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  “I get the picture. And time of the death is estimated to be somewhere between nine and ten? That’s precise.”

  “Based on ambient temperature, and liver temp. The liver was — well, as you could see from the photographs, the liver was exposed. The doctor arrived just after our people did.” She glanced towards the bedroom where Frankland had been found. “He was supposed to have retired, you know that? He shouldn’t have even been involved in this. They managed to swing it by calling him a consultant or some rubbish?”

  “I know that. But running an undercover is the kind of job you can’t just hand over. The more people in the loop the more dangerous it is. And this one was in deep cover, had been for a while.”

  “Yes, but I mean, a woman? Whose stupid idea was that?”

  “I thought you believed in equal opportunities?” Clarke’s attempt at levity fell flat.

  She glared at him. “It’s nothing to do with that. A male undercover officer would have a choice about what kind of role they played in that kind of organization. You know what attitudes they have towards women, both the Perrins and the Sykeses of this world. Anybody that gets involved in that, they would have to be in a relationship with someone. Would have to get involved, and I mean really involved. I know there’s legislation that says undercovers are not supposed to do that. A man may have managed to keep things separate, but a woman couldn’t. Think about it. A woman who wants to get anywhere near anybody in an organization like that, they’ve got to get themselves a boyfriend, a lover. It’s all men at the top, there’s no space for a woman to infiltrate — they’ve got to be totally involved. So they’d have to be sleeping with the bastard, otherwise they’d stick out like a sore whatsit and their cover would be blown in no time. If she’s been in deep cover for three years, she’s been involved with somebody.”

  Clarke suddenly realized that he’d not actually thought much about that side of things. He knew that Petra had been living with Billy Hunter, but he’d been thinking about it on the level of her being a police officer, not on the level of her being a woman. It was not lost on him that there’d been a number of court cases in recent years when male undercover officers had had to face up to their actions and responsibilities. In the seventies and eighties and probably later in some cases, they had gone undercover to gather intelligence within various political organizations, and several had started serious relationships with women within those organizations, some had even had children. The story, when it had broken, had had major ramifications that had been felt throughout the police force. But he’d never given the reverse position any thought, and he really should have done. Petra — “Pat”, as Billy Hunter had known her — had given three years of her life to this, lived in Billy’s house, slept in his bed, been emotionally involved with him . . . The thought of someone like Petra being emotionally entangled with Billy Hunter seemed laughable. But then again, how well did he actually know her? The answer to that was, not at all.

  Was Lauren really safe with Petra? He still didn’t know exactly what the connection had been between Petra Merrow and Harry Prentice. Lauren had told him about the phone number and that Petra had known Harry. “Not quite a friend” was how she said Harry had described her.

  “No,” he said. “You’ve got a point. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  Allwood looked slightly mollified. “You want to go into the room?” she asked. She stood aside and Clarke moved into the doorway and surveyed the scene, comparing the photographs he had so recently studied. He had not known Frankland well, but this still affected him deeply.

  “I liked him a lot,” Allwood said. “His door was always open if you wanted to talk, and he was always kind of quiet, not showy. He never put anyone down. He was just confident in his own abilities, and I liked that.”

  “Has there been any progress made on the other three? I skimmed the notes, but maybe you can bring me up to speed.” Clarke could feel her need to tell him that those other three didn’t matter, that one of their own was dead and he should be focusing on that, as Henderson obviously had been doing. “It’s all linked,” Clarke told her. “And we’re not going to be able to stop it until we can see the bigger picture.”

  She gestured impatiently. “Interviews with family suggest that each one of them received a phone call about an hour before leaving home. Another one just before they headed out the door. Phil Stern and his son drove off together. Somebody in a black car came and collected Kristy Young, but the family won’t speculate as to who might have been driving or if they’d seen the car before. All three left home at around eight p.m. The families assumed they were going out for a drink because that’s what they’d been told.”

  “And they were the last sightings?”

  “Looks like it, yes. None of the family has said that the three men seemed worried, or anxious. They just got themselves ready like they were going to the pub and that was the last anyone saw of them.”

  “And I’m assuming Kyle Sykes is alibied.”

  “Half a dozen witnesses, from about seven in the evening to about the same time the following morning. No forensics, no DNA, no weapon and no witnesses to a vehicle dumping bodies in the early hours of the morning. There aren’t any houses down that way, not even student flats. It’s all up for redevelopment.”

  “Convenient. Not even any rough sleepers?”

  “Not since last year. It’s so damn exposed, even the rough sleepers avoid it. They prefer to be closer to town.”

  Clarke nodded. There had been two deaths last winter, when the weather had been exceptionally cold. Two men sharing an improvised shelter had frozen to death. Word was, it was now seen as an unlucky place. Clarke had seen kids riding dirt bikes on the rough ground, and he knew that syringes were regularly found there by dog walkers coming up off the canal bank. They often complained about it to the police. There was no shelter anywhere, no one living nearby, no industry where people might be working late. Which, no doubt, was why it had been chosen as the dumping ground.

