Pitch Black: A Romantic Thriller (Blackwood Security Book 1) (35 page)

“Didn’t really plan this trip, Jimmy. I just woke up and decided I could do with a session. Are you busy?”

“I’ve got a guy in for training at eight thirty, but I’m all yours until then. Come to think of it, you can go in the cage with him. Keep him on his toes.”

Over the past few years, Jimmy had branched out from boxing into the world of MMA. The gym now sported a pair of cages as well as the more traditional boxing rings. He spent the next hour drilling me through kicks, punches, blocks and grapples. I needed to borrow a towel by the time he’d finished.

“Not bad, girl, but I can tell you’ve had a few months off. You need to find a new partner and keep up with the training. Don’t want you going soft again.”

I paused to get my breath back. “Easier said than done.” My husband had been the only person who’d put up with me.

That earned me a chuckle, and Jimmy looked at his watch. “Too early for beer. Want a protein shake?”

“Why not?”

Eight thirty guy arrived and Jimmy introduced us. “Amanda, this is Lee Belmont. Lee, meet Amanda.”

Lee looked me up and down, his eyes pausing a fraction too long on my chest. He looked like a lightweight, which meant he had about ten kilos on me.

“She the new ring girl?”

Jimmy grinned wide. “Nope. She’s your new sparring partner.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Get on with it.”

For a second I thought Lee was going to refuse, but then he shrugged and climbed into the ring. I hopped up behind him.

I’d never seen him at the gym before, and his strong northern accent suggested he was new to the area. I’d got a bit out of touch with who was who in the world of MMA, but I trusted Jimmy wouldn’t ask me to fight someone without a few decent matches under his belt.

I stuck my mouth guard in and waited for Lee to strip off his tracksuit. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a few of the regulars gather round to watch.

Jimmy rang the bell.

I almost got Lee with my first punch. He fell to his knees, but when I stepped back, he scrambled up, a new determination in his eyes. Guess I wasn’t going to be as easy to beat as he’d assumed.

Once he put some effort into it, he wasn’t a bad fighter. We were half way through the third round when he got me on the ropes with a couple of jabs. The small crowd gasped behind us as he came at me again. In for the kill, or so he thought. I feinted with a high right hook. As my fist swung, his eyes cut to it, and I got him under the jaw with a left-handed uppercut. My ears relished the satisfying thump of leather on flesh.

That dropped them every time, and he’d left himself wide open.

“He’ll have a hell of a headache when he wakes up,” I said, stripping my gloves off.

“All part of the game, sweat pea,” Jimmy said. He and another of the trainers tended to Lee, and once he started to come round, I headed off for a quick shower.

“Won twenty quid on that one, darlin’,” one regular called as I headed upstairs to Jimmy’s flat. I returned his thumbs-up.

I still kept a few clothes in a drawer there, and Jackie made me an egg white omelette while I got dressed.

“You staying all day?” she asked.

“Can’t. Got things to do.”

“That missing girl?”

I nodded. “There’s no sign of her yet.”

I promised to stop by when I had more time, then headed back downstairs to say goodbye to Jimmy. Lee had woken up by then and was slumped on a bench holding an ice pack to his face.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked.

“This is my almost daughter,” Jimmy told him, and the pride in his voice made my breath hitch. I didn’t deserve his admiration right now.

“Wish I’d known that beforehand,” Lee said, holding out his hand for me to shake. “No hard feelings, eh?”

“She’s taken down far bigger men than you,” Jimmy told him. “Just shows you have to train harder and lose some of that cockiness.”

I left Lee and Jimmy to it and began the jog home. My legs were heavy after their workout, and I took it slow. I chose a different route back—it was always good to keep up with how the city was changing. I’d learned that the hard way on the night I met my husband, although it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

I took a right onto Laburnum Avenue, trying to work out why that name sounded familiar. I’d heard it somewhere recently. Halfway along the street, it came back to me—Mack had mentioned this was where the owner of the stolen number plates lived. Was he back from his trip abroad yet? It wouldn’t hurt to check while I was in the vicinity. I called Nye and got the house number.

Number forty-three was the bottom half of a Victorian that had been converted into two flats. The door looked freshly painted, a contrast with that of forty-three-A which was peeling at the edges.

A small, dark-skinned man opened the door with a frown. “Are you selling something?”

“No, I’m not.” I stuck to the same story as the original team and explained the number plates had been used in a burglary.

He broke into a smile. “Oh come in, come in. My sister said somebody called, but she was not sure who. Her English is not so good. I wondered if you would return.”

“Thanks. Are you Gabir Hassani then?” I asked, although the fact he shook with his left hand rather than his right, and walked with a slight limp, was a bit of a giveaway.

“Yes, I am. Would you like some tea?”

“I’d love a cup.” Lesson number one, build rapport.

If he was surprised by a slightly sweaty woman showing up on his doorstep, he didn’t show it as he bustled around the kitchen with teabags and sugar.

“Could you tell me more about the missing plates?” I asked, as he handed me a mug. “When you noticed they were gone, whether you saw anyone suspicious hanging around, anything like that?”

“I noticed straight away they had been taken. They were there in the morning, and in the evening when I went to get in my van, they were gone. And just to be certain I was not wrong, I checked on my CCTV. The man stole them at precisely seventeen minutes past six.”

CCTV? He had CCTV? How the hell had we missed that?

“You mean you actually have the person who stole them on video?”

“Oh, yes. My brother owns a company that sells security cameras. He installed me an excellent system. He says I cannot be too careful on my own in the shop at night. I told the police this, but they did not seem interested. They said they would send somebody round to look at the film, but nobody came.”

“Do you have a copy of the footage I can watch?”

“Certainly, but it is in my shop, in Clapham. That is where the van is kept. My delivery driver uses it. We will have to go there.”

