Condor (The Gabriel Wolfe Thrillers Book 3) Page 3

  Then he went back to his novel, leaving his father spluttering impotently in the doorway. He grinned to himself as he heard the old man stamping off to open another bottle of the foul, cheap red he tipped down his neck while marking his students’ essays about Maoism and the Rise of Chinese Self-determination, or Bourgeois Concepts of Independent Thought: A Marxist Critique.

  The year Jardin had been studying for his Baccalaureate, his parents had been killed by riot police attempting to dispel a student protest outside the American embassy in Paris. Finally, they had swapped their textbooks for placards and been killed for their troubles, a bullet each from a gendarme’s assault rifle. Surprisingly, for a couple of Marxist academics, they had amassed a large and extremely valuable collection of twentieth-century French art. He’d always known that his mother had inherited money from her own mother, the heiress to a tobacco fortune. But the family discourse around capitalism’s evils had led him to believe she had given it all away to good causes. Now, it appeared that at least one of the beneficiaries of her largesse was the Paris branch of a famous international auction house.

  The paintings by Raoul Dufy, Berthe Morisot, Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Chaïm Soutine, and others; the sculptures by Jean Arp, Max Ernst, and Alberto Giacometti. By the time he had disposed of the bulk of his parents’ collection, he was a very rich young man.

  Possessing none of his parents’ scruples about capitalism, the young Christophe Jardin, independently wealthy already, had seen the opportunity in the nineties dotcom boom. He’d tripled his money with a series of stock market investments in companies started by pallid, bearded computer geeks who were now household names. Men so rich themselves that they could now afford to give away billions and still amass more wealth every year than the average man or woman could even dream about.

  3

  Aftermath

  DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR SUSANNAH CHAMBERS liked to initiate all new members of her team with a mantra: “You can call me Boss, Guv, or DCI Chambers. If I invite you for dinner or a party at mine, you can call me Susannah. Call me Ma’am and I’ll have your fucking arse in a sling.” Most opted for Guv.

  Today, the DCI felt as if it were her rear end that was swinging. The uniforms had secured the area of the blast and now Scene of Crime Officers were crawling, literally, all over it. The SOCOs’ white, papery Tyvek romper suits were crimson with blood.

  She ran a hand through her shaggy auburn hair, narrowing her eyes as she surveyed the ruined landscape in front of her. Then she turned to her detective sergeant, who had just returned from a circuit of the devastated junction that until an hour earlier had been simply a crossing of two of the world’s most famous shopping streets.

  “And?” Susannah said.

  “Forty-nine dead at the scene. Thirty-seven from the bus, twelve on the street. Ninety-eight taken to hospitals, sixty-three in critical condition. Fucking hell, Guv, it’s a mess. Looks like a war zone.”

  “Coming from you, Chels, that’s not exactly encouraging.”

  The DS rubbed a hand across her face. She was new to the team, but not to scenes like this one. Chelsea Jones had served two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan before leaving the Army for a job in Civvy Street. Not too far from her old line of work, though. Still tracking down the bad guys and trying to maintain a semblance of law and order.

  After the blast, it had taken just ten minutes before ambulances, fire engines, and police cars had converged, sirens wailing, on Oxford Circus. The police had set up road blocks at Tottenham Court Road to the east, Piccadilly Circus to the south, Hyde Park Corner to the west, and Euston Road to the north. They had, eventually, isolated the scene, with hundreds of uniformed police turning back motorists at side streets and junctions until the area was free from non-emergency vehicles for half a mile in all directions.

  Susannah was the senior detective at the West End Central Police Station at 27 Savile Row. It had taken her ten minutes from the call coming in until she arrived, out of breath, at the top of Regent Street. She knew she had to lose some weight, and after her half-sprint-half-stagger up the broad curved half-mile of pavement, had resolved to go on a diet and join a gym at the very next opportunity. Chelsea had run ahead, the flaps of her black, chain-store suit jacket flying behind her, leaving her boss for dust, shouting over her shoulder that she’d meet her at the top.

  Now they stood together, outside the blue-and-white police incident tape, shoes crunching on broken glass as they walked a little way further up Regent Street.

