‘I made that same promise to you quite a while ago,’ he confessed. ‘I never told you, that was all. The living together part,’ he continued. ‘Did you mean that?’

  ‘Yes. I like my own space and so do you. You had years of solitude preparing you for it.’ She paused. ‘Why? Have I got that all wrong? Do you want to?’

  ‘I want what you want,’ he promised. ‘I hear what you say and I agree with it. Equally, I’ve enjoyed being here with you for the last ten days more than I’ve enjoyed anything in my life.’

  ‘We can do it again any time you like,’ she told him. ‘Here, or anywhere else we choose. We can take time out each year and go off together, go on cruises, stuff like that, without telling a bloody soul.’

  ‘Not even your dad?’

  ‘Especially not my dad! Although I’m sure he knows how we are, and I’m sure he’s happy about it because . . .’ She hesitated, trying to find words to express her feelings ‘. . . because for the first time in his life he really doesn’t have to worry about me.’

  ‘He trusts me to keep you safe? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘More than that,’ Alex replied. ‘He trusts us to keep each other safe. For all your spectacular shared history, you’re like a brother to him.’

  ‘As he is to me,’ Dominick said quietly. ‘If it wasn’t for him, I doubt that I would still be alive.’

  Sixty

  Bob Skinner had never minded working long hours. He was a positive thinker, one whose glass . . . or bottle if he was drinking Corona . . . was always half full, and one of the benefits of being last to leave the office was freedom from the constraints of commuter traffic. He winced as he recalled his time as the last chief constable of the dying Strathclyde Force, a job he had never coveted but which had been forced upon him by a significant event. Then he had commuted from Gullane to Glasgow. Even in a police car with a driver and instant communications, he had found the slow grind along the intercity motorway arse-breaking, and boring. The distance between the InterMedia headquarters and his Golden penthouse, as he thought of it, was relatively short, but Girona was a regional hub with town-sized streets that could become grid-locked, a circumstance he had learned to avoid.

  He smiled as he thought of the amicable outcome of his discussions with his wife. He knew that he should have greeted her excited announcement with feigned surprise and was relieved that the damage had been short-lived. Since then, he had been considering the rebalancing of his business and family lives, and how it could be achieved positively. His private discussions with Xavi were pointing to him being in post for up to nine years. Paloma Aislado Craig, his eventual successor, was twenty-one years old. She was on course for a first-class honours degree from the London School of Economics that would be followed by an MBA, at Harvard rather than Edinburgh, her father’s original preference. That summer she was working as an intern in InterMedia’s Italian division to improve her languages as well as her understanding and experience of the group. When her education was complete in three years, her intention . . . Paloma had declared from the outset that she herself would plot her career pathway . . . was to spend a total of five years working in each area of the business, learning how it worked overall. That would be followed by a year shadowing Skinner, before taking over the chair and coming into her birthright.

  With his own future linked to hers, Skinner had been aware of the consequences for his lifestyle, and for his family. Money had never been an issue, although the job had raised him to a new level of wealth. He could have walked away, but his commitment to the company had become total. Beyond that, he had made a promise to a friend. For the future, the main question was his children’s future, their education and their happiness. Mark, their adopted son, was on the verge of early entry to Cambridge University. Jazz and Seonaid were at different stages of school, and Dawn would be starting nursery in a year or two. Could he be an absent father through the week? It would be tough on him. Would it be fair to them? Boarding school was not an option . . . his Lanarkshire roots and upbringing ruled that out . . . but his research had found that there were four international schools in Girona, each one teaching in English and Spanish. Paloma had been educated at one of them but Xavi had assured him that they were all equally good. The apartment was big enough to accommodate them all, but if the kids preferred to live in L’Escala by the sea, as they did in Scotland, the distance to any chosen school was not great.

  He frowned as he approached his apartment block, imagining the conversation he would have with Jazz. How would his son feel about being uprooted? Seonaid, he knew, would not need a separate discussion; she worshipped her brother and would follow his lead. The jet was ready for him and he was ready to return to Scotland the next morning. He would gather the family together and make his pitch.