Sod the cup of tea. I hailed a passing cab while Gabir locked up. As he hunted for his jacket, I called Dan and asked her to meet me in Clapham. “Put the incident room on standby as well, would you?”

“You think this might be a break?”

“Keep everything crossed. Fingers, toes, the lot.”

“Eyes?”

“If you think it’ll help.”

We were halfway there when my phone pinged again. Nye was calling.

“We’ve just had the new ransom demand,” he said.

“How much?”

“A million plus the software.”

“Where’s the drop?” If he’d picked the woods again, I was going, and I was damn well taking a gun. Sod the legality.

“A shopping centre in East London at six this evening. I’ve sent a team to check the place over.”

If anything, that was worse than the previous location. We’d have to be careful with the public around. I dialled Nick to get an update on Luke.

“How is he?” I asked.

“Just about holding it together. But if this goes on much longer, he’ll give himself an aneurysm.”

I gave Nick a brief outline of where I was heading.

“Shall I fill Luke in?” he asked.

“No. I want him to concentrate on what he has to do this evening, and besides, I don’t want to get his hopes up.”

I couldn’t say much more with Gabir sitting next to me, but I promised to call Nick back once I was out of the range of unwanted ears.

The cab pulled up outside a small supermarket, called, imaginatively enough, Gabir’s Supermarket, and we both hopped out. As I followed Gabir into the store, he proudly pointed out the ridiculous number of cameras in the completely over-the-top security system his brother had installed. I fell a little bit in love with the second Mr. Hassani at that point.

In the cupboard-like office at the back of the store, Gabir cued up the disc with the footage. The picture was crystal clear. I held my breath as a man walked into shot, head down, and unscrewed the plate from the front of the van. He crossed to a different camera and did the same at the rear. The guy was the same size and build as the arsehole I’d chased through the woods, but due to the hood pulled low over his eyes, I couldn’t see his face.

I said as much to Gabir, who stared off into space for a second, pondering.

“This man, I could not be sure, but I think I saw him before. His jacket is very unusual.”

The black hoodie had “YOLO” graffitied in white across the back and the front—quite distinctive. I was hoping to change his philosophy to “YODO.” Can you guess what the “D” stood for?

“I think he came into the store,” continued Gabir. “Earlier in the day.”

“I don’t suppose you have that on film as well do you?”

“Of course. I saved it all. I do watch CSI, you know.”

Thank goodness for that. What would we do without American crime drama?

Once again, Gabir slotted a disc into the machine, and I watched the man walk round the store from sixteen different camera angles, picking up a roll of duct tape, two kinds of pop tarts and a couple of bottles of water. Was he making Tia eat pop tarts? That was inhumane. When he reached the register, he added a pack of cigarettes. Thank heavens for nicotine, because as he selected his brand, he stared straight into a camera he clearly didn’t realise was there, giving us a perfect head-on shot, hood down.

The second I saw his face, synapses fired in my brain, and I swear I almost squealed. I was about to call up Gabir’s brother and offer to have his babies.

My phone rang, and it was Dan. “I’m five minutes out.”

“Drive faster.” I never thought I’d hear myself ask her to do that.

While I waited, Gabir made me a copy of the disc. I clutched it as if it was the Rosetta stone.

“I hope I have been helpful?” he said.

“More than you could ever know.”

His ever-present smile grew wider. “Is there anything you need before you go?”

“Um, a bottle of water and some gum would be good. Oh, and give me twenty quid’s worth of lottery scratch cards.” The way my luck was changing today, I figured it couldn’t hurt.

Dan pulled up outside, and I thanked Gabir again before I left. On my way to the car, I passed a homeless man huddled under a blanket and dropped the scratch cards into his lap.

“Good luck, mate.”

He raised his hand in a silent thank you.

“How was JJ’s?” Dan asked as I climbed into the Aston. She hadn’t been able to resist its lure.

“I knocked out my sparring partner again.”

“Who’d Jimmy put you up against this time?”

“Some dude called Lee Belmont.”

“As in Lee Belmont who just won the UK MMA title in the lightweight division?”

“Dunno, I didn’t ask. Probably. Jimmy seemed to think he needed taking down a peg or two.”

“Well, you sure did that if he ended up on the mat. Now, tell me, why have you got me down here?”

I got out my phone. Gabir emailed me a couple of stills from the videos while he was burning me the disc, and I got the clearest photo up on the screen.

“I want you to quickly look at a photo then tell me your first impressions,” I said.

Dan gave me a quizzical glance. “Okay.”

I held the screen up for a few seconds.

“Luke? What does a picture of Luke have to do with the kidnapper?”

“Look again.”

Dan’s brow wrinkled as she took in the subtle differences between them—the slightly broader nose, a squarer jaw, a steeper slope to his forehead, and longer hair being the main ones.

“A brother? Cousin?”

“He told me he doesn’t have either. I don’t think he’d have tried to hide it—in the same conversation he told me he always wished he had a brother growing up.”

“Well, that guy looks so much like Luke, it’s hard to imagine he’s anything but.”

“And it would fit with his comment to Luke about him having taken his life. Maybe it’s not something Luke’s knowingly done at all? This bastard wants what he sees as his birthright. Luke’s money, Luke’s job, Luke’s sister.”

“Luke’s girlfriend?” Dan suggested.

“If only. You have no idea how many times I’ve wished he took me instead of Tia.”

“I’d love to be a fly on the wall if he tried that.”

I winced as Dan started the engine. It had been ages since she drove me anywhere, and I hadn’t missed the experience.

“So, the possible brother—mother or father?” she continued as she pulled out into traffic, narrowly missing a cyclist.

“Luke looks nothing like his mother. It’s Tia who has her features. So, I’m gonna go with father. And helpfully, he’s dead.”