Stealing People

by Robert Wilson

  7

  20.15, 15 January 2014

  DI Mercy Danquah’s house, Streatham, London

  The call came through at 20.16. Mercy remembered the time, a professional tic, as she clicked the receive button to what she thought was going to be a call from Marcus Alleyne.

  Until that moment she’d been sitting at the kitchen table in her dark blue jeans, a black roll-neck cashmere sweater (a present from Amy), navy blue high heels and full make-up, waiting for him to show. Normally this would not have been an unusual situation. Alleyne, the laid back Trinidadian, felt that punctuality was uncool, while it was Mercy’s duty, as the cop, to always be on time. But given the circumstances of the phone call earlier today, and the fact that they hadn’t seen each other for four days, she thought he might, for once, have been on time.

  Mercy decided not to let it bother her. It was his nature. She slipped back into a reflective mood. January did this to her. The cold and wet, which she loathed, and the possibility of losing her job made her retreat into a dazed state of comfort rumination. She’d been seeing Marcus for nearly two years now. The only man she’d seen for longer was Charles Boxer, and it had just started occurring to her, with some surprise, that she was now over Boxer. She didn’t think about him any more. He naturally cropped up in her mind because he was Amy’s father, but she no longer thought about him in the addictive way of the unrequited lover of the last twenty-odd years.

  Her mind was full of Marcus. He occupied her, but not in the all-encompassing, oppressive way that Boxer had. With Marcus, she was so confident of his love, there was no room for anything else. They talked every day about everything. Well, almost. He loosened her up, made her laugh and they still had great sex.

  So what was the problem?

  That word: ‘almost’. They talked about lots of hard things: Mercy’s relationships with her family, her difficult daughter, Boxer, Isabel, even Isabel’s daughter and ex-husband. Marcus Alleyne had an incredible appetite for people and their difficulties. It was as if he had an empathy muscle that needed a daily workout.

  The one thing they couldn’t talk about was Alleyne’s … occupation.

  He was a fence: receiving stolen goods and selling them on. It was how they’d met. In Amy’s horror phase she’d brought a suitcase of cigarettes over from the Canary Islands with a group of girls and Alleyne had met her at Gatwick airport. One of the rooms in Alleyne’s Railton Road flat was given over to flat-screen TVs, tablet computers, coffee machines, high-end trainers, cigarettes and other contraband. Even Boxer’s mother was wearing a pair of trainers from ‘Santa’s Den’, as Alleyne referred to the room.

  This was more than awkward for a detective inspector with the Kidnap and Special Investigation Unit. It meant that they lived their relationship in a bubble. Mercy couldn’t afford to introduce Alleyne to her family and friends and especially not to any of her colleagues, and she certainly didn’t want to meet any of Alleyne’s acquaintances, who ranged from small-time crooks, rap artists and twerk specialists to debt collectors, gun dealers and well-known gangsters.

  How much longer could they live in this bubble before it burst? She’d already asked Alleyne if he could go straight, but had no idea how he would be able to make £50,000 a year (after tax) going legit. Especially as £20,000 of that money made its way back to Trinidad as his contribution to the family’s investment in a tourist development.

  Mercy had asked Boxer’s advice and he’d been bleak about her options. If Alleyne couldn’t quit being a fence, she would have to quit the kidnap unit, quit the relationship or, as she had done over the last two years, ignore it and hope for the best. She took the third option every time.

  And now it occurred to her for the first time that maybe they’d found out about her relationship with Alleyne and this was why DCS Oscar Hines was demanding her presence in his office tomorrow morning. Her eyes widened at the possibility. How could she have been so slow?

  And where was Marcus anyway?

  That was when her phone rang. ‘Marcus’ came up on the screen, but not his voice into her ear.

  ‘Mercy Danquah?’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Just answer the question,’ said the voice, London accent.

  ‘Yes, this is Mercy Danquah,’ she said, keeping it bored and predictable.

  ‘We’re holding your friend Marcus …’

  ‘Above your head?’ she said, not taking it seriously. ‘I’m not impressed.’

