by Tom Bale
Then a line break, and a final message: Please don’t take this the wrong way – it’s not intended as a threat – but going to the police will be truly bad for us both, and a disaster for Charlie.
‘Not intended as a threat.’ Jen swallowed. The shock had her reeling but she couldn’t afford to lose control now. She shut her eyes, pressed her head back against the seat and took a series of long, slow breaths. This wasn’t the time for a kneejerk reaction: she had to think calmly, clearly, and work out what to do next. Whatever was best for Charlie.
But how would she know what that was?
50
They got lucky with Stemper. He was at his house in Brentwood and had nothing in particular to occupy him at the moment. He’d been all but retired for several years, though always open to offers.
In this case the job was close at hand, and promised to be quick and easy. It was also extremely urgent, which meant top dollar. Stemper had far more money than he knew what to do with, but he derived a particular satisfaction from being lavishly rewarded for work that he would have done for free, for the sheer pleasure of it.
Much like the monarch – for whom he had a great deal of respect, and in whose name, ultimately, he had performed some extremely grisly deeds – Stemper had a choice of residences, placed at strategic locations around the British Isles. Not palaces, in his case, but comfortable boltholes, none of which could be traced to him.
Most were tidy, anonymous bungalows, like this one in Kings Crescent. Brown tiled roof, pale bricks, uPVC windows and a gleaming white garage door. The front garden was paved over, and home to a four-year-old Nissan runabout. Nothing to attract the slightest bit of attention.
He was almost set to leave when the doorbell rang. Mrs Stott, from two doors away. Widowed in her fifties, she was a decade or more his senior, somewhere around seventy now; overweight, a little stooped, but otherwise well-groomed and pleasant-looking. At one time she had considered him a candidate for second husband, or failing that a regular antidote to loneliness. He’d scotched both ideas immediately, but they remained on superficially friendly terms.
A fan of stating the obvious, she declared: ‘Ah, you’re here! The airline hasn’t whisked you away to distant parts.’
‘It’s just about to,’ he said, indicating the briefcase on the floor.
‘They work you too hard, Mr Stemper. A man at your time of life should be winding down. . .’
‘Smelling the roses?’ he suggested, with a knowing smile. ‘Now what can I do for you?’
‘Oh, it’s dear Molly, AWOL again. That cat will be the death of me. Could I ask you to keep an eye out, perhaps check your shed?’
‘No trouble at all. I had the mower out this morning and didn’t see her, but I’ll make absolutely sure before I depart.’
She unfurled a sheet of paper. ‘And I’ve made some posters – not very professional, I’m afraid, but if you wouldn’t mind. . .?’
‘It will have pride of place in the living room window.’
‘Oh, thank you. It’s so nice that you actually care.’ She gave a disparaging glance at the property next door. ‘Some of them round here turn their noses up, and almost seem to think it’s funny.’
‘Declining standards, Mrs Stott. There isn’t the community spirit you saw when I was a boy.’
He soaked up a remark or two in the same vein before easing the door shut on a genial exchange of farewells. He’d been talking pure nonsense: the only ‘community’ in his boyhood had been the flimsy, ever-changing alliances between a bunch of washed-up comics, shaky-handed magicians and obsolete all-round entertainers like his father, the lot of them scrabbling for the meagre pickings to be found on the variety circuit of the fifties and sixties. Not much appetite for community when a whole way of life is dying before your eyes.
Which wasn’t to say he regretted his upbringing: far from it. Many of the skills that were essential to his trade had their origins in his peculiar, painful childhood, not least the ability to adopt an appropriate persona for any given audience. Aging had helped considerably in that respect, too: his bland, grey exterior was like an inexpensive canvas on which a variety of characters could be deftly imprinted.
A few more items to collect, and he was ready to go. He had no need to check the shed, because late last night he’d caught Molly digging in his rose bushes. It had been simple enough to lure the animal into the house, after which he’d strangled it, removed the limbs in the pursuit of scientific enquiry (he regarded himself as a keen amateur surgeon) and buried the remains in a bare patch of earth where he intended, some time next year, to plant more roses.
