Capital Punishment (38 page)

He came up off the tow path just before the thousand-yard-long Islington Tunnel, headed down Duncan Street, and turned left into Angel tube station.

He’d been going to head west but now, in a moment of inspiration, decided to go up to Hampstead. He would make the call from the heath. It would relax him. He’d be on his home turf, having done his training at the Royal Free Hospital.

The lift regurgitated him out of the Hamsptead bowels in more or less the same state as he’d gone in. A bitter wind was blowing down the high street and here there was a totally different class of Londoner, leaving an upmarket bakery with their wholemeal bread and boxed cheesecake. He ducked down the narrow lane of Flask Walk, past the pub. Wouldn’t have minded a pint of Young’s to give him courage. In fact, what the hell? He went up to the bar, ordered a Bushmills and a pint of bitter. He sunk the whisky and sucked down half the pint. This had been a good idea. His nerve started to creep back. He ordered another Bushmills, threw it down followed by the other half of bitter. He now felt as if he had a whole platoon of mates with him and they were going to take on all-comers, and win.

It was 4.00 p.m. by the time he crossed East Heath Road and headed down the tree-lined path onto the heath. Here there were people, insulated by big, puffy, quilted coats, walking their dogs. A muscly Jack Russell in a red woolly jacket trotted jauntily past him, while a heavy black lab staggered ponderously behind its owner, who was in no better condition. Two women joggers with pony tails and legs reddened by the cold huffed past, the one telling the other how kundalini yoga was changing her life.

How had he got himself into this state? Why wasn’t he still a nurse, heading for a new shift and the certainty of doing good, and pay day with pints in the hospital bar with the lads? Putting a bullet into the back of the cabbie’s head flashed sharp in his mind. His father, a postman, had told him at sixteen years old, after a run-in with the police: always resist the temptation to take the first step down, because that will give you your momentum.

That first step down had been stealing drugs to make a bit of money, and now he’d killed two people. But why? He looked up into the cathedral roof of bare branches above his head. He’d asked to work with Skin. That was it. And, by then, he knew what Skin was about. There was something in him that had been inexorably drawn to Skin’s aura of indestructability.

Maybe he should call it all off. Disappear into a new life. He had that bit of money from the cabbie, two grand as he stood now. That would fly him somewhere else, away from the madness.

But he didn’t stop and turn. It seemed to have been established somewhere that he was going to make this call to Isabel Marks and he was powerless to arrest the momentum of fate, even though it seemed to have disaster written all over it. As he arrived at the park bench on Parliament Hill, overlooking the city lights thrown out across the horizon, glinting in the gun-metal blue-grey of the finishing day, the setting sun dipped below the cloud cover and shed a pink-orange light across the city. In the east, on Canary Wharf, the skyscraper of One Canada Square picked it up in its glass frontage and stood there like a vertical gold ingot, saying: ‘I’m yours, claim me.’

Possibly it was that inspirational sight, plus the two Bushmills and the pint of Young’s, that jogged Dan’s elbow. He sat down on the bench and made the call.

‘Isabel Marks?’ he said confidently. ‘I just wanted to tell you that your daughter is not only alive and well, but in very good health, given the strain she’s been under.’

‘I’m so glad you’ve called,’ said Isabel. ‘I’ve been worried sick. I couldn’t think what had happened. You’re more then five hours past your last deadline. Has there been a problem, Dan?’

‘What did you say?’

‘Dan. You
are
Dan? The nurse?’ said Isabel. ‘I’m so relieved my daughter is in the professional and caring hands of an NHS nurse.’

Silence. The confidence trembled in his guts. He could feel its inclination to dissipate like a bad dose of diarrhoea. He clasped his right side with his left hand as if this might keep him psychologically together.

‘Did you get the money?’ he asked.

‘We haven’t been able to raise five million pounds, even with the extra time you’ve given us. I told you that was going to be difficult. My ex-husband thinks that would take another five working days to put that sort of cash together.’

‘What have you got now?’

‘So far we have eighty thousand pounds.’

‘You know what that means, don’t you?’

‘We’re doing everything we can, but, you know ... banks.’

‘That means you’re four million nine hundred and twenty thousand short.’

‘At the moment. We just need more time,’ said Isabel. ‘But I suppose you’re not in a position where you can wait, are you?’

