At 11.15 p.m., Saleem Cheema couldn’t bear the tension anymore. He’d put off this moment for as long as he could and all he’d discovered in those hours was just how inexorable time was. He handcuffed both of Alyshia’s wrists to the frame of the bed.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said, blindly.
Neither of them responded. Cheema told Rahim to follow him and they went up to the kitchen, where they made tea.
‘I’ve spoken to the UK command centre again,’ said Cheema. ‘They’ve told me that we have to kill her before midnight.’
A long silence ensued, during which Rahim looked at his watch, blew on his tea and sipped it.
‘I’ve never killed a woman,’ he said.
‘I’d never killed anyone until Amir Jat last night,’ said Cheema.
‘I could tell,’ said Rahim.
‘They’ve asked me to do it,’ said Cheema. ‘No, they’ve ordered me to do it. They say it’s a punishment for the transgressions of her father, who has consistently received support from our brothers in Pakistan but never given anything in return.’
‘What if we don’t do it?’
‘She could be dangerous to us. She was in the room when I killed Amir Jat. It’s possible that she’s seen us when we dragged her out of the canal.’
‘I’ve never killed a woman before.’
‘You’ve already told me that, Rahim,’ said Cheema, annoyed. ‘But I can’t do it. I can’t kill a woman in cold . . . I’m . . . I’m begging you to do it.’
Rahim put his mug of tea down on the sideboard, stared into the floor.
‘I will tell the UK command that you completed the task,’ said Cheema, taking him by the arm. ‘I’m sure they will reward you.’
‘I will do it,’ said Rahim, shaking off Saleem Cheema. ‘But then I am finished with this. We will have killed the hero of the Mumbai attacks and a woman. That, to me, is not what the Islamic revolution is supposed to be about. So I will kill her for you, but then you must never contact me again.’
‘And Hakim?’
‘Hakim is his own man,’ said Rahim. ‘I’m going out for a walk now. You wait for me downstairs. When I come back, I will do it, but you will be there when I kill her. You will take visual responsibility.’
Boxer drove back to Chiswick, the black hole expanding in his chest, thinking about what Isabel had said to him about Amy. On his way out of the Savoy, it had hit him with such force that he’d had to pull over. This is what his life had been since his father had disappeared: expending great effort to control the manageable but remote, while letting the more intimate but complicated things spin away from him. It had been some minutes before he could continue, and even then he’d driven like someone recovering from a stroke – or was it an epiphany?
He parked up and went to the flat at the bottom of the garden in Fairlawn Grove. He gave Mistry Frank D’Cruz’s proposal, which was greeted in total silence.
‘That’s the way Frank is,’ said Boxer. ‘It’s how he’s been brought up. He doesn’t know any other way.’
‘No,’ said Mistry.
‘No?’
‘I’m not going to do it. The man is sick in the head if he thinks I’m going to restart my relationship with Alyshia on the back of Chhota Tambe’s murder.’
‘You said you’d used a gun once before. When was that?’
‘I had to show my allegiance to Chhota Tambe. It was part of my initiation into his gang.’
‘Do you think that’s any way to start a relationship?’
‘With a gangster, it’s the only way,’ said Mistry. ‘But with the woman I want to be my wife, who I’ve already lied to once, I don’t think I can do it and keep a clear conscience, however much I hate Chhota Tambe for what he’s done to Alyshia.’
More silence. Boxer contemplated the darkness growing inside him. He knew the only solution.
‘And what if I was to do it for you?’ he said, enjoying the irony of it, knowing that this was the work he should have been paid for by D’Cruz.
The two men stared at each other. Boxer with quicksilver running through his veins again, the excitement clutching at his throat.
‘Why would you do such a thing?’ asked Mistry.
‘Because it’s the only way that Chhota Tambe will ever be brought to any kind of justice for what he’s done,’ said Boxer. ‘What do you think he had in mind for Alyshia after that mock execution?’
