Beneath the Bleeding (28 page)

Without warning, Yousef felt his throat tighten as tears welled up in his eyes. This was a terrible thing to be doing. It was the right thing, no doubt about that. The best way to achieve their goal. But he hated that he had to live in a world where things like this were necessary. Where violence became the only language that people listened to. Where violence was the only language available to those who were frustrated at every turn by the way the world was run. George Bush had been right, it was a crusade. Just not the one that bastard in the White House thought it was.

He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. This wasn’t the time or the place for grief or for second thoughts. Yousef opened the toolbox and lifted out the top shelf. Underneath, wrapped in layers of bubble wrap, was the bomb. It didn’t look much. Somehow, Yousef felt it should be grander. More of a statement than could be made by a ghee tin and a kitchen timer.

He checked his watch. He was doing just fine. Twelve minutes past three. He took out a roll of duct tape and fastened the bomb to a bunch of cables halfway up the wall. Then, his mouth dry and his stomach churning, he started to set the timer.

Two minutes in, and Phil Campsie had made a blinding run down the left side, only to be brought
low by in a bruising but fair tackle. ‘Oh no,’ Tony cried.

‘Oh no is right,’ Carol said, marching in, all flags flying indignation. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

Tony gave her the bemused look of a man who has only been doing what men are supposed to do, not taking in her body language at all. ‘I’m watching the footie,’ he said. ‘The Vics and Spurs. It’s only just started, pull up a chair.’

Carol slapped the screen of his laptop shut. Tony looked outraged. ‘What did you do that for?’

‘How dare you suborn my staff to run around the countryside in pursuit of your little fantasies,’ she shouted.

‘Ah.’ Tony grimaced. That would be Paula, then.’

‘How could you? Especially after I said I didn’t think there was any point?’ Carol paced agitatedly to and fro.

‘Well, that’s precisely why I had to.’ Tony eased his laptop open again. ‘If I could have done it myself, I would have. But as it is, you’re saved the embarrassment of having to admit you passed on the best lead you’ve got so far.’

‘Bullshit. We have a suspect who is nothing to do with Danny Wade.’

Tony tapped the mouse pad to bring the match up again. ‘And I have no doubt that you will also find he’s nothing to do with Robbie Bishop. At least, not as far as his murder’s concerned.’ He gave her a brilliant smile. ‘And now Paula has given you another lovely lead. I mean, she must have. Because if she’d drawn a blank, you’d never have been any the wiser.’

Carol stabbed her index finger at him. ‘You are bloody impossible. You are bang out of order. Paula works for me, not for you.’

Tony gave a self-deprecating smile. ‘I could say she helped me out in her own time,’ he said. ‘Because she likes me so much.’

Now it was Carol’s turn to smirk. ‘But that would be a lie. She did it on Bradfield Police’s time, when she was supposed to be working for MIT.’

Tony shook his head, his blue eyes darkening as he prepared to play hardball. He looked at the game on his screen but his words were directed at Carol. You can’t have people working completely undefined hours and then claim all of their waking time is dedicated to your service. Paula’s entitled to breaks. You can’t really complain if she rolls them up into one big slice of time off. I bet she didn’t get eight hours clear between coming off duty last night and starting again this morning. Even your prisoners are entitled to that.’

Carol glared at him. ‘I hate it when you twist things to suit yourself. You were out of order, and you know it. And Paula of all people. You know she’s vulnerable.’

‘I think when it comes to Paula’s mental state, I’m probably a better judge than you.’ He scrutinized her, trying to gauge how angry she still was. ‘Come on, come and sit down and watch a bit of the football with me. The lads are playing their hearts out for Robbie. It’d bring tears to a glass eye, I promise you.’

‘You can’t just deflect this, pretend it didn’t happen,’ Carol said. But he could see she was softening.

‘I’m not. I agree, I was out of order. All I can say is that normally, I would have done it myself. And I
thought it was too important to a murder investigation to leave it undone. I will apologize to Paula for putting her in an awkward position, but I’m not going to apologize to you for putting your investigation on the right track.’ He patted the arm of the chair next to the bed. ‘Now, will you sit down and watch the bloody game?’

With obvious ill grace, Carol threw herself into the chair. ‘You know I hate football,’ she grumbled.

