'I've got authorization for the money,' said Big Barry grimly, looking across his desk at Bolt. 'It wasn't easy. One or two of the top people favoured calling in the negotiators. It took some persuading that not letting on about our involvement was the best course of action. And as you can imagine, no one wanted the responsibility of signing off half a million pounds.'
Bolt nodded. It had just turned four o'clock and he was back in Big Barry's office. Despite the sunny day, the heating was on full blast and the room felt hot and airless. Bolt had an empty feeling in his stomach. He'd tried to eat on the way back to HQ, stopping off at a Pret a Manger to buy a sandwich and a bottle of juice, but two bites and the juice was all he'd managed. The tension running through him made it hard to sit still, let alone concentrate on what Barry was saying.
'If we lose this money,' Barry continued, 'both you and I are going to be in serious trouble. We really can't afford to screw this one up, old mate.'
Bolt nodded again, didn't say anything.
'We'll be providing the bag containing the ransom, and I'm going to have two separate tracking devices sewn into the material where there's absolutely no chance they'll be found.
We'll also have two more trackers buried right in among the money, just in case they change bags. Obviously, though, these things aren't foolproof. They can lose their signal. We all know that. So we're going to need major surveillance back-up. I suggest two ground teams. One will follow Mrs Devern, the other will be sent to stake out the rendezvous as soon as the kidnappers confirm where it's going to be, so we have complete coverage of the area and the ransom itself. Then, as a final layer of surveillance, I want a helicopter on standby to take over the pursuit of the money so we make absolutely sure it doesn't disappear on us. Then it's simply a matter of following it to its destination, and that's the moment we bring in the negotiators and try to end things peacefully. The girl gets released, the perpetrators get nicked, and the money lands safely back in our hands.'
He paused, looking pleased with himself.
'What do you think?'
'I think,' said Bolt, trying desperately to be objective, 'that it's very risky.'
Barry looked mildly irritated. He didn't quite roll his eyes but the movement wasn't far off. 'Of course it's risky. This is a professional kidnapping we're dealing with, Mike. It's the type of op that's always risky. It was risky this morning, and you were arguing for it then.'
But this morning there hadn't been the possibility that 'the girl', as Barry had described her so dispassionately, was his daughter. On the way over, Bolt had thought about laying things on the line. Admitting everything. But he'd quickly dismissed this as a bad move. With such a huge personal involvement, Barry would have had no choice but to remove him from the case and there was no way he was going to allow that to happen.
'I've had time to think,' Bolt said. 'These people haven't put a foot wrong so far. If we don't get this exactly right, then they're likely to kill her.'
'Then we get it right,' said Barry firmly.
'You don't think we might be better off bringing in the negotiators? It's possible that if they realize we're on to them, they might cut their losses and let Emma go.'
'And it's also possible that they might not. You said that yourself.'
Bolt exhaled. 'I guess that's true.'
Barry frowned. 'Are you all right, old mate?'
Bolt nodded. 'Yeah, I'm fine.' But he was sweating, and his shirt felt clammy against his skin.
'We've made the decision now,' Barry continued. 'There's no point going back on it. SOCA needs a nice high-profile success. If we get this right – and, make no mistake about it, we will, because we're going to plan it properly – then it's going to look extremely good on the organization, and on us in particular. We don't often get much in the way of praise. Let's make sure we get some this time.'
'OK, but I don't like the idea of the helicopter.
The kidnappers get so much as a sniff of it, they're going to panic.'
'We'll keep it well away from whatever rendezvous they choose, don't worry. And it'll only be used as a back-up.'
Bolt wasn't convinced, but he didn't argue. There was no point. Barry had made up his mind about how they were going to play it. In fact, he'd made up his mind before the meeting had even started, which made Bolt feel that his presence was largely irrelevant.
'How's Mrs Devern?' asked Barry.
'She's holding up.'
'Hertfordshire CID still aren't entirely happy with her story.'
Bolt wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. 'Why not?'
'Well, their officers did find her covered in blood having just left the scene of the violent murder of her former lover.' Barry allowed himself a thin smile. 'You have to admit it's more than a little suspicious.'
Bolt felt like slapping that smile off his boss's face. For the first time in his life he suddenly had an insight into what it must be like to be a victim of crime – the lonely frustration of dealing with officials who were never going to care enough to deal with your plight.
'I'm sure they don't like her story,' he said, trying to keep his voice as calm as possible, 'but her child's definitely been kidnapped. I saw her on the video the kidnappers sent just three hours ago. And the people holding her are definitely after a ransom. So, unless Mrs Devern somehow set this all up herself, and is deliberately putting her daughter through a huge trauma, then we've got to accept that her story's true.'
Barry waited for Bolt to finish. 'I agree with you,' he said eventually, 'but I do get the idea with Mrs Devern that all is not what it seems. I think we need to watch her.'
Bolt nodded. 'Fair point.'
His boss was right. Andrea was a frighteningly enigmatic woman. She was also a manipulator, as Jimmy Galante had found to his cost, and Bolt himself was finding now.
There was a knock on the door, and one of the newer team members, Kris Obanje, a tall, good looking black man with a fondness for amateur dramatics, appeared.
'There's been a development,' he said with a typical flourish.
Bolt felt his heart race and he clenched his teeth. What the hell kind of development?
'We've just heard back from the phone provider who runs the network Emma Devern and Pat Phelan both use,' he continued, his voice a rich baritone that seemed to resound around the room. 'Phelan's phone was switched off at 4.47 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon in the car park of the dental practice. According to the receptionist, this would have been while Emma was in with the dentist. Emma's own mobile was turned off twelve minutes later at 4.59, a few hundred metres from the surgery, and on the same street. It would have been just after she'd left.'
'That solves the mystery of where they snatched her from, then,' said Barry. 'It must have been in the car park. Shows our kidnappers are willing to take risks.'
'It also shows how technology savvy they are,' said Bolt, 'getting rid of the mobiles straight away.'
'That's the media for you,' snorted Barry. 'They publicize all the ways we can track people. It's no wonder the criminals catch on. We're going to have to interview everyone who was at the surgery that afternoon, see if anyone saw anything.'
'We've also managed to trace the route the car took away from the surgery,' Obanje told them. He unfolded a sheet of A3 paper and laid it on the desk between the two men. It was a photocopied large-scale map of north London, with a curving line of red crosses drawn on it in marker pen running from Hampstead in the south to Barnet and the M25 in the north. 'Here's the surgery,' he said, pointing at the bottom-most cross. 'Here's where Emma's phone was turned off. And here's where they went afterwards.' He traced a finger along the line of crosses, stopping at one in the middle. 'We got a good CCTV shot of Phelan's car here at 5.14.' He unfolded a second piece of paper, this time showing an overhead black and white camera shot of a Range Rover. 'It looks like it might be Phelan driving, and it looks like it might be an adolescent in the seat next to him. We've sent the image over for enhancement. We should have the results back by tomorrow.'
'We're going to have to,' said Bolt, 'because after tomorrow they'll be irrelevant.'
He looked more carefully at the photo as Obanje moved his finger away. The figure in the passenger seat – the girl who might be Bolt's daughter – was a lot smaller than the man next to her, and she had her head turned to one side, making a positive ID impossible. But it was Emma. There was no doubt about that, and he felt a twinge of emotion as he stared at her image.
'If this is Phelan driving, and he's involved in the kidnap, why on earth did he bother taking her to the dentist's first?' demanded Barry.
'Look at this,' said Obanje, producing a third piece of paper. It was another overhead camera shot but this time it was a close-up taken of the rear of the Range Rover. 'This is from another camera on the same street, two minutes later at 5.16. You have to look closely.'
Bolt and Barry both leaned forward so their heads were almost touching. It wasn't difficult to see what Obanje was referring to. There was no mistaking the figure in the back seat, directly behind the driver.
'So there was someone else involved in the initial snatch,' said Barry. 'He gets in the car, presumably at the dental surgery, and either forces Phelan to drive, or it's possible that Phelan's involved, and this gentleman's just helping him.' He turned to Obanje. 'Have we got any better shots than this?'
Obanje shook his head. 'No, this is the best we've got at the moment. And after the car crosses the M25 on the A1 at 5.49, we lose it altogether. Hendon haven't got a single sighting of it after that.'
