Dead Centre

1

Coffee shops are like London buses. You don’t see one for ages, then three come along at once. I sat with my frothy cappuccino and stack of Danishes as more and more people lined up like lemmings for their pre-work caffeine fix. Nearly all of them had headphones or mobiles stuck to their ears.

This branch of Starbucks was on the north side of London Bridge, by Monument tube. Jules had decided he didn’t want me to come to the office. His syndicate dealt with kidnap and ransom. K&R was a private, secretive world. His bosses wouldn’t want him bringing somebody in to tread across their turf — especially when Jules knew that that somebody wouldn’t be wearing a suit.

I sipped at the froth. I’d gone to my flat in Docklands straight from Heathrow and got my head down for a couple of hours. I’d had a lukewarm shower when I got up because I’d forgotten to spark up the immersion heater when I came in. I gave it a twenty-minute burst and jumped in.

The place was covered with dust. Dust sheets were for the movies, or so I thought. I hadn’t sold the 911 or the flat, or even rented it out when I went to Moscow. I didn’t need to. Prices had taken a hit in the recession, but they’d pick up again. As Mark Twain kept yelling from the Moscow billboards: ‘Buy land: I hear they aren’t making it any more!’

Besides, I didn’t know what I was doing with Anna, and neither, I guessed, did Anna know what she was doing with me. We were sort of experimenting with the idea of living together.

The newspapers were still dominated this morning by the Japanese tsunami and Gaddafi’s war.

Japan had raised its nuclear-contamination alert level as core damage to Reactors 2 and 3 was worse than expected after the ’quake. Panic had spread overseas. Shops in parts of the US had been stripped of iodine pills.

Libya’s government was declaring an immediate ceasefire after a UN Security Council resolution backed ‘all necessary measures’ short of occupation to protect civilians in the country. But no one seriously thought Gaddafi would stop bombing his own people just because he said he would.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, yet another country was going tits up. At least thirty-three anti-government protesters had been shot dead in Yemen and another 145 wounded when government forces opened fire on a group of them. The Arab freedom wave kept on rolling, but at a cost.

It was hard to cut away from it and keep my head full of Somalis and piracy. Until I’d joined the Regiment and had to deal with that shit head-on, I’d thought pirates belonged to a far-off world where the Jolly Roger flew on a Caribbean masthead while all the lads swigged rum and gave it the old yo-ho-ho on the quarterdeck. But these fuckers didn’t sport eye patches and head-scarves. There wasn’t a Captain Sparrow in sight. They ran round in flip-flops, shorts and tank-tops. They carried grappling hooks, RPGs and AK47s. And now they killed people.

2

Somalia is a failed state. Its landmass, which makes up the Horn of Africa, is stuck between Ethiopia and Kenya to the west, and the Indian Ocean to the east. Its northern coastline is on the Gulf of Aden, the other side of which lies Yemen, whose government had just taken to killing protesters. Talk about keeping bad company.

The piracy committed offshore is a direct result of the anarchy that rages on land. The same thing happens in other weakly governed states, like Indonesia and Nigeria, but it’s particularly bad in Somalia. The country has been caught up in civil war since the 1990s. Come to think of it, it can’t really be called a country any more.

In the early 1980s, Somali pirates were mostly unemployed youths who hung round the docks looking for work. The warlords, the clan leaders, bunged them in a couple of boats and sent them out to mug whatever they found coming from the Red Sea into the Gulf of Aden. As one of the choke-points for world shipping, it offered easy pickings.

Piracy grew into an industry. As Rudy had discovered, gangs now roved across thousands of square miles, as far east as the Seychelles, south to Tanzania, and north to the Arabian Sea and Oman. The turf was divided up. The waters of the Gulf of Aden might as well be the streets of Mogadishu.

A typical cell of a dozen or so men goes out into the open sea in two or three skiffs, small, cockroach-infested wood or fibreglass fishing boats, for three or four weeks at a time, taking only a couple of outboards. All other available space is filled with grappling irons, ladders, knives, assault rifles, RPGs and khat leaves, the local narcotic.

There’s nothing to cook with. They catch fish, which they eat raw. The plan is always to find and take over a larger vessel, then live on it and use it as a mother-ship. Which was what must have happened with the skiffs that captured the Maria Feodorovna. They’d have binned the fishing boat and would now be using the yacht as a control base, having taken the hostages back to shore because they were European and would be worth a few bob.

Why hadn’t they taken the crew as well? They were white, but maybe they were seen as fellow workers of the sea. Somali pirates had some rules. They didn’t attack all shipping. They left the Indian vessels that brought expensive goodies and food from the east, mainly because the clan warlords liked to buy the stuff with the proceeds of their crimes. If the supply dried up, the warlords wouldn’t be best pleased.

But the fact was, these pirates attacked anything of value that floated: oil tankers, freighters, cruise ships, private yachts, they’d have a go at anything. I found it quite funny that a dozen Somali fishermen could fuck global shipping magnates about, holding them, their crews and world trade hostage. I’d have laughed into my brew if it hadn’t been for Tracy and the boy.

Back on dry land, Somalia was still in shit state. The Americans had tried to intervene in 1993 when the warlords were hijacking food aid. They’d got hammered. Nobody had tried since. The clans were now at war with each other, and Islamic militants had gatecrashed the party for a slice of the action. There was no functioning government, or even a judicial system, just chaos and disorder. Small wonder a job as a pirate seemed such a fantastic opportunity to the average Somali. I’d have been having a go at it if I was up Shit Creek.

The economic impact of piracy was actually quite small as things stood, compared with the volume of international trade. Less than one per cent of the vessels in the Gulf of Aden had been approached by pirates, let alone attacked, and most of those were only shipping garden gnomes from China. But the statistics didn’t tell the full horror of what awaited victims like Tracy and Stefan.

And in the bigger picture, the nightmare scenario for Britain was that if one of the two liquid-gas ships we needed to dock here every day got lifted, we’d lose a major part of the energy supply that kept our power stations humming. If baby incubators couldn’t function and the lights went out, the government might find that uprisings weren’t confined to the Middle East.

Even the front-line pirates got fucked over. They received less than 30 per cent of the take. The bulk of the proceeds had to be handed over to the clan warlords, and those who had to be paid for the hostages’ food and board. There were also investors. Some were Somalis. Buying shares in piracy was better than going to sea. Easier money and conditions. But some were from international criminal syndicates based in the Gulf States, with links into Europe and London.

In fact, the whole thing was a fuck-up, with everyone taking a cut some way or another. There were a lot of noses in the piracy trough.

3

I’d just started on my third Danish when Julian arrived, immaculate as ever. Today he was in a black Crombie coat over a white shirt and tie. I pointed down at the extra mug to tell him that he didn’t have to go and line up, and the Danishes that were left were his. Not that he was going to eat any. They were far too unhealthy.

Jules had done really well for himself since resigning from MI5 last year. He’d gone through his moral car-wash, resigned, and come out the other side without turning his back on the good guys. He was now in the K&R business, negotiating ransoms for insurance syndicates, and trying to make sure that no one got kidnapped in the first place.

I stood up and received a soft palm and a warm smile.

‘Nick …’ He still sounded guarded. ‘How are you?’

‘Not bad, mate. Not bad.’

He took off his coat to reveal a black suit and double-cuffed shirt with simple silver stud cufflinks. He sorted his Crombie out over the back of his chair, making sure it wasn’t dangling in the crumbs on the floor.

‘What’s been happening, Nick?’

The frothing machines hissed behind us as people ordered their double skinny this, that and the other.

‘Same old, same old. But I might be doing a K&R job. I need you to see if they’ve been pinged or not.’

‘How many?’

‘Only three.’

I explained the who, what and where.

‘So the attack was five days ago?’

‘I don’t even know if they’re still alive.’

He fished into a big pocket that looked like it had been specially sewn into his coat, pulled out an iPad and sparked it up.

‘How are things in the K&R world?’

His fingers played about on the screen. ‘Business is good. I’ve stopped working for a percentage of the premium saved. I can normally get them out in about three months, so it’s better just to take a set three grand a day.’

‘In that case, you can pay for these.’ I offered him the plate of Danishes but he shook his head. I dunked one in my coffee.

‘Still busy in South America, Central America, Mexico. Africa is still good, and of course Somalia’s top trumps.’ He finished tapping away. ‘Not a thing, Nick. They don’t show up anywhere.’ He looked up. ‘Do you know who’s holding them? If they’re with a clan? Has anyone been approached about a deal?’

‘Nothing. The BG should be keeping their real identities quiet.’

‘That’s good. But somebody somewhere must have been approached.’

He turned the iPad so both of us could see the readout. ‘As far as we know, twenty-nine vessels held and six hundred and eighty-one hostages.’

The list was divided into countries, age groups and occupations. ‘There’s a lot of sea out there. Maybe they didn’t make it back to the coast.’

That got me worried. ‘Do you think they’ll have been zapped?’

‘Unlikely. They’re merchandise. But that’s not to say the BG didn’t put up a fight and the three of them were killed — or they may have sunk. Those fishing skiffs they use aren’t exactly on the Lloyd’s Register.’

‘What about the four Americans?’

‘That was a total mess. The Somalis went to negotiate with the US Navy. The US Navy didn’t believe them. They held them instead. Their friends on the captured boat thought they were being stitched up, so they killed the Americans.

‘In general, if they’ve got them, they still won’t kill them. Only when they stop being worth money do you have to get worried. If they don’t have outside investors, they’d have to take a loan from their clan warlord to keep and feed the hostages. They might be using your three to pay off debts they owe the clan. Who knows? It’s complicated out there.

‘But if they are alive, even if they’ve been sold on, someone would start to negotiate, someone would make contact. Otherwise there’s no point in keeping them.’

I nodded, and threw down some more Danish. ‘You’re sure they’re not anywhere in that box of tricks?’

‘Just a sec. Maybe I can work out which group took them. You said it was towards the end of last week?’

He logged onto a website, and I watched him enter his password. The page opened up on the Anti-piracy Environment Awareness Chart. It wasn’t a chart at all, more a collection of big break-out boxes, with Google maps, pie charts and bar graphs. He expanded the page to show me something.

‘Depending on the time of year, some areas are more swamped with pirate activity than others. These people are fishermen. They know the winds and tides. They know the sea. They know when they can go out there safely. They know when they can’t — well, the successful ones do. Look.’ He pointed at the screen. The Monthly Piracy Risk showed a satellite picture for each month of the year, and then dots where the attacks had taken place.

‘See the difference between March and June?’

