Maxine Bendick dried herself quickly, pulled her shower cap off and shook her hair loose. She had it cut shorter when she joined the gym so as to save even more time. After checking her watch she dressed in front of her locker. It might be a bit of madness but taking the thirty-minute lunchtime slot changed her working day completely. On the days when she trained, lunch breaks were something to look forward to, and not just because it meant a change from the tedium of pacifying irate tax payers on the phone. For years she had spent depressing lunch breaks walking to the Metro Market, cramming a plastic container with as much pasta salad in mayonnaisy gunk as would fit, then eating it with a plastic fork, sitting on the tiny green near her office in good weather but, this being England, for much of the year at her desk. Now she had the frisson of the dash across town, the mad rush to get changed and what usually amounted to no more than twenty minutes of training with Pat. Even though it hardly progressed beyond the warm-up it left her invigorated and helped her survive the afternoon. Pat stood for Patricia but Maxine had been quite happy to let her colleagues believe it stood for Patrick and that he was handsome. She had no idea what had brought on the fitness craze, she had no weight to lose, in fact had put on weight as she built up muscle, and didn’t know anyone else at the gym. It had just grabbed her imagination one day and she’d got hooked. Going to the gym meant eating a home-made sandwich in the car while she was driving and less time to chat with colleagues but it was worth it. Even here she didn’t have time to make friends at this pace. She’d seen all four other girls that were in this changing room before but never had enough time to do more than smile and nod at them while she rushed. She crammed the gear into her holdall, pulled on her jacket and slammed the locker. As she hoisted the bag over her shoulder she could feel the hard object in her jacket pocket. She pulled it out. Why she had picked it up when she never used face powder or any make-up for that matter was beyond her. Probably because it was shiny and it meant getting something for free. Perhaps she should offer it to one of the girls. She prised the lid open.
The crack of the explosion and the blue, searing flash were simultaneous. Had she not been blinded and distracted by the agonizing pain of her nose being burnt away by a tongue of flame, she’d have noticed the first third of her left thumb fly off and thud into the open locker of one of the girls. All she knew was that her face was on fire. She didn’t know that she was screaming, she thought it was the others. Running blindly in the direction of the showers she collided with the door frame and fell to the ground. She clutched at the unbelievable pain in her face. It felt sticky.
‘Oh God, oh my God.’
‘What the fuck happened?’
‘Her face just blew up.’
‘Someone call an ambulance.’ Someone was screaming it into the darkness. Or perhaps she was just thinking it. ‘Someone call a fucking ambulance!’
Then there was nothing, just the hammering rhythm of blood in the dark.
The constable in the viz jacket bravely stepped in front of his car, signalling him to stop. McLusky wound the handle and the window dropped in a series of jerks.
‘You can’t come through here, you need to — ’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ He cut him off by showing his warrant card.
The PC stepped back a little in order to fully admire the state of the ancient Polo and tilted his head so he could read the inscription on the bonnet. Could the ID be a fake?
‘Never mind the car, it’s the hard-boiled eggs that are getting me down.’ He left him standing there, one constable who was sure to recognize him in future.
The dreaded thing had happened. Not only had the bomber struck again but only a few hundred yards from the first explosion. There was a message in that he didn’t want to hear. It was a message about who owned the place. At the moment it sure as hell wasn’t him.
The corner of Park Street and Great George Street was busy. The ambulance had already left but the rest of the circus was there. The private little gym had been evacuated and some of its members hung about outside to watch the police machine at work. The entire area was being searched for more devices. He was directed down a corridor past an empty cafeteria. Lanky Constable Pym was standing guard outside the ladies’ changing room further along. On one of the benches in the corridor a female officer was comforting a young woman in a dressing gown. Two more young women stood nearby, looking pale.
All McLusky had to do was follow the voices, the police voices, so different from those of civilians — purposeful, using the vocabulary of incident, procedure, of cover-your-back and make-doubly-sure. In the dressing room he found Austin giving instructions to a young police photographer. ‘Get shots of every particle of the exploded device in situ, get the CSI techies to show you where they all are. Hello, inspector, they managed to find you then?’
‘My mobile needs charging.’ He didn’t mention that he had forgotten to turn on his personal radio until he left the university. He sniffed the air. This place smelled of calamity, of singed hair, roasted flesh, burnt fingernails, gunpowder and sweat, the sweat of fear mingling with that of work and concentration. Blood-spurts covered lockers and benches. There was a pool of vomit on the floor. ‘Tell me what happened, Jane.’
Austin talked fluently about the facts so far established. ‘The victim is a Maxine Bendick. Late twenties. She comes here for fitness training in her lunch break, works with a personal trainer, Patricia Maine, who’s out in the lobby right now giving a statement, but she wasn’t in this room when it happened. She was already talking to her next client. There were four women using the changing room when it happened. According to one girl — ’ he consulted his notebook — ‘a Tamara Tasker, Bendick had changed back into street clothes and was about to leave but stopped and took out a gold powder compact which appeared to blow up in her hand.’
‘Marvellous.’
‘One of her fingers …’ Austin pointed at an open locker containing blood-spattered clothes.
‘Thumb.’ A white-suited technician furnished them with the detail without looking up from his task of scraping something unsavoury off the wall next to the locker. ‘Left hand.’
Austin continued. ‘There you have it. Left thumb. Landed in there.’
McLusky took a good look. It looked like pain, a great deal of pain. ‘Other injuries?’
‘Her face. Apparently her face is badly burnt. The same witness said her face was actually on fire. Yes. Extensive burns to her face and hands.’
‘But she’ll live?’
‘I think so, the injuries aren’t life-threatening per se, unless she dies of shock, of course. Ambulance got here quite quickly for once. Did you know our ambulance service is on the bottom of the league tab — ’
‘Spare me statistics and league tables, Jane, wherever possible.’
One of the CSI technicians piped up. ‘You’re not a football supporter then, inspector? Nor a betting man.’
‘Got it in one.’ It was almost obligatory in the force to like football. He had even tried supporting Southampton for a while just to fit in, but had found it mind-numbing. It seemed a long time ago now when he had still tried to fit in.
The girl would live. But would she want to live once she saw what was left of her face? ‘So. Someone fills her powder compact with Semtex? What’s going on here, d’you think?’
‘Search me.’
‘Where’s the rest of her stuff?’
‘Her bag is over here.’
The pink and white sports bag was sitting on a bench by the door. Austin talked to the nearest technician. ‘You finished with it?’
‘We haven’t touched it. If you must open it wear gloves.’