  The frown was replaced by a smile as he drove through the automatic entrance gateway and down into the garage that served the apartment owners. He had made his own mental commitment and he was confident that his son’s sense of adventure would sweep him along. He eased the Tesla between the concrete pillars that supported the structure above and reversed into his parking place. He checked the battery level, as he always did on returning home. It was still high from its charge the night before, and so he switched off the electric motors and stepped out, hearing the street door close automatically above him as he closed the car. He walked towards the exit door, beneath the Sortida sign, opened it and stepped through; to be confronted by two men, facing him and blocking his route to the elevator. One was white-skinned, one was black; each was tall and each wore a dark suit, white shirt and dark tie. Each had a small badge in his lapel.

  ‘Fuck me,’ Skinner exclaimed, with a mix of curiosity and rising anger at any intrusion into his space. ‘It’s the Men in Black: my favourite fucking movie too. You’ll be K,’ he said to the man on the left, ‘and you,’ he nodded to the other, ‘you must be Will Smith. Agent J. I promise you guys, I might be an alien but I’m not an extra-terrestrial.’

  ‘Sir,’ the latter murmured. ‘We need you to come with us.’ The accent was American; Skinner felt the dawn of understanding.

  ‘We all have needs,’ he replied. ‘But it would be a sadder world if they were all fulfilled. Now get out of my way, lads. You’re trespassing on private property, you’re acting illegally, and you’re covered by security cameras.’ The third claim was untrue, but Agent K reacted, glancing upwards.

  ‘We need you to come with us, sir,’ his colleague repeated. ‘Refusal is not an option.’

  Skinner smiled, restraining a laugh. ‘In that case does “Fuck off” work? Look,’ he said, ‘you might be twenty-five years younger than me, and I’m sure you’re trained in stuff, but you’ve never met me. I’m not going with you, I’m going to that lift and you’re not going to stop me.’

  ‘Not so, sir.’ The third voice came from behind him; it was female and it coincided with a sudden pain in his back, and a tension that sent shudders through his body. He had heard of neuromuscular incapacitation but had never expected to experience it.

  You must be Agent L, he thought, as the two men gripped him on either side, as the hypodermic needle went into his neck, and as he faded to black.

  Sixty-One

  ‘There is nothing like motivation,’ Lita Roza exclaimed as she ended the call. ‘Jose can play his golf tomorrow morning after all.’

  ‘He’s got a result?’ Mann asked, her expression registering surprise.

  ‘He has,’ the comissari confirmed. ‘There are lots of helicopter taxi companies in Catalunya, but he got lucky. He prioritised air traffic control rather than go through them individually, in the hope that a flight might have been logged in, because not all of them are. Just over two weeks ago a company called Helibar gave notice of a taxi trip from Barcelona Airport to Riudaura. The flight was tracked and was uneventful.’

  ‘How many passengers?’

  ‘We’ll need to check with the company to find that out,’ Roza grinned. ‘I could have told Jose to check it out tomorrow morning, but I took pity on him . . . and his golf partner. I said I would do it tomorrow.’

  They were in the comissari’s car, in Girona. The journey back from La Garrotxa had been uneventful but it was late in the evening. ‘Do you want to go for a drink and some tapas, or will I drop you at Sir Robert’s place?’

  ‘Much as I’d fancy some patatas bravas and a couple of meatballs,’ Mann said, ‘I don’t feel comfortable going anywhere in this sweaty uniform.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll stop off, you can change and we’ll go somewhere.’

  ‘Don’t you have to get back to Barcelona?’ the Scot wondered.

  ‘No, I have a cousin in Caldes de Malavella. I’m staying with her tonight. I often do when I’m working here. My partner knows that.’

  ‘Fine, the Gaffer’s it is.’

  Roza told Maps to guide her to Skinner’s address, following the instructions as the app obliged. As they reached their destination, she spotted a parking place in the street and headed for it.

