‘I don’t care if he’s the King of Morocco! We’ve got a murder case to –’

  ‘Ma’am,’ Boyd interjected. ‘There’s an added complication with the assault case, which also applies to the murder case.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Jason Turner is the partner of one of our detectives.’

  Sutherland nodded. ‘Of course! Bloody hell, yes. He’s DC Okeke’s other half, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yup. And Louie Collins was Jason Turner’s close friend,’ added Boyd. ‘Jay attacked Hammond because he believed he was responsible for Collins’ stabbing.’

  She shot him a pointed watch-what-you-say look that Sutherland completely missed.

  ‘There’s absolutely no evidence for Turner’s belief, as far as I’m aware,’ said Hatcher. ‘Whereas we have Hammond’s account, facial injuries that verify his account and, according to Mr Karovic, there’s CCTV footage from the apartment block of Turner forcing his way in.’ Hatcher’s gaze lingered on Boyd and it came with a clear-as-glass subtext.

  We are playing along. Understand?

  ‘Well, you can’t have Okeke on your team,’ said Sutherland. ‘For obvious personal reasons. I know you prefer to work with her, Boyd, but… I’ll have to go and explain to her that she’s off the Collins case as of now.’

  ‘Take anyone you need,’ said Hatcher. ‘Even off Flack’s team if you need more manpower. Any uniformed resources you need as well. Just find Turner as quickly as you can.’

  Sutherland shook his head and sighed at her resource-grabbing. ‘All this for an assault?’’

  ‘Just get it done!’ she snapped at him. She rose from her chair to signal that the meeting was over, and both Sutherland and Boyd got up and headed for the door.

  Boyd lingered. ‘Ma’am?’

  She watched Sutherland head off down the hall, then turned her attention to Boyd. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Can we speak privately, ma’am?’

  She ushered him back into her office and closed the door. ‘We said everything we needed to say yesterday, Boyd. I don’t want to repeat myself. Certainly not here. Or now.’

  ‘Who are you in contact with? Directly? The family lawyer, Karovic?’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘The Salikovs themselves?’

  She remained silent.

  ‘Have they communicated with you?’

  She held her hand out and he realised she was asking for his phones. He pulled them out and handed them to her. She briefly inspected each one, then powered them down and placed them in a glass display cabinet and slid the glass shut.

  She turned round. ‘This is the last time we do this.’

  ‘Have they said what’s going to happen to Turner?’

  She spoke very softly. ‘You don’t need to know any more than that he needs to be found, very quickly, charged and then put on remand. That’s what they’ve asked for. And that’s what we need to give them.’

  ‘They’re going to get to him, aren’t they? Wherever he’s held?’

  She hesitated for a moment, then nodded. ‘They’ll get to him on the inside, or they’ll track him down on the outside and, I dare say, if it’s the latter, they’ll take their time with him.’

  She pressed her lips together, producing a row of purse lines. ‘This is not a hill I’m prepared to die on, Boyd. Do you understand? Turner picked the wrong man to go after.’

  ‘Jesus, and that’s it?’

  ‘You don’t do that to the son of a Russian mafia boss and just stroll away. This is a bloody nightmare that I do not intend to get sucked into. And nor will you, Boyd.’ She slid the glass aside and reached for his phones.

  ‘Just do your job, Boyd, and bloody well find him.’

  She handed them back and nodded towards her door. The meeting was over.

  23

  ‘You idiot, Jay. You giant fricking idiot,’ said Okeke. Then she flung her arms around him. He held her tightly for a moment, then let her go.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Sam.’

  She shook her head. ‘Hammond said you had a gun.’

  He spread his hands. ‘What? No. I just… I was empty-handed.’

  ‘And he said you assaulted him, that he fought you off and you fled.’

  Jay snorted. ‘Well, that’s a load of crap. I rugby-tackled him. And then, okay, I tied his hands up and put a sock in his mouth. But I didn’t hit him and I certainly didn’t have a bloody gun!’

  She clacked her tongue. ‘So mostly his bullshit, then. But, Jesus, Jay… I told you to leave him to me and Boyd.’

