Stealing People

by Robert Wilson

  ‘That’s fine. Don’t worry about the CIA and Kinderman. We’ll deal with them. You just give us what we want and you’ll see Amy and Marcus alive and well again at the end of all this.’

  ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘I want you to make Ryder love you.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen.’

  ‘You don’t have to fuck him, just make him think that you think he walks on water.’

  ‘He’s already there splashing about on Galilee.’

  ‘You’re weird, Mercy Danquah.’

  ‘You’re hitting me on my professional side. It’s taken a lot of punishment over the years. It can ride with the punches. I’ve done rope-a-dope.’

  ‘Another thing: tell your friend Charles Boxer that we’ve got Amy.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to. He’s turned his mobile off.’

  ‘Tell him it’s time to back off now,’ said the voice, ‘unless he wants to get himself hurt.’

  ‘Back off from what?’

  ‘Trying to find Conrad Jensen.’

  ‘Hold on a sec, I’m trying to find Conrad Jensen.’

  ‘Everybody keeps their distance while this plays itself out.’

  ‘What plays itself out?’

  ‘As far as you’re concerned, it’s just some kidnaps.’

  Boxer released Jess from her cuffs. She got dressed. He picked up the Walther P99 and pulled the woollen hat off the man’s head, which was shaved. He looked to be late thirties/early forties and not American, unless he was a new arrival. He was still blinking, taking things in from the new perspective lying on his back on the floor with his wrists cuffed.

  ‘Anybody else have keys apart from Todd?’ asked Boxer.

  ‘Like, no … what do you think I am?’

  ‘Just a question,’ said Boxer, looking down. ‘So, who are you?’

  The guy stared back up, said nothing.

  ‘You been sent by Todd Bone?’ asked Jess.

  Nothing.

  ‘Boil a kettle,’ said Boxer. ‘You got a hammer? We’ve got to get this guy talking.’

  Jess went to the kitchen. Boxer sat on the bed turning the gun in his hand.

  ‘Where are you from?’ he asked.

  Nothing.

  ‘Somebody hire you to kill her?’

  No reply.

  ‘You understand English?’

  A basilisk stare that made Boxer think he was going to be remembered for eternity. There was only one way out with guys like this.

  Jess came back in with the steaming kettle and a claw hammer. He took the hammer, put the kettle on the bedside table. He kicked the man’s legs apart and trod on his ankles.

  ‘Undo his trousers,’ he said. ‘Pull down his pants.’

  Jess straddled him and undid his belt. The guy started struggling and Boxer tapped both knees with the hammer. She pulled down his trousers and pants, stood up and backed away.

  ‘Definitely not Todd,’ she said.

  Boxer took the kettle, stood over the man, still with his feet on his ankles, and held it over the groin area.

  ‘Now keep still or there could be an accident.’

  He jogged some boiling water over the man’s stomach. There was a sharp intake of breath.

  ‘Now you know,’ said Boxer. ‘I’m not messing around. Who sent you here?’

  ‘I don’t know his name,’ said the guy, his accent eastern European.

  ‘Where you from?’

  ‘Ukraine.’

  ‘Who taught you to fight like that?’

  ‘Spetsnaz.’

  ‘You were sent to kill her?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You been paid for the job?’

  ‘Not all of it.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Thousand before, thousand after.’

  ‘Two fucking grand,’ said Jess. ‘To off me?’

  ‘Not worth having your tackle steamed off for that, is it?’ said Boxer. ‘Where do you go to collect your thousand after?’

  The Ukrainian struggled with that, writhed with his head, being careful not to upset Boxer and the kettle.

  ‘You want to get out of this alive … get back to Kiev?’ asked Boxer.

  ‘Not Kiev,’ he said. ‘Yalta.’

  ‘Of course. Russian Spetsnaz. Crimea. Sorry. Well, what’s it to be?’

  ‘I tell you that, they’ll find me, kill me.’

  ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘A group. I don’t know what they called. They got something … what you say … a cause. They fighting for something. I don’t know what.’

  ‘Boiling water on your groin and killed later. Or no boiling water and killed later,’ said Boxer. ‘I know what I’d choose.’

