THE THESEUS PARADOX: The stunning breakthrough thriller based on real events, from the Scotland Yard detective turned author. (7 page)

The drink always did that to him. Made him totally forget where he was, who he was, the situation he was in. Then something would happen and he would be standing back there in the present, angry at the world.

He downed his pint. It didn’t taste great after the numerous fruit-flavoured shots still coating his mouth. His arm wobbled slightly as he put down his glass.

‘I’m done with this shit tonight. I’m going.’

As Jake walked past the bar on the way to the exit, the song was still playing.

His head was spinning and the bright lights from the dance floor hindered his vision. Was he drunk? What was he doing here? The brunette was no longer dancing across the room. Why had he come to Leeds? ‘Angels on the Subway’… Was that the song?

He’d had the chance to change things yesterday. He’d messed it up. His phone wasn’t charged. How had that happened? If he’d been able to communicate with the call handler, would all those people now be dead?

If he hadn’t been looking at his handset, would he have been able to avoid the nail bomb?

Had he been drunk the night before? Forgotten to charge his phone? Fuck the drink. He hadn’t seen his daughters in two months; couldn’t remember the last day he’d had off to spend with Claire. He’d been too busy at work. Had he been drunk the night before he told his ex-wife it was over? Forgotten what marriage was like because he’d been too busy at work to try? Drowned himself in drink because he was too scared to be a father – agonising over when he would get the chance to do the growing up he needed to do himself?

This song was driving him crazy. The Angel. That was near King’s Cross.
The
King’s Cross – scene of one of the bombs.

‘Hello,’ he heard a female voice call across at him. Jake looked up. It was the brunette in the black rah-rah skirt. She was heading toward him. He wished it was Claire. He needed her there; needed her to make him feel better.

Before he had a chance to reply she’d grabbed him at the shoulders – and, reaching up, began kissing him passionately on the lips.

She tasted of stale beer, of cigarettes.

He suddenly saw black smoke. He pulled away. Looked at her. But there was nothing. There was no smoke.

Did he really want to be with this woman? His drunkenness was making him confused. She grabbed his hand and smiled conspiratorially, leading him past the bar toward the toilets. There were no words but they both knew where they were headed and why. They slid into a cubicle and she locked the door behind them.

Once the door was secure, she faced him, kissed him, unzipped his flies, then turned her back and bent over the toilet, pulling up her skirt as she did so. She looked exactly like Claire from behind. He yanked aside the black thong underneath. Then he was inside her.

What was he doing here? He hated himself. He hated that he was drunk. Again. Using anonymous sex as a conduit to feel something, anything.

He had hold of fistfuls of her hair as he drove into her from behind. He was being overly rough. She was screaming, ‘Harder, faster!’

It was angry sex. The fury in Jake welled to the surface. He didn’t understand it. Bitterness coursed through him.

He began swearing at her, ‘Fucking dirty bitch!’

Jake was lost. Who was he? Who was this girl? Why was he taking his anger out on Claire’s Yorkshire lookalike in a piss-stained cubicle? She probably would have fucked any man that had shown her the slightest bit of attention in that club – he was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Maybe he should have listened to Helen’s words of warning?

He stopped. Pulled out.

The girl turned and looked at him, confused.

‘What the fuck did you stop for?’ she shouted.

Jake did up his flies.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said as he left the cubicle.

‘Come back here, you stupid wanker!’ she called after him, slurring her words.

Drunken sex with a drunken stranger wasn’t the answer to his problems tonight.

He hated himself. Helen was right.

He had to get out of the place.

13

Tuesday

12 July 2005

0545 hours

Holbeck, Leeds, West Yorkshire

‘Just tell me what’s happened to my fucking brother! Where the fuck is he? Why the fuck do you want to come in here and search our house?’

Karim Rahman edged closer to Jake as his anger built, so that they were almost nose to nose. Jake could feel the spittle hit his face as Karim shouted in it.

Karim was the elder brother of Asif Rahman, the eighteen-year-old suspected of blowing himself up on the number thirty bus in Tavistock Square.

