When SG3 Mike Bolt of SOCA, the Serious and Organized Crime Agency, was woken at just after 5.30 a.m. on a Friday morning in mid-September by a call from his boss telling him to get down to their offices fast, he had no idea that one of the hardest days of his life had just begun.
His team had just come off a job tracking a gang of professional money-launderers who were now safely banged up awaiting trial, and he'd booked the day off as holiday. He had big plans for the coming weekend, his first off in close to a month, which involved driving down to Cornwall to spend a few relaxing days with a twenty-eight year-old artist from St Ives with raven hair and a dirty laugh. He'd been introduced to Jenny Byfleet a couple of months earlier when she'd been up in London, and he was very keen to get to know her better. Jenny was the kind of girl a man could really fall for, and Bolt felt that he deserved a bit of romance in his life, even the long-distance kind. Things had been a bit sparse in that department for some time now.
But the romantic weekend was going to have to wait because this was an emergency: an ongoing kidnap situation, according to the boss.
Most of the public don't know it, but kidnapping is a comparatively common crime. On average, there's one every day in London alone, but the vast majority of these are drugs-related, involving squabbles over money between criminal gangs, particularly those from ethnic minorities. This case was totally different, and far, far rarer. A fourteen-year-old middle-class white girl abducted for ransom was a frightening development, and a senior cop's worst nightmare. Although none of the top brass would ever admit it, Bolt knew that the police service had no real problem tolerating kidnappings involving a few thugs snatching and torturing a crack addict over an unpaid couple of hundred quid, because frankly the press, and therefore the public, weren't really that interested. But if the media got hold of something like this, they'd have a field day. It had all the elements of a great story, particularly now that the kidnapper or kidnappers had murdered a friend of the victim's mother during an attempted ransom drop the previous evening. The stakes, then, were extremely high, and the pressure for a successful result was going to be enormous.
And Mike Bolt was the one who was about to be chucked headfirst into the eye of the storm.
The details he'd been given were still sketchy. The victim's mother had been stopped at just before eleven o'clock the previous night, having been spotted driving erratically by a police traffic vehicle containing two officers from Hertfordshire Constabulary. As she'd got out of her car, she was seen to have bloodstains on her clothing, and when questioned about this, the woman, who'd been in a distressed state, had told them about the kidnapping and the subsequent murder of her friend.
The woman had refused to return to the spot where her friend's body was, claiming that the kidnappers might still be there, but a second patrol car had eventually been dispatched, only to discover that the body had been set on fire and was already badly burned. There was no sign of anyone else in the vicinity and so, despite her protestations of innocence, the woman had been arrested on suspicion of murder and transferred to Welwyn Garden City police station where she'd given a lengthy statement explaining what had happened to her over the previous two days.
It was a difficult and highly unusual situation for Hertfordshire police. On the one hand they had an obvious murder suspect in custody, but one who nevertheless remained insistent that her daughter had been kidnapped, and was acting like someone telling the truth. In the end they'd decided to escalate the inquiry, and because she'd been picked up outside London 's city limits, the senior investigating officer on the case had approached SOCA rather than the Met's overstretched Kidnap Unit, hence the call to Bolt.
It had just turned seven a.m. when he arrived at the office where his team was based. The Glasshouse, as it was known, was a 1960s ten-storey office block with windows that were tinted with the grime of age rather than lavishness of design, set on the corner of a lacklustre shopping street a few hundred metres south of the river in Vauxhall. It was a fine sunny morning, the fifth such day in a warm spell that had followed one of the wettest, most disappointing summers on record – which for England was really saying something – and if it hadn't been for the fact that he was missing out on seeing Jenny, Bolt would have been in a good mood. He liked cases he could get his teeth into, and they didn't come much more meaty than this. More and more these days, his work took him and his team into long drawn-out inquiries where the slow and usually laborious process of evidence-gathering took weeks, sometimes months, to complete. The money-laundering job they'd just finished was a case in point, having started right back in early June; and he'd once been part of a people smuggling investigation that had lasted the best part of a year. During a career that had spanned two decades, Bolt had learned the art of patience, but even so, the idea of taking charge of a case whose resolution could be measured in hours was one he was never going to pass up.
Bolt's team was based in an open-plan office on the fourth floor of the Glasshouse, and when he arrived about half of its dozen members were already there, drinking coffee and generally looking pretty groggy. They'd all been rousted from their beds earlier than they'd been expecting, and Bolt knew he wasn't the only one whose day off had been interrupted before it had even got going. The team had had a major drink-up two nights earlier in the West End to celebrate the arrests of the money-launderers, and it looked like one or two of his people had continued the celebration the previous night as well.
At least Mo Khan looked fairly ship-shape. Mo was one of Bolt's team leaders and the guy he trusted most. They'd been colleagues for close to five years now, first in the National Crime Squad, then at SOCA, and though, with his big round face and friendly, twinkling eyes, he bore more than a passing resemblance to a short, squat cuddly bear, the appearance was deceptive. Mo Khan was tough, efficient and unflappable under pressure, and these were three traits Bolt knew were going to come in very useful today. There was no sign yet of Tina Boyd, his other team leader, or his overall boss, SG2 Barry Freud, although Bolt knew he would be around somewhere since he was the one phoning everyone up at half past five.
He'd only just managed to say his hellos to the team members when Mo came over and collared him.
'Our mystery lady got here twenty minutes ago,' he said as Bolt poured himself a cup of strong black coffee from the percolator. 'Big Barry wants us to start the interview straight away. She's been up all night and he thinks that if we leave it much longer she's going to be too exhausted to talk.'
'Fair enough. Where is she?'
'Over in Interview Room B. Everything's set up and we're ready to go.'
'Blimey, you're quick off the mark this morning,' said Bolt, following him out the door and down the corridor. 'What time did you get in?'
'Half an hour ago. I was moving fast.'
Bolt grinned and gave him a playful punch on the arm. 'You never move fast, Mr Khan. How did you get here? Levitate?'
'I'm a man of many talents, boss.'
'So, have you seen her yet? This Mrs Devern?'
He nodded. 'I spoke to her briefly. She looks absolutely shattered, but she's very keen to talk to us.'
'I'll bet she is.'
Bolt slowed down to take a sip from his coffee, burning his lip in the process.
'Have the Hertfordshire cops checked her story out?'
'Parts of it. She's definitely got a fourteen-year-old daughter, but they haven't searched her house yet to check that she's actually missing. They're leaving that to us, in case the place is bugged.'
'So this whole thing could still be a load of bullshit?'
Mo shrugged. 'I talked to the cops who brought her in. They think that if this is all an act, then she's one hell of a good actress – but, yeah, it's possible.' He stopped outside Interview Room B. 'Guess there's only one way to find out, isn't there?'
Mo entered first, and as Bolt followed him in he experienced a lurch of shock that almost knocked him backwards. It had been a long, long time, but even looking as drawn and exhausted as she was now, with all the life sucked out of her features by whatever ordeal she'd endured these past few days, there was definitely no mistake. He knew the woman sitting in front of him.
And at one time he'd known her far too well.
Andrea Devern stood up as they came in. Mo introduced Bolt to her and they shook hands formally. Knowing that he couldn't let on that he recognized her, Bolt sat down opposite Andrea. Pleased that she made no sign of recognition either, he explained that they were only talking in such formal surroundings because their conversation could be monitored and recorded. 'This way, it'll allow us to go back over your statement more easily. But don't worry. It's not an interview under caution. We just want you to go through everything from the beginning, trying not to leave anything out, so we've got a full picture of what's happened.'
This wasn't entirely true. Given that the truth of her story had yet to be confirmed, making her repeat it would give them an opportunity to check for discrepancies later, should the need arise.
Andrea yawned, putting a hand over her mouth, and Bolt noticed that one of her manicured nails had been broken. 'I've already told everything to the detectives in Welwyn Garden City. I just want you to find my daughter.' Her tone was weary, almost irritable.
'It's important for us to hear it from you. Just in case there's anything you've forgotten. That way it'll help us to get your daughter back safely.' He gave her a reassuring smile.
'OK,' she said, meeting his eyes. 'I understand. Can I smoke in here?'
'Well, this is a non-smoking building, and Mo here has just given up a forty-a-day habit, but… What do you think, Mo?' Bolt smiled. 'Will you be able to concentrate?'
Mo didn't look too happy about it but he nodded his assent. He'd only quit the dreaded weed six weeks earlier and by his own admission was still wobbling at the precipice, but Bolt was one of those people who still believed in a common-sense approach to how the law was enforced, and it seemed churlish to deny Andrea a small pleasure at a time like this. Big Barry would probably have something to say about it, given that he usually had something to say about everything, but Bolt would worry about that later.
Andrea thanked him, removed a pack of Benson and Hedges from an expensive-looking handbag on the desk in front of her, drew out a cigarette and lit it. She took a long drag, clearly enjoying it, before blowing a thin column of blue smoke skywards. And then she started talking. As she spoke, Bolt listened carefully, taking notes, only occasionally interrupting her narrative to question her about points that needed clarification.
It's possible to tell a great deal from a person's body language about whether or not he or she is telling the truth. Liars tend to limit their physical movements, and those they do make are towards their own body rather than outwards. They touch their face, throat and mouth a lot, and will often turn their head or body away from their questioner when they talk, so that they're not facing him or her directly. Andrea exhibited none of these tendencies. Hers might have been a highly unusual story, but from Bolt's point of view she was telling the truth.
There were three reasons for this. First, she came across as genuine. Second, there was, in the end, no real point in her lying, since it would take very little time for him to verify the truth of many of her claims. And third, and perhaps most importantly, he knew her, or at least had known her once, and didn't think she was capable of a charade like this. Underneath a hard, occasionally defensive exterior, she'd always been a good hearted person.
It was why he'd once been in love with her.
Having no children of his own, Bolt couldn't begin to appreciate the extent of the ordeal Andrea was going through, but it was clearly taking a terrible toll. She was still a very attractive woman, with thick, shoulder-length auburn hair and well-defined, striking features that would make most people look twice, but today her face was haggard and puffy from lack of sleep, with dark bags under the eyes and a greyish, unhealthy tinge to the pale skin. The eyes themselves, a very light and unusual hazel that he remembered being so pretty, now appeared haunted and torn, and more than once when she looked at him as she spoke he felt an urge to reach across the table and touch her. It was an urge he fought down. There was no room for personal involvement in something like this.
