Silent Weapon Read online

  Meanwhile there were three laptops warming up on the kitchen table. Dave took charge of calibrating them. One showed the views from each telescope in separate windows. The others would be put into use the next day, when the unit broke into the girls’ flats and installed hidden cameras and mikes.

  ‘Now,’ Dave ordered, ‘each of you select the shirt you’ll be wearing tomorrow, and we’ll fix the mikes into the collars. And then you’re all going for a last visit to the pub so we can shake the system down and get you comfortable with using them in public. You don’t want to be seen wandering around in broad daylight having an argument with thin air. And Ravi, Sean – get used to carrying these … We’ll put them on to charge when we get back.’

  On the table he had set down two devices that looked like smartphones with a rugged black rubber casing. Sean picked one up and looked at it with interest. The moment you checked the screen you ceased to mistake it for a smartphone. The names of different types of explosive scrolled slowly past the bottom of a flickering graph.

  If there were weapons or explosives on the estate, these two gadgets should let them know.

  ‘We’re going to do a test run under cover of darkness,’ Dave said. His voice and face were flat and cold. ‘Twenty-four hours until the Summit, gents. That’s all we have.’

  Chapter 14

  Thursday 3 August, 10:00 BST

  The anger was still there the following morning. Snatching a few hours in his own bed didn’t do much for it – and not just because he’d slept top-to-toe with Ravi Mitra. Opening his eyes and staring at Mitra’s feet had just brought it all back. Fuck, this is really happening.

  Now Sean, wearing overalls borrowed from the council’s maintenance department, stretched his hands out along the parapet of the sixth floor of Wolsey and gazed around at the familiar sights.

  Home sweet fucking home.

  The edges of Littern Mills were a maze of low-rise houses and maisonettes. It was the three squares at the centre – West, East and South, surrounding a triangle of common ‘park land’ which the locals called ‘the jungle’ – that were where it was all at, as far as Sean was concerned. Each square was surrounded by four towers. So, twelve towers in all. Wolsey was on West Square with Gladstone opposite, Cottingham on the left and Coopersale on the right. Each tower had shopping units on the ground-floor level and flats above.

  Sixth wasn’t quite high enough to escape the smells of concrete, piss and petrol. The square might have been washed clean in yesterday’s thunderstorm, but today promised to be bone dry and the odours were already kicking off in the summer heat.

  ‘Sean, stop looking like you’re enjoying the view.’ Dave’s voice spoke in his ear. ‘You’re at work.’

  They had gear that Sean had only previously seen in the movies. Microscopic, flesh-coloured earpieces that would have been invisible to anyone not deliberately staring down their lugholes. Tiny mikes hidden in their collars – the one drawback was that it meant they couldn’t wear T-shirts – couldn’t be clocked by anyone who wasn’t actively feeling for them, and were set to transmit or receive by a concealed pressel switch on their belts. And the pocket-sized, smartphone-like explosive detectors.

  So, that bit was cool. It was everything else that pissed him off.

  Sean shot a glance across West Square at Gladstone. The towers were all built the same way. Every level had an open shared balcony giving access to the flats, with stairs and lifts at either end. So, from here, Sean could look straight over, and a little bit down, at the fourth-floor balcony of Gladstone and the door to his flat.

  ‘Whatever,’ he said under his breath, and turned to where Ravi Mitra, also in maintenance overalls, was busy breaking into Zara Mann’s flat. ‘Still can’t believe you’re a fucking tealeaf. You kept that quiet.’

  ‘Well, sorry it wasn’t quite as glamorous as grand theft auto …’ Mitra never took his gaze from the keyhole, where he had inserted two slim bits of metal – a pick and a rake. The pick looked like a long, thin metal spike with a hook at the end. The rake was one of several that Mitra had gone through to select for this task: a thin metal shaft with ridges on the end that engaged with the pins inside the lock. He moved it gently back and forth until something clicked, and then twisted the pick to release the lock. The door opened when he tugged on the handle. ‘On the plus side, I never did time in a YOI.’

