THE THESEUS PARADOX: The stunning breakthrough thriller based on real events, from the Scotland Yard detective turned author. (46 page)

‘But what?’

‘They didn’t know!’

‘Know what? They didn’t know what?’

‘They didn’t know it was pointless on the seventh, the bombings were pointless… they fucked it all up by doing it a day late.’

Jake couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Why should the bombings have happened early in the morning on the sixth? Tell me! Why?’

He remembered the note that Claire had left behind with the name Mohammed Biaj written on it. The note with the numbers two, zero, one and another two on it… Her handwriting had been sloppy, uneven and spread out. The numbers – he’d thought they were perhaps individual digits for a combination lock, but maybe they weren’t? Maybe they were meant to represent something as a whole?

Biaj’s eyes glinted as he growled back. ‘London was a joke bid. Paris were the favourites. But London? It was a joke. Then they got serious. In – in 2003… I had to act.’ Biaj was beginning to shiver now, from the cold water that was all around him.

‘The Olympics? The bombings were supposed to happen before the Olympic vote took place?’ Jake was incredulous. ‘That was what you were targeting on the sixth? You didn’t want London getting the Olympics?’

He thought back to the digits Claire had hastily scribbled on the piece of paper, two, zero, one, two. Of course! Claire’s numbers were meant to represent a year – 2012. The London 2012 Olympics.

‘International Olympic Committee. The report. Transport weak. London. Weak spot. That’s what the IOC said.’ Biaj was now talking in very short, sharp sentences. The freezing water was beginning to steal the oxygen from his body. ‘Please. Get. Me. Out!’

The wet tongue of the tide was now lapping at Biaj’s fingertips, which he had pulled into his chest. He wrenched one of his hands free of the water. It was wrapped in reeds and covered in lurid green slime.

Jake continued with his questions. ‘The attacks were designed to affect the voting? The voting on London’s bid. You did it to stop the Games coming here?’

Biaj was in full flow now, as if he knew that the truth was the only way out. ‘Yes. The answer was simple. Fuck up the transport. Four bombs. 8.50 a.m. On 6 July. Three hours. Three hours before. Before voting. Before. Olympic votes. Before votes cast in Singapore.’

Jake stood there listening to this petrified voice. A man who’d helped to murder more than fifty people and disable, disfigure, traumatise and injure more than seven hundred.

‘Stupid. Idiots. Couldn’t even blow themselves up. On—’ Biaj gasped in a lungful of air ‘—the right day!’

‘So London won the vote when they shouldn’t have? The bombs were supposed to dissuade the IOC members from voting for London and take the Olympics elsewhere?’ Jake shouted.

‘Yes! NOW HELP ME!’

Why, thought Jake. Why force the Olympics to move elsewhere? What could be important enough to Biaj?

128

Thursday

17 November 2005

1640 hours

East London wasteland, site of proposed mosque

As the light above them finally faded, the realisation dawned on Jake.

He felt the information flowing out of his head like a waterfall.

The rice packets, the Groom-Bates saga, the lump on the car… it was all nonsense. Nothing they’d done in the entire investigation would have brought them to this point. The creek continued to fill.

‘You didn’t want the Olympics here because… because… they need this land! The whole thing has put the kibosh on your mosque! It means your fucking great big mosque won’t get built! The games are coming to London and you won’t get your planning permission. The Olympics coming here has meant you’ve been served with your compulsory purchase order. They need this land to build on for the Games, and that’s what’s going to prevent your huge mosque!’ Jake stared down at Biaj – disgusted with the man looking up at him. ‘All those people died for planning permission for… for… your place of worship?’

The water was up to Biaj’s neck and beginning to lap at his chin. ‘Get me out…’ he shouted.

Biaj was going to drown if Jake didn’t help him. A couple of paces up the towpath, Jake could see a plank of wood, an old scaffold board. He ran to retrieve it. It looked about long enough to hook Biaj out of the water. He moved back to the spot where Biaj had fallen into the creek and leaned down, holding the wood. There was a sudden spark of life in Biaj. He held up his hands for the board.

‘I will help you,’ said Jake, ‘but you finish it. You finish telling me now.’

