Simon Kernick - Target

And when you owe someone, you really don't want to shit on them. Nevertheless, I picked up and put down the handset twice before finally forcing myself to make the call.

'Rob?' he groaned into the phone. 'Is that you? What's happened? You all right?'

'Yeah,' I said. 'Sort of.'

'Listen, I'm in Dubai on business. I've got a breakfast meeting in ten minutes. Let me call you back.'

'No, I need to talk to you now.'

'What's wrong?' he asked. 'Is it anything to do with Yvonne and Chloe?'

Dom, more than anyone, knew how hard I'd taken the break-up of my marriage and how much I missed the two of them. He sounded concerned, and I felt a rush of guilt so strong I almost burst into tears. But I forced myself to stay calm.

'They're fine,' I replied. 'The reason I phoned you was…It's about Jenny.'

'Jenny?'

'Jenny Brakspear. You know, your ex-girlfriend. When was the last time you saw her?'

'Christ, ages ago. Why?'

'She's a normal girl, right? She doesn't have any secrets or anything, does she?'

'Of course she's normal. Why are you asking me all this?'

I took a deep breath. 'She was kidnapped tonight. About three hours ago.'

'What? How do you know?'

'I was there.'

'Where?'

I paused before answering. 'At her apartment.'

He asked me what I'd been doing there, and then listened while I gave him a brief explanation.

'I'm really sorry, Dom. I didn't mean to do it. It just happened, you know? And when she told me that you were still trying to get back with her, that was it. I said I wasn't interested.' This was bullshit of course, but sometimes a lie causes far less harm than the truth.

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone and I waited, wondering if this meant the end of our friendship.

'Did she honestly tell you I was trying to get back with her?' he asked eventually.

'That's right, and when she said it, I told her-'

'Are you sure?'

'What do you mean?'

'Are you sure that she actually said it?'

'Of course I'm sure. It was only a few hours ago.'

'That's weird.'

'Why?'

'Because,' he replied, sounding strangely distant, 'I haven't spoken to her in at least six months.'

Unlike everyone else I'd spoken to that night, Dom didn't question my version of events, and he sounded genuinely worried about Jenny. But then, like me, he knew her personally, and I was beginning to realize what a difference that made.

He wasn't back from Dubai until Wednesday morning but said he'd do anything he could to help before then. Unfortunately, he didn't even have her mobile number any more, so I wasn't sure what he'd be able to manage from three thousand miles away. In the meantime, he told me not to give up pressing the police for action, and we agreed to talk the next day when I'd update him on where we were with things.

No mention was made of where all this left our friendship, but I knew that one way or another it was going to be affected. However, for the moment, it was going to be put aside while we tried to find out what the hell had happened to Jenny.

'I can't understand it, mate,' Dom said before he rang off. 'She's just a normal girl,' he added, using my exact description of her. 'Just like anyone else.'

Just a normal girl.

But she wasn't, was she? Jenny Brakspear was a liar. And if she'd lied about something like that, then what else had she lied about? It could have been the sort of white lie I'd just told Dom, but the thing was, I couldn't think of an innocent or beneficial reason for her telling me that he was trying to get back with her when he wasn't. Given the events of that night, something about it seemed suspicious, and I wondered what it was that Jenny had got herself involved in.

As I finally got into bed and pulled the covers over me, I was determined more than ever to find out.

DS Tina Boyd leaned back in her seat and yawned as she surveyed the morgue-like emptiness of the CID office – a drab, impersonal place littered with cheap furniture that always had that just-been-abandoned-in-an-awful-hurry look – and wondered what had happened to her career. Five years ago she'd been on the fast track to success – one of the new breed of female graduates who were destined for senior positions within the police service – the Met, if not the world, at her feet, yet here she was, stuck in the office alone at four a.m., desperate for a cigarette she wasn't allowed to smoke and a drink she wasn't allowed to drink. And with no one to talk this new case through with, because the other shift guy, DC Hunsdon, had done the sensible thing and phoned in sick with one of his all-too-regular bouts of 'the flu'.

Tina wasn't sure what to make of Rob Fallon's story. On the one hand it was truly outlandish, with no evidence at all to back it up. Yet her instincts were telling her that something wasn't right. First and foremost, he was acting too much like a man telling the truth. It was, of course, possible that he'd had some kind of episode and as a consequence did genuinely believe what he was saying, but Tina had come across plenty of mentally ill people in her ten years in law enforcement, and even though Fallon had smelled pretty appalling, which was sometimes a sign of mental illness, he just didn't fit the bill. He'd been lucid and detailed in his account, had managed to give a plausible explanation for his unfortunate odour, and his details matched the layout of Miss Brakspear's building.

Even so, Tina might still have left it at that if there hadn't been a second reason for doubt. There are four million CCTV cameras in the UK – the biggest number per capita in the world – and at any time something like ten per cent are out of action due to technical faults; but in modern apartment complexes like Miss Brakspear's, where the cameras are new and state-of-the-art, that figure is almost certainly going to be less – five per cent at most. So it jarred with her that the one covering the back of the building had been out of use on the night a serious crime was reported.

Resisting the urge to sneak a cigarette in the toilet, she looked up Jenny Brakspear's name on the PNC.

If anyone had snatched her it was likely to be drugs-related. Tina was no estate agent but, even in the housing market's current parlous state, Jenny's apartment was going to be worth at least three hundred thousand pounds, which was a lot more than a girl who worked in a travel agent's could afford.

But it soon transpired that Jenny Brakspear didn't have a criminal record, and when Tina checked her address on the Land Registry, she saw that the apartment was owned by a Mr Roy Brakspear, who was probably her father. It wasn't uncommon for parents with a bit of money to buy properties for their grown-up children to live in, but it also represented a problem for Tina, because it took away an obvious motive.

It didn't take her long to get an address and telephone number for Roy Brakspear. He lived in a village just outside Cambridge. It was still the middle of the night, but she knew that if something had happened to Jenny then every minute wasted in the search for her could prove fatal.

He answered on the fifth ring, his voice sounding groggy. 'Hello?'

'Mr Roy Brakspear?'

'Yes.'

'This is DS Tina Boyd from Islington CID. I'm sorry to bother you at this time in the morning.'

'What do you want?' he asked, sounding nervous now.

'Are you related to a Miss Jenny Louise Brakspear of 9C Wolverton Villas in London?'

'She's my daughter. Why?'

'I don't want to unduly alarm you, sir, but we've had a report that she was abducted from her apartment in the early hours of this morning.'

'She can't have been.'

Tina was taken aback by the firmness of his response. 'Why not?'