#

The crowd had thinned out and the officer had a clear view now. The suspect was ahead of them on the concourse at Waterloo, his back to them. It was a good enough match for the photograph.

‘Stop – armed police, get down on the floor, now,’ he yelled, and sprinted towards the figure, keeping his rifle pointing down. The man’s hands were clear, and he had no reason to lift the weapon. The man’s body froze, and then turned in slow motion, his head raising as he looked behind in bewilderment and terror. The officer focused on his hands – if they moved inside his jacket, he would be ready to raise the barrel.

But the officer’s rifle stayed pointing at the floor. The man was Asian – Chinese, possibly – with a shock of scruffy dark hair and a nose piercing. He lifted his hands at his side.

‘Sorry, sir,’ said the police officer. ‘Mistaken identity.’

#

Three miles away, at Marylebone station, Rod Houghton left the shelter of his iron pillar and ran to the train. It was too soon to allow himself the luxury of relief, but his destination was now a step closer. Glenister would be on another train by now, heading for Birmingham. His own would be leaving in two minutes, heading to Aylesbury. He felt the sudden urge to urinate and moved towards the toilets.

#

CTOC, St Pancras, London

There was a stifling silence in the ops room, as if all the air had been sucked out. Gabriel looked around at the concentration on the faces of her team as they waited for an update from Waterloo. The sighting of one of the gunmen offered a glimmer of hope that they could salvage something from this terrible day.

‘Come on, come on,’ she mouthed to herself. An overwhelming sense of frustration seemed to ooze from every pore of her skin. She had known something like this was coming, but she had been unable to do anything. She had persuaded Tennant, but that had not been enough and now there were bodies in Pall Mall and killers on the loose.

A DC sat at a terminal in front of Gabriel was monitoring the firearms channel. ‘Ma’am, the suspect spotted at Waterloo is not, I repeat not, the gunman. Mistaken identity.’

Another wave of disappointment crashed around Gabriel.

‘Then where the hell are they?’ she said aloud. The attack was more than forty minutes ago. They could have fled more than two miles on foot in that time. Her team were searching through CCTV, she had every officer available on the ground looking, and still they had nothing. Please don’t let them get away, she told herself. Not this time.

The seconds tore by on the red digital display above the screen, but still nothing. Reports of injuries and fatalities were coming in. Six dead now. Fifteen injured by bullets, petrol bombs or in the desperate scramble to flee the scene of the attack.