Die Alone Page 19

  Bolt had always trusted Tina’s judgement. She’d worked for him for several years on some important cases, and she was undoubtedly a good detective. From what Bolt knew of Ray Mason, he’d been a very good detective too. And so he had to concede that it was therefore unlikely they were wrong about Sheridan’s involvement, which put him in something of a dilemma. What did he do about it?

  Twenty years ago, maybe even ten, he would have known the answer instantly. He’d have started digging deeper, regardless of the consequences. Bolt considered himself an honest, conscientious cop, one who genuinely wanted to keep the streets safe for law-abiding citizens. But he was no blind rule taker either. Like Ray Mason, he’d once executed a man in cold blood. The man’s name was Lench and he’d been by some distance the most brutal murderer Bolt had ever come across. Even so, he’d been unarmed and offering no resistance when Bolt, overcome with anger and emotion, had shot him dead. In those days he’d been prepared to take major risks in pursuit of what he perceived to be natural justice.

  But those days were long gone. He was only eleven months away from retirement. He and Leanne had a plan worked out. Leanne was going to take early retirement from her teaching job. She’d sold her house just before the Brexit vote and the collapse of the London property market and had moved into Bolt’s penthouse loft conversion in Clerkenwell, which he rented from a man he’d once done a huge favour for, so they were ready and able to start a new life elsewhere at the drop of a hat. They’d both fallen in love with the south of France and were looking for a house with gites attached to do up and start a holiday rental business. It was the classic pipe dream of middle-class Brits everywhere, and with their combined pensions and the capital they’d built up over the years it was eminently doable. Leanne’s mother was French, and she spoke the language fluently. The knowledge that they were going to do it together was what kept him going in the day-to-day humdrum and difficult hours of the NCA. He couldn’t afford to do anything that compromised that dream, and digging deeper into a case that didn’t concern him was a real risk. He could already see quite plainly what it had done to Ray Mason.

  As he parked the car in the building’s underground car park and climbed the stairs to the loft, he’d already decided that he wasn’t going to do anything foolish.

  It had just turned two a.m. when Bolt climbed into bed beside Leanne, trying to be as quiet as possible, though he was secretly pleased when she stirred and put a hand in his.

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ he whispered, kissing her neck.

  ‘Love you,’ she managed to whisper back, then did exactly that, her breathing soft and steady.

  Bolt lay beside her, one arm encircling her waist, and closed his eyes. But he couldn’t help thinking about Alastair Sheridan and the possibility that he might get away with his crimes, and for a long time sleep didn’t come.

  Part Four

  * * *

  36

  It was ten o’clock on a sunny, if noticeably cool, Sunday morning when Jane Kelman took a seat on a bench facing the Serpentine in Hyde Park. Because of the time, the park was relatively quiet, peopled mainly with joggers and cyclists, and there were no boats out on the water.

  She was dressed casually in a coat and jeans, with walking boots. Her hair was blonde now and shorter, and tied into a bun, and she was wearing outsize sunglasses. Just like Tina Boyd, she was an expert in changing her appearance. She knew she was physically attractive, with her best feature her eyes, which were almond-shaped and a deep brown in colour, so she tended to wear sunglasses wherever possible to deflect attention from them.

  Today she looked positively ordinary and, unlike most women in their mid-forties, this pleased her. The worst thing for a hired killer is to be memorable, especially one who was killing with the frequency she was. Jane knew she was taking a significant risk by remaining in the UK and taking on a new job so soon after the others, but like most people, she found it very hard to turn down a life-changing sum of money.

  She didn’t have to wait long until a short, wiry man with a large scar on his lip sat down on the bench next to her. He was dressed in a thick coat and carrying a small backpack, which he placed on the seat between them.

  It was extremely rare for her to meet a client. Anonymity was far safer for both parties. But she’d killed for the Kalamans before, and this gave the relationship a rare measure of mutual trust.

  She glanced across at the man and used the agreed code: ‘Do you have the time? I left my watch at home.’

  ‘I did too, but I believe we said ten,’ he replied, uttering the return code phrase, the scar curling his lip into a sneer.

  It was an unfortunate disfigurement, she thought. It made him look hard, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was. She was reminded of a couple of lines from her father’s favourite movie, The Magnificent Seven. ‘Don’t hire the man with the scar. Hire the man who gave him it.’

  ‘Ten it is then,’ she said.

  He nodded, seemingly satisfied, and looked out across the water. ‘Thanks for coming at such short notice. We need you to move fast. Did you get the dossier you were sent on the target?’

  She nodded. It had been comprehensive, not that she’d needed to read it. ‘I’ve come across him before on another job. He’s slippery.’

  ‘He is. And the police are having a hard time finding him.’

  ‘So what makes you so confident that you can?’

  ‘We know someone who knows where he is. She just needs to be made to talk. We’ll deliver her to you. You get the information. Then you take him. Your tools are in the backpack. Check your email account at least once every half hour. That’s how you’ll hear from us from now on.’

  ‘I’ll need a down payment.’

