SEVENTEEN

Nick insisted Jay make a report to the police. ‘What about Nahid and Tivon?’ Jay worried as they walked inside the station. ‘Won’t they go after my mother?’

‘We can’t leave it like this.’ Nick spoke in a fierce, low voice. ‘You were kidnapped, Jay. A friend of ours was killed.’

‘But Nahid said—’

‘They can’t have every cop in their pocket. It’s not possible.’ His mouth narrowed into a hard line. ‘Besides, I refuse to be bullied. I want them to know that, OK?’

Deciding to be cautious, Jay rang her mother and warned her.

‘I do wish you’d find another job, darling,’ her mother sighed. ‘So you didn’t mix with such unsavoury types.’

Normally, Jay would have defended TRACE to the hilt, especially since it wasn’t TRACE’s fault they were in danger, but today she had no strength. She suggested her mother go and stay with her sister, Elizabeth, on her farm just outside Bury St Edmunds for the next week or so.

‘Duncan’s got the dogs,’ Jay said. ‘They’re great alarm bells.’

‘So is Tigger,’ said her mother stoutly, then softened. ‘But I suppose you’re right. Toast and Marmite are ten times bigger. I’ll go there for a few days. I’ll ring Elizabeth now.’

As Jay followed Nick and the duty sergeant down a corridor painted the colour of mouldy cheese, her phone rang. It was Tom.

‘Hi gorgeous,’ he said.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘I just wanted to tee-up next weekend,’ he said. ‘Sofie’s with her mother, so I’m free from Friday. Shall I come to you?’

‘Sure.’

‘I’ll take you to Patara Thai. Feed you up.’

The Patara was one of her favourite restaurants, but she couldn’t rustle up any excitement. ‘OK,’ she murmured.

‘Are you all right? You sound a bit off.’

‘I’ll tell you everything when I see you,’ she said.

‘That sounds ominous,’ he said, but his voice was smiling.

‘Got to go,’ she managed. ‘Sorry. Meeting.’

Jay sat with Nick, opposite Sergeant Neuhaus, in a windowless office that resembled a broom cupboard it was so cramped. Nick got the proceedings started. The sergeant, blinking, eyebrows darting up and down, took furious notes before going outside and returning with a woman constable – Constable Robertson – and a tape recorder. Then he turned to Jay and led her through a series of questions, sometimes repeating them twice. What did the kidnappers look like? Their car? Where did they take her? Was there anything she could remember that might help them identify the kidnapper’s house?

‘The Polo’s number plate. YCO9 OPD. If you could trace it, find out where it’s registered . . . or where it was that night . . . The kidnappers held me in the house opposite to where it was parked. Another thing – unless they’ve cleaned up, there’ll be some blood on the garage floor, where I cut myself.’ She showed the narrow scab on her wrist to the sergeant, who nodded.

The questions continued. Why didn’t Blake call the police when Jay was kidnapped? Why did he meet the men alone? Where was the car park? What happened to Blake’s body? His motorcycle?

When Jay admitted Blake was wanted for murder in Paris, things got heated. The interview became interminable. Already exhausted, Jay sagged in her chair, her answers becoming shorter and shorter until they were almost monosyllabic.

After Jay and Nick had signed their statements, Sergeant Neuhaus finally rose from behind the desk. Shook their hands. Energy crackled from his curly brown hair to the ends of his square-tipped fingernails. He looked ready to charge outside and start making arrests straight away. He said, ‘Do you think you could join us in searching for the car park where Max Blake was shot?’

Although exhausted, Jay nodded. Four of them piled into a grubby Vauxhall Cavalier. Neuhaus drove to the street corner where the girls had picked up Jay. From there, they began casting around the north side of the Thames for any clues. It took two hours until Jay recognized the graffiti on one of the derelict warehouse walls. Neuhaus walked across the car park. When he saw the fresh scores in the concrete from where Blake’s bike had toppled, then the burned-out carcass of an oil drum where Blake had caused his diversion, the sergeant called in forensics.

Constable Robertson drove them back to Fulham, where it was raining, the wind still gusting hard. Pedestrians fought with their umbrellas, their jackets and coats billowing and snapping around them. Nick then drove Jay back to Redcliffe Road. When he’d double-parked outside her house, he turned to her. ‘You mentioned Blake’s friend Sol was with the Garrison?’

Jay nodded. She heard the Leader’s voice echo through her head. He’s killed one of ours . . . Let’s get Blake and ram him for it.

