‘Is there anybody else in the park?’
‘Nobody. And there’s no light. He’s using spotlights on his vehicle to see what he’s doing. And it’s bloody windy out there. In fact, yes, I can see it now. There’s some kind of fluorescent tape marking the ground and he’s positioning the package within the frame.’
‘Get me a report from Battersea heliport,’ roared Hines.
‘We’ve already done that, sir. Nothing’s been allowed to take off for the last two hours due to the weather.’
‘What the
fuck
is going on?’ said Hines, swearing savagely for the first time in his professional life.
‘The second package is down now. He’s starting on the third.’
Hines stared at the map.
‘Right, I want two cars stationed on every road around Victoria Park. I want people on foot down by the Regent’s Canal. There’s a block of flats overlooking the park opposite the London Chest Hospital. Get some men on the roof looking down. I want constant reports on what they can see. Get a camera up there. There’s a boating lake in the park. Is there something on that? Tell me anything and everything.’
‘The third package is on the ground now, sir.’
‘If any vehicle approaches the park, you must allow it to enter,’ said Hines. ‘Do you hear me? Give any vehicle free access.’
Minutes passed. The fourth package was offloaded. A report came from the roof of the block of flats where they were setting up a camera to give a feed into the communications centre.
‘There’s a frame of fluorescent tape on the ground about five yards by four, I’d say, and all the packages are being positioned within that space. That’s all we can see. There’s nothing else in the park. Nothing on the boating lake, not even a pedalo. The weather’s so horrible there aren’t even any joggers out.’
‘And on the canal?’
‘There are some narrowboats moored near the park. It’s clear there are people in them because they have lights on and smoke coming from the chimneys, but nothing unusual. I can see some of our officers down there and they’re not in the least bit concerned by any activity. The fifth package has just been landed. Last one to go.’
The communications centre picked up the feed from the camera on the roof, which was focusing on the unfolding scene in the park, and relayed it to Hines’s screen. The driver hooked up the last package and jumped off the back. The crane took the weight and slowly lifted the package and positioned it in the final slot. The driver used the remote to fold the crane back into its park position. He listened to the mobile phone, went into the cab, came out with something in his hand and did something to the top of each of the packages. He got back into the cab, manoeuvred the truck, churning up the sodden ground, so that the spotlights were on the packages of money. He left the vehicle, walked out of the park.
‘We’ve got a van that’s gone into the park via the Gore Road entrance,’ said one of the officers. ‘It’s approaching the scene. It’s a … it’s Sky News.’
‘A BBC outside broadcast van has just gone in through the Grove Road entrance.’
The men on the roof watched as the newsmen set up their cameras, while the presenters ran a test on their microphones.
An email came through to Hines from the kidnappers.
Are you ready?
One of the constables in the communications centre turned the television on to Sky News. Kay Burley stared into the camera and announced that they were going live immediately to Sky reporter Rhiannon Mills for a special broadcast from London’s East End.
‘Here we are in Victoria Park, otherwise known as the People’s Park, on an extremely blustery night, for what we have been told is going to be one of the most spectacular events to take place in London since the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games,’ said Mills, with her blonde hair whipping across her face. ‘What we have been promised is one of the greatest disappearing acts in the history of illusions. Bigger than David Copperfield’s promise to make the moon vanish. We have been advised that at precisely six o’clock, what you see in the background will miraculously dematerialise. We do not know what is in these six packages that you can see spotlit behind me, but we have been told that it weighs nearly four tons and is valued at one hundred and fifty million pounds. Only as it stunningly transmogrifies will we be told what was contained in the packages, and we have been assured you will be utterly astounded by the feat. We are just fifteen seconds away from … Hold on a moment …’
Mills put her finger to her ear.
‘It has just been leaked exclusively to Sky News that what is contained in the packages behind us is one hundred and fifty million pounds in cash. An extraordinary amount of money, which belongs to—’
Mills ducked at the sound of a colossal explosion as all six packages were lifted more than forty feet into the air, spilling their contents into the gusting wind, which took the loose money high into the thermals and scattered it over the East End.
Mills snatched at the air above her and caught hold of a fifty-pound note, which she held up to the camera.
‘There it is. A fifty-pound note. The air is full of them.’
