Target

by Simon Kernick

  Big Barry nodded. 'That's right. Ratten Holdings. They've got roughly thirty million with HPP. But twelve months ago it was a lot nearer fifty. Wise hasn't done at all well out of Sir Henry, but here's the strange thing. A lot of Sir Henry's clients have been taking their money out of the fund and putting it elsewhere because of its poor performance, but in the last three months Ratten Holdings have actually been putting more money in. In fact, they're now helping to keep Sir Henry in business.'

  'But what's that got to do with all this?' asked Bolt, waving a hand towards the burning building. 'And what's it got to do with a lorry load of mustard gas?'

  'Have you gents ever come across the term "short-selling"?'

  'I've got a little bit of an idea,' answered Mo.

  Bolt just shook his head. He'd never had much of an interest in finance.

  'Basically, it's when someone sells a share they don't own, then buys it back at a later date, hopefully at a lower price.'

  Bolt pulled a face. 'How the hell do you sell something you don't own?'

  Big Barry shrugged. 'That's the financial industry for you,' he said, as if this explained it. 'I'm not sure how it works exactly but it seems the person rents the share from someone else, and then they just hand it back to him at an agreed time. Apparently, it's a very common practice among hedge funds. Anyway, the thing that's significant from our point of view is that HPP have been short-selling huge numbers of shares in British retail, leisure and insurance companies in recent weeks – hundreds of millions of pounds' worth. If the prices of these shares stay static or rise, then HPP are going to be in a lot of trouble, because they're already stretched financially. On the other hand, because of the size of their holdings, if the prices of all these retail, leisure and insurance companies were suddenly to fall significantly – and by significantly I mean ten, fifteen per cent – then they're looking at making the kind of profits that are going to reverse all their bad calls of the last twelve months. But it would take a catastrophe affecting the whole of the FTSE to cause that to happen.'

  'My God,' said Mo, who looked genuinely gobsmacked. 'You think that they were going to blow that lorry load of mustard gas to cause some kind of stock market crash?'

  'Well, given the individuals involved in this plot, it stands to reason. A big London-based terrorist attack would cause an automatic knee-jerk reaction on the stock market, and the shares whose prices would suffer most are those in the sectors that HPP were shorting.'

  'This is Paul Wise's work,' said Bolt, who was finding it hard to believe himself. 'It has to be. I know some of these City boys don't have that much in the way of moral scruples, but there's no way someone like Sir Henry Portman would have had the contacts to get something like this up and running. But Wise . . . I wouldn't put anything past that bastard.'

  'No, I agree,' said Big Barry. 'Someone high-level like Wise would have been running things, but Sir Henry was a willing partner, as was Dominic Moynihan. I believe Moynihan went out with Roy Brakspear's daughter for a while so he would have been the one who volunteered the information about her father's connections with dangerous gases. Then Wise would have used his criminal contacts to organize the actual logistics and hire Hook. Whether or not they intended to carry out a mass slaughter or give some sort of warning before the bomb was detonated we don't know, but knowing someone like Wise, they'd probably take the mass slaughter route, because that would have the bigger impact on the stocks.'

  Mo shook his head slowly. 'What kind of people would do something like that?'

  'Greedy ones. And I reckon Sir Henry and Dominic Moynihan were probably under a lot of pressure from Paul Wise. He's not the type to be very understanding about people losing millions of pounds of his money.'

  'But I can't understand how they'd have got away with it,' said Bolt. 'Surely it would have been a huge coincidence them making a fortune like that on exactly the same day this bomb goes off?'

  Big Barry shrugged. 'I'm no economist, old mate, but I heard once that one third of the world's money passes through the City of London every working day. If that's the case, then the money they would have made – fifty, sixty million – is just a drop in the ocean. So I doubt if it would have been picked up. An attack like that would almost certainly have been blamed on Islamic terrorists trying to disrupt the British economy, and with no witnesses left alive to say otherwise it would probably have been left at that. I doubt if anyone would have suspected a couple of UK-born City financiers, one of whom's a peer of the realm.'

