Frankie (12 page)

Sir Ainsley remained silent.

‘You might do this sort of thing every day of the week, but before I met you I never had so much as a parking ticket. And I don't trust you,
Sir Ainsley
. I don't trust any of you – any more than you trust me. You might have convinced your precious electorate that you are a man of moral fibre, but let's not forget what it is we're doing here. And please don't try and tell me you don't have a copy of these documents yourself.'

Cooper's eyes narrowed slightly, momentarily, before he smiled once more, seemingly ignoring everything Tunney had said. ‘I'm sure we'll be able to sort everything out,' he said calmly. ‘Might I presume that nobody at the bank can access this information any more?'

‘They never could.' Tunney's voice was quieter now too, though he could not hide the waver of nervousness that had found its way into his speech. ‘It was only on my system and nobody had the passwords. She may not even have found anything – all I know is that my computer was broken into. I could have just kept quiet, but I thought it best to get our, er –' he never knew quite what words to use to describe the men they were waiting for – ‘our
friends
to find out exactly what happened.'

‘I'm sure they will have done,' Cooper answered, his face expressionless and his voice implacable. ‘They're exceedingly efficient.' There was a knock at the door. ‘Ah, speaking of efficiency … Come!'

The door opened and two men walked in – both tall, but one slightly taller than the other. They looked so similar they could almost be brothers. One had ruffled blond hair and strikingly blue eyes, while the other one, taller than his companion, had army-style short hair and brown eyes. His face was drawn and pale. They were both dressed in tailored suits with open-collar shirts and no tie. ‘Gentlemen,' the blond one said shortly in greeting, his voice deep and with a thick Eastern European accent. ‘A cold day.' He removed his gloves and flung them nonchalantly on the table.

‘I would have thought you would be perfectly used to such weather in your part of the world,' Cooper replied blandly, clearly making small talk for the sake of it.

The man shrugged. His companion was standing by the closed door, his hands clasped gently together. The blond man looked around the room. ‘Can we talk freely?'

Cooper nodded. ‘It's perfectly secure. Have you spoken to the woman?'

The man allowed a whisper of a smile to pass across his lips. ‘Yes,' he replied quietly. ‘We have had a conversation. She was most forthcoming.' He enunciated his words with the strange precision of a man whose first language was not English.

‘And?' Morgan Tunney's brow had beads of sweat on it.

‘You appear warm, Mr Tunney. Perhaps you should not sit so close to the fire.'

The two men glared at each other. ‘Gentlemen,' Cooper interjected sharply. ‘Enough.' He turned to the blond man. ‘Andreas, what was she doing in Morgan's office?'

‘Downloading information.'

Tunney and Cooper glanced at each other uneasily. ‘Why?' Cooper asked.

‘She noticed some irregularity in the accounting,' the man replied, ‘and alerted the Serious Fraud Office. They persuaded her to break into Mr Tunney's system and locate certain documents.'

The blood seemed to drain from the faces of the two men. ‘Does this sound likely, Morgan?' Cooper asked quietly. ‘Would this woman know what she was looking for?'

Tunney shrugged non-committally. ‘She might. She's quite senior and would notice irregularities that are not normally on the system and not compliant with the FSA. But she wouldn't know how to get into my machine – I'm the only person who has the password –'

‘I could hack into your computer in less than two minutes,' Andreas interrupted starkly. ‘And if I can, so can anybody else. Especially the SFO. They gave her a
device hidden in a silver locket that contained a patch to crack your password. She then loaded the information she wanted onto it.'

‘And gave it to the SFO?' Sir Ainsley breathed the question as though he could not bear to hear the answer.

‘No.'

Tunney's eyes widened, and Cooper turned his back to look out of the window again, as if he was unwilling to let anyone read the emotions on his face.

‘Why not?'

‘She was attacked in the street. Her bag was taken, and so was the necklace holding the device.'

‘Do we know who it was?'

