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  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.

  Twenty-two

  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.

  Twenty-three

  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.'

  Twenty-four

  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 lon
g 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.