Target (18 page)

Bolt stood in the hospital car park, breathing in the cool night air. The rain had stopped completely now, leaving behind the smell of late summer foliage. He'd just finished paying the man from Autoglass, who'd put a new windscreen on the Jag, and he was pissed off.

To have come so close to Hook – the man he'd been after for five years – and then lose him wasn't easy to stomach, particularly with Tina unaccounted for. But it could have been worse. They'd almost lost Fallon as well. When they'd arrived at the hospital earlier and run into the ARV team tasked with guarding Fallon at the entrance, they'd heard the commotion and had run through accident and emergency, disturbing Hook, who'd abandoned his pursuit of Fallon and fled, using two orderlies and their gurney as cover. Bolt had even caught a glimpse of him, thirty yards away down the end of a corridor. So near, yet so bloody far.

His mobile started ringing.

It was Big Barry Freud. 'What on earth's going on, Mike?' he demanded. 'I've just had a call from the assistant chief constable of Thames Valley Police. He says you've been involved in a shoot-out in Berkshire, ran someone over, and drove off in a car that was being treated as crime-scene evidence. Care to explain?'

When he put it like that, it didn't sound too good, but Bolt was fairly certain that his actions had helped save Fallon's life, which was going to earn him some sort of credit. He gave Barry a brief rundown of the situation.

'So you're saying it's all to do with this bloody kidnap that Tina Boyd's been investigating?'

'It looks that way. Hook's definitely trying to do everything he can to shut up Fallon. And he's taking some massive risks. Like coming here tonight.'

'Blimey. It must be a very lucrative kidnapping to be worth all this effort and this many murders. What do we know about this girl?'

'Her name's Jenny Brakspear. And it's not a lot, but according to Tina, her father denied that any kidnapping had actually taken place. He said she'd gone on holiday. I had one of the team check up on Jenny's and her dad's backgrounds earlier, but everything ended up being put to one side when we got the call about Tina, and I haven't got the results back yet.'

'I heard that the body wasn't Tina's.'

'No.' Bolt knew he should have phoned Barry and told him it wasn't, but things had been happening so fast that night there'd been hardly a moment to stop and think.

'And you still haven't heard from her?'

Bolt sighed. 'No we haven't. But we've talked to Fallon.'

'Was he any help?'

'He's filled us in on what happened, but the problem is he didn't really know Jenny that well.'

'Great.' Big Barry exhaled loudly down the phone. 'Which of the team was looking into Jenny's background?'

'Kris Obanje. I think Mo's on the phone to him now.' Bolt looked across to where his colleague was standing on the hospital steps, talking animatedly into his mobile and taking notes at the same time.

'Good. Find out what you can and keep me in the loop. I'm at home.'

Bolt said he would, and ended the call. It was 1.20 in the morning, and he was exhausted. But he had a feeling neither he nor Mo Khan were going to be sleeping any time soon.

'According to Obanje, Jenny Brakspear's a complete unknown,' said Mo, pocketing his phone. 'Currently unemployed. She worked for an internet travel company based in Islington until about three months ago but got made redundant because of the credit crunch. No criminal record. Just an ordinary middle-class girl.'

'Her dad's the key,' said Bolt. 'He's the one they've got to be blackmailing. What did Obanje find out about him?'

'He's a company director of a gas wholesaler based in Cambridge. Good salary, and he's a part owner of the company, but there's not enough to hold him to ransom over. If he liquidated all his assets tomorrow then Kris reckons he could probably raise a few hundred thousand, but he hasn't even attempted to do that. The company's listed on AIM, the small company stock exchange, and there've been no share transactions this week, which there would have been if he'd been trying to raise money by selling his shares.'

'So it's something else.'

They both stood in silence for a minute.

Then a thought struck Bolt. 'You said Brakspear's a director of a gas company. What type of gases do they deal with?'

Mo shrugged. 'I don't know, and I don't think Kris looked into it in too much detail. But they wouldn't be ransoming her for gas, would they? It can't be worth that much money.'

'But if it's not money, I don't know what else it could be. Have you got a name for the company?'

He flicked open his notebook. 'Mainline Gas Services.'

'Let's look them up.'

Mo Khan always kept his laptop with him on jobs. It was currently under the seat in the Jaguar. They got inside the car and he looked up Mainline on the net, using a plug-in stick.