‘We’re the ones in yellow,’ he said.

‘Fuck off. I know that,’ she said.

‘So, are you going to tell me about Paula’s brilliant new lead?’ he said as Spurs gained possession and began to make ground.

‘Hasn’t she told you all about it herself?’

He grinned. ‘No, we both understand the chain of command too well.’

‘You ganged up on me,’ she said. He could tell the storm was over.

‘Be grateful we care enough to want to save you from falling on your arse. Like he just did.’ He pointed at a Spurs player apparently tripping over a blade of grass.

As they watched, the commentary was drowned out by a tremendous roaring rumble. Smoke drifted across the screen, then a storm of debris began to rain down on one side of the pitch. Carol and Tony stared at the screen, dumbstruck. Then the commentator’s voice, hysterical, shouting, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, there’s a hole…I can’t hear. Oh my God, there are body parts…I think there’s been a bomb. A bomb, here at Victoria Park. Oh Jesus Christ…’

Now the director had got his act together. The scene
changed from the pitch to what had been the Vestey Stand. In the centre of the middle tier, nothing could be seen except a billowing grey cloud of dust. In the rows of seats below the corporate boxes, people were stampeding for the aisles. The shot changed to a close-up of one of the exits, where some fans were fighting to get out while others were passing children over heads to get them clear. Then they were looking at the stand again, only this time there were flames licking the edges of the dust cloud and black spirals of smoke curling up as the dust cloud moved downwards. And now the people were screaming.

Carol was already on her feet and halfway to the door. ‘I’ll call you,’ she said, opening the door and running. Tony barely noticed her going. He was transfixed by the unfolding of tragedy on the screen before him. Without taking his eyes off the laptop screen, he reached for the remote and turned on the TV. It was almost impossible to comprehend what he was seeing.

Bradfield had joined that most exclusive club. The Twin Towers. Kuta Beach. Madrid. London. A list no city wanted to join. But now Bradfield was among them.

And there would be work to be done.

Tom Cross had served most of his years in the police in the shadow of Irish Republican terrorism. Twelve dead in the M62 coach bombing, two kids blown to bits in Warrington town centre, over two hundred injured and a city centre devastated in Manchester. He and his colleagues had learned vigilance, but they’d also been taught what was expected of them.

So when the bomb went off in Victoria Park stadium, Cross’s instincts were to move towards the seat of the explosion. The other 9,346 people in the Vestey Stand did not share his reaction. A floodtide of humanity surged for the aisles and the exits and Cross, sixteen rows below the hospitality boxes, put his head down, grabbed the back of his seat and let it flow over him.

As the press of bodies around him eased, he pulled himself hand over hand to the middle of the row, where there were no people. He started to clamber upwards as fast as he could, wishing he hadn’t eaten so much of the delicious lamb stew Jake Andrews had served him for lunch. His stomach felt distended and tender, as if it was swollen to a drum, its contents swilling from side to side like rainwater in a discarded tyre.
Fuck,
he thought as he struggled upwards. Bodies everywhere and he was thinking about the state of his guts.

As Cross grew closer, he could see through the dust and smoke to the hole in the stand. Shattered concrete and twisted metal thrust out into the air, as if a giant fist had punched through from behind. Bodies lay at grotesque angles on the wreckage, most of them clearly dead, many of them lacking limbs. Through the claustrophobic ringing in his ears, he could hear the crackle of flame, the moans of the injured, the PA system begging people to leave in an orderly manner, the sound of distant sirens getting louder. He could smell blood and smoke and shit, taste them on his tongue. Carnage. That’s what he was tasting.

The first person still breathing that he came across was a woman, hair and skin turned grey by the dust.
Her lower left leg was shattered, blood pulsing from the wound. Cross pulled the belt from her trousers and tied off a tourniquet above her knee. The blood slowed to an ooze. Her eyelids flickered then closed again. He knew the rules about not moving the injured, but if the fire travelled fast, she would be caught up in it. There was no real choice here. Cross slid his arms under the woman and lifted her, grunting with the effort. He stepped over debris, edging sideways till he came to an aisle. He laid her down carefully and went back for more, dimly aware that there were others joining him, some in the fluorescent jackets of the emergency services.

