Target

by Simon Kernick

  Bolt, though, had never forgotten twelve-year-old Leticia Jones, a pretty little thing with a big gap-toothed grin who looked younger than her years. When, two years later, there was a series of high-level contract killings in southern Spain, including the murder of a Russian businessman in his Marbella villa along with three of his bodyguards, Bolt had suspected Hook's involvement. Whatever people might think, professional contract killers are few in number, ones capable of taking out four people at a time even fewer. Bolt had informed Interpol, and sure enough his hunch had paid off. A month later Hook was apprehended on a European arrest warrant as he boarded a plane at Madrid airport travelling under a false passport. Even the master of disguise could do little to conceal the fact that he was missing two fingers.

  Less than a week later, Bolt and five colleagues from the NCS had flown out to Spain to bring him back to face trial for murder; but before they'd even touched down news had come through that Hook had escaped from custody, killing a police officer with his own gun in the process.

  Hook was never seen in public again. Even though his name was high on Interpol's most wanted list, he disappeared completely. There was the occasional reported sighting, as well as daring contract killings carried out in different parts of the world which may or may not have borne his hallmark – a senior Indonesian politician slaughtered with his whole family; an American oil billionaire who'd disappeared off the face of the earth while on a hunting trip in the Yukon along with his son and two-man security detail, leaving a trophy wife thirty years his junior to inherit a fortune – but never anything concrete.

  And now, three years on from his arrest in Spain, he was back again.

  The first question was, why?

  The second was what had happened to the woman who photographed him, and it was this one that Bolt was particularly concerned about as he sat in his boss's office at six o'clock that evening telling him about the Hook sighting. Because Tina was still out of contact.

  It had to be said that SG2 Barry Freud, the SOCA equivalent of a DCS, was not best pleased with what he was hearing. A big, bald Yorkshireman with more than a passing resemblance to Humpty Dumpty, Big Barry, as he was universally known behind his back, constantly had one eye on promotion and as a consequence liked to run a steady ship, with risk-taking kept to an absolute minimum.

  Usually Bolt could tolerate this type of environment (although he didn't particularly like it), but today things were suddenly very different. 'We can't just sit here, sir,' he said urgently. 'Hook's been on SOCA's most wanted list right from day one, and now we've had a sighting of him back in the country. We need to be putting all the resources we can into looking for him.'

  Big Barry rolled his eyes and leaned back precariously in his seat. 'We've just spent half the day in a bloody great meeting with the FIU—'

  'Which got us nowhere.'

  'And we're right in the middle of a long-running case,' he continued, ignoring the interruption, 'against an extremely high-profile target.'

  'You don't get much more high profile than Hook, sir. Ex-IRA gunman turned contract killer who murdered a twelve-year-old girl on one of his jobs. It would be a coup if we got him,' he said, appealing to his boss's ambitious streak.

  Big Barry didn't look convinced. 'But where are we going to find him? That's the problem. We don't know when or where these photos were taken, do we?'

  'No, but—'

  'And you said Tina Boyd sent them to you?'

  'That's right.'

  'I thought she was back in the Met. Why's she sending them to you?'

  Bolt told him about her call the previous day and the kidnapping case she was investigating.

  'It all sounds bizarre, old mate,' he said, pulling a face. Big Barry Freud called every man he knew 'old mate'. It was supposed to be a term of endearment, but always sounded vaguely condescending.

  'Bizarre it might be, but Tina's missing. And she has been since soon after she took those photos. Her mobile's off and we're still trying to trace where it lost power. And we're using the ANPR to try to find her car,' Bolt added, referring to the automatic number plate recognition system, a nationwide network of cameras used for tracking car movements.

  'So you've already got people working on this? You haven't got the authority to do that, Mike.'

  'Tina was one of ours for over a year, sir. Trying to help her is the least we can do. And if it helps us track down Hook, then we'll get a double result.'

  'Have we got anything so far?'