  He glanced back at the blood-soaked bed and, though he really didn’t want to have the idea put in his mind, he knew he still had to ask. “How long do they think . . .”

  “They tortured him for?” She shrugged but he could see the tears threaten. “Hours, they think. His hands and ankles had been tied to the legs of the bed. He twisted and fought so much, the rope cut through to the bone. Can you imagine that? I mean, can you just imagine?”

  I can now, Clarke thought. Some vague memory surfaced about Special Forces being taught to fight one type of pain with another, one they could control. But he had no notion if that was just myth and hype or if it was something Frankland might have done deliberately. He found himself hoping so, hoping what had been a very brave man had maintained some small modicum of control.

  His phone rang. It was Superintendent Craig ordering his return.

  Chapter 44

  Clarke arrived back to find his colleagues in a frenzy of moving desks, tech support knee-deep in additional terminals and people he didn’t know vying for territory in the inadequate space. A lot seemed to have changed since he’d left to go to Frankland’s house. He glanced at his watch and noted that he’d only been gone a couple of hours.

  “Toby.” Hopkins sidled over. She handed him a welcome mug of coffee.

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Henderson’s gone, MIT is moving in. I mean, that was bound to happen, but . . .”

  This is happening in a big hurry, Clarke thought, finishing where she had trailed off.

  “Craig’s waiting for you in his office. With someone called Crenshaw. He’s gold commander for—”

  “I know Crenshaw,” he told her. Was this a good thing? At this particular moment, Clarke was no longer certain. He didn’t have long to think about it, because Craig must have heard his voice. He stuck his round, grey head round the door of his office and called Clarke inside.

  “Good luck,” Hopkins told him.

  “Y
eah. Right.”

  Shaking hands with his old boss, he held up the coffee Hopkins had given him by way of declining the offer for more coffee. Taking a seat on one of the uncomfortable, barely padded chairs, he waited for the inevitable, not sure just how much trouble he might be in. He decided to take the initiative. “So, DCI Henderson—”

  “Had some leave due to him and is taking a break. No doubt he’ll be signed off due to stress.”

  “So he’ll be signed off sick and offered an early retirement package,” Clarke said. “Henderson should be—”

  “Not your decision. Henderson will be dealt with through the proper channels and is no longer your problem. Now, I suggest if you want to avoid or at least mitigate those same channels, you bring us up to speed. Putting it simply, Clarke, what the fuck is happening here? No omissions, no fudging.”

  “First things first,” Crenshaw said, taking over from Craig. “The girl and the UC. What’s their status?”

  “Safe, for now,” Clarke told him. “But, sir, I don’t know exactly where they are and, given developments, neither do I think I should—”

  “We may well be a bit beyond that consideration,” Crenshaw told him. He handed two newspapers and a folder of other material to Clarke. “Someone will spot them and someone will call that number.” He tapped at a hotline number printed just below the newspaper headline that screamed Missing Girl, Undercover Officer in Kidnap Scandal. “So far, the families are several steps ahead of us and it’s not yet midday.”

  Clarke skimmed the material he’d been given. It was an incredibly mixed bag. It was as though a gaggle of tabloid headline writers had brainstormed variations on the kidnap, corruption and undercover scandal and thrown every possible angle onto the page. On television and the internet, too, he noted, judging by the screengrabs and printouts in the folder.

  Rumour and misinformation. People trafficking the idea that Lauren might have been kidnapped by a disgruntled employee. That the police had no interest in the teenage daughter of a man they regarded to be a known criminal. That she had been with her fiancé on the night she disappeared and the possibility he might have been killed defending her.

  Other stories suggested that the police, apparently working on false intelligence, had embedded an undercover officer within a perfectly legitimate business corporation — with photos of “Pat”.

  There was an interview with friends of Pat (a gallery owner, and a female wedding photographer). Claims that the police, despite recent high-profile prosecutions, were back to their “old tricks”. The words “honeytrap” and “setup” came up a number of times, along with the observation that Pat was a very attractive woman with “obvious charms”. The use of a female undercover clearly added a level of titillation to proceedings. There were screengrabs taken of several internet sites of claims that Billy Hunter, who had lived with Pat for three years, had now taken his own life.

  “Is he dead?” Clarke wanted to know.

  “Found an hour ago. Single bullet wound. It could have been self-inflicted, but—” Craig shrugged. “Essentially, they’ve just thrown everything out there and are waiting to see what sticks.

  “We’ve got a press conference scheduled for late afternoon and our media liaison are working flat out to try and control this, but we need to get those two women off the streets and into safe custody. And we need to do that now. It will only be a matter of time before someone spots them. It will also only be a matter of time before someone recognizes Pat and comes up with her real identity and who knows what further shit will hit the fan then.” Craig dropped down into a chair as though the entire business was suddenly too exhausting.

