THE THESEUS PARADOX: The stunning breakthrough thriller based on real events, from the Scotland Yard detective turned author. (6 page)

Welcome to Roley’s empire, thought Jake as he walked up to the little cashier-style window. Roley ran the Reserve Room and held all the power when it came to owning and allocating resources. You never upset Roley. If you did, you’d end up bottom of the pile for anything that he might be able to push in your direction. If you wanted a car, Roley held a pool of cars. If you wanted a pen, Roley had a box of pens. But of course Roley was the one who decided whether you got the basic or the super-deluxe model.

Roley looked up from his desk on the other side of the small window as Jake peered through.

‘Alwight son?’ This was his favourite greeting.

‘Head’s a bit sore but I’ll live – I need a new car and a new phone.’

Roley chucked a bound book with a blue plastic cover through the hatch at him. It had a set of car keys in it. Jake looked at the front of the book to see what sort of car it was – a BMW 3 Series. Fine. The blue cover meant the car had been fitted with blue lights and two tones. Extras would include a radio, bigger batteries to run the extra electrical equipment and upgraded brakes, if he was lucky. He’d driven many a vehicle fast, then experienced the all-encompassing fear that came from hitting the brake pedal at 100 mph to be met with the dreaded smell of burning.

‘Try not to write this one off, son,’ Roley said with a smile. ‘Phones are with Maggie in the office.’

Jake walked down the corridor and into the concrete stairwell. Maggie’s office was on the floor below.

She was a cantankerous civvy in her sixties with a nasty, old-fashioned perm. Civilian employees – those who’d come from outside the force – were deemed the lowest in the gene pool at Scotland Yard. Maggie ran the stationery store and ordered anything that needed ordering – provided you had filled out the right form, in the right way, with the right coloured pen, in triplicate, with the right authorisation signature. She was a stickler for the rules. She made Jake’s blood boil.

‘Take one pen – not the whole damn box!’ she was shouting at a DC, as Jake walked into the office.

Jake hated anyone’s rules. He hated Maggie’s rules more than most.

As he walked over to her desk, he noticed that she was sporting her favourite orange woollen cardigan that everyone said smelled of mothballs.

‘Hello, Maggie – how are you?’ Jake forced a cheery smile just for her benefit.

She didn’t reply. That wasn’t unusual.

‘That’s a nasty bump on your head,’ she said eventually, looking up over the top of her half-rimmed glasses at him.

‘Car accident this morning, lost my work phone… I need a new one, please.’

‘I can only do exchanges. You know that. If it’s been lost, I need a superintendent to authorise it before giving you another one.’

‘Malcolm Denswood authorised it – said he was going to call you as he can’t get in to sign the form right this second. It’s a bit on the busy side out there as you might know, Maggie… He’s not rung you?’

All of that was lies, except the part about it being busy – but he coupled it with his best confused-looking face, which he hoped would do the trick.

She shoved a new, boxed Nokia phone and a pile of lost property forms at him.

‘I need the forms done now!’ she barked.

Jake looked down at the paperwork Maggie had handed him. The forms were going to take ages! There were dead bodies lying on London’s streets and in its Tube system and this civilian clerk wanted an hour’s worth of paperwork filling in? He waited until she was distracted by another officer and then departed quietly with his haul. He dropped the blank forms into a waste-paper bin outside her office as he made his way to the lift. He prayed that he didn’t have to wait fifteen minutes for one travelling down to the basement.

The basement area of New Scotland Yard was one huge underground car park. Always jammed full of vehicles, it could often take half an hour just to get out of there. Today there were hardly any vehicles to contend with. The whole of the Yard were at the scenes, rushing home from annual leave or returning from the G8 summit up in Scotland. Jake found the silver BMW easily and sat in the car looking at a Branch team list that he’d picked up from the reserve office. It detailed all the officers’ names and phone numbers on it. Jake already knew whom he was going to call – someone he could bounce stuff off and whom he knew he could trust.

He skimmed through the list until he spotted the name he was looking for… Detective Sergeant Leonard Sandringham.

