The winning time, achieved by a sixteen-stone rugby-playing former public schoolboy called Josh, was six seconds. Second was Tina, in eight. No one else came close and five of the contestants didn't even finish theirs. Claire ended up with the head spins and had to go home.
That should have been that, but when Josh started bragging about his drinking prowess, Tina's competitive streak kicked in and she offered him a challenge. She would match him drink for drink for the course of the evening, with each of them choosing what to have in alternate rounds. In hindsight, it was a mind-numbingly stupid idea, since Josh was close to twice her weight, but Tina could be like that sometimes. Almost self-destructive in her determination.
Over the next two hours they downed tequilas, sambuccas, pints of bitter, even a Malibu and pineapple (surprisingly, Josh's choice). Tina's boyfriend begged her to stop. She hadn't. Not voluntarily anyway. Eventually she simply passed out in her seat and had to be taken back to her hall of residence, where she spent much of the night throwing up.
The next day, her boyfriend, a slightly built intellectual called Vernon, finished with her, claiming with exasperation that he couldn't go out with someone like her because she was out of control and simply didn't know when to stop. He was right, of course. He could have added that she never did things the easy way, either. It was why she'd got into so many scrapes down the years, both in her police career and beyond. Why she'd once ended up being taken hostage by a gunman and being shot in the ensuing crossfire, cheating death only by the angle of his gun.
But that was also only half the story, because the thing about Tina was she tended to get results. The shot that had hit her in the hostage incident was only a flesh wound and the man holding the gun to her head – the one she'd tracked down herself – was killed. After all the trials and tribulations of her adult life (and there'd been plenty) she was still standing, and she was still catching the bad guys, which meant she had to be getting something right.
So when DCI Knox rejected her request for permission to concentrate on the Jenny Brakspear kidnapping, she'd decided to go it alone. She'd gone to him at one of the few quiet moments in the shift, but as she reeled out what evidence she had it was clear he wasn't really listening. He'd switched off altogether when she was forced to tell him that not only was Jenny's father adamant she wasn't missing, but the man who'd made the initial report had since phoned in to claim that he'd been lying. Tina could understand Knox's scepticism. In the end, policework is a firefighting exercise. You have to constantly prioritize. And cases don't get much bigger than the murder of a schoolboy.
When she left the station just after six that morning, walking exhausted into a bright orange dawn, the name of the murder suspect was already known; it was now simply a matter of building the case against him. Tina could leave her colleagues to deal with that. More important for her was to formulate a plan to gather more evidence to get either Knox or the Kidnap Unit interested, because one way or another Jenny Brakspear's time was running out.
As she drove the short distance home, smoking a cigarette, she knew she was going to need to sleep first, otherwise she'd be useless. But Rob Fallon could still make himself useful.
It was time to give him his wake-up call.
Nineteen
'There's been a change of plan.'
'What's happened?' I asked, squinting against the brightness of the early-morning sun. It was 6.45 a.m. and I was walking down my street in the direction of the park, having been woken from an extraordinarily deep slumber ten minutes earlier.
'I can't get the help I need on the Brakspear case.'
'Why the hell not?' I asked, wondering what you had to do to get police assistance these days.
'One, we've got a murder inquiry on, and that takes precedence. Two, we still haven't got any concrete proof that anything's actually happened.'
I started to protest, but Tina cut me short. 'Listen, Mr Fallon, you're preaching to the converted. I don't like it any more than you do. But for the moment, we've just got to accept that we're on our own.'
This was the second occasion on which I really should have told her about what had happened to Ramon. The fact that he'd been killed in my house would definitely get police attention. The problem was, in the absence of a body, or indeed even a suspect, it might be attention of the wrong kind. Once again, it would be my word against everyone else's. Maybe even Tina wouldn't believe me this time. So I kept quiet about it. 'OK,' I sighed. 'So what do we do now?'
'I think Roy Brakspear's involved, and he's operating under duress. We need to find out why. When I phoned him early yesterday morning, he was at home. What I want to do is plant a listening device inside his house.'
'Is that legal?'
'Let me worry about that. I know someone who can get me the kit I need but it'll probably take me some time. In the meantime, I want you to drive up there.'
'How do you know I've got a car?'
'I checked you out, Mr Fallon. It pays to know who you're dealing with.'
You had to hand it to her. She was coolly efficient – the kind of person both Jenny and I needed. But it was still vaguely disconcerting to discover how easily she could access the details of my life.
'I want you to do some low-level surveillance of Roy 's home – I'll email you the address and directions. That means finding a spot where you're not going to look conspicuous or out of place, and watching it. I want to know if he's there or not, and if he is, if there's anyone there with him. He drives a silver Audi A4 saloon. If there are any other cars parked on his property, or just outside, make a note of their numbers and call me back with them straight away. I haven't got a clue about the layout of the place but if you feel you can get close to the house and have a look inside, do it, but on no account get yourself caught.' Her tone hardened. 'Do you understand that? Do nothing too risky and make sure your phone's turned off. And something else too: I'm putting my neck on the line for you here, so if the shit hits the fan and you get caught trespassing, don't mention my name. If you do, I'll deny we ever had this conversation.'
'What are you going to do?' I asked, feeling weirdly like one of the characters in my old book, Conspiracy.
'Get a few hours' sleep, then I'm going to track down those listening devices.'
'If you do manage to plant one and you find anything out, how are you going to tell your bosses without getting yourself implicated?'
'I'll think of something,' she said evenly. 'I always do.'
She took my email address and hung up, leaving me wondering what kind of police officer I was dealing with. I was hoping above all else it was one who got results, because otherwise it wasn't just Jenny's life on the line.
It was mine, too.
Twenty
The Brakspear family home was an imposing detached house on the edge of a village not far from Cambridge that must have been pretty once but which had recently had a business park tacked on to the end of it. I drove past the front entrance but the security gates were closed and a high redbrick wall on either side prevented me from seeing much beyond, so I drove on another hundred yards and parked in a quiet tree-lined lane running off the main road.
It was ten past ten, the journey having been an extremely slow one thanks to heavy traffic on the M11. No one had been tailing me, or if they had they were damn good at it, and I felt a renewed sense of determination as I got out of the car and breathed in the fresh country air. At last it seemed I was actually doing something worthwhile in the hunt for Jenny, and if I could do anything to bring to justice the bastard who'd murdered Ramon, any risk I took would be worth it.