Stealing People

by Robert Wilson

  ‘I don’t know. These circumstances are pretty unusual.’

  ‘A kind of reverse Stockholm syndrome where the kidnapper falls in love with their hostage.’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘Won’t release them for any ransom, not even a king’s.’

  ‘You’re too weird.’

  ‘I’m just playing,’ said Siobhan. ‘I don’t like the guy downstairs. He doesn’t say much, keeps cleaning his gun, then closes his eyes, strips it down and puts it back together again as if he’s in some dumb action movie.’

  ‘We’re all doing the same shit,’ said Amy. ‘Telling stories to make ourselves more interesting.’

  Silence.

  ‘Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing all my life,’ said Siobhan. ‘Coming up with stories better than my own. I’ve spent my whole life doing what my father tells me to do. All this spy shit. Now look at me. Don’t know who I am. You know I said he’ll fuck anything? That wasn’t true either. I just wanted him to look bad. It’s me who’ll fuck anything. The lies just keep pouring out of me. It’s what I’ve been taught. Pretend my life away. Why do you think I’m dressed like this?’

  ‘Because you like it?’

  ‘So nobody knows who I really am. I’m a walking identity crisis.’

  ‘Aren’t we all?’

  ‘You want to know something else?’ said Siobhan, teetering now that she’d brought herself to the brink.

  ‘Go on,’ said Amy, compelled by Siobhan’s sudden intensity.

  ‘He’s not even my father.’

  ‘Who? Conrad?’

  ‘I just got into the idea of it. Told myself that story.’

  ‘What is he to you, then?’

  ‘He’s nobody. He just looks after me,’ said Siobhan. ‘He got me out of a bad situation.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I was a contractor like him, except I was being … used. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I had to fuck people so they would tell me their shit or be caught doing it so that pressure could be applied to make them … turn.’

  ‘People?’

  ‘You know, people that might be close to important players who could then be used to give information.’

  The door opened. The guy from downstairs was silhouetted. He had a gun in his right hand.

  ‘Everything all right in here?’

  ‘We’re talking,’ said Siobhan. ‘You got the key? She wants one of her hands released.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘More comfortable,’ said Amy.

  He gave Siobhan the key. She released one hand and cuffed the other to the bed head, returned the key. The guy leaned forward to make sure the cuff was secure.

  ‘You don’t trust me or something?’ said Siobhan.

  ‘I’m checking the black guy now,’ he said, and left the room.

  ‘Not exactly sweetness and light, is he?’ said Siobhan.

  Amy took hold of Siobhan’s hand, squeezed it.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Siobhan. ‘Don’t fuck with me.’

  ‘I’m not. You just told me something true. That means a lot to me.’

  Boxer barely slept. He’d drunk some whisky and gone to bed in Amy’s room but woke before dawn. He stared at the ceiling. Isabel filled his mind but no feeling came to him. No sorrow. No pain. He imagined his son in the incubator, looked at his hand, remembered the softness of his head on the palm, but couldn’t raise any emotion for him. He felt perplexed, guilty, removed from life. The strange thing was the black hole, the one that in the past had opened out in him whenever he’d been rejected or suffered loss. He’d expected it to be there, expanding inside him, but he had no sense of it unless – and the possibility of this was disturbing – it had occupied him totally. He cast his eyes around his daughter’s room. Her books: Javier Marias, Haruki Murakami, Jennifer Egan. He didn’t know any of these writers. Did he know Amy? Her fascination with Siobhan, was that just a crush? A rush of worry penetrated the numbness and he started thinking how he was going to generate another lead.

  He jerked himself out of bed, wrote Mercy a note, left it in the kitchen and departed silently. He took the bus to Brixton, the tube back to Belsize Park. At home he put the gun on the table and turned on the radio. He took a shower, changed his clothes and sat at the table with the Walther P99 and the Betamax cassette from his father in front of him. He realised he was in no mental condition to do anything about the tape now, as the possibility of destroying it resurfaced in his mind.

