Simon Kernick - Target

I sat staring at the computer screen for the best part of an hour before giving up and eating some lunch in front of the BBC news, which was the usual diet of doom and gloom and reminded me all too vividly why I avoided newspapers and news programmes these days. I was hoping that the break might provide some inspiration. It didn't. All I could think about was Jenny. Where she might be now and what I could be doing to locate her, because at that moment I was doing nothing.

Eventually I could hold back no longer. I called Islington police station and asked to be put through to CID. Without a crime reference number I found myself placed on hold, then sent through to an automated messaging service. When I tried again, the switchboard operator offered to take my details and get someone to call me back (I declined). It was only on my third attempt, when I told a different switchboard operator I wanted to report a murder but would only speak to someone in Islington CID, that I was reluctantly put through.

Incredibly, the phone still rang for a good minute and a half before it was picked up, which made me wonder what the hell you needed to do to get taken seriously by the police these days.

'DS Storey,' said a nasal voice, laced with a strange mixture of excitement and irritation. 'I understand you want to report a murder.'

'No,' I answered, feigning innocence. 'I'm following up on an abduction I reported last night.'

'So you're not reporting a murder?'

'No. I don't know where you got that from. There must have been some mistake.'

DS Storey sighed impatiently. In the background, I could hear a lot of noise. 'Have you got a crime reference number?' he demanded.

I told him I hadn't and started to explain what had happened but he stopped me dead, asking who I'd dealt with. When I told him it was DS Tina Boyd, he said she was who I needed to speak with, and she'd be back on duty at six o'clock.

I couldn't believe it. Jenny had been kidnapped and her kidnappers had tried to murder me yet no one appeared to be doing anything about it. 'This is an abduction I'm reporting,' I said, my patience finally snapping, 'not a fucking parking offence. Why is no one taking it seriously?'

'Listen, sir,' snapped Storey in return, snarling out the 'sir', 'if I don't know anything about it and you don't have a crime reference number then I can't help you. All right? Now, my advice is to contact DS Boyd direct when she comes in tonight because right now we have an emergency on at this station and I do not have the time to talk. OK?'

It wasn't OK, but there was nothing I could do about it, so I rang off.

I looked at my watch. It was half past two. I was angry with Tina Boyd. I'd thought she would take things seriously enough to pass the information on to her colleagues, but it was clear she hadn't. Figuring that I had nothing to lose, I dug out her mobile number and dialled it.

She answered after a fair number of rings and identified herself with a single hello, sounding half asleep.

'It's me,' I said, 'Rob Fallon. From last night. The kidnapping.'

A sigh of irritation echoed down the phone. 'I haven't forgotten you, Mr Fallon, but I was actually sleeping.'

'I'm sorry,' I lied. 'I didn't mean to wake you up.'

'You knew I was on night duty so I'd have thought it was pretty obvious that I'd be sleeping during the day.' She paused. 'What can I do for you now?'

'I want you to know I'm not bullshitting, DS Boyd.'

'You already told me that last night.'

'I've just been on the phone to one of your colleagues in CID, a DS Storey, and he didn't know anything about Jenny's kidnapping. Now I don't know why those men took her, or even if she's alive or dead, but the thing is, I cannot just sit here and do nothing while her life might be in danger.'

Tina gave another exaggerated sigh. 'I want you to forget about this, Mr Fallon.'

'Why? She could be in a lot of danger.'

'I spoke to her father before I came off duty this morning, and he told me that she couldn't have been abducted because she phoned him from Gatwick airport late last night on her way out of the country on holiday.'

'But she was with me late last night. And she never mentioned anything about a holiday. In fact, she said she'd just come back from somewhere, on business.'

'Well, that's what he said, Mr Fallon.'

'And have you managed to speak to her work? What have they said?'

'Ah, her work…that's an interesting one.'

I didn't like the way she said that.

'It took me a while to find the name of her employer with the limited information I had to work on, and I was off duty when I finally called them. I even put off my sleep for it, because I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. But I got through to her boss, a Miss Murton, and guess what?'

I began to get an ominous feeling in my gut. 'What?'

'She left three weeks ago.'

After she got off the phone, Tina found it impossible to get back to sleep. Eventually she got up and made herself a cup of strong black coffee. She knew she'd been a bit harsh on Fallon. Part of the reason for that was because she was always grouchy when she got woken up. The other part was because she still didn't know what to do about the investigation herself. A lot of Fallon's story made sense and there were some strange coincidences that appeared to back it up. Yet the fact remained that he was the only witness to this crime. And some things counted against him, like the fact that he'd been drinking heavily on the night and had had difficulty remembering Jenny's last name, as well as his claim that Jenny had told him she'd just returned from a business trip when, in reality, she'd left the company three weeks earlier.

She lit her first cigarette of the new day and tried Jenny's mobile number again – her fourth attempt – but like the other times, the automated voice told her the handset was switched off. This was turning into a real puzzle, one she was going to have to talk through with somebody. And she knew exactly who.

Tina had worked with Mike Bolt at SOCA, the Serious and Organized Crime Agency, for more than a year before returning to the Met a few months earlier, and he was one of the few people whose opinion on criminal matters she trusted absolutely. But their parting of the ways had been difficult, which was what had stopped her picking up the phone to him earlier that morning.

During their time working together they'd become very close friends, and almost inevitably a mutual attraction had developed. One night he'd given her a lift home from a surveillance job and had made a pass at her. They'd kissed in the car, passionately, and she'd been tempted to let things go further, but she'd had a relationship with her boss in CID four years earlier, before SOCA, which had ended in tragedy, and she was desperate to avoid putting herself through the emotional mill again, especially with someone she was going to see so much of, so she'd pulled away from his embrace.

Mike had apologized and nothing more had been said about the incident, but their relationship had never been the same after that. To be fair, it hadn't been the only reason she'd left SOCA. She'd also grown tired of the long-drawn-out investigations into those shadowy figures running the UK underworld, which so often ended in abject failure. But Mike hadn't seen it like that. He'd thought it had something to do with him, and though she'd tried plenty of times to persuade him that wasn't the case, she knew she hadn't convinced him. And if she was entirely honest with herself, she wasn't convinced either.

They hadn't spoken since, which didn't help, and the longer time had gone on the harder it had become to re-establish contact. She regretted this because, despite the fact that she'd made the break, she missed him.