Shredder (23 page)

I knew I'd never make it all the way to the Thames like this, not even if I'd been a bloody dolphin. Between here and the river were two locks where the canal level dropped, each one a dead end, impassable underwater. The first was another five hundred meters downstream. Maybe the cops would be waiting for me there, but it didn't matter anymore: I was done with swimming, and felt almost too weak to float.

By the time I saw the massive wooden gates looming out of the water ahead of me I couldn't even bring myself to dive, though the thrum of the chopper's blades was still so close that the pilot could be over me in seconds with one twitch of the joystick. I focused on that thought, let the fear and anger drive me onwards up to the wooden gates where more rubbish had piled up, swept downstream by the thunderstorms. There were no cops in sight; they must have thought it impossible I could get this far, and I didn't blame them. The water level was high enough to let me reach the wooden walkway overhead, attached to the canal gates themselves with iron brackets.

As I gripped the walkway's edge my biceps trembled and throbbed, but I managed to haul myself up out of the water, hook one ankle on the walkway's lip and with the last dregs of my strength heave myself up and clear, to lie gasping and dripping on the wooden ledge.

I desperately wanted to rest, but I couldn't—not here, out in the open. I had to move, somehow, somewhere, anywhere else. Ten minutes downstream lay the shiny development of designer flats, with all those people and that nightlife to hide
in—except among them I'd be as conspicuous as a freshly drowned corpse. On the far side of the canal a steep bank rose to a two-meter gray steel fence topped with spikes. On the near side sprawled a muddy jungle of woods and shrubs—the edge of a park I knew vaguely. I'd picnicked there once, years ago, when my mum and dad were still together. No choice, then.

I scrambled to my feet, staggering with such exhaustion I nearly tumbled back into the canal. Clutching the handrail, I hurled myself forward, turned right along the towpath and a few seconds later cut left into the bushes, heading uphill. I wanted to run but could barely manage a jog, and without my sneakers I could feel every twig and pebble underfoot. All the same I kept running, in a half crouch, expecting every second the looming thunder of the police helicopter to surge in volume and the searchlight to dazzle and drown me.

The park was dark and empty—no dog walkers, no teenage potheads, not even a lurking flasher. Around me the trees were starting to thin out and I could see streetlights flickering through sycamore leaves. The sirens and the chopper's beat were pulsing in volume, growing distant, and no one in this
suburban backstreet was curious enough to come out and look. They wouldn't have seen much anyway; just a tall teenager in dripping jeans, a soaking gray T-shirt and mud-caked feet jogging out of the woods, down the street, then ducking sideways into a narrow passage between two terraced houses.

The passage led to an alley that ran along two sets of rear gardens, back to back. One garden was separated from the alley by nothing more than broken fragments of fence, and in it swung a rotating clothesline draped in washing: three T-shirts, assorted socks and a few pairs of sweatpants. I hesitated for almost a nanosecond before I swung my leg over the shards of fencing and snatched the joggers from the line, sending the pegs flying. I took a navy T-shirt too—of the choices available it would be the least conspicuous in the dark. I quickly checked to see if these kind people had left any trainers outside on the back doorstep—Dad used to do that with mine when they stank too badly to keep in the house—but I saw nothing; I guess that would have been too much to ask. I hurried further down the alley and paused in the shelter of a wheelie bin to tug off my soggy jeans.

Forty-five minutes later I stood at Zoe's door in Richmond, my feet bruised and throbbing from running without shoes, and with barely enough energy left to lift the knocker. I didn't realize how hard I was leaning on the door until it opened and I fell inwards, straight through Zoe's arms and into a heap on the doormat. She asked if I was hurt, and kissed me, and recoiled, and told me I stank like a backed-up toilet. While she ran me a bath I told her what I had found in the Turk's lockup, and she told me what she'd found in his laptop's memory. She went online while I clambered into the bath to soak, but I was so shattered I passed out almost immediately. It would have been ironic if I'd drowned in bubbles after what I'd just been through, but Zoe pulled me out, rinsed my hair, toweled me down and put me to bed. We talked for another twenty minutes, made love for twenty minutes, and slept in each other's arms for twenty minutes.