The company's website was pretty basic. It gave a brief history and an even briefer description of the services offered, and the gases they dealt with, none of which looked particularly controversial, although Bolt knew that this didn't mean much.

Mainline had two directors. One was Roy Brakspear, and when Mo double-clicked on his name the photograph of an ordinary-looking man in his fifties with grey hair and an avuncular smile appeared. His background was equally ordinary. A Masters degree in Chemistry from Cambridge; twelve years as a chemist at ICI before founding Mainline with an ICI colleague in 1987; one adult daughter. No mention of a wife. The ICI colleague was Miles Cavendish, now managing director, a younger-looking guy with red hair in a side parting and a much more confident, go-getting smile in his website photo.

'We need to speak to this guy,' said Bolt, pointing at Cavendish's mug.

'He's not going to be pleased being woken at this time in the morning.'

'It's an emergency. We've got no choice.'

It only took a few minutes to find Cavendish's number. SOCA had access to every registered telephone number in the country, but in this case Bolt bypassed HQ and phoned directory enquiries, immediately striking gold.

'This guy must be one of the last people in the country listed in the phone book,' he said as he wrote down the number. 'I'd never have my number there for every Tom, Dick and Harry to see.'

Mo shrugged. 'Saira insists on it. Just in case any of her old friends are trying to look her up.'

'And do any?'

'No. All we get are calls from Indian call centres.'

'I think when he finds out what this is about, Cavendish is going to wish we were an Indian call centre.'

He dialled the number. The phone seemed to ring for ever. Bolt was just about to give up when a hugely irritated male voice came over the line. 'Yes?'

'Miles Cavendish?'

'That's me,' he answered, still not sounding quite awake. 'Who am I speaking to, please?'

Bolt introduced himself and heard the audible intake of breath. No one likes a call from SOCA.

'How can I help you?' There was concern in his voice.

Bolt knew he had to choose his words carefully. He needed answers but he didn't want to have to give too much away. 'Can you tell me if your company, Mainline, handles any gases that could be described as expensive? Or dangerous?'

'Excuse me, can you explain what on earth this is all about? It's half past one in the morning.'

'Can you please answer the question, sir?'

'Look,' snapped Cavendish, 'how do I even know you are who you say you are? You could be anyone. Let me call you back.'

'I'm on a mobile.'

'In that case, goodbye. I'm not talking to people whose credentials I can't see.'

Bolt started to say something else but he was talking into a dead phone, and when he called back it was engaged. He shook his head angrily. 'Arsehole,' he cursed.

'You can't blame him, boss. You wouldn't give out information to someone who called you at home, would you?'

Bolt sighed. 'We're going to have to get his address and drive up there.'

'We could arrange for local CID to go round there if we told them what we needed to know. It would save us a long journey.'

Bolt looked at his colleague. There were big black bags under his eyes and he looked shattered. 'I'd rather do it myself, but there's no need for you to come with me. Honestly. I can drop you back home on the way. It's different for me. It's personal.'

Mo frowned. 'I was never a major fan of Tina Boyd, boss, but I still want to find her. And I want Hook just as much as you do. I worked the Leticia Jones case as well, remember?'

'I just thought maybe you could do with the rest. You look pretty whacked out.'

'I am. But look in the mirror. You do, too. We're in this together, boss. And also, there's still the matter that you saved my neck tonight, whatever you might think. So I owe you. Make the most of it. It won't last for ever.'

Bolt smiled. He felt touched, but didn't know quite what to say. In the end, he turned on the Jag's engine, backed out of the parking space, and once again they were on the move.

Miles Cavendish lived in the village of Stretham, about ten miles north of Cambridge on the A10, and it wasn't far short of three in the morning when Bolt and Mo finally pulled up in front of an attractive barn conversion set back a hundred yards from the road down a quiet lane.

Security lights illuminated the whole of the well-kept front garden, and as they got out of the car more lights came on in the house. By the time they got to the front door it had been opened on a chain by the man from the website photo. He was in a dressing gown and striped pyjamas and his hair was a mess. He eyed them with a mixture of suspicion and concern.

'Mr Cavendish, we spoke earlier.' Bolt placed his warrant card in the gap so that Cavendish could examine it as carefully as he wanted.

'Oh God,' said Cavendish, releasing the chain and opening the door. 'So it wasn't a hoax.'

'I'm afraid not,' answered Bolt as he and Mo stepped inside.