The Gulf of Aden in June had just a few dots on it, and the same past the Horn of Africa and out into the Indian Ocean. But March was a different story. The area was almost black with dots, as was the whole area east, north and south.

‘It’s because of the north-eastern monsoon. That comes down from India and Arabia, normally about December to March. The swell is only about two or three metres, so those small craft can use the wind to negotiate it, get clear of the coast and go out there looking for a mother-ship. If they strike lucky, they might hit what they want to hijack straight away.

‘But June and October are when the south-west monsoon comes in. We’re talking thirty-knot winds and swells of ten metres. That’s the same size as the Japanese tsunami, Nick. They haven’t a hope of making it out to sea without capsizing.’

‘So piracy is seasonal?’

‘Yes. And because we can predict winds and tides, we can have a good idea of where and when they’re going to strike.’

I looked at the pictures. The yellow dots on the Google Earth map showed the 44 per cent of ships that had been approached. The green ones showed that only 18 per cent of those were actually attacked. They must have decided the others were too big or too fast, or maybe painted grey, with big guns. A bar chart showed activity by days of the week. I pointed to Friday and Saturday. ‘Hardly anything happening there. These lads like their weekends, like everyone else.’

He chuckled politely. ‘The British Navy takes the lead on anti-piracy at the moment. They use this to try and predict where the strikes might happen, so they can concentrate their resources. As I said, there’s a lot of sea out there. If they don’t get out a mayday, nobody knows what’s happening.

‘But what we do is put on an overlay that shows the information we’re gaining from dealing with the clans and the kidnappers, to see which groups are active, who’s done the lifting. So let’s have a look at what’s been going on around the Seychelles.’

Every time there was a dot, there was now an overlay and a number between 1 and 19 that represented different groups. The numbers were random in all the areas for March. It looked like a free-for-all.

‘Sorry, Nick. Sometimes the clans designate areas for their own. But it’s open season out there in March. Prime time. If only the yacht crew had had access to information like this, they’d have known where to steer clear of. It’s stupid going into those areas at the best of times. What was going on?’

‘I haven’t got a clue.’ I sat back in the chair. He could see the worry on my face.

‘Someone, somewhere, will know. If they’re alive, the Somalis will have contacted somebody.’ He pursed his lips. ‘You know these three, don’t you?’

‘Yeah. One’s a guy who used to be in B Squadron. The other is the widow of a dead mate. The child’s from her new marriage.’

I got to my feet and picked up my black parka. I needn’t have brought it with me. It was a lot warmer in London than where I’d come from.

‘Tell you what, mate, as soon as this is over, and Anna’s back, why not come over for a week?’

He stood up, and we shook hands again. ‘Any help you need, Nick, you know where I am.’

‘One more thing. Al-Shabab — they still active?’

He nodded. ‘Don’t even think about it. Go find your contact.’

I sat back down and couldn’t do anything but think about it.

Al-Shabab, the hard-line Islamist movement, was Somalia’s Taliban, even down to the suicide bombing and severed heads. They’d been bolstered by experienced fighters from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and now controlled most of the southern part of the country. If those fuckers discovered my three were high value, they’d be coming to lift them from the clans. Tracy, Stefan and BB would die in captivity, or be executed, because … Well, just because.

Jules was looking for something. ‘The Gents. You know where?’

‘Yes, mate.’ I pointed. ‘Let me have a look at that chart again, will you?’

He got it online and headed left of the counter.

4

The Green Dragon on Broad Street felt like it had been around as long as Hereford had been. It was the kind of ye olde tourist hotel where the Rotary Club met every Friday and Saga coach tours stopped for scones and tea.

The TV wasn’t tuned in to RT, so I sat on the big flowery eiderdown and tapped Anna’s number on the iPhone screen instead. It was a lot earlier than I normally called her, but I was going to have a pretty full day. I needed to catch up with Crazy Dave and then trawl the bars for Jan.

I’d already tried the last address I had for her, a flat in a three-storey pebble-dashed housing association joint on the Ross Road at the edge of town. She’d taken it over from her mum years ago. It was almost opposite where the old Regiment camp used to be. In her early husband-hunting years, she must have thought it gave her pole position. There’d been no one at home, and I wasn’t about to start knocking on doors to find out. Not yet, anyway. It was Friday. Unless she’d changed the habit of a lifetime, she’d be out on the town sooner or later.

The phone only rang a couple of times before she picked up.

‘How’s it going?’

‘Better than yesterday. Where are you?’ She was inside this time. I could hear Arabic TV in the background and no gunfire.

‘Back in the UK, in Hereford. You OK to talk?’

‘You took the job?’

‘Maybe.’ I explained. ‘I’m banking on BB keeping them alive long enough for me to find out where they are. Any luck with Frank?’

‘All I can tell you is that he was originally called Vepkhiat Avdgiridze. He’s not Ukrainian. He’s Georgian, from South Ossetia. It’s been fighting for independence for decades.’

‘I know. I was there a year or two before Putin went in.’

North Ossetia was part of Russia, but South Ossetia had always been disputed territory. Most South Ossetians carried Russian passports and wanted to break away from Tbilisi. They had declared it a republic in 1990 and the Georgian government had sent in tanks. A series of wars followed, until the Russians finally invaded ‘to protect their citizens’ in 2008. Well, that was one of the versions. Since then, it had been recognized as an independent republic by Venezuela and a handful of other countries that sucked up to Moscow, but the Georgian government still saw it as occupied territory.

‘Where does Frank fit in?’

‘He finances the South Ossetian independence movement. He helps them attack Tbilisi in any way they can. He’s not short of cash. It looks like he has fingers in every pie. Oil, gas, real estate. He backed Putin when he reorganized things. He’s no good guy, but he has class. He doesn’t own a football club or run for provincial governor. He keeps himself to himself. For him, it’s all about business, all about the deal.’

‘Are you sure he’s the one?’

‘I’ll send a picture.’

‘What about you, Anna? You OK?’

‘I’m fine. But, you know, I’ve been thinking … Maybe … Maybe I should stay a while longer. If Gaddafi retakes Benghazi, I should be here.’

‘And maybe Bahrain, maybe Syria?’

I kept it light, but we both went quiet for a while.

‘So when will you be coming home, Nicholas?’

‘If they’re alive, I’m going to have to go and get them.’

I heard an intake of breath. ‘Yes … Of course.’

There was a pause.

‘Nicholas, I have to go.’

‘I’ll call you tomorrow. But I won’t have a clue what you’ve been up to because pointy-head TV doesn’t show RT.’

She’d have no idea what pointy-head meant, but she started to laugh. I liked it when she did that.

‘Be safe, Anna.’

‘And you, Nicholas.’

The line went dead.

I sat on the bed, trying to make sense of our non-conversation.

My iPhone alerted me to the arrival of Anna’s MMS. I opened it up. The photo was slightly fuzzy and taken from a distance as he got into a limo, but it was Francis Timis all right.

I juggled tubes of instant coffee, fired up the small plastic kettle and worried about Anna. It was becoming a bit of a habit. It wasn’t just the danger she put herself in. I missed her. She was too busy saving the world for us to spend much time together. But I couldn’t blame her. Whoever said war is a drug was right on the money.

I called Crazy Dave on the room phone. I was pretty sure he’d ignore a withheld number or one he didn’t know, but pick up on a local call. I wasn’t wrong.

‘Dave …’

‘What?’

‘You about for a brew in, say, an hour?’

‘If you want work, you can shove it up your arse. As of sixteen hundred hours today I’m retired.’

‘Then get the kettle on for half three. You can still present yourself with a gold clock at four.’

‘Yeah, funny. What do you want?’

‘I’ll explain when I get there.’

I was glad I’d caught him in a good mood.

5

The Green Dragon’s car park was at the rear of the building. The garaging had probably once been filled with horse-drawn carriages. I checked out and drove my grime-covered 911 past Ascari’s café and onto Broad Street. The sky was dark and heavy with cloud.

I used to spend a lot of my time-off in Ascari’s, eating toast and drinking coffee. It was where I’d really got to know Crazy Dave. When I joined he was already a sergeant, something like three generations above me. He was in A Squadron, I was in B, so I didn’t get to see him that much. But over coffee and scrambled egg, we’re all the same. We both used to spend our Sunday mornings there, reading the supplements; him because he was trying to avoid his wife, me because I didn’t have one. Crazy Dave didn’t need to go there so much now. His wife had left soon after he’d got himself fucked up. His legs were useless, and as far as she was concerned, so was he. He was in and out of hospital like a yo-yo, and she didn’t fancy joining him for the ride.

There was a bit of bad blood between us too. I’d felt sorry for him when we met up again in 2005 — but it only took me a week or two to start thinking two fucked-up legs weren’t enough. A friend of mine from Regiment days tapped Crazy Dave for some work. He was in the early stages of motor neurone disease and wanted one last big pay-off so his wife would have a pension. So far so good, but Crazy Dave had found out and taken advantage of him. Charlie was so desperate he’d accepted only a fraction of what the job was worth, and Dave had trousered the rest.

I made him give Charlie’s widow the lot. In return, I’d hold off telling the guys who came to him for work how much of a markup he liked to take, or telling the companies that used him that he had a quality-control problem — he didn’t even check his workforce had fully functioning limbs.

The bit I’d enjoyed most was telling him that if he didn’t get his finger out and have the cash in her account within twenty-four hours, I’d be straight over to separate his bony arse from his wheelchair.

Next time I saw him, a year later, that was precisely what I did. I’d needed some int, but I’d fucked up. Instead of just asking him for a favour, which would have given him a bit of a kick, I’d tried to blackmail him. He gave me the int, and told me we were all square. Then he told me that if I made the mistake of thinking otherwise, he had three hundred guys on his Rolodex who’d happily take a shovel to my face.

If only I could have left it at that.

There are times when you have to accept you’ve been fucked over, and that was one of them. But it pissed me off that he made so much money from scamming his own people, and something in me snapped.

I grabbed his right calf and started towards the door, dragging him and the wheelchair behind me. He screamed and shouted at me to stop, but I kept right on going. When we reached the door Crazy Dave couldn’t hold onto his chair any longer and fell out on his arse. I dragged him through the rain and only let go when we reached his Popemobile. He flailed around on the wet tarmac, trying to pull himself along on his elbows, back towards the house.

To this day, I didn’t know why I did it. It was immature, gratuitous and got me nowhere — but, fuck, it put a smile back on my face.

Unfortunately, I now needed his help again.

6

I turned right at the junction with Broad Street, passed the front of the hotel and headed towards the River Wye.

