I went back inside the house and I was halfway up the stairs when the phone started ringing again. Again, I let it go, going into the bedroom and chucking all my stuff into my backpack.
When it hit answerphone, the caller hung up again.
Ten seconds passed. And then it started ringing a third time.
There was a handset next to the bed in the master bedroom and I went inside and picked it up.
‘Ray Mason. Get out of the house now,’ said a male voice that sounded vaguely familiar. ‘The police are on the way. The car you are driving’s not safe. Change it when you can.’
The line went dead.
I put down the receiver, grabbed the backpack from my room and went over to the window from where I had a view of the narrow country road that led down to the cottage.
I saw them straight away. Three cars travelling in convoy, two unmarked, the first only twenty seconds from the entrance to the driveway.
I bolted down the stairs and out the back through the open French windows, shutting them quickly behind me to at least make it look like the place was empty. I could already hear the cars pulling onto the gravel at the front of the house.
One thing I’ve learned in life is there’s no such thing as being over-prepared. And when you’re on the run and you stop somewhere, you always need an escape route. And thankfully I had one.
Rather than park the rental car in the driveway where it might have attracted attention from the neighbours, I’d left it next to the narrow lane that ran down the side of the house, making sure it was screened from view by some trees. I’d seen from Google Maps that the lane wound down past a farm for about a mile and a half before joining another road that led back to the main highway.
I ran across the deck to the fence then, as quietly as I could, climbed over it and slipped down the other side, taking a very quick look round. The lane was empty and I jogged down it, keeping to the grassy bank, trying to minimize the noise I made as much as possible, before turning into the trees where the car was parked.
Fishing out my car keys, I unlocked it and got in, throwing down the backpack. I started the engine and pulled away in silence. That was the joy of hybrid cars. They’re powered by electricity until they get to a certain speed and that means you can’t hear them. Driving slowly down the lane to prevent the wheels making too much noise on the stones, I kept my eyes fixed firmly on the rear-view mirror until I’d put a good hundred metres between me and the house. Only then did I begin to pick up speed.
And only then did I start to think about what had just happened. I had no idea how I’d been found. I was 98 per cent certain I’d covered my tracks well enough that I wouldn’t have been followed here, but that wasn’t what was preying on my mind now. Someone had called to warn me to leave. Someone with Brennan’s number and knowledge of the police operation to arrest me.
Who?
And in one of those moments of epiphany, I remembered where I’d heard that voice before.
And now, suddenly, nothing made sense.
44
It was Monday afternoon and Tina had got her phone and car back earlier than expected. She’d just left her cottage where the forensic team had let her in to get some more clothes. She’d seen one of her neighbours, Diane, as she was leaving. Tina didn’t know Diane especially well but they always exchanged pleasantries when they saw each other. But not this time. Diane had turned away rather than speak to her, and it had saddened Tina. This village had always been her sanctuary through thick and thin. Now she was unwelcome here.
At least, she thought, she was welcome at Arley’s. Tonight, Arley’s son Oliver was cooking dinner. Some kind of vegetarian Sri Lankan curry apparently. If Tina hadn’t killed his kidnapper all those years ago, he’d have been dead now, along with his sister, no question about it. Amid everything else, the thought gave her some comfort. ‘Put that one in your pipe and smoke it, Diane,’ she whispered aloud.
Tina had been told by the senior SOCO officer searching her cottage that it could be as long as two days before they were finished. While she was in no hurry to go back in, she didn’t think the police needed to be poking round in there for that long, so she decided to put a call in to Mike and see if he was feeling charitable enough to speed things up for her. She knew he probably wouldn’t but wanted to speak to him anyway. She respected Mike and didn’t like the fact that he was angry with her.
She put the phone on hands-free and called him, wondering if he’d answer, given how things had been left between them.
But he did.
‘So are you finally going to come clean, Tina?’ he said brusquely.
‘If you’re talking about Ray Mason, then I’ve already told you everything I know.’
