Capital Punishment (17 page)

‘I still don’t see why you fancied him,’ said the voice. ‘He knew what he wanted and he didn’t take any notice of you: doesn’t sound like a great recommendation. You got anything more positive than that?’

‘It wasn’t his looks,’ she said. ‘He had terrible teeth, said it was from doing too much speed.’

‘I said positive, Alyshia.’

‘He was intelligent; he saw things differently.’

‘Like a few thousand others at Oxford,’ said the voice. ‘Come on, Alyshia.’

What was it? The question reverberated around her mind. What had possessed her at that time? And it was a possession.

‘Did you know his real name?’

‘What do you mean his
real
name?’

‘The
Daily Telegraph
dug that one up around his court case. His real name is John Black. Did he talk about his parents, what they did, where they lived?’

‘His father ran a hedge business for airlines and aviation gasoline. Mother was a lawyer. They lived on the Old Brompton Road. We drove past there once.’

‘Bet you didn’t go in.’

‘He didn’t get on with his parents.’

‘By the time Julian was sent down, he was thirty-one. His father had been dead seven years from liver cancer. His mother still lives on benefits in Nottingham. Her age at the time of sentencing was given as forty-six. She’s part of those statistics that stick in the craw of Little England—the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in Europe.

‘And by the way, something else you might not know: Julian owed Abiola thirty grand. He’d run up some gambling debts to pay for his drug habit. Part of the deal was that he could get Abiola an intro to you.’

Alyshia felt herself buried in a hole, deep in the foundations of a building that had fallen around her.

‘And before you ask, it’s all in the public domain,’ said the voice.

She stared out into the expanding dark. Her eyelashes brushed the velvet sleeping mask as she blinked it all in.

‘Think about that,’ said the voice. ‘What was it about Julian that drew you to him?’

7.30 A.M., MONDAY 12TH MARCH 2012

Home Office, Marsham Street, London SW1

There was one more person in the room than the Home Secretary was expecting. He looked hard and lean with dark hair, high cheekbones, a small scar under his left eye and a permanent frown, which gave him the look of a man who was always curious about what you were going to say next.

‘This is Simon Deacon, from MI6,’ said Joyce Hunter, of MI5. ‘I thought it would save time if he sat in on this meeting. He runs the Asia desk at Vauxhall Cross.’

Natasha Radcliffe, the Home Secretary, was annoyed to find that the small favour she’d done for the Secretary of State for Business Innovation and Skills had now become a ball in her court. She’d heard from Mervin Stanley early that morning that someone had tried to shoot Frank D’Cruz in Knightsbridge yesterday evening. That news had done the rounds and triggered a call to her from Barbara Richmond, the Minister for Security and Counter Terrorism, who was doubly nervous in the run-up to the Olympic Games. After that call, she’d decided that the safest course of action was to convene a meeting with MI5 to discuss any possible security issues around this kidnap and shooting. At least the press hadn’t got wind of any of it.

‘Have you heard of Frank D’Cruz?’ she asked.

‘Of course we’ve heard of him,’ said Deacon. ‘He’s always in the news. He’s that kind of businessman. And we opened a file on him once we were told about his interest in investing in the UK and one of my agents is researching him. So far his reports have been quite bland and they haven’t been circulated because nobody has requested any information about Mr D’Cruz until today.’

‘And what about MI5?’ asked Radcliffe. ‘Have you opened a file on Mr D’Cruz?’

‘Because he’s been meeting ministers and the PM, yes, we have,’ said Hunter. ‘We’ve also had him under light surveillance, but so far he hasn’t done anything that would classify him as a security risk.’

‘Have we got any more information on last night’s shooting?’ asked Radcliffe.

‘Just the ballistics report,’ said her assistant. ‘The bullet they removed from the back seat of Mr D’Cruz’s car didn’t match any they had on their files.’

‘Any further developments in the kidnapping?’ asked Radcliffe.

‘We’re awaiting an update from DCS Makepeace of SCD7.

He’s in a meeting with the Director of Operations for the kidnap.’ ‘Barbara Richmond called me last night and she wants to be absolutely certain that we’re not missing something,’ said Natasha Radcliffe. ‘This combination of an important Asian investor’s daughter being kidnapped
and
an attempted assassination doesn’t make sense to her. And when things don’t make sense, it’s usually because there’s something missing, something we don’t know about that’s preventing us from making the link. I don’t want that “unknown” to become a major security issue. So what I’d like you to do is to start filling those open files on Mr D’Cruz with valuable intelligence that will put the Minister for Security and Counter Terrorism’s mind at ease.’

