Sometimes a person's fate rests on a single, seemingly innocuous decision. For me it was the moment I agreed to go out for a quick beer that Sunday afternoon with my neighbour from down the road, a balding hipster called Ramon who taught salsa at the local community centre and who, against all the evidence, considered himself a magnet for female attention. I'd been cooped up working at home for most of the weekend, and although I didn't tend to like being seen in public with Ramon, who always wore a red or black bandanna, the idea of a relaxing afternoon drink round the corner from where we both lived in the bland but pleasant north London suburb of Colindale seemed like a decent enough idea.
But we all know what it's like. Where alcohol's concerned, things rarely turn out like you expect them to, and our relaxing drink quickly turned into four or five, followed by a cheap all-you-can-eat Chinese meal on the high street, and finally a trip into the West End, which was where I found myself at half past ten that night, wandering round a sweaty, heaving bar just off Long Acre, having lost a salsa-ing Ramon somewhere among the crowds a good twenty minutes before.
By this point, I'd had enough. At one time I'd liked this place. Back in the old days, when I was working in the City, I'd come here most weeks, and had even known most of the bar staff by name. But plenty of water had passed under the bridge since then, and now, at thirty-four, I felt old and out of place, the booze making me maudlin as it offered up memories of times when life was fun and easy and I was the same age as everyone else there. It was definitely time to go, but as I put down the half-full bottle of Becks I'd been nursing for the best part of an hour and headed for the exit, I spotted her coming the other way.
I hadn't seen Jenny in close to a year but the moment she caught my eye she grinned and came over, giving me a hug and landing a sloppy kiss on each cheek. 'Rob Fallon, long time no see,' she shouted above the noise, taking a step back and looking me up and down. 'You look good.'
I doubted if that was the case, not in my current state, but I wasn't going to argue. 'So do you,' I answered in that inane way people tend to do, except in this case I was telling the truth.
Jenny always looked good. She was tall and pretty with long blonde hair that was at least four-fifths natural, and the kind of golden skin the experts like to tell you is unhealthy for Caucasians, but which in her case looked anything but. I think she was twenty-seven or twenty-eight, but she could easily have passed for five years younger. It was her eyes that were her standout feature, though. They were very big and very brown, and when she fixed you with them it took a supreme effort to look away. Not that many men would want to.
If you're concluding from this that I was in love with this girl, then you'd be wrong. There was definitely an attraction there – from my point of view anyway – and we'd always got on extremely well. But there were two things that had always held me back. One: I was still in love with someone else, although after two years I knew my ex-wife Yvonne was never going to take me back. And two: I would never have met Jenny if it hadn't been for the fact that she'd been my best mate Dom's girlfriend. Because of this we'd only ever spent time together in situations where Dom was present, and since they were no longer an item, we'd lost touch. Until now.
It could have been a brief throwaway conversation, the kind people who don't really know each other have all the time, but I'd been feeling pretty lonely lately, and maybe it was the booze too, because the attraction that had probably always been there began to kick in again, and pretty hard too. So, as we shouted in each other's ears over the noise and I caught the soft scent of her perfume, I took the plunge and asked her if she fancied going somewhere else.
To be honest, I wouldn't normally have been so forward, but again, I think it was the booze. I wasn't expecting a yes either. The chances were she was here with friends who were more reliable than Ramon, and she wasn't going to leave them to go off with her ex-boyfriend's mate.
But she said she would.
And in that one moment, my fate was sealed.
We went round the corner to a quieter, more traditional pub where there were plenty of spare tables. I bought the drinks – sparkling water for me, a dry white wine spritzer for her – and we caught up on things.
Jenny worked for a web-based travel agency and she'd just come back from a nine-day trip to Mauritius and the Seychelles checking out hotels, which she told me, rather unconvincingly, was harder work than it sounded. That was the cue for us to talk about travelling and share the usual backpacker stories.
The thing I found about talking to Jenny was that the conversation always flowed naturally. I never felt like I had to put on a front, or be someone I wasn't. Maybe that was because as Dom's girlfriend she'd always been untouchable so there'd never been any need. But tonight we both avoided any mention of Dom, and when we finished our drinks Jenny bought another round, insisting I have something alcoholic so she didn't have the guilt of drinking alone. I plumped for a vodka Red Bull, hoping it would perk me up.
'So,' she said, returning to the table with the drinks, 'did you ever finish that book you were writing?'
A little bit of background here. In the days when Jenny was seeing Dom, I was working on a book. In fact, I'd been working on it for a grand total of three years, ever since I'd cashed in my share options and left the investment bank where I was employed to begin a new life in rural France with Yvonne and our then one-year-old daughter Chloe. It had always been my ambition to be an author, and I'd done enough writing in my spare time to think it was worth trying to make a go of it. It was going to be my retirement plan. Pen a succession of popular and critically acclaimed novels while growing organic fruit and vegetables on our idyllic patch of Burgundy countryside.
Unfortunately, it hadn't worked out quite like that. The book in question – Conspiracy: A Thriller, a high-octane page-turner set in the murky world of high finance (that was my tag line) – turned out to be one hell of a lot harder to write than I'd thought. I just couldn't get the plot right, and when I did, the end result was seven hundred pages long and possibly the most unthrilling thriller I've ever had to read in my life. During all this I'd become almost impossible to live with, and the idyllic Burgundy countryside, all those hundreds of square miles of it, had begun to drive me mad. Worse still, Yvonne loved it.
You can probably guess the rest. We argued like crazy as my dreams, held for so long during those long-drawn-out days in the office, steadily fell apart. I was selfish. I kept threatening to up sticks and head home. One day, Yvonne decided she'd had enough and told me I was welcome to go. We agreed to have a three-month trial separation. I returned to England, staying in Dom's spare room, hoping that the change of scenery would provide the inspiration I needed for Conspiracy. But it didn't. Instead, just as I was about to ask to move back in with Yvonne, having finally realized that living without her and Chloe would only make me unhappy, she announced that she'd met someone else. His name was Nigel, and he was another ex-pat. She and Chloe are still living with him, except now they've moved south, to Montpellier.
And my high-octane page-turner set in the murky world of high finance?
'No,' I told Jenny, a rueful smile on my face. 'I never did finish it.'
'That's a pity,' she said, looking disappointed. 'After all the work you put into it.'
'Sometimes you've just got to know when to quit.' I took a decent gulp of the vodka Red Bull. 'But,' I added, keen to keep her interest, 'I'm not the kind to give up. I'm writing another one now, and guess what?'
Her face brightened. 'What?'
'I've got an agent, a guy who thinks he can sell it. I sent him the first ten chapters and he took me on on the basis of them.'
'Can you tell me what it's about?' she asked, leaning forward in her seat, sounding genuinely interested.
So I told her all about Maxwell.
Maxwell was something of a legend in north London underworld circles, a former loanshark and enforcer now in his fifties who was reputed to be as strong as an ox and possessed of the highly useful loansharking talent of being able to punch open doors. In other words, not the kind of man you wanted to cross. I'd met him a few months back at a party in Hoxton hosted by one of Ramon's salsa students. Maxwell was standing around dealing coke and generally looking menacing, and somehow I'd ended up talking to him.
When I told him I was a writer (which strictly speaking was true, even though I'd never been paid a penny for it), Maxwell had suddenly become very interested. 'I've got plenty of stories to tell,' he growled, following this revelation with the immortal line 'you could turn my life into a book', which, even as a rank amateur in the literary world, I must have heard a hundred times before, usually from people whose lives would have made a bloody awful book. But in Maxwell's case, I'd seen a degree of potential.
