I slept badly, and I slept late, not waking up for the final time until gone eleven o'clock. Straight away I recalled the previous night's events, but this time they felt like a bad, strangely distant dream. Bright sunlight filtered in through the curtains, and outside I could hear the sound of traffic. I lay staring at the ceiling for several minutes, relieved at the normality of the scene but still unable to extinguish the memory of the man trying to cut my throat in the underground car park, and the nagging question of what had happened to the girl I'd been planning to make love to only minutes before that.
I had a lunch meeting with my literary agent Murray scheduled for one p.m.: we were going to discuss the next ten chapters of my gangster masterpiece. But I didn't think I could take it today. I knew Murray was pleased with what I'd done because he'd already told me so, and normally I'd have jumped at the chance to leave the PC and the book behind and enjoy a long, boozy lunch, but there was no way I'd be able to concentrate on it today.
As I showered, all I could think about was Jenny Brakspear. Before the previous night I'd met her maybe ten, fifteen times socially. When she'd started going out with Dom I was already staying at his place, and I remember a couple of evenings when the three of us had lounged around drinking beers and watching DVDs. They were fun nights, reminding me a little of long-ago student days, and even though I felt a little like the odd one out, the two of them had always made me feel welcome. Jenny had talked to me about my relationship with Yvonne, and had tried to get me to think positively. That she partially succeeded was no mean feat.
Even after I'd moved out the three of us had met up for occasional drinks, and when I got my first post-wife girlfriend, Carly, the first people we invited round for dinner were Dom and Jenny.
I suppose it was true that I'd never really known her that well – not long after that dinner party she and Dom had split up and we'd fallen out of touch – but I'd spent enough time with her to be convinced that she was a level-headed girl with her heart in the right place. So why had she lied to me about Dom? And more importantly, why had she been kidnapped by two men who'd broken into her apartment without leaving a single sign of forced entry? I was sure now that the motive wasn't sexual. There'd been no lust in the eyes of either of the two men who'd taken her. Just a cold professionalism. If anything, they'd seemed totally uninterested in her as a person, if the way she'd been chucked into the trolley was anything to go by. There had to be another reason, and I couldn't stop thinking about what it might be.
I called Murray and postponed our lunch, feigning flu. He was disappointed – I think he was looking forward to a few drinks to start the working week – but said to call him as soon as I felt better and he'd absolutely make sure he found time in his diary. 'I know we're on to something extraordinary with this book, Robert,' he announced in that dramatic, vaguely camp manner of his. 'Maxwell's a horrible character. He'll sell millions. And the title, Enforcer. I absolutely love it.' To be honest, I thought the title was crap, but the whole thing now seemed hugely irrelevant.
As soon as I was off the phone to him I cancelled every one of my credit cards and ordered new ones before deciding to try to put everything to do with the previous night out of my mind and simply carry on with the book. I was currently on chapter twenty-two, almost two-thirds of the way through now, and at one of the most violent points, where Maxwell was in his armed robbery phase, just before he ended up on the wrong end of a Flying Squad ambush followed by a six-year stretch in Pentonville. In the real version of events no one had got hurt, but in mine, one of Maxwell's fellow robbers had been killed, while Maxwell himself had shot and badly wounded a cop (a legitimate target in Maxwell's eyes, because he'd been armed) before taking a bullet in the gut himself.
But the writing just didn't work that day. Suddenly, Maxwell didn't seem such an exotic and exciting character. For the first time I was seeing him for the thug he actually was, someone who made his money from intimidating people and, where intimidation failed, hurting them. No different, in fact, from the men who'd attacked me. I felt pissed off that I'd been in such thrall to him. I put it down to the fact that I'd never been the victim of crime before and so was far more inclined to glamorize it. I wondered if my view had now changed for ever, and what implications this was going to have for the book.
I sat staring at the computer screen for the best part of an hour before giving up and eating some lunch in front of the BBC news, which was the usual diet of doom and gloom and reminded me all too vividly why I avoided newspapers and news programmes these days. I was hoping that the break might provide some inspiration. It didn't. All I could think about was Jenny. Where she might be now and what I could be doing to locate her, because at that moment I was doing nothing.
Eventually I could hold back no longer. I called Islington police station and asked to be put through to CID. Without a crime reference number I found myself placed on hold, then sent through to an automated messaging service. When I tried again, the switchboard operator offered to take my details and get someone to call me back (I declined). It was only on my third attempt, when I told a different switchboard operator I wanted to report a murder but would only speak to someone in Islington CID, that I was reluctantly put through.
Incredibly, the phone still rang for a good minute and a half before it was picked up, which made me wonder what the hell you needed to do to get taken seriously by the police these days.
'DS Storey,' said a nasal voice, laced with a strange mixture of excitement and irritation. 'I understand you want to report a murder.'
'No,' I answered, feigning innocence. 'I'm following up on an abduction I reported last night.'
'So you're not reporting a murder?'
'No. I don't know where you got that from. There must have been some mistake.'
DS Storey sighed impatiently. In the background, I could hear a lot of noise. 'Have you got a crime reference number?' he demanded.
I told him I hadn't and started to explain what had happened but he stopped me dead, asking who I'd dealt with. When I told him it was DS Tina Boyd, he said she was who I needed to speak with, and she'd be back on duty at six o'clock.
I couldn't believe it. Jenny had been kidnapped and her kidnappers had tried to murder me yet no one appeared to be doing anything about it. 'This is an abduction I'm reporting,' I said, my patience finally snapping, 'not a fucking parking offence. Why is no one taking it seriously?'
'Listen, sir,' snapped Storey in return, snarling out the 'sir', 'if I don't know anything about it and you don't have a crime reference number then I can't help you. All right? Now, my advice is to contact DS Boyd direct when she comes in tonight because right now we have an emergency on at this station and I do not have the time to talk. OK?'
It wasn't OK, but there was nothing I could do about it, so I rang off.
I looked at my watch. It was half past two. I was angry with Tina Boyd. I'd thought she would take things seriously enough to pass the information on to her colleagues, but it was clear she hadn't. Figuring that I had nothing to lose, I dug out her mobile number and dialled it.
She answered after a fair number of rings and identified herself with a single hello, sounding half asleep.
'It's me,' I said, 'Rob Fallon. From last night. The kidnapping.'
A sigh of irritation echoed down the phone. 'I haven't forgotten you, Mr Fallon, but I was actually sleeping.'
'I'm sorry,' I lied. 'I didn't mean to wake you up.'
'You knew I was on night duty so I'd have thought it was pretty obvious that I'd be sleeping during the day.' She paused. 'What can I do for you now?'
'I want you to know I'm not bullshitting, DS Boyd.'
'You already told me that last night.'
