Sleeper Cell Read online

  ‘The call-in said he’d smashed the lock to get in.’

  ‘That fits. So there was no initial forced entry,’ she said. ‘The security chain is also intact, which means when the mother opened the door, she was expecting someone she knew and trusted. The Farm has a very low crime rate now, but that still seems highly incautious. Who would you open the door to without precautions at midnight?’

  ‘No one outside the family.’

  ‘Exactly. So I think we can say the boy was out, but expected back. But the person she sees when she opens the door is not him.’

  ‘Person, singular?’

  Leila nodded. ‘I’m coming to that. One thing at a time.’ She walked back into the sitting room.

  ‘Gunman forces Mrs Shaw back here, asking whatever he needed to ask. She either yields or fights back. Either way, he has no further use for her so he kills her. Esther hears this and tries to escape.’

  ‘What makes you think she wasn’t being held by a second gunman? She would have had plenty of time to escape between the attacker, or attackers, entering the flat and the final shot unless she was being held.’

  ‘She’s got headphones around her neck. She’d have been oblivious to the initial entry. Anyway, two attackers would have brought the women together, played one off against the other. The leverage of torturing one would have yielded quicker results. Ester was shot in the shoulder, not fatally, but it happened in the boy’s bedroom.’

  ‘So he grabbed Esther as she makes a run for it. After her mother was dead.’

  ‘Yes. Note the single bullet to the chest. It’s execution-style, but not the kind of overkill we saw at Vallance Road. Your assassin here just wanted to kill them. So he gets Esther and she takes him to her brother’s bedroom.’ She led Davis along the corridor and into the room. ‘He’s the key to this. Whatever the gunman wanted, it’s something to do with the boy, and it’s something to do with this room. And whatever it was, Esther told him, or as much as she could.’

  ‘How do you know she told him?’

  ‘Because it all ends here. She was standing here when she was first shot. Single to the right shoulder, designed to inflict pain. Your gunman is left handed, incidentally.’ Leila stood against the desk with her back to the broken monitor. ‘He then pushes her out of the way, against the bed and shoots her twice more, fatally. Very quick.’

  ‘That agrees with what the witnesses tell us,’ Davis said. ‘There was a gap of about a minute and a half between the first and second groups of shots.’

  ‘They heard them?’

  Inspector Davis shrugged. ‘The initial call-in was for muzzle-flash, seen from a flat over in Northolt tower. Witnesses closer in all say the same thing: they thought heard something, but they can’t be any more specific.’

  ‘Then they’re being willfully deaf. Low velocity bullets, yes, but no silencer. This guy likes to work close up and discretely. A five inch silencer on a five inch barrel, he couldn’t have got the angle needed to shoot down into her shoulder. Unless he was seven feet tall, and then I’d hope even here he might have been seen. Did anyone actually see anything?’

  ‘This is the Farm – what do you think? They keep crime low here by dealing with it themselves, not by talking to us.’

  ‘He was here maybe two minutes. He knew exactly what he was looking for.’

  ‘Impressive. Any chance you can you tell me what that was?’

  ‘I take it you’re being sarcastic, but yes, I can. Or some of it. Look at the void on the desk. There’s blood spatter, except here,’ she indicated a clear rectangle near the front of the desk.

  ‘Forensics saw it. There’s another smaller void at the back.’

  Leila shone her torch towards the right rear of the desk. There was a light spray of blood droplets, then a space of about four inches, then another couple of tiny red marks. She leaned over and saw a firewire cable slumped on the floor – the only untidy cable down there. The computer had been moved and opened.

  ‘External hard disk,’ she said. ‘It’s what we would have expected. He probably stripped the internal one as well; you’ll have to get one of your techs to check.’

  ‘But you think this larger void is more important?’

  ‘Yes. There were papers here.’

  ‘Or a book.’

  ‘The boy doesn’t have any books. The void is the size of A4 paper. There’s a fast laser printer in the corner.’

  ‘OK. Paper.’