By this time, Conspiracy was already pretty much down the pan, so I'd gone to the cottage in Berkshire where Maxwell had retired on his ill-gotten gains to interview him, not entirely sure what to expect. What I got was a friendly charismatic guy who was a hugely gregarious storyteller with a never-ending stream of original anecdotes, who'd clearly lived the kind of life that would make a perfect book. I envisaged it as a kind of British riposte to Goodfellas: a thug's journey through Britain's seedy underbelly from childhood to middle age, encompassing the crimes he'd committed along the way, and adding in a few he hadn't, including a couple of murders, just for good measure.
Maxwell hadn't taken much persuading. Since he loved talking about his exploits it stood to reason that he'd jump at the chance to make some money from them. And so, a couple of months earlier, we'd finally got down to work, and I'd produced the first ten chapters, focusing on his early life, which was the part that got me my agent. Since then I'd been ploughing slowly through the rest of it, trying to ignore the fact that what little money I had left in the world was rapidly running out. I'd even contemplated tapping Maxwell for a loan, but had quickly thought better of it. My front door was flimsy and I didn't think he'd grant me any special favours if I didn't pay him back.
When I'd finished talking, having thrown in a couple of choice Maxwell anecdotes, Jenny shook her head in amazement. 'God,' she said, draining the last of her second spritzer, 'it's incredible to think people like that exist.'
'I can promise you they do.'
'He sounds awful,' she said with a mock shudder, but I could tell from the look in her eyes that a part of her had found hearing about him exciting.
'He's like a lot of criminals,' I answered, trying to sound authoritative. 'They can be great fun right up until the minute you piss them off. Then they're not very nice people at all.'
She looked at me and smiled, and I was sure there was something suggestive in her expression. The pub was shutting and, apart from the barman who was collecting up the glasses, we were the only ones left.
I suddenly realized that I didn't want this evening to end. I hadn't been out on my own with a woman for months, and I was enjoying her company. 'Do you fancy going on somewhere?' I asked, trying to sound as casual as possible. 'I know a couple of wine bars round here where we can get a late drink.'
'I would do, but I've got work in the morning and I could do without the sore head.'
Jenny got to her feet, and I followed suit. I was disappointed, but I didn't show it. It was probably for the best: she was Dom's ex-girlfriend and it didn't feel right being too interested in her.
But as we stepped out of the pub and into the chilly night air, she surprised me by asking if I fancied popping round to hers for a nightcap. 'I'm only a five-minute taxi ride from here.'
It was difficult to tell from her tone and demeanour whether she meant the invitation as an extension to our chat or something more, but either way I forgot my earlier inhibitions, hesitating for all of a second before answering, 'Sure, that'd be great.' After all, it could do no harm. Just a drink. See what happens.
How wrong I was.
Jenny lived in a flashy-looking new-build apartment block in one of the nicer parts of north Islington which, with its bright lights and reliance on tinted glass, looked more like the head office of some trendy management consultants than the kind of place anyone in their right mind would want to live. It also looked extremely pricey, and I remember thinking that I ought to become a web-based travel agent if it paid that much, but knowing at the same time that it didn't.
As the taxi pulled up outside, she reached into her handbag to pay the driver but, chivalrous to the last, I gave him my last ten-pound note, which, with London cab prices being what they are, only just managed to cover it.
'There's something I ought to tell you,' she said when we were standing on the pavement.
The last time I'd heard that line it was followed by my ex-wife dropping the bombshell that she'd fallen in love with a man called Nigel. Trying not to let that bother me, I adopted the most neutral expression I could manage and asked Jenny what it was.
She put a hand on my arm, and fixed me with those big brown eyes. I noticed she was a little unsteady on her feet. 'You know me and Dom broke up a while back?'
'Uh-huh,' I said, conscious that I was wobbling too.
'He's been trying to get back with me recently. Phoning up. Calling round. Things like that.'
I had a sinking feeling. I'd thought the two of them were history. Dom hadn't been mentioned all evening, and now, hearing his name spoken out loud, I experienced a sudden rush of guilt.
'I know you and he are very good friends,' she continued, 'so I thought it was fair to tell you that. He's really interested in us starting up again. But I'm not.' She moved closer so our faces were only a few inches apart. 'That's why you're here.'
I wasn't sure what to say, so I plumped for saying nothing. Nor did I resist as she took me by the hand and led me up to the front entrance of the building, although I now knew this was going to be more than just an extension to our chat.
Inside, the foyer was empty, and I noticed Jenny frown as she swiped a card through the space-age-looking reader, releasing the lock on the double doors. 'There should be a doorman on duty,' she said. 'That's what we pay our maintenance for.'
I wasn't quite sure what you needed a doorman for if you had to use a key to get in the building, but I was pleased he wasn't there. I didn't want any witnesses to what I knew was going to be the betrayal of my oldest friend, especially if – God forbid – Dom and Jenny ever did get back together. Although to be fair, that wasn't sounding too likely.
As we got inside and she pressed for the lifts, I heard rapid footsteps coming from the hallway behind the front desk. It sounded like the doorman was returning, so as the lift doors opened I hurried inside and pressed myself against the wall, still worried about being seen.
Jenny followed me in, standing in the middle, and as the doors began to shut she called out, 'Hello, John, I thought you'd gone on strike.'
'Toilet break,' I heard the doorman call back, and then the doors closed, and she pressed for Floor 9.
We looked at each other for a long second and I knew immediately what was going to happen. She leaned forward. So did I.
The first kiss was hesitant, just like it always seems to be in the movies, and I felt my last twinge of guilt evaporating.
The second kiss was harder, longer, and I hardly noticed the lift doors opening again. We paused for a couple of seconds, then she took me by the hand and led me down a short corridor to her front door, kissing me once again before we manoeuvred our way inside, still attached to each other at the mouth.
Jenny's place was nice, as befitted a swanky building like this, opening directly into a spacious, neatly furnished lounge with floor-to-ceiling windows offering views across the park.
She let go of me for a moment and took a step backwards. 'I'm not always this forward, you know.'
'I know,' I said. Which I didn't, of course, but I thought this was probably what she wanted to hear.
'It's just I've always had a bit of a soft spot for you.'
'I guess I've had one for you as well,' I admitted.
'Do you want a drink of something?'
I'll never forget my next words, mainly because they were so hackneyed, and did whatever reputation I had as a romantic or a wordsmith no good at all. 'No,' I said, 'I just want you.'
Something about it must have worked, though, because the next second we were kissing again.
We remained like this for several minutes, our hands running up and down each other's bodies, exploring hungrily, before she whispered huskily that it was time to go to bed.
I wasn't arguing, and we walked sideways, crab-like, still locked together, through to a spacious bedroom with mirrors on the walls and a king-sized bed with black satin sheets which, I have to say, looked to be designed for just this kind of encounter.
She pulled my jacket off and flung it into the corner, then tugged at my belt.
Unfortunately, this was also the moment when, with impeccable timing, I experienced every man's nightmare in this situation: the nagging urge to pee. I really didn't want to say anything for fear of breaking the mood, but I also knew that, my bladder being what it was, I was going to have to, otherwise the urge would get steadily stronger, which would risk ruining everything.
I waited another thirty seconds, hoping it would go away. It didn't.
'I've just got to go to the bathroom,' I mumbled into her lips.
'It's over there,' she mumbled back, pointing at a door to my right. 'Don't be long.'
'I won't,' I said, breaking away.
The bathroom was vaguely disappointing after the opulence of the rest of the apartment. It might have been en suite but it was windowless and way too small, as if the designers had made a mistake with their measurements and run out of room, and it was quite a squeeze to stand in front of the toilet without tumbling backwards into the bathtub.