'So, Phelan's Range Rover could have been abandoned round here somewhere,' said Bolt, prodding the map near to the final cross.
'Could have been, but it's also possible that if they turned off the A1 and took back roads, they could have driven miles without being picked up by cameras. I'll keep on to Hendon, see if we can come up with any more sightings, but I wouldn't hold out much hope.'
'We'll also have a word with the local police, see if they've got any reports of the car being abandoned on their manor,' Barry said. He turned to Obanje. 'Thanks, Kris. Keep up with the good work.'
'It's coming along,' he said. 'She's a sweet looking kid. We all want to get her back.' He picked up the papers and left the room, the other two watching him go.
The tightness in Bolt's stomach had eased just a little. If the man in the back of the Range Rover had got in the car in the dentist's car park, then it was possible he might have been seen by a passerby. It wasn't much, but it represented a chink of hope.
He stood up. He needed to get out of Barry's stifling office. 'I'll get a couple of the team to go down to the surgery,' he said, and went outside.
But he didn't go back to the incident room straight away. Instead, he walked down the empty corridor and into the toilet. He splashed water on his face and stared at himself in the mirror.
He wasn't a bad-looking guy. His hair was still more blond than grey, although turning faster than he'd have liked, and he had a long, lean face with well-defined features and the kind of strong jaw that would stand up in a fight. Even the scars – an S-shaped slash on his chin, two small ragged lumps on his left cheek – added to rather than detracted from his appearance, and their effect was softened by his eyes. 'Laughing eyes' Mikaela used to call them. They were a bright, lively blue, and shone with a friendly and disarming interest.
But today they were duller, more brooding, and Bolt could see that he looked haggard and stressed. All his adult life he'd had to cope with pressure. The pressure of being a young man in uniform policing the streets of modern-day London had given way to the pressure of chasing some of the capital's most dangerous armed robbers during the ten years he'd spent with the Flying Squad. He'd been involved in some extremely dangerous operations, but the difference was that in those days he'd been part of a team, sharing the tension with a group of men and women who knew exactly how he was feeling, their support always providing a measure of comfort. Today he was completely on his own as the investigation into the kidnapping of the girl who could be his daughter went on around him.
He'd been operating pretty much on autopilot all afternoon, constantly turning over the various scenarios in his head, thinking back to those long ago days when he and Andrea had had their brief and passionate affair, trying to work out whether he really was the father of someone he'd never met, and whose first fourteen years he'd completely missed. Wondering now whether he was ever going to meet her, or whether he'd be the man staring down at her dead, broken body. Every time this last thought took hold, he felt himself wince and his heart pound faster.
He forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand. They desperately needed a break, a single mistake by the kidnappers that would provide them with a clue to their identity, and hopefully their whereabouts. But if no one had seen the kidnapper get into Pat Phelan's Range Rover in the surgery car park, it was looking less and less likely that they were going to get one.
For a long moment, Bolt stood there watching the water drip down his face, listening to the constant drumbeat of his heart, knowing that whatever happened today, his life would never be the same again. 'Pull yourself together,' he whispered. 'She needs you.' And he vowed then and there that if he got Emma out of this, he was going to introduce himself to her, and if he was her father – and Christ knows he might never know for sure – he was going to make her part of his life whether Andrea liked it or not.
But in the meantime, he had to force her out of his mind.
His mobile started to ring. He looked at his watch. Twenty past four. He pulled it from his pocket.
It was Tina calling.
From the moment the cruel one had run the blade of the knife across her face, smiling behind the balaclava at her fear, Emma knew there was no way he was ever going to let her go.
Afterwards, when he'd turned off the camera, he'd stared at her for a long time with his dead fish eyes. 'I think you're lying, you little bitch. You saw my face, didn't you?' He leaned forward so his face was almost touching hers, and sniffed loudly. 'I can smell the bullshit on you,' he whispered.
She promised him again that she wasn't lying, even sworn on her mum's life. Because it was true, she hadn't really seen anything – only that he had dark hair. But he didn't believe her, and just kept staring until finally she shut her eyes because she couldn't bear to see him looking at her like that any more.
'If you are lying, you little bitch, then you're going to fucking die,' he said as he headed towards the steps.
She shouted again that she wasn't, honestly, that he had to believe her, but he didn't reply and a few seconds later he was gone, locking the basement door behind him.
For a long time afterwards she sat hunched up on the bed, her knees pressed against her chest, too shocked and terrified to move, wondering why he wanted to kill her when it must have been obvious that she was telling the truth. Why did he have to be so cruel? She'd never done anything bad to him. She'd never done anything bad to anyone. Her mum called her a carer, and she was. She looked after people. There was a girl at school, Natalie, who was getting picked on by some of the Year 12 girls, and Emma had stepped in, even squared up to one of them to get them to stop (and they had: they'd backed off, even though they were bigger), because she didn't like people being bullied.
But now none of this counted for anything.
When she realized that this was it, that the cruel one really might kill her, the fear was like nothing she'd ever experienced before, far worse than the previous days when she'd at least had some kind of hope that the nightmare might end with her being reunited with her mum. Now she was sure this wasn't going to be the case. As soon as she was no longer needed, that'd be it. The cruel one would get rid of her, and there'd be nothing she could do about it, because she was totally helpless down here.
She wondered how they were going to do it. With a gun, or a pillow over her head? Or maybe with that knife of his? She couldn't bear that. To be stabbed to death. It would be slow, horrible, and there'd be blood everywhere. She couldn't bear the idea of her mum having to identify her in some morgue somewhere when they finally discovered her body. If they ever did find it, of course. She might end up missing for ever, like one of those kids who disappear and are never heard from again. If they had to do it, she hoped they'd give her pills so she could just go to sleep, and that would be the end of everything. It would be awful, and she'd miss her mum and her friends, and even her teachers – well, a couple of them – but at least it would be painless.
But she didn't want to die. God, she didn't. And just thinking about it made her cry again.
And then, as she sat there all alone, something within her changed. She realized that she couldn't just lie there weeping. She had to do something, anything. There was a topic they'd covered in history when she was in Year 9. It was about British prisoners in Germany during the Second World War and how they were always trying to escape. How often they weren't successful, and got punished for it, but how they kept on trying, and some – quite a few – even managed it.
It was hard, but once the thought of escape was in her head, she got this weird burst of hope. She stood up and tugged frantically at her handcuffs. In the days since they were first put on she'd lost weight, and with a lot of effort she was able to pull the cuff a half inch or so up over her left hand. It wasn't nearly enough to release her, but at least it was a start. Another half inch and she'd be in with a chance. She decided not to eat again. It would make her feel sick and weak, but it had to be worth a try.
Then she pulled at the chain attached to her ankle, trying to yank it free from the wall. It didn't budge the first few times, but then she gave it a huge tug, leaning back and putting all her weight into it as if she was doing a tug of war, and she was sure she heard something give. The metal plate attaching the chain to the wall was brand new and had obviously been put there just for her, but it felt very slightly loose in her hands, and because the wall itself was so old, she felt sure she could get it out somehow. It would still leave her handcuffed, and trailing a chain, but at least she'd be mobile.
She started scraping at the brickwork round the plate with her fingernails, breaking most of them in the process. Some flakes came away, but the plate didn't get any looser. She needed a tool of some kind, so she scoured the floor all over, hunting in every nook and cranny, until she found an old rusty nail in the corner just beneath the bed frame. Slowly, carefully, she began cutting away at the brickwork with the nail, methodically chipping away at it. It was a slow, painful job, but every time more brick dust fell to the floor she knew she was getting that little bit closer.
She just had to keep praying she had enough time.
'So, Pat Phelan might be in the frame after all?' said Mo Khan as he and Bolt drove to Andrea's house.
'Well, he's certainly got a motive. He owes a lot of money to a very dangerous man who's likely to use some pretty extreme violence to get it back. He also called that man two days before the kidnapping to ask him for a few more days to get the money he owed him. That's a pretty big coincidence if he wasn't involved, isn't it?'
Mo nodded. 'And he's not exactly the most upstanding citizen. A layabout and petty criminal who's sleeping with his wife's business partner. The problem is, it doesn't lead us to Emma, and if Phelan is involved, and she knows he's involved, he's not going to want to let her go.'