‘I’ll tell you what I
can
do that might make the process move on a little quicker,’ said Dan, the pressure bringing out some nastiness in him. ‘Something that might encourage your ex-husband to be a little more demanding when he goes to see the manager of his extensive funds.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Give me your address.’

‘Why?’

‘I want to send you something.’

She gave the address.

‘How are you going to send it?’ she asked. ‘I mean, the mail these days. We’re not going to get that before Thursday, and if you courier it, you’re going to expose yourself to all sorts of dangers.’

Dan couldn’t get over how rock-solid she was. Nothing was getting through to her. He felt a tremendous desire to slap her down. Could just imagine her as the sort of person who’d come out of that stupid bakery with a fucking box of cake in her hands.

‘You don’t seem to be interested in what I’m going to send you to help you speed up this business of getting the money together to save your fucking
daughter
?’

‘
I
don’t need
any
motivation to speed up the process. Nor does my ex-husband,’ she said, gabbling with fear now, not wanting to know under any circumstances what he was going to send her. ‘It’s just that he doesn’t have liquid funds in the UK at the moment. He has to sell assets and he has to find buyers for them, which isn’t always easy. Once they’re sold, the money has to be transferred. That takes three working days in this country. When the funds are available, they have to be made into actual cash, the used twenties you’ve asked for, not just numbers on a computer screen. That means that Securicor vans have to go all over London picking up the money and bringing them to a central location. Each time the cash goes from one place to another, it has to be processed. That means counted and verified. That’s not going to happen before the weekend. So, you see, it’s not me dragging my feet. I want my daughter back more than anything else in the world. It’s just that the world of finance doesn’t move at the same speed as my maternal longings, or your needs.’

‘But,’ said Dan, enraged by her uninterruptible gibbering, ‘if I sent you her finger in the post, or I arranged for it to be dropped at your house, not her little finger, but the index finger of her right hand. I mean, it wouldn’t be an act of butchery. I know how to do these things. I’ve been a theatre nurse. I would give her a local anaesthetic, cut it off at the knuckle neatly and I’d cauterise the wound and give her antibiotics. Do you think that might just persuade your husband to go to his bank and say, I have to BORROW this fucking money NOW?’

Dan cut the line. He had no idea if they had the ability to track him, but he wasn’t taking risks. Now he’d let her stew for a bit, calm himself down, too, and then see if he couldn’t squeeze a bit more out of her than eighty measly grand.

‘Listen to you,’ he said, out loud. ‘Eighty fucking grand. That’s better than the poxy shit you were getting for selling your prescription drugs. The hundred quid here and there that you did three years for in Wandsworth. Thank fuck for Bushmills.’

He jumped to his feet with both arms raised as if he’d won something. There was nobody on the heath, only the ravens crashing through the darkening sky on their way to some rooky wood. His face was hot, even in the bitter wind, and his fingers fumbled numbly with the mobile as he changed the SIM card, chucked the old one in a bin nearby. He breathed back the stress, looking out over the city once more. The gold ingot on Canary Wharf had disappeared. Night was falling and it made him feel bolder. He wiped tears from the corners of his eyes and clenched his fist, punched the air as if he was delivering killer blows to someone who was already down.

‘That was brilliant,’ said Boxer. ‘Absolutely perfect. I’m proud of you.’

Isabel said nothing. She was lying back on the sofa, totally spent. Her stomach muscles had gone into a strange spasm, as if her emotional state, with no vocal outlet, had chosen to erupt from her quivering guts.

‘I’m done,’ she said. ‘I’m completely wiped out.’

‘No, you’re not. You’ve only just started. He’s going to call back. In minutes. I promise you. And you’re going to show him how strong you are. Again. No backing down. You can give him the next twenty grand if you want to. Just remember: he’s desperate. He might sound bold but we know the time pressure he’s under. I think he might be a little drunk, too. There was a thickness to his voice that wasn’t there before. Now sit up, Isabel.’

She sat up straight, looked him in the eye.

‘Where is fucking Chico?’ she said murderously.

‘Exactly, that’s more like it. I’ll call him.’

Boxer tried D’Cruz’s mobile: not available, left a message. He sent a text, too. WE NEED YOU HERE WITH THE MONEY NOW!