The only crazy thing about Crazy Dave was that he’d earned his nickname because he wasn’t: he was about as zany as a teacup. He was the kind of guy who analysed a joke before saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I get it. That’s funny.’ But then again, he wasn’t trying to find work for a bunch of stand-up comedians — even if we sometimes thought we were pretty fucking amusing.

There had always been a broker knocking around Hereford. He had to be ex-Regiment because he had to know the people — who was in, who was getting out — and if he didn’t, he had to know a man who did. When Crazy Dave left after his twenty-two years, he became an intermediary between ex-Regiment guys and the private military companies and individuals who wanted competent people. Dave got his cash by providing the right person for the right job. There’s an HR department in any civilian organization, so why not in a military one? After all, it would be a shame to waste all those skills the taxpayer had paid for us to learn.

Dave’s business was a perfect fit with Cameron’s Big Society. We get the guys into the army; we pay for them to be trained; we pay them to fight, and then we let them go and use their skills in the outside world. Some of them even filed tax returns.

I was heading for Bobblestock. It had been one of the first of the new breed of estate that had sprung up on the outskirts of town when Thatcher tried to turn us all into homeowners. The houses were all made from machined bricks and looked as if they were huddled together for warmth. They all had 2.4 children inside and a people-carrier on the drive.

Crazy Dave lived on the high ground. He’d told me proudly that he’d bought into phase three of the build. The window frames were painted brown instead of white to distinguish it. Apparently that gave the houses a more substantial look.

I drove into the estate. Nothing had changed in the five years since I’d last seen him. I stopped outside his brick rectangle and got another chance to admire the garage extension, which looked as if it had been assembled from a flat-pack.

The house to the right had been called Byways last time I was round. Dave must have new neighbours. Number 53 was now called Rose Cottage. There was fuck-all cottage-like about the place. A net curtain twitched inside. Maybe they’d bought it recently and were still coming to terms with the guy in the wheelchair next door having rough men arriving at his house at strange times of the day and night. They probably thought there was some sort of sex thing going on.

Number 49, to the left, was still called The Nook. Crazy Dave, of course, just had a number. How crazy was that? A ‘60’-plate Peugeot Popemobile was parked outside, the correct nine inches or whatever it’s supposed to be from the kerb. The road was a dead end, so he’d even gone to the trouble of finishing his last trip with a three-point turn and aiming it in the right direction for a quick getaway.

The whole thing was rigged and ramped, even down to levers and stuff instead of pedals. I could see bags on the passenger seat and down the sides of the pope’s throne in the back.

7

I walked up the driveway towards the concrete ramp that had replaced the front steps. I waved at the small CCTV camera covering the front of the house. The door buzzed. I pushed it open and let myself in.

The house was exactly as I remembered it. It still smelt like it’d been given the once-over with a couple of cans of Pledge. There was still a Stannah parked at the bottom of the stairs, and at the top, enough climbing frames to keep a whole troop of baboons happy. Down in the hallway, some shiny chrome bars had been stuck to the walls. A couple of dangle bars hung on nylon webbing. It looked like a gymnast’s idea of heaven.

My Timberlands squeaked on the laminate flooring as I walked into the no-frills living room. There was a big fuck-off TV, and that was about it. The rest was open space. It wasn’t as if Crazy Dave needed an armchair.

French windows opened onto the garden, accessed via another ramp. I followed a narrow path of B&Q’s best fake Cotswold stone up to a pair of doors set into the garage wall. The garage had been converted into an office.

Crazy Dave was sitting behind his desk, within easy reach of the two most important assets his business possessed: a pair of small plastic boxes stuffed with index cards containing the names and details of more than a hundred former members of Special Forces. No wonder the garage had drop-down steel shutters and weapons-grade security. To people wanting to know which companies were doing which jobs, those cards would have been worth more than a container ship full of RPGs.

I closed the door behind me. ‘Better late than never.’

‘What?’

‘About time you got that thing paved. It was like walking through the Somme with that wheelchair of yours fucking up the grass.’

He wasn’t smiling.

‘Don’t get up, mate.’

Still no smile.

I held up my hands. ‘Dave, I want to call a truce. End-Ex. I’m sorry about what I did. I fucked up. Simple as that.’

‘Yes, you did.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘But you know what? Fuck it.’ He slapped the arms of his chair. ‘When you’re in one of these fucking things you realize life’s too short to get pissed off about stuff like that. So fuck you, and fuck the problem. What do I care? I’m living in a soap, am I?’

That was good enough for me.

Where the up-and-over door had once been there was now a stud wall. There were no windows in here — just three sets of fluorescent lights. The brew kit still sat on a table against the opposite wall. The Smarties and Thunderbirds mugs were still going strong. I wondered if he’d saved the Easter eggs they’d come with.

He nodded at the CCTV monitor. ‘Nice motor. You kill someone for that?’

‘Yeah, I did.’ I made my way to the desk. ‘So, how’ve you been?’

The last time I saw Crazy Dave he was balding, with a moustache, like Friar Tuck in a 1970s porno. Now all the hair had gone, but the moustache was still hanging on.

‘Fucked.’

‘So I can see, mate. The Charles Bronson look ain’t doing you any favours.’

He gripped the arms of his wheelchair, lifted himself a couple of inches out of the seat and held himself there, perhaps something to do with his circulation, or to stop pressure sores developing on his arse. ‘Yeah, well, we’ve both got life sentences, haven’t we?’

He careered round the desk in a maroon space-age chair. It looked as though it could use some go-faster stripes. ‘But at least I can get out on the piss when I want to.’

‘Can you do a wheelie in that thing yet?’

He reversed, jerked, and the front wheels came up. He grinned like Evel Knievel. But we both knew that was as good as it was going to get. Crazy Dave had been invalided out of the Regiment after a truck driver from Estonia bounced him off a motorbike on the M4 and forced him to take the scenic route. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d borrowed my Suzuki 650. Six months in Stoke Mandeville hadn’t sorted him out. His legs were still useless.

8

His next party trick was to get us both a brew.

‘So — you come here with something you know, or something you want to know?’

‘BB.’

‘The principal’s wife getting a seeing-to again, is she?’

‘That’s the least of my worries. Do you know who the wife is?’

He spun round to face me with a bag of sugar in his lap. ‘I don’t get involved at that level. The job’s gone through about three or four middlemen before it gets to me. They wanted a BG for a mother and a child. I pick — I used to pick — the best available at the time.’

I shook my head. ‘Mate, how come you were the only one—’

‘To give him work?’

I nodded. ‘He was even a nightmare on the tsunami job, when there wasn’t anybody to shag. What’s he got on you? Is he giving you one as well?’

He spun back round to the kettle and put the sugar down. ‘Shit!’

‘Touched a nerve, have I?’

The wheelchair raced towards the door. ‘No — a shit, I need a shit.’

I followed him into the garden.

‘Look, Nick. He finished that anti-piracy job after about six months. That was fuck-all to do with me. I gave him a job with the oil companies looking after the pipeline in Georgia. It was a good little number in Tbilisi. But he fucked up by falling out with the company over expenses.

‘Then I gave him a job working for an American family in London, which he fucked up big-time. I think the husband was a computer mogul, downloads, some shit like that. While the husband was away, BB started thinking with his cock again. He reckoned that if he got in with the wife, she’d divorce the guy and give Wonderboy access to a big wad of cash.

‘The problem was, he pissed off a lot of other people along the way. He was going round acting as if he was running the job. It was a big one. There were nearly thirty of them on the team, looking after the family in the UK, and the husband as he bounced around the planet selling his downloads or whatever the fuck it was.

‘Anyone who got pissed off with him, BB would get her indoors to sack them. He didn’t give a fuck about those lads, just had his eye on the money. Silly bastard, he thought all he had to do was keep his shagging quiet until the divorce, and then everything was going to come up roses.’

We got to the Stannah lift. Refusing my help, Crazy Dave swung out of the wheelchair onto the hanging frame, then manoeuvred his arse into position.

‘BB’s problem is, he doesn’t understand that the main reason these guys have got so much of the stuff he’d like to dip into is that they’re smart.’

Crazy Dave pressed a button. The motor took him upstairs with a gentle whine. I followed.

‘So then what happened?’

‘He found himself out in the cold. He had no money, and he had no mates because he’d been such a cunt to everyone. That lad can’t seem to keep any distance between his cock and his head.’

We reached the landing. The stair-lift stopped and he grabbed another climbing frame. Bars hung at intervals from the ceiling all the way to the bathroom. He started swinging arm over arm, legs dangling, towards the far end of the landing. From time to time his feet scuffed along the carpet.

Crazy Dave didn’t need to know the whole story. ‘Mate, I have to know if he’s still effective. When the shit hits the fan, has he got a brain? The principal has asked me to check him out. He’s very concerned about the boy’s protection. He wants the best available — and if that’s BB, so be it. What do you reckon?’

The last of the hanging bars was his turning point above the toilet itself. He lowered himself onto his throne, complete with arm supports and a nice padded PVC seat.

‘That’s not a problem. He’s good — he’s a twat, but he’s good. If he wasn’t, I’d have gone out of business long ago.’

Crazy Dave was pulling down his grey tracksuit bottoms a lot quicker than should normally be required. He tried to rip off the Velcro fastening on his big boy’s nappy with the other hand. ‘Fucking things. Why don’t they make the tabs bigger, for fuck’s sake?’

The nappy finally came off, and he gave a sigh of relief.

‘You know, everyone gives him a hard time because he was TA. Nothing to do with the shagging. I was TA, for fuck’s sake, and I didn’t do too bad, did I? Because he’s a dickhead, no one takes him seriously as a player. But they’re wrong. If the shit ever hits the fan, he’ll look after the wife and kid big-time. He’s more than capable.’

He looked up before letting rip. ‘Now fuck off out of here.’

I closed the door but stayed close enough to know that his arse still worked, even if his feet and legs didn’t. ‘Hey, Dave, why’s the council still saying no to a bog downstairs?’

He’d spent two years making application after application. He’d even shown up at the council offices in his wheelchair, but the same twat kept knocking him back. It looked like he still was.

He laughed. ‘I got consent about three years ago, but fuck them. I’ve got used to coming upstairs. Besides, it’s the only exercise I get.’

‘You really binning it?’

‘Yep, fuck it. You know what? I go for a drive every afternoon these days. And sometimes late at night. I just want a little freedom, like I used to have on the bike. I always wanted to do Europe on one, you know. Go banzai on them autobahns. So about a month ago I thought, Fuck it, that wagon out there is going to take me all over, from this evening, and then I’m getting a fucked-legs wagon in Canada. Not exactly a bike, but so what? I’ve got to get it done before I die in that fucking chair. It’s sixteen hundred hours and I’m off to Dover, so now you can really fuck off.’