There are few things more likely to put off a first-time lover than hearing her partner peeing loudly, so I turned the sink's cold tap fully on to mask the noise. Then, once I'd finished and flushed, I washed my hands and inspected myself in the mirror, thinking that I wasn't looking too bad considering I'd been out drinking for the best part of the last eight hours. I even pulled a sexy pout, looking at myself sideways on.
Which was the moment when I heard Jenny gasp once, very loudly, and cry out.
I froze.
The cry was stifled suddenly. Someone had a hand over her mouth. And then I heard movement outside the door and the unmistakable sound of two men whispering urgently to each other.
'Hold her still,' I heard one of them hiss, his accent harsh and distinctly Northern Irish. 'I need to get the needle in.'
Jenny's muffled cries suddenly became more desperate.
'Shut the fuck up and stop wriggling!' I heard the other one snap in a rough London accent, followed by the sound of a hard slap.
I had no idea what was going on in there but I knew I had to intervene because Jenny was being attacked. But I was absolutely rooted to the spot. I'm no hard man like Maxwell. I'm just an ordinary mortal coward who reads the stories in the papers every day about the senseless killings of those individuals brave enough to help victims of crime. I'd always said that I would never ignore someone's cry for help because I'd never be able to live with myself if I did. But now that it was happening, only feet away, I found that I couldn't move as the fear and adrenalin coursed and swirled through my body.
Jenny's cries stopped. Just like that.
Do something! my inner voice roared at me. But what the hell could I do?
'Thank Christ for that,' said the Londoner with a loud sigh, his tone suddenly more relaxed. 'She's a looker though, ain't she?'
'Don't even think about it,' answered the Irishman dismissively, and this time his voice came from right outside the bathroom door. 'We haven't got time. Get her off the bed. I need a leak.'
As he spoke, the door handle began to turn.
Jesus Christ! The bastard was going to come in here, and I'd locked the door! As soon as he realized that it was locked, he'd know there was someone in the apartment, and that would be it. I was trapped. One minute preparing to make love to an attractive woman, the next praying for my life.
The handle kept turning. The guy kept talking. My heart kept hammering.
Do something!
I leaned over and flicked back the bolt, hoping his voice would muffle the sound. Then, moving quickly and trying to make as little noise as possible, I stepped into the bathtub and pulled the shower curtain across so that I was hidden.
Just in time. In the next second, the door opened and he came in, shutting it roughly behind him.
I froze again, teeth clenched, not even daring to breathe as he stood in front of the toilet and unzipped, grunting loudly, only inches away. He was medium height, with the kind of contoured leanness that suggested he worked out a lot more than me, and if I'd put out my hand, I could have tapped him on the shoulder through the curtain – he was that close.
He seemed to take for ever, and every single second I wondered if some sixth sense would alert him to my presence. But at last he finished, and as he flushed and walked back out, not bothering to wash his hands, I finally breathed again.
This time he left the door open and, though I knew that in the interests of self-preservation, if not honour, I should stay exactly where I was until they left, then call the police, I couldn't resist peeking round the edge of the curtain.
From the tight angle I had, I could see the bottom quarter of the bed and the area immediately in front of it, which was taken up with what looked like a large cleaning trolley. I could also see Jenny's bare legs from the knees downwards, now missing the jeans she'd been wearing when I'd left her just a few minutes earlier. The intruders were nowhere to be seen. I could only assume they were going to rape her, the bastards, although I knew they wouldn't have had time to undress her. She'd clearly been undressing for me and I was filled with anger at the thought of these bastards violating her.
I moved away from the curtain's edge, looking round for something to use as a weapon. Amid all the clutter round the bath there was an antique brass soap dish shaped like a giant goldfish, and I picked it up, feeling a satisfying heaviness. It wasn't a lot but it would have to do.
Gripping it in my right hand, I slowly peeked out again. Now I saw one of the intruders properly for the first time. It wasn't the one who'd taken a leak. This guy was big and well built, with a shaven head and the kind of face that didn't waste a lot of time on pity. He was dressed in a blue boiler suit and was carrying a prone, unconscious Jenny over to the cleaning trolley. She was in her bra and underwear, and she'd been gagged with a handkerchief and had her hands tied behind her back. There was something so vulnerable about her in that position that it made me shake with rage.
Yet still I didn't move. Even when he stopped and dumped her into the trolley like a sack of rubbish. Because I was so damn terrified. Because, in the end, I knew that I wouldn't have a chance fighting this man, let alone two of them, and I kept telling myself that there was no point intervening now because it wouldn't actually benefit Jenny. That it would be far better simply to wait until they went and phone the police.
I couldn't see the other one, but then I heard him speak from somewhere behind the door, his words, delivered in that hard Northern Irish accent, cutting through the room like a knife. 'Whose is this, then?'
And then, as he came into view with his back to me, my heart sank.
Because the bastard was holding my jacket, and in the last second before I slid back behind the curtain, I saw both men turn to look in my direction.
Every muscle in my body tensed, and I held on to the soap dish like grim death. I was cornered, and there was absolutely no way out. My jacket's a faded brown leather, distinctly male, and a good three sizes too big for Jenny who was no more than five five and at least eight inches shorter than me. So these guys would know a man was here somewhere, and there weren't exactly a lot of places he'd have to hide in.
Or would they? There was a chance they'd assume that someone had left it here. Maybe I was going to be OK.
But if so, why did the guy pick it up?
The terror I was feeling was worse than anything I'd ever experienced. My legs felt weak and I thought I might collapse at any moment.
What should I do? Run? Stay put? Run? Stay put? I was completely and utterly torn.
The two men were silent for what felt like a long, long time. Then I heard quiet footfalls, first on the bedroom carpet, then on the tiled bathroom floor, and I saw a silhouette appear.
The shower curtain shot back and I was face to face with a man in his forties whose malicious smile was like a bloodless slash across a pale, wraith-like face stretched so tight by plastic surgery that his big saucer-shaped eyes looked like they'd long ago lost the ability to close. Thinning, wiry hair sprang from his scalp like jet-black brush wires.
This was the Irishman, and he was still holding my jacket in one gloved hand, while in the other was a six-inch gleaming stiletto.
I wanted to piss myself; to curl up and die; to let my legs simply collapse under me.
But I did none of these things. Instead, as his eyes widened with an unpleasant glee and the slash-like smile twisted up at the edges, I smashed the soap dish right into it with every ounce of strength I had, knocking him backwards into the sink.
He grunted in pain and dropped the knife as a deep gash opened up on his cheek.
There was very little room for me to get past him but I didn't think about that. I was out of that bathtub like a greyhound out of a trap, and charging into the bedroom.
The big guy with the shaven head was standing on the other side of the trolley, in the same position he was in earlier, except now he was pulling a large knife from the pocket of his boiler suit and glaring at me with cold, confident eyes.
Yelling as loudly as I could in a desperate effort to panic him, I lobbed the soap dish at his face without even breaking stride. He threw up a hand to ward off the impact but it hit him on the elbow and he yelped in pain as it bounced off. Half a second later I charged into the trolley and slammed it into his lower abdomen, sending him off balance, though not quite knocking him down.
It was enough to buy me a second and a half, though, and that was all I needed as I ran at the half-open bedroom door, keeping my head down and dodging the knife as he lashed out wildly, charging through it and into the lounge, feeling a wild surge of hope. I was going to make it. I was going to get out of there.
'Leave him, he's mine!' came a barked command behind me. It was the Irishman with the saucer eyes, and there was an icy calm in his voice that made my heart lurch.
I jumped the coffee table, clipped it, and almost fell into the front door, grabbing at the handle and yanking it as hard as I could, only noticing at the last second that the chain was on. Incredibly, I didn't panic, just flicked the chain across in one movement, threw the door open and ran out into the corridor.
I felt something swish through the air behind me. The knife. It touched the material of my shirt but didn't break it. He was right behind me, just feet away. I could hear him breathing.
