Capital Punishment (8 page)

The formulation of this minor strategy gave her some small strength. She raised her knees, crossed one leg over the other and set her foot nodding as if she was connected to her iPod. She would not ask anything of them, but rather force them to come to her as often as possible and this would give her the opportunity to negotiate.

Her brain calmed down. She could concentrate. She sifted through memories for unlikely things that might help her. The rare afternoons of cable TV, watching survival stories. People in impossibly extreme situations and how they coped. Survivors all talked about giving themselves things to do and think about, so that they didn’t get overwhelmed by the direness of their circumstances. They focused on immediate problems, like making their rations last. What did she have? What was the equivalent of making her rations last?

She needed something more active than the passive strategy of waiting for them to ask her questions. There might be long hours of boredom to get through. Prioritise your needs. That’s good. A top ten of what would improve her current situation. Number one was obvious: removal of the sleeping mask. Number two: wash. Feeling clean had always been important to her, especially when she had been in Mumbai. Number three: how about a JCB digger? What sort of question would you have to answer to get one of those? Something really, phenomenally intimate about her father. Yes, well, she knew a few things that nobody else knew about her father.

‘You’re smiling, Alyshia.’

She shouldn’t have smiled. That was bad. Must have been the thought of the JCB.

‘I was just imagining myself elsewhere,’ she said. ‘I have to keep myself amused.’

‘Like where?’

‘On a beach in Goa.’

‘With anybody?’

‘A friend.’

‘A friend like Duane?’

Silence. How did he know about Duane? Nobody knew about Duane.

‘Who’s Duane?’ she asked, but she knew the beat had blown it.

‘Try again, Alyshia.’

She uncrossed her legs, planted her feet to steady herself. All the strength she’d just built up dissipated. These people knew her.

‘I wasn’t thinking about Duane, no.’

‘He’ll be sad about that, but Curtis won’t. Curtis will be happy, even if you weren’t thinking about Curtis.’

‘Have you spoken to Curtis?’

‘
I
haven’t, no. We don’t do that sort of thing,’ said the voice. ‘Did you know that Curtis had an unfortunate accident the other day?’

‘No,’ she said, concerned. ‘You didn’t hurt him, did you?’

‘No.
You
did,’ said the voice. ‘He saw you with Duane. Young guys like that find it hard to take. They get jealous. You might think it’s all fair in love and war—’

‘And kidnapping.’

‘Good one, Alyshia. You’re one tough cookie. But then again, secretive people are tough. Knowing things that others don’t gives you strength. Your father’s the same.’

‘Nobody gets ahead by letting others know what they’re thinking.’

‘Did Frank tell you that?’

‘My father always used to say: “If you’re straight with people, they’ll take every opportunity to block you”.’

‘That includes Frank’s most loyal employees.’

‘Are
you
one of his
ex
-employees?’

‘It’s probably better that you don’t know who I am,’ said the voice. ‘That way, you stay alive.’

‘You’ve forgotten about the return on your investment.’

‘There’s no return if I’m in jail. The moment I think, or even suspect, the game’s up, you’re finished, Alyshia,’ said the voice. ‘Your father took off from Mumbai some hours ago. He’ll be in London soon. We want to call him with a welcome gift, to show him that you’re alive and well. You should find it easier to give us something on your father than your mother.’

The voice was right there. Her mother had nothing to hide:
vo-vó-voom
was the level of
her
family secrets. Her father was different. The trick was to select the secret that would be least damaging. But she also wanted to protect the personal things. The names they had for each other when it was just them in the room and they were talking, father to daughter. Why should these people know the sort of thing that not even her mother knew?

‘My father gives a lot of interviews. He used to be an actor. Whenever they asked him his favourite book, he would always give an Indian author’s name, because he said it was important to be patriotic. But really his favourite book of all time is
The Great Gatsby.
’

‘A very interesting character, Alyshia,’ said the voice. ‘I’m not surprised. Your father has always had tremendous powers of reinvention. So much so that nobody could ever possibly know him.’