'I've just been on the phone to one of your colleagues in CID, a DS Storey, and he didn't know anything about Jenny's kidnapping. Now I don't know why those men took her, or even if she's alive or dead, but the thing is, I cannot just sit here and do nothing while her life might be in danger.'
Tina gave another exaggerated sigh. 'I want you to forget about this, Mr Fallon.'
'Why? She could be in a lot of danger.'
'I spoke to her father before I came off duty this morning, and he told me that she couldn't have been abducted because she phoned him from Gatwick airport late last night on her way out of the country on holiday.'
'But she was with me late last night. And she never mentioned anything about a holiday. In fact, she said she'd just come back from somewhere, on business.'
'Well, that's what he said, Mr Fallon.'
'And have you managed to speak to her work? What have they said?'
'Ah, her work…that's an interesting one.'
I didn't like the way she said that.
'It took me a while to find the name of her employer with the limited information I had to work on, and I was off duty when I finally called them. I even put off my sleep for it, because I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. But I got through to her boss, a Miss Murton, and guess what?'
I began to get an ominous feeling in my gut. 'What?'
'She left three weeks ago.'
After she got off the phone, Tina found it impossible to get back to sleep. Eventually she got up and made herself a cup of strong black coffee. She knew she'd been a bit harsh on Fallon. Part of the reason for that was because she was always grouchy when she got woken up. The other part was because she still didn't know what to do about the investigation herself. A lot of Fallon's story made sense and there were some strange coincidences that appeared to back it up. Yet the fact remained that he was the only witness to this crime. And some things counted against him, like the fact that he'd been drinking heavily on the night and had had difficulty remembering Jenny's last name, as well as his claim that Jenny had told him she'd just returned from a business trip when, in reality, she'd left the company three weeks earlier.
She lit her first cigarette of the new day and tried Jenny's mobile number again – her fourth attempt – but like the other times, the automated voice told her the handset was switched off. This was turning into a real puzzle, one she was going to have to talk through with somebody. And she knew exactly who.
Tina had worked with Mike Bolt at SOCA, the Serious and Organized Crime Agency, for more than a year before returning to the Met a few months earlier, and he was one of the few people whose opinion on criminal matters she trusted absolutely. But their parting of the ways had been difficult, which was what had stopped her picking up the phone to him earlier that morning.
During their time working together they'd become very close friends, and almost inevitably a mutual attraction had developed. One night he'd given her a lift home from a surveillance job and had made a pass at her. They'd kissed in the car, passionately, and she'd been tempted to let things go further, but she'd had a relationship with her boss in CID four years earlier, before SOCA, which had ended in tragedy, and she was desperate to avoid putting herself through the emotional mill again, especially with someone she was going to see so much of, so she'd pulled away from his embrace.
Mike had apologized and nothing more had been said about the incident, but their relationship had never been the same after that. To be fair, it hadn't been the only reason she'd left SOCA. She'd also grown tired of the long-drawn-out investigations into those shadowy figures running the UK underworld, which so often ended in abject failure. But Mike hadn't seen it like that. He'd thought it had something to do with him, and though she'd tried plenty of times to persuade him that wasn't the case, she knew she hadn't convinced him. And if she was entirely honest with herself, she wasn't convinced either.
They hadn't spoken since, which didn't help, and the longer time had gone on the harder it had become to re-establish contact. She regretted this because, despite the fact that she'd made the break, she missed him.
Now, though, seemed a good time to finally make that call. She speed-dialled his number, having never got round to relegating it to her standard contacts list.
She felt an unexpected jolt of nerves when he answered.
'Hey Tina,' he said, sounding pleased to hear from her, 'long time no speak. How's life back on the streets?'
'Same as it is in SOCA, I expect,' she answered, forcing herself to sound cheery. 'Too many bad guys. Too few of the good ones.'
'But you're enjoying it though, yeah?'
'There's plenty of action, that's for sure.'
In truth, it had been a big disappointment – something she really should have expected, given that she'd worked out of Islington before. Virtually all the crimes she dealt with, from domestic burglary right up to murder, were depressing, sordid affairs where the identity of the perpetrators was obvious immediately, and unfortunately there seemed to be a never-ending stream of them.
But she didn't say any of this to Mike. Instead, they made the usual small talk, and she was slightly saddened that it lasted only a couple of minutes before fizzling out.
'So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your call?' he asked when the inevitable silence arrived.
Tina told him about the kidnapping, going through the details methodically, trying hard not to miss anything out, and feeling better to be getting down to business. 'I don't know what to do, Mike,' she said. 'I still can't get hold of the girl, and Fallon doesn't strike me as a bullshitter. That's why I thought I'd run it by you.'
'You need to build on what you've got,' he replied after a few moments' thought, 'because it's nowhere near enough for the bosses to take seriously. First thing I'd suggest is to get the CCTV footage fast-tracked.'
'Easier said than done.'
'Well, you know Matt Turner works over at the FSS now?'
Matt Turner had been a colleague of theirs at SOCA until he was seriously injured during an operation the previous year.
'No,' she said, suddenly feeling very much out of the loop, 'I didn't.'
'He moved to their hi-tech unit a few months back. I think he got tired of the desk job at SOCA, and he's never going to recover enough for fieldwork.'
'It's a pity. He was a good guy.'
'He still is. Get your footage over there and tell him it's urgent. And if it turns out it has been doctored then you're definitely on to something, and by the sound of it, something big. And have you checked out the doorman at her apartment building yet? Because from what you're saying, they couldn't have done it without his help.'
'No, I haven't,' she said, knowing she should have thought of that. 'That would mean three people involved, which seems a lot.'
'True, but you can't discount it. See if he's got a record. That'll at least give you something to go on.'
'I will, but I don't think my boss is going to let me spend much time on it. We're snowed under at the moment.'
'But if it's happened – and from what you've told me my feeling is that it has – then he's going to need to act. Speak to him. See what he says. He might surprise you.'
Tina doubted that very much. Like most senior officers, DCI Knox was interested in hitting Home Office targets, and that meant dealing with the crimes that were right in front of them and easily solvable, not ones that required extensive resources and might not even have taken place. 'Thanks,' she said. 'I'll do that.'
'Let me know how you get on. Seriously. I'd be interested to find out.'
'Thanks. I will.'
'I'd help myself, but we're snowed under as well right now. I guess that's par for the course in our line.'
'It's all right, Mike, I wasn't after your help. Just your advice. And you've been more than helpful.' He had too, but then he'd always been one of the best detectives she'd worked with.
'We aim to please,' he said, but this time the cheeriness in his voice sounded forced.
There was an awkward silence. Tina asked him what the team were working on at the moment.
'The usual,' he answered. 'Trying to bring down another of the Mr Bigs.'
'Who's it this time? Anyone I know?'
