A Divided Spy (Thomas Kell Spy Thriller, Book 3) (28 page)

Asda was a vast prefabricated barn, as big as an aircraft hangar, strip-lit and packed with customers even in mid-afternoon on a perfect summer day. Huge signs in fluorescent green offering discounted prices hung from metal beams. Old ladies with swollen ankles shuffled around the flower stalls while children, high on sugar and sunshine, screamed with boredom in fruit and veg. Kell spotted a security guard near the automatic doors and approached him. He was checking the messages on his phone.

‘I’m looking for Shahid Khan,’ he said.

‘Haven’t seen him,’ the guard replied.

Kell walked deeper into the store. There was an information desk ahead of him. A poster bearing the slogan ‘Save Money. Live Better’ swayed overhead. He walked up to the desk. A teenage girl with dyed blonde hair wearing a black waistcoat was stifling a sneeze.

‘Bless you,’ Kell told her.

‘Thank you. What can I do for you today?’

She had long-suffering eyes and an intelligent smile. There was a tattoo on her forearm, blue polish on her fingernails.

‘I’m looking for Shahid Khan.’

‘Shahid?’ The girl frowned, shook her head. ‘Not sure I’ve seen him today. Danny!’

She had called out to a passing member of staff, a man in his early twenties with a summer tan wearing outsized trousers and a high-viz jacket.

‘Seen Shahid?’

‘Nah,’ he said, hardly breaking stride. ‘Ask Rosie.’

‘Rosie,’ said Kell, his heart skipping a beat. ‘She’s here?’

‘Yeah. Think she’s on the deli. Do you know where that is, sir?’

Kell said that he could find it and walked as quickly as possible across the store, past aisles of detergents and cereals, stalls with special offers on disposable barbeques. He reached the delicatessen and saw a young woman standing to one side of the serving counter arranging a display of cheeses on a disused wine barrel.

‘Rosie?’ he said, walking towards her.

The girl looked up. Kell saw that the object of Khan’s affection, the focus of his poem of false courage and self-pitying love, was an attractive young woman – perhaps no older than twenty or twenty-one – with pale skin and eyes marked by tiredness and anxiety. Rosie had jewelled piercings in her ears and blonde hair gathered up in a bun beneath a cheap white hat. She frowned when Kell reached out to shake her hand. Her grip was soft and lifeless.

‘Hello.’

She was on duty and too polite to say that she did not recognize this tall, well-spoken stranger, a man she had never seen before. Perhaps he was management.

‘My name is Tom,’ he said. ‘Tom Kell. You’re Rosie?’

‘Yes,’ she said. There was a badge on her shirt with the name printed on it.

‘I wanted to talk to you about Shahid.’

In an instant there was a hardening in her gaze, a collapse in both spirit and civility.

‘I don’t want to talk about him.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t.’ She was moving to one side, bending to adjust the cheeses. ‘I just don’t.’

‘Has he hurt you?’

She looked up, wounded. ‘Why would you say that?’

‘Are you in love with him?’

Rosie reared back, as if the question was both an affront to her pride and an insight of astonishing power.

‘Is he in trouble?’ she said, afraid to look Kell in the eye. ‘Are you police?’

‘I’m not the police,’ he replied. He was aware that their conversation could be overheard by a member of staff serving a customer at the nearby counter. He drew Rosie away from the area, trying to walk her towards a more private space. ‘Why would you think he’s in trouble?’ he asked, taking incrementally slow steps to one side of her so that she was obliged to move with him.

‘He’s troubled,’ she said. ‘He’s confused. He’s got all this stuff in his past.’

Kell was touched by her desire to protect Khan, even as her expression betrayed that she feared both what he was capable of doing to her, and what he might be capable of doing to others.

‘Have you spoken to him today?’

There was a tell in her reaction. She shook her head and said, ‘No’, but her hand covered her mouth as she said the word. She looked down at the polished floor of the supermarket.

‘Not spoken verbally,’ Kell replied, trying to give her an outlet in which she could tell the truth. ‘Just by text. Snapchat? For example do you know where he is now?’