The camera cut to the night sky, which was full of fluttering notes and the remnants of plastic sheeting towering and twisting, rolling and yawing in the gusting wind.
18.05, 17 January 2014
Catford, London SE6
Mercy had thought long and hard before she called in the two homicide teams to look at the crime scenes in Lewisham and Catford. She’d decided that an anonymous informer would have to be involved in the first crime scene. The explanation of the bodies’ positions wouldn’t work without another person having been there. The second scene was more demanding as it involved Alleyne and Amy, who she didn’t want anybody to know about. In her own mind she’d already approved of the idea of Louise Rylance disappearing. It was just explaining how Mercy herself had gained entry into the house, gone upstairs to witness Gav shooting Siobhan and then killed Gav in self-defence. This fiction was proving more difficult to frame into a believable story.
In the end she decided that the informer would have to be used to gain entry. That the kidnapper was expecting a white male and Michael Rylance had given them the code phrase was the key. Gav had admitted the informer, who in turn had let her in. She’d been hoping to make an arrest and interview Siobhan. On gaining entry into the house she’d heard them in discussion upstairs and drawn the weapon she’d taken from Rylance. Suspecting a conspiracy with the informer, Gav had attempted to use him as a shield. The informer had tried to wrest the weapon from Gav’s hand and in the confusion it had gone off, killing Siobhan. Mercy had then shot Gav. It was messy, but that was the nature of these scenarios. It wouldn’t have been the first time that somebody was killed under the stress of a kidnap situation with weapons involved.
She’d tried to call
DCS
Hines to give him a verbal report, but he was embroiled in the unfolding scene in Victoria Park and didn’t want to know. So when Arran Road was clear, she took everybody back to Lewisham. They stayed in the car while Mercy studied the scene and Louise cleared her limited possessions into a large suitcase. Mercy called the first homicide team to the Lewisham house only after she’d dropped them all at the railway station to get a taxi.
The cab took them back to Streatham. Boxer called one of his doctor friends to come and look over Amy and Alleyne. They were both exhausted after days of living on the edge and went to lie down upstairs. Boxer sat with Louise, asked her if she knew how to disappear. She didn’t. He made a call and left a message.
‘He’ll call back,’ said Boxer.
‘I’m not sure I want to do this,’ she said.
‘Nobody’s ready to walk away from their own life,’ said Boxer. ‘It’s the alternative that makes you do it.’
‘It’s like a betrayal,’ she said. ‘It’s like I’m betraying Michael. Leaving him dead. Walking out on our life together as if he never existed.’
‘Did your husband have any family?’
‘He was an only child. His mother’s still alive but in a home in Sussex with dementia.’
‘You?’
‘I’ve got a big family. Both parents and two grandparents alive, two sisters and a brother, nieces, nephews. Aunts and uncles. But they’re an alternative bunch. Most of them are vegans and live in the rural depths of Devon and Somerset, some are in Wales and there’s one in Patagonia. They never approved of me going into the army and they didn’t like Michael. They called him a mercenary.’
‘You won’t be able to contact them … ever.’
She nodded.
Boxer couldn’t speak. He’d been suddenly consumed by a sense of loss that had risen up from nowhere and was so acute he didn’t think he’d be able to contain it.
‘The first time I saw you, I thought you were a psycho, a hit man,’ said Louise. ‘You looked dead behind the eyes. Michael could see it too. I was afraid of you. I thought you were capable of anything and it wouldn’t matter one way or the other. And then on the way to that house in Catford you threw me by asking me … by being so human. Don’t take this badly, but you need help.’
‘Help?’ said Boxer, still struggling.
‘Psychological help.’
‘I’m beyond help,’ he said, looking away. ‘There’s no cure for what I’ve done.’
‘That bad?’
‘Killing people,’ said Boxer. ‘Always bad people, but it’s still killing other human beings and that’s not so easy to admit to some shrink in Hampstead.’
‘I know a woman, professional and discreet, who used to be in the marines. She’s seen her fair share and helped a lot of post-traumatic stress guys,’ said Louise, writing a name and number down on a card. ‘Try her.’
Boxer didn’t want to take the card.
‘It won’t get better on its own,’ she said. ‘You need someone objective who can trace it all back, find out where it went wrong, work out your … motivation.’
