Stealing People

  ‘I used to work for an old boyfriend, a drug dealer, who taught me a bit about running security,’ she said. ‘We bust up. I heard Glider was looking for someone and he took me on. Then about three months ago the old boyfriend contacted me again, invited me to a party. The idea was for me to meet some guy he’d been doing business with. I’d tell you his name but I’m not sure it would help.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Todd Bone,’ she said. ‘Yeah, I thought it was made up too. Older guy. Medium height. Stocky. American, in his fifties, grey beard, long grey hair. Kind of hippyish. Green waistcoat, yellow shirt, bead bracelet, that kind of shit. Not my type at all. But he knew his stuff.’

  ‘What do you mean, knew his stuff ?’

  ‘About security, tracking people, bringing people in, dealing with people. I learnt a lot from him. He said he’d worked with an American security company.’

  ‘Did he tell you a name?’

  ‘He might have done, I don’t remember.’

  ‘Kinderman?’

  She looked blank.

  ‘How about Anchorlight?’

  ‘Yes, that was it,’ said Jess. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘A company that runs security operations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. They work for embassies, oil installations, that kind of thing,’ said Boxer. ‘So you didn’t just meet him once. You got to know him. How did that happen?’

  ‘I had an affair with him,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders.

  ‘I thought he wasn’t your type.’

  ‘He wasn’t, but I dunno, I couldn’t help myself. It just happened. He’s twenty-five years older than me, for fuck’s sake. Mind you, he knew a thing or two about that stuff too. And he was strong, really powerful, the arms and chest on him, amazing.’

  ‘So you’re talking to each other … in bed. He’s telling you how to run Glider’s operation and you’re telling him how Glider works. How did Marcus Alleyne come up?’

  ‘He asked me if I knew him.’

  ‘When did he ask you?’

  ‘A couple of months ago,’ said Jess. ‘I said I didn’t know him but I’d heard the name. Glider had it in for Alleyne but I didn’t know why and he asked me to find out.’

  ‘Did you think that was odd?’

  ‘Yeah, but harmless too, and I wanted him to be happy so I found out.’

  ‘You in love with this guy by now?’

  ‘Pretty much … I mean in lust, in love, who knows? All I know was I didn’t want the fucking to stop. One of the very few guys I’ve been to bed with who really knew what he was doing.’

  ‘So how did he persuade you that kidnapping Marcus Alleyne was a good idea?’

  ‘He’s working freelance, this guy Todd, and he told me he’d met a guy who’s owed money, a lot of money for some tourist development, by Alleyne’s family in Trinidad and he wants to apply pressure. There’s a lot of money in it for us, he says.’

  ‘Like how much?’

  ‘A hundred gees.’

  ‘Didn’t you think that was crazy money for a small-time fence like Marcus Alleyne?’

  ‘The tourist development was worth tens of millions.’

  ‘Why involve Delroy Pink?’ asked Boxer. ‘Why give away twenty-five if you don’t have to? Todd Bone sounds like a capable guy.’

  ‘He said Pink was the key, that through Pink we could bring Alleyne out into the open, take him,’ said Jess. ‘I would give the go-ahead on behalf of Glider. Alleyne would be glad to be doing Glider some kind of service. Pink would make the offer, do the deal. We’d be out of it. All we had to do was take delivery of Alleyne and collect our money.’

  ‘Is that what happened?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘So you haven’t had your money yet?’

  Jess said nothing.

  ‘When was the last time you saw Todd Bone?’

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘You seeing him again tonight?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Where do you meet?’

  ‘My place.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘He just turns up.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘We have a few drinks and go to bed.’

  ‘And you still call him Todd?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’d have thought after all these months you’d want to know his real name.’

  ‘What’s to stop him giving me another bullshit name?’

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Boxer. ‘And don’t bring your people with you, because if I get a sniff of them, you’ll get a nine millimetre in your leg.’

