The media had got hold of the fact that armed police had made arrests at a house in Eccles that were thought to be connected in some way with a shooting incident at a warehouse on an industrial estate off the M60, but so far it hadn’t leaked out that a terrorist plot had been disrupted, or what the intended target had been. Jackson’s death had gone unmourned in the Manchester metropolitan area, while the newspapers had been spare with the usual effusive eulogies for a murdered policeman – word seemed to have got round about McManus’s less savoury activities.
And any sympathy Liz might have felt for her former lover disappeared when Halliday rang her. ‘You know,’ he said after congratulating Liz on the arrest of the terrorist suspects, ‘I felt guilty that I was somehow responsible for the woman Katya’s death – by tipping off Jackson accidentally somehow. But I’ve discovered it wasn’t anything I’d done. McManus was in the police station the night Katya and the other girls were brought in. The desk sergeant told me it was McManus who got her released first – I guess to alert Jackson that she was an informer.’
On that night – really, very early morning – when the Atiyah house was being entered by armed police, a search party had been busy back in the warehouse. It had taken them almost three hours to find the weapons hidden in the lorry, and it would have taken longer than that but for a stray remark from one of the Dagestani women the police had begun to interview. She complained about how long the journey had taken. She said that the driver was forever stopping to fill up – yet he wouldn’t let them out at the petrol stations to stretch their legs or go to the toilet. Since lorries of that size had enormous petrol tanks, this continual stopping for fuel seemed peculiar.
It was then that they checked the fuel tank itself, where they soon found that half of it had been fitted with a metal partition. In the newly created compartment they found twenty AK-47s wrapped in oilskins, grenades in metal containers, and box after box of ammunition clad in bubble wrap. It was an ingenious hiding place, and a stupid one, since a stray spark and some leaked petrol fumes could have set off the ammunition and blown the lorry sky-high.
Liz remained concerned about Peggy Kinsolving, whom the doctors had told to take six weeks’ sick leave. Peggy had been through the mill, with fragments of shrapnel embedded deep in her arm. Some had chipped the bone, and it had required two bouts of surgery to remove them all and repair the bone. She’d been in Manchester Royal Infirmary for more than a week as they monitored her for shock and infection.
Liz had visited her just hours after the tumultuous events at the warehouse had concluded with the arrest of the jihadis at the Atiyah house. She had found Peggy not long out of a first operation on her arm, propped up in bed and still looking dazed and shaken. A TV set on the wall of her room was showing the game between City and United. Liz sat down and they watched together in silence. As the camera panned around the stadium, which was packed to the rafters with noisy fans, waving, cheering and singing, they looked at each other. Liz voiced what they were both thinking.
‘Look at them,’ she said. ‘Think what that would look like if Zara and his friends had got through. If they’d got those guns and grenades in there, into different parts of the stadium, they could have killed hundreds of people before anyone stopped them.’
The two were silent; wild cheering filled the room as a man in red scored a goal. ‘I can’t forgive myself for not checking the message Mrs Donovan left with the Thames House switchboard when I first got it. We could have picked up the terrorists hours earlier and arrested Zara before he ever came to the warehouse.’
‘I’m not sure about that. We needed to have Zara go where the weapons were to have a good chance of prosecution. Anyway there’s no point in beating yourself up. As it’s turned out they were stopped. Thanks to you and everybody else working on this case, it didn’t happen.’
‘Yes,’ replied Peggy, reaching out with her good arm for Liz’s hand. ‘And that includes Martin.’
Liz nodded, her eyes filling with tears.
Now, weeks later, there was still a lot more investigation to do both for the police and Liz’s team before any trials could take place. Research into the young Atiyah’s finances had unearthed a recent series of deposits into his bank account, totalling £177,000 – deposits which to Liz’s fury, the particular branch had never thought to question, as if it were entirely normal for a student from Eccles to have that kind of money at his disposal. It had proved possible to trace the money to a Lebanese bank, which had so far been stubbornly slow to assist with British efforts to uncover the money’s original source.
Following the spider web of connections from Atiyah back to his controllers in the Middle East was challenging and time-consuming, but Liz consoled herself that there was already ample evidence to prosecute Atiyah and his cohorts. Antoine Milraud, appalled by what his young customer had been planning to do, was cooperating fully with Isabelle Florian in Paris, and had agreed to give evidence in court.
Martin would have been pleased by this, Liz thought, as she stood up and went over to the window of her office. There had been a fall of snow the night before, but it was melting now, leaving a thin layer of slush on the pavement along the Embankment. The Thames was a dull grey and restless, with choppy waves stirred up by the winter wind. Martin had liked to tease her that the Seine was the superior river, and today she would have agreed.
Would she ever stop missing Martin? Even now she could only feel heartbreakingly alone in a world without him. His death had served some purpose, she knew. Had he not succeeded in flushing out Ramdani the terrorist would have warned his colleagues bound for England that they were blown. They would have melted away and Liz would still be searching for half a dozen lethal men. She couldn’t make room for the thought that this was any kind of compensation for Martin’s death – it wasn’t – but at least it gave some meaning to it. He had been dedicated and professional to the end, and Martin would have been the first to scoff at any suggestion that he should have hesitated to act because of possible danger. He knew, just as Liz knew, that risk came with the job.
A knock on the open door of her office shook Liz from her reverie. ‘Come in,’ she said.
It was Geoffrey Fane, and for once he actually looked friendly, almost shy. ‘Elizabeth,’ he said awkwardly.
Liz smiled to herself. There was no point in getting cross; he really couldn’t help it. ‘Hello, Geoffrey,’ she said. ‘I actually do prefer Liz, you know.’
‘Of course,’ he said, coming into the room. Liz went back to her desk and sat down, motioning Fane to a chair. But he shook his head; unusually for him, he seemed to understand that his presence might not be entirely welcome. ‘I just wanted to say how very sorry I was to hear about Martin Seurat. I know you two were close.’ He paused, as if hearing his words and how lame they sounded.
‘Thank you,’ she said simply.
He gave a little cough. ‘I gather you did stellar work up in Manchester.’
‘It’s kind of you to say that. A lot of things didn’t go right.’
‘Possibly, but when do they ever? And you did prevent the very worst happening. Well done.’
Is this why Fane had come? Liz wondered. Gentle commiseration followed by a pat on the back? She’d known him long enough to know there had to be some other agenda.
And so there was. Fane came right into the room now, sat down, straightened his long back and crossed a languid leg over one knee. This was the Geoffrey Fane she knew. She watched him warily, waiting for what was to come. He said, ‘I’ve got a bit of news actually.’