  Bolt sighed. 'Not much yet. I've got an all-ports alert out on Hook and the team are all chasing down their informants, seeing if any of them have heard anything on the grapevine about his return, and what he might be here for. Because one thing's for sure: it's not going to be a social visit.'

  'What about the kidnapping Tina was meant to be investigating. Any leads on that?'

  Bolt shook his head. 'I didn't write anything down when she phoned me about it. And it seems she was working on it unofficially. I spoke to Islington CID, where she's based now, and they've managed to get me the crime report that Tina filled out. It's not very detailed but it's got the name of the man who reported the kidnap initially: Robert Fallon, an unemployed thirty-four-year-old from Colindale. But he's not answering his home phone, and if he owns a mobile then it's pay-as-you-go because there's nothing in his name.'

  'This isn't very promising,' said Big Barry with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

  Bolt wasn't deterred. 'Tina also took a photo of a Toyota Land Cruiser which we think is connected to Hook, and we've got the ANPR people looking for that as well. We've got a lot of balls in the air and we only need one or two of them to come down for us to solve this.'

  Big Barry Freud leaned forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his huge slab of a desk. 'All right, old mate,' he said, giving Bolt a suitably serious look. 'Because you've had results before, I'm prepared to cut you some slack. If any of these leads turn up something then we'll concentrate resources on trying to find Hook. It looks like we're already doing what we can to find Tina. But I can't just pull the whole team off what they're doing and send everyone off on a wild goose chase. And if you've put an all-ports alert out for Hook, then we've already done our bit. You understand where I'm coming from, don't you?' he added, his tone suggesting that he believed he was being hugely generous in his offer.

  Bolt knew there wasn't much point saying anything else. It was the best he could have hoped for from his boss, so he said he'd keep him posted and headed back down the corridor to where his team were still flat out working to find their former colleague. Tina had never been hugely popular during her time at SOCA, mainly because she'd kept herself to herself and avoided social gatherings, but she was respected by everyone for her skills and determination, and there wasn't one person in the team who wasn't desperate to find her.

  But the moment he stepped inside the main office he knew something was wrong.

  There were nine people in there – seven men and two women – gathered in a rough circle around Mo Khan, who was sitting down with a phone in his hand, his expression grim. No one was speaking, and as they heard Bolt enter they all turned his way.

  Trying hard not to show the tension he was experiencing, he stopped and looked around. 'What's happened?'

  It was Mo who answered him, his longest-serving colleague, and the most senior person in the room bar Bolt himself. 'Tina's car's been found abandoned near a village called Bramfield in Hertfordshire.'

  'And?' Bolt knew there had to be an 'and'. The faces said it all.

  Mo took a deep breath, his face tight with pent-up emotion. 'And the body of a young woman's been found nearby.'

  Thirty-one

  The man in the cream suit ran a comb through his thinning hair, straightened his jacket, and surveyed himself in the full-length mirror, pleased with the image that stared back at him.

  He was not the best looking of men, he knew that. Physically, he was small and round in stature, with a large, hooked
nose and thin, flinty eyes that hinted at an intelligence not entirely to be trusted. At school they'd christened him 'Shifty', and had tended to shun his company.

  None of this bothered him unduly, however. After all, looks were transient. They disappeared eventually. He possessed something far more valuable. Power. There was a poise about him, a cool confidence in the way he carried himself, which had come from years of success in his chosen field. People treated him with respect. There were those who feared him too, knowing his reputation as a strong-willed man, unafraid of making tough decisions. Not the sort of person you would want to cross.

  But what the man in the cream suit enjoyed the most was the fact that no one, not even those closest to him, had any idea of the true power he wielded. Nor the terrible secrets he harboured.

  As he turned away from the mirror, the phone in his left trouser pocket began vibrating. He had a message. It was from a number he didn't recognize, but he knew the identity of the sender well enough. There was only one person in the world it could have been.

  The message was in block capitals and just three words long.

  STAGE TWO SUCCESS.

