Java Spider (2 page)

Wag’s Bar. What a name. Conjured up a picture of smug young traders drinking the cream off their money-market profits. That’s how the wannabe revolutionaries with the Semtex must have seen them. Not fat cats
yet
, but heading that way.

The rich getting richer and the poor poorer – a symptom of the times. Randall was as envious as the next man of six-figure salaries, but drew the line at killing people over them. The terrorists, however, had uncovered a vein of public sympathy for their crimes, which had curbed the information flow. No mean feat. Usually took a war for people to sanction murder.

A hundred metres ahead, a uniformed City constable pushed back gawpers and cameramen to let the Mondeo into the narrow street of banks and brokerages. The car stopped. Fluttering tape sealed an alley. Randall waited a moment, reluctant to leave the vehicle’s warm, friendly smell. Outside on the alley’s cobbles he could see the litter of terror. Splintered timber, shards of glass and thick, dark smears of blood.

Hooligans. Mad buggers. That’s what they were. Yet when the attacks began, people had called them Robin Hoods. On the first raid, a domestic break-in, nothing
had
been stolen. Just a fine emulsion of human excreta sprayed over the soft furnishings. Tabloids had loved it.

Two more raids like that, then they’d got nasty. A north London mansion burned to the ground. The millionaire owner and his wife unharmed, but not their twelve-year-old daughter, asleep upstairs. Arson, and murder. That’s when the case had become one for the Yard.

The car’s fan sucked in smoke.

‘All right, constable,’ Randall growled. ‘Tell me to move my arse.’

‘Move your arse …
sir
.’

Randall had lived with terrorism for six years, mostly IRA. This lot had seemed different – anarchists, social revolutionaries or whatever – but now they were into Semtex he’d begun to wonder. Not the sort of stuff you could pick up at a chemist’s. And he knew the Provisionals still had tons of it.

He closed the car door and sniffed the air. Damp from the doused fire, and acrid with burned plastic. His soles crunched glass as he stepped over the fat snakes of hoses. 5’ 10”, with thick, brown hair and a body useful in a scrum, he picked his way forward.

He ducked under the incident tape and approached the gaping, smoke-blackened cavern, all that was left of the bar. Bomb Squad were inside. So were paramedics checking none of the remaining bits of human tissue could be sewn back to life.

A uniformed City sergeant checked who he was then told him there were eight dead.

‘That’s from a count of the heads,’ he added ghoulishly. ‘And there’s about thirty injured.’

‘Witnesses?’ Nick shivered and tugged up the zip of his dark green Berghaus.

‘Anyone who was inside and
lived
is down at the hospital.’

Nick sniffed the bitter, black smoke. A foam fire. Furnishings had burned but not much else. Ceilings down, fittings smashed. Just a few ounces of plastic would have been enough. He imagined the place. Young people, mostly men, crowding in after work, their gym-hardened bodies pulped by the blast.

One of them must have seen something.

‘Which hospital?’

‘Southwark.’

‘Thanks.’

He stared into the wreckage. Eight lives gone here tonight. Eight families pole-axed. Not right, no matter how unjust the world.

‘World’s gone mad,’ he muttered.

Out there somewhere, were the handful of people who’d done this, but Randall’s team had no clue who they were. Heavy surveillance of PIRA regulars and of known subversives had produced nothing. The group called itself the Revenue Men, acting to stamp out graft and corruption according to a statement posted to the media two weeks ago. Levying a
tax of suffering
on their victims was the way they’d put it. Somebody with a sick sense of humour.

From the charred shell of Wag’s Bar a woman from Forensic emerged, carrying a heavy plastic sack. Nick knew her a little, having chatted her up once in the canteen. Married, he remembered. They exchanged grimaces but said nothing. Then he returned to the car, avoiding the larger shards of glass. The back seat was still warm. Comforting.

‘Bastards,’ he mumbled. ‘How do they sleep at night after doing something like that?’

Randall picked up the folder containing photos combed from the files at the Yard and the Security Service, MI5. Any suspect with a remote chance of
being
involved. What he needed was a break. For a witness to recognise someone.

‘Southwark,’ he told the driver. ‘The hospital.’

