An overweight guy in a cut-off T-shirt and shorts that were falling down round his ample behind was being held face down in the middle of the linoleum floor by a total of four uniformed officers while he kicked and struggled and yelled that he wasn't drunk, even though the evidence strongly suggested otherwise. His girlfriend, meanwhile, was being pinned up against the wall with her arm behind her back by two female officers, both of whom were trying to dodge her spiked heels as she kicked out donkey-style and let out long, piercing, horror-film screams in a voice so high I actually had to put my hands over my ears. The place smelled of stale sweat and disinfectant. I felt a sudden, intense desire to be lying next to Yvonne in the still of the Burgundy farmhouse we'd once shared, with only the sound of the owls for company.
I walked round the guy on the floor and stopped at the front desk where a world-weary custody sergeant with a long face and heavy black eye bags gave me a stare so intense in its disinterest that I could only assume he'd spent hours in front of the mirror perfecting it. 'Put him in cell three,' he called out over my shoulder during a temporary pause in the screaming. He sighed, turning his attention back to me. 'Yes, sir?'
'I want to report a kidnapping,' I told him, putting on my most serious and earnest expression.
'Whose?'
'A friend of mine.'
'And when did this happen, sir?'
I looked at my watch. 'A couple of hours ago now.'
'And you've just seen fit to report it.'
'I had to walk here. I've lost all my money and my phone.'
'Have you been drinking, sir?' he asked, his tone annoyingly patronizing.
I knew there was no point in denying it. 'A little, yes. But not like him.' I pointed to the drunk whose shorts had fallen to his ankles now that he'd been lifted to his feet, revealing a sight none of us wanted to see.
'You know the kind of stories I hear from drunk people?' he continued wearily.
The girl screamed again. I waited for her to stop before continuing. 'Listen, officer, I'm being deadly serious. A girl I know was kidnapped tonight by two men and I need to talk to someone in CID urgently. I'm not making this up, I promise you.'
'Put her in cell five,' he called over my shoulder. 'So I don't have to listen to her.'
'Wanker!' she howled before being dragged across the floor behind her boyfriend and through a door to the cells.
'Please.' I looked at him imploringly. 'I'm not drunk, and I'm not mad. I know what I saw.'
He stared at me for a long second, then stood up, clearly deciding it was easier just to pass the buck. 'Take a seat and I'll see who's available.'
I sat down on a hard plastic chair in the corner and waited in the now empty foyer, staring at the posters warning against committing various heinous and not-so-heinous crimes that lined every spare inch of wall. I was absolutely shattered, but it struck me then that it might not even be safe for me to go home. If the kidnappers had searched my jacket, they'd have found my wallet. Then I realized with a sense of relief that there wasn't anything in there with my address on. I never took my driving licence out with me, so it would just be my credit and debit cards, plus my Blockbuster membership. So all they'd have was my name as it appeared on the cards: R. Fallon. Not exactly common, but in a city the size of London there were bound to be a few of us. So I was probably safe. But right then I could have done with something a little more concrete than 'probably'.
'Mr Fallon?'
I looked up and saw an attractive dark-haired woman in her early thirties emerging from the door opposite. She was dressed casually in jeans, a sweatshirt and trainers, but straight away I could tell she was a policewoman. There was a toughness and confidence about her that was immediately reassuring.
'I'm DS Tina Boyd,' she said as we shook hands, 'Islington CID. I understand you want to report a possible kidnapping?'
'Well, it's not a possible kidnapping, it's a real one. A friend of mine's been abducted.'
She nodded understandingly. 'Let's talk inside.'
She led me back through the door, up some stairs and into a small corner room, empty except for a desk with a chair on either side. There was an oldish-looking tape recorder on the desk and she switched it on, motioning for me to take a seat. 'I hope you don't mind. I want to record our interview.' She pulled a notebook out of her back pocket and sat back in the chair, regarding me with eyes that didn't look like they missed a lot. 'So, tell me what happened. From the beginning.'
