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  Andrea stood up. 'Well, if you haven't got any other questions, I'd like to lie down for a while.'

  He nodded. 'Of course. Matt and Marie will stay here with you.'

  She left the room, and Bolt wiped the bead of sweat from his brow. It had been a long day, and he knew that tomorrow was going to be an even longer one. There wasn't much more they could do, so, having instructed Turner and Marie to keep a close eye on Andrea, and promising Turner that he'd be relieved later, he and Mo said their goodbyes and went outside.

  Bolt felt a surge of relief to be away from the pictures of Emma. It was torture looking at them.

  'I still get the feeling Mrs Devern's not telling us everything,' said Mo as they walked back to the car.

  'Shit, Mo,' Bolt snapped, 'her daughter's missing. She's going to tell us everything she can to get her back, isn't she?'

  He stopped by the car and took a deep breath, surprised by the anger in his tone. Mo looked taken aback.

  Bolt sighed. 'Sorry, I shouldn't have said it like that. It's just, you know . . . I don't think she's going to be holding anything back.'

  They got into the car in silence. Bolt took another deep breath. The pressure was getting to him. The knowledge that he might lose the only child he'd ever had, and before he'd even met her, was affecting every step he took, and he was beginning to doubt his ability to handle it.

  'What is it, boss? What's wrong with you?'

  Bolt avoided Mo's concerned gaze. 'Nothing. I'm fine.' It was his stock response, and it sounded utterly hollow. He couldn't even bring himself to instil any meaning into it.

  'No, you're not. This isn't like you. I've worked with you, how long now? Four years, five? You never let things get to you. Not like this. You care, but not so much it brings you right down. And you're down now. You haven't been right all day.'

  There was a long pause. Bolt sat there with the key in his hand, inches from the ignition, unmoving.

  'Come on, tell me,' said Mo eventually, his voice quiet. 'We've shared things in the past.'

  'I know.'

  'Important things. Things that no one else knows.'

  'I know.'

  'So, talk to me now.'

  In that moment, Bolt knew that the dam had to give, whatever the consequences. He put the key in the ignition but made no move to start the car.

  'I had an affair with Andrea Devern fifteen years ago.'

  'I thought there was something between the two of you. Back at the house—'

  'There's more.'

  Mo didn't say anything for a moment, then it seemed to click.

  'Oh shit, boss. You're not saying that . . . that Emma's something to do with you?'

  'It looks that way.'

  He told Mo what Andrea had told him earlier.

  'How do you know Mrs Devern, Andrea, isn't bullshitting you?' Mo asked when Bolt had finished. 'Especially as that's exactly what she told Jimmy Galante as well.'

  Bolt sighed. 'I don't know, Mo, but the dates fit. I checked them.'

  'But she was seeing Galante at the same time, right?'

  'That's right. And she was married too.'

  'Well, she certainly got around,' Mo said, a hint of disapproval in his voice.

  'I don't know what to do. It's ripping me to shreds.'

  'Chances are she isn't yours, boss. That's the way you've got to look at it. No offence, but if she was married, seeing another man, and seeing you, it's likely there were others as well.'

  'But if it's true . . .'

  'If it's true . . .' Mo paused, thinking. Choosing his words carefully. 'Then we've got to make sure we bring her back.'

  Bolt ran a hand across his face, the fingers finding the scars on his left cheek. He rubbed hard at the shallow divots in his flesh.

  'You saw what those bastards did to Galante. They're not going to let her go, are they?'

  'You've got to have faith, boss.'

  'Faith in what, Mo? Faith in what?'

  'If you haven't got faith in God, and I know that you haven't, then at least have faith in our abilities. We've got out of tight corners before.'

  'It's a lot easier said than done, Mo. It really is.'

  'I know.'

  'Do you?'

  'I've got four children, boss. Believe me, I know.'

  They were silent again. Bolt felt the tension flowing through his veins, tightening every muscle in his body.

