Capital Punishment (19 page)

‘Tea?’ said Mehta, in a perfect imitation of a waitress in a south London greasy spoon.

They laughed. Clayton nodded, feeling the dinner plates of sweat under his arms cooling horribly, while a waiter put a menu into his hands.

‘They’ve done a good job,’ said Clayton, looking around him, flipping his specs on to read the menu. ‘I haven’t eaten here since before the 2008 attacks.’

‘I don’t think this bit was hit as badly as some of the other parts of the hotel,’ said Mehta. ‘Anyway, you asked to see me. Did I detect some urgency?’

‘It’s about our film star friend, Frank D’Cruz,’ said Clayton. ‘Did you know he’s gone to London?’

‘He’s not high on my list of priorities at the moment,’ said Mehta. ‘What’s the story?’

‘Your friends in the IB think it’s to do with something even more horrible brewing in the Indian Premier League.’

‘He wouldn’t run away from that,’ said Mehta. ‘That’s his meat and drink. And anybody who’s been anywhere near the hysteria generated by that game couldn’t possibly imagine that it’s being run by a council of virgins. So why has he run?’

‘We know
why
he’s run, or rather left,’ said Clayton. ‘But we don’t know who’s behind it.’

Mehta leaned forward, picked up his cup and saucer, and Clayton knew he had his undivided attention. This wasn’t the run-of-the-mill information update they usually had.

‘As you know, we are particularly concerned with intelligence about our next-door neighbours and since he took over the steelworks, D’Cruz has been travelling regularly to Pakistan,’ said Mehta. ‘He’s desperate for export contracts.’

‘Did he travel alone?’

‘Alone, and with his daughter until the end of last year.’

‘Do you know the quality of the people they were dealing with?’

‘They were both seen meeting socially at the Sheraton Karachi, with a Pakistani military officer called Lieutenant General Abdel Iqbal.’

‘I don’t suppose he’s got anything to do with Inter-Services Intelligence agency, by any chance?’

‘Yes, he’s a serving member, we’ve been able to confirm that, but we’re still researching his connections which, given the thinness of our operational support, is not going as quickly as I’d like,’ said Mehta. ‘Those connections may be one of the reasons why D’Cruz’s contracts were signed so rapidly, the licences granted, the product transported, released and paid for so smoothly.’

‘But do you suspect that Iqbal is part of “an old boy network”, so to speak?’

‘He’s part of it,’ said Mehta. ‘We know he’s an old friend of Amir Jat’s, for instance.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘You’ll need a full report on him. He’s a monster of connections and affiliations from the CIA to al Qaeda. You’ll put me off my tea if you make me talk about him.’

‘I wouldn’t countenance it,’ said Clayton.

‘All we’re waiting for now,’ said Mehta, ‘is that last piece of the jigsaw that shows Iqbal’s got the terrorist links we suspect he has.’

10.45 A.M., MONDAY 12TH MARCH 2012

Isabel Marks’ house, Kensington, London W8

Boxer filed his situation report by email and sat back in the room upstairs where he’d put the recording equipment. He wasn’t looking forward to the call he had to make. To his mother. The ‘drunken hag’, as she was so sweetly known by Mercy.

‘Hi, Esme, it’s me,’ he said. She’d insisted on him using her Christian name since he was twelve.

‘Charlie? What do you want?’ she said, in that cracked radio voice of hers from too much smoking. She knew he didn’t call unless he wanted something.

At least she wasn’t drinking yet. He heard the cigarette being lit up, a reflex action from her days as a producer.

‘Mercy and I have both got jobs on,’ he said. ‘Would it be all right for Amy to come and stay with you ... please.’

‘Nobody else’ll take her?’

‘There’s been a problem,’ said Boxer. ‘I think she’d benefit from some time with you. You’re the only person she gets on with in our family.’

He told her about Amy’s Tenerife jaunt. He could hear Esme chuckling to herself.

‘The girl’s got nerve,’ she said.

‘She has,’ said Boxer, ‘but it’s not how parents normally like it to be shown.’

‘Then you should have been around for her more, Charlie,’ said Esme, in that calculated way of hers, guaranteeing maximum irritation because it was so ruthlessly true.

‘Well, you know how it is, Esme, from when I was a kid,’ said Boxer; couldn’t help himself.

‘You turned out all right, and you made sure there wasn’t a whole lot I had to do with it,’ said Esme. ‘And I’m sure Amy’ll turn out fine, too. It might not be the way you
want
her to turn out, but she’ll get to where she wants to be in the end ... no thanks to you, or Mercy.’