  ‘Did you see that?’ Mann asked suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A drunk, I think; on the other carriageway. Two guys were huckling him back to their car. The bloke looked completely out of it.’

  ‘That’s very unusual in Spain,’ Roza admitted. ‘You will rarely see a drunk on the street. It can only be a tourist.’

  ‘He was in a white shirt and cargo pants but the guys carrying him didn’t look like tourists. They were in black suits. Do you want to do something about it?’

  ‘Hell no!’ her colleague snorted. ‘That’s way below my pay grade, and anyway, it’s a job for the locals, not the Mossos. Come on, let’s roust Sir Robert. Maybe he’ll come out with us.’

  They made their way to the entrance to the apartment block. Skinner had given Mann a key, but she pressed the entry buzzer; whether as a courtesy or a warning, she was not sure. She waited for a time, but there was no answer. She tried again with the same negative outcome. Finally she reached for the key. ‘He must be working really late,’ she guessed.

  They rode the elevator to the top floor. Mann let them into the apartment; as they expected it was in darkness, with all the shutters lowered against the daytime heat. ‘Gaffer,’ she called out, against the outside chance that her host had been tired and had gone straight to bed. There was no response; from the hall she could see that his bedroom door was open.

  ‘Call him,’ Roza suggested. ‘Tell him what we’re planning and ask if he wants to meet us.’

  Mann nodded, retrieved the number from her contacts, and called it. She held it up for the Catalan to hear the ring tone repeat and repeat and repeat. ‘Bob Skinner not beside his phone?’ she murmured. ‘That is not usual.’

  ‘Could he have gone to his daughter?’ Roza suggested.

  ‘He could, but he didn’t say anything about it earlier. He definitely said he was going to his office. “See you later”, he said. I remember it.’ Nevertheless, she called the L’Escala landline number that he had given her before her arrival as a precaution. Alex picked up on the fifth ring; she was less than her usual crisp self; sleep was in her voice.

  ‘Sorry,’ Lottie said. ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘No, we were dozing beside the pool, that’s all.’

  Her years in CID made her doubt that, but she let it pass. ‘Your dad wouldn’t be there, would he?’

  ‘No, he’s still in Girona. He called me about an hour ago to wish us a good flight home. He said he was just leaving the office. He’ll be at the apartment by now, Lottie; must be.’

  ‘No, he’s not. I’m there and there’s no sign.’

  ‘In that case he’s probably gone to eat. Check the garage; if his car’s there, that’s what he’ll have done.’

  ‘Will do. The only thing is; he isn’t answering his phone.’

  ‘It may need charging,’ Alex suggested. ‘God knows he’s on it often enough; and he did say the battery was starting to degrade; you know that one, Apple’s cute way of making you buy a new phone. When you find him, Lottie, let me know,’ she asked, the first trace of anxiety creeping into her voice as she disconnected.

  Frowning, Mann pocketed her handset, nodded wordlessly towards the lift and headed for it, with Roza on her heels. They rode it down to the garage and stepped out into a passageway that was dark only for as long as it took a sensor to register their presence and turn on the lights. There was a fire door at the other end with an automatic closer above. It took a little strength to open it but when she did, the garage was illuminated also. She could see Skinner’s car in its space.

  ‘That’s it,’ she called out. ‘He’s gone for a meal or a drink, or more likely both. I’ll take a look in the car; he might have left his phone in it. Probably he has done.’

  ‘Lottie.’ Roza’s voice came from the other side of the fire door. As Mann turned, it opened. The other woman was holding a pale blue cotton jacket; one that Lottie knew she had seen before.

  ‘This is his, isn’t it?’ the comissari murmured. ‘It was on the ground behind the door. You didn’t see it when you opened it.’ She held it up and explored its pockets. ‘His wallet,’ she said, as she withdrew it. ‘His car keys,’ she added. ‘He hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s been taken.’

  ‘By a small army maybe,’ her colleague replied. ‘Jesus,’ she whispered. ‘That guy, the one I thought was drunk. Lita, that must have been him. Not drunk, unconscious. It’s the only way they’d have managed it.’