I started running, realizing as soon as I did so that I was going the wrong way from the lifts, and that the corridor ahead seemed to be a dead end. I yelled again, hoping someone would hear me, thinking that if I made enough noise my pursuer would panic and turn back; but there was nothing, just an intensely loud silence. It was like I was suddenly in the middle of a nightmare.
Behind me he kept coming, his breath almost on my neck, and it was his patient, predatory silence that terrified me the most.
There was a door at the end with a staircase sign above it, and I felt another surge of hope and accelerated, shouting as loudly as I could into the silence. I hit the door head on in a way that would have made Maxwell proud. Because it was a swing door, it flew open and I stumbled, almost losing my footing before swinging hard right and charging down the staircase, taking the steps three at a time, knowing that if I fell I was dead, no question.
Every part of me seemed to ache from the exertion of running, and in my semi-inebriated state I wasn't sure how long I could keep it up for. I could still hear him, ever so close, and I had a desperate urge to look round, but knew it might cost me a precious quarter second which might end up being the difference between life and death. Instead, I started taking the steps four at a time, praying that the doorman was at his desk so at least he might be able to help. Praying that I made it that far.
The knife suddenly appeared right in front of my face as he jumped on my back and I was flung forward, tumbling down the steps, doing a somersault, smacking my head painfully on the hard linoleum steps. I knew that any moment I was going to be stabbed. But then I heard the knife clatter against the wall as he was thrown clear.
He landed hard against the wall at the bottom of the steps but somehow he still had the weapon in his hands, and now he was in front of me and blocking my way while I was lying on my stomach on the steps, only five feet from the tip of his blade. His face was bleeding where I'd cut him with the soap dish and his wiry hair was slightly askew. But he still wore the cruel, predatory smile as if it had been etched permanently on the stretched skin, and the expression in his eyes was one of chilling confidence, as if he knew that whatever I did it would make no difference because, in the end, the outcome was inevitable.
But I wasn't finished yet. I used my hands to push me upright as if I was doing some kind of springing press-up. Somehow I managed the process slightly quicker than him, before vaulting over the banister on to the next set of steps, stumbling down them, ignoring the savage pounding in my head.
Once again he was right there with me, and I knew he wasn't going to give up, so, summoning up every last ounce of whatever feeble reserves of energy I had left, I jumped the whole of the next staircase in one, landed hard on my feet, swung round using the banister as support, and did the same thing on the next one, and the next, feeling a kind of delirious adrenalin-fuelled excitement at the prospect of escape.
And at that exact same moment the stairs stopped and I realized I'd missed the ground floor, and possible safety. Instead, I was in the basement.
Panting, I looked back up just as my pursuer arrived at the top of the last flight of steps. 'Oops,' he said playfully, waving the knife in front of him like a wagging finger. 'Bad move.'
A small part of me felt like giving up there and then. Admitting the fact that I wasn't going to make it out of there and throwing myself at his mercy. Except that I knew there wouldn't be any.
And it was only a small part of me. Self-preservation won through, and as he jumped down the last of the steps I turned and ran for the fire door in the corner – the only way out. I had no idea whether or not it was open, or where it led to, just relied on my instinct to live to keep me going. Running right into it, I pulled down the metal handle, felt it give, and half fell, half scrambled through into a cold and cavernous underground car park.
He was still with me, almost as if he was glued to my slipstream, but this time I took the offensive and turned and slammed all my weight against the fire door, catching him by surprise and trapping his knife arm in it.
But before I could do any real damage, he pushed from the other side and, being one hell of a lot stronger than me and with momentum on his side, he sent it flying open, and me stumbling backwards.
I turned and ran through the dimly lit, silent car park, not knowing where I could turn. Ahead of me was one of those big roller doors that I knew was either the entrance or the exit, but it was shut. My legs felt weak and I just couldn't seem to get the pace up to put any distance between us – the bastard was like some kind of automaton – and I'd barely gone twenty yards before he leapt on my back for a second time, sending me crashing into the concrete.
Sitting astride my back, he yanked my head up by the hair and I knew in an instant that he was going to cut my throat like some kind of animal. I bucked and thrashed as the knife suddenly appeared right in front of my face, and managed to pull free a hand. I immediately grabbed him by the wrist, forcing the blade away from me. I also jerked my head forward, trying to bite him, but his grip on my hair was too strong. This guy had the better of me, and both of us knew it. My arm was shaking with the effort of holding the blade away, and right then my life expectancy could be measured in seconds.
The sound of hydraulics interrupted our deadly duel, and a second later the roller door began to open. I think it surprised both of us because I felt his grip on my hair momentarily ease, which gave me the chance I needed. I sank my teeth into his knife wrist, biting down hard, knowing that while his arm remained in my mouth he couldn't use the blade on me.
He yelled and grabbed my hair again, tugging me backwards, but this time I wasn't letting go and I kept biting down, remembering something I'd once read about the strength of a human bite being something like two hundred pounds of pressure per square inch. I tasted blood and his yells became more urgent.
And all the time the roller door kept opening. It was now five feet above the tarmac and I could see the headlights of a big 44 just outside, waiting to come in. There was no way it wouldn't see us. I was going to make it. I felt a rush of hope, kept my teeth clamped on his wrist.
But then, in one swift, savage motion, he yanked his wrist free from my jaws. I clenched my teeth, waiting for the knife to slice across my flesh, but instead the weight lifted from my back, and a second later I heard his footfalls on the concrete floor as he ran back the way he'd come.
Exhausted and battered, I lay where I was, looking up at the 44 as it nudged its way inside before turning left and disappearing from view.
The driver hadn't seen me. Did this mean that my attacker was going to come back and finish the job? Was he just waiting?
I didn't hang around to find out. I ran wildly through the open roller door and up the ramp, hitting the fresh night air of the street and breathing it in as if my very life depended on it.
But my life depended on nothing any more. I'd saved it. Now I had to think about Jenny's.
I kept running up the dark, silent street until I came to an alleyway on my right. I turned down it and, exhausted, took refuge behind a pair of wheelie bins, leaning against a wall and slowly sliding down it until I was sitting down. I had to phone the police straight away and tell them what I'd just witnessed, so, after taking a few seconds to get at least some of my breath back, I reached into my pocket for my mobile.
And cursed. It was in my jacket, back at the apartment.
Something else too…my wallet. With all my ID in it.
Which meant they were going to know exactly who I was.
A part of me wanted to keep running. To put as much distance between me and Jenny's place as possible, knowing how close I'd just come to death. Another part wanted to go back and keep watch on it, hoping that I might be in time to see the two men leave and pick up any vital clues I could then give to the police.
As it happened, I could do neither. I was too exhausted, and for a full minute I concentrated simply on getting my breath back.
As my panting began to ease, I was suddenly jolted back to reality by the sound of a car moving ever so slowly along the street.
Jesus, they're still here. Looking for me.
I turned round, looking for a way out, saw only a high wall I was never going to be able to climb. I was stuck up a dead end. Knowing I was hopelessly exposed, I lifted up the lid of one of the wheelie bins and wriggled inside, landing loudly on a pile of stinking binbags.
The sound outside was muffled but I could hear the car stopping and knew that it was at the end of the alley.
A car door opened. Shut again.
I began to pray. I'd never really believed in God, but now that I'd arrived at this single most terrifying point in my life, I desperately begged forgiveness for any sin I may have committed and promised faithfully that if he got me out of this I would be a much better person. That I would give money to charity, help people… anything.
Stop. Don't breathe.
I could hear stealthy footfalls on the concrete. Approaching me. Something plastic in one of the binbags made a cracking sound beneath me and I clenched my teeth. The silence was killing me. Was one of them right outside now, knife in hand, getting ready to strike?
