When Tina Boyd was nineteen years old and in her first year at university, she was out drinking one night in one of the student union bars with some of the rowdier elements of her psychology course when some bright spark suggested they have a competition to see who could down a pint of lager the fastest. Two minutes later, eleven people – nine men, Tina, and a girl called Claire – had lined up along the bar with their drinks in front of them, while another of the girls acted as timekeeper.
The winning time, achieved by a sixteen-stone rugby-playing former public schoolboy called Josh, was six seconds. Second was Tina, in eight. No one else came close and five of the contestants didn't even finish theirs. Claire ended up with the head spins and had to go home.
That should have been that, but when Josh started bragging about his drinking prowess, Tina's competitive streak kicked in and she offered him a challenge. She would match him drink for drink for the course of the evening, with each of them choosing what to have in alternate rounds. In hindsight, it was a mind-numbingly stupid idea, since Josh was close to twice her weight, but Tina could be like that sometimes. Almost self-destructive in her determination.
Over the next two hours they downed tequilas, sambuccas, pints of bitter, even a Malibu and pineapple (surprisingly, Josh's choice). Tina's boyfriend begged her to stop. She hadn't. Not voluntarily anyway. Eventually she simply passed out in her seat and had to be taken back to her hall of residence, where she spent much of the night throwing up.
The next day, her boyfriend, a slightly built intellectual called Vernon, finished with her, claiming with exasperation that he couldn't go out with someone like her because she was out of control and simply didn't know when to stop. He was right, of course. He could have added that she never did things the easy way, either. It was why she'd got into so many scrapes down the years, both in her police career and beyond. Why she'd once ended up being taken hostage by a gunman and being shot in the ensuing crossfire, cheating death only by the angle of his gun.
But that was also only half the story, because the thing about Tina was she tended to get results. The shot that had hit her in the hostage incident was only a flesh wound and the man holding the gun to her head – the one she'd tracked down herself – was killed. After all the trials and tribulations of her adult life (and there'd been plenty) she was still standing, and she was still catching the bad guys, which meant she had to be getting something right.
So when DCI Knox rejected her request for permission to concentrate on the Jenny Brakspear kidnapping, she'd decided to go it alone. She'd gone to him at one of the few quiet moments in the shift, but as she reeled out what evidence she had it was clear he wasn't really listening. He'd switched off altogether when she was forced to tell him that not only was Jenny's father adamant she wasn't missing, but the man who'd made the initial report had since phoned in to claim that he'd been lying. Tina could understand Knox's scepticism. In the end, policework is a firefighting exercise. You have to constantly prioritize. And cases don't get much bigger than the murder of a schoolboy.
When she left the station just after six that morning, walking exhausted into a bright orange dawn, the name of the murder suspect was already known; it was now simply a matter of building the case against him. Tina could leave her colleagues to deal with that. More important for her was to formulate a plan to gather more evidence to get either Knox or the Kidnap Unit interested, because one way or another Jenny Brakspear's time was running out.
As she drove the short distance home, smoking a cigarette, she knew she was going to need to sleep first, otherwise she'd be useless. But Rob Fallon could still make himself useful.
It was time to give him his wake-up call.
'There's been a change of plan.'
'What's happened?' I asked, squinting against the brightness of the early-morning sun. It was 6.45 a.m. and I was walking down my street in the direction of the park, having been woken from an extraordinarily deep slumber ten minutes earlier.
'I can't get the help I need on the Brakspear case.'
'Why the hell not?' I asked, wondering what you had to do to get police assistance these days.
'One, we've got a murder inquiry on, and that takes precedence. Two, we still haven't got any concrete proof that anything's actually happened.'
I started to protest, but Tina cut me short. 'Listen, Mr Fallon, you're preaching to the converted. I don't like it any more than you do. But for the moment, we've just got to accept that we're on our own.'
This was the second occasion on which I really should have told her about what had happened to Ramon. The fact that he'd been killed in my house would definitely get police attention. The problem was, in the absence of a body, or indeed even a suspect, it might be attention of the wrong kind. Once again, it would be my word against everyone else's. Maybe even Tina wouldn't believe me this time. So I kept quiet about it. 'OK,' I sighed. 'So what do we do now?'
'I think Roy Brakspear's involved, and he's operating under duress. We need to find out why. When I phoned him early yesterday morning, he was at home. What I want to do is plant a listening device inside his house.'
'Is that legal?'
'Let me worry about that. I know someone who can get me the kit I need but it'll probably take me some time. In the meantime, I want you to drive up there.'
'How do you know I've got a car?'
'I checked you out, Mr Fallon. It pays to know who you're dealing with.'
You had to hand it to her. She was coolly efficient – the kind of person both Jenny and I needed. But it was still vaguely disconcerting to discover how easily she could access the details of my life.
'I want you to do some low-level surveillance of Roy 's home – I'll email you the address and directions. That means finding a spot where you're not going to look conspicuous or out of place, and watching it. I want to know if he's there or not, and if he is, if there's anyone there with him. He drives a silver Audi A4 saloon. If there are any other cars parked on his property, or just outside, make a note of their numbers and call me back with them straight away. I haven't got a clue about the layout of the place but if you feel you can get close to the house and have a look inside, do it, but on no account get yourself caught.' Her tone hardened. 'Do you understand that? Do nothing too risky and make sure your phone's turned off. And something else too: I'm putting my neck on the line for you here, so if the shit hits the fan and you get caught trespassing, don't mention my name. If you do, I'll deny we ever had this conversation.'
'What are you going to do?' I asked, feeling weirdly like one of the characters in my old book, Conspiracy.
'Get a few hours' sleep, then I'm going to track down those listening devices.'
'If you do manage to plant one and you find anything out, how are you going to tell your bosses without getting yourself implicated?'
'I'll think of something,' she said evenly. 'I always do.'
She took my email address and hung up, leaving me wondering what kind of police officer I was dealing with. I was hoping above all else it was one who got results, because otherwise it wasn't just Jenny's life on the line.
It was mine, too.
The Brakspear family home was an imposing detached house on the edge of a village not far from Cambridge that must have been pretty once but which had recently had a business park tacked on to the end of it. I drove past the front entrance but the security gates were closed and a high redbrick wall on either side prevented me from seeing much beyond, so I drove on another hundred yards and parked in a quiet tree-lined lane running off the main road.
It was ten past ten, the journey having been an extremely slow one thanks to heavy traffic on the M11. No one had been tailing me, or if they had they were damn good at it, and I felt a renewed sense of determination as I got out of the car and breathed in the fresh country air. At last it seemed I was actually doing something worthwhile in the hunt for Jenny, and if I could do anything to bring to justice the bastard who'd murdered Ramon, any risk I took would be worth it.
But they weren't the only things driving me. It was also the feeling that, after years of doing little more than existing, unsure about what direction I was heading in, I was finally actually living again.
Although the front of Brakspear's house faced the business park (which I imagine must have pissed him off when it was built), this was partly compensated by the fact that the property also backed directly on to an open field, which bordered the lane I'd just parked in. I climbed over the fence and made my way along its outer edge until I came to the wall at the back of the house. It was lower here, just over head height, with thick, impenetrable-looking leylandii hedges looming on the other side.
I was reluctant to trespass, particularly as there was no obvious exit route, but it was also clear that I wasn't going to find out anything from where I was standing. I tried the back gate but it was locked. So, checking that my mobile was switched to silent, I took a couple of steps back and did a fairly decent impression of a running jump, hauling myself over the top of the wall and sliding down the other side, getting scratched and snagged by the foliage all the way. It wasn't the most dignified of entrances, and I had to crawl on my belly commando-style under the hedge in order to poke my head out the other side.
The garden was mainly well-kept lawn with a stone patio running along the back of the house, complete with a table and chairs and a large Australian-style gas barbecue. It wasn't as big as I imagined and only about twenty yards separated me from the patio doors. They were shut, as were all the windows, even though the day was sunny and already warm – twenty degrees at least. There was something else too. The curtains were drawn behind all but one of the windows on the ground floor, which seemed odd, especially if Brakspear was there.
I lay where I was for several minutes, watching the one window with no curtains for any sign of activity inside, but there was nothing, and I quickly found myself becoming bored. I've never been the patient type, so I crawled out from under the hedge and, staying on my belly, made my way over to a neatly trimmed waist-height privet hedge that ran along one wall towards the house. I got to my feet and, using it as cover, walked, crouching, towards a wooden gate that provided access to the front.
I paused for a moment, listening for any sound coming from the other side. I heard nothing, so I slowly opened the gate. There were two cars in the driveway. One was Brakspear's Audi A4. The other was a dark blue Mazda. I took a couple of steps forward so I could read the number plate and took a photo of it on my mobile phone.
There was a scrape on the gravel behind me.
Then, before I could turn round, a hand grabbed me tightly by the shoulder.
'Who the hell are you?' demanded a well-built middle-aged man.
It had to be Roy Brakspear. He had exactly the same eyes as Jenny as well as the rounded nose. Although a big man, with a shock of curly grey hair, the aggression he was showing didn't look like it sat there naturally. He looked, it has to be said, like a nice guy, a typical middle-class dad in his fifties whose only vice was a little bit of over-indulgence where food was concerned.
'I'm a friend of Jenny's,' I said as firmly as I could, pulling away from his grip. 'I've been looking for her since Sunday night.'
His expression softened. 'Are you the lad who reported her missing?'
'Yes, I reported it,' I replied. 'And the police told me you said she went on holiday to Spain. But she was with me.'
He nodded, looking concerned. 'I thought she had, but it seems I was wrong.' He took my arm again, gently this time. 'Listen, you'd better come inside.'
Something wasn't right. I could sense it. Roy Brakspear was smiling at me but a bead of sweat was running down his forehead and he'd developed a tic in the dark patch below his left eye. He looked like he hadn't been sleeping much lately.
I had an awful feeling that if I went inside that house I might not come back out of it again. But I kept my cool. 'You need to speak to the police again, Mr Brakspear. I'll call them now.' I flicked open my mobile phone.
His smile immediately disappeared, and his grip on my arm tightened again. 'Let's do it from the house. Come on.'
Then he did a strange thing. He silently mouthed a word at me: 'Run.'
I tensed as the adrenalin pumped through me.
'You've come a long way,' he continued. 'You probably need a cup of tea or something. Then we can talk about what to do next. OK?'
Someone else was here somewhere. It was possible they were creeping up on me right now. Behind me the security gates were shut, and probably locked, and they were way too high to try to climb. That meant going back the way I'd come.
Different, conflicting emotions continued to scud across Brakspear's face like clouds. Doubt. Confusion. Sympathy. Fear.
In one sudden movement, I broke free from his grip and bolted past him, heading for the back garden. He made a surprisingly violent grab for my shirt, ripping it, but there was no way I was stopping for anyone and I kept going, stuffing the mobile in my pocket, seeing the boot sticking out behind the wall at the last possible moment.
The big shaven-headed thug – the one with the London accent from Jenny's apartment – suddenly appeared from where he'd been hiding round the corner wielding a heavy-looking ball-peen hammer. But I'd had a split second's notice of his hiding place, and that was enough. Lowering my head and fuelled by a surge of adrenalin, I charged him like a bull, hitting him hard in the stomach. I felt a stab of pain in my lower back as he caught me with the hammer, but he stumbled back and I managed to knock him out of the way, flailing my arms wildly to try to keep him off balance. I found myself pointing in the direction of the privet hedge and I charged right through it, making for the end of the garden, head down, like a sprinter.
I took a quick look round. Shaven Head was running across the lawn parallel to me, moving particularly fast for a man so big. He held the ball-peen hammer like a tomahawk, a furious expression on his face. He was trying to cut off my escape. I clenched my teeth, willing myself to go faster.
The hammer flew straight at me, spinning through the air, the aim perfect. I ducked, and it skimmed the top of my head, actually parting my hair.
Immediately, Shaven Head began fumbling in the waistband of his jeans. I didn't know what he had down there, but I could guess. Shit! Shit! Shit! Staring straight ahead, I charged into the leylandii and, finding a strength and agility I never knew I had, literally scrambled up the wall, diving headfirst down the other side and doing a painful somersault on to the path.
This time I didn't turn round. I was on my feet in a second and racing for the car, and freedom.
The call from Rob Fallon came through at 10.38 according to the alarm clock by Tina's bed, and it woke her from a deep slumber – for the second time in twenty-four hours.
He started talking as soon as she picked up. 'We've got a problem. I was caught at Brakspear's place. I only just got out.'
Tina listened in silence as Fallon poured out his story. He was talking ten to the dozen and it was clear he was still full of adrenalin.
'That's all we need,' she said when he'd finished. 'What did I tell you about not getting caught?'
'I know, but I've never done this sort of thing before. I did get a photo of the other guy's car on my phone, though. With the registration number.'
'Good. Text it to me as soon as you're off the phone.' She sat up in bed and stretched. 'How about you? Are you OK?'
'I've got a few cuts and bruises, but it could have been a lot worse.'
It almost had been. Tina knew she should never have sent him. It was always better to do these things yourself.
'Where are you now?' she asked him.
'About ten minutes away from Brakspear's house, heading back to the M11. Trying to put as much distance between me and them as possible.'
'I want you to go back.'
'What? Why?' He sounded stunned.
'Because now you've disturbed them they're probably going to want to get Brakspear out of there as soon as possible. If they haven't, and he's still there, then I think we're going to have to call in the cavalry.'
'Won't that put Jenny in danger, though?' he asked.
Tina sighed. It was a good question. 'Let me think about that,' she said, 'but right now, I want you to check if they're still there. Don't put yourself at risk or get out of the car. Just drive past and see if the Mazda's still at the front of the house. Then call me back straight away. OK?'
He said he would, although he didn't sound too enthusiastic about the prospect, and they ended the call.
Tina got out of bed and had a quick shower to wake herself up. She was pissed off with herself. This whole thing was running out of control. She was making decisions on the hoof because she was on her own and racing against the clock. She'd dealt with a kidnapping the previous year at SOCA when a fourteen-year-old girl, Emma Devern, had been abducted for ransom. That case had almost turned into tragedy, and that was with the full resources of SOCA concentrated on finding her. Now she was trying to do everything on her own and, to put it bluntly, she'd screwed up. The question was, what did she do now?
Fallon called back fifteen minutes later as she was making coffee. 'The Mazda's gone. Brakspear's car's still there.'