‘No. It was just a random attack. A young girl. The woman couldn't tell us what she looked like.'

Sir Ainsley turned round again. ‘I think, my friend, that you ought to press her a little harder for a description.'

The blond man smiled once more. ‘I can assure you, Sir Ainsley, that if she could have given us any more information, she would have done. We can be very persuasive when we need to be.'

A silence fell upon the room as the four men seemed deep in thought. It was broken by Cooper. ‘It appears you have been fairly lucky, Morgan.'

‘We've all been lucky, Sir Ainsley. You have as much to lose as anyone.'

‘Quite,' Cooper replied in a deadpan voice. ‘Of course, we are not quite out of the woods yet.' He turned to Andreas. ‘Did the woman give you the name of her handler at the SFO?'

Andreas nodded. ‘His name is Sean Carter. We've checked him out – he used to be a DI at London Bridge.'

‘I think perhaps you ought to deal with him.'

‘No,' Andreas shook his head. ‘Without the information he has nothing, and it's far better to know who you are dealing with than to dispose of him and have him replaced by an unknown quantity.'

Cooper nodded his head. ‘You might be right,' he conceded. ‘Is it possible that you could find our little hooligan, or has she gone completely off the radar?'

‘Anything is possible, for a price.'

‘And what would that price be?'

Andreas eyed up his clients. ‘Five hundred thousand.'

Tunney spluttered. ‘Don't be ridiculous! That's an outrageous sum.'

The man shrugged. ‘It's your decision, of course.'

‘I wonder, Andreas,' Sir Ainsley stepped between the two of them, ‘if you and your friend might just give us a moment.' Andreas nodded politely and the two foreign men left the room. Cooper brought up a chair and sat close – uncomfortably close – to Tunney. ‘Listen to me, Morgan,' he practically whispered. ‘It will only take that locket falling into the hands of a reasonably intelligent person for the game to be up. If anyone discovers that I have been illegally involved with arms dealers, or that you have been instrumental in laundering the sums of money that we are talking about, we will both be looking at severe prison sentences. Under the circumstances, five hundred thousand pounds seems like rather a good deal, does it not?'

‘You're not suggesting, I hope, that I assume this expense.'

‘That is precisely what I'm suggesting, Morgan. You got us into this situation, so you can get us out of it.'

The two men stared at each other. Finally Tunney bowed his head in defeat. ‘How do you know we can trust these people? I know next to nothing about them.'

‘Andreas is the best there is. I've used him numerous times in the past, and he has never let me down.' Cooper stood up and went to the door to let the men back in. ‘Five hundred thousand it is,' he told Andreas once the door was shut.

‘Half now, half when we deliver the girl.'

‘And the locket.'

‘Of course. We will get all the information we need from her.' He smiled blandly.

‘How –' Tunney began to ask, but Cooper interrupted him.

‘Mr Tunney agrees to your terms,' he said in a tone of voice that would accept no refusal. ‘Do you have any leads to go on?'

Andreas shrugged. ‘The SFO have asked the police to track the girl down. We have people on the inside who will keep us informed of their progress. We will get to her before they do.'

‘You'd better,' Tunney muttered, but Andreas ignored him and continued the conversation with Cooper.

‘And what do you want us to do with the woman from the bank?'

Cooper turned back to look out of the window yet again. ‘Do whatever you must,' he said in a quiet voice. ‘Just make it discreet.'

‘Same again?'

The girl shook her head. ‘No, I shouldn't. I've got a report to write …' They had been there since midday, and apart from a few lunchtime drinkers they'd practically had the place to themselves, with the exception of an old man propping up the bar, nursing pints of dark bitter and smoking a pipe of pungent cherry tobacco.

He shrugged as he drained his pint, gazing at her over the rim of his glass with a twinkle in his eyes. ‘Have you ever been down to the houseboats?' he asked out of the blue as he placed his glass down on the table.