There was a long silence. A bald man in a pistachio green shirt and off-the-peg black suit walked past and said: ‘Good afternoon, Rosie!’ with the insincere bustle of a middle manager on the make. Rosie said, ‘Yeah, hi, Mr Samuels,’ and at last made eye contact with Kell.

‘Who are you?’ she said.

Kell lowered his voice.

‘I work for the security services. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your friend is a concern to us. A very serious concern. Did he tell you about his time in Syria?’

Rosie’s lips were bound together as she nodded slowly, like a child who has been caught in a lie. It was all the confirmation Kell needed.

‘You won’t be in any trouble, Rosie. I promise you,’ he said. ‘But you must help me find him. We can help him together. But we must do it now.’

He had pushed too hard. He was the law, after all. He was the police and the enemy. He was the kind of man who had bullied her friends, the kind of man Khan had professed to hate. An instinctive clan loyalty flashed across Rosie’s face. She would not be moved to help Kell. She did not trust him.

‘I think you should go,’ she said.

‘I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible.’ Kell knew that this was just a moment of bravado. Push her and she would quickly snap. ‘This man is a threat to the public. If he does what I think he’s going to do, and it’s shown that you failed to help me, you could be in a lot of trouble.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

The question didn’t suit her. The girl was too decent, too kind to fight. There was no real anger or violence inside her: only an awful melancholy, a frustration for what had been gained and what had been lost.

‘I’m asking you to help me, Rosie. I’m asking you to help all these people.’ Kell swept an arm around the vast barn of the superstore, at all the shoppers and shelf-stackers and middle-managers whom Khan would murder as nonchalantly as he would lift weights in a gym. ‘He’s a sleeper agent for ISIS. He has been planning an attack in Brighton. I think you know that, or something like that. I can see it in your face. I can tell from the way that you’ve been talking to me. You know something, don’t you? You’re scared and you don’t know what to do.’

She broke then. Quickly and straightforwardly. There was a slump in her posture. Rosie reached into the back pocket of her jeans and began to mutter something that Kell could not hear. He asked her to repeat it.

‘He called me at lunchtime,’ she said. ‘Asked me if I was on shift.’

‘And what did you say?’

Kell felt a tautness in his body, a quickening of the blood.

‘I said I was off at five. I asked if he wanted to meet up.’

‘Yes …?’

Rosie looked up. Kell saw that her lovely eyes were stained with tears.

‘Then he sent this,’ she said. She passed Kell her phone. ‘He text me this.’

There was a message at the bottom of the screen.

Stay away from the pier tonight.

Kell took out his phone and rang Marquand. Rosie was standing in front of him, holding the top of her head with both hands as though trying to hold herself together. To Kell’s frustration, the call went to voicemail. He left a message.

‘Jimmy, it’s happening this evening. In the next three or four hours. I’ve got a text here, sent to his girlfriend.’ Rosie was starting to shake, looking around the store as if searching for a route by which to escape. ‘Get a team to the pier in Brighton. All the way along. If he starts at the sea end, by the time anybody reaches him he could have killed fifty people.’

Kell lowered the phone. Rosie was starting to cry. She said: ‘What’s he doing? Oh man, what’s he doing?’

Kell reached out and took her hand. She was reluctant at first, flinching as he tried to touch her, but when Kell said, ‘We’re leaving. You’re coming with me,’ and put his hand on her back, the girl allowed him to steer her past the delicatessen counter, along an aisle stacked with bottles of cordial and mineral water, then behind the long line of tills at the checkout area. They moved quickly towards the exit. Rosie seemed grateful that she was at least with somebody who could take charge of her and tell her what to do. Kell passed the manager in the black suit and the girl with the tattoo who had helped him at the information desk. Neither of them appeared to notice that Rosie was leaving, nor that she was in tears.

‘Did you text him back?’ Kell asked, realizing that there had not been a reply to Khan’s message on her phone.

‘I tried calling him,’ she said. ‘He didn’t answer.’

‘And did you tell anybody? A friend? Did you call the police?’

