‘Anything?’ said Amanda once he had stepped inside.
‘We’re narrowing it down.’ He embraced her, feeling her initial resistance, as if being comforted might shatter her resolve. She relented beneath his strength and buried her head into his shoulder. He held her for a minute and kissed her hair. A few seconds later she gently broke away. He saw the glint of moisture in her eyes.
‘You’ll stay for dinner?’
‘Yes, of course. What about the kids?’
‘They’ve already eaten. Steve’s with Melissa in there,’ she said, nodding towards the lounge. She hesitated before asking, ‘Jeremy bathes her about now. If I do that will you read to her later?’
‘Sure.’
There was no need for her to thank him, her gratitude was written in her smile. He went through to the lounge where the children were watching television. Steve looked up, eyes begging for any news at all. Raglan gave a brief shake of his head as Melissa jumped off the sofa and ran to him.
‘Hey, how you doing? What’s this we’re watching?’ he said as he picked her up and spun her around.
‘It’s rubbish,’ she said. ‘Is Daddy with you?’
‘No, sweetheart. But he’ll be home soon.’
‘I hope so because I’ve been doing drawings for him.’
‘Can I see them?’
‘Yes, you can, but don’t tell Daddy because they’re a surprise for him.’
‘I promise,’ he said, allowing himself to be led away by the five-year-old. ‘Your mum’s going to give Melissa a bath,’ he said to the forlorn-looking teenager. ‘How about we go on that run?’
‘You don’t have any kit,’ said the boy, pre-empting the possibility of spending time with Raglan being rejected.
‘I could use your dad’s? We’re about the same shoe size.’
Steve jumped up from the sofa, his grin wider than a moment before. ‘I’ll sort it,’ he said.
*
Raglan tucked the semi-automatic out of harm’s way on top of the antique wardrobe in the spare room and changed into Carter’s tracksuit. Steve was more animated than before. It was time to get a break from the overwhelming emotions in the house. Raglan cleared it with the duty police officers. There was little risk of anything happening in the nearby streets for an hour’s jog. He told the cops the route they would take and a time for them to return. They checked with their command centre and after a few minutes, once the higher-ups knew the identity of the man taking Steve Carter out of the house, permission was granted.
The two set off, jogging slowly and effortlessly, and then Raglan picked up the pace, wanting to force the boy to push himself harder. Exertion concentrated the mind. After twenty minutes, with his own lungs biting for air, Raglan slowed and began a gentle probing to uncover anything else that Carter might have told his stepson. Steve answered the query by increasing the pace again, running away from the memory. Raglan had no problem keeping up.
‘Steve, ease up. All I am saying is that there might be something. A word, anything, that your dad said in the car that you hadn’t remembered.’
The boy came to a sudden halt, anger flashing across his face. ‘Why are you torturing me?’ he shouted. ‘I don’t want to remember!’
Raglan grabbed his shoulders but he was strong enough to shake free. ‘I thought you were on my side,’ Steve pleaded.
‘I am. I promise you. But I’m getting nowhere fast and I have to find your dad before it’s too late. That’s the reality so no matter how tough it is I’m willing to push you hard because you were the last person to see him. Your dad had only seconds to give you a helluva lot of information. Why do you think he shouted at you? He was driving it into your mind. The name Serval, the initials of the man JD, the place where the key was hidden, my address. Everything was pressure.’ He took a more conciliatory tone. ‘Steve, an action like that ambush probably takes less than thirty seconds from the time it kicks off. Your dad would have given you little more than instructions and names, one or two, maybe three words. He hammered them at you and your survival instinct lodged them in your brain.’
Steve sank down on his haunches and put his head in his hands. Raglan watched as the boy shook his head from side to side.
‘Nothing. There was nothing else that he said. I told you everything.’
‘Go back to the shooting. Your father grabbed you. He made you look at him. You were scared. You kept wanting to look at the men with guns but your dad made you listen. He forced you to look at him, didn’t he?’ said Raglan, knowing that Carter’s years of intelligence work would have been concentrated into those few vital seconds. There had to be more than the boy remembered.
