‘Of course I did. But he’s in shadow, I’m afraid.’
‘Perhaps he’s just stepped outside for a quiet smoke,’ suggested Detective Inspector Stanley. ‘I do that myself sometimes. Perhaps he lives with a non-smoker.’
‘Hang on a minute,’ said the commander, and pressed his earpiece closer to his ear. ‘One of my boys says he’s got a gun. A machine pistol it looks like. Seems as if he might be waiting for us, sir.’
Challis nodded grimly. ‘Probably using that body in the garden as some kind of bait. Gets one of us to walk up to the door to try and make an arrest and then opens fire.’ Challis turned to Jake. ‘What do you think about him now, eh? I suppose this bastard with the gun is there to stop the garden gnomes being nicked.’
‘I’ll admit I don’t have an explanation,’ said Jake. ‘But I still think we ought to wait, sir.’
‘For what?’ sneered Challis, not expecting an answer. ‘Can your men take a closer look, Commander?’
‘No problem.’
‘We could train some searchlights on the front of the place,’ Jake suggested. ‘Get a loudhailer.’
‘And let him know we’re here, so he can hole up in there? No way,’ said Challis. ‘I’m not going to risk a siege. The last thing we want on this is the press turning up.’
So, Jake thought, Challis was looking out for the interests of the Home Office after all.
Meanwhile the TFS commander had twisted a small microphone attached to his helmet round to his mouth and given the order.
For several minutes there was only the sound of what passed for silence in that part of London: traffic moving on the North Circular, a Nicamvision’s stereo sound system turned up too loud, a dog exercising its owner’s freedom to let it bark its head off, an ice-cream van insanely spewing out its signature tune “Oh What a Beautiful Morning”, and the wind stirring the rhododendron trees.
Jake breathed uncomfortably, still unable to articulate precisely what was wrong with the whole situation. A long dark Mercedes drew up alongside the other police cars. Gilmour, wearing a dinner jacket, got out and extended an index finger in the direction of Challis. Whatever he said was almost immediately forgotten.
The sound of automatic gunfire is not at all distinctive, at least in a West London suburb. There, people are so unused to hearing the sound that it would almost always be attributed to a late or early fireworks party, no matter what the time of year, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred the sound would indeed turn out to be just that. But on this occasion, Jake, Stanley, Challis, Gilmour, and the TFS commander knew better. Instinctively they ducked and two of them, Challis and the commander, even reached for their weapons.
‘What the hell’s happening, Sergeant?’ the commander yelled into his headset.
There was another, more protracted burst of gunfire and then silence again: traffic still moving in the distance, the Nicamvision still blaring, the dog barking more furiously than ever, and the wind in the trees. After a minute or two there were shouts from somewhere in the target’s garden and the TFS commander, fingers pressed against his earpiece like some affected pop singer, stood up.
‘All over,’ he said breezily. ‘The man in the house has been arrested.’
‘Thank God for that,’ said Gilmour.
‘What about the gunman in the porch?’ asked Jake.
‘He opened fire and was shot,’ explained the commander.
‘Dead?’ enquired Gilmour.
The commander frowned uncomfortably. ‘In cases involving terrorists, a termination is the usual policy, sir. Unless there are instructions to the contrary.’ He glanced awkwardly at Challis as if seeking confirmation that no such instruction had been given.
‘And who ordered this operation?’
The commander’s frown grew more profound as now he sensed that something was not quite right. He pointed at Challis. ‘Him, sir. I mean, Detective Chief Superintendent Challis, sir.’ He touched the earpiece again and turned round. Two members of his squad were frogmarching a handcuffed man towards them.
Gilmour stepped squarely in front of Challis as if he meant to kiss both his cheeks like a French general. But the congratulations he offered were bent double with sarcasm.
‘Well done, Challis, well done,’ he said grimly. ‘You’ll get a medal for this. I’ll see that you do. And I’ll be the one who pins it on your chest. With a fucking bayonet. If I’m not mistaken they’ve just managed to shoot one of our own people. An armed guard from Special Branch.’
Challis’s jaw slackened. ‘What? Well we didn’t know, sir. I mean, who’s he supposed to be guarding?’
‘Him,’ said Gilmour.
The two arresting TFS officers presented their charge, a fat, blowing, angry-looking figure with blood pouring from his nose and mouth, the result of a blow from the butt of a machine pistol. His fair hair was dishevelled and his shirt was torn, but there was no mistaking the corpulent figure of the Shadow Home Secretary, Tony Bedford, MP.
‘You will understand that I couldn’t prove this. Not exactly anyway. Some of it’s nothing more than informed guesswork by Sergeant Chung and myself. And it will take a while to include all of this within the context of the official report—’
A day or so later, with Challis suspended pending an inquiry, the explanation for what had happened was supplied to Gilmour, Jake and Stanley by Inspector Cormack of the Computer Crime Unit, in Gilmour’s office at the Yard.
‘Just get on with it, Cormack,’ Gilmour growled. ‘And try to keep it simple.’
‘Well, sir, it’s like this,’ explained Cormack. ‘Wittgenstein must have hacked onto the police computer at Kidlington, possibly with the intention of leaving a message for the Chief Inspector here. But while he’s there he decides to have a look around the system and discovers Sergeant Chung’s random name and number program. He has an idea. He creates a police record in the name of the man he is planning to kilclass="underline" a VMN-negative codenamed Socrates, real name John Martin Baberton — the body that was found in Mr Bedford’s garden. He gives Baberton the kind of background that is just perfect for us: an ideal suspect, and one that we might not be able to resist. And because he has a sense of humour he adds in one or two details, such as Mr Bedford’s home address and Mr Bedford’s picture.’
‘That’s some sense of humour, all right,’ said Gilmour. ‘But where did he get Bedford’s address and picture? That’s what I want to know.’
Cormack winced. ‘It would seem from our own files, sir.’
‘What?’
‘Well you see sir, ECIS has a one-man, one-record database. It would seem that Mr Bedford has a small record. For civil disobedience during the protest marches against punitive coma a few years ago. He was arrested for obstructing a policeman in the execution of his duty.’ Cormack shrugged apologetically. ‘All Wittgenstein had to do was instruct our computer to copy some of Mr Bedford’s details onto a file in the name of John Martin Baberton, sir. The dead man.’
‘He’s not the only one,’ Gilmour said darkly.
‘I’m sorry, sir?’
‘Nothing. Then what did he do?’
‘Well, after he killed his victim, and left him at the foot of Mr Bedford’s garden — at least we assume that he did that first — Wittgenstein then had to activate Baberton’s name as a VMN on the Lombroso Program. To do that he must simply have added Baberton’s name and telephone number near the top of Chung’s random program. If anyone had checked they would have seen that the address he used matched only the address on the Lombroso file and not the fake record held on the police computer which provided Mr Bedford’s address, and said that the one on the Lombroso file was out of date. And of course, there was no manual file for a John Martin Baberton: another discrepancy. Also if Baberton had had a criminal record at the time of his being screened by the Lombroso people it would have been revealed on his identity card.’