‘So,’ Lamb said, once this was taken care of. ‘I could murder a coffee. Shall we pop inside?’
‘Turn here.’
‘Here?’
‘Am I talking to myself?’
Larry took the exit road. Joanna Lumley objected.
‘Change of plan, darling,’ Curly said, and switched the sat nav off.
‘To what?’ Larry said.
The turn-off took them on to one of the minor roads skirting Epping Forest. If they’d headed directly north they’d not be within miles of here, but getting lost had its advantages. Curly had never been here, but he knew the name. Everyone knew the name. It was a place of shallow graves; regularly name-checked on true-crime programmes. This was where your gangsters buried their enemies. Or sometimes didn’t even bother: just set fire to the car they’d shot them in, then whistled their way home to the concrete jungle. Place had probably seen more deaths than picnics. Plenty of room for another. Two, if necessary.
This road was thickly lined by trees, and the sky disappeared behind a canopy of branches. An approaching car dipped its headlights. Flashing past, its noise reached Curly’s ears like something happening under water.
‘We’re gunna cut to the chase,’ he said.
A bubble welled inside him, and escaped as a brief giggle.
Larry cast him a sideways glance, but didn’t dare open his mouth.
Pissing off Lady Di was not a good career move, and Spider Webb’s choices were largely dictated by such demands. But he didn’t have to go on to the hub. He could wander downstairs instead. Regent’s Park was like any other office block: the guys on the desk were the first to know what was up. So like any suit with an eye to the edge, Spider made a point of being friendly to the guys on the desk.
Leaving his office, he walked down the corridor, through the fire door, and into the stairwell. Here he paused a moment, distracted by movement through the window. Two storeys below, a black SUV was coming down the concrete ramp into the car park beneath the building. One SUV was much like the next, but stilclass="underline" Webb wondered if this was the same one Lamb had hijacked earlier. If it was, Lamb had either been picked up again, or turned himself in. Spider hoped the former, and hoped it had happened roughly. The woman, too. I’ll put a bullet through your foot. He wasn’t forgetting that in a hurry. Mostly for the absolute sincerity of the woman’s tone.
The car was gone. No way of seeing from here who’d been driving, which left open the possibility that it had been Lamb himself. Without Park clearance, Lamb shouldn’t have made it through the barriers, but Webb had heard myths about Jackson Lamb. Clearance might be something required by other people. In which case, Lamb might be loose in the belly of the building.
It wasn’t likely, but it gave Webb all the excuse he needed to go and find out what was happening.
As Catherine Standish watched Roderick Ho perform more virtual acrobatics, another shock of excitement fired through her body. Nothing to do with Ho. Catherine didn’t especially admire technological ability; it was useful when other people had it, because this rendered it unnecessary to have any herself, but she no more regarded it as an aspect of character than she would ownership of a particular make of car.
No: the excitement had been born earlier that morning, when she’d lifted Lamb’s gun from her bag, and pointed it at the young man next to her. I’ll put a bullet through your foot if I need to. That’ll wipe the smirk off your face. Sometimes the scary moments happened to other people.
Min Harper had spoken, unless it had been Louisa Guy. She said, ‘Sorry. I was miles away.’
Harper said, ‘You think we’ll trace him in time?’
This was new too. They were looking to her, as if she had answers, or opinions worth listening to. Below the tabletop her right hand curled, as if it were once more wrapped around the handle of a gun. ‘I think we act as if we’re saving his life, not finding his body,’ she said.
He shared a look with Louisa that she couldn’t interpret.
It was growing lighter, and traffic was building outside. There was a flow of custom inside, too; people collecting takeaway coffee and breakfast rolls, or grabbing supper on their way home from the nightshift. Catherine was an early riser, a poor sleeper; none of this was unfamiliar to her. But she was seeing through new eyes this morning. She unclenched her hand. Fighting her addictions had taught her about their power, and she knew she was clinging to an unhealthy memory. But right now it felt good, and she could only hope those shocks of excitement weren’t visible to the others.
Ho said, ‘Now we wait.’
Louisa said, ‘You’ve got the sat nav system?’
‘Sure. They use RoadWise. It’s just a matter of hacking the system.’
‘And how does waiting help?’
‘Because I’ve reached out for someone who’s done it already. Quicker than doing it myself.’ He bent to his laptop again, until his colleagues’ silence broke through his self-absorption. ‘What?’
‘Care to elaborate?’
He sighed, but overdid it. ‘Hacking, there’s a community, you know?’
‘Like stamp collectors.’
‘Or trainspotters.’
‘Or poets.’
‘A bit,’ Ho agreed, to general surprise. ‘Only way more cool. Hackers hack systems for one reason only. They’re there. Some people do crosswords or sudoku.’ His expression made it clear what he thought of that. ‘We hack. And we share.’
‘So someone will have hacked, what did you call it? RoadWise?’
‘RoadWise. Yeah, sure, if it’s there, it’s been hacked. And anyone cool enough to hack it’ll be in the community.’ He nodded at his laptop, as if it held global masses. ‘And they’ll be getting back to me any moment.’ Perhaps he saw doubt in their expressions. ‘We never sleep,’ he said.
Catherine said, ‘There’s something I don’t get.’
Ho waited.
‘You’re telling us you’ve got friends?’
‘The best kind,’ Ho said. ‘The ones you never meet.’
His laptop bleeped.
‘My ride’s here.’
Catherine watched as he bent to work. We act as if we’re saving Hassan’s life, not finding his body. It was the only approach they could take.
It would be good, though, if they could hurry up a little.
Time was not on Hassan’s side.
The car stopped, and the engine cut out.
For a moment, the silence and stillness were worse than the noise and the motion. Hassan’s heart pounded, struggling for release. He wasn’t ready, he thought—wasn’t ready to put an escape plan into operation, because he didn’t have one. And wasn’t ready because, well, he wasn’t ready. Wasn’t ready to be poured out of the boot and told he was going to die. He wasn’t ready.
Eyes clamped shut, he tried to summon up Joanna Lumley, but she wouldn’t appear. He was on his own.
And then he wasn’t, because the boot was opening, and rough hands were hauling him out, dropping him like a sack of vegetables on to cold ground.
Instinctively, the first thing he did he was pull the hood from his head; a clumsy operation with his hands bound, but he managed it. With his head free, Hassan saw the world for what felt like the first time. He was in a forest. The car had come to a halt on a dirt track, and all around stretched trees, with mossed-over stumps lurking like goblins in the hollows. The ground was hard-packed mud, with a covering of dead leaves and twigs. The air tasted like early morning. Light was starting to make its presence felt; etching a fine tracery of bare branches overhead.
His two remaining kidnappers stood over him, so his first view was of their boots. That seemed appropriate. He guessed their boots saw more action than their brains ever did. And this thought liberated Hassan a little. He was cold and bruised and filthy and stank, but he was not in a cellar. And he was not these bastards’ dog, ready to roll over on their word. In every way that mattered, he was better than the pair of them.