  'You know,' said Mo eventually, staring out of the window, 'there's a village in India, somewhere along the Ganges, where they consider cobras sacred. It means they're not allowed to harm them, and because of that, the whole village is teeming with them. In schools; in people's kitchens; in kids' bedrooms; all over the place. But no one takes a blind bit of notice because they're convinced they're not going to get bitten. And, you know, even when one of the villagers is bitten, they think it's a mistake on the cobra's part, and that the poison won't have any long-lasting effect because they worship it. Now, cobra venom can kill if it's not treated. That's a medical fact. But do you know what? In that village there's not one recorded incident of anyone dying of a snake bite. Like I said, boss, you've got to have faith. It'll be OK.'

  They looked at each other, and Bolt was impressed by the determination in the other man's expression. It made him feel a little better, glad that he had shared his feelings. He was also surprised by the fact that Mo hadn't suggested he say something to Barry Freud. Mo was his friend, but he was also a professional, and he would know that he was taking a risk by keeping his boss's relationship with both the kidnap victim and her mother silent.

  'Not a word about this, OK?' Bolt told him. 'It won't affect how I run this op, I promise.'

  Mo nodded. 'OK, boss, but only as long as it doesn't. If it looks like the pressure's getting too much . . .'

  'It won't. I promise.'

  'But if it does, I'm going to have to say something. You understand that, don't you?'

  'Yeah, I understand that.'

  Bolt started to turn the key in the ignition, but Mo's next words stopped him dead.

  'You were in the Flying Squad when you were seeing Andrea, weren't you?'

  Although there was nothing accusatory in the tone, the meaning was clear. The Flying Squad dealt with armed robberies. The woman Bolt had been having an affair with was also sleeping with an armed robber. The potential for corruption was obvious, and it wasn't as if the Flying Squad hadn't had its fair share of corruption problems in the past. Bolt wasn't offended, but it hurt him that his friend had felt the need to ask the question.

  'As soon as I found out she was seeing Galante, I finished it,' he said firmly.

  'Good. That's all I wanted to know.'

  There was another awkward silence. Bolt had crossed the line with Mo once before, two years earlier, and the implicit trust that had always existed between them had come under a lot of strain. It felt like something similar was happening again.

  'Come on,' he said, starting the engine, 'let's go.'

  Twenty-six

  Home for Mike Bolt was a spacious studio apartment on the third floor of a converted warehouse in Clerkenwell, one of the quietest places in central London, and not far from where he'd first been based as a uniformed cop. He'd been there for four years now, having moved in the year after his wife's death, and ordinarily he'd never have been able to afford a place one quarter of the size on his SOCA salary, but the rent he paid was minimal. The reason for this was that it belonged to a wealthy Ukrainian businessman, Ivan Stanevic, whom Bolt had helped out years before in his National Crime Squad days.

  The case was remarkably similar to the one he was involved in now. Stanevic's twelve-year-old daughter Olga had been abducted from the street by business rivals of her father's, and Bolt had led the team tasked with getting her back. On that occasion it hadn't taken long to find out who they were dealing with and consequently where Olga was being held. It was Bolt who'd personally negotiated her release with the kidnappers, and she'd been freed unharmed, for wh
ich her father had been eternally grateful. It was the only other kidnap case he'd ever been involved with, and the grim irony wasn't lost on him as he stepped inside his apartment and shut the door behind him.

  Usually he loved this place. It was hard not to love it since it had been refurbished with absolutely no expense spared. The floors were polished teak; the high, angular ceiling was crisscrossed with mighty timber beams carefully restored to their former glory; but the pièce de résistance was the way the old windows had been knocked out and replaced by a huge strip of floor-to-ceiling tinted glass that ran the entire length of one side of the apartment, facing east out on to the bright lights of London, with the high towers of the Barbican rising up behind the buildings opposite. Only the night before he'd sat in his armchair with a glass of 2005 Côtes du Rhône staring out across the city while an old Herbie Hancock CD played on the stereo, feeling quietly satisfied that the money laundering case had been brought to a successful conclusion, and looking forward to a weekend away with Jenny Byfleet. The world then had seemed a good, decent place, and for the first time in a while he'd actually felt contented. And all the time the clock was counting down to when it would all go suddenly and horribly wrong. Just like it had that night five years ago when he and Mikaela waved goodbye to the friends they'd spent the evening with, got into his car and driven off to their doom.