I told her everything from the moment I'd met Jenny in the bar to when I'd turned up at the police station, keeping the details as brief and concise as possible. She listened patiently and didn't interrupt at any point, except to take descriptions of the two kidnappers. The thing about her was that she had the kind of face you automatically want to trust, and I felt myself warming to my theme as I continued, ignoring the little voice in my head that told me that what I was saying sounded outlandish.
'So she was alive when they took her?'
'I believe so, yes.'
'And did they make any attempt to molest her?'
'Not that I saw. They tied her up and they chucked her in the cleaning trolley.'
'And there's no reason you can think of why they would have taken her? Anything they might have said when you were listening in, for instance?'
I shook my head. 'From what I can gather they were trying to get her out of the apartment as fast as possible.'
'OK,' she said, writing something down in the notebook. 'And what's Jenny's last name?'
My mind suddenly went blank. I'd only ever known her as Jenny, although I had definitely been told her last name before. I racked my brains. 'It's ...Brakestone, Brakeslip, something like that. No, Brakspear. It's definitely Brakspear.'
'You're sure about that?'
I nodded, way too vigorously, conscious of how unconvincing this must sound to a police officer. 'Yeah, I'm sure.'
'And you met her in a bar tonight? I'm assuming you'd had a few drinks?'
'I'd had a few, yes, but I knew what I was doing.'
'And you say Jenny's a friend of yours? But one whose last name you don't remember?'
'I don't know her that well, OK?'
DS Boyd shot me a hard look, the kind that told me in no uncertain terms to remember who I was dealing with. 'Listen, Mr Fallon, I'm just trying to establish the facts. So how exactly do you know her?'
'She went out with a friend of mine for a while.'
'And your friend's name is?'
'Dominic Moynihan.'
She wrote down Dom's contact details, then asked me when the two of them had split up.
'A while back. Maybe a year.' I thought about adding that he'd been in touch with her recently about getting back together but stopped myself, knowing that it wouldn't make me look good.
'What do you do for a living, Mr Fallon?'
'I'm a writer.' Usually I loved to say that to people, but now it sounded fatuous, and tinged with an air of unreliability.
'And what do you write about?'
'Does it matter? I'm trying to report a kidnap here. A young woman's been abducted and we need to find her.'
DS Boyd gave me another of those looks. 'I'm just trying to find out some background. It'll help us in our search.'
'I write crime,' I answered wearily. 'True crime.'
'And does it involve a kidnap?'
'No it doesn't. Jesus Christ! What the hell do I have to do to convince you I'm telling the truth? Do you think I want to be sitting here in the middle of the night talking to people who'd far rather I just went away?'
I fell silent, staring at her. Feeling at the end of my tether.
DS Boyd rested her hands carefully on the desk and looked at me closely. She had very dark eyes but it was difficult to tell whether they were brown or blue. 'OK, Mr Fallon,' she said, 'let me level with you. It may surprise you to learn that we get a lot of people coming in here reporting crimes that haven't actually happened, particularly when they've been dri
nking. We're also very busy dealing with the many crimes that do happen, so I have to ask a lot of questions before I'm in a position to judge what to do. Now I've heard what you've got to say and I'm satisfied that you genuinely believe an incident's happened—'
'It has. I promise you.'
'Then I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt.' She stood up abruptly.
'Where are you going?'
'To the scene of the crime.' She gestured for me to follow her. 'I'm assuming you remember where that is?'
Five
'Kidnapping's nothing like as rare as people think,' said Tina Boyd as we approached the double doors at the front of Jenny's apartment block, 'but it's almost always drugs-related. People getting held to ransom by dealers over unpaid debts, that sort of thing. Could Jenny have been involved in the drugs trade, do you think?'
I couldn't honestly say for certain, but Dom had never mentioned anything about it, and he'd been anti-drugs since a friend of his had OD'd on a mix of coke and ecstasy back at uni, so I didn't think so. 'She's just a normal girl, you know,' I answered wearily.