It was as she'd expected. There was no way the kidnappers could have stayed put with Fallon free. But it also made things harder. 'OK,' she said, weighing things up. 'Have you got anywhere you can stay for a few days? Somewhere you can lie low while we work out what to do?'
'Wouldn't it be easier if I just walked into a police station and asked for protection? This thing's getting too big for us now.'
'It would be if they believed you, but I'm not a hundred per cent sure they would.'
'Why not? We've got proof, haven't we? I saw one of Jenny's kidnappers at her father's house. Surely that means they've got her?'
'But you've already withdrawn your story once. If Brakspear was still at his house and we knew he was being held against his will, then we'd be able to get the police involved. But he's gone, and it's going to take a massive effort to convince the people who matter that they need to investigate. By that time, Jenny could be dead.'
'But we don't know for certain that the kidnapper took Brakspear with him. Maybe I could go back to the house and talk to him, persuade him to-'
'Mr Fallon,' Tina interrupted, 'do you honestly believe that after your unscheduled appearance the kidnapper hasn't taken Brakspear with him?'
Her words silenced him temporarily. When he finally spoke, he sounded weary. 'You say don't go to the police, just lie low for a while, but for how long? And what are we going to do in the meantime?'
'We need to change tactics,' she said quietly. 'Up the ante a little.'
'How?'
'Leave it with me. I've got a few calls to make, then I'll get back to you. In the meantime, stay away from home.'
'Don't leave it too long, DC Boyd.' Fallon sounded angry and frustrated, and Tina couldn't blame him. 'Pretty soon, the guy who threatened to kill me is going to know that I didn't heed his warning, and he's not going to give me a second chance. I'm a target now.'
'Killing you will only risk drawing attention to themselves, so try to keep calm.'
There was a long pause at the other end before Fallon said something about keeping calm being a lot easier said than done. Then he cut the connection.
Poor sod, thought Tina. She felt bad for putting him in such a precarious position, but knew too that what she'd said about the likely police scepticism if he requested protection was true. Even so, she felt she needed guidance on a way forward. She hadn't wanted to involve Mike Bolt but no longer felt she had any choice. He also had the resources to track down Brakspear's location, using either his mobile number or the registration plate of the mysterious Mazda that had been on his drive that morning, and which was soon going to be on Tina's own phone.
Mike wasn't answering. She left a message asking her to call him urgently, then lit a cigarette. She had a plan B, one that she'd been formulating in the shower, but it was risky, and she'd hoped she wouldn't have to use it.
She looked at her watch. It had just turned eleven, and the clock was ticking inexorably onwards. She'd give Mike until 11.30 to call her back. If he didn't, she knew she'd simply have to take her chances.
There was no other way.
Where I was going to lay my head was a problem, and one I thought about for most of the journey back to London. Under normal circumstances I would have gone to Dom, but he was away until the following day and I'd promised myself that I wouldn't involve him now. There was always Yvonne and Chloe (and Nigel, of course), but they were away too, and even if they'd been back at home in France I'd never have risked hurting them by my presence.
There wasn't really anyone else. Not even family-wise. My mum had died when I was fifteen after a long and protracted battle against cancer. My older brother lived in New Zealand, where he'd been for most of the last decade, and my dad now lived with my stepmother (a pleasant woman, it has to be said) in South Africa. So I was pretty much on my own.
It crossed my mind to try Maxwell, but he'd only ask too many questions, and I really didn't want to have to tell him anything.
In the end, I decided to go online and find a cheap hotel somewhere in the sprawling anonymity of the West End, where I wasn't going to be found.
First, though, I needed to eat. Hardly a thing had passed my lips in the last forty-eight hours, and anything that had had come straight back up again. I was in dire need of sustenance. When I got back into north London, I headed south until I found a suitably grimy-looking café on the Edgware Road where I consumed a huge fry-up of bacon, sausage, black pudding and just about anything else greasy and coronary-inducing they could fling on the plate, washed down with orange juice and two cups of strong coffee.
After I'd polished off the lot, I sat back and relaxed for the first time since all this started. True, I was in the most serious danger I'd been so far, because the people I was up against must now want me dead, whatever Tina Boyd might be saying to the contrary. But at that moment in time, in a busy café far from my usual haunts, it didn't feel that way. It felt instead like I was doing something good, something worthwhile. Maybe for the first time in my life.
Maybe this was the reason I was throwing myself so wholeheartedly into the hunt for a girl who, in reality, I hardly knew. Maybe, too, a part of me enjoyed the adventure. I've travelled the world and visited other cultures. Dived with sharks on the Barrier Reef; travelled up the Amazon in a steamboat; climbed to the summit of Kilimanjaro. But all those things are sanitized adventures. Now I was doing something that was truly risky – suicidal some might say, given that I was unarmed and untrained. But I didn't care. If I got through it in one piece and found out what had happened to Jenny, then at the very least Yvonne might think there was more to me than she'd always thought.
I was on the way back to the car, having paid my bill, when Tina called. I looked at my watch. Twenty past one.
'I want to escalate things, Mr Fallon,' she told me, 'and I'm going to need your help.'
There was a grim seriousness to her tone that I hadn't heard before. 'OK,' I said uncertainly, stopping by the car.
'I'll be totally honest with you. It's potentially going to put you in a lot of danger.'
'I'm already in a lot of danger,' I said, sounding braver than I felt. 'What is it?'
I listened as she gave me the details, and when she'd finished she asked me if I was prepared to go through with it. 'Right now, I believe this is our best way forward,' she added. 'I'll keep the situation under review and if we get any hard evidence of what's happened then I'll bring it straight to my colleagues, and get you full protection.'
I could hear my heart beating hard in my chest as I thought about what was being asked of me.
'You don't have to do it,' she said, then paused. 'The ball's in your court.'
I thought of Jenny. I thought of Ramon. I had no choice. 'Let's go for it.'
John Gentleman, the doorman on duty at Jenny Brakspear's apartment building the night she was abducted, lived in a grimy-looking three-storey tenement building in one of the less attractive parts of Hackney which backed on to a well-used railway bridge. Unlike Jenny's place, there was no security door, and Tina walked straight inside.
Gentleman's flat was on the second floor and Tina didn't meet anyone on the walk up. The flooring in the corridor outside was cheap linoleum and she moved quietly along it, trying to remain as casual as possible. She stopped at his door and put her ear against it, hearing nothing beyond. The door was protected by three separate locks – no surprise in a place as rundown as this, where drug-related burglary was bound to be common, and no real obstacle to someone who knew what he or she was doing.
During her time in SOCA, Tina had learned to break into buildings quickly and efficiently. It was all part of the job. Most people didn't realize that it was perfectly legal for the authorities to break in and bug any property if they had grounds to believe that the individuals living there were committing serious crime.
But as Tina got to work on the new five-bar lock using a small set of hand picks from her SOCA days, she knew that what she was doing would cost her her job immediately if she was caught. It didn't deter her. Nor was it the first time she'd been in this position, breaking the laws she was meant to uphold. It wasn't that Tina didn't believe in the rule of law. She did – broadly speaking, anyway – but she'd also seen its weaknesses at first hand. Justice wasn't always done, and the wrong people sometimes walked free. Paul Wise, her lover's murderer, was a glaring example of this, and she used him as her justification whenever she bent the rules, as she was doing now. She hadn't wanted to go this far, though. It was only because she still hadn't heard from Mike Bolt, even though she'd left a second message on his voicemail, that she'd reluctantly concluded that she had to act on her own.
The five-bar took nearly two minutes to open. She was out of practice, and she also had to work hard to keep quiet and calm, knowing that she could be disturbed at any time. Across the corridor she could hear rap music playing and the sound of voices shouting at each other, and she was sweating by the time she finished.
The other two locks were older and less sturdy and took her thirty seconds between them. Then, after a final listen at the door, she opened it and slipped inside, feeling a rush of illicit excitement.
She found herself in a small, sparsely decorated living room. At the far end a door was partly ajar and beyond it she could hear soft snoring. John Gentleman was clearly out for the count. She shut the front door, spotting his landline handset on the mantelpiece next to a photo of a young girl of about five or six in school uniform, smiling at the camera. This would be his granddaughter, Tegan. Tina had done her research on Gentleman. He lived alone, having divorced eight years earlier. The sight of his granddaughter suddenly made her feel guilty, because it brought home to her exactly what she was doing.
Forcing herself to concentrate, she crept across the room and peered round the bedroom door. Gentleman was flat out on his back in a pair of baggy boxer shorts, the covers half off him. Tina glanced round the room, looking for any other handsets, but there weren't any. This was good. It made her task easier.
Retreating into the living room, shutting the door as much as she could, she picked up the handset from the mantelpiece and took the back off it. Then she reached into her jacket and pulled out a thin piece of plastic about three inches long and less than half an inch wide, which she inserted into a space inside. This was a handset tilt switch, a phone-tapping device with a tiny mike and its own power source which would activate automatically as soon as the handset was lifted up and would record every conversation made on it until the battery flattened. Tina had picked it up on the way over here. It wasn't exactly cutting edge, and could be detected easily by someone who knew what he was doing, but she knew Gentleman wouldn't know so it served her purpose well enough.
Having put the handset back together and replaced it on the mantelpiece, she took a pay-as-you-go mobile phone she'd picked up earlier from Carphone Warehouse from the same pocket. She switched it on and attached its hands-free kit before placing it in the corner of the room behind the TV, where it wouldn't be seen. This was her back-up listening device, in case the handset tilt switch didn't function properly. Although only a cheap standard phone, she'd made some alterations to the settings menu on the way over, turning off the ringer tone and setting it to auto answer, which would turn it into an open mike as soon as she called the number and allow her to listen in on anything said in the room. Even now, she was still taken aback by how easy it was to eavesdrop on people. Gentleman would no doubt discover the phone eventually, but by then she would have the information she wanted and there would be no way of tracing it back to her.
She left the flat as quietly as she'd entered it, using the picks to relock the door. Then, keeping her head down to remain as inconspicuous as possible, she walked back to the car. It was only when she was inside with a cigarette in her mouth that she allowed herself a small smile for a job well done.
She pulled out her mobile. It was ten to two, and still no call from Mike. Time, then, to put the plan into action.
She called Rob Fallon. 'Go for it,' she told him, before disconnecting.
Then she switched on the receiver, connecting to the handset tilt switch in Gentleman's phone, put in her earpiece and waited.
I was standing in a phone box on the Edgware Road when I got the call from Tina. As soon as she'd hung up I picked up the receiver, took a deep breath, and dialled John Gentleman's landline number.
It rang for a long time before going to message. I didn't leave one, just counted to five and called again.
This time he answered, sounding groggy and pissed off. 'Who's this?'
I took a deep breath, then spoke clearly and slowly, as Tina had instructed. 'John Gentleman, I know that you're involved in the kidnap of Jenny Brakspear who lives in the apartment building where you work. You provided the kidnappers with a key to get into her apartment, you broke the security camera at the exit to the underground car park so they could get back out, you cleaned up after them-'
'I don't know what you're talking about!' he shouted, but there was uncertainty in his voice.
'You do, and if you admit it to me now and tell me who the kidnappers are, then I'll make sure your name doesn't get mentioned.'
'I told you: I don't know what you're fucking talking about!'
'You know they're going to kill her, don't you? And when they kill her, you're going to be an accessory to murder, and that means years behind bars. And you know exactly what that's like, don't you?'
'Who the fuck are you?'
'The one person who can help you. You've only got one chance to get out of this, Mr Gentleman, and that's to cooperate. Tell the police who you're working for, otherwise I'm going to spend every waking hour for the rest of my life building a case against you, and I'll make sure you go down for murder. Do you understand me?'
'You're that bloke who was with her, aren't you? Well, you listen to me! You can't prove a fucking thing! All right? And you're a dead fucking man messing around in stuff that doesn't concern you!'
'We'll see,' I said, and cut the connection.
Now there was absolutely no way back.
I called Tina. 'It's done.'
'I know,' she said, 'I heard you. Very menacing. Now we'll see what he does.'
It didn't take Gentleman long to react. As Tina listened, he made a call out from the landline, just as she'd hoped. Unfortunately, she had no way of knowing the number he was calling, but that didn't matter. If necessary, she could contact the phone company and find that information out later.
There was no answer at the other end, just an automated voice asking him to leave a message.
'I've just had a call from that bloke who saw you at the flat on Sunday night,' said Gentleman breathlessly into the phone. 'The bastard's threatening to go to the law and turn me in. This whole thing's getting out of fucking hand. You've got to do something because I ain't taking the rap for it. Call me back ASAP, OK? I'm at home.' He reeled out the number. 'I'm getting very worried here, and if I don't hear back from you soon I'm going to go to the law myself!' He slammed the handset back in its cradle, and the tilt switch stopped recording.
Tina exhaled. She'd just heard the final proof that the kidnapping had actually occurred. Now she knew she had to do something. Unfortunately, by illegally tapping Gentleman's phone she'd put herself in a difficult position. If she went with the recording to DCI Knox, or the Kidnap Unit, she was going to have to answer some very inconvenient questions. But if she didn't…If she didn't, it might cost Jenny Brakspear her life.
Tina suddenly felt completely alone. She knew who she needed to speak to. But the one person who'd be able to get her out of this predicament and move things forward without her losing her job was currently off the radar.
'Where the hell are you, Mike?' she whispered, staring out of the windscreen towards Gentleman's apartment block.
She stubbed out her cigarette, took a drink from a bottle of mineral water on the seat next to her, and phoned Bolt for a third time. Once again he didn't pick up. Once again she left a message, except this time she said that the kidnapping had definitely occurred and that she needed his help desperately. She cursed herself afterwards for using that word. It made her feel weak. Yet, if truth be told, she was feeling pretty desperate.
She wondered what Gentleman was doing, and phoned the mobile she'd left behind his sofa, prefixing the number with 141, so that Gentleman wouldn't be able to trace the call back to her own mobile on the off-chance he discovered the handset before she had a chance to retrieve it. It auto-answered and went to open mike. She could hear movement inside the apartment. It sounded like he was pacing up and down, but the reception wasn't very good. He was definitely panicking, and it crossed her mind to knock on his door, show him her warrant card and wait to hear what he had to say. But there was no guarantee that he could help locate Jenny, or even ID the people who'd taken her.
So, sweating in the heat of the day, Tina sat in her car and pondered her next move while listening to Gentleman as he moved about in his apartment. He occasionally let slip an angry muffled curse, but soon she grew bored of listening to nothing and ended the call. The street was deadly quiet, only the occasional car and pedestrian appearing, and after a while she shut her eyes and dozed off.