Steve nodded. ‘He told me where to go. How long to stay in your flat. Gave me those initials – JD. He was shouting at me. I’ve never seen him scared like that…’ His voice trailed off.
Raglan squatted next to the troubled teenager. ‘Close your eyes. Look at his face,’ he said gently. ‘Look at it. You heard him tell you what to do. Now watch his lips. Can you see the words? What else did he do or say?’
Steve raised his head. He had tears in his eyes. Raglan could see him searching his memory of those final terrifying moments in the car.
‘He… he pulled my face to his… said he loved me… Yes, he put his lips next to my ear… and… and said he loved me. Then forced me out of the car. That’s when I ran.’
The boy’s eyes were searching the image bank lodged in his consciousness. And the buried memory revealed itself as gently as a forensic archaeologist’s brush eases away the grains of dirt from a buried corpse. He looked momentarily startled.
‘There was something else… after he said he loved me… he said…’ The boy looked bewildered. ‘It was… the stars.’
*
Raglan took Steve back to the house and while the boy showered phoned Maguire. The message that Carter had passed to his son in those final moments meant nothing. They bounced the phrase around between them for a few minutes. A pub? Something to do with the Planetarium? None of it made any sense. All Maguire could do was to put his people on it. Then Raglan phoned Sorokina and asked her to check with her Hungarian contacts. He sluiced down in the guest bathroom and asked Amanda whether the word meant anything to her. It did not. Raglan went into Carter’s study and went over old ground again. The desktop and laptop had been taken by the MI6 search team, so too had the phones, and they had not yet returned any other electronic device in the house. Amanda was dependent on the house’s landline and it was a fair bet that MI6 would still be monitoring all calls in and out. Raglan’s search turned up no further clues and he admitted defeat. He ate the meal Amanda had prepared but she did little more than move the food around her plate. An overwhelming sense of helplessness pervaded the house. Finally, she scraped the plate into the bin.
‘Melissa is sleeping in my bed. Do you have time to read to her?’
‘Of course.’
She leant on the sink, head bowed. For a moment he thought she had reached the end of her slender thread of courage.
‘Mandy?’ he said gently, stepping quickly to her.
She shook her head before he could embrace her. ‘Don’t,’ she whispered, in obvious pain. She turned and faced him. ‘Too much tenderness now might finish me off. Understand?’
He did.
30
He stayed longer than he wanted because Melissa demanded the story be read twice, and then it was obvious to Raglan that Steve needed more time too, so he could talk about the man who had assumed the role of his father. While he was giving the children time Raglan mentally pursued the clue given to the boy by his father. What the hell did the ‘stars’ have to do with anything? It was too vague and he could still make no sense of it. If Carter had expected him to work it out quickly then he had put his own life in extreme jeopardy. And Raglan knew that if he couldn’t figure it out then Carter would eventually crack under torture. That’s when the bad guys would win. Even the boy had been given the barest infor
mation. Always the professional, Carter had known that if his son had been captured then JD would not have gained anything more than the bare-bones clue he had planted in the boy’s terrified mind. Carter had been prepared to die in that ambush and the boy he loved had inherited the secret.
By the time Raglan had comforted Steve there were no taxis and rather than take the Underground he strode homeward through the persistent drizzle that softened the city lights. A bus splashed through puddles and he caught sight of three or four people sleeping, heads resting against the steamed-up windows. Rough sleepers seeking a few hours of safety and warmth. There was no need for Raglan to skirt the building to double-check Maguire’s people weren’t watching him. They knew where he was and had more important things to do. As he walked through the night he’d kept thinking. And thinking. He phoned Sorokina.
‘I’ve got it wrong,’ he said. ‘He went south across the river on the Albert Bridge. We were stuck in a jam. Now we’ve alerted everyone to look on that side. If I were him I’d have gone around the park,’ he said, his mind’s eye seeing Battersea Park on the map he had held on his lap while cruising the streets with Abbie. ‘I’d have doubled back on Battersea Bridge. He’s north of the river. Damned if he isn’t. Everything he’s done is this side. The ambush, the first hideout, using Eddie Roman – a local man who knew his own patch. They’re still here. I’ve wasted time. Get your Hungarians back on track.’