  A news package on the radio caught his ear because of the name, Jessica Peel, and the description of the young woman who’d been found dead in the Royal Victoria Dock that morning. Her neck had been broken. There were bloodstains nearby, but the girl had not been wounded and it was assumed she’d managed to hurt her assailant, probably stabbed him. Divers were preparing to search the dock for clues. Police were asking for anybody who saw or heard anything to come forward.

  Boxer called Glider, checked that Jess’s surname was Peel. He confirmed it. Boxer told him what he’d heard on the radio, hung up.

  The nearest hospital with an A&E to the Royal Victoria Dock was the Royal London on Whitechapel Road. He called Mercy and asked her if she could make a police inquiry about anyone being admitted last night with a knife wound, and if so where he’d been found. He set off for the tube. Mercy called back just as he was crossing the road to the station.

  ‘The Royal London’s confirmed that a man was admitted with a stab wound to his left side last night. He had no identity on him, no credit cards, nothing, just a clip of money and some change. Not even a phone.’

  ‘Did they say where they found him?’

  ‘He was picked up from a car outside Poplar DLR station after a phone call from a cab driver who’d seen him awkwardly parked and hanging out of his window.’

  ‘Do you know what’s happened to that car?’

  ‘It’s undergoing forensic examination.’

  ‘What state is the guy in now?’

  ‘He’s stable in ICU. He was unconscious on admission and hasn’t spoken yet.’

  ‘Have they linked it to the murder of the girl found in Royal Victoria Dock?’

  ‘I’ve only talked to reception at the Royal London,’ said Mercy. ‘You want me to go deeper?’

  ‘They should analyse the blood samples found at the scene near where Jessica Peel was killed and compare them to the mystery guy admitted to A and E last night,’ said Boxer. ‘If they find a gun in that car or on his person, they should compare the ballistics with the rounds they’ll find in the body of a dead Ukrainian who’s weighed down in the water of the Regent’s Canal underneath the Caledonian Road.’

  ‘You get around,’ said Mercy. ‘Should we put a police guard on the ICU?’

  ‘Might be an idea.’

  ‘Where are you going now?’

  ‘Poplar DLR station,’ said Boxer. ‘I’m looking for a lead to find out where Siobhan’s taken Amy.’

  ‘What are you expecting to find at Poplar?’

  ‘If he’s who I think he is, then he should have had a mobile phone,’ said Boxer. ‘Can you tell me the position of the car before it was removed by the police?’

  Mercy called the communications centre, asked the question. Told Boxer she’d text him the detail when they got back to her.

  ‘I’ll need your help when I find the phone,’ said Boxer. ‘There’ll be numbers to trace.’

  ‘I’ve got a meeting at Wilton Place with Ryder Forsyth, just the two of us, before DCS Hines shows.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Boxer. ‘It means he trusts you.’

  ‘Text me with any numbers you need traced and I’ll put them through to the communications centre.’

  Boxer took the tube to Bank, changed on to the DLR out to Poplar. A text from Mercy came through giving the exact position of the car, which had been on the pavement twenty-two metres to the east of a footbridge over Aspen Way.

  He went up on to the br
idge to check the scene. There was a lot of thick evergreen vegetation between the station and the road, and on the pavement a man and a woman were looking it over. The man took out his phone, thumbed it and put it to his ear. The woman ran her fingers over the bushes as she walked slowly down the road, listening.

  ‘How’s Emma?’ asked Mercy.

  ‘Under doctor’s supervision, on medication,’ said Forsyth. ‘It’s not just the loss of her daughter but Conrad Jensen’s betrayal too. She’s devastated.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to her again. Find out how serious it was between her and Conrad.’

  ‘Sure. She’s a bit out of it, though,’ said Ryder. ‘She told me he’d been very supportive over the break-up with Ken. And he had a good relationship with Sophie.’

  ‘Have you played her the tapes of the calls you’ve received from the gang?’