‘Can I tell her to go straight up to your place after school?’ asked Boxer, not rising to it.

‘Sure,’ she said, and her phone rattled back down into its cradle.

He took a deep breath, tried to call Amy; still not answering. He sent her a text about the arrangement with Esme, went back downstairs.

Isabel was in the kitchen, staring into a cup of cold coffee. He wanted to focus her mind on the next phone call, develop a strategy that would give her a foothold on the sheer cliff of their opponent’s psychological advantage.

‘You look sick,’ she said, raising her eyes from the muddy cup.

‘I just called my mother. That’s the effect,’ said Boxer. ‘We should talk about the next call.’

‘Tell me about Amy,’ said Isabel, ignoring him.

Boxer looked at his watch; Mercy was due any moment. They’d have the strategy session later.

‘Why is she so unhappy?’ asked Isabel.

‘The reason most kids get unhappy—absent parents,’ said Boxer, still wincing after his mother’s rapier thrusts. ‘Mercy and I have tricky jobs, which means we can’t always be around. When I was working at my old company, I was out of the country for a minimum of two hundred days a year. That’s why I resigned, but ... I think it might have been too late.’

‘And when did you notice things going wrong with her?’

‘She was always a restless kid. Always reaching beyond herself, wanting to be older,’ said Boxer. ‘We went on holiday to Spain when she was fifteen and she developed a twenty-two-year-old boyfriend. I thought we’d never get her away from there. We’re pretty sure she’s been having sex since then. Maybe it was because we weren’t able to give her a proper family life, but she wasn’t that crazy about being a child. Always wanted to be more adult. Mercy wanted the opposite, tried to hold her back all the time. It was the start of real tension between them.’

‘Was she a sociable kid?’

‘Sure. Always been a popular girl. Always had friends and lots of people who wanted to be her friend but ... she’s never retained them.’

‘You haven’t said anything that scares me yet. So what is it?’

‘Apart from the usual stuff, like pathological lying and instant aggression, which is mainly directed towards Mercy, I think, for me, it’s her detachment,’ said Boxer.

‘Like what?’

‘I saw her once with a group of kids who were talking animatedly about the latest band, which in this case was The Killers. There was a concert coming up and they were all wild about it. But I could tell Amy wasn’t interested. Later, I asked her why and she said of the band: “They’re floaters”.’

‘Floaters?’

‘A complicated word in Amy-speak. It means dead in the water, but also floating on the surface. It’s music that doesn’t get inside.’ ‘But that’s good, Charlie. That’s insightful.’

‘It is, but it’s disturbing too, because I see her loneliness. She’s an odd mixture of boundless curiosity, suppressed by endless tedium. She’s like the excited kid in the front row of a party with a magician, but her enthusiasm wanes as she sees how every trick is done. And there’s nothing more disappointing than seeing how banal magic is.’

‘What’s your deepest worry? I mean ... she doesn’t sound suicidal?’

‘No, I don’t think she’s that,’ said Boxer. ‘I’m more worried that she’s like me.’

‘And what’s that?’

The doorbell rang.

‘That’ll be Mercy,’ said Boxer, relieved. ‘I’m going to have a quick talk with her outside before I introduce you.’

‘About us?’

‘That
would not be advisable.’

Boxer went to the front door, put on a coat, took a key.

Mercy was wearing a sober, dark suit and a roll-neck sweater under a black wool coat, leather gloves over her long, slim hands. No jewellery. She kept her hair cut close to her head, which accentuated her sculpted face—high cheekbones, long jawline, a fine nose that hinted at some sub-Saharan ancestry. Her eyes were narrowed against the cold and her mouth pursed—shrewd and professional. She was not alone. Standing five metres away was a young man, in his early thirties. Cropped thick black hair with that Mediterranean whorl that could polish floors, dark heavy eyebrows, deep-set brown eyes, long nose, over-pronounced mouth and, despite a morning shave, a shadow already visible. Under his black raincoat he wore a dark suit and tie, with lace-up shoes. Boxer was surprised he didn’t have a blue light revolving on his head, seeing as his whole demeanour screamed ‘cop’.

‘Who’s he?’ asked Boxer.

‘George Papadopoulos,’ she said, and mouthed ‘Detective Sergeant’. ‘We call him George Papa.’

‘Nobody told me about him,’ said Boxer. ‘Who’s he supposed to be?