They followed Cavendish through to a traditionally decorated lounge and he invited them to sit down. 'I'm sorry about earlier but I've been the victim of identity fraud before and I'm very careful what I say on the phone to people I don't know. Could you please tell me what this is about?' He looked at them anxiously.

They'd decided on the way up to treat Cavendish as if he was a suspect. Which meant not giving much away.

'We can't tell you very much, I'm afraid,' Bolt replied. 'Right now, we just want you to answer our questions.'

Cavendish went white. 'We're a very respectable company, officers. We've got nothing to hide, I promise. We pay our taxes on time—'

'Firstly,' said Mo, 'can you tell me what your organization does?'

'We're a gas wholesaler. Basically, we buy certain specialist gases, directly from the manufacturers in this country and Europe, and sell them on in smaller quantities to our clients, who are mainly in the pharmaceutical and technology sectors.'

'And are there any gases your company handles that could be classed as highly expensive?'

'Yes. Some of the loads are worth a lot of money. A mixed batch of, say, xenon, tungsten hexaflouride, helium-3 isotope, could be worth as much as a hundred thousand pounds.'

That seemed to Bolt to be a lot of money for gas, but it wasn't the kind of figure worth killing people for. 'And do you handle dangerous gases as well?'

'Numerous. We deal in toxics and flammables. You'll have to be more specific.'

'What about radioactive materials?'

'No, we don't deal with radioactives. That's a very specialized area. Please, Mr Bolt, can you tell me what you're getting at?'

Bolt couldn't help feeling sorry for the guy. Unless he was an extremely good actor, it was clear he wasn't involved in Jenny Brakspear's abduction. But it was still essential that he take their enquiries absolutely seriously.

'Could you tell me if any orders for dangerous gases have been made in the past three days? Is that possible to check?'

Cavendish looked at them both in turn. 'All orders of hazardous gases or chemicals need a director's signature,' he said eventually. 'And there are only two directors. Myself—'

'And Roy Brakspear,' said Mo, finishing the sentence off for him. 'When was the last time you spoke to him?'

'Monday morning,' he answered. 'Roy wasn't feeling well. He said he'd been getting stomach cramps over the weekend. We discussed a client proposal we've got coming up but we didn't talk for long.'

'Has he been into work at all this week?'

Cavendish shook his head. 'No, we agreed it was better for him to work at home until he felt better.'

'So you haven't seen Roy at all this week?'

Again he shook his head. 'No. I tried to call him earlier on tonight to check that he was OK but he didn't answer. I assume he was sleeping. He's like me. He lives on his own.'

'But he has a daughter,' said Bolt.

'That's right. Jenny.'

'So he was married once?'

'He was. Celia passed away five years ago. She had stomach cancer. It was very tragic.'

Bolt felt a twinge of sympathy for Brakspear. He'd lost Mikaela seven years ago, yet still thought about her every day. A loss like that never really goes away, and for Brakspear to now face losing his only daughter must be unbearable. He would do anything to keep her alive. The question was, what had he done?

'Can you tell me if Roy's placed any orders for gases or chemicals this week?' he asked. 'Particularly anything out of the ordinary.'

Cavendish frowned. 'Mr Bolt, I've worked with Roy Brakspear for over twenty years now and I can assure you that he's as straight as a die. I can promise you he's done absolutely nothing wrong.'

Bolt leaned forward in his seat and fixed Cavendish with a hard stare. 'Can you just check for us, Mr Cavendish? Please.'

'OK,' he said reluctantly, getting to his feet. 'If he has, it'll be recorded on our system. I can access it from the study.'

They followed him through the lounge to a wide airy room at the back of the house where a mahogany desk faced out into the back garden, and waited in silence while Cavendish booted up his PC. When it was up and running he sat down and began typing.

Bolt rubbed his eyes and thought about Tina, wondered where she was and whether she was even still alive. He hadn't wanted to admit it to himself but, though the kidnappers might have a good reason to keep Jenny alive if they wanted her father to do something for them, they had no obvious reason to do the same with Tina. In fact, quite the reverse. She'd been investigating them, so clearly it would be better if she was out of the way. The only thing giving Bolt hope was the fact that her body hadn't been found yet, even though her car had. It wasn't much, but until he heard otherwise he'd keep searching for her.

