‘I’m serious about the loo,’ said Shepherd.
It was late evening when a female uniformed police officer brought the little girl’s parents to Shepherd’s room. A male nurse had brought him a cheese sandwich and a lukewarm cup of tea. Shepherd hadn’t eaten anything since he’d left France and he’d wolfed it down.
The police officer opened the door and ushered the couple in. ‘Five minutes,’ she said brusquely. ‘I’ll wait outside.’
The young uniformed officer who had been guarding Shepherd all afternoon was sitting on a metal chair in the corner of the room, reading a copy of the Sun.
‘Any chance of a bit of privacy?’ said Shepherd.
‘I’m not your bloody butler,’ said the policeman.
‘And I’m not going anywhere, chained to the bed, am I?’ He jerked his head at the door. ‘Besides, it’d give you a chance to chat her up, wouldn’t it?’
The officer sighed, stood up and dropped his paper on to the chair. He glared at Shepherd as he left the room.
‘Alone at last,’ said Shepherd.
The man and woman frowned, not understanding. Shepherd hadn’t paid them much attention on the boat. They’d been wrapped in warm clothes, their heads swathed in thick scarves, the man carrying two bulky suitcases, the woman fussing over their daughter. Without their heavy clothing and under the hospital’s fluorescent lights he could see that they were in their early thirties. The man was square-jawed with a two-day growth of stubble, and the woman’s face was pinched with deep worry lines etched into the forehead.
‘How is your daughter?’ Shepherd asked.
The woman stepped forward, took his left hand in hers and pressed it to her cheek. She spoke to him in a language he didn’t understand. They were from Kosovo, Hargrove had said, which would make them economic migrants, rather than genuine refugees, Shepherd knew. The ethnic-cleansing horrors of the former Yugoslavia were a thing of the past, but few economic migrants travelled with a million euros.
‘My wife says we owe you everything,’ said her husband, in halting English.
‘Is she okay, your little girl?’
The man’s eyes glistened, as if he were close to tears. ‘Her name is Jessica. The doctors say she will be good soon,’ he said. ‘Because of you she is alive.’
The woman spoke to Shepherd again, tears running down her cheeks. She looked into his eyes as she spoke, and even though Shepherd couldn’t understand what she was saying he could feel gratitude pouring out of her.
‘My wife says we can never thank you enough,’ said her husband. ‘She is Edita. I am Rudi.’
He stuck out a hand and Shepherd shook it. ‘Tell her I’m a father,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m just glad I was able to help.’
‘You could have died,’ said Rudi. ‘You do not know us but you risked your life to save our daughter.’ He translated for his wife. She nodded and kissed the back of Shepherd’s hand.
‘Where are you from?’ asked Shepherd.
‘Kosovo,’ said Rudi. ‘We want a new life in England. For us and for our daughter.’
The wife spoke to her husband and pointed at the chain attached to Shepherd’s leg.
‘Why are you chained?’ he asked.
‘The police did it,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m under arrest.’
‘But you saved our daughter.’
Shepherd forced a smile. ‘They don’t care,’ he said. ‘All they care about is that I was helping to bring you to England. I’ll probably go to prison.’
Rudi spoke to his wife, then nodded sympathetically at him. ‘I am sorry for what is happening to you,’ he said.
‘It’s not your fault,’ said Shepherd.
‘The captain, he was trying to make us jump into the sea.’
‘He’ll be going to prison too.’
‘He is an evil man.’
‘No question about that,’ said Shepherd. ‘Have they said what will happen to you?’
‘The police say they want us to go to court, to tell what happened. I am not sure that is a good idea.’ Rudi glanced around nervously as if he feared being overheard. ‘The men we paid to go on the boat, they are dangerous. If we help the police…’ He left the sentence unfinished.
‘The police can help you,’ said Shepherd. ‘They might let you stay in England.’
