Bombs on Trains: An Inspector Castle Investigation

Contents

Chapter 1 

Chapter 2 

Chapter 3 

Chapter 4 

Chapter 5 

Chapter 6 

Chapter 7 

Chapter 8 

Chapter 9 

Chapter 10 

Chapter 11 

Chapter 12 

Chapter 13 

Chapter 14 

Chapter 15 

Chapter 16 

Chapter 17 

Chapter 18 

About the Author 

Endnotes

Chapter 1 

I came awake screaming and sat bolt upright, my left hand pressed to the scar on the left side of my chest. It was as big as my palm and stretched, like a puddle across my pectoral muscle from almost the centre of my chest. It looked like a birth mark, it was still very red, but it didn’t hurt anymore. Again I’d seen the muzzle flash as the shotgun discharged in my face. I was sweating and panting. My heart was racing as my body struggled to cope with the adrenaline. Not the kind of thing you really want to happen on your wedding night, but I had nightmares some nights because of the shooting. I flopped back on the bed and rolled onto my side, gulping in air.

Bob sat up and leaned over me to put on the bedside light. He looked down kindly and said. ‘That was a bad one!’ He lay down again and scooped me into his arms and placed his hand over mine, where it was resting on the scar on my chest. He pulled my back against his chest and kissed my cheek, and then he rocked me as I strived not to cry and bring my breathing under control.

Twelve months previously I had been shot in the chest by a teenage boy with a sawn-off single barrel shotgun. Luckily for me it had been a cartridge of birdshot otherwise I’d have been killed. The shot didn’t have time to spread, because he was only about three feet away. It hit me on the edge of the breastbone, but some of the pellets did shred the top of my left lung, which took three months to recover.

I was fighting fit, but occasionally I had the nightmares, especially if I’d had a traumatic day. Today had been traumatic. Getting married is a traumatic experience, particularly when it’s a military wedding, complete with battalion colours and an honour guard. My wedding dress was hanging on the front of the wardrobe, next to his dress uniform.

Bob was a Captain in the 2nd Battalion Parachute Regiment and was home on leave from Iraq. He’d been stationed in Basra since the first week of the Iraq war. It was supposed to be peacekeeping, but even he told me it was a war zone. He would be going back at the weekend. We had just four more days. I turned over and wrapped my arms around him trying to forget the dream.

‘It’s just the muzzle flash.’ I said softly, ‘I see it when I dream about the shooting.’

‘I think I would too!’ he said as one hand gently stroked my back and the other played with my ponytail, wrapping it around his fist like a rope.

‘It’s probably not as bad as some of the things you see,’ I said, muffled against his chest.

‘That’s true, poppet!’ he lifted my chin and kissed me gently. ‘But it’s always different when it happens to you, than something you just happen to see. I’ve never seen a teenager take out a shotgun and try to blow me away.’ He rolled me on my back and stroked my belly.

‘You must have, at some point?’ I said and he shook his head slowly. I stroked my fingers over his smooth cheek and up into his dark wavy hair.

‘Not a teenager and not a sawn-off single barrel shotgun.’ He sighed. ‘But I did have some Iraqi bastard try and blow me away with an AK-47.’ He kissed me again. ‘Thank God for Kevlar!’ and he wrapped my ponytail around his wrist and his green eyes brightened.

Then we got down to the serious business of making love again and incidents where we almost died were forgotten.

That’s how it was for four days. My flat was a refuge for us, from the reality of work. Bob was on leave from a war zone and I was a Detective Sergeant with Special Branch Anti-Terrorism Unit. Then the honeymoon was over and he had orders to leave. His fourteen days were up.

We woke early that morning and made love more than once, for Bob it was as if he was trying to take the experience with him. It was edged in desperation as if this was the last time, and we both knew that it could be. Wife today, widow tomorrow. But it was the same for him, I could be killed tomorrow, kicking in the door of a bomb making factory in Battersea. That’s how I got shot in the first place.

