Stealing People

by Robert Wilson

  ‘She fell down the stairs. She’d been in bed and had obviously felt distressed and had tried to get downstairs, presumably to call for help. She fell and was knocked unconscious. Under those circumstances all the mother’s powers go to protect the baby. If she’d been found immediately, things could have been different. As it was, we think she’d been there a few hours, and that proved fatal to her.’

  ‘To her?’

  ‘We performed an emergency C-section, and while the mother did not survive it, the baby did,’ said the doctor. ‘Would you like to see your son?’

  ‘My son?’ said Boxer, swallowing hard. He blinked as if this might jolt him out of this particularly strange dream. He picked up his case and followed the doctor, very conscious of putting one foot in front of the other. They arrived at the neonatal ICU, a room full of incubators, computers twitching with data about oxygenation, temperature, cardiac function and brain activity. Nurses in scrubs were observing the monitors, while others had their hands in the incubators seemingly caressing the tiny froglike bundles.

  The doctor asked Boxer to wash his hands and then led him to an incubator. He looked down on an impossibly small creature, one no larger than his scrubbed hand. A tube was taped into his nose. His face bore the slight frown of one concerned at his own state. Boxer was allowed to touch the downy, porcelain head, feel its warmth, measure it between his thumb and forefinger. A nurse tried to relieve him of his case but he clung on to it.

  ‘His lungs seem to be quite mature,’ said the doctor. ‘The prognosis is good.’ They all looked at Boxer, but he was incapable of showing emotion. What he had growing in his chest was nearly uncontainable. He managed a nod.

  ‘I think I’m going to have to go out now,’ he said.

  The doctor nodded as if this was to be expected given the traumatic circumstances. They withdrew from the room and stood in the corridor.

  ‘You can’t be on your own,’ said Mistry.

  ‘No, Charlie, you have to come with us,’ said Alyshia, holding him to her.

  ‘I want to be on my own,’ he said, extricating himself, moving away. ‘I’ll be all right. That’s just what I need … some time alone.’

  He managed a wave as he walked back to the lift. He was comforted by its ordinariness and a porter with a patient sulking in a wheelchair, oxygen mask attached, who looked up at him with eyes that said: ‘You should try this … see how you get on.’ They left at the third floor and Boxer continued alone to the ground, where he crossed the lobby to the entrance. It was raining outside, angled rods in the orange light. He had no umbrella. He stood outside under the thundering canopy, breathing in the glistening streets, the traffic honking and hissing. A busload of people went past, staring out of the fogged, warmly lit interior on their way to a certain destination. Boxer zipped up his coat, hunched his shoulders and stepped out on to the pavement. He walked without stopping with one hand rammed into his pocket and the case hanging in the other. The heavy rain quickly soaked into his hair down to his scalp. He breathed the darkness into the black hole that now occupied his whole interior.

  ‘How much longer do we need to do this?’ asked Amy, well soaked by the heavy rain.

  ‘Until they know we’re in the clear,’ said Siobhan. ‘This can go on for hours. They have to be sure. It’s like leading someone to your door.’

  They were standing out under the bandstand in the middle of a wet and windy Clapham Common. A message came through telling them to proceed to Orlando Road in Clapham Old Town. They walked through the rain to Clapham Common North Side. Siobhan had an earplug in now, connected to the phone.

  ‘Keep close,’ she said, taking Amy’s arm. ‘We’re getting to it now. We’re going to have to move fast. You ready?’

  They entered Orlando Road and about halfway down the empty street Siobhan dragged Amy through a gateway, behind a privet hedge and down the side of a Victorian house, through an open wooden door, which she closed behind her, and into the garden. They walked to the wall at the end and climbed over into the adjoining garden. They waited until a light came on in the basement, ran down the steps into the doorway, through a kitchen, down a hallway and out into the street, where a white transit was waiting with a sliding side door open. They got in. Siobhan slid the door to and they collapsed on the floor. The van took off.

  ‘Stay lying down,’ said Siobhan.

  The van drove a tortuous route for over half an hour until it pulled up and there was the sound of an opening electric shutter.