  ‘But not through the front entrance,’ Roza pointed out. ‘That would have been too public. This way, come on.’ She headed for the garage entrance. Beside it, separated from the road by a railing, was a curving pathway leading up to a pedestrian exit marked Sortida like the internal door. It opened onto a side road that led to the twin carriageway at the front.

  Mann pointed. ‘It was over there!’ she called out. ‘That’s where they took him.’ She looked around then pointed to a street lighting column, one of a line in the space separating the two roadways. ‘Is that a camera? If it is you need to access it and get to the footage. Lita, can you do that?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied ‘but on a Friday night God knows how long it will take. It’s run by a private company.’

  ‘We need sight of that car,’ Mann yelled. ‘Big and dark, possibly black, that’s all I can tell you about it. But there must have been a third person behind the wheel, on the other side. When they pushed him into the back seat, one of them got in there behind him, and the other jumped into the front passenger seat. You need to call this in now!’ she insisted.

  Roza was ahead of her, firing instructions into her phone in Catalan. ‘Immediatament!’ she ended. ‘Done,’ she said. ‘Officers will access the camera footage as a matter of urgency. Meantime, every big dark car on every highway within fifteen minutes of here is going to be pulled over.’

  ‘Who would do this?’ Mann asked her. ‘I mean, what the fuck?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the comissari confessed. ‘I have no idea. But Sir Robert is the chair of InterMedia, which has taken a strong editorial stand against the extreme Right across all Spain. Those are not people you mess with; I can only hope it’s not them, otherwise we’ll find him in a ditch.’

  ‘Or them, when he comes to,’ the Scot said, grimly optimistic. ‘Meanwhile, I’ve got another problem. Do I phone Alex now, and if so, what do I tell her?’

  Sixty-Two

  ‘Dad’s been kidnapped? Are you kidding me, Dominick?’

  ‘ “Abducted” was the word she used, but yes, that’s what Lottie said,’ he confirmed. ‘She got my number from Sauce Haddock. She thought she should call me rather than break it to you over the phone, and she was right.’

  ‘Kidnapped?’ Alex repeated. ‘How, in God’s name?’

  ‘They think he was waylaid in the garage of his apartment block, drugged and driven off. Lottie and a Catalan officer found his jacket there when they went to look for him and later the police first-responders recovered a hypo.’

  ‘Even so,’ she said. ‘My dad? He’s never lost a fight in his life.’

  ‘Don’t I know it,’ Dominick murmured. ‘They reckon there were three of them.’ He paused, concerned about her reaction, but continued. ‘Lottie said that when she and the other cop arrived at the building, they actually saw someone being loaded into a car but from that distance they couldn’t see who it was. They assumed it was a drunk. It was only later, after they found the jacket, after she’d called you, that the penny dropped.’ He went to the fridge, took out a bottle of Vichy Catalan sparkling water and handed it to her. ‘Drink this, breathe deeply and be calm.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she assured him, ‘I am calm. I’ve had worse nights than this with him. That time he was stabbed, for example; Sarah and I were told it was odds against him surviving.’

  ‘What time?’ he exclaimed. ‘I never knew.’

  ‘Why should you? You were away. Now he never talks about it and neither do we. The kids don’t know: Jazz was a baby at the time, Mark hadn’t come into the family and Ignacio . . . we didn’t even know he existed. “One night in Paris”,’ she sang, smiling softly. ‘Only in his and Mia’s case it was Davidson’s Mains.’

  ‘You have quite a family,’ Dominick observed.

  ‘Get used to it. You’re part of it now.’

  ‘That’s a nice thought. I’ve never had a family before.’ He smiled rarely. When he did, she thought it lit up the room. ‘Are you saying we’re official?’

  ‘We are what we are, best friends. The fact that we sleep together, that’s our business. I’ll make that clear to Dad when I tell . . .’ She stopped, the sentence hanging in the air. She looked up at him. ‘Did Lottie say what the police are doing?’