THE THESEUS PARADOX: The stunning breakthrough thriller based on real events, from the Scotland Yard detective turned author. (30 page)

Just a couple of drinks tonight. No food. Early night.

A break would do him good.

83

Friday

26 August 2005

1008 hours

Longthorne Oak Hotel, central Leeds, West Yorkshire

Jake had awoken that morning to a white expanse of hotel-room ceiling, with what looked like a new light fitting in the middle of it. He’d lain in bed for ages, wondering why his light had been changed during the night.

As he’d looked down, he realised that ‘just a couple’ of drinks must have turned into many more. He vaguely remembered talking to a group of girls at a bar who’d then dragged him to a club. He couldn’t even remember which club it was. The attractive, twenty-something brunette with whom he was in bed must have been one of them, surely?

An hour later, he’d said his goodbyes and made his way back to his own room, wearing the previous night’s clothes.

‘This has got to stop, Jake. We can’t carry on like this. You’re going to kill yourself, or catch something nasty,’ he said to himself as he looked at his reflection in the lift mirror.

Time for a shower, fresh clothes and then a dash to get to work.

Jake’s team worked at Dudley Hill from the Monday of one week through to the Friday of the following week, without a break. That made a shift of twelve days on the trot. They had two days off with their family, or whatever or whomever they had in their lives, then they had to be back at Dudley Hill at 0900 hours the following Monday.

That meant just sixty-five hours’ break every two weeks. Jake couldn’t comprehend how anyone had enough time to conduct anything vaguely approaching a normal lifestyle or relationship. To him it seemed an impossible task, given the distance they were away from home.

Lenny was sat at his desk in the office as Jake walked in.

‘Morning boss. Good night last night?’ asked Lenny with a wry smile. He was in a good mood. Jake envied him in many ways. He was happily married. He only ever spoke positively about Mrs Lenny. They still did things together; shared good times despite twenty years of marriage. It was a feat Jake had failed miserably at.

Lenny was happy and that made Jake happy. Lenny was going home for his sixty-five hours with his wife today.

‘Lenny, I really need breakfast. You can brief me on what you’ve found out about that Shahid bloke over a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich.’

Lenny and Jake made their way over to Dot’s café across the road. Dot had confided in Jake that she was making a killing out of the Met officers being there. Over the past seven weeks she’d purchased a new coffee machine, some new tables, had painted inside and out and taken on two of her granddaughters as waitresses.

Jake sipped his mug of tea.

‘What do we know about Shahid then, Lenny?’ asked Jake, before squirting ketchup onto his roll.

‘I’ve run him through the West Yorkshire CIS system. It says he’s of Pakistani heritage, Muslim, thirty-two-years old, successful businessman – owns a number of supermarkets with his older brother who is very well connected. Oh, and he once had his car broken into. I also did some checks through Intel down at the Yard. He comes up as a victim of an assault. Was bashed up by some guy in London a year ago. I’ve not been able to look at the London crime report for the assault yet, but that might give us something. What did the Security Service say about him, guv?’

‘They’ve not said anything. My contact has the arse with me. I’ve got to use the official channels, she says.’

Jake bit into the bacon roll. Ketchup oozed out of every side as he sank his teeth into the front of it. It dripped onto his plate. He chewed lazily; chewing time was thinking time.

‘OK, I want to keep moving on this one. Find out if they took photos of him and his injuries after that assault and I want to know what that fracas was about. Can you sort that this morning, Lenny?’ asked Jake.

Lenny pulled back his shirtsleeve to reveal his wristwatch.

‘It’s already four minutes past noon, Jake. I won’t do it this morning, but I’ll do it straight away,’ said Lenny cheerfully, as he got up and walked out of the café door.

84

Friday

26 August 2005

1415 hours

Dudley Hill police station, Bradford, West Yorkshire

The office was dead apart from Jake and Lenny. The satellite staff had taken their actions for the day. Jake knew they’d be banking on getting them done early so that they could speed their way back to London and miss the Friday traffic.

Lenny was still on the phone to the intelligence unit in London, trying to locate the crime report for Shahid. It baffled Jake why, with the exception of HOLMES and the Police National Computer, none of the UK’s forty-three police forces had compatible software packages that could communicate with each other. Fax and phone were still the go-to tools.