  ‘Put this on,’ said Siobhan, handing her a black hood, pulling one over her own head. Amy did as she was told.

  The van eased forward and pulled up. The driver stayed put. The sliding door opened and the two women were hauled out and marched stumbling over concrete flooring. They were now inside a slightly echoing space. They were not being handled lightly.

  They were split up and Amy was taken into a room and slammed down in a chair to which she was tied. All her questions went unanswered. The hood was raised and tape stuck across her mouth before it was lowered again. They left her alone. As the door closed she heard Siobhan’s voice:

  ‘You took your time.’

  ‘It was complicated,’ a male voice replied.

  17

  20.30, 16 January 2014

  Wilton Place, Belgravia, London SW1

  ‘We’re still trying to track down Conrad Jensen,’ said Mercy. ‘He has a daughter, Siobhan, did you know that?’

  ‘He never mentioned her,’ said Emma.

  ‘Why do you think it’s important to find Conrad Jensen?’ asked Forsyth.

  ‘We always like to track down people who’ve spent time with the victim and her family. We just need to clarify all relationships, especially the close ones, and—’

  ‘Conrad Jensen has been vetted by the US military.’

  ‘We’d also like to find an American called Walden Garfinkle,’ said Mercy, purposely not addressing that remark. ‘He might be able to shed light on Jensen’s whereabouts, as he saw him in his hotel room five days ago. I don’t know if your network can help with that?’

  ‘Anything interesting at the crime scene?’ asked Forsyth.

  ‘I’m getting to that,’ said Mercy. ‘We’ve found the cab driver who picked up Jensen’s daughter Siobhan from the Savoy. He says he dropped her at a flat on Lofting Road in Islington. No answer. We’re working on the owner of this flat, which is a short-term let, to see if we can get a phone number for Siobhan.’

  ‘I’m not sure this obsession with Conrad Jensen is healthy,’ said Forsyth.

  ‘It’s not an obsession,’ said Mercy. ‘It’s routine. We’ve covered all the other friends and visitors to this house, who’ve all been available for questioning and we’ve been able to eliminate them from our inquiries. Jensen has disappeared. He’s been in a relationship with Emma and yet he’s never mentioned that he has a daughter. Those two things count for more in my book than his being vetted by the US military.

  ‘As for the crime scene, the forensics have turned up a big zero on prints in and outside the car. We found no one in the mews at the time of the kidnap. My colleague discovered from residents in Lyall Street that there must have been eight people involved. There were three men seen in the street putting up the roadworks, all in hard hats, goggles, dayglo jackets and trousers. It would have taken two on the scaffolding to drop the sheet, two on the ground to sedate Pat Gould and kidnap Sophie, and one driver in the white transit that, we’ve had confirmed, was reversed under the arch to the mews for the girl’s removal. There was also a BT Openreach van that was used by the three workmen for their escape. So it was a highly organised operation with considerable care taken. I’d be tempted to call it a military-style exercise were it not for your confidence in their vetting procedures. Have the kidnappers called again?’

  Mercy didn’t know why she was doing it. Riling Forsyth. Maybe his denying knowledge of Charlie had annoyed her.

  ‘Still nothing,’ said Forsyth. ‘We haven�
�t had proof of life yet. So if they keep up this level of frequency, there’s a long way to go before we start negotiating. It’s going to be interesting to see how they cope with simultaneous negotiations with multiple consultants. Never seen that before.’

  ‘Is there anything particularly political that Kinderman are involved with that could complicate this kidnap?’

  ‘That doesn’t concern you. You’re here to investigate,’ said Forsyth, cutting her dead. ‘There’s another branch of operatives working on that side of things.’

  ‘But why can’t you tell her?’ said Emma. ‘It might help her to know.’

  ‘I’d need clearance, and not just from Kinderman.’

  ‘So there is something and it’s at a very high level,’ said Mercy. ‘That’s enough for me at the moment.’

  ‘Not even I have clearance,’ said Emma.

  Mercy’s phone went. She looked at the number, which she didn’t recognise, answered it.