I had to hand it to him. ‘Good luck, Monkey Boy.’ I headed downstairs.

9

I’d been hitting the bars in town, doing my best not to bump into anybody I knew apart from Jan. I didn’t need the ‘Oi, what’re you doing here?’ and ‘What you been up to?’ and all that sort of shit. I needed to keep moving. Only if push came to shove would I actively seek out familiar faces to try and track her down. Failing that I’d go back to her flat and sit and wait — and hope that she still lived there.

I’d already done most of the pre-gaming bars. The last hits had been the Barrels, the West Bank and the Hop Pole, and now I was heading to Saxtys. The wine bar had been in the city centre for decades in different incarnations. It also had a nightclub that was Jan’s idea of a perfect Friday night out.

I walked through the glass doors into a wall of noise. The blow-heater blasted downwards across the threshold to keep it warm inside. The place was packed with pressed shirts, clean jeans, night-out dresses. Colognes and perfumes filled the air. I eased my way through the wall-to-wall crowd. The club hadn’t opened yet, but it was time enough for Jan to have booked herself a spot. Women like her who thought they were still sixteen were as much a fixture in this town as the cathedral.

And there she was. Right at the back of the crowd, at the bar, just before it opened up into the seating areas. She and two other mutton-dressed-as-lambs were standing around a small table, waffling away.

Time hadn’t been as kind to Jan as it had to Tracy. Her sleeveless blue dress stretched just that bit too tight. Her bra straps showed, and the flesh overflowed each side of them. The hair was still the same, far-too-dark-to-be-natural brown and straightened beyond belief. Her mascara was laid on with a trowel, and she hadn’t held back with the bronzer and eyeliner.

I moved towards the bar and into her line of sight, but she was too busy chatting to her mates. If they ever started shooting The Only Way Is Hereford, these three would be first in the audition queue.

‘Jan!’ I did my best to look surprised to see her. ‘Jan!’ I had to raise my voice. ‘How are you?’

She gave me a fuck-off-whoever-you-are look. I wasn’t in Friday-night clothes and I wasn’t twenty-five.

‘It’s me — Nick.’ I kept the smile in place, still bending, tilting my head down to her level.

Recognition finally dawned.

‘All right, Nick?’ Her expression brightened. ‘How are you? It’s been ages!’

The Hereford accent always sounded like soft Welsh to me. Her arms came up for a bear hug and I got a noseful of Boots Special. She took a step back but kept a hand on my arm as she checked me out.

‘Too long, Jan. Mong’s funeral, I guess. You look … really … good …’

She liked that. She probably wasn’t used to flattery from someone who wasn’t after a shag. ‘Oh, thanks, Nick. I’ve got to put a bit more slap on these days to cover the wrinkles, but I get by.’

Her mates melted away and started talking to a group of men with sharp creases down the sleeves of their Friday-night shirts. She hadn’t introduced me to them. Code, probably, for ‘fuck off’.

We had to keep close to make ourselves heard over the music. The Boots Special was starting to make my eyes water.

‘So, you married again yet?’

She lifted up her left hand. ‘Not right now. But I’m a four by four.’

‘A what?’

‘Four kids by four husbands. They’re all grown-up now. Flown the nest. Gives me some me-time at last.’ She gave me a sad smile. It told me that me-time was not quite as much fun as she was trying to make it sound.

‘You still living on the Ross Road? In the flats?’

She reached down for a glass of what looked like spritzer and sipped from it until the ice slid down and hit her lips. ‘What about you? You found a nice girl?’

‘Why? You offering?’

A faraway look came into her eyes. ‘Well, there’s a thing …’

She started the general catch-up stuff. Have you seen this guy, that woman? All that shit. I didn’t have a clue who she was on about half the time. This was no longer my world. When I’d left Hereford to go and work for the Firm, that was it. I wasn’t coming back for weekend trips. Hereford was done. And after London, there was somewhere else, and somewhere else again. I’d moved out. I might even have moved on. The only thing I’d left behind was my account at the Halifax. I wondered how the recession had hit my £1.52.

‘Seen anything of BB?’

Her expression clouded. ‘No — fucking arsehole. He stayed at my place the night before the funeral, then didn’t even bother coming to the service. What a wanker.’

I shuffled her towards the bar for another drink. There were still a few things this girl wouldn’t take lying down.

‘What about Tracy? Last time I heard, she was in France. She met somebody?’

There was no hint in her face of a drama. ‘Yeah, she’s OK. Some Russian or other. Lucky bitch. I wanted to go over as well, see if I could get one. She’s in love. They’ve got a little boy. Stevie … something like that. I think he’s about four … five … six, maybe. Don’t really hear much from them.’

She didn’t look too impressed with it all.

‘That’s great news, isn’t it? That she’s happy?’

The barman came over to Jan far earlier than our place in the queue deserved. She didn’t even need to tell him what she wanted. ‘What about you, Nick?’

‘I’ll just have an orange juice.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘You still looking to live to a hundred?’

‘Nah. I just know a whole lot of other ways of killing myself.’ I moved the smile back into place. ‘You haven’t heard from Tracy, then?’

‘Not since she’s been in the money.’ She leant in a bit closer. ‘You kept on telling her to leave, didn’t you? Well, hasn’t she done well for herself?’

Her nose wrinkled. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

‘You could go, try somewhere else. You said your kids have left home …’

The drinks turned up, and a brighter future was no competition for a long swig of spritzer. ‘You were always good to her, weren’t you, Nick? She used to give me some of the money you sent, just sometimes, when I was a bit hard up.’

‘Oh, right. And I bet she still sends you a few quid, eh?’

I got a nod, but a disapproving one. ‘Yeah, but not that much. And it’s not like she couldn’t spare it. I thought maybe she’d buy me a house, but no. It’d be pennies for her. But what do I get? Nothing. And I’m her sister, for fuck’s sake.’

Jan took another slug. She’d made the mistake of thinking that just because people had money it was their duty to piss it away. She was jealous that Tracy had it, and angry that she didn’t hand enough of it over. It wasn’t Tracy’s to give away in the first place, but that didn’t seem to occur to her. All she wanted to do was grab.

‘Listen, Jan. I’ve got to meet someone at the Market Tavern. I’ll try and get back later. But if I don’t make it, what’s your number?’

I pulled out my phone, still smiling so much my face was beginning to hurt. She opened her bag. I didn’t expect to see house keys. She got so pissed she’d lose them, so she used to hide a spare set. But there they were. And I also clocked three mobiles.

‘Jesus, Jan. You a dealer or what?’

She selected one and powered it up. ‘Just a complicated life, Nick. Two men to manage, and you’ve got to keep them apart. I’m a bit old-fashioned like that.’

I gave Jan my number once she had worked out how to access her contacts file. ‘This is my personal phone. I don’t really like keeping anything on it. Not even texts or anything. You never know who might sneak a look while you’re busy making yourself beautiful. That wanker BB would have been straight in there. He’d probably send texts from it to all his mates, to tell them what he was up to. If he had any mates.’ She gave me hers. An O2 number. I tapped it in.

‘Whenever you’re in town, Nick …’ She gave me a hug, phone still gripped in her hand. Then she switched it off. ‘I hate these things.’

We parted with a quick kiss on the cheek. Her soapie mates were now getting chatted up by another group of guys with well-clipped hair and Friday-night shirts. She selected the one with a very tight blue-striped short-sleeved number, and was soon in the swing of things. Banter wasn’t necessarily his strong suit, but he was keen to give her the full benefit of his tribal tats. He flexed his biceps by gripping his Bud bottle like it was the last one on earth.

10

I worked my way out of the bar and turned right along Widemarsh Street towards the Green Dragon.

Ant was the taller of my new pair of comedians, but seemed to think lighting a cigarette in the doorway of Marks & Sparks would make him invisible. He was still in his favourite overcoat. I didn’t bother looking for Dec and his nondescript haircut. He’d be staking out the other side of the bar in case I chucked a left when I came out. The car they’d followed me in to Hereford was a C-class Merc, in case they had to keep up with the 911. But it wasn’t in sight now. They would have seen mine in the car park. They’d assume I wasn’t going anywhere for a moment or two.

They hadn’t been on my flight, and the next one was four hours later. But they’d managed to pick me up outside my apartment after my meeting with Jules and followed me to Hereford. Frank really did take that knowledge-is-power shit seriously. He couldn’t just let me get on with the job.

I left Marks & Sparks behind me and followed the road round to the right, then went left onto Broad Street. I got online as I drove, checking for the default PIN code to access message services on O2 numbers. I found it on Google.

Once back in the hotel, I used the almost redundant payphone and called Jan’s mobile. It was still switched off. If she’d answered it, I would simply have said, ‘Hi,’ and tried again in the middle of the night.

I pressed the star button as soon as it went to voicemail. I was welcomed warmly to the O2 messaging service. I tapped in the 8705 PIN code Google had given me, and was inside in less time than it had taken to defeat the electronic lock at the Ararat Park Hyatt.

An infuriatingly cheerful female pre-record told me that there were three new messages and twenty-four old ones. The voice prompt then invited me to press 2 to listen to them.

The first was three days old: a pissed-off Jock, honking that none of his calls had been returned on either of her phones and that he had found this mobile in her bag — so she could fuck right off, and by the way, he also wanted his iPod speakers back. The next one was the same guy, a day earlier. He’d just got back to H and he’d love to meet up and, yes, he knew about this number but he had missed her.

I cancelled them. I didn’t want her to know they’d been accessed. This was the method a few journos had been using to hack into mobiles belonging to celebrities, royals and politicians over the last couple of years. And if you couldn’t be bothered to change your PIN, what grounds did you have to complain?

The next message was four days old. ‘Hello, Janet. Greetings. My name is Nadif. You must call me.’ The voice was deep, slow and resonant. ‘This is very important. Your sister, her child and her friend … they are in great danger. I can help you. Please, you must call me.’

I reached for the stub of hotel pencil on the bedside cabinet, scribbled the mobile number on the pad, and cancelled this message too.

Then I called Nadif.

11

The phone rang for ages. I was on the point of giving up when the deep voice suddenly answered. He was guarded, probably because I’d withheld my number. ‘Hello …’

I didn’t fuck about. ‘You left a message. I’m calling about Tracy — Janet’s sister. My name is Nick. Are they safe?’ I kept my tone even and respectful, not wanting to spark him up.

