THE THESEUS PARADOX: The stunning breakthrough thriller based on real events, from the Scotland Yard detective turned author. (45 page)

As Jake got to the apex, Biaj had disappeared. A short concrete ramp led down toward the creek; Jake assumed this was where Biaj must have gone.

As Jake walked down the ramp, the smell hit him. Sewage mixed with chemical effluent; the smell he thought had been coming from the van. It was the creek. It was black, a thick, oil-like film floating on top. Abstract shapes were breaking the surface at the water’s edge. Jake thought he could make out the murky outline of an abandoned vehicle, but he couldn’t be sure.

He found Biaj standing on a path by the stagnant creek’s edge, his back to him. He was staring across the water toward an expanse of partially excavated wasteland.

The incandescent skyline of Canary Wharf was visible beyond. The setting sun reflected off the chrome and glass surfaces of the high-rise buildings; they glowed as if ablaze. Wasim’s words from his martyrdom video rang in Jake’s ears: ‘…Taste the punishment of the Burning Fire.’

Jake approached quietly and stood by the side of the bearded Middle Eastern-looking man who was lost in thought, gazing at the horizon.

‘What do you want from me?’ asked Biaj gruffly without turning to look at Jake. He spoke with an educated English accent that held just a faint hint of an Iraqi inflection.

Jake was surprised by the bluntness of the question. Biaj didn’t even appear to have seen him approach.

‘What do I want?’ Jake asked. ‘What do you think I want?’

‘That van you got out of has been there for some days. You’ve obviously been watching the site for some reason. I assume it’s me you want.’

Jake decided now was not the time to play games. ‘I want to talk to you,’ he said.

‘Reporter? Security Service? Police officer? White supremacist?’ Biaj barked back.

‘Just someone who’s interested in finding out the truth.’

‘The truth about what?’

‘The truth about your plans for the biggest mosque in Europe.’

Biaj narrowed his dark brown eyes. ‘What do you mean “the truth”? It’s hardly a secret.’ He turned to face Jake fully. ‘You look like a policeman,’ he sneered.

Jake ignored the comment. ‘There’s more to this mosque than meets the eye though, isn’t there?’ he asked, fishing for a reaction, a loose thread.

‘Like what?’

‘It was a hefty investment back in the nineties. Seems odd that you’ve still not built your great big mosque here. Lack of money?’

‘I could see the potential of this site. It was perfect. I sold them the vision of what we could really have. I wanted a seventy-thousand-capacity mosque…’ Biaj pointed across the creek as he spoke.

The two of them stood looking at the barren industrial landscape that lay before them. The silence lasted too long. Biaj was waiting for Jake to speak, but Jake was thinking. There was something important in what he’d just heard this man say, but he couldn’t quite grasp it there and then.

Biaj broke the silence. ‘It’s no secret; it’s well known what I wanted here. Who are you? What’s this about?’

Jake heard it again – the intonation in Biaj’s voice, the way he moved his eyes as he said the word ‘wanted’.

‘You wanted it here? Past tense?’ asked Jake as he stared intently at Biaj.

‘Yes…
wanted
. Who are you and why do you need to know?’

‘I’m Claire Richards’ boyfriend…’

Biaj paused for a moment.

‘The detective inspector who was suspended? Flannagan?’

Jake nodded.

A slight smile played across Biaj’s face.

‘I don’t think you should be here, Mr Flannagan. You are going to be in even more trouble now.’

Biaj began to walk further on along the towpath and away from Jake.

‘Claire was on to you,’ Jake called after him, trying to grab his attention. ‘I know about you and Lawrence Congerton-Jones.’

Biaj stopped and turned. ‘You know nothing!’

‘I know that you were both supplying drugs,’ replied Jake, bolder now.

‘So what?’

Jake wasn’t getting the reaction he’d expected. He tried again.

‘Claire knew the bigger picture – she knew you wanted more people to deal to. She’d cottoned on to the fact that a huge mosque meant a larger customer base… That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?’ Jake asked.

Biaj broke into a smile. ‘Is that all you’ve come here to ask me about?’ He chuckled. ‘A bit of drug dealing with a handler and a large mosque? Is that all you’ve got?’ He began to laugh uproariously in Jake’s face.