  An unpleasant thought struck Bolt. 'What can we prove against Wise?'

  'I don't know,' admitted Big Barry, his expression not inspiring a great deal of optimism. 'Probably not a lot. Wise is an intelligent, surveillance-aware operator so he'll have been careful with his side of the planning, and I expect he left a lot of the actual logistics to Hook. With most of the conspirators dead, we're going to have to rely on Sir Henry testifying against him, and even then it's going to be difficult to build a case.'

  'Have we brought Sir Henry in yet?'

  'At the moment we haven't got enough evidence to charge him with anything, but we've got him under twenty-four-hour surveillance and his house has been bugged, so even if he farts we'll know about it.'

  Bolt took a gulp of his coffee. 'Fair enough,' he said, even though he'd have been happier with Sir Henry Portman in a place where they could lean on him. Bolt was sure a high-living socialite who'd never known true pressure would crumble immediately.

  At that moment, a shout went up among the assembled firefighters in front of the barn. The fire was pretty much out now and two horrifically charred bodies were being brought out. As Bolt watched, they were laid down on the gravel track, and two paramedics with body bags and the duty doctor came forward to complete the formalities.

  'So we got him at last, boss,' said Mo, patting Bolt on the shoulder. 'It's what he deserved.'

  Bolt nodded, then slowly made his way between the squad cars over to where the bodies lay, exhaustion finally beginning to take hold. He had no real desire to view the charred corpse of the man he'd been after these past five years, but something drove him on. Perhaps it was the memory of Leticia Jones's small, stiff body on her uncle's floor. Or the other bodies he'd seen these past twenty-four hours. Roy Brakspear, Rob Fallon, the unidentified woman beside the road the previous night . . .

  He stopped a few feet away from the bodies, flinching against the overpowering smell of burnt flesh. Bolt might have been a police officer with more than twenty years' experience, but he still found it very difficult to look at dead people. They reminded him too much of his own mortality, and burns victims were possibly the worst. The intense heat melted their fat and shrank them into nightmarish charcoal sculptures, almost unidentifiable as human.

  One was very tall, and he guessed that this was the body of the as yet unidentified man who'd been found on the barn floor when the armed officers had gone in.

  Bolt took a deep breath and stared down at the other corpse – all that was left of his nemesis. Although some form of natural justice had been done here, he found it difficult to feel any real satisfaction.

  Something caught his eye on the body. A smoke-blackened gold ring on one of the gnarled, twisted fingers.

  He bent down, looking more closely. Which was when he felt a surge of pure shock. There was a second gold ring on the finger next to it, unmistakably feminine in design.

  Bolt wasn't looking at Hook at all. He was looking at the body of a woman.

  And straight away he knew it must be Jenny Brakspear.

  Seventy-two

  Hook had waited until the pretty paramedic with the spiky red hair turned her back to him to prepare a shot of painkillers, then slipped an arm free and released the chest strap holding him to the gurney. He'd attached a small plastic blade, four inches long and very sharp, to the inside of his wrist with tape earlier, and he pulled it off, the noise alerting the paramedic, who started to turn round.

  Hook had been
far too quick for her. Drawing her back into a tight embrace, he'd clasped his hand over her mouth and driven the blade deep into her neck. A geyser of blood from the severed jugular vein spattered hard against the back window before slowing to a sputter as she died, shaking, in his arms.

  He'd placed her body gently on the floor, then discarded the makeshift blonde wig he'd sliced from Jenny Brakspear's head and leaned through the partition into the cab, putting the dripping blade to the unsuspecting driver's neck and ordering him to pull over.

  The shocked driver had been sensible enough to cooperate. 'Let me go and I won't raise the alarm for another ten minutes,' he'd said calmly as he brought the ambulance to a halt. 'That should give you enough time.'

  It was a fair offer, but Hook hadn't been tempted to take it. Instead, he'd yanked the driver's head backwards and dispatched him in exactly the same way as he'd dispatched his colleague, sinking the blade up to the hilt in his neck. This time there'd been more of a struggle. The driver had made some loud choking noises and had lurched forward in his seat, the blood spraying everywhere. Somehow he'd managed to break free, and he'd grabbed wildly at the door handle.

