First Response by Stephen Leather Page B

me as and when you think appropriate.’
    ‘I will, sir.’
    ‘And good luck. I rather think you’ll need it.’
    The line went dead and Kamran put down the receiver.
    Waterman looked up from her screens. ‘Mo, we’ve got IDs for two of the men now.’
    Kamran hurried over to stand behind the MI5 officer. ‘What’s the story?’ he asked.
    On her right screen were two photographs, one taken from the CCTV camera within the Southside centre boutique, featuring a bearded Asian man in a long coat. Next to it was a photograph taken from a passport application. ‘Mohammed Malik,’ she said. ‘We’ve managed to get CCTV from inside the shop via the centre’s security system, so the quality’s good. Facial recognition says it’s a hundred per cent match. He’s a second-generation Pakistani Brit. Parents run a curry house in Southall. He went fundamentalist when he was sixteen, just after Nine/Eleven. Went to Pakistan three years ago for six months. Told his parents he wanted to learn something about his culture but we believe he spent half his trip in a training camp on the Afghan border. Since then he’s been quiet. That happens to a lot of these kids who go over thinking that jihad is action and adventure. They realise that it’s not a game and they come back with their tails between their legs. He works in Halfords, has a clean record and wasn’t regarded as a serious threat.’
    ‘And the fact that he was at an Al-Qaeda training camp wasn’t considered serious enough to have him watched?’
    ‘If we watched every British Asian who went to Pakistan we’d be overwhelmed. Close to three hundred thousand British Pakistanis go to Pakistan each year. Border Force doesn’t check passports on the way out and we don’t ask them where they’ve been or what they were doing when they return, unless they’re on a watch list. And Malik wasn’t considered a serious threat. As I said, we have no direct proof that he went to a training camp. He was vocal for a while at his local mosque and used to send letters to his local paper accusing the West of wanting to exterminate Muslims, but he’s stopped all that.’
    On her right-hand screen there were two more photographs, one from the CCTV camera within the Fulham post office showing a second bearded Asian handcuffed to a young woman. The man’s suicide vest was clearly visible under his coat, as was the trigger in his right hand. He could have been the twin of the Asian in the shopping centre – dark-skinned, bearded, average height, average build. Nothing out of the ordinary, other than that they were both wearing suicide vests and threatening to blow themselves up. Next to the CCTV picture was another passport photograph. ‘This is another hundred per cent match. We’re getting a direct feed from the post office and the images are first class,’ said Waterman. ‘Ismail Hussain. He’s more an anti-war demonstrator than a fundamentalist. Was photographed on a few poppy-burning demonstrations and is a member of a group called Muslims Against Crusades. He was one of the guys screaming at soldiers from the 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment when they arrived back in Luton after their Iraq tour. He’s got one conviction for assault after he attacked an off-duty soldier with a bottle. That was well before the killing of Lee Rigby in Woolwich so he only got community service.’
    Lee Rigby was a British soldier who had been stabbed to death in Woolwich, south London, in May 2013, not far from his barracks. His attackers waited for the police to arrive and said that they had murdered him to avenge the killings of Muslims by British soldiers. Both killers were British-born Nigerians who had been raised as Christians but then converted to Islam.
    ‘No overseas training?’ asked Kamran.
    Waterman shook her head. ‘None that we know of,’ she said. ‘He’s a cleanskin. We’re aware of him but he’s never been on a watch list.’
    ‘So what’s happened to trigger