He glanced back at the street through the window and spotted Lawrence’s heavy, presumably on his way back to the office. Lawrence was not with him.
Jake quickly retraced his steps and slipped back into the café. Claire’s boss was no longer sat at the table; in fact, he was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he’d gone to the toilet?
Jake made his way to the rear by the kitchens. Inside the Gents, Lawrence was relieving himself at the far end, staring off into the distance.
Jake stood at the next urinal along, hemming Lawrence in to the corner, and proceeded to pull down his own flies.
‘Hello again, Lawrence,’ he said.
Congerton-Jones visibly jumped as he realised who was stood beside him. Jake noted the surprised look on his face. The runny nose and telltale grains of white powder below his left nostril, gave away the fact that Lawrence had just been snorting cocaine.
‘Tut, tut, Lawrence. Naughty boy,’ said Jake, as he deliberately missed the urinal and turned, conveniently, to piss all over Lawrence’s handmade, lace-up Louis Vuitton shoes.
‘I’m surprised you didn’t know I was going to do that, Lawrence. You, an agent of the Security Service. I thought you’d be one step ahead of an oik police officer like me?’
Lawrence stood open mouthed as Jake quickly washed his hands and walked out of the toilet.
113
Tuesday
11 October 2005
0915 hours
Fifteenth floor, New Scotland Yard, Westminster, London
Jake stood in the corridor outside DCI Helen Brookes’ office. The door was closed. Helen had called him just twenty minutes previously and told him to get there. It had sounded like bad news. Jake guessed he was going to get a bollocking. He’d spent the weekend going over and over what he knew about Claire in his head, thinking about Lawrence. Thinking about his comment on the use of the car. That last one was really bugging him.
How had Lawrence known that he’d taken the car down to Cornwall? Claire was surely in on this whole thing? Was Claire trying to set him up? Maybe she had tried to make him take a tumble for the 21/7 stuff? Why? None of it made any sense.
The door to Helen’s office opened. Jake stared into the small space and saw a man in a black suit whom he didn’t recognise, sitting inside. Helen stood at the door.
‘Come in, Jake,’ she said.
Jake stepped into the tiny office and Helen closed the door behind him. Door-shut moments were very bad news. Jake’s heart began to beat hard and fast.
‘Sit down please, Jake.’ Helen was being overly formal.
Jake sat down opposite the man in the suit. He didn’t introduce himself or offer to shake Jake’s hand.
Helen sat at her desk by the window but swung her chair around to face them both.
‘What’s this all about?’ asked Jake.
‘This is Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Powell. He’s from the Directorate of Professional Standards,’ said Helen, indicating the man aged fifty-plus sat opposite Jake.
The DPS dealt with complaints against police, internal investigations. Jake knew he was in trouble. The question was how much trouble?
‘Jake, I’m here to inform you that you are being formally suspended from duty today. There have been several allegations made against you, some of which have concerned us enough to require you be suspended while we investigate them properly. You can have a Police Federation representative or a friend with you here whilst I go through the formalities with you and serve the relevant paperwork on you. Do you wish me to wait for a friend or representative to be present?’ asked DCS Powell.
Jake felt sick.
‘This is all bullshit. What are the allegations?’ said Jake, trying to sound composed. His mouth had gone dry. His lips stuck to his teeth as he spoke.
Helen pushed a piece of paper toward Jake who picked it up and read: ‘Form 163A: Formal Allegation of Complaints against Police Officers.’
DCS Powell began reciting from a duplicate version of the same form that he had in front of him: ‘Point one – on or before 10 October 2005, you used a police vehicle for unauthorised private use. Point two – on or before 10 October 2005, you failed to properly instigate a formal missing-person’s enquiry relating to the disappearance of Claire Richards. Point three – on or before 10 October 2005, you perverted the course of justice in relation to the collection and retention of evidence relating to the disappearance of Claire Richards. Point four – on 10 October 2005, you assaulted a Security Service officer by urinating on him.’
Jake sat there in silence. He was really in the shit if they could prove the allegations they were making. This was the problem with the DPS; they didn’t need evidence to find you guilty and sack you. Internal discipline matters were found on the balance of probabilities. It was like a kangaroo court where they could present pretty much anything against you. They didn’t have to follow the normal rules of evidence and procedure the same as a police investigation. The evidentiary standard required here was much, much lower than that required at court.
This was going to take a lot of sorting out.
‘The serious nature of these allegations means that I must suspend you from duty. Your warrant card and the keys to the car that you’ve been driving, please.’ DCS Powell held out his hand as he finished the sentence.
The journey home took him half an hour on the train. Completing the last part on foot, he turned off Commercial Road and walked up Caroline Street. As he neared his place above the sari shop, he saw immediately that the main entrance had been kicked open. The frame was split and had splintered. Inside, his flat had been ransacked. It was a tip. His computer was missing.
Jake stood there, looking at the mess. The furniture had been slashed open – white feathers spewed out of the cuts. The contents of the kitchen cupboards had been thrown on the floor. They’d been in a hurry. It didn’t look like any job he’d been privy to in the police, too messy. The Security Service? The kidnappers? Lawrence?
