Mercy was sprinting down the length of the warehouse. She swung round the door jamb at the end, ricocheted off the walls of the alleyway and, as she reached the top step going down into the basement, heard the gunshot. It was as if she herself had been hit. Her body stiffened, her eyes widened, her mouth opened but no scream came out.
The firearms officer had put down his carbine and drawn his Glock 17. He pulled open the door and threw himself forward low down. At the end of the corridor he saw the Mexican with a gun in his hand, smoke still coming from the barrel.
That was when Jaime really wished he had better English. He turned, raising his arms without dropping the weapon, but holding it up in the flat of his hand. The firearms officer took no chances and shot him twice in the chest. In seconds he was on him, checking the room, saw a man in a wheelchair slumped forward, blood on the wall beyond. He had his gun out in front of him as he came through the door and beyond the hard edge of his sight saw another man, naked, tied to a bed frame, and a girl, naked and foetal, lying on the floor, shivering as if freezing cold.
‘Cut me loose,’ said Boxer, hoarse from screaming.
The firearms officer pulled a Bowie knife from its thigh holster and cut the four plastic cuffs. Boxer tried to stand, found he had nothing in his legs and fell on his knees. He crawled on all fours to his daughter, held her, kissed her shoulder.
‘We’re O.K.,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘We made it.’
Mercy burst into the room, saw Boxer’s naked back covered in burn marks and realised that he was bent over Amy on the floor.
‘Is she all right?’ she said, panic-stricken, dropping to her knees.
She touched her daughter’s face. Amy was nodding and crying. In one hand she held her father’s fingers, in the other she gripped her mother’s hand, wasn’t going to let go, ever.
33
11:00 A.M., FRIDAY 30TH MARCH 2012
1 South Lambeth Road, London SW8
Mercy was sitting in Makepeace’s office in the same black leather chair she’d occupied just over a week ago, when she’d been told that her daughter had been murdered. She could barely believe her emotional transformation: one moment facing a lifetime of loss and devastation, the next miraculously happy.
Makepeace was on the double sofa. Between them was an empty armchair waiting to be filled by James Kidd, who was coming to give them ‘a full explanation’ of what had happened last Friday.
‘How’s Amy?’ asked Makepeace.
‘Getting better,’ said Mercy. ‘She couldn’t bear to be alone for the first three or four days, had to sleep in my bed. If I left her even for a minute she’d come and find me, even if she was deeply asleep and I’d just gone to the bathroom. Completely traumatised. She reverted to childlike behaviour. I got a psychologist involved from the start and she’s coming round now. And she’s . . . she’s been . . . ’
Makepeace reached for his coffee, nodded her on.
‘She’s been incredibly loving too,’ said Mercy, struggling with the emotion rising in her chest at the thought of how her little girl had been returned to her. ‘To both of us. Charlie’s been very good with her. She wriggles under his arm on the sofa and puts her head on his chest as if he’s the pillar in her life. They talk . . . endlessly, as if they’ve never talked before. As if the whole thing has started again from scratch.’
‘That’s very . . . gratifying,’ said Makepeace, unable to find a bigger word for the experience.
‘Amy’s biggest problem is guilt. It’s going to be a while before she can forgive herself. She can’t bear to think of what happened to Chantrelle. Even though the autopsy revealed she hadn’t actually been murdered, she knows the terror she must have gone through. The dismemberment has caused a lot of trouble too. The psychologist is trying to unpick the confusion over her responsibility for that, which she’s stitched into her own mind.’
‘And what about Chantrelle’s mother?’
‘She didn’t know her so well and there was a long history of trouble between Chantrelle and Alice, so the relationship wasn’t there. She’s appalled at how Alice died and again feels guilty because it’s as a consequence of her behaviour, but it’s not with the same intensity as for Chantrelle,’ said Mercy. ‘Did I tell you that she wants to do weekend work at Charlie’s LOST Foundation? I think that would be good for the guilt, you know, helping to find other kids who’ve lost their way.’
