Relentless (33 page)

He sighed, and I saw his expression harden. 'You've been
through one hell of a lot in the past day. More than most people
will ever go through in their lives. You're lucky to be alive. So
was I. When they pulled me from the wreckage of my car, it was
touch and go. I didn't think I was so lucky at the time, though.
As soon as I heard what had happened to Mikaela, I wished I
was dead. No question. The six weeks I spent in that hospital,
lying there helpless while my injuries slowly healed, were the
worst of my life. The next six months, sat at home on sick leave
with all the reminders of our time together, weren't much better
either. But eventually I got back to work, I moved house ... I
moved on, I suppose. I still think about Mikaela every day. I still
wonder what would have happened if we'd stayed in that night,
how life would have turned out. Family, children, a house in the
suburbs. But I try not to dwell on it. Life goes on. You've got no
choice but to get on with it.'
'Is that how you got those scars? In the car accident?'
He nodded, touching a finger to the S-shaped pink slash that
ran above his jawline. 'A constant reminder,' he said. 'In case I
ever get too complacent.'
I took a last drag on my cigarette and chucked it out of the
open window. 'I think I'm going to change jobs,' I announced. 'I
hate being a fucking software sales manager.'
I thought of Wesley's oily smile and horseshit motivational
speeches, and remembered that today I'd shot a man, and that
somehow this meant that Wesley could never intimidate me
again. I imagined standing up during the next weekly sales
meeting and, instead of going through a list of frankly imaginary
current business prospects in the hope that they'd be enough
to appease him, simply announcing that I had none whatsoever,
and what's more I was quite happy with this state of affairs,

before sitting back down with a big grin on my face. I could
imagine the look of shock on his face as he realized that his
supreme authority as Vice-President Sales of Ezyrite Software
Services was being challenged, and that when it came down to it
he wasn't as charismatic, popular and invincible as he'd always
thought.
'Do you enjoy being a copper?' I asked Bolt.
He appeared to think about this for a few moments. 'I do
when I get a result, because then you can see that you're making
some sort of difference. But I don't like it when I can't get a
complete line on what's going on. When there are loose ends
that need tying up. Like this case. Why don't you fill me in on
what you know?'
'But if you're suspended, surely it won't make any difference.
I've already said everything I know in the interview.'
'Humour me,' he said. 'We've got a forty-five-minute drive
ahead of us.'
I was reluctant to go through the story again. I didn't much
like being reminded of all the details. But Bolt struck me as
the sort of man who didn't very easily take no for an answer,
and who would probably take my reluctance as a sign of guilt.
So I went through everything in chronological order, with him
regularly interrupting with perceptive questions.
When I'd finished he asked me why I thought Jack Calley
had called me even though we hadn't spoken in four years,
particularly as he was having an affair with my wife.
'He said he wanted me to help him.'
'What possible help could you provide? I don't mean that in a
derogatory way, but I don't see how you, a man ten miles away
from where he was being chased, could assist him in any way. If I
wasfeim, I would have dialled nine-nine-nine.'

I shrugged. 'So would I, but who knows what goes on in the
mind of someone in that situation?'
'Well, you must know,' he said. 'You've been in that position
several times over the past twenty-four hours and you've told me
that when you were being interrogated and threatened with
torture, if you'd known what the hell your interrogators wanted
you'd have told them everything straight away. But it sounds
like Jack didn't.'
'He got freed by Kathy. Then he made a break for it.'
'But he was tortured prior to that, and then, what did you say
was the last thing you heard him say on the other end of the
phone? Your address, wasn't it? He gave them your address.'
I nodded slowly. 'That's right.'
'Why? If what you say is true--'
'It is true.'
'If Calley had handed the key these men were looking for to
your wife, why not just tell them that your wife was in the house
with him? Why give them your address?'
I'd been thinking about this for a while today. 'My guess is he
was trying to protect her. Throwing them off her scent by
sending them to our house. Perhaps he thought that if he could
let me know what was going on, that they were after Kathy, I
could get her away from there.'
'Perhaps,' he mused, although something in his tone suggested
he wasn't entirely convinced.
I played Jack's final phone call over in my mind, and
wondered whether he'd been trying to warn me when he'd
shouted out my address to his pursuers. To let me know they
were coming so I could get out. The last act of a man who'd once
been my best friend. I liked to think so, but, as with everything
else, I couldn't be sure.