Eventually we had to get up as he needed to get ready. We showered together, he loved to wash my hair and as it came down to the small of my back, it could be a massive undertaking. I think it was my hair that attracted him in the first place. He’d called me Lara Croft, when we first met, not that I knew who she was, because that’s the way I wear my hair most of the time. Gathered in a scrunchie at the nape of the neck and then plaited. I even wear it plaited at night in bed otherwise he would be lying all over it. But Bob did get his greatest fantasy fulfilled; he wanted to spread my hair out on the pillow, whilst I was still wearing my wedding dress, and it took some doing, because of the pins and combs that had kept it in place all day. But he painstakingly removed every single pin and brushed my hair out. Then he laid me down and spread it out on the bed like a fan and we consummated our marriage. I didn’t get my fantasy, which was soft and gentle love. I don’t think Bob knew how at that time, he was always in such a hurry. Typical of a soldier.

He packed his holdall and dressed in civvies, he wouldn’t put on his fatigues until he got to the barracks in Colchester, and no soldier advertised their profession anymore. It was too dangerous for those of us that had to remain at home. I carefully put his dress uniform away in the garment carrier.

We had a late breakfast and then he just held me, tightly. He gave me a hard and unrelenting kiss, picked up his bags and was gone, again. I watched from the window as he threw his bags in the boot and waved to me, and then he got in the car and drove off. I stood looking out onto the road and wondered whether that would be the last time I would see him, trying not to cry.

The phone rang. I picked it up and immediately said my maiden name. ‘Green!’

‘Are you sure?’ Detective Inspector Appleton asked. ‘I thought your name was Castle!’

I laughed, ‘Yes, Sir, it is!’

‘Has your husband left for Essex yet?’ he asked sweetly.

‘Yes, Sir, about five minutes ago, why?’

‘Good, you can get your backside down to the Yard.’ He said coldly. ‘We’ve got a case we’re still investigating.’

‘Yes, Sir! I’ll be there in about ten minutes!’ and I dropped the phone back on the hook and rushed in to the bedroom and threw on a suit, picked up my Glock 17 and checked it then put it in the holster and jammed it into my belt. Put my wallet and my mobile phone in my pocket, snatched up my car keys and headed for the door.

I lived in Streatham so it was more like half an hour before I got to Scotland Yard. I pulled my car into the car park and headed for the front door. As I got there, a police car pulled up at the bottom of the steps and Inspector Appleton opened the window and shouted, ‘Come on, Becky! We’ve found him!’ I ran down the steps and got into the front passenger seat.

‘Where are we going, Sir?’ I turned sideways in the seat so that I could talk to him, as I pulled the seat belt around me. The car took off up Victoria Road with the sirens howling. We really tanked up the speed because it was a dry, sunny day.

‘The YMCA on the Old Kent Road. We had a tipoff that Fakesh is holed up there.’ He handed me the Kevlar vest that I had habitually worn since I’d got shot.

‘Fakesh?!’ I asked quizzically. ‘I thought that bastard was still in Afghanistan with Osama!’

‘Well, apparently he isn’t. He was seen leaving the East London Mosque in Whitechapel last night and was followed to the YMCA in Old Kent Road, and it would really make my day if I could nail that bastard!’

With the sirens and lights, cars scattered to get out of our way as we flew across Westminster Bridge.

‘Are the tactical team going to be there Sir?’ I always ask, after getting shot, it makes you more cautious. But they were there that day, so what difference would it make.

‘Yes, Becky, don’t worry the tactical team will be there, and they will be going in first.’ Appleton was always very good with my neurosis. But then he’d been there when I got shot and it had scared him too. But he was amazed that I managed to shoot the kid that shot me. Apparently I fired at the same instant that the kid shot me and got him in the shoulder of his firing arm, but not before he pulled the trigger. I remember Appleton trying to stop the bleeding with his handkerchief and I certainly recall the look of horror on his face while he was doing it. He must have thought it was a 12 bore at first, like I did, and as he faded away, I thought that would be my last sight. But I came around on the trolley in the hospital and it was a strange sensation. I felt weightless, as if I was floating and I had no strength. I could see Appleton, but he wasn’t looking at me and then he faded away again.