He followed suit with Maguire. It was no good giving vent to the frustration of knowing that they had lost hours that might have cost Carter his life.
He was soaked by the time he reached his room. He changed into the spare clothes from his holdall and then settled down on the old bedstead and opened the only book he had brought with him from his apartment. Carter had used the Arabic book to show him that he had visited Qatar but was there more? The page that had been marked by the boarding pass was a section on tenth-century Arabic astronomy and showed a table of named stars and constellations. And that surely was where the clue that Carter had passed to his son in those final desperate moments would be explained. Raglan had spent months in the desert; there, he had not only depended on the latest GPS positioning but on celestial navigation, yet as he gazed at the book he couldn’t work out what Carter meant him to see. There were two hundred stars and constellations listed. For the next couple of hours Raglan noted various combinations of the Arabic names on the pages and their meaning in English but by the time the street lights blinked off in the morning all he had for his efforts was a stiff neck and a sense of frustration that whatever trail Carter had left him went nowhere.
Morning traffic was already busy on the road below his window as he checked up and down the broad street. He saw Abbie waiting in her car on the nearside kerb. So Maguire had told her where he was staying. He would have preferred Maguire had kept that information to himself. Abbie was useful for navigating the busy streets, but she was Maguire’s crew and he knew every thought he spoke aloud would go back to her boss. He tucked the semi-automatic into his waistband and decided that after the day’s reconnaissance he would move rooms again. As he closed the small volume on the bookmarked page the dull light through the window showed the faintest of pencil marks, almost impossible to see unless the book was held to the light on a flat plane. It was enough. He ran down the stairs into the street, phone to his ear.
‘Maguire, Carter marked up an Arabic-named star called Al-Nilam. It translates pretty much as a, or the, string of pearls.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’ the irritated voice demanded.
Raglan strode to where Abbie waited. ‘I’ve no idea. This is your town, you figure it out.’ He climbed into the car and covered the mouthpiece. ‘Ever heard of anything called a string of pearls? A place?’ he asked her.
She shook her head. ‘Sounds like a pub.’
‘Maguire,’ said Raglan, ‘get your people on to this and—’
Abbie placed a hand on his arm. ‘Wait. The String of Pearls was some kind of millennium celebration. They opened up buildings for the public. Places you never usually got to see. I remember my father telling me.’ She shrugged at the sparsity of the information she offered.
‘Abbie’s just told me it was something to do with buildings being opened up twenty-odd years ago to celebrate the millennium.’
‘Yes, I remember. Dammit, Raglan, how the hell do we trace anything that far back? There were dozens of places opened to the public.’
‘Something will link Carter to one of them…’ He heard Maguire covering the phone and shouting orders; then he was back listening. ‘Whatever he was doing before he joined the service,’ said Raglan. ‘His university perhaps. His time as a lawyer? He spent years in the army. Those are the links. We’re going on with the derelict sites but text me a list of places.’
Maguire severed the connection.
‘Where to?’ said Abbie, looking happy enough to drive to the end of the world if Raglan asked her to.
He unfolded the map and squared it off so the area he wanted was visible. ‘We stay north of the river.’
She looked as though she was about to argue that the man they pursued had gone south, but stayed silent. If Raglan had decided otherwise so be it. She swung the car into traffic. For the next fifteen minutes, she navigated around bottlenecks and roadworks. The journey was almost leisurely. She drew in a breath and steadied the flutter in her stomach.
‘My parents have invited you to dinner…’
He glanced at her.
She shrugged. ‘You made an impression. Dad’s never done that before, so…’
‘It’s a compliment,’ Raglan said.
She nodded, her face flushing with embarrassment. ‘I’d better warn you: it’ll be one of his hot curries. I said you were busy so don’t feel obliged. Honest. No big deal.’ It was.
‘That’s very kind, Abbie, let’s see how the day goes. I’d be honoured.’