'Yeah,' he said, his tone sounding reluctant. 'Paul Wise.'
Tina swallowed hard. Mention of Paul Wise's name still made her jaw tighten and her stomach knot. If there was one person she could blame for doing so much to wreck her life, it was him, even though they'd never met. Wise was the bastard behind the murder of her former boss and lover John Gallan. A multi-millionaire businessman with his finger in all manner of unsavoury pies who'd managed to evade justice all his life and who was as close to untouchable as any criminal she'd ever come across.
'How come he's suddenly back on the SOCA agenda?' she asked, hearing the strain in her own voice. 'I thought everyone had given up on pinning anything on him.'
'No one's going to give up on Paul Wise, Tina.'
'And what's he doing now? I thought he was based out of the Turkish part of Cyprus, far away from the long arm of the law.' She knew damn well he was. She'd checked enough times.
'He is,' said Bolt, 'but he's been diversifying now that property development isn't as lucrative as it used to be. Now he's into large-scale heroin smuggling into the UK. That and prostitution.'
Tina snorted. 'As classy as ever. Are you close to getting him yet?'
'The honest answer's no. But that doesn't mean we stop trying. We've got a lot of resources aimed at him now. It's only a matter of time.'
She didn't know whether Mike believed this or not, but she didn't. Britain didn't even have an extradition treaty with the Turkish part of Cyprus, and the moment it got one Wise would be off somewhere else where he couldn't be touched. Men like him always seemed to be one step ahead of the law. She would still like to have been involved, though, and it suddenly irked her that she was out of it.
'If you do get the evidence to take him down, make sure you let me know, OK Mike?'
'You'll be the first I tell, Tina. I promise.'
She could hear the warmth in his voice, and she knew then that he would. 'Thanks. I appreciate that.'
'Take care. And don't give up on your case. Follow your instincts.'
I always do, she thought as she said her goodbyes. And it usually gets me into trouble.
Have you ever felt that you're moving in a parallel universe to everyone else? Where everything you do takes on a dreamlike quality? I experienced it once before as a student when a group of us took magic mushrooms – my one and only foray into hard drugs – but even then I knew that what was happening wasn't reality. I was far less sure of that now, and for the first time in my life I began to question my sanity. I've had some tough times in my life, tremendous highs followed by leaden, black lows, but I've always felt in control. The things I was hearing now, however, were confusing me so much I was wondering whether last night had happened at all.
But I had been in Jenny's apartment because when I went back it felt completely familiar to me. And my jacket, along with my mobile phone and wallet, was definitely missing.
I needed to clear my head, so after I finished talking to Tina Boyd I drove up to Broxbourne woods and went for a much-needed walk, enjoying the solitude after all the drama of the past twenty-four hours.
I hadn't got very far when Dom called. He asked me if I'd had any news. 'I've been worried about it all day.'
'Some,' I said, and I told him what I knew.
There was a pause at the other end of the line, and I sensed what he was thinking. For a while, when I first got back from France, I'd gone into a real depression. I'd slept badly, found myself unable to work, and almost stopped eating entirely. At my lowest point I didn't get out of bed for three solid days, and I lost more than a stone in weight. I don't think it was a breakdown as such, but I know that Dom was worried about my mental health. He'd even talked to my dad about what he should do, without informing me. Eventually I fought my way out of the worst of it without need of outside help, but I was sure Dom was feeling the same concerns about me now. I hadn't seen him for a few weeks so in his eyes it was entirely possible, I suppose, that I had relapsed.
I knew he wanted to say something, so I beat him to it. 'Everything's been going fine in my life lately, Dom. This happened, I promise.' But I was conscious of the doubt in my voice.
'I just don't understand it,' he said. 'Why would Jenny's dad say she was on holiday if she wasn't?'
'What's he like, her dad?' I asked.
'I only met him a couple of times. He was a nice guy.'
'Is he rich?'
'He runs his own business and I think he's quite well off, but nothing spectacular. I doubt if he clears more than a couple of hundred grand a year. Not enough to kidnap his daughter for.'
It was a good point, and it closed another door for me, because now I had no obvious motive for Jenny's abduction. The nagging voice started in my ear again. Did it really happen, Rob? Are you sure you're not imagining it?
'What are you going to do now, Rob?' asked Dom.
'I don't know.' I sighed, unable to keep the sense of defeat out of my voice. 'Keep hassling my police contact, I guess. Get her to check the CCTV footage from Jenny's apartment block for any signs that it's been tampered with, because I know that it has been. Other than that, I don't know. I could try speaking to Maxwell, I suppose, see if he's got any ideas. You know, from a criminal's point of view.'
'That sounds a bit desperate.'
'It is,' I said wearily. 'But I'm beginning to run low on options.'
'Are you OK, Rob? Maybe I should come back.'
'Thanks, mate, but there's no point. Right now there's nothing you can do that I can't. You may as well stay where you are. I'll keep you posted.'
He tried to insist but I could tell his heart wasn't really in it. I wondered whether he did actually believe my story or whether he thought I'd finally gone over the edge.
Once I was off the phone I kept walking, enjoying being away from the city and its dangers, and it was gone six by the time I got back to the car. The shadows were lengthening as late afternoon turned into early evening, and the sunlight flickering through the beech trees took on a soft orange glow.
The last time I was up here I'd been with Yvonne and Chloe. Chloe had only just started walking, and I'd held her hand most of the way. It had been a sunny day like this, but that was the only similarity. Things had been very different then. We'd been discussing our move to France. The house there had been bought, our flat in London had been sold for close to double what we'd paid for it five years earlier, and I was preparing to hand in my notice at work. We'd had money in the bank and a brilliant plan for security, success and happiness.
I stood in silence for a long time, wondering how and why I'd let it all slip through my fingers, and wishing that I could have that time back again. I experienced a sudden, painful urge to phone and talk to Yvonne and Chloe. To chat to them about this and that and try to inject some semblance of normality back into my life. But they were on a walking holiday in northern Sweden with Nigel, out of mobile phone contact. Instead, I got back in the car and began the drive home, thinking I desperately needed something to cheer me up.
Ramon might not have been everyone's cup of tea, but in the circumstances he'd do just fine.
Agent Mike Bolt sat staring at the piles of paperwork on his desk, feeling a mixture of anger and frustration. His job at SOCA was disrupting the activities of the couple of hundred Mr Bigs who ran organized crime in the UK, an industry that was worth an almost unbelievable forty billion dollars a year, but he was pragmatic enough to know it was a war he and his colleagues were never going to win. The enemy was far too superior in numbers and resources for that. But the important thing was not to lose it entirely. You had to be patient and keep chipping away at their defences. Sometimes you had to wait months for a result. Sometimes you didn't even get one. A witness might suddenly retract his testimony, or a judge throw out the case, and all your hard work went up in smoke as the bad guys walked free with big grins on their faces and went back to making obscene amounts of money. But in Bolt's experience, there was always a chink in a target's armour somewhere, and if you kept going long enough, you'd eventually find it.
