“I’ve already told you what I think. Let me go, and you take off alone. Then you’ll have a chance.”
Jaff shook his head. “No. No way I’m letting go of my greatest asset.”
“Oh, really? I thought that was your gun.”
“Guns are just tools. You’re a bargaining chip.” He paused. “Goddamn, that’s it!”
“What is?”
“You. I’ve been holding you in reserve all this time, and now it’s time to use you. Of course! What a bloody idiot I’ve been.”
“What do you mean? You’re scaring me.”
Jaff pulled out his mobile. “What’s your father’s number? His mobile, not the fucking police station.”
“My father—”
“His mobile number. Now!”
Numbly, Tracy told him. She could see his hand shaking as he keyed in the numbers and mumbled to himself, then he put the phone to his ear.
“ARE YOU ALONE?”
This wasn’t the usual opening of a telephone conversation, and it alerted Banks to possible danger. “Yes,” he lied, though he didn’t recognize the voice. He was actually in the boardroom of Western Area Headquarters with Gervaise, Winsome, Geraldine Masterson, Harry Potter and Stefan Nowak discussing the fate of Justin Peverell and his dead girlfriend, Martina Varakova.
Burgess had just reported from the Highgate house again, and Ciaran and Darren had finally been taken from their hotel in an ambulance under police guard. Ciaran had apparently broken his arm in two places while trying to escape police custody, as well as sustaining other minor cuts and bruises, including one groin injury that might impair his sexual performance for some years to come. Neither had given up The Farmer, but Banks planned on paying the bastard another visit soon, anyway, now he had a little more ammunition up his sleeve. And if they let Burgess into the interview room down south, anything could happen. Banks had never heard him sound so upset and enraged.
He excused himself from the conversation and went out into the corridor. “Right,” said the voice on the phone. “I’ve got a job for you.”
“And you are?”
“Never mind that. Here’s someone you might recognize.” There was a brief pause, during which Banks could have sworn he heard sitar music in the background, then a girl’s voice came on. “Dad, it’s me! Tracy. Please do what he says. If you don’t he’ll—”
“Tracy? Are you all right?”
But before she could reply, the other voice came back on again. Jaff’s voice, Banks now knew. “She’s fine,” he said. “And if you want her to stay that way, you’ll listen carefully to what I have to say. We’re in Leeds, in Harehills, outside a closed-down garage opposite a boarded-up school called Harehills Park. Got that?”
“Leeds. Harehills Park. Yes. If you so much as lay a finger on her—”
“I know. I know. You’ll kill me. How long will it take you to get here?”
“About an hour.”
“Bollocks,” said Jaff. “Forty, forty-five minutes max. But I’ll give you one hour. Not a minute more. We’ll be watching for you. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t even think of bringing a friend or arranging a welcome party. Believe me, if I see any signs of police activity in the area, your daughter gets it. Understand?”
“I understand,” said Banks. “What do you want from me?”
“I’ll tell you that when you get here. You’re wasting time. Get going.” And the connection broke.
Banks popped quickly back into the boardroom and said that one of his informants had called, and he had to go out for a while. Gervaise nodded, and everyone got back to the conversation. For a moment he was in two minds whether to tell Gervaise the truth, as he knew he should, and let her organize the cavalry, but he also knew from experience what the red tape was like, the necessary levels of approval, documents in triplicate. He also had the recent example of the Patrick Doyle fiasco if he needed any concrete reminder of what could go wrong. His daughter’s life was at stake this time. He remembered Jaff’s warning and believed it. He grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair, dashed down the stairs and out back.
He had no trouble signing a car out of the pool. It was just after nine o’clock in the morning, and what passed for rush hour in Eastvale was already beginning to abate by the time he had negotiated the one-way streets and joined York Road. The weather was fine, the traffic running smoothly, and he made it to the Leeds Ringroad in about forty minutes. He didn’t even put any music on. He didn’t want any distractions. He needed a plan, needed to think.