The flight from Lisbon landed late at Heathrow, around 11.30 a.m. Immigration was packed. While he was waiting, Boxer thought about working with Mercy. It had never happened before, although they had compared notes on cases. Despite their separation, they were still very close, and not just good friends, more like siblings. They knew each other better than lovers, which was probably why it hadn’t worked out on that front. But he did love her. More than anyone he’d met before or since. He felt nobody else saw what he saw in Mercy. Where strangers saw a tall, slim, erect, utterly driven cop, he saw the long limbs, the high cheekbones, the almond-shaped eyes and the rare but dazzling smile that showed the deeply buried sweetness of the heart within. He knew they would work well together, because they had that most indestructible of human connections: trust.

He called her, thinking if she’d been given this job, she’d have left the course she was on and would now be at home with Amy. He needed to start repairing the damage.

‘Is that my new colleague?’ said Mercy, irony on full.

‘Who’d have thought it?’ said Boxer. ‘They told you anything yet?’

‘Not much. I’m getting a full briefing later today. All I know is that you’re the lead and I’m the supporting actress,’ she said.

‘You think this’ll work?’

‘Between you and me? Sure,’ said Mercy. ‘As for the rest, once Whitehall’s involved, the Home Sec and all that, who knows? We’re pawns, while the kings and queens do their little dance. How did you get the job?’

‘Martin Fox said the client asked for me by name.’

‘So who recommended you?’

‘He didn’t say.’

‘You should find out. It might tell us something if you were put up by someone like Simon Deacon, for instance.’

‘Simon?’ said Boxer, incredulous. ‘MI6 don’t go around recommending people and certainly not people like me.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Look, just let me talk to Amy quickly.’

‘Yeah, very funny.’

‘Come on, Mercy, don’t mess me around. We parted on a bum note and I want to start patching...’

He ran out to silence as things started dawning.

‘What do you mean by “parted”, Charlie?’ said Mercy. ‘She’s with
you
.’

‘Oh, shit.’

‘I gave her her passport so that she could go to Lisbon
with you
.’

‘She called me, said she had to revise for her exams and was going to stay at Karen’s,’ said Boxer. ‘And that she’d spoken to you about it.’

‘She told me she was going to hang at Karen’s and then meet you at Heathrow for the flight at seven,’ said Mercy. ‘I even managed to call her at about six and I heard airport noise in the background. She said you’d gone to the loo.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘I’m serious, Charlie, when I spoke to her there
was
airport noise and she did have her passport with her. You don’t think she’s...’

‘I don’t know,’ said Boxer. ‘I think she’s capable of anything. I mean, she had the nerve to take your call. Christ, the girl’s got balls.’

‘Leave it with me,’ said Mercy, furious and galvanised. ‘I’ll find her and when I do, I’ll handcuff her to the bloody radiator. She’ll wish she’d never—’

‘Clapped eyes on Merciless Danquah,’ said Boxer. ‘You know what gets me? How easily she plays us. We’re the professional lie detectors. I mean, are all seventeen-year-old girls like this?’

‘So I’m told,’ said Mercy.

Frank D’Cruz’s flight had been delayed so Martin Fox and Charles Boxer didn’t turn up at the Ritz until four-thirty in the afternoon. A young Indian man let them into the Berkley suite, poured tea and provided a tiered tray of biscuits and cakes. He told them D’Cruz was on his way and left them to it. Martin Fox stood straight-backed at the window, looking out over the black and leafless trees of Green Park towards Constitution Hill, as if performing some military inspection.

‘So who recommended me for this job?’ asked Boxer.

‘The client didn’t say,’ said Fox, turning into the room.

‘It wouldn’t be Simon Deacon, would it?’

‘Why?’ asked Fox. ‘I haven’t seen Simon Deacon since the test match against India at Lord’s last July. Haven’t even seen him at the Special Forces Club. Is he all right?’

‘As far as I know,’ said Boxer. ‘He’s just very busy with security in the run up to the Olympics. You know he’s on the Asia desk?’

‘Ah, right, I see the connection now,’ said Fox. ‘You’ll have to ask Frank D’Cruz. It was the Lloyd’s man who said he’d asked for you by name.’

