Deadline (2 page)

But they have her, Andrea
, said a voice in her
head.
That's the only thing that matters. They have
her.

Half an hour passed. In that time she stopped
walking only once, to refill her brandy tumbler,
and to look out of the French windows and into
the darkness beyond, wondering if even now
there was someone out there watching her,
checking her reactions. She drew the curtains and
resumed her pacing. She knew now she wouldn't
be able to sleep until Emma was safe, and in her
arms. In the meantime, all she could do was pace
the prison of her house alone.

Where was Pat?

An hour passed. She called him again. Still no
answer. This time she didn't bother leaving a
message.

She was getting a bad feeling about this. It
wasn't like him not to answer his mobile. He
carried it with him everywhere. It finally occurred
to her that he might be at the Eagle, a pub he
often liked to drink in on his evenings out.
She didn't know the number, so she looked
it up in the Yellow Pages and gave them a call.

A young woman with a foreign accent
answered. In the background Andrea could hear
the buzz of conversation, and immediately felt a
pang of jealousy. Sounding as casual as possible,
she asked if Pat Phelan was in tonight.

'I'll ask,' the girl replied. 'Hold on, please.'

Andrea waited, the phone clutched tight to her
ear.

Thirty seconds later the girl came back on the
line. 'I'm afraid no one has seen him for a long
time,' she said politely.

Andrea's jaw tightened. Tonight was Tuesday.
Pat had told her he'd been at the Eagle the
previous Friday night, and last Wednesday.

'Is that everything?' asked the girl.

'Yes,' said Andrea quickly. 'Thank you.'

She hung up and stared at the phone. So Pat
had been lying about his whereabouts. But why?

An unpleasant thought began to form in her
mind. Could he possibly be involved in this? It
was difficult to believe. After all, they'd been
together nearly two and a half years, and
although, if she was honest, she didn't entirely
trust him, particularly where other women were
concerned, he'd always got on all right with
Emma. They hadn't been the best of friends, and
Emma had certainly not welcomed his arrival into
their close family unit, but she'd come round in
the end. If anything, their relations had been
improving in recent months. It was too much of a
step to imagine him hurting her like this.

And yet . . . Pat was one of the only people in
the world who knew she had cash reserves she
could call upon without attracting too much
attention. Near enough half a million pounds of
cash reserves, in fact. Nor was he whiter than
white. He'd admitted to her that years earlier, as a
young man, he'd had a few scrapes with the law,
and had even served a few months for receiving
stolen goods. Receiving stolen goods was a long,
long way from abduction, but even so, in her
weakened state the thought preyed on Andrea's
mind that the man who, for all his faults, she still
loved might have betrayed her dramatically.

'Please don't let it be you,' she whispered,
staring at the phone. Because she knew if that was
the case, she'd be totally on her own.

Another hour passed, and as the clock ticked
towards midnight with still no word from him,
her doubts grew stronger. It crossed her mind
more than once to call the police, but the people
she was dealing with were ruthless, and clearly
well organized, and they'd already told her what
would happen to Emma if she did. Andrea didn't
have much faith in the forces of law and order
anyway. She'd had too much experience of them
for that.

No, she needed someone she could trust.
Someone who'd know what to do.

There was one person who could help. She
might not have spoken to him for more than a
decade but she was sure he would respond in this,
her hour of need. The problem was, if she brought
him back, she might also be unleashing forces
outside her control.

But what choice did she really have? She
couldn't do this alone.

There was a grandfather clock in the hallway,
bought from an Islington antique dealer at an
exorbitant price several years earlier, which had
always looked out of place. Something about its
relentless ticking tended to soothe her, though,
and when it chimed midnight she stubbed out
her latest cigarette in the ashtray and made her
decision.

She retrieved a small black address book from
her handbag on the kitchen top and found the
number she wanted in the back, with no name
next to it. She turned on the overhead light to dial,
stopping at the last second. Thinking. They might
have bugged the landline, and if they heard her
. . . She couldn't risk it. Instead, she fed the digits
into her mobile and stepped out into the back
garden.