126

Thursday

17 November 2005

1545 hours

East London wasteland, site of proposed mosque

This was like a game of twenty questions, thought Jake. He didn’t know all the answers, but he knew enough to realise when he hadn’t got a bite. The drugs issue wasn’t even rippling the surface. Biaj clearly thought it was some huge joke.

The stench seemed to be getting worse as the surrounding tidal rivers began to seep into the creek. Jake’s nose wrinkled at the smell. Biaj noticed. ‘That stink you can smell in the air. What do you think that is?’

Jake shrugged his shoulders blankly.

‘It’s shit! What you can smell is raw sewage. Sixteen million litres of raw, untreated overflow sewage passes through that creek every year. It’s just the same as it was in Victorian times. The Thames is supposed to wash the sewage out to sea, but until the new tunnel is built, we are surrounded by shit. Can you see why no one wanted this land back in the nineties? That’s why the TJs bought it. Cut off by railway lines and a shit-filled river; land contaminated by hazardous chemicals and highly toxic acids from the derelict factories. All these poor people wanted was their own place, in this toilet, and you bastards wouldn’t even let them have that!’

‘This is about Tablighi Jamaat, isn’t it?’ Jake pressed harder to see if he could get a reaction. He was running out of places to go with his questioning. Biaj ignored him and began to walk away, but Jake needed answers.

‘Where’s Claire?’ he shouted after him.

Biaj was some feet in front of him now, his back turned as he walked away. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ he called over his shoulder, waving the question away.

The time for being a shrinking violet had passed. Jake closed the space between them suddenly with an instant burst of speed, like in his old athletics days, go on the ‘B’ of the bang.

Biaj heard the footsteps. He spun around quickly, only for Jake to grab the collar of his jacket. His aim was to get in the Iraqi’s face, to shout aggressively, scare him a little.

As Biaj twisted and pushed back, he lost his footing in the mud and slipped slightly from Jake’s grasp. They were closer to the water’s edge than Jake had realised. Biaj stumbled backwards, off balance, arms flailing wildly in the air as his feet missed the side. He plummeted downwards, landing almost waist-deep in the putrid smelling mud at the base of the creek.

Jake looked down at the bank below him. It was covered with sheet metal to stop erosion, creating a sheer drop. The other side, backing onto an ancient sewage works, was edged with crumbling Victorian red brick. The jagged shapes he’d seen emerging from the water earlier were gone now, as the tidal currents swiftly flowed in.

‘Fucking get me out of here!’ bellowed Biaj as he writhed and floundered around. The wild movement served only to make him sink further into the mire that lay beneath his feet.

Jake looked left and right. There was no one. His breath twirled up and into the evening gloom, descending quickly upon them now. It was almost dark. ‘I need answers before I can help you,’ replied Jake calmly, as he looked down from the creek’s edge.

Biaj continued to try to free himself, this time forcing his hands down against the mud at his sides as if to push it off himself, but the sludge just wreathed its way further up his arms. He began to panic, thrashing about with his whole body, as if in a frantic struggle to free his legs and lower body from the mouth of some filthy, oily beast.

Jake looked on, saying nothing. Seeing the fear build. Listening to the cursing and hissing of anger as it turned into more scared cries for help.

Biaj realised he was just wasting his energy, that it was no use. He was truly stuck. He stopped thrashing about. He was panting, out of breath. The stinking water was just a foot or so away now. Biaj watched as it lapped against the bank of mud where he was trapped, the water like the tongue of the beast whose mouth he was now caught in. It moved slowly, silently, softly as it crept closer and closer, higher and higher.

‘Fuck! Help me, the water…’ Biaj screamed through frenzied intakes of breath. ‘The tide, the water, it’s…’ Biaj began squirming around in the mud again, struggling ever harder to make the beast spit him out.

Jake watched as the panic took hold of Biaj; he’d seen panic many times before. It was no use trying to talk to him at the moment.

‘… coming in… It’s coming in, the tide, it’s coming in, please help me… HELP ME!’

Jake knew that the planning forms that Claire had left him were somehow crucial. He thought back to Shahid and how his flat above the sandwich shop had been rented for use as a bomb factory by the bombers, how they’d all been involved with Tablighi Jamaat, how the planned mosque was going to be built and run by a charitable arm of the same sect. Yet what good was any of that information if he couldn’t get the killer breakthrough, couldn’t create a penny-falls machine payout?