  They left the flat. Boxer put the gun in his pocket, took Jess by the arm. They walked to the Caledonian Road and Barnsbury overground station and took a train to Kentish Town West. From there it was a short walk to the huge red-brick facades of the Peckwater estate where Jess lived. Her flat was on the fourth floor of a block set back from the road; it had a small balcony that overlooked a kids’ playground.

  In the flat he told her to lie on the floor of the bedroom with her hands behind her head. He searched the chest of drawers, wardrobe and bedside table. There were two sets of handcuffs and a roll of duct tape in the drawer.

  ‘Whose are these?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Are you into it or is he?’

  ‘They’re his,’ said Jess.

  ‘Do you just go along with it?’

  ‘I didn’t like it at first. But he got a kick out of it and that was good enough for me.’

  ‘What time does he usually show?’

  ‘After ten.’

  It was close to that time now.

  ‘Does he have a set of keys?’

  ‘Yes. Sometimes if I have to work late with Glider he lets himself in.’

  ‘You keep any weapons in the flat?’

  ‘Just my feet and hands … and kitchen knives if you count them.’

  ‘When you hear Todd come in, I want you to call him into the bedroom,’ said Boxer. ‘Don’t try anything clever or you’ll both get shot.’

  The bed had a metal frame. He told her to strip to her underwear and lie face up on the bed, and used one set of handcuffs to secure her arms above her head. He pocketed the others. He checked to make sure that he could see her from the galley kitchen and then closed the bedroom door, placed her mobile phone on the table in the living room and retreated to the optimum viewing point.

  It was a thirty-minute wait and all of it agony. The mental effort required to prevent negative thoughts from entering his brain was brutal. He couldn’t help it. The sight of Isabel in the hospital went through him like an infection. He was desperate to remember the animated version of her, the one that had held his hands across the table, but it wouldn’t come. All he could see was the waxen, lifeless skin around the features that had become so dear to him: the straight eyebrows, the beautiful mouth, the fine declivity. And then there was the stillness of her, the terrible absence of her. He waited for the swelling membrane of some emotion or other, but none came. All that emerged from the murkiness of his mind was an awkward guilt that left him feeling in some way responsible.

  A key squirming into the lock of the front door snapped him out of his unbearable thoughts; the shutter slammed down over memory. He tightened his grip around the Walther P99, took a deep breath.

  Todd Bone came into the living room from the hallway. He wasn’t wearing hippy gear. This time he was in black jeans, a black waterproof jacket and a black woollen hat with none of his grey hair visible. And this version of Todd Bone, if it was him, had no beard. From the darkness of the kitchen Boxer could see him clocking the mobile phone on the table. He also noticed that this Todd Bone was wearing latex gloves.

  ‘I’m in here, Todd,’ said Jess.

  Bone went to the bedroom door, opened it, stood with his hands behind his back, saw her lying on the bed, handcuffed. She didn’t smile.

  ‘See anything you like, mister?’ she said in a poor American accent, turning her hea
d to look at him. She seemed shocked, uncertain, perhaps puzzled by his different appearance.

  ‘Sure do,’ said Bone, but the accent was off.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ she said.

  Bone moved forward much faster than Boxer had expected, as if there was some urgency. His hands came from behind his back and before Boxer had a chance to move or Jess had time to even scream, he was on her. Boxer saw her legs kick up as if trying to scissor Bone’s head, but he was prepared and her disadvantage under his advancing weight was just too much. His body came down on her powerful legs as his hands locked themselves around her throat. Boxer moved at pace across the living room, knocking into the table as he went. Todd’s head turned and Boxer knew in that moment that he was dealing with someone highly trained.

  It had been a while since Boxer had been in hand-to-hand combat. He still went to training but that was no substitute for the real thing. Bone was fast. He intuited Boxer’s reluctance to fire his weapon with Jess behind him on the bed, and his need for Bone’s survival. He lunged forward, hand outstretched, and locked on to the Walther P99. Boxer aimed his left fist at his opponent’s throat, but Bone’s head twisted away and it slammed into the side of his neck. He could feel an expert hand working on the joints of his own holding the gun and he jammed his thumb into Bone’s right eye, rammed his hip into his chest and tried to wrench his gun hand free, sending the Walther P99 spinning across the room towards the door.