  ‘Don’t get mad with me. I didn’t know he was a Russian!’ said Jay. ‘He certainly didn’t sound or look like one.’

  ‘Oh, God help me…’ She sighed. ‘They don’t all look like Dolph Lundgren in Rocky, you muppet.’ She stood back and looked him over. He was wearing her pink dressing gown and little else. ‘You’re going to need some clothes.’

  ‘And shoes,’ he said, sitting back down and waggling a bare foot. ‘I can’t go back to the house?’

  She shook her head. ‘It won’t take long before they realise you’ve got a workshop. So you can’t hide out here, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh.’ He looked disappointed. ‘That was my plan: bunk up here and wait for things to blow over.’

  ‘It’s not going to “blow over”, love.’

  Sitting in Mrs Patton’s armchair in nothing but her bathrobe and a single flip-flop, Jay couldn’t have looked less ready to face the shitshow he’d just kicked off.

  ‘The police or the Salikovs are going to find you here, babe… you’ve got to find somewhere better than this to lay low.’

  ‘How about round Gary’s?’

  ‘No. You work with him. They’ll be knocking on his door soon enough.’

  Karl’s. That was the only other place she could think of: his half-brother’s.

  ‘Not Karl,’ he said, reading her expression.

  ‘Yes, Karl.’

  ‘No. He already thinks I’m a loser. And you want me rocking up at his place begging for a place to stay?’

  She grabbed his shoulders. ‘Jay! This is serious! This is your life we’re talking about!’

  He pulled a dismissive smile. ‘Oh, come on. They’re just a bunch of dumb scrotes in shell suits, babe. We took ’em last time.’

  ‘Jesus.’ She wanted to slap that idiot grin off his face. ‘Have you forgotten what actually happened last year? How close they came to killing you and Boyd?!’

  ‘If I recall, we kicked their arses.’

  ‘No, love. You didn’t. You got away. That’s it. You got away by the skin of your teeth. And the only reason you didn’t wind up dead was that they had the person they were after.’

  She realised there was a disconnect between what she knew and what Jay knew about the whole situation. He’d turned up on the night to look big and scary in front of Nix. That was it. And, in the aftermath of that night, all she’d told him was that the men he’d come up against were low-level Russian thugs.

  ‘Jay, listen to me carefully. You just roughed up the son of a Russian mafia boss,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t touch him! Not after I tied him up, anyway. I just wanted him to know that you and the guv were going to take him down for killing Louie. And I told him we both heard him plan a murder.’ Jay smiled. ‘Hammond literally peed himself when I mentioned that. I literally scared the piss out of him.’

  Okeke took a deep breath and sat down on the stool. ‘Jay, let me explain your situation… You need to listen to me now. Rovshan Salikov is the big boss. He runs the biggest organised crime group in Georgia. That’s drug money, extortion, people smuggling, human slavery, torture, murder. He’s brought that all over here. Now I don’t know whether he’s planning to start up a criminal empire in the UK, or simply looking to clean his money – either way, he’s not the type to settle for you getting six months’ suspended sentence and a hundred hours’ community service for attacking his son.’

  That stupid smirk had finally gone from Jay’s face. ‘Well… what if I just hand myself in, then?’ he asked.

  ‘No. No. No! You don’t understand. Salikov’s already got his grubby hands on…’

  Do I tell him? She decided she had to. ‘They’ve basically got a chokehold on the Chief Superintendent. And Boyd.’

  ‘The guv?’ Jay’s jaw dropped.

  ‘He’s been threatened, yes. As in “you find Jay or you’re next”!’ Saying that out loud, the realisation finally slotted into place for her. She wasn’t going to be able to trust Boyd this time round. They could threaten Emma. ‘Listen, babe. I know you think Boyd’s a great guy, but do you see…? He’s got no choice. He has to bring you in, Jay. Do you understand?’

  ‘But he wouldn’t,’ Jay replied. ‘Not the guv.’

  ‘What if they threaten Emma? Huh? What if they already have?’

  His brows dropped to a troubled ridge.

  ‘If it comes down to you or Emma… who do you think he’s going to pick?’

