The Angel Read Online Free Page B

into the office at 8 p.m., once most of the staff had gone home. He would work for five hours and finish at 1 a.m., when he would then work as the night-shift caretaker in a local hospice. He was , by all accounts, one of the nicest men you could ever hope to meet. Hard-working, honest and good-natured. Not the sort one would expect to have any truck with hard-line jiha dist Islam.
    The police had the block under heavy surveillance, and at seven-thirty, they saw Rubió emerge from the communal entrance.
    The officer on duty had been unable to photograph him as he came out of the building’s lobby. Pope had heard that the man had been urinating, but whatever the reason, it was unfortunate for Rubió. The officer was unable to provide an image to Gold Command , the Metropolitan Police operational headquarters that was in charge of the investigation, and it was impossible to compare him to the passport images of the suspects who had been identified.
    The commander in charge of Gold Command panicked. He authorised officers to continue pursuit and surveillance, and ordered that Rubió was to be prevented from entering the Underground system.
    The officers trailed Rubió as he followed Kingsland Road to a bus stop. He took the No. 242 and headed south. Plainclothes police officers boarded, too, and kept him under close observation. He used his telephone during the trip into the city, and one of the officers thought that she heard the word ‘bomb’.
    The surveillance officers believed that Rubió’s behaviour suggested that he might be one of the suspects and – worse – that he might be on his way to carry out an attack. The pursuing officers contacted Gold Command and reported their suspicions. Based on this information, Gold Command authorised ‘code red’ tactics and again ordered the surveillance officers to prevent Rubió from entering the public transport system. The commander ordered the surveillance team that Rubió was to be ‘detained as soon as possible ,’ before entering the station.
    Gold Command then transferred control of the operation to Group Fifteen. Pope had positioned all ten of his available agents within the boundary of the City of London, and he tasked Numbers Three and Twelve, McNair and Snow, to interdict the suspect. Snow’s inexperience within the Group was not ideal, but it was hardly the case that he was green. He was an experienced soldier with five years in the SAS. This kind of interdiction was something he had done many times before.
    McNair was held up in traffic and had to sprint the remaining mile. Snow was there before him. In the meantime, confusion over the handover from the police to the Group meant that Rubió was allowed to enter Liverpool Street railway station at about 7.45 p.m., stopping to pick up a free newspaper from a distributor who stood in the lobby. He used his Oyster card to pay the fare, walked through the barriers and descended the escalator to the Central Line. He then ran across the platform to board the newly arrived train.
    McNair arrived at street level as Snow was hurrying down the escalator to the platform.
    Three surveillance officers followed Rubió onto the train. He had taken a seat with a glass panel to his right, about two seats in. The carriage had a handful of commuters leaving the city to go home. One of the plainclothes officers took a seat on the left, with about two or three passengers between Rubió and himself. When Snow arrived on the platform, a second officer moved to the door, blocked it from closing with his foot and called ‘He’s here!’ to identify Rubió’s location.
    Snow boarded the train and shot him. The shell casings collected from the floor of the carriage indicated that he had fired eight rounds. Rubió was shot with a classic double tap – once in the chest and then once in the head – and died at the scene.
    McNair arrived a minute later.
    It took less than five minutes after that to understand that an awful mistake had