Jo stood her ground, she didn’t let her gaze waver. He was close enough for her to smell the nicotine on his breath. In the end he’d have to back off. So she waited him out.
As he finally allowed her to walk away, flanked by her two minders, he called after her. ‘Be sure to get yourself a good lawyer. But then Daddy’ll probably pay, won’t he?’
She clattered down the tiled stairway, there was no way she was hanging about waiting for the lift. She could feel the shame burning her face. It wasn’t so much Foley’s viciousness that stung as his disillusionment. It seemed so easy for all her colleagues, officers she’d worked with and trusted, to believe the worst of her. No one was remotely interested in her side of the story. They’d closed ranks. She’d seen it happen before so it shouldn’t have surprised her.
In less than two minutes she was out on the street and her escorts were closing the doors behind her. Pulling her scarf tightly round her neck, she strode away. When she reached the corner of the road she broke into a run. Once she was out of sight of the building she ducked behind a dumpster and the tears began to flow. Maintaining a front was a matter of pride, but inside she was raw and bleeding and reeling with shock.
It felt as if she’d stepped off the edge of a cliff and was tumbling into the abyss. What made it worse was she could make no sense of it. How on earth had five thousand pounds ended up in her bank account? There was no sensible explanation. Had her father decided to give her some money to help her out? But he wouldn’t be transferring it from some offshore account, would he? And anyway, surely he’d have told her.
Clutching at straws she rang his number. He did have her bank details, they hadn’t changed since her student days. She prayed he’d pick up.
‘Hello, Dad.’
‘Jo. How are you, I was—’
‘D’you have an offshore bank account in the British Virgin Islands?’
‘Pardon?’
‘I dunno, Dad, for tax avoidance, for your business, for whatever.’ She was aware that she must sound breathy and tearful. She had to swallow hard to stop herself from sobbing.
‘No. Absolutely not.’
‘Tell me the truth, please.’
‘I am telling you the truth. What d’you take me for?’
‘So you haven’t just transferred five grand into my bank account?’
‘No. What the hell is this about, Jo? Are you all right?’
‘It’s nothing. A mistake. I have to go.’
She hung up.
Her heart was thumping but she had to keep moving. She started to walk without any destination in mind. The phone was on silent but she felt it vibrating against her hip from inside of her bag, once, then again, then a third time. Nick Boden wasn’t giving up.
And Foley had mentioned her father. Daddy’ll probably pay. No one in the job liked a bent cop, not if they were supposedly in the pay of a scumbag like Kelmendi. But Jo never spoke of her family at work so how would Foley know that Nick Boden could afford to get her an expensive lawyer? He’d wanted to say something nasty, that was obvious. Was he simply guessing she was from middle-class parents who had money? Did she come over like that, a bit posh? She didn’t think so. At Hendon she’d quickly morphed into a streetwise cop with a slangy London accent and that had tended to be her work persona ever since. Or at least she thought it was. Could the likes of Foley have seen through it?
Her head was thrumming and it helped to walk. She crossed Regent’s Park, the squelchy turf muddying her shoes, and ended up in Camden Town in a bar she knew on the Regent’s Canal. She’d been there on a couple of dates. It was restful and affluent, London for those who could afford its pleasures and wanted the choice of forty different brands of gin. The place was warm and deserted; she took a stool at the bar and ordered herself a drink. It came in a large bulbous glass, fizzing and friendly, with several raspberries floating in it. The barman gave her a neutral smile and she wondered if he saw her humiliation, a woman drinking in the middle of the day, needing a drink to cope. It was probably more common than she thought.
Foley had flickered in and out of her mind, as had Bruce and Briony and Nathan and her sister. It was Nathan who’d pointed her in the direction of Richard Green. Had he somehow set this up? But why? How could he know the drug dealer was an associate of the Kelmendis? Perhaps he knew Green far better than he’d let on? He could have other jailhouse connections she didn’t know about too. What she couldn’t figure out was why he’d want to harm her.