Banks knew the general Harehills area, but not the back streets, and it was one of those rare occasions when the satnav actually proved its worth. This time he didn’t end up facing a brick wall while being told he had arrived at his destination, nor was he in Guiseborough when he had set the thing for Northallerton. The boarded-up school came into view on his right, about a hundred feet ahead, as he turned into the street, and opposite it stood the out-of-business garage and a greasy spoon. It was an odd place to arrange a meeting, and Banks guessed that Jaff had come to the area looking for something he had expected but hadn’t found. The garage was the most obvious clue. If it came to it, he could find the owner’s name and see if he had any links to McCready or Fanthorpe. For now, though, he wanted to see for himself that Tracy was unharmed.
Banks came to a halt outside the garage, as instructed. He scanned the street in both directions but saw nothing out of place. A few men in traditional costume coming in or out of the mosque. A couple of women in black burkas chatting as they walked down the street carrying their shopping. A normal day in a normal street.
There were plenty of parked cars, facing all directions, and most of them were in need of rust treatment and a new tire here and there, but nothing stood out. A silver Honda hatchback had pulled into the street after Banks and parked on the other side, behind a yellow Fiesta with a dented door, but a youth in a dark blue hoodie and black tracksuit bottoms got out and went into the sewing-machine repair shop without so much as glancing in Banks’s direction.
In his rearview mirror, Banks saw two figures emerge from the greasy spoon, huddled close together like lovers, one of them carrying a bulky hold-all, the other a leather shoulder bag. The slighter one was Tracy, and his heart lurched in his chest at the sight of her. They got in the back door of his car and the voice from the telephone said, “Drive.”
Banks drove.
“Give me your mobile,” Jaff said when they were on the main road. Banks took it out of his pocket and passed it back. He noticed Jaff switch it off. He was a tall, good-looking kid with long eyelashes, a burnished gold complexion and big brown eyes. Banks could see why women found him attractive. Tracy sat huddled as far away from him as she could get, at the far edge of the seat, hunched in on herself, pale and frightened-looking. Banks wanted to tell her it was all right, Daddy was here, everything would be fine, but he couldn’t force out the words in Jaff’s presence. It had to be enough for him just to know that she was still alive and, apparently, unharmed.
Seeing her like this reminded him of the time she was twelve and finally confessed to him in tears that one of the girls at school had been bullying her and extorting her dinner money from her. Banks wanted to hug her, as he had then, and make all her pain go away.
“We’re heading for London,” Jaff said. “I suppose you know the way?”
Banks nodded. He also knew there was no point in going to London, that Martina Varakova was dead and Justin Peverell’s reason had taken a hike, maybe forever. And the fake documents were in the hands of the Metropolitan Police. But he wasn’t about to tell Jaff that. Everything depended on Jaff believing he was on his way to freedom.
“Whereabouts?”
“King’s Cross. You can drop us there, and I’ll let her go in half an hour.”
Banks didn’t like the sound of that, but now was far too early to negotiate. By the time they got to King’s Cross the balance of power might have shifted a little in his favor. They wer
e probably not meeting at the Highgate house, Banks thought. That was why Ciaran and Darren had left after they had finished with Justin and Martina. They were going to lie in wait for Jaff and Tracy, but they hadn’t said where. “You’ve been causing us quite a bit of trouble, Jaff,” he said, without turning his head.
“It’s Mr. McCready to you. And you’ve only got yourselves to blame for that. Live and let live, that’s what I say.”
“That what you said to Annie when you shot her?”
A sly smile spread over Jaff’s face. “She your girl, was she? I know it’s a waste, a tasty morsel like that, but needs must. Just drive. I’m not in the mood for conversation.”
“Are you okay, Tracy? Are you comf—”
“I said just drive.” Banks felt a hard metallic circle push against the back of his neck, and he knew it was the Baikal’s silencer.