  ‘Which is curious. A computer geek is working on a something: what does he need to print out?’

  ‘Whatever he’s finished.’

  ‘No. A finished file has a purpose. It gets uploaded, or run, or shared. It’s done. He printed something he was still working on, something he needed to see in black and white.’

  ‘A complex bit of the programme he was writing? You think he needed to work something out on paper?’

  ‘Maybe. It might just have been a to-do list. But it was important to him, and it was important to whoever shot his sister and mother. The gunman took the hard disks; he also took those papers. And he made no attempt to disturb any of the other equipment, other than to break one monitor, which would have been just to intimidate the girl.’

  ‘Right. So the million dollar question is: do you think this was this one of the Vallance Road gunmen?’

  ‘I have no idea. It does seem to be too much of a coincidence that the methods are so similar, though the motivation was slightly different. At Vallance Road they were fast, triple-tap executions. That means there was a message being left. This is more like aggravated burglary. There was no intent to intimidate other people in this community, just to steal the computer kit and eradicate witnesses. Plus, there’s no obvious connection between the women who knew our bomber, and this family. And you say there’s no sign of the brother?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Canvas the area. This doesn’t feel like a kidnapping. The most likely explanation is that he was absent throughout.’

  ‘Rioting?’

  ‘No. This boy’s a computer geek. Most of his friends, if he’s got any at all, will be on line. If he’s got any political leanings, they’ll be of the conspiracy theory type. He trusts his computer, not people. He won’t have gone far. He’s either hiding on his own or is being hidden close-by. And it’ll be dawn soon. He’ll move at first light.’

  ‘We’ll get onto it.’

  ‘Right now. If this is connected to the Vallance Road shooting, it’s connected to the attack on the hotel this morning.’

  ‘You think he stumbled onto the identity of the cell?’

  ‘It’s the only thing valuable enough right now to kill his family for.’

  ‘Why? Terrorists aren’t concerned with anonymity. They’ll tell us themselves who they are soon enough.’

  ‘This lot are going to a lot of trouble to conceal their identity, and there’s only one reason why they’d do that.’

  ‘Because this is an ongoing operation,’ Davis said. ‘Phillip Shaw’s a threat.’

  ‘Exactly. And your gunman took a picture off the wall. He knows what Phillip looks like now. We need to find the boy, and quickly. If we don’t find him before they do, there’ll be nothing to stop them.’

  Day Two

  18

  Leila was woken by a tap on the window above her head. She’d arrived back at Scotland Yard at 5.50am and had taken the opportunity for an hour’s shut-eye in the passenger seat of her Peugeot.

  Another tap.

  ‘DS Reid,’ a voice said. She turned her head stiffly and looked up into the face of DC Steve Jones. He was holding a paper cup of coffee. Reid wound the window down.

  ‘Thought you might need a liquid refresh,’ Jones said, handing the coffee to her. ‘DCI Lawrence is coming in at eight.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  Leila took the plastic lid off the cup and threw it behind the seat. Jones was a man who knew how to further his career in CTC. In the office she always took her coffee blac
k, no sugar. Breakfast was the exception: cappuccino, plenty of froth and a couple of sachets of demerara. She took a sip. Jones would go a long way with attention to detail like this.

  She drained the last of the coffee as she walked down the corridor to Commander Thorne’s office. There were already a dozen officers milling around, and plenty more in the other offices she had passed on the way. She couldn’t wait another hour for Lawrence to arrive.

  She tapped on the Thorne’s door and went in before he could stop her.

  ‘DS Reid, I didn’t expect to see you here,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d phoned all your intel in last night. Is there a problem?’

  ‘I’m hoping you can tell me. Have we found Phillip Shaw yet?’ she said. She sat down opposite her boss, again before he had chance to tell her not to.

  ‘Shaw?’ He spread the files on his desk. ‘The second shooting…’

  ‘Double assassination in Broadwater Farm last night. I said we needed to find him as a matter of priority.’

  ‘It’s… in the system. We’re stretched thin on leads that are going nowhere.’