By this time we were on the New Kent Road and still steaming along. I looked out of the windscreen and could see the Tactical Unit van standing at the curb. The constable turned off the sirens and lights and we pulled up behind the van. Then we proceeded quietly in convoy to the YMCA. We pulled up and I got out of the car, took off my jacket and pulled on my Kevlar vest. I went through the front door, up to the desk and I showed my I.D. to the receptionist. ‘Police. We’re here to arrest a resident. So keep your hand off the phone and nobody will get hurt.’ The constable stood just behind me and I left him there and followed Appleton up the stairs. ‘Do we know what room he’s in?’

‘Yes, 22. Now be quiet!’ Appleton said.

The tactical team arrayed themselves in the corridor and Appleton and I were at the back of the queue.

They kicked in the door and we all piled into the room and it was so embarrassing! It was especially scary for the couple having sex in the bed. I shook my head and left it to Appleton to apologise on behalf of the Met and I organised a room by room search of the whole place. It took us two hours, but there wasn’t one single person of Middle Eastern extraction on the premises.

I stood beside the car, with my arms folded and watched the Tactical Unit pack their kit away. Appleton came to stand beside me and leaned his rump on the wing. ‘Well, that was embarrassing!’ he said and laughed to cover his discomfiture.

‘Are you sure it wasn’t Fakesh in there, giving her one?’ I said, good humouredly. He laughed again. ‘Don’t be surprised if your snitch is dead tomorrow. This stinks like a set up. Give you perfect bait and watch to see who blabs.’ I took off the vest and put my jacket back on.

‘Well, they’ll have a job killing a snitch; it was a local copper who saw him. Remembered his face from the board in his local station.’ Appleton said thoughtfully. ‘Let’s get some coffee and you can tell me how your wedding went off, seeing as how I couldn’t be there!’

An hour later we were back in the office and I was looking through the numerous pictures of Fakesh that we had. The man changed his face like I changed my socks. I also looked through the paperwork that had accumulated on my desk in the past seven days. There were flyers of sightings of terrorists, reports on suspected Muslims and Mosques, suspects coming into the country and going out again. Analysis reports of explosives we’d found as well as weapons evaluations. And there were still reports to be typed from two weeks ago, that I hadn’t got around to before the wedding. There was also another reminder that our department in Special Branch would be amalgamated with the other Anti-Terrorist departments from MI5 and MI6 to form a new division called Counter Terrorist Command.

The phone went and I picked it up and said ‘Castle.’

‘I’d like to speak to Detective Sergeant Green?’ the voice on the other end was quiet and cautious.

‘Hello Benny, it’s not Green anymore. I got married, so my name is Castle now!’ I told my little snitch. Benny was one of the best. He ran a small pawn brokers in Wapping and he always had his ear to the ground about explosives. He could find out the most amazing things.

‘That’s wonderful, Detective. Congratulations! I need a meeting. I have some news for you. Usual place, half an hour.’ And he hung up. I got up and went to Appleton’s office.

‘Sir?’ he looked up. ‘I’ve just had Benny on the phone. It seems he has something for us. Shall I go alone or do you want to come as well?’ for an answer he reached for his coat. He always wore a raincoat like it was part of a uniform. I picked up the phone and called for his car.

Benny liked to meet at MacDonald’s on Wapping High Street. The place was always so busy and you could go unnoticed in there. I went to the counter and bought a couple of Big Mac’s so that we could blend in. Of course, Appleton never could blend in; he always looked like a copper in his raincoat. But we sat in a booth at the back and tucked into our food. Benny slid into the booth and Appleton gave him his fries on the tray.

‘Hello Inspector Appleton, Sergeant Green.’ He said quietly and then drew in a sharp breath and said. ‘Oh! I’m sorry, you said you’d got married, it’s Castle now.’

‘Hello Benny, yes, it’s Castle now. What have you got for us?’

‘I heard on the grapevine that you had a disappointing morning at the YMCA on the Old Kent Road. Fakesh was supposed to be staying there?’ We both just looked at him. ‘Anyway, Fakesh was spirited away on the Thames early this morning. Apparently somebody saw your policeman follow him from the Mosque, so he’s gone.’

‘Shit!’ Appleton swore.

‘Is that all you brought us down here for?’ I asked indignantly, ‘to tell us something we already know?’