  ‘A hundred thousand’s already been deposited in the account we sent your last payment to. You’ll receive the remainder as soon as we have confirmation that the job’s done. It would also be very useful if you could get the chance to speak to him before you pull the trigger. We’d ideally like a filmed confession. We want to know who else was involved. He wasn’t acting alone.’

  Fat chance of that, thought Jane. There was no way she wanted Mason talking. The deader he was the better.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said, getting to her feet with the backpack.

  37

  Tina enjoyed staying at Arley’s place. Her kids, both now in their early twenties, still had vivid memories of the day seven years earlier when their father and nanny had been murdered and they’d been abducted at gunpoint. According to Arley, they’d undergone extensive therapy afterwards to help them come to terms with what had happened. Considering they’d spent the next four years apart from their mum while she’d been in prison, twins Oliver and India seemed remarkably confident and well adjusted.

  They hadn’t seen Tina since the night she’d rescued them from their abductor, killing him in the process, and when they first saw her on Sunday morning they’d both hugged her tight and thanked her profusely for what she’d done for them. Tina had to fight hard to keep her emotions in check but, as always, she tried to deflect attention away from her role, remembering that night all too well herself, and wanting to keep it in the past where it belonged. Even so, it did make her feel good to know that, because of what she’d done, these two were here now. Oliver was about to go travelling in the Far East, just as Tina had done at his age, and India had a job in London working for a charity.

  ‘The pay’s crap but at least it’s doing something worthwhile,’ she said when she was telling Tina about it.

  The four of them had a barbecue in Arley’s back garden. The sun was shining but the weather had cooled down substantially and they sat around the patio heater. Tina felt comfortable in the company of this happy family that had come so close to being torn apart and wiped out in one bloody day. The kids bombarded her with questions about the famous cases in her career, and were endearingly blunt.

  ‘So Mum says you’re in trouble again,’ said Oliver, w
ho’d grown into a good-looking young man, and was the more confident of the twins.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ said Arley, ‘and you need to leave Tina alone. You know we can’t talk about an ongoing case.’

  ‘Mum’ll sort you out,’ said India. ‘She’s a shit-hot lawyer.’

  Tina laughed. ‘I’m innocent, so justice will prevail. But you’re right. She is shit hot.’

  After they’d cleared away, Tina and Arley sat together in the lounge.

  ‘You know you can stay here for as long as you want, Tina,’ said Arley. ‘I like your company, and I’ll never stop owing you for what you did for me.’

  ‘There was never any debt to pay,’ Tina told her. ‘I did it because it was the right thing to do. And seeing your kids now, healthy and happy – you know, it makes me feel good. But I don’t like imposing on you. I may still be in danger and people around me seem to have a very unfortunate habit of dying. I don’t want that to happen to you.’

  ‘It won’t, Tina. It was Ray they wanted, not you. It’ll be too dangerous for them to try again. And in case you hadn’t noticed there’s a police car parked at the end of the road. They’ll be keeping an eye on you now.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll take you up on your offer. I don’t know when the police are going to let me back into my house, or give me my car back.’

  ‘I’ll chase them tomorrow, but it’s unlikely they’ll let you go home before the end of the week.’

  Tina sighed, suddenly feeling very down. ‘I’m not sure I want to go back. Not after what’s happened to Mrs West. It won’t feel right.’

  Arley leaned over and put a hand on her arm. ‘Then don’t. Do something else. Stop sticking your neck out waiting for someone to chop it off, because one day someone will. When we were sat outside with the twins talking about your past, it made me realize how many needless risks you’ve taken over the years.’ She sat back and gave Tina an appraising look. ‘Look at you. You’re young, you’re gorgeous.’

  ‘You should be my PR woman, not my lawyer.’

  ‘Why don’t you go out and date, rather than hold a candle up for men who are never going to be there for you?’

  ‘Says the single woman.’

  Arley chuckled. ‘I’ll admit it’s not easy finding a decent guy out there, especially online, but remember, I’m ten years older than you and I’ve been in prison. I’m not a catch. You are. You can find someone.’

  ‘I’ve been dating,’ said Tina, remembering all the meaningless, unsatisfying encounters of the past year, and the date with Matt that had had some promise but still hadn’t made it off the ground. ‘In fact I met someone last week. Do you mind if I borrow your PC? I need to check my profile and send him a message, and the police have got my smartphone.’

  Arley gave her the kind of look she’d employed a lot when she was a senior detective. Authoritative and slightly condescending. ‘You’re not planning on doing anything dodgy, are you?’

  ‘Arley, please,’ said Tina. ‘I never do anything until the third date at least.’

  ‘I meant anything illegal, like try to get in touch with Ray Mason.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ve had my fill of illegal. I just want to get on with my life now. And I promise you, Arley, hand on heart, that I have no idea where he is.’

  ‘Good. My laptop’s on the table. And show me a photo of this man you met. I want to see if he passes muster.’