  ‘Well this one isn’t going nowhere. We need to get Shaw out of the system and into action.’

  ‘You think he’s something to do with this?’ He opened the file and scanned the first page of the report that Inspector Davis had copied through to CTC.

  ‘Yes, I think he’s something to do with this,’ Leila said. ‘His family wouldn’t have been killed if he wasn’t.’

  ‘But what’s the connection? They’re black, they’re not Muslim, they’ve no political affiliations. They’re just ordinary people.’

  ‘All terrorist operatives are just ordinary people. That’s how they do what they do.’

  ‘You think the Shaw boy’s part of the cell?’

  ‘No, I don’t. I’m just saying his ordinariness doesn’t mean anything. He’s not a terrorist, but I think he knows about them. I think he found something and someone needed to make sure he didn’t tell us about it. We need to get to him before they do.’

  ‘OK. I’ll get the Gang Unit onto it. They’re our best chance at Broadwater.’

  ‘Let me know when they find him.’

  ‘Your shift ended about six hours ago, DS Reid. You’ve done what DCI Lawrence asked you to do. I don’t remember recalling you for today’s shift.’

  ‘My shift doesn’t end until this does. We’re closing in and I need to be here. So, where are we with the bomber?’

  ‘Remember who you’re talking to, DS Reid.’

  ‘My apologies, Sir. Can you tell me if we got anything from Jaafar’s safe?’

  Thorne sighed deeply.

  ‘His tip-off was good,’ he said. ‘Ghada Abulafia kept her passport and a small amount of cash with him, along with a bank deposit book with a balance of two hundred and eighty pounds.’

  ‘What do we know of her?’ Leila said.

  ‘Immigration have confirmed she was a Palestinian national who came here with her father, Ibrahim Abulafia, in January 1988, age thirteen, claiming refugee status. She became a naturalised British citizen in 1990 and lived with him until 2006, working agency shifts for various hospitals as an orderly. She had an address in Wembley for six months, then left when the tenancy was up for renewal. After that, we’ve got nothing. She went dark.’

  ‘For nine years?’

  ‘Jaafar has confirmed that she spent some time at the Vallance Road flat in the last year, but was not a permanent resident. We’ve got nothing else yet. The murdered women may have known more, but Jaafar himself had hardly spoken to Abulafia.’

  ‘OK, so they came here early 1988. That’s the beginning of the first intifada,’ Leila said. ‘Where did they come from?’

  ‘Silwan in East Jerusalem. It would account for the level of politicization.’

  ‘Except Ibrahim emigrated. Hardly the actions of a highly politicized man. Plus they were legal: background checks would have thrown anything up when they were naturalised.’

  ‘The father’s background is murky.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Just that. It’s a sealed file. SIS deny any knowledge of him, but it’s possible he was an informant. Either way, he’s been a model citizen since he arrived here.’

  ‘Are we giving any more credence to al Sahm in this?’

  ‘It’s a working title. SIS are reporting anything they’ve brought in on the ground overnight at the eight o’clock briefing. I’m assuming you won’t be there.’

  Leila looked at him but he gave nothing away. She wasn’t sure whether that was an order or just an acknowledgment that she was working to her own timetable. Not that she cared either way. She had no intention of being at the briefing.

  ‘So what are we doing with the father?’ she said.

  ‘His flat in Ealing’s under surveillance. He’s a cleaner for London Underground. His shift starts at eight. There’s nothing in his record to suggest he knew anything about this, so for now we’re just watching him.’

  ‘Why not bring him in?’

  ‘If he is operational, he’ll clam up or give us deliberate false leads. Watching him is far more useful right now. Whether he just clocks on for work as normal or tries to make contact with anyone else, we’ll be there. We can pick him up if necessary.’

  ‘Come on. You can’t kid a kidder. If this was anyone else, you’d have him in the cells by now. SIS are doing more than denying him, aren’t they?’

  ‘They assure us he’s not involved. If we want any more than that, we’ll need a warrant from the Home Secretary. My guess is even then they’d delay us until next Christmas.’

