You Will Never Find Me (48 page)

‘I know you don't want to tell me,' he said.

‘She had a stroke in hospital,' said Mercy. ‘You know what that is?'

‘It's a blood clot in the brain,' said Sasha. ‘People die from that.'

‘They moved her into intensive care and she was stable,' said Mercy. ‘Then there was a big car crash on the motorway and they needed places in the unit so, because she was stable, they moved her out.'

Sasha looked up to the ceiling and nodded.

‘I know what you're going to say now,' he said.

‘She had a heart attack and they couldn't revive her,' said Mercy. ‘I'm really sorry, Sasha.'

‘Was my dad there when she died?'

Mercy shook her head. Sasha sobbed so violently that his shoulders came off the trolley. She hugged him to her and he cried into her neck until he fell back exhausted.

‘She always said she didn't want to die alone,' said Sasha, quietly. ‘And I promised her she wouldn't.'

 

Bobkov picked up the phone in Wireless Up the Junction and waited there for nearly half an hour until a call told him to head down the hill to Clapham Junction and take a bus towards Wandsworth. He boarded a 156 but was told to get off at the first stop on St. John's Hill. It was getting dark as they took him through the streets onto Battersea Rise and then alongside Wandsworth Common. Fortunately MI5 had included a dog walker among their agents so that when Bobkov took one of the paths that headed into the darkness of the common they could bring him in without raising any suspicion.

At 19:35 Makepeace got the full report of what had happened in the house on Milnthorpe Road and called James Kidd to tell him that Sasha was now safe, that they had two men in custody and one dead. Kidd thanked him for the update.

‘It means you can abort your operation,' said Makepeace. ‘We have two people for you to interrogate. You don't have to put Bobkov in danger's way.'

‘The operation is already under way. We have no way of communicating with Bobkov,' said Kidd. ‘Where's the boy?'

‘He's been taken to Charing Cross Hospital,' said Makepeace. ‘Why can't you send in one of your agents and tell him it's all over?'

‘Thanks for keeping me informed,' said Kidd. ‘Much appreciated.'

‘You do realise that if anybody calls Milnthorpe Road now, they will no longer get a reply. That could put Bobkov in serious danger.'

‘Has anybody called any of the phones you've recovered from the scene?'

‘Not yet,' said Makepeace. ‘We're not getting anything from the captured Russians. Not a word.'

‘They won't say anything,' said Kidd. ‘Let me know if anybody calls those mobiles you've taken. It will have an impact on the operation.'

Bobkov had walked past the tennis courts and was then instructed to go to the middle of the cricket ground. It was dark now and felt darker out on the expanse of open field, with only the lights and traffic of Trinity Road some way off. Bobkov was nervous. The hand carrying the case was sweating. The heat from his body was rising from the front of his coat into his face and he could smell his own fear. He knew what was coming. He was on his own now. None of the agents had dared come with him. The dog walker had kept to the lighted path in front of some houses overlooking the common. The dog was off the lead but didn't fancy it out in the distant dark. Bobkov felt the profound loneliness of his situation, as if he was enduring a metaphor of the last ten years.

 

The Russian captives remained silent. At 19:47 one of the mobiles recovered from the house on Milnthorpe Road rang. An MI5 agent answered it but said nothing. A voice asked for Evgeny. The agent said that Evgeny wasn't available. The phone went dead. The agent called Kidd and Makepeace immediately.

 

Bobkov came back into the light. The first glow of the ugly orange street lamps on Trinity Road almost warmed him. He stepped onto the pavement and was instructed to cross the four lanes of heavy traffic. He thought this could be the perfectly absurd ending to an unreal existence—flattened by a truck mid-operation.

He was directed away from the blast of the traffic and past Wandsworth Prison before being sent down a maze of residential streets to Garratt Lane. They were reeling him in. He felt he was close to the end now as they sent him up towards Wandsworth High Street, past the supermarket and across the road into the Southside shopping centre.

