Free The Angel by Mark Dawson Page B

were moans and cries for help.
    In the distance, there came the sound of sirens.
    And then, closer to hand, a sound he recognised immediately.
    Gunfire.
    It was coming from his four o’clock. Pope spun.
    The Palace.

Chapter Sixteen
    T he man they called Mohammed was waiting inside the empty warehouse. His name was not really Mohammed. He had been given many names, and it had been so long since he had been referred to by the one his mother had given him that he had almost forgotten it. His earliest years had been lived on th e streets of the Gaza Strip. He had been wild and unruly then, and the Isr aeli soldiers had called him ‘Arabush’ , or rat. When he arrived in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets, aged just seventeen, the mujahideen had called him ‘Kid’. The jihadists in the Sudanese al-Qaeda cell had called him the ‘ Engineer’, because his bombs and martyrdom vests were the most effective that they had ever seen. Now, his brothers in the caliphate called him ‘Iblis’ . In Islam, Iblis is a jinn born from fire who refused to bow for Adam. The literal translation was ‘Devil’.
    He had been given the name of Mohammed Shalmalak when he arrived in the United Kingdom. His false passport and driver’s licence bore that name, and it was the one he used as he set up a home for himself in the north of the country. It was the name he had used when speaking to the young suicide bombers that the imam, Alam Hussain, had provided. For a man who did not care for names, it was as good as any.
    Weeks ago, Mohammed had been provided with the address of this warehouse and a key to open the padlocked front door. He had not questioned its provision, but he had been scrupulous in ensuring that it was vacant. The warehouse had seemed derelict and had obviously been empty for months. There were two offices and a bathroom on the first floor. All had borne the evidence of squatters. There was graffiti on the walls, the radiators had been removed for scrap and what little furniture had been left behind was broken and useless. It had been the same downstairs, too. The small kitchen had been filthy and the large warehouse space was a wreck, with clinker from an unswept chimney gathered in a dirty grate. The only piece of furniture had been a two-seater sofa, the fabric covering ripped so that the yellowed stuffing was poking out.
    Mohammed had not concerned himself with the state of the property. It was empty, it could be secured and the windows had been covered by metal sheeting that meant that it was impossible to see inside. It had been the perfect spot to build his bombs.
    He was wearing a pair of latex gloves and overshoes and a hairnet . He had dropped his bag on the sofa. He opened it, took out a silenced 9mm Berretta and placed it on the floor. He went back to the bag, took out an iPad, saw that he had a strong 4G signal and opened the BBC’s iPlayer app. He navigated to BBC Parliament.
    Prime Minister’s Questions was held in the main chamber of the House of Commons every Wednesday at midday. It was an unruly bear pit, and tickets in the public gallery were sought after by foreign visitors, who found the occasion both fascinating and appalling. The baying, rude loutishness of it all was so different from proceedings in their own countries. Mohammed found it distasteful, although he admired the adroitness of the combatants. Not many political leaders could cope with quick-fire exchanges that required detailed knowledge of a Barnsley bypass one minute and the finer points of a UN resolution the next.
    Attendance was strongly encouraged for MPs of all persuasions, and that usually meant that both the government and opposition benches were full. Most debates in the Commons were dry and dull affairs, with the green benches mostly empty, but Mohammed knew that this would be different. He had watched it on television, and of course he had secured one of those public gallery seats for himself when he conducted his reconnaissance.