Jake picked up the phone to call his ‘official’ Security Service contact, Joe West, at Thames House.

Skinny, with unkempt blonde hair, he reminded Jake of a weather-beaten, malnourished surfer. Jake sat with the phone to his ear, listening to the rings, as he waited for Joe to pick up.

‘Joe West speaking.’

‘Hey, Joe. How are you?’

‘I’m OK, Jake, how’s it going?’

‘Busy. We’re working on something up here that may be interesting. I need you to run a name and phone number through your systems and let me know if you have anything.’

‘I’m off today and this weekend, Jake. Is it urgent? Can it wait until Monday?’

‘I want to move on this today, Joe. Things are taking too long to progress at this end.’

‘I’ll call the office for you and ask them to contact you about it. I don’t know who’s in or what they’ve got on though, Jake. So I can’t guarantee it’ll be soon, sorry,’ he replied.

‘Fine. Thanks. Have a good weekend, Joe,’ said Jake as he ended the call.

‘Every fucking Saturday and Sunday off, those bastards!’ Jake mumbled under his breath as he scrolled through the phone records again.

There was something rhythmic about the seven calls between Shahid and the bombers. The calls came in four blocks. April, May, June, July… Why?

Lenny sat down opposite Jake with a notepad. ‘I’ve managed to get some details from the crime report relating to Shahid Bassam, guv. That London assault back in 2003; Shahid was attending a mosque down in East London.’

‘What was he doing down there, then?’ asked Jake.

‘Well, there appear to have been some undesirable types protesting outside about something. A big group of skinheads were demonstrating. One of them got into an argument with Shahid and punched him in the face. Got charged with ABH then pleaded guilty at court. He got one hundred hours community service; no compensation awarded.’

‘Any witnesses? What was it about?’

‘I don’t know exactly what it was about. Crime report is very basic. But they took some photos of Shahid for the court case. I’ve got a copy on the email. He’s a big old lump.’

‘We should talk to him,’ said Jake.

‘Do it Monday?’ Lenny asked pointedly; Lenny wanted to go home.

‘Let’s get it out of the way, Len. I’ll call him and have a chat on the phone. Sounds like it’s a wild goose chase. He was probably just one of the bombers’ mates or something…’

Even as the words came out of his mouth, Jake’s gut told him that this wasn’t a wild goose chase at all.

85

Friday

26 August 2005

1600 hours

Dudley Hill police station, Bradford, West Yorkshire

Lenny was pacing up and down the corridor. Jake could see him through the narrow pane of glass. Mrs Sandringham would not be happy. Her sixty-five hours with her husband were counting down.

‘I know, Sue… Not my fault… I’m sorry… Oh, I forgot… Sorry… It’s important…’

Jake glanced at the supercomputer’s flatscreen monitor. He had dates and numbers swimming before his eyes. There were patterns of contact that looked interesting then turned into irregular patterns… then floated upwards.

It had been a long week, made even bleaker by the fact that he had nothing in the diary to look forward to this weekend.

Jake spoke to himself as Lenny continued to try to placate Mrs Sandringham on the phone outside the office door.

‘So four blokes did a job. I can’t rely on anything except what can’t be disputed. Anything any person has said
can
be disputed. But machines and systems don’t lie. Phone calls don’t lie… I know the dates that they travelled to and from Pakistan. I know the date they blew themselves up. Forget everything else. Why would you stop calling the bombers once the bombings have taken place? Who kills contact then and why?’ Jake mumbled to himself.

Lenny came back into view through the pane of glass on the office door.

‘OK, I won’t, I’m always careful, love you too,’ Lenny said into his phone, as he ended the call with one hand and pushed the door open with another.

‘Jake, we have got to catch these fuckers soon. My marriage is going to end in divorce otherwise!’

Jake smirked.

‘I love that about you, Lenny – you’ll divorce your wife rather than leave me to catch these bastards alone.’

Lenny sat down opposite Jake at the desk.