They walked outside into the blinding sunlight. Kell looked at Rosie for an answer. She indicated that she had told no one.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I should have done something. I should have told someone. I don’t like talking to the police.’

‘Show me a photograph of him,’ Kell said, looking around for his driver. ‘Have you got one?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, quickly taking out her phone. She seemed to want to make up for not calling the police. ‘Got loads.’

The driver was nowhere to be seen. Kell swore under his breath as he took Rosie’s phone. There was a selfie of Khan on the screen, a clean-shaven, good-looking man in his mid-twenties wearing a crisp white shirt. He was smiling for the camera, for Rosie. There was a gold stud in his left earlobe, a medallion around his neck.

‘Send this to me, send it to this number,’ he said, passing the phone back to Rosie.

In a trance of obedience, Rosie tapped Kell’s number into her phone and sent the photograph to him via WhatsApp. Kell was still looking around for the taxi driver when he heard the photo ping into his iPhone.

‘Send more,’ he said. ‘Three or four more, different angles, different perspectives. Whatever you’ve got. I need to send them out so that people have an idea what he looks like. And I need his contact details.’

Rosie did as she was asked. They were now some distance away from the entrance to the superstore, wandering around the car park looking for Kell’s taxi. There was still no sign of it. The driver had taken his money and run.

‘I’ve sent two more,’ Rosie told him. Kell forwarded the photographs to Marquand, as well as the number of Khan’s phone. There was a chance that he had left it switched on and that GCHQ could triangulate his position. No sooner had he done so than Marquand called him back.

‘Tom?’

‘Did you get the photographs?’

‘Yes. Just now. And your message. SO15 is scrambling, I’ve given the number to Cheltenham. I’m very sorry, Tom. We should have listened to you.’

‘Forget about that.’ Kell looked up at the coast road and saw that a traffic jam had formed above the cliff. It would be quicker to walk to the pier. Ten minutes. Perhaps fifteen. ‘I’m going to go down there. I’m with the girlfriend.’ Rosie flinched. ‘She might be able to spot him.’

‘What else can you tell me about him?’ Marquand asked.

Kell led Rosie towards the ramp that curved up to the coast road. His hand was on her shoulder as he steered her along the pavement.

‘Tell me more about Shahid,’ he said to her, with Marquand on the line. ‘How tall is he?’

She looked up at Kell, squinting against the sun. ‘What?’

‘How tall is he? Shahid. Is he a big guy? Muscles?’

‘Yeah. Goes to the gym. Does that stuff.’

‘Tall?’ Kell asked.

‘About your height.’

‘Did you get that?’ Kell said to Marquand. ‘Six foot. Athletic build. Muscular. Shaved head.’

Rosie reacted with disdain. ‘What? No he doesn’t.’

‘Shaved head,’ Kell repeated. ‘Brown eyes. He’s going to be solid. Military. Remember this is a guy who has seen action in Syria. He’s trained, experienced. Tell ’15 to be careful.’

‘They know what they’re doing, Tom.’

They were almost at the top of the ramp as Kell ended the conversation. He looked at his phone. He had only 13 per cent power left, not enough for more than twenty or thirty minutes, much less if he kept talking to London.

‘How much power in your phone?’ he asked Rosie. His hand was still on her back and they were hurrying along the promenade like a couple running late for a wedding.

‘How much what?’

Rosie looked at her phone and said that she had more than 50 per cent. As they walked, Kell typed her number into a message for Marquand and instructed him to call it if the battery on his own phone died. They were out in the summer crowds now, traffic backed up to the west all the way to the Grand Hotel, the shimmering beach packed as far as the eye could see. The pier was half a mile away, a pale charcoal blur in the intensity of sunlight and heat. Kell urged Rosie to walk more quickly, the rucksack starting to bite into his shoulder, the gun and the laptop knocking against his back. Skateboarders and cyclists were riding in single file along the promenade dodging fallen ice-cream cones and dogs on leads. The clamour and energy of Brighton in that moment was so great that Kell felt the imminence of Khan’s lethal plan as an inevitability: he would never be able to spot him among the crowds; he would never be able to give sufficient warning to the men and women and children who would stand in his way. The joy of an innocent summer day at the beach would be obliterated. Kell quickened his pace, urging Rosie to look for Khan, to search the crowds for his face.

