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24
"I'm sorry to have left you so unexpectedly," Sharon said, on her return "particularly for a false alarm."
"A false alarm?" I asked, and Sharon laughed.
"It started out like that," she explained, "but it turned out to be very constructive."
"How did that happen?" I asked.
"It was DCI Mark Brooks who called me this morning," Sandra explained. "He believed he was in the middle of a catastrophe. But by the time I reached his office, the whole problem had been settled."
"Typical," I said. "I presume he tried to recompense you for your disruption."
"How did you know?" Sandra asked.
"I've worked with DCI Brooks before, remember?"
"Since he is so well associated with the Assistant Commissioner," Sandra explained, "I asked for his help in finding, the one-time friend of Tina Davis, Suzanne Bowen. It didn't take Brooks long to find her, and I spent most of the morning talking with Miss Bowen."
"What was she like?" I pressed.
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IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 25
I came back a few seconds later with my file in my hands. As I didn't own a computer or a mobile phone, I filed the old-fashioned way, writing everything down on cards designed for my index.I flicked through the sheets until I found the record I wanted. "Ah, here we are," I said. "Ahmed Dastageer, a British Muslim of Pakistani descent. Born in Birmingham. He fled to Pakistan after a fatal knifing of his uncle. Apparently he was quizzed by police in association with that offence but was discharged and permitted to leave the country. He lived in a part of Pakistan where his ancestral relations lived, and married a daughter, or a niece of the creator and mystical leader of the Fist of Allah, an extremist group who have crafted their style by blasting passenger trains in India and Kashmir.""How nice of them," Sandra said."Yes," I said. "Ahmed deceptively revisited England and was allegedly grilled and discharged again this time in association with the tube-and-bu
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 26
26 "For the test," I proposed, "we may as well start with the items one would usually use for cleaning kitchens and bathrooms. We can surely try the dish and laundry cleaners, but it makes common sense to work with the cleansers first, doesn't it?" I started to space on my work surface. "You've got some splendid examples, Sandra," I said. "Put them here, side-by-side, can you? We'll mop them with a sponge, and we can grasp them all at once." "Do you think we should shield the tabletop in some way?" Sandra asked. "Unquestionably some spring-cleaning merchandises will seep through the gaps. Do you have a layer of heavy plastic somewhere?" "Don't bother," I replied. "After the spillages, this table has undergone over the years, a drip of cleanser may come as a delightful surprise. The most liable candidate for leaving a crumbly deposit, would be a powdered detergent, such as, what did you buy? Ajax?" Sandra handed me the tin she had bought, and I
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 28
As the morning dragged on, I paid attention to material about the shadowing, arrest, and tribunal of the Liquid Bombers. It was a long and complex story.Sandra went off to work while I continued with my research.The surveillance of the Liquid Bombers was astonishing. The conspirators shadowed for practically twelve months before their arrest. Police had fitted a covert camera in the Bomb Factory.MI5 had diverted the email that the conspirators had sent, and some of this email presented as proof. Undercover detectives from all over Britain had allegedly brought in to follow the collaborators around. One officer sat across from a conspirator at an Internet cafe and watched him download data used in arranging the attack.Some of the original reports said the police had arrested twenty-five people, and some reports stated that the police released one of them immediately. Later reports put the number of people detained at twenty-four.Several more pe
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 27
I looked up from my empty plate and asked, "What do you think about those files?" I asked, not expecting an enthusiastic answer. "My head is spinning," Sandra responded. We picked a new restaurant between Barnet and Whetstone, which had a fixed menu, changed each day. Today we had beef consommé, bitter greens with tomatoes the size of peas, thin roast beef slices, noodles in a green sauce, cheese that melted on your tongue served with sweet blue grapes. The servers, all young people dressed in blue tunics, move wordlessly to and from the table, keeping the salvers and wine glasses full. "So is mine," I acknowledged. "I can't work it out, at least not yet. But it seems for every aspect that shows clarity, I'm discovering three or four others that make no sense at all. I am unable to put the word misrepresentation out of my mind. Am I are reading a story or am I reading the facts. My instinct served me well, in the past but there is so much about this s
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 29
Friday began warmer and drier than previous days, for which my back was grateful. Before I ate my breakfast, I looked in on the countertop test. The façades were dry, and all except the brownest appeared clean. But I pulled a fingertip across them, and it came up pale white. The deposit was chalky and, to some extent, tacky, and it took a bit of determination to clean it off my fingers. If the purpose of our test were to discover whether a white chalky deposit could have been left behind, perhaps inadvertently, after an almost comprehensive scrubbing with an everyday domestic product, then the answer was clear. I left the countertops untouched so that Sandra could see for herself. After I had eaten my bacon sandwich, I spent time looking from beginning to end through my files in search of articles about the encrypted communications between the conspirators and Ahmed Dastageer. I found a piece in the Daily Mail called POLICE OBSERVED THE CONSPIRACY EVOLVE, THE
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 30
As the afternoon wore on, I tried to disregard the tick of the clock. But my anxiety continued to develop as I anticipated the likelihood of questioning Dr Jodie Smith, who was coming to see us, on my own without DCI Burton's necessary presence. Thankfully, Sandra arrived with ten minutes to spare, and I hugged her with sheer relief. Her presence made my questioning legal. I could not follow the route I was following without her right beside me. Shaking the professor by the hand, I said, "This is my friend DCI Sandra Burton." Sandra rose and shook Jodie's hand, and I gestured toward the other armchair. She was beautiful, with striking blonde shoulder-length hair and crystal blue eyes. Her waist was thin, her bust ample, and her legs languid and long. "Please, take a seat, Dr. Smith. Thank you for coming to see us today. You have saved us a trip to Manchester." Jodie smiled. "It's the least I could do," she said. "I was surprised to hea
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 31
On my way back from the door, I stopped and drew a fingertip across the countertops. "This residue is just as Nelson described it. What did you use?" "It's Cif. Your normal bog standard creamy white cleanser," Sandra said. "I used it to get rid of the much heavier product left by the first cleaner and I didn't rinse it off." "If nothing else, you have shown that the powder Nelson described could have been left in the Suffolk Street flat in exactly the same way. As for what the cleaning was intended to hide, we may never know the answer." "What about fingerprints?" "You could be right, we must be cautious in looking at inferences from poor evidence, but we are safe to assume that whoever killed Tina Davis wasn't wearing gloves at the time." "It seems a minor point." "And yet it could turn out to be a significant detail, and I am prepared to call the countertop experiment a success. You may keep carrying out your tests, but there
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London was an unsafe place at the commencement of the G20 Conference, which brought together the economic brains of the planet's most influential countries, also got acts of objection. Police began expecting violent behaviour long beforehand the occasion, and from all developments, they were resolved not to be proved mistaken. Before the occasion, campaign coordinators aimed to organise a consultation with the Metropolitan Police to talk about procedures and the security of all concerned. But the police had more demanding difficulties, at least until The Guardian started asking awkward questions. A short debate was quickly assembled but created nothing significant. The Met were unconcerned in consulting with the demonstrators. Instead, they had their particular strategies. In order, they said, to safeguard London and avert any likely aggression, they would use a manoeuvre kettling, in which officers, equipped with batons and screens and esc
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