‘I’m not going to have it, Charles,’ said Isabel. ‘So just forget it.’

‘As I said before, it doesn’t mean you’ll be sidelined. It doesn’t mean it won’t be your responsibility. It just means you won’t be taking the brunt of contact with Alyshia’s kidnapper.’

‘I’m not going to trust anyone with her life,’ she said, walking away from him, showing the back of her hand over her shoulder. ‘So stop talking about it.’

‘OK. Will you give me the names of people who you would consider in the event of your being incapacitated?’ said Boxer. ‘We have to think ahead all the time. If you crack...’

‘I’m not going to crack.’

‘It’s not just the pressure of the phone calls. It’s all this “downtime” as well. The waiting. The way things play on your mind. Nobody with your level of involvement could expect to last longer than a week.’

‘What is this about?’ asked Isabel, a little venom creeping in now, showing her steel. ‘Is this about something else?’

‘There is nothing else. This is how life is until it’s over.’

‘I mean, is this about what happened last night ... between us?’ she said. ‘You want some distance now?’

‘No. It’s not about what happened last night. But you’re right,’ said Boxer. ‘We already have a highly emotional situation, into which we’ve introduced...’

‘What? What has been introduced? Is there a word for it in the manual? Like getting friends to do your negotiating for you is called a Crisis Management Committee. What’s having sex with your kidnap consultant called? A Crisis Manager Encounter?’

‘My boss would call it a Crisis Management Disaster,’ said Boxer. ‘I’d never work again.’

‘And you? What would you call it?’

‘Look,’ said Boxer, holding up his hands. ‘Look at us. This is what I’m talking about. We’ve introduced a whole new level of emotional involvement. There’s not just the enormous external pressure from the kidnap situation but also a powerful internal one, because of what’s happening between us.’

‘And what is happening between us?’

They were staring intently into each other’s eyes when Boxer’s phone went off.

‘Tell me,’ she said.

‘You know what’s happening,’ he said. ‘There’s no mistaking it.’

The phone continued to ring.

‘Answer it,’ she said.

‘It’s the profiler,’ said Boxer, looking at the screen.

‘Tell him to call back on the fixed line,’ she said, still riled. ‘I want to listen to this on the speaker phone.’

Boxer gave the profiler, Ray Moss, the number. They sat back in silence, waiting.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m just—’

The phone rang.

‘Hi Ray. I’m putting you on speaker phone now. Present in the room is Alyshia’s mother, Isabel Marks, and me. You’ve listened to the recording. Tell us what you think.’

‘I don’t think he’s a kidnapper.’

‘Hold on a sec, Ray.’

‘I know,’ said Moss, ‘but it feels to me like he’s playing a role.’

‘Whether he’s playing a part or not, he’s still kidnapped my daughter,’ said Isabel. ‘What’s your point?’

‘The first thing that struck me was the way you found out that your daughter had been kidnapped,’ said Moss.

‘You mean the kidnapper waiting for Isabel to contact
him
,’ said Boxer.

‘That’s significant,’ said Moss. ‘If I remember correctly, you said your ex-husband had been calling Alyshia on Saturday and she hadn’t answered his calls. Do we know when she was taken yet? If not, when did you last speak to her, Mrs Marks?’

‘Friday afternoon.’

‘So it seems likely that it was Friday night,’ said Moss. ‘It’s pretty rare for a serious gang to wait twenty-four hours for the
mother
to make contact so that they can reveal that they’ve taken her daughter.’

‘He
did
have proof of capture ready,’ said Isabel.

‘Which in itself is odd,’ said Moss. ‘Why prepare yourself and then wait to be contacted? A lot of gangs make initial contact
without
proof of capture. They’ve got their prize and they want you to know it as soon as possible. More often than not, it’s the kidnap consultant who ensures that the first proof of capture is asked for, and rarely the gang that offers it up.’

‘What else?’ said Boxer.

‘The detail of his threat if you dared to involve police or press was much more calculated that the norm,’ said Moss. ‘And I understand you felt that he knew the extent of your ex-husband’s ruthlessness, which I do think indicates that he knows him and that there’s something personal about this, too.’

