PART ONE: FRIDAY NIGHT
23:41
“What do you mean he’s gone, Dawson?” Detective Chief Inspector John C. Wayne had not been expecting a call from Detective Sergeant Michael Dawson, only a text message to confirm his subject was in bed. And he was not expecting that for at least another hour. Wayne had hoped to be asleep before it came. “Gone. From the opera,” Dawson panted. “Professor Veda, and Kaia. He— they’re gone, sir.” Wayne could tell that Dawson wasn’t his normal self but somewhere between confused and exasperated. Or drunk. “All right, Dawson,” said Wayne. He kept his voice low and even out of habit, as the calm voice of reason. “No need to panic. They probably left early, before the fat lady sang. Purcell isn’t for everyone.” Or anyone, really, he thought. “All right, Dawson. What happened?” Dawson sounded slow, but even. “I fell asleep, sir. I believe I was drugged.” “You believe?” Wayne caught his voice and offered an excuse. “It’s Purcell, Dawson.” He wanted to believe the easy explanations. But the worst-case scenario kept needling him. “Yes, sir it was. But…” Wayne let the silence hang as he walked back to his office, phone in hand. He put it on the desk next to his touch pad. Wayne tapped the pad and dragged his finger diagonally to pull a 16x16 grid of camera feeds onto the left-hand screen. Each image had a small dialogue window below it with an abbreviated address and the camera’s GPS coordinates. Wayne could see the last opera-goers still filing out of the Opera House. He sent the link in a message to Special Analyst James Tully’s phone as he continued to scan the viewers: You up? Need you on this. More to follow. Show it to HOLMES. Wayne knew Tully’s expertise with the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System would come in handy one day. He hadn’t expected it to be today. He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly as he continued to toggle round the camera feeds. Each highlighted image bulged out of the grid in a 3D effect as he zoomed in on his target. Wayne saw the block of feeds from the car park off Drury Lane and highlighted and dragged it over to the right-hand screen. He watched as life played in three-second clips on each of the fourteen cameras in-and-around the three-storey car park. He could see Dawson, dressed in a tuxedo standing next to the Peugeot assigned for ferrying Dr Veda and his date to the Royal Opera House. Wayne noticed the passenger door was slightly ajar. “Did you open the door?” “No sir. It was open just like this when I came up here.” This was a crime scene now, and Wayne went into management mode. The Home Secretary had given him Dr Veda exactly thirty-five days earlier when Veda had arrived in London from Oxford University. Wayne had no idea who Veda was before he got the call, and he said so. She explained that Dr Veda was doing important work for the Health Ministry, and his personal safety was of the highest importance. The Home Secretary expressed concern that Veda might have difficulty adapting to life in London, so it was decided that he would have a plainclothes officer as his driver for an undetermined short-term transition period. Wayne accepted the Home Secretary’s explanation before considering whether the professor had value to anyone or faced any threats. Wayne had assigned Michael Dawson to the first official posting of the MCU2. Dawson’s file was one of the first few dozen files Wayne had culled from his initial candidate search of the Met’s personnel database. One phone call to Dawson’s superior in the Intelligence Command had put him on Wayne’s short list. Still in his twenties, Michael Dawson was one of the youngest officers to earn the rank of detective. But Wayne was most intrigued by Dawson’s two failed attempts to join MI6. They met once, and Wayne revealed little about the task force he was creating before Dawson volunteered to request the transfer himself. He accepted his first assignment with few questions, and Wayne appreciated that. But it wasn’t a babysitting job anymore. “Well, you did look, right Dawson?” Wayne didn’t wait for Dawson to reply. “What did you touch?” “I pulled it open by the latch, but I didn’t get in. Just looked. No contamination, sir,” Dawson asserted. “But you looked,” Wayne repeated without reproach. He was curious. “Well? Anything?” “Yes sir. Looks to be two small drops, on the inside of the door next to the lock button. Right here.” Dawson held his phone at an angle and focused the camera on the pair of droplets. “Looks like blood, sir.” He used his free hand to point at them from outside the window, flexing his index finger and bending his thumb to pinpoint the spots and the small gap between. Dawson held steady and waited for the inspector to respond to his find. Wayne glanced at