Away from the incident scene the traffic soon thinned. London was strangely nervy these days, more so than when the IRA did their worst. In the canteen at the Yard the reasons for this were the subject of speculation. The chaps with university educations said because the Irish were
foreign
, the Brits had stood up to them. But the Revenue Men were
Brits
, part of
us
– a sort of enemy within. It made people anxious. Made them wonder where they’d stand if the barricades went up.

All fanciful crap as far as Randall was concerned. More evidence of the futility of having letters after your name.

The driver stopped at a road block. A random check. Traffic Branch threw them up all over the place. Groping in the dark, the press called it. The driver flipped his warrant card and they were through.

Groping in the dark? Or leaving no stone unturned … Earlier that afternoon, Randall had slung the Nikons round his neck, stuffed the press pass in his pocket and slipped in amongst the hacks to take a look at a group of women picketing parliament. Anti-arms-trade. Not a shred of evidence linking them with the Revenue Men. But it was faces. Faces to add to the collection that one day might ring a bell.

The Southwark hospital had been new, twenty years ago, but looked ready for demolition now. At casualty reception normal patients were being turned away. The City bombing had swamped facilities here.

Nick showed his ID and was taken inside. Twenty minutes since the last bomb victim was admitted, he guessed. The most serious were already in theatre. Treatment bays lined the walls of the department, all
full
. Some victims lay motionless, wounds covered with bloodstained dressings. In others staff worked on their patients.

A harassed casualty officer brushed past, her pager bleeping. Young-looking but in charge. Nick touched her arm.

‘Any fit enough to talk?’ he asked. ‘I’m police.’ He showed his ID.

She took in his face then noted the cord trousers and pullover under his coat. Preferred her policemen in uniform probably, Randall guessed.

‘Just a moment. I’m being beeped.’ She grabbed a wall phone, dialled a number, gave her name and listened.

Her face was English and cultured. Well-bred, well-educated and good-looking. Like the crowd he’d been brought up with as a child and then rejected in his teens. She harangued the caller with words all the more cutting for their omission of obscenities. Finally she slammed down the receiver.

‘If they want miracles they should phone a priest,’ she snapped, turning back to him. ‘Now … you’re looking for witnesses?’

‘That’s the idea.’

‘Well, there’s a man over there. I think he worked behind the bar. Minor cuts and burns. And shock, so take it easy.’

She led him to a bay with its curtains closed, then abandoned him as her pager trilled again. Nick peered inside. The man was in his thirties, his face red. Flash burn, he guessed.

‘Hello. Can I talk to you? I’m police.’

A blank stare. ‘Why?’ The man’s voice trembled.

‘Just a chat.’

‘No,’ he moaned. ‘I mean why’d they do it?’ Angry now, as if it were Nick’s fault.

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out. Maybe you can help.’

‘Bit bloody late …’

‘I don’t think so. You worked there, is that right?’

‘
Worked
there? It was my sodding bar.’ His face twisted with the shock of his loss.

‘I’m sorry. You must’ve known everybody in there, then?’

The man turned away, mouth trembling. Nick left it for a few moments.

‘I wonder if you’d look at a couple of pictures?’ he asked after a while. ‘No rush.’

He leaned through the curtains, spotted a chair and retrieved it. He placed it beside the bed and sat down.

‘OK now?’ he checked. The man nodded. ‘Sorry to press. Any strangers in the bar tonight?’

‘Always a few I don’t know. Mixed up amongst the regulars.’ His eyes were remembering what he’d seen.

‘Nothing special you noticed? Someone acting strangely, differently?’

The man thought, but couldn’t get his brain past the images of shattered flesh. He shook his head. Nick took out the photos from the folder.

‘Who’s this, then? Are these the ones?’ the bar owner asked.

‘Just wondered if you’ve ever seen any of them.’

The man took the prints from him, but his hands couldn’t hold them still.

‘Here. Let me.’

Nick watched the bar owner’s eyes as he shuffled the prints. Nothing. The man shook his head again, which made him wince this time. He put a hand to the small dressing on his neck. A glass-splinter cut.

‘Can I take your name and address in case I want to contact you once more?’

Randall wrote it down.

‘You bloody nail them, right?’ Angry again. ‘Those were my
friends
…’

‘Don’t worry. We’ll get ’em.’ He pushed through the curtain, wishing he believed it.