  ‘He said you’d be a cool customer.’

  ‘Let me speak to him,’ she said, instantly annoyed, not liking the idea of Marcus taking the piss out of her profession with his dubious mates.

  ‘He’s indisposed,’ said the voice. ‘I think that’s how you’d put it.’

  ‘Don’t give me that crap,’ she said. ‘We’re supposed to be in the restaurant in less than half an hour.’

  ‘I’d change your reservation to a table for one if I was you.’

  ‘Not funny. You hear that?’ said Mercy, giving him a beat of silence. ‘I’m not laughing. Put Marcus on the line … now!’

  ‘I’m sorry, but he won’t be able to make it to the phone,’ said the voice, very polite. ‘We’ve had to soften him up a little.’

  Silence. Things sinking in. Her professional mode smacked down the fluttering fear in her stomach.

  ‘So far all I know is that you’ve got his mobile phone,’ said Mercy.

  ‘In that case you don’t know him very well,’ said the voice.

  Silence. She’d told Marcus not to carry her number in any of his phones.

  ‘Right. Now you’re thinking, aren’t you, Mercy?’

  ‘There’ll be no progress without proof of life.’

  ‘That’s more like it. Very professional. Glad to hear you’re taking this seriously now.’

  ‘Let’s have it then. No more bullshit.’

  ‘We’ll just have to wait for him to come round,’ said the voice. ‘Maybe you could give us a question we could ask him?’

  ‘What’s the name of my father’s village?’

  The line went dead.

  She dropped her phone on the table. Her cool deserted her. She was up and pacing the kitchen floor. Her hands gripped the close-cropped hair on her head as she came to a halt at the sink and looked at her reflection in the window to the big, dark outside. Her fingers trickled down her cheeks as she realised that this was the ultimate disaster.

  There was only one person she could call.

  As soon as she opened the door to her mock Georgian house on a luxury estate in the middle of Kensington, he knew something had changed. She’d put on weight for a start, which was an achievement after six weeks in Mumbai.

  ‘Did you get my text?’ asked Boxer, hanging up his coat.

  ‘Yes,’ said Isabel, standing behind him, waiting.

  ‘I’m sorry. I had to go. Amy had a tricky scenario with a client,’ he said, turning to her.

  ‘She’s all right, though?’

  ‘She’s fine. And you?’

  ‘Just tired,’ she said. ‘Jet lag always gets me coming back from Mumbai.’

  He hugged her to him, felt the warmth of her contours pressing into him, a difference in shape, and with a trembling vulnerability underneath. He kissed her neck. He’d missed her. Six weeks she’d been away. Something she’d planned over a year ago, wanting to spend quality time with her daughter and her boyfriend, Deepak Mistry. She and Boxer had talked every day, but a physical craving for her had started up within a week, something that had never happened before with any other woman.

  ‘So how was Mumbai?’ he whispered into her hair. ‘Did you get into the street food?’

  ‘Oh, you know, Frank was exhaustive and exhausting, as you can imagine,’ said Isabel, pulling away from him. ‘Alyshia and Deepak were lovely. I didn’t travel as much as I wanted to. We did that Kerala trip and the week in Goa was great, but I was taking it easy.’

  ‘Is something the matter?’ asked Boxer. ‘
You … feel different.’

  ‘Alyshia’s come back with me.’

  ‘Was that the idea?’ asked Boxer, convinced that it wasn’t. ‘She’s all right, isn’t she?’

  ‘She’s fine,’ said Isabel. ‘Let’s go into the kitchen.’

  They sat on either side of the table. She poured Boxer a beer, and herbal tea for herself, which he glanced at. She stretched her hands across the table and took hold of his. She looked straight into his eyes so that he felt compelled to stare back.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.

  The surprise and elation spread through him.

  ‘Well at least that’s settled,’ she said and squeezed his hands, released him.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘You’re happy. I had to see that to make up my mind.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Whether to keep it or not.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘At my age it’s not a light decision.’

