Stealing People (26 page)

25

10.30, 17 January 2014

Wilton Place, Belgravia, London

‘First of all, I want everybody here to confirm that the preparation of their contribution to the kidnappers’ demand for expenses is in process,’ said
DCS
Hines. ‘We’ve just heard that we will be given instructions for delivery of the money at 16.00 hours and that it must be in position by 18.00, which corresponds with the height of London rush hour. Ideally we would like each individual contribution ready by lunchtime so that we can bring it all together in one place with time to spare. It’s going to be a high-security operation and we are going to need every minute of those two hours to position the money.’

‘Where is the central collection point going to be?’ asked Ken Bass.

‘We’ve decided on New Scotland Yard. It’s secure, and centrally located for all the banks and for wherever the kidnappers decide they want it sent,’ said Hines. ‘If anybody is having trouble putting together their twenty-five million, we should know now. Can we have a show of hands from anybody experiencing difficulty?’

Hines sensed an atmosphere of subterranean belligerence from the billionaires around the table. Uttar Sarkar and Sergei Yermilov had their arms firmly folded and their chins tucked into their chests. Ken Bass, in a white shirt and sports jacket, no tie, was looking around trying to find another person at the table as intelligently frustrated as he was. Pfeiffer, in three-piece suit and tie, was staring into the highly polished dining room table tapping a pen up and down through his finger and thumb, which was annoying the sizeable figure of Anastasia Casey, hair down to her shoulders as wild as a pro wrestler’s, who had the edge of the table gripped in both hands as if she might be about to turn it over. Only Wú Dao-ming, who was sitting very still, hands folded in her lap, looked in any way forlorn.

‘I think everybody’s agreed here,’ said Bass, ‘that, having seen the brutality of the kidnappers, we should do everything in our power to comply with their demands.’

‘You should know,’ said Hines, ‘that the way the kidnappers have asked for such a quantity of money to be delivered is very unusual. We’ve consulted around the world on this matter and none of the current experts have been able to work out what’s going on here. The kidnappers will necessarily have to expose themselves, and that will give us an opportunity, which we are well prepared to take.’

‘But not at any risk to our loved ones,’ said Bass. ‘I think I’m speaking for everybody here when I say that we are very happy with the way Ryder Forsyth has been handling the kidnappers, but what we need to know is how the Metropolitan Police are doing making progress with finding our children.’

‘We were hoping for a free flow of information between ourselves and the
CIA
,’ said Hines. ‘As it happens, that has been one-way traffic. We have given all the information we’ve gathered, which, I might add, has been quite considerable. Colonel Forsyth’s working relationship with our special investigator DI Mercy Danquah has been excellent by all accounts. We have captured one kidnapper and another is presently wounded and under armed guard in the ICU of the Royal London Hospital. I also understand that a British army intelligence officer, who DI Danquah identified as being involved in some way, is currently being interviewed after an incident in Afghanistan. Despite our extremely assiduous investigations and all-round effective communication, we have had precious little – in fact nothing – in return from the
CIA
. So perhaps your fellow American, Ray Sutherland of the
CIA
, would like to take the floor and explain that to us.’

DCS
Hines sat down feeling righteous, expecting to see the
CIA
crash and burn in front of Ken Bass. Sutherland, though, was looking surprisingly cocky, which was at odds with how he’d been feeling on the inside since the name Conrad Jensen had been associated with this series kidnap. Had he been given the floor half an hour ago, it would have been a pitiful sight. As it was, earlier this morning he had been furnished with a photograph of the injured man being held in the Royal London and they had been able to identify him. It didn’t make him feel any easier, but at least he wasn’t going to look foolish.

‘We have been conducting extensive research into the personnel used by US
PMSC
s and in that process we have been able to narrow down the number of operatives who could possibly have had associations with Conrad Jensen to fifty men and women. When we received the photo ID of the wounded man, we were able to immediately identify him as Chuck Powell.