His interest in the assignment was enhanced by the fact that the first target was familiar to him. They’d never actually spoken, but their career paths had crossed a few times, to the point where Stemper was confident the man would know of him – and of his reputation. When time was of the essence, that offered a considerable advantage.
And so it proved. He’d been given the address of a substantial mock Tudor pile in one of those leafy enclaves that might be in Bucks, or Herts, or Beds: even some of the residents were never quite sure which.
The security was naturally more than adequate, beginning with high locked gates and entry via an intercom. Eschewing a clandestine approach, he rang the buzzer and spoke to a woman who had what he thought was a Vietnamese accent. Stemper supplied his name, and there was a lengthy delay before the gates creaked open.
He drove along a gravel driveway and pulled up at the house. The target waited in the doorway. Hugo Hamilton was taller and thinner than he remembered, but otherwise precisely what Stemper expected. Aged about sixty-five, he wore tan-coloured cavalry twill trousers and a tattersall shirt with a pair of reading glasses poking from the breast pocket. He had thinning red hair slicked back from his brow, and he stood with a rigid military bearing.
As Stemper got out of the car, Hamilton thrust his chest forward, as if to receive a medal. ‘I know you, don’t I?’
‘You may well do.’
A grunt. ‘Who sent you?’ The question was more cautious than cantankerous. He remembers me.
‘One of your ops hasn’t gone to plan. I think you already appreciate the problem. There was a phone call earlier today.’
‘Gerard bloody Lynch? He employed you?’
‘Not directly.’ Stemper named the man who had recommended his services, and Hamilton looked a lot more perturbed.
‘Are you the one involved in. . .?’ He referred to a notorious incident in the mid 1980s, the full details of which were known to fewer than a dozen people. Stemper confirmed that he was, and noted the ensuing loss of colour from Hamilton’s face.
‘I’ll tell you now, Mr Stemper, I don’t know anything. So whatever your intentions are, you’re not going to succeed.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you can help far more than you realise.’
‘Look, we’ve done our utmost to fulfil the brief. As I told Gerard, this latest glitch has nothing to do with my people.’
‘That’s yet to be established beyond doubt.’
‘I assure you, no one who works for me is going to kidnap the client’s grandson. It’s utterly counterproductive.’
‘But you were watching the house?’
Hamilton shook his head, even as he admitted to it. ‘You’ll know as well as anybody, it’s purely a matter of covering bases. Gerard has nothing to fear from me.’
Stemper was unmoved. ‘Who was it?’
‘No idea. I’m hardly likely to get involved on that level, am I?’
‘Then who’s leading the operation?’
There was a hesitation, and then surrender. ‘Chap called Alex Wilson. He was with Five for nearly a decade, perhaps you know him?’ When Stemper gave no reaction, he said, ‘Not a bad operative, a sort of gifted second-rater.’
‘I’ll need a full debrief from him.’
‘Well, yes, I suppose. . .’ Ruefully, Hamilton shook his head. ‘What a conniving little prick. Gerard, I
mean. Didn’t think he could be as vicious as that rancid column makes him appear, but there we are. . .’
‘Bad form to misjudge an opponent, old chap,’ Stemper said drily, aping the other man’s high-born manner.
‘He was never classed as an opponent,’ Hugo countered. ‘I’ll bet this kidnapping is completely unrelated, you mark my words. Odd things sometimes happen, you know that. Just in the last few days there’s been a murder, scarcely a hundred yards from the daughter-in-law’s home.’
‘A murder?’
Hamilton noted his consternation, and said cheerfully, ‘This is my point. Not everything revolves around the dark master of the diatribe.’
‘Tell me what happened.’
‘Just a messy domestic: some oddball killed his wife. The police seemed to think he may have been sniffing around Jennifer Cornish. Now he’s on the run. Russell Pearce.’
