Capital Punishment (7 page)

‘I know you speak English, Diogo,’ said Boxer.

‘Diogo?’

‘Don’t piss me around.’

‘My name is Rui Lopes.’

‘Close your eyes and listen to my voice,’ said Boxer. ‘You and I have spoken before, Diogo Chaves.’

Chaves shook his head, things occurring to him.

‘I was the one who delivered Bruno Dias’s money to you. That’s how I know you speak English.’

Chaves struggled to cope with the import of that short sentence as the horror of being discovered closed in on him and the fear rose in his chest.

‘I can see you’re beginning to remember now,’ said Boxer. ‘Couldn’t forget what you did to that poor girl, right?’

‘I don’ know what you talking about.’

‘Bianca Dias?’ said Boxer. ‘She was only seventeen and you ruined her, left her for dead on the side of the road. Beaten and raped.’

‘Still don’ know what you talking about.’

Boxer kicked him on the knee.

‘
Porra
,’ hissed Chaves, clasping his knee now, tears coming to his eyes with the booze and the pain.

‘I’ve seen the money you’ve got hidden in the ceiling.’

Chaves sat back, his fingers trembling away from his damaged knee.

‘You wan’ that money, is that it?’

‘How much you got left now, Diogo?’

‘Maybe one hunner fifty thousan’,’ he said, more hopeful. ‘It’s yours.’

Boxer shrugged, shook his head.

‘If I’d wanted it, I’d have taken it before, wouldn’t I?’

Chaves was confused for a moment, then got it.

‘Why d’you do it, Diogo?’

‘Do what?’

‘Ruin the girl,’ said Boxer. ‘You got what you wanted.’

‘Not my idea. The other two. They wanted it. Nice little rich
menina.
Wanted to do to her what had been done to them all their lives. What am I gonna say?’

‘Tell them no.’

‘Maybe you don’ understan’ how Bruno Dias make his money.’

‘I know how you made
your
money.’

‘You on the rich man’s side now?’

‘I’m on the girl’s side, always have been.’

‘I didn’ do
nothing
to her.’

‘She can’t walk. She can’t talk. And you were the gang leader,’ said Boxer. ‘You’re responsible. And you didn’t give a damn about that seventeen-year-old kid, did you? You got any last words for Bianca? For Bruno Dias? Or for the lovely Cristina he sent to check you out?’

Chaves’ eyes widened as he realised the extent of the set-up. ‘You tell that bastard Bruno Dias...’ he started, but then all the fight went out of him. ‘Fuck it, man. Just do it. I’m finished.’

Natasha Radcliffe called the Mayor of London, Mervin Stanley, affectionately known as Merve the Swerve for his brilliance at extricating himself from the political and personal life catastrophes that had so far been the signature of his time in office. She outlined the problem to him while he held his finger to his lips and glowered at Svetlana, who’d just poured a glass of champagne over her naked, enhanced breasts and was licking it off with a surprisingly long tongue.

‘Who?’ he said, cutting in on something he’d been only half listening to.

‘Frank D’Cruz.’

‘I know that name.’

‘Electric cars, Mervin. He’s going to build two factories in the Midlands. I know it’s not London but his daughter
has
been kidnapped in your city.’

‘We can’t have that,’ he said in his robustly, fruity Old Etonian accent. ‘Electric cars? That’s why I know him. I secured permission for him to display some prototypes in the City and out at Stratford in front of the Olympic Stadium. I think they’re going to drive them around the country in the run-up to the games. What’s his daughter’s name?’

‘Alyshia D’Cruz,’ said Natasha Radcliffe, shaking her head. Stanley reached over for his iPad and went into Facebook, found the girl. A little more class than old Svetty Betty at the end of the bed, he thought, running his hand through the brilliantined rails on his head. He Googled Frank D’Cruz.

‘What do you want me to do, Natasha?’

‘We need some sympathetic treatment from the relevant department of the Met.’

‘So, although Frank D’Cruz doesn’t want the Met informed, you want
me
to tell them and then ask them to keep a low profile on the matter?’

‘Not just a low profile.’

‘A no profile?’

‘What are the chances?’

‘What do
you
think?’ said Stanley, irritably. ‘How would you like it if a private company, over which you had no control, started operating in the Home Office? They’re policemen. Their lives depend on trust and hierarchy. They are very suspicious of people who do what they do, but for money. Not that theirs is a voluntary force, it has to be said.’

