Adam Palmer - The Boudicca Parchments

“Exactly.”

“Okay, I’ll ask them. But I have a feeling that might alert them to the fact that you contacted me.”

Dovi was speed-reading yet another report from a field agent when the call came through from the Urim monitoring station.

“We’ve got an audio intercept from Shalom Tikva’s phone. We’re sending it through now.”

“Why the call?”

“It’s urgent. Something about kidnapping one of Daniel Klein’s nieces.”

Dovi’s fingers sprang into action, calling up the transcript, not bothering with the audio. His other hand was calling Sarit at the safe house.

“Hallo Sarit,” he said quietly. “Listen don’t react overtly, but is Daniel in the room?”

There was a second’s hesitation.

“Yes.”

The hesitation was presumably a warning not to speak to loud. That meant that he was close to her.

“Listen, we haven’t any time to lose. I’ve just had a call from Urim. They picked up a call between the Tikvas, father and son.”

“Local?”

“The father’s here. The son is still in your neck of the woods. Anyway the point is — and stay calm when you hear this — they’re planning on trying to kidnap Daniel’s youngest niece. I believe her name is Romy. She’s five.”

“What!”

She was about to add “The bastards” when Dovi spoke again.

“I like your way of not reacting.”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, the position is this. We can tell the local police but then they’ll swoop in on the family and it’ll tip the bad guys off that we’ve got them under surveillance. At the moment they don’t even suspect.”

“But we can’t take risks with a — ”

“Don’t talk, just listen. We are going to tell the Metropolitan Police. As you say it’s too serious not to. They’ll probably have to put the whole family under protection because from the way they were talking, little Romy was merely their first choice. But the problem is that until the intercept was transcribed and flagged, Bar Tikva had time to make some of the arrangements. I’m going to put some procedures in place to reduce the lead time on these intercept messages from Urim involving Klein and his family. But in the meantime, it looks like time is of the essence.”

“Have you got his whereabouts?”

Even as they were speaking Dovi was using one hand to peck away at the keyboard and manipulate the mouse, calling up the historic trace report on Baruch Tikva’s mobile phone. He could broaden it to the precise location every fifteen seconds, or create a line on a map of varying scale. The intensity of the line also flagged areas where Tikva had stayed for a long time. He noticed one at Chalk Farm in London, a north-central area close to Camden Town, which he knew well.

“Right now he’s in transit going south from Golders Green. He also seems to have spent some time at an address in Chalk Farm. I’m zooming in on it now with Google Maps and going into Street View.”

“Can you see it?” asked Sarit impatiently.

“Just a minute… yes I can. It’s a lockup.

“And is that where he’s going now?”

“No… right now he appears to be headed for Chalk Farm, but he’s not going the route for that address, although he does appear to be heading towards that general area. The map shows that on previous days he’s been at another address, but not so long or so frequently.”

Dovi clicked on another tab and looked at the transcript of the phone intercept.

“Good God, he’s going to kidnap her now!”

“What as in… right this minute?”

Dovi’s voice took on a new urgency.

“Yes Sarit! Right this minute! ”

“You’ve got to call the police!”

Dovi wondered how Daniel was reacting to his side of the conversation. With his perfect Hebrew, he would know that Sarit was agitated about something and that something urgent was going down. But from what Sarit had said, he would not know why.

“I’m calling them now, but I can’t be sure they’ll take it seriously. If I say it’s happening they’ll ask me what colour car he’s driving. Look there’s no other choice Sarit, you’re going to have to go there!”

“And leave Daniel?”

“ Yes Sarit! Leave him! He doesn’t need you to babysit. But his niece needs you to stop this thing from going down.”

“Shall I — ”

“No don’t tell him a thing. Just tell him that it’s something urgent and you’ll tell him when he gets back!”

“Okay.”

“Oh and tell him not to answer the phone.”

Peter Hackett had been hesitating for a long time. As Daniel’s solicitor, he was protected by privilege. Indeed he was duty-bound to keep that privilege and not disclose any privileged information. And the act of passing on the witness statements and post-mortem report was not in anyway a breach of the rules.

Even if his client had been in custody, he could quite lawfully have handed over copies of those documents to him. With the exception of cases involving terrorism or national security — which this case plainly wasn’t — the accused is allowed to see all the prosecution evidence that his lawyer sees. And an accused is entitled to see not only the evidence that the prosecution intends to use, but also any unused evidence that they have considered but deemed to be of no relevance to the prosecution case.

So Hackett had no concerns about passing on that evidence to Daniel’s eMail address and he hoped that Daniel would be prudent about accessing it. Not that he wanted Daniel to remain at liberty. But he knew that it would be better for Daniel to turn himself in of his own accord than to be tracked down and re-arrested, not to mention being charged with the additional charge of unlawful escape and possible supplementary charges involving other murders.

But that in turn led right back to Hackett’s other dilemma: how to handle Daniel’s request for information about the police search of Martin Costa’s home? He had reservations about asking the question. But his client had requested it. And it could provide some useful information for the defence. He had to make the call to DCI Vincent.

“I was basically wondering if the search of Martin Costa’s flat revealed anything.”

“If it had we would have told you. Look don’t worry Mr. Hackett, you’ll get all the material well before the next hearing. But right now we’re still waiting for the records from the phone company. I’m surprised you’re not asking about that.”

“Well that I assumed you would give me as soon as you’ve got it. But the reason I was asking about Costa’s flat was because of what Klein was saying about the image that Costa sent him. He said it looked like a manuscript and so I was wondering about the original.”

“Well presumably it was destroyed in the fire — if it existed at all. I mean Costa was supposedly all set to bring it to the meeting.”

“That may be a probability. But it isn’t a certainty. Klein thought it might still be at Costa’s home.”

“What do you mean thought ? When did he tell you that?”

Hackett realized that he had to think quickly.

“At the court… at the remand hearing. It was one of the things we talked about.”

Hackett realized that he was actually contributing to an escalation of Vincent’s suspicions. He wasn’t supposed to be revealing what specifically he and his client had been discussing. The fact that he was — and that he was gabbling — was practically advertising the fact that he had something to hide. By now, Vincent probably knew that Daniel had called him. But it was too late to go back now.