‘Yash was convinced he was going to kill her. It was the only possible punishment for Frank, as far as Chhota Tambe was concerned: Frank’s daughter for Chhota Tambe’s brother. It was the most destructive thing he could think of,’ said Mistry. ‘So, what do you want me to do?’
‘Get me close to Chhota Tambe.’
There was tremendous tension inside the Jack Romney Decorators van. The ground forces were in constant contact now that the VW van had been backed up to the Boleyn Road garage of Saleem Cheema’s house. The officer in charge of the CO19 squad, sitting in an unmarked van in a parallel street, was convinced that they were about to kill the girl. He was desperate to go in, but that presented its dangers, too, and he was constantly weighing up Plan A versus Plan B. He was also under pressure from the operations room to wait for the right moment. They still had no idea if there was any link between these kidnappers and the people who’d planted the bombs in D’Cruz’s cars.
The surveillance team in Boleyn Road sat in their van, chewing gum at triple speed now, looking at their screen, waiting, ever hopeful. At 11.30 p.m., they finally got their break. The front door opened and Rahim came out into the road and walked towards the shops. The surveillance team relayed the information to CO19.
As Rahim turned the corner, they were waiting for him and came up on either side. He felt the uncomfortable pressure of a gun in each kidney. They walked him to the parallel street and put him face down in the back of the CO19 van, stripped him down to his underpants. They cuffed him and searched his clothes. They found the front door key to the house, which they handed over to an Asian officer, specially selected because of his similar height and build to Rahim. He dressed in Rahim’s clothes, put on his trainers.
They questioned Rahim to find out where Cheema was in the house. He refused to speak.
The officer walked to the house on Boleyn Road, let himself in and went to the back of the house, checking the rooms. He found the secret buzzer in the wall that Hakim Tarar had revealed to Mercy. The door clicked open. He took out his Glock 17 and calmly went down the stairs.
Saleem Cheema was looking up and saw Rahim’s trainers and jeans coming down the steps.
‘You were quick,’ he said, and made the mistake of looking down, unconcerned.
When there was no reply, he did look up and that was when he found himself looking down the Glock 17’s barrel. He reached forward for the gun Rahim had left him and the bullet hit him in the right arm, knocked him off his chair. The officer went down to the basement floor, picked up the gun. He cuffed Cheema’s hands, reported back into his lapel mike.
Alyshia was shaking on the bed, her head was still wrapped in a sweater, which covered her eyes, the handcuffs were rattling against the frame of the bed.
‘You’re OK,’ he said. ‘I’m police.’
35
11.30 P.M., WEDNESDAY 14TH MARCH 2012
The City, London
At 11.30 p.m., the jammers were all in position under the podiums and the mobile phone network in the City was shut down. Police diverted the traffic away from Threadneedle Street, Cornhill and Leadenhall Street. Office cleaners trying to get to work were turned back.
The two EOD teams of technicians, still posing as security guards, moved in on the cars in front of the Royal Exchange and on St Mary Axe and exposed the batteries to their colleagues operating their mobile Wheelbarrows. In front of the Royal Exchange, they installed a CCTV camera on the plinth of the Wellington equine statue. In St Mary Axe, the CCTV camera was clamped to a nearby tree. They left the scene.
P
lain clothes officers and MI5 agents moved through the streets, looking into the small courts, lanes and dead ends, checking that they were empty of people. Two mobile CCTV units monitored the area around the two podiums. One team of firearms officers from CO19 were stationed on a flat roof behind a balustrade on the Bank of England building, with a line of sight to the podium behind the Wellington statue. Others were on the ground, behind the pillars of the Royal Exchange, at the mouth of Pope’s Head Alley and on the steps of Bank tube station. Another CO19 team were based on the side roof of the church of St Andrew Undershaft on St Mary Axe, with a view of the podium in the square in front of the Aviva Building, while others looked out from an outdoor staircase on the Lloyd’s Building and from a narrow passage by the church.
The technicians moved their Wheelbarrows into position and took the first X-rays of the batteries and scanned them for any electronic signals. Nothing was coming off them – no odour, no sound, no radioactive warning. They studied the images, comparing it to the car battery in Stratford that had contained a bomb.