  ‘Bollocks,’ he mumbled. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

  She nodded. ‘So… Karl’s it is. You’re going to get your arse over to Karl’s and then we can work out what we do next.’

  ‘What about you, Sam?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll be fine. I’m not wanted by anyone.’

  ‘You could come with me?’

  Okeke shook her head. ‘If I’m at the station, I can help you to stay ahead of the manhunt.’

  Hopefully. There was a good chance that Boyd wouldn’t use her… or had already been told he couldn’t use her. However, within the open CID floor, intel was pretty porous. She could possibly squeeze Warren for titbits outside during a ciggie break. Plus, she’d have access to LEDS.

  ‘I’m going to get you some stuff to wear,’ said Okeke. ‘Then you need to go, baby. You need to go.’

  24

  The town house that Roland’s father had bought was Number 17 Eaton Square. A magnificent five floors of whitewashed stone, balconies with gold-painted railings and a grand portico entrance with five marble steps leading up to it from a spotless pavement.

  At any other time, Eaton Square would have been an oasis of suburban calm in the middle of Belgravia, London. But right now the pavements and road outside his house were cluttered with contractors’ vans.

  Roland hurried up the steps and paused to make way for a couple of workmen who were carrying out a large panel of dark oak. He let them pass and hurried into the entrance hall.

  Inside the Downton Abbey-like décor was being ruthlessly stripped from the walls and floors to make way for a more contemporary look. The Old Man was getting on, but he made every effort to disguise his age. Not just in his personal appearance but in his choice of women, the environment he lived in and the cars he drove.

  Mother had shown Roland the interior designer’s renderings of the town house – how it would look when every last detail had finally been completed. To his eyes, it looked cold and very masculine. All chrome and slate, hard edges and ninety-degree angles. He much preferred the Regency-era look that was currently being brutally torn out of the house.

  He spotted his mother’s PA hurrying down the central stairs, clipboard in one hand and phone to her ear in the other.

  ‘Gillian, where’s Mummy?’

  She paused to look at him. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

  He ignored her and repeated, ‘Where’s Mother?’

  ‘She’s upstairs in the music room,’ she replied.

  He took the marble steps up, two at a time, stopping again for a pair of workmen carrying out a chaise longue between them. Roland had just got used to thinking of this place as home of sorts. Until Rovshan had announced he was stripping out the whole building and modernising it, stamping his gaudy, vulgar, Liberace-like notion of ‘style’ all over it. He’d started with the top floor and was working his way downwards. The workmen – or clueless bloody vandals as Roland liked to think of them – had reached the third floor, and his bedroom. Accepting Rovshan’s errand to take some time to scout out Hastings for some investment opportunities had turned out to be a merciful escape, rather that than watching these apes in overalls strip the gorgeous mahogany panelling from his walls.

  He pushed the large French doors inwards and spotted his mother sitting in the bay window with a glass of something clear and sparkling in one hand while she puffed frantically on a cigarette. The open doors allowed the noise of hammering, grinding and sawing to invade her quiet space and she whirled irritably round in her seat. She beamed when she was it was her son who’d entered the room.

  ‘Oh, Roland,’ she gasped.

  He closed the doors behind him, the sounds of the workmen muted once again, and hurried quickly across the wooden floor. He gave her a peck on the cheek and sat down. ‘Where’s the old man?’ he asked.

  ‘Somewhere upstairs,’ Letitia said, gesturing at the ceiling. There were three more floors above them. ‘Probably discussing what he can ruin next with his project manager and his bloody designer.’

  ‘Mummy, we need to talk.’

  ‘What happened to your face?’ she asked, reaching out to touch it.

  Roland shook his head. The genuine scrapes and bruises on his cheeks and temples were nothing compared to the cosmetically enhanced ones he’d walked into the police station with. It was amazing how a little rouge deployed around a slight graze could make it look like a significant injury.

  ‘I got into a fight. It’s nothing.’

  ‘Rolly! A fight?!’ He could hear her voice slurring. It was only 6 p.m. She must have started on her first gin at lunchtime.

  ‘It was a misunderstanding, all right?’ he said impatiently. ‘Now listen – we really need to talk.’