Biaj realised he needed to keep talking, and fast. He began speaking at three times his normal speed. ‘The mosque. Just one part of my Islamic city. The draw. A new enclave. Jamaatis, TJs. Thousands of them. Starts ball rolling. Money. Lots of money. Power. Control. Influence over the area. Influence over people in it.’ Biaj paused, sucking in lungfuls of air again before continuing. ‘A new headquarters, my new global HQ. My version of TJ. Houses, businesses, schools. People need goods and services.’

Jake nodded. ‘You mean like slum accommodation, protection money, fake passports, dodgy visas, ropey insurance, drugs? And the vast riches that those things create come straight back to you? That’s what this mosque is about?’

‘Yes. Help me! Get me out! Please!’ cried Biaj.

‘No. You tell me it
all
, NOW!
Then
I get you out!’

Biaj was struggling to keep his head above the waterline. He was thrashing about with his hands, trying to reach for the board, which Jake had left frustratingly just out of reach. His skullcap had fallen off, his white robes were being held by an invisible vacuum, sucked down by the effluent and mud.

‘The Tablighi Jamaat headquarters in India?’ asked Jake. ‘They never sanctioned this?’

‘No! Elders believe in simplicity. We live life the way the Prophet did. Peace be upon him. We brush teeth with twigs. Cut beards to same length! I don’t care what they want! This was to be my extravagant masterpiece!’

‘This was a sect-wide plan?’

‘No! It was me… Me! My friends. We duped everyone.
Now help, help
! HELP ME!’ screamed Biaj at the top of his voice.

Biaj was still desperately trying to extricate himself from the bottom of the creek but he was taking in gulps of water now as the level rose around his chin.

‘You duped everyone?’

‘Yes… you police, the bombers, the trust, I even duped al-Qaeda!’

Jake pushed the scaffold board down to Biaj. Biaj grabbed it with both hands and started pulling himself up as Jake held onto the other end.

‘Why here, why now?’ asked Jake as he watched Biaj steady himself and gradually pull himself free from the mud. He began to slowly inch his way up the board. He craned his neck and looked up at Jake as he spoke. ‘A global city like London with a prime location like our site? I could have taken power here. Created my own headquarters and my own walled city.’

Biaj crawled slowly on his belly, hauling himself further up the board like a caterpillar as he carried on muttering, ‘Flash cars, watches, designer clothes and fancy lifestyles. I’m the man in the background that you can never touch. Friends in high places, friends with businesses, friends with money that make things happen. The people that will live near my mosque, they will rent their houses from my friends, but they will rent their souls from me.’

Jake looked into Biaj’s eyes. The fear was gone. His words were boastful. He was talking about the future. This wasn’t over for him.

Jake yanked the board as hard as he could, back up and toward him. Biaj lost his grip. As he did so, he was sucked back down into the water and back into the mud.

The water level was high now. Biaj’s head went straight under the surface of the creek. All Jake could see were his arms flailing about wildly as they broke the murky surface.

With all his might, Jake tossed the board like a caber into the deepest part of the creek, way out of Biaj’s reach.

A moment later, a face bobbed just above the surface, gasping for air. Biaj resurfaced again several times as if climbing an imaginary ladder, only to slip back down again below the gloopy black surface of the water, the weight of his Western jacket and Eastern robes sucking him down.

Jake stood there shaking, watching for what felt like an eternity, as the movements in the creek slowed. Bubbles began appearing from beneath the water as Biaj’s thrashing arms eventually became still.

Jake thought about how alone he’d felt chasing Wasim down the M1 on the morning of the bombings; how desperate he had been for some help; how no one would listen to him throughout the investigation; how broken the families were that had lost people, both those of the victims and the bombers; how he’d felt so low that he had to seek solace with a different woman at the bottom of a bottle every night, when really it was Claire he missed, and his family. How the victims’ families and even the bombers’ families had become more important than his own. How, even now, he wanted answers to the bombings… stupidly forsaking questions about Claire to find out the solution to the puzzle that had dogged him for so long.

The putrid water was motionless. Nothing moved; it was dark and still.

There were no more thoughts. And his mind was made up.

He turned and walked away.