She was woken with a start by the rumble of an engine, and as she opened her eyes she saw a dark blue Toyota Land Cruiser with blacked-out windows drive slowly past before pulling up on the other side of the road about twenty yards up from Gentleman's place.
A white man in dark glasses and a baseball cap got out the passenger side and took the briefest of glances up and down the street. The day was warm, mid-twenties and humid, yet he was still wearing a jacket, and even from twenty yards away Tina could see that the pale, almost translucent skin of his face was stretched tight from plastic surgery.
It was the kidnapper who'd threatened Rob.
She grabbed her Nikon camera from the seat beside her and started taking pictures. She managed to get several good ones in profile before the suspect turned and started walking in the direction of Gentleman's flat. She turned her attention to the Land Cruiser, getting a shot of its number plate as the driver accelerated away and disappeared under the railway bridge.
The suspect walked up to Gentleman's building, paused for just one second, and then went directly inside.
Tina tensed, listening. A part of her was pleased. She'd got a photo of one of the kidnappers, and given the way he looked it shouldn't be too hard to put a name to him. But another part of her was extremely concerned, because the manner of his arrival, and his demeanour and appearance, suggested he wasn't here to bolster Gentleman's morale.
She looked at her watch, made a mental note of the time – 2.45 – and phoned the mobile in the flat again, listening as it was auto-answered at the other end.
For the first few seconds there was silence. Then she heard a faint knock on the door, and the sound of footfalls. Gentleman said 'Who is it?' but Tina couldn't hear any reply. There was the sound of the door being unlocked, then Gentleman said something else, but this time it was unintelligible.
And then nothing. Not a sound for at least ten seconds. She thought she heard the door closing again, but couldn't be sure.
Tina frowned. Keeping the phone to her ear, she picked up the Nikon with her free hand.
Thirty seconds passed before she heard the deep engine rumble of the Land Cruiser. She watched in her wing mirror as it drove by her for a second time, heading back in the direction of the railway bridge. As the vehicle reached Gentleman's building, the driver slowed. A second later, the man in the cap and sunglasses walked out the front door.
Tina flinched. He was alone. Where the hell was Gentleman?
She dropped the phone, zoomed in with the Nikon and got off a couple more shots as he opened the passenger door, keeping his head down. As the Land Cruiser pulled away for a second time, Tina picked up the phone again and heard nothing but silence coming from Gentleman's apartment. She began to get an ominous feeling in the pit of her stomach.
She looked up at the second-floor windows. Nothing was moving up there. Cursing, she called Gentleman's landline. It rang and rang, finally going to message. She looked up his mobile number in her notebook and called that. It went to message too.
Either he was no longer at home or, far more likely, he was dead. Tina knew she'd miscalculated. If Gentleman had been killed, there was no way of avoiding the fact that it was her fault, because she was the one who'd set events in motion. 'Shit,' she whispered, 'what have I done?' She knew the answer: she'd acted like an amateur, and now the repercussions were going to be enormous.
She was still professional enough to know that she had some extremely valuable evidence in her possession, however. She pulled her laptop from under the passenger seat, plugged the camera into it, and watched as the photos she'd just taken downloaded. She then opened up her email account and sent the photos to Rob Fallon's and Mike Bolt's email addresses with the same message for both – Do you recognize this man? – before signing out and replacing the laptop under the seat.
There was no point phoning Bolt – she'd left enough messages for him already – so she called Fallon instead, asking him where he was.
'In the West End, looking for a hotel room. What's happening?'
'I'll give you a full briefing later. In the meantime, get into your email account. I've just sent you some photos. Download them on to a USB stick but don't show them to anyone until you hear from me. Understand?'
'Sure,' answered Fallon. He started to say something else but Tina said she'd phone him in an hour, and ended the call.
She stretched in her seat and sighed. What the hell was she going to do now?
Then the passenger door opened and the man in the cap and sunglasses climbed inside, holding a short-barrelled pistol with a silencer attached. 'Start driving now,' he said calmly, 'or you're dead.'
Mike Bolt was shattered. He hated inter-departmental meetings at the best of times, but when they dragged on and on, as this one with the people from the Financial Intelligence Unit had, they truly pissed him off. He, Mo Khan, his own boss, Big Barry Freud, and three other members of the team had gone into the meeting room at half past ten that morning and were only just emerging now, almost four and a half hours later, at five to three. Lunch had been sandwiches that tasted of plastic, eaten at the table while various people had continued to drone on, and now Bolt's back was aching badly and he was still hungry.
'Is it just me,' he asked Mo as they walked back to the team office, 'or are we in exactly the same place with Paul Wise as we were four hours ago?'
'I don't know,' answered Mo, sounding dazed. 'I'm too tired to think. But I wouldn't bet on an arrest being imminent.'
Bolt grunted, switching his phone off silent. 'My sentiments exactly.'
The meeting had been a hugely detailed rehash of what was in the report. There'd been the usual promises of greater cooperation between the various departments within SOCA, but aside from a few recommendations from the FIU people, who were going to put a degree of pressure on the various people involved in converting Paul Wise's money from dirty to clean, there was still no plan for bringing him to justice, or even curtailing his activities.
As far as Bolt was concerned, there were way too many meetings in SOCA and it was slowing them all down. Not for the first time in these past few months he hankered for a return to the good old days when he was part of the Met's Flying Squad, facing the comparatively straightforward task of chasing down armed robbers. At least you knew where you were with them.
The phone bleeped and he saw he had three messages, all from Tina Boyd. He wondered what was so urgent that she'd called that many times. As he listened to them, he realized that there had clearly been some major developments in the kidnap case she'd spoken to him about the previous day. Still, he was surprised she wanted to talk to him about it rather than her bosses at Islington CID.
He pressed call-back but it said her phone was switched off, which seemed odd if she was so keen to get hold of him. He sighed, hoping she hadn't got herself into trouble, knowing it wouldn't be the first time. Tina had a habit of relying heavily on her initiative and being prepared to go it alone on investigations, and occasionally she wasn't very good at judging when to stop. The positive side to this was that she usually got results. But, he thought grimly, it wasn't always such a positive if she was out there alone, dealing with the wrong kind of people.
'Anything the matter, boss?' asked Mo as they got back to the office.
'Nothing exciting,' Bolt replied, unsure about how much to tell Mo, who'd never got on that well with Tina, and who probably wouldn't approve of him encouraging her to follow up on her leads.
Although the team worked in an open-plan office, Bolt had his own small room at the far end. He went in there now and tried Tina's number a second time. Still switched off. He sat back at his desk and opened up his email screen on the PC.
There were ten new messages from various people, which was about average, but straight away he saw that the most recent one was from Tina, and that it had been sent just ten minutes ago. He opened it and read the message: Do you recognize this man?
There were five photos attached. He double-clicked on the first one. It was a profile shot of a man in a cap and sunglasses. The quality was good – Bolt could see that the skin on his pale face was tight, as if he'd had plastic surgery – but the subject was clearly well disguised. The second shot was similar but with less of the subject's face showing. The third was of the back of a Toyota Land Cruiser on a residential street. He took down its registration number, wishing Tina had given a bit more of an explanation in her email as to what this was all about. Then he opened photo number four.
This one was a close-up, full-frontal shot of the man in the cap and sunglasses from the chest upwards. He was trying to keep his head down and wasn't looking at the camera, but even so, there was something familiar about him. Bolt expanded the photo until it filled the screen, then focused on the pale face. It looked like the man had suffered burns at one time because the plastic surgery looked more like repair work than anything cosmetic. He zoomed in on the chin. The quality got worse, the picture beginning to blur, but a rectangle of skin lined with scar tissue remained distinctive. It was about half the size of a credit card and much fainter than it had been before, but unmistakable nonetheless.
Bolt felt a physical jolt. He took a deep breath and zoomed out again so that he was back to just the face. 'Jesus, it can't be,' he whispered. 'Not you.'
He turned away from the screen and called out to Mo.
'Is this who I think it is?' he asked, turning the monitor round as Mo came into the office.
Mo stared at the picture for a long time.
'It's him, isn't it?' said Bolt, zooming in again and pointing out the scar.
'It is,' said Mo at last. 'It's Hook. Who sent you this?'
Bolt's throat felt dry as he answered. 'Tina Boyd. About ten minutes ago. I'm guessing she was the one who took the photo.'
'Have you spoken to her yet?'
Bolt shook his head. 'No. Her phone's switched off. I just tried it.'
'Do you know when she took it?'
'No, but I'm guessing it was probably today. And here in London.'
Mo whistled through his lips. 'So Hook's back in town. There's got to be a very good reason why he'd risk his neck to be back here.'
Bolt dialled Tina's mobile again. It was still off.
'Well, whatever it is,' he said, 'I'm truly hoping he hasn't crossed paths with Tina. Because if he has…'
He let the sentence trail off. They both knew all too well what Hook was capable of.
Tina stared straight ahead as she drove through the streets of Hackney in the direction of the A12, as per the gunman's instructions, making absolutely sure that she avoided any eye contact, not wanting to give him an excuse to put a bullet in her.
She was trying to remain as calm as possible but it was damn hard, and she could feel herself sweating as she tried to figure out how to get out of this situation. She'd been in tight corners before, facing the wrong end of a gun, and had come out of them in one piece, but there was no guarantee that it would happen again, and she had a very bad feeling about the man next to her. Most criminals, even the well-organized professional ones, tended to exhibit signs of nerves, particularly when they were pointing a gun at someone, but this guy was sitting there with an almost Zen-like calmness, and in Tina's experience that made him extremely dangerous.
She stopped at a busy junction as the lights went red. Outside the car window the street was thronged with passers-by swarming around one another like ants, only feet away, yet as good as a million miles. No one looked at Tina, or caught her eye. A group of schoolchildren crossed in front of the car, one of them scraping his bag against the bonnet. They were so close she could hear their banter – heard one of them call his friend a name. She tensed, looking for the right moment to make her move.
'I know what you're thinking,' he said, and once again his thick Northern Irish accent sounded strange to Tina. It didn't really fit with the delicate, almost feminine features of his face. 'You're thinking that now's a good time to make a break for it. That I won't dare shoot you in broad daylight with a lot of people around. And I can understand that. But I'm afraid you'd be making a big mistake. You'd never even get a hand on the handle before I put a bullet in your heart. The rounds in this pistol are low-velocity so there'd be no exit wound, no smashed windows. And, with this suppressor, no noise. You know how impersonal London is, the way its citizens hurry on by minding their own business. I guarantee no one will have any idea that you've just been murdered.'
Tina didn't say anything. He'd read her thoughts. The lights turned green, and any chance she'd had (and in truth there had been none) was gone. She pulled away, indicating right.
'So, pretty lady, who are you? And what were you doing taking photos of me?'
She knew she was going to have to play this carefully. If she said the wrong thing, she was dead. 'My name's Tina Boyd, and I'm a police officer.'
'And what were you doing on that street? You can't have known I'd be coming by, so you must have been there for a reason. What is it?'
Tina knew there was no point lying. Not now. 'I was watching a property.'
'Ah, the one belonging to our friend Mr Gentleman, I'll wager.'
'That's right.'
'Interesting.'
'Look,' she said with as much confidence as she could muster, 'you may as well give yourself up. It's the best way.'
The man let out a low chuckle, his lips hardly moving. 'Now why would I want to do that? You appear to be unarmed and in no position to threaten me, and any colleagues you might have don't appear to be – how shall I put it? – beating a path to your door.' He turned round in his seat and looked through the back window. 'Do they?'
Again, Tina spoke with a confidence she didn't feel. 'My colleagues know where I am and they're on the way.'
'Is that right? And is it them you were talking to on your mobile phone just now?'
'Yes, so I really wouldn't do anything stupid. They'll throw away the key if anything happens to me.'
'I think, my love, that they would throw away the key if they caught me anyway. I've already killed one person today.' Out of the corner of her eye she could see him regarding her, his thin lips forming a tight smile. 'Our mutual friend, Mr Gentleman. How long do you think I'll get for snuffing him out?'
Tina stiffened. She thought of the photo of Gentleman's granddaughter on the mantelpiece.
'He was a pain in the arse,' continued the man with the gun, enjoying her reaction, leaning forward now so his mouth was right next to her ear, stroking the gun against her belly. 'I'd like to have finished him off more slowly – it's always more… satisfying that way – but I didn't have the time.'
He ran his lips across her earlobe, licking and nibbling it. 'Give me your phone,' he whispered gently. 'And don't hesitate or I'll kill you.'
Tina's skin was crawling but she refused to allow herself to flinch or pull away. Prising one hand from the wheel, she took it out of her pocket and handed it over.
As he flipped open the cover and began scrolling through the menu, Tina came to a halt behind stationary traffic at the next junction, and once again she thought about escape. It was a huge risk as this bastard definitely wasn't bluffing. But it was an even bigger one staying put, because she was pretty damn sure he wasn't going to let her live.
'Ah, so you weren't talking to your colleagues when I arrived. You were talking to another of our mutual friends, Mr Fallon. Now, he really is a pain in the arse. Are you sure you're a police officer? You wouldn't be joshing me now, would you?' His tongue flicked out like a lizard's, wetting his lips.
Then, without warning, he lunged forward, forcing the gun between her legs so that the end of the silencer was pushed hard against her groin. 'What's going on?' he demanded, his eyes boring into the side of her face. 'Tell me or I'll shoot you right here, right now.'
'I'm moonlighting,' Tina answered with an unavoidable flinch, staring straight ahead, only vaguely aware of the world outside. 'Doing work for Fallon.'
'Interesting. He really is very persistent.'
As the traffic began to move again, he switched the phone off, snapped off the cover with his teeth, pulled out the SIM card and pocketed it, then opened the window and threw out the pieces.
Tina cursed inwardly. This guy knew what he was doing, getting rid of the one item that could be used to trace her.
He picked up the Nikon. 'Now, these photos you took. Did you send them to Mr Fallon?'
'No,' she said firmly, hoping fervently that he hadn't been watching her car when she sent the photos on the laptop. She was just trying to stay alive now, hoping that if he didn't think she'd done that much to ID him he might let her go. It was a long shot, but when you've got a gun thrust between your legs, you tend to cling to long shots.
The man with the gun deleted the photos from the Nikon with his free hand and casually tossed it out of the window.
A bead of sweat ran down Tina's eyelid and into her eye. She blinked it away angrily. 'That camera cost me five hundred pounds,' she said coldly.
'If you hadn't been snooping around in other people's business, you wouldn't have lost it.'