  ‘When I finish the job I send a code to a phone number. We meet half an hour later under a bridge over the canal near King’s Cross. Caledonian Road.’

  ‘I know it,’ said Jess.

  ‘What do you have to take with you to prove you killed the girl?’

  ‘She got a chain around her neck with a ring on it.’

  ‘That’s my mother’s engagement ring,’ said Jess. ‘She gave it to me when she died. I told Todd that.’

  ‘No need to feel betrayed,’ said Boxer. ‘It’s just work. You got some kind of a vehicle the three of us can use?’

  ‘Only a motorbike, but I can get a car if I go back to Glider’s.’

  ‘Then go.’

  Mercy was outside the flat on Lofting Road in her car, waiting for the landlady to show. A BMW Mini pulled up in front of the house; a woman got out and looked around. Mercy crossed the road, flashed her warrant card.

  ‘She sent me new sets of keys,’ said the woman, as she let them into the flat. ‘Said there’d been a problem with the locks. I haven’t had time to get round here to take a look.’ She paused at the door, inspected the work.

  Mercy saw the two mobiles on the table.

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ she said, pulling on some latex gloves and inspecting the iPhone. It was dead. The landlady came in, looked over her shoulder.

  ‘It’s been erased,’ she said. ‘Or the SIM’s been removed.’

  Mercy opened it up. No SIM. She turned on the other phone without picking it up and looked in the photo section, saw shots of herself, Boxer and Esme, knew that it was Amy’s phone.

  ‘What can you tell me about the tenant?’ she asked.

  ‘Not a lot. We didn’t meet. She paid me in advance.’

  ‘Online transfer?’

  ‘From a company with an offshore bank account in Bermuda called Ferguson Consulting.’

  ‘Get me the details of that account and send them through to my phone, will you?’ said Mercy. ‘I want to get forensics in here too.’

  ‘What … now?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning. Can you be here to let them in?’

  She walked around the rooms, put in another call to Boxer, still no answer. Came across Amy’s bag, knelt down and went through it. Nothing unusual. She looked up and saw from her vantage point that Amy’s mobile was slightly tilted. She went back to the table, flipped the mobile, found the screwed-up, flattened piece of paper that Amy had left and teased it open. A UK mobile phone number. She called the operations room at the kidnap unit HQ in Vauxhall, asked them to check the number for her, do a trace on it and call her back. She stared into the table trying to stem a rush of thoughts and emotions about the last time Amy had gone missing, the terrible sense of loss even after years of not getting on. But now … she winced at the memory of that hug Amy had given her in the coffee shop, her new grown up girl.

  Jess called Boxer, told him she was outside with the car. Boxer took the Ukrainian down. As they drove to the rendezvous point, Jess handed over the chain from her neck. They parked outside some seventies blocks of flats down a side street, crossed the Cally Road and went down the steps to the Regent’s Canal towpath to perform the recce. They looked towards King’s Cross and decided that there were too many buildings overlooking that stretch. They we
nt under the bridge formed by the Caledonian Road and walked along the canal, past the ramp up to Muriel Street and as far as the western portal of the Islington tunnel.

  On this side there were no overlooking buildings and the narrow boats moored on either side of the canal were silent, unsmoking, uninhabited. The nearest one was twenty metres away from the bridge and had a canvas cover over the rear deck and entrance; its centre was weighed down by a tarn of leafy water. On the way back to the bridge, Boxer unclipped the canvas, making sure he didn’t tip any of the water over the side. He told Jess to go back to the car and wait for his text, be ready to mobilise.

  ‘If it’s Todd coming to this meet, I want to be here,’ she said. ‘We’ve got things to discuss.’

  ‘That’s not how it’s going to work. There’ll be no confrontations. We want to find out where he’s going. You wait in the car,’ said Boxer. ‘You know this area?’

  ‘Lived around here all my life.’

  ‘We don’t know where he’s going to come from or his mode of transport, so we have to be prepared for everything. I want you to park the car where you can see both access points down to the towpath. If you see Bone arrive or leave, you text me the word Bone.’