  A powerful arm closed around Boxer’s neck from behind and he realised he was no match for this brute, that he needed help, which was still secured to the bed. He drove backwards with both legs and there was a cracking sound and a grunt of pain as Bone’s back made jarring contact with the metal bed frame. He was momentarily hurt and Jess was quick enough to wrap her thighs around his neck. He tried to bring his arms up but she put the squeeze on his carotids and his arm around Boxer’s neck went limp. Boxer pulled out the handcuffs as Jess rolled Bone over, still between her legs. He secured Bone’s hands behind his back and finally Jess released him. Boxer massaged the semi-conscious man’s neck and his eyelids fluttered.

  ‘Is this Todd Bone?’ asked Boxer, gasping for breath.

  ‘No it’s not,’ said Jess, leaning over the edge of the mattress, her arms still secured to the bedhead. ‘I’ve no idea who this guy is.’

  18

  22.30, 16 January 2014

  unknown location, London

  ‘Is that you?’ asked Amy, still hooded up but with the tape removed, her hands secured with plastic cuffs to the chair.

  ‘Could be,’ said Siobhan.

  ‘I don’t know how you’ve got the nerve to come and talk to me,’ said Amy. ‘You fucked me over. I heard you when they brought us in. You’re … you’re part of this.’

  ‘That old line,’ said Siobhan. ‘Nothing personal, just business.’

  ‘You mean everything?’ said Amy. ‘It was all … business?’

  ‘Ah, the kiss?’ said Siobhan, stroking Amy’s thigh. ‘You liked the kiss after all.’

  Amy ripped her leg away.

  ‘I’m not talking about the stupid kiss,’ she said. ‘What about the guys beating you up?’

  ‘They were part of the crew.’

  ‘And the rape?’

  ‘Theatrical blood between the buttocks,’ said Siobhan. ‘But I did take a beating. That had to be real. Your father wouldn’t have bought make-up and it would have come off in the bath.’

  ‘What about Tanya Birch?’

  ‘She’s real … if you can call that manky bitch real. Con’s got one in every port. They call him the Golden Dick. Fuck a frog if it’d stop hopping.’

  ‘And are you really Conrad Jensen’s daughter?’

  ‘Well, daughter/shmaughter … know what I mean?’ said Siobhan. ‘But for my pains I am from his lusty loins.’

  ‘And has he really disappeared or is that … ? That must be fake too.’

  ‘No, Con has had to disappear … nobody knows where he is.’

  ‘You mean you knew he was going to disappear?’

  Siobhan said nothing.

  ‘OK, I’ll take that as a yes,’ said Amy. ‘But why involve my dad? What’s he got to do with this? You already had Marcus, which I assume was to get inside information on some special investigation from my mother. So why pull my dad into this? And what is this?’

  ‘It’s a series kidnap,’ said Siobhan. ‘The first of its kind.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Rich kids. An Indian layabout, a German art student who’ll never have to create anything in her life, a Chinese economics undergrad who hasn’t had to understand it from the ground up, an Australian druggie, a Russian mafia adviser’s little boy and a young girl called Sophie Railton-Bass. Daughter of the CEO of Kinderman, an American military corporation.’

  ‘All those nationalities,’ said Amy. ‘Is this political?’

  ‘We’re nothing if not ambitious.’

  ‘All right,’ said Amy, sensing some resistance, ‘so you kidnap Marcus because you know my mother will be one of the investigators, but why do you need me?’

  ‘Icing on the cake?’

  ‘But you didn’t need to bring my dad into it. Why do that?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. I’m not the mastermind. I just do my job,’ said Siobhan. ‘Now your starter for ten is to tell me what you and your mum got up to when you were a kid. We’re talking proof-of-life shit. You know what that is by the sound of things.’

  ‘She was a lousy mum.’

  ‘But you must have done things together like … kidnap investigations maybe?’

  ‘Not funny,’ said Amy. ‘Because, if you really want to know, she used to show me how to take fingerprints.’

  ‘That is sad.’

  ‘It was something.’