  It had just turned eight o'clock as Bolt kicked off his shoes and poured the remainder of the previous night's Côtes du Rhône into an oversized wine glass, taking a big slug and trying hard to relax. He'd phoned Jenny on the way home and, trying to sound as casual as possible, had apologized for the fact that he was going to have to postpone. She'd asked if he wanted to rearrange, and he'd said he'd get back to her, hearing her disappointment down the other end of the line as he'd hung up. That was probably it for the two of them, but he was past caring about that. All he could think about was the case, about how Andrea had come back into his life and, even after all these years, managed once again to turn everything upside down for him.

  He sat down in his armchair, but almost immediately stood up again. It didn't feel right resting his legs. Not with his mind going like the clappers. Instead he paced the room, thinking about what Mo had said about Andrea not being entirely truthful, and holding something back. He remembered Isobel Wheeler's words: Watch her. And most of all he thought back to his own experience with Andrea, and of how one night fifteen years ago, a mere eight weeks into their relationship, she'd dropped such a bombshell that it had ended everything between them with a bang that echoed even now.

  He recalled the night perfectly. It was in the days when mobile phones were still the size of house bricks, and long before Bolt had taken to carrying one as a matter of course. He'd arrived home after a few drinks with a couple of Flying Squad buddies to find that he had a message from Andrea on his answerphone, asking him to call her urgently if he received the message before 10.30, giving him a number he didn't recognize, and adding that under no circumstances was he to call the number after that time. If she didn't hear from him before then, she'd call back later when she got a chance. The message had been left at twenty to ten, just fifteen minutes earlier, and Andrea had sounded uncharacteristically scared. He'd called her back immediately, and she'd picked up on the first ring, obviously waiting for the call.

  'Mike, thank God you've called. I don't know how to tell you this.'

  'Whatever it is, you can talk to me about it, OK? I can help.'

  She took a deep breath and spoke quietly. 'There's going to be an armed robbery. Tomorrow morning, between ten and ten thirty. A police van carrying a load of cocaine for incineration from Lewisham Nick to Orpington.'

  The shock of her announcement left Bolt cold.

  'How do you know about this, Andrea?' he asked.

  'I just do,' she said unconvincingly.

  'You're going to have to do better than that. I need details. Like where you got the information.'

  There was a silence at the other end of the line.

  'Andrea, I can't go to my bosses and get authorization to do anything about this until I know more.'

  This wasn't entirely true. He could have done if he really wanted to, but the most important thing was to find out how the woman he, a Flying Squad officer, had been seeing for the past two months had details of exactly the kind of major crime he specialized in investigating.

  'I've been seeing a guy,' she said. 'His name's Jimmy Galante.'

  'While you've been seeing me?' he asked, knowing the answer already.

  'Yes.' Pause. 'I'm sorry, Mike. I've been seeing him a while. Since before you.'

  He resisted the urge to shout at her, even though he wanted to. Instead, he listened while she continued, telling him how she'd always known that Jimmy was a bit dodgy and operated on the wrong side of the law, but hadn't ever realized the extent of his misdemeanours. Until that evening, when she'd been at his place and overheard a conversation he'd had on the phone in which he'd discussed the robbery with a fellow conspirator. 'He was in the other room, and thought I couldn't hear him, but he's been jumpy all day so when the phone rang I listened at the wall and heard everything he said. When he came back in the bedroom, I was in bed, so he didn't suspect a thing. Then he said he had to go out, and he'd be back about half ten.'

  To this day, Bolt remembered how gutted he felt when she told him about getting back into another man's bed, how he'd got that wrenching feeling in his stomach as if someone was tying it in knots. He hadn't seen Andrea for close to a week because she'd said she'd been so busy, and all the time she was fucking some lowlife robber.

  'So, you're at his place now?' he said.

  'Yeah. I'm meant to be staying tonight. Billy's away on business.'