‘He could be in one of the cars,’ he said. ‘Keep looking at the cars and the vans. Motorbikes. Keep looking on the other side of the road.’

A man carrying a poodle in a basket stepped across Kell and swore as Rosie blocked his path.

‘Don’t mind me,’ she said, releasing a burst of anger as she was forced to walk around him. The man ignored her and disappeared down a flight of steps towards the sand. Horns sounded in the queue of traffic behind them, drivers growing ever more frustrated in the stalled humidity of the late afternoon. As Kell broke into a jog, still several hundred metres from the pier, a moped passed within six inches of his right elbow, weaving in and out of the cars in a reckless slalom.

‘We need to run,’ he told Rosie, but she was reluctant to do so, asking Kell to slow down because she had hurt her leg at work. Kell had no choice but to comply, checking his phone for an update from Marquand as he walked alongside her, moving as quickly as possible. There was nothing. Just a message from Claire and a message from Mowbray, both of which Kell ignored. The power on the phone was down to 10 per cent. Two or three more calls from London and he would have nothing left.

He looked at the time. It was not yet six o’clock. Kell assumed that Khan intended to act at any point from six onwards, if only because he had told Rosie to avoid the pier ‘tonight’. The early evening was the time when the greatest number of people would be coming back from the beach, when he could do the most damage. On this basis, there were ten minutes before an attack might begin. Kell did not know its nature, nor even if Khan would be acting alone. It was plausible that he was merely one piece in a nightmare jigsaw, and that several brainwashed ISIS thugs were currently descending on Brighton, looking to take control of the pier and to spread mayhem on the beach. It was then that Kell decided to take out the Sig Sauer, pulling the rucksack off his back and feeling for the butt of the gun beneath the laptop and his jacket. Waiting until a group of tourists had passed, so that he could act with relative discretion, he pulled the weapon out of the rucksack and slipped it into his hip pocket.

‘What was that?’ said Rosie. ‘Was that a fucking gun?’

‘We won’t need it,’ Kell replied. ‘I won’t have to use it.’

‘Fucking hell,’ she said, ‘you’ve got a fucking gun. You’re gonna kill Shahid.’ She slowed her pace and moved away from Kell, trying to release his grip on her arm. It was like marching a prisoner to the gallows. Kell urged her to keep her voice down and held on to her with all of his strength, feeling the gun knock against his thigh as he put his arm around Rosie’s stiffened back, squeezing her shoulder against him.

‘It’s going to be OK,’ he said. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do.’

It helped to keep talking to her. Rosie calmed down as Kell explained his strategy. They would go to the entrance of the pier and he would leave her there. She had the chance to save hundreds of lives. All she had to do was stand, facing the road, and wait for Shahid to come. If she saw him, she must go up to him. She must do everything she could to stop him doing what he had come to do. Kell asked her if she believed that Shahid was capable of shooting her and she said ‘No’ with absolute conviction. She began to cry then, but Kell squeezed her shoulder more tightly, holding her body against his own as they walked, explaining what he intended to do.

‘He might start at the far side of the pier. Over there. At the French end.’ It was an odd description, but it made sense to Rosie. She looked south, in the direction of France, and followed Kell’s hand as he illustrated the route he would take to meet up with her. ‘It means people can get away, but it means he has a chance of escape. I’ll leave you at the entrance and I’ll look for him on the pier. I’ll run. It won’t take me long. I’ll be back with you in just a few minutes. Once I know the pier is clear, we can wait for him. We can wait for him together.’

‘Why don’t we just call the police?’ she said, and Kell explained that a counter-terrorism unit was already on its way to Brighton – might already
be
in Brighton – and that if Shahid got spooked by the police, or saw that the pier was being closed off to the public, he would walk away, only to try again when nobody knew where he was or what he intended to attack.