The night was silent as she walked to the pear
trees at the end, thirty yards from the house, and
stopped. She looked round, listening, remembering
what the kidnapper had said:
We're
watching you.
But they couldn't see her in the back
of the garden, she was sure of it.

So, taking a deep breath, she pressed the call
button on the mobile.

And took her situation to a whole new level.

Jimmy Galante answered on the third ring.
'Hello,' he said quietly, his accent still firmly east
London.

There was no background noise that Andrea
could make out, which surprised her. Jimmy had
always been something of a nightbird. Maybe
he'd changed.

'It's me,' she said, keeping her voice low,
knowing the risk she was taking.

'Who's me?' he asked.

'Andrea. Andrea Devern.'

He gave a raucous laugh down the phone.
'Jesus, now there's a ghost from the past. How
you doing?'

'Bad. Very bad.'

'Shit, I'm sorry to hear that,' he said, but she
could almost hear the smirk in his voice. Jimmy
Galante was not the kind of man who wasted time
or effort on sympathy. 'How did you get my
number? You been keeping tabs on me, Andrea?'

She had, but she wasn't going to tell him that.
At least not yet. 'Someone gave it to me.'

'Oh yeah? Who?'

'That doesn't matter. What matters is I need
your help.'

'To do what?'

Andrea took a deep breath, looked round in the
gloom. 'My daughter's been kidnapped. I need
you to help me get her back.'

Jimmy's husky trademark chuckle rumbled
down the line again. There was something inherently
cruel in it. It made Andrea think of a child
pulling the wings off a butterfly, or cutting a
worm into quarters, and it still made her nervous,
even now, years afterwards.

'Sure, Andrea, whatever you say. You don't
speak to me for God knows how many years—'

'You haven't been here. You've been in Spain.'

'You could have called,' he snapped. 'In all that
time, you could have fucking called. But you
didn't bother, did you? Because you didn't want
nothing then, but now you do, so it's' – and here
he did a nasty, high-pitched imitation of Andrea –
'please, Jimmy, help me find my daughter, some
nasty man's kidnapped her.' He chuckled again.
'It don't work like that, babe. I've got business
interests over here now. What do I want to come
back to a shithole like England for? Fuck that for a
game of soldiers.'

Andrea sighed. She'd been expecting this, but it
still hurt to hear his complete lack of interest,
either in her or in Emma. But his reaction told her
something else too. Jimmy Galante, for all his
faults, wasn't involved in this. If he had been, he'd
have asked more questions.

'I want you to help me, Jimmy,' said Andrea,
knowing that the sudden firmness in her tone was
born of desperation.

'Sorry, babe, forget it. You still ain't given me a
good reason why I should.'

'Because,' she answered, 'Emma isn't just my
daughter. She's yours too.'

There was a long silence at the other end, and
then Jimmy started to say something, but Andrea
cut him off, pressing her advantage. 'Emma's
fourteen years old. Her birthday's April the
second. Think of the timing, Jimmy.'

'I can't think that far back. It's been too long.'

'Try. Fifteen years ago, the summer of 1992. We
were together, weren't we? That's when I got
pregnant. Just before you left.'

'How the fuck do I know she's mine?' he
barked. 'You was married, Andrea. Remember?
You was the one shagging around behind your
old man's back. Or has that conveniently slipped
your mind now as well?'

'Billy was impotent,' she said, not wanting to
speak ill of her dead husband, but knowing that
she had no choice. 'And you were the only man I
was sleeping with then. She's yours, Jimmy. Face
it. Your child. And now some bastard's taken her.'

She could almost hear the cogs whirring as he
thought things over down the other end of the
phone. This time she left him to it.

'What's happened then?' he asked eventually, a
tone of resignation in his voice.

For the first time since the phone call more than
three hours earlier, Andrea experienced a tiny,
barely perceptible twinge of optimism. It seemed
like she might be getting Jimmy Galante onside,
which meant there was a chance she was no
longer facing this nightmare alone.

