‘Thanks,’ Joe said.

‘Don’t mention it.’ The old man was still looking at him curiously. ‘Have I seen you before?’ he said.

‘No.’

The man shrugged. ‘Maybe someone like you,’ he said.

‘Like what?’ Joe said.

The man shrugged again. ‘You know. A fuzzy-wuzzy.’

A fuzzy-wuzzy? What the –?

Joe took the book with him. As he left the doorbell rang again and the cat on the rocking chair opened one eye, only to close it again a moment later.

Joe walked up, leaned against the wall, and looked at the book in his hands. Fuzzy wuzzies?

He leafed through the pages.

— we are at war and I am a soldier —

At 07:21, four men entered the train station at Luton. Hassib Hussain wore dark shoes and trousers, and was bare-headed. Germaine Lindsay wore bright white trainers and carried a shopping bag. Mohammad Sidique Khan wore a white baseball cap. Shehzad Tanweer brought up the rear as they entered the station. All four carried backpacks.

Mohammad Sidique Khan was born at St. James’s University Hospital in Leeds. His father, Tika, was a foundry worker. Mohammad went to South Leeds High School and later to Leeds Metropolitan University. Later still, he worked at Hillside Primary School in Leeds, a mentor for the children of recently-emigrated families. He was described by colleagues as a ‘quiet man’. He was married, with one girl. At the time of his entering the Luton train station, his wife was pregnant with their second child. She later had a miscarriage.

 In a filmed segment found after the event, Khan said, ‘Our words have no impact upon you, therefore I’m going to talk to you in a language that you understand.’ He was thirty years old. ‘Our words,’ he said, ‘are dead until we give them life with our blood.’

Hassib Hussain was eighteen. He had also gone to South Leeds School, where his teachers described him as ‘a slow, gentle giant.’ He liked cricket, and was a member of the Holbeck Hornets football team. He lived with his brother at 7 Colenso Mount, Holbeck, Leeds. Shehzad Tanweer was twenty-two; Germaine Lindsay was nineteen.

The four men met up at Luton Station. They drove there in a red Nissan Micra, which Tanweer had rented several days before. They left the car parked by the station. They waited for nearly half an hour at Luton before boarding the 07:48 Thameslink train to King’s Cross. They arrived at King’s Cross at twenty past eight. Half an hour later three of them would be dead.

hobbies for the dead men

——

Joe looked up from the book and drew a deep breath. This was insane. Longshott’s obsessively neat facts and figures seemed designed to snare him, entrap him: names, times, street addresses, hobbies for the dead men. London. He thought: fuzzy-wuzzies, and giggled. Was he searching for Longshott, or was Longshott searching for him? The pulp writer was leaving him a trail of crumbs to follow, and he was following, and the world was slowly unravelling around him, a threadbare tapestry that could no longer quite comfort him against the chill. I could throw it away, he thought. There was a bin nearby. I could drop it and walk away, go back, and if she follows me I will say –

But he had no idea what he’d said. He remembered those pointy ears, pinned back, the soft brown hair; something in her eyes that he could put no words to. She always looked, he thought, like she had more to say to him.

Is that what it came to, he wondered – is it simply that I am afraid to say no to her? All this, the bloodied trail he followed, the shades that fell in his path, fell and were stilled, the questions he didn’t want answered: was it all for her sake, or for his?

His head ached, and he leaned it against the old bricks and closed his eyes. The book felt heavy, unwanted in his hands. He stood up, walked, turned left, and found a pub with unbroken windows, loud music, and few clientele. He purchased a pint and carried it to a table scarred by extinguished cigarettes. He leaned back in his seat, took a swallow of beer, and opened the book again.

— the reality of this situation —

The four men separated at King’s Cross station. Crowds milled through the halls and corridors, up and down escalators, to and from platforms, into and out of trains. Their backpacks were full of homemade explosives.

Mohammad Sidique Khan took the Circle Line. So did Shehzad Tanweer. One went west; the other east. Germaine Lindsay went on the Piccadilly Line. All three activated their charges at 8:50am, within fifty seconds of each other.

Hassib Hussain was meant to travel on the Northern Line. Instead, he had discovered, in the last hour of his life, what every Londoner knew off by heart: you can never rely on public transport.

The Northern Line was closed.

Not sure what to do, the slow, gentle giant went above ground. He stopped at a Boots store in King’s Cross Station. At 09:35 he boarded the number 30 bus to Hackney Wick. The bus was a Dennis Trident 2 double-decker. Its registration number was LX03BUF. At 09:47, as the bus passed through Tavistock Square, Hussain detonated the bomb in his backpack. He was later identified by the remnants of his skull, credit cards and driving license.

Below ground, subterranean London was a world of smoke and fear, twisted metal and bone fragments, a world of darkness, despair, death – and an overwhelming desire to live, as survivors fought to escape out of the tunnels. Passengers not killed in the attack were left in packed, dark carriages. Air filtered in through the smashed glass windows. Passengers talked, trying to reassure each other. From time to time there were screams. They could not leave the train because the live tracks would have electrocuted them. When they did disembark, they journeyed single-file through the tunnels, ghostly in the half-light of the emergency lights. The air was full of dirt that worked its way into people’s lungs and made them choke. When they reached the stations they were lifted up onto the platforms, where they joined others like them, dirty, blackened, bleeding hollow-eyed people who were as yet not sure they really were alive.

‘I and thousands like me are forsaking everything for what we believe,’ Mohammad Sidique Khan said in his recorded statement. ‘Now you too will taste the reality of this situation.’

a trail of graffiti

——

His head hurt – a blackness behind his eyes, shooting stars. He looked down and saw that his drink remained almost untouched on the table. He felt no desire to drink. He raised his hand and looked at his palm, the lines etched into the skin like tracts that led nowhere, that terminated at dead-ends. The skin around his nails was nicotine-stained yellow. There was a small scar at the base of his thumb and he couldn’t recall where he got it, or how. He left the pub, went outside, and drew in a breath of muggy London air. What did they believe, he thought. What did he believe? He could not taste a reality in his situation. He began to walk, staring at the walls as he passed, not knowing which way he was going, not caring, the darkness behind his eyes expanding and constricting like a heart.

He followed a trail of graffiti. Near an off-license someone had spray-painted the message, Vera Lynn was right.

7/7 again. 9/11. 7/8. 11/12. It was as if a mad mathematician was let loose in the city with unlimited cans of paint.

We are Edwin Drood made no sense.

Mum I miss you.

On the side of a red phone box: Refugees go home.

Behind his eyes, expanding and constricting, the darkness blocking out thought. An adult cinema, an usher staring at him curiously, white-blond eyebrows raised, on the wall, that term again. Fuzzy Wuzzies, I can see you.