the screen on his phone. His eyes were busy as he pulled up a map of Greater London on the main viewer on his desk. “Have you got a photo of them?” “The blood stains?” asked Dawson. “No, Veda and…” “Kaia? Yes sir. A few,” said Dawson. “From tonight,” he added. “Shall I share them, sir?” “Well, yes. Ms Rebane,” Wayne tapped his desk. “Send me the best one with both. Now,” he said. “I’ll send it out A-S-A-P.” He always spelled it out, like Duke Wayne would have done in one of his classic war films. Wayne disliked the way too many people had made the acronym into a single word. He had already dragged and dropped the file photo of Dr Veda onto the centre screen and was preparing to send it out with an alert, but a photo of both of them together would make more sense. Besides, Wayne realised he hadn’t any photos of the girlfriend, despite her seeming to take up more and more space in Veda’s world since they first met a few weeks earlier. Dawson’s message arrived and Wayne smiled at the attachment’s title as he opened it, but didn’t laugh at the irony until he saw the image of the couple standing in front of a phone box around the corner from the main entrance to the Royal Opera House. “Dr Who, indeed,” Wayne wondered aloud. “Sir?” asked Dawson. “Didn’t it come through?” “It did, Dawson. I was referring to the caption you wrote. Dr Who?” “Oh, that,” Dawson breathed heavily. “It was a joke. The lady at the box office asked Dr Veda to repeat his name when we were picking up the tickets. I took the photo just after.” Wayne had a dossier on the young scientist. Now he regretted not performing due diligence on the woman when Dawson had first informed him about the budding romance in Veda’s life. But he had no reason to be suspicious before tonight. After all, according to the memo from the Home Office Dr Nicholas Veda was a relatively unknown scientist from Oxford, working on a cure for typhoid or some such disease, and of little interest to anyone outside the Health Ministry. Wayne had read the good doctor’s bio and was quietly happy to hear that spring had finally arrived for Veda when Ms Rabane entered his life. But suspicion rang like a fire bell in Wayne’s ear as soon as he saw the photo of the stunningly beautiful Ms Rebane standing next to the meek and humble scientist. He knew full well it didn’t only happen in the movies. “No, it’s fine, Dawson.” Wayne cornered his dubiety in the back of his mind and went on cordially, “Well, stand by, secure the scene, and I’ll get a team over there.” “Yessir!” Dawson exclaimed, sounding relieved. Wayne rang off, then opened his directory. He paused, his thumb hovering over the screen. His first instinct had been to request the Home Office to call in extra military, double or triple the street patrols in the vicinity of the Opera House and give them the order to detain Veda and his date on sight. In a moment he could send out an alert to every level of the Metropolitan Police Service, have the photo in the phones of every uniform in the Greater London area, including transit and airports, through the Met’s COMS system. And have thousands of eyes scanning the city for the well-dressed scientist and the knockout that must be accompanying him. If he was sure there was foul play involved, he had to act. But he wasn’t. Wayne’s unit had been officially active for almost three months but in fact had yet to engage in any official action. At the administrative level of the Met, all the commanding officers had received a directive to cooperate in any way requested if called upon by the Unit and DCI Wayne. Despite being active, the unit was far from operational. No need had arisen to engage any other branch of the Metropolitan Police to date. Wayne had his core of First Officers in place but had deliberately kept the unit offline at the Met, and had remained on standby with the Home Office since St Valentine’s Day, awaiting a direct order. The directive to supply a security escort for the Health Ministry’s virologist had appeared to be an excuse to be logging active hours until Major Crimes Unit 2 went operational. Wayne grimaced at his phone and scanned his directory for his contact in the HO. He read the time. “Almost midnight.” He put the phone down and sighed. But the grimace refused to loosen as his eyes roamed the map. Wayne wasn’t ready to call the Home Office until he was certain that the two young lovers hadn’t simply slipped out of the Opera House for a little snogging. Even now they might be thinking about calling Dawson to pick them up. He was hoping the blood at the scene was somebody else’s—preferably nobody’s. Either way, putting the Met Police ground forces and surveillance branches on it seemed prudent. He quickly typed a draft alert on his desktop. Getting his team