‘My trainee consultant.’

‘And on whose authority is he here?’

‘I think this goes right back up to the Commissioner of the Met,’ said Mercy, finger on chin. ‘Part of the deal.’

‘That nobody thought to tell me about.’

‘There was a manpower clause,’ said Mercy, bringing her thumb and forefinger together. ‘Small print.’

‘So what’s the idea?’

‘George is going to do the footwork while I work my connections,’ said Mercy. ‘Have we got a time and a place of the kidnapping yet?’

‘No.’

‘Are we allowed in or do we have to set up a tent out here?’

‘You got one?’ asked Boxer. ‘Ray Moss, the Pavis profiler, has been on the line, having listened to the call. He doesn’t like it. Thinks we’ve got a killer rather than a kidnapper. He said, “Bring in the Met”. How do you like that?’

‘You don’t often hear those words from the private sector.’

‘There’s no Crisis Management Committee, either,’ said Boxer. ‘Isabel Marks doesn’t want one. She won’t even give me names in the event of her incapacity. She’s on her own in there.’

‘What about the ex-husband?’

‘They don’t get on under “strained” circumstances.’

‘No friends?’

‘Only in Brazil, and with her own problems.’

Mercy sighed, ran a long, slim, gloved hand over the tight curls of her hair.

‘Let’s have the good news,’ she said.

‘Jordan, our kidnapper, is the playful type. A show-off and a tease. He’s keen to spin this one out along the lines: “You don’t know what your daughter’s really like”.’

‘Been there, done
that
,’ said Mercy emphatically.

‘I spoke to Mum, by the way; she’ll take Amy and I’ve sent Amy a text,’ said Boxer.

‘Did Esme love you for that?’

‘Oh, I think so,’ said Boxer lightly. ‘The bad news about Jordan is that he’s on the volatile side. One call he’s calm and in control, the next he’s arrogant and cavalier.’

‘Right. So we’d better get on with it,’ said Mercy. ‘Can we do this inside, Charlie? I’m bloody freezing out here.’

Her eyes were now tearful, turning rheumy, and her normally dark, lustrous skin was going grey. She hated the cold, had never got used to it, even after twenty years in England. He opened the door, let them in, shook George Papadopoulos’s hand as he came through. They shed their coats, went into the kitchen where Boxer introduced them to Isabel Marks, who poured the coffee. He hadn’t doubted it, but he was glad to see that Isabel and Mercy liked each other on sight.

‘So, Mercy, how will you and George fit into this ... this scenario?’ asked Isabel.

‘I’m Charlie’s back-up,’ said Mercy. ‘If it’s a prolonged kidnap, I’ll take over after two weeks. That means I have to know everything.’

‘And George?’

‘He observes and learns. He’s my trainee.’

‘Mercy and George will also be doing some research around the kidnap,’ said Boxer.

‘Meaning what exactly?’

‘We’ll find out where Alyshia was last seen, at what time and with whom,’ said Mercy. ‘We’ll build a picture of the lead-up to the event, in the hope that it might give us an indication of who we’re dealing with. Someone alone or with a gang. A disgruntled boyfriend. Perhaps people in her everyday life can shed light on any strange personalities, difficult business interactions, that sort of thing. We also might find out stuff that we can use in our negotiations with the kidnapper, something to give us an advantage. As you’ve realised from your conversations with Jordan, knowledge, in this game, is power.’

‘But you won’t contact the police.’

‘Don’t worry, this is a very private investigation. We tread very carefully. We understand the threats that have been made,’ said Mercy. ‘Now, we’d like to start by hearing your story. We’ve had a briefing from the Director of Operations but there’s nothing like hearing it in your own words.’

Mercy listened to Isabel’s version of events. She got her to go back in time and, being a sympathetic woman and a clever investigator, she dug deeper and was rewarded.

‘Alyshia left and went to rent her own place because we weren’t getting on so well. I was finding her reticence difficult to take,’ said Isabel. ‘Something had happened in Mumbai and, while I expect my ex-husband to be secretive, I don’t expect my daughter to withhold. She’s always told me everything.’

‘Everything?’ said Boxer. ‘Is there such a thing as everything?’

‘No,’ said Mercy. ‘As we find out all too often, and to our cost. Young people have their own lives.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Isabel.

‘The kidnapper has dropped Alyshia’s mobile phone somewhere off the M4. We’re waiting for it to be brought in,’ said Boxer, ‘with more revelations.’

‘About?’ asked Mercy.