‘Well, it sure as hell doesn’t fit the guy who pissed himself at the sight of the Secret Service.’

‘You think you’ve been played, boss?’

Bull took a moment; the thought had crossed his mind.

‘I don’t know,’ he finally answered. ‘The way it’s being told to me, Mansour went berserk and beat the shit out of the guy. Doesn’t seem likely, from what I saw of him.’

‘Be careful you’re not reaching now. To find excuses for the fella.’

‘Don’t worry about that. I’m not jumping to any conclusions. If it all stacks up then that’ll be a different story. Now, where are we?’

‘Close to it all stacking up, if you want my take,’ McConnell replied grimly. ‘Everything points to him, boss.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Well, first off, Bilal Essa. That was a red herring.’

‘How?’

‘He was just a lazy fecker who sold his National Insurance number to Rifat Mansour. So Rifat could have worked for Pan-Atlantic Airlines with Nizar.’

‘So we assume he didn’t have one?’

‘No. Nizar is here legally. Rifat wasn’t.’

‘So Essa exists, but he’s nothing to do with this?’

‘Doesn’t seem to be.’

Bull nodded his head. The assessment made sense.

‘What else do we have?’

‘Footage from Heathrow. A lot of it.’

‘What does it show?’

‘Well, it’s got Nizar Mansour paying a whole lot of attention to a particular bag. Marked up as ‘Heavy’. The cameras show him taking hold of it from the point it comes through the front desk, right up until he places it in the hold. Doesn’t let the thing out of his sight the entire time.’

‘Which proves he put the thing on the plane. As he admitted.’ Bull looked away. A thought occurred to him. ‘How much footage is “a lot”?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean how many cameras caught this little journey Mansour took?’

‘All of them, far as I can see.’

‘All of them?’

‘Yeah. What I mean is, there doesn’t seem to be any of the journey between check-in and the plane that’s not covered. It’s a complete set of footage.’

‘Are the cameras manned?’

‘No, pre-programmed. They move through the day, following a set pattern.’

Bull nodded his head. He had anticipated the answer.

‘That’s a hell of a stroke of luck, don’t you think?’

‘What is?’

‘The fact that these pre-programmed cameras all happened to be facing in a direction that caught Mansour, all at exactly the right time.’

‘Boss?’ McConnell looked confused for a moment. A look soon replaced by understanding. ‘Oh.’

‘It’s too convenient, surely?’

‘It’s . . . it’s . . . not usual, is it?’

‘No, it’s bloody well not.’

Neither man spoke for a moment. Bull was considering the implications of what they had just discussed. He could see that McConnell was doing the same.

It was McConnell who broke the silence.

‘OK, let’s assume for a moment that someone’s behind this. That Mansour’s being set up somehow. Why would he confess?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Bull replied. ‘What if Mansour handed himself in to save his own life?’