Michael Hollinghurst is the victim of a terrorist attack. Now he seeks retribution from his wheelchair. But he's about to become a sitting target.
Michael Hollinghurst is a successful corporate lawyer living a comfortable, suburban life in leafy North West London. But on 7 July 2005, his life is transformed when he steps on a London underground train targeted by Islamist suicide bombers. While most passengers in his carriage are killed, Michael survives the explosion but is confined to a wheelchair as a result. Coming to terms with his predicament and controlling his own feelings of guilt as a survivor conspire to push him in a direction that is out of character and a tad reckless. In a quest to seek retribution, he resorts to embracing the internet and posing as a radical Islamist in order to snare potential perpetrators. Much to his surprise, his shambolic scheme yields results and is brought to the attention of both GCHQ and a terrorist cell. But before long, dark forces begin to gather and close in on him. There is seemingly no way out for Michael Hollinghurst. He has become, quite literally, a sitting target.
Excerpt
PROLOGUE
Michael had been sitting there for 40 minutes with the long plastic tubes, one of which he’d managed to insert into his back passage. Another was attached to a rubber pump mechanism, which he had already squeezed with his right hand to pump warm water around his bowel. The indignity of his daily routine was horrendous. Just as he began to think he’d wheel himself into the shower and try again later, his bowels evacuated and his ears were greeted by the sound of a mini Niagara Falls. Thank Christ, he thought to himself and pulled the bell cord.
Annie, the young Filipino girl had only been his carer for two weeks. She may have been young, but she’d been fantastic. You didn’t have to explain everything to her 50 million times; you just told her once, and she’d get on with it. Better still, she’d smile and engage in normal conversation; not like those sour faced bitches from the agency who moped around as if the world owed them a living and gave you the impression that they were doing you a favour by just showing up - even when they were half an hour late.
Within minutes Annie had wheeled him into the shower and was washing his hair. In truth, he could probably have managed it himself, even though his stomach muscles were clearly on their way out, and it was an almighty effort to sit up straight, but it was nice to get this kind of attention. Besides, it had been a long time since a woman had smiled at him.
‘So what you do today, Mr Hollinghurst?’ Annie asked while dousing his head with the shower as if watering a delicate flower that was in desperate need of a good drink.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Thought I might have a spin on the heath. Buy The Telegraph and catch up with the god-awful news. How about you?’
Annie smiled and shrugged. ‘The usual. I go home to look after nan.’
She was a bright kid. She’d been to university back home and had a degree in economics, and now was only in the UK to look after her elderly grandma living in Golders Green. How many English teenagers would have the decency to ditch their lives and up sticks to look after an aged relative? Probably no more than you could count on the fingers of one hand, Michael surmised.
Annie wheeled him out of the cavernous wet-room, and through into the bedroom. ‘Nice picture,’ she said as they swept past the fireplace displaying the large framed shot of all four of them on the day of his daughter, Natasha’s graduation ceremony at Durham University. They were all beaming; even that cow of a wife of his. Those days were long gone. Life had moved on. Though sometimes Michael felt like his life had just stopped moving and had come to a crashing halt on 7 July, 2005.
CHAPTER 1
He could remember that morning very clearly now. It had been a day like any other. He’d just checked his email on his mobile and had stepped onto a train at Edgware Road. The train had barely left the station, and like everyone else, he was just going through the motions of the daily grind, hanging onto the handrail while someone else’s elbow blocked his vision. This was the joy of commuting on London’s electric sewer.
He could vaguely recall that deafening blast, but that’s all. No white flashes; no screams; no pain; no dying passengers; no heroic paramedics; just nothingness. The media had been full of it, of course. Blurred CCTV images of those four demented individuals had appeared on newsprint the world over, and the whole ghastly business had acquired its own moniker; its own brand identity; its own soundbite: 7/7. London’s very own 9/11.
His clearest recollection was the face of that large black nurse bearing down on him. ‘Hello there Mr Hollinghurst. You’re at the Royal London Hospital.’ He remembered hearing her chirpy voice very clearly, but it took a while before his eyes could focus properly.
He’d been there for some hours to undergo minor surgery to remove shrapnel from his right leg. And then he’d been transferred to Stanmore, the national hospital for spinal injuries.
The horror of it all came flooding back to him when he found himself in another altogether more claustrophobic tube. The MRI machine was a marvel of the technological world. It was also bloody uncomfortable. Lying there surrounded by whirring cold metal, he caught fleeting fragments of the moments before the blast. The attractive young woman sitting opposite applying eye mascara and pulling unflattering faces while doing so; the young guy with designer stubble reading the well-thumbed copy of Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene; the toddler with the pink headband sitting on her mother’s lap. Their ghosts had come back to haunt him and his eyes had welled up with tears. What had given him the right to cheat death?
Some hours later he’d been wheeled back into his ward. There were three others sharing this utilitarian space with its grey flecked flooring, medical paraphernalia and lightweight dividing curtains that could turn your shared world into a private one in a mere swish.
The consultant had arrived with his entourage of student doctors and a dutiful nurse with an Irish accent had drawn the blue curtain, surrounding them in a calm oasis of nylon. Mr Hudson was your typical consultant, privately educated at some minor public school in the home counties, followed by a stint at King’s College Cambridge and that long slog up the greasy pole that was the NHS. And here he was with his thinning grey hair and ruddy cheeks going through his file of notes. ‘Well, I hope we’re making you feel as comfortable as possible, Mr Hollinghurst. You’ve been through the most terrible ordeal. But the important thing now is to get you through this as best we can.’ The rest of the one sided conversation had washed over Michael. He could hear the pleasant and calming sound of Mr Hudson’s dulcet tones and could understand the meaning of individual words but for some unfathomable reason hadn’t been able to comprehend the sentences; to join up the dots. The word compression seemed to be one of the words that had cropped up quite a lot. Trauma was another. And then, rather ominously, surgery.
Once he was fully conscious and the full horror of a C3-C5 spinal compression injury began to sink in, the dark clouds had begun to gather and suicidal thoughts became the order of the day. He’d lost all sensation from the neck downwards, He’d lost bladder and bowel function; his legs were totally useless appendages that would lead a life of their own by going into uncontrollable spasms that would reverberate l