But even he had to admit that if Paul Wise had a chink in his armour, it was incredibly well hidden. Wise might have left the UK more than three years earlier to avoid the attentions of the law, but a large proportion of his income still came from criminal activities within his home country.
In the five months Bolt's team had been actively targeting him, they'd raided four brothels in which he had a controlling interest, freeing a total of sixty-seven trafficked women in the process. They'd also seized more than ten kilos of ninety per cent pure heroin belonging to him, most of it in a daring undercover operation during which two of his key operatives were arrested. All this activity had garnered plenty of positive press coverage, but unfortunately not a shred of evidence that could be used against Wise himself. The two operatives caught with the heroin weren't talking and had got themselves some seriously expensive legal representation (doubtless bankrolled by their boss). As for the people they'd arrested in the brothels, only two had been prepared to cooperate – a Turkish asylum seeker who managed one, and a local thug who ran security at another – and neither had met or even spoken to Wise, both having dealt with his middlemen.
Now, for the first time, Bolt and his team had turned to SOCA's Financial Intelligence Unit for help. The FIU's task was to discover where all the huge profits from organized crime were hidden so they could be traced back to the Mr Bigs who were making them, and subsequently used as evidence in any criminal proceedings. Bolt didn't have a huge amount of interest in the complex world of financial crime – it felt too far away from the action for him – but since nothing else was working he'd agreed with his bosses that going after Wise's money represented their best chance of truly hurting him.
However, after over a month of FIU involvement Bolt had only just received his first report from them in his email in-box that afternoon. It was forty-five pages long and read like absolute gobbledygook. So much so that he'd asked one of his team, Mo Khan, to take it away and decipher it for him in preparation for the meeting they were scheduled to have with the FIU representatives the next day. Bolt figured that with a B-grade A-level in applied economics Mo was probably the best qualified of all of them to make sense of it, but he'd been gone for more than two and a half hours now, so maybe he was having as much trouble as the rest of them.
Evening was drawing in, but Bolt wasn't thinking about going home. As he stood looking out of his office window across the park opposite and the high-rise buildings beyond, he was thinking about Tina Boyd, as he had been for most of the afternoon. He'd felt a real frisson of excitement when she called, even though they hadn't spoken or seen each other in close to a year, but then she'd always been able to get under his skin. The initial excitement had quickly turned to disappointment, though, when it became clear that the reason for her call was professional, and he felt bad that he'd had to tell her about the Paul Wise investigation, knowing the part that Wise had played in the death of her former boyfriend.
At least they'd agreed to stay in touch, and he knew that she'd want to hear about any developments on the Wise case, but he wished there was more to it than that. He'd pondered asking if she fancied meeting for a drink, but he knew it wouldn't work. He was still attracted to her, but the last time he'd followed his instincts when they were alone together, responding to signals he was sure had been there, had left him feeling embarrassed and depressed. It would be better simply to put her behind him completely.
There was a knock on the door and he turned round as a short, stocky Asian guy with a round jolly face and a frizzy mop of hair that couldn't decide whether it was salt or pepper ambled into the room. Mo Khan looked tired, his big bloodhound eyes sporting heavy bags, and Bolt noticed he was putting on weight round the middle – a result, no doubt, of his latest effort to give up smoking.
'Ah, the wanderer returns,' Bolt said with a smile, glad for the interruption. 'Any joy with that?'
'Some. It seems that Paul Wise is good at cleaning his money.'
'And it took them a month to work that out? He's been a criminal for thirty years. Of course he's good at cleaning his money.'
'Well, they've found out a bit more than that,' said Mo, as the two of them took seats opposite each other. 'They've worked out that he's making a gross annual profit of at least twenty-five million dollars, just from prostitution and drug smuggling. Most of the cash gets smuggled out of the country. Some of it gets sunk into his construction and leisure businesses, particularly the restaurants, where it's difficult to differentiate it from the legitimate takings. The rest of it ends up going through the usual laundering routes and into bank accounts in places like Iceland, Panama, and of course northern Cyprus, before it finally makes its way into Wise's pocket. He loses maybe thirty per cent of the total in turning it from dirty to clean, but he's still raking in huge quantities, and he's got some deal with the authorities over there where he's even managed to defer his tax payments.'
Bolt had long ago given up getting worked up about the personal wealth of the Mr Bigs, but he still whistled through his teeth at the size of these particular figures. 'And who said crime doesn't pay? OK, so how does the report help us?'
Mo shrugged. 'We might be able to disrupt the flow of the cash if we know how he's getting it out of the country and we can intercept it, but from what they say here, it's going to be a nightmare building a watertight money-laundering case against him. He spreads the stuff around too much for that, and the fact that he owns a lot of businesses where large sums of cash are used counts in his favour.'
'So they've been able to find out all these clever statistics and write this big flashy report, but it basically makes no difference.' Bolt shook his head irritably.
'That's about the size of it, boss. There is one piece of good news, though. The credit crunch is hitting Wise hard. Not only are all his legitimate businesses suffering, he's been putting millions into a hedge fund in the City run by some hotshot financier called Sir Henry Portman.'
'Where do I know that name from?'
Mo grinned. 'He was filmed by the News of the World dressed in stockings and suspenders snorting cocaine and cavorting with a succession of high-class prostitutes, one of whom was seen to spank his bare behind with a paddle.'
Bolt raised his eyebrows. 'And that's in the report?'
'No, I just Googled it now.'
'Jesus. But why would I remember that? Those kind of scandals are two a penny.'
'Well, one, he sued them successfully over it for breach of privacy, which made the news. Two, he's a big name in the City and his fund, HPP, has been one of the star performers of the last five years. Up until recently, that is. It's now down more than thirty-five per cent year on year. Which translates into losses in the millions for Wise.'
'Good. At least there's some divine justice. But it still doesn't bring us any closer to getting him. Is there any personal link between Wise and Portman?' Wise had had some good contacts with senior figures in the establishment, which in Bolt's view was one of the key reasons he'd avoided justice so far.
'Not that the report mentions,' said Mo. 'And even if there were, it wouldn't make any difference. The money Wise has been investing goes through a holding company of his, Ratten Holdings, and it's officially clean. According to him, he's just a businessman.'
As Mo spoke, Bolt Googled Sir Henry Portman on his PC and came up with several hundred matches. He clicked the first one and a report of his court victory against the News of the World appeared.
'Listen, boss, do you mind if I make a move? I wanted to take the kids swimming tonight, and time's getting on. I've written up a summary of the report for you to take a look at.'
