Capital Punishment (11 page)

In the kitchen he went into a saucepan cupboard, removed the pans and a section of the base. He lifted a floorboard underneath and took out a Belgian-made FN57 semi-automatic pistol with a spare twenty-round clip. He liked this gun because, although it was light, at just over one and a half pounds fully loaded, the rounds could penetrate Kevlar vests. He put the gun, spare clip and one thousand five hundred of the cash in the false bottom of his overnight bag. He packed clean clothes. From the spare room he took a small, hard-shelled, silver suitcase, which contained the recording equipment, a laptop computer, memory sticks, notepads, pre-prepared sign cards for use in telephone calls with the kidnappers, felt tips and Blu-tack. He took a pen torch and some metal tools from a cupboard and put everything by the front door and only then did he make his call to Martin Fox.

‘I’ve been hired,’ he said. ‘Somebody on a Vespa took a pop at D’Cruz en route between the Ritz and his ex-wife’s house in Kensington.’

‘Jesus,’ said Fox. ‘Still, I can’t say D’Cruz had the look of a virgin about him.’

‘You’d better arrange for forensics to extract the round from the back seat and get the ballistics on it,’ said Boxer. ‘I’ve told the driver not to touch.’

‘I’ll talk to D’Cruz’s insurers and I’ve got a DCS Makepeace coming to my office tomorrow to sit in my operations room. I’m sure he’ll be interested in that.’

‘I wouldn’t think it’s connected to the kidnap. Why kill the guy you want to pressurise?’ said Boxer. ‘You might get D’Cruz a bodyguard, too. The driver’s calm, said he’ll sort out a limo with bulletproof glass. Has D’Cruz spoken to you yet?’

‘No. Was he shaken?’

‘And
stirred,’ said Boxer.

The arrivals hall at Gatwick was busy. Mercy was standing well back from the mêlée of people crowding the barriers in front of the double doors from the customs area. She had a clear view down the channel where the arriving passengers would come. Amy’s flight had landed.

There was a strong smell of fried food, which was contributing to the sickness in her stomach, although most of that was coming from her mental state. She couldn’t help but feel that she’d failed as a parent. She thought her incapacity must have stemmed from the absence of her own mother, who’d died in childbirth when Mercy was only seven, and the insanely strict regime that her Ghanaian police officer father had imposed on her and her four siblings. Maybe she was just repelled by parenthood because, as the eldest, a lot of mothering had fallen in her lap. She’d never intended to have a child so early herself. Amy hadn’t been planned, arriving, as she had, soon after she and Boxer had split up. She’d found herself with little to offer Amy, reluctant to impose her father’s type of discipline, but with no alternative up her sleeve. Then again, she was dealing with somebody harbouring the suspect genes of Charles Boxer, and that was never going to be easy—a runaway boy with a ‘missing’ dad, a war veteran, a lone professional, a man who, as far as she’d known, had never loved passionately, and had now become someone, since leaving his job at GRM, worryingly detached.

The double doors opened and Amy came through alone, her blonde highlighted ringlets framing her wide face with its caramel complexion and her dark, full lips. Her light green eyes scanned the crowd confidently. She had a small rucksack on her shoulder and was dragging a very large sky blue suitcase, which Mercy didn’t recognise and seemed far too big for a weekend away.

Mercy hung back, waited. As Amy reached the end of the channel, a black man stepped out of the crowd. He was around thirty, short dreadlocks, long black leather coat, white scarf. Not, to Mercy’s practiced eye, a criminal. He kissed Amy once on the cheek and took over the suitcase. He gave her a quick hug around the shoulders and let her go. Mercy held up her mobile phone and took a photo of them. They walked together, chatting. It was like seeing an older brother meeting his sister.

They passed Mercy, who gave them twenty yards and fell in behind them. They headed off towards the short term car park and railway station. A surge of people from the station came between Mercy and Amy just at the moment when Amy peeled away from her partner and went down the escalators to the platforms. The guy continued with the suitcase. Mercy stuck with Amy. She already had a return ticket and went down the escalators to see her daughter sitting in the lighted waiting room.