‘My motivation?’
‘Why you’ve ended up doing what you do,’ said Louise. ‘Maybe you’ve got a personality disorder. All too human one moment, psychopathic the next.’
The doorbell rang. Boxer, still shaken, let the doctor in, took her upstairs. They’d met playing poker. She gambled on everything: cards, horses, sport, even the weather. She examined both patients, who’d been sleeping, and gave Boxer sedatives for them, but only if they developed anxiety or insomnia. She charged seven hundred pounds cash, which Boxer didn’t have, but she knew he was good for it.
Back in the sitting room Louise was crying. He left her to it, waited in the kitchen until he heard the tears run out and went back in.
‘You got money?’ he said, sitting opposite her. ‘I should have asked.’
‘I’ve got the hundred grand, all offshore. No record of it in this country. I can access it.’
Boxer’s phone rang. He took down an address. Hung up.
‘This is where you go,’ he said, handing her the paper. ‘I’ll walk you to a cab. Best not to call one here.’
They left the house, Boxer wheeling her suitcase. He had the strange sensation of saying goodbye to someone he’d known for a long time. He hailed a black cab, put the suitcase in the back. She kissed him on the mouth, held his face close to hers.
‘Am I allowed to see
you
again?’ she asked.
‘Best not,’ he said, but with the feeling of her lips on his.
‘It could have been interesting,’ she said.
He watched the taxi drive away on the black and gleaming road, confused, and wondering at how life never stopped coming at you.
Mercy had answered the questions as best she could with the first homicide team and then left to go to the Catford house. She had to clean all evidence of Amy and Alleyne from the house. She stripped the beds and bagged the linen, which she put in the boot of her car. She hoovered around the beds and wiped down the surfaces. She hated this. She hated subterfuge and lying. There was nothing more difficult than to keep track of a pack of lies. She’d broken too many suspects through their pathetic lies.
She called the second homicide team and gave her report when they arrived. She explained that she’d handed over the weapon used in this shooting to the first team and then excused herself, said she had to keep up with her special investigation into the six kidnaps.
It was a terrible night, with the wind buffeting her car and rain slashing across the windscreen as she made her way back to the Vauxhall office. She listened to the news and heard a full report of what had happened in Victoria Park. She went straight in to see
DCS
Hines and handed over the evidence bag with Chuck Powell’s mobile phone. A member of the tech team came in to retrieve it, took down the details and left. Hines debriefed her on the afternoon and evening’s events.
‘Anything from the kidnappers since the big giveaway?’ asked Mercy.
‘An email. I quote: “We don’t want to give you the impression that this is a mere redistribution of wealth. As you know we called this money ‘expenses’. We believe that this is the minimum amount that these individuals would have had to pay if they hadn’t enjoyed tax-free or non-dom status and been taxed at the same level as ordinary people.”’
‘Probably right,’ said Mercy.
‘I’ll make that our official quote for the press conference,’ said Hines. ‘I heard you had to kill three people.’
‘My informer and I were attacked during the handover of the phone.’
‘Which informer?’ asked Hines. ‘And why are you using informers for this kind of work? I’d have thought Papadopoulos would have been up to the task.’
‘First of all I don’t reveal the names of any of my informers,’ said Mercy. ‘And secondly, I was using this one in a slightly more inventive way than usual because I was concerned that the kidnap unit might have been compromised.’
‘What makes you think that?’ asked Hines, sitting up.
‘We made significant inroads into the kidnappers’ organisation but they always seemed to be ahead of the game,’ said Mercy. ‘We arrested Reef. They knew immediately and acted: cleared the hostages out of the Old Vinyl Factory and left a little booby trap to make us look stupid.’
‘Somebody in the communications centre?’
‘That would be the obvious place, the hub of all information,’ said Mercy. ‘But then again, they’ve been responsible for circulating that intelligence and it’s gone everywhere, not just to our officers in the field, but to MI5, MI6 and the
CIA
.’
‘There was a leak to Sky News about the cash, too,’ said Hines. ‘But what worries me more is that we’re dealing with an organisation that doesn’t appear to be motivated by profit. I mean literally blowing a hundred and fifty million is the ultimate demonstration of the ideologue. We might as well be up against religious fanatics.’