Bolt smiled. Mo Khan doted on his four kids, and with the long hours they worked at SOCA, time was precious. 'Sure. We're done here. Have fun.'
For a fleeting moment he felt jealous of Mo having a family to go back to. His own wife, Mikaela, had died in a car accident seven years earlier, and he'd never remarried, or had kids.
He pushed the thought aside and turned back to the computer screen, inspecting the colour photo of the distinguished-looking gentleman with the silver hair and the pinstripe suit. In the picture, Sir Henry Portman was standing outside the High Court addressing reporters, alongside his blonde female lawyer, who looked a damn sight better than most of the ones Bolt had to deal with. He wore a serious expression, as befitted the occasion, but there was something vaguely rakish about him, a twinkling in the eyes, and it didn't take that much to imagine him enjoying the attentions of good-looking call girls.
Paul Wise was strongly suspected of being responsible for as many as twenty-five murders, including that of a teenage girl and at least one police officer, even though he used other people to do the actual dirty work, and Bolt wondered whether Portman knew where the money Wise was investing in his funds came from. Or whether he even cared.
After all, in Bolt's experience, when large amounts of money are involved, people tend to forget their morals very, very quickly indeed.
'What she lacked in obvious beauty, she made up for both in talent and enthusiasm,' announced Ramon, describing his conquest of the previous night, a credit controller called Cheryl. 'And I've got to tell you, my man, that even the great Ramon's libido has been temporarily tamed. I am, how you say, fair shagged out.' He grinned and took a toke on his joint, sucking in the smoke and holding it there for a good ten seconds before blowing out a thin stream towards the ceiling.
We were sitting in my bedroom cum living area, Ramon in the old armchair by my bed, me reclined on a couple of beanbags opposite him, a Peroni in my hand. An old Santana album (Ramon's choice) was playing on the iPod, and I was feeling relaxed for the first time in twenty-four hours. I was supposed to be cooking dinner for us both, but somehow I didn't think this was going to be happening any time soon.
'How about you, my man?' he said. 'There were a lot of women in that place last night. Did you attract one with your lethal combination of wit and good looks?'
'Incredible though it might seem, no.' I took a slug from the beer, surprised that I wasn't even tempted to tell him about what had happened to me. I guess at that moment I just wanted to forget about it.
'Ach Roberto,' he said, pointing the joint at me accusingly. 'A good-looking guy like you and you're wasting your youth. One day you're going to sit back and wonder where the time went. Let me tell you something, my man. No one ever regretted that they didn't spend enough time in the office.'
'I don't work in an office.'
'I know you don't. But you've still got to loosen up, my man. Here, have a puff on this little number. It's prime weed. Not any of that skunk shit.' He leaned forward with the joint.
Normally I'd have said no. I rarely smoked dope. It tended to make me both sleepy and incredibly horny at the same time, which was always a pointless combination, especially so when all I had for company was another man, but tonight I felt like throwing caution to the wind. I took it off him and inhaled deeply, enjoying the feeling of smoke in my lungs. I'd given up the cigarettes years back but, like most smokers, I still missed them.
'Everything's all right with you, isn't it, Roberto?' he asked, looking at me seriously.
I smiled. 'Sure, I'm good. It's quite a compliment to be told I'm wasting my youth when I'm thirty-four.'
'Yeah, but the man telling you that's forty-two.'
We both laughed, and I took another toke, beginning to get that lightheaded feeling.
'I want you to be happy, man, you know? You've had a few hard times, but you've got to remember that life's short, and it's there to be enjoyed. That's my philosophy and it's always worked.' He sat back in his seat, making himself comfortable, and fiddled with his bandanna (red tonight).
His philosophy had worked, too. Ramon might not have had a lot financially, but he was one of the happiest men I knew. He had his dope, his dancing, his conquests, and one way or another he always perked me up, however black my mood was.
I drained my beer and pointed to his. 'Another one?'
'Do bears defecate in forested terrain?'
'Apparently so,' I said, and got up, handing him the joint.
As I pulled two more Peronis from the fridge, I had a sudden rush of guilt. Here I was enjoying myself, drinking and smoking dope without a second thought for Jenny. I looked at my watch. It had just turned half eight. I knew I ought to phone Tina and chivvy her into action, but I told myself that I'd do it later. If I hassled her too much she'd end up ignoring my calls.
'You know what I could do with?' I said, coming back into the room with the beers. 'A holiday. I've just realized I haven't been anywhere apart from France since before Chloe was born, and that was over four years ago.' I put Ramon's bottle on the bedside table beside his chair, and collapsed back into the beanbags. 'I'm thinking somewhere like Costa Rica. Have you ever been there?' I remembered that he'd always claimed to have been a bit of a world traveller.
Ramon didn't answer.
He didn't even move.
I tensed, experiencing a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. 'Ramon?' My voice cracked as I spoke his name.
He was slumped forward a little in his seat, like he'd fallen asleep, and the joint was no longer in his hand.
I put down my drink and got to my feet, moving too fast and getting a headrush as I walked over to him. 'Ramon? You all right, mate?'
I crouched down. Still no movement. The hollow feeling was spreading to every part of me. I lifted his head, not wanting to do it but knowing that I had to.
'Oh Jesus. Oh, Jesus Christ.'
There was a deep red hole where his left eye had been. It was pumping blood, a thick stripe of which ran slowly down his face and on to his neck, pooling in the fold there.
Straight away I knew he was dead. There was no question about it. His head hung heavy and useless in my hands, but it was still almost impossible to believe because I'd only been gone a few moments – thirty seconds at most – and when I'd left him he'd been laughing and talking and toking. Unable to quite comprehend what I was seeing, even though the blood was now running freely down his face, I felt desperately for a pulse that wasn't there.
A terrified panic ripped through me. 'Ramon! Ramon! Wake up! Stay with me!' I gave his face a gentle slap. 'Please,' I whispered. 'Stay with me. Don't go.'
And then I heard movement.
I froze.
'Who's Chloe?' said a voice behind me in a harsh Northern Irish accent.
My mouth went dry. My stomach tightened so much it was painful. More than anything else in the world, I didn't want to turn round.
But I couldn't keep staring at Ramon's blank, dead face either. Its utter lifelessness was tearing me apart.
Slowly, very slowly, I turned my head. Is this it? I kept asking myself. The end of my life? A lonely, bloody death in a cramped little flat miles away from the people I loved. I didn't want to die. God, I didn't want to die.
He stood between me and the bedroom door, blocking any possibility of escape – the grotesque-looking Irishman with the saucer eyes and the malignant smile permanently etched on the rack-tight skin of his face. He had one of his hands behind his back, while in the other he held the photo I kept by my bed of Yvonne, Chloe and me, taken in the garden a few weeks after we'd arrived in France, shortly before Chloe's second birthday, in the days when we were still full of optimism. Before everything went wrong.