  For a moment Hook had thought the driver was going to yank open the door, which would have been a problem because there were headlights coming the other way, but thankfully all energy had then seemed to leave him and he'd slumped to one side, lifting one arm in a useless show of resistance.

  He'd pushed the driver into the passenger seat, then clambered through the partition and taken the wheel, pulling away as two police squad cars passed him heading in the other direction.

  Hook had allowed himself a small smile as he picked up speed, checking his location on the GPS. It wouldn't be long before they realized their mistake, but by then it would be too late.

  Once again, it would be like he'd never existed. A shadow disappearing into the night, leaving only terror and destruction behind him.

  Seventy-three

  The helicopter rose swiftly above the smoking ruin of the barn before turning south towards London. Below him, Bolt could see the wide cordon of flashing blue lights stretching out in the darkness across the countryside, with the crashed phosgene lorry in the centre, illuminated by the search beams of a circling police helicopter.

  It was now half an hour since he'd discovered that the body he'd assumed was Hook was actually female, and therefore almost certainly the kidnap victim, Jenny Brakspear. Ominously, the ambulance taking the person they'd thought was Jenny to hospital had not arrived. Nor had the crew responded to radio contact or calls to their mobile phones. The assumption was that they'd been carrying a disguised Hook, and that he'd managed to overpower them and escape. Only someone with his ruthlessness and nerve could have carried something like this off, and Bolt almost felt a grudging admiration for him.

  He sat back in the cramped seat, frustrated at the way events had once again twisted out of his control, fighting the exhaustion that was now taking hold as the adrenalin-fuelled tension of the past twenty-four hours subsided. He knew he'd achieved a lot. He'd helped to avoid what would have been a disaster for London and the UK, and he'd rescued Tina from certain death. He'd just spoken to the hospital again, and the doctor had told him she was expected to make a full recovery, although it would be some months before she regained full use of her foot. So, in the end, he had a lot to be proud of.

  Except it wasn't enough. Hook remained free, and Bolt knew he'd probably murdered the paramedics as well. Portman remained free too. As did Paul Wise. Justice, then, had not been served on those who deserved it. Bolt felt like sleeping for a week, but he knew he wouldn't be able to until matters had been brought to a close.

  In the cramped helicopter cab with him were Mo Khan and Big Barry Freud. Mo was dozing, while Big Barry, who still had a long night ahead of him, sat in the seat next to Bolt, staring into space. He was on his way to Scotland Yard where he would help coordinate the capture of all outstanding suspects involved in the plot.

  Bolt turned to him now. 'I want my team on the Henry Portman surveillance,' he said firmly. 'I think we deserve that.'

  'Get some sleep, old mate. And don't worry about Sir Henry. He's not going anywhere.'

  'I don't care. I still want to be a part of it.'

  Big Barry looked reluctant, but he was also pragmatic enough to know when to give ground. 'All right, I'll speak to DAC Bridges and see what we can do. There's a new team taking over at two a.m., and they're on until ten tomorrow. I'll try and get your people to take over then.'

  Bolt looked across at Mo, who'd opened one eye and was listening to the exchange. 'Does that give you enough time to sleep?'

  'If I have all the sleep I need,' he answered, yawning, 'then I won't be awake until Saturday. But I don't want to miss out on this either. Someone's going to have to pay for this, and I'd love to see the look on that pompous sod's face when we nick him for conspiracy to murder.'

  Bolt cracked a half-smile. 'My feelings exactly.'

  Mo closed his eye and went back to dozing while Bolt stared out of the window at the sweeping curtain of lights that signalled their approach into London. Somewhere down there was Hook. Hiding among the city's ten million citizens. The immense apparatus of the state would be hunting him down, using all the latest technology, but Bolt knew that it wasn't going to be enough. Their quarry was too good for that, and right now the slippery bastard was winning on points.

  But it wasn't over yet.