‘Bullshit. Tina, we’re building a case against you. The sooner you cooperate the better it’ll be for you. I’m serious.’
His tone sounded almost sympathetic, and this worried her. ‘I’m sorry, Mike, I can’t help. But I wanted to know if you could speed SOCO up in my cottage. They’re telling me they won’t be finished until Wednesday.’
As Tina spoke, she slowed to round a sharp bend. Her satnav was taking her on a quiet back road away from the M25 so she was surprised to see a car in front of her going slowly while behind her another one, a black SUV, came up behind her fast.
That was when she knew it was a trap. ‘Shit,’ she said quickly. ‘I think I’m about to be attacked.’
‘What’s going on?’ demanded Bolt, sounding concerned.
The car in front did an emergency stop, partially blocking the road, and immediately two men with scarves pulled up over their faces jumped out and ran over, pointing pistols straight at her. There was no way past them, and no way of reversing either as the SUV behind was blocking her way. Two other men jumped out of it, again with scarves pulled up over their faces. One of them looked like he had a taser.
One of the gunmen appeared at the driver’s side window, pulling at the handle. ‘Open the fucking door!’ he shouted, banging the pistol’s barrel against the window.
‘Mike, I’m being kidnapped! The reg is EF14 3DW!’
‘Open up now or I’ll put one in your leg!’ screamed the gunman.
‘All right, all right, I’m coming!’ she shouted, as much for Mike’s benefit as anyone else, then opened the door.
The gunman yanked her out by the arm and pushed her towards the one with the taser, who immediately discharged it.
The electric shock was all-consuming. Tina’s knees went from under her and she crumpled to the ground, landing on her side. She felt herself being picked up by several hands and dragged rapidly over to the open boot of the lead car. She just had time to see another gunman jump into her car, and then she was being lifted up and shoved inside like an unwieldy parcel, unable to do anything to resist.
Then the boot slammed shut and the world went dark.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Bolt. ‘Tina’s been abducted.’
He and Mo were on the M3 eastbound, heading back to HQ. Mo was driving and Bolt was writing down the registration number Tina had given him in his notebook.
‘I thought we had people watching her,’ said Mo.
‘We’ve got a car watching her lawyer’s house 24/7, but she’s not under surveillance. We haven’t got the manpower for that, and anyway we’ve got her passport so she isn’t a flight risk. I didn’t think she’d be in danger.’ But even as he spoke the words, he knew he’d made a serious mistake.
‘Who do you think’s got her?’
‘I don’t know, but there’s a half-million bounty on Mason’s head and there are people out there who think she knows where he is. She managed to give me the reg of the car the kidnappers were driving. We’ve got to find it before she comes to any harm.’
45
Tina was trapped in the boot for what felt like an interminably long time. Her abduction had been highly professional. These guys knew exactly what they were doing. The most obvious suspects were the Kalamans – the sam
e people who’d visited her in the office two days earlier. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. What they wanted was also pretty obvious. The question Tina was asking herself was, would she give up Ray?
And right at that moment, feeling scared, dizzy and claustrophobic, she wasn’t at all sure of the answer.
The car eventually stopped and she heard footsteps coming round the back followed by bright light flooding in as the boot lid was opened. Two sets of hands roughly pulled her out and she was forced to her knees and a hood placed over her head before she could properly take in her surroundings.
A voice spoke close to her ear in a rough London accent. She wasn’t sure but she thought it might be the man with the scar on his lip from her office. ‘You’ve got a reputation as a fighter so a word of advice,’ he said. ‘Put a lid on it this time. My friend’s got a gun pointed at you, he’s ex-army, and he’s got orders to put a bullet in your kneecap if you start playing up. But if you do what you’re told, you won’t get hurt. Nod to show you understand.’
Tina nodded.