  The man in the cream suit felt a tingling, almost sexual sensation running up his spine as he walked over to the window and looked out towards the darkening sea.

  Events were moving fast now. All those months of planning were finally coming to fruition.

  He looked at his watch and smiled.

  Just twenty-four more hours...

  Thirty-two

  There were plenty of reasons why I'd deliberately avoided involving Maxwell until now, but chief among them was the fact that I didn't trust him. After all, he was a career criminal with a moral code that was skewed at best, non-existent at worst, so not the kind of guy you'd automatically turn to for help. But that also made him the kind of person best suited to tell me what the hell my next move should be, because as a criminal he would at least have some idea how other criminals think, and be able to advise me accordingly. And even if he wasn't feeling charitable, I figured that the fact that I was writing a book about him would give him some incentive to help me. After all, when it came down to it, I was more valuable to him alive than dead.

  Maxwell (he didn't seem to have any other name) had retired from the London crime scene having made, in his own words, too many enemies – a feeling I was becoming all too familiar with. He now lived in deepest Berkshire, an hour's drive out of town on a good day, close to double that when you were doing it all the way from Hackney at the tail end of rush hour, as I was now.

  I didn't phone ahead, deciding that it was easier to turn up unannounced, and it was getting close to eight o'clock when I pulled up outside the pretty picture-postcard cottage with the thatched roof that was his current abode. For a city boy who'd grown up on a sprawling east London council estate it seemed a strange place to end up, a good mile from the nearest house and almost dead quiet, except for the very faint buzz of traffic that you get anywhere in south-east England, and the occasional plane overhead. But that was one of the many paradoxes about Maxwell. He might have been one of the top London hard men in his day, but he also liked to grow his own vegetables and while away his days fishing for trout in the nearby streams.

  I was relieved to see that the front door was open, and as I got out of the car and breathed in the fresh country air I felt a lot better. The city and all the danger it represented suddenly seemed a long way away and, if I was honest with myself, the idea of someone like Maxwell being on my side came as a huge relief.

  I could hear movement inside – a reassuring clatter of pots and pans coming from the kitchen – so I rapped hard on the door and called out his name, just so he'd know it wasn't one of his old enemies coming calling.

  A few seconds later, Maxwell appeared in the narrow hallway, all five foot six of him, barrel-bodied and pug-faced, looking vaguely comical in an apron with a large cartoon pair of breasts on it. His grizzled face creased into a frown. 'All right, Robbie. Didn't expect to see you today. We didn't have a meet planned, did we?'

  Maxwell always referred to me as Robbie – a term of address I'd always hated, but I'd never had the heart (or balls) to correct him.

  'I need your help,' I said, looking straight into his narrow, hooded eyes.

  The frown deepened, but he nodded. 'Better come inside then. Want a drink of something?'

  I knew I needed to keep my wits about me, but the thought of a real drink proved irresistible. 'A beer, if you've got one.'

  I followed him into the kitchen where a big pot was bubbling away on the stove. I didn't stop to look at its contents, but the smell was good, and I felt the first stirrings of hunger since lunchtime.

  Maxwell opened two bottles of Peroni and handed me one, then led me through into his tiny sitting room where we always conducted our interviews, and which had clearly been designed for men of Maxwell's height rather than men of mine. I bent down, narrowly missing the overhead beam I'd almost knocked myself out on the first time I was here, and took a seat in one of the two old leather armchairs by the fireplace.

  He sat down in the other one, placed the beer on the coffee table beside him, and lit a cigarette. If he was at all concerned about what I had to say, he didn't show it. But then that was Maxwell all over. He wasn't the kind of man to be easily fazed.

  'OK,' he said through the smoke, 'what's happened?'

  It seemed like I'd already told this story a thousand times, usually to a sceptical audience, but I had the feeling Maxwell would believe me. He'd inhabited the world where this kind of thing happened for a long, long time. So I told him everything, with the exception of Ramon's murder, every so often taking a big slug of my beer, while he listened in silence.