  Letitia Hammond-Bowles took another slurp from her glass.

  ‘Oh, Rolly,’ she slurred. ‘I’m not in the mood for talking today.’

  Roland grabbed the glass from her shaking hand and set it down on the drinks table next to her.

  She began to cry. ‘Rolly, I’ve had enough of this – I just want it all to stop.’

  ‘Shhhhh…’ He massaged her hand gently between his. ‘It’s okay. It’s going to be okay, Mummy.’

  Her shoulders began to lift and drop, lift and drop, as she eased back from the edge of a panic attack.

  ‘Easy now. That’s it. Easy,’ he reassured her.

  There was a loud crash from outside the double doors, followed by a shout and laughter from the workmen.

  ‘I can’t do this, Rolly!’ she cried. ‘I really can’t do this any more.’

  She took a pull on her cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke towards the dark window. The doll’s-house buildings around Eaton Square were lit up like Harrods’ display windows and provided her a Peeping Tom’s paradise.

  ‘Mummy, I really need to talk to you today,’ Roland tried again.

  ‘Oh, Rolly…’ she whimpered. ‘I wish we’d never started…’

  He sighed. ‘Listen, I’ll take care of you, okay? All you’ve got to do is stay calm and keep doing what you’re doing? All right?’

  She managed a nod. ‘Can I have my drink back please?’

  ‘There’s a good girl.’ He kissed her hand and passed the glass to her. ‘This’ll all be over with soon enough. I promise.’

  ‘God, I hope so,’ she said, and took a gulp of her gin.

  He smiled. ‘I’m going to go up and try to have a chat with Daddy.’

  25

  The wind along the seafront was tugging at Boyd’s coat like a bored child and forcing noisy frothy waves high up onto the shingle beach. Ozzie was, of course, incandescent with rage at the Channel for being so presumptuous.

  ‘Sounds rough there,’ said Charlotte. ‘Are the waves up to the top?’

  ‘Nearly,’ he replied.

  ‘It’s a bit blowy here too. Dad’s worried about an old elm that’s swaying around above the conservatory. He’s forbidden me and Mum from stepping in there today in case it comes down.’ He heard her chuckle. ‘It’s not exactly the storm of the century.’

  Boyd smiled. She sounded a little more like her old self. The time with her folks was healing time, catch-up time for all those years she’d stayed away from them.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asked presently. ‘You sound a tad… pensive.’

  ‘Fine,’ he replied, not really helping his case.

  ‘Is it work?’ she asked.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘As in too much?’ she probed. ‘Or a particularly difficult job?’

  ‘More the second,’ he replied.

  ‘Is it anything you can talk about?’

  Boyd sighed. He really wished he could let it all out for her to hear, and maybe if she was on the beach standing here with him, he might have. But not over the phone.

  ‘I’m sorry, Charlotte, not really.’

  She was silent for a moment.

  He could hear the mournful wail of wind down the phone. ‘It sounds like you’re in a haunted house.’

  ‘It’s a draughty house,’ she replied, ‘that’s for sure.’

  ‘How’s Mia getting on with your parents?’ he asked.

  ‘With my parents, fine. With their spaniels? Well… there’ve been a few harsh words exchanged between them. She’s been a bit bossy.’

  Boyd laughed. Charlotte’s dog was a lot smaller than Ozzie, and very sweet, but she could hold her own. ‘I can imagine. And you and your folks? How’re you getting on?’

  He heard her set a teacup down on its saucer. ‘It’s a bit strained every now and then. I mean, I’ve been a bit of a stranger to them for so long. In some ways, it’s peculiar, Bill; it’s like it was when I was eighteen.’ She laughed. ‘I’m actually in my old bedroom. It hasn’t changed a bit. Would you believe there’s still a poster of Kate Bush up on my wall?’

  He laughed. The small talk about dogs, her parents, her childhood bedroom was the antidote he needed right now: a slice of normality. A piece of calm.

  ‘Look, I’d better go,’ he said reluctantly. ‘I’ve got to get Ozzie back home and then I’m in at work.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Charlotte said. ‘Give my love to Emma. And Ozzie.’