She was lifted to her feet and marched inside a building with hard floors that smelled of grease and engine oil, the door shutting with a loud clang behind her. No one spoke as she was led through another door, and then a few seconds later she was pushed into a metal chair that felt cold against her bare forearms. Two thick straps were forced round her torso and arms, pulling them tight. Two more tied her to the chair’s arms and a final two were used to tie her to the legs. She was now completely helpless and it gave her a sick, cold feeling in her stomach.
‘What do you want?’ she asked, already knowing the answer.
But there was no reply, and she heard footsteps moving away from her, then the door shutting and a lock being turned. She tried to move around in the chair but it was held fast to the floor and her bonds were tight. The room was cool, and Tina suddenly felt very thirsty. Her only hope was rescue. Mike had the registration of the car they’d brought her here in and she hadn’t heard it being driven away. But any rescue would take time. They’d have to find the car, and it wasn’t like tracking a mobile phone. If there were no cameras in the vicinity then it would make their task almost impossible.
Was this the place where she would die? The Kalamans were ruthless enough to kill her, and once they’d extracted the information they needed, there really wouldn’t be much incentive for them to let her go. The thought scared her, but not as much as it would have done many years ago, before the job and her own innate self-destruct button had turned her life upside down. She’d been held at gunpoint before, too many times, and had always survived, but if this was the end, then so be it. It was a waste of life – that was the worst thing – but it wasn’t as if her life was worth that much any more, and at least it would mean that her family would be safe.
She just hoped it would be quick.
But right now, her abductors were taking their time. The minutes passed. She could hear the faint sound of muffled voices coming from outside the room, and an even fainter sound of traffic coming from somewhere further away. She wondered why they weren’t questioning her already. Maybe they wanted to let her stew for a while to make her more compliant. If so, it was working. Her thirst grew more pronounced as the time continued to drag, and now she needed to pee.
She thought about calling out but knew it would do no good. She shut her eyes and tried to think of something else, knowing that the longer they left her here, the better her chances of being rescued.
And then, after she’d been in the room for what must have been at least an hour, maybe even longer, she heard the outside door shut and the sound of muffled voices again.
There was a pause. Tina took a deep breath, steadying herself as the fear came seeping back. Then the door to the room she was in opened and someone came inside. She could just about make out footsteps coming closer, so light she thought she might even be imagining it.
Except she could feel a presence. Closer now. Right beside her.
‘Hello Tina,’ whispered a voice in her ear, and her blood ran cold.
Because the presence of the woman Ray called The Wraith meant only one thing. She wasn’t getting out of here alive.
46
It was 4.29 p.m. Exactly ninety-nine minutes since Mike Bolt had received Tina’s frantic call, and he and Mo were now in the middle of Tottenham, driving on a quiet residential road just north of Lordship Lane, with Bolt behind the wheel.
The ANPR cameras had tracked the car the kidnappers had used to abduct Tina along the M25 heading clockwise, then down the A10 into north London, before it turned left onto the A406. It had last been picked up sixty-four minutes ago by a camera going south on the Tottenham High Road, so it was likely to be parked up somewhere close by.
Even in an area as busy as Tottenham, which was very well covered by ANPR cameras, this meant it could still be anywhere in a heavily populated warren of streets covering as much as a square mile, which might not have been quite the proverbial needle in a haystack, but was still going to be a serious challenge. Because of the seriousness of the offence, and the fact that the perpetrators were likely to be armed, Bolt had managed to acquire the assistance of four armed response vehicles, an armed surveillance unit, and half a dozen other marked and unmarked patrol cars to aid in the search.
By rights, Bolt and Mo shouldn’t have been there. They both had more than enough to do back at HQ. The French police had arrived at the Brennans’ house in France and found no sign of Mason, which was a setback, and now a lawyer representing Steve Brennan had called Bolt and arranged for them both to arrive at NCA HQ at 6.30 p.m. for a formal interview. But there was no way Bolt was going to stop searching for Tina. Whatever her failings – and, Jesus, she had plenty of them – she was still a former cop, a former lover, and a former friend of his, and that meant he felt duty-bound to help her. DCS Trinder hadn’t been keen but, given that Tina was a person of interest to the NCA in the Ray Mason case, it was in Trinder’s and the NCA’s interests to get Tina back unharmed.
