He lit a cigarette, looked up and down the wet, deserted street, at the bright shop windows and the pools of light. Nothing and no one.
Clodagh beckoned from the driver’s window of the Escort. He sauntered back towards her.
The two women climbed out of the car, anxious to stretch their legs. Dougan’s daughter said: ‘It’s just been on the radio news ‘
‘Christ, radio!’
The woman laughed. ‘Wrong type of signal, Leo, don’t worry. Worry if you see some kid with a radio-controlled toy car.’
Muldoon felt foolish. ‘Sorry, what news?’
‘The Poplar bomb went off. No details yet.’
The Irishman grinned ‘That’ll make the bastards eat their words.’ He offered Moira Lock a cigarette.
As she looked up from the flame of his lighter, the expression froze on her face. She could see the distant white police car crawling beside the pavement, a routine night patrol checking the shops in the arcade.
‘Peelers,’ she breathed.
Muldoon glanced up. One beat officer out of the vehicle and going to a doorway. A dossier? A suspected breakin? Christ! ‘Moira, go get Hughie, quick.’ He turned to Clodagh. ‘Back in the car and get it started.’
As Moira disappeared inside the shop, Muldoon scrambled into the Renault.
‘Hughie! Quick!’
Dougan turned at the sound of the girl’s voice, the dowel peg he had pulled still in his hand. Suddenly he realised where she was in the darkness. ‘Don’t move!’ he yelled, flashing his torch.
‘What?’
The last thing he saw in the circle of light was the expression of puzzlement on the pretty pale face as her foot stepped onto the loose lino.
A huge bursting bubble of lacerating glass and brickwork exploded across the street in front of Clodagh’s eyes. She just saw the Renault van lifted bodily into the air, like some levitational conjuring trick and hurled across the street into the shop window opposite before the shock wave caught her own car. Her view through the windscreen was a swirling panorama of the devastation as the vehicle spun like a fairground dodgem, slewing across the road until it faced the opposite direction.
Miraculously the windscreen had not shattered. She stared blindly ahead, hands grasping the steering wheel, her dark world closing in, the words screaming in her skull. Da is dead! Da is dead!
Rubble was bouncing on the car roof as it landed, glass crashing all around. She glanced back, saw Muldoon lurching from the van that had been concertinaed sideways by the force. Blood poured from his head as he stumbled blindly across the pavement. Beyond him the two beat officers had recovered from their shock and were running towards the scene. Lights were coming on in the bedrooms overlooking the street, heads appearing at shattered windows, people in their nightwear emerging, bewildered and bloodied, into the debris-strewn road.
Clodagh jammed the gear lever into reverse and stamped on the accelerator. The engine howled and tyres squealed, glass crunching noisily as she pulled alongside Muldoon.
He fumbled for the handle of the passenger door, yanked it open and fell inside.
She changed into first, her foot hard down, and the car screeched into the night.
‘I don’t like it,’ Harrison said.
‘You don’t have to.’
Pritchard’s mind was clearly made up. He walked away towards the Section’s Range-Rover where Les Appleyard was waiting. After witnessing the Poplar incident the Expo was taking no chances and was kitted out in a full bombsuit and Nomex hood beneath his helmet.
Harrison crossed the street to the Mini Cooper where Casey Mullins was using his mobile, telling Hal Hoskins where to come to take the photographs.
She glanced up as he approached and he thought how efficient and professional she looked, yet how vulnerable. The drizzle had darkened her copper hair and flattened it against the sides of her head, the ends dripping onto the traditional reporter’s trench coat and running down to the jogging pants and white trainers. No make-up — there’d been no time — and that made her look wide-eyed and almost childlike.
‘What’s happening, Tom?’
‘Les is going in.’
‘ Al won’t use another Wheelbarrow?’ Her eyes were bright, but clouded with concern.
‘I can’t budge him. I can understand his point even if I don’t agree with it. This bomb looks identical, which could mean the same highly sensitive trembler. Les can make a more stealthy approach than the robot. And there’ll be no radio contact, just in case.’
‘What will Les do? Use a disrupter?’
He smiled, amused at how easily she’d absorbed the language and the techniques. ‘No, it’s a sealed steel drum. He’ll use a Flatsword — you know, the type I told you I used at the Europa recently. But Al wants a picture first.’
‘Picture?’
‘An X-ray, so we can get some idea what we’re up against. With our experience we can recognise most electronic gizmos, circuitry and so on.’
‘I see.’ She brushed a strand of wet hair from her eyes. ‘And the evacuation?’ She meant the adjoining council estate.
‘There never is enough time. But I don’t think AIDAN’s intention here is to kill innocent civilians.’
‘Then what is the point, Tom? I don’t understand.’
‘It’s to kill an Expo or an ATO. To prove I was wrong about what I said.’
She stared hard, trying to see behind those impassive dark eyes. ‘In my last article, you mean?’
Harrison didn’t answer, couldn’t. How could he tell her she was an unwitting party to all this? Just another victim, just another small contributor to the jigsaw.
‘God, Tom, that’s terrible.’
Les Appleyard was on the move now, his helmet in place, waddling round the corner, carrying the blue plastic Inspector camera, and out of sight.
A portable camcorder and tripod had been erected at the roads crossroads which relayed Appleyard’s rapid progress to a monitor in Pritchard’s Range-Rover and Harrison moved across with Casey to watch.
Pritchard’s driver called from the front seat of the Rover. ‘Message from the Ops Room room, sir. It’s Midgely.’
The Sexpo turned away from the screen as Appleyard was seen entering the one-time Oxfam shop. ‘Yes?’
‘Says to tell you there’s been an explosion in Lambeth. He’s tasking in an Expo team. Reports from two local coppers saw people acting suspiciously just before and after.’
Pritchard’s impatience was on a hair-trigger. ‘Meaning?’
The driver’s smile positively beamed. ‘Looks like an own goal, sir. Possible two of the buggers have blown themselves up.’
Harrison was only half listening, his attention riveted to the monitor and the street scene, deserted and brightly lit like a clapboard film set. He’d seen Appleyard go in, was visualising every movement of the stealthy approach he would be making, anticipating each of Les’s thoughts, living each tentative footstep himself. Could imagine his friend stooping gently, carefully going onto one knee. Eyes transfixed by the solid black drum. Hating the thing like it was the very essence of evil. A living entity with a clockwork heartbeat and a black soul. Les watching for the slightest movement, careful not to make a loose floorboard tremble. Carefully placing the two taped-together Polaroid cassettes behind the device. Resting the X-ray camera on his knee, adjusting the focus.