She wiped her forehead, feeling a desperate urge for a cigarette. 'Do you mind if I smoke?'
'You've a gun pressed into your cunt and you're thinking about your next cigarette?' He chuckled again. 'You've got spirit, my love. I like that. Go on then.'
Tina reached down and pulled the pack and the lighter from where they were nestled in the cup holder. 'Do you want one?'
'No thanks. I prefer more enjoyable vices.'
He slipped the gun out from between her legs and rubbed it gently up and down her thighs, never taking his eyes off her.
Ignoring his gaze, Tina lit a cigarette and took a long drag, knowing that it was essential she keep talking to him. It was always more difficult to kill someone when you'd established a connection with them, although this guy sounded like he might well be the exception to the rule.
'Have you noticed something?' she asked him.
'What?' He sounded interested.
'I haven't looked at you once. I haven't seen your face.'
'You took those photos of me, didn't you?'
'From a distance, and with you wearing sunglasses and a cap. I can't describe you. Also, I've got no incentive to go to the police. I got Fallon to call Gentleman to try to panic him, so if you've killed him, then that's my fault. In other words, I'm going to keep quiet. So, rather than kill me and open up a whole world of shit, you might as well let me go. I'll get out of the car and I won't say another word to anyone. I promise.'
Out of the corner of her eye she saw his smile widen a little.
'Thanks for the advice,' he said, 'but it's OK.' He leaned forward again, running his nose softly up her neck. Sniffing. 'I'm quite enjoying the company.'
'What are you going to do to me?' she asked, trying hard to keep her voice even, more frightened than she'd been in years. Perhaps ever.
'Why, I'd have thought that was obvious,' he said quietly. Then he grabbed her by the chin, jerking her face round so she was looking directly into his pale face, even though they were travelling at close to thirty miles an hour. 'I'm going to kill you.'
It had just turned four o'clock when I finally found an internet café on a side street near Bloomsbury in the heart of the West End, and signed into my email account. The day was sunny, the streets were crowded, and I was hot and bothered, having been trooping round for much of the afternoon buying clothes and provisions and then looking for somewhere to check my mail, all the time waiting for news about what Tina was up to, because it was clear she was up to something.
I clicked open her email, saw the message, and downloaded the photos.
The first one stopped me dead. It was him. The strange-looking Irish kidnapper. I could only assume Tina had taken this photo outside John Gentleman's place. Seeing his face now made me go cold, bringing back black, terrible memories that I knew were going to stay with me for the rest of my days. I scrolled through more of the photos, finding it difficult to believe that this man had abducted Jenny and murdered Ramon in cold blood. He looked so much more ordinary in a cap and sunglasses.
I wear a four-gigabyte memory stick round my neck which contains my most up-to-date drafts of Conspiracy as well as my book on Maxwell, and I copied all the photos on to it. I'm not the kind of person to rely too heavily on technology, though, so before I deleted them on the PC I printed them off in colour on one of the café's printers, paid the blank-eyed man at the desk, and headed out.
Now that the Irishman had finally come out into the open, I was itching for an update from Tina. In our last conversation she'd said she'd call in an hour, but that was an hour and twenty minutes ago, so I figured I could get away with hassling her.
Her phone was switched off. I waited five minutes, then tried again. Same message. I remembered only too well what this man was capable of – how he'd managed to conceal himself in my flat, listening to Ramon and I talking before striking silently and coldly in the space of seconds. If Tina had been taking photos of him, she'd have had to get close. Maybe too close.
I walked the streets of the West End for a while, trying her number, always in vain, waiting for a call that I had an ominous feeling was not going to come.
And it didn't.
My car was parked near Belsize Park Tube station and I took the Northern Line to get it. By the time I arrived, I had a plan. It was a fairly basic one, as most of mine tended to be, but it would have to do.
I'd picked up an A to Z some time earlier, and now I drove across north London through the choking rush-hour traffic until I came to a quiet rundown street of cheap 1960s housing. I've got a good memory for facts and figures and I remembered John Gentleman's address from when I'd been round to see him at the apartment block on the night Jenny was kidnapped. Since Tina's last known location was outside Gentleman's flat, I figured it was as good a place as any to start looking for her. Risky perhaps, but I was running low on options.
But as I drove under a railway bridge, hoping to see Gentleman's building come up on the right, I was forced to come to a stop. Ahead of me, police vans were parked on both sides of the road and lines of bright yellow scene-of-crime tape ran across it with a sign below saying POLICE NOTICE: ROAD CLOSED. A cluster of onlookers had gathered round the outside of the cordoned-off area, looking excited, while a group of men and women in top-to-toe white suits were trooping in and out of a clapped-out building with sludge-grey paintwork.
I knew without checking the number that this had to be Gentleman's place. And, like everyone else, I've seen enough crime programmes on the TV to know that the presence of this many police, particularly the ones in white suits, means that something extremely serious has taken place. Like murder.
As I sat staring at the scene, trying to take it all in, a uniformed cop approached the car, waving at me to back up. Heeding his instructions, I turned round and found a parking spot further back the other way before returning on foot, looking round for any sign of Tina.
I tried her number again. Still off.
'Do you know what's happened here?' I asked a couple of overdressed old ladies who were tutting and shaking their heads as they watched the police at work.
'Murder,' growled one. 'Some poor sod killed in his own home.'
'Just keeps getting worse,' said the other, continuing to shake her head. 'You wonder when it's all going to stop.'
'They should hang 'em,' said the first lady. 'Bring back the death penalty. That'd sort it out.'
I thanked them and walked round the scene-of-crime tape and through the onlookers to the other side of the street. But still I couldn't see Tina. I went to the top of the road, checked the parked cars. They were all empty.
Where the hell was she?
I looked at my watch. It was nearly six p.m. More than three hours since we'd last spoken; two since the time she'd told me she'd ring. The sun's rays were weakening as evening began to draw in, and I got a leaden feeling in my gut.
Maybe I should have gone to the police there and then. In hindsight, it would have been the best move. But what stopped me once again was the fear that they wouldn't believe me, particularly my story about Ramon, and that I'd end up a suspect, even if I showed them the photos I had.
Instead, I decided to turn to the one man I'd avoided throughout all this. The subject of my book Enforcer, and my last resort.
Maxwell.
Five years earlier, not long after Mike Bolt had joined the National Crime Squad, the organization that became SOCA, he'd found himself involved in a case that had ended up having a lasting impact on him.
It started when a three-man gang of Jamaican thugs based in Dalston took to holding up drug dealers at gunpoint and relieving them of their product and their money. These men were extremely violent and, on the one occasion they did meet resistance, they shot the dealer dead and seriously wounded his bodyguard, sending out an ominous message to all those who might defy them. In fact, so successful did they become that for a short while the supply of crack and heroin in the borough plummeted as the other dealers moved out to safer areas. The gang's luck, however, was always going to run out, and when they robbed two crackhouses belonging to Nicholas Tyndall, a high-level gangster in neighbouring Islington, getting away with tens of thousands in cash and drugs, it finally did.
Tyndall was not the type of man to let such blatant disrespect go unpunished. Because he had a great deal more power and influence than the dealers the Jamaicans had robbed in the past, it hadn't taken him long to identify them. Incredibly, it seemed they weren't even making much of an effort to hide their crimes, clearly thinking they were above retribution.
This changed when one of their number, Ralvin Menendez, was found dead on waste ground near his home, a bullet in his head and his severed penis and testicles stuffed into his mouth. A week later, a second member of the gang, Julius Barron, was discovered at home dead in bed, in exactly the same condition.
The two men's deaths generated only minimal publicity. Drug-related murders within the black community were common, and even though these killings were particularly brutal, there was still little that set them apart from the many others that occurred that year in London.
This all changed a month later when a third robber, Clyde Jones, met the same fate as his cohorts. Because when the killer turned up at his flat, breaking in through a window, Jones wasn't in there alone. Also present was his twelve-year-old niece Leticia, whom he was looking after for the night. No one knows for sure the exact sequence of events but it seems likely that Leticia came out of her bedroom and disturbed the killer as he was in the process of castrating her already dead uncle. If she screamed, no one reported hearing her. It was unlikely she got the chance. She was shot once in the head from a distance of about ten feet, and then twice more in the heart at point-blank range, so it was clear that the killer had deliberately finished her off.
In the ensuing public outcry, the National Crime Squad was called in to find the killer. Bolt had been part of the investigating team, and he remembered all too vividly visiting the Jones flat, a cramped, untidy place on the sixth floor of a tower block whose only views were of other tower blocks. There was a huge bloodstain on the living room sofa where Jones himself had died, and a smaller one on the threadbare carpet outside the bedroom where Leticia had breathed her last. Bolt had thought it such a cold, lonely place for a child to die. He'd been a police officer long enough to know how hard and unjust the world could be, but even so he'd been affected by what he'd seen, and he'd sworn then and there that he'd do everything in his power to find the person responsible.
With a reward of £50,000 on offer, the name of Nicholas Tyndall had quickly come up and the NCS had subsequently bugged his palatial Islington home. Listening in, they heard Tyndall refer repeatedly to someone he called Hook as the hitman he'd used for the murders of all three of the Jamaicans. It sounded like Tyndall was extremely annoyed that Hook had killed a civilian, and was even thinking about holding back on the balance of his payment because of the heat Leticia Jones's murder was generating. No one knows whether or not he did because shortly afterwards Tyndall ordered a professional bug sweep of his property which turned up all the listening devices. Incredibly, even with Tyndall's taped admissions, the CPS had somehow concluded that there wasn't enough evidence to charge him with anything.
Instead, NCS efforts were channelled into locating the mysterious man called Hook, and Bolt's team was given the task of finding out his real name. It took a hell of a lot of digging but eventually they identified him as one Michael James Killen, a thirty-seven-year-old former IRA gunman who was suspected of killing as many as eighteen people in a career spanning almost two decades. Having been released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement from the Maze prison in 1999, where he'd been serving a life sentence for the murder of two RUC officers and a British soldier, he'd headed to the UK and become a gun for hire within the burgeoning London underworld, where reliable killers were always in demand.
Hook was spoken of with a quiet awe by those few in the criminal fraternity prepared to talk about him. It wasn't just that he was brutally efficient, with a breezeblock for a heart and a reputation for taking on any job and getting it done. There was also an air of real mystery about him. The son of wealthy Belfast accountants (father Catholic, mother Protestant), he was hardly your typical IRA gunman, and was remembered in the movement as someone who was more interested in the thrill of violence than furthering the cause of Irish unification. At one time he'd apparently been a good-looking man, but in 1991 he'd suffered extensive shrapnel injuries to his face and body when a bomb an IRA colleague had been working on exploded. He'd also lost two fingers on his left hand, hence the nickname: Hook.
Although he'd been arrested once by Met officers, in early 2001 on suspicion of murder, Hook had somehow avoided getting charged. Since then he'd kept an extremely low profile, and it was known that he'd resorted to plastic surgery on a number of occasions in order to change his appearance. So determined was he in this that hardly any of the people Bolt's team spoke to could physically describe him adequately (let alone say where he might be found). Those few who did attempt it came up with wildly different versions, none of which bore much resemblance to the badly scarred young man with the skin graft on his chin who appeared in the police mugshot taken when he was arrested in 2001.
Armed with all this information, the authorities had put out an all-ports alert for Hook and had every police force in the UK looking for him. But as the days turned into weeks, it became clear that he'd slipped the net, and eventually the public outcry died down as other heinous crimes vied for their attention.
Bolt, though, had never forgotten twelve-year-old Leticia Jones, a pretty little thing with a big gap-toothed grin who looked younger than her years. When, two years later, there was a series of high-level contract killings in southern Spain, including the murder of a Russian businessman in his Marbella villa along with three of his bodyguards, Bolt had suspected Hook's involvement. Whatever people might think, professional contract killers are few in number, ones capable of taking out four people at a time even fewer. Bolt had informed Interpol, and sure enough his hunch had paid off. A month later Hook was apprehended on a European arrest warrant as he boarded a plane at Madrid airport travelling under a false passport. Even the master of disguise could do little to conceal the fact that he was missing two fingers.
Less than a week later, Bolt and five colleagues from the NCS had flown out to Spain to bring him back to face trial for murder; but before they'd even touched down news had come through that Hook had escaped from custody, killing a police officer with his own gun in the process.
Hook was never seen in public again. Even though his name was high on Interpol's most wanted list, he disappeared completely. There was the occasional reported sighting, as well as daring contract killings carried out in different parts of the world which may or may not have borne his hallmark – a senior Indonesian politician slaughtered with his whole family; an American oil billionaire who'd disappeared off the face of the earth while on a hunting trip in the Yukon along with his son and two-man security detail, leaving a trophy wife thirty years his junior to inherit a fortune – but never anything concrete.
And now, three years on from his arrest in Spain, he was back again.
The first question was, why?
The second was what had happened to the woman who photographed him, and it was this one that Bolt was particularly concerned about as he sat in his boss's office at six o'clock that evening telling him about the Hook sighting. Because Tina was still out of contact.
It had to be said that SG2 Barry Freud, the SOCA equivalent of a DCS, was not best pleased with what he was hearing. A big, bald Yorkshireman with more than a passing resemblance to Humpty Dumpty, Big Barry, as he was universally known behind his back, constantly had one eye on promotion and as a consequence liked to run a steady ship, with risk-taking kept to an absolute minimum.
Usually Bolt could tolerate this type of environment (although he didn't particularly like it), but today things were suddenly very different. 'We can't just sit here, sir,' he said urgently. 'Hook's been on SOCA's most wanted list right from day one, and now we've had a sighting of him back in the country. We need to be putting all the resources we can into looking for him.'
Big Barry rolled his eyes and leaned back precariously in his seat. 'We've just spent half the day in a bloody great meeting with the FIU-'
'Which got us nowhere.'
'And we're right in the middle of a long-running case,' he continued, ignoring the interruption, 'against an extremely high-profile target.'
'You don't get much more high profile than Hook, sir. Ex-IRA gunman turned contract killer who murdered a twelve-year-old girl on one of his jobs. It would be a coup if we got him,' he said, appealing to his boss's ambitious streak.
Big Barry didn't look convinced. 'But where are we going to find him? That's the problem. We don't know when or where these photos were taken, do we?'
'No, but-'
'And you said Tina Boyd sent them to you?'
'That's right.'
'I thought she was back in the Met. Why's she sending them to you?'
Bolt told him about her call the previous day and the kidnapping case she was investigating.
