Simon Kernick - Deadline

'I think that's everything, Mr McMahon,' she said, standing up. 'Thanks for your time, and for being so candid with me.'

He stubbed out his cigarette. 'I'm trusting you, Miss Boyd. If word gets out that I pointed you in Leon Daroyce's direction, things ain't going to look good for me.'

'I keep my word.'

'Yeah,' he said, watching her carefully. 'You look like you do.' He lit another cigarette, blew out some smoke. 'A word of advice. Be careful. Leon Daroyce tends to take things personal.'

Tina opened the door, gave him a cool smile. 'Don't worry about me, Mr McMahon, I'm always careful.'

There was one reason above any other why Tina Boyd was always careful. She attracted trouble. It hadn't always been like that. She'd had a happy middle-class upbringing in the country, the product of two parents who appeared to love each other, and certainly loved her. She'd gone to private school, then to university, studied English and Psychology, did her time on the well-worn backpacking trail. And then, while all her friends took up their office jobs, she'd joined the police. It hadn't been on a whim – well, not entirely anyway. She'd never fancied office work, and she'd always had an inquisitive mind. She was interested in what made people tick. Maybe she should have been a psychiatrist, but somehow she thought she'd learn more about the human condition as a cop. And she had, too, although she wasn't at all sure that it had been a positive development.

For the first few years of her police career things had been remarkably trouble-free. She'd spent two years in uniform – and was one of the few officers in her station who was never assaulted once – before joining Islington CID as a detective constable. As a graduate, she was on the fast track. A senior position looked inevitable, and sooner rather than later.

But then things had started to go wrong. First, she was taken hostage by a suspect she'd been investigating and was hit in the crossfire when he was shot dead by armed CO19 officers. The wound she suffered was comparatively light, and she was back at work within six weeks, to much fanfare and an immediate promotion to detective sergeant. They'd even put her on the cover of one of the issues of Police Review shortly afterwards. It should have made her happy, but she knew she didn't deserve the praise. She'd made a mistake which had got her into the position of being shot in the first place, and it looked like she was being rewarded for that. If she was honest with herself – something that she was constantly – then this was the part of the whole incident that had scarred her the most. Tina was a perfectionist, and when it came down to it she'd been found wanting.

Barely six months later, trouble came calling again, except this time it was with a vengeance. A detective she'd been working with closely was murdered while on a case they were both involved in, followed only weeks later by the apparent suicide of her long-term lover, also a police officer, which turned out to be a murder indirectly related to the same case. Suddenly, from being the next big thing, she'd become tainted by association, the kind of cop everyone wants to avoid in case something should happen to them. Someone had even nicknamed her the Black Widow, and the name had stuck.

She never saw the people who'd killed the two men so close to her brought to justice. It was possible that not all of them had been. This knowledge had scarred her too, and she'd resigned from the force, hit the rails, and become very depressed. She might never have recovered – at one point, things had genuinely felt that bad – but then she'd met Mike Bolt, who was then working for the National Crime Squad, and he must have seen something in her because he persuaded her to join his team, and to move across with them when the NCS became SOCA.

She appreciated what he'd done for her, and she worked hard at her job to demonstrate this. Sometimes she thought Bolt was attracted to her, occasionally even that this was the reason he'd hired her in the first place, and consequently she tended to keep her distance from him in the workplace. He was a good-looking guy, there was no question about that. Tall, broad-shouldered, with blond hair only just beginning to fleck with grey, and piercing blue eyes that were so striking she'd thought at first (wrongly) that he wore contact lenses. She almost certainly would have gone for him at one time, but things were different for her now. She'd had her fingers burned far too badly, and the experience had made her more cautious. She'd become a loner, someone who kept herself to herself both inside and outside a work environment, and she knew that some of the team resented her for it, putting her manner down to a brusqueness that wasn't there.

She'd been a fun girl once. Had got drunk, got laid, travelled the world. Smoked dope so strong in northern Thailand she'd hallucinated. Swum, awestruck, with dolphins on the Great Barrier Reef. Had a real life. She didn't really have one any more, and there were times – more often than she'd like – when she was filled with an angry regret over the path she'd chosen, and its bitter consequences, wondering how things might have turned out if she'd taken the office job.

But today wasn't one of those times. She was actually feeling good as she walked along Colindale Avenue in the direction of the Underground, the autumn sun warming the back of her neck. She was on her way back to the Glasshouse and had already called ahead and told Bolt about Pat Phelan's alleged debt problems, as well as asking him to check out anything they had on Leon Daroyce.

Bolt had seemed pleased with the lead – which he should have been, because it provided them with a motive for the kidnap – but he'd also sounded under strain, which wasn't like him. Mike Bolt was generally calm and level-headed, the type of guy who was able to withstand pressure. It was one of the reasons she enjoyed working with him. She felt she could trust his leadership.

'Hey lady, how you doin'?'

The words, delivered in a deep baritone with a faux American twang, snapped her straight out of her thoughts. She turned to see a silver Merc pull up beside her. The man addressing her through the open window was a well-built, smooth headed black man in his thirties, wearing shades and an expensive-looking suit.

'I'm not buying, I'm not available, and I'm not interested. So piss off.' She looked away and kept walking, but the car kept pace with her.

Tina didn't take kindly to being accosted in the street by strangers. It happened now and again. This was London, after all. She tended to ignore them, and usually they went away, but it didn't look like this guy was going to. She was a hundred metres from the Tube station now, the irony of the fact that she was only spitting distance from Hendon Police College not lost on her. God knows why this guy was picking on her, but if he decided to jump out of the car and cut up rough, then he'd get a lot more than he bargained for.

She heard the guy chuckle. 'You got some spirit, lady. I like that. A friend of mine would like to speak to you. I hear you might want to speak to him too.'

She stopped, turned his way, saw a white guy with a tight T-shirt and big biceps beyond him in the driver's seat.

'Is that right?' she said. 'And who's your friend?'

'His name's Leon, but to you he's Mr Daroyce.'

Tina cursed to herself. How the hell had he found out about her this fast? Then she thought of that brassy bitch who'd taken her up to McMahon's office, and it came to her. She must have been listening at the door. And there she'd been, saying how careful she always was. Not careful enough, darling.

'Thanks for the offer, but I have a rule never to get into cars with strangers.'

'Does it still count if we know you, Tina Boyd?' The man gave her a predatory smile as he made a great show of emphasizing the pronunciation of those last two words.