I strained, listening.
Silence.
The wait seemed to last for ever. Seconds ticking like dull, bored hours.
And then I heard the car door slam again and the car pull away.
I exhaled sharply, but didn't move. It could have been a trap.
Gradually I began to breathe more easily but I continued to lie exactly where I was, listening to the quiet of the night. At some point I think I even drifted off to sleep: I remember opening my eyes and getting a shock because I was still in darkness, and the smell was terrible, and my mouth felt like someone had been sandpapering it. At first I didn't know where I was. Then it all came back to me in a huge rush like some kind of horrible hallucination. Someone had tried to kill me, and they'd come very close to succeeding.
I took a couple of deep breaths to calm myself, then clambered to my feet and climbed out of the wheelie bin into far fresher air. The alley was quiet, even the night-time sounds of the city seemed strangely muted. I stretched, and looked at my watch. It had just turned twenty past one – over an hour since it had all happened. An image suddenly came to me of an unconscious Jenny being casually flung into the cleaning trolley, and I felt a renewed burst of anger and guilt. I could have done something to help her. And I hadn't.
Rubbing my eyes, trying hard to focus as I felt the first stirrings of an early hangover coming on, I walked back to Jenny's street and, recalling the route I'd taken earlier, turned left. I stopped in front of her apartment block. Nothing looked any different from when we'd arrived together, which now felt like a lifetime ago. Except that this time the doorman, a middle-aged man in a jacket and tie, was sitting at the front desk, reading a paper and eating a packet of crisps. It looked a perfectly natural scene, and, standing there, I had this bizarre feeling that maybe nothing had actually happened. Perhaps I'd dreamt it all.
But no. It had happened all right. I was sure of that.
I started towards the door, then stopped. There was no point trying to talk to the doorman. I looked and smelled pretty awful, having fallen asleep in a dustbin, and he hadn't even seen me earlier. He'd probably think I was mad. I had to speak to the police. But with no phone, no ATM card and only a handful of loose change in my jeans pocket, that was going to be a lot easier said than done.
I memorized the apartment address and walked out on to the main road, heading in a general southerly direction. There was still traffic around but most of the taxis ignored me, and those few that did stop pulled away again as soon as I told them I needed to get to a police station and almost certainly didn't have enough money for the fare. At last I found a driver charitable enough to give me directions to the nearest one, before advising me to take a bath as soon as possible and disappearing pretty sharpish.
It wasn't far, but I still managed to get lost several times, and it was past two o'clock when I finally walked through the door of Islington police station and straight into a scene of bedlam of the sort I suspected was played out in stations like this most nights and which reminded me graphically why I'd left England in the first place.
An overweight guy in a cut-off T-shirt and shorts that were falling down round his ample behind was being held face down in the middle of the linoleum floor by a total of four uniformed officers while he kicked and struggled and yelled that he wasn't drunk, even though the evidence strongly suggested otherwise. His girlfriend, meanwhile, was being pinned up against the wall with her arm behind her back by two female officers, both of whom were trying to dodge her spiked heels as she kicked out donkey-style and let out long, piercing, horror-film screams in a voice so high I actually had to put my hands over my ears. The place smelled of stale sweat and disinfectant. I felt a sudden, intense desire to be lying next to Yvonne in the still of the Burgundy farmhouse we'd once shared, with only the sound of the owls for company.
I walked round the guy on the floor and stopped at the front desk where a world-weary custody sergeant with a long face and heavy black eye bags gave me a stare so intense in its disinterest that I could only assume he'd spent hours in front of the mirror perfecting it. 'Put him in cell three,' he called out over my shoulder during a temporary pause in the screaming. He sighed, turning his attention back to me. 'Yes, sir?'
'I want to report a kidnapping,' I told him, putting on my most serious and earnest expression.
'Whose?'
'A friend of mine.'
'And when did this happen, sir?'
I looked at my watch. 'A couple of hours ago now.'
'And you've just seen fit to report it.'
'I had to walk here. I've lost all my money and my phone.'
'Have you been drinking, sir?' he asked, his tone annoyingly patronizing.
I knew there was no point in denying it. 'A little, yes. But not like him.' I pointed to the drunk whose shorts had fallen to his ankles now that he'd been lifted to his feet, revealing a sight none of us wanted to see.
'You know the kind of stories I hear from drunk people?' he continued wearily.
The girl screamed again. I waited for her to stop before continuing. 'Listen, officer, I'm being deadly serious. A girl I know was kidnapped tonight by two men and I need to talk to someone in CID urgently. I'm not making this up, I promise you.'
'Put her in cell five,' he called over my shoulder. 'So I don't have to listen to her.'
'Wanker!' she howled before being dragged across the floor behind her boyfriend and through a door to the cells.
'Please.' I looked at him imploringly. 'I'm not drunk, and I'm not mad. I know what I saw.'
He stared at me for a long second, then stood up, clearly deciding it was easier just to pass the buck. 'Take a seat and I'll see who's available.'
I sat down on a hard plastic chair in the corner and waited in the now empty foyer, staring at the posters warning against committing various heinous and not-so-heinous crimes that lined every spare inch of wall. I was absolutely shattered, but it struck me then that it might not even be safe for me to go home. If the kidnappers had searched my jacket, they'd have found my wallet. Then I realized with a sense of relief that there wasn't anything in there with my address on. I never took my driving licence out with me, so it would just be my credit and debit cards, plus my Blockbuster membership. So all they'd have was my name as it appeared on the cards: R. Fallon. Not exactly common, but in a city the size of London there were bound to be a few of us. So I was probably safe. But right then I could have done with something a little more concrete than 'probably'.
'Mr Fallon?'
I looked up and saw an attractive dark-haired woman in her early thirties emerging from the door opposite. She was dressed casually in jeans, a sweatshirt and trainers, but straight away I could tell she was a policewoman. There was a toughness and confidence about her that was immediately reassuring.
'I'm DS Tina Boyd,' she said as we shook hands, 'Islington CID. I understand you want to report a possible kidnapping?'
'Well, it's not a possible kidnapping, it's a real one. A friend of mine's been abducted.'
She nodded understandingly. 'Let's talk inside.'
She led me back through the door, up some stairs and into a small corner room, empty except for a desk with a chair on either side. There was an oldish-looking tape recorder on the desk and she switched it on, motioning for me to take a seat. 'I hope you don't mind. I want to record our interview.' She pulled a notebook out of her back pocket and sat back in the chair, regarding me with eyes that didn't look like they missed a lot. 'So, tell me what happened. From the beginning.'
I told her everything from the moment I'd met Jenny in the bar to when I'd turned up at the police station, keeping the details as brief and concise as possible. She listened patiently and didn't interrupt at any point, except to take descriptions of the two kidnappers. The thing about her was that she had the kind of face you automatically want to trust, and I felt myself warming to my theme as I continued, ignoring the little voice in my head that told me that what I was saying sounded outlandish.
'So she was alive when they took her?'
'I believe so, yes.'
'And did they make any attempt to molest her?'
'Not that I saw. They tied her up and they chucked her in the cleaning trolley.'
'And there's no reason you can think of why they would have taken her? Anything they might have said when you were listening in, for instance?'
I shook my head. 'From what I can gather they were trying to get her out of the apartment as fast as possible.'
'OK,' she said, writing something down in the notebook. 'And what's Jenny's last name?'
My mind suddenly went blank. I'd only ever known her as Jenny, although I had definitely been told her last name before. I racked my brains. 'It's…Brakestone, Brakeslip, something like that. No, Brakspear. It's definitely Brakspear.'
'You're sure about that?'
I nodded, way too vigorously, conscious of how unconvincing this must sound to a police officer. 'Yeah, I'm sure.'