Fox ran his hands through his sandy hair before shoving them into his pockets. He gave Boxer some background on Frank D’Cruz, his Bollywood past and Konkan Hills Securities, D’Cruz’s holding company. He walked around the sofas as he talked, keeping an eye on Boxer from all angles. There was definitely something different about the man since he’d left GRM a couple of years ago; nothing dramatic, more a matter of perception. Fox wondered if others saw it. Boxer was watchful, patient and grasped all the detail he was giving him, all of which was normal in a consultant of his calibre. It was just that now those qualities seemed to be married to a man with the eyes of a sniper, rather than someone who was merely determined to understand a new situation.

Frank D’Cruz came in and immediately his charisma filled the room. He ignored Fox and went straight to Boxer, shook his hand and looked into his eyes. Boxer returned the intended intrusion and, after some long seconds, D’Cruz parted from him, feeling that he’d got the right man.

‘I’d like to speak to Mr Boxer alone,’ he said, shaking hands with Fox.

‘Maybe it would be a good idea if we all sat down together to start off with,’ said Fox. ‘You give us a recap of the developments so far. We can formulate an approach, discuss terms and conditions, and if you and Charles would like to continue, then, of course, I would leave you to do that.’

D’Cruz was irritated but he also realised that Fox held the key to Charles Boxer. D’Cruz opened his hands to the sofas and took a seat in the armchair at the head of the coffee table.

‘My ex-wife, Isabel Marks, called my daughter’s phone at around eleven-thirty on Friday night and had her first contact with the kidnappers,’ said D’Cruz, giving them a recap of the phone call, including the kidnapper’s name and his calm, authoritative state of mind.

‘Is that the only contact with the kidnappers so far?’ asked Fox.

‘No, they called me when my flight landed at Heathrow, using Alyshia’s mobile. An electronically distorted voice said, “Welcome to London, Mr D’Cruz”. I wasn’t even off the plane. It was three o’clock.’

‘Any demands made directly to you?’

‘No. He said there was plenty of time for that. The point of the call was to confirm what I already knew. In case I doubted Isabel, I suppose.’

‘But they didn’t say that,’ said Boxer.

‘No. They gave me the same instructions about not contacting the police and press, and said they wouldn’t be talking to me again. All further discussions would be through my ex-wife.’

‘Did they offer you proof of capture?’

‘They told me my favourite book, which I don’t admit to anybody, but Alyshia knows.’

Boxer and Fox wanted to ask the same question but didn’t.

They discussed the two lines that had contained some kind of demand. What could be ‘more complicated’? What could the kidnappers mean by it not being ‘a money-making exercise’? If D’Cruz knew, he wasn’t letting on. Of course he had business enemies.

‘Name me a billionaire, apart from perhaps Warren Buffet, who doesn’t have a line of people they’ve trodden on to get to where they are now,’ he said. ‘I had a brutal battle to gain control of the steel works I wrested from the hands of the Pitale family in 2007. I’m in a big fight now with Mahale Construction to get the contract to remove the slums from central Bombay and replace them with a major inner city development. They are also furious because the government has asked me to advise on the building of some nuclear reactors. But these are business battles. I know these people. They will try everything but they draw the line at family.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked Fox.

‘I am
dealing
with members of their families. I don’t just talk to the patriarch, I speak to his sons and daughters. I know wives, husbands and their children. I know them socially. My wife, Sharmila, is very close to several women in the Mahale family, for instance.’

‘Have you increased security on your family in Mumbai?’ asked Fox.

‘They’re not to leave the compound until this is over. Screened tutors will come in to teach the children. Sharmila will only allow people she knows into the house. I’ve doubled security at the compound.’

‘What about foreign business dealings?’ asked Fox. ‘I understand you’ve moved into the Chinese market. You’re getting raw materials from Africa.’

‘Yes, well, it’s possible that the Chinese could be more ruthless than, say, the Europeans, but I haven’t antagonised anybody ... yet. I’m selling steel to them. I’m buying parts from them. I’m growing two companies in the Special Economic Zones around Guangzhou and Shenzhen. I’m creating jobs and I’m paying in hard currency—if you can call the dollar hard.’

‘What about in London?’ asked Fox. ‘Do you have anything here?’

‘Property,’ said D’Cruz. ‘I’ve been buying commercial property over the last four years with the market being so low. Now I’m selling it.’

‘And in the UK generally?’ asked Fox.