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2024-10-29 19:42:56Friday began warmer and drier than previous days, for which my back was grateful. Before I ate my breakfast, I looked in on the countertop test. The façades were dry, and all except the brownest appeared clean. But I pulled a fingertip across them, and it came up pale white. The deposit was chalky and, to some extent, tacky, and it took a bit of determination to clean it off my fingers.
If the purpose of our test were to discover whether a white chalky deposit could have been left behind, perhaps inadvertently, after an almost comprehensive scrubbing with an everyday domestic product, then the answer was clear. I left the countertops untouched so that Sandra could see for herself.
After I had eaten my bacon sandwich, I spent time looking from beginning to end through my files in search of articles about the encrypted communications between the conspirators and Ahmed Dastageer.
I found a piece in the Daily Mail called POLICE OBSERVED THE CONSPIRACY EVOLVE, THE
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IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 30
As the afternoon wore on, I tried to disregard the tick of the clock. But my anxiety continued to develop as I anticipated the likelihood of questioning Dr Jodie Smith, who was coming to see us, on my own without DCI Burton's necessary presence. Thankfully, Sandra arrived with ten minutes to spare, and I hugged her with sheer relief. Her presence made my questioning legal. I could not follow the route I was following without her right beside me. Shaking the professor by the hand, I said, "This is my friend DCI Sandra Burton." Sandra rose and shook Jodie's hand, and I gestured toward the other armchair. She was beautiful, with striking blonde shoulder-length hair and crystal blue eyes. Her waist was thin, her bust ample, and her legs languid and long. "Please, take a seat, Dr. Smith. Thank you for coming to see us today. You have saved us a trip to Manchester." Jodie smiled. "It's the least I could do," she said. "I was surprised to hea
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 31
On my way back from the door, I stopped and drew a fingertip across the countertops. "This residue is just as Nelson described it. What did you use?" "It's Cif. Your normal bog standard creamy white cleanser," Sandra said. "I used it to get rid of the much heavier product left by the first cleaner and I didn't rinse it off." "If nothing else, you have shown that the powder Nelson described could have been left in the Suffolk Street flat in exactly the same way. As for what the cleaning was intended to hide, we may never know the answer." "What about fingerprints?" "You could be right, we must be cautious in looking at inferences from poor evidence, but we are safe to assume that whoever killed Tina Davis wasn't wearing gloves at the time." "It seems a minor point." "And yet it could turn out to be a significant detail, and I am prepared to call the countertop experiment a success. You may keep carrying out your tests, but there
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 32
London was an unsafe place at the commencement of the G20 Conference, which brought together the economic brains of the planet's most influential countries, also got acts of objection. Police began expecting violent behaviour long beforehand the occasion, and from all developments, they were resolved not to be proved mistaken. Before the occasion, campaign coordinators aimed to organise a consultation with the Metropolitan Police to talk about procedures and the security of all concerned. But the police had more demanding difficulties, at least until The Guardian started asking awkward questions. A short debate was quickly assembled but created nothing significant. The Met were unconcerned in consulting with the demonstrators. Instead, they had their particular strategies. In order, they said, to safeguard London and avert any likely aggression, they would use a manoeuvre kettling, in which officers, equipped with batons and screens and esc
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 33
The morning after The Guardian displayed the mobile phone footage depicting Mark Dye's deadly attack on Harold Usher, a very odd series of incidents started to develop. It began when Mark Dye, the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, arrived at No. 10 Downing Street for a meeting with Prime Minister and emerging from his car carrying dossiers. On the exterior of the dossiers was a marked paper secret, which summarised the prearranged seizures of a group of extremists in Manchester and Liverpool. Press photographers are constantly camped out near No. 10, with digital photographic cameras and telephoto lens systems. Dye understood the repercussions of his blunder straightaway, according to the article. Authorities progressed rapidly to censor any photos of the personal record if the accused heard of the proposal to seize them, while others quickly moved against the accused. Mark Dye hastily offered his letter of
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 34
I spent most of Sunday reading about an email one of the Bombers had swapped with a suspected al Qaeda contact in Islamabad, the capital, on the Potwar Plateau, 9 miles northeast of Rawalpindi, the former interim capital. The sender, identified only as "Z," had written chiefly about girls, weddings, parties, and cars. The messages didn't make any sense, according to MI5, unless they were in code. Journalist Steve Mann explained something about that code in The Telegraph: MI5 assumed that they used young women's names to refer to chemicals and that talk of a wedding ceremony was essentially a testimonial to the terror campaign itself. I was happy to find Mann's piece, but I still look for the email messages themselves. Later that night, I found what I was searching for in another editorial printed by The Telegraph. The first email printed in The Telegraph was sent in early December, from Z in Manchester to Islamabad: Dec 3 11.33 am