  ‘Then let’s talk about it.’

  ‘I could see you were pleased.’

  ‘I am. I can’t deny it. It’s … it’s great.’

  ‘Then I will have the baby,’ said Isabel. ‘If you’d been a bit iffy … well, I’d have … That’s why I had to look you in the eyes.’

  ‘You’d have what?’

  ‘I’d have terminated it.’

  ‘Does that mean you don’t really want to have it?’

  ‘I do, but if you hadn’t been keen, that would have decided me. It’s not the right age to be having a child. Alyshia should be having one, not me.’

  Boxer leaned back, gripped the edge of the table.

  ‘I’m sorry, it was stupid,’ she said. ‘Not to think about it. I just assumed I wasn’t fertile any more. My periods have been erratic for the last five years and I thought I was weighing into the menopause. I mean, we’ve been sleeping together for two years without contraception …’

  ‘So how pregnant are you?’ asked Boxer. ‘I mean, you didn’t look pregnant before you left.’

  ‘Over five months … twenty-four weeks, they reckon.’

  ‘And you didn’t know?’

  ‘I thought something was going on, but that it was me being menopausal,’ said Isabel. ‘I’d missed two periods, but that’s not so unusual.’

  ‘And how did you find out?’

  ‘I wasn’t feeling great so I went to Alyshia’s doctor in Mumbai. I thought it was a stomach bug. I was feeling sick. First thing they found was that my blood pressure was raised. Then they did a blood test and it came back positive.’

  ‘Have you spoken to your GP here?’

  ‘Not yet. I had an amniocentesis test while I was in India and it was clear. Did you ever …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Come on, Isabel, let’s get it all out.’

  ‘The question mark over Amy … who her father was. Did you ever get that checked out?’

  ‘No. It didn’t matter to me. We’re closer now than we’ve ever been.’

  The discovery of the tape left by his father flashed through his mind and he decided that he wouldn’t bring that up now. He’d wanted to ask her advice. She had such sound judgement. But now, he realised, was not the time.

  ‘What’s going on in there?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘That’s why I didn’t want to tell you over the phone from India. I wanted to be looking into your eyes when I told you,’ she said. ‘You have two modes: professional and personal, and they’re instantly interchangeable. Your job demands that you hide your emotions, which you do … very well.’

  ‘If I’m honest, for the first time in my working life, the job has faded away in importance. I used to love it because it put me in a place where I believed things really mattered.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘You matter to me now. And Amy, Mercy, even Esme has started to matter.’

  And as he spoke, the emotion came up in his throat and he thought his voice might crack and betray the intensity of what he was feeling for Isabel and his new life in which she’d been so instrumental. She reached a hand across. He took it and kissed the soft skin over the small knuckles.

  ‘Say it,’ she said. ‘Nobody ever says anything these days.’

  Her face leaned over the table: the straight dark eyebrows above the velvet brown eyes that always completely undid him, the high cheekbones with the faintest declivity beneath where his lips had found their most preferred resting place. Then there was the full mouth with the pronounced Cupid’s bow, which had whispered close to his ear so many words that hadn’t just disentangled the unanswerable knots of a lifetime of confusion, but repaired him too, rendered him whole.

  ‘I love you,’ he said, and something quickened in her. Her neck flushed, the cords tightened and her blood ticked into his fingers. ‘Nobody has ever paid me a greater compliment than wanting to bear my child. You’ve rescued me …’

  She knew it was true. She’d noticed changes in herself, realised now that the shadowy allure of her unknowable first husband no longer intrigued her. All it had done was hide a terrible emptiness, in fact worse, his ruthlessness. She’d been excited but frightened when she’d sensed the same draw in Boxer, and had found the courage to reach in, but this time had discovered something different. He seemed determined to escape from his inner darkness and was willing to strive for any possible light.

  Boxer’s phone vibrated against his chest. After the night he’d had with Amy and Siobhan, it was not a call he could ignore. Isabel told him to take it.

  ‘Mercy,’ he said, wondering why she was using her landline.