Then the cops smashed the front door in.

It wasn't how I'd expected it to happen, but to be honest I hadn't expected the cops at all—or not for another twenty-four hours, anyway. I thought at first it was an Armed Response Unit, but the men who came thundering up the stairs and squeezed into our tiny bedroom—in such numbers they nearly started falling over each other—were packing nothing more lethal than batons and pepper spray. Every one of them was in full Met police uniform, with bulky stab vests, and navy baseball caps pulled down low over their eyes, and every one of them was even bigger than me—it was like a rugby scrum round our bed.

Zoe screamed at them to get out, dragging the sheet around herself and off me, but I was still so dopey with sleep I didn't even notice I was naked. When I'd blearily tugged on my stolen sweatpants and T-shirt, ringed in a knot of uniforms so tight I
could feel their breath on my skin, they handcuffed me, and with two cops ahead and two cops behind I was marched down the narrow stairs. We left Zoe behind, hissing and spitting and demanding to see a warrant, as if this house was hers and she was entitled to be there, but I could hear the confusion in her voice: she couldn't figure out why she wasn't being arrested too, on a charge of conspiracy—the catch-all the cops use when they haven't quite figured out who's been conspiring with whom to do what, and need time to ghostwrite a confession or fabricate some evidence.

The tiny downstairs lounge too was heaving with uniformed cops, wearing latex gloves and with plastic covers over their boots as they raked through cupboards and combed the bookshelves. As the arresting officers led me out into the street I saw the Turk's sleek laptop and the chunky one belonging to Zoe's aunt sealed into thick polythene evidence bags and stowed in the boot of a cop car.

It didn't make sense, any of it. I'd just returned from a bomb factory. I thought the dumb cops would have sealed off the street and sent guys in hazmat suits in to lift the floorboards and probe every crevice with chemical sniffers in the search for explosives.
With a cop on either side holding me by the arms I was led to a standard-issue police van, the sort they use to round up drunks on a Friday night. The paintwork was scratched and dented, and one of the side windows freshly cracked; clearly it had been in the wars this week.

Net curtains twitched along the length of the street but nobody so much as poked their head out of a window to ask what was happening as I was bundled aboard and shoved towards a bench seat. The van doors slammed shut behind us and the engine fired up. One cop sat opposite me while the other sat to my left, so when the van lurched off I went sliding into him. He shoved me away again, none too gently. In the dimness of the van it wasn't easy to make out their faces, but the one opposite me was middle-aged, with a neatly clipped graying beard that made him seem almost human. I caught his eye and asked him what I was being charged with.

“Riot,” he grunted.

I nearly laughed in his face.

But they were serious. I thought they'd take me to the local precinct, but we drove for more than an hour through the suburbs to a station so massive
it looked like a prison, way south of the city. In the huge custody hall hordes of sulky teenagers and surly twentysomething yobs were being led to desks, questioned, charged, searched and locked up. The supervising cops snarled at us to keep quiet, but rumors went buzzing round the room: there were all-night courts in session upstairs, processing suspects like battery hens, each hearing taking only a few minutes. The same thing had happened after the last outbreak of rioting; back then, out of two thousand accused, not one had got bail, no matter what the charge or the circumstances. Every suspect was remanded in custody, and some ended up serving months of imprisonment before they even came to trial.

And it was my turn next.

“Name?”

“Finn Maguire,” grunted the bearded copper at my shoulder to the custody sergeant, who typed my details up on a computer using two fingers. No wonder this was taking so long.

“Address?”

“Don't have one,” I said. The duty sergeant glared at me, but saw I was serious, and glanced back to the copper.

“What's the charge?” he said.

“Riot and GBH,” said the cop. That sounded even more ominous than I'd feared. Every other charge I'd overheard had been “burglary” or “violent disorder.” Grievous Bodily Harm? What was that about?

Oh shit. Dean's kneecap.
They have video
.