'It all sounds bizarre, old mate,' he said, pulling a face. Big Barry Freud called every man he knew 'old mate'. It was supposed to be a term of endearment, but always sounded vaguely condescending.
'Bizarre it might be, but Tina's missing. And she has been since soon after she took those photos. Her mobile's off and we're still trying to trace where it lost power. And we're using the ANPR to try to find her car,' Bolt added, referring to the automatic number plate recognition system, a nationwide network of cameras used for tracking car movements.
'So you've already got people working on this? You haven't got the authority to do that, Mike.'
'Tina was one of ours for over a year, sir. Trying to help her is the least we can do. And if it helps us track down Hook, then we'll get a double result.'
'Have we got anything so far?'
Bolt sighed. 'Not much yet. I've got an all-ports alert out on Hook and the team are all chasing down their informants, seeing if any of them have heard anything on the grapevine about his return, and what he might be here for. Because one thing's for sure: it's not going to be a social visit.'
'What about the kidnapping Tina was meant to be investigating. Any leads on that?'
Bolt shook his head. 'I didn't write anything down when she phoned me about it. And it seems she was working on it unofficially. I spoke to Islington CID, where she's based now, and they've managed to get me the crime report that Tina filled out. It's not very detailed but it's got the name of the man who reported the kidnap initially: Robert Fallon, an unemployed thirty-four-year-old from Colindale. But he's not answering his home phone, and if he owns a mobile then it's pay-as-you-go because there's nothing in his name.'
'This isn't very promising,' said Big Barry with a marked lack of enthusiasm.
Bolt wasn't deterred. 'Tina also took a photo of a Toyota Land Cruiser which we think is connected to Hook, and we've got the ANPR people looking for that as well. We've got a lot of balls in the air and we only need one or two of them to come down for us to solve this.'
Big Barry Freud leaned forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his huge slab of a desk. 'All right, old mate,' he said, giving Bolt a suitably serious look. 'Because you've had results before, I'm prepared to cut you some slack. If any of these leads turn up something then we'll concentrate resources on trying to find Hook. It looks like we're already doing what we can to find Tina. But I can't just pull the whole team off what they're doing and send everyone off on a wild goose chase. And if you've put an all-ports alert out for Hook, then we've already done our bit. You understand where I'm coming from, don't you?' he added, his tone suggesting that he believed he was being hugely generous in his offer.
Bolt knew there wasn't much point saying anything else. It was the best he could have hoped for from his boss, so he said he'd keep him posted and headed back down the corridor to where his team were still flat out working to find their former colleague. Tina had never been hugely popular during her time at SOCA, mainly because she'd kept herself to herself and avoided social gatherings, but she was respected by everyone for her skills and determination, and there wasn't one person in the team who wasn't desperate to find her.
But the moment he stepped inside the main office he knew something was wrong.
There were nine people in there – seven men and two women – gathered in a rough circle around Mo Khan, who was sitting down with a phone in his hand, his expression grim. No one was speaking, and as they heard Bolt enter they all turned his way.
Trying hard not to show the tension he was experiencing, he stopped and looked around. 'What's happened?'
It was Mo who answered him, his longest-serving colleague, and the most senior person in the room bar Bolt himself. 'Tina's car's been found abandoned near a village called Bramfield in Hertfordshire.'
'And?' Bolt knew there had to be an 'and'. The faces said it all.
Mo took a deep breath, his face tight with pent-up emotion. 'And the body of a young woman's been found nearby.'
The man in the cream suit ran a comb through his thinning hair, straightened his jacket, and surveyed himself in the full-length mirror, pleased with the image that stared back at him.
He was not the best looking of men, he knew that. Physically, he was small and round in stature, with a large, hooked nose and thin, flinty eyes that hinted at an intelligence not entirely to be trusted. At school they'd christened him 'Shifty', and had tended to shun his company.
None of this bothered him unduly, however. After all, looks were transient. They disappeared eventually. He possessed something far more valuable. Power. There was a poise about him, a cool confidence in the way he carried himself, which had come from years of success in his chosen field. People treated him with respect. There were those who feared him too, knowing his reputation as a strong-willed man, unafraid of making tough decisions. Not the sort of person you would want to cross.
But what the man in the cream suit enjoyed the most was the fact that no one, not even those closest to him, had any idea of the true power he wielded. Nor the terrible secrets he harboured.
As he turned away from the mirror, the phone in his left trouser pocket began vibrating. He had a message. It was from a number he didn't recognize, but he knew the identity of the sender well enough. There was only one person in the world it could have been.
The message was in block capitals and just three words long.
STAGE TWO SUCCESS.
The man in the cream suit felt a tingling, almost sexual sensation running up his spine as he walked over to the window and looked out towards the darkening sea.
Events were moving fast now. All those months of planning were finally coming to fruition.
He looked at his watch and smiled.
Just twenty-four more hours…
There were plenty of reasons why I'd deliberately avoided involving Maxwell until now, but chief among them was the fact that I didn't trust him. After all, he was a career criminal with a moral code that was skewed at best, non-existent at worst, so not the kind of guy you'd automatically turn to for help. But that also made him the kind of person best suited to tell me what the hell my next move should be, because as a criminal he would at least have some idea how other criminals think, and be able to advise me accordingly. And even if he wasn't feeling charitable, I figured that the fact that I was writing a book about him would give him some incentive to help me. After all, when it came down to it, I was more valuable to him alive than dead.
Maxwell (he didn't seem to have any other name) had retired from the London crime scene having made, in his own words, too many enemies – a feeling I was becoming all too familiar with. He now lived in deepest Berkshire, an hour's drive out of town on a good day, close to double that when you were doing it all the way from Hackney at the tail end of rush hour, as I was now.
I didn't phone ahead, deciding that it was easier to turn up unannounced, and it was getting close to eight o'clock when I pulled up outside the pretty picture-postcard cottage with the thatched roof that was his current abode. For a city boy who'd grown up on a sprawling east London council estate it seemed a strange place to end up, a good mile from the nearest house and almost dead quiet, except for the very faint buzz of traffic that you get anywhere in south-east England, and the occasional plane overhead. But that was one of the many paradoxes about Maxwell. He might have been one of the top London hard men in his day, but he also liked to grow his own vegetables and while away his days fishing for trout in the nearby streams.
I was relieved to see that the front door was open, and as I got out of the car and breathed in the fresh country air I felt a lot better. The city and all the danger it represented suddenly seemed a long way away and, if I was honest with myself, the idea of someone like Maxwell being on my side came as a huge relief.
I could hear movement inside – a reassuring clatter of pots and pans coming from the kitchen – so I rapped hard on the door and called out his name, just so he'd know it wasn't one of his old enemies coming calling.
A few seconds later, Maxwell appeared in the narrow hallway, all five foot six of him, barrel-bodied and pug-faced, looking vaguely comical in an apron with a large cartoon pair of breasts on it. His grizzled face creased into a frown. 'All right, Robbie. Didn't expect to see you today. We didn't have a meet planned, did we?'
Maxwell always referred to me as Robbie – a term of address I'd always hated, but I'd never had the heart (or balls) to correct him.
'I need your help,' I said, looking straight into his narrow, hooded eyes.
The frown deepened, but he nodded. 'Better come inside then. Want a drink of something?'
I knew I needed to keep my wits about me, but the thought of a real drink proved irresistible. 'A beer, if you've got one.'
I followed him into the kitchen where a big pot was bubbling away on the stove. I didn't stop to look at its contents, but the smell was good, and I felt the first stirrings of hunger since lunchtime.
Maxwell opened two bottles of Peroni and handed me one, then led me through into his tiny sitting room where we always conducted our interviews, and which had clearly been designed for men of Maxwell's height rather than men of mine. I bent down, narrowly missing the overhead beam I'd almost knocked myself out on the first time I was here, and took a seat in one of the two old leather armchairs by the fireplace.
He sat down in the other one, placed the beer on the coffee table beside him, and lit a cigarette. If he was at all concerned about what I had to say, he didn't show it. But then that was Maxwell all over. He wasn't the kind of man to be easily fazed.
'OK,' he said through the smoke, 'what's happened?'
It seemed like I'd already told this story a thousand times, usually to a sceptical audience, but I had the feeling Maxwell would believe me. He'd inhabited the world where this kind of thing happened for a long, long time. So I told him everything, with the exception of Ramon's murder, every so often taking a big slug of my beer, while he listened in silence.
When I'd finished, he stubbed out his cigarette, rubbed a stubby, nicotine-stained finger along the side of his nose, and looked at me with a suspicion I wasn't expecting. 'You sure you ain't been smoking too much of the wacky baccy, Robbie? This is some fucking story and I know you've been prone to, you know, breakdowns.'
I met his gaze. 'It's the truth. I swear it.'
When the suspicious look didn't disappear, I told him I had the photographs to prove it and pulled the print-outs of the images Tina had emailed me from my back pocket.
'All right, let's have a look,' he said, and took them off me. He unfolded three of them and looked at them carefully. 'And these were taken today in London?'
'In Hackney. Why? Do you know the guy?' It was a long shot but, given Maxwell's previous career, not a complete impossibility.
He shook his head. 'You said he was Irish, right?'
'That's right. Northern Irish, I think.'
'I had dealings with some Belfast paramilitaries – UVF blokes – a few years back, but I never trusted them. The greedy bastards were always trying to put one over on you.' He sighed, handing the photos back.
'So,' I said, 'do you believe me now?'
He nodded slowly like some wise, thuggish Yoda. Maxwell never did anything in a hurry. 'Yeah,' he said at last, 'I believe you. Looks like you're in a lot of shit, mate.'
'Yes, Maxwell, I know that. What I'm after are suggestions about what I should be doing about it.'
'My advice?' Pause. 'Take a long fucking holiday. A month at least. Somewhere a long way away. And make sure you're on email as well. We'll need to speak about the book. Try to forget any of it ever fucking happened.'
'But what about Jenny? I can't just leave her at the mercy of someone who's going to kill her.'
Maxwell's features cracked into an unpleasant smile. 'Never really took you for the hero, Robbie. Thought you were more the sort who just liked to write about them.'
'Then maybe you don't know me that well. If someone's in trouble and I can help them, then that's what I'm going to do.' Two nights ago that hadn't been the case, but now I genuinely meant it.
'Well, that's real touching, Robbie, but you try poking your nose into something like this and you're going to end up with it sliced off, know what I mean? Let me give you a piece of advice,' he said, pointing his Peroni bottle in my general direction. 'Only get involved in something when you absolutely have to, or where there's money involved. Anything else, steer clear, because it ain't worth it. Especially in this case. If what you're saying's true, then it's possible they've killed a copper, which means they're prepared to kill anybody. Next time it could be you.' He settled back in his chair, having delivered his sage advice, and lit another cigarette.
I realized what Maxwell was truly like then. When I'd first met him I'd thought him glamorous – a hard man definitely, ruthless too – but because he liked a laugh, told a good story and was always nice to me, I'd got to thinking of him as a loveable rogue, someone who might hurt other criminals – people whose actions deserved it – but also someone who would stand up for the underdog, who wouldn't put up with bullies, who could be reasoned with, because underneath it all his heart was still somewhere close to the right place. But this was all bullshit. Maxwell was just another selfish thug, and it shocked me that it had taken my own experience at the hands of selfish thugs to understand this.
'Have you ever killed anyone?' I asked him.
Maxwell shook his head. 'I've come close a couple of times when people fucked me over, but no, I ain't.'
'What about kidnapping someone? Have you ever done that?'
He paused before answering. 'I've had to persuade people to pay back money they owe. Sometimes that meant holding them in places against their will, until their associates came up with the cash. Maybe even giving them a little bit of a kicking to ensure their cooperation. But no. Not like you're talking about. I never hurt women. I respect them too much for that.'
The way he was talking disgusted me, and I think that disgust must have shown on my face because his own creased into a fierce glare. 'Don't go all moralistic on me, Robbie. I've done some bad things. You know that. And I ain't particularly proud of some of them either, but I'm also a realist. And yeah, it's bad that this girl, whoever she is, has got herself kidnapped, but it ain't my business, and it ain't yours either. You hardly know her. And you're in a lot of trouble already. You've done what you can. Leave it.'
'I can't leave it.'
'Then I ain't gonna help you, mate. Sorry, but that's the way it is.' He shrugged his immense shoulders, as if to say there was nothing more he could do.
I felt terrible. I'd been a fool to expect him to help me. I thought about threatening to knock the book on the head unless he changed his mind but dismissed the idea immediately. I needed it as much as he did; and anyway, right then, the book seemed totally irrelevant.
I drank the last of my beer down in one, savouring its coldness.
'Do you want another?' he asked.
I did. Desperately. I really needed just to unwind, and the chair felt extremely comfortable. I could feel the indignation draining out of me. 'Yeah, please. And can I ask you a favour? I need a place to stay for a few days. To give me some time to lie low and think. Can you put me up here?'
'All right, but on one condition: you don't try and hunt for that girl while you're under this roof. Like I told you, I don't want to get involved.'
He fixed me with the kind of stare that dared you to defy him. I had a feeling not many people did, and I was no exception. I said that I wouldn't, and he headed back into the kitchen for more Peronis.
I knew I wouldn't be able to keep the promise, though. The events of the last two days might have frightened the shit out of me but I was still determined to locate Jenny and get her to safety. My life had changed. I'd changed. Never in my wildest dreams would I have expected to be risking my life to help a girl I hardly knew, but now that I was doing it, there was no way I was going to give up. And for the first time, sitting there in Maxwell's house, I actually felt good about that.
But tonight…Tonight I was going to have to put my quest to one side. I was tired. I needed to rest.
When Maxwell came back with the drinks, I was already yawning. He told me I looked shagged out, and I didn't disagree. I drank the second beer fast while he spun one of his more amusing yarns about his days as a gangster. I wasn't really listening though, and when he offered me a third, I declined. 'I just need to close my eyes for a minute,' I said, feeling an overwhelming tiredness.
I remember him saying 'No problem', and something about having some chicken soup when I woke up, and I also remember him watching me closely as I drifted off, which I thought was a bit odd. Then sleep came and relieved me, at least temporarily, of all the burdens of the world.
They'd driven much of the way in silence. Two men who'd been colleagues for almost six years, who'd had their ups and downs but who also, when it came down to it, were prepared to risk their careers and their necks for each other.