I decided it was time to ask Bolt a question since he clearly
had doubts about the reasons behind the call. 'You're the detective,'
I said. 'What do you think?'
'I think,' he answered, looking at me out of the corner of his
eye, 'that your wife's hiding something.'
I gave a humourless laugh. 'I think she's been hiding a lot of
things.'

55

Bolt cooked himself pasta sauce that evening - a slow dish of
tomatoes, Spanish ham from the local deli, fresh garlic and
spring onions, chilli and parmesan. He served it on a bed of
penne with a glass of dry Aussie Chardonnay on the side. He
tried to forget that he'd killed a man that morning. It wasn't
easy, but at least the food tasted good and the wine went
down well. He wondered what he was going to do now that
he was suspended. He'd missed his Dorset fishing trip; a few
days' salmon fishing in the west of Ireland to make up for it
sounded an attractive proposition. He knew he needed the
break, and thanks to his single status and the ultra-cheap rent on
his apartment he wasn't short of cash. He would have to make
himself available to the PCC, but that didn't mean that he had to
sit on his arse at home waiting for them to call. The speed they
usually worked, it would probably be August by the time
theyturned up with their reams of questions and stern, officious

stares. He might as well do something productive in the meantime.
But,
as he'd said to Tom Meron, he didn't like loose ends, and
elements of this case still bugged him. It also bugged him that he
was no longer privy to the information being garnered by the
various investigation teams. He was out in the cold. It made
trying to find the solution to what had happened - what the
safety deposit box actually contained, who the hell wanted its
contents so badly, and why - near enough impossible.
He finished the Chardonnay, and his thoughts turned to
Mikaela. He was surprised he'd told Meron as much as he had. It
wasn't like him to talk about what had happened that night.
He'd always preferred to take the exact opposite of the route the
bereavement counsellors recommended, and brood alone. But
he'd felt sorry for Meron, sitting in the passenger seat, his face
hollow with the shock of the seismic changes in his life, and the
loss that was a part of it. He hadn't told him everything, though.
There were secrets he kept that no-one would ever know. That
he hadn't wanted the child Mikaela was carrying, had still felt he
wasn't ready; how unsupportive he'd been as a husband in those
final weeks, even though he'd agreed to go through with starting
a family; how at the time he was in the habit of drinking at, or
occasionally above, the drink-drive limit when he was out for the
evening; and how he still wasn't sure whether or not he'd had
alcohol on that fateful night. How the couple whose house
they'd been at - Mikaela's friends Chris and Sharon - had
avoided him ever since the accident, and how he was never sure
whether or not they blamed him for what had happened. He
never told anybody about these things, or about the occasional
crippling attacks of guilt he experienced when he went over
them in his mind. Nor would he ever do so.

He felt an attack coming now, a leaden cloak of melancholy
that left unchecked would drag him down into a slow depression.
In an effort to stave it off, he walked over to the window and
looked down at the bright lights of the street below. It was
quieter than usual, being a Sunday evening, but people still
wandered up and down. A bus snaked past and stopped outside
the Feathers, the pub he drank in sometimes. Two young
couples disembarked, their laughter drifting up towards him,
and walked to the Thai place, thirty yards further down the road.
One of the girls leaned into her boyfriend and whispered something
in his ear. They kissed, and Bolt looked away, feeling like
an interloper.
He refilled his glass and took a long sip, wondering whether it
might be worth popping down to the Feathers for a couple of
pints. He knew the landlord pretty well and he was usually good
for a chat when the bar was quiet. He could do with the
company and it would help to take his mind off things.
His mobile rang. He went over to the table in the lounge area and picked it up.
It was Mo. 'Hello, boss, everything OK?' His voice seemed
flatter than usual, the tone cautious.
'Mo, how's it going?'
'I'm OK. I've been busy. What about you? I heard about the shooting this morning.'
'He had a gun,' Bolt said, maybe a little too quickly. 'I gave
him a chance to surrender.'
'DCS Evans says he's hoping you'll be back on duty soon.'
'Him and me both. I'm not the kind of person who likes sitting
around twiddling his thumbs. You made the call to the police
then, about the kids?'
'J»st like you said.'