‘Chuck Powell and Conrad Jensen worked together in an interrogation team in a black site just outside Rabat in Morocco from 2003 to 2006. Obviously that was not continuous employment and there were changes of personnel in that team over those years. What we do know is that Jensen and Powell always worked together and we deduce from this that they were close friends as well as associates. We think Powell would be part of the inner core of this kidnap gang and we would urgently like to interview him.’

‘He’s still unconscious,’ said Hines. ‘He had a massive internal bleed from a knife wound. The doctors won’t commit as to when we’ll be able to talk to him.’

‘As a result of focusing our attention on ex-colleagues of Conrad Jensen and looking at dates given to us by the UK Border Agency, we have now been able to identify three other possible suspects who were in the UK at the time of the kidnappings.’

While Sutherland handed out a sheet with mug shots of the three suspects, Hines glanced down at his mobile phone. A text from Mercy told him she was on her way with a team from the kidnap unit and Special Firearm Command to the Old Vinyl Factory in Hayes, believed to be where the hostages were held, but from which they had probably now been moved. Hines took great pleasure in announcing this to the gathering. The buzz amongst the police and intelligence officers left the victims’ families bemused.

‘Can somebody tell us the significance of this announcement?’ asked Uttar Sarkar.

‘Moving hostages is a very difficult thing to do,’ said Hines. ‘The gang is opening themselves up to maximum exposure. It enormously increases our chances of finding where they’re keeping them. We’re also hoping that their exit from this hiding place was as a result of our outside pressure and that they will have left evidence and therefore clues in their rush to vacate the premises.’

Ray Sutherland sat back, glad to feel the spotlight retrained elsewhere.

Mercy and Papadopoulos were on their way to the Old Vinyl Factory in Hayes. She called Boxer, who filled her in on how he’d come by the information.

‘We need to talk to them,’ she said.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ said Boxer, and told her about the Rylances’ additional task later this evening.

Mercy glanced over at Papadopoulos, who was driving, following the convoy at high speed through west London.

‘OK, how’s that going to play out?’

‘I’m going to handle it,’ said Boxer. ‘I’m going to deal with the situation as you asked me to do.’

‘Do you think that’s strictly necessary?’

‘You’ll never work again if I don’t.’

Mercy closed her eyes at the thought of what she was sanctioning.

‘Where are they now?’

‘Sitting on the floor of their living room,’ said Boxer, gun in one hand, glancing into the room from the corridor.

‘Does anybody else know about this?’

‘I only know about it because I listened to the news this morning and I knew things from what I witnessed last night,’ said Boxer. ‘When I saw them searching the site for the phone I thought I was going to hit a dead end, then I got lucky.’

‘The injured man has been named by the
CIA
as a
PMSC
operative called Chuck Powell.’

‘Doesn’t mean anything to me, but the Rylances might know something.’

‘I’ll let you know what we find in the Old Vinyl Factory.’

Mercy hung up as they arrived at the factory site.

‘Who was that?’ asked Papadopoulos.

‘One of my informers.’

‘I realised that.’

‘This one’s deep cover. Nobody knows about him. And it’s going to stay like that.’

The local police were pointing them away from the part of the factory earmarked for redevelopment, down to the other end of the eighteen-acre site. Police presence was even stronger there, and ID had to be shown. They parked up. The Special Firearm Command Unit were looking at a map of the site and deciding how they were going to go in: two through the main entrance and two via the old loading bay.

The men went in. Mercy and Papadopoulos sat on the car bonnet, watching, along with thirty or more silent policemen. A cold wind was blowing, buffeting the huddled figures with fierce gusts. Mercy sank into the collar of her coat, rammed her gloved hands into the pockets. Everybody flinched and ducked as they heard two distinct but muffled explosions. Mercy and Papadopoulos stood up from the car and ran towards the building

‘Call an ambulance,’ shouted Mercy.

As they reached the entrance, they met the men coming out. They were all relaxed, brushing themselves off, shaking their heads and laughing nervously.

‘Take a look,’ they said.