The young casualty officer was on the phone again, close to losing control. She really was a very pretty girl, he decided. Pale, creamy skin with heat blotches on her cheeks. When she put the receiver down, she looked close to tears. He wanted to hug her.

‘Any luck?’ she asked, dabbing her nose with a tissue.

‘No. He couldn’t help. Got any more?’

‘There’s two others able to talk. But they’re confused … Still, if you’re gentle …’

‘I’m always gentle.’ He gave her the smile that had got him in deep water several times too often and watched her blush.

West End of London

22.45 hrs

Charlotte Cavendish pushed through the glass door, paused on the step and turned up the collar of her fawn coat against the cold. It had been a long day, made longer by the Wag’s Bar bomb. She should have gone off shift at seven, but at the thinly-staffed News Channel when something big happened it was all hands to the pump.

‘Got ’ny change?’

She jumped. Hadn’t noticed the vagrant huddled in the entrance. She peered left and right for the lights of a taxi.

‘I
said
can you spare some change, please?’

More of a threat than a request. She pulled the black leather purse from her pocket and gave him a pound.

‘Thanks, miss.’

‘For something to
eat
, right?’

She wished she hadn’t said that. Made her sound like her own mother.

‘Yes, miss. I’ll go to the caff,’ he mocked, lifting a lager can to his lips.

Charlotte stepped on to the pavement as a taxi turned into the street, its lamp like Florence Nightingale’s. She crossed to the kerb, arm outstretched.

Inside the cab, she flicked on the heater and hugged herself for warmth. She looked for the usual sign saying THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING. None there, so she lit up. Her nicotine levels felt uncomfortably low. The News Channel was a non-smoking office.

Charlotte pushed her free hand through her blonde hair and squeezed the tension from the back of her neck. Aged twenty-nine, she was a video-journalist with a new, low-cost television news station broadcasting on cable and satellite where
everyone
abbreviated her name to Charlie. She was ambitious – chief reporter at the BBC was where she’d set her sights. Meanwhile, as a humble VJ for now, she was jack of all trades – on-screen reporter, off-screen writer of scripts for the studio, and occasional camera operator.

The wine bar bomb had squeezed out her earlier report on the arms contract with Indonesia – submarines, patrol boats and aircraft upgrades, worth half a billion pounds. Lots of jobs – and votes for the beleaguered government. In the afternoon she’d filmed the small crowd outside Downing Street, anti-arms trade activists protesting that the weapons were for a regime that ruled by torture and murder.

In truth she knew little about Indonesia. Had to look up the Times Atlas to find where it was. Foreign news
wasn’t
high on the News Channel’s agenda anyway, so when Wag’s Bar flashed they’d switched her to the bomb story.

A News Channel cameraman had been one of the first at the scene. She’d edited and voiced his tape from the studio. Horrific footage. When another reporter was sent to do the live spots there she’d been glad it wasn’t her.

The taxi stopped at red lights, the third in a row. The driver was black. She didn’t see herself as socially or racially prejudiced, but the Revenue Men bombings had divided people. Haves and have-nots. Irrational fears had crept into her head.

She glimpsed a flash of white in the mirror – his eyes watching her. She shifted across to be out of his sight, then felt bad about it. The driver slid the glass partition. Charlotte shivered. No conversation please. Just get me home.

‘D’you mind openin’ the window if you’re goin’ to smoke?’ he asked.

She smiled weakly. Why did
everyone
make her feel bad about her habit?

‘Sure.’ She took a last deep drag, opened the window a crack to throw out the butt, then closed it. Better to die of nicotine starvation than of cold.

She’d been with the News Channel for a year. Joined when it started, after training and working at the BBC for four years. The Channel wasn’t her style – a downmarket mix of hard news and soft porn financed by a tabloid paper – but it
had
given her the chance to be a reporter. She knew she had the looks to make it up the ladder and hoped she had the talent. All she needed were the breaks.

The taxi’s brakes squealed. Ahead stretched red tail lights. A jam that seemed to go on for ever. The driver slid back the glass again.

‘Sorry ’bout this. Didn’t see it in time. Could’ve taken the back doubles if I’d realised …’