Bolt was conscious of the fact that Mo had done more of the risking over the years, that he'd covered for Bolt in some tricky situations, and he wouldn't have wanted anyone else in the car with him as they went to see if the woman who'd been found dead near Tina Boyd's abandoned car was in fact Tina herself. There'd been no identification on the body when it was found with gunshot wounds to the face by a dog walker two hours earlier, and the only description Bolt and Mo had was that it was a dark-haired woman in her thirties. But it was one that fitted Tina, and Bolt wasn't the type to believe in coincidences. In the car he'd fought to keep an open mind and not jump to conclusions, but it was a battle he'd steadily lost.
He'd remembered the first time he met Tina, in a dive of a pub in Highgate one wet Saturday night. He and Mo had gone there to get some information from her about a case they were working on. It wasn't long after her boyfriend had died, and Bolt remembered how tired and vulnerable she'd looked, and how he'd had an immediate desire to take her in his arms and protect her. It was a feeling that had never really gone away during all the time he'd known her.
The victim's body was still at the crime scene when Bolt parked his Jaguar at the edge of the police cordon. Darkness was descending fast now, but the quiet stretch of wooded B-road just south of the village of Bramfield was a hive of activity. Two police patrol cars with their lights flashing blocked the road, a uniformed cop eating a baguette in one of them; a dozen other police vehicles and an ambulance were lined up on either side of the road. A plastic tent had been erected just inside the tree line, and a few yards behind it a red Nissan Micra that Bolt recognized as Tina's was parked up on the verge.
Bolt and Mo showed their ID to the uniform, who managed to finish chewing his baguette long enough to point them to a van where they could put on the plastic coveralls all officers were obliged to wear when entering crime scenes. Once they were kitted up, they slipped under the scene-of-crime tape and walked along a specially marked path lined with more tape in the direction of the tent.
Bolt was aware that his breathing had increased. He'd always feared death, right from childhood, because he'd never been able to believe – and God knows he'd tried – that there was anything beyond it. Unfortunately, because of his job, he'd had to see far more of it than most people, and almost always when the end had come violently. The sight of their empty faces was something he'd never got used to, and the prospect of seeing someone he knew and cared about lying there was much worse.
'I can do this if you want, boss,' said Mo quietly, turning his way.
Months earlier, when they'd been sharing one too many beers at a pub near SOCA's Vauxhall HQ, Bolt had told Mo about the night he made a pass at Tina, and about his feelings for her. It wasn't the sort of thing he usually shared; he preferred to keep matters of the heart to himself. But the drink had done what drink always does and loosened his tongue, and, with Tina having only recently departed from SOCA, he'd been at something of a low ebb. Mo hadn't approved, Bolt knew that, but he'd been sympathetic to his boss's plight, as he was now.
Bolt looked at Mo, saw the concern in his friend's eyes. He appreciated the offer but knew it was essential he didn't show weakness. 'No, it's all right,' he said. 'I'll be fine.'
One of the white-overalled officers peeled away from the throng and came over to them. 'Mo Khan?' The questioner was a woman in her mid thirties with an attractive, friendly face that didn't look like it needed much encouragement to break into a smile. Beneath the transparent hood she was wearing her hair, tied back, was a fiery red.
'That's me. And this is my boss, SG3 Mike Bolt.'
'I'm DCI Miller, the SIO on this case,' she said as the three of them shook hands. 'Thanks for coming. She's over here. The body was discovered by a dog walker approximately two and a half hours ago,' she continued as Mo and Bolt followed her to the tent. 'No real attempt to conceal the body.' She opened the flap and stood to one side. 'It looks like she was shot several times in the face and then just left where she fell.'
Bolt didn't flinch but his expression was granite as he stepped inside, barely conscious of Mo and DCI Miller filing in behind and standing either side of him.
She lay there alone, flat on her back in a halo of coagulating blood, arms neatly by her side, eyes closed. There were two small black holes in her face: one just below her mouth, the other high up on her cheek, like a large, out-of-place beauty spot. She looked asleep, peaceful, as if all the trials and tribulations of this world had been lifted from her shoulders. Which of course they had.
Bolt took a deep breath and turned to DCI Miller. 'It's not her,' he said.
I'm going to kill you.
The afternoon had turned out to be the most terrifying of Tina Boyd's life. For what must have been close to an hour she'd driven her car at gunpoint along the North Circular Road, and finally out of London on the A10 heading north. During that time the man had spent much of his time asking her questions, often touching and stroking her as he spoke. Sometimes his tone was conversational. He would ask her about her background, her likes and dislikes, her work as a police officer. Other times his tone became cruel and he'd ask her quietly, playfully, what lengths she would go to in order to live, and whether she believed in life after death.
It was clear he was enjoying tormenting her, but she'd refused to play along, answering him defiantly (she'd do what it took to stay alive and, yes, she did believe in an afterlife), yet at the same time giving him enough information to keep him interested, and even asking questions of her own, although on these he tended to be evasive. Still, she was proud of herself for remaining calm, even when they'd left the noise and traffic of the A10 behind and moved on to quieter, more isolated roads. Even when he'd ordered her to drive off one of these quieter roads and down a deserted wooded lane.
It was only when he'd told her to stop the car and taken the keys from her that the fear really hit home. Tina's legs had buckled slightly as she was ordered on to the grass verge. This was it. The moment of truth.
You've seen his face! screamed a voice inside her head. He's going to kill you!
But she hadn't panicked. Instead, she'd turned to face him, knowing that it was harder for even the most brutal killer to shoot someone in cold blood that way, forcing herself to ignore the obvious fact that she was dealing with a sociopath.
He'd raised the gun so it was pointed at her chest and they'd looked at each other for a long, lingering moment.
And then he'd smiled, and said, 'Empty your pockets, and take off your watch.'
She'd done as she'd been told, pulling out her wallet and house keys. At his command, she'd thrown them into the bushes.
He'd come forward and given her a quick one-handed pat-down to check there was nothing left behind, then opened the boot and pushed her inside, slamming it behind her.
Despite being cramped and uncomfortable, for the first time Tina had felt a real surge of hope. He intended to keep her alive, for the moment at least, and this gave her a chance.
He'd also made a mistake: he'd missed the set of picks in the back pocket of her jeans, and failed to tie her hands. She'd immediately reached round, pulled them out and shoved them into her sock where they would be even harder to locate. She knew she was taking a big risk, concealing them and risking her tormentor's wrath later, but this was a time for big risks.
The car hadn't moved, and the engine had remained off for a long time. Tina had begun to wonder if he'd simply abandoned her. Then, finally, she'd heard another car pull up next to her. She'd banged on the metal of the boot with her fist and yelled out as loudly as she could, excited at the prospect she might be freed. But when the boot opened she'd been greeted with the sight of the man with the gun again.
Without speaking, he'd pulled her out. She'd asked him what was going on but he'd told her to shut up, then shoved her roughly into the boot of the new car, a dark-coloured saloon. She'd had to push a couple of bags of grocery shopping aside before she could squeeze in, which had made her wonder where he'd got the car from. A few minutes later they were on the move again.
What was clear to Tina as she was driven along road after winding road was that the man who'd taken her was not only a sociopath but an extremely intelligent one who appeared to appreciate the tools available to the police for tracking down kidnap victims – hence his decision to get rid of her phone and her car. This was bad news, not only for her but also for Jenny Brakspear, because she was certain that this man was involved in her abduction too.
But what she couldn't understand was why he was choosing to let her live. 'Just be thankful he is, girl,' she'd whispered to herself, wondering at the same time why she'd allowed herself to end up in this position. Her desire to go it alone and bend the rules was, she'd always believed, borne out of a need to see justice done, yet there was more to it than that. There was also something self-destructive about the impulse, as if she were driven by a need to court danger, even in the knowledge that eventually she'd come unstuck.
However, now that her life truly was on the line, she realized, almost with a sense of surprise, that she desperately wanted to live. To try to return to the happier days that had been absent for far too long. Lying there frightened and hunched uncomfortably against the bags of shopping, she told herself that if she got through this she'd kick the booze – that monkey had been on her back for far too long now – and maybe even quit the force altogether and go off travelling somewhere new. South America, or southern Africa.
After what seemed an age the car slowed and made a sharp turning, then after a further hundred yards or so she heard the sound of gravel crunching under the wheels before it finally came to a halt. They'd already stopped a while back for about ten minutes, but this time she instinctively knew that this was their final destination.
She heard footsteps on the gravel and the sound of muffled voices, then the boot was flung open and the man with the gun shouted at her to shut her eyes, threatening death if she disobeyed.
There was no danger of that. She squeezed them shut like a young kid playing hide and seek as a hood was pulled roughly over her head. She was then led along the gravel by two men, each holding an arm, and dragging her, so she had to move fast. She was taken through several doors, then up some stairs and through yet another door, before finally being pushed roughly into a chair.
In silence they handcuffed her wrists behind the chair and strapped her to its back from stomach to neck with a roll of masking tape. She couldn't move an inch, and her hope began to evaporate. She still had the set of picks in her sock but there was no way of getting to them now.
The man with the gun told his colleague to leave, and there was a throaty edge to his voice as he spoke. Then he pulled off Tina's hood. His lips cracked into a smile, a look of undisguised lust in the big staring eyes, and she felt her heart sink. She knew then that this bastard had been telling the truth when he said he was going to kill her.
But it was clear that he wanted to have some fun first.
When they were back in the Jaguar, having finished at the crime scene and having briefed DCI Miller about their hunt for Tina Boyd, Mike Bolt let out a long, deep sigh. 'I tell you, Mo, sometimes this job really gets to me.'
'It gets to all of us, boss. You know that.' Mo turned, and Bolt could see the lines of tension on his face. This had been tough for him, too.
'You know, I haven't seen her in more than a year, but if it had been her I think I would have fallen apart. I never knew she'd had that much of an effect on me.'
'But it wasn't Tina, was it? Which is a good sign. That's the way you've got to look at it, boss. Accentuate the positive. Keep the faith.'
'But where the hell is she?' said Bolt, staring out of the window at the trees.
The fact was, they'd run out of leads. The Land Cruiser Tina had photographed earlier had disappeared off the ANPR's radar, having last been spotted thirty miles away in Essex, and now Tina had disappeared too. All that remained was an anonymous woman shot dead in what appeared to be a professional hit. One that bore Hook's hallmarks – and Bolt could guess his motive: to hijack the victim's car and make it as hard as possible for him to be followed. As always, he seemed to be one step ahead.
'We're not going to stop searching for her,' said Mo eventually, his voice weary. 'Of course we're not. But I don't think there's much more we can do tonight.'
Bolt nodded. Mo was right. There really wasn't much else they could do. An alert had been put out to all the UK 's police forces and now it was simply a matter of waiting. Without another word, he started the engine and pulled away.
But they'd barely been driving five minutes when Bolt's mobile started ringing.
'Who is it?' asked Mo, as he picked up the handset and examined the screen.
Bolt frowned. 'An old informant of mine. Strictly small time. His name's Maxwell.'
When I woke up, I didn't have a clue where I was. Then I saw the empty armchair opposite me and the coffee table with the half-full ashtray and the Peroni bottles beside it, and I remembered I was at Maxwell's place.
I sat up, rubbing my eyes. The lights were on in the sitting room and the curtains were pulled but I could tell it was dark outside. I looked at my watch. Twenty past ten. I'd been out for an hour at least, probably longer. I got to my feet. The door to the kitchen was closed, but I could hear Maxwell in there. I needed a drink of water, then I needed to get to bed.
But I only took one step before the door opened and I realized with a single jolt of sheer terror that it wasn't Maxwell in the kitchen at all.
'Hello again,' said the Irishman, coming into the room, a gun with silencer raised in front of him. He was dressed in a black boiler suit and black boots, the saucer eyes cold and angry.
My stomach churned, and my legs felt like they were going to go from under me. All my optimistic thoughts of carrying on until I found Jenny, of defying the men I was up against – so attractive when I'd been sitting in the comfort of Maxwell's cottage with a large beer in my hand – turned immediately to dust, and I was once again what I'd always been: a terrified man out of my depth.
I didn't even think about running. There was no point. I was trapped. I tried to think of something to say, something that might stop him from doing what I knew he was about to do, but nothing came out.
'Didn't you believe me when I said I'd kill you if you carried on with your foolishness?' asked the Irishman, his harsh accent tinged with incredulity that I could be so stupid.
And the thing was, he was right. I had been stupid, utterly stupid, ever to have got involved. In that moment, I cursed Jenny Brakspear. And I cursed Maxwell too. I couldn't believe he had betrayed me like this. I knew he'd not been the most morally upright guy in the world, but I'd trusted him.
'Now it's time to pay for what you've done,' he said, grabbing my arm in a tight grip and pushing me back into the kitchen with the butt of the gun.
I could smell the chicken soup as I was shoved through the door. I saw Maxwell in there with the second kidnapper, the big lumbering guy with the shaven head. Both men had their backs to me, and even in my fear I felt a burst of rage. 'What's the matter, Maxwell? Can't you bear to face me, you treacherous bastard?'
Maxwell and Shaven Head turned round almost as one, which was when I realized that Maxwell wasn't a part of this at all. His face was bloodied and he had a deep cut above one eye. A rope had been pulled tight round his neck, the pressure making his eyes bug out. Shaven Head held one end of it in a gloved hand while his other held a gun, which was pressed hard against Maxwell's side. Maxwell, who was dwarfed in size by his captor, looked exactly like I felt: terrified. He wasn't even making any attempt to hide it, and this more than anything else extinguished any hope that I'd had. If even a hard bastard like Maxwell could be overpowered by these people, what the hell chance did I have?
'All right, let's go,' said the Irishman impatiently.
Shaven Head nodded and dragged Maxwell out into the hallway. I was given a shove and made to follow.
They seemed to know where they were going because they took us through the hall to the cottage's back door. I wondered immediately why they were taking us this way. It was only Maxwell's beloved vegetable patch that was out there.
The answer became obvious as soon as we were outside: the Irishman picked up a pair of shovels that were leaning against the door and handed one to each of us.
My heart beat savagely in my chest as I took mine and watched Maxwell take the other. Then I heard him groan because he too knew what we were going to have to do now.
I can't adequately describe the fear I experienced then. It was total and all-encompassing. My life didn't flash before me. Nothing like that. There was only the sure, solid knowledge that this was the end, that soon there would only be black nothingness. I wished I was religious, that I could have some small hope of salvation to cling on to, but I hadn't believed since I was a child, and death had always seemed too far away to care about.
But now… now it was right there at my side.