A career detective with more than twenty-five years of service under his belt, Lenny was a hard-working copper; one of the best Jake had ever worked with.

They’d met when Lenny had been on the Area Crime Squad and Jake had been working on an operation involving the importation of drugs and stolen cars. They’d quickly become friends and not long after had both ended up working at the Branch, albeit on different teams.

A slim, dapper silver fox in a tweed jacket, Lenny had two grown-up daughters and a long-suffering wife whom he adored. The day job had changed considerably during Lenny’s lifetime of policing – but his tales of noble cause corruption from earlier years on the force could still entertain.

Jake plugged in the number listed and found that Lenny was currently on his way back from a camping trip in Devon. He’d cut it short after hearing the news about the attacks.

They exchanged the usual pleasantries.

‘Have you got any plans for the next month, Len?’

11

Thursday

7 July 2005

2000 hours

The flat above the sari shop, Whitechapel, East End of London

Jake parked the BMW on double yellow lines. He needed some fresh clothes. The Def Leppard T-shirt and baggy jeans had to go.

Upstairs in his flat, he grabbed a holdall off the top of the wardrobe and started to pack.

The place was baking. It had been shut up and neglected for almost a fortnight. The spider plant in the bathroom looked close to death; unwashed teacups in the sink had grown mould.

Jake looked out through the sash window. There was no sign of Ted on the extension’s corrugated iron roof.

The flat sat in a row of severely neglected Victorian properties that housed retail space down at street level. The buildings, though distinguished in their time, had faded as they’d fallen into disrepair. The place had been his grandmother’s until she’d passed away six months previously. It was like being in a time warp with its carpet of dark brown and orange swirls and its avocado bathroom suite.

After his grandmother had died, he’d moved in to look after the damn cat, Edwina. Jake had renamed her Ted.

Both his grandparents had grown up in Whitechapel, both of Irish heritage. Jake remembered the stories they’d tell of how their families fled in the 1850s; the hatred for the English landowners who’d ignored the potato famine and continued to export nearly all of Ireland’s grain – creating a catastrophic situation out of a mere crisis.

The Irish had flocked to the cheap accommodation in the slums of Whitechapel, with its thousands of prostitutes, numerous whorehouses and Jack the Ripper. His great-grandfather had worked in Whitechapel’s filthy slaughterhouses and butchers. Yet Jake’s grandmother had always joked that Whitechapel was still like living in a palace after you’d been reduced to sharing accommodation with your own livestock back in Ireland.

Jake sometimes wondered if his love of bacon was in his DNA.

‘Ted, Ted!’ Jake shouted as he leaned out of the window and banged the side of the cat-food tin with a knife. Ted was coming back less and less lately; he was sure someone else was feeding her. Like all the women in his life, this feline had grown weary of being left on her own for long periods.

‘Ted, you little shit, where are you?’ he shouted wearily.

He could hear the steady hum of the traffic. Car after car used the side street to try and dodge the gridlocked traffic attempting to head out of the city along the main road.

It was still scorching outside. The rusty, corrugated iron roof below radiated heat into his face; it felt as though he were being slapped across the face by a sizzling frying pan.

He closed the window and picked up his bag containing two of everything. It was time to leave. Ted would have to fend for herself again.

He had a lot of driving to do – the M25 to Surrey to collect Lenny and his bags, and then back up to Leeds.

12

Friday

8 July 2005

2100 hours

Greek Street, central Leeds, West Yorkshire

The four of them stood on the edge of the dance floor – Lenny, Jake and the two new DCs he’d requested. The place was packed and the music thumped. Friday-night revellers wore short skirts and T-shirts, but Jake and his team were dressed like City boys in their suits and stood out a mile.

Jake had spent a long day hard at work – putting together the start of the research packages in a small office he’d found for the team to use at Millgarth police station. Tonight it was time for a drink; he needed it after the couple of days he’d just had.

‘Did you hear what the Mayor of London announced today?’ asked Lenny loudly above the pulsating dance track. Jake was only half-listening to the conversation. Watching the dance floor and enjoying his drink were less taxing options right now. The two DCs shook their heads. ‘He’s pledged free tickets to the Olympics for those seriously injured in the bomb blasts,’ continued Lenny.