Stemper had heard the name on a news bulletin this morning. He regarded Hamilton with contempt. ‘So Pearce showed an interest in your target. He killed his wife, his whereabouts are unknown – and now Cornish’s son has gone missing?’
Hamilton blanched. ‘Hold on a moment. If you’re implying—’
‘Call Alex Wilson. I need an urgent meeting.’
51
Jen made it onto a train at just after three in the afternoon, opting for a Thameslink service that gave her a choice of stops across London. En route she would have to decide whether to follow the instructions and be at the bridge for five, or first confront Gerard.
Her supposed benefactor had warned her not to involve the police. If Charlie truly was missing – and Jen was still clinging to a possibility that the emails were fake – she didn’t think she could abide by that warning. But she also had to consider what she could tell the police – very little of substance, at present – and whether she was likely to be taken seriously.
As the train drew close to Gatwick, it suddenly occurred to her that the whole situation might have been concocted to provoke an overreaction. She would raise the alarm and send the cops rushing round to Gerard’s, only for them to find Charlie safe and well, enabling Freddie’s lawyers to depict her as hysterical and vindictive. She couldn’t risk going to the police until she’d verified the situation with Freddie.
If the messages were genuine, then the demand to meet in London made sense, given that she suspected Freddie was at his dad’s house in Bloomsbury. And if Freddie had lied about being in Greece, had he also lied about having Charlie with him? Jen could hardly countenance the idea that Freddie – and Gerard – were aware that Charlie had gone missing, but were attempting to conceal that information from her, and presumably from the police. If true, it was a monstrous betrayal.
Soon afterwards, the train was halted by some sort of issue further along the line. The hold-up lasted ten minutes, and for nearly half an hour after that they limped along at the speed of a horse and cart, through East Croydon and into South London.
Jen sat and stewed, her anxiety gnawing its way deeper into her soul with every passing second. There wasn’t enough time to go to Gerard’s first and still make it to the rendezvous. If the train carried on at this speed she might not even get there for five o’clock, and then what would happen? The messages hadn’t convinced her that Charlie was safe.
Cautiously, as if hedging her bets, she sent one more email: If you’re on my side, tell me who you are and how you got involved in this.
Her phone lit up almost immediately: a call from an unknown number. It must be him – or her, she thought, realising she’d automatically assumed that bestfriend808 was a man.
The voice that greeted her was male, and seemed familiar – or sort of familiar. ‘Jen, I’m really sorry. It’s a fuck-up – I’m a fuck-up – and you should never have—’
‘Freddie? Slow down, please. You sound slurred. Are you drunk?’
‘Drunk?’ He made a noise that might have been a sob. ‘Probably, yeah. But that’s not why my voice. . . Pa threw something at me, cut my mouth open.’ Another explosion of air: definitely a sob. ‘He’s crazy, Jen. The stuff he’s done. . .’
‘Where’s Charlie? That’s all I want to know.’
‘I didn’t wanna do it, Jen. I’m gonna pay.’ Freddie was, for the most part, a cheery soul, but if things were to take a turn for the worse, he could wrap self-pity around him like a comfort blanket. ‘I deserve to be punished.’
‘Freddie, I need to know if you lied to me. Are you in London?’
‘Yes.’
‘You came back early, you and Charlie?’
‘Mm.’
‘What? Is he there with you now? You’ve got to let me talk to him.’
For a few seconds he sounded too upset to speak; then he blurted out: ‘Pa took my phone away. I found this one in a bedroom, but if he catches me. . .’
‘What do you mean? You’re a grown man. Tell me what’s happened. Where is Charlie?’ She caught other passengers staring at her, picking up on the strain in her voice.
Freddie continued as if he hadn’t heard her: ‘He’s talking about prison. For both of us. I’m sorry, I’m the worst dad—’ She heard him wince, and in the background a door banged open. ‘Ah, shit,’ he hissed. ‘You’ve got to help, Jen. No cops. You’re his only chance—’
And the line went dead.
