Simon Kernick - The Crime Trade

He put the phone in the other pocket of his jacket and crept out of the room.

Tino shut the door as he came through and glared at him. ‘What is going on here, man? I do not want to hurt her, do you understand that? She is a nice girl. She is, how you say, sweet. If anything happens to her-’

‘Nothing’s going to happen to her,’ replied Stegs calmly, his voice a whisper. ‘You’re going to look after her for a couple of days, give her a little bit more of the Rohypnol so she doesn’t recognize you or give you any hassle, then, when you get the word from me, you’re going to let her go.’

‘I don’t like this.’

‘I know you don’t. You didn’t like it on Saturday either, but that’s not my problem. You do as you’re told, and everything’ll be fine. But do me a favour, eh? Stop fucking moaning about it.’

Tino took a step nearer Stegs. The Dutchman towered above him. If he’d wanted to, he could have made life difficult for Stegs, but Stegs wasn’t worried. He had the run of Tino, and he was a good judge of character. This boy had gutless-when-it-came-down-to-it written all over his face.

‘Let me tell you something, please, Mark. Do not try to deceive me. I will be very angry if you do.’

Stegs looked him right in the eye and gave him a twinkling smile, the type you give your girlfriend’s mother when you meet her for the first time. ‘Take a fucking hike, Tino. And don’t forget. If she gets out of here, it’ll be 2010 by the time you see the outside world again. That’s a long time without female flesh.’

He turned and walked away, leaving Tino standing in glowering silence.

Ten minutes later, Stegs went into a phone box on Baker Street and telephoned the Flanagan household. The wife answered, her tone nervous, and, hearing no background noise, Stegs immediately hung up. He then phoned Flanagan’s mobile, remaining in the phone box but this time using his daughter’s phone. It was picked up quickly.

‘Judy, where are you? I told you to phone your mother if you were staying out the night.’

Stegs could tell Flanagan was in a car somewhere. Probably on the way to the O’Brien incident room. He might have been the one who’d overseen the disastrous Operation Surgical Strike, but he’d done a good job of passing the buck to those under him, and had consequently avoided suspension. Which was typical of the bastard.

Stegs put the voice-suppressor to his lips and spoke. ‘This isn’t your daughter.’ The words were high and robotic, not unlike those of a Dalek. He had to stop himself from adding ‘Exterminate! Exterminate!’

There was a sharp intake of breath at the other end. Stegs could almost taste the other man’s shock. ‘Who are you?’ said Flanagan, emphasizing the ‘are’.

‘We have your daughter. She is quite safe. As long as you do what we say, absolutely no harm will befall her and she will be released shortly.’

‘What is it you want me to do?’ asked Flanagan, his voice calm but strained.

It was, thought Stegs, ironic that the head of Scotland Yard’s SO7 unit, which among other things dealt with kidnappings, should be the victim of a crime he himself had soothingly described as extremely rare when he’d appeared on Crimewatch a few months earlier. Not rare enough, Flanners, my man. Not rare enough.

‘I need you to supply me with a simple piece of information. Your daughter will be released as soon as we have received this information and checked its authenticity.’

‘Listen, I can’t-’

‘Can’t’s not a word I want to hear. You will supply this information,’ he said, emphasizing the ‘will’. ‘Otherwise your daughter dies.’ Exterminate!

‘How do I know you have her?’ Flanagan was less calm now. Only just keeping a lid on his emotions.

‘I have posted a letter to your home address. It is for your attention. Inside it is a lock of your daughter’s hair as well as her charm bracelet. The one she wears on her right wrist. She says it was a childhood gift from her mother.’

He was breathing heavily. ‘What is it you want?’

Stegs didn’t pause. ‘I want to know the whereabouts of Jack Merriweather.’

Tina Boyd watched from the other side of the road as Stegs Jenner came out of the PCA offices in Great George Street. He looked both ways, but didn’t see her. She was well hidden in the entrance to one of the imposing buildings that were commonplace this close to the seat of government. She stepped backwards out of sight, ignoring the strange look of a middle-aged woman coming out of the revolving doors, then peered round to watch as Stegs started off in the direction of Parliament Square. When he was about forty yards away, she saw him cross the road and turn and hail a black cab. The cab came to a halt and Stegs leant in the window to talk to the driver.

Breaking cover, Tina came down the steps of the building and hailed a cab of her own, heading in the same direction.

‘Where are you going, luv?’ asked the driver through the open window.

She bent down quickly. ‘Police,’ she said, flashing her warrant card before uttering a variation of something she’d wanted to say ever since she’d first seen films on the telly as a kid. ‘Follow that cab.’ She motioned towards the vehicle carrying Stegs as it indicated and pulled away from the kerb, and jumped in the back. The driver took a quick look over his shoulder and moved off, one car between him and the taxi carrying Stegs.

‘I’ve always wondered whether anyone’d say that to me,’ he said, leaning back and inclining his head towards her. He was about fifty-five, with a deeply lined, stubble-covered face and a baseball cap perched on his head that had seen better days. ‘To be honest, I never thought anyone would. Especially a bird.’ He guffawed throatily, scanning her in the rearview mirror. ‘You are going to pay us for this, I hope.’ He guffawed again. The archetypal cheeky chappie. Tina guessed that he was convinced he was a real comedian.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ she said, ‘I’ll do you a deal. You keep your eyes on the cab and your opinions to yourself, and you’ll get paid. Lose it because you’re gawking at me and I’ll nick you. Understand?’

‘All right, all right. I was only joking.’ He gave an exaggerated sigh and fixed his eyes straight ahead.

Tina sat back in the seat as the cab moved down Bridge Street and on to the Embankment, following Stegs to wherever it was he was going. She was convinced of his guilt, as she had been right from the beginning. They taught you, of course, to be very careful in forming your opinions and to follow the evidence rather than your gut instincts, but in this she knew she was right, and slowly but surely the evidence was building up to back her judgement. There’d been something wrong with Operation Surgical Strike from the beginning. Someone had set the whole thing up, and in her mind there could only be one possibility. Now she was determined to prove it, particularly as John had remained sitting on the fence over the last few days, sympathetic to her viewpoint but never quite making the step needed to agree with it. Not that she’d condemn him for that. John liked to take his time over things, mull the possibilities. But even he would have to agree that what she’d already discovered that morning had pushed Stegs Jenner even further into the frame.

She’d got into the incident room early, before eight, coming straight from her flat, eager to continue developing the lead she’d been working on the previous day, despite the fact that (a) it had initially looked like a dead-end, and (b) she was carrying a sore head from the leaving do the previous evening. There might not have been anyone on the Megane list whose name also appeared on the Desmarches suit one, but she hadn’t been prepared at that point to throw in the towel. In the past twelve months, there’d been four purchases of the suit made where the list didn’t provide the name of the purchaser. Three had been cash buys, and there was nothing that could be done about them. If the killer had paid cash, there was no way the purchase could be traced back to him. The fourth purchase, however, had been made using a stolen credit card in the name of a Mr Bernard Stanbury. It was a long shot to expect that whoever had stolen the card and had subsequently used it would turn out to be their killer, but Tina had decided to follow up on it anyway. She’d called the credit card company, explained who she was, and got the address and telephone number of Stanbury. The address was Barnet. Stegs Jenner’s manor. She’d taken a look in the A to Z and seen that Stanbury lived less than a mile from her suspect. Another coincidence? She didn’t think so.