hacksaw he’d used to get the bullet out.
‘And if they confirm it’s a bullet in a melted video cassette…?’ he asked.
Then we must ask how and when it got there. There may be no way of confirming it was fired from a gun on those premises on the same day as the explosion…’
‘It fits with what Hector heard!’
‘Oh aye. Hector!’ she said mockingly.
Pascoe again found himself reacting to this knee-jerk dismissal of the constable.
He said, ‘Look, just because Hector’s pre-digital doesn’t mean he doesn’t function. He’s managed to identify one of the men he saw, hasn’t he? OK, description-wise he’s no great shakes, but find the right picture and he could still pick out the other.’
His fervour seemed to impress Glenister.
‘You know your own men best, Peter,’ she said. ‘All right. Let’s say he did hear a gunshot and that this is indeed the bullet that was fired. This brings us to what you call the big question: Where’s the gun? Well, you’ve supplied one answer, you and your dog.’
‘You mean it might have been missed?’
‘This was,’ said Glenister lowering her hands to touch the evidence bag. ‘We sifted the debris thoroughly, of course, but what we were looking for were indications of the nature of the explosion, the kinds of explosive used, their possible source. Plus, of course, body parts, remnants of clothing et cetera that could help identify the men killed. If there were a gun at or near the centre of the explosion, it could simply have disintegrated and its fragments been distorted unrecognizably by the subsequent heat.’
‘Unrecognizably? Not very likely, is it?’ exclaimed Pascoe. ‘Not unless your people aren’t as finicky as we like to be in Yorkshire.’
‘Peter,’ she said gently, ‘you’ve done well, but before you slag off the efforts of others, don’t forget it was a stroke of sheer luck that put you on this track. I’ll find where the council are dumping the debris and make my people go over it again. OK?’
Before he could respond, the door was pushed open and Freeman said, ‘Sorry, didn’t know you had company. Sandy, we need to speak.’
Glenister gave a little frown. Maybe she objected to Freeman’s rather peremptory tone in the presence of a native. Who was it held the whip hand in this weird twilight zone the CAT people inhabited? Pascoe wondered.
She said, ‘Can it wait a moment, Dave?’
‘No.’
Well, that was certainly the sound of a whip-crack, thought Pascoe.
Glenister said, ‘Peter, let’s continue this later, all right?’
‘Why not? I’ll see if I can fit you in,’ he said. ‘Dave, good to see you again.’
He left, closing the door firmly behind him and resisting a strong temptation to press his ear to the woodwork.
Instead he went to see Wield and put him in the picture about the bullet.
His reaction was familiar.
‘So Hector could’ve been right. Had to happen! What’s Sandy going to do?’
‘Fuck knows,’ said Pascoe. ‘Get her own examination done, then probably kick the whole thing into touch if it doesn’t fit her agenda.’
‘Pete, you’ve got to wait and see,’ protested Wield. ‘Like I told you yesterday, she really seems to be treading eggshells to make sure we don’t feel sidelined.’
‘You reckon? Well, I think pretty soon you’re going to hear a great deal of crunching underfoot. Something’s happened, and us being on the need-to-know list is even less likely than Hector getting things right. And if you’d care to bet on that, I’ll just run home and get the deeds of the house!’
A man who had left a garden hammock to get blown up on an English Bank Holiday should have learned to distrust certainties.
Fortunately Wield didn’t take the bet. Fifteen minutes later Pascoe got a summons to the CAT Ops Room. When he arrived he was met by men coming out carrying computer equipment. Inside he found Glenister talking animatedly into the scrambler phone. As he approached she finished speaking and handed the receiver to one of her men who unplugged the phone and put it into a box.
‘You’re moving out?’ said Pascoe.
‘Yes, we’re on our way. Wouldn’t have been long anyway, we were just about done here, but something’s happened. What do you know about Said Mazraani?’
‘Just what I’ve seen and read. Lebanese academic, teaches at Manchester, good looking, talks well, dresses smart, claims high-level contacts throughout the Middle East. In other words, all the right qualifications for getting on the talking-head shows whenever they want an apparently rational Muslim extremist viewpoint. What the papers called the acceptable face of terrorism until he blotted his copybook with Paxman.’
This had been the previous month, after the kidnapping and videoed execution of an English businessman called Stanley Coker. Mazraani had been trotted out to give an insight into the motives and mindset of the kidnappers, a group calling themselves the Sword of the Prophet. He prefaced his remarks with a fulsome expression of sympathy for the dead man’s family, which he repeated when asked if he unreservedly condemned the killing. ‘Very nice of you,’ said Paxman. ‘But do you condemn the killing?’ Again the verbiage, again the question. And again, and again. And never a direct answer came.
Next day the papers went to town, led as always by the People’s Voice.
The People’s Voice, the youngest and fastest-growing of the tabloids, was in fact not so much the voice of the people as the rant of the slightly pissed know-it-all in the saloon bar who isn’t fooled by government statements, legal verdicts, historical analyses, or forensic evidence, but knows what he knows, and knows he’s right!
The Voice headline screamed
BEHEADING HOSTAGES IS OK! (so long as it’s done in the best possible taste)
‘That’s the one,’ said Glenister. ‘Well, barring miracles, he’s done his last talking-head show. For the past two days there’s been a rumour that Al Jazeera had received a tape showing an execution, a beheading. But not a Western hostage this time. A Muslim.’
‘So? In Iraq they’ve shown little compunction about killing their own.’ Then it came to him what she was saying. ‘You don’t mean…?’
‘This morning the BBC, ITV and Sky all received copies of what is presumably the same tape. Yes, it’s definitely Mazraani. He hadn’t been seen in any of his usual haunts for several days. We sent a team to visit his flat in Manchester. They were told to be discreet but there was already enough of a smell to bother the neighbours. He was in there, him and his head, quite close but not touching. Plus another man not known to us.’
‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Pascoe. ‘Was he beheaded too?’
‘No. Shot. They want me back over there now.