‘No, that was a freebie. This one is worth money.’ And he held out his hand. I took out my wallet and gave him twenty quid. ‘Don’t make me laugh, I said money!’

Appleton took out his wallet and gave him a fifty pound note.

‘That’s better! Now I have a line on some naughty boys who are building bombs in their mum’s kitchen. A flat in Stepney.’ He gave us the address. ‘It’s a little job for Fakesh, some little car bomb in a busy high street like this one.’ And that’s why Benny liked to help. His sister had been injured in the Canary Wharf bomb blast and he couldn’t stand the thought of a bomb going off on Wapping High Street, where all his friends lived.

‘How kosher is this?’ Appleton asked.

‘Straight up, Mr. Appleton. Four of the little bastards. You go and arrest them.’ He stood up to let Appleton out of the booth. I took my Big Mac with me and we headed for the door.

Back in the car, Appleton was on the radio to the Tactical Unit and giving them the address of this flat in Stepney. I finished my burger and wiped my hands on the serviette. We were in an official car, so we had to pull up early and wait for Tactical to arrive. I put on my vest while we waited. It took them about ten minutes to get there, but eventually they turned up. Appleton got out of the car to talk to the Officer in charge and then we went slowly and quietly to the flat on Stepney Green.

Tactical were set up to take both doors and I was round the back again. It’ll be nice when I make Inspector, I thought, and then I can go through the front door. I was waiting for the word from Appleton to go in the back. He gave the word and I nodded at the Tactical guys to go, one kicked in the door and the rest of us followed.

We arrived in a kitchen that looked like an armoury. There were four twenty something’s playing with explosives on the table and not one of them got a gun up before ours were in their ears.

‘Police, nobody move!’ I shouted and to reinforce my meaning all the tactical guys cocked their Heckler and Koch MP5 machine guns. There was silence and all the Tac boys moved around the table and pinned the suspect’s heads down. Appleton had come through the front door and met stiff resistance from somebody’s mum. She was screaming and giving him a really hard time. We quickly got the lads handcuffed to be removed and I went to deal with the mother.

‘You’ve no right to kick in my front door like that!’ she screamed at me. ‘They’re doing some chemistry homework.’ I really couldn’t believe the idiocy of this woman.

‘Really Madam, are you so stupid as to believe that the bomb factory on your kitchen table is chemistry homework?!’ and I turned her around and cuffed her as well. She could do time for aiding and abetting.

By this time the transport had arrived to take them to Paddington Green. The Tactical Team escorted them to the vans and then they were gone.

Appleton and I snapped on the rubber gloves and started going through the stuff in the kitchen. There were two Remington Pump-action Shotguns on the worktop and four Walther P99 handguns on the table. And in the cupboard I found an Armalite AR-15 assault rifle. On the table was a bomb maker’s workshop. Top of the range equipment, as well as the instructions for building a state of the art explosive device, and in amongst it all I came across a brochure for the Eurostar. The rest of our department arrived and they got into the stuff as well. They found the Semtex in the fridge. 250 grams of it.

I sat looking at the brochure. Appleton came over to me and said, ‘Thinking of going on holiday? I hear Paris is nice this time of year!’ in a very satirical manner.

‘Why would they have a brochure for the Eurostar?’ I asked rhetorically.

‘Where was it?’ Appleton asked caustically.

‘I found it in with the instructions, for making the bomb.’ I replied thoughtfully. ‘It seemed out of place there.’

‘Do you think this device was intended for the channel tunnel?’ he laughed at me. ‘Jesus, Becky! You’ve been watching too many films.’

‘Well, it would make a spectacular show for Fakesh and Osama. Brilliant headlines!’ I sighed, ‘After all it makes headlines when there are leaves on the line.’

‘Forget it, Fakesh probably came into the U.K. that way and the brochure just got mixed up with everything else.’

Appleton could well be right. But there was that nagging doubt, the inconsistency of it being there. I put it in a plastic bag on its own and put it with the rest of the evidence. ‘But it’s a brochure, not a train ticket.’