  ‘None of them are Jensen, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘I’m beginning to think he’s masterminding this remotely,’ said Mercy. ‘He’s using well-trained people—’

  ‘I just heard from Yermilov, by the way,’ said Forsyth, cutting in. ‘Seems Jensen researched the two more complicated kidnaps very carefully. He didn’t just get up close and personal with Emma; he also used Boris Bortnik to persuade Irina’s brother to get inside the Yermilov household.’

  ‘I don’t fancy his chances of survival.’

  ‘Or Irina’s,’ said Forsyth. ‘Jennifer Cook’s been interviewed too. So far she’s the only one who’s actually met with Jensen. She tried to persuade our interrogators that this project, as she kept calling it, was some kind of socialist conspiracy to bring about a fairer world from the top down.’

  ‘And that doesn’t wash with you?’ said Mercy, surprised at Forsyth’s new openness.

  ‘I reckon she’s in denial,’ said Forsyth. ‘In my experience, if your intentions are philanthropic, you don’t steal people’s kids and murder a couple of guys in the process, demand vast sums of money, then torture the kids when you don’t get an immediate agreement on protocol.’

  ‘Socialists can be ruthless too. Got to break eggs to make an omelette and all that,’ said Mercy. ‘Any decisions made about using the media to locate Jensen?’

  ‘DCS Hines and the Joint Intelligence Committee are having a meeting about that later this morning.’

  ‘You had any more thoughts about this money?’

  ‘I had a conference call just now with four active kidnap consultants. We discussed it to death. Can’t see how they’re going to make it work,’ said Forsyth. ‘For someone who’s clearly very sophisticated when it comes to money, with all his business interests, global connections, offshore accounts, to be taking delivery of a huge amount of cash in this way doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘But presumably you’re thinking the handover is going to give you your best opportunity for targeting the kidnappers.’

  ‘The fact that they’ve demanded a truck with lifting gear suggests they’ll be transferring the money to a number of smaller vehicles,’ said Forsyth. ‘Obviously we’ll have a tracking device built into the truck just in case they’re crazy.’

  ‘And in the money?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Forsyth. ‘They’re pretty sophisticated now. Super thin, undetectable. The latest from the CIA.’

  ‘What’s the current thinking about the hostages’ whereabouts?’ asked Mercy. ‘Because the kidnaps took place over an extended period and different locations, it probably means that, at least for a time, they gathered them together.’

  ‘We’ve studied the punishment videos and they all took place in the same location.’

  ‘Has Reef revealed anything more under interrogation?’

  ‘Only that he accessed the telephone number to call by running a decoding program through a website. We’ve tried to do the same, but no result. We reckon that now they know Reef ’s been arrested, they’ve rendered the website useless.’

  ‘If they know Reef ’s been arrested, they’ll move the hostages,’ said Mercy. ‘In the meeting at Thames House, the CIA said they were going to go through all contractors used by all PSCs in the USA and suggested we did the same here to see if we can find a pattern. I haven’t heard anything about their findings, have you?’

  ‘It’s a slow process. First of all he must have a core of people he’s known for some time, who will be expert at disguising identity, being in two places at once, that kind of thing. Then there are the people he’s hired, but they seem to be on the periphery even if, like Reef, they pulled off one of the kidnaps. I don’t think it’s going to be fruitful working through thousands of contractors, and even if it is, it’ll probably be too late. You know the game. We’ve either got to find the hostages or Jensen.’

  ‘And we haven’t even talked about the ransom yet.’

  ‘We’re having a brainstorming session on that later this morning with all concerned, including representatives from the various embassies.’

  The woman, wearing a black mac, collar up, handbag slung across her shoulders, stopped and jutted her chin into the bushes. The guy listening on the phone nodded her in. She darted sideways and disappeared into the vegetation. It was almost comical. Her head reappeared and she wound her finger round so that the guy on the pavement thumbed his phone again. Listened. She moved to her left, ducked down again and then came up as if for air. This time her thumb was raised. She emerged with her hands in her pockets.