'I don't know,' said Bolt slowly. 'I would hope that it would mean he's less likely to hurt her because of the personal relationship they have.'
'That's assuming he's got a conscience. Anyone who can kidnap their own stepdaughter and put her through a living hell that's going to scar her for life just to pay off a gambling debt is capable of most things in my book.'
Bolt's fingers tightened on the steering wheel. 'But what I still can't work out is that if he is involved, why did he disappear too? Why not set everything up, make sure he's got an alibi for the time Emma's snatched, and simply stay behind and act innocent, advise Andrea not to go to the police, and wait for his money? Why implicate yourself?'
Mo shrugged. 'Maybe he's stupid.'
Bolt shook his head. 'No, one thing we do know for sure is the people behind this aren't stupid.'
The reason they were going to Andrea's house was to talk to her about these latest developments. Bolt had spoken on the phone to Tina Boyd for more than fifteen minutes and had been impressed by her detective work in uncovering the leads, but also concerned that she'd been abducted from the street and threatened by Leon Daroyce. Bolt was unfamiliar with the name, but a quick check on the PNC had revealed Daroyce as an unpleasant thug with several convictions for violence. He'd also been charged with a number of offences over the years, including extortion and, more ominously, attempted murder, all of which had ended up being dropped as witnesses retracted their statements, refused to testify, or in one case simply disappeared. Clearly he was a dangerous man.
But Tina hadn't sounded unduly distressed. If anything, she'd sounded excited, which wasn't like her. The thing with Tina was that she tended to keep her emotions in check, and usually exhibited a businesslike calm that her colleagues occasionally found disconcerting. He'd offered her the rest of the day off, knowing that however brave a face she put on it she was still going to be shocked by what had happened, but knowing too that she'd refuse the offer, which of course she had. Tina Boyd wasn't the type who liked being treated with kid gloves, something that Bolt had always admired about her, and he'd told her to return to the Glasshouse and help out there.
Bolt was finding it increasingly hard to concentrate on anything but Emma's whereabouts and he knew he looked under stress. His fingers were glued to the steering wheel, and twice Mo had asked him whether everything was OK. He'd replied that he was fine, just tired, which wasn't an uncommon occurrence on his team. They regularly did sixty-, even seventy-hour weeks when they were on a job, but he'd felt bad not saying something to Mo about his plight. They were good friends who knew each other well. But Bolt was well aware that the moment he opened his mouth he'd put his colleague in an impossible situation. He'd done that once before, and had sworn then that he wouldn't risk their friendship a second time.
It had just turned twenty to six when they pulled up outside Andrea's house, having called through to the surveillance team to announce their arrival. Not surprisingly, the team leader reported that there'd been no suspicious activity in the street all day. The kidnappers, it seemed, were continuing to keep a low profile.
Bolt pressed the buzzer on the security gate, and they were let through without preamble. The garden looked even prettier in the dappled lateafternoon sunshine as he and Mo walked towards the front door. It opened and Andrea appeared, dressed in a white LA Fitness T-shirt and ill-fitting trackpants. She'd removed her make-up, and looked older. Her eyes were red, and there'd been recent tears.
'Any news?' she asked.
'I'm afraid not,' answered Bolt as she moved aside to let them in, 'but we've got a few questions we need to ask you.'
Matt Turner and Marie Cohen, the liaison officer, were in the hallway and Bolt nodded to them both as Andrea led them through to her living room. She took a seat on a long leather sofa while Bolt and Mo sat down in armchairs opposite her.
Marie leaned round the door and asked if anyone fancied a cup of tea. Bolt declined. Mo and Andrea both asked for coffee.
'What do you want to know?' she asked, lighting a cigarette with shaking hands and blowing out a line of pale blue smoke.
Bolt wasn't looking forward to this. It felt akin to kicking her when she was already down.
'We've heard from very reliable sources that Mr Phelan has a very large gambling debt. Did you know anything about that?'
She looked genuinely shocked. 'Are you sure? How big?'
'We believe it's tens of thousands of pounds.'
'Oh God, no. He's been staying out late quite a bit, but I had no idea he was gambling. What's he been betting on?'
'He's been losing it in a casino, but the point is, he owes a lot of money to some very nasty people.'
'Have you ever heard the name Leon Daroyce, Mrs Devern?' asked Mo, speaking for the first time.
She shook her head. 'Is he the person Pat owes the money to? Do you think he's the one who snatched Emma?'
'It's possible,' Bolt conceded. 'We don't know for certain. We think it might be that Mr Daroyce is currently looking for your husband to get the money he's owed.'
Andrea took another urgent drag on the cigarette. 'But surely he's the one with the motive. Are you not going to arrest him? Do something?'
'Mr Daroyce and his people are currently under surveillance, so if they are involved, we'll know about it very quickly.' Bolt paused. 'But our source tells us that your husband phoned Daroyce last Sunday night, saying he was going to get him his money in the next few days. That was only two days before the kidnapping.'
'So you're saying he is involved?' she asked, her voice cracking.
'We have to face up to the possibility that he is, yes.'
'He wouldn't do this, you know. He really cares for her.'
The room fell silent. Bolt leaned forward in his seat.
'What we keep coming back to, Andrea, is that if your husband wasn't a part of this conspiracy, how did the kidnappers know his and Emma's movements? We think the abduction happened in the car park of the dental surgery where Emma had her appointment.'
Andrea's eyes filled with tears. 'Don't use that word, abduction. It makes it seem, I don't know, like some paedophile snatched her and she's not coming back.'
'I'm sorry. Snatched. But the point is, the kidnappers knew she was going to be there. And we need to know how.'
Marie came back into the room with the coffee for Mo and Andrea. Andrea waved hers away.
'Who's got access to this house, Mrs Devern?' asked Mo, taking his coffee and thanking Marie. 'And who knows the code to your burglar alarm, aside from you, Mr Phelan and your daughter?'
'No one except the cleaner, and she's been doing the house for years.'
As Mo took down the cleaner's details, Bolt's mobile rang. It was the surveillance team leader. Bolt excused himself and walked to the other side of the room out of earshot.
'We've got an IC1 female stopping at Mrs Devern's security gate. Black hair, early forties. She'll be ringing the bell any moment now.'
The buzzer sounded in the hallway, and Matt Turner poked his head round the living-room door.
'Are we expecting anyone?' Bolt asked him.
'Not that I'm aware of.'
'OK, ignore it, then. Let's hope they go away.'
A few seconds later the buzzer sounded again, longer this time.
'Oh shit,' said the surveillance team leader down the phone.
'What is it?'
'She's unlocking the gate, and now she's coming through.'
Bolt cursed. This was the problem with operating out of a private address. He hung up as the key turned in the lock and the front door opened.
'Andrea?' came a woman's voice, followed immediately by an accusatory 'Who are you?' as she saw Turner.
'It's all right, Isobel, I'm in here,' Andrea called out, getting to her feet quickly. 'It's my business partner,' she added by way of explanation.
Bolt and Mo exchanged glances as Isobel Wheeler, the other half of Feminine Touch Health and Beauty Spas, came into view. She was a striking woman in her mid-forties whose shoulder-length black hair and olive skin suggested eastern Mediterranean parentage. She was wearing a short black dress that finished halfway down her thigh, and which Bolt thought would have suited a slightly younger woman, and black high-heeled court shoes. She didn't do a lot for Bolt, but he could see why some men might go for her.
Isobel and Andrea greeted each other with a kiss on both cheeks.
'I came to see whether you were feeling any better,' Isobel said, breaking away and surveying the room with a cool confidence that was only a hair's breadth short of arrogance. 'What's going on? Who are all these people?'
Bolt opened his mouth to reply but Andrea beat him to it. 'Pat's gone missing,' she said worriedly. 'I haven't seen him for days.'
Isobel looked shocked. 'Is that why you haven't been in this week? You weren't ill, then?'
Andrea shook her head. 'No. I've been waiting for him to come home, and he hasn't. The police are looking for him.'
'What do you think's happened? Did you have an argument or something?' There was something accusatory in Isobel's tone.
'No, it wasn't like that. He just didn't come home one night. I don't know what's happened.'
Isobel turned to Bolt. 'Why aren't you out there looking for him?'
'I don't believe we've been introduced,' he said coolly. 'You are?'
'Isobel Wheeler,' she snapped. 'Why aren't you looking for him?'
