Deadline (17 page)

It had just turned twenty past ten when Bolt
arrived at the address Mo had given him – a
bedsit on a residential road of rundown whitebrick
Georgian townhouses on a hill a few
hundred yards north of Tufnell Park Tube station.
There were a dozen or so police vehicles as well as
an ambulance double-parked on both sides of the
street, blocking it off entirely, and small clusters of
onlookers, some of them in dressing gowns,
standing at the edges of the cordon talking quietly
among themselves, clearly both appalled and
fascinated by the crime that had taken place in
their midst.

Bolt's taxi stopped a few yards short of the
bright yellow lines of scene-of-crime tape.

'Christ, what's going on here?' asked the driver
as he took the fare.

'Murder,' Bolt told him, and got out of the car.

He showed his ID to one of the uniforms
ringing the cordon and was directed to a van
where he put on the plastic coveralls all officers
are obliged to wear when entering crime scenes.
He was exhausted, the remnants of the two pints
of Stella he'd had with Jack tasting sour and dry in
his mouth.

Mo met him in front of number 42. He looked a
little queasy. 'It's pretty bad in there, boss.
You might want some of this.' He produced a
tube of Vicks and Bolt dabbed some under his
nostrils.

Bolt sighed. The last thing on earth he wanted
to see right now was a body, and it wasn't essential
to the inquiry that he did so since he could
easily get the details of what happened from other
people, but he wasn't the sort to shirk the
unpleasant aspects of the job. 'Let's get it over
with,' he said, following Mo through the open
front door and into a dusty foyer with plastic
sheeting over the bare stone floor. Long threads
of cobweb hung from the corners of the ceiling
and there was a stale, airless smell, mixed
with something else. Something much more
pungent.

'She's down here,' said Mo, walking past a
threadbare-looking staircase and down a dark,
very narrow hallway to an open door at the end,
the smell of decay getting stronger with each step.

By the time they reached it, it was pretty much
unbearable, and Bolt had to stop himself from
gagging.

'Jesus,' he whispered.

'It looks like she's been dead for days,' said Mo,
moving aside to allow him access.

The room was small and cramped, dominated
by an unmade double bed which took up well
over half the floor space. Flies were everywhere,
their buzzing irritatingly loud as they vied for
space with the four white-overalled SOCOs
inside, who were testing the various surfaces for
DNA, and taking samples from the body. Bolt
could get no further than the doorway, which
suited him fine.

A woman lay on her side in an approximate
fetal position, her feet and ankles wedged under
the bed. She was wearing a pink T-shirt with
writing on it that Bolt couldn't make out, and a
lacy black thong. Her body was bloated and
discoloured where the first stages of decomposition
were beginning to take effect, but the
maggots that were eating her up on the inside had
yet to burst out. From his basic knowledge of
forensics, Bolt knew this meant that although
death had definitely not been recent, it was also
unlikely to be more than four days ago, particularly
in comparatively warm weather such as
they'd been having.

He stood still for several seconds, staring at her
dead, ruined body. The abject humiliation of
death depressed and horrified Bolt. It always
brought home his own mortality, and the sure
knowledge that one day he too would end up like
this. Nothing more than rotting flesh, all thoughts
and memories of a lifetime gone.

'Have we ID'd her yet?'

Mo nodded. 'That's why I called you. Her
name's Marie Aniewicz. She's Mrs Devern's
cleaner.'

'Jesus Christ,' he whispered, tensing. 'How old
was she?'

'Twenty-five,' answered Mo. 'She'd worked at
Mrs Devern's place for just under three years.'

He thought of Emma, only eleven years
younger, and was unable to stop himself from
picturing her here in the same position.

'It's no age, is it?'

'No, it's not.'

Bolt took a deep breath, temporarily forgetting
the thick stench of rancid meat.

'What a waste.'

No one said anything for a while. The SOCOs
continued to work methodically, as if this was just
a routine task for them, which of course to a large
extent it was.

'Do we know how she died yet?'

The SOCO nearest to Bolt, who was kneeling
down beside the body taking photographs, heard
the question and looked up.

'Looks like a single stab wound to the heart,' he
said, his voice muffled by his face mask. 'No other
obvious injuries on her.'

