Hunter Hunted by Jack Gatland (best value ebook reader .TXT) 📗

the bloody Daily Mail telling the world of the death of a rival journalist and believed terrorist. And that is a picture of who we believe is her terrorist handler, moments before he met with her in a secret meeting.’ Sutcliffe sighed. ‘And now, thanks to the magic of the World Wide Web, everyone in the bloody world knows about it.’

Billy was reading the piece.

‘They say she was an extremist,’ he said.

‘Where?’ Anjli leaned in now. Billy pointed to the screen.

‘It says here they reckon that they have a source, claiming that when she was in Syria a few years back, an extremist Muslim organisation turned her. They write that this man may have been her handler, and that he killed her because she failed some mission.’

‘This is bullshit!’ Declan exclaimed.

‘This is tabloid journalism,’ Billy replied.

‘Well, it’s out there now,’ Declan said. ‘Let’s move on and solve this before—‘

‘Oh, so you’re still on this case?’ Sutcliffe snapped. ‘The one I specifically told you to walk away from?’

‘Just offering to help,’ Declan suggested. ‘I assumed we have a briefing?’

Sutcliffe pointed at the briefing room, and Declan, Anjli, Billy and Frost entered it, with Sutcliffe walking in behind them.

‘I don’t know how to use this bloody plasma screen,’ Sutcliffe muttered. ‘So someone will have to work it for me as I talk.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Billy started tapping on his laptop and the screen filled with The Daily Mail’s website, complete with image.

Declan shifted uncomfortably in his chair, looking around. Nobody yet was staring at him, so he hoped the disguise would hold.

‘So as we all know, journalist Kendis Taylor was found murdered in Brompton Cemetery today,’ Sutcliffe started. ‘She was killed by a stab wound to the chest, likely inflicted elsewhere around eight pm last night, and was brought to this spot under cover of darkness. The wound is apparently an interesting one, according to your team as it’s double edged, like a tiny sword and it left behind a strange residue.’

‘Strange how?’

‘Ruthenium,’ Sutcliffe read the word from his phone. ‘Which is one of the rarest minerals in the world, apparently, and used in solar cell batteries and electrical contacts.’

‘So someone stabbed her with a sharpened solar cell?’

Sutcliffe raised a hand to stop the conversation, waiting for silence before continuing. ‘We’ve sent her personal items off to be examined, and hopefully we’ll get something from them.’

‘What were the items?’ Declan asked.

‘Two phones, a purse with twenty-five pounds in, some credit cards and her NUJ card—‘

’NUJ? Billy looked up.’

‘National Union of Journalists,’ Declan replied.

‘She also had a notebook with pages written in shorthand, which we’ve asked her newspaper to translate for us and a post it note with both TOTTERS LANE and FOB C written on it.’

‘Totters Lane is in Shoreditch,’ Billy said as he checked a page on his laptop. ‘Nothing of note, got obliterated in the war. People literally vaporised.’

‘Check if she had any connections there,’ Sutcliffe ordered. ‘It could have been her next target.’

Declan resisted the urge to respond to the comment.

‘FOB C?’ Anjli now looked up at the DCI. ‘As in key fob?’

‘No idea,’ Sutcliffe replied. ‘If it is, it’s the third one in a series of fobs, so we need to work that out. Unless Mister Walsh, being our soldier on the scene knows?’

Declan looked to the desk. There was a term that he knew, used back when he was a Military police officer.

‘FOB can mean forward operating base,’ he reluctantly replied. ‘It’s a military term, more used by the US army, but it means any secured forward operational level military position that’s used to support tactical objectives and strategic military intentions.’

‘Look at that,’ Frost grinned. ‘A known extremist having a piece of paper that—‘

‘She’s not a known anything,’ Declan snapped. ‘And as Anjli said, a key fob is just as possible.’

‘Well, we’ll know more when we get a report back,’ Sutcliffe interjected.

‘DC Davey could have done that quicker, sir,’ Anjli spoke up.

‘DC Davey is a jobsworth who only does what her boss tells her to do,’ Sutcliffe replied. ‘I’d rather a professional does it. Anyway, we have a rough timeline of her last day. She arrived at her desk at ten in the morning and was apparently quite agitated. She disappeared at around noon and turned her phone off, which is concerning.’

‘Or she was conserving her battery,’ Declan suggested.

‘Let’s go with the extreme terrorist idea first, shall we?’ Sutcliffe threw back. ‘Either way, she turned it back on around one thirty and sent a text message, arranging a meeting for three pm that afternoon at Brompton Cemetery, with this mysterious man, and a Nasir Gill, a co-worker with Muslim tendencies.’

‘Muslim tendencies?’ Anjli shook her head. ‘Do you mean he was a Muslim? That’s like saying someone has Christian tendencies.’

‘I’m sorry, was my statement not woke enough for you?’ Sutcliffe took a moment and then continued. ‘She also met with Nasir Gill, a co-worker and known Muslim.’

‘Who did she send the text to?’ Declan asked. ‘Maybe it can nail down the target?’

‘Unregistered sim,’ Billy replied. ‘And, more importantly, it doesn’t matter because it was one of the two phones she had on her body. The man must have given it back when they met. She then caught a taxi but almost immediately exited it, as if throwing someone off her trail, and then caught a bus to Victoria Coach Station with her Oyster card. We have the card being used again after this, but bus CCTV footage shows it being used by a young Asian man.’

‘He stole it?’

‘Or she gave it to him. This is still three hours before time of death. She then disappears from view until this morning, when we found her. At some point she was taken back to the cemetery that she’d been in earlier.’

‘What time does the cemetery close up?’ Declan asked.

‘Waiting to find out,’ Sutcliffe replied.

‘Two nights ago she used her credit card to buy a round of drinks in The Horse and Guard pub in Chelsea,’ Frost spoke now. ‘Apparently the