Deadline

Eleven

When he first started out as a nineteen-year-old probationary constable, having failed to secure the A Level results needed to get into the universities and polytechnics he'd applied for, Mike Bolt's first posting was Holborn Nick in the heart of central London, directly between the West End and the City. Having grown up on a diet of 1970s cop shows from Z Cars to Starsky and Hutch, he'd always quite fancied the idea of joining the police, but in an abstract way, like someone wanting to be an astronaut or a jockey. Had he made university, his life would probably have taken a completely different turn.

He'd spent five and a half years at Holborn, the first three in uniform, before joining the station's CID. One of his first cases as a detective was the death of Sir Marcus Dallarda, a fifty-eight year old City financier who'd made a fortune in the late 1980s developing rundown inner-city brown field sites and turning them into blocks of luxury flats. Sir Marcus was one of the few people to foresee the end of the property boom and had sold virtually all his property holdings before the great crash, and as interest rates soared, he'd lent his profits to the money markets where the returns were suddenly enormous. To some people Sir Marcus was the worst kind of capitalist, a man who created nothing and simply sat on a growing pot of money that had been gained through other people's sweat. But the media loved him. He was a good-looking, flamboyant figure with a ready stream of amusing one-liners, and he exuded the kind of unashamed joie-de-vivre that made him difficult to dislike. With two divorces, more than one love child, and a string of mistresses under his belt, he was tabloid heaven, and he possessed that strange upper-class ability of creating an affinity with the masses that someone middle-class could never dream of achieving.

So when he was found, after an anonymous tipoff, naked and dead in the penthouse suite of a renowned five-star hotel in the Strand, with several thin lines of white powder on the table beside him and a condom hanging rather forlornly from his flaccid penis, it was always going to be big news. Although a DCI was made the senior investigating officer in charge of the case, it was Bolt and his boss at the time, DS Simon Grindy, a world-weary forty-year-old for whom the term 'half-empty' could have been invented, who'd been given most of the legwork.

'Dirty old bastard,' Grindy had mused, with a gruff mixture of admiration and jealousy, as he and Bolt stood in the opulent bedroom looking down at Sir Marcus's rather spindly body. 'If you've got to go, I could think of worse ways.'

Bolt wasn't so sure. He always felt sorry for those whose deaths had to be investigated by the police. There was a certain indignity about being inspected by various people while you lay helpless, and in Sir Marcus's case in a somewhat humiliating pose. Like most people at the time, Bolt had enjoyed reading about Sir Marcus's rakish antics, and he remembered thinking at the time how powerful death was that it could crush even the most larger-than-life characters. It was something that had remained with him ever since.

It hadn't taken long to determine what had happened in this particular case, though. The post-mortem concluded that he'd died of a massive and sudden heart attack, at least partly brought on by the cocaine in his bloodstream. If he'd been indulging in intense physical activity before his death this could also have been a contributory factor.

Since Sir Marcus's friends and colleagues insisted he would never normally touch drugs, it was concluded by the media that whoever had been with him that night, and had made the anonymous call, had also supplied him with the illegal contraband. There was an appeal for witnesses and it turned out that two young women had been seen leaving the hotel in a hurry shortly before the call to the police, which had been made from a nearby phone box. At the same time, a search of the room and Sir Marcus's possessions turned up a business card in the name of a 'Fifi' who provided 'relief for all your tensions'. On it was an east London telephone number.

A call to BT had provided a name and address for the number in Plaistow, and so it was on a grey drizzling afternoon, three days after Sir Marcus had shuffled off his mortal coil, that Bolt and Grindy knocked on the door. The address itself was a small 1950s grey-brick terrace on a lonely back street in the shadow of a monolithic tower block. 'This girl ain't going to be pretty,' was Grindy's less than deductive take on things. 'If she was making money there's no way she'd be cooped up in a shithole like this.'

But Simon Grindy had not been the best of detectives, the accuracy of his predictions never likely to be giving Mystic Meg cause for concern, and this one was no exception. The girl who answered the door was a very attractive willowy brunette in her early twenties, wearing a pleasant smile, a black negligee and not a great deal else. The smile disappeared the moment she saw the two men in suits and raincoats standing on her doorstep.

'Whatever it is, I'm not buying,' she'd said dismissively in a strong east London accent.

'I can see that, Fifi,' Grindy had replied with a leer. 'If I was a betting man, I'd say you were selling.'

She'd pulled a face. 'Not to you, mate. Everyone's got to have minimum standards.'

Bolt had almost laughed but managed to stop himself. He hadn't been working with Grindy long and had no wish to fall out with him. But he liked this girl. She had balls.

'We're police officers,' he'd told her, pulling out his warrant card, 'and we want to speak to a Miss Andrea Bailey. Are you her?'

She seemed to notice him for the first time then, and gave him a quick appraising look that would have made him blush if he'd been five years younger before reluctantly opening the door and leading them into a cramped living room. She motioned for them to take a seat on a threadbare sofa while she put on a dressing gown and asked them what they wanted.

