‘London, are you sure?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not good with accents.’
Barlow made a note on his pad. ‘Young? Old?’
‘Thirty, maybe. Looked like he worked out, you know? He was wearing overalls but I could see he was fit. He spends time in the gym, I’m sure of that.’ He consulted his watch. ‘I want to go home,’ he said. ‘I need to get a shower.’
‘Just a few more questions and then we’ll take you wherever you want to go,’ said Barlow.
INTERVIEW WITH MOHAMED OSMAN (10.20 p.m.)
‘When that poor man was blown up, I was so sure I was going to die,’ said Mohamed Osman. ‘Shahid killed him without a second thought, as if he was no more than an animal.’ He shuddered. ‘May Allah rest his soul in peace.’
‘And why was this man killed?’ asked Kamran.
‘He said he wouldn’t do what Shahid wanted, sir. Shahid said we had to obey him, and that if we didn’t, we would die too.’
‘What about the trigger you were holding?’
‘Shahid said the trigger would not work, sir. He said the only way the bomb could be detonated was by the phone he carried. Sir, check the bomb for yourself, you will see that I am telling the truth.’
‘Which mosque do you attend, Mohamed?’
‘I do not go to the mosque to pray, sir. I sometimes pray with my family at home.’
‘Why do you not go to the mosque?’
‘It is not our way, sir. And the mosques near us are not for Somalians.’
‘The mosques are for all Muslims,’ said Kamran.
Osman forced a smile. ‘That is what they say, sir. But the Pakistanis at our local mosques do not make us welcome.’
‘And how do you feel about ISIS?’
Osman frowned. ‘How do I feel, sir? What do you mean?’
‘Are you sympathetic to their aims?’
Osman shook his head. ‘Oh, no, sir. I lived in Somalia before I moved to England. I have seen that violence solves nothing.’ He reached up to touch the wicked scar that ran across his left cheek. ‘When I was a child, robbers came to our house. They did this to me to force my father to hand over everything we had. My family came here to escape violence. That is the wonderful thing about England. Here we all live together in peace.’ He grimaced. ‘That is what I thought, anyway. Until today. I did not think that something like this would ever happen to me. Not in England.’ He shuddered again. ‘Do you think you will catch this man, sir? Do you think you will make this Shahid pay for his crimes?’
‘I certainly hope so, Mr Osman.’
Osman nodded enthusiastically. ‘I hope so too, sir. That is one of the great things about this country. There is justice for all.’
LAMBETH CENTRAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMAND CENTRE (10.45 p.m.)
‘Well, that’s it, then,’ said Gillard, blowing smoke towards the Houses of Parliament. He was standing with Kamran on the terrace outside the canteen. ‘They were all in fear for their lives.’
‘The timeline fits, too,’ said Kamran. ‘Starting with Zach Ahmed and ending with Faisal Chaudhry, they were abducted, fitted with the vests and terrorised. They all tell the same story, pretty much.’
‘Plus they all have the same throwaway mobile phones and typewritten instructions. We’re getting them checked for DNA and prints but I’m guessing that Shahid won’t have left any traces.’ He blew a tight plume of smoke towards the Shard. ‘We need to find out where they were taken to,’ he continued. ‘They all give the same description of the factory or warehouse where they were held. I’m guessing somewhere in south London because that’s where the first drop-offs were. It shouldn’t be too hard to find.’
‘And we have a murder enquiry now,’ said Kamran. ‘How do you want to handle that?’
‘We’ll keep it within SO15 at the moment,’ said Gillard. ‘We’ll need to run a check on all Asian men who went missing over the past forty-eight hours, obviously.’ He took a long drag on his cigarette and blew more smoke towards the Thames. ‘I’m knackered, Mo.’
‘It’s been a long day.’
‘Yeah, we should call it a night. Start fresh in the morning.’
‘What about the men we’re holding?’
‘We have to let them go home,’ said the chief superintendent.
‘It might be helpful to keep them here overnight.’
‘In a perfect world, sure. But we know they were forced to wear those vests. They’re victims in this, and if we start to make it look as if they were anything but victims we run the risk of being seen as heavy-handed. We don’t want anyone alleging that we’re keeping them in custody because they’re Asian men with beards. A couple of them have already tried to play the race card.’ He took another drag on his cigarette. ‘No, we let them go home. But we keep them under observation, for the time being at least. Our main aim now is to find the location of that warehouse, to identify the victim and, of course, to track down Shahid. I don’t understand why he never got back to you.’
‘Maybe something happened that we’re not aware of,’ said Kamran.
Gillard smiled tightly. ‘Wouldn’t it be ironic if he got hit by a bus?’
‘There has to be some reason he hasn’t called,’ said Kamran. ‘He’d won. He’d got what he wanted. The prisoners were at the airport. So far as he knew, there was a plane there ready to fly them out. Why didn’t he follow through?’
‘Maybe he realised we were calling his bluff,’ said Gillard. ‘He knew we were about to send in the SAS and that would mean game over. The vests were fake so once we called his bluff he was out of options.’
‘But why didn’t he use real explosives?’ asked Kamran. ‘He obviously had the real thing because he killed the guy in the warehouse. How come that vest was real and the rest weren’t? None of this makes any sense.’
‘Go home and sleep on it,’ said Gillard. ‘I’ll tie things up here and see you first thing. And make sure you keep your mobile with you, just in case Shahid does call back.’ He patted Kamran on the shoulder. ‘You did bloody good work today, Mo. You should be proud.’
Kamran smiled at the compliment, but he wasn’t sure it was merited. He felt that somehow he’d been out-manoeuvred, that Shahid had got exactly what he wanted. The problem was, for the life of him Kamran couldn’t work out what that was.
BAYSWATER (11.35 p.m.)
‘There you go, Mr Ahmed,’ said the female constable in the passenger seat in front of him. ‘I’m sorry about the clothes. You’ll get them back eventually.’
‘That’s okay. I’m just glad to be home,’ said Ahmed. He climbed out of the car. He was holding a small plastic bag containing his wallet, mobile phone, spare change and keys. A woman with several carrier bags stared at him as she walked by, frowning. He knew how strange he looked in the paper suit and paper shoes, but the police had explained they needed all his clothing as evidence.
He let himself into the building and went up the stairs to his second-floor studio flat. Once inside he made himself a mug of tea, then spent the next hour carefully wiping down every surface in the flat, taking particular care to clean every knob, handle and switch he had touched. He used disposable cloths and placed the used ones in a black rubbish bag. When he was satisfied, he stripped off his paper suit, put it with the disposable shoes into the rubbish bag, and went into the cramped bathroom.
He stood in front of the mirror and stared at his reflection for several seconds. He had hated the beard from the start, but it had been necessary. He used a pair of scissors to hack away most of the facial hair then took a can of shaving foam and a Gillette razor and shaved off the rest.