Bobkov had always hated shopping centres, but this one seemed to have a particular ruthlessness to it, with no attempt made by the architects to ease the experience of financial stripping. He walked the glassy surface of the polished floor wincing at the neon. He was sent up the escalator to the food court and the cinema complex.

There was a vast throng of people queuing to see the latest blockbusters including a young Asian contingent after tickets for a Bollywood romantic comedy. Yes, he wouldn't have minded a bit of love and laughter himself.

The crowd engulfed him, the roar of London chat, the smell of food wafting in from the fried chicken joints, and the phone went suddenly dead. He stopped to look at it. There was still battery power. The screen was functioning. He raised his head in time to see the crowd parting, as if something biblical was in train, and a man in jeans, a navy-blue zip-up jacket and a Knicks cap closed on him. His arm came up. Bobkov dropped the briefcase as two colossal hammer blows smacked into his chest, and he was falling backwards and the London chat had turned to screams, and where before space had seemed impossible now there was half an acre around him and the smell of popcorn was strong in his nostrils until it wasn't.

B
oxer was in a greasy spoon in West Ham. The place was now empty. He'd been there for more than an hour. He went to the toilet at the back of the café. As he relieved himself two men came in, stood behind him and told him to keep looking at the wall. He finished, zipped up and one of the men put a mask over his eyes and wound gaffer tape twice around his head. He told Boxer to put his hands behind his back and the other cuffed him. They searched him, found the money and took it. They walked him out of the toilet and further into the back of the café and then out into the open air. They told him to get into the boot of a car.

After an hour the car pulled up. A chain was unthreaded from a metal gate. The car moved forward before reversing, and the roar of the metropolis receded. The boot opened. Two men pulled him out and walked him down the length of a building to a door at the end, which they unlocked. They pushed him through and he hit the wall of an alleyway that was too narrow for both men to walk either side of him. They took him down some steps and into a narrow corridor. They pushed him to the end into a small room on his left.

‘Who's that?' asked Amy.

‘It's me, Amy,' said Boxer.

‘Dad?' she said, which was the first time in years she'd called him that.

Dennis pushed past him into the room.

‘Your dad, he's doing a very fine thing for you, little girl.'

‘I'm not a little girl,' she said without conviction.

‘I'll leave you alone. Please don't try anything stupid. It'll just mean you both get killed.'

‘Wait,' said Boxer. ‘You and I had an agreement. I said I would hand myself in with thirty grand, and you promised me that my daughter would be released. You gave me your word.'

‘I did. And that is what is going to happen, but only after we've concluded our business here. If I release her now she can go straight to the police—her mother, for instance.'

‘She shouldn't be anywhere near here when . . . 
he
arrives,' said Boxer. ‘You know what he's like.'

‘There's nowhere else for her to go. She stays here. We'll put her in another room.'

‘He shouldn't even see her. He shouldn't know about her,' said Boxer.

‘She'll be fine. I'll make sure of it,' said Dennis. ‘Now take some time together.'

He closed the door.

‘I'm blindfolded,' he said.

‘Me too,' said Amy. ‘I'm on the bed, tied to it.'

He edged forward, hit the metal frame with his knee. He sat down, hands still behind his back and gave her leg an affectionate squeeze.

‘Give us a kiss, Dad. I need a kiss.'

He knelt down, shuffled forward, leaned over, found her cheek and kissed her. He rested his face against hers.

‘You're going to be all right,' he said.

‘What's going on?' she whispered in his ear.

‘It's complicated,' said Boxer, ‘and it's best you don't mess your head up with it. All you need to know is that I offended a Colombian gangster in Madrid. He wants revenge and he's reeled me in by kidnapping you. As the bloke said, you're going to be released.'

‘And what's going to happen to you?'

‘We'll see.'

‘Listen to me,' she said, and he put his ear close to her lips, felt the terror in her body. ‘I tried to escape when there was just one guy looking after me. He uncuffed me so I could go to the loo and I hit him, tore off my mask and saw his face.'

‘And he knows you saw it?'

