"She's his mother, Den, they won't .. ."
"Just do as you're fucking told, will you!" Donovan shouted, and immediately regretted the outburst.
"I'm sorry, Laura. I didn't mean that."
"It's okay, Den. I'll talk to the school, explain the situation to them. But you're going to have to come back and talk to them yourself. You're his dad, I'm just his aunt."
"I'll be back, don't worry about that. Are you okay looking after him for a while?"
"You don't have to ask, Den. You know that."
Donovan cut the connection and dialled again. A man answered. Donovan didn't identify himself, but told the man to get to a clean phone and call him back. Donovan gave him the St. Kitts number. The man began to complain that he didn't have enough coins to make an international call from a phone box.
"Buy a fucking phone card, you cheap bastard," said Donovan, and hung up.
Donovan paced up and down as he waited for the man to ring back.
Laura's husband, Mark, drove her over to Donovan's house. She'd asked a neighbour to sit in with the children, who were so engrossed in the Cartoon Channel that they didn't even ask where Laura and Mark were going.
"We've met this Sharkey guy, haven't we?" asked Mark, accelerating through the evening traffic.
"Yeah. That barbecue last time Den was over. He's an accountant or something."
"And she was in bed with him?"
That's what Robbie said."
"Stupid bitch."
"Yeah."
"Fancy doing it in her own bed."
Laura flashed him a withering look.
He grimaced.
"I meant she was a stupid bitch for doing it in the first place. But if you're going to have an affair, you don't shit on your own doorstep, do you?"
"Well, I'll bear that in mind, honey," she said, frostily.
"You know what I mean. How did Den sound?"
"Angry."
"He'll kill her."
"I hope not."
"You know what your brother's like. What he's capable of."
"Yeah. And so does Vicky."
"Christ, what a mess."
They drove the rest of the way to Kensington in silence. Mark pulled up outside Donovan's house. Vicky's Range Rover was parked outside.
"Shit," said Laura.
"She's still home."
"Maybe not," said Mark.
"She might have left in his car."
"Leave behind a Range Rover? Come on. Vicky's not the sort to say goodbye to a thirty-thousand-pound car."
"She can't take it overseas. And even if she could, it'd make her a sitting duck."
Laura realised that her husband was probably right and she relaxed a little. Despite her brother's assertion that the house belonged to him, Laura wasn't sure how well she'd be able to cope with a confrontation with Vicky. She took the house keys from her bag and climbed out of the car.
Laura opened the front door. She had the combination of the burglar alarm, but there was no bleeping from the console so she figured that Vicky hadn't set it. She was about to step inside when Mark put a hand on her shoulder.
"Best let me go in first, kid," he said.
"Just to be on the safe side."
Laura smiled at him gratefully and moved to let him go inside.
Mark quickly walked down the hall, checked the two reception rooms and the kitchen, then came back into the hallway, shaking his head.
"No one here," he said. He looked up the stairs.
"Vicky?" he shouted.
"She'll be well gone," said Laura.
They went upstairs to the master bedroom. The duvet was thrown over a chair by the window and two pillows were on the floor at the foot of the bed. Laura opened the doors to the fitted wardrobes. Among the clothes still hanging there were more than two dozen empty hangers. Laura walked into the en suite bathroom. She opened the medicine cabinet over the sink and ran a hand over the medicines and toiletries.
"She's left him," she said.
Mark came up behind her.
"How do you know?"
"No contraceptive pills. No razor. No toothbrush."
"You should have been a detective," said her husband.
"She'll have to run a long bloody way to escape from Den."
"Can you get some clothes from Robbie's room?" asked Laura.
"There's something Den wants me to do."
As Mark went along the hallway to Robbie's bedroom, Laura headed downstairs. She opened the door to the study and walked over to a large oil painting hanging behind an oak desk. It was of two old-fashioned yachts sailing into the wind, and a similar one hung on the wall opposite. Laura reached for the ornate gilt frame and pulled the right-hand side away from the wall. Behind was a gunmetal-grey safe with a circular numbered dial in the centre. She'd written the combination on the back of a Marks and Spencer receipt, but it took her several goes before she could get the door open. The safe was empty. Laura swore under her breath. She wasn't looking forward to giving her brother the bad news.
Chief Superintendent Richard Underwood buttoned up his coat and pushed open the door. He walked out of Paddington Green police station and nodded at two Vice Squad detectives before walking down Harrow Road. He turned up his collar against the wind that always seemed to whip around the station, no matter what the season.
He walked past the first two phone boxes, the old-fashioned red types, the insides littered with prostitutes' calling cards. The third was about half a mile from the station, on Warwick Avenue, close to the canal. Underwood tapped in the pin number of his phone card, then the number in St. Kitts. It rang out for so long that he thought maybe he'd taken down the wrong number, but then Donovan answered.
"You'd better be quick, Den, there's only twenty quid on this card."
"Yeah, put it on the tab, you tight bastard," said Donovan.
"Look, I need to know what my position is back in the UK."
"Fucking precarious, as usual."
"I'm serious, Dicko. I'm going to have to come back." He told Underwood what had happened.
"Hell, Den, I'm sorry." Underwood had known Donovan for almost twenty years and Vicky Donovan was the last person he'd have expected to betray her husband.
"Yeah, well, I need to know where I stand."
"You're Tango One. So far as I know, that's not changed."
"It's been four bloody years since I left."
"Memories like elephants. They'll be all over you like a rash if you come back."
"Check it out, will you?"
"If that's what you want, Den, sure. I'll call you tomorrow. This number, yeah?"
"Nah. I'm getting a flight back this afternoon."
"Bloody hell, Den. Don't get manic about this. Softly, softly, yeah?"
"Don't worry, Dicko. I'll stop off in Europe. Germany maybe. I'll call you from there."
"Just remember Europol, that's all. You're Most Wanted all over Europe."
"I'll be okay. One more thing. I want you to get Vicky and that bastard Sharkey red-flagged. They leave the country, I want to know."
"You're not asking much, are you?"
"I'm serious, Dicko. If they run, I want to know where they run to."
"Don't do anything stupid, Den."
"You can do it, yeah?"
Underwood sighed.
"Yeah, I can do it."
"Cheers, mate. Let's talk again tomorrow."
The line went dead in Underwood's ear. He felt his stomach churn and he popped a Rennie indigestion tablet into his mouth.
Donovan walked over to the convertible Mercedes. Doyle had the door open for him.
"You okay, boss?" he asked.
Donovan didn't reply. He tapped on the dashboard with the palms of his hands as Doyle climbed into the driving seat.
"Where to, boss?" asked Doyle.
Donovan's hands beat even faster on the dashboard as he tried to collect his thoughts. He'd flown to St. Kitts purely to meet the Colombian, but his return flight was to Anguilla, and that didn't get him any closer to London. He needed a ticket, he needed to speak to his sister, and he needed to confirm the collection of the several hundred kilos of Colombian heroin that was on its way to Felixstowe.