His, too, was measured. ‘I’m trying so hard to keep them alive. Why have you taken so long? Who are you?’

‘I’m a friend of Tracy’s. A very old friend. Is her little boy safe?’

‘They’re all safe. But they won’t be safe for long. Only I can save them. But I need your help. Please, you must help me. Will you help me?’

The world is full of chancers who pick up their phones after a kidnap, claiming to be the only ones who can get the hostage back. They collect a deposit, and then they’re never heard from again. I needed to know that Nadif wasn’t one of them.

‘Nadif, I want to help you, but before we can do anything I need proof that they’re alive. Can you provide that? Can you prove to me they’re alive?’

‘Yes, of course. But the people who are holding them, they demand three million dollars. Do you have that? Can you bring them this money? If you bring this money, I can help you get them released. Do you have this money?’

My tone changed from positive and obliging to scared and concerned. ‘No. I mean, yes, maybe — maybe, maybe. I don’t know. I’m not rich — we’re not rich people. But we will get the money together. I will try everything. I will do everything possible to get that money. I will get the money somehow. But, please, you must prove to me first that they’re alive. Can I talk to them? Please?’

There was a pause.

‘Nick, do you really, really want them to come home?’

‘Yes, I do. I really do. I’ll do anything I can to get them back.’

‘That is very good, Nick, because only I can keep them from being killed in a very terrible way. Remember that, my friend. I will prove that they’re alive. You will come to me tomorrow. You will do that, yes?’

I took up the pencil once more as he gave me his address in Bristol.

‘Listen, I’m less than two hours away. Why don’t I come now? We can start the process. Please, Nadif, I don’t know what we’d do without you.’

He agreed, and I powered down the phone. I grabbed my keys and started down to the car park.

The one thing you’ve got to do with these people is be subservient. You must show them at all times that they hold all the cards. Right now it wasn’t that difficult.

12

I drove past Ascari’s.

Maybe it would have made sense to sell the 911 a month ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’d enjoyed fucking off the salesman when I bought it, and I still enjoyed the mere fact that I owned it. I’d wandered into the showroom in my stinking trainers and running kit and the fucker had sneered when I asked how much it cost. I’d pulled out my wallet and asked if he was OK with cash.

And, anyway, I wasn’t too sure what was going to happen with me and Anna. Maybe she’d seen the light and was ready to fuck me off already. After all, I was punching above my weight and she wasn’t in any rush to get back to Moscow. I wasn’t too sure how I felt about that, so I immediately told myself: Fuck it, so what? I didn’t own the woman.

But going back to a life of Saturday mornings on my own in a café? I suddenly realized I was too old for that shit.

At this time of night there wasn’t much traffic once I’d got out of town, especially on the route I was taking. Rather than use the main drags and the motorway, I was going to go via Pontralis, into Wales, and then on B roads to Chepstow, before crossing back into England on the Severn Bridge.

I knew I’d be able to get my foot down this way. The speed cameras had sprung up like dandelions over the last few years, but I had a detector. I could do this route blindfolded. I used to fast-drive it day in, day out, in another lifetime. Bristol was used as a training ground for covert operations in Northern Ireland. The little B roads were where we’d practised our fast-driving skills. Sometimes you could make it door-to-door in under an hour.

The roads were narrow and bendy, with high hedgerows each side. Ant and Dec were going to have their work cut out to keep up, though the geography would help them. Each time I went up a hill, they’d be able to see my full beams.

Now and again I saw headlights behind me as I hit a long stretch of straight. I didn’t blame Frank. I’d probably have had someone following me as well.

13

I reached the Chepstow ring road, and then the bridge approach. The traffic was a little heavier as I re-entered England for the princely toll of £5.70. I took the motorway to Bristol and headed for the town centre instead of Nadif’s address. I parked on the second floor of an NCP and took the stairs.

Leaving the car there had nothing to do with good antisurveillance skills. I just didn’t want to get Nadif all sparked up. A 911 outside his front door would say all the wrong things about the size of Tracy’s bank account. I also didn’t want to come out and find the thing up on bricks. If Frank’s boys were about, they’d get the message as soon as they saw where I was going.

Bristol is a bit special on Friday and Saturday nights. It’s a well-known venue for lads on the piss and, increasingly, girls keeping in step. My route to the ATM became a giant pavement slalom as I dodged and wove through discarded kebab wrappers and the odd splash of vomit. I maxed out for the day on my three cards and soon had fifteen hundred pounds in my jeans pocket.

A taxi rank served the Broadmead Shopping Centre and cinema. I joined the queue. Four or five groups of students were ahead of me. The girls’ skirts weren’t long enough to cover their goosebumps, and they weren’t carrying coats because they knew they’d get nicked in the bars and clubs.

When my turn came I jumped into an old Renault people-carrier. The sickly aroma of vanilla air-freshener did nothing to disguise the smell of the roll-up the driver had blatantly just finished. He was in his mid-fifties, white hair greased back. He didn’t need gel; not washing it for a month did the job just fine. His faded tattoos and big rough hands told me that, if it wasn’t for the recession, he would have been more at home on a building site.

‘Easton, mate. I’m after Barratt Street in Easton.’

‘It’s an extra fiver for a drop-off in little Mogadishu, boy.’

It was far enough from the centre of town to be a good fare, but even beneath the deep West Country burr I could tell he wasn’t too pleased.

We used Bristol for training because it was close to Hereford and as segregated as Belfast and Derry. The safe areas were very safe; the rough areas were very rough. But unlike in the Province, the segregation wasn’t religious. It was financial. A lot of places were in shit state. The local housing authorities used them as dumping grounds for the poor and dis advantaged. In the 1980s the St Paul’s area, near the city centre, became notorious for riots and drug-dealing. It all boiled down to lack of opportunity.

Easton had become a Somali ghetto, and it was no accident. Bristol lads were the original slavers, and for hundreds of years the dockland was populated by Africans, Indians and Chinese. Some of the graves in the local cemeteries contain the bodies of black businessmen, and they date back to the first half of the eighteenth century.

My iPhone vibrated.

‘I need to stop at a cashpoint, mate.’

He grunted something indecipherable in carrot-cruncher code but pulled over outside a building society. I added another fifteen hundred to the wad I’d taken out the other side of midnight.

14

The kebab wrappers and splashes of vomit gradually retreated as we moved into a more residential landscape. Every traffic light was red, but we were soon surrounded by terraced houses and little bay windows. They might have been nice and shiny when they were built during the Boer War, but Easton had definitely seen better days.

We followed the railway line, carried above us on a plinth of grime-covered brown brick. The roads were only just wide enough to take the people-carrier. They were designed for the odd coal cart to trundle up and down, not for the world of Grand Theft Auto. Vehicles were parked up on both sides, half on the pavement, half off.

We drove past three or four mosques and endless rows of dirty brown houses. All the old corner shops had become fast-food joints. Box-fresh knights sat astride rusty mountain bikes outside them, waiting to fulfil their delivery promise. But it wasn’t late-night pizza these kids in their immaculate white high-sided trainers and ball-caps were in the business of bringing to your door. It was something even more addictive.

We stopped at a junction, and he pointed to our right. ‘That’s Barratt. I can’t get down there.’

I paid my £17.50 with a twenty-quid note and told him to keep the change. A big old industrial building that had been converted into a gym stood on the corner. Lights glared from the first and second floors, but nobody was inside. I turned down the narrow and dimly lit street beside it.

15

There were no front gardens as such, just walls a couple of feet from the front windows. Some were slabbed, some had weeds springing out of broken concrete. One had a mattress decorated with Coke cans and McDonald’s wrappers. Most of the cars and vans alongside them were at least five years old. I walked past a jazzed-up 1.2-litre Peugeot with the world’s biggest exhaust extension.

I rolled the three grand as tightly as I could and shoved it down into the front pocket of my jeans.

All the windows had been fitted with plastic or aluminium double-glazing at some stage, the kind that meant you couldn’t possibly escape if someone torched your house. That was just the cheapest way to do it.

Black wheelie-bins and matching Sky dishes lined every front wall.

I checked my Breitling. I’d had a little bit of a spending spree with Anna in Moscow and thought it was time to step up a notch. Funnily enough, it told me the same time as any other watch, but it still gave me a kick every time I looked at it.

It was 01.35.

I slipped it off my wrist and out of sight.

Nadif had told me to keep an eye out for Ali’s convenience store. A car passed, stopped at the junction behind me, and then drove off. I was impressed. Frank’s lads had done really well staying with me.

Now and again a TV blared and light flickered in the gap between the curtains. The only other noise came from trains rattling past the end of the road behind me.

Back in Queen Victoria’s day, Ali’s front window would probably have boasted neat displays of coal-tar soap and jars of imperial jam. Now it was full of Chinese pots and pans and offers of a thousand tea-bags for 99p. Peeling stickers announced it was a gas and electricity pay point, sold SIM cards, Mars bars, the News of the World and fax and photocopying facilities.

The only thing they didn’t advertise was hawala broking services, but I had no doubt that if you wanted to send money to relatives in Karachi, Dubai or Mogadishu, Ali would be your man. You’d bring your cash along and give him a code word or phone number, which he’d pass to a broker at the other end. Your favourite uncle would turn up, say the magic word, and be handed a brown envelope of the local currency — minus commission, of course. The two brokers would sort that out between themselves.

Billions and billions of dollars had been moved all over the world in this way for decades. It’s the money-movement method of choice for criminals and terrorists, for obvious reasons, and a law-enforcement nightmare. Not that any of the lads round here would be financing the next 9/11. They’d just be slipping a few bob to their families back home so they could eat.

The shop was closed, but it wasn’t cut-price tea-bags I was after. It was the blue door to its left, which belonged to the flat above. The wrought-iron knocker was in the shape of a lion’s head. I tapped it three times. I didn’t bother checking whether Ant and Dec were breathing down my neck. I’d brief Frank as soon as I knew what he needed to know.

A light came on behind flimsy curtains on the second floor. The silhouette of a body moved across the room. A few seconds later, two lever locks were being turned and I had to step back as the door was pushed open. I soon saw why. There was an ornate wrought-iron security gate behind it, fastened through the first two bars with a D-ring bicycle lock.

I could tell the lock was an old one by its circular key well. It was probably another of Ali’s bargains — and a complete waste of time. Before manufacturers wised up and introduced flat keys, me and a couple of mates used to supplement our rifleman’s wages by nicking mountain bikes from Andover’s sports centre when we were squaddies in Tidworth. We’d hire a van for the weekend, throw as many in the back as we could liberate, and flog them on the London estates.