He gently lifted her right arm with his free hand
and touched a thin tear in her T-shirt at roughly
the level of her third and fourth ribs. A small dark
patch on the T-shirt, not much bigger than two
fifty-pence pieces, marked the spot. The fact that
there was so little blood, either on the body or
anywhere else in the room, suggested to Bolt that
she'd died quickly.

'How was she found?' he asked.

'Like this,' answered the SOCO, 'but with the
duvet covering her.'

'It's an unusual position to be in for someone
who's just been stabbed. I'd have thought she'd be
more sprawled out.'

'It looks like she was stabbed, then placed in
this position almost immediately. You can see
from the lividity that this is where she's been lying
most of the time since death.' He pointed to
her underside which was darker than the rest of
the body where the blood had slowly collected
there.

Bolt nodded, and looked around the room.
There were no signs of a struggle. The two lamps
on either side of the bed were still upright, as were
the handful of framed photos and the pot plant on
the chest of drawers against one wall. Bolt didn't
look at the photos. He didn't want to see what
Marie Aniewicz had been like in life.

'Looks like a professional job,' he said when he
and Mo were back outside on the pavement,
breathing in the comparatively fresh air, glad to be
out of the stifling tomb that was the young
cleaner's bedroom.

'No one heard a thing, and there's no sign of
forced entry, either to the house itself or her
bedsit. And it's been difficult to get hold of
witnesses. The other ground-floor bedsit's empty,
and the rest of the people in the house are apparently
illegals, so they've made themselves scarce.
The local cops got an anonymous call reporting a
nasty smell coming from her room about six
o'clock this evening.'

'Does Barry know? And Tina?'

'I got hold of Barry, and he told me to get you
down here. He's at some charity function tonight.
He wants a full update in the meeting tomorrow
morning. I couldn't get hold of Tina. She left
before I found out about this, and now she's not
answering her phone.'

Bolt exhaled air through his nostrils. 'This puts
a whole new perspective on things, doesn't it?'

'Well, there's no way it's unconnected. We
haven't got an exact time of death yet, but
according to the doctor who examined the body
she's been dead somewhere between three and
five days. About the time of the kidnapping.'

'There's only one motive for killing the cleaner,
then: they found out the alarm code from her and
got access to Andrea's house. Which is how they
would have placed the trip switch on the front
door and found out what Emma was planning on
Tuesday. So it's not an inside job.'

'And Phelan's probably not involved.'

'Almost certainly not. Killing the cleaner was a
risk. You'd only do that if you had to.'

'So, either they've got Phelan as well as
Emma . . .'

'Or he's dead.' Bolt thought of Andrea,
wondered how much more bad news she could
take. 'They've already killed two people that we
know about. There's no reason why they won't
have made it three.' Or four, whispered an uninvited
voice at the back of Bolt's mind. The fact that
the kidnappers could plan to murder a cleaner
just to get access to a house meant that it was
highly unlikely they'd lose too much sleep over
the prospect of killing Emma.

Bolt wiped a hand across his brow. The night
was unseasonably warm for September, and he
was conscious that he was sweating again.

'These guys really mean business, Mo.'

Mo nodded slowly, his dark eyes full of
sympathy. 'I know. But as you've said, they took a
risk killing the cleaner. Someone somewhere
might have seen something. Sooner or later
they're going to make a mistake. Remember that,
boss. No one's luck lasts for ever.'

It was close to midnight by the time Bolt walked
through his apartment door for the second time
that day. He and Mo had stayed at the crime scene
for a further half an hour to talk to the senior
investigating officer from Tufnell Park CID. They
shared what information they could, but were
deliberately vague about most of it because of the
secrecy of their own op. Bolt had been apologetic
about this but it hadn't prevented the senior
investigating officer from getting seriously pissed
off and threatening to talk to the head of SOCA to
get further details if he had to.

