‘Well, it was nice to meet you again.’ Sam said over his shoulder as he walked to his front door. ‘Take it easy.’
Raynor watched Sam enter the house. He waited a minute before he walked through the gates, crouched and followed the hedgerow along the side of the garden. Recon. Know your entry and exit points. Know your surroundings. Then get the next train back home. Things to do tomorrow.
Chapter Eleven
The clouds kept rolling over the sun, blocking its brilliance, teasing the funeral party in the cemetery below.
James Culpepper and Lucas Fostervold stood at the freshly dug graveside of Shelly Winter. The casket slowly being lowered into the ground.
‘We’ll find the bastard who did this Lucas, I promise.’ Culpepper said. ‘We’ll issue a reward. A hundred thousand should buy a bit of intel. Fuck it, a million, I don’t care. Shelly was your niece, Lucas, but I’ve known her since she was a baby. Uncle Jim, she used to call me, and to me she’s family.’ He paused for a moment before correcting himself, ‘Was family.’
Fostervold was silent. He still couldn’t believe it. His niece had been tragically killed in the Knightsbridge explosion. He felt powerless. All his wealth and there was nothing he could do to bring her back. He looked up from the grave and browsed around the assembled funeral party. Family he hadn’t seen in years. George Smith along with other England players. All looking distraught. Beyond the cemetery gates, the paparazzi waited. Scum. Why can’t those fuckers just let us mourn?
He turned to Culpepper.
‘Then what, Jim?’
‘What do you mean, Lucas?’
‘I mean, then what? We issue a reward, the bastard gets caught, locked up for life, does sixteen years, gets on with things.’
He looked forlornly at the casket as the mourners started to drop handfuls of earth onto it.
‘It won’t bring Shelly back, Jim.’
Culpepper looked at the ground. Bashful almost, as Fostervold continued.
‘And anyway, we’re a bloody arms company, we can’t issue rewards or encourage vigilantism. We sell the shit that allows this to happen. We could have been responsible for Shelly’s death, Jim.’
‘Don’t think like that, Lucas, we had nothing to do with this.’
‘Maybe not, but how many nieces, nephews, sons, daughters have died because of what we sell?’
‘Don’t go down that road, Luke, we sell to governments, we aren’t responsible for what they do.’
‘Look, mate, I’m sorry, it’s just really got to me. She didn’t deserve to go like this. So young, so much to look forward to. I can’t let the bastard get away with this, but I’m powerless to do anything to change it.’
‘I understand mate, I really do.’
The tramp shuffled up the street. People going about their daily routines giving him plenty of room. A group of workmen in high-visibility jackets were digging up the street again, a pneumatic drill hammering the road like a demented, mechanical, woodpecker. He liked it around here. Soho. One of his favourite places. The John Snow pub, named after the doctor who traced the 1854 cholera outbreak to the Broadwick Street water-pump, was up ahead. Before passing the replica water-pump, erected in 1992, he dropped a brown paper bag in a litter bin, had a brief rummage for anything of value, then continued up toward the pub.
If he was lucky, there might be a few glasses left out on the street-side window ledges. He’d heard some of the other tramps talking about it. The pub was on the street, it didn’t have any grounds or a beer garden, which meant the smokers would go out onto the street to temporarily subdue their demons, sometimes leaving unfinished pint glasses precariously standing on the angled window ledges, looking over the edge as if wondering whether they should jump.
I might have just made a hundred quid, but that doesn’t mean I’ll pass up a freebie. He thought.
One hundred pounds, what was he thinking? I’ll have a pint of what he’s been drinking.
He chuckled. Coughed. Stopped walking and bent over double, coughing even more. A rattling, hollow sound. The cough of ten thousand cigarettes all vying for a part of his demise. His discomfort went ignored by those around him. Once his coughing had ceased he took a moment to recover before continuing his zombie-like amble toward the pub. His thoughts returned to the big, tattooed man.
‘Just put this in the bin for me, mate. There’s a ton in it for you, here you go, enjoy yourself. By the look of you, you don’t have long left for having fun.’ Cheeky bastard. Still, hundred quid to put some rubbish in the bin. Are people really that lazy nowadays?
He got to the pub. His luck was in. A glass with a finger of lager at the bottom. He swigged it back and wiped his mouth with the back of his crusted sleeve before carefully placing the glass back on the window ledge.
Raynor stood on the corner of Berwick Street, where he pretended to be on the phone while watching the broken old man. Once he saw the package go into the trash he took his phone from his ear and fired up an app. While he configured his application, he walked north toward Oxford Street where he would become just another face in the crowd, both Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road tube stations within easy reach.
The tramp continued his listless stroll towards Carnaby Street. Around him, thousands of invisible ones and zeros flew into the ether in every direction. Some would make it to mobile phones, others would simply be ignored by every device they came into contact with if the mobile phone number wasn’t one of the thousand being hunted by the message being sent.
Everyone around him continued with their lives, doing their best to ignore him, completely unaware of what could happen at any moment.
Chapter Twelve
Sam was enjoying the sun as he sat in Victoria Gardens having a sandwich. Lunch breaks were a rarity in Thames House, so he tried, when he could, to get away for half an hour. This secluded little bit of greenery in the middle of the capital had a calming effect. Sam needed it after the week he’d just had. Fortunately, the media where starting to ease up. His bosses, however, were a different story. The pressure from the Prime Minister increased as it rolled down the chain of command, ending with Virani. To be fair, she tried her best to deflect the pressure from Sam and his team, knowing full well they were doing all they could to find the Knightsbridge bomber. But still nothing. Not a single lead. No individual or group were claiming responsibility. It made no sense.
They’d been knee-deep in data from auction sites. It was amazing, the number of transactions that went through these sites on a daily basis. But still nothing. No patterns, no clues, no luck.
Sam was just about to stand up from where he was relaxing, leant against the Buxton Memorial Fountain, when he heard the muffled explosion. He froze. Everybody in the small park froze. His head turned to the direction of the sound, slightly west of north. Soho. To the left of the Elizabeth clock tower, which housed the Big Ben bell, a plume of smoke rose into the clear blue skies.
Sam started running, heading back to MI5.
Shit, not again. Not another bomb. Maybe it’s just a gas main.
MI5 was only a couple of hundred metres away, but it was lunchtime, it was busy, he had main roads and junctions to cross, and he was wearing a suit. A minute later, he was heading through the doors into Thames House. He quickly flashed his ID card at the security guard and ran upstairs as Jayshree Virani was leaving with Nick Upex.
‘You’re with us, Sam.’ she called. Urgency, but not stress, in her voice.