It hadn't taken him long to find out where I lived, then.
'I asked you a question, Mr Fallon,' he said, his voice quiet and calm. 'Who's Chloe?'
He brought the hand round from behind his back, and I saw he was holding the stiletto he'd tried to cut my throat with the previous night, except this time it was stained with Ramon's blood. He tapped the tip of the blade against the photo. 'Is it her?' He turned the frame round so I could see it properly, rubbing the blade along the image of Chloe's innocent, smiling face.
'She's my daughter,' I said, my voice barely a croak.
'You don't want her to end up like your friend, do you?'
'No.'
'Good. Then you'll do exactly what I say.' He dropped the photo on to the carpet, and took a step towards me.
'You didn't have to kill him,' I whispered. 'He was nothing to do with this.'
'I know, but I enjoyed it.' He paused, taking pleasure in my fear, the pale saucer eyes lighting up with a childlike glee. 'Fear's a strange instinct, isn't it? It's supposedly there for self-preservation, yet right now it's preventing you from doing the one thing that will most obviously preserve your life – running.'
I didn't say anything. I didn't need to. He was right.
'Fear can make you weak and useless, but if you know how to control and channel it, it can be used to your advantage. I have that ability. I've always had it. But your problem right now is that you don't. Instead, your fear's going to make you do exactly as you're told.' He took another step forward so he was standing above me. I became aware of the scent of expensive aftershave. 'And what you're going to do now is drink this.' He produced a hipflask from the pocket of the raincoat he was wearing and threw it in my lap. 'Go on, drink.'
I picked it up but made no move to put it to my lips. Instead, I focused on the bloodstained blade only a few feet from my face. For the first time a real sense of anger began to overcome my fear. I couldn't believe this bastard had casually executed Ramon. And now he was threatening to do the same to my precious daughter, the one person in this world I would die to protect.
Some primal instinct kicked in. Remembering the way I'd caught him off guard the previous night, I leapt to my feet with a yell, blanking out the danger as I grabbed for his knife hand and lunged forward with the hipflask, using it as a makeshift club to slam into his face.
He moved aside easily and slapped the flask out of my hand, then drove a foot squarely into my groin.
I felt a searing pain travel up into my belly and the fight went out of me instantly. As I began to fall to my knees a gloved hand grabbed me by the throat and I was slammed back into the wall, stumbling over Ramon's corpse in the process. 'Don't fuck me about,' he hissed, and a split second later I felt the blade as he pushed it against my cheek.
For a second the room was silent, then he brought his face very close to mine. For the first time I noticed jagged patches of scar tissue round his chin that the plastic surgery had failed to get rid of entirely, and that he was wearing blusher to try to conceal them.
He ran the top of the blade along my cheek and into the pit just below my eye, pushing it against my eyeball. All the time his grip on my throat tightened, and I found it almost impossible to breathe.
'I once cut a man's face off with this knife,' he whispered gently, his breath warm on my skin. 'I started here.' He pushed the blade in harder and I began to moan, not daring to move a millimetre. 'And I sliced all the way down.' He slowly traced a line down my jawline to my chin. 'And when I'd finished, I had a fillet. Then I did the other side. His wife was watching at the time. I informed her that if she didn't tell me the whereabouts of her son – a man who owed a client of mine a very large sum of money – then I'd use a skillet to fry her husband's cheeks, and feed them to her. But she was strong-willed, as women so often are, so she ended up eating well that night. It was only when it was her turn to provide the meat that she relented and gave him up.' He let out a low chuckle, moving the blade down so that it was against my throat, revelling in my fear. 'I tell you this so you understand what I'm capable of if you lie to me.'
'I understand,' I whispered. All my anger had dissolved now and terror was back in the ascendant. 'I won't tell anyone, I swear it.'
'It's a little bit too late for that now, isn't it? You've already been blabbing to the police, telling them about what you thought you saw last night. Who else have you told?'
How the hell did he know that? Had he been following me somehow?
I knew immediately I couldn't betray Dom, but still I hesitated before answering, 'No one,' trying to look as confident in the lie as possible.
He spotted the hesitation. The whip-thin mouth curled up at either end in a knowing smile. 'I don't think you're taking me very seriously, are you, Mr Fallon?' he asked, placing an exaggerated emphasis on my name, driving home the fact that he was the one in control. 'Even though I've just executed your friend. I could cut you into little pieces right now, but you're lucky. Killing you might draw unwanted attention, what with the fact that you've been blabbing to the police, so for the moment it's easier to keep you alive. But if you keep bullshitting me, I might decide that it's easier just to be rid of you.'
I swallowed, the movement painful under the knife blade.
'I asked you a question: who else have you told? Answer it, cunt.'
'No one,' I whispered, meeting his intense stare, willing him to believe me.
He moved away suddenly, causing me to sway and almost fall, but I stayed where I was against the wall as he picked up the hipflask and thrust it into my hand again. 'You have exactly one minute to drink the contents of this bottle,' he announced calmly, moving the knife back and forth in front of my face. 'If you spill any, or hesitate at all for any reason, I'll begin to remove pieces of flesh.' He glanced at his watch. 'Starting now.'
I unscrewed the cap and caught the sickly scent of Scotch, a drink I'd despised since throwing up on it at a party aged sixteen. I took a deep breath and gulped a mouthful down, grimacing against the fiery taste. Visions of my own disfigurement danced across my mind, and my hands shook as I forced down more, thinking that if I had to suffer then I may as well be drunk. I wanted to throw up, but ignored the feeling and carried on. It's amazing what the threat of serious, life-altering violence can make you do. I even began to get used to the sour, fiery taste as I steadily emptied the flask. And all the time he stood watching me, the same calm, matter-of-fact expression on his face, and all the time I feared him completely because I knew that when he spoke of cutting pieces off me he was telling the absolute truth.
The room began to spin as I let the empty flask fall to the floor, and I worked hard to steady myself.
'Phone the police officer you dealt with,' he ordered, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the mobile phone I'd left in my jacket at Jenny's place. 'Tell her that you've been depressed lately and drinking too much, and that you made the story of the kidnapping up, and are sorry to have wasted her time. Say anything else and you'll be dead before you finish the sentence. Understand?'
I fumbled round in my pocket for Tina Boyd's business card, then dialled her number. She didn't answer, and after about ten rings the number went to message. I then said exactly what he'd told me to say, slurring out the words, still having difficulty standing up straight, before flicking the phone shut.
'So now you keep quiet, get on with your life, and never mention the girl's name again. That way, you and your family stay alive.'
I made no move to resist as he grabbed me by the hair and swung me round so I was facing the wall. The bile rose in my throat and I had to work hard to swallow it down.
