‘Last warning. Drop the bag,’ screamed the woman. He had a choice. He could stop this now. He could give up. He could find peace. And he would spend an eternity in jail. He knew he couldn’t cope with that. No. Once again he thought of Abu Mujahid and his mother. And himself holding his father’s hand in the crowd at that football match all those years ago. And letting it go. He clutched the rifle more closely.

A searing heat in his chest and a stumble. There was no pain, just confusion. And then a stabbing sensation like a knife in his heart, twisting and pulling, cutting out chunks and throwing them to the floor. There is no white tunnel, he thought as the burning spread through his body. There is no gateway. No garden. No welcome. Just pain and doubt and tears and suffering.

#

CTOC, St Pancras, North London

It was like the first desperate gasp of a swimmer who has dived too deep and too long. Gabriel stood in the ops room, face blazing in the video screen glare, clutched at the desk top and sucked air deep into her body. Four members of the cell – Muhid, Saleem, Mirza and Asad – were accounted for, all dead. The twisting anxiety that one of the cell would emerge from the jostling Wembley crowds and open fire had ebbed away and in its place flowed a soothing wave of relief. Gabriel noticed her shirt was sopping wet.

Campbell was still at the flat, overseeing the clean-up. The drone had done little damage to the building, aside from broken glass and roof tiles – its payload was designed to maim people, not demolish walls – but residents had been evacuated and they would be out of their homes for a few days.

He came on the phone, breathless. ‘Ma’am. The bodies are piling up down here. We’ve got three now. The body in the cupboard has been positively identified as the cell member Tanvir Mirza, as we suspected, and he had been dead some time – a couple of days, by the state of him. His throat was slit and he was bundled into a cupboard.’

‘Sounds like Abu Mujahid’s work,’ said Gabriel. Why kill Mirza? Did Abu Mujahid think he was a mole? Or had he found out about Mirza’s phone call to his parents?

Campbell continued. ‘The man who was shot when we raided the flat has been IDed as the cell member Waheed Saleem. Bullet to the chest and died within a couple of minutes of internal injuries.’

‘And the third?’ asked Gabriel.

‘She was a Rebecca Gladstone, aged eighty-one. Lived in a ground-floor flat. Her throat was slit. Whoever did it got out by the kitchen window and into the street. She was killed within the last half hour. Looks like the killer was in the flat when we raided, and got out under cover of the fire alarm and evacuation. We found a second relay box by her body – it’s likely that the killer detonated the second drone from there as it returned to the flat.’