Deadline

by Simon Kernick

'Parts of it. She's definitely got a fourteen-year-old daughter, but they haven't searched her house yet to check that she's actually missing. They're leaving that to us, in case the place is bugged.'

  'So this whole thing could still be a load of bullshit?'

  Mo shrugged. 'I talked to the cops who brought her in. They think that if this is all an act, then she's one hell of a good actress – but, yeah, it's possible.' He stopped outside Interview Room B. 'Guess there's only one way to find out, isn't there?'

  Mo entered first, and as Bolt followed him in he experienced a lurch of shock that almost knocked him backwards. It had been a long, long time, but even looking as drawn and exhausted as she was now, with all the life sucked out of her features by whatever ordeal she'd endured these past few days, there was definitely no mistake. He knew the woman sitting in front of him.

  And at one time he'd known her far too well.

  Ten

  Andrea Devern stood up as they came in. Mo introduced Bolt to her and they shook hands formally. Knowing that he couldn't let on that he recognized her, Bolt sat down opposite Andrea. Pleased that she made no sign of recognition either, he explained that they were only talking in such formal surroundings because their conversation could be monitored and recorded. 'This way, it'll allow us to go back over your statement more easily. But don't worry. It's not an interview under caution. We just want you to go through everything from the beginning, trying not to leave anything out, so we've got a full picture of what's happened.'

  This wasn't entirely true. Given that the truth of her story had yet to be confirmed, making her repeat it would give them an opportunity to check for discrepancies later, should the need arise.

  Andrea yawned, putting a hand over her mouth, and Bolt noticed that one of her manicured nails had been broken. 'I've already told everything to the detectives in Welwyn Garden City. I just want you to find my daughter.' Her tone was weary, almost irritable.

  'It's important for us to hear it from you. Just in case there's anything you've forgotten. That way it'll help us to get your daughter back safely.' He gave her a reassuring smile.

  'OK,' she said, meeting his eyes. 'I understand. Can I smoke in here?'

  'Well, this is a non-smoking building, and Mo here has just given up a forty-a-day habit, but . . . What do you think, Mo?' Bolt smiled. 'Will you be able to concentrate?'

  Mo didn't look too happy about it but he nodded his assent. He'd only quit the dreaded weed six weeks earlier and by his own admission was still wobbling at the precipice, but Bolt was one of those people who still believed in a common-sense approach to how the law was enforced, and it seemed churlish to deny Andrea a small pleasure at a time like this. Big Barry would probably have something to say about it, given that he usually had something to say about everything, but Bolt would worry about that later.

  Andrea thanked him, removed a pack of Benson and Hedges from an expensive-looking handbag on the desk in front of her, drew out a cigarette and lit it. She took a long drag, clearly enjoying it, before blowing a thin column of blue smoke skywards. And then she started talking. As she spoke, Bolt listened carefully, taking notes, only occasionally interrupting her narrative to question her about points that needed clarification.

  It's possible to tell a great deal from a person's body language about whether or not he or she is telling the truth. Liars tend to limit their physical movements, and those they do make are towards their own body rather than outwards. They touch their face, throat and mouth a lot, and will often turn their head or body away from their questioner when they talk, so that they're not facing him or her directly. Andrea exhibited none of these tendencies. Hers might have been a highly unusual story, but from Bolt's point of view she was telling the truth.

  There were three reasons for this. First, she came across as genuine. Second, there was, in the end, no real point in her lying, since it would take very little time for him to verify the truth of many of her claims. And third, and perhaps most importantly, he knew her, or at least had known her once, and didn't think she was capable of a charade like this. Underneath a hard, occasionally defensive exterior, she'd always been a good hearted person.

  It was why he'd once been in love with her.

  Having no children of his own, Bolt couldn't begin to appreciate the extent of the ordeal Andrea was going through, but it was clearly taking a terrible toll. She was still a very attractive woman, with thick, shoulder-length auburn hair and well-defined, striking features that would make most people look twice, but today her face was haggard and puffy from lack of sleep, with dark bags under the eyes and a greyish, unhealthy tinge to the pale skin. The eyes themselves, a very light and unusual hazel that he remembered being so pretty, now appeared haunted and torn, and more than once when she looked at him as she spoke he felt an urge to reach across the table and touch her. It was an urge he fought down. There was no room for personal involvement in something like this.