  ‘So he was an informant. How interesting.’

  Thorne shrugged. ‘We’re strictly hands off. Of course, if he was ever working for SIS, it makes it highly unlikely he’d be involved in this.’

  ‘I agree. Even if they screwed him over, this would be way out of proportion. Send his address to my cell. I want to go and check out the flat.’

  ‘You might think you’re still on duty, but I’m telling you, you need to take a break. And I expressly stated that I don’t want you hands-on with anything sensitive. You’re acting as a consultant for now, nothing more. Dyson and Page are on the ground at the flat. They’ll go in when he leaves.’

  ‘Dyson and Page’ll go through there like a couple of elephants,’ Leila said. ‘Right now, we don’t want to spook him. If you’re right and he’s an ex-informant, he’ll be hyper-aware of being watched. Get them to tail him. You don’t want me anywhere near suspects, so I’ll make sure I don’t see him when I go in.’

  ‘You are unbelievable.’

  ‘But I’m what you need right now. Sir. Let me take a look at the flat. He’ll never know I was there. I can get a handle on him if I can see where and how he lives. He’s the only live link we’ve got back to al Sahm, and even that’s tenuous.’

  ‘What makes you think there’s anything worth finding there? Surely if he knew anything he would have been targetted by the assassin too?’

  ‘He may be on their list. Or it may be that they daren’t risk taking him out because it would lead us to look into his family. They don’t know we’ve identified Ghada yet.’

  ‘Or more likely SIS are telling the truth and he knows nothing at all.’

  ‘Maybe not, but there are two reasons why it’s worth me taking a look. Firstly, you say there’s two hundred and eighty pounds in Ghada’s bank account. That’s a decent float to keep you alive day to day, but not to run an operational cell. There’s more money somewhere. Secondly, what did the passport tell you?’

  ‘Nothing. It had never been used.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. She has it so she’s got ID. But she’s travelling on another one. There’s probably a whole other identity.’

  ‘And you think it’ll be at the father’s place?’

  ‘It’s a long shot, but it’s the only shot we’ve got. Send a copy of her passport photo and details to my phone so I’ve got a point of reference
. We need to move fast on this.’

  ‘You still think they’re going to strike again?’

  ‘I’ve no evidence for it, but I’m sure they’re planning to. They haven’t done it yet, so they’re waiting for something, something significant. We’re less than four and a half hours to the time the first bomb went off yesterday. If they are going to strike again, that would be a symbolically powerful time to do it.’ She stood to leave.

  ‘And please,’ she said, ‘get Trident to find Phillip Shaw. He might just be able to tell us who al Sahm is, and what they’re planning to do next.’

  19

  Raha Golzar woke in her cell in Low Newton Prison at six, exactly as she always did. At eight she ate breakfast, showered, then returned to her room. Same as always. She waited, but this time she knew what she was waiting for. If she was being moved, the unit’s Clinical Director, Dr Penhalligan, was going to have to sign off on the transfer.

  He arrived a little before nine.

  ‘Good morning, Raha,’ he said from the door.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said.

  ‘Are you well?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Taken your medication this morning?’

  She looked up at him. ‘I’m not medicated. I’m on anti-allergy drugs for my… challenged immune system, not anti-psychotics.’

  ‘Your file says you’re a paranoid schizophrenic,’ he said with just a hint of a smile. Golzar just looked at him.

  ‘Still not talking?’ he said. ‘Raha, I know you’re not a schizophrenic. I know you shouldn’t be here. I know Thorazine made you shake like an old man and flaked your skin quicker than the lupus. But I’d rather sign you off with a clear conscience than throw you into general population with the slightest doubt that you still need our help. So talk to me.’

  ‘Do you know anything about my transfer?’

  ‘Enough. Please, come down to my office and we’ll have a chat.’

  Golzar followed the doctor to a small, softly furnished office. None of the nurses paid her any attention. Never in fifteen months had she been violent or even disrespectful. They had even less idea why she was there than she did.