There was a grim seriousness to her tone that I hadn't heard before. 'OK,' I said uncertainly, stopping by the car.
'I'll be totally honest with you. It's potentially going to put you in a lot of danger.'
'I'm already in a lot of danger,' I said, sounding braver than I felt. 'What is it?'
I listened as she gave me the details, and when she'd finished she asked me if I was prepared to go through with it. 'Right now, I believe this is our best way forward,' she added. 'I'll keep the situation under review and if we get any hard evidence of what's happened then I'll bring it straight to my colleagues, and get you full protection.'
I could hear my heart beating hard in my chest as I thought about what was being asked of me.
'You don't have to do it,' she said, then paused. 'The ball's in your court.'
I thought of Jenny. I thought of Ramon. I had no choice. 'Let's go for it.'
Twenty-four
John Gentleman, the doorman on duty at Jenny Brakspear's apartment building the night she was abducted, lived in a grimy-looking three-storey tenement building in one of the less attractive parts of Hackney which backed on to a well-used railway bridge. Unlike Jenny's place, there was no security door, and Tina walked straight inside.
Gentleman's flat was on the second floor and Tina didn't meet anyone on the walk up. The flooring in the corridor outside was cheap linoleum and she moved quietly along it, trying to remain as casual as possible. She stopped at his door and put her ear against it, hearing nothing beyond. The door was protected by three separate locks – no surprise in a place as rundown as this, where drug-related burglary was bound to be common, and no real obstacle to someone who knew what he or she was doing.
During her time in SOCA, Tina had learned to break into buildings quickly and efficiently. It was all part of the job. Most people didn't realize that it was perfectly legal for the authorities to break in and bug any property if they had grounds to believe that the individuals living there were committing serious crime.
But as Tina got to work on the new five-bar lock using a small set of hand picks from her SOCA days, she knew that what she was doing would cost her her job immediately if she was caught. It didn't deter her. Nor was it the first time she'd been in this position, breaking the laws she was meant to uphold. It wasn't that Tina didn't believe in the rule of law. She did – broadly speaking, anyway – but she'd also seen its weaknesses at first hand. Justice wasn't always done, and the wrong people sometimes walked free. Paul Wise, her lover's murderer, was a glaring example of this, and she used him as her justification whenever she bent the rules, as she was doing now. She hadn't wanted to go this far, though. It was only because she still hadn't heard from Mike Bolt, even though she'd left a second message on his voicemail, that she'd reluctantly concluded that she had to act on her own.
The five-bar took nearly two minutes to open. She was out of practice, and she also had to work hard to keep quiet and calm, knowing that she could be disturbed at any time. Across the corridor she could hear rap music playing and the sound of voices shouting at each other, and she was sweating by the time she finished.
The other two locks were older and less sturdy and took her thirty seconds between them. Then, after a final listen at the door, she opened it and slipped inside, feeling a rush of illicit excitement.
She found herself in a small, sparsely decorated living room. At the far end a door was partly ajar and beyond it she could hear soft snoring. John Gentleman was clearly out for the count. She shut the front door, spotting his landline handset on the mantelpiece next to a photo of a young girl of about five or six in school uniform, smiling at the camera. This would be his granddaughter, Tegan. Tina had done her research on Gentleman. He lived alone, having divorced eight years earlier. The sight of his granddaughter suddenly made her feel guilty, because it brought home to her exactly what she was doing.
Forcing herself to concentrate, she crept across the room and peered round the bedroom door. Gentleman was flat out on his back in a pair of baggy boxer shorts, the covers half off him. Tina glanced round the room, looking for any other handsets, but there weren't any. This was good. It made her task easier.
Retreating into the living room, shutting the door as much as she could, she picked up the handset from the mantelpiece and took the back off it. Then she reached into her jacket and pulled out a thin piece of plastic about three inches long and less than half an inch wide, which she inserted into a space inside. This was a handset tilt switch, a phone-tapping device with a tiny mike and its own power source which would activate automatically as soon as the handset was lifted up and would record every conversation made on it until the battery flattened. Tina had picked it up on the way over here. It wasn't exactly cutting edge, and could be detected easily by someone who knew what he was doing, but she knew Gentleman wouldn't know so it served her purpose well enough.
Having put the handset back together and replaced it on the mantelpiece, she took a pay-as-you-go mobile phone she'd picked up earlier from Carphone Warehouse from the same pocket. She switched it on and attached its hands-free kit before placing it in the corner of the room behind the TV, where it wouldn't be seen. This was her back-up listening device, in case the handset tilt switch didn't function properly. Although only a cheap standard phone, she'd made some alterations to the settings menu on the way over, turning off the ringer tone and setting it to auto answer, which would turn it into an open mike as soon as she called the number and allow her to listen in on anything said in the room. Even now, she was still taken aback by how easy it was to eavesdrop on people. Gentleman would no doubt discover the phone eventually, but by then she would have the information she wanted and there would be no way of tracing it back to her.
She left the flat as quietly as she'd entered it, using the picks to relock the door. Then, keeping her head down to remain as inconspicuous as possible, she walked back to the car. It was only when she was inside with a cigarette in her mouth that she allowed herself a small smile for a job well done.
She pulled out her mobile. It was ten to two, and still no call from Mike. Time, then, to put the plan into action.
She called Rob Fallon. 'Go for it,' she told him, before disconnecting.
Then she switched on the receiver, connecting to the handset tilt switch in Gentleman's phone, put in her earpiece and waited.
Twenty-five
I was standing in a phone box on the Edgware Road when I got the call from Tina. As soon as she'd hung up I picked up the receiver, took a deep breath, and dialled John Gentleman's landline number.
It rang for a long time before going to message. I didn't leave one, just counted to five and called again.
This time he answered, sounding groggy and pissed off. 'Who's this?'
I took a deep breath, then spoke clearly and slowly, as Tina had instructed. 'John Gentleman, I know that you're involved in the kidnap of Jenny Brakspear who lives in the apartment building where you work. You provided the kidnappers with a key to get into her apartment, you broke the security camera at the exit to the underground car park so they could get back out, you cleaned up after them-'
'I don't know what you're talking about!' he shouted, but there was uncertainty in his voice.
'You do, and if you admit it to me now and tell me who the kidnappers are, then I'll make sure your name doesn't get mentioned.'
'I told you: I don't know what you're fucking talking about!'