Free THE THESEUS PARADOX: The stunning breakthrough thriller based on real events, from the Scotland Yard detective turned author. by David Videcette Page A

hours. He’d not slept much the previous night anyway; he never did the night before a job, and this was probably the highest-profile one he’d done.
    Geoff and Mike were stood behind the EXPO van, finishing up their rolls.
    ‘I’ll get an exhibits team here; you’ll have to work with them. I want a photographer in there today – and maybe a sample of the brown substance from the plates that we saw on the floor.’ Jake sipped the hot coffee as he reeled off his requests. He was desperate to get started.
    ‘You can photograph from the window, mate, fine, but I’m going to have to clear a path inside through everything that’s on the floor. We need to be able to move around inside safely before I can let anyone in there. The place could be full of explosives.’
    ‘How long? Just give me an idea of how long,’ said Jake.
    ‘Two or three days, all being well – assuming that we don’t find any viable devices as we clear the path. Your photographer can do some initial photos from the window – I’m not having anyone blown up on my watch,’ said Geoff sternly.

19
    Thursday
    14 July 2005
    0330 hours
    Dewsbury, West Yorkshire
    The night was humid. They’d wound down the windows on the car to let in some air. Clouds that had locked in the day’s heat at sunset were now blocking out the light from the moon and there were very few street lights actually working in the dark, familiar cul-de-sac. The few that were gave off an eerie yellow glow in their immediate vicinity only.
    It was the third night in a row that Jake and Lenny had been sat in the BMW together. They’d decided against looking for an observation point in any of the houses. It was too risky; everyone knew everyone else in the street. It was bound to get out and back to their target – Wasim’s wife, Salma.
    They still had to have good vision though, so the BMW was the next best thing. Sitting in it hour after hour meant that they could ensure the street was clear and safe for the walker to go in. The walker was a West Yorkshire officer together with his dog Spike, a white West Highland terrier. Spike wasn’t specially trained and had no security or counter-terror skills; he was a prop and he belonged personally to John the police officer. Spike was the reason John was walking around the streets at 0330 hours – at least that was the cover story if anyone stopped to ask. Even Spike thought that was the real reason; they were just out playing ball, weren’t they?
    Anyone looking at the bloke and his dog in the street, as John kicked the tennis ball lightly along the ground, would most likely think the same.
    Spike was a natural. He hadn’t needed to practise his role on repeat for the past seven days like his owner had. John had stood at the side of an identical red Honda Civic upwards of a hundred times. He’d spent two days learning every inch of the underneath of the chassis to find exactly the right place to attach ‘the lump’.
    The lump was a small magnetic metal box that held a tracking device. It could tell you the car’s exact location at all times and how long the vehicle had been there. Best of all, it could do it all on its own. In remote mode you could even program it to send text messages to you to say it was moving. When it did, you could then log on to a specially configured laptop and watch its movements live on the computer from wherever you were located.
    The dummy Civic, which John had been memorising every inch of over the past seven days, was identical to the one that Wasim’s wife drove; identical to the one she’d been using ever since the bombings in London. It was too early to say if Salma Khan was involved in the atrocity or not. Had she hidden things? Perhaps more explosives? ‘Keep tabs on her, just in case,’ Denswood had said. ‘Know where she goes.’
    The risk was that if she were involved in the bombings, she might well be surveillance aware. With cars and people following her all the time, she’d be