'And you met her in a bar tonight? I'm assuming you'd had a few drinks?'
'I'd had a few, yes, but I knew what I was doing.'
'And you say Jenny's a friend of yours? But one whose last name you don't remember?'
'I don't know her that well, OK?'
DS Boyd shot me a hard look, the kind that told me in no uncertain terms to remember who I was dealing with. 'Listen, Mr Fallon, I'm just trying to establish the facts. So how exactly do you know her?'
'She went out with a friend of mine for a while.'
'And your friend's name is?'
'Dominic Moynihan.'
She wrote down Dom's contact details, then asked me when the two of them had split up.
'A while back. Maybe a year.' I thought about adding that he'd been in touch with her recently about getting back together but stopped myself, knowing that it wouldn't make me look good.
'What do you do for a living, Mr Fallon?'
'I'm a writer.' Usually I loved to say that to people, but now it sounded fatuous, and tinged with an air of unreliability.
'And what do you write about?'
'Does it matter? I'm trying to report a kidnap here. A young woman's been abducted and we need to find her.'
DS Boyd gave me another of those looks. 'I'm just trying to find out some background. It'll help us in our search.'
'I write crime,' I answered wearily. 'True crime.'
'And does it involve a kidnap?'
'No it doesn't. Jesus Christ! What the hell do I have to do to convince you I'm telling the truth? Do you think I want to be sitting here in the middle of the night talking to people who'd far rather I just went away?'
I fell silent, staring at her. Feeling at the end of my tether.
DS Boyd rested her hands carefully on the desk and looked at me closely. She had very dark eyes but it was difficult to tell whether they were brown or blue. 'OK, Mr Fallon,' she said, 'let me level with you. It may surprise you to learn that we get a lot of people coming in here reporting crimes that haven't actually happened, particularly when they've been drinking. We're also very busy dealing with the many crimes that do happen, so I have to ask a lot of questions before I'm in a position to judge what to do. Now I've heard what you've got to say and I'm satisfied that you genuinely believe an incident's happened-'
'It has. I promise you.'
'Then I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt.' She stood up abruptly.
'Where are you going?'
'To the scene of the crime.' She gestured for me to follow her. 'I'm assuming you remember where that is?'
'Kidnapping's nothing like as rare as people think,' said Tina Boyd as we approached the double doors at the front of Jenny's apartment block, 'but it's almost always drugs-related. People getting held to ransom by dealers over unpaid debts, that sort of thing. Could Jenny have been involved in the drugs trade, do you think?'
I couldn't honestly say for certain, but Dom had never mentioned anything about it, and he'd been anti-drugs since a friend of his had OD'd on a mix of coke and ecstasy back at uni, so I didn't think so. 'She's just a normal girl, you know,' I answered wearily.
'That's what I can't understand,' she mused, pressing her warrant card against the glass so that the doorman could see it. It was the same guy as earlier – grey-haired, middle-aged, ordinary looking. He buzzed us in.
I felt strangely sheepish as I followed Tina over to the front desk. She introduced us both and said that I'd been in the building about three hours earlier and had witnessed a possible abduction.
The doorman fixed me with a bemused expression. 'Really? Who was abducted then?'
'A Miss Jenny Brakspear. Apparently she lives on the ninth floor.'
He frowned. 'Blonde Jenny?'
'That's her,' I said.
He looked puzzled. 'That's weird. I haven't even seen her tonight. I thought she'd gone on holiday.'
'Hold on,' I said, unable to believe what I was hearing. 'You did see her. She called out to you. Your name's John, right?'
'Yeah, it's John, but I still didn't see her.'
'John what?' asked Tina.
'Gentleman,' he answered, 'and I'm telling you I didn't see her tonight.'
Tina wrote down his name in her notebook. Not that John Gentleman was one you were likely to forget. I couldn't believe the guy was lying.
'What's supposed to have happened then?' he asked Tina, giving me a distasteful look.
'We can't divulge any details at the moment, sir,' she answered smoothly. 'I'm assuming you've got CCTV cameras in this building?'
Gentleman nodded. 'We've got two. One's at the back, at the entrance to the underground car park, and there's another above the front doors where you've just come in. The one at the back's been on the blink for the last few days. We've got an engineer booked in for tomorrow. But the front one's working all right.'
'Mr Fallon says that he came in here at approximately midnight. Do you mind if we take a look at the footage for about fifteen minutes either side?'
'Sure,' said Gentleman, double-clicking on a mouse under the desk and turning round the PC monitor so we could see what was happening. 'We use DVR filming technology in the cameras so it records straight to the computer's hard drive. It means we can store the film indefinitely.' He double-clicked again and a close-up aerial view of the area just outside the double doors appeared. He fast-forwarded through it quickly until the time in the bottom left-hand corner said 23.30. Next to it was Sunday's date. 'Right, I'm slowing down the search now so we're moving through the footage at sixteen times normal speed. Just let me know when you want me to stop.'
We watched in silence. For most of the time the area was empty. Occasionally, though, people appeared, and Gentleman slowed down the footage so we could get a look at them. He seemed very keen to be as cooperative as possible.
The time in the bottom corner of the screen hit 00.00 and Monday's date appeared. Gentleman kept searching. A handful of other people appeared, but not Jenny and me. It hit 00.15. Gentleman looked at Tina expectantly, and she looked at me.
'You said midnight didn't you, Mr Fallon?'
'It might have been a bit later,' I muttered, even though I knew it hadn't been.
I watched as the time moved inexorably towards 00.30.
'This is bullshit,' I said eventually. 'This film's been tampered with. I was here tonight. I can describe Jenny's apartment if you want me to.' I ran a hand across my forehead, feeling the exhaustion taking hold, trying to get a grip on what the hell was happening.
'Look, mate,' said Gentleman, 'I've been here all night and I haven't seen you, I haven't seen Jenny, and I haven't tampered with this. Nor's anyone else.'
I turned to Tina. Her expression was impassive. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking.
'When was the last time you saw Miss Brakspear?' she asked the doorman.
'Yesterday, I think. She told me she was going on holiday.'
'Where?'
' Barbados. She's a bit of a world traveller, Jenny. I thought she said she was going tonight, but it might have been tomorrow.' He shrugged, his casual demeanour suggesting that my story was no longer even worth attempting to take seriously.
But credit to Tina Boyd, she didn't turn round and leave, even though I think I would have done. Instead she asked to see Jenny's apartment.
Gentleman didn't look too happy. He said he wasn't authorized, but Tina was insistent, so he located the keys and took us up in the lift.
As he unlocked Jenny's front door I scanned the woodwork for signs of forced entry but there wasn't a single scratch. I wondered how the hell the two kidnappers had got in. Jenny hadn't let them in. She'd been in the bedroom.
So, the chances were they'd also had a key.
I knew what the inside of the apartment was going to look like before Gentleman led us inside, and my suspicions were immediately confirmed. The front room was immaculate. The coffee table I'd clipped while running away was set at exactly the right angle between the two sofas.
Gentleman and Tina both looked at me expectantly. Unsure what to say, I walked past them and into the bedroom.
The bed was made. There was even a cuddly teddy bear with a sky-blue bow sitting perfectly symmetrically between the two sets of puffed-out pillows. The bathroom door was shut. There was no sign of the clothes Jenny had been wearing nor, more worryingly, my jacket. In fact, nothing was out of place. The room was so damn tidy it could have been part of a show home.
I flung open the bathroom door. It was perfect in there, too. No sign of any bloodstains from where I'd clouted the Irish guy with the soap dish. What I did notice, however, was that it smelled of disinfectant in a way it hadn't done earlier.
'Someone's cleaned this place up,' I said firmly, turning round.