After saying his goodbyes to Mo, he'd found a
taxi on Junction Road to take him home. On the
way back he'd tried Tina's number to bring her up
to date with developments but again she wasn't
answering, and he decided to leave speaking to
her until the morning. He hoped she hadn't
suffered any ill effects from her earlier ordeal, and
it struck him that maybe he should have done
more to check she was OK. At the Glasshouse
earlier she'd been quieter than usual, and they'd
hardly had a chance to speak. But Tina was a
tough cookie. She'd be all right. And at the
moment he had enough on his plate without
worrying about her.

The first thing he did when he got back inside
the apartment was gulp down a large glass of
water in an effort to rehydrate himself and get the
taste of stale beer off his breath. The remainder of
his glass of red wine was on the kitchen top and
he was tempted to finish it off, but quickly
dismissed the idea. Instead, he threw off his
clothes and jumped in the shower, trying hard to
relax himself. He was still tense but less so than he
had been, even given what he'd just seen. Perhaps
he was simply getting more used to it.

It occurred to him as he towelled himself dry
that this had possibly been the worst day of his
life, and there'd certainly been a fair share of
contenders for that accolade over the years.
Mainly because it had been so totally and utterly
unexpected, and he'd had so little time to react to
the speed and ferocity of events as they'd buffeted
him again and again.

He was also aware that tomorrow could turn
out to be even worse.

Bolt tossed and turned all night, his sleep a series
of fitful dozes. In those rare times when he did
go under, the dreams came, unwelcome and
unnerving. In one of them he and Mikaela were
living in Andrea's house with two young children
of their own. But the children were nameless, faceless
wraiths. He wasn't even sure if they were
boys or girls, only that he loved them with an
intensity he didn't realize he was capable of. Yet
every time he went to hold one of them, they
would float out of his grip, leaving him feeling
progressively more angry and frustrated. He tried
to talk about this to Mikaela but she didn't seem
to understand. 'They're our children,' was all she
said, and she was smiling as she spoke, because
Mikaela had always wanted children. It was he
who hadn't . . .

Some time later, in the grey time before dawn,
he'd found himself slipping into another dream,
this one far clearer and more violent. He was back
at the Lewisham robbery – the gunfight that in
reality had lasted a matter of seconds, but which
had remained etched on his mind for ever. Only
this time the robbers were unarmed. They were
standing in a line and trying to surrender, hands
in the air, their balaclavas removed, all but one of
their faces blurred. The one Bolt could see properly
was Dean Hayes, a scraggy-faced youth with
a hook nose that had been broken more than once,
and dyed blond hair. His eyes were wide with fear
and he was trying to say something. But in the
dream, Bolt was filled with a ferocious rage. These
were the bastards responsible for kidnapping his
daughter – all of them. The rage made the gun
quiver and twitch in his hands, but that didn't
stop him from opening fire, the shock of the
retorts echoing in his head. Dean Hayes bucked
crazily as he was hit repeatedly, until finally he
fell sprawling to the pavement. Then Bolt moved
the gun in a slow, careful arc, pulling the trigger
again and again, experiencing a burst of elation as
one after another they went down, hardly hearing
the shouts of his colleagues as they tried to get
him to stop shooting.

The last thing he remembered was seeing
Andrea standing beside him, dressed in the lacy
black negligee she was wearing when he'd first
met her all those years ago, the gun in her hand
kicking as she too opened fire on the men in front
of her, her expression a picture of controlled calm.

And then suddenly the dream ended with the
shriek of the alarm, and it was back to a reality
he'd rather not have had to face.

He was shattered by the time he got into the
office that morning. There was a 7.30 meeting for
everyone involved in the operation, except those
who were on surveillance duty, either watching
the area around Andrea's house or keeping tabs
on the movements of Leon Daroyce and his close
associates. It was led by Big Barry Freud, and was
at least partly overshadowed by the discovery of
Marie Aniewicz's body the previous evening.
There were no further details on her death,
although the initial results of her autopsy were
expected by mid-afternoon. One thing, though,
was clear: she'd been deliberately targeted, and
her murder was linked to the kidnap inquiry.
Barry seemed unduly hopeful that the results of
the house-to-house enquiries in the area, and a
search of the murder scene itself, might elicit clues
as to the identity of the kidnappers, conveniently
glossing over the fact that they had only a matter
of hours left before any such clues became irrelevant.
There'd been no breaks in the case anywhere
else, and the Daroyce surveillance team had
nothing to report to suggest that either he or his
people were directly implicated, so, once again,
everything hinged on the success of the sting
operation they were setting up to catch the
kidnappers during the ransom drop.

