‘For Christ’s sake, Sarah, this was not a hard stop and this was not one of my men.’
All eyes were on Halford now. He coughed slightly, needlessly adjusted his collar and attempted to continue in a calmer tone: ‘The pursuit team came upon the victim’s car when it was already stationary.’
The room fell eerily silent. Garvey’s eyes burned. Halford had tried to shut off her questions by addressing her as if she were a child. Bad idea. She kept her tone measured. ‘Yet it was your officers, was it not, who ordered him out of the car, with their weapons drawn?’
‘We had reason to believe the driver had a weapon in the vehicle.’
‘And Suleiman complied — presumably because your men were pointing their MP5s at him.’
‘Home Secretary, I’m not prepared to be questioned like this.’
‘No, Commissioner, you clearly aren’t.’
Halford was now bright red and speechless with rage. Clements’s barely contained glee at the spectacle erupted into a loud snort, which he half concealed behind his hand.
Garvey was well into her stride now, the atmosphere in the room electric. ‘Where are the bullets?’
‘They’ve been sent for examination.’
‘So you did find them.’
‘They were removed from the body.’
‘So they hadn’t exited. How come?’
Halford’s voice was low and cold. ‘I don’t follow.’
She leaned forward. ‘Well, unless I’m mistaken, all police rounds are designed to embed themselves in the target with the minimum possible likelihood of their exiting and injuring someone else.’
There was an awed silence. Halford fiddled with his cap, lying in front of him on the desk. ‘Are you suggesting that we’re covering something up?’
‘Perish the thought, Commissioner. I’m just putting it out there that perhaps the shooter intended to make the hit look like it was one of your chaps.’
There was another ripple of surprise from round the table. Garvey knew that, not for the first time, she was out on a limb. She had to be sure of her facts. ‘Since the shooting took place less than four minutes after the victim’s car came to a stop, it’s unlikely that the assailant was tailing him and was most probably lying in wait. So, this was in all likelihood a carefully planned assassination by a professional who had recced the location and chosen his position in advance, knowing the target would come to a halt right where his weapon was aimed. This killing ground was carefully chosen.’
Clements’s triumph was complete, but he made sure his expression remained grave.
Halford’s eyes bulged. ‘And exactly how did you deduce that?’
As soon as he spoke it was clear he wished he hadn’t. The home secretary was not known for her great intellect but she more than made up for it with her grasp of detail.
‘Do you know what kind of car Suleiman was travelling in?’
‘I don’t think that’s—’
‘Correct. It wasn’t a car, it was a van — and since it was parked facing away from the direction of the shots, the gunman needed Suleiman out of the vehicle to get a clean shot. So you might ask yourself if the shooter also expected your lot to be there to get his man into the open for him.’
‘Home Secretary, I really think that airing untested theories in this forum is unwise.’
‘Why?’ She looked round the room. ‘Since you’re not telling us anything, what’s going to leak? All I’m asking is, you look closely at the possibility that this was no drug shooting but a carefully planned assassination in which the Metropolitan Police appear to have been — no doubt unwittingly — complicit. What if the shooter wanted your men there to make it look like they did it? Where did your team get the information that Suleiman and his driver were supposedly armed? Surely it’s the source of that intelligence which might lead you to whoever lured both Suleiman and your men to the site, where they were made to look like complete pricks.’
She stared at Halford, who looked as though his balls had shrunk to the size of acorns. Sweat was spreading around his high-riding collar. He made one last attempt to regain some kind of authority. ‘Home Secretary, I completely fail to see what value there is in pursuing this unwarranted line of interrogation. The whole point of COBRA—’
‘Is to get to the heart of things. I know, John, and you shouldn’t take it so personally. We can all see you’re in a tight spot.’
That was the coup de grâce — the final twist of the knife. Having floored him she now turned to Woolf. ‘I’m sure MI5 would be the first to agree that this one’s going to take a lot of digging to resolve. Woolf, don’t you agree?’
He looked startled to have the spotlight suddenly trained on him. ‘Er — absolutely, ma — Home Secretary.’
‘Can you bring us up to speed on their thinking?’
He fiddled with his tie as if to check it was still there holding his head in place, discovered it was loose, made an attempt to tighten it, failed and gave up. ‘All our intelligence seems to confirm that Suleiman was clean, which may have put him at odds with the drug lords.’ He stole a glance at Halford, who was staring at his cap. ‘But if there turns out to be no drug-crime-related motive, then we could be looking at extremist elements wanting to open divisions between Muslims and the, er — well, the rest.’
Garvey was ready to pounce. ‘Which elements? You’re supposed to be the people with their fingers on the extremist pulse.’
She watched Woolf scan the room. All eyes were on him. Evidently he hadn’t anticipated being put on the spot like this. She knew just what was going through his head; Mandler would have told him to sit tight and take notes, but say as little as possible. But now she had put him on the spot. He would have to try to sound as though he was answering the question, while not actually doing so at all. ‘We’re preparing a dossier for you, which we’ll be sharing with all of the security services by the end of play today.’
‘Oh, marvellous.’
They give nothing away, that lot. Garvey gave him an empty smile. She needed him to know that he wasn’t in the clear yet.
Clements was trying to get her attention. ‘Since we are without an FCO presence today…’ He cleared his throat.
Trust him to try to ride more than one horse, she thought.
He took off his annoying little half-glasses and twirled them. ‘There is the matter of Britons who’ve been fighting in Syria rotating back to the UK. We have to factor in that some of these folk have seen some pretty serious action and acquired, in some cases, some equally serious training. I just thought I should add that to the pot as our people are pretty stretched keeping tabs on them all, particularly in view of their increasing use of, and for once this phrase is appropriate, noms de guerre.’
Garvey looked at him. Pretentious twat.
He paused and glanced at Woolf. ‘I’m sure MI5’s doing a fine job of monitoring all the would-be jihadis in our midst, but if you’re looking for someone with the skills to carry out an assassination such as this, our eager returnees from Syria might be a good place to start.’
She turned to Woolf. ‘Well?’
Woolf bit his bottom lip while he crafted the appropriate answer. ‘The cabinet secretary is quite right that the returnees are a source of concern. And we will, of course, continue to rule nothing out.’