Bolt didn't like this woman at all, but knew better than to react to her rudeness.
'We are looking for him,' he explained calmly, 'but unfortunately there's no law against a man leaving his house, even for an extended period of time, and at the moment there's no suggestion of foul play.'
'Pat wouldn't just walk out,' she said firmly.
'You know him well, do you?'
'I know him well enough,' she said curtly before turning back to Andrea. 'And you can't think where he might be, Andi?'
Once again, Andrea shook her head. 'I've tried everywhere. I've got no idea where he is, or why he went.'
Bolt was impressed by the way she was holding up, but he also found the smooth and natural manner in which she lied unnerving.
Isobel stared at Andrea for a couple of seconds, then leaned forward and gave her a hug.
'Do you want me to stay here with you?' she asked.
'I'll be all right, I promise.'
'Keep me posted of progress, OK?'
'Of course I will.'
'And don't worry about anything at work; it's all being sorted.'
Andrea managed a weak smile. 'Thanks, Iz. I appreciate it.'
'Now, if you'll excuse us, Miss Wheeler,' said Bolt, 'there are details we need to take down from Mrs Devern.'
Isobel nodded brusquely. 'Call me,' she told Andrea, then pushed past Turner and walked back out into the hallway.
Bolt followed her out and opened the front door for her.
'Have you any idea what's happened to him?' Isobel whispered as she stepped past him on to the steps. 'I mean, really? Because four police officers seems an awful lot to come round to take a missing person's details.'
Bolt shook his head. 'No, we haven't, I'm afraid.'
She gestured in the direction of the living room. 'Watch her,' she said, but before Bolt could ask her to elaborate she'd turned and walked away down the garden path.
Bolt watched her go, wondering what she meant. And wondering too why at no point had she asked where Emma was.
'I thought you said only the cleaner had access to the house, Mrs Devern,' said Mo as Bolt reentered the living room.
Andrea was back on the sofa, looking flustered. 'Sorry, I forgot that I'd given a key to Isobel. It was last year. I asked her to check the place while we were on holiday.'
'And there's definitely no one else we should know about?'
She shook her head firmly. 'Definitely not.'
Bolt thought of what Isobel had said on the doorstep.
'Do the two of you get on well?' he asked.
Andrea nodded. 'Well enough. She's my business partner. I've known her for years.' Then her expression changed. 'You're not saying she's got something to do with this as well, are you? First you accuse Pat-'
'No, no,' he said hastily, 'of course not. But we don't think this is a random act. If your husband wasn't involved, we still need to know how the people targeting you knew your movements, and one of the ways would be by bugging your house.'
'But you said you found no bugs.'
'There were none when we looked this morning, but if someone other than you had access, they could have removed any listening devices.'
'Jesus, this is ridiculous. Isobel's a lawyer, not something out of MI5. What would she gain by any of this?'
'We're just trying to cover every angle, that's all,' he said, knowing that if he told her about Isobel's affair with her husband it would probably prove the last straw.
Andrea reached over to the coffee table and picked up her cigarettes again, taking one out of the pack and lighting it.
'Mike,' she said, looking him squarely in the eye, 'is there something you're not telling me?'
The question caught him off guard, as did the fact that she'd called him by his first name again in Mo's presence. Bolt had to consciously resist looking at him.
'No,' he said, shaking his head. 'As I say, these are just routine enquiries.'
As he spoke, he caught sight of an old framed photo of Emma on top of an antique chest of drawers in the corner next to the French windows – a smiling child's face staring at him from an odd angle. For a second he couldn't drag his gaze away, and he felt a bead of sweat run down his temple.
Andrea stood up. 'Well, if you haven't got any other questions, I'd like to lie down for a while.'
He nodded. 'Of course. Matt and Marie will stay here with you.'
She left the room, and Bolt wiped the bead of sweat from his brow. It had been a long day, and he knew that tomorrow was going to be an even longer one. There wasn't much more they could do, so, having instructed Turner and Marie to keep a close eye on Andrea, and promising Turner that he'd be relieved later, he and Mo said their goodbyes and went outside.
Bolt felt a surge of relief to be away from the pictures of Emma. It was torture looking at them.
'I still get the feeling Mrs Devern's not telling us everything,' said Mo as they walked back to the car.
'Shit, Mo,' Bolt snapped, 'her daughter's missing. She's going to tell us everything she can to get her back, isn't she?'
He stopped by the car and took a deep breath, surprised by the anger in his tone. Mo looked taken aback.
Bolt sighed. 'Sorry, I shouldn't have said it like that. It's just, you know… I don't think she's going to be holding anything back.'
They got into the car in silence. Bolt took another deep breath. The pressure was getting to him. The knowledge that he might lose the only child he'd ever had, and before he'd even met her, was affecting every step he took, and he was beginning to doubt his ability to handle it.
'What is it, boss? What's wrong with you?'
Bolt avoided Mo's concerned gaze. 'Nothing. I'm fine.' It was his stock response, and it sounded utterly hollow. He couldn't even bring himself to instil any meaning into it.
'No, you're not. This isn't like you. I've worked with you, how long now? Four years, five? You never let things get to you. Not like this. You care, but not so much it brings you right down. And you're down now. You haven't been right all day.'
There was a long pause. Bolt sat there with the key in his hand, inches from the ignition, unmoving.
'Come on, tell me,' said Mo eventually, his voice quiet. 'We've shared things in the past.'
'I know.'
'Important things. Things that no one else knows.'
'I know.'
'So, talk to me now.'
In that moment, Bolt knew that the dam had to give, whatever the consequences. He put the key in the ignition but made no move to start the car.
'I had an affair with Andrea Devern fifteen years ago.'
'I thought there was something between the two of you. Back at the house-'
'There's more.'
Mo didn't say anything for a moment, then it seemed to click.
'Oh shit, boss. You're not saying that… that Emma's something to do with you?'
'It looks that way.'
He told Mo what Andrea had told him earlier.
'How do you know Mrs Devern, Andrea, isn't bullshitting you?' Mo asked when Bolt had finished. 'Especially as that's exactly what she told Jimmy Galante as well.'
Bolt sighed. 'I don't know, Mo, but the dates fit. I checked them.'
'But she was seeing Galante at the same time, right?'
'That's right. And she was married too.'
'Well, she certainly got around,' Mo said, a hint of disapproval in his voice.
'I don't know what to do. It's ripping me to shreds.'
'Chances are she isn't yours, boss. That's the way you've got to look at it. No offence, but if she was married, seeing another man, and seeing you, it's likely there were others as well.'
'But if it's true…'
'If it's true…' Mo paused, thinking. Choosing his words carefully. 'Then we've got to make sure we bring her back.'
Bolt ran a hand across his face, the fingers finding the scars on his left cheek. He rubbed hard at the shallow divots in his flesh.
'You saw what those bastards did to Galante. They're not going to let her go, are they?'
'You've got to have faith, boss.'
'Faith in what, Mo? Faith in what?'
'If you haven't got faith in God, and I know that you haven't, then at least have faith in our abilities. We've got out of tight corners before.'
'It's a lot easier said than done, Mo. It really is.'
'I know.'
'Do you?'
'I've got four children, boss. Believe me, I know.'
They were silent again. Bolt felt the tension flowing through his veins, tightening every muscle in his body.
'You know,' said Mo eventually, staring out of the window, 'there's a village in India, somewhere along the Ganges, where they consider cobras sacred. It means they're not allowed to harm them, and because of that, the whole village is teeming with them. In schools; in people's kitchens; in kids' bedrooms; all over the place. But no one takes a blind bit of notice because they're convinced they're not going to get bitten. And, you know, even when one of the villagers is bitten, they think it's a mistake on the cobra's part, and that the poison won't have any long-lasting effect because they worship it. Now, cobra venom can kill if it's not treated. That's a medical fact. But do you know what? In that village there's not one recorded incident of anyone dying of a snake bite. Like I said, boss, you've got to have faith. It'll be OK.'
They looked at each other, and Bolt was impressed by the determination in the other man's expression. It made him feel a little better, glad that he had shared his feelings. He was also surprised by the fact that Mo hadn't suggested he say something to Barry Freud. Mo was his friend, but he was also a professional, and he would know that he was taking a risk by keeping his boss's relationship with both the kidnap victim and her mother silent.