This wasn't the time to argue, and there was no point in trying.

“I want to speak to DS Amobi from the NCA,” I said.

“The court will appoint a duty solicitor to represent you,” said the sergeant, in a voice like a speaking clock. “Turn out your pockets and give me your shoelaces.”

“There's nothing in my pockets and I'm not wearing shoes,” I said. “Amobi's a detective sergeant in the National Crime Agency. I need to talk to him about—”

“Son, I don't give a damn who you'd like to talk to. It's four o'clock in the morning and all the detectives are in bed asleep, which is where I should be. Now turn out your pockets and give me your shoelaces.”

“Just think, if you were a detective,” I said, “you'd earn enough to buy your own sodding shoelaces.”

That was probably a mistake. The cops were too busy and tired to bounce me down the stairs, and the corridors were too crowded for them to practice their favorite baton strikes and restraint techniques. But they managed to find me a cell with a young bearded nutter babbling loudly to his guardian angel, a wino who had crapped his pants, and a tattooed Chinese guy who stood with his back to one corner and his arms folded, staring at the rest of us as if wondering who to strangle first. The duty sergeant suggested with a smirk that I should make myself comfortable—I was going to be here awhile.

There was only one bench in the cell, and it was molded out of the same stuff as the wall—hard washable plastic, easy to hose down and disinfect—but the drunk was stretched out the full length of that. The whole cell stank of shit, but it was particularly strong near him, so he had the bed to himself. The mental patient had lain down on the floor opposite and curled up facing the wall, muttering “Talk to Jesus, talk to Jesus,” and the mute Chinese guy had taken possession of one corner. That left me the other. I hunkered down till my backside hit the floor, rested my head on my legs, and shut my eyes.

“Maguire.”

How long had I been asleep? My knees had locked up. The cell door was open and the duty sergeant was back and he wasn't smirking anymore. Behind him stood Amobi, and he wasn't smirking either.

After that stinking packed cell the interview room felt like a penthouse and its stale recycled air smelled like a meadow breeze. I stretched my legs out and breathed it in. Amobi looked twitchy and impatient, like he had better places to be. He seemed less drawn and tense than the last time I'd seen him, but then the last time I'd seen him he was being beaten to the ground by two uniformed cops.

“Any chance of a cup of tea?” I usually didn't have to ask the cops for tea, and it was always so pale and weak I didn't bother drinking it, but right now I actually wanted some. Maybe I was getting too used to police stations.

“I don't think so, Finn, and if any officer here offers you a cup, I would advise you not to drink it,” said Amobi. I frowned. “Too many of them have seen the evidence against you,” he explained.

“You mean me taking part in a riot?”

“I mean you starting a riot.”

“I didn't mean to…. OK, I did. But I had to create a diversion so I could rescue Zoe.”

“I would not rely on that for your defense. Homes and shops and cars were burned and looted all over London. You cost this city millions of pounds. Three men died, many were injured—one man was crippled.”

“Yeah, and most of them were working for the Turk. I asked you for help, Amobi, and you said no, because the Turk was an informant and you couldn't touch him.”

Amobi's glance slid sideways to the young uniformed officer standing at ease in the corner.

“I don't recall any such conversation,” he said carefully.

“Yes, you do, I said. “It was right before you got worked over by two racist cops.”

“I don't recall any such incident,” said Amobi. Now he held my look. I knew it wasn't the first time he'd lied to protect his colleagues, no matter how little they deserved it, and I felt anger, but also pity; I'd trusted him once. He must have seen it in my eyes, because he pushed his chair back as if he was about to leave. “Finn, I came here as a favor to Zoe,” he said. “She called me and told me you were in custody
and you needed my help. But I came to tell you I can't help you anymore.”

“You misunderstood,” I said. “It's you who needs my help.”

He paused, but I could see he wasn't convinced.

“I figured out how they're recruited,” I said. “Those suicide bombers you've been chasing. They're not really suicide bombers.”

Amobi said nothing.