‘Yes, he's one of their drug dealers,' said Amy. ‘He came to see me before he left and said he hadn't told them, but I don't know. I think he'd have had to. Couldn't risk it. And if he did tell them, they won't let me go and they'll . . . they'll . . . '

‘Don't worry. Keep calm,' he said, kissed her on the cheek again and forced himself to say, ‘Everything is going to be fine.'

 

The paramedics had told Mercy she couldn't come into A & E with them. They'd dropped her outside the front of the hospital. After an emotional goodbye she'd felt an almost maternal wrench as she left Sasha in the back of the ambulance.

She'd then had to drive at speed, with a blue flashing light on the roof, all the way across London to get to Holloway police station in time for the start of DI Max Hope's interview. She tried calling Boxer on the way, but his phone was switched off.

The preliminaries were just winding up as she was shown into the observation room. She wasn't sure if she was going to be able to stand watching someone else interview a suspect whose information she needed so desperately. She stood with her face up close to the window and observed Lomax, tried to work him out. He wasn't looking good. He was unshaven and clearly hadn't slept. But there was intelligence in his eyes and a belligerence in his manner. This might be a tough nut to crack.

‘Now, you can lie to me about the contents of this little plastic bottle,' said DI Hope, holding up the evidence bag with the phial of liquid GHB found in Lomax's coat pocket, ‘but it won't help you. We'll do the analysis and we'll find out the contents. The same applies to this little bag of white rocks.'

‘GHB and crack,' said Lomax. ‘I use them when I go clubbing.'

‘What's the GHB for? To spike girls' drinks?'

‘I'm not a creep,' said Lomax. ‘I use it to get high.'

‘Where were you last night?'

‘Out.'

‘At the Andover Estate?'

‘I've never been to the Andover Estate in my life.'

‘Never?'

‘Never. Not my part of town.'

‘Which part of town is that?'

‘I don't know because I've never been there.'

‘But you know it's not your part of town so you must know where it is.'

‘No. I only know where it isn't.'

‘Tel says he was with you at the Andover Estate last night.'

‘Who's Tel?'

‘Terence Mumby. Your partner in crime last night.'

‘Never heard of him, so he must be lying.'

‘The two of you were seen carrying a girl between you and putting her into a car which we've since found out was a silver VW Golf GTI registration LG 59 KFC.'

‘What time?'

‘Just after midnight.'

‘In the dark?' said Lomax. ‘Somebody's identified us in the dead of night on the Andover Estate? They're all crackheads in there. You got some of them to buy themselves a future by agreeing to your version of things?'

‘I thought you'd never been to the Andover Estate?'

‘It's notorious,' said Lomax. ‘So notorious you'd make sure you never went there.'

‘We have another witness who saw you in the stairwell of Danbury House on the Andover Estate at around 11:25 on Friday night, smartly dressed, this woman said, in a blue coat and an open-necked white shirt, and then again a bit later, at 11:40, with a bottle of vodka and two cans of Coke. We have another witness who saw Tel hanging around in the same stairwell on the fourth floor of Danbury House at 11:55
P.M.
That's a hell of a lot of sightings of two people who say they've never been to the Andover Estate in their lives, Mr. Lomax.'

Nothing back from him.

‘Do you know Alice Grant?'

‘No.'

‘Did you visit Alice Grant in her flat, number 504 Danbury House on the Andover Estate, on Friday night at around 11:25?'

‘No.'

‘You're absolutely certain you don't know her, never met her and never been to her flat?'

‘Yes.'

‘Can you repeat that for me saying the words very clearly.'

Lomax did as he was asked.

‘You know what the problem is here, Miles?'

‘Mistaken identity.'

‘No, the problem here is that someone's died,' said DI Hope. ‘Alice Grant
died
last night.'

‘I'm sorry to hear that.'

‘She drank vodka and Coke with a very high concentration of GHB in it and she smoked crack on top. She choked on her own vomit. Now, we've found GHB and crack cocaine in your possession. That taken in conjunction with all the sightings of you on the Andover Estate is making it hard for us to ignore your involvement in Alice Grant's demise. And there's one other thing . . . '