  And anyone, even a cunning pro like Hook, could make a mistake.

  Thursday

  Seventy-four

  Sir Henry Portman rose at seven a.m. on Thursday and, after showering and dressing, ate breakfast with his wife, Amelia, during which they discussed the dinner party they were hosting at the weekend, as well as the news being reported on Radio 4's Today programme that a terrorist plot to release poison gas in central London had been foiled the previous night. According to the surveillance operatives listening in, Sir Henry sounded perfectly normal, even feigning outrage at the callousness of the terrorists. 'What on earth is the world coming to?' they heard him saying.

  After breakfast, he checked his business email account, answering a query regarding the terrorist attack from a private Jersey-based client, who wondered how it was going to effect HPP's positions. Sir Henry replied that it was too early to say, but a short-term fall in the market seemed likely, and thanks to HPP's recent bearish approach to blue-chip UK stocks, the fund would make some modest short-term gains.

  At 8.30, Sir Henry's driver arrived at the five-storey Chelsea townhouse and he left for a prearranged 9.30 meeting with a London-based private client at the Landmark Hotel on the Marylebone Road, just west of Baker Street. He arrived twenty minutes early and took a seat in the open-plan dining area on the hotel's mezzanine floor, where he ordered a cappuccino and read the Financial Times until his client, a Mr Raif Mohammed, arrived at 9.25.

  Their meeting, which was filmed covertly by surveillance officers sitting at a nearby table so that lip readers back at Scotland Yard could describe what was being said in real time, was polite yet tense. It seemed Mr Mohammed was less than impressed with HPP's current investments and it took all of Sir Henry's powers of persuasion to keep him from withdrawing his money from the fund.

  While all this was going on, Bolt's team of twelve took up their positions. Two joined their colleagues in the Landmark dining area; a third took a seat in the foyer with a copy of the Sun; the remainder gathered near the hotel's main entrance. One of them, Kris Obanje, was on a motorbike; the others split themselves between four cars.

  Bolt had had to give up the Jaguar he'd used on surveillance ops ever since his days in the NCS. It was undergoing a full steam clean to get rid of any traces of phosgene before being delivered to Thames Valley CID so that they could carry out an inspection and attempt to ascertain whether or not Bolt had been driving recklessly when he'd hit Rob Fallon. He didn't like his new car. It was an immense Mitsubishi Shogun 44, totally unsuite
d to London streets. Worse still, it was an automatic.

  'They take all the pleasure out of driving,' he said, leaning against the car door, trying to get comfortable. 'I don't know what philistine invented them.'

  Mo smiled. He was in a better mood now that he'd had a sleep and the danger from the gas had passed. 'You sound like Jeremy Clarkson, boss.'

  'Jesus. Really? Well, he's got a point.'

  'I don't like the way that prick Portman isn't feeling scared,' said a voice from the back seat.

  Tina Boyd looked pale and she was sporting a black eye and a bandage across her nose, but even so, she'd made a pretty remarkable recovery. The hospital, having operated on her foot and put it in plaster, had wanted to keep her in for observation, but Tina was the kind of person who liked to make her own decisions, and she'd discharged herself at seven that morning and immediately phoned Bolt for an update.

  As soon as she found out that his team was going to be following Sir Henry, she'd insisted on being involved. It had taken Bolt a lot of effort to persuade Big Barry to let Tina come along, and he'd swung it by explaining that she was better placed than anyone to ID Hook should he turn up, but he wasn't at all sure now that it was such a good idea. Tina had been quieter than he could remember in the hour the three of them had been in the car together, as if she was weighed down by an unseen burden. He couldn't help wondering what suffering she'd undergone at Hook's hands, indeed whether she would ever fully recover. He wanted to talk to her, offer words of comfort and support, but knew that now was not a good time.

  'He probably doesn't even know we're on to him,' Bolt told her. 'There's no real reason why he should. It just means the look on his face is going to be even better when we finally nick him.'

  'But even when we do it's going to be difficult to prove anything against him, isn't it?' she said quietly, staring out of the window.