  'I made one mistake,' she said when she'd finished, looking at both men in turn. 'I trusted them.'

  'No, Andrea,' Bolt told her, 'you made two mistakes. You trusted them, and you didn't come to us first.'

  'I thought I was doing the right thing.' She sighed, stubbing out her third cigarette in the coffee cup in front of her. 'I guess I was wrong.'

  Mo looked up from his notes and spoke for the first time. 'Do you have a picture of Emma we can copy, Andrea?'

  She nodded and produced a small colour photo from her purse, handing it to him. 'This was taken last year. I'd like it back, please. It's very precious to me.'

  'I'm sure it is,' he answered, his tone sympathetic. He gave it only the briefest of glances, not wanting to make the moment any more painful than it had to be, before slipping it inside a small clear wallet.

  'Do either of you two gentlemen have children?'

  'I'm afraid I don't,' answered Bolt.

  'I have,' said Mo. 'Four of them.'

  Andrea looked at him with new interest, as if he was a kindred spirit in a way that Bolt could never be. 'You're very lucky,' she told him. 'I hope what happens to me never happens to you. You can't imagine what it's like.' And in that moment, her features, tight with tension and pain, almost cracked. Almost, but not quite.

  'I promise you we'll all do everything in our power to help you and bring your daughter back,' Mo told her. 'But you're going to need to help us as much as you can. Now, there are some points that need clarifying, and some questions that need answering. Can I speak frankly?'

  She nodded. 'Of course.'

  'Your husband's missing, and he has been since Tuesday, the same day that Emma was kidnapped. Do you think he could be involved?'

  She paused for several seconds. 'I've thought about that a lot but I just can't see it. He's always got on well with Emma, and he's not the sort to do something like this to her.'

  'Has he acted at all differently around you and your daughter in the last few weeks?' asked Bolt.

  'Not that I've noticed.'

  'So, where do you think he might be?'

  She threw up her hands. 'I honestly don't know. Maybe they've taken him as well.'

  Mo made a show of consulting his notes. 'According to what you've told us, you never asked the kidnapper who phoned you whether he was also holding your husband, or what might have happened to him?'

  'It's about priorities, isn't it? I've only had a few very short conversations with the man holding my daughter, and in all of them that's who I've been focusing on: Emma.' She sighed. 'Look, the thing is, I don't know whether Pat was involved or not, but I'm pretty damn certain he wasn't. He's not that sort of bloke. Besides, why would he bother? He's got a pretty good life. He doesn't have to do a lot. He drives a nice car, gets decent holidays. Goes out when he wants. If he asks me for money, I give it to him. I probably shouldn't do, because I'm hardly motivating him to get off his arse and get a proper job, but I do. So, why would he put all that at risk? For a share in half a million quid? I don't think so.'


  It was, thought Bolt, a good point.

  'Kidnapping a child for this kind of ransom is highly unusual,' he said, 'and it's clear that you weren't chosen at random. Is there anyone you can think of, in either your personal or your business life, who might have a motive for putting you through this?'

  Andrea was silent again, then shook her head firmly. 'I can't think of anyone, no.'

  But there was just the briefest flickering of hesitation in her eyes when she spoke, and Bolt, who was trained in such things, noticed it.

  He looked at Mo. 'I think that's everything for the moment, isn't it?'

  Mo nodded. 'I haven't got anything else.'

  'So what happens now?' Andrea asked, her voice shaking.

  'The kidnapper gave you forty-eight hours,' said Bolt, leaning forward in his seat. 'There's still nearly forty left until he makes contact again. During that time we're going to be gathering what clues we can as discreetly as possible in an attempt to ID him.'

  'If they find out about you, though . . . I mean, these guys know what they're doing.'

