Stephen Leather - The Bombmaker

'I'll leave the mess for you to clean up,' said Wong, putting his gun back inside his jacket. 'I'm sure you know the right sort of people.'

Andy woke up to the sound of someone knocking on the office door. It was Green-eyes, with a mug of coffee and a croissant. Andy had spent the night on a leather sofa with one of her pullovers as a pillow. She sat up and took the coffee and pastry.

'We finished the drying a few hours ago,' said Green-eyes.

'You haven't slept?'

'I'll catch a few hours once we've started on the next stage.'

Andy put her coffee mug down and ran a hand through her hair. 'I could do with a shower.'

'You and me both. But the washrooms are all we have. A full washbasin is the best we can do. Sorry.' Green-eyes looked at her wristwatch. 'Ready in ten minutes, right? The troops are waiting.'

Green-eyes went back to the office floor. Andy drank her coffee and ate half the croissant, then went to the washroom to clean her teeth and wipe herself over with a damp flannel.

Green-eyes and the two men were waiting for her in the office area. The temperature had dropped to a more bearable high seventies now that the ovens were switched off. The four electric woks had been taken out of their cardboard boxes and were lined up on the desks. Andy went over and examined them. They were Teflon-coated, with dials that controlled the heat settings.

'Right,' said Green-eyes. 'What do we do?'

Andy picked up one of the five-gallon cans of alcohol. 'We use this to wash the ammonium nitrate. It gets the impurities out of it.'

She went over to the pile of black garbage bags and dragged one of them over to the woks. 'You need a container. The Tupperware'll do. Half fill it with the ammonium nitrate, then pour in just enough alcohol to cover it. Stir it well for about three minutes, then pour off the alcohol. It should go a dirty brown. You can use it a few times. Okay?'

Green-eyes and her colleagues nodded.

'Okay, so then we have to evaporate off the alcohol. Pour the wet ammonium nitrate into the wok and sort of stir-fry it. You've got to keep it moving, at a low heat. The same applies as when we were drying it in the ovens – try to keep the temperature around one hundred and fifty degrees. You've got to keep watching it. If it gets to four hundred degrees, it'll blow.' She looked around the office. 'The fumes can be fierce. I'd suggest we spread out, and use the fans.'

'What about the respirators?' asked Green-eyes.

'No use. The respirators are for particles, not fumes. The best thing would be to open the windows, but that's not possible, so we'll have to make do with the fans. I warn you now, it'll give you a headache.'

'How long do we heat it for?'

'Three or four minutes should do. It's just like when you stir-fry food – keep it hot and keep it moving.'

Green-eyes grinned. 'You might have to give the boys a demonstration. I don't think they're particularly at home in the kitchen.'

She laughed, and Andy started to laugh along with her. She stopped suddenly when she realised what she was doing. She was laughing with the woman responsible for kidnapping her daughter, the woman who was forcing her to build a four-thousand-pound bomb in the City of London. Green-eyes stopped laughing too. She stood looking at Andy, as if sensing her confusion. 'Go on, Andrea,' she said. 'What then?'

Andy clenched and unclenched her hands, bunching them into fists and then relaxing them. What could she be thinking of? These weren't her friends, she shouldn't be enjoying herself, she shouldn't be letting her guard down. How dare she laugh with them? It was a betrayal – she was betraying Katie and she was betraying Martin. They both deserved better.

'What then, Andrea?' Green-eyes repeated.

'You have to grind it up into a fine powder,' said Andy, her voice shaking. 'In the coffee grinders. A couple of minutes should do it. Then seal it back in the Tupperware containers as quickly as possible. Every second it's exposed to the air, it absorbs water.'

The Wrestler held up a hand, pointing a finger at her. 'Wait one fucking minute,' he said. 'We've already treated all three thousand and odd pounds of it. Pound by pound. Are you saying we have to do it again?'

'That's right. It all has to be treated. It has to be uniformly pure, uniformly fine. If there are wet spots, or rough spots, the detonation velocity won't be consistent.'

'It's going to take for ever,' moaned the Runner. The Wrestler and the Runner stood looking at each other, clearly unhappy at the prospect of the work that lay ahead.

Green-eyes went over to Andy. 'Why don't you get yourself a coffee, Andrea. I want to have a word with the boys.'

Andrea went off to the meeting room, knowing that Green-eyes was going to give the men a talking-to. She closed the door behind her, poured herself a mug of coffee and set it down on the table. She looked through the glass panel at the office opposite. She had just about plucked up the courage to open the door and tiptoe across the corridor when she heard footsteps. She rushed back to the table and picked up her mug of coffee just as the door opened. It was Green-eyes. 'Right. Come on,' she said to Andy. 'Let's get started.'

– «»-«»-«»Martin Hayes telephoned the Strand Palace Hotel from a call-box at Belfast airport ten minutes before he was due to board his flight to London and asked to speak to someone on reception. A girl answered, and Martin explained that his wife had stayed there the previous Wednesday night and asked if she'd left a message for him. The girl checked and said that no, there was no message. Martin thanked her and cut the connection. He called Padraig's mobile and his partner answered. Martin thanked him again for driving him up to Belfast and for waiting with him in the airport carpark until dawn broke. He reminded his partner to check on his dog, thanked him again, then hung up and went to catch his flight.

He arrived at Heathrow at nine o'clock in the morning and caught a black cab to the Strand. He figured that whoever had answered the phone would have been at the end of the night shift and had probably gone home. To make absolutely sure that he didn't speak to the same person, he went up to a young man in a black suit. Martin wasn't sure why he was in the hotel – he just knew that it was the only link he had to Andy. She'd have known that too, so if she'd left any sort of trail it had to have been at the hotel. He leaned forward over the reception counter and smiled at the man. 'My wife lost an earring when she was staying here last week. Can you tell me if anything was handed in after she checked out?'

The man tapped away on his computer and shook his head. 'Nope, nothing was handed in,' he said. 'And Housekeeping haven't reported finding anything.'

Martin sighed. 'Damn. It was hellish expensive. Diamond. Cost me an arm and a leg. Look, I don't suppose I could have a quick look around, could I? Just to check?'

The man consulted his computer again. 'The room's empty. I don't see why not.' He look around. 'I'll get someone to go up with you.'

'That's okay, I don't want to trouble anybody.'

'Security, sir,' said the man. He waved over a teenage bell-boy in a beige uniform and handed him a key before explaining the situation.

The bell-boy took Martin up to the fifth floor and opened the door for him. 'An earring, huh?' he said, bending down and looking under the bed.

'Yeah. Gold with a diamond.' Martin went into the bathroom and looked around. If he'd been Andy, where would he have hidden a message? The toilet cistern was boxed in and there was no way he could see of removing the base of the bath or shower. There was a small ventilation grille close to the ceiling but the screws holding it in place had been painted over and there was no sign of it having been moved.