One was of Neville.
The other of Lisa.
The two policemen had already studied the pictures Christ alone knew how many times that day.
Mind you, it gave them something to do while they sat in the unmarked car about twenty yards from Kenneth Baxter's house.
Both men were dressed in jeans, Hagan wore a faded blue shirt, Wells a T-shirt which bore the legend: all this and money too.
He put one foot up on the dashboard and started flicking idly at the laces of his trainers.
Around his feet lay a couple of discarded Styrofoam cups and a McDonald's bag stuffed with empty quarterpounder cartons and soiled napkins.
The car could do with a good clean on the outside too, Hagan mused, noticing the thin layer of grime covering the bonnet. Also there was a huge streak of bird shit on the windscreen. He thought about flicking on the wipers to dislodge it but then decided against it.
'It's a pity we're not watching sortie bird, isn't it?' Wells said.
'What?' Hagan murmured.
'This stakeout stuff.'
Hagan smiled.
'You've been watching too many bloody American cop shows,' he said, flipping open the glove compartment and pulling out the packet of wine gums inside. 'Stakeout.' He grunted.
'Well, that's what it is, isn't it?' Wells protested. 'We've been sitting watching Baxter's place for the last three hours.'
'It's not a stakeout, it's surveillance,' Hagan reminded him.
'Stakeout sounds better though, doesn't it? It sounds more exciting.'
'I suppose so,' Hagan said, offering the wine gums to his companion, who took a red one.
'Claret,' he said, reading what was printed on the confection. 'That's a load of bollocks, isn't it? I mean, they call them wine gums but they've got no wine in them. At least liqueurs have got real booze in them. I used to eat them when I was a kid. The sherry ones. I used to bite the ends off, suck out the sherry then chuck the chocolate away.'
Both men laughed.
'My gran always used to have this big box of them,' Wells continued. 'Me and my brother bought them for her every Christmas then ate the lot.'
Hagan pushed another wine gum into his mouth and chuckled, glancing out of the side window.
He was the first to see Baxter emerge.
'Rob,' he said, still chewing.
Wells looked over.
'You call in, I'll follow him,' the younger man said.
He watched as Baxter strode down the road, long legs eating up the ground.
Wells snatched a two-way from the back seat, jammed it into the pocket of his jeans then climbed slowly out of the car. He leaned against the vehicle for a moment, glancing to his left and right, hoping his act of nonchalance was working
'Don't lose him, for fuck's sake,' Hagan said, watching Baxter in the wing mirror. 'It looks as if he's heading towards the cemetery.'
Wells ran a hand through his hair then set off.
He was about thirty yards behind his quarry on the opposite side of the road.
Hagan waited a moment longer then reached for the radio.
4.27 P.M.
This is bullshit and you know it.
Doyle guided the Datsun over Blackfriars Bridge, glancing to either side swiftly, seeing the grimy water of the Thames snaking through the city like a long, parched reptilian tongue.
Fucking bullshit.
The car ahead stalled and Doyle muttered under his breath, glancing again at the pedestrians nearest him.
In a city of nine million people you think you're just going to spot them?
He waited for the car ahead to start moving again.
Julie Neville and her daughter and, oh, wait a minute, there's Robert Neville too. What a stroke of quite amazing fucking luck.
Doyle shook his head.
The words needle and haystack sprang to mind.
Drive around London, spot the three people you need to find just like that.
Piece of piss.
The car in front moved off, Doyle drove on, cranking up the volume on his cassette.
'… Living in the fast lane is easy, 'til you run out of road…'
He tapped a finger on the wheel in time to the thumping beat of the music.
'… Friends will turn to strangers when you're out of control…'
As he brought the car to a halt at traffic lights, the counter terrorist scanned those who walked before him.
Will the Neville family please step forward?
Again he looked at his watch. It was becoming a habit. One which he seemed to have acquired the longer the day went on. And with good reason.
In just over thirty minutes, if Neville didn't speak to his daughter, he would detonate another bomb.
God alone knew where, and God had fuck all to do with it.
Bomb.
Doyle suppressed a smile.
Just like old times, eh?
Belfast. Londonderry.
London.
What was the difference?
People had died, more would die.
Trying to find an armed and dangerous man. It had a ring of familiarity to it, didn't it?
Welcome familiarity?
The lights changed to green and Doyle turned left, guiding the car along the Victoria Embankment, the river and the pedestrians to his left-hand side now.
He sucked one last lungful of smoke from the cigarette and jammed it into the already badly overflowing ashtray.
Immediately he lit another.
'… It's a hard life to love…' thundered the cassette.
Doyle shook his head.
They weren't going to do it.
It was as simple as that.
Barring a miracle, there would be another explosion at five.
A miracle.
Julie and Lisa Neville were probably out of the city by now.
Long gone.
Doyle slowed down for the next set of lights.
Come on, think. Where would Neville go? You're supposed to know how he works. After all, he's not that different to you, is he?
Finding Neville was one thing. Finding his wife and kid was another.
Doyle looked at his watch again.
'Shit,' he murmured under his breath.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
He'd known when he climbed into the Datsun that he'd been clutching at straws. That cruising the streets of the capital in search of a missing woman and her child smacked of desperation, but what the hell else was there to do? Besides, he needed to be alone for a while. He'd been around others too long already today.
He needed the solitude which had been so much a part of his life for so long. He needed no company.
Not even Georgie?
Her image flashed fleetingly through his mind and he blinked hard to drive it away.
It persisted stubbornly for a few seconds longer than he would have liked, then was gone.
He sucked hard on the cigarette.
The traffic moved on.
So did time.
4.32 P.M.
The East London Cemetery stretched for roughly half a mile towards all compass points, one of many resting places that seemed like green oases within the desert of concrete, brick and glass that comprised the capital.
Separated from the memorial recreation ground alongside it by a high privet hedge, the cemetery was the usual clutter of headstones, some old, some new, of well-kept and uncared-for graves. Of resting places for those admirably old and some pitifully young.
At its centre was the crematorium. The hub of an unmoving wheel.
A network of paths, some gravel, some Tarmac, wound through the cemetery like arteries. Elsewhere, walkways had been fashioned across grass by the passage of so many feet.
So many mourners.
There was a number of wooden benches too, most of them placed close to the taps which also dotted the necropolis.
Kenneth Baxter walked slowly past one of these taps, glancing at it as it dripped water on to the gravel below.