She loitered on the gloomy platform, watching Amy through the window, intrigued to see her daughter as a person out of her normal sphere. Amy was chatting to a couple in their forties. She was at ease. The couple were laughing. It could have been ... it should have been Charlie and Mercy, but it wasn’t. That rush of failure swept over her once again. She felt drawn to the window as if to a screen she couldn’t stop watching. She came closer and closer until her face was up to the glass. Her daughter continued, oblivious. She was telling a story, making faces, being entertaining. Then she looked up.

The first thing Mercy saw was fear, then anger.

‘Oh fuuuuck,’ said a voice behind her.

Mercy turned to see Karen approaching the waiting room. There was fear in her face, too. Was this all she inspired? Fear? No, no, there was always anger, too.

‘What ... what ... are you doing here, Mrs Danquah?’

‘I thought I’d meet you off the plane.’

The waiting room door slammed shut.

‘That’s typical, that’s fucking typical of you,’ said Amy, throwing her fingers out at her mother. ‘You can’t stop playing cops, can you? You have to play the fucking cop with your own daughter now.’

Mercy was momentarily shattered by the change in her daughter. The instant ferocity. And yet, seconds ago, she’d been so dazzling. Where’s the dazzle? Let’s have the dazzle back, girl.

But it was true what Amy had said. There was nothing she could do about it. Detective Inspector Mercy Danquah reasserted herself in moments. You don’t do thirteen years in the Met and let a seventeen-year-old girl put one over on you.

‘If I’d been “playing cops”, I’d have organised a reception committee for you and your smooth friend and had you both arrested on smuggling charges,’ said Mercy. ‘Then where would you be, Amy Boxer? In fact, I might still do that with my photo evidence.’

She held up her mobile with her shot of the two of them on the screen. Amy stared with wide open eyes.

‘You’d better tell me what was in that suitcase.’

Amy couldn’t speak through her anger at being caught so redhanded. The humiliation raged through her. And all in front of her friend, too.

‘It was just cigarettes, Mrs Danquah,’ said Karen quickly. ‘That’s all it was. Promise. Just cigarettes.’

Isabel was cooking the duck rice that she should have done for her lunch party. D’Cruz took Boxer up to a spare room at the top of the house. He dropped his overnight bag on the bed and asked if there was a central room with a phone jack where he could put the recording equipment.

They went back down to the next level where there was a room with a desk, a chair and a single bed. D’Cruz watched from the door while Boxer plugged the recorder into the mains and phone jack. He asked for Isabel’s mobile number, entered it into the computer within the recorder. He also booted up the laptop and tapped Alyshia’s mobile number into the Pavis tracking software. No signal.

The pressure of D’Cruz’s need to question him filled the room. Boxer carried on with his work. D’Cruz crossed the room, looked down into the dark gardens at the front of the development.

‘What’s it like to kill someone?’ he asked.

‘Why?’ asked Boxer. ‘You thinking of doing it?’

‘I don’t have it in me,’ said D’Cruz.

‘An interesting observation.’

‘When I was in the movies I played gangsters who killed people, but I never knew what it was like.’

‘Didn’t the director introduce you to gangsters who
had
killed people?’

‘Sure, but I could never ask that question,’ said D’Cruz. ‘The situation was never right. You know, there’s an etiquette.’

‘Are you asking me because of what happened to you on the way here?’

‘No. I’m asking you because I can and you’re intelligent enough to give me a reply.’

‘I can only tell you one thing,’ said Boxer, turning to face D’Cruz. ‘That once you’ve killed someone, whatever the circumstances, it takes you out of the world of men. You are forever apart, because you have done the greatest possible damage one human being can do to another.’

They searched each other’s faces for some time. The lamps buzzed in the room.

‘You surprised me when I first saw you,’ said D’Cruz.

‘I found out when I was a homicide detective,’ said Boxer, smiling ironically, ‘that the most successful murderers were the ones who didn’t go around looking like killers.’

‘I only meant that I thought you’d be bigger,’ said D’Cruz. Boxer grunted a laugh.

‘I used to be bigger,’ he said. ‘I got sick travelling in a remote part of Mongolia after I left homicide. A group of tourists picked me up just in time. I lost a lot of weight and never put it all back on.’

‘What was wrong?’

‘They never found out,’ said Boxer. ‘Do you ever
answer
questions, Frank?’

‘Not often with the complete truth, I have to admit,’ said D’Cruz. ‘It’s part of my job to keep people guessing.’

‘I’m glad you told me that,’ said Boxer.