'I made one mistake,' she said when she'd finished, looking at both men in turn. 'I trusted them.'
'No, Andrea,' Bolt told her, 'you made two mistakes. You trusted them, and you didn't come to us first.'
'I thought I was doing the right thing.' She sighed, stubbing out her third cigarette in the coffee cup in front of her. 'I guess I was wrong.'
Mo looked up from his notes and spoke for the first time. 'Do you have a picture of Emma we can copy, Andrea?'
She nodded and produced a small colour photo from her purse, handing it to him. 'This was taken last year. I'd like it back, please. It's very precious to me.'
'I'm sure it is,' he answered, his tone sympathetic. He gave it only the briefest of glances, not wanting to make the moment any more painful than it had to be, before slipping it inside a small clear wallet.
'Do either of you two gentlemen have children?'
'I'm afraid I don't,' answered Bolt.
'I have,' said Mo. 'Four of them.'
Andrea looked at him with new interest, as if he was a kindred spirit in a way that Bolt could never be. 'You're very lucky,' she told him. 'I hope what happens to me never happens to you. You can't imagine what it's like.' And in that moment, her features, tight with tension and pain, almost cracked. Almost, but not quite.
'I promise you we'll all do everything in our power to help you and bring your daughter back,' Mo told her. 'But you're going to need to help us as much as you can. Now, there are some points that need clarifying, and some questions that need answering. Can I speak frankly?'
She nodded. 'Of course.'
'Your husband's missing, and he has been since Tuesday, the same day that Emma was kidnapped. Do you think he could be involved?'
She paused for several seconds. 'I've thought about that a lot but I just can't see it. He's always got on well with Emma, and he's not the sort to do something like this to her.'
'Has he acted at all differently around you and your daughter in the last few weeks?' asked Bolt.
'Not that I've noticed.'
'So, where do you think he might be?'
She threw up her hands. 'I honestly don't know. Maybe they've taken him as well.'
Mo made a show of consulting his notes. 'According to what you've told us, you never asked the kidnapper who phoned you whether he was also holding your husband, or what might have happened to him?'
'It's about priorities, isn't it? I've only had a few very short conversations with the man holding my daughter, and in all of them that's who I've been focusing on: Emma.' She sighed. 'Look, the thing is, I don't know whether Pat was involved or not, but I'm pretty damn certain he wasn't. He's not that sort of bloke. Besides, why would he bother? He's got a pretty good life. He doesn't have to do a lot. He drives a nice car, gets decent holidays. Goes out when he wants. If he asks me for money, I give it to him. I probably shouldn't do, because I'm hardly motivating him to get off his arse and get a proper job, but I do. So, why would he put all that at risk? For a share in half a million quid? I don't think so.'
It was, thought Bolt, a good point.
'Kidnapping a child for this kind of ransom is highly unusual,' he said, 'and it's clear that you weren't chosen at random. Is there anyone you can think of, in either your personal or your business life, who might have a motive for putting you through this?'
Andrea was silent again, then shook her head firmly. 'I can't think of anyone, no.'
But there was just the briefest flickering of hesitation in her eyes when she spoke, and Bolt, who was trained in such things, noticed it.
He looked at Mo. 'I think that's everything for the moment, isn't it?'
Mo nodded. 'I haven't got anything else.'
'So what happens now?' Andrea asked, her voice shaking.
'The kidnapper gave you forty-eight hours,' said Bolt, leaning forward in his seat. 'There's still nearly forty left until he makes contact again. During that time we're going to be gathering what clues we can as discreetly as possible in an attempt to ID him.'
'If they find out about you, though… I mean, these guys know what they're doing.'
Bolt fixed her with a calm stare. 'So do we, Andrea, so do we. In the meantime, you'll be supplied with a team of trained liaison officers. They'll look after your day-to-day needs and provide support until the situation's resolved. We'll also house you in secure and comfortable accommodation. Any calls to your home landline will be automatically re-directed to you there, so when the kidnapper makes contact you'll still be able to speak to him and we'll be able to monitor the conversation.'
'No. I want to go home.'
'That's not going to be possible,' said Mo. 'The logistics would be too difficult.'
'I don't care. I want to go home.' Her voice was panicky now. 'These people have been watching the house. They must have been to know that Jimmy was there. If they're watching it now and they see that I'm not at home, they'll suspect that I've gone to you. I can't risk it. They said they'd kill Emma if I went to the police, and I believe them.'
'It's very unlikely that your kidnapper or any of his accomplices are watching your house,' Bolt explained, knowing that Mo was right: letting her back home would be a real problem. 'They won't want to risk drawing attention to themselves, and there won't be many people involved in this either. Two, possibly three at most, so they won't be able to spare the manpower to keep watch on all your movements.'
'That's what Jimmy said,' Andrea countered, 'and look what happened to him. I'm sorry, but I want to go home. That's all there is to it.'
Bolt sighed, knowing from the decisive expression on her face that she wasn't going to budge on this. 'All right, we'll see what we can do.' He stood up, and Mo followed suit. 'Someone'll be along shortly to take you to a more comfortable room. But don't worry, I'll be giving you regular updates.'
He turned to go.
'Mike?'
Bolt flinched at her sudden familiarity, and Mo looked at him. He turned back, avoiding his colleague's gaze. Andrea's hazel eyes were full of anguish.
'Promise me you'll get her back. Please.'
Bolt felt his mouth go dry. This was hard, far harder than he was used to. He wanted to promise her but knew that there was absolutely no way he could. It would be a dereliction of duty. Emma's kidnappers had already killed once; it was entirely possible they could kill again. If he said one thing, and then another happened… well, it wouldn't look good.
'I can't provide a cast-iron guarantee on anything. I'm sorry.'
She turned to Mo. 'You've got children. You must have some idea of the pain I'm feeling.'
'I do,' he said softly. 'I really do.'
'Please…'
'We'll do absolutely everything in our power to get Emma back,' Bolt told her firmly. 'Absolutely everything.'
She gave a slight nod and reached for her cigarettes with shaking hands, ignoring a single tear that ran down her cheek.
For the moment, there was nothing more to say.
When he first started out as a nineteen-year-old probationary constable, having failed to secure the A Level results needed to get into the universities and polytechnics he'd applied for, Mike Bolt's first posting was Holborn Nick in the heart of central London, directly between the West End and the City. Having grown up on a diet of 1970s cop shows from Z Cars to Starsky and Hutch, he'd always quite fancied the idea of joining the police, but in an abstract way, like someone wanting to be an astronaut or a jockey. Had he made university, his life would probably have taken a completely different turn.
He'd spent five and a half years at Holborn, the first three in uniform, before joining the station's CID. One of his first cases as a detective was the death of Sir Marcus Dallarda, a fifty-eight year old City financier who'd made a fortune in the late 1980s developing rundown inner-city brown field sites and turning them into blocks of luxury flats. Sir Marcus was one of the few people to foresee the end of the property boom and had sold virtually all his property holdings before the great crash, and as interest rates soared, he'd lent his profits to the money markets where the returns were suddenly enormous. To some people Sir Marcus was the worst kind of capitalist, a man who created nothing and simply sat on a growing pot of money that had been gained through other people's sweat. But the media loved him. He was a good-looking, flamboyant figure with a ready stream of amusing one-liners, and he exuded the kind of unashamed joie-de-vivre that made him difficult to dislike. With two divorces, more than one love child, and a string of mistresses under his belt, he was tabloid heaven, and he possessed that strange upper-class ability of creating an affinity with the masses that someone middle-class could never dream of achieving.
So when he was found, after an anonymous tipoff, naked and dead in the penthouse suite of a renowned five-star hotel in the Strand, with several thin lines of white powder on the table beside him and a condom hanging rather forlornly from his flaccid penis, it was always going to be big news. Although a DCI was made the senior investigating officer in charge of the case, it was Bolt and his boss at the time, DS Simon Grindy, a world-weary forty-year-old for whom the term 'half-empty' could have been invented, who'd been given most of the legwork.
'Dirty old bastard,' Grindy had mused, with a gruff mixture of admiration and jealousy, as he and Bolt stood in the opulent bedroom looking down at Sir Marcus's rather spindly body. 'If you've got to go, I could think of worse ways.'
Bolt wasn't so sure. He always felt sorry for those whose deaths had to be investigated by the police. There was a certain indignity about being inspected by various people while you lay helpless, and in Sir Marcus's case in a somewhat humiliating pose. Like most people at the time, Bolt had enjoyed reading about Sir Marcus's rakish antics, and he remembered thinking at the time how powerful death was that it could crush even the most larger-than-life characters. It was something that had remained with him ever since.
It hadn't taken long to determine what had happened in this particular case, though. The post-mortem concluded that he'd died of a massive and sudden heart attack, at least partly brought on by the cocaine in his bloodstream. If he'd been indulging in intense physical activity before his death this could also have been a contributory factor.
Since Sir Marcus's friends and colleagues insisted he would never normally touch drugs, it was concluded by the media that whoever had been with him that night, and had made the anonymous call, had also supplied him with the illegal contraband. There was an appeal for witnesses and it turned out that two young women had been seen leaving the hotel in a hurry shortly before the call to the police, which had been made from a nearby phone box. At the same time, a search of the room and Sir Marcus's possessions turned up a business card in the name of a 'Fifi' who provided 'relief for all your tensions'. On it was an east London telephone number.
A call to BT had provided a name and address for the number in Plaistow, and so it was on a grey drizzling afternoon, three days after Sir Marcus had shuffled off his mortal coil, that Bolt and Grindy knocked on the door. The address itself was a small 1950s grey-brick terrace on a lonely back street in the shadow of a monolithic tower block. 'This girl ain't going to be pretty,' was Grindy's less than deductive take on things. 'If she was making money there's no way she'd be cooped up in a shithole like this.'