  “What the fuck happened here, Chels?”

  “It was a bomb, Guv.”

  Susannah turned to her DS, eyebrows raised.

  “You think?”

  “Sorry.” Chelsea blushed, caught out yet again by her own literal-mindedness when her Guvnor wanted insights, not statements of the bleeding obvious. “I mean, you’ve got blast trauma, tons of really bad injuries from shrapnel, civilians the target. Terrorists. Obviously,” she added hastily, to forestall another ironic gold star from Susannah. “Suicide bomber, I’d say. And I found this.”

  She held out her right hand, palm upwards, and unpeeled the corners of a paper tissue.

  Sitting in the centre of its crumpled white wrapping was one of the God’s Tears.

  “That hanky better be a fresh one. If your snot or tears or lippy have contaminated that … thing … you’re going to have some explaining to do.”

  Relieved that she could answer with a clear conscience, Chelsea nodded.

  “Fresh from the packet. I found it outside Top Shop on the pavement. Don’t worry,” she said, as Susannah scowled, “it had rolled right against the wall. I didn’t go inside the perimeter.”

  “Jesus!” Susannah wiped her eyes where smoke from a burning car was stinging them, then planted her hands on her hips. “What kind of sicko fucking evil bastard sends someone onto a crowded bus at Oxford fucking Circus on a Tuesday morning dressed in a fucking ball bearing waistcoat? And what kind of fucking idiot sicko freak goes, ‘OK, yes, my glorious fucking overlord, I’ll do that and blow myself up with a hundred innocent strangers.’?”

  “We’ll get them, Guv. We will.”

  “We’d better,” Susannah said, pushing a hand into her jeans pocket and extracting her phone, which had started vibrating on her thigh. She peered at the screen. “Fuck! That’s the Chief Super.” She put the phone to her ear.

  Chelsea watched, amazed, as her Guvnor dropped the Sweary Mary act and transformed into Super Cop, all clipped, efficient language, and professional calm.

  “Yes, sir,” Susannah was saying. “Crime scene secure, SOCOs evidence-gathering. Roadblocks instituted with a half-mile perimeter, uniforms talking to eyewitnesses plus getting contact details for in-person interviews at the station. My team, and DI Rixon’s and DI Harper’s are all here too, but as you know, there’s not much we can do right now. We’re just … yes, I know, sir, I already cancelled it. No leave until further notice and … well, sir, suicide bomber is our feeling. My DS is ex-Army. Iraq, Afghanistan. She called it and I agree.” Susannah looked at Chelsea and nodded. Little shout-out to the Chief Super for you, girl. Never does any harm. Chelsea nodded back. Thanks. “Yes, sir. As soon as I’m back at the station. Absolutely, sir.”

  She ended the call and stuffed the phone back into her pocket. “Fucking wanker.”

  Chelsea laughed then stifled it with her hand, eyes wide. “Sorry, Guv. Not the time or the place.” Tears started from the corners of her eyes and she wiped them away, frowning, angry with herself for this unprofessional show of emotion.

  “It’s OK, Chels,” Susannah said. “Better to let it out in bits when you can. Either that or have a fucking great cry and drink a bottle of chardonnay tonight.”

  “What did the chief want then, Guv?”

  “‘My office, soon as you can. I want a full briefing’,” Susannah said, slipping from her usual south London accent into a passable imitation of Chief Superintendent Graham Ford’s flattened Manchest
er tones. “Which is going to be pretty fucking short unless a lead falls out of the sky.”

  Both women looked upwards, but the sky contained nothing but wispy clouds, their very insubstantiality an insult to the dead, dying, and maimed victims of Christophe Jardin’s latest blow against sin.

  *

  On Great Marlborough Street, one block east of where Susannah and Chelsea were talking, stood the offices of a discreet stockbroking firm named Arbuthnot & Hammond. One hundred and eighty years earlier, the founding partners, Walter Arbuthnot and Frederick Hammond, had forgone the comforting embrace of the city’s financial district for the anonymity and commercial hurly-burly of the West End. The shattering explosion had brought all the staff out onto the street at the assembly point opposite the Liberty department store. Now that it was clear they were not about to be annihilated themselves, the brokers, analysts, client advisers, IT staff, secretaries, and partners had trailed back inside, some grinding out cigarettes under their shoes, chattering nervously, and casting worried looks around them.