'Not a word about this, OK?' Bolt told him. 'It won't affect how I run this op, I promise.'
Mo nodded. 'OK, boss, but only as long as it doesn't. If it looks like the pressure's getting too much…'
'It won't. I promise.'
'But if it does, I'm going to have to say something. You understand that, don't you?'
'Yeah, I understand that.'
Bolt started to turn the key in the ignition, but Mo's next words stopped him dead.
'You were in the Flying Squad when you were seeing Andrea, weren't you?'
Although there was nothing accusatory in the tone, the meaning was clear. The Flying Squad dealt with armed robberies. The woman Bolt had been having an affair with was also sleeping with an armed robber. The potential for corruption was obvious, and it wasn't as if the Flying Squad hadn't had its fair share of corruption problems in the past. Bolt wasn't offended, but it hurt him that his friend had felt the need to ask the question.
'As soon as I found out she was seeing Galante, I finished it,' he said firmly.
'Good. That's all I wanted to know.'
There was another awkward silence. Bolt had crossed the line with Mo once before, two years earlier, and the implicit trust that had always existed between them had come under a lot of strain. It felt like something similar was happening again.
'Come on,' he said, starting the engine, 'let's go.'
Home for Mike Bolt was a spacious studio apartment on the third floor of a converted warehouse in Clerkenwell, one of the quietest places in central London, and not far from where he'd first been based as a uniformed cop. He'd been there for four years now, having moved in the year after his wife's death, and ordinarily he'd never have been able to afford a place one quarter of the size on his SOCA salary, but the rent he paid was minimal. The reason for this was that it belonged to a wealthy Ukrainian businessman, Ivan Stanevic, whom Bolt had helped out years before in his National Crime Squad days.
The case was remarkably similar to the one he was involved in now. Stanevic's twelve-year-old daughter Olga had been abducted from the street by business rivals of her father's, and Bolt had led the team tasked with getting her back. On that occasion it hadn't taken long to find out who they were dealing with and consequently where Olga was being held. It was Bolt who'd personally negotiated her release with the kidnappers, and she'd been freed unharmed, for which her father had been eternally grateful. It was the only other kidnap case he'd ever been involved with, and the grim irony wasn't lost on him as he stepped inside his apartment and shut the door behind him.
Usually he loved this place. It was hard not to love it since it had been refurbished with absolutely no expense spared. The floors were polished teak; the high, angular ceiling was crisscrossed with mighty timber beams carefully restored to their former glory; but the pièce de résistance was the way the old windows had been knocked out and replaced by a huge strip of floor-to-ceiling tinted glass that ran the entire length of one side of the apartment, facing east out on to the bright lights of London, with the high towers of the Barbican rising up behind the buildings opposite. Only the night before he'd sat in his armchair with a glass of 2005 Côtes du Rhône staring out across the city while an old Herbie Hancock CD played on the stereo, feeling quietly satisfied that the money laundering case had been brought to a successful conclusion, and looking forward to a weekend away with Jenny Byfleet. The world then had seemed a good, decent place, and for the first time in a while he'd actually felt contented. And all the time the clock was counting down to when it would all go suddenly and horribly wrong. Just like it had that night five years ago when he and Mikaela waved goodbye to the friends they'd spent the evening with, got into his car and driven off to their doom.
It had just turned eight o'clock as Bolt kicked off his shoes and poured the remainder of the previous night's Côtes du Rhône into an oversized wine glass, taking a big slug and trying hard to relax. He'd phoned Jenny on the way home and, trying to sound as casual as possible, had apologized for the fact that he was going to have to postpone. She'd asked if he wanted to rearrange, and he'd said he'd get back to her, hearing her disappointment down the other end of the line as he'd hung up. That was probably it for the two of them, but he was past caring about that. All he could think about was the case, about how Andrea had come back into his life and, even after all these years, managed once again to turn everything upside down for him.
He sat down in his armchair, but almost immediately stood up again. It didn't feel right resting his legs. Not with his mind going like the clappers. Instead he paced the room, thinking about what Mo had said about Andrea not being entirely truthful, and holding something back. He remembered Isobel Wheeler's words: Watch her. And most of all he thought back to his own experience with Andrea, and of how one night fifteen years ago, a mere eight weeks into their relationship, she'd dropped such a bombshell that it had ended everything between them with a bang that echoed even now.
He recalled the night perfectly. It was in the days when mobile phones were still the size of house bricks, and long before Bolt had taken to carrying one as a matter of course. He'd arrived home after a few drinks with a couple of Flying Squad buddies to find that he had a message from Andrea on his answerphone, asking him to call her urgently if he received the message before 10.30, giving him a number he didn't recognize, and adding that under no circumstances was he to call the number after that time. If she didn't hear from him before then, she'd call back later when she got a chance. The message had been left at twenty to ten, just fifteen minutes earlier, and Andrea had sounded uncharacteristically scared. He'd called her back immediately, and she'd picked up on the first ring, obviously waiting for the call.
'Mike, thank God you've called. I don't know how to tell you this.'
'Whatever it is, you can talk to me about it, OK? I can help.'
She took a deep breath and spoke quietly. 'There's going to be an armed robbery. Tomorrow morning, between ten and ten thirty. A police van carrying a load of cocaine for incineration from Lewisham Nick to Orpington.'
The shock of her announcement left Bolt cold.
'How do you know about this, Andrea?' he asked.
'I just do,' she said unconvincingly.
'You're going to have to do better than that. I need details. Like where you got the information.'
There was a silence at the other end of the line.
'Andrea, I can't go to my bosses and get authorization to do anything about this until I know more.'
This wasn't entirely true. He could have done if he really wanted to, but the most important thing was to find out how the woman he, a Flying Squad officer, had been seeing for the past two months had details of exactly the kind of major crime he specialized in investigating.
'I've been seeing a guy,' she said. 'His name's Jimmy Galante.'
'While you've been seeing me?' he asked, knowing the answer already.
'Yes.' Pause. 'I'm sorry, Mike. I've been seeing him a while. Since before you.'
He resisted the urge to shout at her, even though he wanted to. Instead, he listened while she continued, telling him how she'd always known that Jimmy was a bit dodgy and operated on the wrong side of the law, but hadn't ever realized the extent of his misdemeanours. Until that evening, when she'd been at his place and overheard a conversation he'd had on the phone in which he'd discussed the robbery with a fellow conspirator. 'He was in the other room, and thought I couldn't hear him, but he's been jumpy all day so when the phone rang I listened at the wall and heard everything he said. When he came back in the bedroom, I was in bed, so he didn't suspect a thing. Then he said he had to go out, and he'd be back about half ten.'
To this day, Bolt remembered how gutted he felt when she told him about getting back into another man's bed, how he'd got that wrenching feeling in his stomach as if someone was tying it in knots. He hadn't seen Andrea for close to a week because she'd said she'd been so busy, and all the time she was fucking some lowlife robber.
'So, you're at his place now?' he said.
'Yeah. I'm meant to be staying tonight. Billy's away on business.'
Bolt sighed. 'And you're absolutely sure about this?'
'Positive. I'd bet my life on it.'
'So why are you telling me this now?'
'Isn't it obvious?'
'Not really, no. I'm surprised you're so keen to shop your… your boyfriend.'
'I'm scared of him, Mike. I've been wanting to finish it for a while, but he's not the sort to take no for an answer. He even threatened to hurt Billy if I left him.'
'Tell me something. When you met me, was it a coincidence, or did you plan it?'
'Course I didn't plan it. How could I have done that?'
Bolt was silent. He wanted to believe her, but even though he was a lot younger then, he wasn't entirely naive. Something didn't feel right with her story. But she was giving him a tip, and he felt duty bound to act.
'Do you know where they're meeting up to do this robbery?'
'No. I've given you all the details I know.'
'If we try to stop them, and they're armed, you know what might happen, don't you? Your boyfriend, the guys he's with… They might end up getting shot.'
Andrea said that she understood. 'He's the one going out there with a gun,' were her exact words.
And that had been that. The next day the Flying Squad had hastily set up an ambush, following the police van and its cargo of more than a hundred kilos of cocaine, which was being driven by their officers, on its journey from Lewisham police station to an incinerator in Orpington. Sure enough, the robbers made their move, boxing the van in on a busy dual carriageway and forcing it to a halt before appearing, balaclava-clad, weapons in hand. Such was their speed and brazenness that they caught the Flying Squad team off guard, but only for a couple of seconds.