But Simon Grindy had not been the best of detectives, the accuracy of his predictions never likely to be giving Mystic Meg cause for concern, and this one was no exception. The girl who answered the door was a very attractive willowy brunette in her early twenties, wearing a pleasant smile, a black negligee and not a great deal else. The smile disappeared the moment she saw the two men in suits and raincoats standing on her doorstep.
'Whatever it is, I'm not buying,' she'd said dismissively in a strong east London accent.
'I can see that, Fifi,' Grindy had replied with a leer. 'If I was a betting man, I'd say you were selling.'
She'd pulled a face. 'Not to you, mate. Everyone's got to have minimum standards.'
Bolt had almost laughed but managed to stop himself. He hadn't been working with Grindy long and had no wish to fall out with him. But he liked this girl. She had balls.
'We're police officers,' he'd told her, pulling out his warrant card, 'and we want to speak to a Miss Andrea Bailey. Are you her?'
She seemed to notice him for the first time then, and gave him a quick appraising look that would have made him blush if he'd been five years younger before reluctantly opening the door and leading them into a cramped living room. She motioned for them to take a seat on a threadbare sofa while she put on a dressing gown and asked them what they wanted.
Andrea Bailey was a cool customer. When Grindy told her harshly that they knew she was the woman who'd been with Sir Marcus Dallarda and demanded that she tell them who her companion was, she'd sat in the chair opposite and flatly denied it, and for the next ten minutes batted off their questions with a quiet confidence that Bolt couldn't help but admire. When asked how her business card had got into Sir Marcus's wallet, she'd replied that she had no idea. 'I've got hundreds of business cards. I give them out. That's what they're for. I can't keep track of where they end up.'
'And what exactly is your business, Miss Bailey?' Grindy had growled menacingly.
'Read the card. Massage, of course.'
And so it had gone on, with Grindy's attempts at intimidation failing dismally.
'We can get a warrant to search this place,' he'd said at last.
'I'm sure you can,' she'd answered with just the hint of a smirk. 'You're a policeman.'
'In fact we've got it here,' he'd added, producing it from his raincoat pocket with a flourish, as if this would throw her off-balance.
It didn't. She remained casually impassive, even giving Bolt a cheeky wink.
Bolt knew she was trying to embarrass him, and didn't rise to the bait.
'Have you got something in your eye, Miss Bailey?' he'd asked her coolly.
'Just a twinkle,' came her answer, and he'd always remembered that. Cool and witty. It made Bolt wonder what she was doing in such a dump when there was a whole world out there she could have conquered.
They'd searched the house from top to bottom, supposedly looking for the same kind of drugs that had killed Sir Marcus, and Bolt had had to go through her underwear drawer while she watched.
'I don't enjoy doing this, you know,' he'd told her as he rummaged through the various lacy little numbers.
'Course you don't,' she'd said with a chuckle. 'But ask yourself this: how many other blokes get into a pretty girl's knickers as part of their job?'
They'd bantered on and off throughout the search. Andrea was a terrible flirt but there was something hugely engaging about the way nothing seemed to faze her, and Bolt was pleased she hadn't taken offence to them turning her house upside down.
There hadn't been any drugs – there hadn't been anything illegal anywhere – and Grindy was in a horrendous mood when they left. 'Cheeky bitch,' he'd complained bitterly. 'You want to keep away from women like her, Mike. They're trouble. Take it from me. I know.'
Grindy had never struck Bolt as an expert on women, but in this case his boss was right. Andrea, however, had definitely got under his skin, and he'd thought about her often afterwards.
It was three years before he saw her again. He was still living in Holborn but had joined the Flying Squad, and was walking down the Strand one afternoon when he heard a woman's voice call out, 'Mr Bolt, are you ignoring me?' He'd turned round to see a woman with jet black hair, a good suntan and big sunglasses coming out of a designer clothes shop. She was dressed in a white sleeveless top, figure-hugging jeans and high heeled black court shoes, and was carrying several bags. There was something familiar about her, the voice especially.
She smiled. 'Plaistow, 1989. My knickers drawer.' Then she removed the sunglasses and it came back to him in an instant.
'Andrea Bailey?'
She shook her head, coming forward. 'No, Andrea Bailey's dead. Meet Andrea Devern.' She put out a manicured hand, and they shook. 'I'm a married woman now,' she added, just in case he hadn't noticed the wedding band and diamond encrusted engagement ring.
'Congratulations. You've dyed your hair.'
She shrugged. 'I fancied a change.'
'It's good to see you again,' he told her, and it was. 'You look well.'
'Thanks. You don't look so bad yourself. Still a copper?'
He nodded. 'Yeah, but not at Holborn any more. I'm in the Flying Squad these days.'
She raised her eyebrows. 'The Sweeney? Very glamorous. So' – she looked around – 'you fancy buying me a drink, or are you too busy?'
Bolt was single at the time. It was a Saturday afternoon and he'd just been wondering about doing a bit of shopping without any real plans.
'Sure,' he answered, 'why not?'
So they'd found a wine bar round the corner, got themselves a nice quiet table and proceeded to demolish a bottle of Chablis.
It was one of those occasions when everything just clicked. They'd only met that one time years earlier, and hardly under ideal circumstances, but even so they talked like old friends. Andrea told him about her upbringing in a council flat, the middle of three daughters brought up by a single mother; how she'd left school at a young age with no qualifications and got herself a job in a local corner shop which she really enjoyed, before a friend turned her on to drugs. 'I got in far too deep, far too fast. Problem was, with my wages, I couldn't pay for them, so my mate told me a great way of earning big money.' She rolled her eyes. 'I was young, and I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time. I didn't want to work for some pimp, though, so I set up on my own, got business cards printed, and worked through recommendations. I didn't enjoy it, but…' She shrugged. 'It got me money. My idea was to kick the coke, raise a couple of grand and put myself through college. I wanted to do a business course.'
'But you never made it?'
'Oh, I made it all right,' she told him with a smile. 'I kicked the gear, but I took a quicker route to the real money and married it.'
'Always a good move,' he said.
'He's a nice guy,' she told him, her expression suddenly serious. 'He looks after me.'
But on that day at least, Andrea hadn't been in a hurry to get back to him, and with one bottle consumed she'd asked Bolt if he fancied sharing another. He knew it wasn't right to fool around with married women, but he was twenty-four, and the sad truth of the matter was that he was never going to say no.
And so the afternoon drifted lazily on, the conversation veering here and there, covering both their lives. Andrea now lived in Cobham with her husband, a businessman twenty-five years her senior who was, she claimed, one of the nicest guys she'd ever met. 'Present company excepted, of course.'
'Of course,' said Bolt with a smile.
Eventually they got round to how they'd originally met, and with the case of Sir Marcus Dallarda now firmly set in the past, Andrea admitted that she'd been with him that night. 'I'd never met him before but a girl I knew in the business had and she said he was a decent bloke and a good payer, so I went along with her. I never normally did threesomes – I'm not that kind of girl, believe it or not.'
Bolt wasn't sure that he did believe it, but as a trained detective he preferred to listen rather than pass immediate judgement.
'Well,' she continued, 'to cut a long story short, there we were, doing the business, and he conked out. Just like that. Grabbed his chest and keeled over.' Her eyes widened as she recalled the events, and although she was clearly trying to stop herself, a small smile appeared. 'It was comical really, the way it happened. Like something off the TV. I know I shouldn't say that, but it just didn't seem real.
'Anyway, we didn't know what to do. My friend was panicking. She thought we might get the blame for it, especially as he was a bit of a celebrity as well. So I said, let's just get the hell out of here. And that's what we did. But obviously we didn't want him to get found by the cleaner the next day, so we phoned the police and told them. I didn't want to bullshit you when you came round to interview me, but I didn't actually think I was doing anything wrong, you know.' She paused, fixing him with an expression of mild amusement, her eyes twinkling. 'So, what do you think of me now?'
Bolt may have been mildly drunk, but what he thought was that Andrea was a liar. A funny, engaging, attractive and intelligent one, with beautiful twinkling eyes, and loyal too, because she'd never given up her friend, even when he and Grindy had turned her house upside down, but a liar nonetheless, and one who wasn't much good at remembering the details of the past either. Otherwise she would have recalled that the police had originally been led to her by the fact that it was her business card in Sir Marcus's wallet, and not her friend's, meaning that Sir Marcus had almost certainly known her before that night. It seemed a strange lie to tell, given that she'd already admitted that she'd been a prostitute. Why not simply admit that she was the one who'd approached her friend about the threesome, not the other way round?
Not that Bolt said any of this, of course. Instead, he put down his glass and returned her gaze.
'I think,' he said quietly, 'that if I stay here much longer I'll do something I regret.'
'Here's to regrets,' she said, and lifted her glass.
Don't get involved, he told himself. You will regret it.
'You're a married woman, Andrea,' he said, but it sounded lame, even to his own ears.
She sat back in her seat with a wide smile on her face. She was a little drunk too, but her eyes remained sharp and focused. 'Ah, I forgot, I'm talking to a policeman.' She raised her hands in mock surrender. 'All right, you've convinced me. I shouldn't even think about making love to you.'
But it was clear that neither of them was thinking about anything else. Andrea was in London on a weekend shopping trip, and she was staying at a hotel in Bloomsbury on her own. So once they'd finished their second bottle of Chablis Bolt had walked her back. She'd invited him in. This time he hadn't even bothered to resist, and they'd gone to her room and made love before ordering room service, making love again, and finally sinking into the slumber of the drunk and the contented.
The next morning they'd made love a final time before Andrea told him she had to get back to Surrey. 'I'm really glad we met up,' she'd whispered, touching his cheek and leaning over to kiss him on the lips before getting off the bed and walking naked into the bathroom to shower.
Bolt remembered what an effect she'd had on him: a potent mixture of lust, satisfaction, jealousy and anger. The anger was the worst part, because he wasn't used to getting so worked up over a woman. He'd had a great time with her, a fantastic time, but he couldn't get over the feeling that he'd been used and was now being discarded, which hurt his young man's pride. Even in those days he'd known that the best way to woo a woman was to play it cool, to pretend you didn't care that much, but it hadn't worked and he'd still left his card on top of her handbag, hating himself for it, before walking out and shutting the door behind him.