  On the roof of the building, wedged between a defunct brick chimney stack and a sloping section of slate tiles in the centre, was Eloise Payne’s battered and bloody head. Perching on the broken jawbone, its hooked beak jerking at a strip of muscle partially torn away from the left cheek by the impact, was a female peregrine falcon. Her eggs had hatched three weeks earlier and now she had two hungry chicks to feed. The piece of flesh snapped free of its sinews, causing the head to wobble, then tumble from its moorings. The falcon took off in alarm, wheeling away back to her nest on the neighbouring building. The head slithered and bounced down the sloping slates, gathering pace with each jarring collision. On its last bounce, it cleared a low parapet surrounding a six-foot square sheet of toughened glass that roofed the building’s central atrium.

  Toughened it may have been, but the glass was also old. And prolonged exposure to acid rain, ultraviolet light, and the relentless chemical attack of diesel particulates and petrol fumes had weakened it. The head hit the glass dead centre, with sufficient kinetic energy to burst through.

  Annette de Freitas was the senior receptionist on duty at Arbuthnot & Hammond. The emergency evacuation had ruffled her composure. She could feel her heart racing beneath her immaculate cream silk blouse and twin strands of pearls. One didn’t work in central London for thirty-five years without developing a certain sangfroid when it came to sirens, alarms, and screams. However, the fact that this was not a fire drill but a fully fledged bomb attack, not a hundred yards from the office, had frightened her. She was on the point of asking the elderly gentleman in front of her, a longstanding client of the firm’s, to jot his details down in the visitors’ book when the smash from the atrium’s roof made them both look up. Two-and-a-half seconds later, the head and its corona of sparkling glass fragments crunched wetly onto the marble floor. It scored a direct hit on the four-foot diameter Arbuthnot & Hammond crest.

  Annette screamed. The elderly gentleman whirled round, almost losing his balance as his cane clattered to the floor. And two other visitors, waiting on a burgundy leather sofa to be collected and taken to the offices proper, leapt to their feet.

  On impact, the already damaged skull split apart along its sutures. Fragments of bone sprayed out in a rough circle, intermingling with the irregular chips of glass. But the remaining flesh held the major pieces of the skull together in a grey and scarlet mess of brain tissue and blood.

  The two men who had been waiting for meetings turned away. One vomited noisily into a potted dracaena plant. While Annette stood, motionless, her eyes wide with terror, the elderly man barked an order.

  “Call nine-nine-nine. Now!”

  Annette roused herself and snatched the phone from its cradle to make the call.

  “You there, sir,” the elderly gentleman called over to the younger man rooted to the spot by the sofa. “Go and stand by the door. Nobody in, nobody out. Understand?”

  The suited investor, who had only come to discuss his portfolio, now found himself cast in the role of sentry. He skirted the pool of blood and bone fragments, looking down, then looking away, and stationed himself at the mahogany door, his right hand resting on the brass push-bar, looking out onto the street.

  Behind him, the elderly gentleman approached the other visitor, now wiping his mouth on a white pocket square he’d pulled from his jacket.

  “If you’re feeling all right now, I need you to go and comfort that lady behind the reception desk. Her name is Annette.”

  The man did as he was asked, so shocked by the violence of the previous twenty seconds that he would have danced naked on the table had he been bid.

  With the two men occupied, Major-General Angus “Jock” Stuart, (Retd.), reached into the inside breast pocket of his tweed jacket for his phone, and called his wife.

  “It’s me, darling. Going to be late home, I’m afraid … You did? Bloody media. Vultures, the lot of them. Well, anyway, I’m fine. Heard the bloody thing though. I’m at A&H. Damnedest thing just happened … What? Oh, it doesn’t matter. But I’m going to be here for a while … Yes. I love you too. Bye for now. Bye.”

  *

  “Guv?” It was Chelsea. She’d just taken a call.

  “What is it? Please don’t tell me there’s been another one.”