The bulk of the meeting was spent going over
the details of the sting itself and everyone's part in
it, and Bolt sensed the growing excitement among
those present in the incident room as it became
clear they were going to get a chance to bring
some truly brutal individuals to justice.

Bolt shared none of this excitement. The tension
was building in him again, rising to almost intolerable
levels as he heard his colleagues discuss the
proposed arrest of the kidnappers and the rescue
of his daughter, noting grimly that there seemed
to be more emphasis on the first objective than on
the second, and that Emma was rarely mentioned
by name. Once during the meeting he caught
Tina's eye. She was looking tired, but she
mouthed the words 'You OK?' at him. He
managed a small smile and a nod in return,
wondering if his stress was that obvious, and she
turned away. He watched her for a second, feeling
a sudden urge to unburden himself – somehow he
knew she'd understand – but he dismissed it
immediately, telling himself not to weaken. There
were things he needed to do.

When the meeting was over, Bolt asked to see
Barry alone.

'You look bloody awful, old mate,' said his boss
when they were in his office.

Bolt was already on his fourth coffee of the day.

He hadn't eaten anything more substantial than
half a sandwich for more than twenty-four hours
now, and the lack of food was making him
nauseous.

'I feel it.'

'I'd say take a holiday, but we're far too busy for
that.'

'I've got a possible lead,' Bolt told him.

Barry frowned. 'Why didn't you mention it in
the meeting?'

'I didn't want to muddy the waters. Everyone's
got enough to think about without me complicating
matters.'

'If it's a lead, it's a lead. What is it?'

Bolt told him about the armed robbery fifteen
years ago, how Galante was strongly suspected of
being involved, and how Andrea's information
had scuppered it, leaving the other robbers dead
or behind bars.

Barry looked incredulous. 'So what you're
telling me is that you knew Andrea Devern from
the past? Why the hell haven't you said anything
before now?'

'I only knew her vaguely. She was a friend of a
snout.' He could see that Barry didn't entirely
believe him. 'Anyway, two of the gang – Marcus
Richardson and Scott Ridgers – are out now, and I
think we should view them as potential suspects.'

'Why? Were either of them aware that it was
Mrs Devern who shopped them?'

Bolt shook his head. 'No, not that I know of. I
was deliberately vague about who'd given me the
information so that I could protect Mrs Devern.
You know what it was like back then. You didn't
have to give too many details.'

'So why do you think they'd be targeting her if
they didn't know about her part in putting them
away?'

It was a good question, and one Bolt had been
thinking about a lot.

'They were probably aware that Jimmy Galante
was seeing Andrea – Mrs Devern – at the time, so
they may well have known her too. Then, when
they come out of prison years later, looking for a
way to make money and see how well she's
doing, they think, well, why not hit on her?'

'Was any reward money paid to Mrs Devern for
the information she gave?'

'No.'

'So they couldn't have found out that way.'

Bolt shook his head.

Barry leaned forward in his seat, adopting one
of his thoughtful poses, which consisted of
steepling his hands together as if in prayer, his
index fingers touching his nostrils.

'It's not much, is it?' he said finally.

It wasn't. But for Bolt it was still something.

'These guys are villains, sir. Hardened criminals.

Richardson fired at us when we tried to
arrest him. He didn't hesitate. There aren't many
people around like that. People willing to kill for
financial gain like our kidnappers. They've got to
be worth looking into.'

Barry sighed loudly. 'I haven't got the
resources, Mike. We've got two surveillance teams
out already, and everyone else is concentrating on
the ransom drop.'

Bolt knew he wasn't going to win, but when he
was back in his own office the first thing he did
was access the PNC and check the details of
Marcus Richardson and Scott Ridgers.