A steep, narrow stairway with a threadbare brown carpet led into the gloom the other side of the gate. The woodchip wallpaper could have done with a few licks of paint.

My new best Somali mate stood at the bottom of the stairs, wearing the kind of smile that any vicar would have been proud of. A good six feet tall and slim, with fine features and high cheekbones, he really did come from the place where Africa meets Arabia.

‘You are Nick.’

The voice belonged to a man about three stone heavier. Mr Lover Man back in Moscow would have given his right arm for a voice like that.

I nodded. ‘Nadif?’

16

He checked left and right my side of the gate.

‘Where is your car?’

‘I took a cab.’

‘You do not have a car?’

‘It’s nothing to shout about.’

‘What sort of car do you drive, Nick?’

‘An old beat-up Renault. Why?’

He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Where do you come from, Nick?’

‘I was in Hereford this morning. That’s where Tracy comes from. Her sister, Janet — you called her, yeah? — she still lives there.’

He nodded slowly and undid the D-lock. The gate squeaked open. It looked like it had come from a garden centre. He was in jeans, cheap brown Burberry-check slippers and a grey hoodie with a faded black star across the chest, none of which matched his stature and his long, thin, delicate hands. This lad could have followed Jules down the Calvin Klein catwalk. He’d never been near a building site or a fishing boat in his life.

I stepped inside. The stairwell stank of cigarettes and microwaved ready-meals. His eyes never left me as he closed both doors. I moved to the bottom of the stairs. He gestured politely. ‘Please, after you, my friend.’

I didn’t follow his invitation until I’d seen what he did with the keys. The double-glazing meant I wouldn’t be able to jump out of a window if there was a drama. He slid them into his pocket, quite casually, like a man who didn’t have six mates upstairs as a welcoming committee. If I was wrong about that, I’d soon be finding out.

The room above was a mess. It looked more like a boffin’s bedsit than the HQ of a kidnap king. The only new bit of kit was the aluminium MacBook sitting on the cheap veneer table to the right of the door. Beside it was an old, steam-driven fax machine.

Back issues of Newsweek and estate agents’ brochures were heaped on the floor. Two steel Parker pens lay on top of a pile of folded local and national newspapers. He was either going to read them later or have a crack at the crosswords. A couple of ashtrays, each with only one or two stubs in them, sat beside a velour armchair that was a bit short of velour. An equally moth-eaten TV showed BBC News 24 without the sound. In Bahrain, Saudi armoured vehicles were well and truly bedded in.

I nodded in the direction of the screen. ‘Any news on Japan?’

‘Not good, Nick.’ He shook his head mournfully as he pulled a folding wooden chair from under the veneer table. ‘But let us talk about other things. Please, Nick, sit.’

He waited for me to do so before he settled into his armchair. He rested his chin on his steepled hands.

‘Now, Nick, tell me. Will you be able to get the money? It’s the only way I can save that small child and the others too — Tracy and Justin …’

‘I’ll do my very best.’

‘Nick, you have to get the money as quickly as you can. It’s the only way I can get them out of that hellhole. I worry so much about them. You are their friend, yes? Do you love them? Do you love them enough to help me free them?’

My chair creaked as I sat back. I caught a glimpse of the kitchen. Washing dishes obviously wasn’t high on Nadif’s list of priorities. The guy had bigger fish to fry.

‘Yes, of course. I’ve been asked by Tracy’s sister and Justin’s family to ensure their safety. You’ll have to help me, Nadif. Three million dollars is such a lot of money … It’s going to take the families some time to raise it. They were on a nice boat but they are not rich people. I hope you can use your influence. A man like you, I’m sure you have much respect in Somalia …’

He liked that.

‘But first I have to know that they’re alive. Their families … everyone’s really worried. We don’t know the people who have them. Can you arrange for me to talk to them? Please …’

He glanced at the red Swatch on his wrist and lowered his hands onto the arms of the chair. ‘Would you like some tea, Nick?’

‘That’d be good. Thank you. Thank you very much. Then can I talk to them, please?’

He got to his feet. ‘All in good time, my friend. Be patient. These things take time.’

He disappeared into the kitchen. So far, so good. He liked being thought the top banana — or, more probably, that I seemed to think I was smoking him like a kipper. These guys were far too smart to be taken in by flattery, however much it was part of the ritual. A Somali taxi driver in the UK had brokered the deal to repatriate the kidnapped British sailors, Paul and Rachel Chandler, after they were taken hostage on their yacht between the Seychelles and Tanzania in 2009. For all I knew, he might have been Nadif. Whoever it was, I bet he used the same gentle, sympathetic patter.

He brushed aside the crap in the sink enough to fill a kettle. ‘Nick, my friend, how much money can you raise immediately?’ His deep baritone resonated round the small room. ‘I think we need to make a show of faith. But I also need to know I can trust you, personally, before we go forward and try to get your loved ones freed.’

17

As glasses and spoons clanked in the background, I leant forward and riffled through the paperwork around me. There was all kinds of stuff, but nothing that gave me a clue about where they were being held. The Savills brochures were for houses around the £500K mark, countrywide. School prospectuses invited dutiful parents to invest almost half that figure to ensure their kids got to wear the right kind of tie. Next to the Mac was a list of local papers Nadif had logged onto. Several were crossed out.

‘Of course you can trust me, Nadif. That’s why I’m here. We’re desperate. Whatever I have to do, I’ll do. I just need to be able to speak to them. I need to know that they’re alive.’

‘Tell me, Nick. Do you own a home? As well as your car?’

‘I’ve just bought a flat in London.’

‘What about the other families? Do they have homes?’

‘Justin’s family live in a council house.’ I knew fuck-all about them, but I wasn’t going to admit it, and I needed to keep his expectations low. ‘Tracy’s sister rents her place. She hasn’t much money. But don’t you worry, Nadif. We’ll find some way of getting there.’

Guys like Nadif didn’t miss a trick. They’re negotiators, the middlemen between the hostages and the clans. He was going to make it work both ends.

And judging by the contents of his archive, I could see he was a whole lot more than a broker. He was the spotter, too. During the negotiation he’d be looking to find out as much as he could about the payers. He had to make sure he was squeezing out every last drop. If a family claimed they were doing everything they could to raise the cash, he’d go round to the house and make sure it was up for sale. And if they couldn’t come up with an interim payment, he’d be telling them to sell the BMWs in the drive. If they claimed that they were trying, he’d say, ‘I didn’t see any details in the local newspaper. Maybe it would be best to go to a dealer.’ Or, with just the right degree of sympathy, ‘Your three children are at Marlborough. Wouldn’t they prefer to have their auntie back home with them?’

You could depend upon Nadif to do his level best to help.

I wondered for a moment whether the school prospectuses were for his own kids. With the sort of hostage numbers Jules was talking about, business must be good. This shithole certainly wasn’t where he lived. It was a bedsit without a bed. He probably lived near the university, in a townhouse that would put anything that cost as little as £500K to shame.

18

‘Nick, my friend, as a show of faith between us and the people who have your loved ones … an appropriate price would be ten thousand dollars, I think. Then I can talk with the clan leader, a very important man, without insulting him. I can talk to him right now, and let you speak to all three of your loved ones. But you must know these services cost money. I understand your concern, but I must talk of these things first.’

Unless he was bullshitting me, I now knew one thing: they had moved up the food chain, from the kidnappers to a clan. The kidnappers would have declared the hostages to their clan leaders. They’d probably have funded the whole thing with a loan from the nearest warlord. When their demands were met, the pirates would take their cut and repay the loan, plus interest and whatever percentage he demanded.

If there was no cash, or the hostages died, the debt still stayed in place. Maybe the guys who’d snatched Tracy had to pay off an existing loan. What the fuck did it matter? I was going round in circles, and I hadn’t yet had any proof of life. That was all that mattered right now.

Nadif reappeared with a pewter teapot and glasses on a tray, just like he would have back in the old country.

‘Nadif, I’ve been sitting here thinking about how to get that sort of money quickly. It’s very, very difficult. But I have come with some money. I’ve got three thousand pounds on me — nearly five thousand dollars. Maybe that would be enough for you to let me speak to them now.’ I paused. ‘And whatever money is finally agreed, maybe … maybe twenty per cent could go to you when they’re released.’

I knew he’d be making about five per cent from the clan. And if he went the hawala route with the money, maybe he’d take another five per cent on top.

He sat down again and poured the tea, slowly and from a generous height. The oxygen it absorbed as it splashed into the glasses was supposed to improve the flavour. I smelt apples as the steam came my way.

Somalis are a cultured and ancient race. Even when they’re living in shit, they show each other great politeness and respect. Centuries ago, they were pouring tea like this when we were still burning witches and gnawing turnips. At the same time, they could be savagely brutal — though I guess they saw it as no more dramatic than a lion killing an antelope. Not evil or malicious, just the way of the world.

I sat and waited for him to complete the ritual of the tea, and the ritual of making me wait for his answer. To be a demanding arsehole didn’t work with these people. They were businessmen, and their business just happened to be trading in humans.

The pouring stopped. He offered me sugar. I shoved in three teaspoonloads and stirred. He did the same. And then, lifting the glass gently between thumb and forefinger, he offered a toast.

‘I think that’s a very good suggestion, Nick. If you pay me that cash now, I will make contact, and we can start getting your loved ones back. You can pay me in instalments as everything moves on. But can I trust you?’

‘Of course you can trust me.’

‘These people are very dangerous. You can’t deal with them. Only I can get your loved ones out.’

‘I know that, Nadif.’

I pulled out the roll of money and put it on the table. It sprang open and doubled in size. Seeing cash physically increase in value always focuses the mind on the deal.

We raised our glasses, clinked, and both took a sip of tea.

He looked at me. ‘You know, my friend, I think we will get your loved ones back home, and safe, quite soon.’

I got some very sweet apple tea down my neck.

He took another sip and then got up. ‘Please excuse me …’

He went back into the kitchen and I watched as closely as I could while he fumbled about under the sink. He conjured up a mobile, an old grey pay-as-you-go thing, like a rabbit out of a hat.

He checked his watch once more. Mogadishu is three hours ahead. It would be very early morning there.

‘Nadif, aren’t you worried that the police, or the intelligence service, can hear what you’re saying?’

He smiled as he dialled. ‘Please do not be concerned. No one cares about being listened to. Nothing will happen. In Somalia, there are no police, no government, no army — no one. And here, why would they want me to stop? I am performing a service. I return people’s loved ones to them. I help them. Your government, they do not. The Americans — they too can listen if they want to. Will they come back into my country after what happened to them last time? I don’t think so, my friend.’ I could hear the phone ring. ‘You see, everything is fine. Please be calm.’

