Today, it was just going to be about who finished first.
In their headphones, from the speakers, the sounds of some drama or other. One of those set in a hospital. Bar a short exchange about tea – asked for by the hostage and curtly refused by the hostage taker – it had been nothing but television for the last hour or so.
Behind him, on the other side of the van, Yates was aware that the hostage negotiator had her nose buried in one of those magazines. Hello! or some rubbish. He knew what Annette would think about that.
He wondered if he should let her finish the sudoku first. Beating him would put her in a good mood and she might be more inclined to say yes if he finally plucked up the courage to ask her out for a meal. He would need to think carefully though. Taking the standings between them into account, the fact that he had now won six in a row, she was far too smart not to at least suspect that he had let her win, and her reaction to that could only really go one of two ways. Would she think he was being gallant, or patronising? Would she be angry with him? Or would she pretend to be offended, but only because she was secretly pleased?
Hell’s bells, this was why he found women such a nightmare, he could never second-guess them.
He went back to the puzzle, filled in another couple of numbers.
Who was he trying to kid anyway? Like he was ever going to ask Annette out for a meal. Perhaps he should ask another woman what she thought. Yes, that was a sensible idea, he decided. Get a second opinion before deciding what to do next.
He would ask his mother when he got home.
Yates, Williams and Pascoe all looked up at the same time when the sound stopped suddenly. Magazines and puzzle books were pushed quickly aside.
‘TV’s off,’ Pascoe said.
The two technicians made a few minor adjustments to the levels. All three listened. Pascoe looked back to where Donnelly was talking to Chivers in the playground, just beyond the back doors of the truck.
She shouted, ‘Sir… ’
Akhtar: I think I have been very patient up to now, but I am running out of it. No more patience.
More adjustments, to cope with the sudden increase in volume level from the hostage taker.
Weeks: Please put the gun down, Javed-
Akhtar: I think I am being laughed at.
Weeks: That’s really not true.
Akhtar: Inspector Thorne thinks I am a fool, that he can tell me this and that and string me along while I sit in here like an idiot making bloody tea! Well, that’s enough.
There was a pause. Half a minute. Donnelly and Chivers stepped up into the van.
Akhtar: Does this have a camera on it?
Donnelly looked at Pascoe as he grabbed a pair of headphones. She shook her head, no wiser than he was. They all listened, but for the next few minutes until Akhtar spoke again the only sounds were generated by Helen Weeks. A grunt as she shifted position, the rattle of metal handcuffs against the radiator pipe.
Akhtar: There. Now we’ll see. Then, Sorry about the smell.
Weeks began to cough.
Akhtar: I brought this. Should help a bit.
There was a long hiss, then another. Donnelly looked at Pascoe.
‘Aerosol,’ she said.
Akhtar: That’s better.
A few seconds later the television was switched on again. The channels were changed in rapid succession; music, football, canned laughter, before Akhtar – presuming it was Akhtar – finally settled on the same drama they had been watching a few minutes earlier. There were a few more coughs from Helen Weeks, then the sound of something – a remote control or possibly the gun – being dropped on to a table.
Then nothing.
‘Hell was all that about?’ Donnelly asked.
SIXTY
McCarthy told Thorne that there were perhaps a dozen different venues where the parties had been held, in the few years he had been in regular attendance. Locations and guest lists were confirmed last minute, he said. Despite having been to this particular place before, he had no idea who owned it, only that it would be an individual whose discretion could be relied upon absolutely. Someone who, because of their shared tastes and enthusiasms, was happy to entertain a few dozen high-flying professionals once every couple of months. Who would not mind too much if red wine, or anything else for that matter, got spilled on the soft furnishings.
Thorne craned his neck to look up. Thought, someone who’s worth a good few million.
The venue for the evening’s get-together could not have been any closer to the water. Housed within a sleek glass-and-silver crescent on the south side of the river between Battersea and Albert Bridges. Eleven storeys arcing back from the water’s edge, with a horseshoe of duplex penthouses, light spilling from their tinted windows across a wraparound balcony.
‘Nice place for it,’ Thorne said.
‘You’re just trying to make it sound dirty,’ McCarthy said. ‘I’m not ashamed.’
‘ What? ’
‘Not of… the sex.’
Thorne turned in his seat, stared right at him. ‘Listen, I don’t care who you fuck, or how,’ he said. ‘Long as it’s legal and you’re not using anyone. Fact is though, Ian, I think it’s all gone a bit beyond that, don’t you?’
McCarthy said nothing, leaned his head against the window.
‘I’m more concerned about you killing young boys than sleeping with them.’
Thorne had parked up on a narrow access road to the west side of the development. It was probably not a location mentioned on the estate agent’s lavish description of the property. From the car, he could see no more than a dark sliver of Thames, and nothing at all of Chelsea Embankment twinkling on the other side of it, but he had a nice, unimpeded view of the entrance to the twenty-four-hour underground car park.
Since arriving fifteen minutes before, they had watched half a dozen cars turn in and drift slowly down the ramp. As many black cabs dropped passengers off at the main entrance. Now, another car approached. McCarthy checked, shook his head.
Thorne already knew what vehicle he was looking out for. ‘He’d better be coming.’
‘Why don’t you just arrest him when he arrives?’ McCarthy asked. ‘Why do you need to go up there?’
‘Because I want to walk in there and catch him sweating,’ Thorne said. ‘With his hands all over some fourteen-year-old. I want to see his face when he knows I’ve got him, same as I wanted to see yours. Then he’s going to tell me the whole story. He’s going to tell me everything, so I can tell Amin Akhtar’s father.’
Through the rain on the windscreen, Thorne saw another pair of headlights emerge from the blackness. He watched as a dark-coloured Jaguar XJ slowed, and turned into the car park.
McCarthy nodded. ‘That’s him.’
Thorne could smell the fear coming off the man in the passenger seat, or perhaps it was something coming off himself. He could certainly taste the adrenalin in his mouth, the metallic tang in what little spit he was able to suck up. Tinfoil against his teeth.
He told McCarthy to stay where he was, and got out of the car. ‘We’ll give it a few minutes,’ he said, before closing the car door. ‘Let things get going a bit. No point being unfashionably early.’
Thorne jogged the twenty or so feet to the car that had driven in and parked opposite his own a few minutes after arriving. He climbed into the back of the unmarked Volkswagen Passat, then leaned forward between the front seats to talk to the two occupants.
‘We’re in business then,’ Holland said. He too had recognised the number plate on the Jag, having pulled up all the necessary information from the Police National Computer several hours earlier, after Thorne had called him en route to Barndale. He had texted Thorne the details. The registration numbers for the Jaguar and the Audi Q7. The addresses of the flat in Marylebone and the weekend house in Sussex.
Yvonne Kitson turned from the passenger seat. ‘So what’s the plan?’