'I can see that,' said Tina, coming into the room behind me. 'It looks great. But let me tell you something, Mr Fallon. In my experience, criminals never like to hang around after they've committed their crime. If these two men kidnapped Miss Brakspear, as you say, then it's extremely unlikely that they would have taken the time to make the bed and give the place a spring clean afterwards.'
'I know that,' I said, feeling like I was going mad. 'But that's exactly what happened. I promise you that. I'm not making it up.'
For several seconds, Tina didn't say anything. Gentleman appeared in the doorway of the bathroom. He was wearing an expression that was part way between irritation at being dragged all the way up here and the kind of patronizing pity usually reserved for the mentally ill.
What was worse was that in his shoes I'd have felt exactly the same.
Tina asked him if all the apartments on this floor were occupied.
'I'd have to check,' he answered, 'but I think Jenny might have been the only one living on this floor. What with the credit crunch, they've only sold about half the units in the building. Maybe not even that.'
Christ, that was all I needed.
We went back outside, and even though it was past three in the morning Tina knocked on the doors of the floor's other three apartments. No one answered.
I felt embarrassed and confused. Those events just hours earlier had happened – the fact that my jacket was missing was enough to prove that – but there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
Tina got Gentleman to copy the footage from the CCTV camera on to a USB stick she was carrying and thanked him for his time. When we were outside, she told me she'd file a report and make some enquiries, but there was little enthusiasm in her tone.
'Someone's covering for these guys,' I persisted, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice. 'I swear it. That's why the camera for the underground car park wasn't working. Why there was no sign of forced entry. And why the place was cleaned up. I was there tonight and I know exactly what I saw. I bet if you check that footage through carefully enough, you'll see that it's been tampered with.'
Tina put up a hand to stop me. 'I'm sorry, Mr Fallon, but criminal conspiracies are a lot rarer than most of us like to think. Criminals just don't tend to be that clever. If two men did kidnap Miss Brakspear, it's highly unlikely that they were in cahoots with the door staff because the more people there are who know about something like this, the harder it is to keep it secret. Even you've admitted that Jenny's an ordinary girl with an ordinary job, and was acting perfectly normally when you met her earlier, so it's highly unlikely she's a victim of some kind of conspiracy. What I want you to do is to keep calm, try not to read too much into everything, and leave the investigating to me.'
'I bet if you check passenger lists for all flights to Barbados out of London Jenny Brakspear's name won't appear on them.'
'Mr Fallon, please.'
I wanted to keep trying to convince her that I was telling the truth, but I could see it wouldn't work. Instead, I asked her what she planned to do.
'I'll contact Jenny's place of work, and I'll contact her family to find out if they can shed any light on things. And when I've done that I'll be in a better position to decide what to do next.' She pulled out her car keys. 'You said you didn't have any money, didn't you?'
'That's right. My wallet was in my jacket.'
'Where do you live?'
'Colindale.'
'Do you want a lift home?'
I nodded, thankful at least for this kindness. 'Please.'
We drove back in silence. For a while I shut my eyes, but I didn't sleep. It was just easier than talking to DS Boyd. I knew she didn't believe me, and I could understand her scepticism, but it was an awful feeling to have witnessed a violent crime and know that a young woman's life was in danger yet have no one take you seriously.
Traffic on the road was sparse and it was barely twenty minutes later when Tina turned into my street.
'Whereabouts is your house?'
'Anywhere round here's fine,' I said, not wanting her to see my crappy little pad after Jenny's flashy apartment.
She pulled in a few doors down from Ramon's place and yawned. 'Get some sleep, Mr Fallon. And when you get up tomorrow have a good long shower. You're not smelling your best.'
I nodded. 'Thanks for the lift, and please, don't give up on this. There's a young woman missing. If we don't do something…'
'I'll make enquiries, I promise.'
'Can I take your number? Please. Just in case I think of anything else.'
She didn't look too happy but produced a business card from her handbag and handed it to me. 'I don't want you to take this as an excuse to keep calling me, Mr Fallon, because it won't help me locate Jenny. And I'm off duty in a couple of hours and I'll be sleeping. Understand?'
'Sure, thanks.'
Reluctantly, I got out of the car and stood in the darkness. DS Boyd pulled away with a small wave and her car quickly disappeared down the street, leaving me alone.
The night was dark and cool, and for a few minutes I stayed where I was. I thought about going to Ramon's place and asking if I could stay there but there were no lights on in his flat and I really didn't want to have to recount what had happened to anyone else and endure their sceptical stares. So I slowly headed down the street.
Home for me was a rented one-bed ground-floor flat in one of the 1950s terraced houses that lined both sides of the road. I'd been there over a year but had never really got used to it. It was small and characterless, and I'd spent far too many lonely hours in it.
Approaching the front door now, I felt the tension rising in me, knowing it was possible that Jenny's kidnappers had already used the information in my wallet to find out where I lived. I looked over my shoulder but the street was silent. I checked the locks on the door but they were intact. Taking a deep breath, I opened the door and stepped inside.
That night at least there was no one waiting for me. I switched on the light and went through to the kitchen, where I poured myself a glass of water and drank it down in one. For the first time that night I noticed how awful I smelled and it amazed me that Tina had volunteered to drive me home. Her car must have reeked, yet she hadn't made a fuss. She struck me as a good-hearted person, even though she had an impressive line in cutting looks, and a good detective as well. There was an air of quiet confidence about her which I liked, and I really hoped she'd do something with this investigation.
I looked at the clock on the wall. It had just turned half past three. I needed my bed. But there was still something I could do before I gave up on Jenny for the night. Something that might shed some light on events.
Even though I really didn't want to have to do it, I located the landline receiver and, taking a deep breath, dialled one of the few telephone numbers I knew by heart.
Dom Moynihan and I had been friends since school. After university, when I was temporarily unemployed, he'd helped get me my first job in the City, at the stockbrokers where he was working; and when, years later, my marriage had finally broke up and I'd returned to London, bitter and defeated, it was him I'd gone to for support. The thing was, Dom had always been there for me when I needed him, and although I'd always appreciated everything he'd done for me, and had told him so on many occasions, I'd never actually done any major favours in return. I would have if he'd ever needed one, but the fact that I hadn't always made me feel that I owed him, even though I knew he'd never call in the debt.
And when you owe someone, you really don't want to shit on them. Nevertheless, I picked up and put down the handset twice before finally forcing myself to make the call.
'Rob?' he groaned into the phone. 'Is that you? What's happened? You all right?'
'Yeah,' I said. 'Sort of.'
'Listen, I'm in Dubai on business. I've got a breakfast meeting in ten minutes. Let me call you back.'
'No, I need to talk to you now.'
'What's wrong?' he asked. 'Is it anything to do with Yvonne and Chloe?'
Dom, more than anyone, knew how hard I'd taken the break-up of my marriage and how much I missed the two of them. He sounded concerned, and I felt a rush of guilt so strong I almost burst into tears. But I forced myself to stay calm.
'They're fine,' I replied. 'The reason I phoned you was…It's about Jenny.'
'Jenny?'
'Jenny Brakspear. You know, your ex-girlfriend. When was the last time you saw her?'
'Christ, ages ago. Why?'
'She's a normal girl, right? She doesn't have any secrets or anything, does she?'
'Of course she's normal. Why are you asking me all this?'
I took a deep breath. 'She was kidnapped tonight. About three hours ago.'
'What? How do you know?'
'I was there.'
'Where?'
I paused before answering. 'At her apartment.'
He asked me what I'd been doing there, and then listened while I gave him a brief explanation.
'I'm really sorry, Dom. I didn't mean to do it. It just happened, you know? And when she told me that you were still trying to get back with her, that was it. I said I wasn't interested.' This was bullshit of course, but sometimes a lie causes far less harm than the truth.