The radio crackled into life. It was HQ. ‘Alpha One to all vehicles. We’ve got movement on suspect car. Just been picked up on camera going west on Creighton Road at the junction with White Hart Lane. Hard stop has been authorized. Repeat. Hard stop has been authorized.’
There was a clatter of reaction on the radio from the other cars, several of which were in the immediate vicinity, as they now converged on the suspect car.
Bolt felt the adrenalin surge through him as he took a quick look at the satnav, got their bearings, and made a rapid three-point turn before accelerating north towards Creighton Road.
The chatter over the radio was coming thick and fast. Within the space of a minute, Tango 3, one of the ARVs, had got a visual on the suspect car, and was following at a distance of about fifty metres. Seconds after that, a second ARV announced that it had just turned onto Creighton Road, ahead of the suspect car, and now had it in sight in its rear-view mirror.
‘This is Tango 4. Two male suspects in front of vehicle,’ the driver intoned, his tone calm but tense. ‘We are unmarked so they haven’t picked us up, but they are now directly behind us. We are ready to move. Over.’
‘Tango 3 to Tango 4. We have car between us and are ready to move when you are.’
‘Tango 4. We’re ready. Go, go, go!’
Bolt heard the sound of car doors slamming and yells of ‘Armed police!’ over the radio, and his hands gripped the wheel tightly as he pulled onto Creighton Road, cutting up a car that immediately let rip on the horn. Bolt ignored it, annoyed by the fact that the pool car he was driving didn’t have a flashing light, which would automatically have given him right of way. Up ahead, he could see the marked ARV parked up in the road with its own lights flashing, the traffic already backing up behind it.
Knowing he wouldn’t get any closer, he pulled the car up on the pavement, threw on the hazards, and jumped out, followed more cautiously by Mo.
A total of six officer
s – three in plainclothes and wearing black police baseball caps, and three in full uniform – had the two suspects, both white males and already cuffed, lined up against the car at gunpoint, while a handful of passers-by stopped and stared. The boot was already open and one of the cops was looking inside.
Bolt felt the tension shooting through him, fearful that Tina was in the boot, already feeling his anger growing from somewhere deep within. As he ran, he touched the handle of the Glock 26 pistol in his shoulder holster, wanting to pull it out but resisting the urge. The suspects were compliant and under control so there was no point. Instead, he pulled out his warrant card as one of the cops turned to face him.
He lifted it up for them to see. ‘NCA, DI Mike Bolt,’ he said, using his police rank. ‘Any sign of the victim?’ He could already see that the boot was empty.
‘No, she’s not in there,’ said one of the uniforms who was pointing an MP5 at the nearest suspect’s back. ‘And these two are both unarmed.’
‘Where the hell is she?’ demanded Bolt, grabbing the nearest suspect by the collar of his shirt and dragging him round.
The suspect – short, wiry, mid-forties, with a scar curling up from his lip – stared back at him blankly. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. And get your hand off my collar or my brief’ll have you for assault.’
Bolt felt rage building in him. He wanted to draw the Glock and shove the barrel against this arrogant bastard’s forehead, knowing that that way he’d get an answer in seconds, but he also knew that this one simple, three-second act of madness would cost him his job, his pension, and possibly even his freedom. He was powerless, and the cocky expression on the other man’s face told him he knew it too.
‘I know you abducted Tina Boyd,’ snarled Bolt, still holding onto his collar and pulling him closer. ‘And I know you did it in this car. And do you know how I know? Because I was on the phone with her at the time and she gave me your registration number. So what’s the betting we’ll find her DNA in your car?’
Die Alone Page 22