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 35
When Sandra woke up the next day, she discovered that I was already wide awake by at least an hour. My breakfast plate was empty, and I had started going through the morning's newspapers by this time. "Hello, darling," I said. "Thought I'd get an early start and carry-on trailing through the archives a bit." "Can I ask a few questions about what you have discovered while I eat?" She said, placing some slices of bread in the toaster. "Not at all," I replied. "Ask away." "Can you tell me about your dream?" she asked. "Not much," I answered. She sighed resignedly and then asked, "Tell me what you have discovered then?." "I have found out a lot," I said, "where do you want me to start?" "Last night, you declared the Bomber detectives under no circumstances find any explosives. No material that could be used to make explosives, and no weapons of any kind. Do you recall what, other than the trace of coded emails, the
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 36
"Have you heard of the Finchley Pizza Shop Sting?" I asked "I can't say I have," Sandra admitted. "Of all the tales I will you, this may be the most distressing. So I'll give you a hasty synopsis. The narrative turns around Indika Nuwan Karunaratne, a Sri Lankan refugee who lived in East Finchley and sustained his spouse and six offspring with the pizza shop, Pizza Palace. The pizza enterprise was not performing well, and Karunaratne had started considering ways to expand his money stream when Mahesh Theekshana began to visit. Mahesh drove a showy vehicle, sported extravagant attire, and carried plenty of money. He said he was a prosperous entrepreneur, and he appeared pretty approachable. So, one day Indika Nuwan Karunaratne asked Theekshana for an advance. This was the introduction Theekshana had been waiting for, and he conveyed the discussion to his supervisor, an MI5 agent. But, in truth, Mahesh Theekshana was not a prosperous entrepreneur but a crimina
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 37
"One would ruminate," Sandra said, "that after such a public show of deceitfulness, Mahesh Theekshana would have been systematically disgraced." "But instead," I said, "he was welcomed as a hero, set up with an even larger financial plan, and sent out to grab more extremists." "Truly?" Sandra asked, "How come I haven't learnt something about all this?" "This case is all about distraction," I said, "and we've been led astray from the very start. Mahesh Theekshana emerged next in Claydon, a hamlet of Ipswich in Suffolk, where he began hovering around a mosque and performing in such a way that not a single person would have anything to do with him." "What was he doing?" "He began by going to the business office and asking for a list of followers. But the work force wouldn't give him one unless he showed a legitimate reason, and he never even tried to explain his demand. Instead, he began showing rolls of cash, proposing to buy people meals, give
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IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 59
59 Sandra raised her eyes suddenly and gave me the same sort of inspection, as if she’d never really seen me before: and I guessed that for her it was much more a radical assessment. I was no longer the man she’d tricked rather easily with her charms and feminine ways, but the man who had discovered her duplicity. I was accustomed by now to seeing this new view of me when people had tried to deceive me, and although I might often regret it, there seemed no way of going back. “They warned me you know,” she said doubtfully. “I kept hearing how good the great Quintus Noone was, and I should tread carefully. They said you’re exceptionally good…exceptionally good…at this sort of thing. But I didn’t believe them. But now I’m standing here in your North London flat banged to rights.” “Afraid so,” I said succinctly. Her eyes were red with tears, but I never fell for crocodile tears. Having three sisters had nullified that emotion. “When did you
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 58
"The three theories," I began, "are positively conceivable. Assuming what we recognise, we may deliberate them quite believable. But they are still theoretical. In extra words, they may be precise, but their correctness is by no way established. As such, they signify three areas of indecision. However, I do not regard these doubts as major flaws in our case, both because in all three examples, several reasonable replacements exist, and because these propositions are all efforts to respond consequential, or even relating, questions. We may never find acceptable responses to all these distant inquiries, but the fundamental of our case is built on solutions to other, more dominant, questions. Do you understand?" "I do," Sandra replied, "but I don't see where you're going with it." "I think Tina Davis was assassinated," I continued. "I think MI6 played a main role in her death, and I think so founded on deliberations dispassionate of these doubts. I think Tina was doing
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 57
"As we move away from the fundamentals, things get ambiguous, Sandra. There is one conceivable response to the subject of why Tina may have focused against her employers. But there are many other probabilities. For what reason did Tina make those trips to the café near the West Finchley tube station. Her recurrent chance encounters with an enigmatic duo, who may or may not be the same as the Mediterranean twosome for whom the police are hypothetically searching. Maybe Tina and the couple were convening to arrange other, less observable meetings, and for this motive, these discussions were seen by Tina's MI6 as duplicitous.""It is likely that the Mediterranean pair, and the West Finchley team may be the identical people," Sandra interjected, "and that they might have been MI6 agents who were allocated to analyse Tina, possibly to deceive her, definitely to obtain whatever she may have been attracted to reveal."