'That's what I can't understand,' she mused, pressing her warrant card against the glass so that the doorman could see it. It was the same guy as earlier – grey-haired, middle-aged, ordinary looking. He buzzed us in.
I felt strangely sheepish as I followed Tina over to the front desk. She introduced us both and said that I'd been in the building about three hours earlier and had witnessed a possible abduction.
The doorman fixed me with a bemused expression. 'Really? Who was abducted then?'
'A Miss Jenny Brakspear. Apparently she lives on the ninth floor.'
He frowned. 'Blonde Jenny?'
'That's her,' I said.
He looked puzzled. 'That's weird. I haven't even seen her tonight. I thought she'd gone on holiday.'
'Hold on,' I said, unable to believe what I was hearing. 'You did see her. She called out to you. Your name's John, right?'
'Yeah, it's John, but I still didn't see her.'
'John what?' asked Tina.
'Gentleman,' he answered, 'and I'm telling you I didn't see her tonight.'
Tina wrote down his name in her notebook. Not that John Gentleman was one you were likely to forget. I couldn't believe the guy was lying.
'What's supposed to have happened then?' he asked Tina, giving me a distasteful look.
'We can't divulge any details at the moment, sir,' she answered smoothly. 'I'm assuming you've got CCTV cameras in this building?'
Gentleman nodded. 'We've got two. One's at the back, at the entrance to the underground car park, and there's another above the front doors where you've just come in. The one at the back's been on the blink for the last few days. We've got an engineer booked in for tomorrow. But the front one's working all right.'
'Mr Fallon says that he came in here at approximately midnight. Do you mind if we take a look at the footage for about fifteen minutes either side?'
'Sure,' said Gentleman, double-clicking on a mouse under the desk and turning round the PC monitor so we could see what was happening. 'We use DVR filming technology in the cameras so it records straight to the computer's hard drive. It means we can store the film indefinitely.' He double-clicked again and a close-up aerial view of the area just outside the double doors appeared. He fast-forwarded through it quickly until the time in the bottom left-hand corner said 23.30. Next to it was Sunday's date. 'Right, I'm slowing down the search now so we're moving through the footage at sixteen times normal speed. Just let me know when you want me to stop.'
We watched in silence. For most of the time the area was empty. Occasionally, though, people appeared, and Gentleman slowed down the footage so we could get a look at them. He seemed very keen to be as cooperative as possible.
The time in the bottom corner of the screen hit 00.00 and Monday's date appeared. Gentleman kept searching. A handful of other people appeared, but not Jenny and me. It hit 00.15. Gentleman looked at Tina expectantly, and she looked at me.
'You said midnight didn't you, Mr Fallon?'
'It might have been a bit later,' I muttered, even though I knew it hadn't been.
I watched as the time moved inexorably towards 00.30.
'This is bullshit,' I said eventually. 'This film's been tampered with. I was here tonight. I can describe Jenny's apartment if you want me to.' I ran a hand across my forehead, feeling the exhaustion taking hold, trying to get a grip on what the hell was happening.
'Look, mate,' said Gentleman, 'I've been here all night and I haven't seen you, I haven't seen Jenny, and I haven't tampered with this. Nor's anyone else.'
I turned to Tina. Her expression was impassive. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking.
'When was the last time you saw Miss Brakspear?' she asked the doorman.
'Yesterday, I think. She told me she was going on holiday.'
'Where?'
'Barbados. She's a bit of a world traveller, Jenny. I thought she said she was going tonight, but it might have been tomorrow.' He shrugged, his casual demeanour suggesting that my story was no longer even worth attempting to take seriously.
But credit to Tina Boyd, she didn't turn round and leave, even though I think I would have done. Instead she asked to see Jenny's apartment.
Gentleman didn't look too happy. He said he wasn't authorized, but Tina was insistent, so he located the keys and took us up in the lift.