  ‘And what did you do with your dada?’

  ‘You know how to annoy people.’

  ‘Just one of my specialities.’

  ‘My dad was out of the country most of the time.’

  ‘You’ve got to give me something.’

  ‘El Osito. That should do it.’

  ‘Teddy bear? OK.’

  ‘A Colombian drug baron who was going to kill me until my dad stepped in.’

  ‘Really?’ said Siobhan. ‘I wonder whether Con would do that. The more I think about it, the more I realise that it’s not so much people my father’s obsessed by as their secrets. He has to know what’s going on inside. But as soon as he finds out, it’s like seeing the inside of a magic trick, very mundane, a bit of jibber-jabber, some sleight of hand, laughable, and he moves on.’

  ‘A secret’s only interesting while it’s still a secret,’ said Amy. ‘Once it’s out in the world …’

  ‘That’s the problem: you can’t share a secret,’ said Siobhan. ‘It’s either yours or mine but never ours.’

  ‘But you can bind yourself to someone with a secret,’ said Amy, ‘as long as there’s trust.’

  ‘Well, that’s us finished,’ said Siobhan. ‘Now that I’ve betrayed you.’

  ‘You can always rebuild the trust,’ said Amy, easing back on the anger, remembering now all those overheard conversations between Mercy and Charlie, recalling the demands of her situation.

  ‘Truth and reconciliation,’ said Siobhan, with a scoffing laugh. ‘And I can tell you we’re very short of the first commodity around here. Bunch of fucking spooks.’

  ‘Is that was your crew consists of ?’ asked Amy.

  ‘Friends of Dad,’ said Siobhan. ‘I don’t think he’s got a normal friend. I mean someone who isn’t operating, if you know what I mean. Someone who’d just come round to watch the football and have a beer with you on the sofa.’

  ‘Where do they come from?’

  ‘All walks of life. No, that’s not quite true, because that would include normal people, and none of them are that. There’s special forces nutters, paranoid spooks, private security company bods, ex-military maniacs, a few busted cops, some business types, silver-
tongued lobbyists, think-tank nerds, an eerie economist or two … it goes on. Fingers everywhere.’

  ‘Do you … they … call themselves something?’ asked Amy. ‘If you’re aiming at something political, then you’ve got a cause. Most people with a cause have a name.’

  ‘If they have, they ain’t told me,’ said Siobhan. ‘I’m too lowly. A dogsbody. Expendable.’

  ‘What did you used to do with your mother?’ asked Amy, casting her rod again.

  ‘Now that would be telling you … something,’ said Siobhan, picking up on the trick. ‘But I will tell you one secret if you want.’

  ‘Don’t bother unless it’s real.’

  ‘The kiss,’ said Siobhan. ‘That was real.’

  Mercy paced her kitchen, her police phone in one hand and her private mobile in the other, waiting for another call from the kidnappers. The landlady who’d rented the flat out in Lofting Road to Conrad Jensen’s daughter Siobhan had called to give the contact number, which Mercy had tried. It was no longer available. She wondered if the landlady had been given a wrong number, but apparently she’d used it earlier and spoken to Siobhan. Mercy was also trying Amy and Boxer, leaving messages and texts on their unresponsive phones. The lack of contact from all sides was making her desperate.

  Her private mobile rang. She slapped it to her face.

  ‘Amy’s been telling us that when she was small, you taught her how to take fingerprints,’ said the voice, male, the same as the last time. ‘Sweet. Not exactly cupcakes and tinsel, Mercy. You were one tough-love mother, weren’t you?’

  ‘She wasn’t interested in cooking. So you’ve got the proof of life. What else?’

  ‘How’s it going with Ryder?’

  ‘Nothing much happening on that front. You’re not communicating with him, and—’

  ‘I meant your relationship.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Everything matters when your daughter and your lover are at stake.’

  ‘Well our relationship is frosty. He’s very protective of his information. He’s keeping everything separate. I investigate the London scenario and he’s got a whole bunch of other people looking into the political and Kinderman side of things, which I know nothing about and will never know …’