Target

'I've got a few cuts and bruises, but it could have been a lot worse.'

It almost had been. Tina knew she should never have sent him. It was always better to do these things yourself.

'Where are you now?' she asked him.

'About ten minutes away from Brakspear's house, heading back to the M11. Trying to put as much distance between me and them as possible.'

'I want you to go back.'

'What? Why?' He sounded stunned.

'Because now you've disturbed them they're probably going to want to get Brakspear out of there as soon as possible. If they haven't, and he's still there, then I think we're going to have to call in the cavalry.'

'Won't that put Jenny in danger, though?' he asked.

Tina sighed. It was a good question. 'Let me think about that,' she said, 'but right now, I want you to check if they're still there. Don't put yourself at risk or get out of the car. Just drive past and see if the Mazda's still at the front of the house. Then call me back straight away. OK?'

He said he would, although he didn't sound too enthusiastic about the prospect, and they ended the call.

Tina got out of bed and had a quick shower to wake herself up. She was pissed off with herself. This whole thing was running out of control. She was making decisions on the hoof because she was on her own and racing against the clock. She'd dealt with a kidnapping the previous year at SOCA when a fourteen-year-old girl, Emma Devern, had been abducted for ransom. That case had almost turned into tragedy, and that was with the full resources of SOCA concentrated on finding her. Now she was trying to do everything on her own and, to put it bluntly, she'd screwed up. The question was, what did she do now?

Fallon called back fifteen minutes later as she was making coffee. 'The Mazda's gone. Brakspear's car's still there.'

It was as she'd expected. There was no way the kidnappers could have stayed put with Fallon free. But it also made things harder. 'OK,' she said, weighing things up. 'Have you got anywhere you can stay for a few days? Somewhere you can lie low while we work out what to do?'

'Wouldn't it be easier if I just walked into a police station and asked for protection? This thing's getting too big for us now.'

'It would be if they believed you, but I'm not a hundred per cent sure they would.'

'Why not? We've got proof, haven't we? I saw one of Jenny's kidnappers at her father's house. Surely that means they've got her?'

'But you've already withdrawn your story once. If Brakspear was still at his house and we knew he was being held against his will, then we'd be able to get the police involved. But he's gone, and it's going to take a massive effort to convince the people who matter that they need to investigate. By that time, Jenny could be dead.'

'But we don't know for certain that the kidnapper took Brakspear with him. Maybe I could go back to the house and talk to him, persuade him to-'

'Mr Fallon,' Tina interrupted, 'do you honestly believe that after your unscheduled appearance the kidnapper hasn't taken Brakspear with him?'

Her words silenced him temporarily. When he finally spoke, he sounded weary. 'You say don't go to the police, just lie low for a while, but for how long? And what are we going to do in the meantime?'

'We need to change tactics,' she said quietly. 'Up the ante a little.'

'How?'

'Leave it with me. I've got a few calls to make, then I'll get back to you. In the meantime, stay away from home.'

'Don't leave it too long, DC Boyd.' Fallon sounded angry and frustrated, and Tina couldn't blame him. 'Pretty soon, the guy who threatened to kill me is going to know that I didn't heed his warning, and he's not going to give me a second chance. I'm a target now.'

'Killing you will only risk drawing attention to themselves, so try to keep calm.'

There was a long pause at the other end before Fallon said something about keeping calm being a lot easier said than done. Then he cut the connection.

Poor sod, thought Tina. She felt bad for putting him in such a precarious position, but knew too that what she'd said about the likely police scepticism if he requested protection was true. Even so, she felt she needed guidance on a way forward. She hadn't wanted to involve Mike Bolt but no longer felt she had any choice. He also had the resources to track down Brakspear's location, using either his mobile number or the registration plate of the mysterious Mazda that had been on his drive that morning, and which was soon going to be on Tina's own phone.

Mike wasn't answering. She left a message asking her to call him urgently, then lit a cigarette. She had a plan B, one that she'd been formulating in the shower, but it was risky, and she'd hoped she wouldn't have to use it.

She looked at her watch. It had just turned eleven, and the clock was ticking inexorably onwards. She'd give Mike until 11.30 to call her back. If he didn't, she knew she'd simply have to take her chances.

There was no other way.

Twenty-three

Where I was going to lay my head was a problem, and one I thought about for most of the journey back to London. Under normal circumstances I would have gone to Dom, but he was away until the following day and I'd promised myself that I wouldn't involve him now. There was always Yvonne and Chloe (and Nigel, of course), but they were away too, and even if they'd been back at home in France I'd never have risked hurting them by my presence.

There wasn't really anyone else. Not even family-wise. My mum had died when I was fifteen after a long and protracted battle against cancer. My older brother lived in New Zealand, where he'd been for most of the last decade, and my dad now lived with my stepmother (a pleasant woman, it has to be said) in South Africa. So I was pretty much on my own.

It crossed my mind to try Maxwell, but he'd only ask too many questions, and I really didn't want to have to tell him anything.

In the end, I decided to go online and find a cheap hotel somewhere in the sprawling anonymity of the West End, where I wasn't going to be found.

First, though, I needed to eat. Hardly a thing had passed my lips in the last forty-eight hours, and anything that had had come straight back up again. I was in dire need of sustenance. When I got back into north London, I headed south until I found a suitably grimy-looking café on the Edgware Road where I consumed a huge fry-up of bacon, sausage, black pudding and just about anything else greasy and coronary-inducing they could fling on the plate, washed down with orange juice and two cups of strong coffee.

After I'd polished off the lot, I sat back and relaxed for the first time since all this started. True, I was in the most serious danger I'd been so far, because the people I was up against must now want me dead, whatever Tina Boyd might be saying to the contrary. But at that moment in time, in a busy café far from my usual haunts, it didn't feel that way. It felt instead like I was doing something good, something worthwhile. Maybe for the first time in my life.

Maybe this was the reason I was throwing myself so wholeheartedly into the hunt for a girl who, in reality, I hardly knew. Maybe, too, a part of me enjoyed the adventure. I've travelled the world and visited other cultures. Dived with sharks on the Barrier Reef; travelled up the Amazon in a steamboat; climbed to the summit of Kilimanjaro. But all those things are sanitized adventures. Now I was doing something that was truly risky – suicidal some might say, given that I was unarmed and untrained. But I didn't care. If I got through it in one piece and found out what had happened to Jenny, then at the very least Yvonne might think there was more to me than she'd always thought.

I was on the way back to the car, having paid my bill, when Tina called. I looked at my watch. Twenty past one.

'I want to escalate things, Mr Fallon,' she told me, 'and I'm going to need your help.'