I felt dizzy as we were taken across Maxwell's small but well-kept lawn. I started to fall, but the barrel of the Irishman's gun pressed tighter into my spine, forcing me forward. I straightened up, desperate to delay the inevitable as long as possible, and kept moving.
Maxwell's vegetable patch was as big as the lawn itself and was bisected by a path that ran up to where his land ended and the woods began. We walked in dead silence up the path and then on to the soft soil so that we were standing side by side, facing the tree line. The night was warm and silent, and I was conscious of drops of light rain beginning to fall on my head. I swallowed and stood stock-still, staring blankly into the pines, ignoring Maxwell. Ignoring everything.
The Irishman stood on the soil behind us, while Shaven Head remained on the path and produced a torch from his pocket. He shone it on the side of my face and I thought I heard him snigger. My bowels felt like they were going to open and I clenched my buttocks together, not wishing to humiliate myself completely in my final moments.
'Time to dig, gentlemen,' said the Irishman, a genuine enjoyment in his voice.
I didn't hesitate, slamming my foot down on the shovel with more strength than I thought I was capable of, and hurling up a pile of dirt.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Maxwell hadn't moved, and I felt a sudden slither of hope. Was he going to make some kind of move? Do something that might save us?
Then he spoke. 'Listen mate, please. I'm nothing to do with this. He's the one you want. I don't know anything. He just came here tonight for a drink, that's all.'
'You know you're going to die,' said the Irishman, addressing Maxwell. His tone was calm and even, almost reasonable. 'But there are different ways that you can meet death. It can be quick, and comparatively painless. Or it can be slow and agonizing.' He emphasized this last word, letting it slide almost playfully out of his mouth. 'It's your choice which way it is, but I can promise you that if you don't do exactly as you're told, then by the time I'm finished with you you'll be begging me to finish you off.'
Maxwell at last got the message, and began digging.
And so we dug together. Dug our own graves. The adrenalin coursed through me as I worked, and the rain grew steadily harder. I was terrified, but the act of thrusting the shovel into the soil gave me something to concentrate on, and even though I knew that the moment I finished it would spell the end, I kept on going, if anything increasing my pace, as I concentrated my fear and impotence on the task at hand. It was as if I wanted to make sure my final act in this world was done in the best way possible so that I could leave it with my head held high.
'What's your name, my friend?' the Irishman asked Maxwell when his hole was half dug and mine two-thirds done. Shallow, but almost long enough for me to fit in. I pictured myself lying face down in it, a bullet in the back of my head, the rain drumming down on my corpse. Never to be found, or properly mourned by the two people I cared about most in the world: Yvonne and Chloe.
'They call me Maxwell,' he answered listlessly.
'And is that your real name?'
This time he didn't hesitate. 'No,' he said. 'It's Harvey Hammond.'
I almost laughed out loud. Harvey Hammond. What sort of name was that? How could you have a gangster going by the name of Harvey? I was beginning to realize now that the man whose violent past I was meant to be chronicling might not be all he had cracked himself up to be.
'And what has Mr Fallon told you, Mr Hammond?'
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Maxwell, Harvey, whatever the hell his name was, stop digging and stand up straight, turning round so he faced the Irishman. 'Everything,' he said, figuring no doubt that there was no way he'd be believed if he tried to lie. 'But I promise you, there's no way I'd tell a fucking soul about it. I'm not that kind of bloke. I don't get myself involved in things that don't concern me. And I'd rather die than talk to the law. I've never said a word to them in my life. Honest.' He wiped the rain from his eyes and I could see that his shoulders were shaking. 'Please,' he whispered. 'He's the one you want. Not me. I'll keep shtum. Not a word. I promise.' And then, louder, almost wailing with desperation, 'I fucking promise!'
I realized he was crying. Sobbing softly. And I felt sorry for him. I couldn't help it, even though he was trying to get them to kill me rather than him.
I kept digging, staring now at the sodden hole in the ground I was standing in, trying to remain as anonymous as possible, letting Maxwell get all the attention. Knowing, even without seeing it, that the Irishman had lifted his gun and was preparing to kill him.
'Please!' begged Maxwell – Maxwell the growling hard man with the scar on his face; Maxwell who was never fazed by anything; Maxwell who was now shivering and shaking like a wet kitten. 'Please don't kill me. I won't say a word. I swear it. I fucking swear it!'
'Turn round,' said the Irishman. 'Face the trees.'
Maxwell made a weird moaning sound, and didn't move.
I gritted my teeth and dug furiously, ignoring the burning feeling in my biceps as I tried in vain to shut the world out.
There was a sound like a cork being popped from a champagne bottle, barely audible in the rain, and Maxwell's legs went from under him. He fell on to his behind and remained sitting upright, his grizzled face a mask of pain, both meaty hands clutching at his injured knee.
The Irishman took two steps forward, stopping in front of Maxwell, the smoking gun barrel pointed down at his head.
I stopped digging, stood up straight, eyes fixed on the scene in front of me.
Maxwell looked up at his executioner and just for an instant his expression became calm as he accepted the inevitable. Then the popping sound came again and a line of blood sprayed from the back of Maxwell's head as the bullet hit him in the face. He stayed stock still for an incredibly long moment, then tipped over backwards, his eyes still open. A spent shell landed in the mud beside me as the Irishman casually pumped two further rounds into his body. Maxwell juddered violently, threw one arm uselessly into the air, then, as his fist hit the sodden ground with a loud slap, he lay absolutely still.
The Irishman turned my way, grinning at me. He briefly glanced at the hole I'd dug and seemed satisfied that it was adequate. Then he lifted the gun so that the end of the smoking barrel was pointed directly between my eyes. 'So, my friend, your turn. Same as before. I can do it quick, or I can do it slow. Now, be honest with me. Aside from Miss Boyd, is there anyone you've told about Miss Brakspear?'
If I answered him, I died. If I didn't answer him, I'd get kneecapped like Maxwell, and possibly worse. Either way my life was completely over, and for several seconds I was utterly incapable of speaking. I simply stared at him, unable to avoid seeing Maxwell's body as it lay bleeding in its shallow grave, conscious of the warm trickle of urine running down my leg. I hunted desperately for any possible sign of mercy in the cold, staring eyes, knowing there would be none. But still you look, because in the end it is your only hope as you scrabble around for any chance of staying alive for a few moments longer.
A stark choice. Give up Dom and enjoy a few more precious seconds, even though the end result would be the same. Or say nothing and go to my grave right now.
'Tell me,' he said, lowering the gun so it was pointed at my kneecap.
I opened my mouth. It felt as dry as a bone. The urge to give up Dom and stay alive just one more moment was almost unstoppable.
But then he turned his head in the direction of the cottage.
I turned my head too, because I'd also heard it. The sound of a car coming up the lane, its headlights illuminating the woods.
It stopped. Directly outside the cottage. And I heard the doors open.
Which was the moment I snapped out of the stony trance I'd been in and, with an angry shout, threw my shovel at the man who was about to kill me.
I didn't even look to see how my would-be killer had reacted. I saw the shovel hit him somewhere in the midriff while he was still turned the other way, and I heard him let out a surprised grunt, but by then I was charging for the tree line, splattering mud everywhere, knowing that salvation was only feet away.
I half dived, half slid into the trees, rolling on the pine needles and scrambling to my feet. Behind me I heard the pop of a shot fired through a silencer, then the sounds of barked orders and pursuit.
Sensing freedom, and with adrenalin coursing through me, I ran into the welcoming darkness, ignoring the branches that tore at my skin. I stumbled once, almost fell, but my sheer momentum, coupled with a desperate, exhilarating will to live, drove me onwards.
A powerful torch beam moved in a steady arc through the sodden foliage, trying to focus in on me, and as I weaved to avoid its glare a bullet hissed quietly past my head and popped into the trunk of a pine just ahead of me, leaving a small round hole and a thin trail of smoke. I caught the whiff of cordite as I passed and tried to accelerate but my legs wouldn't go any faster and my lungs ached with the strain of all my exertions. I wasn't fit, and it was beginning to show. But I knew without doubt that the men following me would be fitter, so either I continued to run or I died.
Without warning, the ground ahead of me simply disappeared, and before I knew it I was tumbling down a slope. I somersaulted once, hitting my head on something hard, and then I was immersed in water.
I scrambled to my feet, saw that I was knee deep in a shallow stream, then charged across it and scrambled up the slope on the other side. As I reached the top, gasping for breath and blinking the rainwater out of my eyes, I dared for the first time to look over my shoulder.
And saw him there. Standing in the darkness, at the top of the slope on the other side of the stream, barely twenty yards away, the snarling wolf face skewed slightly where it had taken a knock, but with the gun held outwards in both hands, taking aim.
I dived forward into the mud as he fired, making myself as small a target as possible. The shot sailed somewhere above me and I crawled assault-course style on my belly until I had cover from the trees. Then I got to my feet and was running again, hearing him splash through the water of the stream as he continued his pursuit.
I was tempted to drop down and hide in the thick undergrowth, knowing that it would be extremely difficult to find me there, but in the end my instincts told me that my best hope of survival was to put real distance between us and reach some kind of civilization.
I could hardly breathe now – my lungs felt like they were about to burst – but my legs somehow kept going and I'd covered maybe another fifty yards when I finally saw a gap in the trees ahead. The sounds of pursuit had faded and I had this sudden elated feeling that they'd given up, having decided that I was proving too difficult to kill.
The opening in the trees gave on to a quiet country road flanked on the far side by an impenetrable-looking hedge. As I ran on to the lane I saw the lights of houses about a hundred yards further down.
Freedom. As soon as I got there I knew I'd be safe. And this time I'd go straight to the police, regardless of what they believed or didn't believe.
But a hundred yards is a long way when every muscle in your body aches and each breath comes in a shallow gasp.
And when there are two men chasing you with guns.
I caught a flash of the torch beam in the trees to my right, but this time it was further ahead, between me and the houses. The bastards were trying to cut me off.
I took off again, arms flailing, my gait little more than an exhausted, drunken stagger.
A hundred yards. Eighty. Fifty. The torch beam had disappeared, and as I rounded a slight bend in the road I could see a red pub sign hanging outside one of the buildings. All the lights were on inside and there were several cars parked next to it. The rain was easing now.
Thirty yards. Twenty. I could hear the clink of glasses, the welcome buzz of conversation. Safety.
The pub door opened and a middle-aged man stepped out, turning his head to call out a final goodbye to those inside.
'Help me!' I managed to shout, the effort physically painful. Barely ten yards away now. 'Please help me!'
He was still grinning when he turned my way. I was, too. I'd never been so happy to see someone in my whole life. To have been so close to death and to be given a second chance at life is the sweetest, most incredible reward imaginable.
The bullet struck him in the eye with a malevolent hiss and blood splattered the pub window. He tottered on his feet for a full second, his expression one of mild surprise, then he lost his footing on the pub step and went down hard, his head hitting the pavement with an angry smack.
I stopped, all hope sucked out of me, and turned round slowly.
The Irishman was twenty yards away from me, the gun raised and pointed at me.
Strangely, I felt nothing. I think I was too exhausted for that. I'd tried everything. I'd done my best, and in the final analysis it simply hadn't been enough.
And then there was a roaring sound, getting closer and closer, and the Irishman was suddenly bathed in bright light.
A car. Coming fast, skidding now.
Instinctively I swung round to meet it, blinded by the headlights as it bore down on me, realizing at the very last second that I was right in the middle of the road; and then I was flying through the air, flailing like a madman, seeing the ground come up to greet me.
And then, bang.
Nothing.
Mike Bolt took the corner way too fast. There were plenty of reasons why: it was dark; it was pissing with rain; the road was unfamiliar, winding and very narrow; and, most important of all, he was a man in a serious hurry.
He slammed on the brakes, conscious of Mo Khan smacking a hand on to the dashboard to steady himself as he shouted instructions for back-up into his airwave radio, but the car was already going into a skid. Bolt turned the wheel hard, trying to straighten up before he hit the house looming up in front of him. He missed it narrowly, but the wheels locked and the car was temporarily out of control as it skidded along the rain-slicked road. A red pub sign appeared through the slicing of the windscreen wipers, and then suddenly Mo yelled out, his voice almost deafening him: 'Boss! Watch out!'
A guy standing in the middle of the road facing them. Frozen like a deer in headlights.
The car was slowing down thanks to Bolt's pressure on the brakes, but nowhere near fast enough. He could see the fear on the guy's face, the way his eyes were widening, recognized him from the photo he'd seen at HQ earlier that day as Rob Fallon, the man they'd gone to Maxwell's place to see, the one man who might help them locate Tina.
And then, bang, they hit him.
He flew over the bonnet, smacked bodily into the windscreen, cracking it, then bounced off and into the darkness.
The tyres screamed, the car wobbled, and then, at last, it stopped. The two men lurched forward in their seats, Bolt's head narrowly missing the windscreen.
That was when, through the rain, he spotted another figure standing in the road only a few yards in front of them. It was a man, but Bolt didn't get a good look at him, because he was pointing a gun straight at the car.
'Get down!' he shouted, dragging Mo down by the collar as he ducked beneath the steering wheel.
There was the sound of breaking glass as a bullet whistled through the car, followed by a second crack as it exited through the back window.
Keeping his head below the level of the damaged windscreen, Bolt floored the accelerator and the Jaguar shot forward. Two more bullets smashed through the window in rapid succession, both missing their targets, and then out of the corner of his eye Bolt saw the gunman jump to one side as they passed him, then disappear from view. He lifted his head above the steering wheel, saw the guy running for the trees, but he was trying to do far too many things at once and before he had a chance to turn the wheel and give chase the Jaguar mounted a bank at the side of the road and ploughed into a hedge, before coming to a halt at a forty-five-degree angle to the tarmac.
For a moment, Bolt was too shocked to say anything. Barely five minutes earlier he'd been driving to his informant's house to follow up on a lead. Since then he'd discovered his corpse, done a mad dash to try to intercept his killers, run over Rob Fallon, probably written off his second car in a year, and narrowly avoided being shot dead.
But there was no time to dwell on any of that now. Shaken but unhurt, he jumped out of the car and, using the door as cover, scanned the trees ahead for the gunman, wondering for the first time if it had been Hook. Because if it had been, and they could catch him, then maybe they could find out what had happened to Tina.
But it was clear he was gone.
Bolt leaned back inside the car. 'Are you OK?' he asked Mo, who was scrabbling round on the floor for the radio.