He brought it up to his ear. I caught a few syllables of Somali waffle. Nadif didn’t bat an eyelid.

He turned and looked at me, phone still glued to his ear. ‘Nick, it may be a little time until you can speak to them. They have been moved — for their own safety.’

I was about to open my mouth when his hand came up.

‘It’s OK. I will make sure they are not harmed. Trust me, Nick. Please, one moment.’

There was more waffle. He sounded as calm as if he was ordering a takeaway from the boys with the white trainers. Then he passed the phone across to me. ‘It’s a message for you, Nick. Don’t talk, just listen.’

I put it to my ear. The line was terrible. In among the crackling I could hear birds sing. A vehicle rumbled past. Then I heard a woman’s voice. ‘Yes — yes, of course I will …’

There was a rustling sound, and then a sniff. ‘In here?’

I couldn’t help myself. ‘Tracy, it’s Nick …’

Nadif waved a hand. ‘She cannot hear you, Nick. You are listening to a message.’

Her voice was flat and dull. It was obvious she was reading. ‘Help me. I am very sick. My health is deteriorating markedly due to fever and dysentery. I need to see a doctor. They will not give any of us the medicine. I have a toothache. My tooth is badly broken and very infected and abscessed. I need help immediately. Please.’

It sounded like one of those Nigerian email scams.

She didn’t stop there. ‘My son has severe stomach problems. There is no one to take care of him. I don’t want him to die here. Please do not let my son die here. I’m so afraid I will die of diseases if I don’t get help soon. I don’t know how much longer we can bear this. Someone, please help us. Please.’

Her voice quavered. ‘The men who hold us are very serious and they say that, if the ransom is not paid, they will kill all three of us. But I’m telling you, our conditions are very serious right now and we could very seriously die of an illness. My son, Stefan, might die. Justin might die. We’re very sick people.’

There were a few mumbles from whoever was holding the mike and I could hear the rustling as it was taken away from her. There was a click, and Nadif held out his hand. ‘Please, Nick. Thank you.’

They exchanged a few more words and the line went dead. He put the phone down and sighed theatrically. He looked at me like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. ‘Nick, these are dangerous people. I can help you, but you must get the money. Somehow, please.’ He put his hands together again, as if he was praying. ‘My friend, I have done my part. I will make sure that you get to talk to her tomorrow. I will organize this. Are you now going to show some more good faith, Nick? I am helping you. Now you have got to help me. They must be paid so your loved ones are free.’

He stood up and rummaged in a pocket for a business card. Like Frank’s, the only thing on it was a mobile number. Unlike Frank’s, you could help yourself to twenty of these for two quid at your local motorway service station.

‘I can help you, Nick. But you have to help me to stop those crazy people from hurting your loved ones. Go home and call me tomorrow at midday. I will have some good news, I promise.’

19

I found the number for a minicab firm outside the railway station. Fifty minutes later I was rattling round the ring road in the 911, following signs for the bridge. I hit the Bluetooth and synched up the iPhone, checking the occasional set of headlights in the rear-view.

I rehearsed tomorrow’s speech to Nadif in my head. I’d be phoning with good news. I could raise maybe thirty thousand dollars within the next couple of days. How was that for good faith? Very soon, my very small flat would go on the market, even though I’d only just bought it.

I’d be able to make some money, I’d tell him, but I had a mortgage of just over £100K to repay. I should be able to clear another £45K, but the way the market was, it would take time. Maybe I could try to remortgage. Janet and Justin’s families were working hard to raise money. I was showing trust; I was showing commitment. I would get the money together, come what may.

In the meantime, I really needed Nadif to keep them alive. I needed him to let me speak to them. A man with his influence must be able to help me do those things.

My Breitling had me coming out of the city and onto the motorway at just past five a.m. I dialled Frank, expecting him to be engaged. Ant and Dec would be phoning about now to say I was heading back towards Hereford.

I had to carry on managing his expectations. Apart from anything else, I didn’t want him to go his own way. He was already following my every move. What else might he be up to? When people start fucking about with the system, hostages get killed.

It rang just twice before a voice barked from the speakers: ‘Yes?’

‘All indications are that they’re still breathing. I’ve made contact with someone I think can broker the deal.’

There was a pause.

‘Have you spoken to them? Arrange the exchange. I can have the money ready in—’

‘Stop. It doesn’t work like that. Where are you? We must meet. I need to tell you what’s happening, and what to do next. I’m not going to do that on an open line.’

There was another pause.

‘How good are the indications? Are you able to get them back?’

Either he hadn’t heard or he wasn’t listening.

‘I’m not talking on the mobile. We need to meet.’

‘I am in France. I will send my jet to London.’

‘Can’t you come to me? It’ll be quicker. The clock’s ticking.’

There was a long silence.

‘There is something happening here that I cannot cancel. How long until you can get to the airport?’

‘Three hours, maybe. Less if I get picked up at Bristol airport.’

‘Where?’

‘B-R-I-S-T-O-L. It’s in the south-west.’

‘Someone will call to arrange this.’

‘One more thing …’

‘What?’

‘Call off your guys. You don’t need to check up on me. I’m only letting them stay with me because they’re yours. It’d be a lot easier for me if you lose them. I’m not going to let you down, because I’m not going to let her down. I’m not going to leave them in the shit. So just call them off, yeah? They’ll only fuck things up.’

It took him a moment to digest this too.

‘I have no one following you, Nick. Why would I? Why do you think I chose you? You say you can lose them, so do it. Whatever it takes. I do not want any of my enemies to interfere with this.’

He ended the call.

I pulled off the motorway at the next exit and headed back the way I’d come. I rang Nadif. His phone was turned off. At least, I hoped it was.

Frank’s enemies were now my enemies. He probably wasn’t short of them, but the only ones I knew about came from Tbilisi.

20

It was light by the time the taxi dropped me off. This time I got the driver to take me to the other end of Barratt, so I could walk the last three blocks. As we drove past the turning, I looked to my left. A couple of people in work clothes were getting into their cars.

‘Just here, mate. This’ll do.’

I paid him off and headed back towards Ali’s place. I could soon see the shop front about thirty metres down on the left. What little sunlight there was glinted on the display window and the roof of a car parked beside it. There was no sign of any shiny rental C-class Merc.

I got out my iPhone and tried Nadif one more time as I turned in towards the blue door.

I grabbed the lion’s head knocker to give it a couple of bangs, just to let him know I was there. The door opened towards me a couple of centimetres.

As nonchalantly as I could, I let go of the knocker and stepped aside so I could see through the gap. I eased it further open with my finger. The D-bar was locked. I could see a little way up the stairs, as far as I needed to. A Burberry-slippered foot was just visible at the top. I hoped the rest of him was still attached.

I eased the blue door towards me until it looked like it was shut. A couple of brightly dressed African women came out of the shop laden with milk, bread and papers. They passed me, jabbering away in a dialect I didn’t recognize. I stayed where I was, as if Nadif was just about to answer the door. A couple of trains passed each other at the other end of the street. Traffic whipped along the elevated section a couple of hundred metres away.

Once the women had disappeared, I stepped back onto the pavement and went into Ali’s emporium. It was full of plastic stuff I hadn’t known I needed: cans of dodgy-sounding fizzy drinks and cat food; plastic flowers and bottles of cleaning fluid with Greek labels. I went straight to the kids’ section. For a quid, I picked up a twelve pack of felt-tip pens, a bit thicker than ordinary biros, in a plastic case with a picture of Shrek on the front. I grabbed some rubber gloves on the way to the till.

The woman behind the counter was deep in conversation on the phone about the trouble in Libya as she marked up front pages full of it for the paper rounds. Her brother-in-law’s family lived in Benghazi and she was worried sick. I didn’t interrupt. I put a two-pound coin on the counter with a sympathetic smile and loaded the stuff into a carrier myself.

As soon as I was outside, I ripped Shrek’s head off with my teeth and pulled out a pen. By the time I got to Nadif’s door, I’d also pulled off the cap at the end opposite the nib. I didn’t look around for Ant and Dec, or anyone else. I had to look natural. I had my back to passers-by. They wouldn’t be able to describe anything about me except my height, hair colour and clothes.

I eased the door open far enough to expose the bike lock. There was no point mincing about. I jammed the open end of the pen into the circular key well. Gripping the bar with my left hand, I pushed the pen and twisted. Two turns and the lock fell apart.

I pushed the grille open and slipped inside. I closed the main door behind me. I looked up at the little I could see of Nadif as I put on the rubber gloves. The one contact I had was now history. I dropped the packaging into the carrier bag and shoved it down my sweatshirt.

Nadif’s body, what was left of it, came into view as I moved up the stairs. He lay sprawled across the small landing. There wasn’t that much blood on the carpet but his sweatshirt was covered with it. A tea-towel had been rammed into his gaping mouth, probably to stop him being heard as one of his steel ballpoint pens was forced through his right eardrum and driven into his brain.

The rooms had been ripped apart. My bundle of cash was scattered across the carpet, along with the papers, books and Mac screen. They’d been after something more important.

I checked Nadif’s pockets for the keys and his mobile. Nothing. The rubber gloves were now wet and red as I lifted his right arm and turned him over. He had been punctured seven or eight times with a narrow blade into the lower stomach. Some of his gut had spilt out. Ant and Dec weren’t fucking about. They knew exactly how to inflict maximum pain.

The second steel pen was embedded in his left eye. The eyeball was still in place but the vitreous fluid had drained out.

Why hadn’t Ant and Dec locked the door? The keys were in his jeans pocket, in a thick pool of blood. They must have thought the door was on a latch instead of lever locks, and only realized once they had closed the D-lock. Or maybe they just didn’t give a fuck.

I went and locked both doors. Because of the shitty double-glazing I didn’t have any other way of escaping now, but if Ant and Dec decided to come back at least I’d buy myself a few minutes to reflect on how badly I’d fucked up.

Avoiding the blood, I climbed over Nadif. He didn’t smell yet. But that wouldn’t take long.

First things first. I checked the kitchen. The teapot wasn’t on the tray, but the glasses were. They, too, went into the bag inside my sweatshirt. One of them carried my DNA.

I got to my knees and started pulling out the shit from under the sink that Ant and Dec hadn’t already pulled out during their search. It hadn’t taken Nadif long to retrieve that phone last night. It had to be close to hand.