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone and I waited, wondering if this meant the end of our friendship.
'Did she honestly tell you I was trying to get back with her?' he asked eventually.
'That's right, and when she said it, I told her-'
'Are you sure?'
'What do you mean?'
'Are you sure that she actually said it?'
'Of course I'm sure. It was only a few hours ago.'
'That's weird.'
'Why?'
'Because,' he replied, sounding strangely distant, 'I haven't spoken to her in at least six months.'
Unlike everyone else I'd spoken to that night, Dom didn't question my version of events, and he sounded genuinely worried about Jenny. But then, like me, he knew her personally, and I was beginning to realize what a difference that made.
He wasn't back from Dubai until Wednesday morning but said he'd do anything he could to help before then. Unfortunately, he didn't even have her mobile number any more, so I wasn't sure what he'd be able to manage from three thousand miles away. In the meantime, he told me not to give up pressing the police for action, and we agreed to talk the next day when I'd update him on where we were with things.
No mention was made of where all this left our friendship, but I knew that one way or another it was going to be affected. However, for the moment, it was going to be put aside while we tried to find out what the hell had happened to Jenny.
'I can't understand it, mate,' Dom said before he rang off. 'She's just a normal girl,' he added, using my exact description of her. 'Just like anyone else.'
Just a normal girl.
But she wasn't, was she? Jenny Brakspear was a liar. And if she'd lied about something like that, then what else had she lied about? It could have been the sort of white lie I'd just told Dom, but the thing was, I couldn't think of an innocent or beneficial reason for her telling me that he was trying to get back with her when he wasn't. Given the events of that night, something about it seemed suspicious, and I wondered what it was that Jenny had got herself involved in.
As I finally got into bed and pulled the covers over me, I was determined more than ever to find out.
DS Tina Boyd leaned back in her seat and yawned as she surveyed the morgue-like emptiness of the CID office – a drab, impersonal place littered with cheap furniture that always had that just-been-abandoned-in-an-awful-hurry look – and wondered what had happened to her career. Five years ago she'd been on the fast track to success – one of the new breed of female graduates who were destined for senior positions within the police service – the Met, if not the world, at her feet, yet here she was, stuck in the office alone at four a.m., desperate for a cigarette she wasn't allowed to smoke and a drink she wasn't allowed to drink. And with no one to talk this new case through with, because the other shift guy, DC Hunsdon, had done the sensible thing and phoned in sick with one of his all-too-regular bouts of 'the flu'.
Tina wasn't sure what to make of Rob Fallon's story. On the one hand it was truly outlandish, with no evidence at all to back it up. Yet her instincts were telling her that something wasn't right. First and foremost, he was acting too much like a man telling the truth. It was, of course, possible that he'd had some kind of episode and as a consequence did genuinely believe what he was saying, but Tina had come across plenty of mentally ill people in her ten years in law enforcement, and even though Fallon had smelled pretty appalling, which was sometimes a sign of mental illness, he just didn't fit the bill. He'd been lucid and detailed in his account, had managed to give a plausible explanation for his unfortunate odour, and his details matched the layout of Miss Brakspear's building.
Even so, Tina might still have left it at that if there hadn't been a second reason for doubt. There are four million CCTV cameras in the UK – the biggest number per capita in the world – and at any time something like ten per cent are out of action due to technical faults; but in modern apartment complexes like Miss Brakspear's, where the cameras are new and state-of-the-art, that figure is almost certainly going to be less – five per cent at most. So it jarred with her that the one covering the back of the building had been out of use on the night a serious crime was reported.
Resisting the urge to sneak a cigarette in the toilet, she looked up Jenny Brakspear's name on the PNC.
If anyone had snatched her it was likely to be drugs-related. Tina was no estate agent but, even in the housing market's current parlous state, Jenny's apartment was going to be worth at least three hundred thousand pounds, which was a lot more than a girl who worked in a travel agent's could afford.
But it soon transpired that Jenny Brakspear didn't have a criminal record, and when Tina checked her address on the Land Registry, she saw that the apartment was owned by a Mr Roy Brakspear, who was probably her father. It wasn't uncommon for parents with a bit of money to buy properties for their grown-up children to live in, but it also represented a problem for Tina, because it took away an obvious motive.
It didn't take her long to get an address and telephone number for Roy Brakspear. He lived in a village just outside Cambridge. It was still the middle of the night, but she knew that if something had happened to Jenny then every minute wasted in the search for her could prove fatal.
He answered on the fifth ring, his voice sounding groggy. 'Hello?'
'Mr Roy Brakspear?'
'Yes.'
'This is DS Tina Boyd from Islington CID. I'm sorry to bother you at this time in the morning.'
'What do you want?' he asked, sounding nervous now.
'Are you related to a Miss Jenny Louise Brakspear of 9C Wolverton Villas in London?'
'She's my daughter. Why?'
'I don't want to unduly alarm you, sir, but we've had a report that she was abducted from her apartment in the early hours of this morning.'
'She can't have been.'
Tina was taken aback by the firmness of his response. 'Why not?'
'Because she phoned me from Gatwick airport at eleven o'clock last night. She was just about to board a plane to go on holiday. I could hear the noise in the background so she was definitely at the airport. Who was it who reported this?'
'A friend of hers,' Tina answered, aware of the doubt in her own voice.
'Well it sounds to me like her friend was playing some sort of joke. Jenny's been talking about this holiday for weeks.'
'Do you have a mobile number I can get her on? So I can speak to her just to satisfy myself that everything's all right?'
He came back to the phone a few seconds later. Tina wrote down the number and thanked him. 'I'm really sorry to have bothered you, sir,' she added. 'The person who made the abduction claim wasn't the most reliable source. As it happens, the doorman of her building said she was off on holiday to Spain, but unfortunately we still have to follow up every report otherwise we wouldn't be doing our job. I hope I haven't caused you too much distress.'
Brakspear said that he understood and that she hadn't, and Tina ended the call.
She immediately rang the number he'd given her for Jenny but an automated voice told her that the phone was currently switched off and that she should try again later. Somehow, she'd known that might happen.
According to everyone she'd talked to bar Rob Fallon, Jenny Brakspear wasn't missing, she was on holiday. Except it seemed she was holidaying in different places. The doorman, John Gentleman, had said it was Barbados, but when Tina had suggested to Jenny's father that he'd said Spain, Roy Brakspear hadn't contradicted her.
It could have been an innocent oversight, of course. After all, the poor guy had been half asleep. But taken along with everything else, her uneasy feeling remained, bolstered by the fact that Jenny's father had been so adamant that his daughter couldn't have been abducted. Tina wasn't a parent, but she was pretty damn sure that if a police officer had rung her in the middle of the night to give her the same news she wouldn't have been anything like as confident as him, and would have demanded further investigation.
But he hadn't.
And Jenny wasn't answering her phone.
Tina knew her boss, DCI Knox, wouldn't allow her to put too much time into this. They had way too much on at the moment, and without anything concrete to back up her case it was inevitably going to end up on the backburner. She'd keep trying Jenny's number, and would call her work too, when she got the chance, to see if they could verify the story. But right now that was the best she could do.
She yawned again and rubbed her eyes. Only another hour and a half of the shift before she finished and it became someone else's problem. Just enough time to file a report.
But first, there were a couple of things she needed to do.
Reaching into the bottom drawer of her desk, she pulled a stainless-steel hipflask from her make-up bag and slipped it into her jeans pocket, resisting the urge to take a slug then and there. Then, popping an unlit cigarette into her mouth, and ignoring the guilty voice in her head that told her she couldn't keep on like this, she got up from her desk and headed to the toilet.