  ‘What about me?’ asked the Ukrainian.

  ‘You’re going to go back up on to the Caledonian Road to send the coded text message that will bring Todd Bone here. I’ll be watching you from across the road. You come back down here, stand in the light and wait. When Bone arrives, you hand over the chain and ring, take your money and split,’ said Boxer, taking a shot of the Ukrainian with his phone. ‘Make it quick. If you tell him anything about us, I’ll find you.’

  ‘I want the chain and ring back,’ said Jess, stepping forward.

  ‘Don’t complicate the issue,’ said Boxer. ‘Let’s just get it done. I’ll be under the canvas of the narrowboat. Take your positions and let’s keep it relaxed.’

  Jess and the Ukrainian trotted up the steps to the Cally Road while Boxer slipped under the canvas at the stern of the boat, careful to maintain the puddle of leafy water. He took up a position with a view of the towpath, making sure his back didn’t make contact with the canvas.

  Minutes later, the Ukrainian walked slowly out of the deeper darkness under the Caledonian Road and held up his phone. He retreated back under the bridge. Traffic heading into King’s Cross crashed overhead.

  They waited. Boxer changed position after ten minutes. Too uncomfortable. He lay on his back, listening with the Walther P99 on his chest. He tried to keep his mind blank, but the images of the night kept streaming through his brain. He saw himself stuck on the threshold of the hospital room, not wanting to go in, knowing that what he would see would change him forever. He toyed with the words: Isabel has passed away. Isabel is no longer with us. Isabel is dead. Isabel has died. He said them to himself over and over until the words achieved a wonderful meaninglessness, one that released him from their terrible reality. His mind drifted to the struggling infant in the incubator. That tight, purposeful frown. He tried to think what he should do with this little life that had been left to him, and that was when he heard footsteps on the towpath coming from the direction of the Islington tunnel.

  He eased over on to his front, peeked out from under the canvas awning. Nothing. No one. Silence. The footsteps started up again. They were coming up alongside the narrowboat and stopped again at the stern, right next to where he was hidden. He heard the man breathing through his nose. Still couldn’t see him. The Ukrainian appeared in the low light shed from the Caledonian Road on to the towpath and made a signal with his hands. The footsteps started up again more confidently and the man finally eased into view, walking slowly but decisively towards the Ukrainian. He was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a calf-length coat with his hands in the pockets. He was medium height, stocky, with powerful shoulders, which fitted Jess’s description of Todd Bone. Boxer reckoned he’d spent some time assessing the scenario from a distance.

  Bone cruised up to the bridge, shook hands with the Ukrainian and they squared off in the dim light. The Ukrainian produced the chain and ring from his pocket. Bone took out a small flashlight, checked it, nodded. He reached into his inside pocket for what Boxer assumed would be the money and produced a SIG Sauer with suppressor attached. No words preceded the four sharp clicks that were the shots that put the Ukrainian down on the towpath. Bone finished him off with a head shot before disappearing into the darkness under the bridge. He came back into the light with weights in his hands, which he must have stowed earlier. He pushed them down the Ukrainian’s jacket, rolled him over the edge and into the canal. He straightened his coat and hat and walked back under the bridge. Boxer saw him turn right and go up the steps to the west side of the Caledonian Road. It had taken no longer than ninety seconds.

  Boxer sent a pre-prepared text to Jess and got out from under the canvas, clipped it back into place. He ran up the steps, but took the path to the east side of the Cally Road much more slowly, holding back in the darkness of the trees. Bone was already heading south, hands in pockets, relaxed pace. Boxer waited, let him get a good fifty metres ahead before he stepped out on to the pavement and followed him on the opposite side of the busy road.

  After a few hundred metres Bone crossed at a zebra crossing and disappeared down a side street. Boxer waited again, watched him, certain that he was trained and would feel a tail at a hundred metres. He called Jess, told her to turn her car around and ease down towards Muriel Street, park, turn the engine off and see if Bone came past on foot. Bone turned left down Muriel Street. Boxer hung back still on the Cally Road, checking the map of the area on his phone and what the options were. The street ahead of him was empty of people; he didn’t want to risk going down there. Nothing from Jess. He crossed the road, took the first turning on the right and waited by a concrete pillar in front of an ugly block of flats opposite the Thornhill Arms. He texted a question mark to Jess. She came back with a zero.