Jake stepped backwards – there were times for fighting and there were times when physical confrontation just made things worse.

They were standing in the living room of the terraced family home in Holbeck. Karim was waving his arms about animatedly as he squared up to Jake. Karim’s mother was sat at a table in the corner sobbing, whilst his father – a dark-skinned Pakistani man in his sixties with white hair and a white beard – shouted at the top of his voice at a uniformed police officer in the kitchen.

‘Bloody police! You bloody… you bloody come round here… we report our son missing and you do nothing. Then you come round here and want to search our house… you bloody fuck off!’

When Asif had failed to return from a trip to London the previous week with his friend Wasim, Mr Rahman had called the police and reported his son missing.

The whole family had just been dragged out of their beds by a firearms team who’d smashed open the front door. Mr Rahman was wearing a pair of beige cotton pyjama bottoms and a white T-shirt.

‘What are you fucking gonna do to us?’ Karim shouted in Jake’s face.

Attitude breeds attitude. It was easy to get caught up in the heat of the moment, easy to rise to their level of anger – most people would get angry at police with guns running up and down their stairs and shouting at them at 0500 hours. It was easy to feed off the adrenalin pumping around everyone’s veins at this intrusion. None of that would help matters though.

Jake took another step back from Karim and raised his hands in front of him.

‘Please calm down. I can explain. Please sit down in the chair.’

Jake spoke in a low, composed voice. Karim wouldn’t be able to hear what was being said if he kept shouting at Jake. It was a tactic Jake had used many times before – get them to come down to your level – a calmer level.

‘I don’t want to fucking sit,’ Karim retorted – but the shout had gone from his voice.

‘I can explain to all of you… May I sit down?’ Jake turned to ask Karim’s father who was now silent and looking at him from the kitchen.

Karim’s father nodded. It was important that the head of the house allowed him to sit.

Jake perched on the grey L-shaped sofa. Karim sat down two seats along from him. Jake noticed that he was wearing an England cricket tracksuit. There was silence in the room.

Jake paused for moment to check he had their full attention and began, properly this time. ‘As you know, a number of people have died in London as a result of four explosions. At this stage we cannot confirm that Asif is one of them. What we
do
know is that identification belonging to Asif was found at the scene of the bus bombing in Tavistock Square. We are investigating the possibility that he was involved in the bombing. That’s why we are here; that’s why we have a search warrant.’

The room was silent.

‘No. Not my boy. He wouldn’t do anything like that… He’s a good boy!’ Karim’s mother said from the table. Tears rolled down her face as she spoke.

Jake already knew that the attacks had been undertaken by suicide bombers. Witnesses had described men on the Tube and the man on the bus as ‘exploding’. Jake already knew that Wasim had had explosives in the washing-machine pipe at his house; he already knew that the bus bomber had blown himself into a number of different pieces. He was convinced that the DNA sample they would take from Asif’s toothbrush – or from one of the hairs they would take from his hairbrush – would match the DNA on the fragments of body, the two stray arms and two stray legs that had been found in the square – but this wasn’t the time to talk about his opinion. He was dealing with facts.

‘We don’t know yet that he was definitely involved. We do not know if he is alive or dead. But we are going to search this property to try and help us ascertain if he was, or was not, involved.

Jake waited for a response.

‘So what? So what if his identification was there? He might be injured in a hospital somewhere. Are you searching
all
of the homes of the people hurt?’ Karim responded.

It was a fair question. Jake thought about it for a moment. There were so many things to consider here – one of them was that Karim could be involved, as could the mother and father. Revealing information about what police knew and didn’t know had to be controlled.

‘We found identification from three other Leeds-based people, a different set of identification, one at each of the bomb scenes in London. We are searching their homes at this moment too… The other three people are the ones you say Asif went to London with.’

‘It’s that fucking Wasim, isn’t it? That cunt! That fucking cunt! I fucking knew it… You think my brother martyred himself, don’t you? That he’s a suicide bomber?’ Karim punched the sofa repeatedly, in sheer anger.