‘That is what they said,’ said Rudi. ‘But I cannot risk my wife and daughter. We will say nothing and they will send us back to Kosovo. We will try again, maybe next year.’ He put his arm round his wife’s shoulders. ‘We are very grateful,’ he said. ‘We will never forget you. What is your name?’
‘Tony,’ said Shepherd. ‘Tony Corke.’
‘We will never forget you, Tony Corke,’ he said. ‘And we will make sure that our daughter never forgets the name of the man who saved her life.’
‘I’m just glad she’s okay,’ said Shepherd.
The female officer returned and took them away. Her colleague closed the door and stood at the end of the bed. ‘You jumped into the sea to save a little girl?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ said Shepherd.
‘They said you nearly died.’
‘It was pretty close.’
‘Bloody brave.’
‘Spur of the moment.’
‘No life-jacket or anything?’
‘There wasn’t time,’ said Shepherd. ‘Like I said, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. She went over the side and I went in after her.’
‘There’s not many would have done the same.’
‘The kid was going to die. I couldn’t stand by and watch.’ Shepherd lay back and closed his eyes. He heard the officer walk to the chair and the legs scrape as he sat down.
‘If you want anything, a coffee or whatever, let me know,’ said the policeman. ‘Or if there’s anyone you want me to call, I’ll pass on a message.’
‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ said Shepherd. ‘Just fuck off and leave me be.’ He could have done with some coffee but it was important to stay in character. He couldn’t afford to give the impression that he was more than a criminal facing a jail term.
The Saudi toyed with his salad of seared tuna ni?oise and looked over Circular Quay towards the Sydney Opera House, which squatted by the water like a huge beetle unfolding its wings. It would have been a superb target, but the area around it was too open, the tourists too spread out, and casualties, even from a large bomb, would be limited. He was sitting in a much better target, logistically and politically. The Hyatt Hotel was at the base of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which spanned the entrance to Circular Quay and was one of the most recognisable structures in the world. A bomb in the hotel’s restaurant on a Sunday lunchtime would kill up to a hundred people, and images of the devastation would be shown round the world, the aftermath of the explosion and, behind it, the bridge. It would be as powerful an image as that of the airliners flying into the Twin Towers in New York.
Hotels were practically the perfect target, the Saudi knew, especially American-owned chains. Embassies were good for shock value, but generally more locals were killed than foreign nationals. Hotels were full of wealthy foreigners. The sort that newspaper editors liked to splash across their front pages. It was the way the world worked. Kill a hundred Pakistanis in Lahore and no one outside the country would care. Kill five hundred Nigerians in Lagos and the world’s newspapers wouldn’t devote more than a few paragraphs to the story. But kill a single American in Sydney and it would be on the front page of every newspaper in the United States, and a breaking story on every television channel.
The Saudi chewed a sliver of tuna, but barely tasted it. A young couple were sitting at a table by the window, drinking cappuccino and discussing whether or not to take one of the guided walking tours across the bridge. They had London accents, and the man was wearing a Chelsea football shirt. A German couple at the next table were drinking a bottle of white wine and encouraging their two young children to eat their pasta. One of the children, a chubby-faced toddler, smiled at the Saudi and waved a fork at him. The Saudi smiled back. He imagined a bomb going off in the middle of the restaurant. The flash of light, the explosion, the shrapnel ripping through bodies, the glass exploding across the walkway and into the blue-green waters of the harbour. Dismembered limbs, blood, entrails, the moans of the injured and dying, the screams of the living. The Saudi didn’t make a habit of visiting the targets he intended to destroy, but sometimes it was too good an opportunity to miss. There was little police presence at the harbour, and he’d seen hardly any CCTV cameras. Not that it mattered. There was nothing to connect him with what was about to happen. By the time the bombs exploded he would already be out of the country. His flight to the United Kingdom left at just before five o’clock in the afternoon but the cell who would carry out the operation wouldn’t arrive for another week. They had all been trained and the explosives and detonators were already in the country, hidden in a self-storage facility in Melbourne.