There was no point phoning Bolt – she'd left enough messages for him already – so she called Fallon instead, asking him where he was.
'In the West End, looking for a hotel room. What's happening?'
'I'll give you a full briefing later. In the meantime, get into your email account. I've just sent you some photos. Download them on to a USB stick but don't show them to anyone until you hear from me. Understand?'
'Sure,' answered Fallon. He started to say something else but Tina said she'd phone him in an hour, and ended the call.
She stretched in her seat and sighed. What the hell was she going to do now?
Then the passenger door opened and the man in the cap and sunglasses climbed inside, holding a short-barrelled pistol with a silencer attached. 'Start driving now,' he said calmly, 'or you're dead.'
Twenty-seven
Mike Bolt was shattered. He hated inter-departmental meetings at the best of times, but when they dragged on and on, as this one with the people from the Financial Intelligence Unit had, they truly pissed him off. He, Mo Khan, his own boss, Big Barry Freud, and three other members of the team had gone into the meeting room at half past ten that morning and were only just emerging now, almost four and a half hours later, at five to three. Lunch had been sandwiches that tasted of plastic, eaten at the table while various people had continued to drone on, and now Bolt's back was aching badly and he was still hungry.
'Is it just me,' he asked Mo as they walked back to the team office, 'or are we in exactly the same place with Paul Wise as we were four hours ago?'
'I don't know,' answered Mo, sounding dazed. 'I'm too tired to think. But I wouldn't bet on an arrest being imminent.'
Bolt grunted, switching his phone off silent. 'My sentiments exactly.'
The meeting had been a hugely detailed rehash of what was in the report. There'd been the usual promises of greater cooperation between the various departments within SOCA, but aside from a few recommendations from the FIU people, who were going to put a degree of pressure on the various people involved in converting Paul Wise's money from dirty to clean, there was still no plan for bringing him to justice, or even curtailing his activities.
As far as Bolt was concerned, there were way too many meetings in SOCA and it was slowing them all down. Not for the first time in these past few months he hankered for a return to the good old days when he was part of the Met's Flying Squad, facing the comparatively straightforward task of chasing down armed robbers. At least you knew where you were with them.
The phone bleeped and he saw he had three messages, all from Tina Boyd. He wondered what was so urgent that she'd called that many times. As he listened to them, he realized that there had clearly been some major developments in the kidnap case she'd spoken to him about the previous day. Still, he was surprised she wanted to talk to him about it rather than her bosses at Islington CID.
He pressed call-back but it said her phone was switched off, which seemed odd if she was so keen to get hold of him. He sighed, hoping she hadn't got herself into trouble, knowing it wouldn't be the first time. Tina had a habit of relying heavily on her initiative and being prepared to go it alone on investigations, and occasionally she wasn't very good at judging when to stop. The positive side to this was that she usually got results. But, he thought grimly, it wasn't always such a positive if she was out there alone, dealing with the wrong kind of people.
'Anything the matter, boss?' asked Mo as they got back to the office.
'Nothing exciting,' Bolt replied, unsure about how much to tell Mo, who'd never got on that well with Tina, and who probably wouldn't approve of him encouraging her to follow up on her leads.
Although the team worked in an open-plan office, Bolt had his own small room at the far end. He went in there now and tried Tina's number a second time. Still switched off. He sat back at his desk and opened up his email screen on the PC.
There were ten new messages from various people, which was about average, but straight away he saw that the most recent one was from Tina, and that it had been sent just ten minutes ago. He opened it and read the message: Do you recognize this man?
There were five photos attached. He double-clicked on the first one. It was a profile shot of a man in a cap and sunglasses. The quality was good – Bolt could see that the skin on his pale face was tight, as if he'd had plastic surgery – but the subject was clearly well disguised. The second shot was similar but with less of the subject's face showing. The third was of the back of a Toyota Land Cruiser on a residential street. He took down its registration number, wishing Tina had given a bit more of an explanation in her email as to what this was all about. Then he opened photo number four.
This one was a close-up, full-frontal shot of the man in the cap and sunglasses from the chest upwards. He was trying to keep his head down and wasn't looking at the camera, but even so, there was something familiar about him. Bolt expanded the photo until it filled the screen, then focused on the pale face. It looked like the man had suffered burns at one time because the plastic surgery looked more like repair work than anything cosmetic. He zoomed in on the chin. The quality got worse, the picture beginning to blur, but a rectangle of skin lined with scar tissue remained distinctive. It was about half the size of a credit card and much fainter than it had been before, but unmistakable nonetheless.
Bolt felt a physical jolt. He took a deep breath and zoomed out again so that he was back to just the face. 'Jesus, it can't be,' he whispered. 'Not you.'
He turned away from the screen and called out to Mo.
'Is this who I think it is?' he asked, turning the monitor round as Mo came into the office.
Mo stared at the picture for a long time.
'It's him, isn't it?' said Bolt, zooming in again and pointing out the scar.
'It is,' said Mo at last. 'It's Hook. Who sent you this?'
Bolt's throat felt dry as he answered. 'Tina Boyd. About ten minutes ago. I'm guessing she was the one who took the photo.'
'Have you spoken to her yet?'
Bolt shook his head. 'No. Her phone's switched off. I just tried it.'
'Do you know when she took it?'
'No, but I'm guessing it was probably today. And here in London.'
Mo whistled through his lips. 'So Hook's back in town. There's got to be a very good reason why he'd risk his neck to be back here.'
Bolt dialled Tina's mobile again. It was still off.
'Well, whatever it is,' he said, 'I'm truly hoping he hasn't crossed paths with Tina. Because if he has…'
He let the sentence trail off. They both knew all too well what Hook was capable of.
Twenty-eight
Tina stared straight ahead as she drove through the streets of Hackney in the direction of the A12, as per the gunman's instructions, making absolutely sure that she avoided any eye contact, not wanting to give him an excuse to put a bullet in her.
She was trying to remain as calm as possible but it was damn hard, and she could feel herself sweating as she tried to figure out how to get out of this situation. She'd been in tight corners before, facing the wrong end of a gun, and had come out of them in one piece, but there was no guarantee that it would happen again, and she had a very bad feeling about the man next to her. Most criminals, even the well-organized professional ones, tended to exhibit signs of nerves, particularly when they were pointing a gun at someone, but this guy was sitting there with an almost Zen-like calmness, and in Tina's experience that made him extremely dangerous.