  ‘We have your daughter Amy now,’ said the voice. ‘We’d like you to wrap up your discussion with Ryder and leave the house. We’ll be in touch.’

  Boxer had walked all the way home from the Fulham Road to his flat in Belsize Park. He was soaked through. He stripped naked, showered, and dressed again in clean, dry clothes. He unpacked the case, put the money back in the safe and sat at the table, arms folded. He stared at the two guns, whose barrels pointed at the empty package addressed to Charles Tate and the Betamax tape.

  He couldn’t believe what had happened to him in just over twenty-four hours. He’d tried to assimilate it as he’d walked home, hoping that his rhythmic pacing would help him comprehend the enormity, but it had been too big. Trying to disentangle the emotional fallout of the loss of the only woman he’d truly grown to love, who’d been carrying his child and had probably died as a result, was proving to be too much. In fact he couldn’t even grasp the loss. When the image of her lying on the bed flickered into the darkness of his mind, he shook his head at its impossible lifelessness. Twenty-four hours ago she’d held his hands across the table, looked into his eyes and told him she was pregnant. She hadn’t just been alive, but doubly alive. Doubly animated. And now?

  He tried to think of his son, the impossibly small baby in an incubator whose head was lost in the palm of his hand. He’d never seen such a small living human and he feared for his survival. Was that why he’d walked away? He couldn’t bear to make another emotional connection only to lose it?

  He sat back, looked into himself, wanting to find an emotion, a reaction, but there was no grief. It stunned him, this incapacity to feel. Two years ago, when he’d thought that Amy had been killed, even though he hadn’t seen a body, he’d had some premonition of doom. Something had told him that things had gone wrong. He’d been mentally prepared for disaster and, when he was confronted with the evidence of it, an access to grief had opened up in him. He remembered being in the chief inspector’s office in Madrid and shunting the desk across the room with his sobs. But this? He was suspended from all emotion. It was as if, in being unable to find an expression for the complexity of his feelings, his mind had flipped a switch, turned it off until later, when there might be a better chance of managing a reaction.

  The inertia frustrated him. The suppressed turmoil of his inner life made him want to move enormous things: buildings, bridges. He hammered his fists on the table, wanting to, needing to get something out, but it refused to come. He paced the room. Each time he turned, he glanced down at the table – the guns, the tape – and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to bear the rest of his life without knowing what was on that cassette. But he had to do something now. The tape needed a special player; he would have to track one down, he had an idea where. But that wouldn’t resolve his need for action.

  His eyes fell on the Walther P99: a brutal gun, a lawmaker’s weapon whose nine-millimetre potential would stop villains in their tracks. Ironic that it had been in the hands of a criminal, but good for Boxer if he found the need to use it. The thuggishness of the weapon suddenly appealed to him. He reached over and hefted it in his hand, continued his pacing. It came to him that now was the time to go and see Jess.

  He put the FN57 underneath the floorboards and slipped the Walther P99 into the pocket of his jacket.

  The rain had eased off to a blustery spit. He walked to Haverstock Hill and hailed a cab to take him to the Caledonian Road. On the way he thought about how he was going to play this, given Jess’s evident security consciousness. He asked the driver to let him out at the railway bridge, where, in the dripping darkness, he unloaded the gun, putting the bullets in his pocket, and moved it to the small of his back. He walked down the Cally Road and turned right into the poorly lit Bemerton estate towards Glider’s building. Again he was picked up by outriders, who tailed him to the foot of Glider’s stairs, where Jess was there to meet him.

  ‘Didn’t know you had an appointment,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t,’ said Boxer. ‘I’ve come to see you. Is there somewhere we can talk?’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘A little money-making business.’

  ‘Do I look like I need to make money?’

  ‘Everybody can use a little extra, and this is very easy.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘I think you’ve got the right qualities for the job.’

  ‘Follow me,’ she said, dispersing her team.