  When I'd finished, he stubbed out his cigarette, rubbed a stubby, nicotine-stained finger along the side of his nose, and looked at me with a suspicion I wasn't expecting. 'You sure you ain't been smoking too much of the wacky baccy, Robbie? This is some fucking story and I know you've been prone to, you know, breakdowns.'

  I met his gaze. 'It's the truth. I swear it.'

  When the suspicious look didn't disappear, I told him I had the photographs to prove it and pulled the print-outs of the images Tina had emailed me from my back pocket.

  'All right, let's have a look,' he said, and took them off me. He unfolded three of them and looked at them carefully. 'And these were taken today in London?'

  'In Hackney. Why? Do you know the guy?' It was a long shot but, given Maxwell's previous career, not a complete impossibility.

  He shook his head. 'You said he was Irish, right?'

  'That's right. Northern Irish, I think.'

  'I had dealings with some Belfast paramilitaries – UVF blokes – a few years back, but I never trusted them. The greedy bastards were always trying to put one over on you.' He sighed, handing the photos back.

  'So,' I said, 'do you believe me now?'

  He nodded slowly like some wise, thuggish Yoda. Maxwell never did anything in a hurry. 'Yeah,' he said at last, 'I believe you. Looks like you're in a lot of shit, mate.'

  'Yes, Maxwell, I know that. What I'm after are suggestions about what I should be doing about it.'

  'My advice?' Pause. 'Take a long fucking holiday. A month at least. Somewhere a long way away. And make sure you're on email as well. We'll need to speak about the book. Try to forget any of it ever fucking happened.'

  'But what about Jenny? I can't just leave her at the mercy of someone who's going to kill her.'

  Maxwell's features cracked into an unpleasant smile. 'Never really took you for the hero, Robbie. Thought you were more the sort who just liked to write about them.'

  'Then maybe you don't know me that well. If someone's in trouble and I can help them, then that's what I'm going to do.' Two nights ago that hadn't been the case, but now I genuinely meant it.

  'Well, that's real touching, Robbie, but you try poking your nose into something like this and you're going to end up with it sliced off,
know what I mean? Let me give you a piece of advice,' he said, pointing his Peroni bottle in my general direction. 'Only get involved in something when you absolutely have to, or where there's money involved. Anything else, steer clear, because it ain't worth it. Especially in this case. If what you're saying's true, then it's possible they've killed a copper, which means they're prepared to kill anybody. Next time it could be you.' He settled back in his chair, having delivered his sage advice, and lit another cigarette.

  I realized what Maxwell was truly like then. When I'd first met him I'd thought him glamorous – a hard man definitely, ruthless too – but because he liked a laugh, told a good story and was always nice to me, I'd got to thinking of him as a loveable rogue, someone who might hurt other criminals – people whose actions deserved it – but also someone who would stand up for the underdog, who wouldn't put up with bullies, who could be reasoned with, because underneath it all his heart was still somewhere close to the right place. But this was all bullshit. Maxwell was just another selfish thug, and it shocked me that it had taken my own experience at the hands of selfish thugs to understand this.

  'Have you ever killed anyone?' I asked him.

  Maxwell shook his head. 'I've come close a couple of times when people fucked me over, but no, I ain't.'

  'What about kidnapping someone? Have you ever done that?'

  He paused before answering. 'I've had to persuade people to pay back money they owe. Sometimes that meant holding them in places against their will, until their associates came up with the cash. Maybe even giving them a little bit of a kicking to ensure their cooperation. But no. Not like you're talking about. I never hurt women. I respect them too much for that.'

  The way he was talking disgusted me, and I think that disgust must have shown on my face because his own creased into a fierce glare. 'Don't go all moralistic on me, Robbie. I've done some bad things. You know that. And I ain't particularly proud of some of them either, but I'm also a realist. And yeah, it's bad that this girl, whoever she is, has got herself kidnapped, but it ain't my business, and it ain't yours either. You hardly know her. And you're in a lot of trouble already. You've done what you can. Leave it.'