Bolt knew his friend wanted to ask him how he'd come by the
information he'd called in, so he told him. 'The guy I shot told
me where the kids were. I shot him once in the belly when he
aimed his gun at me, and when he went down I asked him where
they were being held. He told me, but then he went for the gun
again. That's when I shot him a second time.'
'Why didn't you make the call yourself? And why did you
want it done anonymously?'
'I didn't have time to make it myself, and I didn't want people
asking me how I got the information. You're not meant to
interrogate a wounded man.'
There was a painful silence down the other end of the phone.
Bolt could tell Mo was having difficulty believing him. Finally,
he said: "The man you killed: fingerprint records confirm that
his name was David Harrison. He was an ex-soldier who got
involved in the Yugoslav conflict, and who was meant to have
been killed in Bosnia more than ten years ago, but obviously
wasn't. He had an old record for sexual assault, and was named
as a war crimes suspect by the UN in 1995. Apparently, he'd
been involved in several massacres of civilians. Meron said that
he was referred to by the men working for him as Lench, but we
can't find any record of anyone using that name or alias.'
'Do we know who he was working for?'
'From what we're hearing, his boss was a London-based
businessman called Paul Wise.'
'I've heard the name, but I don't know where from.'
'Probably from the Sunday Times Rich List. He's a seriously
wealthy guy, with some very aggressive ways of doing business.
Also, the body of another man was found in the burnt-out
wreckage of the house, and he's been ID'd through his DNA as
a Peter Mantani, an ex-con with a whole raft of convictions for

violence. Mantani's name appears on the payroll of a company
linked indirectly to Paul Wise. It's not a lot to go on, and it
wouldn't do a scrap of good in court, but it's something.'
It made sense to Bolt. The reason Lench had been so confident
when he'd thought he was going to be arrested was
because the person he worked for had a lot of power. Bolt now
remembered reading an article on Wise in one of the Sunday
papers several years earlier. It had detailed his steady rise to
becoming one of the UK's top self-made businessmen. The
reporter doing the story had dropped the odd vague hint that
there was a dark side to Wise's wealth, but Bolt had thought
little of it. There's no shortage of people out there whose money
comes from nefarious business dealings.
'Meron said something about being rescued by an undercover
guy from the NCS with the codename Daniels,' Bolt said. 'The
last he saw of Daniels was at their place in the New Forest. He
was taking on Lench and his cohorts. Do we know anything
about that?'
'There's been no undercover NCS operation against Paul
Wise,' said Mo. 'Whoever Daniels was, he definitely wasn't
NCS.'
'Strange.'
'Also, you ought to know that Kathy Meron gave a full and
detailed statement.'
Bolt felt an icy chill go up his spine. What did that mean
exactly? 'Are you able to tell me the details?'
'She confirmed that the man you shot had kidnapped their
two children and was armed and threatening to kill both of
them, as well as her and her husband, unless she revealed the
whereabouts of a key to a safety deposit box.' Bolt resisted
sighing with relief. So, Kathy hadn't put him in the shit either.

'She also told us that the deposit box contained a tape and a
laptop, both of which belonged to Calley.'
'Really? So she did know what was in it?'
'That's right, but she kept quiet because if the people after her
thought either she or her husband knew anything, she knew
they'd kill them.'
Bolt was intrigued. 'So, are you going to tell me? What was on
the laptop and tape that was so important?'
'According to Kathy, the tape contained a partial confession
from Tristram Parnham-Jones about his involvement in a child
abuse ring. The same one Gallan had been investigating. It also
named names, the majority of whom are dead, but including one
man who isn't.'
'And what's his name?'
'Paul Wise.'
'Jesus, so he's one of them as well. No wonder he wanted to
get his hands on that tape.'
'That's what it looks like,' answered Mo. 'But Kathy's admitted
she's never actually heard the tape. She just knew about what it
contained because Calley had told her. Apparently, all the details
of the allegations were held on the laptop. They'd been compiled
by Calley over a period of some months.'
'But Calley was Parnham-Jones's solicitor. What was he doing
putting together a case against his biggest client?'
Mo sighed. 'It seems that Jack Calley was one of that rare
breed: a lawyer with a conscience. When John Gallan first went
to his superiors in January, they did start a formal investigation
into Parnham-Jones, and obviously the Lord Chief Justice
involved his solicitor. Although the investigation was dropped a
few weeks later due to lack of evidence, Kathy Meron says that
Calley became convinced of his client's guilt and that the fact