  Bolt fixed her with a calm stare. 'So do we, Andrea, so do we. In the meantime, you'll be supplied with a team of trained liaison officers. They'll look after your day-to-day needs and provide support until the situation's resolved. We'll also house you in secure and comfortable accommodation. Any calls to your home landline will be automatically re-directed to you there, so when the kidnapper makes contact you'll still be able to speak to him and we'll be able to monitor the conversation.'

  'No. I want to go home.'

  'That's not going to be possible,' said Mo. 'The logistics would be too difficult.'

  'I don't care. I want to go home.' Her voice was panicky now. 'These people have been watching the house. They must have been to know that Jimmy was there. If they're watching it now and they see that I'm not at home, they'll suspect that I've gone to you. I can't risk it. They said they'd kill Emma if I went to the police, and I believe them.'

  'It's very unlikely that your kidnapper or any of his accomplices are watching your house,' Bolt explained, knowing that Mo was right: letting her back home would be a real problem. 'They won't want to risk drawing attention to themselves, and there won't be many people involved in this either. Two, possibly three at most, so they won't be able to spare the manpower to keep watch on all your movements.'

  'That's what Jimmy said,' Andrea countered, 'and look what happened to him. I'm sorry, but I want to go home. That's all there is to it.'

  Bolt sighed, knowing from the decisive expression on her face that she wasn't going to budge on this. 'All right, we'll see what we can do.' He stood up, and Mo followed suit. 'Someone'll be along shortly to take you to a more comfortable room. But don't worry, I'll be giving you regular updates.'

  He turned to go.

  'Mike?'

  Bolt flinched at her sudden familiarity, and Mo looked at him. He turned back, avoiding his colleague's gaze. Andrea's hazel eyes were full of anguish.

  'Promise me you'll get her back. Please.'

  Bolt felt his mouth go dry. This was hard, far harder than he was used to. He wanted to promise her but knew that there was absolutely no way he could. It would be a dereliction of duty. Emma's kidnappers had already killed once; it was entirely possible they could kill again. If he said one thing, and then another happened . . . well, it wouldn't look good.

  'I can't provide a cast-iron guarantee on anything. I'm sorry.'

  She turned to Mo. 'You've got children. You must have some idea of the pain I'm feeling.'

  'I do,' he said softly. 'I really do.'

  'Please . . .'

  'We'll do absolutely everything in our power to get Emma back,' Bolt told her firmly. 'Absolutely everything.'

  She gave a slight nod and reached for her cigarettes with shaking hands, ignoring a single tear that ran down her cheek.

  For the moment, there was nothing more to say.

  Eleven

  When he first started out as a nineteen-year-old probationary constable, having failed to secure the A Level results needed to get into the universities and polytechnics he'd applied for, Mike Bolt's first posting was Holborn Nick in the heart of central London, directly between the West End and the City. Having grown up on a diet of 1970s cop shows from Z Cars to Starsky and Hutch, he'd always quite fancied the idea of joining the police, but in an abstract way, like someone wanting to be an astronaut or a jockey. Had he made university, his life would probably have taken a completely different turn.

  He'd spent five and a half years at Holborn, the first three in uniform, before joining the station's CID. One of his first cases as a detective was the death of Sir Marcus Dallarda, a fifty-eight year old City financier who'd made a fortune in the late 1980s developing rundown inner-city brown field sites and turning them into blocks of luxury flats. Sir Marcus was one of the few people to foresee the end of the property boom and had sold virtually all his property holdings before the great crash, and as interest rates soared, he'd lent his profits to the money markets where the returns were suddenly enormous. To some people Sir Marcus was the worst kind of capitalist, a man who created nothing and simply sat on a growing pot of money that had been gained through other people's sweat. But the media loved him. He was a good-looking, flamboyant figure with a ready stream of amusing one-liners, and he exuded the kind of unashamed joie-de-vivre that made him difficult to dislike. With two divorces, more than one love child, and a string of mistresses under his belt, he was tabloid heaven, and he possessed that strange upper-class ability of creating an affinity with the masses that someone middle-class could never dream of achieving.