Jake excused himself from a discussion about who’d pay for this initiative and made his way to the bar. He ordered a round of beers and a round of translucent shots in a variety of lurid colours. They looked foul, but he didn’t really care.

The bar was the swankiest that Leeds had to offer. They’d been told ‘members only’ at the door, but this wasn’t London. Their warrant cards still got them into places. London door staff had become hostile toward police officers ‘briefing it’ to get in – the warrant card was often referred to as ‘ya brief’. Outside of London they were far more welcome. It was usually accepted that officers weren’t going to cause a fight and would probably help staff out if there was trouble.

On his way back to the group, Jake spotted the Leeds football chairman, Ken Bates, in a shaded corner. He looked like Father Christmas in NHS glasses, yet the ladies appeared keen on him.

The beer was cold, and already Jake was forgetting about the last few days. He needed to forget. Alcohol made him forget. Enough of it and he would almost forget that he’d been so close to stopping Wasim, about the body parts strewn across Tavistock Square.

Life had felt hollow since he’d left his wife. Work was all he had, but at times like these even that made him feel lifeless inside. Jake missed his daughters and they were growing up so fast. All he managed of late was a daily phone call with each of them before bed – if he wasn’t doing something at work that prevented it. Claire was barely ever available and the pressures of both their jobs seemed to preclude them from conducting a ‘nice, normal’ relationship.

Their phone calls were often the prelude to his drinking, the drinking made him crave attention and the cravings and loneliness made him long to be close to a woman – any woman.

Jake and his team downed more beer, incredulous that it was half the price of a London pint – even in this place, on the most expensive street Leeds had to offer. The alcohol was having its effect. Jake was now ready to take on the world. Not the world he took on by day; the world he inhabited by night. A world that had no problems, no terrorists, no high-ranking bullies warning him off, no ex-partners screaming at him for money, no girlfriends arguing about when they could or couldn’t spend time with him.

‘So how did you write that car off, guv? Tell us, we’re dying to know.’ DC James said, licking the overspill of beer off his hand.

‘Loose lips sink ships. If I thought you needed to know, you’d know.’ Jake winked and laughed as he said it. It was enough to convey the message that he’d been up to no good and to not ask again.

‘Anyway, that’s work. You know I don’t talk about work when we’re not at work. You’re guilty, DC James. I sentence you to buy more beer. Go! Buy me beer.’

As Jake pushed James toward the bar, he spotted a familiar-looking brunette in a black rah-rah skirt out of the corner of his eye. She wore a black vest top and blue high-heeled sandals. Her chin-length bob was chestnut brown and wavy, identical to Claire’s – and, from a distance, her dainty facial features looked uncannily reminiscent of his girlfriend’s.

He did a double take, fixing his gaze on her to check again who it was. She returned the attention she was getting with a huge grin in his direction.

His heart sank. No, it wasn’t Claire.

She continued to smile back at him. There was no denying that she was very attractive indeed… and that she was interested in him.

Jake wiggled his hips in time to the music and the brunette laughed back at him. With their eyes directly on each other, she joined in the dance from the other side of the room. Stuart chuckled at the scene before him. ‘It’s like shooting gazelle with an elephant gun in here, guv – the women are gagging for it!’

Jake turned away and ignored her, mid dance.

‘She wants you, Jake. What are you doing?’ asked Stuart, bewildered.

‘I’m unavailable,’ replied Jake, shrugging. ‘Anyway, we’re supposed to be keeping a low profile up here and I’ve been spotted by Dennis Wise already…’ Jake pointed out the former footballer, who was watching them. ‘Our cover is blown.’

James had returned from the bar with more drinks. He burst out laughing when he saw the familiar figure looking at them.

They drank.

The DJ segued into another track. Jake recognised it as the same song that had been playing on the radio when he hit top speed heading south on the M1 the previous day. His mood darkened. The sudden realisation of what had happened to all of the people on their way to work that morning brought him crashing back down to earth.