At the door, she turned, caught him looking at her and interpreted it right. Not sexual, just curious. Puzzled even. She reached for the handle and revealed a chunky Breitling Galactic stainless-steel watch and bracelet on a wide caramel wrist. If anything persuasive had occurred to her, she’d decided that saying nothing was more powerful. She nodded to him, closed the door quietly.
Boxer stared after her, still dazed, definitely not at his best after an all-night poker game in which he’d lost £120,000. He’d returned home at first light, collapsed into bed. He’d woken up at three in the afternoon remembering the dangerous thought he’d had only the previous morning (one of those that no one should ever be tempted to think) that life was good. His relationship with Amy, built on the solid rock of trust, was getting better as they worked more closely together. He was in love with Isabel, who he’d consulted for on the kidnap of her daughter a couple of years ago, and the passion had not abated. Mercy had turned her attention to her new boyfriend, Marcus Alleyne, and had eased herself into a friendship with Boxer rather than insisting on being his lover manqué. He was even getting on better with his mother, Esme. Amy, who was very close to her, had been instrumental in that. All this had meant that he was careful about the consulting jobs he took, travelled less and was as close to being happy as he’d ever been.
And then he’d lost heavily at poker. No cards and all his bluffs had failed, and yet he couldn’t tear himself away from the table. Now Siobhan had stepped into his world. He knew that this job was something he shouldn’t even have to think about. The answer was a screaming NO! The kid looked like trouble on stilts. And yet … there was something fascinating about her, and Conrad too.
The first thing he had to find out was how she knew about his willingness to kill people who’d done wrong. As far as he was concerned there was only one man in London with that knowledge: Martin Fox of Pavis Risk Management, who’d given him freelance work since he’d left the salaried security of the top kidnap consulting private security company
GRM
. He hadn’t worked for Pavis since the job he’d done for Isabel and her ex-husband Frank D’Cruz, negotiating the return of their daughter Alyshia. There’d been offers but he’d turned them down, didn’t like Fox’s intimate knowledge of his past. Fox had been clever enough not to press him, understood his sensibilities. Now, as Boxer’s thoughts rumbled on in the aftermath of Siobhan’s powerful charisma, he began to wonder whether this was just Martin Fox making an indirect approach.
Boxer made the call.
‘It’s been a while,’ said Fox, coming on the line.
‘I think we should meet,’ said Boxer.
‘I’d given up on you.’
‘I’ll see you at our usual bench.’
‘Now?’
‘I’ll be there in twenty.’
He hung up, put his coat and scarf on, tucked his Canadian trapper’s hat under his arm and went out into the main office, where he saw Siobhan still there fitting a black furry Cossack hat on to her head and finishing up a conversation with Amy. She slipped her hands into some black leather fur-trimmed gloves, hunched her shoulders and walked out, one hand in the pocket of her calf-length raincoat, the other yanking out an umbrella from the coat stand. She swaggered a little and returned Boxer’s unflinching gaze. He waited until he heard her heels on the stairs.
‘What was that all about?’ asked Boxer.
‘My earrings.’
‘Your
earrings
?’
‘And she asked me out.’
‘To what?’
‘A Sarah Lucas show at the Whitechapel Gallery.’
‘Sarah Lucas?’
‘Not your kind of thing, Dad.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Instinct,’ she said and shrugged.
‘You going to go?’
‘If I don’t get interrupted any more and I can finish my work.’
‘What do you make of her … Siobhan?’
‘She’s cool.’
‘You want to expand on that?’
‘Why? She want us to work for her?’
‘Me. She wants
me
to do something for her.’
‘Like?’
‘Find someone,’ said Boxer, walking to the window, looking down on Siobhan as she came out into the mews. ‘Her father.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘That’s where I was hoping for some help from you,’ said Boxer. ‘There’s something … not quite right about her. I was hoping for some intuition of the female kind.’
‘Not quite right?’
‘I can’t explain it,’ said Boxer. ‘At one point I asked her how old she was and she said twenty-eight.’
‘That’s how she dresses.’
‘Then she said she was twenty … ish.’
‘Same as me … ish.’
‘It’s not her age that bothers me. It’s her instinct for lying, which is never good in a client. And … there’s something else.’
‘Maybe she wanted you to take her seriously.’
‘I took her seriously all right,’ said Boxer. ‘I had no problem with that. Never for a moment struck me as someone to take lightly. You?’
‘What?’
‘Come on, Amy, get your head in gear,’ said Boxer. ‘That girl’s trouble and I can’t see why. Let’s have some youthful insight.’
‘Like?’
‘She seemed attracted to you.’
‘Lesbian?’ said Amy, scoffing. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Dad. Male fantasy.’
‘Not mine,’ said Boxer. ‘You came in, she introduced herself and when she turned back to me she was …’
‘What?’
‘In a heightened state.’
‘Of what? Excitement?’
‘Looked like it to me.’
‘I didn’t get anything like that off her,’ said Amy. ‘We just talked.’
‘Are you going to go to the Sarah Lucas show with her?’