  “No, thank God. Only, Control have just taken a triple-nine. From just over there. Thought you’d want to take it personally.”

  “Why?” Susannah said, turning now to face her DS.

  “Because a head just came through a skylight in an office building on Great Marlborough Street.”

  Without answering, Susannah strode towards the side road opening onto Regent Street, Chelsea at her heels. Then she stopped, causing her DS to stumble in her efforts not to crash into her. She pointed to a man sitting with his legs splayed in front of him against a shop doorway, a tan leather briefcase at his side. His head was down and he had lost his suit jacket somewhere: his shirtsleeves, waistcoat, and trousers were drenched in blood.

  “Go and see if that bloke’s OK. Paramedics must have missed him. Fuck, he’s bled buckets.”

  4

  A Wounded Man

  CHELSEA LEANED DOWN AND TOUCHED Gabriel on the left shoulder. His head jerked up and his blank expression whisked her back to Afghanistan. She knew that look. Slack muscle tone, eyes unfocused but red-rimmed. Like a “Closed for lunch” sign hung on a soldier’s soul.

  “Sir? Are you hurt? There’s a lot of blood.”

  Gabriel looked down. “It’s OK,” he said. “It isn’t mine. I was just helping.”

  “Can I ask your name?”

  “It’s Gabriel.” He frowned. “Gabriel Wolfe.”

  She smiled and squatted beside him.

  “Gabriel, did you see what happened?”

  He wiped a hand over his face, smearing the blood.

  “Not the explosion, no. I heard it, though. I was on Regent Street, up there,” he said, pointing north. “I was early for a meeting so I was having a coffee. There was a girl. She lost her legs. And a man. His head was a mess. Lots of people wounded. A little Arab girl with her parents. She … I did what I could.”

  “I’m sure you did.” Chelsea looked around and spotted a paramedic leaning against a shop window, smoking. She beckoned him over. He levered himself away from the glass, dropped the cigarette and ground it out, then jogged over. “I have to catch up with my Guvnor, but I would like to speak to you again. Later on, when you’re sorted out. I want you to let my colleague here take a look at you. This is me.” She proffered her business card. “Can you call me? As soon as you can?”

  Gabriel took the card, examined both sides, then tucked it into his waistcoat pocket.

  “Call you? Yes. I can call you.”

  Chelsea stood and ran to catch up with Susannah, leaving the paramedic to begin checking Gabriel for physical injuries and the shock from which she was sure he was suffering.

  Inside the office building, Chelsea took in
the scene with a glance. On the rare days when she had some time off for lunch, she enjoyed spending time in the National Gallery, on the north side of Trafalgar Square. This reception area looked like a tableau imagined by one of the old-school religious painters—one with a particularly gory turn of mind.

  The centre of the composition was a misshapen human head, flattened and distorted, but still recognisable. She couldn’t tell the gender from what was left of the face, and the blonde hair was cut short, so no clues there.

  The head was surrounded by a halo of blood and brain matter, in which fragments of glass winked like jewels in the dust-edged shaft of sunlight spearing down from the smashed window overhead. Surrounding it were four people: a middle-aged woman and three men, one elderly, two in their thirties. The woman was being comforted by one of the younger men. She was sitting in a chair by the reception desk, and he was positioned to her side, kneeling and patting her hand, head bent towards her as he whispered words of comfort. The other younger man stood to the side of the door through which Chelsea had just entered. He was holding himself stiff and straight like a guardsman.

  Standing with his back to the gruesome mess in the centre of the floor was an elderly man. White hair cut very short, watery, pale-blue eyes, neatly clipped white moustache, and the bearing of someone used to being in command. Ex-Army. Probably senior. She looked again at the tweed coat with its plum-coloured velvet collar. Was that a row of medal ribbons on his suit jacket, peeping out from the left-hand lapel? Probably very senior.

  He approached her.

  “Name’s Stuart. Major-General Angus Stuart. But you,” he winked, “can call me Jock.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Chelsea said, almost saluting, so authoritative was his tone. “I’m Detective Sergeant Chelsea Jones. They used to call me ‘Bun’ in the Army. Not very imaginative, but, you know …”