‘How did the parents of the victims take it?’ said Mercy, deciding to keep Emma’s revelations to herself.
‘All of them were stunned, some of them were very angry.’
‘Angry?’
‘Rich people care about money: not the status it confers by having lots of it in the bank or visible assets, but the physical presence of cash,’ said Hines. ‘And to see it thrown away like that was infuriating to some of them, especially Uttar Sarkar and Anastasia Casey. Apparently it wasn’t even Sarkar’s money. He’d done a deal with the Indian government and they’d supplied his twenty-five million in exchange for some tax break. It did not diminish his fury.’
‘They think differently to us,’ said Mercy.
‘Wealth is like drinking seawater. The more you have, the thirstier you get.’
‘And we haven’t even got to the ransom yet,’ said Mercy. ‘But if you’re right about Conrad Jensen being an ideologue, it looks like what they demanded of the
CIA
is going to be the name of the game. Announce this, declare that, name names.’
‘We have to find these hostages,’ said Hines.
‘Any reports of movements in or out of the Old Vinyl Factory?’
‘We’re not hopeful in a run-down industrial zone with little night-time activity.’
‘The lengths they went to in order to retrieve Chuck Powell’s phone show how important he is. Has he come round?’
‘Not yet and it’s going to be a while before he’s strong enough to talk. In the meantime we’ve got to look at all possibilities.’
‘Are the hostages still in this country?’ asked Mercy. ‘Are we looking at the ports? The Channel Tunnel?’
‘There’s a limit to what we can achieve without intelligence,’ said Hines. ‘Trying to check every container leaving the UK might be a bit of an ask.’
‘I interviewed Rylance before he attacked me. His phone had the names of two of his partners, Mark Lee and Jim Ford, who he worked with on Rakesh Sarkar’s kidnap,’ said Mercy. ‘He gave me the address of Mark Lee’s flat where they met up to change clothes for the kidnap.’
‘Let’s bring him in, both of them if we can, but they’ll probably be peripheral like all the others we’ve caught,’ said Hines. ‘The people exposed by doing the kidnap work don’t seem to know what’s going on in the centre. We need to find someone who was in the Old Vinyl Factory when they moved the hostages.’
‘After the kidnap, Rylance delivered Rakesh Sarkar to the factory. He maintains he didn’t see anything. He left the police car, changed out of uniform and was driven back into town,’ said Mercy. ‘Reef delivered Siena Casey to a car, which must have at least gone to the Old Vinyl Factory if it didn’t come from there. Siena was out of her head and it’s unlikely they would have let her travel unsupervised in a highly drugged state. Reef must have gone with her. And he must have had some way of recognising the car he was supposed to deliver her to.’
‘So who are you going to talk to first?’
‘I think I should try to find Mark Lee.’
Boxer felt acutely alone after the strange connection he’d made with Louise. He went to sit in Amy’s room, left the door open so there was a little light from the hall and watched her sleeping. It reminded him of when she’d been small and, on the few occasions he’d been in the country, coming back from work and going upstairs to watch her. The memory, tied up with the evening’s odd liaison and the terrible sense of loss, brought on a crying jag. Tears streaked down his face as he breathed in, shuddering against the emotion. He tried to remember the last time he’d cried and had to go right the way back to when he’d first been told that his father had gone. He’d cried then, but only once.
‘Is that you, Dad?’ said Amy, from the bed. ‘Are you … are you crying?’
He nodded, wiped his face with the back of his hands and told her what had happened to Isabel, and about the baby lying in an incubator in the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. And then Amy was crying too, and she pulled him over. He lay down next to her and she clasped him to her in the dark.
‘What a life,’ he said.
‘What are you going to do with the baby?’
‘Your mum asked the same thing. And I don’t know. I haven’t got that far. I’m in a strange state. I’ve just lost Isabel, but she’s left me this little life that I’m going to have to fit into my own and I’m not sure how.’
‘I like the idea of a half-brother.’
‘You’ll have to go and see him,’ said Boxer. ‘It was one of the strangest things that’s ever happened to me. To see Isabel, but to find her totally absent, and then to be introduced to this struggling, quivering life in a Perspex box.’