If Sol was part of the Garrison, why had he been meeting Blake? And what about Emilie, who Sol had been in love with? Was she still alive? Jay posed the question to Nick.

‘I’ll do some checking through some NATO contacts of mine in Brussels,’ he said. ‘Do you know which hospital?’

Jay shook her head. ‘Sorry.’

Nick told Jay to work from home over the next week. ‘So you can sleep when you need to,’ he told her.

She didn’t understand what he meant until Tuesday afternoon, when she found her eyes wouldn’t stay open. It wasn’t just the trauma of losing Blake, but the kidnapping had taken a lot out of her. She rested her head on the kitchen table, thinking to have a five minute nap, only to wake with a fierce crick in her neck to find she’d been asleep for over two hours.

While keeping an eye on her normal work and her clients, Jay began to research the prison system to try and find if there was any foundation to Nick’s Home Office rumour. She studied inquest statistics from the early nineties up to the current year until her head ached, but finally, towards the end of the day, she had a working chart to show Nick when he popped round to visit her.

‘Interesting,’ he said, staring at the totals.

Beneath the heading Self-inflicted Deaths, the national total of deaths in British prisons went from fifty in 1990 to seventy-one in the last year. Non Self-inflicted Deaths went from twenty to thirty-eight.

Beneath the heading Homicide, the total went from five in 1990 down to one in the last year. Control and Restraint dropped from three to zero.

Beneath the heading Natural Causes, however, the total leaped from eighty in 1990 to 170 in the last year.

Nick pointed at the figure 170 with raised eyebrows. ‘What did they die of?’

‘I don’t know.’ Jay bit her lip. ‘The information isn’t public knowledge.’

‘Probably the diet,’ Nick muttered. ‘Or drug overdoses.’

He didn’t seem to make much of it, but it bothered Jay. How could one statistic increase so much, while the others rose relatively steadily, or dropped?

The week dragged past. Nick spoke to Sergeant Neuhaus on Wednesday, but apparently the policeman had had no luck with the number plate search on the VW Polo. He had, he told Nick, hit a bit of a ‘problem’, whatever that meant.

‘I’ll keep pushing him,’ Nick promised. ‘I want that address. Then we can lean on one of your kidnappers, if you know what I mean.’

Leaning, as Nick called it, was an understatement. He had friends in the Special Forces, hardened soldiers who knew exactly how to extract information. The men who’d kidnapped her weren’t in the same league as Nick and his buddies, and if they got their hands on one of them, she had no doubt they’d get the intel they needed.

When Friday arrived, Jay was amazed she’d survived. The aching loss hadn’t lessened, but the fact she’d made it to the weekend without losing her mind meant she was strong enough to bear the pain. Tom had texted her saying he’d booked a table at the Patara for eight p.m., but Jay was still at work on her computer, tucked in the corner of the kitchen, when he rang the doorbell. Angela went to answer the door. Denise was in the middle of cooking Moroccan tagine.

‘Smells good,’ Tom said as he stepped into the kitchen, sniffing the air appreciatively. Raindrops clung to his hair.

Jay felt a familiar surge of happiness at his smile. She realized she was glad to see him.

‘You can stay if you like,’ Denise said, waving a wooden spoon in his direction. ‘We’ve got loads.’

Tom cocked a questioning eyebrow at Jay. She crossed the room and put her arms around his waist, comforted by the contact. He cupped the back of her head, his thumb gently stroking her nape. They stood like that for a moment before Jay looked up at him. His eyes were sparkling. ‘Your decision,’ he whispered.

‘I’d love to eat in,’ said Jay. ‘Would you mind?’

‘Since you’re looking so sexy, no, I wouldn’t mind.’

‘You think everything’s sexy,’ she murmured.

‘Only because it’s you.’

While Tom cancelled the restaurant booking, Jay poured glasses of Chianti and turned the lights low to create a cosy atmosphere against the stormy weather outside. Denise served the tagine at the kitchen table with slices of warmed bread. The conversation was general, Tom asking the girls what they’d been up to, the girls asking him about his latest case – two Somalian youths up for murdering another as retribution for knifing a friend of theirs – until Denise asked Jay for news on her and Nick’s investigation into the Garrison. Not that she put it that way, just said, ‘What’s the news with Nick and Sergeant Neuhaus?’ but Jay knew Denise was offering her an opening to tell Tom what had happened last weekend.

Jay pushed aside her plate. Tom frowned. She’d barely touched her food. Since her kidnapping, and Blake’s death, she hadn’t had an appetite.