Stunned, she turned to look out of the window and dimly registered that the train had picked up speed. Freddie’s garbled plea seemed to confirm that the emails weren’t fake. Someone had Charlie.
The thought hit her like a body blow, but at almost twenty to five there was nothing she could do now except head for the bridge. The priority was to get Charlie back safely in her possession, and then involve the police to find out what had happened.
When the train finally pulled into Blackfriars, she had about fifteen minutes to get to the Jubilee Bridges. According to the map on her phone, they were only about a mile away, but in the fine weather the Victoria Embankment was choked with traffic, pedestrians and bikes. Still better than risking the underground at this time of day, she thought.
After a dangerous slalom run along the road, she reached the rendezvous point at a minute to five. There were streams of people on the bridge. As she climbed the steps, her phone buzzed – an email, which told her to cross to the south bank and then wait.
Jen groaned. Was somebody just playing games with her?
Then she considered the timing of the message. Whoever had sent it might be watching her, right now.
She turned in a slow circle, examining the faces of everyone she could see. No one seemed interested in her, and yet she felt her skin crawl, and had a sudden sense of foreboding. The emails are from Russell Pearce; he’s already killed Charlie, and I’m next—
The vision of that fate was so powerful that her legs nearly gave way. But it spurred her into action; she pushed forward across the bridge, immune to the glorious views on either side but instantly suspicious of anyone who paused to admire them. She kept her phone unlocked, ready to dial 999 at the first indication of trouble. Up here it was busy enough to be safe, but what if the next instruction tried to lure her somewhere quieter?
The adjacent railway bridge was noisy with the clanking, screeching progress of a train. Someone jostled her, bumping shoulders, and she gave a yelp – that could have been Pearce, sneaking in close to plunge a knife into her, before melting away in the crowd. Nowhere was safe.
The Royal Festival Hall loomed ahead, but Jen was only about halfway across the bridge when she received another email: Turn and come back to Villiers Street.
She was being taken for a fool. But what choice was there but to go along with it?
Another train rumbled past, braking with an ear-splitting scream. Jen’s heart was thudding, causing her to breathe in rapid gasps. She followed a march of commuters along the narrow walkway through Embankment Place and had almost reached the escalators when somebody spoke quietly in her ear: ‘Hello, Jen.’
She jumped, at
first unable to identify the voice, but in the half second it took to turn and see who had lightly taken hold of her arm, she came up with a name and a face.
It was Dean.
52
Alex Wilson agreed to meet Stemper, but insisted on choosing the location. That turned out to be a Costa Coffee in Croydon. An aggravating drive at this time of the day, but he managed to be there ten minutes early.
He bought a bottle of water and found a table that allowed them a measure of privacy. Wilson turned up soon afterwards. He was an unimpressive looking man with lank grey hair, pallid skin and bloodshot eyes. Perhaps emboldened by the public location, his tone was combative from the start.
‘Is Hugo bringing you in over my head?’
Stemper acted bemused. ‘Why would he do that?’
‘Because of the client, wanting the fucking moon on a stick. I’ve worked my arse off on this case, and just when it’s almost done. . .’ He tailed off, perhaps detecting Stemper’s lack of interest in his tirade.
‘I don’t work for Hamilton.’
Wilson gave a dubious nod. ‘Right.’
‘But I do work for your client.’ Stemper smiled at the other man’s confusion. ‘Think of me as a kind of auditor. I’m here to review your operation and determine what’s gone wrong.’
‘Who says anything’s—’
‘If I’m here,’ Stemper calmly interrupted, ‘you can be sure that something needs fixing.’
Jen stared at Dean. She was shocked, but also – for a millisecond or two – absurdly relieved. At least it wasn’t Russell Pearce.
She craned to look behind him. ‘Where’s Charlie?’
‘He’s safe. But he’s not here.’
‘I thought you’d be bringing him back.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Where is he? Why have you— ?’