“Shooting me right now wouldn’t be a great idea,” he said. “That’s just to let you know that I’m still in charge. Besides, I could shoot her, not you. Maybe just in the leg or something. Or the gut. I said just shut up and drive. And don’t draw attention to us by your driving, or you’ll regret it.”
Banks drove east to the Ring Road, then turned right and followed it down through Seacroft, Killingbeck and Cross Gates to the M1 at Selby Road. He knew that he would show up on dozens of CCTV cameras but that no one would take the slightest bit of notice because his papers were all in order, the car wasn’t stolen, and he wasn’t a wanted man. Unless someone flagged him as a stray and questioned Western Area as to where he was going, which wasn’t very likely. The police drove all over the place in unmarked cars all the time.
“Put some music on,” said Jaff.
“What’s to your taste?”
“Got any Beatles?”
“I do.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t stand them. What about some jazz?”
Banks didn’t often listen to jazz when he was driving, but he had plenty on his iPod. “Anything in particular?”
“Kind of Blue.”
“No problem.”
“One of my mother’s boyfriends in Mumbai used to play Kind of Blue all the time,” Jaff said, so softly he might have been speaking to himself. “Every time I saw him, I used to say, ‘Play Miles for me, play Miles for me.’ My mother had a lot of boyfriends. I learned all sorts of things from them.” Then he lapsed into silence as Bill Evans’s piano intro to “So What?” started up, followed by the bass, and soon the music filled the car, Miles’s trumpet, Coltrane’s tenor…It was surreal, Banks thought. Here he was hurtling toward the M1, and only God knew what fate, a desperate man with a gun holding him and his daughter hostage, and one of his favorite jazz albums of all time blasting out of the speakers. Not a word was spoken. Banks chipped away at the edge of the speed limit, but never went so much beyond it that he would raise any unwanted interest. Occasionally he would look in the rearview mirror and see Tracy sucking her thumb with her eyes closed as she did when she was a little child, clearly not asleep, the tension still tight around her mouth, eyelids twitching now and again. Jaff was just staring out of the window looking grim.
It wasn’t until they had passed Sheffield that Banks became certain the silver Honda hatchback he had seen in Harehills was the same one that had been keeping a respectable distance behind him all the way down the motorway. And when he came to think of it, though he didn’t want to appear prejudiced at all, it had seemed odd at the time that a person dressed in a hoodie and a tracksuit bottom had gone into a sewing-machine repair shop in the first place.
DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT Catherine Gervaise took off her reading glasses and rubbed her eyes. It was years since she had stopped up practically all night, catching only a quick nap in her office between two and three, and she felt exhausted. Naps were all very well, but these days they often left her more tired than before. While she was proud of her origins as a street copper before she made the fast track, and she liked to let people know that she’d done many of the tough jobs they complained to her about, she had to admit that for the most part she’d been on training courses, studying for a university degree, sitting exams, transferring back and forth to uniform and, for the most part, she had become an administrator rather than a working detective. Now her eyes were sore, her brain slow and her body felt weak. She just wanted to go home to bed, but she had important decisions to make.
Gervaise sipped the strong coffee that Winsome Jackman had brought her, but it didn’t seem to do much good. Now they were well into the morning, her tiredness was beyond coffee. Still, at least the taste and warmth of the dark liquid kept her at subsistence level consciousness, though she still felt like one of those zombies out of the movies her son liked to watch so much. Winsome sat opposite her, at the other side of the large desk. She seemed fine, Gervaise thought; but then she was twenty years younger and far more used to the hours.
“I’ve just had Dirty Dick—I mean Commander Burgess—on the phone, ma’am,” said Winsome.
“My, my, you two are getting familiar. Be careful. That man sounds like a walking toxic waste dump to me,” Gervaise said. “What did he say?”
“Still nothing from the two suspects about The Farmer’s involvement.”
“Well, I’m not surprised,” said Gervaise.
Winsome smiled. “But the one thing they did give up—rather, Darren Brody gave up—was the location for the meet.”