Isabel sobbed quietly to herself, hands holding her forehead, occasionally blurting great hunks of emotion that came out as if she were choking on them. He held her by her shoulders at arms’ length.

‘There isn’t a chance in hell that he’ll carry out his threats. He’s built himself up to be bold and aggressive, but it is not in his nature.’ ‘You said he’d killed somebody already. I saw the draft press release. They’ve both killed people.’

‘They’ve killed other criminals, under orders from Archibald Pike. You don’t know the circumstances. He might have felt he
had
to do it, and he would have been under pressure from Skin, who’s probably a different animal altogether,’ said Boxer. ‘There’s a big difference to dealing with a hostage. First of all, you want a hostage alive in order to get your money. Second, in looking after your hostage, as Dan has told us he’s been doing, you form a relationship, which means, third, carrying out your threats becomes more difficult and, anyway, takes time. You were brilliant to point out how he would expose himself by using a courier.’

‘That’s what you told me to say.’

‘But you said it. You brought it into your spiel as if it was yours
and
under extreme duress,’ said Boxer, releasing her shoulders, taking her hands in his. ‘You’re doing better than I could possibly have hoped.’

‘I should have listened to you.’

‘You did and you stepped up to the plate and delivered.’

‘I mean, you were right. Somebody else should be doing this. It’s too ... too ... visceral for me.’

‘But you
are
doing it and you’re going to finish it,’ said Boxer, looking into her eyes. ‘Remember, you’re acting a part. It’s a tough role, but you’ve found the resilience in yourself to carry it off. Take a grip of the iron bar of will in your middle and don’t let this little shit, Dan, get the upper hand.’

The phone rang. Boxer gripped her hands to stop her from reaching out. He kissed them, let them go. She didn’t leap for the phone.

‘You can tell him about the other gangs and the police now if you feel you have to.’

She looked at the phone with practiced cool and let it ring twice more.

‘Hello, Dan,’ she said, staring into Boxer’s eyes.

‘I’m just limiting my call times in case you’re tracking me.’

‘We haven’t got that sort of equipment here.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure,’ said Dan. ‘Your husband must have a triple A credit rating with any number of banks. All he has to do is go and see the manager and arrange for a temporary loan until he can sell whatever he has to sell. I’m sure someone who’s worth four and a half billion dollars has heard of that. I mean, I’m a penniless ex-nurse and
I’ve
heard of that.’

‘He just called after you rang off. He’s raised another twenty thousand and he’s on his way here with it,’ said Isabel. ‘That’s money he’s taken from current accounts and borrowed from friends in London and it’s the limit for what he can do tonight. I realise it’s difficult for you to give us more time considering the pressure you’re under.’

‘Who said I was under any pressure?’

‘I understand there are a lot of people looking for you at the moment. The East End gang you stole Alyshia from, and friends of the two men you shot in Grange Road. Somebody’s also told me that you should take a look at the evening news. If not the six o’clock on BBC, then the seven o’clock on Channel Four, or maybe Sky News, at any time. What I’m offering you is one hundred thousand pounds right now. You tell me the place and I’ll have a family friend deliver it to you. It could all be over in an hour or two if you’ll accept—’

‘Don’t worry about us, Mrs Marks. We’re
very
safe. Your daughter is in a place where nobody, not even the London rat population, could hear her scream. So don’t go concerning yourself that we might be found by anyone,’ said Dan.

‘Wait,’ she said, but he’d already gone.

Boxer was relieved that Dan had hung up. He could feel Isabel edging towards cracking point. One more exchange and she might have fallen. Now she lay on her side, facing into the sofa, shoulders heaving. Boxer called Fox. The calls were being automatically transferred to the Ops room.

‘You sound tense,’ said Boxer. ‘I thought I was the one who was supposed to be tense.’

‘You’re not here,’ said Fox quietly.

Boxer heard his breathing and footsteps as he moved away from other voices in the background.

‘Problem?’ he asked.

‘DCS Makepeace has just done what he wanted to do from the outset. He’s taken over the kidnap. He says the circumstances have changed and that this is now a SCD7 operation. I’ve just had the Commissioner of the Met on the line to confirm it to me. They still want you involved, but you’re no longer the official consultant on this case.’