‘And what about her grandmother?’
‘She could hardly bear to face her. We took her to the Royal Free and had to practically drag her into Esme’s room. If Esme had died I think Amy would have been suicidal.’
‘I’m surprised that in running away she was prepared to leave Esme.’
‘That was interesting or, rather, frustrating,’ said Mercy. ‘Amy did go back at one point to ask her advice, but Esme was already in hospital by then, and when she heard Charlie’s voice on the video intercom she ducked away from the camera. If she’d stayed we’d have all been saved a lot of trauma.’
‘And how is Esme?’
‘She was discharged Thursday morning. Charlie and Amy went up there to settle her back in and Amy stayed the night. The first time she’s been away from me. The psychologist says it’s a good development.’
‘It’s been a journey,’ said Makepeace.
‘Not quite the one any of us expected,’ said Mercy. ‘But strangely the rewards have been amazing. I wouldn’t want to go through it again, but . . . well, my mother would have made it out to be something religious. You know, human suffering and faith resulting in greater self-knowledge.’
‘And you?’
‘It’s been a lesson in consequences,’ said Mercy. ‘And what resulted from those consequences gave us the ability to show the people we really are.’
‘And what about Charlie?’ asked Makepeace. ‘Has he been to the psychologist?
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ said Mercy. ‘This is why he got into the kidnap game. He has to be where it all matters. He loves it.’
‘You know what I mean, Mercy,’ said Makepeace. ‘How did he get himself into that situation? That was a big lesson in consequences, if ever I heard one.’
‘He did what he thought was going to be best for Amy and he was prepared to sacrifice himself to achieve it.’
‘I read the transcript of the interview with Dennis Chilcott,’ said Makepeace. ‘It was very revealing about Charlie, as I’m sure you know.’
‘Then why ask me?’
‘Because I wanted to know if Charlie explained his behaviour in Madrid to you,’ said Makepeace. ‘He smashed a man’s legs up with a baseball bat.’
‘He said he lost it, out there on his own, when he saw that Colombian drug baron strutting his stuff around the place, having murdered our daughter, cut her up, thrown her away. Then taking another girl back to his apartment to do exactly same thing. He wanted to punish him. Make him understand the pain he’d caused.’
‘Is that it?’
‘That’s what he told me,’ said Mercy, holding up her hands in surrender.
Makepeace nodded, drank some coffee, offered more to Mercy, poured some for himself too.
‘You mentioned Chilcott,’ said Mercy. ‘What’s been the fallout from taking those two into custody?’
‘Well, on that particular score the kidnap unit has come out very well,’ said Makepeace. ‘The project team in the Special and Organised Crime Command have earned themselves some international recognition for closing down the Chilcotts, who they knew nothing about until the Lomax interview. These guys were bringing in two and a half tons of cocaine a year and half of it was being made into crack. They were just about to step up their imports to three and a half tons, arriving in containers at Liverpool docks, with the help of El Osito. The Madrid drug squad are happy because they’ve picked up Jaime’s brother and closed down Vicente Carrillo Fuentes’s con
tainer business into Algeciras. We’ve definitely come out smelling of roses on that one. It’s our own backyard that’s been left stinking.’
‘Talking about stinking backyards. What about Lomax?’ said Mercy.
‘That was an embarrassment,’ said Makepeace.
‘He wouldn’t have gone back through the warehouse,’ said Mercy. ‘When the shooting started, he was in the alleyway. I saw him there. He’d just brought Darren Chilcott into the warehouse. Two of the firearms officers were at the bottom of the basement steps and the other two were in the warehouse guarding the Chilcotts and their driver. When I went down into the basement he was left on his own in the alleyway. He must have disappeared into the Rowland Estate and found another exit.’
‘Well, he hasn’t showed up on any CCTV in the area so far.’
‘Oddly enough, Amy got quite fond of him.’
‘Fond?’
‘Bit of a crush. They hit it off in a Stockholm syndrome kind of way,’ said Mercy, shrugging. ‘She said she learned a lot from him.’
