Three Hours(71)

But maybe on that one evening Jamie saw Victor for what he really is and tried to go back to his parents, to his old friend Zac, his liberal school and family tugging him back to the boy he used to be. And perhaps a part of that ‘old Jamie’ remains and he can be reasoned with and he’ll let the children and their teacher go. But she fears it’s unlikely.

‘Detective Inspector Polstein?’ Bronze Commander asks.

‘I think our chance of getting through to Jamie Alton, that there is anyone left to get through to, is very small.’

‘Have we been able to establish any communication?’ Bronze Commander asks.

‘He hasn’t answered his phone to his parents or to us,’ Dannisha says. ‘His mother has a special ringtone; if his ringer is on he’ll know it’s her calling.’

‘Get the parents to keep on trying, and we do too,’ Bronze Commander says. ‘What about Victor Deakin? Does belonging to this terror organization tell us anything more about what he intends to do?’

‘Being a member of a white terrorist organization might be good news in one way,’ Stuart Dingwall says. ‘As Inspector Polstein said, Deakin is intelligent enough to know the police will shoot him dead if he opens fire. Unlike radical Islamist terrorists, where suicide is frequently part of the plan, far-right terrorists often aim to survive.’

Rose knows he’s right; the Michigan State University report confirmed it. And you only have to think of far-right terrorists in the dock following an atrocity: the murderer in Pittsburgh, the murderer in Charlottesville, the murderer of scores of young people in Norway raising his – very much alive – arm in a Nazi salute.

‘Victor won’t die for any cause other than himself,’ Rose says. ‘And as I said, psychopaths rarely commit suicide. But he could still want to go out in what he sees as a blaze of glory.’

‘And he’s still waiting to build up an audience?’

‘Yes. Perhaps he’s waiting for the USA to wake up. It’s 6.13 in New York.’

‘Do you know why Deakin joined 14 Words?’ Stuart asks.

‘I think he wanted to use them to radicalize Jamie Alton, so he’d have an accomplice,’ Rose says.

‘And access to weapons,’ Stuart says. ‘He bought the guns himself, but this terrorist organization probably found him a dealer. More than that, like Generation Identity, they send UK recruits to military-style anti-Islam training camps in Europe. Deakin has been out of the country twice in the last six months, but Alton hasn’t. So Deakin, perhaps others, trained Alton.’

‘And has Victor Deakin been radicalized too?’ Bronze Commander asks.

‘I doubt it; he just found a natural home,’ Rose says. ‘A white supremacist terror organization fits a Caucasian narcissistic psychopath. But this terror group are using him too, to carry out this attack for them.’

Very useful to have a psychopath, a man utterly devoid of conscience, in your ranks; all the most ruthless paramilitary groups have them; they crawl out of the woodwork whenever a terrorist organization goes recruiting.

‘Does it help us negotiate with Deakin?’ Bronze Commander asks.

‘I think he has already decided what he wants to do,’ Rose says. ‘If he reads our texts, even if he talks to us, he’s not going to change his plan.’

While the discovery of 14 Words is relevant, and deeply worrying, for Jamie Alton and for the children held captive by him in the pottery room, it doesn’t tell her more about Victor Deakin.

Lysander comes back on to the screen.

‘We’ve tracked the tweet about Victor Deakin being a psychopath to 14 Words, through a variety of aliases; they used automated high-volume retweeting to get it trending.’

Rose already thought 14 Words knew Victor was a psychopath, probably top of his desirable qualities, and that Victor himself is proud of who he is.

‘But why?’ Bronze Commander asks. ‘To increase the terror?’

‘That’s the logical conclusion, yes,’ Rose says.

‘And did nobody they know suspect terrorist involvement?’ an officer asks.

‘Victor Deakin is a psychopath so a skilful liar,’ Rose says. ‘And Jamie was probably coached on how to stay below everybody’s radar. It’s significant that he used an alias and to begin with, his interface with this organization was done on Deakin’s computer, before he upped the security on his own computer. And with Jamie’s previous personality, by all accounts an unaggressive, thoughtful boy, I doubt people had any reason to suspect, even people close to him.’

‘I agree,’ Stuart says. ‘Unfortunately for us, members of 14 Words are not skinheads with white power tattoos or any other obvious signs of their beliefs. They are younger, tech-savvy, and have made themselves deliberately hard to detect.’

The part of the screen that showed Lysander’s face now only shows the top of his head as he bends to work on Victor’s computer, while he continues the briefing.

‘There are levels of encryption we haven’t been able to access on the 14 Words dark website,’ Lysander says. ‘We think they’re hiding posts or messages, and possibly transactions. Instead of using 1024-bit RSA encryption keys they’re using ED-25519 elliptic curve keys.’

‘Can you decipher any of it?’ Bronze Commander asks, Rose thinks unnecessarily since Lysander will be doing everything humanly possible; Bronze Commander can’t have worked with him before.