'Nothing yet,' said Cavendish, without looking round, still tapping away on the keyboard. 'As I've said to you already, Roy's as straight as a die. He won't have made any significant orders – anything out of the ordinary, as you put it – without telling me.'

Bolt leaned against the wall, feeling frustrated. Roy Brakspear was being blackmailed, he was absolutely sure of it. No other explanation made sense. But if it wasn't something to do with his work, then what the hell was it?

'Christ.' Cavendish had stopped tapping on the keyboard and was now staring at something on the screen.

'What is it?'

Bolt and Mo hurried over to where he was sitting. On the screen was an invoice that appeared to be in German.

'I don't understand it,' said Cavendish distantly. 'Roy has put in an order. For a whole lorry load of phosgene. Now why on earth would he do that? We only ever buy it one pallet at a time.'

'What is phosgene?' asked Bolt.

Cavendish turned to face him. 'It's a component for pharmaceutical products, and it's more commonly used name is mustard gas.'

Bolt was confused. 'Mustard gas? The stuff they used to use in the First World War? And Roy Brakspear was able to order it? Just like that?'

'It's a legal product, Mr Bolt, manufactured in Germany. And we're authorized to import it. This quantity is unusually large, but it won't have been queried because the company has been dealing with us for years.'

'When was this order placed?' asked Mo.

Cavendish typed a command. 'Seven a.m. on Monday morning, so he must have done it remotely. I spoke to Roy about two hours later and he didn't say anything about it.'

'Is there time to cancel the order?' snapped Bolt.

Cavendish typed another command, and Bolt heard him swallow. 'No,' he said quietly. 'According to the system it was picked up at the factory in Germany at two o'clock yesterday afternoon. It must have been a rush order, but I've got no idea who it could be for. Roy hasn't listed who the end user is.'

He didn't need to
, thought Bolt. The end user in this case was going to be Hook. But what the hell was he going to do with a lorry load of mustard gas?

'What would happen if the gas was released?' he asked Cavendish. 'What sort of damage would it do?'

Cavendish turned in his seat so he was facing Bolt. He looked stunned. 'But who's going to release it?'

'Just answer the question.'

'It depends on the weather conditions and how it is released. It's carried in light steel cylinders and you can't simply blow them up because that would render the gas ineffective. However, if there was very little wind, the gas was dispersed in a crowded area, and the people who carried out the dispersal somehow managed to break the valves on the cylinders simultaneously without damaging the phosgene, then...' He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice cracked a little. 'I dread to think. The death toll would be hundreds at least. Possibly even thousands.'

Bolt looked at Mo, whose face was draining of colour. Bolt was shocked himself. He knew what Hook was capable of. They both did. There were only two reasons why a man like him could possibly want something as lethal as this. Either to blackmail some other organization, the government perhaps. Or to commit a terrorist act.

Bolt forced himself to remain calm. 'We need to locate the load urgently,' he said. 'How do we do it?'

'I don't know which driver we used. Roy didn't fill his name in on the order form. There'll be a signature on the paperwork though. That should tell us who it is.' He began typing again, and a copy of the German invoice reappeared on the screen. 'There's the signature,' he said, pointing to an illegible squiggle in the bottom right-hand corner. He examined it closely, shaking his head. 'I'm afraid I don't recognize it.'

'What the hell is this?' demanded Mo, his face red with anger. 'You don't know who the hell's driving a deadly cargo on your company's behalf?'

Bolt could understand his friend's reaction. He had a wife and four children at home in London. If Hook was plotting a terrorist outrage then it was a fair guess that the capital would be the target, which put a hugely personal slant on the case.

'It's not my fault if Roy didn't fill out the information,' said Cavendish defensively.

Mo wasn't mollified. 'What about the checks and balances?' he asked. 'You should have known about it. You're a director of the company, for God's sake.'

'Roy's a director, too. He's in charge of the bloody checks and balances. How was I to know he'd do something like this? I can't understand it. What the hell did he think he was doing?' Cavendish put his head in his hands and stared down at the desktop.

Bolt put a hand on his shoulder. 'OK, Mr Cavendish, no one's saying it's your fault. But we really do need to locate the lorry carrying this load.'

Cavendish slowly lifted his head and looked up at Bolt with frightened eyes. 'That's the problem, Mr Bolt. We don't have any of our own drivers. We use agency ones, and they come from all over the place. That bloody gas could be anywhere.'