Andrea Bailey was a cool customer. When Grindy told her harshly that they knew she was the woman who'd been with Sir Marcus Dallarda and demanded that she tell them who her companion was, she'd sat in the chair opposite and flatly denied it, and for the next ten minutes batted off their questions with a quiet confidence that Bolt couldn't help but admire. When asked how her business card had got into Sir Marcus's wallet, she'd replied that she had no idea. 'I've got hundreds of business cards. I give them out. That's what they're for. I can't keep track of where they end up.'

'And what exactly is your business, Miss Bailey?' Grindy had growled menacingly.

'Read the card. Massage, of course.'

And so it had gone on, with Grindy's attempts at intimidation failing dismally.

'We can get a warrant to search this place,' he'd said at last.

'I'm sure you can,' she'd answered with just the hint of a smirk. 'You're a policeman.'

'In fact we've got it here,' he'd added, producing it from his raincoat pocket with a flourish, as if this would throw her off-balance.

It didn't. She remained casually impassive, even giving Bolt a cheeky wink.

Bolt knew she was trying to embarrass him, and didn't rise to the bait.

'Have you got something in your eye, Miss Bailey?' he'd asked her coolly.

'Just a twinkle,' came her answer, and he'd always remembered that. Cool and witty. It made Bolt wonder what she was doing in such a dump when there was a whole world out there she could have conquered.

They'd searched the house from top to bottom, supposedly looking for the same kind of drugs that had killed Sir Marcus, and Bolt had had to go through her underwear drawer while she watched.

'I don't enjoy doing this, you know,' he'd told her as he rummaged through the various lacy little numbers.

'Course you don't,' she'd said with a chuckle. 'But ask yourself this: how many other blokes get into a pretty girl's knickers as part of their job?'

They'd bantered on and off throughout the search. Andrea was a terrible flirt but there was something hugely engaging about the way nothing seemed to faze her, and Bolt was pleased she hadn't taken offence to them turning her house upside down.

There hadn't been any drugs – there hadn't been anything illegal anywhere – and Grindy was in a horrendous mood when they left. 'Cheeky bitch,' he'd complained bitterly. 'You want to keep away from women like her, Mike. They're trouble. Take it from me. I know.'

Grindy had never struck Bolt as an expert on women, but in this case his boss was right. Andrea, however, had definitely got under his skin, and he'd thought about her often afterwards.

It was three years before he saw her again. He was still living in Holborn but had joined the Flying Squad, and was walking down the Strand one afternoon when he heard a woman's voice call out, 'Mr Bolt, are you ignoring me?' He'd turned round to see a woman with jet black hair, a good suntan and big sunglasses coming out of a designer clothes shop. She was dressed in a white sleeveless top, figure-hugging jeans and high heeled black court shoes, and was carrying several bags. There was something familiar about her, the voice especially.

She smiled. 'Plaistow, 1989. My knickers drawer.' Then she removed the sunglasses and it came back to him in an instant.

'Andrea Bailey?'

She shook her head, coming forward. 'No, Andrea Bailey's dead. Meet Andrea Devern.' She put out a manicured hand, and they shook. 'I'm a married woman now,' she added, just in case he hadn't noticed the wedding band and diamond encrusted engagement ring.

'Congratulations. You've dyed your hair.'

She shrugged. 'I fancied a change.'

'It's good to see you again,' he told her, and it was. 'You look well.'

'Thanks. You don't look so bad yourself. Still a copper?'

He nodded. 'Yeah, but not at Holborn any more. I'm in the Flying Squad these days.'

She raised her eyebrows. 'The Sweeney? Very glamorous. So' – she looked around – 'you fancy buying me a drink, or are you too busy?'

Bolt was single at the time. It was a Saturday afternoon and he'd just been wondering about doing a bit of shopping without any real plans.

'Sure,' he answered, 'why not?'

So they'd found a wine bar round the corner, got themselves a nice quiet table and proceeded to demolish a bottle of Chablis.

It was one of those occasions when everything just clicked. They'd only met that one time years earlier, and hardly under ideal circumstances, but even so they talked like old friends. Andrea told him about her upbringing in a council flat, the middle of three daughters brought up by a single mother; how she'd left school at a young age with no qualifications and got herself a job in a local corner shop which she really enjoyed, before a friend turned her on to drugs. 'I got in far too deep, far too fast. Problem was, with my wages, I couldn't pay for them, so my mate told me a great way of earning big money.' She rolled her eyes. 'I was young, and I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time. I didn't want to work for some pimp, though, so I set up on my own, got business cards printed, and worked through recommendations. I didn't enjoy it, but . . .' She shrugged. 'It got me money. My idea was to kick the coke, raise a couple of grand and put myself through college. I wanted to do a business course.'

'But you never made it?'

'Oh, I made it all right,' she told him with a smile. 'I kicked the gear, but I took a quicker route to the real money and married it.'

