bombing of the American Embassy in Kenya in 1998?’

Bill scratched his balding dome. ‘One of many, but I recall it.’

‘A guy named Jamil Akram is one of the principal bomb-makers affiliated to certain terrorist organizations. First made his name making car bombs, more recently he’s been mass producing body packs for suicide bombers. Also a weapons expert, particularly small arms.’

‘And your interest is?’

‘He had a major hand in that embassy bombing — with others, of course. I lost two good friends in that blast and I don’t forget easily.’ His voice became brittle.

‘And somehow he’s connected to these guys today?’

‘In Yemen they were at a camp at which Akram is known to be a facilitator. The thinking is, I guess, although I can’t be sure, that something will be uncovered by arresting these two today that will lead us closer to Akram. Nailing him, even with a missile fired from a drone, would be a major scalp, one which MI5 would like to claim for their own.’

The door opened as Henry and Rik walked up the pathway to the house. The woman standing there, maybe only in her late thirties, looked haggard and exhausted, a tatty dressing gown wrapped tightly around her, hair scraped and pinned carelessly back.

‘I know you’re the police,’ she said shakily.

Henry flipped out his warrant card to confirm her suspicion. ‘Mrs Philips, I’m Detective Superintendent Christie from the Force Major Investigation Team and this is Detective…’

Her face froze in an expression of horror. She had been able to recognize that two plain clothes cops were at her door, but when the first one introduced himself and stated his rank… that was when she knew, and it was as if an invisible weight had struck her. She sagged, swayed, her hand sliding down the door jamb. Henry lurched forwards to catch her before she hit the ground.

‘You’re going to be bored,’ Bill said to Donaldson. They were parked up in a street about half a mile away from where the targets had their flat, the street on which their car was also parked. The purpose of the operation was to sit on that car, which was being observed by two cops in the back of a van, wait for the subjects to get in and drive off, then stop them in an appropriate place. Four other plain cars, each with two armed officers on board, a police dog van and a personnel carrier with six uniformed support unit officers were also placed in well thought out, discreet locations, ready to move and pounce once the target car was rolling.

There was nothing to say that the car would move that day. However, the operation would continue until it did.

Donaldson yawned, folded his arms and sank low in his seat, closed his eyes, felt his stomach rumble and said, ‘Possibly.’

‘How good do you think the Intel is?’ Bill asked.

‘Hard to say.’

‘Who will have done all the legwork?’

Donaldson opened one eye and squinted through it at Bill. ‘I always thought you were the laconic type, not loquacious.’

Bill frowned, decided it was a compliment and said, ‘Thanks.’

‘And in answer to your question, I don’t know. MI5, MI6, SIS, Special Branch, Counter Terrorism…’

Bill was used to acting on intelligence received from unknown sources, usually crims with a grudge or a debt to repay. It was the way things were done these days, with many firewalls between informant and the officers who then acted on the information. It protected people and he guessed that in this case, the firewalls were pretty much impregnable. He yawned, too. Then said, ‘Not much of an Asian population around here.’

‘No, but plenty of white holiday-makers,’ Donaldson replied and snapped open his eyes as a horrible thought struck him.