  Tina sat back down with the laptop and quickly logged on to her account. She hadn’t logged on in close to a week and she had eighty-nine new messages. That was the thing about online dating. It was a numbers game, and you had to kiss a hell of a lot of frogs before you had a chance of finding a prince. Tina skimmed through the messages, more out of curiosity than anything else, but there was no one whose words or photos even came close to attracting her. She then brought up Matt’s profile. He was forty-two, six feet tall, an engineer with a daughter aged ten from a previous relationship, and he was a really nice guy. But it was this that was putting Tina off. She just couldn’t bring herself to involve someone like him, and by extension his daughter (whom he seemed to dote on), in the violence and chaos of her life. It would just make her feel scared for him.

  Still, she showed Arley his photos, including one he’d posted of him in a pair of swim shorts.

  ‘Yes, I like him,’ said Arley. ‘Definitely. I hope you’re going to see him again?’

  ‘I think so,’ Tina lied.

  ‘Well, make sure you do, but maybe not for a few days yet. It might be hard to explain what you’ve been up to this weekend. Keep him on ice.’

  ‘Will do,’ said Tina.

  She returned to her seat with the laptop and, as Arley started checking her phone, Tina checked the emails on her two official addresses, cancelled a couple of deliveries to her house, and then logged on to an email address that only she and Ray had access to. She was certain that the police wouldn’t be monitoring Arley’s laptop – they’d need a warrant for that – and she didn’t think either Sheridan or the Kalamans would have been able to break into it already. In fact, it was unlikely they knew where she even was.

  Even so, she felt more than a little guilty as she typed in the password and saw that there was a single message saved in the drafts section, which could only be from one person. She opened it up and started reading.

  Hey you. All good. Now safely out of UK. Planning next move. I’m sorry we had to leave under the circumstances we did. I’m sorry I said I love you too. It was a heat of the moment thing. But I want you to know that I will miss you deeply like I’ve always missed you since the day I was arrested. But I also want you to get on with your life. I saw on the news that they’d arrested you but that now you’ve been released. Take care for God’s sake. And stick to your story. I got rid of the phone and I don’t think there’s anything tying me to you. You won’t see me again now and I won’t give you my location because I don’t want you to be compromised. But just know that I’m truly thankful not just for your help but for everything else as well. Take care Tina.

  Tina read the message through a second time, deleted it and, remembering her promise to Arley, didn’t write anything back. When Ray logged back on and saw that his draft was deleted, he’d change the password to one they’d agreed yesterday. That way it would be impossible for anyone to monitor any communications between them. Not that she thought they’d be speaking again.

  She briefly considered dropping a message to Matt and giving him a second chance, but decided to leave it for a few days. Instead, she put down the laptop and settled back with Arley, who’d now been joined by Oliver and India, to watch an episode of Midsomer Murders.

  Ray was safe. It was time to move on.

  38

  Mike Bolt sat at his desk in the far corner of the loft’s open-plan living area. He hated working Sunday evenings, especially when he’d been working all weekend.

  Behind him, Leanne was lounging on the sofa watching a re-run of The Vicar of Dibley on TV. Ordinarily, Bolt would have joined her. He was exhausted. There was still no sign of Mason, and the witness from Tina’s village who’d apparently seen her leaving with a man in her car the previous night after the Mary West murder was now unsure if he’d seen a man after all. And so far they hadn’t found any useful traces of Mason’s DNA in Tina’s cottage. So, although they had plenty of circumstantial evidence linking the two of them, they didn’t have a shred of proof.

  The pressure from above to find Mason was relentless, made worse by the number of killings connected to his escape, and the complete absence of any leads. Sheryl Trinder had torn a strip off him and Mo in her office that day for their perceived failures, and had effectively told them they’d be fired for misconduct if it turned out that Mason had been hiding at Tina’s place when they’d searched it.

  However, this wasn’t why Bolt was still working. He was working because he couldn’t seem to let go of what Tina had told him last night.

  Like most people, he’d b
een surprised by the lack of arrests in the Bone Field case. The remains of seven women had been found at the house in Wales, which made their killer or killers some of the worst in British criminal history. Bolt was realistic enough to know that, because only one of the women had been positively identified, and she was a working-class woman in her early twenties, the case hadn’t captured the public’s imagination in the way it might otherwise have done, and so, as time had passed, the clamour for results had died down. But there were still plenty of unanswered questions. The ownership of the farmhouse had been traced back through numerous shell companies to Hugh Manning, the lawyer who’d done a lot of work for Alastair Sheridan’s hedge fund, and he’d handed himself in with Tina Boyd a year earlier, on the same night Ray Mason had been arrested for murder. But Manning had then been assassinated less than a week later while in a secret location under police protection, presumably to stop him naming other people who’d been involved in the Bone Field murders. Only a handful of people would have known his whereabouts, yet somehow the killers had got to him, suggesting they were people on the inside with powerful connections.

  Under ordinary circumstances, Bolt might have thought Tina mistaken in thinking that Alastair Sheridan was a serial killer. She was a good detective, but prone to letting emotion get the better of her. Yet the fact that the NCA investigation into the Bone Field murders now had only a handful of people on it, none of whom had turned up anything new in months, was now bothering him.