  He’d been right. The flattery had worked. They went up the stairs to the first floor and along an open walkway to a flat. She unlocked the door, pushed it open and motioned him inside. As Boxer walked in, she reached under his jacket and pulled the Walther P99 out of his waistband. Boxer carried on, flipping the light switches as he went. The flat was almost empty apart from some rudimentary furniture, two battered armchairs, a table with an ashtray containing four upstanding cigarette butts, and two stools on either side.

  ‘Keeping it simple,’ he said.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asked, holding the gun out, pointing it at him.

  ‘It’s a Walther P99.’

  ‘Looks like you’re expecting trouble.’

  ‘Not from you,’ said Boxer. ‘It’s not my gun.’

  ‘Whose is it?’

  ‘Know a guy called Jarrod?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘How about Delroy Pink?’

  She went very still. Her dark hair was scraped back so painfully tight into a ponytail that it had almost given her eyes some chinoiserie. She was very well built. Her shoulders were square under a short leather jacket from which a length of belt hung down to her thigh. She wore a tight dark grey roll-neck jumper, which revealed an almost flat, hard chest. Her legs were long and strong, encased in dark stretch jeans, and she was wearing brand-new black and grey trail shoes.

  ‘How do you know Pink?’

  ‘Our paths crossed tonight,’ said Boxer. ‘He kidnapped a friend of mine called Marcus Alleyne and sold him on. Know anything about that?’

  ‘Sit down in that armchair,’ she said.

  ‘He told me you paid him twenty-five thousand. How much did that leave you with?’

  ‘Sit down,’ she said, shaking the gun at him.

  ‘You pay someone twenty-five grand, it would make me think you’d come away with fifty at least,’ said Boxer.

  ‘Sit the fuck down,’ said Jess.

  Two steps and he was on her; she fired the Walther P99, which clicked loudly, and it meant she had no time to defend herself. He hit her hard in the side of the head with a fist full of bullets and she dropped to the floor faster than a sack of rubble. His hand hurt a lot, but he didn’t care or notice. He didn’t even try to shake it out. He was engrossed by the action. He removed the gun from her grasp, reloaded it with the bullets. He went to the kitchen and filled a bowl with water, came back and tipped it over her face. The only reaction from her was a quivering of her eyeballs under their lids. He’d been too wound up, hit her too hard. He slapped her lightly back and forth on the chee
ks, raised her eyelids. She murmured. He refilled the bowl, flicked water into her face, and finally she came round, looked up at him blinking.

  ‘Bit of a glass jaw on you, Jess,’ he said. ‘Got to make sure you get your retaliation in first.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Don’t take it badly. I’ve got a lot more experience than you,’ he said. ‘Didn’t mean to hit you so hard. I’ve had a stressful evening. But you’ve got to learn something: stealing people is wrong.’

  ‘I didn’t steal anybody.’

  ‘Talk me through it. Who put you up to the job?’

  She licked her lips, couldn’t keep the hate out of her eyes.

  ‘We’ll get there in the end,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to humiliate you even more, but I’ve got no problem hurting you. You’ve got to understand that I don’t like kidnappers and I believe in gender equality. So you will get the same punishment as any man. Now look me in the eyes.’

  She looked at him and he saw fear worm its way in over the hate, knew that what he had in his own eyes was beyond her comprehension. He grabbed her by the ponytail and her ankle and rolled her over. He sat on her buttocks and put his foot in the back of her knee, yanked the ankle back and started twisting it.

  ‘You ever had torn ankle and knee ligaments?’ he asked. ‘It’ll take the swing out of your high kicks.’

  He upped the pressure and she slammed her hands into the floor with the pain.

  ‘OK, OK. Let’s talk,’ she said.

  ‘Start with how you were contacted.’

  ‘Can we do this without you sitting on me?’

  ‘Sure, but don’t make me get you down on the floor again, or that knee won’t work the same for the rest of your life,’ said Boxer.

  He frisked her thoroughly, took her mobile phone.

  ‘Sit in the armchair,’ he said. ‘Hands on head.’

  He pulled her up, pushed her back into the armchair so that her head flicked back. She looked a bit groggy. He sat on the arm of the chair opposite her and waved her on with the gun.