‘I won’t
lie
to you,’ said D’Cruz. ‘Not to the man who’s going to bring back my daughter.’

‘This box here will record all calls to Isabel’s mobile in the house,’ said Boxer, and he handed D’Cruz an attachment. ‘If she goes out and takes a call from the kidnapper, she should hold that to the phone.’

Boxer tested Isabel’s phone to make sure her calls were being recorded.

‘I asked you to think about something while I was out,’ said Boxer. ‘You got anything to tell me yet?’

‘It’s dog eat dog out there,’ said D’Cruz, tapping the window. ‘In Bombay, I mean.’

‘Personal animosity,’ said Boxer. ‘Not business. Someone who would want to take revenge for something you’ve done, or been perceived to have done. Think visceral. This is someone attacking your
family.
They’ve taken your
child.’

D’Cruz shook his head, pursed his lips.

‘Women?’ said Boxer.

‘Women?’

‘I imagine you get a lot of attention from women, Frank.’

‘You think this is the work of a
woman
?’

‘No, but women can inspire men to extreme behaviour,’ said Boxer. ‘Where do the big human emotions come from? What makes men behave irrationally? Jealousy. Betrayal. Humiliation. If Jordan is serious about not wanting money—’

‘It will come down to money in the end,’ said D’Cruz. ‘You’ll see.’

‘I’m not so sure, which is why I want you to think and, more important, tell.’

D’Cruz blinked at the possibility of his enormous capacity to pay becoming an insignificant factor. The fear spread out from the whites of his eyes and he turned to face his insubstantial reflection in the window.

7.45 P.M., SUNDAY 11TH MARCH 2012

location unknown

‘Tell me about Hackney. Tell me about London Fields,’ said the voice. ‘You could live anywhere in London. Notting Hill, Chelsea ... no, maybe they’re a bit too grown up for you. What is it about Dalston, Broadway Market? Why’d you want to live there, Alyshia?’

‘What do I get for answering this question?’ she asked.

‘This isn’t a question. This is a conversation. This is us getting to know each other.’

‘You gave me the rules. I’m just playing by them. I answer questions. You give me rewards. Nothing comes for free, you said.’

‘You’re a hard little nut, Alyshia,’ said the voice, without conceding it. ‘Tell me what you want.’

She wanted to see very badly. She couldn’t bear the disorientation of the constant dark. Seeing would give her a sense of power. It would give her possibilities.

‘I want a shower,’ she said.

‘No, a shower is a very expensive item. You need a lot of air miles before you get a shower,’ said the voice. ‘I tell you what. I’ll let you take the sleeping mask off if you talk to me nicely.’

‘I live in Hackney because I want to be an ordinary person. I want to make friends with people who like me for who I am. You probably don’t know what it’s like to be born into wealth.’

‘It must be terribly, terribly hard,’ said the voice, mocking. ‘Probably harder than it is to live in a Mumbai slum with no electricity, no clean water, shit running down the street and rats who don’t knock at the door.’

‘I wouldn’t know. All I know is what it’s like to arrive in a perfectly insulated life. To never have the opportunity to learn from experience, because there’s none available.’

‘So how did
you
turn out so nice,’ said the voice, aggressive. ‘Where did
you
get this special insight from?’

‘My mother.’

‘Another very comfortable person from a privileged background. I suppose she made you sit on chairs without cushions?’

‘She let me see over the walls.’

‘Oh,
very
nice, Alyshia. The prison walls of wealth. Yes, we know how high and thick they are,’ said the voice. ‘You’re not being very persuasive. I’m finding it hard to feel sorry for you.’

‘I don’t remember asking you to feel sorry for me,’ said Alyshia. ‘You asked me why I live in Dalston. I’m telling you it releases me from my family background. When I’m there, I’m not a billionaire’s daughter. It’s a huge relief. I get the same treatment as everybody else. I’m liked, or loathed, for being who I am.’

‘That’s such bullshit,’ said the voice. ‘If you said you lived in Dalston because it’s close to where Duane and Curtis live, I’d be more likely to believe you.’

‘That’s not where I met them.’

‘No, that’s true. You met in the Vibe Bar on Brick Lane.’

‘You’re changing the subject now,’ she said, rattled by the extent to which he’d penetrated her life. ‘If we’re finished with “Why do you live in Dalston?”, you should let me take off the sleeping mask.’