Cut to the Bone by Alex Caan Read Free Book Online Page B

to break it.
    ‘So what brought you to London?’ he said, unable to take the quiet any longer.
    ‘Does it matter?’ she said. ‘What made you come to London?’
    ‘I was born here,’ he said. ‘I am London.’
    Silence again. Normal people would ask him to explain.
    ‘What about you? Why London? Whereabouts in America are you from?’ he tried again.
    She sighed, sipped her coffee.
    ‘Massachusetts,’ she said. ‘A small town you would never have heard of.’
    ‘Try me,’ he said, grinning at her. Someone blasted their horn at him. The traffic had moved; he hadn’t kept pace. A few seconds later, they stopped again.
    ‘So why London?’ he persisted. ‘Isn’t America the land of milk and honey?
    ‘I’m pretty sure that’s Israel,’ she said. ‘How did you decide on this posting? Were you bored with SO15?’
    So she wasn’t the type to do small talk.
    ‘Haven’t you read my personnel file?’ he said.
    ‘I like to hear it from the source,’ she said.
    Zain stayed quiet. The car was now directly outside Waterloo station, near his flat.
    ‘Waterloo,’ she said. ‘That’s why I came to London. The history you find on almost every corner. I walk the streets, and it brings to life all the books I’ve read, all the things I’ve learned. I watch people, and they fly around London, taking every inch of it for granted. Me, I came as a teenager with my parents, and it stayed with me. I fell in love with it, so I made it my home.’
    Zain was surprised at the intimacy of her words.
    ‘So why did you make the move? From SO15?’ she said.
    Zain laughed. She’d given up something only because she wanted him to give more. ‘You must know why,’ he said.
    ‘I told you, I like it from the source.’
    SO15 was the Met’s counter-terrorism command. Zain had been drafted in following a stint with GCHQ after university, but soon became enamoured with police work. There was an honesty to it. He smiled as he thought this, reflecting on what he had become in the end. He had retrained at Hendon Police College, done his duty as a rank and file, then been drafted into SO15.
    ‘You did well,’ said Kate. ‘I saw how quickly they moved you along.’
    ‘I was ideal for it. I knew London, and I don’t mean on the surface, but the grit in its claw.’
    ‘Until it went wrong,’ she said.
    Fuck, she was cold, he thought. ‘It didn’t go wrong. Let’s just say I was wounded in the line of duty.’
    ‘I read the occupational health report,’ she said. ‘It seemed clinical. It talked about injuries, mental trauma. Sustained while on duty. Is that the line you’re going to spin me, too? I thought we were becoming friends?’
    She said this with a set face, looking out of the car window.
    ‘What I want to know is, should I be worried? Are you over it? I’m curious, you see, because if you are so completely fixed, why did they send you on secondment?’
    Zain ignored her, enjoying the rare free flow of traffic down the London Road. They drove past Elephant and Castle, and then hit Newington Causeway, where they caught more London gridlock. Borough wasn’t far away now; he could have just not answered. Instead, something compelled him to. She compelled him to.
    ‘We were staking out some al-Qaeda operatives,’ he said. ‘They were planning an attack, a hit on St Pancras station, the Eurostar. It was the usual set-up, a small cell, but they were weakned. Easy to keep tabs on, and they were leaking information badly. We were aware of their every move. It was a joint operation; we had an agent from MI5 with us.’
    Zain remembered the agent; he had disappointed all preconceptions about spies. No James Bond, just a very ordinary, grey man, not memorable physically. Yet his mind was acutely tuned into the situation, the cell, SO15, and he had conveyed that intelligence in a low, authoritative voice.
    ‘The main part of the cell shifted location to another safe house,’ said Zain, ‘close to King’s Cross. I