They went into the high-roofed warehouse with its rusted triangular steel beams. It was like being on the inside of a snow globe. The air was full of white feathers. In the middle of the floor were two boxes with their lids blown off.

‘What the fuck?’ said Papadopoulos.

‘Very seasonal,’ said one of the officers.

‘They’re taking the piss now,’ said Mercy. ‘Not sure we’re going to get anything out of this.’

She walked through the space to the line of offices at the far end, stripped off her leather gloves, put on latex and opened a door. There was a smell of bleach. Sitting in a chair was a rag doll frog, legs crossed, looking pleased with itself. Sophie’s Zach, thought Mercy. There was a note pinned to his chest:
Proof of life?

In the other offices were personal items from each of the hostages: a piece of jewellery, a neck chain, a bracelet, an engraved watch, a personalised mobile phone. Mercy told Papadopoulos to collect them up and have them delivered to Wilton Place, where the meeting was still going on.

‘We’ve got our work cut out trying to find anything under this lot,’ he said.

‘It wasn’t just a joke,’ said Mercy, tearing off her gloves. ‘You know what to do.’

‘You’re leaving me with all this shit?’ said Papadopoulos.

‘That’s what happens. I get the nice jobs, you get the … not so nice jobs,’ said Mercy. ‘You could start by finding out the type of feathers and who could supply that sort of quantity.’

‘And what are you going to do?’

‘Pursue other lines of inquiry.’

‘With that informer?’

‘Could be.’

‘Why all the secrecy?’ asked Papadopoulos. ‘We’ve hardly done any work together on this one. What’s going on?’

Mercy went up to him, looked him hard in the eye, piercing right the way through to the back.

‘Mercy?’ he said, frowning.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Just checking. I’ll take the car.’

His eyes followed her all the way. She nodded to him as she got in, reversed out of the parking space. At the first set of traffic lights, she texted Boxer for a postcode and street number. He sent it, asking her if she thought it was wise to come. She ignored the question, tapped the postcode into the sat nav and drove.

She writhed at every set of lights and at times found herself close to tears. What had happened to her? She’d always been so sure of herself, or at least so sure of that one thing about herself. She knew she had great potential to be an emotional mess; the darkness in her childhood, her broken, downcast mother, the cruelty of her father had all contributed to that. But the one thing that had held her together through all the years of neediness with Charlie, the uncertainty of Amy’s paternity, the terrible conflict with her daughter, the endless battle of the job, was that at least she had something inside her cast in steel. It was possibly the only thing that she had taken on board from her father: an unshakeable morality.

And now?

The way she’d given in so easily. Sitting there with Charlie in the café with all the comfortable people sipping their espressos and telling him, yes, do it, kill them all. But now they’re real, sitting on the floor of a living room in Lewisham, waiting for the word. So that she can carry on working in the kidnap unit? So that nobody finds out that she’s having an affair with a known fence from Brixton?

And how had it come to pass that she’d accepted the unacceptable about Charlie? Had she gone through some process of justification without being aware of it? She remembered lying in bed next to him after he’d come back from Iraq, knowing that he’d killed people: soldiers as innocent as him who just happened to be on the wrong side. She’d asked him how he coped with it and he’d shrugged and said:

‘You step over a line when you join the army.’

What line had she just stepped over?

She parked in an adjacent street and walked round to the address Boxer had sent her. She had plastic cuffs with her as requested. Boxer opened the door, let her in, stepped back quickly to keep an eye on his captives. She gave him the ties and he cuffed the Rylances together, lying down with linked arms behind their backs.

Boxer handed over the mobile phone.

‘Any numbers on there you need traced?’

‘It’s been remotely wiped so you’re going to have to recover the data, but I’m sure you’ve got people who can do that,’ said Boxer. ‘Somebody from the kidnap gang is due here to collect it.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘You’re going to deal with him – or her – too?’ she said, under her breath.

Boxer looked at her steadily.

‘I’ll spell it out for you if you like,’ he said.