‘So a compromise is in order?’

‘That’s what we’re good at,’ said Stanley. ‘Look at it this way, Natasha: just by pulling all these strings, Frank D’Cruz has let a whole bunch of people in on his secret. One wonders, given his evident acumen, whether he did it on purpose. If I was you, I’d be wondering what his game is.’

‘His game, Mervin,’ said Radcliffe icily, ‘is that his daughter has been kidnapped and he’s using his high profile investment to persuade us to bend the law so that she doesn’t get killed on day one of her ordeal. He’s also letting everybody know that he has power, there’s ministerial muscle behind him, and he’s prepared to use it.’

‘Quite so. I’m just saying it’s as well to know who you’re getting into bed with, Natasha,’ said Stanley. ‘Not that you would, of course; just a figure of speech, you understand.’

‘Oh shut up, Merve,’ she said, to Stanley’s husky laughter.

‘One thing is for sure, Natasha: he knows what
he’s
doing and he’ll know what
we’re
doing.’

‘Just get the best compromise you can, Merve,’ said Radcliffe. ‘Remembering that this Charles Boxer as consultant is the non-negotiable bit.’

‘That’s going to be tricky.’

‘Will you call the Commissioner now, please, Mervin?’

Stanley saw that it was 3.30 a.m. and Svetlana was snoring quietly at the foot of the bed. He shrugged.

‘This
is
my favourite time to call him, Natasha. You’ve just made my night.’

Boxer didn’t watch Chaves’ final struggle. He went into the living room, decided to leave the music playing and the light on. He checked the logic of the scene: the empty glass fallen on the floor, the man hanging in the hallway above the money spoke of a depressed drunk’s realisation that he wasn’t going to be able to put right what he’d done wrong and that suicide was the only solution.

When Chaves was finally still, Boxer couldn’t help but feel pity; not for the dead man, only for a young woman’s ruined life. He brushed past the body, pressed his ear to the front door of the apartment, heard nothing, opened it and left.

The night was silent, the river black.

He made his way back to the casino, feeling solid again, the hole in his centre collapsed to a pinpoint.

Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Makepeace, the head of Specialist Crime Directorate 7, which contained the Met’s Kidnap Unit, sat at the top of the stairs, listening to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and becoming more unimpressed by the moment.

‘So what you’re telling me, sir, is that, despite being the Met’s best performing department with a 99.5% recovery record, we’ve got to let the highest profile case we’ve had in the last five years go private,’ said Makepeace, quietly savage with fury. ‘All these years we’ve been handling ugly little crimes with Yardies, Albanians, Chinese and the like, and now, when the big number comes along, we’ve got to hand it over to some tosser with a fancy office in Mayfair.’

‘I know,’ said the Commissioner, sympathising, ‘all they have is a single client from whom they’re trying to make a buck, while we have the safety of eight million people to consider. It’s just politics, Peter.’

‘And that’s another point, isn’t it, sir? What if they’re terrorists, these kidnappers? We have defined procedures; what do Pavis Risk Management have? Probably just a bonus structure.’

‘They won’t be performing without supervision,’ said the Commissioner. ‘We’re not giving them free rein.’

‘And what’s their experience in running a London-based kidnap?’

‘That I don’t know.’

‘All these guys are experts in Colombia and Pakistan, but what do they know about London? We’ve got all the informers—’

‘The kidnap consultant they want to use, like most of these private security company guys, is ex-army. He fought in the first Gulf War with the Staffords,’ said the Commissioner, glancing down his notes, cutting through the fury, edging towards the compromise now, ‘but afterwards he joined the Met as a homicide detective.’

‘Name?’

‘Charles Boxer.’

‘I know him.’

‘You
do
?’

‘I didn’t know the PSC he freelanced for was called Pavis,’ said Makepeace. ‘His ex-partner works for me in SCD7. Her name is Mercy Danquah. She’s Ghanaian. They had a daughter together but split up straight away.’

‘Badly?’

‘No, no, very well. They’re still good friends,’ said Makepeace. ‘He left his salaried job with GRM the year before last because he was out of the country all the time. The daughter was becoming a bit of a problem, you know, like all teenagers. Mercy was taking the brunt, so he quit.’

‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

‘It’s possible. I could live with Mercy being a co-consultant,’ said Makepeace. ‘I’d still like to have someone else in there to do some groundwork. And we’d want access to Pavis’s operations desk.’

‘In a supervisory role?’

‘In an ideal world I’d like to run it.’

‘And if they’re not amenable to that?’

‘We’d like to be consulted on all operational matters with the right to veto,’ said Makepeace. ‘And if we suspect
any
terrorist connection, we take over the whole show.’

‘That’s fair enough,’ said the Commissioner. ‘Let’s see what we can do.’

Boxer looked from his mobile screen to the two kings and two fours in his hand, weighed it: Martin Fox with a job possibility or the potential for a full house.

‘I’m going to have to take this,’ he said, folding.

He left the room, stood in the granite-tiled corridor between two uplighters.

‘Martin. How’s it going?’

‘Hello, Charlie. Where are you?’

‘Tierra del Fuego.’

‘Pity,’ said Fox. ‘I can tell I didn’t wake you up. Is it windy?’

‘It sounds as if you’ve got a job for me.’

‘I do, but the initial meeting is over here, not Argentina.’

‘What is it?’

‘A girl’s been kidnapped in London. The client asked for you by name.’

‘How did he know me?’

‘You only find that out face to face.’

‘I’m in Lisbon.’

‘I know. I just tracked you,’ said Fox. ‘It didn’t sound like Patagonia in the background. Business or pleasure?’

‘In London, you said.’

‘Are you interested?’ asked Fox.

‘When’s the meeting?’

‘Two this afternoon in the Ritz.’

‘My flight’s not until this evening.’

‘I’ll book you an earlier one, business class.’

‘London?’ said Boxer, not letting that detail get away from him. ‘What about the Met?’

‘We’re entering into a collaborative arrangement with them.’

‘And now comes the small print,’ said Boxer. ‘Go on.’

‘You have to work with them. I have to work with them. The client mustn’t know.’

‘He’s important then?’

‘Ministers of the realm are involved.’

‘Who am I going to have to work with from the Met?’

‘Mercy is going to be your co-consultant.’

‘And how’s
that
going to work?’

‘I haven’t got all the details yet,’ said Fox. ‘That was all the special risks underwriter at Lloyd’s was prepared to tell me.’

Silence, while Boxer thought it through.

‘I’ll double your daily rate, given the circs.’

‘Now you’re making me suspicious.’

‘There’s more work for Pavis where this comes from.’

‘Well, I’ve got to keep my hand in somehow,’ said Boxer finally. ‘And you’ll owe me one.’

‘Will I?’ said Fox.

6.45 A.M., SUNDAY 11TH MARCH 2012

location unknown

Alyshia lay on her back, still with the velvet underside of the sleeping mask pressing against her cheekbones. Her eyes were open and desperate to see something other than the swirling colours that zero visual stimulation sent to her retina.

The house rules had not been difficult to understand. Privileges had to be earned by answering questions and would be withdrawn for minor infringements such as doing anything without permission. Refusal to answer questions would be punished by being cuffed to the bed in increasingly more uncomfortable positions. Any assault on staff would incur corporal punishment. Any attempt to leave the room would be considered an escape and punishable by sexual violation.

‘Rape?’ said Alyshia. ‘So you wouldn’t kill me?’

‘No point. There’s considerable investment tied up in your detention,’ said the voice. ‘And don’t think it’s a soft option. If you try to escape, you’ll be gang-banged by thugs. So, not only will you fail, but you’ll be scarred for life. Don’t even think about it, Alyshia. Just concentrate on giving us what we want and improving your quality of life.’

The sleeping mask was making her claustrophobic. Not in the way that the closed cab in the dark garage had made her panic, but more anxious than she’d like to feel. She needed a horizon. She had always avoided situations that might put her out of sight of land. She also did not like the abstract, preferred the figurative. In her state of sensory deprivation, these were the fragments of truth about herself that she was facing up to. But there were other fears, of a more personal nature, that would normally have remained subliminal but were beginning to nudge at the surface of her consciousness. This was why she wanted to see. Darkness encouraged doubt. Light would give her balance. But she didn’t want to show them that darkness was a weakness. She was forcing herself to endure this state for as long as possible to show them that being blindfolded was no problem.