‘Like I said, if somebody lets me get on with my work.’
‘Call me. Let me know how it goes. What’s she do … Sarah Lucas?’
‘You don’t need to know.’
‘Did Siobhan give you her mobile phone number?’
Amy nodded. Boxer beckoned it out of her. It was different to the one she’d given him.
‘One other thing,’ he said, from the doorway. ‘Call the Savoy and just make sure for me that Siobhan Jensen was staying there these last few nights.’
17.55, 15 January 2014
Marylebone High Street, London W1
Boxer walked down to Oxford Street automatically checking his back, making sure he wasn’t being followed. He was clean. As he took the escalator down into Bond Street tube, he looked up, saw Siobhan standing at the railing looking down on him. She tinkled a wave, raised an eyebrow. Con had taught her a few things.
In Green Park he made his way to the bench where he always met Martin Fox. It was empty. He was glad of his fleece-lined hat as he sat waiting in the freezing dark.
Martin Fox approached from Constitution Hill. His office was in Victoria, on the other side of Buckingham Palace, which was now lit up behind him, making the park feel darker. His silhouette, with fedora, raised collar and flared trench coat, gave him the look of a professional cliché. His shoes with steel heel tips rang out on the wet tarmac between the high bare trees and the gleaming grass. He hovered to see whether a handshake was forthcoming. It wasn’t. He sat on the bench leaving a good space between them. Silence, apart from the distant roar of the metropolis.
‘Been working, Charlie?’
‘I’ve been playing a quiet game since that D’Cruz job a couple of years ago.’
‘I heard about your daughter’s … travails,’ said Fox.
‘Who from?’
‘Your mate in MI6, Simon Deacon. We meet in the Special Forces Club once a month. He says he hasn’t seen much of you either.’
‘Been keeping a low profile,’ said Boxer. ‘In fact I’ve been spending as much time with Amy as I can. I’ve done some “reprioritisation”, as you’d probably call it.’
‘I can understand that after what you went through,’ said Fox. ‘How’s Mercy these days?’
‘She’s still with the Met’s Kidnap and Special Investigations Unit, but not quite as driven as she was before,’ said Boxer. ‘She’s done some …’
‘Some what?’
Boxer decided against it. Fox knew far too much as it was.
‘What can I do for you?’ asked Fox, feeling Boxer dry up. ‘I haven’t got any work, if that’s what you’re after. You’ve drifted off the scene since D’Cruz.’
‘I’m all right on that score. I did some jobs in South America to keep my hand in.’
‘Who gave you those?’
‘My US contacts,’ said Boxer, no names, Fox always digging.
‘Well we haven’t come out in the cold and wet for a drink,’ said Fox, ‘so what is it?’
‘Do you know a lawyer called Mark Rowlands?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know a security contractor called Conrad Jensen?’
‘I know that name.’
‘But nothing about him?’
‘Not off the top of my head other than that he has contracts with the American military,’ said Fox.
‘For what?’
‘Security and IT, I think. Not sure of the specifics,’ said Fox. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘There’s been an approach.’
‘To work for
him
?’
‘You sound surprised.’
‘As far as I know he doesn’t touch kidnap negotiating,’ said Fox. ‘Unless he’s making a move into that part of the market, which seems … unlikely.’
Silence again. A helicopter scudded above the stripped trees, lights winking.
‘Or,’ said Fox, ‘is this a roundabout way of telling me he’s been kidnapped and you’re looking for intelligence? Except …’
‘What?’
‘Nobody would come to you direct with a job like that. They’d go to
GRM
. Are we going to lay our cards on the table or are you going to play me the whole night long?’
‘The person who made the approach knew something about me.’
Fox turned his head slowly in Boxer’s direction.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘and you think because of what came out about your “additional service” in the D’Cruz case that I’m responsible?’
‘It occurred to me.’
‘Let’s get something straight about your “special service”, Charlie.
You
started it. You left GRM. I gave you a job. The first one passed off without incident. Then there was the case of Bruno Dias’s daughter, Bianca, which went horribly wrong. You got her back, but badly damaged. It had an effect on you. Then you did the Russian job with the Ukrainian gang and that’s when you offered your special service. Not me.
You
. The Russian gave you the intelligence and you followed it up. When the Russian offered you money, you told him you’d prefer a donation to
LOST
.’
‘How did Bruno Dias know about the
LOST
Foundation and that I’d be open to him making a contribution for the work he wanted me to do?’ asked Boxer. ‘You know I can’t afford those offices we’ve got in Jacob’s Well Mews. They’re Bruno’s donation.’
‘That was just coincidence. As I remember it, Amy was supposed to go with you on that trip. If she’d been there, none of that would have happened.’
‘The coincidence is
you
, Martin. He knew about my special service from you. I’ve become your niche in the kidnap consulting business. Why would anybody go to Pavis when
GRM
are just down the road?’
Nothing back from Fox.
‘
You
were the one who started offering my special service, Martin,’ said Boxer. ‘And
that
was not your prerogative. You told Dias. Just admit it, for God’s sake.’