  ‘No, I bet you just burst into tears and begged to be let off.’

  ‘Got it in one.’ Mitra grinned and pushed the door further open. ‘Suspended sentence and an appointment at the recruiting office. Shall we?’

  He called into the hallway. ‘Hello! Maintenance!’

  They had rung the bell before Mitra went to work. But there could always be someone who was so wasted or out of it they hadn’t responded. Priority One was establishing that the flat really was empty, so he pushed the door shut behind him and they split up.

  Somehow Sean could already tell it was empty. There was a certain deadness in the air. It was a silence that set his teeth on edge. In the past, whenever he wired a car, he had been able to put his mind into neutral, just concentrating on the task at hand. He had always checked around, or posted a lookout, to ensure that he wasn’t interrupted – but if he was, well, he had long legs and he could move them fast. But being in a flat – that was another matter. You couldn’t see who was coming, and there was only one way out. The silence just helped him to picture imaginary owners on the balcony outside, getting closer and closer …

  At least he knew the layout of flats like this. The two doors on the left would be the master bedroom and the living room. Mitra took those. Sean took the two on the right, after the kitchen. Both were obviously young people’s rooms, with single beds and the same kind of decoration – sports photos, school certificates, movie posters. He had to look at the names on the certificates to see which room belonged to who – Zara or her brother Ste.

  One of the unit’s objectives was to establish whether Zara was actually on the estate, or had ever left it. Now they were in the flat, it still wasn’t obvious. All the windows were cracked open as far as the security locks would allow for ventilation in the summer heat, so there was no musty smell of disuse. Zara’s neatly made bed could have been slept in the night before, or last month.

  It was no different from her brother Ste’s or her dad Jamie’s, and it had been confirmed that they were around. Ste was a medical student, placed at Whipps Cross University Hospital. Dad was a long-distance driver. Zara didn’t have a job, wasn’t a student and wasn’t signed on, so there was nowhere to check up on her.

  Sean didn’t remember any of the Manns from when he had lived here. They would have been a bit too respectable for him. A family that could produce a medical student would have steered well clear of the Littern Guyz.

  A bellow of laughter just outside the window made Sean jump about a metre into the room. It was only someone walking along outside, past the kitchen window, chatting into their phone. The voice and laughter receded.

  They had confirmed that the flat really was empty.

  ‘That’s Ravi and Sean complete,’ Mitra reported for Dave’s benefit as he came out of the bathroom at the end of the hall.

  ‘Complete’ meant they were inside. Dave had drilled them all on surveillance-speak but it still sounded weird. Like listening to a bunch of three-year-olds talk about themselves, using their names instead of saying ‘I’. Sean wants a wee-wee. But it was important. It was a way of speaking that always exactly identified who was saying what about where. And it was impossible to mistake for normal talk, so you knew you weren’t accidentally overhearing someone else’s conversation.

  Mitra went on. ‘Flat is empty, and Sean is acting like the cat waiting for its owner to discover it’s crapped in his slippers.’

  ‘Roger, and get on with it. You need to start patrolling.’

  ‘Breaking and entering was never my thing,’ Sean said in self-defence.

  ‘Learn from the best, my
friend.’

  Mitra got a chair from the kitchen and stood on it under the hallway smoke detector. The detector was a white plastic box with a grille and a red test button in the centre. The cover dropped open on its hinge and Mitra went to work.

  ‘You can’t have been that good if you got nicked.’

  ‘True.’ Concentration made Mitra poke his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as he wired the miniature camera and microphone into place, as per Dave’s demonstration back at the OP. ‘Probably shouldn’t have kept on robbing the block where I lived.’

  Sean snorted. ‘That’s just lame. You don’t shit in your own bed – rule number one.’

  ‘Says the man going undercover on the estate he grew up on.’

  Sean rolled his eyes and got to work.

  They had already done this in Emma’s flat on the fifth level, so Sean knew it would take Mitra a couple of minutes to do his thing, first in the hallway and then with the other smoke detector in the living room. He used the time to begin his really close search.