114
Friday
28 October 2005
0735 hours
The flat above the sari shop, Whitechapel, East End of London
The room was filled with a hazy red hue; he assumed it was dawn, but he had no idea which day it was. There was a strong taste of stale beer in his mouth. As he rolled over, he felt the deep ache of bruises all over his body. His left arm hurt badly. It was sore around the base of the bicep. Had he been fighting in his sleep again? He wouldn’t even notice if he had broken anything in his flat because, right now, the whole of it wouldn’t have looked out of place in a skip.
Jake dragged himself out of bed and opened the cupboards in his kitchen. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten anything. Was he even hungry? He didn’t really know. There was nothing except for sugar and tea bags. Where had the beans gone? He was sure he’d seen four cans of baked beans the last time he’d looked, not that he could remember when that was.
He picked up his phone; the battery was flat. He found the charger and plugged it in. What day was it? Empty bottles lay strewn around the living room and kitchen. Jake didn’t remember drinking their contents.
He flicked on the TV. BBC news was reporting on riots in Paris. The riots were slowly spreading to other towns and cities in France. Cars were being set alight everywhere following the deaths of two Muslim teenagers in a Paris suburb. The teenagers had somehow been accidentally electrocuted in an electricity substation, whilst being chased by the police. Heavy-handed tactics were being blamed. The news ticker running across the bottom of the screen announced that George Best was close to death.
‘That happened quick! Bestie only went into hospital last week. What day is it?’
His phone screen lit up one corner of the room and caught his eye. He got up out of his chair to see if it had regained enough juice to switch on properly.
�
��Fuck me!’
He’d been suspended seventeen days ago. They’d taken his warrant card and told him that until the investigation was complete, he was not to use any of the powers of a police officer. Seventeen days ago.
‘So where the hell have those beans gone?’
He wandered into his kitchen. The empty tins were sitting there in his bin. He didn’t remember eating their contents; he couldn’t remember anything of the last seventeen days. Jake made a cup of tea with eight sugars. Black. There was no milk. The tea revived him enough to survey the damage properly.
It was utter devastation. There were empty cans of beer on every surface, except the corner of the coffee table, which held a rolled-up ten-pound note. The tubular note was bloodied and crusted around one end, whilst the other was white and crystallised. It was sitting in a very thin layer of white dust. Jake winced and shook his head in disbelief. He felt a cold knot of fear well up in his stomach. He’d taken drugs as a teenager, then briefly when his father died.
Jake knew that most of London’s cocaine was only about 15 to 20% pure. It was always cut and heavily watered down with other stuff – baking soda, flour, citric acid, cleaning chemicals, Italian baby laxatives. The nose often bled after repeated snorting. The extras were what wrecked people’s noses.
His dad had died from the booze and George Best’s liver was on its way out, yet Jake had never really felt over-burdened by his own alcohol abuse. Drugs, though, that was another matter. Jake still viewed drugs as the more evil and destructive twin.
‘Seventeen days!’ he chastised himself.
He was hungry, very hungry. He had to eat. He looked in his pocket for some cash but found none. He showered, dressed and began to walk to the café-cum-kebab shop nearby. On the way, he stopped at the cashpoint to withdraw £20. The machine said there were insufficient funds in his account. Jake pulled up a balance enquiry. Jesus Christ! He was £3,000 overdrawn and payday had only been eight days ago.
‘What the fuck have you done, Jake?’ he asked himself.
115
Friday
28 October 2005
0907 hours
Commercial Road, Whitechapel, East End of London
He placed a quick phone call to his bank, which revealed that he’d withdrawn £4,000 in cash in eleven days, £2,000 of which had been in lots of £500 in just over forty-eight hours. Jake had told them that he couldn’t remember going to the cashpoint, but the bank pointed out that it was his card and PIN that had been used. Amounts had been taken out at 2359 hours and 0001 hours and the same cycle repeated less than forty-eight-hours later. The bank also refused to increase his overdraft facility, a request which had never previously been a problem.
Jake trudged back home and picked up the bloodied ten-pound note from the table. He needed to eat. He washed it in the bathroom sink. What was he going to do? This was all he had to live off for three weeks? Ten pounds?
He walked back to the café and ordered the biggest all-day breakfast they had. He’d be able to think straight once he’d eaten.
He sipped tea from a tannin-stained mug before scooping up some baked beans on his fork. His mouth and jaw ached.
It couldn’t get any worse than this, surely?
‘Hello, Jake,’ said a thin, twenty-something girl, cradling a takeaway polystyrene cup as she sat down opposite him. In a short skirt, high heels and wearing ton of make-up, she looked like she’d been partying a little too hard. She must still be dressed up from the night before, thought Jake.
‘Hello,’ said Jake politely. ‘Do I know you?’ he asked.
The girl let out a laugh and smiled at him. ‘Yes, you know me!’
Jake sat there looking at her. ‘I’ve forgotten your name,’ he said, buying thinking time.
‘It’s Joanne. We met a few weeks ago. You were very drunk. Wheler Street, you remember? You’d been out in Shoreditch drinking, I think you said. Took me back to your place.’