Karim’s mother started to wail loudly and rock in her chair.

Strike while the iron is hot, Jake. Don’t wait. Use the anger, Jake’s inner voice said.

‘Why do you say that, Karim? Why do you say it’s something to do with Wasim?’ asked Jake.

‘Look at the age difference. My brother is just a kid – eighteen. Anything he’s done, he’s done for Wasim. He has some fucking spell over Asif with his stupid jihadi war stories. He’s a cunt. His fucking family are going to pay for this,’ Karim said through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve been to see Wasim’s brother – we almost had a fight. His brother reckons he don’t know where he is either… They were supposed to go to London on the sixth, but that got called off at the last minute. Car trouble, Asif said. They went on the seventh instead…’

Jake saw Karim look at his dad. The pair made eye contact. It was subtle. There was a slight nod from Asif’s father.

Karim stood up.

‘Come… I found some stuff in my brother’s bedroom… It might help you find out what’s happened to him.’

Jake stood up alongside Karim. ‘OK, show me,’ he replied.

14

Tuesday

12 July 2005

0600 hours

Holbeck, Leeds, West Yorkshire

Karim led Jake upstairs and into a small box room at the front of the house. It contained a single bed. At the foot of the bed was a narrow wardrobe.

The room was immaculate – like the rest of the house. On top of a light green bedspread sat two mobile phones and a piece of paper.

‘I found those on top of his wardrobe over the weekend – I’ve not seen them before.’

Karim pointed at two grey Nokia handsets and the sheet of paper. Jake was careful not to touch them with his bare hands; he left them lying on the bed.

‘Who’s handled the phones and the piece of paper other than you, Karim?’

‘No one – just me. I’ve called the two numbers on that note and some of the numbers from the phones to ask if they know anything – if they know where my brother is.’ Karim stared off into the air. He began to cry silent tears.

‘What have these people said to you?’

Karim wiped his cheeks with the cuff of his tracksuit. There was a pause while he inhaled and composed himself.

‘The one with the name Shaggy against it – he says he lives in Sheffield and reckons he don’t know my brother. He hung up on me. The Shahid guy says he knows my brother from the mosque but doesn’t know where he is… Thing is, right, that’s my brother’s handwriting on that piece of paper. I’ve never heard of these people; never heard him talk about them… Who the fuck
are
they?

‘Same with the phones – I’ve called some of the numbers stored in the contacts… same story. People I’ve never heard of… One of them says he’s in Egypt, says he don’t know my brother, but that he knows Wasim. Says he rented a flat to him in Leeds. I’ve been round there, but there’s no answer…’

Jake remembered the morning of 7 July – he’d seen Wasim leave his Dewsbury home. He’d driven toward Leeds. Jake had lost sight of him but he’d been somewhere – why would Wasim rent a flat in Leeds when he had a house in Dewsbury?

‘Karim, I need the address of this flat. I need you to show me where it is.’

Jake motioned for Karim to lead the way back down the stairs. Karim went to speak with his father, who was in the kitchen. Jake caught snatches of Urdu. His father nodded at whatever Karim had said to him then followed his son out into the hallway.

‘He will take you – you find who did this to my boy. He was just bloody eighteen, you know,’ Karim’s father said to Jake.

‘Thank you. I will find who did this. I promise you.’ Jake nodded at Mr Rahman who appeared to be coming to the realisation that he might never see his son again. ‘Is there anything else I need to know?’

Mrs Rahman stood up from the table and tried to speak through her sobs. ‘My son – he come back from Pakistan… from wedding… February… He so thin. He always sick. I buy him new clothes… old ones too big for him… his hair, it was lighter, blonde at the front… not my boy,’ she said as her grief turned to wails. Jake could hardly understand her through the tears.

He thanked the Rahmans for their help and grabbed Lenny as they left the house with Karim.

15

Tuesday

12 July 2005

0630 hours

Holbeck, Leeds, West Yorkshire

Karim’s road had been blocked off to the public at either end, to stop the press taking photos.