  You move nothing without noting where it is, and then putting it back exactly. Dave had drummed the procedure into them. Mitra would make sure he left no footprints on the chair and he would replace it exactly where he found it. They had been told to look for tell-tales on the doors – small bits of paper, maybe even hairs or bristles positioned so that they would drop down if the door was opened. If they found them, they would put them back.

  All the doors were open, but Sean still clocked their exact angle so he could return them to it when he was done. There would be nothing to tweak the sixth sense of anyone in the Mann family – nothing to make them think, Hang on – someone’s been here.

  ‘That’s Dave getting sound and vision.’ The OP was picking up the signals from the bugs.

  Emma’s flat hadn’t produced anything except confirmation that she was around – somewhere. No clue as to whether she had ever been away; nothing to say whether she was Girl X.

  Zara’s flat was more helpful. In the dirty clothes basket in the bathroom – Sean took a snap of the top layer of clothes so that he could put them back in the exact same position – he found a lightweight, flowery T-shirt and linen trousers. He felt his heart begin to thump louder as he laid them out on the floor and checked them against the CCTV images of Zara on his phone.

  It was an exact match.

  ‘That’s Sean with the outfit Zara was wearing at the airport,’ he reported. Slowly he let himself grin.

  Until then, he suddenly realized, this had all been theory. It still could have all been one big misunderstanding. This was the first confirmation that there was a grain of truth in MI5’s suspicions.

  He simultaneously heard Mitra in the next room and over the radio. His mate’s voice was also biting back on excitement.

  ‘And that’s Ravi with her passport. Not in her name. Exit stamp from Murtala Muhammed Airport, dated two days ago.’

  Grain number two.

  ‘Roger and excellent!’ They could hear Dave’s satisfaction. ‘So she’s back. Take photos, replace and keep looking.’

  There wasn’t anything else – and as Sean was positioning the bathroom door exactly as it had been, it suddenly struck him that there was a significant absence. He went back to the bathroom cabinet and looked more closely at the contents. Hair gel. Deodorant. Two electric razors and two kinds of aftershave – presumably for Dad and Ste. Three toothbrushes and three different kinds of toothpaste, and considerably more than three kinds of what he would basically describe as ‘girly stuff’. Also three towels, but they were all bone dry on a heated towel rail. It was impossible to tell if any had or hadn’t been used that day. Ditto the three toothbrushes, which would have dried out in the warm air.

  But …

  ‘There’s no sign of anti-malarials here,’ he reported. ‘Headache, Strepsils, blood pressure, Wellman – no anti-malarials.’

  ‘None in her room, either,’ Mitra reported. ‘Suppose she could have them on her, though?’

  ‘What’s the big deal with anti-malarials?’ Dave asked.

  Wolston answered. ‘Dave, if she’d come back from tropical regions, she’d have them. Like we do.’

  ‘But we know she’s been back,’ Sean stressed, thinking of the clothes. He closed the bathroom cabinet and went back into the hall. Mitra stepped out of Zara’s room and they looked at each other. It was weird. Why leave evidence that you’ve been there and then moved on, instead of just moving on and making like you’ve never been there at all?

  ‘Roger. We have a result. Well done. Complete your search and get—’

  But Sean didn’t hear the rest of the sentence – because then a shadow moved behind the frosted glass of the front door and a key scraped in the lock.

  Chapter 15

  Thursday 3 August, 10:30 BST

  Training took over. Only boyos and civilians stood rooted to the spot when things went south. Trained lads reacted. The enemy appeared, you went for the nearest cover.

  Which in this case was the bathroom. While the newcomer was still fighting with the lock – Sean wondered if Mitra had broken it – the two lads had got themselves behind the bathroom door. They stood looking at each other, chest to chest, ears cocked for sounds outside.

  Whoever it was had won the battle with the door. It opened and footsteps came down the hall.

  Mitra frowned in thought, then turned abruptly and flushed the toilet. ‘Dunno what the old bat was on about,’ he said loudly as he stepped out into the hallway. ‘There’s no blockage here— Oh, hello!’