‘I can’t see anything suspicious,’ said the supervisor.
‘Maybe they did a better job on these two,’ said the tech.
They looked at the output of the electronic signal detector. Nothing.
‘More sophisticated, or harmless?’
‘Let’s take a shot from underneath the vehicle,’ said the supervisor.
The techs pulled out the Wheelbarrows, repositioned them, took another two X-rays.
‘What the fuck is this?’ said the supervisor.
Into the frame of the two screens showing the feeds from the CCTV cameras came two men in long dark coats, running at the podiums, holding their right hands out in front of them.
The Met police mobile CCTV units picked them up, too. The order was given immediately.
‘Take them down.’
That was what the CO19 teams heard in one ear. In the other was the wild shout of Allahu Akbar. There was no hesitation. Four shots rang out. The two men fell to the ground, their mobiles skittered away from them across the paving stones.
‘I think we’ve just been given our answer,’ said the EOD supervisor. ‘Let’s get those batteries out.’
Deepak Mistry and Charles Boxer were heading for a meeting with Chhota Tambe. Boxer had already stripped down and cleaned the gun Mistry had been given by the Southall gang and found more ammunition for it. This was the weapon he’d decided to use. It would be confusing for the police to find the gun used in the earlier incident, where he and D’Cruz had been on the receiving end.
Boxer was going to drop Mistry off near Chhota Tambe’s house in Regent’s Park. The story was that Mistry had found someone close to Frank D’Cruz who was prepared to kill him for a fee of £2,000. They were relying on the intensity of Chhota Tambe’s obsession and his need to take action against Frank D’Cruz before he realised who had been responsible for the initial kidnap. Once D’Cruz had worked that out, there would be an all-out war on Chhota Tambe’s interests in Mumbai from the likes of Anwar Masood.
‘How are you going to persuade Chhota Tambe to leave the comfort of his warm house in Regent’s Park and venture out in the cold and dark onto Primrose Hill for an assignation with your proposed hit man?’ asked Boxer.
‘In this particular case, I know he would like to be involved, to actually give the order,’ said Mistry. ‘And he still trusts me. He knows what this business has cost me.’
‘How did you meet me? How do you know what I do and that I’m willing to do it?’
‘You found me. You were the kidnap consultant appointed by Frank.’
‘Why am I willing to kill him?’
‘Frank found out you were having an affair with his ex-wife and wouldn’t tolerate it,’ said Mistry. ‘I think that’s something Chhota Tambe will identify with.’
Boxer gritted his teeth at Mistry’s improvisation. It had the horrible ring of truth about it.
They drove past the house on Park Road and continued to Primrose Hill, where Boxer showed Mistry where to bring Chhota Tambe. He dropped Mistry back at Chhota Tambe’s house, parked the car and walked to Primrose Hill, up to the bench with the view of the BT Tower. His mobile rang; he must remember to turn it off. Deacon.
‘How is it going, Simon?’
‘I just thought you’d want to know that Alyshia has been rescued and D’Cruz’s cars have been rendered safe.’
‘That’s good. Has Isabel Marks been told?’
‘Yes. She’s heading to the hospital now to see Alyshia,’ said Deacon. ‘You don’t sound particularly elated . . .’
‘Just a few things on my mind,’ said Boxer. ‘That’s all.’
‘The frightening thing, Charlie,’ said Deacon, ‘is that if Alyshia hadn’t been kidnapped, I’m not sure how close we’d have got to discovering the bombs. It focused our minds.’
‘Sometimes you have to believe, Simon.’
‘Let’s meet for a drink soon.’
‘Any time,’ said Boxer. He hung up and turned off the phone.
He stood in the darkness, away from the lamp light shining down on the bench, with the cold running through him, the black hole in his chest widening at the notion of Amy, and now possibly Isabel, turning away from him. He saw two men approaching up the lit walkways of the park, recognised Mistry as one of them. He was surprised by his companion. Even though he knew his name meant ‘little’, he hadn’t expected him to be quite so small – barely five foot, and tubby with it.
