He turns down Argyll Street and crosses Great Marlborough, stepping round pedestrians. Soot runs into his mouth and crunches between his teeth.Ĭrossing the road between two trucks, he forgets to lift his feet and trips over the gutter. Buses, vans, cars and cabs-nothing is moving. She had white headphones trailing from under her long hair. There was also a girl standing near the doors, wearing a short jacket. Who was sitting in the other carriage next to Dessie? A guy in a Jesus T-shirt with his eyes closed, doing the nodding dog. Things went quiet for a moment and completely dark. Papers were blown through the air, glass showered down on him and the train shuddered to a halt. One moment Sami was standing near the train doors and the next he was lying on his back, flapping his arms and legs like an upturned beetle. Six and a half pounds of TATP-the Mother of Satan-just blew a gaping hole in a packed carriage on the Central Line, peeling off the roof like a giant opening a big can of peaches. People step aside and stare at him like he's some sort of ghost. Sami ducks beneath a makeshift barricade of crime-scene tape hanging from plastic bollards.

Emerging from Oxford Circus Underground, he blinks into the sunlight and coughs so hard it feels as if his sphincter is coming up through his lungs looking for clean air. Sami Macbeth's day has been nothing but stones. John Denver used to sing that before he crashed a plane into Monterey Bay.

Bombproof michael robotham