  Sean pulled the peak of his cap down as far as it would go without actually blinding him – he didn’t remember any of the Mann family, but he couldn’t guarantee the same would apply in reverse – and followed his mate. Out in the hall, below the dark half-circle of his brim, he could just see a young white man in his mid-twenties staring in astonishment at the two of them.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘Maintenance?’ Mitra said. Sean was happy to let him do the talking. His mate turned round for a moment so that the man could read the council logo on his back. ‘Got a report of a blockage. And you are …’

  ‘I fucking live here and there’s no fucking blockage.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we’d worked that out.’ Mitra pulled out his phone and pretended to check it. ‘So, uh …’ He jabbed at the screen with a hint of desperation. ‘Uh-h …’

  Shit, he’s forgotten!

  They had worked out the details of the cover story in advance. Just in case they got caught like this. But it meant remembering a particular name …

  ‘Mrs Patel,’ Sean said, not looking up.

  Mitra seized on it. ‘Mrs Patel …’

  ‘Do I look like my name’s Patel? My name’s Mann. This is 614. Mrs Patel’s in 514. One level down.’

  Which had been the whole point of the cover story. Oops, sorry, wrong level. Won’t bother you any longer.

  So this was Ste – though Sean had kind of guessed that already. While Mitra kept him talking, Sean studied him, still not giving the guy the benefit of a clear look at his own face. Medium height, skinny, dark hair already matted with sweat on a warm summer morning that was still not as hot as it was going to get. He was wearing a limp, damp T-shirt and baggy cargo pants, and a bag was slung over his shoulder. And someone had given him a nice shiner recently. Sean narrowed his eyes. The dark swelling over his cheekbone meant that Ste’s right eye was pushed a little more closed than the left.

  ‘… look,’ Ste was saying, ‘I just pulled an all-nighter and I’m only here to change my shirt, then I’m due back on shift. And there’s no blockage. Right?’ He ducked into his room.

  ‘Shit,’ Mitra called. He glanced at Sean. ‘They work you hard. What sorta job’s that, then? Bar work?’

  Ste came out again, tugging a fresh T-shirt down over his torso. ‘Trainee doctor,’ he said. He glared down at Mitra. ‘You still here?’

  ‘Just leaving, Mr, uh, Mann. Sorry to have bo
thered you.’ Mitra grimaced at Sean and jerked his thumb at the door with a commanding Let’s go gesture. They exited with as much grace as they could.

  They headed for the lifts and stairs in tight silence. Sean would have liked nothing more than to bellow into the mike something along the lines of Why the fuck didn’t you tell us he was coming? But people tended to notice guys shouting at the air, even on Littern Mills.

  So they said nothing until they reached the lifts. Mitra pressed the call button but Sean took his elbow and guided him to the stairs.

  ‘See,’ he murmured, ‘this is why you kept getting nicked.’

  They walked one flight down, and along to 514. Sean pressed the bell.

  ‘Supposing she’s in?’ Mitra asked.

  ‘Bluff.’

  They waited, and Sean rang again. When he sensed someone in his peripheral vision, he glanced to his right.

  Ste Mann was peering at them suspiciously from the stairwell.

  ‘Awright?’ Sean called. Mitra gave a friendly wave and Ste withdrew without saying anything.

  ‘OP,’ Sean said, ‘give us confirmation when he leaves the building.’

  They stayed where they were until Wolston reported that Ste was crossing the square. Then and only then did Sean and Mitra set off for the lifts.

  Sean’s furious question still bubbled inside him, but he also had an important observation to report.

  Ste had that shiner. Nice one.

  It was right where Lance Corporal Marshall had thumped Hammond the day before.

  Chapter 16

  Thursday 3 August, 10:45 BST

  ‘Because I was watching Emma’s flat,’ Wolston said through his teeth.

  Sean had put his question to him. They stood nose to nose in Sean’s mum’s kitchen, where the cameras and telescopes were set up behind the blind. Sean’s admiration for the man – for his courage, his leadership, his handling of the airport job – had been put on the back burner.