‘From a drug dealer?’ said Makepeace.
‘Even drug dealers have to have . . . interpersonal skills,’ said Mercy.
Makepeace checked his watch and ate a biscuit, as if thinking of better things.
‘So what are we expecting to get out of this meeting with James Kidd?’ asked Mercy.
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ said Makepeace. ‘We’re owed an explanation and no lesser person than the home secretary called me to say that Mr. Kidd was coming here in the “spirit of openness”, which I have to say sounds a bit diaphanous for my taste. I’d rather he came with some solid facts, along the lines of why the fuck he dumped my department so massively in the shit.’
Mercy wasn’t sure whether she’d ever heard the DCS swear before. She started looking forward to the meeting, had imagined it as some dull post-mortem, with MI5 playing their cards close to their chests, but it looked like the boss was going for the jugular.
James Kidd was shown in, hands were shaken, more coffee distributed.
‘The home secretary called to say you were going to reveal all,’ said Makepeace.
Kidd went very still as if this was not in his script.
‘As you’re aware, we agreed to your presence in the negotiating phase of the kidnap because we hoped for an insight into the nature of the gang we were dealing with: criminal or FSB-inspired,’ said Makepeace. ‘We also gave your operative the ultimate responsibility for bringing the boy’s kidnap to a safe conclusion because of the unarmed combat expertise required. You agreed to look after Bobkov in the endgame and we supplied you with all the information necessary to bring that about.
‘I certainly don’t like the way things did turn out. But what really enrages me, Mr. Kidd, is that the people in my department have somehow been blamed, in the massive media coverage of this event, for a “botched kidnap negotiation”.’
‘They weren’t quoting me,’ said Kidd.
‘Somebody told them that something went wrong in the negotiating process, which resulted in Sasha being fatally wounded in the house and Bobkov senior being shot as he was handing over the ransom.’
‘We don’t talk to the media.’
‘Now let’s get things straight, Mr. Kidd. First of all, we know Sasha survived the rescue. The police marksmen saw to that. Mercy escorted him out of the house, spoke to Sasha in the ambulance while they checked him out and travelled with him to Charing Cross Hospital explaining to the poor kid how his mother had died. By the time Mercy got out of the ambulance in front of the hospital he wasn’t in any physical distress at all. However, when we called to get an update on his condition later that night, we were told that he was dead on arrival and none of the paramedics responsible for his welfare during the ambulance journey can be traced.’
‘Shock can have a devastating and delayed effect on the system,’ said Kidd. ‘Also the kidnappers had been using drugs to keep him sedated, and these can have a catastrophic effect on blood pressure and heart rate.’
‘At least you admit he wasn’t fatally wounded,’ said Makepeace.
‘Sasha was in perfectly good shape when I left him,’ said Mercy.
‘Secondly,’ said Makepeace, on a roll, ‘Bobkov senior was your responsibility, Mr. Kidd. You made the cockeyed decision to carry on with the drop when it was completely unnecessary. I, personally, called you to let you know that we had suspects for interrogation . . . ’
Kidd held up both hands to halt the tsunami of accusations. The DCS eased up, sat back on the sofa.
‘I couldn’t pull Bobkov senior for operational reasons,’ said Kidd.
‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ said Makepeace. ‘You’re going to have to do a lot better than that.’
‘All right, let’s go back a few days,’ said Kidd, taking control. ‘The real game-changer for us was when Mercy revealed that Irina Demidova had penetrated the offices of DLT Consultants, as Zlata Yankov,’ said Kidd. ‘As soon as we heard that we knew this was an FSB operation, which meant it became an MI5 operation and that meant certain operational developments could not be discussed openly with you.’
‘As your partners in the negotiating process, it would have been polite to have told us that you were taking this to a different operational level,’ said Makepeace.