The Flying Squad ambush ethos is surprise, aggression and overwhelming force. As their own cars roared on to the scene, forming a loose cordon around the van and the robbers' vehicles, and disgorged their screaming officers, the back of the security van flew open and more gun wielding cops leapt out. The shouts of 'Armed police, drop your weapons!' filled the air and Bolt felt an adrenalin kick like he'd never felt before as he stood, legs apart, Colt revolver held two-handed in front of him.
Which was the moment it all went wrong.
There were four robbers with guns outside the car, two more – the drivers – inside. One of them opened fire and a Flying Squad guy called Hammond, who was thirty-one and just celebrating the birth of his child, got hit in the shoulder. Passers-by dived for cover as another of the robbers raised his shotgun, but this time he never got the chance to pull the trigger. Bolt and the guy standing next to him both opened fire, hitting the robber a grand total of four times. Dean Hayes was twenty-five, only months older than Bolt, with a criminal record stretching back into his mid-teens. He died three hours later on the operating table. Only one of the bullets was fatal. It had pierced his heart. A later PCC investigation revealed that it was Bolt who'd fired it.
The cops from the back of the security van grabbed another of the robbers and slammed him to the tarmac with guns in his back, while the fourth robber got off a wild shot before taking a bullet in the shoulder that sent him sprawling. But the first robber, the one who'd shot Hammond, had managed to scramble into the back of one of the getaway cars, a powerful Sierra Cosworth, whose driver then reversed suddenly, knocking down one of the advancing cops and breaking his hipbone. It then smashed into the Flying Squad car that was blocking it in, pushing it into the central reservation and narrowly missing Bolt in the process, before accelerating through the narrow gap it had created.
Several of Bolt's team had been carrying pickaxe handles, and one of them managed to smash the driver's side window as the getaway car passed, showering the driver with glass, and another threw his into the windscreen; but, faced with no direct threat to their lives, they were unable to shoot at the occupants. Bolt remembered being cool-headed enough, even after shooting a person for the first time, to take aim at the Cosworth's tyres, but the car had taken off at such a speed that it was thirty metres away before he had a chance to fire, and with civilians everywhere he knew it would be too dangerous to pull the trigger again.
Police patrol cars from Lewisham station had descended rapidly on the scene and there was a high-speed chase which ended only minutes later when the Cosworth crashed into a parked van. The driver, a well-known face in the criminal fraternity, was captured, but the gunman was nowhere to be seen, having fled the vehicle on foot, still wearing his balaclava.
With the other five gang members accounted for, it soon became clear that none of them was the mysterious Jimmy Galante, a man who at that time had never shown up on the Flying Squad radar. An arrest warrant was hastily put together, and at four a.m. the following morning a Flying Squad team that included Bolt had raided his flat, finding him apparently asleep. Bolt had half expected to find Andrea there still, having not heard from her the previous day, but it turned out Galante was alone, and remarkably unfazed at being prematurely woken from his slumber by half a dozen men in black, all shouting and pointing guns at him.
Galante was a cocky bastard from the start. Even if he hadn't been sleeping with the woman Bolt had fallen in love with, he would have hated him anyway. It just made it worse that he was a criminal, and a good-looking one at that. But his cockiness was justified. Although he had several cuts to his head and bruised ribs, strongly suggesting that he'd been involved in the Cosworth's crash, he'd denied involvement in any robbery and produced a cast-iron alibi for his whereabouts at the time (a café in Islington where he'd apparently been seen by at least half a dozen witnesses, including the owner). Worse, there was no sign of the clothes he'd been wearing, or any firearms residue on his hands. Everyone knew that he could have removed this simply by washing them thoroughly, but there was nothing they could do about it, and because none of the surviving robbers fingered him, Galante wasn't even charged with, let alone convicted of, any offence.
Bolt burned with the intense frustration any police officer feels when a criminal he or she knows is guilty gets off through lack of evidence; the fact that he'd shot one of Bolt's colleagues made it almost unbearable. But bear it he had to, and shortly afterwards Galante disappeared off the scene, moving to Spain, away from the watchful eyes of a vengeful Flying Squad.
Bolt had never heard from Andrea again after that. He'd tried to make contact with her several times but she hadn't returned his calls, and he'd been forced to accept that their relationship was over. But for him, personally, it had been a coup. His information had led to a huge result for the Flying Squad, marred only by wounding and injury to two of their own, and the fact that he'd shot dead one of the gang only increased his kudos among his colleagues. There'd been no repercussions from the PCC – his shooting of Hayes was considered totally justified – and although he'd been asked on several occasions to name the source who'd told him about the robbery, he'd always claimed that it was an informant, and gave no further details. Because the op had been a success, no one had ever pushed him on it.
He continued to pace the room. Continued to think. Always about Andrea. How her information had foiled a major robbery and put a lot of very nasty people out of business, at least one permanently. How she seemed to have turned her life around so formidably in the years since. And how she could have made some serious enemies along the way.
He stopped pacing and put down his wine on the marble kitchen top. He had an idea, and for the first time in the last few hours he felt a twinge of hope, coupled with something approaching excitement.
Pulling the mobile from his pocket, he dialled a number he hadn't called in far too long.
Emma dug away in the gloom with the rusty nail, trying to shut the constant fear out of her mind, forcing herself to concentrate totally on what she was doing. It had been dark for over an hour now but still she kept going, even though every part of her body seemed to ache with the effort. It was a slow, painful job, but she was getting somewhere. She'd created a gap of almost a quarter of an inch between the wall and the plate on the left-hand side, enough almost to get a finger underneath, and when she tugged at the chain it definitely felt looser. If she could just keep at it, eventually it was going to come free. She was sure of it. But God, it was hard.
She heard a noise upstairs – footsteps. She froze. If they saw what she was doing, they'd punish her. The cruel one might even decide that keeping her alive was now too risky, that it was time to get rid of her altogether.
She jumped up, lifted the bed, straining with the effort, and pushed it back against the wall, trying to be as quiet as possible but unable to stop it from scraping loudly on the stone floor.
Please don't let them hear it.
Gritting her teeth, she lay back on the bed, put the nail under her pillow, and reached for the hood.
The footsteps stopped. Was one of them outside the door?
She put on the hood and closed her eyes, hardly daring to breathe, terrified that this might be it. The last few seconds of her life. Had all her efforts of the last few hours been wasted?
But the door didn't open.
Five minutes passed. Then ten.
She lay there in the darkness, her heart going faster and faster, cold beads of sweat running down her forehead as she listened as hard as she could for any sound in the room, knowing that the cruel one always liked to creep up on her.
But she could hear nothing. Only silence. And eventually she plucked up the courage to remove the hood and look around. But the room was empty.
So, he wasn't coming for her tonight.
But she couldn't help thinking it was just a stay of execution.
In the old days, everyone in the Flying Squad had had a nickname. Bolt's, not altogether surprisingly, was Nuts, while Jack Doyle, the man he was going to meet, had been known as Dodger. Although he was five years older, Doyle had probably been Bolt's best mate in the squad. He was also the most accident-prone guy Bolt had ever known.
Doyle's long litany of injuries was legendary: three months in traction after falling off a ladder trying to retrieve a football from his roof; a rare and potentially deadly blood infection when he'd stepped on a fishbone on the first day of his honeymoon; and in the most bizarre instance of all, a month off sick with concussion after a pool tournament during which a wildly mishit cueball flew off the table, hit him in the temple and knocked him spark out. Somehow his injuries always coincided with times when the squad were in action, hence the nickname, and it irritated him hugely because he'd always been one of its hardest members, and as a highly successful former amateur boxer was not afraid of a fight. He simply considered himself unlucky.
Jack (Bolt had never called him Dodger) was one of the few of the old team still left at Finchley. He'd moved up the ranks and was now a DI. His experience, coupled with a near photographic memory, meant that if there was ever anyone who could provide Bolt with the information he needed, it was him. Although they'd kept in touch over the years, and still did the occasional fishing weekend away, it had been months since they'd last spoken. Even so, as soon as Bolt explained that he needed to meet up with him urgently, Doyle hadn't hesitated, and told him to name the time and place.
