CHAPTER 56
The news about Cass quickly spread to Kevin, Roger, Walid, and Gordon. Walid then briefed Winston, and Winston told Willie.
At 4:00 p.m., after school finished, Willie called Gordon and agreed to come to the garage at 8:00 p.m. for more explanations. “Bring your computer-hacking gear,” Gordon told him. “And wear dark clothes.”
“Do I need a balaclava?”
“Up to you,” Gordon replied, “as long as we can recognise you. Just bring whatever it is you use to save data—floppy disks or one of those little sticks with caps. And we won’t be doing any risk assessments.”
***
Ritchie left the London office of Asher & Asher at 5:00 p.m.
By 8:00 p.m., he was sitting with Gordon, Roger, Kevin, and Walid with Gordon’s big brown teapot and old tea-stained mugs. At 8:15, Walid was instructed to find two more mugs and to add more tea bags to the pot as they were joined by Walid and Willie.
Ritchie went first. He explained the conclusions he and Colin Asher had drawn from cross-checking Cass’s photographs with other data. “Cass took a huge risk,” Ritchie said. “If he’d been shot dead in Syria, it would have been lost forever, and if they’d discovered what he was doing before he escaped, I dread to think what they would have done.”
Then, with Kevin sitting opposite him, he said, “Your mum helped a lot, Kevin. We are 99 percent sure that the photos of Hassan Bashir and Mahmoud Al-Sahili and an Italian are, in fact, photos of Muhammad Khokhar, your father. Colin is still looking into this data, and using some contacts in the Home Office, we are hoping to make more links. Cass will be able to offer more when we can talk to him.”
The news didn’t surprise Kevin. He just nodded.
Then it was Roger and Gordon’s turn to explain the plan for the evening. “We’re going in to mop up,” Gordon said like a general directing troops on a final sortie.
Ritchie sniffed as if breaking and entering Khan’s cellar was to have been the highlight of his career to date. “Leave absolutely no trace,” he said.
“You think there’s even more evidence than what you’ve already got?” Willie asked.
Winston then piped up because Kevin and Walid had told him what they’d found the night before. “There are password-protected files,” he said, turning to Ritchie. “I can open encrypted files. Willie showed me how. He’s teaching me computer science and IT for A level so I can go to university.”
Willie, with his thin grey haircut just short of his shoulders, patted Winston’s back. “A good student,” he said. “And all done on a weak Wi-Fi signal from downstairs.”
Winston grinned. “Why didn’t you ask me to come with you on that first night, Kevs?”
“Because you were working in the bakery, and we didn’t know what we’d find,” Kevin replied.
“Tonight, we need experts,” Gordon said. “And I’m not one.”
“Don’t look at me,” Roger said. “I barely understand a microwave oven.”
“And you won’t need me because Winston can do it,” Willie said.
Walid then summed it up. “All six of us can’t go in.”
“I say Gordon opens the doors, and Kevin, Walid, and Winston go inside,” Roger said.
“If Gordon taught us his lock-breaking technique, we could do everything ourselves,” Kevin suggested.
“True,” said Gordon, “but it requires practice. I’ll open the doors, and you three get on with it.”
“Let’s think about this,” Roger said. “We still need enough to convince the police to act. Otherwise, I can see another street demonstration organised by Councillor Mohammed Basra or three mysterious overnight disappearances followed by murder and the discovery of the grisly remains of our three valiant volunteers.” He looked at Ritchie. “Advice from Hamish is to get the evidence,” he said.
“We totally agree,” Ritchie said. “Gather the evidence. It’s what we do as a business. We’re not police. The police won’t start investigations until they’ve got enough evidence. Clients pay us to gather the evidence, and it’s best to gather so much that there can be no backsliding or asking for more or succumbing to outside interferences. So—”
“So?” Roger prompted.
“So,” he said, looking at Kevin, Walid, and Winston, “I’d like to go in with you three guys. We’ll video it and transmit it directly to Colin in London. Colin has contacts within the counter-terrorism police, the immigration police, and the national crime agency, the NCA. And let’s not forget Cass in all this. We need to get him back here on the basis of evidence. What I’m saying is, there’s nothing wrong with you three guys going in tonight, but we need urgent top-level action afterwards. To call the local police and ask them to drop by to see what you found during a break in of Mr. Khan’s shop on Park Road is only going to delay things. Let’s bypass the locals and go directly to the top. Agree?”
They agreed.