And here he was fifteen years later, and still she was having an effect on him. The shock of seeing her again that morning was wearing off as the operation to find Emma cranked rapidly into gear and the team focused on the hunt for the kidnapper, but Andrea still possessed that 'something' Bolt had always found so irresistible, even in her current state. He wanted to help her. He told himself it was because she and her daughter were both crime victims, but he knew it was more than that. A part of him still wanted to impress her, to prove that he was the tough guy who could rescue a damsel in distress.
As he walked down the corridor to his boss's office for a strategy meeting, he knew that, just like last time, Andrea's presence in his life spelled trouble.
'What do you mean she wants to go home?' SG2 Barry Freud, the SOCA equivalent of a DCS, sat behind the huge slab of glass he called a desk, looking incredulous. 'That's not how we do things. There are procedures to follow in cases like this.'
Bolt, who was sitting on the other side of the slab, told him she was insistent. 'She says that otherwise she's not going to cooperate.'
'What choice does she have? She's got to cooperate if she wants her daughter back. It'll be far too much hassle allowing her to go home. I can tell you that for free, old mate. Far too much hassle.'
Big Barry Freud called every man he knew 'old mate'. It was supposed to be a term of endearment, but it never came across like that. As bosses went, Bolt scored Barry as decent enough. A big bluff Yorkshireman with a bald, egg-shaped head and a pair of peculiarly small ears, he made a hearty effort to come across as one of the lads, but never quite managed to make it look natural. Like a lot of senior officers, both in SOCA and the police services beyond, he always had one eye on the next rung of the ladder and did what he thought would go down well with his own bosses. He also had an inflated idea of his own importance. Word, probably put about by Barry himself, had it that he was a distant relation to the great psychoanalyst with the same last name, which gave him a natural insight into the minds of the people he was paid to catch. But Bolt couldn't see it himself. If you were part of such a distinguished family tree, you really weren't going to name your first-born son Barry. However, he was a decent enough organizer and he usually left Bolt alone to do his job, for which he was thankful.
That wasn't going to be the case today, though. Today, it was all hands on deck, and Big Barry was looking excited. He was the kind who tended to look at a crisis as a potential career opportunity.
'Can't you persuade her to see sense? The logistics of getting her home'll be a nightmare.'
'I've tried. I think it's going to be easier just to live with it.'
'That's your opinion, is it?'
Bolt nodded.
'She's still under suspicion of murder.'
'And we'll still be able to keep an eye on her there. I know it's unusual, but if we play it right, it won't compromise the op.'
Barry sighed. 'Well, if she absolutely insists, I suppose we can do it. I'm going to trust your judgement on this one, old mate. But make sure she knows that it means using resources that could be used helping to locate her daughter.'
'I will.'
Barry lifted a huge mug of coffee to his lips and took a loud slurp.
'What do you think of her story?' he asked.
Bolt hadn't mentioned the fact he knew Andrea because to do so would almost certainly mean him being removed from the case, but he answered honestly. 'I think it's true. You don't make something like that up. We know her daughter kept her dental appointment on Tuesday afternoon at a quarter to five, but that's the last confirmed sighting.'
'Have they got CCTV at the dentist's?'
'They have. It covers the car park and the front entrance, but it works on a loop and gets wiped every forty-eight hours, so it's already gone.'
Barry looked annoyed. 'Stupid woman. She should have come to us earlier. We could have had the daughter back by now if we'd been involved from the start. We need to know where she was snatched from, Mike. If it was in a public place, someone might have seen it.'
'I've got Mo and his people on that,' said Bolt, 'but this is the interesting thing. So far there's been not a single reported abduction anywhere in Greater London on Tuesday between four forty-five, when we know Emma was at the dentist's, and eight forty-five, when Andrea received the first phone call from the kidnappers. Also, when Andrea arrived home that night, she specifically said in both her statements that the alarm was on. If anyone had snatched Emma from the house, there's no way they would have stopped to reset the alarm.'
'So it looks like it could be an inside job? What about the old man, Phelan? What have we got on him?'
Bolt consulted his notebook, even though he already knew Patrick Phelan's form. 'He's got old convictions for drug dealing and receiving,' he answered, wondering why a live wire like Andrea was so often attracted to deadbeats. 'Nothing major, but he served a year behind bars in the late nineties for receiving a load of hi-fis that had been lifted in a hijack a few weeks earlier. That was his last conviction. He's been straight since then. For what it's worth, Andrea doesn't think he was involved.'
Barry grunted. 'She wouldn't, would she? It wouldn't say much for her judgement if her old man was capable of kidnapping his stepdaughter and holding her to ransom. The fact is, he's missing. Which means he's either dead, or he's one of the kidnappers. Fact.'
'Phelan's car's missing too,' said Bolt. 'I've got Mo's people checking the ANPR to see if we can track it that way.'
The automatic number plate recognition system was the latest technological tool available to the police in the twenty-first-century fight against crime. It used a huge network of CCTV cameras which automatically read car number plates to log the movement of vehicles along virtually every main road in Britain. These images – some thirty-five million a day – were then sent to a vast central database housed alongside the Police National Computer at Hendon HQ where they were stored for up to two years. Not only was it possible to trace the movements of Phelan's car on the day, but also where it had been in the days and weeks leading up to the kidnap, although Bolt knew it would take time and effort to gather this information.
'What are Tina Boyd's people doing?' Barry asked, taking another noisy slurp of his coffee.
'Background checks on everyone involved in this. Looking for motives. Andrea told us she had a lot of cash stored in deposit boxes, which made up most of the half million she paid out to the kidnapper. I think someone knew she had those deposits, and we need to find out who.'
Barry nodded. 'If it is personal, then it's someone who really hates her, isn't it? To kidnap her only child, take the half million, and then renege on the deal. You've got to be a truly nasty piece of work to do that.'
'Well, these people are certainly nasty, and they took out Jimmy Galante, so they know what they're doing.'
'You knew him?'
'I knew the name from my days in the Flying Squad. He had a reputation as a hard bastard. We had him down as a suspect in a couple of armed robberies but we never pinned anything on him, and he ended up running a bar in Spain, like Andrea said.'
'But why are they asking for more money? That's what I can't understand. They've got what they wanted. Why not just release the girl and have done with it?'
Bolt shrugged. 'Because they're greedy, I suppose. Maybe they figure that if it only took Andrea forty-eight hours to come up with half a million, then maybe they were selling themselves short. I don't suppose the fact that she brought someone along to the ransom drop made any difference. I think that was just an excuse for them.'
'So they were always going to keep squeezing…' Barry shook his head slowly. 'We're going to have to catch these bastards, Mike.'
'All I'd say, sir, is, don't expect miracles. We haven't got a lot of time until the next deadline.' He looked at his watch and saw that it had just turned ten a.m. 'It's only about thirty-six hours until she's meant to come up with the next tranche of money.'
'All right, point taken.' Barry put down his mug. 'So, what are we going to do about this one, old mate? Negotiate, or take them out?'
It was the big question. Bolt knew only too well that the problem with kidnap cases, what made them so different from other equally serious crimes, was the fact that the investigators had far less control over events. It was the kidnapper who set the tempo, and since the circumstances of kidnappings varied so much, the police procedures for dealing with them had to be far more flexible than they would be in, say, a murder case where a set of very specific rules applied.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
'I think the girl's still alive,' Bolt said at last. 'And I think they'll keep her alive while they need her as a bargaining chip. They've already said that Andrea can speak to her again before the next ransom drop, and there's no reason at the moment to believe that they'll renege on that.'
'But?'
'But, as we both know, they're ruthless. They've killed once. They may well have killed Phelan too for all we know. So if we spook them by trying to negotiate when they next make contact, my guess is they'll disappear back into the woodwork and that'll be the last we see of them. And there's no guarantee they'll let Emma go either. Especially if they think there's the remotest chance she can identify them. To them, she's just a loose end. We go the negotiation path, I think there's a good chance they'll kill her.'
Barry didn't look convinced. 'But there are a lot of things that can go wrong if we try to trap them, and if we mess it up it could be disastrous for SOCA. We're in need of some high-profile successes at the moment, so the public can see where all their tax money's going. A high-profile failure's going to set us back years.'
'You asked my opinion, sir. I think negotiation's the wrong move. If we can put trackers with the ransom money and play things right, we should be able to get our kidnappers to lead us right to Emma. It's risky, and there's a chance it might not work, but there's also a chance she's dead already. If we want to catch these guys, and we can't ID them before they make contact, then this is the best way.'
Barry massaged his head with pudgy hands, and tipped his chair back. 'Well, I'm going to send it upstairs. See what the head honchos have to say. I'll let you know their decision as soon as I've got it.'
As Bolt got to his feet, sensing that the meeting was over, there was a knock on the door and Tina Boyd entered the room, carrying several sheaves of paper in one hand.
Tina was a relatively new member of the team, whom Bolt had brought on board after he'd met her during a case a few years earlier. At the time she'd just resigned from the force, and it had taken a lot of persuading to get her to join the team. An attractive woman just short of thirty, with dark hair cut into a jaunty bob and smooth, delicate features that shaved five years off her easily, she had that look that was unmistakably educated and middle-class, and she could have passed as a primary school teacher just as much as a cop. But the look belied the tough time she'd had down the years. Bolt knew that Tina had seen and done it all. Shot during a hostage-taking drama four years earlier, she'd also lost two colleagues, both murdered. One of them had been her lover, earning her the unwelcome nickname of the Black Widow in some quarters.
When she'd finally joined the team a year or so back, Bolt had harboured the odd romantic aspiration where Tina was concerned, but any attempt at warmth or even flattery had come up against a brick wall, and he'd quickly realized that he was on a hiding to nothing. Tina was polite and she was pleasant, but it seemed you didn't get close to her. Even when she socialized with the team, she was always one of the first to leave, making her excuses before heading home alone.
'I've got some interesting news,' she said, approaching the giant glass desk.
'Tell us more, Tina,' said Barry with something approaching a leer.