‘You feeling OK?’ he asked.

This was the opening she needed. She took a breath. Willed the girls to stay and not bolt for cover. She said, ‘Something happened last weekend.’

Tom’s fork paused mid-air.

‘Something serious,’ she added.

The girls continued to eat and drink their wine, seemingly unperturbed, creating an oddly normal atmosphere against the sudden tension in the room. Slowly, Tom put down his fork. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘I had to ring Denise and Angela early last Saturday morning. Three a.m. to be precise. I didn’t know exactly where I was because that’s where the men dumped me . . .’

Tom’s expression froze as Jay continued to talk. Having run through the weekend’s events with the girls, Nick and the police, she had the story pretty pat by now, and Tom seemed to realize this, because when she finally ground to a halt, he said, ‘How many people know this?’

Jay told him.

He pushed back his chair with a clatter. Got to his feet. The girls glanced at him, then away. Concentrated on their wine.

Tom’s open, friendly smile was gone, the warmth in his eyes replaced with an arctic chill. ‘At least I know where I stand. I don’t come first in your life. Not even second or third. But fifth.’

Jay rose and faced him. ‘Tom, it’s not like that—’

‘Tell me what it is like, Jay.’ His tone was scathing. ‘Tell me why you rang the girls, not me. Why you talked to Nick before you talked to me. Why you went to the police station with Nick, not me.’

He stared at her, his eyes angry.

‘You were in Bristol,’ she said lamely, but it was a lie. She hadn’t been able to bear seeing Tom so soon after watching Blake die. She didn’t know why, but it had felt as though by having Tom nearby, she’d be disrespecting Blake.

‘And Bristol’s on the other side of the world,’ he said, his tone dripping sarcasm.

‘Tom . . .’ Denise spoke tentatively, but he rounded on her.

‘Stay out of it,’ he snapped.

The girls quietly rose and left the room.

‘I wanted to talk to you about it,’ Jay said weakly. Another lie.

‘So what stopped you?’ he hissed.

‘I was . . . a mess.’

His face didn’t change.

She raised a hand, let it fall. ‘I was exhausted. Shocked. I was barely functioning—’

‘You were functioning well enough to go to the police.’

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Nick did most of the talking.’

It was the wrong thing to say. His jaw tightened. He spoke through his teeth. ‘That makes me feel so much better. The fact that you called on your boss for help, rather than me, is just great for my ego.’

‘Tom, please,’ she begged. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just the way things played out. Please don’t take it so hard.’

‘How should I take it?’ he demanded. ‘Jesus, Jay. I’m not your pet dog, able to survive on the scraps that fall from your table. We’re engaged to be married, remember? People who get married are partners. They’re a team. From the way you’re behaving, I’m not sure you’re on the same page as me. I’m not sure you’re even in the same book.’

He studied her face for a long moment, speculating.

He said, ‘I think we should take a break.’

‘What?’ Her heart clenched.

‘Sofie said you didn’t want an engagement ring. That you thought having a ring would be like being branded. Now I can see why.’

Her mouth fell open. ‘She said what?’

‘You heard. Now I know why we’ve never managed to go shopping for a ring,’ he said. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. ‘You don’t want to get married, do you?’

Her mouth still hung wide.

‘I guess not.’ He gave a bitter smile.

Jay shook her head, trying to clear it. ‘I never said anything like that to Sofie. She’s lying.’

‘Why would she lie?’

‘She wants you to marry Heather.’

He paused at that. ‘That’s not possible.’

‘Why not?’

‘It just isn’t, OK?’

‘I wish Sofie was as confident,’ she said. For the first time since Blake died, she felt some energy return. ‘Do you have any idea what it’s been like having her pretending to be my best friend while she stabs me in the back? She lies about everything, Tom. From being allergic to chicken, to how she got her sticky little paws on my mother’s bracelet—’

‘Having a go at Sofie is below the belt.’ Tom glared at her. ‘Especially since she isn’t here to defend herself.’

‘Grow up, Tom,’ she snapped. ‘Your daughter isn’t sugar and spice and all things nice. She’s a spoiled only child who’s always got her own way, and when things don’t work out how she wants, she meddles. Look at us now! Fighting over her! You think she didn’t plan this?’

He was suddenly right in front of her, eyes tight. ‘She’s just a child.’

‘She’s a poisonous bitch.’

‘Enough!’ He walked out of the kitchen, striding for the front door.

‘Send her my love!’ Jay yelled after him.

The only response she got was the door slamming behind him.