'Just peachy,' Mo replied, picking it up, but his thick wedge of greying hair was standing upright and he looked like he'd seen a ghost. 'I think you might have saved my neck.' He pointed at one of the bullet holes in what was left of the windscreen. It was at head height on the passenger side.
There wasn't time for Bolt to acknowledge the gratitude in his colleague's voice. 'Get on that radio and tell them to get helicopter support here as soon as possible. We need to track down that shooter. And get ambulances here too. ASAP. I'll go check on our casualty.'
Leaving Mo in the car, Bolt ran back in the direction of the pub, the adrenalin-fuelled excitement he was experiencing tempered by the fact that he'd run down the one man they desperately needed to speak to.
A crowd had gathered outside the pub – about a dozen people in all, mostly men. Most appeared to be milling around, seemingly unable to take in what had just happened, but one was bent down beside a man lying on the ground, giving him what appeared to be an increasingly desperate heart massage.
Bolt's heart sank. Surely he hadn't killed Fallon. That would be the most terrible irony of all.
One of the men saw him coming. 'There he is, the one who hit him!' he shouted in a loud upper-class voice that carried all the way down the street.
Bolt pulled out his warrant card and waved it at the group. 'I'm a police officer,' he called out with as much authority as he could muster, knowing he needed to take control of this situation. 'Move out of the way please.'
The crowd parted a little, letting him through, although they aimed angry mutterings at his back.
'He's dead,' said the man giving the heart massage, looking up as Bolt stopped next to him, his expression one of utter disbelief. 'Jim's dead.'
Bolt looked down and felt a guilty surge of relief. Jim was a well-built man in his fifties, wearing a check shirt and corduroy waistcoat. There was a blackened, coin-shaped hole where his right eye should have been.
'This man's been shot,' he said firmly so that everyone could hear him. 'An ambulance'll be here in a few minutes. We're trying to locate the killer right now, but there's another casualty round here as well.' Then, wiping away the raindrops on his face, he pushed through the group, looking for Fallon, praying he was OK.
He found him lying in a narrow alleyway just up from the pub. He was on his side in an approximate fetal position, and he wasn't moving.
Cursing, Bolt crouched down beside him, feeling for a pulse. 'Mr Fallon, Rob… can you talk to me?'
Sirens began wailing in the distance, coming from more than one direction.
Fallon moaned. He was bleeding from the mouth, but he also had a strong pulse. Slowly his eyes opened and he rolled over so he was staring up at Bolt, his face a mask of numb shock. There was a gash above his eye that was weeping a thin trail of blood down one cheek and he had a cut on his head as well.
'It's all right, Rob, you're safe now. I'm a police officer, and an ambulance is on the way.' He showed him his warrant card. 'Can you speak?' he asked, conscious that the sirens were getting closer, and that he had only a short time to talk to Fallon before he was taken to hospital.
'Yeah,' he said weakly, 'I can speak. But I think I might have broken my arm.'
Bolt looked down. His right arm was on the ground beneath him, and for the first time he saw that it was bent at an unpleasant angle.
'The doctors'll fix that. But I need to know about Tina Boyd. Do you have any idea where she is? We need to find her urgently.'
Fallon managed to shake his head a little. 'No. I was trying to get hold of her earlier.'
'Have you been in contact with her today?'
'Yes.'
'Where was she when you last spoke to her?'
Fallon winced in pain. 'Outside the doorman's place. John Gentleman.'
'Doorman?'
'The one at Jenny's place. Jenny Brakspear.' Fallon struggled to sit up, but failed. 'Listen, you've got to find her. The Irish guy, the one with the gun…I think he's got her.' He started to say something else but his words were drowned out by the blaring sirens as the first of the emergency services vehicles came to a halt on the road behind them.
Through the noise, Bolt told Fallon once again that he'd be OK now and squeezed his good hand. But inside he was in turmoil.
Where the hell was Tina Boyd?
When the phone in his left pocket began to vibrate, the man in the cream suit excused himself from his conversation with the mayor and his wife – a mountain of a woman who'd single-handedly polished off two plates of canapés – and weaved his way through the clusters of guests lining the swimming pool over to the cobbled steps leading down to the beach.
'Where are you calling from?' he demanded, walking along the sand away from the party.
'A phone box,' answered the man he knew only as Hook. 'We've got a problem. The witness I told you about. Fallon. We didn't get him.'
The man in the cream suit hissed through his teeth. It was a sound he made whenever he became angry or frustrated. In this case, he was both. 'I thought I told you specifically to get rid of him.'
'You did, but he managed to evade us.'
'If you'd dealt with him in the beginning, as I wanted you to do, we wouldn't have this problem, would we? Right now, he's a major threat to everything. I want him dead. Put all your resources into it.'
'It's too late. He's in the hands of the police.'
The man in the cream suit hissed again. 'I can't afford problems on this. There's too much riding on it. Neither can you. I'm sure I don't need to remind you that the two million you're being paid is conditional on events reaching a successful conclusion. If Fallon talks, that's not going to happen.'
'He's hurt. I'm not sure how badly, but he was hit head-on by a car travelling at speed which knocked him high into the air. I saw it happen. It's possible he might even be dead.'
'It would be useful if he was, but we can't leave it to chance. Can you get to him in the hospital?'
'It's possible, but it might be too risky.'
'I didn't think you were the kind who scared easily, Mr Hook.'
'I'm not, but I'm no fool either. That's why I'm still here.'
The man in the cream suit thought about pushing him further but decided against it. He was used to getting his own way, but he was also pragmatic enough to know that Hook had a point. 'Do what you can, but events are very close to fruition and nothing can go wrong now. There's too much riding on it. How far away are we from receiving the goods?'
'A matter of hours. As soon as we have them, no one's going to be able to stop us.'
'So everything's in place?'
'Absolutely.'
'Good. Kill Fallon. I'll sleep easier with him gone. And keep me posted on developments.'
He hung up and stopped walking, looking out to sea at the squid boats on the horizon. As with everything in life, there were complications, but the man in the cream suit was not the type to worry unduly. He was a gambler by nature. This was just a bigger gamble than usual. Even if it failed he would still be insulated from its repercussions, because he was also an expert at covering his tracks.
As he returned to the party, he heard his wife's high-pitched, faux upper-class laughter rising above the buzz of chatter as she talked to two middle-aged men in suits, one of whom was gazing unashamedly at her new breasts. The party had been her idea. Charmaine liked to act the glamorous hostess, and the man in the cream suit was happy to go along with it. She was a useful trophy, but little else. His real interest lay in much younger company, and he tended to travel overseas for his gratification, to Phnom Penh, Saigon and Manila.
Charmaine caught his eye as he took a glass of Krug from one of the waitresses, and flashed him an expensive smile. 'Darling, where have you been? I wanted to introduce you to some friends. This is Mohammed.' She pointed to the one focusing on her cleavage. 'And this is Atul. They're in import/export.'
The man in the cream suit came over and put out a hand to each of them in turn. 'Paul Wise,' he said, flashing a smile of his own. 'Very pleased to meet you.'
Mobile reception in the village was almost non-existent so Bolt found himself shouting into the phone as he walked away from the jumble of emergency services vehicles clustered around the pub. 'I need an armed guard on Robert Fallon. A minimum of three officers. He's currently en route to Wexham Park Hospital in Slough. This is absolutely top priority. He's the only live witness we have to what's been going on here.'
The man Mike Bolt was talking to was Frank Carruthers, the assistant chief constable of Thames Valley Police, currently in charge of the force while his boss was sunning himself on the Algarve, and who up until a few minutes before had been relaxing at home in front of the television. He sounded shell-shocked to find himself suddenly presented with a double murder investigation and absolutely no sign of any suspects.
'It's going to take me time to get a team over there,' explained Carruthers. 'All our ARVs are currently hunting for the gunmen involved in this incident, and we just don't have the resources you lot have got in London.'
'We haven't got time, sir. Mr Fallon was the gunman's target tonight. He managed to get away, but we believe that the gunman is a professional shooter called Michael James Killen, also known as Hook. He's currently wanted for a number of murders, and may well have another go at Fallon.'
'And we're trying to find him now, which is our first priority.'
'Well, you could do worse than try the hospital.'
'There are procedures to follow, Mr Bolt. You know that. I've got to make sure that the area's secure and that there's no immediate threat to members of the public.'
Bolt could have predicted this kind of reaction. Police officers, at senior and junior level, tended to play things far more by the book these days and were discouraged from using their initiative too much. He could sympathize with Carruthers. Everything was target- and procedure-related now, and as one of the brass, if he didn't do everything the right way, he was in trouble.
So he changed tack. 'As I said, Fallon's pretty much the only witness to what happened here tonight. If we do catch Hook and charge him with the murders, we'll need Fallon to give evidence. It's essential he's protected.'
'How serious are his injuries?' asked Carruthers.
'He's hurt, but he's also conscious and talking.'
'And why is he a target exactly?'
'I'm not sure yet, but as soon as I find out anything I'll let you know.'
There was a short silence at the other end. 'OK,' said Carruthers eventually. 'I'll get people over to the hospital as soon as I can.'
Bolt thanked him, knowing he'd done all he could. He wasn't going to leave anything to chance though, and he hurried back to where Mo was leaning against a marked patrol car next to the police cordon, drinking a mug of coffee and talking into his mobile. He still looked shocked, which Bolt could understand. He wasn't feeling it so much himself, partly because he'd been shot at before on more than one occasion, and was better prepared to handle it. Perhaps later, when he was alone, it would hit home. Right now it was something he didn't have time for.
The rain had eased to a light drizzle, and the lane was busy with a mixture of curious onlookers, horrified witnesses and swarms of local uniforms who seemed to have materialized in huge numbers, and SOCO, busy kitting themselves up to begin the fingertip search of the crime scene. Above their heads, a police helicopter circled steadily, although already its presence was obsolete. Hook – and Bolt was now convinced it was him – was long gone.
As Bolt reached him, Mo came off the phone. 'That was Saira,' he said, referring to his wife and the mother of his four children. 'I was telling her not to wait up for me. I didn't have the heart to tell her that someone just tried to shoot us.'
Bolt smiled grimly. 'Probably just as well.'
'You know, boss,' he said, sounding subdued, 'I'll vouch for you that Fallon was in the middle of the road, and you weren't driving erratically when you hit him. In case they bring the IPCC in.'
'Thanks, I appreciate it.' He gave Mo's arm an affectionate pat. 'Right now, though, it's the least of our worries. We need to get over to the hospital. The armed guard's not set up yet and I want to make sure nothing happens to Fallon.'
'How are we going to get over there? We've lost our transport.'
'No we haven't.' He motioned for Mo to follow and set off through the mêlée, conscious of the fact that he had to keep his colleague distracted so that the shock didn't begin to overwhelm him. Right now, he needed Mo.
The Jag was still parked halfway up the bank at the end of the village, temporarily forgotten. A single uniform stood guard over it, since technically it remained part of the crime scene. Pulling out his keys, Bolt flashed his warrant card, said he had permission from Assistant Chief Constable Carruthers to remove the vehicle, and carried on walking.
'I don't think we should do this, boss,' said Mo once they'd climbed in. 'We have the slight problem that we can't actually see anything out of the windscreen.'
Bolt would never have described himself as impulsive, but he took a huge amount of satisfaction from his next move, which was to reach down behind the driver's seat, lift up the Enforcer – the heavy cylindrical tool used for breaking down doors – and smash it through the ruined windscreen. The driver's half disappeared completely as glass flew across the bonnet and on to the grass below. 'We can now,' he said.
He manoeuvred the car back on to the road with a loud bump so that it was facing away from the murder scene, relieved to realize that the vehicle was still in good working order. In his rearview mirror, Bolt saw the uniform staring at him aghast. Bolt had a moment's doubt too, but it didn't stop him from accelerating away, weaving around the Road Closed sign and heading in the direction of Slough.
The room was small, square and empty, save for the heavy office chair Tina Boyd was strapped tight to. She was cold and tired – naked too, apart from her blouse and socks.
He'd removed all her other clothes when they were alone together earlier, slicing them off with a knife before tossing them casually into the corner. Tina had been expecting him to rape her, but strangely he hadn't, preferring to use his hands to stroke and paw her, every so often breaking off and pacing slowly around the chair, taunting her in cruel little whispers.
Are you ready to die yet?
Do you want me to fuck you now, or should I wait for the others?
She'd said nothing, enduring his attention in cold, defiant silence, trying to ignore the way her skin slithered and crawled under his touch, preparing for the inevitable.
But the inevitable had not yet come. It was as if he'd suddenly lost interest, replacing the hood on her head and leaving the room with a final, almost half-hearted taunt.
Later, bitch.
That had been hours back now; since then there'd been nothing but silence. She couldn't even hear anything outside. She was freezing cold and starving hungry, and worst of all she was utterly alone, with no prospect of help.
The thought scared her. Her life had been hard these past four years, and in some ways it had been getting worse, particularly the constant fight with the booze, but she wasn't going to give it up without a fight. In a fit of sudden desperation she struggled against her bonds, howling her frustration from behind the gag as the realization that her efforts were utterly pointless hit her once again. The only part of her body she could move was her head. It was as if she was paralysed from the neck down. Her ankles were tied to the chair's base with ropes, and her hands and elbows were lashed to the arm rests. Several rolls of thick masking tape had been wrapped round and round her chest and stomach, giving her the appearance of a half-dressed mummy. Thankfully, the set of picks in her sock hadn't been discovered. She might not have been able to reach them but they still represented some sort of hope, however faint.
Suddenly she heard something. It was a muffled cry, coming from beyond the wall.
For a second, she thought she'd imagined it. Then it came again. Someone was trying to call out to her but whoever it was was gagged too.
Jenny Brakspear! It had to be her. So she was still alive…
Tina made a noise in return, using her weight to try to force the chair nearer to the wall. But the damn thing wouldn't budge. Someone had removed the wheels, and it was way too heavy. She made more noises, wanting to let Jenny know that she wasn't entirely alone. Relieved herself, that she wasn't the only prisoner here.
Tina waited for a response, but the cries from beyond the wall had stopped. Then she heard something else, much fainter this time. The sound of weeping.
Tina made some supportive noises, hoping this would encourage Jenny to stop, but the weeping continued, then finally it stopped altogether, and the cold silence returned.
She wondered what Jenny had had to put up with from the man who'd kidnapped her, what kinds of torments he'd put her through. She also wondered what it was that was going on here. They'd kidnapped Jenny two days ago and were clearly keeping her alive. They were keeping Tina alive, too.
The burning question was, for how long?