I pushed at the panels round the sides and the back of the unit, then lifted the once-white Formica sheet at its base. I was rewarded with a Tupperware box containing three small grey mobiles and a charger. There were also five Lebara SIM cards, still embedded in their credit-card-sized plastic mounts. They’re cheap. Immigrants use them to phone their families back home — or to call their clan leaders.

I hit the power button on each one in turn. They were SIMed up and had a bar or two of signal. I checked my iPhone and got ready with the numbers.

I called Crazy Dave on one of the phones. It rang several times before transferring to his messaging service. I cut away. I rang again. Still no answer.

I tried Jan next. That went straight to voicemail too. I cancelled.

Then I keyed in Jules’s number.

It rang three times.

‘Anything on those names yet, mate?’

He was even more hesitant than yesterday. ‘Not yet, but I’m checking every day.’

‘OK, can you keep on it? Got to go. Just thought I’d check.’

No point getting him sparked up for nothing. Ant and Dec didn’t know about him. They hadn’t been in-country in time to cover our meet at Cheapside. But they had been with me in Hereford. Even if they hadn’t seen me with Jan, they would now have her number. It had to be on the mobile that was missing. They wouldn’t have mine. It was a blocked number. But had they followed me to Crazy Dave’s? They must have.

I hoped Jan was waking up in someone else’s bed on the other side of town, and Crazy Dave was rattling down an autoroute in his Popemobile.

I pressed the tools on all three machines until I found Calls Made. They’d all registered international calls, and to one area. The code was 252. It had to be Somalia. I’d know soon enough, but right now I was looking for a call made at about two o’clock this morning. I scrolled down on the third and finally found it. 252 again.

I switched it off and slid it into my jeans, then fished out the carrier bag and added the other two to the Shrek and rubber-glove packaging. I had to tuck my sweatshirt into my jeans to take the weight.

A baby screamed in one of the nearby houses and a mother screamed back just as loudly.

I took a badly stained, almost stiff tea-towel and wiped down the bike lock and the grille door. I felt sorry for Nadif. We’d only had one brew together, but I’d quite liked the poor fucker.

Ant and Dec wanted what I had. They appeared to be the only things of value in this shit-heap, now that the Mac had bitten the dust. I certainly wasn’t hanging around to see if there was anything more. That phone number was all I needed.

I unfastened the security gate and unlocked the front door. I stood for a moment inside the threshold, listening for voices or footsteps.

Nothing.

It was fuck-it time.

I opened the door just enough to slip through, relocked both barriers and wiped the outside as best I could. The tea-towel and washing-up gloves went into the carrier bag too.

Head down, hands in pockets, I walked back the way I’d come. I didn’t know or care where I was going. I just wanted to be lost in the maze of terraces and alleyways.

21

Back in the 911, I headed across the Severn Bridge into Wales. A service station had fitted me out with a thin green fleece and a blue acrylic jumper.

The bag of goodies was on the seat next to me. The car was in Tiptronic mode so I could focus on sorting out the mobiles. I turned them both on, to identify which one I’d used to call Jan and Crazy Dave. I kept the one with the Somali number in my pocket.

I was soon through Chepstow and on the Pontralis road. The car swung from side to side. I needed to make distance but only had one hand on the wheel.

I rang Crazy Dave.

Still nothing.

I tuned in to Radio Wyvern. Hereford was now about nine miles away. I caught the nine a.m. news. No doleful announcements of the violent murder of a Hereford woman or a disabled man in the early hours of this morning.

I tried Crazy Dave once more. This time I got a dial tone. Non-UK.

‘What?’

Simon and Garfunkel wailed in the background. Something about Cecilia breaking their hearts.

‘Dave, it’s Nick.’

‘What?’

‘Where are you?’

‘I fucking told you, didn’t I? What do you want?’

‘Nothing, mate.’

‘Well, fuck off, then.’

Jan’s phone went straight to voicemail again. Perhaps she was doing what Cecilia had done.

I crossed the bridge towards Ross-on-Wye and parked up at Asda by the river. It was a five-minute walk to the flats. I’d done it a million times before the old camp at Stirling Lines had made way for an executive housing estate.

I redialled Jan a couple more times on Nadif’s mobile, with the same result. If she wasn’t at home, I was going to have to start searching.

St Martin’s Church stood at about the halfway mark. Many of my friends were buried there. I always thought about them when I passed, but not today. I needed another word with Crazy Dave.

‘What?’

‘Dave, it’s me again.’

Bob Dylan had taken over from Simon and Garfunkel.

‘Yeah?’

‘Jan? You know, Tracy’s sister? You know where she works, or where she might be today?’

Dave didn’t miss a beat. ‘Who the fuck do you think I am? The fucking Yellow Pages?’

‘What about her mates — do you know any of them?’

‘I’m trying to have a new life here. Remember what I said?’

‘What?’

‘Fuck off.’

The flats, a collection of three-storey rectangular blocks, were on an uphill stretch to my right. The grass around them was neatly trimmed. The cream rendering looked in much better condition than I remembered.

Jan lived on the ground floor, far right, at the back. There was no C-class Merc in sight. I wasn’t surprised. It would have stuck out like a sore thumb.

A couple of kids kicked a ball between them as their mum tried to open the main security door. She was laden with shopping and a pushchair, and had to use a knee. She called over her shoulder, ‘You staying out?’

They didn’t answer, just kept on kicking the ball. She got the message.

I quickened my pace but stayed out of her line of sight. A stranger entering the block would register.

I grabbed the steel handle as the door closed behind her and held it open a second or two to give Mum time to move out of the hallway.

I turned right down the corridor. I wanted the last door on the left.

The place had definitely had a facelift. Bright strip-lights showed off the newly painted walls. The 1960s doors with frosted panels had been replaced by solid wooden ones with on-trend steel furniture.

I gave Jan’s a gentle knock. There was no bell. The intercom at the front entrance did that job. There was no letter-box either.

I knocked again, this time a little harder and with my ear to the wood. The loudest thing I heard was a muffled shout from the two kids outside.

One more knock. Still nothing.

I walked outside. The footballers were sitting on the grass with the ball between them. I glanced around. There was nowhere out here she could have hidden a set of keys.

I followed the block round to the back. Her curtains were closed. There was no sign of life. Maybe she really had played away last night.

22

Among the forest of Sky dishes that had sprouted along the wall there were two small bird boxes. One was by her bedroom — or what I remembered as her bedroom.

I pushed my hand inside the hole, felt around inside and heard a metallic clink. Old habits die hard. One was a plastic fob to enter the security door, the other an ordinary pin tumbler.

The footballers looked ready to take an early bath. I walked past and pressed the fob. The door opened. I opened the flat door slowly. I didn’t call out. As soon as I saw the state of the place I knew I didn’t need to. The hallway was strewn with coats and newspapers. Every drawer of the sideboard she used to keep the kids’ clothes in — the ones that didn’t fit in the bedroom — had been tipped out.

I closed the door with an elbow and headed for the bedroom.

Her dress and underwear were on the floor, alongside her shoes. Next to them was a pair of jeans and a blue-striped shirt. Their owner was still in bed. The duvet he was lying on was covered with blood. He had puncture wounds in his neck and chest.

I moved on to the living room. It had been ripped apart. Jan was sitting naked on the floor, her top half slumped over the sofa. She hadn’t been as beautiful as her sister for a good few years. Now she looked a whole lot worse. Her back was a riot of stab wounds and bruises. The carpet was soaked with blood. Like Nadif, she had been gagged with a tea-towel. Her face was black and swollen. There were splits in the skin above and beside her eyes. Part of an ear lay on the cushion beside her. The blood that had run down her neck and shoulders was dry.

Neither of them would have stood a chance.

I moved back into the bedroom and kicked at her bag to see if the phones were still inside. They weren’t.

I went to the front door and checked the hallway before closing it behind me, using the sleeve of my brand new fleece.

Outside, the kids were nowhere to be seen. I turned downhill towards Asda.

How the fuck had Ant and Dec managed to deal with both locations? Maybe they’d followed me to Nadif’s place, done him, then found out about Jan via his mobile. Or maybe they’d seen us together at Saxtys. It didn’t really matter. What did was that they had both confidence and ability, and that made them dangerous.

I felt sorry for Jan, and even sorrier for Blue Stripes. All he’d wanted was a shag. The Jock on her voicemail was going to have a pretty hard time too. The police would find his pissed-off phone messages on Jan’s other phones and he’d have a fuck of a lot of explaining to do. Another poor bastard dragged into this nightmare — but at least he was alive.

I pointed the 911 out of the city. I wanted to get into the countryside as quickly as possible.

I jumped out at a lay-by beside the mud flats, engine still running, and pulled apart Nadif’s first two phones. They didn’t have his two a.m. call in the memory, but they did have the ones I’d made. I took out the batteries and wiped them on my fleece. I clambered up the bank and through the hedge. I kicked a hole with my heel in the mud the other side, stamped the phones into the bottom of it and smoothed wet earth back over them.

I powered up Nadif’s remaining mobile and hit redial on the Somali number as I got back in the 911.

It rang several times, then I was treated to a high-decibel crackle of the local dialect. The only thing I could tell from it was that the guy who’d answered was very old indeed. I waited for him to pause for breath.

‘Do you speak English?’

More crackle. ‘Italiano?’

‘No. English?’

There was a sudden explosion of invective. It sounded like everyone around the old boy was getting shouted at to shut the fuck up. I held the phone away from my ear. Then there was a rustling sound, as if the mouthpiece was brushing against facial hair. A new voice came on, much younger.

‘Yes.’ He paused. ‘Where is Nadif? This is Nadif’s phone. Where is Nadif?’ He had a soft American accent, more Twilight than Friends.

‘Nadif has been killed. I don’t know who did it, and I don’t know why. I want to find out. But I need help. I need help from someone with power and influence. I want to pay for my friends to be released. Nadif was going to help me, with his powerful friend. Are you his powerful friend?’

‘Yes. Only I can help you get your friends released. What is your name? Who are your friends?’

‘I’m Nick. My friends are a man, a woman and a child — a little boy. Their names are Justin, Tracy and Stefan.’

He was straight down to business. ‘Do you have the money, Mr Nick? Do you have three million American dollars?’

‘I am trying to get it. Please can I speak to them? I need to know they’re OK.’

And then it was as if we hadn’t had the first part of the exchange. ‘Nadif, where is Nadif?’

‘Nadif is dead. I don’t know who killed him.’

He thought about it for a while. I heard more rustling. ‘You will call again tomorrow. Same time.’

The phone went dead.

I gave it thirty seconds and rang again. Nothing. He’d powered down.