‘You see, you’ve just proved my theory, Lenny. Friends and family keep calling. They keep in touch. If you didn’t turn up at home tonight, Sue would call, wouldn’t she? If she didn’t know what had happened to you, she’d keep calling until she did, wouldn’t she?’ Jake was half talking to Lenny and half talking to himself now.

‘If I don’t turn up tonight she’s going to come looking – and it’ll be for you, Jake! She knows this is you making me stay!’

‘I need tea to help me think, Lenny, tea!’

Lenny walked toward the door.

‘I can’t believe that I’m sacrificing time with my wife to make you fucking tea, you wanker!’ Lenny kicked open the office door with his foot and headed for the kitchenette up the corridor.

Jake looked back at his screen.

Those rhythmic calls between Shahid and the group, he couldn’t get them out of his head. They had to mean something.

Lenny walked back into the office holding two mugs of tea, with a digestive hanging out of his mouth. He looked at the phone numbers crowding the supercomputer’s screen whilst he munched on his biscuit and glanced at his tired, drawn-looking boss.

‘I don’t know why you didn’t just leave all that data back with the analysts down in London. Why bother making more work for yourself, guv?’

‘Lenny, a piece of intelligence is useless unless you give it meaning. If we let analysts run wild in the MIR, all this phone data will just be left and we’ll get nowhere. Analysts are not supposed to solve things for you. They’re just there to give you the data.’

‘But they’re the experts, boss. Why not leave it to them to sort out?’

‘Lenny! It’s all very well an analyst telling us that telephone A has been in contact with telephone B, but they won’t be able to tell you who was on the end of the phone having that conversation. Now a detective worth his or her salt should be able to work out why those two numbers might have been in contact with each other. And if they really know their stuff, then he or she might also be able to find out who may or may not have been at the end of that number,
and
what they’ve been up to.

‘Lenny, those analysts might have been on some fancy-sounding courses but that doesn’t make them into a detective in a couple of weeks or months. Ten years it took us, with all our policing experience. There’s something funny about this Shahid, I can just feel it in my gut and the supercomputer is agreeing with me.’

‘What is it, boss? What did you find out?’

‘Well, from the phone records on screen here, we can see that this Shahid has been in contact with at least two of the phones belonging to the bombers
and
the landline of the parents of a bomber. Hence he’s lied about knowing people whom he clearly does know. There’s a rhythm to the calls, monthly almost. Then they stop. I’m going to give him a ring.’

Jake picked up the phone on his desk, ignoring Lenny’s pleas for Friday-night clemency and punched in Shahid’s mobile number. A number he now knew off by heart.

‘Yes,’ a man with a Leeds accent answered the call.

‘Is that Shahid Bassam?’ asked Jake.

‘Yeah. Who is this?’

‘I’m Detective Inspector Flannagan from the Metropolitan Police. I need to talk to you about Wasim Khan.’

‘Why? I didn’t know him,’ replied Shahid.

Bingo, thought Jake. Shahid had just handed him a huge gift without realising it. He had referred to Wasim in the past tense. He knew Wasim was dead. He knew who Jake was talking about instantly. He was lying.

‘It’s just a formality thing, sir. We’re just tying up some loose ends. Where are you now?’

‘Well, I’m in my supermarket, aren’t I?’

‘Which supermarket is that? I’m nearby. I’ll come and see you straight away. Won’t take long,’ replied Jake

‘Al Siddiq. 442 Harehills Road,’ said Shahid.

‘See you in thirty minutes.’ Jake hung up the phone without giving him an opportunity to say anything further.

Lenny’s mouth fell open and the digestive biscuit dropped onto the dark green carpet. It smashed into several pieces at his feet.

‘But… now? It’s Friday? Sue is gonna kill me! We’re doing this right now? Interview tonight? No, Jake… please.’

‘Lenny, he’s a liar and I want to interview him. I’m not waiting till Monday. I can’t leave him to disappear over the weekend now I’ve spoken to him on the phone. We need to see him face to face, today!’

Jake grabbed the car keys off the table in front of him and pulled his jacket off the back of his chair.

Lenny plonked the two mugs he was carrying down onto the desk. Hot tea splashed up onto his shirt cuff and over the desktops.