Boxer kept to the shadows, waited. Rather than the task in hand, he found himself thinking of his father. But this time the thought came with a question, one that so many others had asked him and which he’d never answered: at what point did you stop looking for your father? And the answer was that he’d stopped looking for him on the day he’d thought for the first time that his father might have been guilty, and not just of one killing.
The two men arrived, sat down on the bench. Boxer looked around the empty, freezing park. He didn’t think about it. He walked calmly out of the darkness and into the light, fired, dropped the gun and carried on walking.
36
1.00 A.M., THURSDAY 15TH MARCH 2012
Bupa Cromwell Hospital, London SW5
Alyshia had been taken to Newham General Hospital emergency department, where she’d been given a full check-up. When her father heard about the rescue, he immediately organised an ambulance to take her to a private room in the Bupa Cromwell Hospital where Isabel would be waiting for her. Frank D’Cruz was not able to make it as he was undergoing a debrief at Thames House.
Isabel didn’t get to see her immediately as the doctor D’Cruz had hired at great expense to give Alyshia a thorough examination did not want any interruptions. He came out to give her exactly the same findings as the NHS doctor at Newham General: Alyshia was in very good physical shape, considering the extremes of her ordeal. However, mentally there could be repercussions: the dreaded post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Isabel didn’t know why, but once the doctor had left her in the corridor, she knocked on her daughter’s door before going in. An etiquette had established itself in her mind. This disappeared on entry as Alyshia, connected to a saline drip, held her arms open and cried out something that Isabel hadn’t heard for many years.
‘Mummy!’
For the first few minutes they didn’t speak and just held onto each other: Isabel hugging her, breathing in her hair, kissing her head, rocking her child while Alyshia inhaled the familiar warmth of the cashmere sweater, the perfume, the deeper, atavistic mother scent.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Alyshia, over and over again. ‘I’m so sorry, Mummy.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Isabel. ‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry about. If you weren’t here, that would be something to be sorry about. But you are. You really are here.’
She crushed Alyshia until she squeaked.
‘I meant I’m sorry for all my cruelty,’ said Alyshia. ‘For pushing you aw
ay when I came back from Mumbai. I should never have done that. You are the one true person, the only really true person I can trust more than anybody else. And I didn’t know that until I thought I was never going to see you again.’
Isabel said nothing, just crushed her so hard that Alyshia whimpered like a kitten.
They held hands, looking at the miracle of each other, unable to speak, a whole lifetime to exchange in one sitting.
Over the next fifteen minutes, they calmed down. A nurse brought some tea. Isabel went to the window while she checked the drip, temperature and blood pressure. She told Alyshia that D’Cruz wouldn’t be able to come until after his debrief.
‘I don’t want to see anybody except you,’ said Alyshia, shaking her head. ‘I’ve been surrounded by men for a week. Bad men. Let’s just have some time together, the two of us.’
‘Deepak’s here, too,’ said Isabel. ‘He’s desperate to see you.’
‘I can’t do Deepak now,’ she said. ‘I might never be able to do Deepak.’
Saturday midday, Boxer was sitting with his mother, Esme, at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. He’d come to pick up Amy, who was getting her things together in the bedroom. They still hadn’t actually spoken to each other since the ugly phone call he’d made at Heathrow.
‘How’s Amy been?’ asked Boxer.
‘She’s been good; great, in fact. We’ve had a nice time together,’ said Esme, lighting up her fourth cigarette of the morning, Marlboro, full strength. ‘I like her. She has spunk, as my bloody father used to say. She reminds me of me, when I was her age. She can take the battering. She’s strong inside. And she’s learnt to protect herself.’
‘Maybe you’re getting childhoods muddled up,’ said Boxer. ‘Your father beat you up. We’ve never laid a hand on Amy. Mind you, she’s aggressive enough to make anybody think we have laid a hand on her.’
‘You and Mercy are making parental demands on her, which Amy doesn’t think you deserve to make when you’ve already fallen short in your parental duties,’ said Esme. ‘When you’ve already built up such a deficit of love.’