‘Come on, Becky! We’ve got people to interrogate!’ Appleton was practically rubbing his hands with glee. He liked interrogating prisoners. I often thought that he must have been in the Gestapo in a previous life, especially as he rarely took the raincoat off while he was doing it. I considered buying him a soft felt fedora for Christmas last year, but couldn’t pluck up the courage to do it.

We went outside and got into his car and I told the driver ‘Paddington Green.’ This was the only high security police station in London, and it was especially kitted out for us to use for the terrorists. With the new laws that came into effect in 2005 after 7/7, we could now hold suspects for 28 days. So we had a month to sweat these four bomb makers and find out what they were planning to do before we had to charge them or release them.

The car turned onto the A501 and we started our trek around the outskirts of central London. Paddington Green station was in Paddington, right between Hyde Park and the end of the M40 and as we were driving in central London in the middle of the afternoon, there was a lot of traffic.

Appleton was getting seriously frustrated with it, in the back of the car and in the end he said. ‘Jesus! Get the lights and sirens on! I’d like to get there today!’ and the constable behind the wheel complied, even though we’re not supposed to.

We pulled up at Paddington Green just as the transport was arriving, which would mean we had to sit around and wait for them to be strip searched and given overalls to wear. All their clothing would be bagged up and sent to Forensics.

‘Maybe we should get some tea in the canteen, Sir?’ I asked him and he scowled at me, because he liked to get on with interrogating the suspects. ‘You did insist on the sirens, Sir. We wouldn’t have been here so fast otherwise.’

We went to the canteen and sat around talking for an hour. He was telling me about his wife’s job in the City and how cutthroat it is and I told him about Bob and the dream on my wedding night.

‘God! I’m glad my Lucy didn’t wake up screaming on our wedding night. I would have found it quite disconcerting!’ he said indignantly.

‘Bob took it in his stride, and we talked about when some Iraqi tried to blow him away with an AK-47.’

‘So you saw the muzzle flash again?’ he asked softly, playing with the sugar in the bowl.

‘Every single time. I see the kid, then the shotgun, then the muzzle flash and then I wake up screaming.’ I told him. ‘It doesn’t happen every night, just occasionally, when I’ve had a stressful day and a wedding day is stressful.’

‘Yes, Lucy found our wedding day stressful. I just found it terrifying.’

‘Terrifying?’ I asked him, stunned. ‘Why would you find it terrifying, Sir?’

‘It’s the commitment that I found terrifying. I was committing the rest of my life to this woman and I couldn’t guarantee her the next fifty years!’ he explained softly, still making swirly designs in the sugar bowl.

‘Nobody can guarantee fifty years!’ I scoffed. ‘Bob can’t guarantee me a day, let alone fifty years. We work in a high risk job. The chances are that either you or I will be dead inside of five years. I’ve certainly had my close call; it’s your turn next.’

He looked at me in horror. ‘Touch wood!’ and he rubbed his fingers on the edge of the table. ‘Maybe I’ll be lucky and not get shot at all!’ We’re a superstitious lot, coppers, anything to ward off fate.

Right then, Chief Inspector Harris came through the door like a tornado. ‘Appleton, Green, what have you got here.’

‘Hello Chief! And her name is Castle now, don’t you remember giving her away at her wedding last week?’ Appleton corrected him politely.

I got up to fetch him some tea and when I got back Appleton was explaining the bomb factory that we’d found and how we found it.

Harris looked at me firmly. ‘Why would you trust this snitch?’ he demanded.

‘He’s never led me up the garden path, Sir! Also his sister was injured in the Canary Wharf incident and he doesn’t like the idea of a car bomb in Wapping High Street.’

‘So we have four twenty odd year olds building bombs on mum’s kitchen table in Stepney and a hint of Fakesh behind it?’ he looked at Appleton. ‘Anything about it strike you as odd or out of place?’

Appleton shook his head, ‘No Nothing Sir.’

‘What about the Eurostar brochure?’ I asked him.

‘I told you it was probably in there by accident!’ he snapped at me.

I sat back, contrite and pretended to zipper my mouth.

‘What Eurostar brochure?’ Harris asked quietly and evenly, stirring his tea.

‘She found a bloody Eurostar brochure on the