She looked at them both in turn. 'Andrea Devern might be a high-flying businesswoman but her company's not doing that well. Turnover in the last financial year was £4.81 million but the overall operating profit was only forty-eight thousand pounds, which for a company that size is piss poor. It's also a seventy per cent drop on the year before on a higher turnover, and they've got serious debt to service with the banks. Andrea owns sixty per cent of the company. Her main business partner, and fellow director, is a woman called Isobel Wheeler.' Tina consulted one of the sheets of A4. 'She's a forty-two-year-old lawyer, divorced with no children, who bought into the company ten years ago and now owns the remaining forty per cent. Both women pay themselves generously. They draw salaries of one hundred and sixty grand each.'
'Nice work if you can get it,' grunted Barry.
'Very nice, but it's not going to last. With profits that feeble, the banks are going to be having serious words. And Andrea and her husband are big spenders. Their joint credit card bills mount up to a hundred and twenty K a year.'
'So, what's the interesting part, Tina?' asked Barry, cutting to the chase. 'They're big spenders.
So are most other people in this country. It's why the economy keeps doing so well.'
Tina gave him a mildly dismissive look, but when she spoke her tone was even. 'Well, I Googled Andrea's name and her company, and it seems that there've been a couple of articles about her in trade publications, but nothing of any significance. She certainly hasn't got a public profile. She earns good money but nothing special, so the question is, why on earth target her?'
Bolt nodded. 'It's what I've been thinking. This isn't random. It's personal.'
'You need to talk to Andrea herself, old mate,' Barry told him, manoeuvring himself slowly to his feet, 'and find out who the hell knew she was sitting on that half million in cash.'
'I will, but I reckon we can count in Pat Phelan straight away, and I reckon her business partner's a strong possibility too. Which means we need to turn up everything we can on the two of them.'
'We're on it already,' said Tina.
Bolt felt a rush of excitement. It was the knowledge that the clock was ticking; the realization that this case was going to be concluded in hours rather than months; and that he was in the centre of things.
It was a good feeling.
And one that wasn't going to last.
She had to be brave.
Emma Devern had said this to herself countless times since they'd brought her here. But as the hours dragged into days and still there remained no prospect of her being released back to her mum, it became harder and harder for her to manage it.
They were keeping her in a dank, carpetless cellar with one narrow window coated in grime, high up on one wall and well out of reach, which let in thin shafts of daylight. She had to wear a pair of handcuffs, and was chained to the wall by one ankle. The chain was long enough so she could move around, but she couldn't reach the steps at the end of the room or the far wall, and she knew in her heart that there was no way she was going to be able to escape.
She thought this was the third day she'd been here, which meant it was Friday. It was difficult to know for sure because the days simply flowed into one another, but she was trying hard to keep track. At nights it was cold. She slept on a horrible little bed with filthy sheets and she was forced to wrap herself up in them to keep warm, even though they smelled awful.
On the first night she'd been too shocked about what had happened even to cry. She remembered very little about how it had all started. She was going back to the car after the dentist appointment. Her dentist was called Mr Vermont, after the American state. He always said what good teeth she had, and she did too, because she looked after them well and didn't stuff her face with sweets like a lot of her friends. It had just been a standard check-up. She liked Mr Vermont. He was good-looking with a nice tan, even though he was a bit old and his hair was beginning to go a bit thin on top. The check-up had gone well. For the third visit running nothing needed doing – which was just as well because she hated having her teeth messed about with – and she'd been in a good mood as she crossed the car park at the front of the building.
Pat had been in the driver's seat with the paper in front of him, checking the sports pages, like he always did, but as she opened the door and got inside, something immediately felt wrong. He didn't greet her like he usually did, with a big grin and an 'All right, baby, how'd everything go?' in his rough London accent. Instead, he turned and stared at her, and she saw that he looked really frightened. His eyes were wide and there was sweat running down his forehead.
Then she heard a noise behind her, a kind of shuffling, and before she could even take in what was happening she was grabbed round the neck and pulled back into the seat. The next second, a wet cloth that smelled of chemicals was pushed against her face, and suddenly she couldn't breathe any more and she was struggling and kicking, trying to attract attention, help, anything…
It was all over so quickly, even now it didn't feel quite real. Her last image was Pat turning away from her and starting the car's engine with a low rumble. Then everything went black, and she couldn't remember another thing until she'd woken up in this cold, featureless room with a terrible headache and feeling really sick.
She wondered what had happened to Pat. She'd always liked him. He was good fun. They liked to joke together, and he seemed to make her mum happy. At first she hadn't been sure about him. She was used to it being just her and her mum. That was the way it had always been, the way she'd always preferred it. She didn't know her real dad. She'd never met him and she didn't even know who he was. Whenever she asked her mum about him, she'd always said that it was just a man from a long time ago, that he'd gone away, and that it would be best just to forget about him. She wanted to find her dad, but she didn't push it with her mum, and anyway, Pat made quite a good dad. And her friends were jealous because he was nice-looking, and not too old either.
She hoped they hadn't done anything bad to him.
'They' were the two men who were keeping her prisoner. She was not allowed to see them, and had to put on a black hood like something an executioner in a medieval history book might wear whenever the cellar door opened. One of them wheezed when he walked, making a horrible sound like something out of a horror film. She might not have been able to see him, but she could always hear his approach. And she could smell him too. He absolutely stank, a really horrible combination of BO, old socks and toilets that was so bad she thought she might gag whenever he got too close to her. He was the one who usually came down twice a day to check up on her. He'd bring food – Marmite or jam sandwiches, and fruit – and change the bucket they made her use as a toilet.
When he'd come down on that first night, telling her to put on the hood, she'd been absolutely terrified. But he'd told her not to worry, that no one would hurt her, and that she'd be going home soon, and even though he'd talked in a strange rasping voice as if he was trying to disguise it, and had stroked her arm with cold, gloved hands, his touch lingering that little bit too long, something told her that he meant what he said.
As time wore on she'd begun to lose hope of going home and being reunited with her mum and her friends, and everyone she cared about. But she had to be brave. She just had to be. It was just that she really didn't want to die. She was happy. She'd never done anything wrong, and she couldn't see why anyone would do this to her. It wasn't fair. And when she thought about what might happen to her, she got really scared. Although she trusted the smelly one, she definitely didn't trust the one he was working with.
He'd only been down once, on the second night. When he'd called out to her from the top of the stairs, telling her to put on the hood, his voice was harsh and cruel, with no kindness in it at all. She'd done what she was told to do and had then sat there waiting, but she hadn't heard his approach. He was that silent on his feet it was like he was a phantom. All that told her he was in the room was the faint smell of cigarettes, and a feeling that someone was watching her.
After a while she'd asked uncertainly whether there was anyone there.
'Yeah,' came the reply, like he was mocking her. 'I'm here.'
'What do you want?'
'You're going to talk to your mum. You're going to tell her that if she pays the money, then you'll be going home tomorrow.'
She felt a rush of excitement. 'And will I?'
'If she does what she's told, yeah,' he answered, but it didn't sound like he meant it. 'Now turn round on the bed so you're facing the wall.'
She did what she was told.
'Bet you're not used to being told what to do, are you? Little rich girl like you. Bet you usually tell the servants what to do, don't you?'
'I don't have servants,' she said quietly. 'I'm just normal.'
'You don't know what normal is, you little bitch.'
'Why are you doing this to me?' she asked, because she really didn't understand why he was being so cruel to her.
'You don't ask the questions,' he said, ripping the hood from her head in one movement. 'You obey orders. Keep staring at the wall, and remember what you've got to tell your mum. If she does what we say, you go home tomorrow.'
He'd pushed a phone roughly against her ear and a couple of seconds later her mum had come on the line. Emma felt a huge burst of emotion. She wanted to cry so much but she knew she had to hold it together for her mum's sake, so she'd said she was fine and that if the money was paid she'd be back tomorrow. She'd wanted to say more but the phone had been snatched away with a hissed 'Don't turn round', and then a few seconds later she'd heard the key turn in the lock of the cellar door.
After he'd gone, she'd sat there shaking for several minutes, part of her feeling hope now that she'd heard her mum's voice, but a much bigger part feeling fear. She'd never come across anyone truly evil before, and now that she had, it made her wonder whether she was ever going to get out of here alive. Because they hadn't let her go, like he'd said they would. She was still here, hoping that the smelly one would keep the cruel one from doing anything to her, which was why she'd been as nice as possible to him whenever he came down.
They were talking upstairs now, their voices muffled, and she wondered what time it was. They'd taken her watch, or at least she thought they had. When she'd woken up in this place for the first time, it was gone, as was her handbag, which had had her mobile phone in it. All she'd been left with were the clothes she was wearing when she'd been taken – a black T-shirt, denim skirt and her favourite wedge-heeled sandals – and she was still in them now.
The smelly one had already been in that morning to give her sandwiches – Marmite this time – and to change the bucket. That was a while back now. He'd seemed in a strange mood. Normally he was quite friendly, but today he'd been quiet, and it had worried her. She'd asked him if everything was all right, and when they were going to let her go like they'd said they would, and he'd come over, sat down and put his arm round her, telling her it was going to be fine and that she'd be home very soon. Even though she'd felt like throwing up with him so close to her, she'd told him once again that she just wanted to be back with her mum and her friends, because she thought that if she said it enough times he'd feel sorry for her and would help to make it happen. He'd told her not to worry, everything would be all right, like he always did, but this time it seemed as if he was making an effort to say it, and that maybe it wasn't true.
The voices were getting louder. They were arguing. She got up from the bed and walked as far as the chain would allow until she was almost at the bottom of the steps, then stopped and listened, straining hard to hear what they were saying.
The voices stopped before she could make out any words, and then suddenly the key turned in the lock and the door flew open, slamming hard against the wall.
Emma darted back, rushing for the bed, but not before she'd seen the man at the top of the stairs, partly silhouetted by the bright light behind him. She'd only got the barest of glimpses, just enough time to note that he was of normal height and build and had dark hair. For just half a second their eyes had met, but she knew straight away that she'd made a terrible mistake.
'Get your hood on. Now,' the cruel one called out from the top of the steps.
Shaking with fear, trying hard not to cry, Emma sat on the bed and pulled the hood over her head. She heard the door shutting, followed by a pause that lasted long enough that she began to hope he wasn't coming down at all, and then she heard the footfalls moving fast, louder than last time. She tensed as she heard him stop in front of her.