129

Thursday

17 November 2005

1715 hours

East London wasteland, site of proposed mosque

Jake walked briskly back to the van, backed out of his parking spot and made a rapid getaway. He didn’t really know where he was going. He drove in a daze, the pennies still crashing down in his head. He pulled over onto some bumpy waste ground near to West Ham Tube station, put his head in his hands and wept.

Nothing they had done in the entire investigation would have brought them to this realisation – why the attacks had actually been perpetrated. Even the bombers themselves had believed their own personal motives were the reasons for the attacks. Jake still couldn’t believe what he’d heard. This act of terrorism had been created by an entrepreneur who would stop at nothing to create and rule his very own kingdom on a toxic island of industrial wasteland in the very heart of London.

He grabbed his mobile; he needed to call Lenny.

‘Hi, Jake, you OK? Where are you?’ said Lenny on pick up.

‘Lenny, listen – just trust me on this. Don’t worry about how I know but… we missed it. It was staring us in the face this whole time and we missed something…’ Jake was trying to get the words out as fast as he could.

‘Lenny. The attacks. They were meant for 6 July but they lost their baby. It was to stop the Olympics coming here. They wanted to keep the land. It was all about the land. Biaj had his own special development planned.’

‘Slow down. The Olympics? What do you mean? That happened the day before. The bombings took place on the seventh, Jake?’

‘Remember the emergency hospital visit? The text messages? The CCTV showing Wasim buying the ice just after dawn on the sixth? It was supposed to happen on the sixth! It was delayed. But it had all been designed to affect the Olympic voting, to stop London getting the Olympics.’

‘What the hell? So what was the point of going ahead with it then? Why not put a stop to it all after they knew they’d missed the deadline to influence the vote?’ asked an incredulous Lenny.

‘The bombers didn’t know – they just thought they were there to martyr themselves, kill others and make a huge religious and political statement. Biaj made sure they knew nothing about his plans. They were totally unaware that it was the wrong day and too late to influence the Olympic vote. So what are you going to do with them? They were bent on martyring themselves. If he hadn’t let them run with it, there was a risk to him in case they found out what he’d really used them for. You don’t train an attack dog and then use it to fetch your fucking slippers, Lenny, do you?’

‘But how did he get them to do it?’

‘I guess they were just angry young men. Kids who couldn’t stand the greyness of life. They needed absolutes. Their sect beliefs mean they regard this life as a “toilet”, that the next life is far more important. He played on that. They were just a bunch of depressed and misguided drug addicts before the TJs and Biaj got their hands on them. They give up their addiction to drugs and become addicted to a misguided and warped religious sect instead. It’s easy to fill young minds full of fanciful myths and visions at the crucial detox time. He harnessed their pain and anger. He used their utter belief in what they were doing, but he used it for his own entrepreneurial ends. It wasn’t terrorism, it was economics.’

‘Then why bother with a second wave of attacks on 21 July? What was the point?’

‘I think the 21/7 lot were just the backup crew. They had a number of different team leaders for the same job. I’m pretty sure a lot of the hydrogen peroxide that the 21/7 guys purchased was bought on 5 July. People change their mind, get arrested, have accidents. I think they were the B team. They’d already had two youngsters who’d blown themselves up during their explosives training in Pakistan. The ones on 21/7 were just the understudies, but once they’d all been trained, albeit to a lesser degree, they were left to their own devices. They were the perfect decoy, weren’t they? Tell them to go out and do it two weeks later, make it a copycat attack.’

‘A second wave of attacks, designed simply to take everyone’s eyes off the first?’ asked Lenny.

‘A stand-alone attack targeting the Olympic vote on the sixth – it would have looked too obvious, wouldn’t it? But in the end they missed the vote anyway, so no one noticed.’

‘It wasn’t al-Qaeda at all, was it?’ Lenny realised.

‘No. I think someone paid in drug money to use their camps, their trainers and their explosives-training people. The videos were passed to al-Qaeda after the attacks. They slapped all the graphics on the martyrdom videos months after they’d been filmed. Al-Qaeda are just a bunch of out-of-work freedom fighters, but they still need to earn a living somehow.’