“Justin Peverell with Jaff and Tracy?”
“Yes. Hampstead Heath, near Highgate Ponds.”
Gervaise thought for a moment. “That means McCready’s probably still on his way. And he was being extra careful just in case someone had located Peverell’s house.”
“But he can’t have bargained for what actually happened.”
“No. I’m sure he doesn’t know, or he’d be heading as fast as he could in the other direction. Maybe he is.” Gervaise shook her head. “I don’t know, Winsome. What the hell are we to do?”
“Commander Burgess suggested organizing an armed reception committee for McCready at the Heath.”
Gervaise snorted. “He would. What about Tracy Banks?”
“He said he thought he could keep it low-key enough, that McCready wouldn’t spot what was happening until they were on him.”
“I doubt it. We know how easily these things go pear-shaped. Where’s DCI Banks, anyway? He’s been gone ages.”
“I don’t know,” said Winsome. “He’s not around here, that’s for certain.”
Gervaise frowned. “Where did he say he was going?”
“To meet with an informant, I think. I don’t really know where. We were all so busy talking about what had happened to Justin Peverell and his poor girlfriend.”
Gervaise checked her watch. “Whatever it was, it shouldn’t have taken him this long. Especially given his concern over Tracy. Try his mobile, Winsome.”
Winsome keyed in Banks’s mobile number. “It’s turned off, ma’am,” she said.
“That’s not like him. Why would he turn off his mobile at the crucial point of an investigation that involves him personally?” Gervaise felt her brain springing to life, though it was a chaotic sort of life, sparks flying everywhere, but none of them lighting up the bulbs they should, or making the connections they were aiming for. Her thinking felt like a badly played game of pinball, but something was definitely happening. “Help me out here, Winsome. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” said Winsome. “Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless DCI Banks was…lying about the informant.”
“Don’t sound so horrified at the thought. People do. Sometimes for good reasons.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Winsome, tight-lipped.
“So, if Alan was lying, or making an excuse—he did go into the corridor to take the call—then perhaps it was Tracy. He would certainly lie for her.”
“It could have been McCready.”
“Either way, he might be in trouble.”
“It’s McCready I’d be worried about,” said Winsome. “He’s had a lot of trouble with transport. Perhaps he needs DCI Banks to drive him to Hampstead.”
The neurons were firing a lot better now, and the pinball score was racking up. “Look,” said Gervaise, “let’s find out which car Alan signed out from the pool and see if we can access Automatic Number Plate Recognition control, find out where he is. If you’re right, he’ll be on his way to London, to Hampstead Heath, and we should be able to track his progress.”
“Should we alert all the motorway patrol units?”
“Not yet. We don’t want a car chase on our hands. Not if Alan and Tracy are in one of the cars and McCready is armed. Let’s keep it low profile for now, until we know what’s happened. If they’re still on their way to Hampstead we’ve got a while yet to work something out. Get on to Burgess again, too. Try to persuade him that softly softly’s the way to go for now.”
“Do you have a plan, ma’am?”
“I wish to God I did, Winsome. I wish to God I did.”
BANKS WAS also desperately trying to work out a plan as he drove down the M1 with his silent passengers and loud music. He had already figured out that Jaff’s mood shifts were volatile. Perhaps the pressure of being on the run was getting to him, and he had also been snorting cocaine in the car. So much had gone wrong so far that he had to be becoming increasingly worried about making it. Whatever plan Banks came up with, he knew he would have to take great care and choose his moment.
Separating Jaff from his gun was the key. Without it, he was nothing. The gun was in the hold-all; of that Banks was certain. There was something about the way Jaff held it close to him all the time, often thrusting one hand inside it for a while, gripping something that gave him comfort and confidence, that made it obvious. It wouldn’t be easy to get it away from him, and there was no way it was going to happen if he dropped Jaff and Tracy off at King’s Cross. He couldn’t let that happen.
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