  ‘Are you alone?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m with Isabel.’

  ‘This might be a conversation for us to have alone.’

  He looked up at Isabel, who was sipping her tea. She pointed him into the living room. Mercy filled him in on what Alleyne’s kidnappers had told her.

  ‘Have they given you a proof of life?’

  ‘I’ve asked a question and I’m waiting for the reply.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘A few minutes.’

  ‘And I’m the first person you’ve called?’

  ‘There’s no one else who knows about my involvement with Marcus.’

  ‘In your office, you mean, but not in the outside world,’ said Boxer. ‘Any indication what this could be about? I mean, it’s not going to be money, unless …’

  ‘No, they’ve said nothing.’

  ‘Are you working on anything sensitive at the moment? You or others in your office. People in powerful places?’

  ‘I’ve been away on a course. I haven’t caught up with what’s going on,’ said Mercy. ‘I was wondering about Glider. I was thinking that maybe he’d worked out how you turned up at his door when we were trying to find Amy.’

  ‘That was nearly two years ago.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have been difficult for him to trace the source back to Marcus, and you know what these guys are like. They hold a grudge, keep it nicely incubated until the right time comes along and they can make use of it for their own benefit.’

  ‘You want me to go and talk to Glider again?’

  ‘Don’t make it sound like it’s something I ask you to do every day of the year.’

  ‘Just a question, Mercy. I … I’m thinking,’ said Boxer. ‘How are you going to play this with your colleagues?’

  ‘We don’t know that they’re going to be involved yet.’

  ‘Is there something in your life that I don’t know about?’

  ‘I hope so. I wouldn’t like to think that Charles Boxer knows everything there is to know about Mercy Danquah.’

  ‘As far as I know, you have your work, Amy, Marcus and your family,’ said Boxer. ‘Is there anything interesting going on with any of them?’

  ‘Nothing special,’ said Mercy.

  ‘So it’s got to be work.’

  ‘Except that I’m not working on anyth
ing at the moment,’ said Mercy. ‘Where’s Amy, by the way?’

  ‘She was in the office until late and then went to an art show with a friend,’ said Boxer, smoothly.

  ‘She hasn’t come home and isn’t responding to my calls and texts.’

  ‘I think she’s staying with the friend.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Her name’s Siobhan,’ he said, fluffing it slightly.

  ‘You don’t sound so sure about that.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I don’t know any Siobhans.’

  ‘She’s a client.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit weird?’

  ‘Her father’s gone missing. She needed a bit of support so Amy went to the show and stayed with her afterwards.’

  ‘LOST supposedly doesn’t handle current cases, which means you’re telling me something but holding back on some nasty stuff.’

  ‘Don’t wind yourself up, Mercy,’ said Boxer. ‘I know it’s in your nature but you don’t have to know everything, especially tonight with your particular situation.’

  ‘All right, will you go and see Glider … do a bit of rooting around in there?’ asked Mercy.

  ‘When?’

  ‘How about now?’

  ‘I’m having a conversation with Isabel and anyway, why would I be going to see Glider? We have no idea whether he’s involved.’

  ‘Marcus was nervous of him.’

  ‘I’ll go and see him … but tomorrow if that’s all right. Tell me if the gang makes contact again. Don’t talk to anyone else unless you’re coming clean to your colleagues.’

  ‘It’s a bit late for that, and don’t treat me like an idiot.’

  ‘It’s never too late, and you’re under a lot of stress.’

  ‘Which you’re doing what to alleviate?’

  ‘Good night, Mercy.’

  ‘At least you didn’t tell me it was my own stupid fault.’

  ‘Some people think I’m sensitive.’

  ‘Only Isabel.’

  ‘Good night, Mercy.’

  He hung up, went back to the kitchen, saw through the partly open door that Isabel hadn’t moved. She sat at the table, her shoulders hunched, bringing the tisane to her lips. He watched her thinking about their child inside her and realised for the first time that he’d found a woman who was everything to him: lover, friend, mother, sister, partner and now, although not officially, his wife.