'If it's true . . .' Mo paused, thinking. Choosing his words carefully. 'Then we've got to make sure we bring her back.'
Bolt ran a hand across his face, the fingers finding the scars on his left cheek. He rubbed hard at the shallow divots in his flesh.
'You saw what those bastards did to Galante. They're not going to let her go, are they?'
'You've got to have faith, boss.'
'Faith in what, Mo? Faith in what?'
'If you haven't got faith in God, and I know that you haven't, then at least have faith in our abilities. We've got out of tight corners before.'
'It's a lot easier said than done, Mo. It really is.'
'I know.'
'Do you?'
'I've got four children, boss. Believe me, I know.'
They were silent again. Bolt felt the tension flowing through his veins, tightening every muscle in his body.
'You know,' said Mo eventually, staring out of the window, 'there's a village in India, somewhere along the Ganges, where they consider cobras sacred. It means they're not allowed to harm them, and because of that, the whole village is teeming with them. In schools; in people's kitchens; in kids' bedrooms; all over the place. But no one takes a blind bit of notice because they're convinced they're not going to get bitten. And, you know, even when one of the villagers is bitten, they think it's a mistake on the cobra's part, and that the poison won't have any long-lasting effect because they worship it. Now, cobra venom can kill if it's not treated. That's a medical fact. But do you know what? In that village there's not one recorded incident of anyone dying of a snake bite. Like I said, boss, you've got to have faith. It'll be OK.'
They looked at each other, and Bolt was impressed by the determination in the other man's expression. It made him feel a little better, glad that he had shared his feelings. He was also surprised by the fact that Mo hadn't suggested he say something to Barry Freud. Mo was his friend, but he was also a professional, and he would know that he was taking a risk by keeping his boss's relationship with both the kidnap victim and her mother silent.
'Not a word about this, OK?' Bolt told him. 'It won't affect how I run this op, I promise.'
Mo nodded. 'OK, boss, but only as long as it doesn't. If it looks like the pressure's getting too much . . .'
'It won't. I promise.'
'But if it does, I'm going to have to say something. You understand that, don't you?'
'Yeah, I understand that.'
Bolt started to turn the key in the ignition, but Mo's next words stopped him dead.
'You were in the Flying Squad when you were seeing Andrea, weren't you?'
Although there was nothing accusatory in the tone, the meaning was clear. The Flying Squad dealt with armed robberies. The woman Bolt had been having an affair with was also sleeping with an armed robber. The potential for corruption was obvious, and it wasn't as if the Flying Squad hadn't had its fair share of corruption problems in the past. Bolt wasn't offended, but it hurt him that his friend had felt the need to ask the question.
'As soon as I found out she was seeing Galante, I finished it,' he said firmly.
'Good. That's all I wanted to know.'
There was another awkward silence. Bolt had crossed the line with Mo once before, two years earlier, and the implicit trust that had always existed between them had come under a lot of strain. It felt like something similar was happening again.
'Come on,' he said, starting the engine, 'let's go.'
Twenty-six
Home for Mike Bolt was a spacious studio apartment on the third floor of a converted warehouse in Clerkenwell, one of the quietest places in central London, and not far from where he'd first been based as a uniformed cop. He'd been there for four years now, having moved in the year after his wife's death, and ordinarily he'd never have been able to afford a place one quarter of the size on his SOCA salary, but the rent he paid was minimal. The reason for this was that it belonged to a wealthy Ukrainian businessman, Ivan Stanevic, whom Bolt had helped out years before in his National Crime Squad days.
The case was remarkably similar to the one he was involved in now. Stanevic's twelve-year-old daughter Olga had been abducted from the street by business rivals of her father's, and Bolt had led the team tasked with getting her back. On that occasion it hadn't taken long to find out who they were dealing with and consequently where Olga was being held. It was Bolt who'd personally negotiated her release with the kidnappers, and she'd been freed unharmed, for which her father had been eternally grateful. It was the only other kidnap case he'd ever been involved with, and the grim irony wasn't lost on him as he stepped inside his apartment and shut the door behind him.
Usually he loved this place. It was hard not to love it since it had been refurbished with absolutely no expense spared. The floors were polished teak; the high, angular ceiling was crisscrossed with mighty timber beams carefully restored to their former glory; but the pièce de résistance was the way the old windows had been knocked out and replaced by a huge strip of floor-to-ceiling tinted glass that ran the entire length of one side of the apartment, facing east out on to the bright lights of London, with the high towers of the Barbican rising up behind the buildings opposite. Only the night before he'd sat in his armchair with a glass of 2005 Côtes du Rhône staring out across the city while an old Herbie Hancock CD played on the stereo, feeling quietly satisfied that the money laundering case had been brought to a successful conclusion, and looking forward to a weekend away with Jenny Byfleet. The world then had seemed a good, decent place, and for the first time in a while he'd actually felt contented. And all the time the clock was counting down to when it would all go suddenly and horribly wrong. Just like it had that night five years ago when he and Mikaela waved goodbye to the friends they'd spent the evening with, got into his car and driven off to their doom.
It had just turned eight o'clock as Bolt kicked off his shoes and poured the remainder of the previous night's Côtes du Rhône into an oversized wine glass, taking a big slug and trying hard to relax. He'd phoned Jenny on the way home and, trying to sound as casual as possible, had apologized for the fact that he was going to have to postpone. She'd asked if he wanted to rearrange, and he'd said he'd get back to her, hearing her disappointment down the other end of the line as he'd hung up. That was probably it for the two of them, but he was past caring about that. All he could think about was the case, about how Andrea had come back into his life and, even after all these years, managed once again to turn everything upside down for him.
He sat down in his armchair, but almost immediately stood up again. It didn't feel right resting his legs. Not with his mind going like the clappers. Instead he paced the room, thinking about what Mo had said about Andrea not being entirely truthful, and holding something back. He remembered Isobel Wheeler's words: Watch her. And most of all he thought back to his own experience with Andrea, and of how one night fifteen years ago, a mere eight weeks into their relationship, she'd dropped such a bombshell that it had ended everything between them with a bang that echoed even now.