engaged and up to speed came first, he reasoned, if only by a few seconds. Wayne dragged their mobile numbers into the address box on the message pane. Then he paused to consider exactly who else needed to see the alert. How high, and how wide do I wave this flag? His gut told him he was facing the Unit’s Inaugural Event, but his head reminded him of the potential for political disaster. After being introduced by the Home Secretary at her Easter Tea with the Superintendents, DCI Wayne had reached out to every commander in the Service to get a read on their reaction to the directive. Most reacted with the proper acceptance, all with varying degrees of reluctance. Wayne had restated the delicately worded article that described the position of his MCU2-cum-Task Force in the Met’s hierarchy. He had got a good read on many Commanders in the series of face-to-face meetings which he held after the Home Secretary announced Superintendent John Wayne’s reassignment to the newly activated MCU2. They were labelled meetings in his calendar but Wayne had tagged some as chat and some F2F discussion depending on how confrontational he anticipated them to be. His assumptions had proved right in all cases. Most of the leadership within the Metropolitan Police Service understood and accepted that the new directive was about action not authority. Wayne knew all of them well enough to know it would be difficult for some of these capital ‘L’ leaders to see it as anything but castration should the need arise for them to step aside and let Wayne take charge of and deploy their assets. There were a few too many in high places with designs on climbing higher before they retired. If he had to pull rank to get things done, it would mean inaction until the Home Office reacted, leaving Wayne paralysed. Worse yet if the two escaped lovebirds were to turn up getting it off in the bushes at Lincoln’s Inn Park, a ten-minute walk from the Opera House… He hadn’t dismissed the public sex fantasy solution, but had to consider all eventualities, including activating Charles Burns, but only if the situation dictated. He decided to send the notice directly to Dispatch, to engage the eyes of the Met—at street level only. IT Guy and Tully will have to find answers to the bigger questions. As they arise, he thought. Wayne drew his hands back from the keyboard, leaving them hanging stiffly as he considered the next steps to follow the general alert. He opened another window on the left-hand viewer that displayed the location of each team member’s phone on a smaller scale map. He noted the locations and proximities to his primary points of interest. Wayne tapped on the touch pad to send the instant message—with the photo and details—to each unit member’s phone, and also to an officer in Dispatch he knew well enough to trust to be discreet. He watched his phone, waiting only a few moments before the message read confirmation appeared on all message tabs. He knew that within minutes the alert would be sent out to a few thousand Met police patrols, constables and special constables across all the boroughs of London. By Wayne’s calculation, if the two young lovers had simply slipped away from Dawson, they would be spotted and quickly reported. There was the real possibility that Dr Veda and Kaia Rebane were abducted from the car park, and the reality was that Wayne had no idea why, much less who. An Albanian prostitution ring? Racists or terrorists? He fought off the impulse to call his contact in the HO and demand some answers about Dr Veda and his work. Instead he opened the stream linking his computer display directly to Intelligence Specialist Analyst Tully and IT Specialist Inspector Guy Tellier and pinged them both for immediate response. As a second thought, he sent Tellier another short message with Veda’s telephone number and email address. He quickly typed in the subject line: And their tweets etc., leaving the message blank. Wayne closed the phone and checked his watch, then turned his attention to the maps on his monitors. He confirmed his time and distance estimates and contacted three members of his team, sending each a message with an address and a brief directive. He sent Detective Sergeant Semi Riza to the car park on Drury Lane, informing him that a forensics team should follow his arrival. Then he sent the address and Riza’s contact details in a second message to his ally in Dispatch requesting a forensics team and directing them to follow Riza. In a separate message he requested dispatch of a wagon to take Dawson to the infirmary for toxicology tests and monitoring. Wayne kept an eye on the message tab and shot glances up at the computer monitor as he typed and sent another message. He placed the phone on the desk and relaxed and flexed his