“They're smuggled in,” I said. “From somewhere in the back of beyond, Kurdistan or Uzbekistan. Like all trafficked people, they're promised jobs, but they end up owing the traffickers a fortune and having to work like slaves to pay it back. Only some of them, the ones with no family, no friends to miss them, I think they're given special deals. They're told that if they make one delivery they'll be let off some of their debt. And they're given a backpack and sent off to Liverpool or Bristol or Oxford Street, and when they get there, someone phones the mobile in their backpack that's wired to a detonator, and…
boom
.”

“That's an interesting theory,” said Amobi in a noncommittal tone, as if he'd heard it before. But he didn't get up.

“It's Karakurt who's recruiting them,” I said.
“That's his trade, people trafficking. He has an infinite supply of volunteers, from all over Eastern Europe.”

Amobi stared at me. “You can go,” he said suddenly. It took me a second to grasp he was talking to the uniformed cop in the corner.

It took the cop a second to grasp it too. “Sorry, sir?” he said. “Do you want me to fetch someone else?”

Amobi turned to him to explain, as patiently as if he was talking to his favorite idiot nephew. “This isn't a formal interview, it's a conversation,” he said. “I don't need another officer in attendance.” The officer hesitated, as if he wasn't sure where to be if not in here, while Amobi waited. Then he slunk out.

“Am I getting warm?” I said.

“Where did you hear that name?” said Amobi.

“Karakurt?” I said. “It's what the Russian mafia calls him. He's teamed up with them now. The Guvnor's not around anymore.”

“So where is he?”

“Retired,” I said. “Or so I heard.” I wasn't getting into what I'd witnessed, and fortunately Amobi didn't insist.

“Did these Russians tell you the Turk was behind
the bombings? I wouldn't rely on them, Finn. They have their own agenda. Besides, we just shut down the terrorists' bomb factory.”

“The one near the canal. It was Karakurt who tipped you off about that place, wasn't it? That's why you only found one body in there. The poor bastard who was ordered to guard the place when his mates were sent to set up two new bomb factories.”

Now Amobi was staring and some of the color had drained from his shining black face. I'd once promised myself never to play poker with him, because his expression gave so little away, but right now he looked like a man who'd staked his life on one last hand and been dealt a pair of threes.

“That was you?” was all he said.

“Was what me?” I said. “The guy who broke in just before the SWAT team turned up and drove the tanker into the canal and disappeared? No. I know nothing about it.”

“Did you say there were other factories?” Amobi seemed keen to change the subject.

“Karakurt's not finished,” I said. “You guys will be clapping each other on the back and lining up for medals, and in a few weeks it'll all start again, and you'll need him more than ever.”

“How do you know about them?” asked Amobi. “These factories?”

I told him about the laptop I had grabbed during the riot, how Zoe had downloaded the memory, and how she'd decoded it. Amobi was starting to sweat, I noticed, and twitch in his seat. I could see he wanted to dash out and call his office, to tell them how Karakurt had taken them for a ride, but I wasn't done with him just yet.

“One of the other files Zoe found mentions two locations up north. I don't know for sure they're bomb factories, but maybe you should go and look. Another turned out to be a recording of a woman who sounds very high up in the security services promising the Turk limited immunity in return for his cooperation.”

“Finn, it's dangerous to be in possession of this sort of information,” said Amobi.

“I'm in a police station,” I said. “Surely it's the safest place I could be.”

He missed the sarcasm, but then he had a lot on his mind. “I was thinking of Zoe,” he said.

“They should have arrested her when they arrested me,” I said. “You're never going to find her now.” I was praying that was true. “There is one
way to make the knowledge less dangerous,” I went on. “Spread it about. Tell the world everything.”

Amobi had always kept a beautifully folded handkerchief peeping out of his breast pocket; for the first time ever I saw him pull it out and dab his lips like he'd been eating something messy; it was a nervous gesture. I'd finally rattled him.

“I really wouldn't advise that,” said Amobi.

“You wouldn't advise Zoe and me to tell every media outlet and blogger and conspiracy theorist in the world how British security services protected a major criminal who was running a bombing campaign in the UK?”