  There was no access to the DLR station from that side of the road and no obvious place to park a car on a busy six-lane highway. The couple crossed the road, climbing over the central reservation. Fortunately there was no way into the Docklands at that point and their options were to either walk down Aspen Way and turn right, or climb up to the footbridge where Boxer was standing.

  They chose the footbridge.

  Boxer preceded them into the DLR station. He recharged his Oyster card keeping an eye on them. They went to the platform in the Canary Wharf direction. It was after rush hour, but there were still plenty of people. Boxer got up close and took a good look at them. They both had the lean, hard, purposeful look of trained operatives. Both were wearing coats that could easily have hidden firearms.

  Boxer knew he needed backup for this kind of work. The couple could split up. The phone might already have been exchanged between them when they’d been behind him on the footbridge. He wouldn’t know who to go after.

  They boarded the train. Boxer went into a different carriage. The couple sat opposite each other, behaving as if separate. They went through Canary Wharf and out the other side into Greenwich. The train was practically empty. Boxer was glad he’d taken a different carriage. The couple didn’t speak, didn’t even exchange glances.

  The train continued to Lewisham, the last station. They went out on to the main road, under a railway bridge, and walked alongside a small river into a modern estate of three-storey blocks of flats. It was an almost impossible task to tail them in daylight with so few people on the street.

  The man was speaking on his mobile phone. The woman walked alongside but didn’t look around. Boxer realised they were not expecting to be followed. They were taking no precautions. They walked in a continuous progression. They didn’t stop or walk back in the direction they’d just come from or take a circular route. Maybe they were trained, but not in spycraft. They walked under a railway bridge and came out into some residential streets.

  They turned up a road with cars parked on either side in front of Victorian terraced houses and a block of seventies flats. They went into a pebble-dashed house about halfway down. The only time they looked around was when they opened the door. Boxer was lucky. He’d teamed up with a young mother pushing her baby in a buggy. As he walked by, he saw that the terrace had a break in it, and set back down a passage were two wooden doors leading to the gardens behind the houses.

  He had to act quickly before they set about destroying the phone. He let the woman with the buggy stride away from him. He crossed th
e street, walked back to the house and slipped down the passage, past the bins. There was a low wall. He jumped on to it and vaulted over the wooden door into a heavily overgrown garden, which backed on to flats in the next street. A cat on the roof of a decrepit shed slipped away. A crow took off into the gunmetal sky from a stone birdbath trussed in weeds.

  The kitchen had open venetian blinds. It was empty. A door with a large glass panel led out into the garden. The key was in the inside lock. There was no time to think this through. Boxer ducked under the window, went to the door, took out the Walther P99 and used the butt to smash the window. He put his hand through the shattered pane and let himself in with the key. Gun in right hand, he marched into the front room, which was the only other place the couple could be. He flung the door open and introduced them to the Walther P99.

  The phone was on the table with its rear panel removed, along with an open laptop. Both the man and the woman were on their feet. The guy had a Beretta 92 Compact Rail in his hand. The woman had nothing.

  ‘I suggest you put that down,’ said Boxer. ‘I’ve got the Met kidnap unit outside and four members of the Specialist Firearm Command front and back.’

  The man’s eyes flickered towards his companion, which was all Boxer needed to know that he’d got the psychological advantage.

  ‘Lay it on the table and both of you put your hands on your head.’

  Another glance from the man to the woman. She nodded, did what she’d been told. The man put the Beretta down on the table and clasped his hands on his head too.

  ‘Move over there, stand next to her.’

  Boxer tucked the Beretta into his coat. He took a wallet out of the guy’s back pocket, searched his jacket and found his mobile.

  ‘Backs to the wall, sit on the floor.’

  They slid down the wall. Boxer rearranged the furniture and sat in front of them. The woman’s handbag was on the floor by the chair where she’d been sitting. He told her to kick it towards him. Inside he found a Beretta BU9 Nano. He pocketed that too. Put her mobile with her partner’s on the table. Found her wallet, opened it: credit cards in the name of Louise Rylance. He opened the guy’s wallet. His name was Michael Rylance.