'Always a good move,' he said.

'He's a nice guy,' she told him, her expression suddenly serious. 'He looks after me.'

But on that day at least, Andrea hadn't been in a hurry to get back to him, and with one bottle consumed she'd asked Bolt if he fancied sharing another. He knew it wasn't right to fool around with married women, but he was twenty-four, and the sad truth of the matter was that he was never going to say no.

And so the afternoon drifted lazily on, the conversation veering here and there, covering both their lives. Andrea now lived in Cobham with her husband, a businessman twenty-five years her senior who was, she claimed, one of the nicest guys she'd ever met. 'Present company excepted, of course.'

'Of course,' said Bolt with a smile.

Eventually they got round to how they'd originally met, and with the case of Sir Marcus Dallarda now firmly set in the past, Andrea admitted that she'd been with him that night. 'I'd never met him before but a girl I knew in the business had and she said he was a decent bloke and a good payer, so I went along with her. I never normally did threesomes – I'm not that kind of girl, believe it or not.'

Bolt wasn't sure that he did believe it, but as a trained detective he preferred to listen rather than pass immediate judgement.

'Well,' she continued, 'to cut a long story short, there we were, doing the business, and he conked out. Just like that. Grabbed his chest and keeled over.' Her eyes widened as she recalled the events, and although she was clearly trying to stop herself, a small smile appeared. 'It was comical really, the way it happened. Like something off the TV. I know I shouldn't say that, but it just didn't seem real.

'Anyway, we didn't know what to do. My friend was panicking. She thought we might get the blame for it, especially as he was a bit of a celebrity as well. So I said, let's just get the hell out of here. And that's what we did. But obviously we didn't want him to get found by the cleaner the next day, so we phoned the police and told them. I didn't want to bullshit you when you came round to interview me, but I didn't actually think I was doing anything wrong, you know.' She paused, fixing him with an expression of mild amusement, her eyes twinkling. 'So, what do you think of me now?'

Bolt may have been mildly drunk, but what he thought was that Andrea was a liar. A funny, engaging, attractive and intelligent one, with beautiful twinkling eyes, and loyal too, because she'd never given up her friend, even when he and Grindy had turned her house upside down, but a liar nonetheless, and one who wasn't much good at remembering the details of the past either. Otherwise she would have recalled that the police had originally been led to her by the fact that it was her business card in Sir Marcus's wallet, and not her friend's, meaning that Sir Marcus had almost certainly known her before that night. It seemed a strange lie to tell, given that she'd already admitted that she'd been a prostitute. Why not simply admit that she was the one who'd approached her friend about the threesome, not the other way round?

Not that Bolt said any of this, of course. Instead, he put down his glass and returned her gaze.

'I think,' he said quietly, 'that if I stay here much longer I'll do something I regret.'

'Here's to regrets,' she said, and lifted her glass.

Don't get involved, he told himself. You will regret it.

'You're a married woman, Andrea,' he said, but it sounded lame, even to his own ears.

She sat back in her seat with a wide smile on her face. She was a little drunk too, but her eyes remained sharp and focused. 'Ah, I forgot, I'm talking to a policeman.' She raised her hands in mock surrender. 'All right, you've convinced me. I shouldn't even think about making love to you.'

But it was clear that neither of them was thinking about anything else. Andrea was in London on a weekend shopping trip, and she was staying at a hotel in Bloomsbury on her own. So once they'd finished their second bottle of Chablis Bolt had walked her back. She'd invited him in. This time he hadn't even bothered to resist, and they'd gone to her room and made love before ordering room service, making love again, and finally sinking into the slumber of the drunk and the contented.

The next morning they'd made love a final time before Andrea told him she had to get back to Surrey. 'I'm really glad we met up,' she'd whispered, touching his cheek and leaning over to kiss him on the lips before getting off the bed and walking naked into the bathroom to shower.

Bolt remembered what an effect she'd had on him: a potent mixture of lust, satisfaction, jealousy and anger. The anger was the worst part, because he wasn't used to getting so worked up over a woman. He'd had a great time with her, a fantastic time, but he couldn't get over the feeling that he'd been used and was now being discarded, which hurt his young man's pride. Even in those days he'd known that the best way to woo a woman was to play it cool, to pretend you didn't care that much, but it hadn't worked and he'd still left his card on top of her handbag, hating himself for it, before walking out and shutting the door behind him.

And here he was fifteen years later, and still she was having an effect on him. The shock of seeing her again that morning was wearing off as the operation to find Emma cranked rapidly into gear and the team focused on the hunt for the kidnapper, but Andrea still possessed that 'something' Bolt had always found so irresistible, even in her current state. He wanted to help her. He told himself it was because she and her daughter were both crime victims, but he knew it was more than that. A part of him still wanted to impress her, to prove that he was the tough guy who could rescue a damsel in distress.

As he walked down the corridor to his boss's office for a strategy meeting, he knew that, just like last time, Andrea's presence in his life spelled trouble.