First Response by Stephen Leather

much blusher. Her lipstick was also a slapdash affair and she had smeared some across her top teeth. ‘I can’t stay here all day.’
    ‘Madam, that is a suicide vest he is wearing,’ said El-Sayed. ‘If he presses that trigger in his right hand, it will detonate and everyone here will die and then there will be no one to feed your dog. Now, please, be quiet.’ He turned to the man again. ‘What about something to eat? You must be hungry.’
    The man shook his head.
    ‘May I know your name, brother?’ asked El-Sayed.
    He shook his head again. ‘My name doesn’t matter.’
    ‘It matters to me, brother. We are both men, are we not? We are in this situation together. My name is Imad El-Sayed. That is my only son, Hassan.’
    ‘You need to stay quiet,’ said the man. ‘If you want to talk, talk on Twitter and Facebook. Tell people that we want the six warriors released from Belmarsh.’ He waved his right arm around. ‘All of you, do it now. Keep sending messages to all your friends. Keep telling them what is happening here. And use hashtag ISIS6 with every message.’
    Customers and staff began taking out their phones.
    El-Sayed smiled. ‘I never use Twitter,’ he said. ‘I never really understood the point of social media. People need to talk to each other. They need to connect, face to face, or at the very least to hear each other’s voices. I call my friends and family, I don’t text them.’
    The man said nothing.
    ‘At least let me get you a drink, brother,’ said El-Sayed. ‘Some water if nothing else. You must be thirsty.’
    The man didn’t look at El-Sayed, but he nodded.
    El-Sayed waved at a barista and clicked his pudgy fingers. ‘You, bring him a water. Quickly.’
    The barista hurried over with a bottle, twisted off the cap, put it down in front of the man, then scurried back behind the counter.
    The man used his left hand to lift the bottle to his lips. El-Sayed smiled and sipped his coffee, then smiled encouragingly at his son. Hassan’s face was bathed in sweat and El-Sayed could smell the boy’s fear. He wanted to tell him that everything was going to be all right, but he had to take it one step at a time.

LAMBETH CENTRAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMAND CENTRE (12.34 p.m.)
    ‘We’ve identified four of them now,’ said Waterman. She tapped on her keyboard and four pictures flashed up on her screen. All bearded Asian men, all in their twenties or thirties, they could have been cousins, if not brothers. ‘Top left, Mohammed Malik. Top right, Ismail Hussain. We talked about them earlier. Bottom left, Rabeel Bhashir, bottom right, Mohammed Faisal Chaudhry. Rarely uses the Mohammed as a Christian name.’ She pulled a face. ‘Whoops. Can’t say that, obviously. Anyway, we’re reasonably sure that Bhashir is in the church in Brixton. Chaudhry is the bomber in the pub in Marylebone.’
    ‘What do you mean you’re reasonably sure about Bhashir?’
    ‘Facial recognition isn’t an exact science,’ said Waterman. ‘A lot depends on the material we’re working with. One of the hostages posted a picture of him on Twitter but it was a side-on view. But even so we’re looking at an accuracy prediction of eighty per cent. We’re more sure about Chaudhry.’
    ‘And are either of them known?’
    ‘They’re both known, both on our watch lists, but at a low level.’
    ‘Then how could this happen?’ asked Kamran. ‘If they were being watched, how did they get suicide vests?’
    ‘There’s a difference between being watched and being on a watch list. They were considered possible threats, not direct threats.’
    ‘I’d say this was a pretty direct threat, wouldn’t you?’ asked Kamran. Captain Murray joined them, holding a cup of black coffee.
    Waterman held up her hands. ‘Please, Superintendent, don’t go shooting the messenger here. At any one time we have literally thousands of British Asians on our watch lists. Just visiting a relative in Pakistan is enough to get them