digits, his arthritic index finger still slightly curved, as if reluctant to relinquish its grip on the phone. The reply came in only a few seconds. He let out a long, satisfied breath and his grimace slowly turned upward, approaching a smile, as he read it. Detective Sergeant Martin Blennerhassett confirmed he would take his car and meet up with a second patrol at Veda’s residence in Kensington. Wayne dispatched Detective Sergeant John Aitkens directly from Scotland Yard to Veda’s laboratory, as he was the only team member on duty. He determined that Aitkens and two uniformed officers would be arriving there before the others reached their destinations. Wayne allowed himself a sigh of relief. The Incident Response had quickly become an investigation and his unit had it under control. His first steps had been sure. He felt confident that he had ticked all the required boxes if anyone in the Home Office asked to see the protocol. The physical teams were in place or en route and the digital intelligence was being gathered and analysed. For the time being at least, he needn’t involve any of the Higher Ups in the Met or the HO. Either his team would find Veda and Ms Rebane in the next few hours or he would get a call from whoever snatched the professor and his girlfriend. The possibilities swirled in his head. Violent abduction, a disappearance at least—planned or coerced? And Kaia Rebane. Wayne had to ask himself again why no due diligence when Dawson first mentioned the Estonian beauty in his daily reports. He cursed himself for not ordering Dawson to do a background check on her. But Wayne didn’t see a security threat when the details came down from the HO about this police escort assignment. The only potential conflict he could imagine would be in London traffic, and that was Dawson’s business. He turned to the window and gazed at the endless flow of traffic on the Embankment below. It was supposed to be…nothing. Wayne sent another message to Tully: Need to see everything on Veda and Kaia Rebane A.S.A.P. Something told Wayne that adding Charles Burns to the receivers list would be advisable. His eyes wandered to the short, two-drawer mahogany filing cabinet to the right of his desk. He inherited it when he took over as Superintendent of The Specialist Branch in 2002, and it was the only furniture that had survived the move to his new office at MCU2. He visualised the folder in the top drawer containing the transfer papers for Charles Burns. He had been holding off on signing the order to make it official. But the current situation was expanding rapidly, and the former Major Charles Burns had front line experience in many extraction and hostage recovery missions—all with unqualified success—during his years with the Canadian Joint Task Force and British SBS. Wayne hoped it never came to that. He reasoned that even if it didn’t, he needed more boots on the ground, pronto. Wayne located Burns’ phone at the Alexandra Ice Palace. He pressed the dial button. Wayne knew Burns’ experience in JTF2 could be valuable if the worst came to worst. He rang off after he heard the first ring and stared at the number display. He calculated the distance to the Opera House and sent a text message directing Burns to call in A.S.A.P. then he set his phone down on the desk again. Wayne arched his back and stretched, feeling the late hour. “The night’s just getting started,” he mused aloud. Then he made two direct calls. One, a logical choice and another, a gut reaction, centred somewhere near the throb of fear just behind his diaphragm. He direct-dialled the security office at the housing complex in Kensington where Veda had been living since he began his work for the Health Ministry. After identifying himself, Wayne had a brief chat with the woman who had been on duty since 20:00. He asked if she had noticed any disruption to the video feeds. “Not tonight, no sir.” Wayne asked if she had photos of the residents and if she knew Dr Veda. She answered, “Yes and yes, sir.” She reported no sighting of Veda, because he left for the opera before she came on duty. “According to the key log,” she said. “His key should be in the lock up.” And it was. The guard explained how Veda, like many of the residents, took advantage of the services provided by the building management, but Wayne barely heard her. He was racing through the possible endings to the evening. He asked if the guard had access to the recording of the video for the hours previous to her coming on shift. The guard kept it a little coy. “Now, why might you be looking for video following one specific citizen, Mister Wayne?” “Detective Chief Inspector Wayne.” He politely took the guard’s mobile number and sent her the general alert looking for Nicholas Veda and his date as persons of