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here officially. He’d been told that. His head throbbed and the painful bruising across his torso gnawed at him as he walked the short distance to the train station.
    The train was packed with holidaymakers. The carriage was noisy as it trundled and jerked its way toward London. Jake read a couple of dog-eared newspapers he found in the luggage rack. Between the din of the excitable tourists unaware of the mess that awaited them in the capital, and the roar of the tracks beneath him, Jake knew there was no point trying to make polite conversation with anyone. They’d be lucky if they reached London before the rail network was shut down completely, he thought.

9
    Thursday
    7 July 2005
    1607 hours
    King’s Cross, London
    It was bedlam. Much of the ticket hall and waiting area was being used as a makeshift field hospital to treat casualties. Train services were being cancelled left, right and centre. The Tube was closed. Jake knew he had to make his way over to the site of the bus bombing in Tavistock Square and was torn between that and helping the walking wounded. Outside, it was chillingly quiet. There was little traffic apart from the occasional wail of emergency-service sirens as response vehicles tore past.
    Jake trudged past Euston station. When he reached the square, it was cordoned off. They’d already erected huge barriers made from scaffolding and wood to prevent people from getting close to the scene. Jake flashed his warrant card and the uniformed police officer on the outer cordon allowed Jake entry to the street. At the inner cordon Jake met an officer that he knew from the Branch. He allowed Jake through, despite the Def Leppard T-shirt.
    Anti-Terrorist Branch officers were knelt down in a line in the road behind what was left of a red double-decker bus. They wore pale blue, disposable boiler suits and blue gloves to ensure that they wouldn’t contaminate the scene.
    The temperature was in the upper seventies Fahrenheit and humidity was touching ninety-five per cent. They must be sweltering inside those coveralls, thought Jake.
    This was standard Branch stuff. You got sent on a bomb course. They’d blow up a car. You watched. Then you picked up the pieces. You learned fast. You’d pick up every tiny fragment that you could find and pass it back to your team leader. It would get sorted into ‘plastics’, ‘metals’, ‘glass’ and ‘others’, there and then. The fragments and parts would eventually be assembled to build up a picture of the explosion. Very early on, officers picking up the tiny pieces could often get an idea of what the bomb consisted of by the spread and type of debris. This was very different from the course though; they had both blood and body parts to contend with.
    He spotted Helen stood on some steps surveying the scene. She waved and came over to greet him. Tall and slim, she was wearing her favoured, trademark outfit of an expensive black trouser suit with a white blouse underneath. Her long dark hair was swept up into a chignon.
    ‘How are you doing? How’s your head?’ Helen looked sombre. Her mood was different from when they had spoken on the phone earlier.
    ‘I’m OK. How many dead?’ asked Jake.
    ‘We think fourteen here. Difficult to say right now; not all the bodies are in one piece. We think one of them is the bomber himself.’ Helen ushered Jake back out through the inner cordon. She led him to the foyer of a nearby hotel that had been completely taken over by the Branch and their exhibits function.
    ‘We’ve found some identification that belongs to a guy from Leeds at the scene, Jake. The ID was loose – not near any of the bodies. It’s like it was dropped deliberately. I’m told that there are Leeds IDs found in similar circumstances at all of the other scenes too.’
    ‘Shit.’ Jake sighed and placed his head in his hands. If only he’d been able to stop their car.
    ‘Who are they, Jake?’ asked Helen.
    ‘A primary-school teacher and some of