Jake looked across the creek at the brownfield site opposite. ‘You wanted a seventy-thousand-capacity mosque… here?’ he said, repeating Biaj’s earlier comment, thinking out loud now. It was a rhetorical statement spoken into the dusk air. ‘You
wanted
… You “
wanted
” it – you can’t have it now, can you? Why?’ asked Jake.

‘Get me out of here and I will answer every question you ask – I promise!’ Biaj screamed, raising a mud-covered arm above his head.

‘No. You talk now, and I’d talk fast if I were you. What do you mean by you “wanted”?’ Jake asked, looking down at the now clearly terrified Biaj.

‘Compulsory purchase order… Today. Get me out!’ Biaj shouted as he began thrashing about again.

‘Compulsory purchase order, why?’

The water was all around Biaj now, the muddy bank and weeds below its surface holding him firm in their grip as the levels rose around him.

‘Those fucking idiots… they fucked it up – did it a fucking day late, that’s why!’

Biaj was out of breath again. He began muttering dementedly to himself in a language that Jake didn’t understand.

‘A day late’ – Jake played the words over in his head.

‘A day late’ was clearly important. More important to Biaj than any accusations of kidnapping, drug dealing or being in cahoots with his MI5 handler would ever be. Jake could feel he was getting close. What had happened a day late? What could possibly be more awful than the sum of those pretty serious misdemeanours? The penny-falls machine started whirring in Jake’s head again. A twenty-four-hour delay. Something important had been put off, but what?

Delay.

Late.

Wait.

‘Having major problem. Cannot make time. Will ring you when I get it sorted. Wait at home.’

Jake’s brain was in overdrive. There had been another death on 7/7 – the very first death of 7/7. Salma Khan, Wasim’s wife, had gone into hospital with complications and miscarried their unborn child. That had triggered a flurry of text messages from Wasim about a ‘major problem’.

‘Wait. Wait at home.’

The hospital visit meant he’d had to abandon the original schedule.

They’d carried out the bomb attacks twenty-four hours later than planned.

Jake remembered watching the CCTV footage from the supermarket. Wasim had been pottering round with his trolley full of ice at 0520 hours on the morning of the sixth, shortly after he’d sent his text message telling the rest of the gang to stay at home. Fifteen bags of ice to keep the improvised explosive devices cool for another day. Wasim wasn’t rushing… he showed no panic… to him it was just a small detour, a minor diversion because his wife had gone to hospital and they couldn’t travel to London that day.

The attacks being carried out a day late hadn’t seemed the slightest bit important at any stage of their investigation, neither to Jake nor to the bombers themselves…

Until now.

127

Thursday

17 November 2005

1602 hours

East London wasteland, site of proposed mosque

Jake was suddenly transported back in time to the morning of 7 July, sat in his car on that West Yorkshire terraced street, listening to the BBC replaying the news over and over again.

The news from the previous day… the news from 6 July.

‘And the host city for the 2012 Olympic Games… is… LONN-DONN!’

The pennies mounted up again and overlapped in Jake’s head to form a perfect arc. They were beginning to flow out of the machine like a waterfall, a crescendo of coppers crashing down faster than Jake could catch them in his cup.

The attacks had been delayed on 6 July, a twenty-four-hour delay because of the complications with Wasim and Salma’s unborn child.

Jake’s head emptied of all the useless pieces of information that he had been storing, like water flowing out. He looked down at Biaj; the water was chest deep and climbing now.

‘The delay. The sixth of July was the intended date for the bombings, wasn’t it? The bombings were delayed, weren’t they? How did we not see it? This was inspired by you?’

‘Please help me… I will tell you everything, I promise.’ Biaj’s panic had given way to uncontrollable sobbing. Tears flowed down his cheeks. The fight had gone out of him. He had stopped moving. He remained motionless as the creek’s wet tongue licked up his body.

‘Keep talking,’ said Jake, ‘and I’ll think about it.’

Biaj was clearly desperate now – he began babbling at high speed. ‘No one knew. Not even the bombers themselves… They – they should have done it early on the morning of the sixth. But… but… but…’