'Did you see me?' he hissed, venom in his voice.
'No,' she answered, shaking her head vigorously.
'Did you see me, bitch? Tell me the truth.'
'No, I promise.' She pushed herself back against the cold stone wall, her heart pounding.
He tore the hood off and she turned her head away from him, shutting her eyes, not wanting to see him, knowing only too well what seeing him would mean. He grabbed her roughly by the chin, squeezing the flesh, and pulled her towards him.
'Look me in the eye, bitch. Did you fucking see me?'
She opened her eyes and saw that he'd put on a black balaclava. His face was only inches away from hers.
'No, honestly, I didn't,' she said, finding it hard to get the words out. 'Please, you're hurting me.'
'This ain't hurt, bitch. You don't know the fucking meaning of the word. But you will if you're lying. I'll hurt you good. I'll hurt you until you're screaming with the pain. Do you understand?'
She nodded rapidly, feeling the tears well up, but determined not to cry in front of him. 'Yes, yes. I'm not lying, I promise.'
He released his grip on her chin. Behind the slits his eyes were dark and cold. 'Good.' He pushed the hood back over her head. 'Now, we're going to send your mummy a little message. So you can let her know how much fun you're having.'
His tone had changed again. He was mocking her, pleased that she seemed so terrified. He was enjoying this. It was difficult, almost impossible to believe, but he was actually enjoying this. Underneath the hood, away from his terrible gaze, the tears flowed freely down Emma's face.
And then she felt something touch the bare skin of her arm. Something cold and sharp.
Oh God, no. He's got a knife.
There were serious logistical issues to be addressed in order to get Andrea back home, and Bolt spent most of the remainder of Friday morning organizing them. He had to operate on the assumption that the kidnappers were watching the place, even though he thought it highly unlikely. It didn't take long to confirm that no properties with views on to Andrea's house had been rented out for more than eighteen months, so any observation point being used by the kidnappers would have to be on the street itself. With Big Barry's authorization, he managed to get a twelve-person surveillance team from another area of SOCA pulled off their current job, and they were sent to Andrea's neighbourhood. Having discreetly confirmed that there was no one suspicious hanging about, either on foot or in a car, they'd set up at various points and now had the street under continuous observation.
With the area secure, Bolt had given Andrea's card key, house keys and the burglar alarm code to one of his team, SG5 Matt Turner, who'd gone to check out the property. Although Jimmy Galante had searched the place for bugs, he'd bought a cheap device from a spy shop, so it was likely he'd only have been using a radio frequency detector, and not a very good one either, which would have been inadequate for the task at hand. Bolt knew that RF detectors were designed to pick up signals from active transmitters and radio telephone taps, but couldn't detect switched-off or remote control devices, nor could they find hardwired microphones and telephone taps, or recorders. In other words, the place could have been bugged to the hilt and neither Jimmy nor Andrea would have known about it. Turner was armed with the latest cutting-edge counter-surveillance equipment, including a Time Domain Reflectometer used to detect breaks and splices in cables; a Harmonic Radar to find cables and mikes buried in walls, cavities and furniture; and a Multi-Meter to measure line voltages within the telephone line.
However, when he called Bolt just after midday, Turner hadn't found anything either. 'The place is clear, sir. I've given it a complete once-over, and there's nothing here.'
Bolt trusted Turner's judgement on this kind of thing.
'Any sign of a struggle in there, Matt? Something that might suggest Emma Devern was snatched at the house?'
'Nothing like that. The place is spotless. Also, I reckon it'd be too risky trying to abduct someone here. There's a security gate running round the property, with only one entrance from the front, and it's pedestrian access only. No room to get a car through it. So the kidnappers would have had to take her out on to the street, and I think that would have been too risky in broad daylight. That's my take on it, anyway.'
Bolt sighed. The kidnappers had managed to track Emma's movements on Tuesday, and find out about Jimmy Galante's involvement in the ransom drop, but for the moment, how they'd done so remained a mystery.
He thanked Turner and rang off, then went to tell Andrea that he would drive her home. She'd been kept in the only office in the building with a sofa all morning and, according to the female liaison officer assigned to her, had spent most of the time asleep on it. She was awake when he went in there, though, and seemed pleased by the news that she was going back to her house, even if it was without her daughter.
It felt strange for Bolt being so close to Andrea again, and their conversation for much of the journey was stilted. He wanted to bring up the past, to talk about the old days, but Marie Cohen, the very short, very earnest liaison officer, was in the back seat of his car, which made any such conversation impossible. Eventually Andrea fell asleep again, leaning against the passenger side window. Occasionally Bolt glanced across at her, trying to look natural in front of Marie Cohen. Andrea was still a very attractive woman, but the lively spark in her eyes that had drawn him in all those years ago had long since gone.
Poor, rich Andrea. She'd never really had much luck with men, and Bolt wondered whether in Phelan she'd made the worst choice of all.
She woke up when they were stuck in traffic on Hampstead high street.
'How long have I been out for?' she asked, rubbing her eyes.
Bolt checked the clock on the dashboard: 12.49. 'A while. The traffic's been murder.' In his rearview mirror, he saw that Marie had also gone to sleep in the back. Clearly his effect on women wasn't quite as electric as he would have liked.
Andrea yawned. 'Do you mind if I smoke?'
He smiled. 'Well, technically it's illegal as this is a work car, but I guess under the circumstances we can make an exception. I'd ask Marie, but she looks flat out.'
Andrea looked round, checked that she was, and opened her window halfway before lighting up.
'Thank God for that,' she whispered, looking at Bolt. 'She means well, but I wish she'd just leave me alone.'
'She's just trying to help.'
'Yeah, but sometimes you can try too hard.'
Bolt watched as she put the cigarette to her lips. Her hands were trembling and the drags she took were short and urgent. The tension was coming off her in waves.
'You know, Andrea,' he said, turning off the high street, 'we've checked out your house, and the area round it, and we can't work out how the kidnapper could have known Emma's movements so thoroughly.'
'So you still think it might be an inside job?'
'It's a strong possibility.'
Andrea sighed, taking another drag on the cigarette. 'I just can't see it being Pat, that's all. He's got faults – big ones, like the fact that he's a waster – and if I'd known about them when I first met him I'd never have married him, but he wouldn't have done something like this to Emma. He's not cold enough. And I've met some cold people in my time.'
Bolt thought of Jimmy Galante. She was right on that score.
They were almost there now, and Bolt used a dual-band radio to call the surveillance team. He needed confirmation that the area round Andrea's house was still secure. When this had been given by the team leader, he slowed the car down and turned into Andrea's road.
It was a leafy avenue of grand semi-detached houses, lined with mature oak trees planted fifteen yards apart, with expensive-looking sports cars and 4_4s parked on both sides. Instinctively, Bolt checked for occupants, but they were all empty, although he spotted a white van with blacked-out windows and the name of a plumbing firm down the side, which he recognized as a SOCA surveillance vehicle. A pretty young woman with oversized sunglasses who was busy putting a toddler in the car seat of a brand-new Range Rover seemed to be the only person around.
Andrea's place, one half of an impressive-looking three-storey Edwardian redbrick building, was about halfway down on the right hand side. It was fronted by a brick wall approximately head height, mounted with freshly painted black railings, which enclosed the entire property but wouldn't have put off a determined intruder. Bolt found a parking spot about thirty yards further down between a Mercedes and a BMW people carrier. In the back, Marie woke up with a start.
As Bolt got out of the car he saw a shadow move across one of the upstairs windows of the house opposite. It had been turned into an observation post by the surveillance team, giving them a perfect view of the portion of the street to the front of Andrea's house.
Bolt let Andrea lead the way, with Marie bringing up the rear. He thought about how much Andrea had moved on since the old days when he'd first known her. It was all down to her own efforts as well. He admired her for that, but then she'd never been short of spirit and drive. It was spirit she was going to need now.
'We've got something called a trace/intercept set up on your landline,' he told her as she pressed the buzzer on the security gate and waited for Turner to let them in. 'It means that if they make a call to your home, we'll be able to pinpoint the location of the caller very quickly.'
'I don't want you to do anything that risks hurting Emma, Mike.'
'We won't,' said Bolt, but it was a lie, and he knew it. Whatever they did, they risked hurting Emma.
Matt Turner buzzed them in, and as they stepped inside the gate Bolt was immediately struck by the strong scent of flowers. The garden was a riot of colour, well kept with neat flowerbeds bordering the house's exterior wall. It was also very well stocked, with thick walls of greenery rising all round the terraced lawn. His wife Mikaela would have loved this place. She'd always wanted to live in a big, rambling house with a couple of kids and a couple of dogs and plenty of space, somewhere that with his copper's salary and hers as a primary school teacher they were never going to be able to afford.
Turner met them both at the door, greeting Andrea with a formal 'Mrs Devern' and moving out of the way to let her pass.
The front door led into a rather grand tiled hallway with a flight of stairs disappearing up to the next floor. The decor was all very neutral, with off-white colours dominating, which in Bolt's opinion gave it a rather soulless feel – not that he was any kind of expert in interior design. Straight ahead of him, above a vase containing partially wilted orchids, was a large professional portrait photograph of Andrea and Emma. It was a good shot of both mother and daughter, who were smiling widely at the camera, their faces side by side and touching, and the twinkle was firmly in Andrea's eye. Emma was a pretty kid with dark blonde hair down to her shoulders and a cute button nose. She looked young in the picture, probably no more than ten.
Bolt looked away quickly, not wanting to draw attention to the photo. Marie asked whether anyone would like a cup of tea.
Bolt smiled at her. 'I'll take coffee, thanks, if it's going.'
Turner said he'd have the same.
Andrea didn't appear to have heard her. She was staring at the picture.
'What do you think of her, Mike? Isn't she beautiful?'
'Yes,' he said, keen to keep Andrea's spirits up. 'She's beautiful. And we're going to bring her back.'
'You've got to.'
The hallway fell silent and Marie and Turner went into the kitchen, leaving Bolt and Andrea alone. She ran a hand through her hair, turning away from the photo.
'I don't know what to do, Mike. It's the waiting.