‘No,' she shook her head.

‘Fancy a look?' He stared straight into her eyes.

She looked coyly down at the floor. ‘No. It's freezing out there.'

‘C'mon,' he persisted, his voice low and cajoling. ‘Half of them are empty. We can just have a peek.' But the look in his eyes made it clear that peeking was the last thing on his mind. He grabbed their coats, took her by the hand and pulled her from the pub. She squealed, but she did not put up any resistance.

Outside the pub he put his arm around her shoulders and she snuggled up to him as they approached the small jetty leading down to the houseboats. A metal chain ran across it, which they climbed over with a quick, guilty look. The jetty was still slightly slippery from the icy night
before, so they walked down as carefully as their merriness would allow, reeling occasionally as they lost their footing and clinging to each other a little more tightly than they perhaps needed to.

It was quiet among the houseboats, and the couple stood in silence for a few moments, listening to the water lapping against the wooden slats. A hazy mist was falling, blurring the other side of the river, shrouding them in a blanket of seeming solitude. She lifted her face up to his and they kissed, their eyes closed.

As they drew away from each other, they smiled sheepishly. ‘Come on,' he said, pointing at a derelict-looking boat further down the jetty. ‘No one's ever there.'

‘I suppose this is where you bring all your women,' she suggested archly.

He put his hand to his chest. ‘You're the only one. Hand on heart,' he told her.

‘I don't believe you,' she replied as they climbed onto the boat. They clambered over the roof to the other side, where they could stand on the narrow deck out of the way of anyone else who might happen to be around. He stood with his back to the boat's railings as she approached him, kissed him once more and then rested her head on his shoulders.

And then she screamed.

‘What is it?' he asked, shocked by the sound, but she was too hysterical to answer him. He spun round and looked out. In the water, banging gently against the side of the boat, was a body. The bullet wound on the head had rendered it an almost unrecognizable mess, but the longish hair splayed out in the water and the clothes that she still wore indicated that it was the body of a
middle-aged woman. A magpie, braving the chilly waters in search of something to eat, sat on her head, pecking harshly at the pale wounded flesh.

The young man ran to the end of the boat, leaving his companion screaming with horror, grabbed the railings and vomited over the side.

The bird on the body flew away at the sound of his retching.

It had been a slow news day. Come to think of it, it had been a slow couple of weeks. Andy Summers, crime reporter on a national tabloid, had had quite enough of dredging up old stories that weren't really stories in the first place, of hanging round the courts hoping for a nugget of something printable. He was frustrated; more importantly, his editor was pissed off – he'd already received a bollocking in conference that morning, and he couldn't face another one tomorrow. This was the sort of run of bad luck that led to reporters being fired, and he knew it.

He had just finished making another fruitless round of calls to the same contacts in the Met and beyond, and they had all given him the same answer – ‘Nothing you'd be interested in, mate. Sorry.' Andy had a finely honed journalist's instinct and he knew when these people were fobbing him off – today they weren't. He was sitting at his desk fiddling with his pencil, only vaguely aware of the hubbub around him as his colleagues rushed about in an attempt to finalize the following day's paper, when his phone rang. It was Janet at reception, as bubbly sounding but as to-the-point as ever. ‘Hi, Andy, member of the public on the phone. Says he's got a story for you.'

Andy groaned inwardly. In his considerable experience, the average punter couldn't tell a story if it fell on them; but today he needed all the help he could get, so he took the call. ‘Andy Summers, crime desk.'

There was a pause at the other end of the line. ‘How much do you pay for a story?' His voice had a thick East End accent.

It was always the first question they asked, and the rules of engagement were that Andy never gave a proper answer. ‘Depends on the story, mate. What have you got?'

‘But you do pay?' His caller was obviously a rookie at this sort of thing.

‘Yeah,' Andy replied nonchalantly. ‘If we use it, we'll come to some sort of arrangement.'