And so it was that barely an hour after arriving home Bolt walked in through the door of the King's Arms, a busy, old-fashioned drinkers' pub just off the King's Cross end of the Gray's Inn Road. He had to look around for a few seconds, pushing his way through the buzzing crowd of drinkers, before he saw Doyle sitting in a booth in the corner, two pints of lager set out on the table in front of him.
Doyle stood up as Bolt approached and they shook hands. As always, the other man's grip was vice-like. With his jutting, granite jaw and square shaped head, topped with thick black hair, Jack Doyle bore a strong resemblance to a Thunderbirds puppet – not that it was advisable to tell him that. He wasn't a particularly big man – no more than five nine, and of slim build – but the look was deceptive. He was all sinewy muscle, and even now, in his mid-forties, there wasn't an ounce of fat on him.
'How are you, Mike?' he asked in a thick Glasgow accent that hadn't mellowed, even after more than a quarter of a century down south. He gestured at one of the pints. 'I got you one in.'
Bolt smiled as they sat down opposite each other.
'Thanks, Jack, I'm all right,' he said, determined not to show the turmoil he was going through. 'You?'
'Not bad,' said the other man wearily. 'Counting the days until retirement.'
They clinked glasses.
'What is it you've got left now? Five years?'
'Four. And I tell you, pal, I can't bloody wait. How's life at SOCA?'
Bolt took a gulp of his beer. It tasted good.
'Busy,' he answered. 'That's why I need your help. You remember the Lewisham robbery, back in ninety-two? The police van carrying the coke for incineration?'
'How could I forget? It's the one where you made your spurs. Took out that toe rag Dean Hayes.'
Bolt nodded. 'That's the one.' He'd never been proud of the fact that he'd killed Hayes. He might have been, as Doyle put it, a toe rag, but that didn't make ending his life any easier, and Bolt felt mildly uncomfortable at it being mentioned now. 'Do you remember what happened to the people who got put away for it?'
'Is this to do with a case you're working on?'
He knew there was no point denying it. 'Yeah, it is.'
'It must be a pretty big case if you wanted to see me this urgently. Can you give me any details?'
'It's an ongoing op, so I can't say too much at the moment.'
'Not even to an old mate?'
'You know I'd tell you if I could, Jack.'
'Fair enough. And you think some of the guys we put away might be involved in it?'
'We don't know yet. But at the moment, I'd like to know their current status, and any intelligence you've got on any of them.'
'Well, you tagged one, and we put away four, didn't we? Vernon Mackman – he was one of the drivers. One of the best there was, I always thought. He died of cancer five years back while he was still in the Scrubs. As for Barry Tadcaster, he's back inside. He was out six months, then teamed up with a couple of old-style blaggers and got done for conspiracy to rob when one of them turned grass. I don't think he's expected out until after I retire.'
'And the others? Marcus Richardson, and who was the other? Scott somebody?'
'Scott Ridgers. They've been in and out since they got released for the Lewisham job. You know what it's like with blokes like that, professional robbers – they never change. Ridgers carried on blagging; Richardson branched out into smuggling coke into the country. But as far as I know they're both on parole and keeping their noses clean. I haven't heard anything about either of them for a while now.'
'How long did they go down for?'
Doyle thought for a moment. 'Ridgers got fourteen years, I think, and served seven. Richardson got longer – seventeen, eighteen, something like that – because he fired a shot before he got hit himself, so he did time on an attempted murder charge as well, even though he always claimed the gun went off by accident. He served eight or nine.'
'You got an address for either of them?'
Doyle's face broke into a craggy smile. 'My memory's good, Mike, but it's not that bloody good. They'll be on the PNC, though. I'm sure they're both still on licence.'
'I'll check them out.'
'You haven't asked about the one who got away. Jimmy Galante.'
'Oh yeah, I remember him. He ended up in Spain, didn't he?'
Doyle nodded. 'He did, but I heard from one of my snouts that he was back in the country. Someone saw him the other day in a pub in Islington.'
Bolt feigned interest. 'Really? I must look into that.'
Doyle took a slug of his own beer and at least a quarter of it disappeared. For a small guy, he'd always had a prodigious capacity for the booze.
'Whatever you think our boys Richardson and Ridgers might be involved in, you've got to remember they weren't the brightest of sparks. Galante was always the brains of the outfit.'
Bolt tried to picture the two men, to remember anything about them, but they were a blank. It was all too long ago. He wondered whether he was wrong to think that there might be a connection. The Lewisham robbery was ancient history, and as far as he was aware no one, either inside or outside the Flying Squad, knew that it was Andrea who'd helped to foil it. And even if someone had found out, there was still no reason to wait until now, fifteen years later, to do something about it. When he thought about it like that, the whole thing didn't make much sense. But it was all he had, and the fact that Jimmy Galante had been involved in both cases meant that it was better to be here asking questions than sitting around at home.
They sat in silence for a few moments, finishing their drinks, oblivious to the noise around them.
'How well do you remember Richardson and Ridgers?' asked Bolt.
'Not very. There wasn't much to say about either of them. They were just two robbers prepared to get nasty to get what they wanted. I doubt many people'll have fond memories of them when they're gone.'
'Do you think either of them could be capable of the kidnap of a young girl? A fourteen-year-old?'
Doyle frowned. 'Is that what this is about?'
'Between you and me, yes.' Bolt knew he was treading on shaky ground here, talking about the investigation to someone outside it, but he also knew it was the only way he was going to get answers.
'A kidnap for ransom?'
'Yeah. But I can't tell you any more than that, and you've got to keep what I do tell you under wraps, OK?'
'You know me, Mike. I don't blab. What makes you think those two are anything to do with it?'
'Just a hunch.'
'Shit, pal, you sound just like Columbo.' Doyle fingered his empty glass. 'I wouldn't put it past either of them to be involved in something like that. They're criminals, and they're greedy bastards, so if there's money to be had, there's a good chance they'll be there.'
'Do you think they'd hurt her? The girl?'
'Christ, Mike, I don't know. The one thing about armed blaggers is they're pros. They don't add years on to their sentences unless they absolutely have to.'
Bolt felt relieved, even though he knew this was irrational. Jack Doyle was no criminal psychologist.
'You look shattered,' Doyle told him.
'I am. It's been a long day.'
'Maybe you should get home.'
But Bolt didn't want to go back yet. He picked up the empty glasses. 'No, let me get you a drink.'
'Cheers. I'll have a pint of Stella.'
When he returned with the drinks they made small talk for a while, but Bolt found it hard to concentrate on anything other than Emma, and he was conscious that he wasn't good company. It angered him that he couldn't relax with an old friend over a few beers at the end of a long, hard day, and the anger was aimed at Andrea, because it was her doing. If she'd just kept her mouth shut, he might have been able to do his job properly instead of flailing round from place to place, tearing himself apart.
He finished his second pint and got to his feet. 'I'd better go, Jack. Early start tomorrow.'
Doyle stood up as well and they shook hands.
'Good luck with the case, Mike.'
'Thanks. I hope we don't need it.'
'Don't worry, she'll be all right. Blokes like that, they just want the money. They won't risk going down an extra twenty years by killing her.'
Easy for you to say, thought Bolt as he said his goodbyes and walked outside into the cool night air. It was a two-minute taxi ride home or a fifteen minute walk. He decided to walk, hoping it might calm him down a little, but he'd only got a few hundred yards when his mobile started ringing.
It was Mo. Bolt had left him back at the Glasshouse a few hours earlier. He'd said he was just finishing up and was about to go home, but maybe he'd decided to stay later. He flicked open the phone and put it to his ear.
'Mo?'
'There's been a development.'
His tone was grim, and Bolt felt his stomach constrict at the prospect of bad news.
'What is it?'
'I'm at a house in Tufnell Park. I think you'd better get over here.'
It had just turned twenty past ten when Bolt arrived at the address Mo had given him – a bedsit on a residential road of rundown whitebrick Georgian townhouses on a hill a few hundred yards north of Tufnell Park Tube station. There were a dozen or so police vehicles as well as an ambulance double-parked on both sides of the street, blocking it off entirely, and small clusters of onlookers, some of them in dressing gowns, standing at the edges of the cordon talking quietly among themselves, clearly both appalled and fascinated by the crime that had taken place in their midst.