‘All right, yes, I told Dias. He was mad with rage …’
‘And now it’s out there, which is why this girl came to see me
this afternoon. I know she knows. I can see it in her eyes. And she’s been told to be careful. Not to say it to my face.’
‘Which girl?’
‘Conrad Jensen’s daughter.’
‘And she heard it from her father’s lawyer, Mark Rowlands.’
‘Who got it from where?’ said Boxer.
‘Not me,’ said Fox. ‘Are you trying to find out if I’m making an indirect approach to you to recover Conrad Jensen?’
‘Are you?’
‘No. Rowlands could have got that information from …’
‘Where?’
Silence.
‘This is what I don’t like,’ said Boxer. ‘It’s getting to be common knowledge.’
He could hear Fox thinking.
‘Has Conrad Jensen been kidnapped?’ he asked eventually.
‘Nobody’s asked his daughter for a ransom yet and it’s been three days.’
‘So what exactly is the job?’
‘To find him.’
‘But why you?’
‘That’s what I want to find out,’ said Boxer.
Amy turned right out of Whitechapel tube station and, walking through the vestiges of the Bangladeshi market, which was being packed up for the night, headed for the glittering helix lines of the distant Gherkin.
There was a very long, stone-cold sober queue outside one entrance to the Whitechapel Gallery, while a gaggle of less sober people were steaming out of another. Two bouncers manned the door, rebuffing chancers who could see where the party was. Amy sent a text to Siobhan, who told her to ask for Kev at the door. Kev took out his mobile phone, checked it, compared Amy’s face with what he had on the screen and carved her away from the scrum outside.
Siobhan was striding down the corridor with two glasses of pink champagne. Before Amy could ask how Kev could possibly
have had a photo of her on his mobile, Siobhan handed her a glass, chinked it with her own.
‘Let’s take a look,’ she said, and grabbing Amy by the arm led her into the main gallery, which had the feeling of bedlam about it, as wildly dressed couples circled exhibits: a vest stretched over a table with two Galia melons hanging in the neckline, next to a filthy, torn mattress with two fried eggs and a coat hanger with a kipper dangling below.
‘The Full English Nightmare,’ said Amy.
Siobhan laughed and they wandered underneath Zeppelins with masturbating arms upstairs through a room of photos of a male dangling steak above his genitals, opening a beer can as if it was his cock and the predictable foamy spurt. Siobhan only slowed as she came to a couple of vast bleached male members, which appeared like the abandoned driftwood beams of an ancient galleon, where she emptied her glass. They went downstairs to the bar where she poured more champagne.
‘What do you think?’
‘Glad my dad didn’t come,’ said Amy.
‘Modern art not his scene, or just embarrassing to stand next to your pa looking at a tumescent three-metre cock on the floor?’ asked Siobhan. ‘Sarah’s obsessed.’
‘You know her?’
‘Sure?’
‘How?’
‘I’m interesting,’ said Siobhan. ‘Fancy one of these?’
She flipped the lid of a small tin box to reveal some white pills.
‘What are we talking about?’
‘Ecstasy … nothing wild.’
They socked back a pill each. Siobhan refilled the glasses.
‘So what makes you so interesting?’ asked Amy.
‘You’ll see,’ she said. ‘Lucian Freud wanted to do me when I was thirteen, but my father wouldn’t have it.’
‘
Do
you?’
‘Paint me.’
‘He had a bit of a rep for the other.’
‘My father’s objection wasn’t that he might have fucked me,’ said Siobhan. ‘More to do with wanting me to sit for five hours a day for a year. We weren’t in London that much and, shit, I mean that’s like two thousand hours of your life.’
‘My father would’ve probably killed him.’
Siobhan stared at her for a beat.
‘But if he was
painting
you,’ she said, ‘trying to see into you? I mean, looking at you as if you were an animal. Don’t you think that would be fascinating and … seductive?’
Amy had her back to a white brick wall. The drug was making her more alert to the people around her, mellowing her insides too, making them treacly. Siobhan loomed over her. She was taller on her high heels. Amy sipped her champagne, wouldn’t look her in the eye, not sure what she’d find there.
‘A friend of my father’s seduced me like that,’ said Siobhan. ‘Didn’t just take an interest in me as a kid, asked me what I thought about stuff … like my mother dying. Nobody would talk to me about that. Most people just glide past each other. They don’t dig. Too afraid of what they’ll bring to the surface.’
‘How old was your father’s friend?’
‘Sixty-eight.’
‘God.’
‘Does that disgust you?’
‘So how old’s your father?’
‘Seventy-two,’ said Siobhan. ‘My mother was twenty-three when she met him. There was an age difference of twenty-one years. Age doesn’t mean that much to me. Nor gender.’
She kissed Amy on the lips, her tongue darting between her teeth, sliding over her tongue, the roof of her mouth, quick, electric. The charge slammed into the back of Amy’s head, ran down her spine and legs, earthed into the tiled floor.