The caller hesitated again. ‘All right,' he said finally. ‘You know that girl in the paper, the one caught running from the scene of the murder?'

It wasn't much of a description, but it had been such a quiet couple of days that Andy knew exactly who he meant. ‘Yes, I know the one.'

‘I can tell you who she is.'

Andy sat up a bit straighter – it sounded like this could be something after all. He'd better start turning on the charm. ‘Thanks for coming to me with this, er …'

‘Mike,' the caller said, audibly relaxing at Andy's change of tone. ‘I run the local pub in a village down in Surrey. You get to hear all the gossip.'

‘You don't sound like a Surrey boy,' Andy noted, his voice slipping into a mock Cockney accent as it often did when he was talking to people like this. His colleagues took the mickey when he did it, but it worked for him.

‘No, I moved down here a few years ago. Better class of customer, if you know what I mean.'

‘Of course. So who is it, then?'

‘Her name is Francesca Mills. She ran away from home about four years ago. Everyone thought she was dead, to be honest. Terrible business.'

Andy allowed the conversation a respectful silence before continuing. ‘So this girl's parents still live in the village, do they?' he asked.

‘The mother does. Father died years ago – before my time. She's remarried now, local Old Bill. Nice enough couple. Keep themselves to themselves a bit, especially since the girl ran off.'

Andy thought about what he was being told. ‘You realize that we need to go to the police with this, don't you?'

‘The police know,' Mike told him. ‘Apparently they've been round already.'

‘OK,' Andy said, jotting notes in a little pad. ‘Good. Tell me a bit more about the mother.'

‘Well, like I say, I don't see her much in here. Not short of a bob or two, though – nice big house, couple of cars.'

‘Sounds a bit grand on a copper's salary. What is he, chief commissioner?'

Mike laughed. ‘Nothing like,' he confided. ‘Word is, the first husband was worth a fair whack. Something in the city, don't know what. When he died all their insurances paid off. Course, it might all be rumours …' His voice trailed off a bit.

‘Of course.' Andy was not averse to the occasional rumour if it helped flesh things out. He continued to make notes, the cogs in his newshound's brain working
overtime. The story in his head was taking shape already: nice girl, well-to-do family, mother a housewife, stepfather a copper, she goes off the rails and ends up the prime suspect in a murder investigation. On the right day it could even be a splash. ‘Tell you what, Mike,' he told his informant, ‘I might come down and see you. Maybe you can show me the house.'

‘When were you thinking of?'

‘Well,' replied the reporter, looking at his watch. ‘What are you doing in about an hour's time?'

It took Andy and his photographer a bit longer than he had predicted to struggle through London and start following the directions Mike had given him, but he found his way to the pub soon enough. The Running Horses was a pretty place, with its thatched roof, old timber frame and limed walls, sitting serenely on one side of the village green opposite the church. The journalists ducked their heads as they walked through the low door into the small lounge bar. It was totally empty apart from a matronly woman behind the bar. ‘What can I get you, lads?'

‘Actually, we're here to see Mike.' Andy gave her his most winning smile as he sat on a stool.

The woman nodded. ‘Mike!' she shouted over her shoulder. ‘Someone to see you.'

The landlord was everything Andy had expected from talking to him on the phone. A large, thickset man, despite the cold weather he wore a T-shirt that revealed the faded pale blue tattoos up his arm. ‘Hello, Mike.' Andy proffered his hand across the bar. ‘This is Glenn, the photographer.'

‘All right, fellas,' Mike replied in his rough voice. ‘What can I get you, on the house?'

‘Nothing, really,' answered the reporter, eager to get the pleasantries out of the way. ‘Why don't we get on? Is the house far from here?'

‘Not at all,' he said, disappearing behind the bar and returning with a heavy coat. ‘I'll show you.'

As they trudged along the country lane, Andy started to ask his contact a few more questions. ‘So tell me how you found out about all this.'

