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  'Mr Fallon,' said Tina Boyd. 'Have you sobered up yet?'

  I almost laughed at the sound of her voice. Even after everything that had happened, Tina Boyd still gave me confidence. But I was also aware that the man who'd come here tonight was no idiot and might have left behind some kind of bug to record any calls I made. It was time to start thinking like them.

  I knew from research I'd done for Conspiracy that it was almost impossible for a private individual to bug a mobile, so right then it was my best bet.

  'Can I call you back?' I said. 'Five minutes?'

  'I'll be waiting,' she said, and cut the connection.

  Seventeen

  Tina was sitting at her desk drinking her third coffee of the night when Fallon called back.

  'Where are you speaking from?' she asked him.

  'I'm walking down my street.'

  'Is it safe at this time of night?'

  'A lot safer than my flat. I had a visit tonight.'

  'What happened?'

  'One of the kidnappers broke in and threatened me with a knife. He knew I'd been speaking to the police and he was the one who made me call you.'

  'Which of them was it?'

  'The Irish guy. The one who'd had the plastic surgery.'

  'Can you give any further description of him? Something you may not have mentioned last night?'

  'He had scarring round his chin. It looked a bit like someone had cut him with a bottle, but it wasn't that pronounced. I think the plastic surgery must have got rid of most of it, which makes me think that at one time he must have been hurt pretty badly.'

  Tina frowned as she wrote down this information. It all seemed so improbable somehow, yet her initial suspicions that Fallon had indeed been telling the truth were turning out to be correct. 'This man didn't hurt you, did he?'

  'No, but he left me in no doubt that he would if I carried on searching for Jenny. That's why I'm phoning you from four hundred yards down the road. I don't want anyone else listening in.'

  'And are you sure you're not being followed now?'

  'I'm being extra careful, I promise.'

  'Glad to hear it. And don't worry. We can offer you protection if you need it.' But even as she said the words, Tina wondered if they actually could.

  Fallon sighed. 'I think I'm going to need it. What did you find out that made you call me?'

  She told him about the doctored CCTV footage and the doorman's criminal record.

  'So, the bastard was involved.'

  'Almost certainly, and that makes it a major criminal operation. If they're going to this much trouble and planning, then there's a very specific reason why they kidnapped Jenny. Her father claims that nothing's happened to her—'

  'He's lying. He's got to be.'

  'I agree. And I think he's lying because he's under duress, which means the kidnappers are in contact with him. But we still don't know why.'

  'It's usually money, isn't it?'

  'Usually, but I'd be surprised if it was in this case. I've got some background on Roy Brakspear. He's a widower who lost his wife to cancer five years ago, and he's the director and part owner of a reasonably profitable mid-sized company based in Cambridge which supplies raw materials to the pharmaceuticals and technology sectors. He takes a salary of one hundred and seventy thousand pounds per year and he holds fifteen per cent of the company's shares, which if he sold them tomorrow would net him about three hundred thousand. He's not going to be hitting the poverty line any time soon, but it doesn't make him a rich man. So there's something else, and I think we need to focus on Brakspear himself to find out what it is.'

  'What do you need me to do?' asked Fallon, sounding eager to help.

  'Right now, nothing. Go back home, get some sleep and leave the investigating to us.'

  'Are you going to take finding Jenny seriously now? She's been gone twenty-four hours, and I'm really worried about her.'

  'We've got enough evidence to move on this now so, yes, we are going to take it seriously. And I'll keep you informed of progress too, you have my word on that. But I want you to promise me you're not going to speak to anyone about this. Because if you do, it could jeopardize our inquiry.'

  Fallon said he wouldn't, and she ended the call, returning to the pile of witness statements for the stabbing on the Holloway Road that afternoon.

  It made the usual grim reading. A loud argument between a bunch of school kids, insults thrown, followed by a flurry of fists and feet, then suddenly one of them pulls a knife and plunges it into his nearest opponent. A single stab wound to the chest, delivered without thought of the consequences, and now a fifteen-year-old was in a hospital bed fighting for his life. Tina had never become inured to the casual violence she had to deal with and she found incidents like this – petty, pointless disputes that ended so horrifically and with so much attendant suffering – profoundly depressing. The only positive was that it wasn't going to be difficult to ID the perpetrator. This meant that CID resources could be freed up to look for Jenny. Tina had now decided to speak to DCI Knox about it as soon as she finished her shift. With Jenny missing for twenty-four hours now, time really was of the essence. It crossed her mind to go straight to the Met's Kidnap Unit but she knew they were snowed under with drugs-related cases and probably wouldn't take what she had that seriously. It would be easier if Knox referred it.

  She yawned and reached for her cigarettes, deciding that she could probably get away with having one more at her desk, rather than puffing out of the toilet window. But as she lit it she saw an exhausted-looking DCI Knox approaching along the corridor. She'd just thrown the cigarette into the dregs of her coffee cup and deposited it under the table when he opened the door and came inside.

  Knox was usually annoyingly upbeat and full of motivational psycho-babble, but tonight he didn't look very happy at all. 'Bad news,' he said wearily. 'Our stabbing's just become a murder. The kid died at midnight.'

  Tina's heart sank. Not just because a fifteen-year-old had lost his life and a family would now be grieving, but also because of what it meant for Jenny Brakspear.

  Tina would never get the resources she needed now.

  Tuesday

  Eighteen

  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 s
he'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.

  Nineteen

  '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.

  Twenty

  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 Brak
spear 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.

  Twenty-one

  '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.'