Constantly mentioning Emma by name, and
keeping her voice as quiet as possible, she
detailed the evening's events, trying not to leave
anything out. When she was finished, Jimmy
asked her if she could raise the money in the time
she'd been given, and she told him that she reckoned
she could. 'It's not going to be easy, but I can
manage it,' she said.

'And your new old man . . . he's missing?'

'Yes,' she said slowly. 'He is.'

'You certainly know how to pick 'em, don't you,
babe?'

'Don't, Jimmy.'

'Think he might be involved?'

'To be honest, I can't see it, but . . .' She paused
a moment. 'But I can't say for sure.'

'All right. What's his name?'

'Pat Phelan.'

'Don't know the name.'

'He's from Finchley.'

'I know a couple of people up that end of town.
I'll ask around. You haven't gone to the cops, then?'

'No. And I don't intend to either.'

'Good, no point involving those bastards. So,
what do you need me to do?'

'I just need you here with me, OK? I'd feel
better. After all, you are her dad.'

'I'd better be, Andrea,' he said ominously, his
voice barely more than a whisper. 'Because if I'm
not, and you've dragged me back under false
pretences, then I really ain't going to be very
happy at all. You understand what I mean?'

There was no doubt at all what he meant. There
never was when Jimmy talked like that. 'Yeah, I
understand,' she answered. 'But you are. I
promise you that. You are.'

There was another pause.

'I'll be on the first available flight into
Heathrow tomorrow,' he said at last. 'I'll call you.'

'Thanks.'

'Don't thank me,' he said blankly. 'I ain't doing
it for you.' And he hung up.

Andrea exhaled loudly as she flicked the phone
shut. Now there really was no going back. Part of
her was afraid of what involving Jimmy was
going to mean for Emma's safe release. Jimmy
was a violent man. He was capable of inflicting
serious injury, even killing someone, but perhaps,
in the end, that was what she wanted. Revenge on
the people who'd abducted her daughter and put
her through such pain. And Jimmy was no fool.
He wouldn't rush in guns blazing and put Emma
and everyone else in danger. He possessed an
animal cunning, an ability to sniff out danger,
something that had served him well in the past
and something, she knew, he wouldn't have lost,
even during his years in Spain. You didn't lose
cunning like that. It was instinctive. And she
needed someone with it in her corner.

She went back inside and locked the door
behind her, feeling a little better. At least she'd
actually done something now, and the paralysis
born of utter helplessness which had affected her
all evening seemed to dissipate a little. She drank
another glass of water, smoked a last cigarette,
and thought about having another brandy, but
decided against it. Andrea had a strong tolerance
of alcohol, having consumed it regularly
throughout her adult life, but she'd had more than
enough tonight. She needed to keep her wits
about her. It would have been all too easy simply
to lose herself in the oblivion of the bottle, and
behaviour like that wouldn't help Emma.

Emma. Her baby. A fourteen-year-old girl
enduring her first night as the prisoner of those
animals.

If she's still alive . . .

Andrea stopped the thought, took a deep breath
and told herself not to weaken.

'Think positive. They won't hurt her. They want
money.'

She repeated it to herself three times, praying to
God that it was true. Then, with slow, listless
movements, she got herself ready for bed
knowing that, for better or for worse, Jimmy
would be here tomorrow. Jimmy Galante. Armed
robber, violent thug, and possibly her only hope.

As she lay under the silk sheets in the master
bedroom, staring at the ceiling, with a gap beside
her where Pat usually lay, it wasn't her husband
she was thinking about. It was Emma.

And Jimmy.

Jimmy Galante had always been a smooth
bastard. Now forty, two years older than Andrea,
he still looked damn good as he walked out of the
arrivals gate at Heathrow's Terminal One, dressed
in a tailored suit and open-neck shirt, and Andrea
noticed more than one pair of female eyes
glancing at him as he walked across the concourse
with a casual confidence that bordered on arrogance.
Tall, broad-shouldered and tanned, his
thick wavy black hair was longer than she remembered,
but still as lustrous as it had been all those
years ago. Even under the current circumstances,
even after all these years, Andrea still felt a twinge
of excitement. She wondered what it was about
her, why she always seemed to go for the smooth
bastards. It was something her business partner,
Isobel, had once asked her, with more than a hint
of disapproval in her voice, and it was a question
she hadn't attempted to answer. Some women just
go for the wrong sort of men, Andrea told herself,
and maybe she was one of them.