  Just as Boxer felt his nerve stretched to snapping point, Bone came out of Muriel Street, glanced down towards him and carried straight on. Boxer turned and ran down a parallel street, took a left turn and crossed the road, hid behind a brick pillar by the gate of a kids’ playground, which had a view of the street Bone had taken. He sent a text to Jess telling her where Bone had gone, but not to move. He looked at the map again; saw his problem. Bone had all the options, and Boxer realised he was going to need some luck.

  Bone appeared at the end of the street, turned into it and started heading towards Boxer, but on the other side of the road. Boxer crossed over, veered away from some steps to a blue-tiled building and the Café Niko; Bone passed in front of him, slowed and got into a blue Ford Focus parked on the corner. Boxer took the registration number, carried on walking, called Jess, told her to pick him up.

  Jess pulled up alongside him forty seconds later. They cruised along Bone’s route with Boxer looking right and left trying to find the blue Ford Focus. Nothing. They came to a T junction, where they saw the Ford Focus turning left on to the Pentonville Road. They followed. By the time they got to the main road, there were five cars between them and the Focus.

  ‘Keep your distance,’ said Boxer.

  ‘Bone taught me how to follow in a car,’ said Jess. ‘How about that?’

  ‘Useful,’ said Boxer. ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t spot his own distinctive style.’

  At the traffic lights with Penton Street, the Ford Focus stalled. There was some honking from behind. Then the lights changed to red and it pulled away, turning left.

  ‘That was one of his tricks,’ said Jess.

  ‘The old ones are the best,’ said Boxer, and switched his mobile phone on.

  19

  23.30, 16 January 2014

  Lofting Road, Islington, London

  ‘That phone, Mercy, it’s a disposable but it’s turned on and we’ve done a trace on it to an address in Tower Hamlets. Corner of Duff and Grundy Street. Do you want us to send someone roun
d there?’

  ‘No, leave it with me. Too sensitive for that.’

  Mercy and the landlady left the flat. Mercy headed east around the City, down the Commercial Road, which was brutal with traffic even at this time of night, to Poplar. She found a big Victorian house at the address she’d been given, drove past it, looking it over. Must have been a pub and a survivor of some Blitz bombing, as all around were terraced houses built in the seventies. There was an empty lot next to it, fenced off, with a beaten-up car in the undergrowth. Mercy did a circuit and parked outside one of the terraces just down the street from the house. Now she saw in the orange glow of the street light an old sign on the side of the building, paint well faded: The African Queen. Her phone vibrated. Boxer. Finally.

  ‘What happened to you?’ she asked.

  ‘Just tell me where you are.’

  ‘You know they’ve got Amy now.’

  Silence.

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘I heard you,’ said Boxer. ‘She must have gone with Siobhan. I told her not to, but she’s let her get into her head somehow.’

  ‘That’s Conrad Jensen’s daughter,’ said Mercy. ‘Now that I know who the Siobhan is you were talking about before.’

  ‘And how’s that?’

  ‘One of those kidnaps I was telling you about. The Kinderman girl. The mother, Emma Railton-Bass, is the ex-wife of the CEO. Her boyfriend is Conrad Jensen. I wanted to talk to him to exclude him from our inquiries, but he couldn’t be found. And now the kidnappers holding Amy have just told me that you’re looking for him as well. And that they want you to back off too.’

  ‘I’ve been set up,’ said Boxer. ‘I just don’t understand why. Tell me where you are.’

  Mercy gave him the address.

  ‘Are you armed?’ she asked.

  ‘I could be.’

  ‘Well bring it with you and don’t drag your feet,’ said Mercy. ‘I’m … I need you here.’

  ‘Amy’ll be all right,’ said Boxer. ‘She’s learnt some stuff since she’s been at LOST.’