As she sipped her drink her tumultuous emotions began to settle, the shock of Hollingsworth’s accusation subsided and one question floated to the surface of her mind. Why was this happening? She was being falsely accused of corruption. Why? Someone had given her five thousand pounds, supposedly as a pay-off. How would you even arrange that?
Briony Rowe had been about to identify Bruce and she’d ended up dead. Jo had started to ask questions and she was out of a job. Someone wanted to shut them both up, someone with determination and resources and who understood the internal workings of the Met. Had Cynthia Fenton-Wright warned him? It had to be Bruce. He was real and he was out there and he was dangerous.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
The feeling was hard to pin down: the sudden realization that it was over for her, that she was done for. There was inky darkness and she was sinking into it. It was soft and squidgy, a black quagmire sucking her downwards, swallowing her up. She was trying to speak, she was pleading, begging for her life, but the words wouldn’t come. He would save her, surely he would save her? She was gasping for breath.
The hammering and ringing came from far away. Its insistence helped her surface. As she opened her eyes to blinding morning light she realized she’d gone to bed without closing the curtains properly. Coming home tired and spent, having drunk far too much gin, all she’d wanted was to escape into the oblivion of sleep.
Jo threw back the duvet, got out of bed, zigzagged unsteadily through the flat to the front door. Then she hesitated. Marisa was still in hospital. The shock and the panic of the acid attack came flooding back. No way was she just opening that door.
There was a spyhole of sorts, but like everything in the flat it wasn’t fit for purpose. Jo peered through it. The tiny bead of glass was cracked, she could see nothing but a shadowy blur.
‘Who is it?’ Her voice sounded croaky and small.
‘For God’s sake, Jo, it’s me! It’s freezing out here.’
Alison? Her mother rarely visited the Lant Street flat, she hated travelling on the tube.
Raking her hand through her hair, Jo unlocked the door and opened it.
‘You smell of gin.’ Alison didn’t wait to be invited, she barged in. ‘What’s happened to the door?’
‘It’s . . . long story.’
Alison pulled a copy of the Daily Mail out of her shoulder bag. ‘Have you seen this?’
Jo took the newspaper. Her head was a clotted fug, it took a moment to focus. Then the tabloid headline screamed at her: Corrupt cop named. Traffickers paid five grand to Met detective. There was a picture of Jo, snapped on a long lens as she left the building after her encounter with Hollingsworth the previous day. They’d been waiting for her. They’d been tipped off.
She scanned the front-page article. Its tone was hyperbolic but the detail was there: the Kelmendis, an Albanian people-trafficking gang, also responsible for the prostitution of young children, had been fed vital inside information from within the police operation targeting them. And she was named – Detective Constable Joanna Boden, 28, of the MPS faces investigation by the IPCC and is likely to be charged.
Turning to her mother, tears welled in Jo’s eyes. She had a pulsing headache. ‘It’s a pack of lies, Mum. Not true, any of it. You have to believe me.’ She felt suddenly desperate and desolate like a small child.
Alison sighed, threw her arms round her daughter’s shoulders and pulled her into a hug. ‘Don’t be soft. Of course I believe you.’
Jo found herself weeping i
n her mother’s arms. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done this. Probably when she was thirteen and her school bag had been chucked under a bus by the class bullies.
‘Hey hey, c’mon.’ Alison held her close and stroked her hair.
‘I’m so sorry. I just . . . oh, Mum.’ Somehow the tears wouldn’t stop.
‘What’ve you got to be sorry about?’ Alison took her daughter’s face between her two palms. ‘Listen to me, Jo, you need to get dressed. And we’ll get a cab.’
‘A cab?’
‘I’ve been talking to Tania Jones on the phone. She and Gordon agree with me. First Briony, now this. Someone’s setting you up to try and shut you up.’
‘You’ve talked to them?’
‘As soon as I saw it. I only went out for a carton of milk. It confirms all our suspicions.’
Standing in her pyjamas with bare feet, Jo could feel the cold seeping up through the stripped floorboards. But she wasn’t alone. It was hard to believe but her mother, her mad flaky mother, was there to protect her.