It's killing me.'
'Why don't you lie down for a bit?' He felt uneasy standing so close to her. 'We'll let you know of any developments.'
She nodded, and started up the staircase.
Bolt watched her go, then went to get his coffee.
The kitchen was large and modern with a breakfast island in the middle, and gleaming pots and pans hanging from hooks all around. Again, he thought about how much Mikaela would have loved a place like this. She'd been a great cook, but had had to do all her cooking in a place about a quarter of this size.
Marie and Turner were at the far end of the room, talking while she poured boiling water into the cups. Turner was approaching thirty and still resolutely single, a situation he seemed increasingly desperate to remedy. He tended to get first dates – he was a proud member of at least a dozen internet agencies, so was always getting introductions – but second ones proved a lot more elusive, which Bolt thought was a pity. Prematurely balding with a long hangdog face designed for frowning, and an obsession with the technical, the guy was definitely the kind of acquired taste a lot of people never get round to acquiring, but Bolt liked him. Turner might have had a geeky exterior, but he also had a bone-dry sense of humour, he never moaned, and there was a certain vulnerability about him that Bolt found endearing. Lately, he'd been smiling a lot more, as if he'd been taking charm lessons.
When Bolt walked in, Marie was laughing at something Turner had said, and he almost felt as if he was interrupting something. They both stopped speaking and turned his way, and Marie looked a bit sheepish.
'Andrea's gone to lie down,' he told them with a smile to show he hadn't seen or heard anything untoward.
He took the coffee cup from Marie and added a couple of sugars to it. There was another photo of Emma attached to the cupboard above the kettle, this time just a snapshot. In it she was flanked by her mother on one side and a lean, good-looking guy with unkempt brown hair on the other. They looked like a typical family. It made Bolt feel slightly jealous, although he wasn't a hundred per cent sure why.
'Do you think the husband's involved, sir?' asked Turner, seeing Bolt looking at the photo.
'Part of me says definitely,' he answered quietly, aware that he had to be careful what he said in front of Marie, who wasn't officially part of this inquiry, 'because it would explain how the kidnappers knew Emma's movements. But the other part says that if he is, why on earth did he then disappear? Surely he'd have known it would only arouse suspicion. It'd be far better to let the kidnappers know when and where to make the snatch, then act completely innocent. Even if we suspected him, there'd be nothing we could do about it.'
'That's what I was thinking,' said Turner. 'It's all wrong somehow, isn't it?'
Bolt was about to tell him not to speculate too much out loud when he heard a rapid set of footfalls on the stairs, and Andrea came rushing into the room dressed in a full-length dressing gown, her mobile phone in her right hand.
'They've called.'
'When? Just now?'
'Yes. On the mobile.'
'What did they say?'
'He asked if I was getting the money together for tomorrow night. I said I was, and he told me to turn my computer on and check my emails.'
She took a deep breath, and Bolt could tell she was using all her strength to hold things together.
'They said they've sent me a warning.'
While Andrea fetched her laptop and turned it on, Matt Turner called in to HQ and asked them to run an urgent trace on the last number to call Andrea's mobile. 'They'll get back to us in five,' he said as he and Bolt followed Andrea through the hallway and into a large, spacious study at the back of the house.
Andrea set the laptop down on a desk at the far end of the room which faced out on to the back lawn, and sat down to wait while it booted up. Bolt and Turner stood behind her while Marie Cohen remained further back, in the doorway. The desk itself was expensive mahogany and scrupulously tidy. There were two framed photos on it: one of Emma as a toddler, dressed in a pink swimming costume and playing with a hosepipe, laughing at the camera; another more recent one of mother and daughter smiling.
'What do you think they mean by sending me a warning?' asked Andrea, turning round in her seat and looking up at Bolt.
'Let's just see,' he said calmly.
'That's easy for you to say, isn't it?' she snapped, turning back and double-clicking on her internet icon.
Bolt didn't answer. The problem was that he wasn't very good around victims of crime. He never had been. He much preferred the process of detective work, of breaking up criminal enterprises. Of identifying targets and hitting them. He might have suffered his own private tragedy but the fact remained that he wasn't trained for this, and being intimately acquainted with this particular victim wasn't helping either. He looked over at Marie Cohen, wondering if she was going to intervene with soothing words, but she remained silent, motioning him just to leave it.
Andrea's homepage appeared on the screen and she clicked on her emails. There were a dozen or so unread messages but it was the one at the top, sent from a numbered hotmail account, which was the one they wanted. The word WARNING was written in block capitals in the subject column, and there was an mpeg attachment.
Without speaking, Andrea opened it. The message said simply WATCH THE FILM.
'Oh God,' she whispered.
Bolt tensed. 'Maybe it's best if we watch it first, Andrea,' he told her, putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. He didn't add 'just in case', but he knew he might as well have done.
She took another deep breath. 'No. She's my daughter. I've got to watch it.'
'It might not be a good idea, Andrea,' said Marie, moving into the study.
'I am going to watch it. End of story.' Her words were loud and decisive, cutting across the room.
She clicked on the mpeg file and waited the twenty seconds while it downloaded. The room was silent, with just the peaceful sound of birdsong coming from outside. With trembling fingers, Andrea pressed play.
Immediately the screen was filled with the top half of a person sitting against a wall in a darkened room lit by a bulb somewhere off camera. The quality of the recording was very good, and Bolt knew that he was looking at Emma even though she had a black hood over her head. The arms beneath the black T-shirt she was wearing were pale and skinny – kid's arms.
Andrea let out an audible gasp.
For two or three seconds Emma sat there, absolutely still, then very slowly she lifted a copy of The Times until it was in full view. The main headline was about the run on the Northern Rock bank. The camera panned forward until it was fixed on the date in the top right-hand corner. It was today's.
'See, Andrea, she's alive,' said Bolt, trying to sound positive. 'And it's in their interests to keep her that way.'
Andrea didn't reply, but her shoulders were shaking, and he realized she was crying silently as she stared at the screen.
The camera panned back so that Emma's upper body filled the screen again, and then the camera suddenly jerked as the cameraman reached forward with a gloved hand and roughly removed the hood, revealing the pretty teenage girl with the dark blonde hair and blue eyes whose photo was all over Andrea's house.
Her face was terrified and wet with tears as she stared uncertainly at the cameraman. He appeared to give her some sort of off-camera prompt because she started to speak slowly and carefully, her voice shaking with fear. 'Mum, they say that if you get the money, they'll let me go tomorrow night.' There was a pause again while she appeared to get a second prompt. 'But Mum… they said that if you don't pay, or you call the police… they said they'd hurt me really bad.' As she spoke these last words, the tears began streaming down her face again.
Then she gave a short, tight gasp. She was staring at something they couldn't see, her eyes widening.
'Oh God, Emma,' whispered Andrea, her own voice cracking under the strain. 'My darling.'
And then they all saw it. The long, gleaming blade of a hunting knife, held in a black-gloved hand, moving slowly across the screen from right to left, mocking the viewers with its presence. It belonged to the cameraman. His camera shook very slightly as he moved it. The knife then changed direction as he leaned forward, pointing the tip of the blade at Emma's neck. His arm beyond the glove was covered by a black sweater. There was no flesh showing, nothing that might even hint at a possible ID.
A torturous wail came from Andrea. 'No, Jesus, no. Please. Don't hurt her.'
Bolt felt his mouth go parchment dry. This was total sadism, something that, thank God, was rare.
In twenty years of law enforcement he'd only seen something similar once before when he'd been forced to watch an old amateur videotape showing the sexual abuse and torture of a three-year-old child by her father. That was a long time ago now, yet he could still remember every single moment of it. It was etched on his brain, like a hideous tattoo, for ever. This was similar, and in a way all the more painful in that the victim's mother was someone he'd once cared so much for.
'Let's turn it off, Andrea,' he said. 'We can watch it again in a minute.'
She shook her head angrily. 'No. I've got to see. I've got to.'
On the film, Emma pushed her body back into the wall, craning her head away from the blade, her pale blue eyes never leaving it.
Andrea's moaning grew louder. It stopped abruptly when the point touched Emma's neck. Ever so gently.
No one moved a millimetre. It was as if they'd been frozen to the spot, staring hypnotized at the screen. Waiting.
The blade traced a slow path up the contours of Emma's jawline and on to her cheek, brushing the pale skin but not breaking it, stopping at the fold of skin just below her left eye. Half a centimetre more and it would be caressing the eyeball.
Bolt steeled himself for what might be coming next. He prided himself on being a hard man, able to take some of the worst experiences the world had to offer, but this was tearing him up inside, and he wondered how many times this scene would be revisiting his dreams in the coming months.
The knife jerked suddenly to the side, moving like a flash. Disappeared from view.
Emma cried out. Andrea gasped. Bolt stopped breathing.
The camera panned inwards. Emma's face filled the screen. Terrified, but unmarked. Then it panned slowly outwards as Emma crumpled into a fetal position on the bed she'd been sitting on, dropping the newspaper to the floor. She was wearing handcuffs, and there was a chain attached to her ankle by a metal loop.
Something dark rose up from the bottom of the screen, blocking out everything else, and the camera took several seconds to focus on it. It was a piece of paper. Five words were written on it in bold capitals: NO POLICE OR SHE DIES. The camera stayed on it for a full three seconds. Then abruptly the film ended and the screen returned to Andrea's homepage.
For a long moment, no one spoke. Bolt was just about to open his mouth to tell Andrea to be strong, that this was just a method for the kidnappers to cow her into submission so that she'd get them the next tranche of the ransom money – even though he wasn't at all sure he still believed it – when in one ferocious movement Andrea swept the laptop off the table, sending it crashing to the floor, and jumped to her feet. She grabbed the photo of Emma as a toddler from the desk and hugged it to her chest. Pushing Turner out of her way, she swung round to face Bolt, her tearstained face a twisting combination of torment and rage.
'They're going to kill her, aren't they? That's it.
They're going to kill her.'
Bolt put a hand on her arm, trying to calm her. 'No, Andrea, they won't. They're far better off keeping her alive.'