  So when he was found, after an anonymous tipoff, naked and dead in the penthouse suite of a renowned five-star hotel in the Strand, with several thin lines of white powder on the table beside him and a condom hanging rather forlornly from his flaccid penis, it was always going to be big news. Although a DCI was made the senior investigating officer in charge of the case, it was Bolt and his boss at the time, DS Simon Grindy, a world-weary forty-year-old for whom the term 'half-empty' could have been invented, who'd been given most of the legwork.

  'Dirty old bastard,' Grindy had mused, with a gruff mixture of admiration and jealousy, as he and Bolt stood in the opulent bedroom looking down at Sir Marcus's rather spindly body. 'If you've got to go, I could think of worse ways.'

  Bolt wasn't so sure. He always felt sorry for those whose deaths had to be investigated by the police. There was a certain indignity about being inspected by various people while you lay helpless, and in Sir Marcus's case in a somewhat humiliating pose. Like most people at the time, Bolt had enjoyed reading about Sir Marcus's rakish antics, and he remembered thinking at the time how powerful death was that it could crush even the most larger-than-life characters. It was something that had remained with him ever since.

  It hadn't taken long to determine what had happened in this particular case, though. The post-mortem concluded that he'd died of a massive and sudden heart attack, at least partly brought on by the cocaine in his bloodstream. If he'd been indulging in intense physical activity before his death this could also have been a contributory factor.

  Since Sir Marcus's friends and colleagues insisted he would never normally touch drugs, it was concluded by the media that whoever had been with him that night, and had made the anonymous call, had also supplied him with the illegal contraband. There was an appeal for witnesses and it turned out that two young women had been seen leaving the hotel in a hurry shortly before the call to the police, which had been made from a nearby phone box. At the same time, a search of the room and Sir Marcus's possessions turned up a business card in the name of a 'Fifi' who provided 'relief for all your tensions'. On it was an east London telephone number.

  A call to BT had provided a name and address for the number in Plaistow, and so it was on a grey drizzling afternoon, three days after Sir Marcus had shuffled off his mortal coil, that Bolt and Grindy knocked on the door. The address it
self was a small 1950s grey-brick terrace on a lonely back street in the shadow of a monolithic tower block. 'This girl ain't going to be pretty,' was Grindy's less than deductive take on things. 'If she was making money there's no way she'd be cooped up in a shithole like this.'

  But Simon Grindy had not been the best of detectives, the accuracy of his predictions never likely to be giving Mystic Meg cause for concern, and this one was no exception. The girl who answered the door was a very attractive willowy brunette in her early twenties, wearing a pleasant smile, a black negligee and not a great deal else. The smile disappeared the moment she saw the two men in suits and raincoats standing on her doorstep.

  'Whatever it is, I'm not buying,' she'd said dismissively in a strong east London accent.

  'I can see that, Fifi,' Grindy had replied with a leer. 'If I was a betting man, I'd say you were selling.'

  She'd pulled a face. 'Not to you, mate. Everyone's got to have minimum standards.'

  Bolt had almost laughed but managed to stop himself. He hadn't been working with Grindy long and had no wish to fall out with him. But he liked this girl. She had balls.

  'We're police officers,' he'd told her, pulling out his warrant card, 'and we want to speak to a Miss Andrea Bailey. Are you her?'

  She seemed to notice him for the first time then, and gave him a quick appraising look that would have made him blush if he'd been five years younger before reluctantly opening the door and leading them into a cramped living room. She motioned for them to take a seat on a threadbare sofa while she put on a dressing gown and asked them what they wanted.

  Andrea Bailey was a cool customer. When Grindy told her harshly that they knew she was the woman who'd been with Sir Marcus Dallarda and demanded that she tell them who her companion was, she'd sat in the chair opposite and flatly denied it, and for the next ten minutes batted off their questions with a quiet confidence that Bolt couldn't help but admire. When asked how her business card had got into Sir Marcus's wallet, she'd replied that she had no idea. 'I've got hundreds of business cards. I give them out. That's what they're for. I can't keep track of where they end up.'