interest to Major Crimes Unit 2. “See my message? That’s why.” The guard apologised with a nod and went to work on her computer. She typed a few commands and scanned through the images on a smaller viewer to her left. “Nineteen-oh-seven. There he is. And his date.” She paused slightly before she concluded, “Dressed to the nines.” Wayne imagined by her tone that the guard might be more jealous of Veda than of Kaia. “And not been back.” “That’s right sir. I’ve seen three exits and no entries in the last three hours.” “Almost four,” said Wayne, trying to express appreciation. “Well, a team should be arriving soon to see if Dr Veda returns and will likely wait until he arrives.” Wayne got a little edgy when the guard balked at the idea of letting anyone in without a warrant. “Will they have something… on paper, or something, sir?” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, as if they held a worry stone or string of beads. “This alert status authorises the Metropolitan Police to immediate access anywhere, understood?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, good. If you have a problem you can contact the Home Office directly,” Wayne paused. “At nine am tomorrow.” Wayne poked his touch pad a few times with his stiff right index finger. “I just sent you the number,” he said, and waited for the guard’s reply. “I understand, sir,” she acknowledged. “I want to help in any way.” “Good. Meanwhile, keep a line free to call us if you see the good doctor, and detain any strangers until we get a good look at them, yes? We’ll keep the link open on your video feed, so we’ll be with you.” “Understood, sir.” Wayne knew she hadn’t looked at the number he texted her. He wasn’t sure if she needed to be reassured of all she had taken in, but he admired her for protesting and then capitulating. She obviously understood the situation and would act as directed. “It was Purcell,” he added, as consolation. “They were going to a Purcell opera. Do you know Purcell?” When the guard explained with a grunt that she didn’t, he added, “Well you’re not missing anything. Detective Sergeant Blennerhassett and his team are en route and will arrive…” he checked the map and calculated the distance between Blennerhassett’s phone signal and Veda’s flat in Holland Park. “in about seven minutes. Do let us know if you see anything.” Wayne rang off, looking at his watch and calculating how long it would be before Aitkens and the uniforms got down to the lab, and wondering why he didn’t ask the conscientious young security guard’s name. He flagged the number on his outgoing calls list, and next dialled the security desk at Dr Veda’s newly constructed lab in Uxbridge Road, Shepherd’s Bush. Any optimism he had left was slowly drowning. Wayne panned his focus to the video feed from the cameras at the building where Veda’s modest lab took up about two thousand square feet of the lower level. The camera angle was fixed at the opposite end of the corridor beyond the lift and stairwell, directed toward the door, with the entry scanner taking up most of the foreground. On the right side of the frame he could see only the corner of the security desk and what looked like a tall, empty rolling chair that was pushed to the corner behind the desk, its back turned as if it was being disciplined for some misbehaviour. Wayne was not able to remotely zoom or pan the camera. Mech. fail, read the sidebar. Wayne grumbled. He tried and failed to remember the last time he spoke to any of the three officers on duty at the lab in the sub level. Wayne had received the contact details and a dossier on each man assigned to the detail by the Home Office. But he had only had perfunctory contact with them since the assignment began four weeks earlier, and only during office hours. He dialled the number for the derelict HO man’s phone and let it ring once, giving him the option to return his call, as he toggled through the viewer index to find the video feed from the main foyer. He zoomed in to the security station and entry gate. A guard sat motionless—completely still for several seconds—behind the desk. Wayne wondered if the video was indeed live. He scrolled through his directory to the number for the building’s reception desk in the foyer. A private contractor had handled the building’s security since before Wayne had even heard of Uxbridge Commercial Plaza. The man in the chair fit Wayne’s idea of a night watchman—old and lonely. He watched as the man stirred and put his book down to answer the phone on the desk. “Number Ten Uxbridge,” said the guard in a Glaswegian accent. “Right. Good evening. Detective Chief Inspector John Wayne here, Metropolitan Police, Major Crimes.” “Really?” The guard sounded unimpressed. Wayne let it go. He was relieved to have