‘Please do what they say,’ Hannah said. ‘They will hurt me. They have made that very clear. Hurt me in terrible ways. Do not contact the police. Do not attempt to find me. They will be in touch with instructions in due course. Do not contact the police.’
The light went off. It was dark for a few seconds and then came the sound of Hannah crying before it was suddenly muffled.
I played the clip back again: there was an option to play it at HD, which I clicked on, but the quality wasn’t greatly improved.
I turned to Adrian Tuttle, our only remaining computer expert now that Sponge had gone back to Russia. ‘Adrian, get out there and see if you can track the traffic line on this. And burn the footage from YouTube. I want to put it in our system. See what we can do with it.’
‘Boss.’
He hurried his gangling frame out of the conference room, back to his workstation. A real-life Ichabod Crane. I would have smiled at the thought but seeing Hannah Shapiro humiliated, trussed up and scared for her life had left me too furious for levity.
I used the remote to click back to our email in-box. Nothing there.
I’d promised I’d take care of Hannah. Doing a fine job of it so far, I thought sourly. I slammed my hand down on the conference table in frustration and looked around at my colleagues. ‘Any ideas?’
‘I’d say the ball is in play now. That’s something,’ said Sam.
I nodded. Hannah was unhurt thus far. That was important – our job was to make it stay that way. And Sam was right: the ball was in play. We had something to focus on now. They had made contact: that was far better than the alternative.
We watched the tape through a couple more times, blowing it up to full-screen. Learned nothing more.
‘So, we sit and wait?’ Suzy asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘We need to get down to the college, look into those rugby players. This barman. We need to keep moving, guys.’
‘I’ll get on it,’ she replied.
I nodded. ‘Take Lucy with you, Suzy. Get down to the bar. You might find out something that the police haven’t picked up on.’
‘You got it.’
‘But be careful, okay?’
‘Boss.’
She stood up and left and I turned to Sam. ‘Why don’t you and I go and have a word with Brendan Ferres and his puppet master?’
‘That wise? Before we know what the deal is?’
‘Probably not. But we’re going to do it anyway. Let’s kick the apple tree a little, see what drops,’ I said.
Then all hell broke loose.
Chapter 41
The door flew open and a flustered Lucy hurried in.
‘Sorry, sir, there was nothing I could do,’ she said.
Following in behind her was my ex-wife, DI Kirsty Webb of the Metropolitan Police, and several of her colleagues in smartly pressed blue uniforms.
‘Dan Carter,’ she began ominously. ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of interfering with the course of justice.’
‘You are shitting me,’ I replied.
She gave me a pointed look of the kind that I remembered only too well. ‘You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
Kirsty waited for me to come back with a smart remark. I didn’t give her the satisfaction.
She nodded to one of the burly uniformed officers. ‘Cuff him, George.’
I held my hands out and smiled sweetly at her as the cop slapped the cuffs on my wrists.
‘What did I do? I forget it was our anniversary?’
I couldn’t help myself.
‘Take him down the nick,’ she said tersely to George. ‘Make sure he doesn’t fall down too many stairs.’
Chapter 42
Half an hour later I was in a holding cell.
It was painted a sickly pale lime green. An inset concrete bed with a thin pallet on it. No windows. I had checked the door – it was locked.
Kirsty hadn’t said a single word to me on the journey over. It would have been hard to – she’d been travelling in a separate car. I had been bundled unceremoniously into the back seat of a modified Range Rover with caged partitions. It felt like I’d been picked up by the police dog-handling unit. Maybe I had been.
I’d taken my jacket and shirt off. Kept my white cotton T-shirt on to spare the blushes of any visitors, and was doing press-ups. I had done about a hundred and twenty when I heard the viewing hatch slide open and a voice announce, ‘You got a visitor, Carter.’
I got a faint hint of perfume, something floral and musky, and considered moving on to finger-and-thumb press-ups, but thought better of the idea.
Was I any fitter now than I’d been before an Iraqi roadside bomb and a couple of well-aimed insurgent bullets had seen me hospitalised for two months all those years ago? The truth was that I probably was.
I didn’t take my immortality for granted any more, that was for damn sure. And I kept my body in as fit a condition as I could manage. Doing press-ups in the cell gave me something to do other than think of Hannah and Chloe. Didn’t work, but when you get dealt a crap hand you’ve got to play it the best you can.
The door opened and I stood up.
It was Alison Chambers. Black suit, white silk blouse. Her make-up perfectly applied and the perfume as heady as that from a field of poppies.
‘What the fuck have you done now, Dan?’ she said, kind of spoiling the moment.
I shrugged as the thickset uniform shut the door on us. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t offer you tea,’ I said as I sat down on the pallet and patted the space beside me for her to join me.
She folded her arms and gave me the kind of look my beloved ex had given me earlier. You know the kind – the sort a judge might give you before slamming down the gavel and sending you off to the colonies for fifteen years’ hard labour.
‘Just tell me what’s going on,’ she said.
‘Alison,’ I said. ‘I honestly don’t know.’
And I honestly didn’t.
Chapter 43
I took a sip of tea.
It was awful. Too much sugar, too much milk. I made a tutting sound and got a reproachful look from Alison Chambers.
She was now sitting next to me on the bed. A businesslike notebook open on her lap, on the pages of which she was writing businesslike notes, I assumed. The nib of her Mont Blanc fountain pen appeared to scratch into the paper a tad deeper than was probably necessary.
‘The tea not to your satisfaction?’ she asked coolly.
‘It’s not PG Tips, I can tell you that much,’ I said.
‘And this isn’t the Ritz either, if you hadn’t noticed. It’s the Paddington Green nick.’
‘Yeah, I did notice that. The last time Kirsty took my trouser belt off on our wedding anniversary she didn’t take the shoelaces as well!’
I looked down at my brogues. Without the laces the tongues of both shoes flopped out like those of overheated dogs.
‘You don’t seem to be taking this seriously, Dan. So I am not sure I can help you.’
‘Oh, I’m taking this deadly seriously, I can assure you.’
‘You bring a woman into this country under a false passport. You enter your so-called god-daughter into the same college as her, also under a false name, but at least that’s not a crime so far as I know.’
‘Nor me,’ I agreed.
‘But you had Chloe working for you, didn’t you?’ Alison pressed angrily.
I didn’t respond.
‘And now the girl you smuggled in illegally,’ she continued, ‘has been kidnapped and you refuse to tell the police a damn thing.’
‘I’m taking the Fifth.’
She sighed, exasperated. ‘This is Paddington Green, Carter! Not Prairie Fart, Idaho. You don’t have the option to take the Fifth. There is no Fifth!’