'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.
Twelve
'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?'