As Jimmy approached her, he smiled, and there
was something so knowing and cocky about his
expression that it made her realize immediately
why their relationship had ended. Up close the
lines on his face were more pronounced, and the
scar that ran down in a jagged line from just below
his earlobe to his chin seemed deeper than before.
But the eyes, so dark they were almost black, still
commanded attention.

'Hello, babe,' he said, looking her up and down.
'You look good.'

She knew he was just saying that. She felt
awful, and she was pretty sure she looked awful
as well. She'd hardly slept the previous night,
tossing and turning in the silence, knowing that
Emma was out there somewhere, desperate for
her mother's help. Emma was a tough young
thing – she took after her mother in that respect –
but there was no way she could have been
prepared for what she had to be going through
now. Andrea had always protected her from the
darker things the world had to offer. She wanted
for nothing materially (although she wasn't
spoiled); she was being well educated at a decent
private school (girls only); and her mother had
always been there for her, never failing to make
time in her busy schedule for her daughter and
providing her with the nurturing hand any child
needs. They'd always been a team, the two of
them, with Andrea the senior partner.

Today had been easier than the previous night
because she'd been able to keep busy. Having
called Isobel to tell her that she wasn't feeling too
good and was going to take the day off, she'd then
phoned the dentist's and found out that Emma
had kept her 4.45 appointment. She didn't know
how this helped her, but for some reason the
knowledge that Emma had been alive and well
the previous afternoon, only a few hours before
the kidnapper had called her, made it feel more
likely that she was alive now.

Andrea had then spent the remainder of the
morning and much of the first half of the afternoon
raising the half a million she needed. This
had involved emptying the two private deposit
boxes she rented in separate banks in
Knightsbridge, which gave her the grand total of
£439,000. It was money that had been built up
over a number of years as a result of various cash
deals, and she'd viewed it as her retirement fund,
her nest egg should things ever go badly wrong.
And now they had. She'd then called the three
banks where she had personal accounts, and
organized the transfer of cleared funds between
accounts to secure the remaining £61,000, which
had proved a lot less easy than she'd anticipated,
since no one these days seemed to want to hand
over large sums of cash. When this had been done,
she was left with a total of £11,561 in liquid assets
– a pretty poor return for fourteen years of hard
graft.

There'd still been aspects of the business to
attend to as well. She'd received a number of calls
from the company accountants regarding the
Bedfordshire Spa, and even a couple of semiapologetic
ones from Isobel on the same subject.
She'd dealt with them as best she could but it was
hard to concentrate on anything other than
Emma. Andrea had built up her company,
Feminine Touch Health and Beauty Spas, from
absolutely nothing into a thriving business which
generated turnover in excess of five million cash.

Yet ultimately, when it came down to it, this huge
achievement and all the hard work that had
brought it about would count for absolutely
nothing if her daughter didn't come home.

Which was why Jimmy was here. To make sure
she did.

'Any news?' he asked as they stood there
looking at each other.

'No, nothing yet.'

'You got the money?'

She thought she saw a glint in his dark eyes
when he said this, and felt a twinge of unease. The
expression on his face remained irritatingly
casual, and his lips formed the vague, knowing
half-smile of someone who always has the
answers. It concerned her that he didn't seem to
be too worried about his daughter.

'I'll have it by tomorrow night,' she told him.
'Come on, let's go. I want to beat the rush-hour
traffic.'

They walked in silence through the arrivals hall
and into short-term parking.

'My, my, you are doing well,' said Jimmy when
he saw the Mercedes.

'I've worked hard for it,' she answered curtly.

'You didn't tell me what you did for a living.'

'I know,' she said, getting inside.

They didn't speak again until they were
through the slip road and on to the M4, heading
back into London. Even though it was still before
five, the traffic both ways was heavy, and the
atmosphere in the car was tense.