Jo wiped the back of her hand across her nose. ‘And it has to be Bruce, doesn’t it?’
‘Yep. I think so.’
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
By midday they were seated in Tania Jones’s plush office with pictures of celebrities on the walls, balancing large cups of coffee. The film was going ahead, there was no question of abandoning it. Tania insisted that they owed it to Briony and she already had interest from a major broadcaster.
Jo didn’t know whether to be worried by their enthusiasm or relieved that someone believed her. She could end up on the telly and out of a job, neither of which appealed. Cops and media were different tribes. They used each other but it seldom turned out well. The bottom line here was money. More controversy, allegations of police corruption, another innocent abused by the system, it was all grist to their mill – and part of Jo didn’t trust it.
Gordon Kramer roamed in and out using a headset to speak on his phone. Jo watched him chatting and laughing. He was a trader in information and peddler of favours, a man continually in search of the real story. But what was real to him? It looked like a game and one he enjoyed.
As a detective, Jo thought she had a more principled route to the truth but maybe she was fooling herself. It was tempting to feel morally superior to a journalist like Kramer and to dismiss him as a hack. But did she have any right to? Her boss, the squeaky clean, by-the-book Dave Hollingsworth and her so-called colleagues wouldn’t even listen to her; they’d already made up their minds she was guilty.
Hanging up, Kramer came and perched on the corner of his wife’s desk. ‘I’ve got an old mate who’s a sub-editor at the Mail. He won’t say who’s gunning for you, though he does admit someone might be.’
Alison gave him a stern look. ‘Then how can they print these lies?’
Gordon puffed out his cheeks. ‘It’s a story. The interesting thing is it came to them two days ago.’
Jo frowned. ‘That’s before I even saw Hollingsworth.’
‘Someone planned this. They won’t divulge the source obviously. But it’s definitely someone inside the Met. Probably in your building.’ The reporter gave her a quizzical look.
‘Not the IPCC?’ Jo was still harbouring the hope that it wasn’t one of her own who’d betrayed her.
‘Other cops like to blame the IPCC for all sorts. It’s the standard get-out. But leaking to the press is rarely in their interests.’
‘Two days ago was when I went to see Richard Green. But that came from Nathan.’
Kramer stroked the dimple in his chin. ‘Yes, our boy wonder. I talked to him this morning. I think he genuinely believed what he told you.’
‘Green denied having anything to do with Sarah’s death.’
‘Doesn’t mean Nathan was lying to you. Could just mean that what he believed was wrong. The story chimed in with his psychology because he did feel guilty about your sister. But there’s no way Nathan has access to offshore bank accounts.’
‘He could’ve met someone in jail who does.’
‘What motive does he have to discredit you? He’s resentful, he’s angry and he hates the system. Sixteen years in jail doesn’t make you a nice person. It makes you bitter.’
Tania laced her fingers. ‘Jo, Nathan’s been upfront with us. What he wants out of all this is money. But who can blame him?’
Jo shrugged. ‘He still strikes me as devious.’
Kramer laughed. ‘He is devious, very devious, that’s how he’s survived in the nick. But someone’s trying to ruin your life, Jo. If you can think of another reason for that, fair enough. I think it’s because you went to see this Cynthia Fenton-Wright. I’ve got a researcher doing some digging, see what we can find out about her.’
‘There’s also the Kelmendis, scumbags I helped arrest. My flatmate’s in hospital because someone knocked at our door and threw acid in her face. I’m guessing it was meant for me.’
‘Oh, God, Jo.’ Alison’s hand flew to her mouth in horror. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because . . .’ Jo hesitated. ‘Because . . .’ her thoughts were spinning.
Panic, fear, confusion, so much of it had been swilling around in her head. The shock of what had happened to Marisa, coupled with gnawing self-blame, had thrown everything out of kilter.
But Kramer was right. Too much noise, discordant and screeching, she had to filter it out, focus on what was essential. Sift out facts from feelings. The Kelmendis were thugs for whom revenge meant violence. Setting out to incriminate her with the use of offshore bank accounts was too sophisticated for them.