‘Friend of Mrs Johnson's,' Mike replied shortly. He seemed to be less forthcoming than he'd been on the phone – a bit ashamed of what he was doing, perhaps. Andy decided that now was the time to spur him on a little.

‘I spoke to my editor,' he said. ‘Could be six grand in it for you, if the story hits the front page.'

Mike nodded his head slowly as they walked. ‘She comes in the pub quite often – the friend, I mean,' he continued. ‘Anyway, I overheard her telling someone that Mrs Johnson had told her all about it.' He chuckled to himself. ‘She's a bit of a gossip, old Sally. Anyway, here we are.' They stopped by a driveway. The large wooden gate was open and there was a small two-door convertible parked by the front door of the big house. There were a few lights on, suggesting somebody was in.

‘OK, Mike. Thanks very much. I'll take it from here and I'll be in touch.' He shook the landlord's hand.

‘You'll let me know, won't you? About the money, I mean.'

‘Course I will, Mike.' He smiled at him again.

Moments later Mike was walking back. ‘You're a sly fucker, do you know that?' Glenn said to his colleague.
‘Six grand!' He shook his head. ‘Six hundred quid more like.'

‘You never know,' Andy replied, smiling. ‘We might turn up something amazing. Can you get a decent shot from here of whoever answers the door?'

‘Should be fine, just so long as you stand to one side.'

‘No problem.' He fished out of his pocket the small Dictaphone that he always carried with him, and moments later he was knocking on the heavy door to the house. There was no answer at first, but then he heard footsteps coming down the stairs. The door opened slightly and a woman's face appeared in the crack.

Andy was used to the people he was doorstepping looking pretty awful – in his line of work he was more often than not interviewing people who had gone through something dreadful. This woman's eyes were raw from crying and had deep bags underneath them – a sure sign that she had not been sleeping. She wore an unflattering, baggy tracksuit and her hair was a mess. She looked at him rather blankly, as if unsure whether she was supposed to recognize him or not. ‘Mrs Johnson?' he asked gently.

The woman nodded her head.

‘My name's Andy Summers. I'm a reporter. I wonder if I could just ask you a few questions.'

Harriet looked at him in horror. ‘N-no …' she stammered. ‘No, I don't want to talk to the press.' She slammed the door in his face. Andy was used to this happening. He knocked on the door once more. When there was no reply he knocked again. ‘Go away, please,' Harriet's voice pleaded from inside.

‘Look, Mrs Johnson,' Andy persisted. ‘If you don't talk
to me now, I'm only going to stand on your doorstep until you do. This is your chance to tell your side of the story.' He tried to say it as sympathetically as possible, but it just sounded false.

There was no reply.

‘Honestly, all I want is five minutes of your time.' He did his best to make his voice sound reasonable.

‘My husband is a policeman,' Harriet told him, her voice wavering. ‘If you don't leave my property, I'll call him.'

‘Have you heard from Francesca, Mrs Johnson?' Andy ignored her threat.

‘No, no, I haven't. Look, I really don't want to talk about this.' Tears started to well up in her eyes.

‘I understand this must be very difficult for you, Mrs Johnson.' His voice was sympathetic now. ‘Is there any message you'd like to give to her if you could speak to her? We're a national newspaper – she's bound to read it.'

‘No. I mean, yes. I … I don't care what anyone says she's done, I just want her to come home.'

Andy could sense her loss, but he needed a picture to go with his story. He had to get her to open the door a little. ‘What I really want to know, Mrs Johnson,' he asked her, ‘is if this is the sort of thing you would ever have suspected Francesca of being capable of.'

The door swung open again, and Harriet looked at him in utter contempt. ‘Of course not,' she whispered. ‘She's my daughter. Now get off my property.' She slammed the door in his face.

Andy raised an eyebrow and cocked his head to one side before turning round and walking back down the driveway. ‘Did you get her?' he asked.