As he unlocked Jenny's front door I scanned the woodwork for signs of forced entry but there wasn't a single scratch. I wondered how the hell the two kidnappers had got in. Jenny hadn't let them in. She'd been in the bedroom.
So, the chances were they'd also had a key.
I knew what the inside of the apartment was going to look like before Gentleman led us inside, and my suspicions were immediately confirmed. The front room was immaculate. The coffee table I'd clipped while running away was set at exactly the right angle between the two sofas.
Gentleman and Tina both looked at me expectantly. Unsure what to say, I walked past them and into the bedroom.
The bed was made. There was even a cuddly teddy bear with a sky-blue bow sitting perfectly symmetrically between the two sets of puffed-out pillows. The bathroom door was shut. There was no sign of the clothes Jenny had been wearing nor, more worryingly, my jacket. In fact, nothing was out of place. The room was so damn tidy it could have been part of a show home.
I flung open the bathroom door. It was perfect in there, too. No sign of any bloodstains from where I'd clouted the Irish guy with the soap dish. What I did notice, however, was that it smelled of disinfectant in a way it hadn't done earlier.
'Someone's cleaned this place up,' I said firmly, turning round.
'I can see that,' said Tina, coming into the room behind me. 'It looks great. But let me tell you something, Mr Fallon. In my experience, criminals never like to hang around after they've committed their crime. If these two men kidnapped Miss Brakspear, as you say, then it's extremely unlikely that they would have taken the time to make the bed and give the place a spring clean afterwards.'
'I know that,' I said, feeling like I was going mad. 'But that's exactly what happened. I promise you that. I'm not making it up.'
For several seconds, Tina didn't say anything. Gentleman appeared in the doorway of the bathroom. He was wearing an expression that was part way between irritation at being dragged all the way up here and the kind of patronizing pity usually reserved for the mentally ill.
What was worse was that in his shoes I'd have felt exactly the same.
Tina asked him if all the apartments on this floor were occupied.
'I'd have to check,' he answered, 'but I think Jenny might have been the only one living on this floor. What with the credit crunch, they've only sold about half the units in the building. Maybe not even that.'
Christ, that was all I needed.
We went back outside, and even though it was past three in the morning Tina knocked on the doors of
the floor's other three apartments. No one answered.
I felt embarrassed and confused. Those events just hours earlier had happened – the fact that my jacket was missing was enough to prove that – but there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
Tina got Gentleman to copy the footage from the CCTV camera on to a USB stick she was carrying and thanked him for his time. When we were outside, she told me she'd file a report and make some enquiries, but there was little enthusiasm in her tone.
'Someone's covering for these guys,' I persisted, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice. 'I swear it. That's why the camera for the underground car park wasn't working. Why there was no sign of forced entry. And why the place was cleaned up. I was there tonight and I know exactly what I saw. I bet if you check that footage through carefully enough, you'll see that it's been tampered with.'
Tina put up a hand to stop me. 'I'm sorry, Mr Fallon, but criminal conspiracies are a lot rarer than most of us like to think. Criminals just don't tend to be that clever. If two men did kidnap Miss Brakspear, it's highly unlikely that they were in cahoots with the door staff because the more people there are who know about something like this, the harder it is to keep it secret. Even you've admitted that Jenny's an ordinary girl with an ordinary job, and was acting perfectly normally when you met her earlier, so it's highly unlikely she's a victim of some kind of conspiracy. What I want you to do is to keep calm, try not to read too much into everything, and leave the investigating to me.'
'I bet if you check passenger lists for all flights to Barbados out of London Jenny Brakspear's name won't appear on them.'
'Mr Fallon, please.'
I wanted to keep trying to convince her that I was telling the truth, but I could see it wouldn't work. Instead, I asked her what she planned to do.
'I'll contact Jenny's place of work, and I'll contact her family to find out if they can shed any light on things. And when I've done that I'll be in a better position to decide what to do next.' She pulled out her car keys. 'You said you didn't have any money, didn't you?'
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