This all came back to Cynthia and the evidence was there, staring her in the face. Inside the Met. In your building. Suddenly his behaviour made sense. He’d told her himself that he went to the same university as Sarah. He was the right age. He’d even tried coming on to her; she’d found that creepy but also weirdly knowing. And then there was the unguarded comment about her father. How would he know about her background if they’d simply been thrown together randomly as colleagues? It was almost as if he was teasing her.
Jo caught Kramer’s eye, he was studying her. She was beginning to realize that behind the fancy shades and the vanity lurked a razor-sharp intellect. He may be an adrenaline junkie who liked to challenge authority, but he hadn’t won the stack of awards decorating the wall of the reception area for nothing.
The reporter tilted his head and smiled. ‘You know who it is, don’t you?’
Jo hesitated. Could Calvin Foley be Bruce? She didn’t want to believe it. But wouldn’t it have taken a big, strong bloke, someone as big as Foley, to shove Briony Rowe under a train?
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
Suspended in an emotional limbo, Jo sat and watched in a daze as the resources of Xtraordinary Productions swung into action. She’d answered Kramer’s question, given him the name he needed. Foley, her sister’s killer. Saying it out loud had somehow made it real. Now she seemed paralysed, unable to get up and leave as she wanted to, but also unable to join in. Her limbs were too sluggish and heavy to do her bidding.
Alison, in contrast, seemed more alive and engaged than she’d been for years. She chatted to one of the young researchers who was jabbing an index finger at his computer screen as he explained what they were doing. Jo couldn’t hear the words, they sounded like a confused babble in the general background hum of the office. But her mother was nodding sagely like a wise primary school teacher giving encouragement to an over-excited pupil.
Making a documentary film and running a police investigation seemed to have more similarities than Jo had previously thought. Gordon was the dynamo, tossing out ideas, theories, demanding information. Tania was the steady hand on the tiller, making sure proposals were noted ready for translation into some form of action.
The team comprised three researchers on computers and phones, a whiteboard splattered with mugshots and questions, plus, lined up neatly on the table, an array of tiny covert came
ras and state-of-the-art audio devices which, Jo reflected, would’ve been way beyond the average police budget. They already had Cynthia Fenton-Wright’s Spitalfields office under external surveillance, with a live-feed to a bank of monitors, but they needed someone to get through the door to turn it into an effective stakeout.
The potential illegality of it all bothered Jo. As a police officer, should she even be a party to this? But was she? All she was doing was sitting there watching and trying to summon up the energy to move, to leave. Perhaps this was some form of delayed shock? Then she remembered she had nowhere to go, she was suspended from duty and under investigation. Could her situation get any worse?
The queasiness she put down to a hangover and no breakfast. But she was feeling decidedly odd. She became focused on the bobbing of Kramer’s Adam’s apple, up and down, with the bellow of his voice.
Then from nowhere, Phil, Gordon’s cameraman, plonked down on the sofa beside her and insisted on explaining the workings of his telephoto lens, which he boasted he’d used to read text on a government report tucked under the arm of a hapless official at the other end of Downing Street. It had led to the resignation of a cabinet minister who’d been lying. He seemed very pleased with himself. They all seemed so pleased with themselves.
Jo felt hot, then cold, then she wondered if she was about to faint. This had never happened before, but a voice dragged her back from the brink. She felt a cool hand on her brow.
‘Jo, are you all right?’ Tania Jones was looming over her. And then Alison. They gave her water, she took several sips.
‘She’s still in shock.’
Her swimming vision came back into focus. ‘Sorry.’ This was embarrassing. She looked up at a swirling sea of concerned faces. Then she blacked out.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
The private stakeout of Cynthia Fenton-Wright’s office was being run from a quiet booth in a café-deli across the road. Establishing the connection between her and Calvin Foley was the priority. They’d studied at the same university, that much had been easy enough to prove. Foley was born in 1980, which made them contemporaries. But Jo knew they’d need much more to build a credible case.
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