‘The SAS raised it as a possibility,’ said Kamran. ‘If they get the chance of a clear head shot, what’s the downside?’
‘The downside is that, despite what you see in the movies, death is rarely instantaneous,’ said Drury. ‘You might blow the brain apart but the heart will still pump and muscles can still contract. The headless-chicken thing. I wouldn’t like to bet that a bullet to the brain would stop the trigger being depressed.’
‘Do you have any suggestions?’
‘If you could cut the wires to the trigger, that might do it. I’m not seeing a secondary circuit. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one, of course. And there could be a remote trigger, too.’
‘How would that work?’ asked Kamran.
‘They use them in Iraq when they’re not sure how committed a jihadist is. They give him a trigger but they have a remote switch as well, triggered by a mobile phone. You make a call, the circuit closes and bang.’
Kamran sighed. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear. ‘So what’s the SOP with a suicide bomber?’ he asked.
‘To be honest, most of our procedures are for after the event — dealing with the crime scene, making the area safe, procedures like that. In terms of dealing with bombers in situ, that’s generally left to the negotiators.’
‘What about minimising the damage if there is an explosion?’
‘We just make sure that everyone is kept well away.’
‘What about bomb-disposal officers wearing bomb suits?’
Drury shrugged. ‘The suits we have provide pretty good protection against a vest bomb,’ he said. ‘The top-of-the-range Kevlar, foam and plastic jobs weigh more than thirty-five kilos and would provide pretty good protection. Except for the hands and forearms, of course. They’re left unprotected so that the officer can use his hands to defuse the device.’
‘I was thinking of using them to disarm the men,’ said Kamran.
‘I don’t see that being possible,’ said Drury. ‘The suits inhibit movement and they’d be seen coming a mile off.’
‘Is there definitely no way that the vests can be disabled at a distance?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Drury. ‘That’s down to whoever’s going to be negotiating with them.’
Kamran rubbed the back of his neck. He was starting to get a headache. A bad one. ‘The way things are going, that will probably be me,’ he said.
MARBLE ARCH (12.33 p.m.)
The man who had handcuffed himself to El-Sayed’s son was watching the television anxiously. A blonde presenter was detailing the latest suicide bomber who had locked himself into a pub in Marylebone, not far from the coffee shop.
‘How many is that?’ asked the man, almost as if he were addressing the newsreader. Then he turned and glared at Hassan. ‘How many?’
‘S-s-s-seven,’ stammered Hassan. ‘It was five, then you, and then the pub.’
‘Can I get you something to drink, brother?’ El-Sayed asked the man. ‘Water, perhaps. Or a fruit juice?’
‘No,’ said the man, who was now staring out of the window. There were two armed police, sheltering behind a car, aiming rifles in his direction. He shouted to one of the waitresses, ‘You! Yes, you!’ She looked at him and pointed at her chest. ‘Yes! Stick some newspaper over the window so that they can’t see us.’
The woman left the counter and picked up a copy of The Times. Another waitress gave her some Sellotape and she went over to the window to begin sticking the sheets onto the glass.
‘I’ve got to go home and feed my dog,’ said a woman sitting at the table next to El-Sayed. She was one of the few non-Asian customers in the shop, in her thirties and wearing a green parka with a fur-lined hood over an Adidas tracksuit. Her mousy brown hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and she had applied too much blusher. Her lipstick was also a slapdash affair and she had smeared some across her top teeth. ‘I can’t stay here all day.’
‘Madam, that is a suicide vest he is wearing,’ said El-Sayed. ‘If he presses that trigger in his right hand, it will detonate and everyone here will die and then there will be no one to feed your dog. Now, please, be quiet.’ He turned to the man again. ‘What about something to eat? You must be hungry.’
The man shook his head.
‘May I know your name, brother?’ asked El-Sayed.
He shook his head again. ‘My name doesn’t matter.’
‘It matters to me, brother. We are both men, are we not? We are in this situation together. My name is Imad El-Sayed. That is my only son, Hassan.’
‘You need to stay quiet,’ said the man. ‘If you want to talk, talk on Twitter and Facebook. Tell people that we want the six warriors released from Belmarsh.’ He waved his right arm around. ‘All of you, do it now. Keep sending messages to all your friends. Keep telling them what is happening here. And use hashtag ISIS6 with every message.’
Customers and staff began taking out their phones.
El-Sayed smiled. ‘I never use Twitter,’ he said. ‘I never really understood the point of social media. People need to talk to each other. They need to connect, face to face, or at the very least to hear each other’s voices. I call my friends and family, I don’t text them.’
The man said nothing.
‘At least let me get you a drink, brother,’ said El-Sayed. ‘Some water if nothing else. You must be thirsty.’
The man didn’t look at El-Sayed, but he nodded.
El-Sayed waved at a barista and clicked his pudgy fingers. ‘You, bring him a water. Quickly.’
The barista hurried over with a bottle, twisted off the cap, put it down in front of the man, then scurried back behind the counter.
The man used his left hand to lift the bottle to his lips. El-Sayed smiled and sipped his coffee, then smiled encouragingly at his son. Hassan’s face was bathed in sweat and El-Sayed could smell the boy’s fear. He wanted to tell him that everything was going to be all right, but he had to take it one step at a time.
LAMBETH CENTRAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMAND CENTRE (12.34 p.m.)
‘We’ve identified four of them now,’ said Waterman. She tapped on her keyboard and four pictures flashed up on her screen. All bearded Asian men, all in their twenties or thirties, they could have been cousins, if not brothers. ‘Top left, Mohammed Malik. Top right, Ismail Hussain. We talked about them earlier. Bottom left, Rabeel Bhashir, bottom right, Mohammed Faisal Chaudhry. Rarely uses the Mohammed as a Christian name.’ She pulled a face. ‘Whoops. Can’t say that, obviously. Anyway, we’re reasonably sure that Bhashir is in the church in Brixton. Chaudhry is the bomber in the pub in Marylebone.’
‘What do you mean you’re reasonably sure about Bhashir?’
‘Facial recognition isn’t an exact science,’ said Waterman. ‘A lot depends on the material we’re working with. One of the hostages posted a picture of him on Twitter but it was a side-on view. But even so we’re looking at an accuracy prediction of eighty per cent. We’re more sure about Chaudhry.’
‘And are either of them known?’
‘They’re both known, both on our watch lists, but at a low level.’
‘Then how could this happen?’ asked Kamran. ‘If they were being watched, how did they get suicide vests?’
‘There’s a difference between being watched and being on a watch list. They were considered possible threats, not direct threats.’
‘I’d say this was a pretty direct threat, wouldn’t you?’ asked Kamran. Captain Murray joined them, holding a cup of black coffee.
Waterman held up her hands. ‘Please, Superintendent, don’t go shooting the messenger here. At any one time we have literally thousands of British Asians on our watch lists. Just visiting a relative in Pakistan is enough to get them red-flagged, or posting on a jihadist website or tweeting in support of ISIS. But we don’t have the resources to put every one of them under full-time surveillance.’