Chapter 36: St. Stephen’s Entrance, Palace of Westminster: 4:50 p.m.
From her position in front of the screen of the security scanner in the echoing hallway of St Stephen's porch, Betty Wardley’s eyes kept darting across to the MP for Barnet, whose nervous fidgeting and intermittent chatter with her two Met colleagues was making her ever more uneasy.
She had followed Neil’s instructions to the letter without the slightest hiccup. The software Neil had given her for the metal detector was loaded; it had been even easier to distract PC Davidson’s attention long enough to substitute his body scanner for the one Neil had given her—all the constant siren blasts over the last twenty minutes had sent him scurrying to the doorway at St Stephen's entrance on at least four separate occasions.
Now she was waiting ever more impatiently for the moment when Driscoll’s Arab guests would arrive, the moment when Neil's software for the baggage scanner screen had better bloody work or all hell would break loose.
And what were Neil and his friends up to? Whatever it was she hoped that it would be something to shake up those grey-suited murderers in the government. That would be her revenge, an overripe revenge which had been brewing steadily inside her like magma in a sealed pipe vent since the day sixteen months back when her ex-Royal Marine husband had slit his wrists in the bathtub of their Shepherds Bush flat. Right down to the last the Ministry of Defence had queried the connection between Alan’s chronic post-traumatic stress from the Afghan war. But since then her new lover, Neil, had taught her how to recognise that the real enemy of the Afghan war and the Iraqi war before it had been the State itself; and now she wanted even.
‘Crikey, there goes another lot!’ Driscoll snorted good naturedly to PC Davidson as they listened to a further fleet of police sirens raging through Parliament Square then on across Westminster Bridge.
‘So there is,’ the policeman replied, all squeaky clean boots and matter-of-fact as he sidled up to the MP.
‘I thought you said the bomb scares were at Piccadilly and Euston?’ Driscoll hesitated.
PC Davidson shrugged his shoulders.
‘I did. Blimey, maybe there’s another in the Waterloo area.’
PC Davidson cocked his head to sift through the cackle erupting over his radio and Driscoll stepped outside the entrance to take another look at the flashing police lights, but was rewarded instead by a summons from another policeman outside St Stephen's
‘Your guests are here, Mr Driscoll, Sir.’ They're just stepping out of a black, Merc with diplomatic plates.’