Talpur nodded.
‘Any hostage? Or a particular one?’
‘Shahid said that as soon as I got on the bus I was to grab the nearest person. He said the driver was behind a screen so I should ignore him and just get the closest passenger. I grabbed a woman. With hindsight I should maybe have gone for a male but I wasn’t thinking too clearly at the time.’
‘And was there a key? For the handcuffs?’
Talpur shook his head.
‘We didn’t find one in the waistpack he gave you to wear, but I wondered if you had had a key and it was lost or thrown away.’
Talpur shook his head again. ‘There was no key.’
‘So if you’d had a change of heart at the time and wanted to swap the woman hostage for a man, you couldn’t have done?’
‘I’m confused, sir.’
‘I’m sorry, just humour me for a little while longer. You couldn’t have changed your hostage, once you’d made your choice?’
‘That’s right, sir.’
Talpur frowned as the superintendent walked over to the whiteboard and pulled off two photographs. He sat down again and pushed one of the photographs across the desk. It was of the hostage-taking at the coffee shop in Marble Arch, the shot taken by the bomb-disposal officer through the newspaper-covered window. The bearded Asian man in the vest could be seen close up, and behind him was half the face of his hostage. ‘This was the bomber in Marble Arch,’ said Kamran. He smiled ruefully. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t be calling him a bomber, should I? His name was Zach Ahmed.’ He pushed the second photograph across the desk. ‘This is a photograph of the hostage, taken after you were all off the coach. His name is Mohammed Al-Khalifa, an asylum-seeker from Sudan.’
Talpur stared at the two photographs. He nodded but had absolutely no idea what the superintendent was getting at.
‘If you look at the photograph of Mr Ahmed, standing just behind him is his hostage. And if you look carefully, you’ll see that it is most definitely not Mr Al-Khalifa.’
Talpur picked up the two pictures and looked at them in turn. The superintendent was right. The man in the picture taken through the window was in his early twenties. The head-and-shoulders shot taken afterwards was of a man in his forties. ‘He switched hostages,’ said Talpur.
‘Yes, he did,’ said Kamran. ‘But how could he have done that unless he had a key? And why did he have a key and you didn’t? In fact, keys weren’t discovered on any of the bombers.’ He grimaced. ‘There I go again. I really must stop doing that. But you hear what I’m saying. There were no keys. But clearly Mr Ahmed had access to one.’
Talpur put down the photographs. ‘Why would he change hostages? Like I said, I could imagine swapping a man for a woman, but why swap a younger man for an older one?’
‘How about we go and ask him ourselves?’ said Kamran. ‘Are you free?’
Talpur nodded enthusiastically. ‘Hell, yeah.’ He grinned. ‘Sir,’ he added.
BAYSWATER
According to the statement taken by Chief Superintendent Gillard, Zach Ahmed was a security guard. He had worked for a north London firm for the past year. Prior to that he’d worked as a security guard in Leicester. He was British born of Pakistani parents. He’d never been in trouble with the police, never even had a speeding or parking ticket. He lived in a block of flats in a road close to Bayswater Tube station in a four-storey terraced house that in the distant past had been home to a single wealthy family and their staff but, decades ago, had been converted into more than a dozen studio flats.
Kamran’s driver dropped them outside the building and went off in search of a place to park. There was an intercom to the left of black doors with fourteen buttons, each with a handwritten number on it. Kamran rang Zach Ahmed’s bell several times but there was no answer. On one of the buttons was the word ‘CARETAKER’. Kamran pressed it and eventually a man growled, ‘Who is it?’
‘Police,’ said Kamran. ‘Can you come to the door, please?’
A minute or so later a black man with greying hair and thick-lensed spectacles was standing in front of them. He was short and squinted up at the two policemen. ‘Is there a problem?’ he asked.
Kamran and Talpur showed him their warrant cards. ‘Do you know the tenant in number six? Zach Ahmed?’
The caretaker shook his head. ‘People come and go. I don’t know all their names.’
‘I’m not getting any answer from his bell.’
‘Maybe he’s not in,’ said the caretaker. Kamran wasn’t sure if the man was being sarcastic or matter-of-fact.
‘When did you last see him?’
The caretaker screwed up his face. ‘I’m not even sure what he looked like, to be honest.’
Kamran took out a photograph of Zach Ahmed and showed it to the caretaker. The man nodded. ‘Ah, Mr Taliban.’
‘Mr Taliban?’
The caretaker handed the photograph back. ‘You know, with that beard. He looks like a terrorist. No offence.’
Kamran frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, he’s Asian, right? I didn’t mean to say that all Asians are Al-Qaeda.’
‘Just the ones with beards, right?’ said Talpur.
The caretaker put up his hands. ‘I said, no offence.’
‘None taken,’ said Kamran, putting the photograph back in his jacket. ‘Do you have a spare key?’
The caretaker nodded.
‘So how about you let us have a quick look at Mr Ahmed’s room?’
The caretaker opened the door wide, suddenly eager to please. He took them up to the second floor and pulled a set of keys from a retractable chain on his belt. He unlocked the door and stepped aside.
It took Kamran less than a minute to realise that Ahmed had gone, and that he’d cleaned up before he’d left. ‘The bird has flown.’ He sighed. ‘Fancy a coffee, Kash?’
‘I’d love one, sir.’
They walked to Queensway and Talpur grabbed a table at the rear of a Costa Coffee while the superintendent ordered and paid. As Kamran stirred two sugars into his, he shook his head. ‘I doubt we’ll be seeing Mr Ahmed again. In fact, I doubt that’s his real name.’
‘He might just have moved to escape the press,’ said Talpur. ‘The newspapers and TV people have been all over the hostages and the guys forced to wear the vests. I’m hard to find but a lot of them have had press packs camped outside their houses.’
Kamran sipped his coffee. ‘Let me ask you something, Kash. When they took the hood off your head in the warehouse, what did you see?’
‘Guys like me wearing ski masks and tied to chairs. All with suicide vests on.’
‘Did you see Ahmed, do you think?’
‘Difficult to say. We all had ski masks on. And we were all pretty much the same height and build.’
Kamran nodded thoughtfully. ‘And when they took the hood off, how many of you were sitting there?’
‘Nine,’ said Talpur.
‘Including yourself?’
Talpur nodded. ‘Eight plus me. Nine.’
Kamran sipped his coffee again. ‘You’re absolutely sure, Kash? Think carefully.’
‘I remember counting them. There was no way of telling them apart because they were all wearing masks, but yes, there were eight.’
‘Eight plus you? So nine in total?’
‘Yes. Nine.’
Kamran smiled over the top of his mug. ‘Don’t you see it, Kash? Don’t you see what happened?’
‘What?’ asked Talpur. ‘What’s going on?’
‘There were nine of you tied to the chairs and wearing masks. Shahid took one of the nine and killed him. That left eight. But there were nine incidents. Nine hostages taken. Nine jihadists on the coach.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Talpur. ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘One of them was working with Shahid,’ said Kamran. ‘It was all a set-up. They faked the explosion, put the hood back over your head, then the dead jihadist came back to life. That dead jihadist was the man who called himself Zach Ahmed. Which is why I’m sure he’s gone for good.’