'If you ever see me again,' he whispered, coming close to my ear, 'it means that it's your time to die. To lose every experience you ever had. For ever. Just like poor Ramon.'
And then he slammed me face first into the wall and the whole room exploded in pain and darkness.
Islington CID was bedlam when Tina turned up for duty that night. There'd been a serious stabbing incident that afternoon after two groups of kids from rival schools had clashed outside a fried chicken takeaway on the Holloway Road, leaving a fifteen-year-old in intensive care with life-threatening injuries. Most of her day-shift colleagues were still there, trying to collate the numerous witness statements and trawl through the CCTV tapes, and she was immediately roped in to help, only just finding the time to arrange a courier to get the USB stick containing the camera footage from Jenny's apartment over to Matt Turner at the FSS. She'd spoken to him earlier for the first time since visiting him in hospital over a year earlier, and though he really didn't owe her any favours, he'd told her he'd look at it straight away.
It was almost three hours before the place emptied and Tina was left on her own with a pile of paperwork, finally able to collect her thoughts. It had been a pretty awful day. To be reminded of the existence of Paul Wise and the fact that he was free and living it up in the Med after what he'd done to the man she'd once loved was bad enough, but she'd never have been reminded of it if it hadn't been for Rob Fallon. Not only had he sent her on a wild goose chase, wasting her time, but just to put the icing on the cake he'd also ruined her day's sleep. When she picked up his drunken voice-mail message she'd come close to throwing her phone against the nearest wall, such was her frustration. As if drinking heavily lately was some kind of excuse. Tina drank too heavily on occasion too, and had done so ever since Wise had had her lover murdered, but she made sure she kept it under control. She would never allow herself to get to the stage where she blurred fantasy with reality.
She'd had a drink that night, something she never normally did before shifts. A large glass of red before she left her flat, gulped down, and two cigarettes in succession. It was a stupid move, and she'd cleaned her teeth twice to cover any smell. Another thing to blame that prick Fallon for. She felt like charging him with wasting police time but, to be honest, it wasn't worth the paperwork.
'No point crying over spilt milk, girl,' she said aloud, lighting a cigarette at her desk, against all the rules. She took a long drag and put her feet up on the pile of statements next to her PC, feeling rebellious. That lazy sod Hunsdon was still off sick, meaning once again she was all alone. It was, she thought bleakly, the story of her life.
Her phone rang. If it was Fallon again she decided she'd give him a real earful, but it wasn't. It was Matt Turner.
'Christ, you're working late,' Tina said, blowing a line of smoke towards the ceiling.
'How about you? Anything happening on the old night shift?'
'The usual. Murder, robbery and mayhem. Don't tell me you've managed to have a look at that stick already.'
'I certainly have.'
'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to waste your time. The whole thing was a hoax. I should have told you earlier.'
'Really? That's odd.'
'Why?'
'Because the footage you gave me has been tampered with.'
Tina removed her feet from the desk and sat up in her seat, frowning. 'Are you sure?'
'Course I'm sure. It wasn't even a very good job. It was just spliced and thirty seconds were taken out. I managed to retrieve it as well.'
'And what did it show?'
'A man and a woman coming up to the front door.'
'Describe them.'
'The man was an IC1, early thirties, with dark curly hair. She was late twenties, blonde, and very attractive if I may say so.'
Rob Fallon and Jenny Brakspear. So something had happened. Tina felt a stab of excitement. 'Thanks, Matt,' she said. 'You've been a great help.'
'So, it wasn't a hoax?'
'I don't know yet. I'll keep you posted.' She rang off and stubbed out her cigarette, wide awake suddenly.
Straight away, she did what Mike Bolt had suggested when she'd talked to him earlier that afternoon. She logged on to the PNC database and fed in the details of the man most likely to have doctored the CCTV footage.
Forty-seven-year-old John Lionel Gentleman, the doorman at Jenny's apartment building, had eight separate convictions, mainly theft-related, and stretching back twenty years. Definitely the kind of man who could be bought.
The question that was really interesting Tina now was, if Gentleman was bought, who had done the buying?
I wasn't sure how long I was unconscious for. It could have been a few minutes, more likely it was an hour or two. It was impossible to tell because when I did finally open my eyes and clamber slowly to my knees, I was still quite drunk. My head felt like lead, and when I touched my forehead there was a big painful lump there. I looked round, waiting patiently while the room came into focus. There was no sign of Ramon. Nor any sign that he'd even been there.
I got to my feet and staggered into the bathroom and over to the toilet, experiencing a wave of nausea. I fell to my knees and threw the whisky up into the bowl in violent spasms, staying in that position for a long time, head bowed, taking deep, painful breaths.
Finally, I staggered back into the bedroom, trying hard not to picture Ramon sitting there lifeless, and lay down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, knowing that I was incredibly lucky to be alive. Twice now I'd come within a hair's breadth of death, and twice I'd been given another chance to carry on. I knew that I should simply accept that this was a battle I'd lost and do what that callous saucer-eyed bastard had told me to do, because it was clear that he wouldn't hesitate to kill me if it came to it, not to mention my family.
I'm the type of person who avoids confrontation. I've always preferred the quiet life. Maybe that's why I gave up the frenetic pace of the City and tried my luck as a writer. But I also have a strong sense of justice. I know that it's essential that people do the right thing, because if we neglect that basic tenet, then society collapses. Some people say that in the UK we've started doing it already: crossing the street to avoid the kids hanging around outside the shop, refusing to intervene to stop rowdy behaviour. I've done it myself. I once saw a school kid about twelve years old being mugged by a group of older kids. They were making him empty out his pockets and one of them looked like he had a knife. The kid seemed terrified. He looked over towards me, trying to get my attention, but I turned away and kept walking. I did phone the police, but only once I'd got round the corner where the muggers couldn't see me.
I'd hated myself for that. Truly hated myself. I remember Yvonne asking me if anything was wrong that evening, and I was too ashamed to tell her about what had happened, because I knew that however much she might understand my actions, she'd be ashamed of me too. And if I did nothing now, I knew I would never be able to live with the guilt. It was as simple as that.
For some reason, Jenny Brakspear had been snatched as part of a conspiracy (and whatever Tina Boyd had claimed, it was a conspiracy) involving a total of three people, the kidnappers and the doorman – four, if Jenny's father was in on it too. And if they'd gone to that much trouble to take her, and to cover up their crime, then there was a very important reason behind their actions. Which meant that, unlike Ramon, there was a possibility Jenny was still alive.
Things were different now, though. The people who'd snatched Jenny had shown me how utterly brutal they were. And how well organized. They'd found me with no trouble at all, and they knew that I'd talked to the police, which meant that if I continued on the path I'd chosen I was going to have to be a lot more careful in my approach. I also needed to make sure that no one else close to me got hurt. Yvonne and Chloe were OK for the next two weeks at least because they were away in Sweden, but Dom might not be.