'They told me not to involve the police, and now look at you all here.' She yanked herself free and swept an arm dismissively round the room. 'Standing around while my daughter's tortured by these bastards. Oh God. If they kill her… if they kill her, it's all going to be my fault!'
'You can't think like that, Andrea,' said Bolt, but she was no longer listening. She strode rapidly past them and out the door, leaving behind only grim silence.
Marie went after Andrea, and Bolt heard them both going up the stairs, Andrea shouting at Marie to leave her alone. He stood staring at the upended laptop, wondering how Andrea was ever going to recover from this. Finally he broke his reverie and turned away.
Turner was speaking into the phone. When he hung up a few seconds later, Bolt asked him if they'd got a trace.
'He called from a mobile on a back street in the N18 postcode. But he switched off straight away so we can't follow him.'
'So he knows what we can do with mobile phones.'
'Looks that way, doesn't it?'
'Any chance of getting anything from the email he sent?'
'We won't get much out of the email address itself. Anyone can set up a hotmail account anonymously. But we should be able to locate the computer he sent it from. It might take some time.'
'Get the team on to it straight away. We've just got to hope this guy makes a mistake.'
'He hasn't made any so far.'
Bolt might have liked Turner, but his occasional habit of accentuating the negatives could grate at times. Especially times like this. 'Just do it,' he said, turning away and pulling out his own mobile. 'And get the local cops down the street where the call was made from, just in case he's still there.'
He unlocked the French windows in the living room and went out into the back garden, dialling his boss's number. When Big Barry answered, he explained to him what the kidnappers had done. 'These guys are good, sir. They know exactly which buttons to press. But there's something else too. The way they're tormenting her – this is personal. I'm sure of it. Someone really wants Andrea Devern to suffer.'
'Well, let's hope you're right, because that might help lead us to them. The woman can't have that many enemies. In the meantime, though, I've had authorization for us to set up a sting. Looks like the ladies and gents upstairs agreed with you about negotiation. It's pointless with people as ruthless as this.'
'It's definitely the right move. This way we'll be the ones in control.'
'We'll use bundles of counterfeit notes fitted with trackers.'
'These people are professionals, sir. They're going to spot something like that.'
'We'll be right on their tails. By the time they realize the notes are fake it'll be too late and they'll be in custody.'
Bolt wasn't convinced. 'But it also might be too late for Emma. If they pick up the money, then check the notes in the car, see that they're not real, they'll know we're involved. In that case, they might never lead us to her.'
'Come on, old mate, how am I going to get authorization to use half a million pounds of real money? And where am I going to get it from? The Christmas kitty? Think about it.'
'You said we're not going to lose them.'
'We're not.'
'So we can afford to use the real thing, surely?' Bolt thought of the photo of Emma as a toddler, playing with the hosepipe in her pink swimming costume. 'This is a young girl's life we're talking about.'
'Let's not get sentimental, Mike.'
'I'm not. But if we use fake money and it all goes wrong, it's not going to look good for any of us, is it? That we thought the money was more important than our kidnap victim.' He resisted adding 'heads will roll', but the point was a valid one. Bolt was appealing to Barry's innate arse-covering instincts, knowing that there lay his greatest chance of success.
And it seemed to be working. 'I'll talk to them upstairs, but I can't see them going for it.' Barry sighed. 'Look, this whole operation needs to be well planned, so I want you back here so we can discuss the details. As soon as poss. Keep Turner and the liaison there with Mrs Devern, just in case they make contact again.'
Bolt hung up, and looked at his watch. It was ten past one. His stomach was growling and he realized that he hadn't eaten a thing all day. He'd grab some lunch on the way back. He took a deep breath. One way or another, he was going to get these bastards. And get Emma back for Andrea as well. The hunt was on now, and on the ground at least, he was the one in charge. This was the part of the job he loved, when the battle lines were drawn and it was all about you and them. Pushing the images of the video aside, he felt a renewed sense of determination.
He became aware of a presence behind him. It was Turner, looking vaguely sheepish.
'Everything all right, Matt?'
'Mrs Devern wants a word with you upstairs.
Alone. She doesn't want to talk to Marie.' There was a vague disapproval in his tone.
'OK, thanks.'
Bolt walked back into the house through the French windows. Marie was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking concerned.
'She's in the first room on the left,' she said wearily.
Bolt smiled, feeling sorry for her. 'Thanks. I don't see there's much I'm going to be able to do either, but I'll give it a try.'
Andrea was in the master bedroom, sitting in a white leather armchair and staring out of the bay window, a cigarette in her hand. She turned as he came inside and shut the door behind him. Her face was set hard, the tears wiped away now.
'You've got to get her back, Mike.' She spoke the words firmly.
'And we're doing absolutely everything we can to bring that about. I know how hard it must be, but you've got to try to sit tight and be patient.'
'Did you never want children, Mike?'
She watched him closely, waiting for an answer, the cigarette burning, forgotten, in her hand. He sighed, wondering how he was going to extricate himself from this conversation.
'The opportunity never arose. Maybe one day.'
'Have you ever been married?'
'I was. Once.'
'What happened?'
'She died. In a car crash. Five years ago.'
Five years. It felt like such a long time, yet in truth it had gone fast. He could still picture Mikaela perfectly, could still hear her voice. But she was someone he didn't like to be reminded of by other people. He liked to keep his thoughts and memories of her to himself.
'I'm sorry,' she said, sounding like she meant it.
'It's OK.'
Silence. He sensed there was something she wanted to add, so he waited for it.
And it came.
'Listen, Mike, I don't know how to say this, but…'
She noticed the cigarette then, and flicked the ash into an ashtray on the windowsill before it spilled into her lap.
'What is it, Andrea?'
'I told you about Jimmy Galante, didn't I? About the reason I involved him.'
'Because you needed his help.'
'Yes, and because he was her father as well.'
'That's right.'
'The thing is, I was lying.'
Bolt tensed. 'What do you mean?'
'I mean I was lying when I told Jimmy he was the father. He wasn't.'
She looked him squarely in the eye. 'You are.'
One of Mike Bolt's problems in his younger days was an inability to say no. He should never have carried on the affair with Andrea Devern after that first night of passion in the Bloomsbury hotel. She was a married woman, with a wealthy husband who looked after her, and he was an impetuous twenty-four-year-old cop, so it was always going to end in tears. But Bolt had somehow convinced himself that this didn't really matter. He was just going to see how things went and not get too involved.
But he had got involved, and in the eight weeks the affair had lasted he'd found himself driven ever deeper into Andrea's web. In the beginning he'd been in control, but that control had evaporated rapidly as he'd become more and more obsessed with her. He was driven to distraction by the difficulties in getting hold of her, and in meeting up for their illicit liaisons. In those eight weeks they slept together on only six occasions, and then suddenly it was all over. Just like that. Not with a whimper either, but with a bang he'd never forget.
But could he really have fathered her child? The thought nagged at him ferociously as he drove back to HQ. But the dates fit. Andrea had convinced him of that back at the house. 'Our daughter's birthday's the second of April,' she'd said. 'We were seeing each other in June and July.'
Our daughter. His daughter. She could be wrong, of course. As he'd found out afterwards, she was also seeing Jimmy Galante at the time. And she was married too, although she'd always claimed that her husband, Billy Devern, was impotent, which was why he'd allowed her to take lovers. Whether that was true or not was still largely immaterial, because the dates fitted. Check them, Andrea had said, and he had, going back in his head to those giddy days, and the truth shouted at him so loudly he could barely hear anything else. It was possible Emma Devern wasn't his child, but there was a damn good chance that she was.
On the seat next to him were photographs of Emma and Pat Phelan which he was taking back to the incident room. Phelan's was face up, but Emma's was face down. He couldn't bear to look at her. Couldn't bear to think that she might be his flesh and blood, and the first he'd known about it was when he'd been put in charge of investigating her kidnapping.
He thought of Mikaela, the woman he'd met a couple of years after Andrea, who'd gone on to be his wife. Mikaela had always wanted children. A boy and a girl, she'd always said. Children, and the big, rambling house with a nice garden. It was Bolt who'd always held back. He'd feared the immense commitment required; with the long hours he worked, he didn't think he could provide the necessary support. But eventually, after seven years together, he'd reluctantly agreed to Mikaela's increasingly persistent requests that they should start trying for a baby.
She was two months pregnant when the car he was driving left the road and smashed into an oak tree, crunching it into a shape that made it unrecognizable.
He'd spent six weeks in hospital and now carried three small scars on his face as a permanent reminder of that night. Mikaela's life support system was turned off three days later, without her ever regaining consciousness. Bolt had been too ill to leave his bed to say goodbye. He hadn't even been told of the decision, made by her parents, until almost two days later because it was thought the news would be so traumatic it would worsen his condition.
And all that time – all the time he'd ever been with Mikaela, and through those long hard years since – he might already have had a child. A child growing up whom he'd never seen, and knew absolutely nothing about.
His fingers tightened on the steering wheel and he clenched his jaw, feeling a sudden burst of furious resentment towards Andrea. If he was the father, why had she said nothing to him all these years? And if he wasn't, how could she manipulate him like this?
He pulled over to the side of the road before the fury got the better of him, and took some long, deep breaths, trying to calm himself down. But it was hard. Incredibly hard. That morning he'd been a reasonably happy man with a new girlfriend, coasting towards his fortieth birthday – now only a few months away – having got used to the idea that he was probably never going to have children. And now he'd been told not only that he might have one, but that her life was in terrible danger, and he was the one responsible for getting her back safely.
He sat there for a full minute, his heart thumping so loudly it felt like the only thing he could hear. Then he picked up the photo of Emma – blonde, smiling, fourteen years old, in her school uniform – and stared at it, searching for resemblances. Was she his? There were similarities, there were differences. He thought of the man – the men – holding her. The men who might not want to return her alive. The men they were now going to try to set up. For the first time, he truly imagined what could happen if their plan went wrong, and his stomach lurched violently. The girl who could be his only child would die.
He put down Emma's photo, but he kept it face up so that he could see the girl he had to rescue. It was time to take responsibility and think straight. Technically, the position hadn't changed; it was just that the stakes had now become infinitely higher.
He took a final deep breath, flicked on the indicator, and pulled out into the traffic.