She beamed.
His phone rang. Abbie could hear the Russian woman’s voice.
‘Something looks promising,’ she said. ‘I’m in a police car and heading for a place in East London. It’s a derelict factory.’
Raglan pressed the phone to his chest and instructed Abbie: ‘East London.’
She nodded. ‘I heard.’
Sorokina was speaking to the two police officers; then her voice came back again. Raglan put the phone on speaker so they could both hear her instructions. ‘You are nearest. It is an abandoned building in Commercial Road. My contacts tell me the building is used sometimes by film companies as a location. It was rented four weeks ago for cash but no questions were asked until I asked them. The film company does not exist.’
Raglan looked at Abbie. She shook her head. ‘That’s an hour away. Can they get an armed response vehicle from another borough?’
‘I want to be there,’ said Raglan. A hunter sensing his prey.
‘But if we don’t secure the area and the men you’re after are there then they could be gone,’ Abbie urged him.
Raglan nodded. She was right. He wished he could click his fingers and be instantly transported to the target. But of course he couldn’t. He raised the phone. ‘Get the local police to task ARVs. Deep cordon. No breach. Secure the streets and no sirens. Confirm when they get there. We’re on our way. Elena, you follow.’
Abbie was already finding gaps in the traffic but irrational envy taunted her again when she heard Raglan call the Russian by her Christian name. She changed down a gear and floored the accelerator, more confident since she had pursued the black Saab.
Raglan kept his eyes on the road ahead but his mind raced. The armed response officers were top-notch guys who dealt with violent crime involving firearms, but if JD was in that building who knew how many gunmen he had with him. It was all too easy for a hostage to die in the crossfire. They needed a breach by trained assault troops or the Met’s Counter-Terrorist Unit. They would be worth their weight in gold, except they had been stood down by their command
er because JD was wanted for kidnapping and murder so this was a simple hunt for armed men led by the police investigation teams.
Abbie braked hard, avoiding a slow driver.
‘Don’t take risks,’ Raglan told her. ‘Find the best route you can, but we need to get there in one piece.’ He smiled, wanting to offer her some comfort. ‘We can’t let your folks down. I haven’t had a chance for a curry since I got here.’
31
As they approached the location Raglan saw the striped police cars angled across the near and far end of the road. The two yellow discs in their windscreens indicated they belonged to armed officers. One of them waved them down while his partner covered him, weapon tucked into his shoulder. Raglan wound down the window.
‘Mr Raglan, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘They told us you were coming. We got here twenty minutes ago; we secured both ends of the road.’
Raglan climbed out of the car, grateful that Maguire had cleared him. ‘Stay here,’ he told Abbie. He turned to the second officer. ‘Make sure she does. No one goes forward.’ Raglan glanced at the huge billboard that someone had erected. He smiled.
‘Operational command lies with my assistant borough commander, sir,’ said the cop, pointing to a uniformed senior officer at the second vehicle. Raglan nodded and strode towards the female officer.
‘Raglan?’ she said as he reached her. He nodded. She hadn’t been at the operational meeting in Hammersmith. ‘My orders are to give you every assistance.’ She hesitated. ‘Whoever you are.’
Raglan had no time for soothing bruised egos. A lie was easier. ‘I’m a hostage negotiator. Keep your officers back. We don’t know how accurate our intelligence is or how many men might be in there.’
She flipped open a tablet and brought up an aerial picture of the building. ‘There’s a canal at the rear with a towpath. We have two armed officers at each end of the building. The front is boarded up with one window clear top right that gives a view down the street, but I have my people behind that hoarding there,’ she said, pointing out the high wooden walls surrounding an adjacent building site. ‘So they won’t be spotted. We have sealed off any approach road. We’re telling people there’s been a hazardous chemical spill from a tanker. We couldn’t risk using a drone to check the place out, but my team got a pole camera above the rear yard walls. There’s a black Saab visible and another similar-sized vehicle under a tarpaulin.’
The Englishman - Raglan Series 01 (2020) Page 17