‘That’s fucking mad,’ Rosie told him. ‘We’ve just gotta stop him or all these people are gonna die.’

‘We will stop him,’ Kell told her. ‘We will stop him.’

Moments later, his phone rang. It was Marquand, relaying the information that SO15 were airborne and twenty minutes out.

‘Don’t let them land on the beach,’ Kell said. ‘Don’t let them show themselves on the pier. I don’t want him spooked. I don’t want him running away.’

Marquand understood Kell’s terrifying gamble, the risk he was taking in not informing the police and clearing the pier. Kell told him that he was armed and that he intended to leave Rosie at the entrance to the pier while he checked that Khan was not active at the southern end.

‘What if she walks?’ Marquand asked.

‘She’s not going to walk,’ Kell replied, making eye contact with Rosie so that she knew that he was talking about her. ‘She’s a good person. She wants to stop this thing as much as you and I do. She can get in the way of this man and talk to him. I’m convinced of it.’ He was speaking for Rosie’s benefit, as much as for Marquand’s. ‘If she walks, she knows she’s in a lot of trouble. I’ve explained that. Rosie doesn’t want that on her conscience.’

They passed a Ferris wheel and came to the entrance to the pier. Kell told Marquand that he wanted to preserve the power on his phone and he hung up. Rosie was looking at the crowds mingling under the clocktower with an expression of numb, open-mouthed dread.

‘Just wait here,’ Kell said, aware of cackling laughter at one of the food stalls, of ‘Beat It’ playing on a sound system. ‘Do what I told you. If you see him, go up to him. Don’t be afraid. Give me your phone in case mine dies. I won’t be more than five minutes.’

Kell passed underneath the clocktower and ran along the western deck, the beach beneath him still packed. He could picture Khan at the southern end of the pier, preparing to move with the fanatic’s clinical and deadly efficiency from the fairground rides at the southern tip to the fish-and-chip stalls at the entrance. Kell could tell, simply by the weight of numbers around him, that the pier was packed along its entire length. The only limit to the devastation Khan might cause would be imposed by the amount of ammunition he was able to carry and by how quickly people were able to conceal themselves or run away. Kell was also aware that he had taken a grotesque risk with Rosie’s life; he could not know how Khan would react if he saw her. Her presence might detain him momentarily; it might also catalyse him to an even greater rage.

He reached the first enclosed structure on the pier. It was a cave of arcade games and slot machines, a stink of vinegar and a frenzy of amateur gambling. He looked for Khan, but saw only kids and parents, eager young couples shoving coins into penny pushers. Ten seconds later Kell was back outside, a seagull passing within a few feet of his head, keeping pace with him as he ran south along the pier, gliding soundlessly on an updraught from the water. Kell reached a restaurant, jogged around it on the western side, not so much looking out for Khan – there were
simply too many faces to register and process – but trying to detect changes in the atmosphere of the pier: silence or screams, gunfire, the shock and panic of crowds. He heard a sunbathing pensioner on a white bench saying: ‘Slow down, luv’ as he ran past her. Kell then came to a second enclosed area, this one larger than the first: more penny pushers, more fruit machines, deafening pop music smothering the clicks and shouts of a game of air hockey played by young boys in shorts and T-shirts. Still no sign of Khan. Moments later Kell was outside again and moving towards the last section of the pier. He was in sight of a mini-rollercoaster, a packed dodgem car track to his right and, beyond it, further west along the seafront, the rusted shell of the old, burned-out pier. He sprinted in the direction of the beach. Kell ran until he could feel himself at the point of exhaustion, his body and his face drenched with sweat. His lungs were stinging. He was gasping for air. If he had to use the gun, he doubted that he would be able to control his breathing sufficiently to be able to take an accurate shot. Kell had to stop the weapon from jumping out of his trouser pocket, holding it in his left hand as he ran, the rucksack repeatedly knocking against his back. Somebody else shouted: ‘Slow down, mate!’ as Kell passed a stall selling fresh doughnuts and Brighton rock. He almost collided with a young child in a wheelchair.