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 56
"But why?" Sandra demanded, "I cannot believe you are willing to give up, so easily.""When I said, I was going to drop it, what I meant was that the Home Secretary angle has been shut off to me, but there are more than one way to skin a cat.""Please, Quintus, tell me, what you are planning to do?""Very well. Unless I'm reading it entirely incorrect, the crime concerned as much personality elimination as bodily slaying. What could be the reason? It seems to me that Tina must have been doing something her managers found unbearable, something that made her a burden rather than an advantage, and I don't think she was very careful about it.""Go on," Sandra pressed."She was besieged for a three-branched attack: first, to quieten her forever; second, to make sure she would never be contemplated well-thought-of, though she may have been much more than that; and third, to warn her co-workers of the significances of pursuing the trail she chose."
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 55
I woke up early the following day to find that Sandra had already left, although she hadn't eaten breakfast. Instead, I found a note and a newspaper. I read the note first. Quintus There is terrible news this morning. I have gone to find out what the Commissioner knows about this. All the morning papers say the same. So here is the story in its most diminutive illegible form. I will return as soon as possible. SB Then I picked up the paper and found that Sandra had circled a headline, which read: Two Metropolitan Police Shot In Jewellery Shop Robbery Home Secretary Unharmed, Cabinet Shuffled The text was this: Two Metropolitan Police officers sustained gunshot wounds yesterday after apparently stumbling upon an attempted burglary in progress. Detectives Hector Nelson, 45, and Stewart Alderman, 32, were wounded while chasing suspe
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 54
Under arrest?" the Home Secretary cried. "Are you stupid? I am a Home Secretary! A representative of the Cabinet! I am a fragment of the Government!! Do you comprehend??""Yes!" Nelson said."I cannot be under arrest!" the Home Secretary continued. "I cannot be incarcerated! I cannot be put on trial! Don't you know anything?""I do understand," said Nelson calmly, "that no man's job designation seats him above the rules.""Ha!" the Home Secretary replied, whose pallid face was becoming more sanguine with each occurring second. "We become the law! We are the law! The directive is ours! It is not to be expended in opposition to us!"Sandra, Nelson, and I gaped in incredulity as the manacled man carried on. Alderman, progressing gradually, appeared from the bedroom and began to move toward us. The Home Secretary didn't seem to perceive; he just stormed on."We're the administration!" he bellowed. "We make the regulations. So clearly we cannot r
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 53
"Very well," said the Home Secretary. I sat in an armchair and scrutinised intently at our visitor opposite. "I can begin with the particulars of the tableau. Even though no exact reason of death has been proven, our study has left no misgiving in my mind that Tina Davis was assassinated." "Really!" exclaimed the Home Secretary. "Oh, no! She was the victim of a very strange kinky sex game gone wrong, wasn't she?" "That is not true. The state of the flat and that of her corpse propose an alternative justification completely." "I did not know," said the Home Secretary. "No, I you didn't. There is a great deal of misperception about what happened." "A resentful paramour?" the Home Secretary suggested. "No, definitely not. Offences of lust are generally chaotic; the wrongdoer gets flustered and consigns a profusion of proof. In this case, the lack of scientific verification, among other things, advocates planning." "Fuck me
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 52
52 When we had all finished eating, Sandra brought a tray of coffee. I invited the two policemen to relax on the settee, and we all paid the detective chief inspector kindly accolades as she cleared the table. "I almost forgot to tell you, Mr. Noone," Nelson said, "and it may not even matter. But a couple of interesting details came to my attention, and I would be remiss if I failed to share them." “Please do.” "We have continuously supposed that there are two unexplained couples involved in this case," said Nelson, "but that might not be true, sir." "Why’s that?" "One couple," Nelson said, "the so-called Mediterranean couple, were purportedly buzzed into Tina's residence by a neighbour, apparently after asserting to have a key to Tina’s flat. Detectives are clearly fascinated by the Mediterranean couple, and police artists have even created e-fits of them. The other couple met Tina Davis several times at the
IF THE TRUTH BE TOLD 51
51 After DI Brooks left, I closed all the drapery, turned on the lights, and sat in a comfy chair to read. "Aren't we going to alter the venue for this evening's events?" Sandra asked. "This is now a crime scene." "If we change it, our suspect will get suspicious." "Very well," Sandra shrugged, and this was followed by a rigorous knocking on the door. "That will be Hector and his mate," I said, standing up to respond to the thumping. But when I opened it, I discovered I was looking at a worn-down old lady. "Good afternoon," she said, in a rumbling and oddly recognisable voice. "Come on in, Stewart. Meet Quintus Noone and DI Burton." We observed an old man waddle into the flat, lugging an overnight case over which he was bowed in understandable distress. The old lady shut the door and removed her coat and then her wig, disclosing the recognisable face of Hector Nelson. "Hello, DCI Burton," he said. "It's a joy to see you
