I remembered the Show History list on my laptop. And I remembered how he single-handedly demolished the men who attacked us on Charterhouse Street. And I remembered what he said.
One in the head and one in the heart.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think you’re involved. But I think you’re on their side.’
‘Yeah, me and sixty million other people!’
I remembered the wild kid he had been. And I knew that wildness was in him still and that it would be there forever.
‘I don’t want you to get into trouble,’ I said. ‘I care about you, all right? I just don’t know you, Jackson.’
He showed me his famous smile.
‘You know me better than anyone,’ he said. ‘You want some Phad Thai noodles? Best this side of Bangkok.’
I stared at him for a moment and then smiled back at him.
‘Some Phad Thai would be great,’ I said.
But I never got the chance to try Jackson’s Phad Thai noodles. We were under the black arches of Waterloo when my phone began to vibrate.
EDIE WREN CALLING.
‘They’ve got another one,’ she said.
And I did not need to turn my head to know that Jackson was watching me, his face impassive, not smiling now.
20
I came into MIR-1 thirty minutes later and saw the big HD TV screen was filled with a head-and-shoulders shot of a bearded man.
The beard was the frizzy kind that is missing a moustache. The man who wore it was light-skinned, pushing forty, with a small pillbox hat perched on his head and hooded eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles. He wore plain grey robes.
‘The victim of the latest abduction is Abu Din,’ Pat Whitestone was saying. Edie Wren, Billy Greene and Tara Jones watched her from their workstations. They must have renewed Tara’s contract, I thought, with a stab of elation.
‘Abu Din was born in Egypt and granted asylum in the UK,’ Whitestone continued. ‘He is wanted for inciting acts of terror in the United States but currently resisting extradition from the UK. His appeal is pending at the European Court of Human Rights.’ She nodded. ‘Pretty much your basic hate-preaching scumbag.’
‘You back?’ I said.
‘I’m back.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘I can’t find the Abu Din hanging online.’
‘They haven’t hanged him yet,’ Edie Wren said. ‘Or at least they haven’t put anything online.’
Billy Greene brought me a triple espresso and I smiled at him gratefully. It wasn’t from the Bar Italia, but it would do for now. I bolted it down in one.
‘What have they posted about him?’ I said.
‘Nothing that we can find on any of the usual platforms,’ Edie told me. ‘We’ve got an open line to Colin Cho at the Police Central e-crime Unit. The abduction is generating a lot of traffic. PCeU are on it. But Albert Pierrepoint himself is unusually silent.’
‘How do we know it’s them?’ I said. ‘They could be copycats. They could be self-radicalised. There are enough people out there who feel like they are on their side. How do we know it’s the Hanging Club?’
‘Educated guess,’ said Whitestone. ‘We’ve got CCTV of Abu Din being lifted. They’re far too slick to be fan boys. Have a look at this, Max. Can you run it, Billy?’
Greene’s fingers flew over his keyboard and the mugshot of Abu Din was replaced by black-and-white footage from a CCTV camera. The camera revealed a crowd of men kneeling in the road of a suburban street. A figure in grey robes stood before them. Abu Din. High above the street I could see the curved arch of Wembley Stadium, glinting in the sunshine at the end of another beautiful day.
‘Abu Din was at the Wembley Central mosque, but they kicked him out after he went on Newsnight and praised the murder of six British soldiers in Afghanistan. So now he preaches in the street.’
I wanted another triple espresso.
‘Abu Din,’ I said. ‘Why does his name seem familiar?’
‘He’s the one they call the Mental Mullah,’ Billy said. ‘I’ll just fast-forward over the prayers, shall I?’ The CCTV footage began speeding up. ‘The papers tagged him the Mental Mullah after he said the killing of British soldiers was “a glorious thing”.’
‘He gets fifty grand a year in benefits for his wife and six kids,’ Edie said. ‘I reckon we must be the mental ones.’
‘The papers had to stop calling him the Mental Mullah because it was considered offensive by mental health charities,’ Billy said. ‘Ah, this is the money shot.’
The CCTV footage slowed down to real time. There were perhaps one hundred men kneeling in the Wembley street. Abu Din himself faced them in his plain grey robes, flanked by what looked like a couple of bodyguards. Both of Abu Din’s index fingers were pointing to the heavens. At the back of the crowd I could see a solitary uniformed policeman, a black officer with the height and bulk of a heavyweight boxer. I guessed he could handle himself. Watching this street wasn’t an easy posting. The uniformed cop was standing directly in front of a young man in a wheelchair. There was a woman behind the wheelchair. Their dark good looks were so similar they could have been twins. The young man was holding up a placard. I could just about make out the words.
My Country – Love It or Leave It.
‘Coming up now,’ Billy said.
The policeman suddenly started to run. The woman gripped the handlebars of the young man in the wheelchair and seemed to hunch, as if expecting a blow. And then the crowd were all getting to their feet, pointing at something out of camera.
They began to scatter.
Running for their lives.
A black transit van was being driven at speed. It appeared to be heading straight for the crowd but suddenly it mounted the pavement to avoid the young man in the wheelchair. I automatically looked for anything that would make the transit van unique. Dents, scratches, words that had been sprayed over. But there was nothing. There was brown duct tape plastered over the registration plate. Simple but effective.
The crowd had done a runner. Apart from Abu Din, who was wagging an admonishing finger at the black van.
He was still wagging it when Albert Pierrepoint got out of the van. And then another Albert Pierrepoint. The faces of the two kindly uncles scanned the street. At the top of the screen I could see the young uniformed copper on his belly, radioing for assistance. Another kindly uncle sat at the wheel of the transit van, gunning the engine.
‘Albert Pierrepoint masks,’ I said. ‘Nice touch.’
‘And the duct tape over the registration plates is an even nicer touch,’ Whitestone said. ‘Whoever they are, they know exactly what they’re doing.’
Abu Din’s bodyguards were nowhere to be seen as the preacher was bundled into the back of the black van without ceremony. It began to reverse at speed down the suburban street and then it was gone, the street gradually filling with worshippers watching it leave, the uniformed copper slowly getting to his feet.
Billy hit a few buttons and the big screen became the standard CCTV grid of nine, all of them views of fast-flowing evening traffic.
‘The CCTV followed them on the North Circular heading in an anti-clockwise direction and then we lost them. And then we picked them up again.’
The grid was replaced by a single still image of the transit van burning on what looked like the surface of an abandoned planet. In the background I could see the faded sign of a giant oil company.
‘They switched vehicles,’ I said.
‘Disabled the cameras in this abandoned petrol station and torched their old ride,’ Edie said. ‘So we’ve got one CCTV camera for every person in London but it does us no good at all because we don’t know what we’re looking for.’
Telephones suddenly began to ring, chime and vibrate. Edie scanned a text on her mobile.