Bolt's taxi stopped a few yards short of the bright yellow lines of scene-of-crime tape.
'Christ, what's going on here?' asked the driver as he took the fare.
'Murder,' Bolt told him, and got out of the car.
He showed his ID to one of the uniforms ringing the cordon and was directed to a van where he put on the plastic coveralls all officers are obliged to wear when entering crime scenes. He was exhausted, the remnants of the two pints of Stella he'd had with Jack tasting sour and dry in his mouth.
Mo met him in front of number 42. He looked a little queasy. 'It's pretty bad in there, boss. You might want some of this.' He produced a tube of Vicks and Bolt dabbed some under his nostrils.
Bolt sighed. The last thing on earth he wanted to see right now was a body, and it wasn't essential to the inquiry that he did so since he could easily get the details of what happened from other people, but he wasn't the sort to shirk the unpleasant aspects of the job. 'Let's get it over with,' he said, following Mo through the open front door and into a dusty foyer with plastic sheeting over the bare stone floor. Long threads of cobweb hung from the corners of the ceiling and there was a stale, airless smell, mixed with something else. Something much more pungent.
'She's down here,' said Mo, walking past a threadbare-looking staircase and down a dark, very narrow hallway to an open door at the end, the smell of decay getting stronger with each step.
By the time they reached it, it was pretty much unbearable, and Bolt had to stop himself from gagging.
'Jesus,' he whispered.
'It looks like she's been dead for days,' said Mo, moving aside to allow him access.
The room was small and cramped, dominated by an unmade double bed which took up well over half the floor space. Flies were everywhere, their buzzing irritatingly loud as they vied for space with the four white-overalled SOCOs inside, who were testing the various surfaces for DNA, and taking samples from the body. Bolt could get no further than the doorway, which suited him fine.
A woman lay on her side in an approximate fetal position, her feet and ankles wedged under the bed. She was wearing a pink T-shirt with writing on it that Bolt couldn't make out, and a lacy black thong. Her body was bloated and discoloured where the first stages of decomposition were beginning to take effect, but the maggots that were eating her up on the inside had yet to burst out. From his basic knowledge of forensics, Bolt knew this meant that although death had definitely not been recent, it was also unlikely to be more than four days ago, particularly in comparatively warm weather such as they'd been having.
He stood still for several seconds, staring at her dead, ruined body. The abject humiliation of death depressed and horrified Bolt. It always brought home his own mortality, and the sure knowledge that one day he too would end up like this. Nothing more than rotting flesh, all thoughts and memories of a lifetime gone.
'Have we ID'd her yet?'
Mo nodded. 'That's why I called you. Her name's Marie Aniewicz. She's Mrs Devern's cleaner.'
'Jesus Christ,' he whispered, tensing. 'How old was she?'
'Twenty-five,' answered Mo. 'She'd worked at Mrs Devern's place for just under three years.'
He thought of Emma, only eleven years younger, and was unable to stop himself from picturing her here in the same position.
'It's no age, is it?'
'No, it's not.'
Bolt took a deep breath, temporarily forgetting the thick stench of rancid meat.
'What a waste.'
No one said anything for a while. The SOCOs continued to work methodically, as if this was just a routine task for them, which of course to a large extent it was.
'Do we know how she died yet?'
The SOCO nearest to Bolt, who was kneeling down beside the body taking photographs, heard the question and looked up.
'Looks like a single stab wound to the heart,' he said, his voice muffled by his face mask. 'No other obvious injuries on her.'
He gently lifted her right arm with his free hand and touched a thin tear in her T-shirt at roughly the level of her third and fourth ribs. A small dark patch on the T-shirt, not much bigger than two fifty-pence pieces, marked the spot. The fact that there was so little blood, either on the body or anywhere else in the room, suggested to Bolt that she'd died quickly.
'How was she found?' he asked.
'Like this,' answered the SOCO, 'but with the duvet covering her.'
'It's an unusual position to be in for someone who's just been stabbed. I'd have thought she'd be more sprawled out.'
'It looks like she was stabbed, then placed in this position almost immediately. You can see from the lividity that this is where she's been lying most of the time since death.' He pointed to her underside which was darker than the rest of the body where the blood had slowly collected there.
Bolt nodded, and looked around the room. There were no signs of a struggle. The two lamps on either side of the bed were still upright, as were the handful of framed photos and the pot plant on the chest of drawers against one wall. Bolt didn't look at the photos. He didn't want to see what Marie Aniewicz had been like in life.
'Looks like a professional job,' he said when he and Mo were back outside on the pavement, breathing in the comparatively fresh air, glad to be out of the stifling tomb that was the young cleaner's bedroom.
'No one heard a thing, and there's no sign of forced entry, either to the house itself or her bedsit. And it's been difficult to get hold of witnesses. The other ground-floor bedsit's empty, and the rest of the people in the house are apparently illegals, so they've made themselves scarce. The local cops got an anonymous call reporting a nasty smell coming from her room about six o'clock this evening.'
'Does Barry know? And Tina?'
'I got hold of Barry, and he told me to get you down here. He's at some charity function tonight. He wants a full update in the meeting tomorrow morning. I couldn't get hold of Tina. She left before I found out about this, and now she's not answering her phone.'
Bolt exhaled air through his nostrils. 'This puts a whole new perspective on things, doesn't it?'
'Well, there's no way it's unconnected. We haven't got an exact time of death yet, but according to the doctor who examined the body she's been dead somewhere between three and five days. About the time of the kidnapping.'
'There's only one motive for killing the cleaner, then: they found out the alarm code from her and got access to Andrea's house. Which is how they would have placed the trip switch on the front door and found out what Emma was planning on Tuesday. So it's not an inside job.'
'And Phelan's probably not involved.'
'Almost certainly not. Killing the cleaner was a risk. You'd only do that if you had to.'
'So, either they've got Phelan as well as Emma…'
'Or he's dead.' Bolt thought of Andrea, wondered how much more bad news she could take. 'They've already killed two people that we know about. There's no reason why they won't have made it three.' Or four, whispered an uninvited voice at the back of Bolt's mind. The fact that the kidnappers could plan to murder a cleaner just to get access to a house meant that it was highly unlikely they'd lose too much sleep over the prospect of killing Emma.
Bolt wiped a hand across his brow. The night was unseasonably warm for September, and he was conscious that he was sweating again.
'These guys really mean business, Mo. '
Mo nodded slowly, his dark eyes full of sympathy. 'I know. But as you've said, they took a risk killing the cleaner. Someone somewhere might have seen something. Sooner or later they're going to make a mistake. Remember that, boss. No one's luck lasts for ever.'
It was close to midnight by the time Bolt walked through his apartment door for the second time that day. He and Mo had stayed at the crime scene for a further half an hour to talk to the senior investigating officer from Tufnell Park CID. They shared what information they could, but were deliberately vague about most of it because of the secrecy of their own op. Bolt had been apologetic about this but it hadn't prevented the senior investigating officer from getting seriously pissed off and threatening to talk to the head of SOCA to get further details if he had to.
After saying his goodbyes to Mo, he'd found a taxi on Junction Road to take him home. On the way back he'd tried Tina's number to bring her up to date with developments but again she wasn't answering, and he decided to leave speaking to her until the morning. He hoped she hadn't suffered any ill effects from her earlier ordeal, and it struck him that maybe he should have done more to check she was OK. At the Glasshouse earlier she'd been quieter than usual, and they'd hardly had a chance to speak. But Tina was a tough cookie. She'd be all right. And at the moment he had enough on his plate without worrying about her.
The first thing he did when he got back inside the apartment was gulp down a large glass of water in an effort to rehydrate himself and get the taste of stale beer off his breath. The remainder of his glass of red wine was on the kitchen top and he was tempted to finish it off, but quickly dismissed the idea. Instead, he threw off his clothes and jumped in the shower, trying hard to relax himself. He was still tense but less so than he had been, even given what he'd just seen. Perhaps he was simply getting more used to it.
It occurred to him as he towelled himself dry that this had possibly been the worst day of his life, and there'd certainly been a fair share of contenders for that accolade over the years. Mainly because it had been so totally and utterly unexpected, and he'd had so little time to react to the speed and ferocity of events as they'd buffeted him again and again.
He was also aware that tomorrow could turn out to be even worse.