Jake knew Wheler Street. It was a bit of a walk. A cut through from Brick Lane onto Commercial Road. A railway arch, covered in graffiti and street art at one end, meant traffic couldn’t drive down it. The arch made a vast section of the road dark even during the daytime. It was a place prostitutes hung out looking for clients; an area well known for streetwalkers since the days of Jack the Ripper.
On joining the force, Jake had been warned about the three Ps; paperwork, prisoners and prostitutes. He’d heard the many lines his colleagues had trotted out to them over the years, such as ‘Sleep with me and I won’t arrest you’ and ‘Let me take you away from all this’. He’d used neither in his life. He’d never had any urge to go near a prostitute before.
He looked at Joanne’s teeth; they were poor for her age. That usually meant a heroin addiction. Her clothes were cheap. They looked worn and uncared for.
‘Joanne, I really don’t remember. I found you in Wheler Street though? You go there often?’ Jake asked, in a way that made it sound as though English were his second language.
‘Yeah. A bit. It’s OK there.’
‘Joanne, don’t take this the wrong way. What did we do when we got back to my place?’
Joanne laughed again. ‘We talked. Well, you talked. And then we took a lot of drugs.’
A vision flashed before Jake’s eyes momentarily; the imprint of a pair of buttocks outlined in white powder on the glass coffee table, his glass coffee table.
She was smiling broadly at him. She looked a little like a badly kept Claire. Is that why she’d caught his eye? Is that how they’d got talking?
‘Joanne, as lovely as you are, I’m sorry we’ve met like this. I won’t be doing anything like this again. What drugs did we get and how much did I spend?’
‘We got some brown. I told you I liked it and you insisted you wanted to try it. You loved it! Then you asked me to go and get you some more. The dealer wanted more money for the second lot though, so you might see a few different withdrawals on your card instead of just one,’ Joanne was smiling again.
‘I gave you my bank card and PIN number?’ Jake’s couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
‘Yeah. You got the card back though. The second lot of drugs was £1,000 instead of £200 from that dealer; so I took £1,000 out that day. Then I got some food and stuff for us.’
He looked at his bruised left arm. That’s why it hurt so much. He’d injected heroin into it.
‘Great to meet you, Joanne. I’m going to finish my food.’ Jake didn’t want to hear any more. He just wanted her gone.
She tried to milk her cash cow further. ‘I was wondering if you wanted to do it again? I’d like to. You up for it?’
Jake looked at the scrawny prostitute that he’d invited into his home, taken drugs with and then entrusted with his bank card. How could he have been so stupid? Just doing any one of those things would have seemed beyond crazy a few weeks ago.
‘I want you to leave me alone, Joanne, so that I can finish my breakfast in peace, please.’ Jake looked her dead in the eye. He wanted her to get the message that she was no longer welcome.
‘Aww, OK, Jake, I can pop over and see you later?’ She winked at him and smiled, exposing her rotten teeth.
‘No. I hope we won’t meet again. Thanks.’ Jake looked back down at his five-pound breakfast that was now getting cold.
‘I saw the photos on your wall, you know, Jake.’ There was a change in the tone of Joanne’s voice; it had an edge to it now.
Jake looked up at her. ‘What?’ he snapped back. She was referring to his commendation-ceremony photos, which hung in his hallway.
‘The police ones. Should I keep quiet about my latest client’s activities, being an officer of the law ’n’ all, Jake?’ Joanne was half-smiling at him, but her eyes had narrowed. This was the prelude to blackmail.
‘Your client? Did we have sex too?’ asked Jake.
Jake got to his feet suddenly, scooping his plate up with his fingertips and depositing its contents all over Joanne. Before she’d had chance to realise what had happened, he’d grabbed her by the arm.
Jake whispered into her ear, his body blocking the view of the waitresses. ‘That breakfast all over you now will be nothing compared to what I will do to you and any other fucking piece of shit that comes near me. I suggest you stay away and keep your mouth shut. Unless you have a punter in it, that is!
‘You can finish my breakfast, Jo,’ he called over his shoulder as he walked out.
116
Friday
28 October 2005
1203 hours
Commercial Road, Whitechapel, East End of London
Jake had to escape. He had to escape from himself. In just over two weeks he had gone from gifted detective on the Anti-Terrorist Branch to an officer suspended from duty, drinking heavily, using drugs and now bringing a street prostitute back to his own home. He couldn’t believe that in his drug-addled stupor he’d been stupid enough to give her his cashpoint card and PIN, so that she could empty his bank account.
Walking back toward his flat, he felt a creeping despair. Was Claire still missing or was this all part of her master plan? He had just a couple quid left in his pocket and he was still hungry after emptying most of his breakfast over Joanne in the café. He’d had to hand back his police Amex at the suspension meeting, and because of his father’s debt trouble, Jake had never trusted himself with anything more than a debit card. Just feeding himself now was going to be a major hurdle.
THE THESEUS PARADOX: The stunning breakthrough thriller based on real events, from the Scotland Yard detective turned author. Page 32