confirmed that the camera feeds were, live again, and so was the guard. He chose to assign the sarcastic response not to a man who was junior in rank, but rather credit it to a man senior in years. “Yes,” Wayne continued evenly. “Turn and look at the camera above your left shoulder and wave. Please.” The security guard complied despite his initial disbelief. Wayne gave a curt “Thank you” and went on to explain how his unit had “spotted some anomalies in the signal transfer” and how he hoped the guard would be able to help. “It’s because of this I need to ask you a few questions…” Wayne let his last word hang, making it sound like a question itself. He smiled out of one side of his mouth and waited until the security guard took the cue and gave his name and details. Wayne asked if any visitors had come this evening, if and when any disruption in video occurred since the guard had started his shift, some five hours earlier. There had been no disruptions and no traffic in or out since 18:48, the time code of the last handprint-verified exit by an employee of one of the companies from the third floor. “And I’ve had no contact with the officer on duty downstairs this evening,” the guard added rather curtly. Wayne let the guard know that a team was on its way and that they would need access to the lower level elevator. The guard asked Wayne to repeat his name and the names of the officers on the way over. “Just covering me arse here,” the guard explained. Wayne smiled at the phone and repeated the names of the men due to appear any minute at the guard’s desk. “And it’s DCI Wayne here, of the Major Crimes Unit. You have the number. Yes?” He waited for the gruff Scot to read back the number before he rang off. Wayne was never the kind of officer to wear his insignia as a reminder of his rank to anyone. He had risen to the rank of Major as a young man in the military and to the rank of Superintendent in the Met, starting there thirty years earlier as a sergeant. John C. Wayne shared the same build as his famous namesake, and he always carried himself with the same authority. Now in his sixties, Wayne had officially stepped off the ladder, but not out of the chain of command. He had resigned his office with the former Specialist Command to assume the lower official rank of Detective Chief Inspector to lead the newly formed MCU2. The unit had been set up to report directly to the Home Office and was not to be nested under any other unit in the Service, including the existing Major Crimes Unit. The full authority and autonomy granted by the HO fit with his own mandate to create a more direct response to national security threats than what the current levels of bureaucracy in the Met and the MI branches had been crippled by. MCU2 was to become the more accurately titled Major Crimes Task Force before the current Home Secretary’s term came to an end in a little over two years. Wayne had begun working on the germ of the idea over three years earlier with an officer and old mate from the military in the Home Office. Now it was official. The new Home Secretary had writ large her dissatisfaction with the status quo and even hinted at her mistrust of the accountability of MI5 and MI6. Three months ago, she cut the ribbon without a ceremony, and told everybody to get on board. Wayne had been tasked with assembling Major Crimes Unit 2, with the tacit approval to poach the other commands in the Met. Wayne had done so, to an extent, for several months before he formally accepted the command of MCU2. And Wayne had reached out through international channels to a few chosen candidates on many occasions, long before the previous Home Secretary departed. It was only a matter of days after the announcement that Wayne had an Official Roster—the only way the Metropolitan Police Federation would approve any transfers. Wayne had recruited three men internally: two he knew personally in the Specialist Branch and Dawson, whom he almost had to pluck out of MI5. Wayne approved three other transfer requests after conducting over twenty interviews. Employment contracts were signed with Guy Tellier and the other non-MPS members of his IT team and Marty Blennerhassett, the ‘Irish Import’ as he had dubbed himself. “If we ever get enough men for a side, Chief,” was his joke. If we ever get a game, was what he inferred in the several weeks that had passed with no directive. The unit had no open cases, no investigations. No orders. Wayne’s MCU2 was just getting started and any orders were expected to come from the HO. His unit would work with any and all of the Met Commands, directing units from each and any branch as required. Wayne had been given the authority to engage any number necessary of available police, from any branch, including military and