‘Except that we wanted you to continue to perform exactly as if it were a normal kidnap, which was why we didn’t tell you, for instance, that the DCRI, the French interior intelligence services, found Irina Demidova and her son Valery dead in a house in a small village outside Fontainebleau,’ said Kidd. ‘To have given you the bigger picture then could have compromised our plan.’
‘Which was?’ said Mercy, rattled by Kidd’s latest disclosure.
‘I can’t reveal that to you.’
‘Not acceptable,’ said Makepeace. ‘The home secretary gave me guarantees.’
‘Let me put it this way,’ said Kidd. ‘Once we were given the news about Professor Statnik and Igor Tipalov being killed in Russia, we had to accept that our intelligence cell’s cover had been blown and that Andrei Bobkov would now become a target himself. We therefore decided on a course of preventative action.’
Silence. Mercy and Makepeace exchanged looks.
‘So Bobkov was working for British intelligence,’ said Makepeace, ‘rather than under his own steam?’
Nothing from Kidd. Silence, punctuated only by the tapping of his fingers on the leather arms of his chair.
‘The fact that you wanted us to continue to perform normally, as the Met kidnap unit,’ said Mercy slowly, thinking out loud, ‘does that mean you intended it to look like a botched negotiation?’
Still nothing from Kidd.
‘Was it important for their future safety that the outside world believed that Bobkov senior was shot and Sasha was fatally wounded and DOA at Charing Cross?’
‘I am unable to reveal any MI5 operational detail,’ said Kidd, looking her directly in the eye, expressionless.
She smiled at him. He winked, but she wasn’t quite sure whether it was that tic of his or if he was confirming her suspicions.
34
1:00 P.M., SATURDAY 4TH AUGUST 2012
Isabel’s House, Aubrey Walk, London W8
It was early afternoon and it still hadn’t rained. Boxer and Mercy had been banished to the sitting room by Isabel, who had never mastered the ability to cook and talk at the same time. The television was on, as it was in most UK households during the Olympics. Sweden was playing Argentina at handball, an unlikely attraction, but there was always someone riveted at some point. Three bottles of wine stood on the table, two red and one white, all of which had been opened. Boxer was drinking a beer and Mercy was on her first glass of Rioja.
‘So, you and Isabel,’ said Mercy. ‘Four months. That’s a record, isn’t it?’
‘In the p
ost-Mercy era, yes, it is,’ said Boxer. ‘How are you getting on with young Marcus?’
‘No need to make him sound like a schoolboy, just because he’s younger than me.’
‘So when do you think you’ll be able to take him to SCD 7’s Christmas party?’ asked Boxer. ‘I can just see him offering the DCS a toke . . . ’
‘Don’t go there, Charlie,’ said Mercy, smiling.
‘You know what I’m saying,’ said Boxer. ‘He’s a nice guy and he’s been good for you, but I know what you’re like, and this isn’t a career move.’
‘I thought we were having a nice little family gathering where we didn’t talk about things like . . . guns under the floorboards, baseball bats and—’
Mercy shut up as Isabel came in with a tray of canapés, told them not to eat them all. The doorbell rang and she asked Boxer to deal with it.
It was Esme. Despite the sun breaking through the clouds, she was wearing a red mac with a matching umbrella.
‘Lost your confidence?’ said Boxer.
‘I’ve tried and been soaked too often this summer,’ said Esme, kissing him, handing over two bottles of white Montrachet with a look that told Boxer they were not for sharing.
He opened one and poured her a glass. She went into the kitchen, kissed Isabel and walked straight back out again without offering to help. They went into the sitting room.
The doorbell rang again. Mercy let in Marcus Alleyne. They kissed and hugged each other for a while because Mercy had been away on a course all week and hadn’t seen him. He gave her two bottles of red, both 1999 grand cru burgundies.
‘Where did these come from?’ asked Mercy.
‘Well, they didn’t fall off the back of a lorry,’ said Alleyne. ‘I just put the word out that I wanted to take something special to a party and this is what came back. Don’t know anything about it.’
‘What if I told you a hundred and fifty quid a bottle?’