  Bolt sighed. 'And you're absolutely sure about this?'

  'Positive. I'd bet my life on it.'

  'So why are you telling me this now?'

  'Isn't it obvious?'

  'Not really, no. I'm surprised you're so keen to shop your . . . your boyfriend.'

  'I'm scared of him, Mike. I've been wanting to finish it for a while, but he's not the sort to take no for an answer. He even threatened to hurt Billy if I left him.'

  'Tell me something. When you met me, was it a coincidence, or did you plan it?'

  'Course I didn't plan it. How could I have done that?'

  Bolt was silent. He wanted to believe her, but even though he was a lot younger then, he wasn't entirely naive. Something didn't feel right with her story. But she was giving him a tip, and he felt duty bound to act.

  'Do you know where they're meeting up to do this robbery?'

  'No. I've given you all the details I know.'

  'If we try to stop them, and they're armed, you know what might happen, don't you? Your boyfriend, the guys he's with . . . They might end up getting shot.'

  Andrea said that she understood. 'He's the one going out there with a gun,' were her exact words.

  And that had been that. The next day the Flying Squad had hastily set up an ambush, following the police van and its cargo of more than a hundred kilos of cocaine, which was being driven by their officers, on its journey from Lewisham police station to an incinerator in Orpington. Sure enough, the robbers made their move, boxing the van in on a busy dual carriageway and forcing it to a halt before appearing, balaclava-clad, weapons in hand. Such was their speed and brazenness that they caught the Flying Squad team off guard, but only for a couple of seconds.

  The Flying Squad ambush ethos is surprise, aggression and overwhelming force. As their own cars roared on to the scene, forming a loose cordon around the van and the robbers' vehicles, and disgorged their screaming officers, the back of the security van flew open and more gun wielding cops leapt out. The shouts of 'Armed police, drop your weapons!' filled the air and Bolt felt an adrenalin kick like he'd never felt before as he stood, legs apart, Colt revolver held two-handed in front of him.

  Which was the moment it all went wrong.

 
; There were four robbers with guns outside the car, two more – the drivers – inside. One of them opened fire and a Flying Squad guy called Hammond, who was thirty-one and just celebrating the birth of his child, got hit in the shoulder. Passers-by dived for cover as another of the robbers raised his shotgun, but this time he never got the chance to pull the trigger. Bolt and the guy standing next to him both opened fire, hitting the robber a grand total of four times. Dean Hayes was twenty-five, only months older than Bolt, with a criminal record stretching back into his mid-teens. He died three hours later on the operating table. Only one of the bullets was fatal. It had pierced his heart. A later PCC investigation revealed that it was Bolt who'd fired it.

  The cops from the back of the security van grabbed another of the robbers and slammed him to the tarmac with guns in his back, while the fourth robber got off a wild shot before taking a bullet in the shoulder that sent him sprawling. But the first robber, the one who'd shot Hammond, had managed to scramble into the back of one of the getaway cars, a powerful Sierra Cosworth, whose driver then reversed suddenly, knocking down one of the advancing cops and breaking his hipbone. It then smashed into the Flying Squad car that was blocking it in, pushing it into the central reservation and narrowly missing Bolt in the process, before accelerating through the narrow gap it had created.

  Several of Bolt's team had been carrying pickaxe handles, and one of them managed to smash the driver's side window as the getaway car passed, showering the driver with glass, and another threw his into the windscreen; but, faced with no direct threat to their lives, they were unable to shoot at the occupants. Bolt remembered being cool-headed enough, even after shooting a person for the first time, to take aim at the Cosworth's tyres, but the car had taken off at such a speed that it was thirty metres away before he had a chance to fire, and with civilians everywhere he knew it would be too dangerous to pull the trigger again.

  Police patrol cars from Lewisham station had descended rapidly on the scene and there was a high-speed chase which ended only minutes later when the Cosworth crashed into a parked van. The driver, a well-known face in the criminal fraternity, was captured, but the gunman was nowhere to be seen, having fled the vehicle on foot, still wearing his balaclava.