He had no sense of how much time passed. All he knew was the dirt and the blood and the nausea and the sweat pouring down his face and the pain in his guts and the bodies, always the bodies. He worked alone and with others, shifting debris, giving the kiss of life, moving bodies and telling the injured the old familiar lies. ‘It’s going to be all right. You’re going to be fine. It’s going to be all right.’ It was never going to be all right again, not for any of the poor bastards caught in this shitstorm.

And all the time he was working, he was feeling worse and worse. He put it down to the shock and the exertion. His guts were cramping so much that he had to leave the rescue a couple of times to find a toilet. His bowels emptied in a gusher of liquid both times, leaving him feeling weak and feverish. The third time he tried to return to the bomb site, a paramedic stopped him on the stairs. ‘No way, mate,’ he said. ‘You look terrible.’

Cross sneered. ‘You don’t look so great yourself,
pal.’ He tried to push past, but didn’t seem to have the strength. Baffled, he leaned against the wall, sweat pouring from him. He clutched his stomach as another spasm of pain shot through him.

‘Here, put this on.’ The paramedic handed him an oxygen mask and a portable gas cylinder. Cross obeyed. Shock and exertion, that’s what it was. He barely noticed the other man reaching for his arm and taking his pulse. But he did notice that the paramedic looked worried. ‘We need to get you to hospital,’ he said.

Cross lifted the mask. ‘Bollocks. There’s people up there with serious injuries. That’s who needs to be in hospital.’ Again he tried to push past.

‘Mate, I’d say you’re minutes away from a heart attack. Please. Don’t give those bastards the satisfaction of adding another number to the list. Come on, humour me. Let’s walk down to the ambulances together.’

As Cross glared at him, his vision seemed to blur and an arrow of burning pain shot from his gut to the fingertips of his left hand. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he roared, stumbling and clasping his shoulder. The pain fled as swiftly as it had come, leaving him sweating and nauseous. ‘OK,’ he panted. ‘OK.’

Carol made it to A&E in time to catch one of the emergency ambulances being despatched to Victoria Park. As they raced through the streets, siren screaming and blue light strobing, she was on the phone. First to Stacey in the office, telling her to send the rest of the team to meet her at the stadium. Then to John Brandon. He too was in motion, pulled away
from a shopping expedition with his wife, who now found herself trying to drive like a police driver without the advantage of lights or siren. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ he said. ‘I know your first instincts are to help preserve life, but I don’t want your team involved in the rescue and evacuation. We can’t forget this is also a crime scene. Forensic teams are on their way, and your job is to work with them to make sure they can collect and preserve as much as possible.’

‘Is it mine?’ she asked.

‘Only until the Counter Terrorism Command get here from Manchester,’ Brandon said. ‘They’re on their way. They’ll be with us within the hour. Then you’ll have to step away. But till they get here, yes, the command is yours.’

‘Will CTC take over the whole investigation?’ Carol asked, snatching at a grab handle as they took a corner on what felt like two wheels.

‘In effect, yes. You’ll be working to them. I’m sorry, Carol. That’s the way it is. They’re the specialists.’

Her heart sank. Come tomorrow, she and her detectives would be no more than gofers for those arrogant bastards in CTC who thought being the saviours of mankind gave them the right to walk over anybody and anything in their way. She’d had enough dealings with the Anti-Terrorism Branch and the Special Branch before they’d been amalgamated into the new, bespoke CTC. She knew they thought they were the lords of creation and that people like her and her team were put on this earth to do their grunt work. Bad enough that there were likely dozens dead from a terrorist bomb. Traumatic enough for her team without having to deal with a bunch of outsiders who
didn’t know the ground and didn’t have to take responsibility for their actions. They wouldn’t be the ones left to mop up the consequences of shattered relationships among communities and between those communities and the ones left behind to police them.

‘Any figures yet?’ she asked, knowing it was pointless to complain to Brandon, as powerless in this as her team was.

‘At least twenty. There will be more.’

‘And the rest of the crowd? Where are we evacuating to?’

‘Contingency plans say the school playing fields further down Grayson Street. But I suspect most of them are putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the stadium. It’s going to be a nightmare, getting witness statements for this one.’