The line went dead just as Spate slid back into the room. ‘The car’s ready, Home Secretary.’
A second, and her mental diary had gone blank.
‘For COBRA.’
She let out a low groan and reached for her bag. ‘I’m not getting into a car to travel three hundred metres down Whitehall.’
‘Under the current circumstances, Home Secretary…’
‘There’s a press scrum on my doorstep. I’m bloody well not going to be photographed climbing into a bulletproof Range Rover to go half a block. People need to see that someone’s got some fucking balls around here.’
‘Absolutely, Home Secretary.’
Was that the hint of a smirk she detected? It had better bloody not be. The PM had already put her in a foul mood and, if necessary, she was prepared to get the nutcrackers out. In fact, she was looking forward to it.
9
The COBRA room smelt as if the same air had been inhaled and expelled by successive mandarins, through a filter of tobacco, alcohol, pizza and curry. Buried as it was in a blast-proof windowless basement under Whitehall, to keep the inhabitants breathing it relied on an ancient air-conditioning system that should have been donated to the Science Museum long ago.
As Garvey entered, she paused and looked over the sea of male faces. For a moment she was propelled back to her schooldays, the solitary female in her Latin class. Nothing changes. ‘Sorry I’m late. The PM kept me on the phone.’
The room went quiet. Their petty smugness at having started without her was trumped by the fact that she’d had a private call with the prime minister, as she’d known it would. Curiosity compelled them to listen.
‘He wants to bring in some fresh Muslim voices — “press the reset button” on relations with the Islamic community.’ She looked up. ‘Fine, so long as it’s not wired to blow up in our faces.’
Round the table, uncomfortable titters broke out. Her off-the-cuff remarks had often got her into trouble but she didn’t care; they were part of her arsenal in the guerrilla warfare of politics. She allowed herself a rare smile of satisfaction that she could control the atmosphere in a room full of male self-importance. As she took her seat she scanned the attendees. Conspicuous by their absence were any cabinet members: with the PM away, the imperative to show up was gone. And, in turn, department heads had sent their deputies or their deputies’ deputies. This was supposed to be the decision-making forum for domestic-crisis management. Fat chance.
The only exceptions were John Halford, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, who was in deep conversation with the deputy head of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, and Delamere, the army chief of general staff. The owner of the only unfamiliar face was seated slightly apart, his tie adrift. She glared at him until he eventually looked up.
‘Woolf, ma’am, MI5.’
‘Don’t “ma’am” me, Woolf. I’m not the bloody Queen — yet.’
Another titter went round the room until the sound of a pen tapping a cup brought them to order.
Alec Clements, the Foreign Office mandarin recently seconded to the Cabinet Office, seemed to have appointed himself chair in the prime minister’s absence. He leaned back and spread his hands. ‘Shall we make a start?’
To her annoyance, he had also bagged the head of the table. This constant manoeuvring and jockeying for position was both pathetic and tiresome, but it went with the territory. She cleared her throat and from her seat, directly opposite Halford, raised her voice just enough to make sure she had everyone’s attention. She had already made up her mind what she wanted out of this.
‘Thank you, Alec. Let’s keep this brief, shall we? We all need to get back to our posts.’
Having seized the initiative, she fixed her gaze on the commissioner, who was doing a lot of silent nodding with the army chief.
‘John, shall we start with your update on the Suleiman shooting?’
Halford looked at her, unblinking. He was in uniform, his cap occupying the space on the table in front of him. Perhaps he thought it made him look more powerful. Instead the effect was the opposite. The starchiness of his tunic and the way that the collar rode rather high round his short neck gave him the air of a schoolboy whose mother had got him a too-large blazer to ‘grow into’. Hired by her predecessor, he had never once said anything she agreed with.
Clements’s eyes darted towards her and away again as he attempted to regain control of the room. ‘Ah, we were rather expecting to focus on civil security, Home Secretary. There are a number of pressing decisions regarding co-ordination, deployment and resources.’
Garvey, knowing exactly where this was leading, waved his words away. ‘We’re not putting troops on the streets, Alec. You can forget it.’
‘We’re just talking about a visible presence. To send the message that—’
‘The only message that’s going to send is that we think we’re at war.’
Delamere, the army chief, pursed his lips. ‘Just for the record, if matters deteriorate, there’ll have to be a rethink about the PM’s plans to cut troop numbers.’
She brought him to a halt. ‘You can go on the offensive with the Treasury later about that. What I want to hear from the commissioner is where we’re at with how all this started.’
Clements wasn’t ready to give up yet. ‘We, that is the commissioner and I, feel strongly that there should be national co-ordination to the policing—’
‘Yes, good idea, sort it.’ She smiled. ‘There — that wasn’t so hard.’
She turned back to Halford. ‘So, John, who fired the shot that started all this?’
He moistened his lips with a small serpent-like tongue. ‘Sarah, I really think that at this stage it’s too early to—’
She cut him off with the sweep of a hand that had the makings of a karate chop to his Adam’s apple. ‘If we don’t bottom out how this started we’re never going to get a proper grip on it. As far as the public’s concerned, an unarmed British Muslim, a popular community worker with no criminal record or terrorist connections, who was trying to build bridges with the wider community, has been shot by the police.’
‘Which, as I’m sure you are aware, is complete and utter—’
‘But, nevertheless, a popular view, which we have yet convincingly to counter. Meanwhile the entire Muslim community comes onto the streets and here we are.’
Halford straightened up, as if to launch into a long speech. ‘I’ve put the head of Homicide and Serious Crime Command in direct control. He’s confident that we’re going to find our man in the drug world.’
‘Well, that narrows it down.’
A murmur of amusement rippled round the table. Her and the commissioner’s loathing for each other was no secret in the corridors of Whitehall. She glanced at Clements, sitting back, arms folded to enjoy the joust.
Halford ploughed on: ‘Suleiman’s vocal opposition to drug- and gang-related crime inevitably made him some enemies. But because of the volatile atmosphere on the streets we’re having to move forward with a significant degree of caution to ensure our interventions do not exacerbate the situation by further raising tension in the community.’
‘So — after five days — no actual suspects.’ Garvey glanced at Woolf, but the MI5 man was frowning intently at his clasped hands, as if he had forgotten how to work them.
Halford pressed on: ‘We have a number of persons of interest among the criminal fraternity who had reason to be upset with this individual.’
‘Sufficiently upset to commission a professional hit?’
They all stared at her.
Garvey sighed. ‘From my limited and inferior third-hand knowledge, drug shootings are almost always close range and even then frequently botched, resulting in multiple discharges to get the job done. This was a single shot to the head — or, more precisely, the left temple — a direct hit. The shooter was obviously a trained marksman, perhaps a sniper or—’