I drank a glass of water, then called him on the mobile. I had to make sure he was safe, and the only way I could do that was if I stopped him worrying about Jenny.
He was out at dinner with clients, but excused himself so he could take the call. Taking a deep breath, I told him that I'd been drinking very heavily the previous night, that I'd been on medication for depression, and that my imagination had ended up playing tricks on me because I'd heard from Jenny this evening and she was fine.
At first, Dom was furious with me, not only for causing him a night of needless worry but also for getting drunk when I was on prescribed drugs. Eventually, though, he became more sympathetic, asking me how long I'd been depressed for and whether I was getting counselling. Keen to get him off the phone, I answered his questions as best I could, and he told me that we'd get together when he got back and try to sort out my problems. 'You've got to put the past behind you, Rob. Yvonne's gone. Think of the future and don't piss your life away.' I promised him I wouldn't and he signed off by saying that unless I pulled myself together I'd end up dead in a ditch somewhere. Utterly unaware how close that had already come to being a reality.
But at least he'd bought the story.
Now that I'd got rid of the only person who'd actually believed me, I was effectively on my own, and as I was an investment analyst turned writer, not a detective, this meant I needed some expert help.
I was still thinking what I was going to do about this when the landline started ringing. I sat up suddenly and my vision blacked out temporarily, taking several seconds to return. Still feeling pretty awful, I looked at my watch for the first time since Ramon had been killed, surprised to see that it was almost half past midnight. I reached for the receiver.
'Mr Fallon,' said Tina Boyd. 'Have you sobered up yet?'
I almost laughed at the sound of her voice. Even after everything that had happened, Tina Boyd still gave me confidence. But I was also aware that the man who'd come here tonight was no idiot and might have left behind some kind of bug to record any calls I made. It was time to start thinking like them.
I knew from research I'd done for Conspiracy that it was almost impossible for a private individual to bug a mobile, so right then it was my best bet.
'Can I call you back?' I said. 'Five minutes?'
'I'll be waiting,' she said, and cut the connection.
Tina was sitting at her desk drinking her third coffee of the night when Fallon called back.
'Where are you speaking from?' she asked him.
'I'm walking down my street.'
'Is it safe at this time of night?'
'A lot safer than my flat. I had a visit tonight.'
'What happened?'
'One of the kidnappers broke in and threatened me with a knife. He knew I'd been speaking to the police and he was the one who made me call you.'
'Which of them was it?'
'The Irish guy. The one who'd had the plastic surgery.'
'Can you give any further description of him? Something you may not have mentioned last night?'
'He had scarring round his chin. It looked a bit like someone had cut him with a bottle, but it wasn't that pronounced. I think the plastic surgery must have got rid of most of it, which makes me think that at one time he must have been hurt pretty badly.'
Tina frowned as she wrote down this information. It all seemed so improbable somehow, yet her initial suspicions that Fallon had indeed been telling the truth were turning out to be correct. 'This man didn't hurt you, did he?'
'No, but he left me in no doubt that he would if I carried on searching for Jenny. That's why I'm phoning you from four hundred yards down the road. I don't want anyone else listening in.'
'And are you sure you're not being followed now?'
'I'm being extra careful, I promise.'
'Glad to hear it. And don't worry. We can offer you protection if you need it.' But even as she said the words, Tina wondered if they actually could.
Fallon sighed. 'I think I'm going to need it. What did you find out that made you call me?'
She told him about the doctored CCTV footage and the doorman's criminal record.
'So, the bastard was involved.'
'Almost certainly, and that makes it a major criminal operation. If they're going to this much trouble and planning, then there's a very specific reason why they kidnapped Jenny. Her father claims that nothing's happened to her-'
'He's lying. He's got to be.'
'I agree. And I think he's lying because he's under duress, which means the kidnappers are in contact with him. But we still don't know why.'
'It's usually money, isn't it?'
'Usually, but I'd be surprised if it was in this case. I've got some background on Roy Brakspear. He's a widower who lost his wife to cancer five years ago, and he's the director and part owner of a reasonably profitable mid-sized company based in Cambridge which supplies raw materials to the pharmaceuticals and technology sectors. He takes a salary of one hundred and seventy thousand pounds per year and he holds fifteen per cent of the company's shares, which if he sold them tomorrow would net him about three hundred thousand. He's not going to be hitting the poverty line any time soon, but it doesn't make him a rich man. So there's something else, and I think we need to focus on Brakspear himself to find out what it is.'
'What do you need me to do?' asked Fallon, sounding eager to help.
'Right now, nothing. Go back home, get some sleep and leave the investigating to us.'
'Are you going to take finding Jenny seriously now? She's been gone twenty-four hours, and I'm really worried about her.'
'We've got enough evidence to move on this now so, yes, we are going to take it seriously. And I'll keep you informed of progress too, you have my word on that. But I want you to promise me you're not going to speak to anyone about this. Because if you do, it could jeopardize our inquiry.'
Fallon said he wouldn't, and she ended the call, returning to the pile of witness statements for the stabbing on the Holloway Road that afternoon.
It made the usual grim reading. A loud argument between a bunch of school kids, insults thrown, followed by a flurry of fists and feet, then suddenly one of them pulls a knife and plunges it into his nearest opponent. A single stab wound to the chest, delivered without thought of the consequences, and now a fifteen-year-old was in a hospital bed fighting for his life. Tina had never become inured to the casual violence she had to deal with and she found incidents like this – petty, pointless disputes that ended so horrifically and with so much attendant suffering – profoundly depressing. The only positive was that it wasn't going to be difficult to ID the perpetrator. This meant that CID resources could be freed up to look for Jenny. Tina had now decided to speak to DCI Knox about it as soon as she finished her shift. With Jenny missing for twenty-four hours now, time really was of the essence. It crossed her mind to go straight to the Met's Kidnap Unit but she knew they were snowed under with drugs-related cases and probably wouldn't take what she had that seriously. It would be easier if Knox referred it.
She yawned and reached for her cigarettes, deciding that she could probably get away with having one more at her desk, rather than puffing out of the toilet window. But as she lit it she saw an exhausted-looking DCI Knox approaching along the corridor. She'd just thrown the cigarette into the dregs of her coffee cup and deposited it under the table when he opened the door and came inside.
Knox was usually annoyingly upbeat and full of motivational psycho-babble, but tonight he didn't look very happy at all. 'Bad news,' he said wearily. 'Our stabbing's just become a murder. The kid died at midnight.'
Tina's heart sank. Not just because a fifteen-year-old had lost his life and a family would now be grieving, but also because of what it meant for Jenny Brakspear.
Tina would never get the resources she needed now.