'Why didn't you tell me about my daughter,
Andrea?'

Andrea sighed. 'Because I thought we'd be
better off without you.'

'
You're
certainly better off. That's for sure.'

'You know something, Jimmy? You haven't
even asked her name. Your own daughter.'

Now it was Jimmy's turn to sigh. 'You already
told me, Andrea. Her name's Emma. And cut me
a bit of slack here, please. Number one, I didn't
even know I had a daughter until last night. I still
ain't seen a photo of her so I don't even know
what she looks like. And number two, and much
more important, I'm here, aren't I? I didn't have to
come.'

'OK, OK, point taken.'

Andrea wiped sweat from her brow. The car's
interior was cold with the air con blasting out on
full, but she felt hot and vaguely nauseous.

'Are you all right, love?' he asked, leaning over
towards her.

She could smell his cologne. It was strong but
pleasant.

'Yeah, I'm fine. I think I need to eat something.
I haven't had anything since a sandwich
yesterday night.'

'We'll get something for you. What about your
old man? Mr Phelan. Any sign of him yet?'

She shook her head. 'Nothing.'

She remembered how strange it had seemed
waking up this morning without him there. He
never stayed away from home. She did occasionally,
for business, but not Pat. He always made it
back to their bed, even if sometimes it was in the
early hours. She still prayed that he had nothing
to do with this, but with each hour that passed
without any word from him it became more and
more difficult to believe otherwise. But she didn't
want to say that to Jimmy. It was bad enough that
he was probably thinking it, without her admitting
that once again she'd ended up with the
wrong kind of man.

'I found out a little bit about him,' said Jimmy.
'He's a bit of a crook, ain't he?'

Although his tone was remarkably free of any
gloating, she couldn't let it go.

'That's rich, Jimmy.'

'I was never a small-time little peasant like him,
peddling dope and knock-off electrical goods.'

'He's not like that any more.'

'He doesn't need to be any more, does he? He's
got you.'

Andrea fell silent. Conceded the point.

'Listen,' he said, putting a hand on her
shoulder, 'I'm not trying to score points. I'm just
trying to work out whether he's involved or not.'

'And do you think he is?'

Jimmy shrugged. 'Hard to tell. He's still
missing, ain't he? That doesn't look too good. But
it's a big step from flogging hookey gear to
kidnapping.'

'Oh God, Jimmy. I don't know what to think, I
really don't.'

'It'll be all right, babe. Don't worry. I'm here
now.'

But it wouldn't be all right, Andrea knew that.
Whatever happened, the life she'd worked so
hard to build up, and the life of her precious
daughter, had changed irreversibly. Even in the
best-case scenario, with Emma returned to her
physically unharmed, she would be a different
person, permanently scarred by the trauma of this
situation. And Pat . . . well, Pat wasn't coming
back. There was no doubt about that. And the
thing was, she thought they'd been pretty happy.
She would miss him, too – unless, of course, he
was involved. But her instincts told her he wasn't;
that he wasn't capable of putting Emma through
such an ordeal. Because the thing was, as Jimmy
had pointed out, he really didn't need to. He had
access to money, he drove a nice car, he didn't
need to work for a living, he enjoyed two or three
foreign holidays a year, and he had freedom, too.
Andrea cut Pat a lot of slack, so why put it all at
risk for a share in half a million pounds, and the
possibility that he'd end up in jail for the next ten
years? She didn't buy it.

But she still couldn't explain his absence.

Jimmy's hand massaged her shoulder, slowly
and deliberately. The sensation filled her with
conflicting feelings. She still loved Pat, or at least
she thought she did, but Jimmy had always done
something to her, and even now she felt the first
stirrings of arousal, accompanied by sharp pangs
of guilt that she could even think about sex when
her daughter was in the position she was in. Yet
she couldn't help feeling much more secure with
Jimmy here with her. He was strong, stronger than
Pat could ever be, and she needed that now. But
he was also trouble, and there was no part for him
in her life now. Once this was over, she'd say
goodbye to him for ever.

Although something told her it wasn't necessarily
going to be as easy as that.