‘Yeees,’ said Boxer, in a way that warned Moss off what he was building up to.

‘The second call was quite different in tone. More teasing, offhand, arrogant and casually violent. This time he’s
not
going to give you any proof of life. I would have expected a gang eager to make money to have issued a demand during this call. If she was taken on Friday night, then we are now talking fifty-four hours later. That there’s still no demand, but rather the reverse—a statement of disinterest in financial gain—is very unusual. That he also seems to want to demonstrate to you his superior knowledge about every aspect of your life, including your daughter—’

‘What do you mean, superior knowledge about my daughter?’ asked Isabel, hackles rising.

‘The kidnapper said: “Her interest lies elsewhere”, implying that he knows about someone your daughter is involved with that you don’t. And he also seems to know “what happened in Mumbai”. Do you?’

‘No.’

‘These are fairly normal tactics designed to alarm and undermine, but they’re usually accompanied by a demand for money.’

‘So if he’s not a kidnapper, what is he?’ asked Isabel.

Moss breathed in, held it.

‘I think we should listen to what’s on the mobile as soon as it’s been retrieved,’ said Boxer.

‘You think he’s a killer, don’t you?’ said Isabel.

‘I haven’t said that because it’s not clear to me what he is,’ said Moss. ‘All I know is that he’s not behaving like a
regular
kidnapper.’

‘But you think he bears a grudge against my ex-husband and in not making a demand, in fact dismissing my ex-husband’s extensive ability to pay, it’s implicit that his intention is ... to punish him.’

‘Whatever his intentions are,’ said Moss, ‘they don’t seem to be immediate. He seems to want to spin this out. He’s expecting you to retrieve the mobile. He’s talked about “what happened in Mumbai”, which indicates to me that there are more revelations to come. He’s enjoying this role.’

‘You say this “role” as if he’s
acting
as a kidnapper when, in fact, he’s told us he
is
a kidnapper and that we
are
in a kidnap process,’ said Isabel, desperate to arrange the facts as positively as possible in her mind. ‘Is it conceivable that we are hearing someone acting on behalf of someone else?’

Boxer could hear the pity coming down the line.

‘All Ray is saying,’ said Boxer, ‘is that Jordan has set up a situation with all the appearances of a kidnap, but that there are a number of oddities, which make his intentions unclear.’

‘I’d like to listen to what he sends you on your daughter’s mobile,’ said Moss. ‘Forensics will want to look at it first. Then we’ll talk again.’

‘Thanks Ray,’ said Boxer, taking it off speaker, putting the phone to his ear.

‘She shouldn’t be managing this on her own,’ said Moss.

‘We’re trying.’

‘He’s going to kill her ... in the end. I’ve got no doubt about it in my mind,’ said Moss. ‘This teasing is just part of the torture. I’d get the Met onto it straight away, whatever that fucker, Jordan, says.’

Simon Deacon’s phone call had given his agent, Roger Clayton, the sort of full day’s work he wasn’t used to and especially not in this terrible mid-March humidity, which had taken over after the hot dry winds from Gujarat had departed. The phone call had precipitated three meetings, which were all in different parts of a city that, for some mad reason, had taken Los Angeles as its template for modern living. The city sprawl was colossal. The only way to get to all these places was by car, along with ten million other road users in Mumbai. He estimated his travel time alone at around nine hours for the day.

Rajiv Tandon was a Deputy Central Intelligence Officer for the Indian Intelligence Bureau, known as the IB. They’d arranged to meet in one of the most dreaded places in Mumbai for Clayton: the High Street Phoenix Shopping Mall in Lower Parel, a development which had ironically incorporated the old textile mill’s chimneys and was only a few miles south of his office in the Bandra Kurla Complex. Tandon liked to shop and, because Clayton had nothing to offer Tandon to make him look better to his superiors, and Simon Deacon had told him that he didn’t want D’Cruz’s daughter’s kidnap openly known in the IB, Clayton knew what he had to do: produce the credit card at the right moment. Clayton didn’t like this; not because it felt like corruption or bribery, but because he had to pay with his own card and reclaim on expenses, which used to take six weeks but, since HM government’s austerity measures, now took close to ten. At least Tandon wasn’t excessively greedy, and three hundred and fifty quid’s worth of Ralph Lauren did the trick.