intelligence resources to create a task force instantly, and ad hoc. Despite telling every new team member of the dynamic shift of the paradigm, some had suggested they were still sceptical of how self-directed the unit could be. In each case, the point had been carefully made that the Unit’s autonomy was in question, not Wayne’s authority. Their respect for him was unanimous. Wayne had not given much thought to what a first operation for the unit might look like. But he had not imagined it would look like this night. He returned his focus to the video feeds from the car park and the Royal Opera House. He highlighted four views from each and began toggling them all to play back in reverse real time. Each viewer showed people and autos moving in a backward dance. Wayne confirmed that he had opened links to allow Tully to see his desktop and then called him directly. “Tully. Wayne here. Are you getting this? We need facial recognition.” “Yes sir,” Tully yawned. “I’ve got it, and HOLMES and I are on it.” “So, you’re asleep there,” Wayne snorted. “No sir. I’m in a handi-cab. Be there in ten. But we are on it, sir.” Tully may have yawned but he did not sound at all tired. He was engaged and already fired up. Suddenly his tone changed. “Bollocks! Ah, sir it seems there’s erm, an irregularity.” Wayne was looking at the screen with the eight views of the Opera House and the car park, still playing in reverse. They all went blue at the same time, 22:10, all looking like an old television that had been disconnected from its VCR but not turned off. “I know,” Wayne stared into the blue void facing him. “What is it?” He couldn’t hide his shock at seeing his most crucial source of intel wiped clear before his eyes. Tully sounded angry, and a little surprised. “We don’t know yet, sir. I’m working remotely until I get in, but I’m online with HOLMES and I’ve just messaged IT. Guy’s ahead of us and already has some major suspicions. It looks…” “Like trouble,” Wayne said with a grunt. He watched the unchanging screen and the time code race backward as he first doubled, then accelerated to five times faster. The screens all stayed blue until 19:19 and magically, life was restored to them. People and cars once again resumed their jerking, backward dance. Wayne and Tully both made a note about the time out and time in for the “Blue Out”, as Wayne had named it. “It’s some kind of hack…” “Hack? Are you telling me the London Metropolitan Police Service has been hacked?” Wayne worked his jaw as if he had chewing gum in his mouth for the few seconds before Tully continued. “Yes sir. But no. Maybe a DoS, a denial of service but…” Tully trailed off. “Really unclear now. Guy can’t say how big it is, or where it came from. Maybe he’ll know how by the time we…” Tully stopped. “What’s the plan, sir?” “How big it is?” Wayne’s baritone wavered. “You mean the range of the blackout? Was it more than just at the opera and car park?” “Seems so, sir.” Wayne looked up at the screen and began selecting the camera feeds from a wider radius around the Opera House and the car park in Drury Lane. He dragged their images to the centre display and typed in the time code to check their playback. Grid by grid, it looked like half of London was blue. CCT cameras offline everywhere. Wayne realised his fantasy of a tryst in the car park with a beautiful dancer was not how Veda’s evening would end. He straightened himself, as if he were giving an order to the assembled troops. “The plan is to find Dr Veda and his date.” Then he added, “I think we must assume an abduction has taken place.” Tully wanted to reassure himself more than Wayne. “Guy can’t say where the disruption entered our communications network or where it originated. But nothing…” He trailed off again then hastily added, “Guy will have more answers. We haven’t got any confirmed ground level reports yet, but IT is reaching out.” Tully was less surprised and more concerned now, as he repeated, “two hours.” Wayne was silent. His mind was racing through an ever-growing list of officially and unofficially recognised extremists. Tully cleared his throat. Some of the anger was still there. “We’ll all know more in ten minutes.” “Right,” said Wayne. “In your office in fifteen?” “I’ll put the coffee on, sir.” “With your smartphone, right?” Wayne rang off before Tully could stop smiling and respond, “Yes, sir.” Wayne went back to his desktop and opened a search, but he paused to consider where to begin to set the parameters. He sent a copy to Tully with the caption: any ideas? Wayne’s hand hovered over the keypad as he debated a call to the Home Office. Wayne checked his messages, then called Burns again but got voicemail. He dropped the call and sent Burns the general alert message, and waited with growing unease.