Richardson was the more brutal of the two,
having amassed a total of twenty-three convictions
in his forty-two years, including one for
stabbing a teacher in the eye with a screwdriver
when he was only fifteen years old. He'd been
released from his sentence for armed robbery and
attempted murder in the summer of 2001 and
since then had been back inside twice: once for
possession of cocaine with intent to supply, the
other time for assault, after he'd beaten his girlfriend
so badly she'd been in hospital for three
days. He'd been out for just over two years now
and it looked like he'd kept his nose clean,
although someone with a criminal record as long
as his was unlikely to have turned over a new leaf.
He was currently living in his native Kilburn,
and remained on parole, as he would do until his
original eighteen-year sentence ran out some time
in 2010.

Ridgers had a similar, if slightly less violent,
record. Since he hadn't discharged the handgun
he was carrying during the robbery, his sentence
had been only fourteen years, which Bolt noted
wryly didn't say much for how the courts treated
the attempted murder of police officers. He'd been
released in 1999 but had gone back in three years
later, once again for armed robbery, after he'd held
up a betting shop at gunpoint, firing several shots
into the ceiling. He was caught minutes later by
the occupants of an armed response vehicle that
had been passing. It seemed that Ridgers wasn't
the luckiest armed robber around, and he'd spent
a further four years inside before being released
back into an unsuspecting community late in
2006.

Bolt stared at their pictures and tried to
remember the initial police interviews with them,
but after fifteen years and several hundred other
suspects his memory of them both was sketchy.
Jack Doyle had said neither man was a budding
Einstein, so it was unlikely they had organized
something like this, but even so, he couldn't get
the feeling out of his head that they were worth
pursuing.

Throughout the morning the sense of anticipation
in the incident room grew. Although most of
those present were still involved in the mundane
tasks of sifting through camera footage, everyone
knew that later on they were going to be in action.
That sense became heightened when it was
reported that the ransom money, half a million
pounds in cash, had arrived in the building and
was under armed guard in the basement.

Bolt was on his sixth cup of coffee, feeling wired
and knowing he was going to have to eat soon,
when Andrea phoned, asking for him. He refused
to take the call, making an excuse. For the
moment, he had nothing to say to her. He still had
doubts that she was telling the truth about his
relationship with Emma. The more he thought
about her actions, both in the present and in the
distant past, the more manipulative he found her.

Yet, as she'd told him, the dates fitted. There
was no way round that. Within minutes he was
feeling guilty about not taking her call, so he
phoned Matt Turner – who was back on babysitting
duties, along with Marie Cohen the liaison
officer – and asked him what she wanted.

'She just wants to speak to you, sir,' Turner told
him when he came back on the line. 'She wouldn't
say what it's about.'

'Tell her I'm very busy at the moment. I'll talk to
her later. How's she bearing up?'

'Same as she was yesterday. Tired, emotional . . .
like you'd expect.'

'OK. Keep an eye on her, can you?'

'Sure – but, boss?'

'Yes.'

'When exactly am I going to get relieved? I'd
like to get where the action is. You know, there's
not a lot happening here.'

Bolt sympathized with him. He'd have felt the
same way too, but he didn't have the time or the
inclination to start shuffling resources.

'Soon,' he said. 'I'll sort something.'

He hung up and stared out of the window at the
street below. The sun was shining, a few puffy
clouds trailed in an otherwise blue sky, and it
looked like it was going to be another warm day,
the sixth or seventh in a row after the wet
summer. When Bolt craned his neck, as he was
doing now, he could see one half of a small park,
little more than a thin strip of land with a climbing
frame and a couple of trees, set between two office
buildings. There was a man sitting on one of the
benches, a push bike propped up beside him, and
he was looking up at the sky. Bolt was too far
away to see his expression, but he knew from
the man's casual demeanour that it was one of
satisfaction.

Bolt watched him enviously. He'd always been
a level-headed man. You needed to be in his line
of business, where part of the job involved
stalking your target for weeks, sometimes
months, at a time. He was finding this sudden
change in him just too much to bear.

He turned away and stood up. He could stand
it no more. He had to do something other than sit
and wait to react to events that might well shatter
his life for ever. He had to get out and start
influencing them.

Grabbing his jacket, he walked out of the office,
telling Kris Obanje, who was the nearest person to
him, that he was off for an early lunch.

It was time to renew some old acquaintances.