  This is bad, Clarke thought. He was also taken aback by how fast this had all moved. “How have they managed to do this so quickly? How deep does this all go? I mean, Henderson—”

  “Our media experts believe much of this to be pure speculation. Putting two and two together and spinning it to make fourteen. Not much of it stands up to analysis, but that’s not going to stop the speculation, and it’s not going to stop these stories from getting bigger. You can imagine, this is network gold.”

  “But they’ve moved so fast.”

  “Gus Perrin is a major shareholder in the Radcliff media group,” Crenshaw told him.

  Clarke hadn’t known that. Looking at the two senior officers, he didn’t think they had, either. “Through yet another shell company?”

  Crenshaw laughed bitterly. “No, all open and above board. His name is on the register at Companies House, alongside fully registered interests in his hotels and golf courses. He started off as a minor shareholder and he’s been building his interest incrementally over the past decade. Up until now, the only crossover we’ve ever been aware of happens when the local papers in the group turn up to celebrate yet another Gus Perrin gift to the poor and needy.”

  Clarke turned to his old boss. “What do you want from me now, then?”

  Craig’s reply was urgent. “We need to get Lauren and the officer properly protected and you need to share, Clarke. Tell us what the fuck you’ve got yourself mixed up in so we can start to make some sense of it and start the counter-attack.”

  * * *

  Petra set her notebook down and stretched, crunching her back. She and Lauren had spent the morning exchanging intelligence and consolidating what they knew. She had been surprised at just how much the younger woman understood was going on and how much more she had guessed.

  The USB drive that had been sent to Petra by Frankland was still in the lining of her coat and she wished she had a means to look at it, but they had no computer access so she knew that would have to wait. There was no doubt as to its importance. But this left her with two questions. Frankland had evidently copied this intel from his own files, probably from his own computer. Who else now had that information? More importantly, he had obviously been fearful of exposure — hers and presumably his own — and that fear had been justified. Petra wondered if he had feared for his life when he’d sent her the drive, or whether he had just been afraid that her operation had been compromised. It would be typical of Frankland that his strategy was to give her the intel, then leave it up to her to decide what action should be taken to keep herself safe. Frankland was no fool. Surely had he suspected that someone might break into his house, torture him, kill him, he would have sought sanctuary elsewhere.

  No, she decided. He had been wary, had wanted her to have the USB drive as insurance. “Forewarned is forearmed” had always been Frankland’s motto. So he had known that something was wrong, that intelligence was leaking from somewhere to the wrong people, but he had not yet been so anxious that he’d felt personally threatened or even that he should tell her to withdraw immediately.

  So what had changed?

  “Henderson,” Petra said aloud.

  Henderson had let something slip, something that allowed the Perrins to put everything together. Led them straight to Frankland and straight to me.

  Lauren looked up when she had spoken. She had been studying the notes that now spread across both beds. She glanced at her watch. “News time soon,” she said. She slid off the bed and went to look out of the window. The view was a line of bushes and a corner of the car park. And rain, really heavy rain. “You think he’ll call this afternoon?”

  Clarke. She meant Clarke, of course. She’s scared and she’s bored, Petra thought, that odd combination of feelings that after a time became unbearable. That often caused individuals who should have known better to precipitate action, just so they could feel more in control. Petra glared at her phone, willing it to do something. She’d seen it happen in her military days. She was impressed by how much self-control Lauren was actually exhibiting.

  The phone rang. Petra snatched it up and answered on the second ring. Across the room, she could see Lauren tense. Then she came over to listen to the call. Clarke rang off moments later and Lauren and Petra immediately logged on to the internet, scanning news sites.

  “Fuck
,” Lauren said.

  “Pack all our notes, fold them small so they fit in your bag, coat lining, any non-obvious place and then we’re out of here.”

  “Should we wait for him?” Lauren asked, but she was already sorting their possessions ready for departure. She too would rather be on the move.

  “We need to get off the motorway, get away from prying eyes, then I’ll let him know where he can collect us from. We’ll follow him. I’m not losing the car.”

  Lauren nodded. She was stuffing papers into her bag. She stopped. She shoved one of the beds aside and studied the floor beneath.

  “Concrete floor,” Petra said. But Lauren’s impulse was right. The notes they had made, the information they had pooled, they should protect that. Petra was willing to believe that Clarke was trustworthy, but beyond that . . .

  The beds had a divan base lifted from the floor by small pads. Lauren slid her fingers beneath the bed. The underside had fabric stretched across the framework and stapled into place. Using the end of the car key, she worked one of the staples loose and created a gap through which everything could be posted. Then she moved the bed back into place. She pulled on her coat, checked the pockets, the lining. Money, phone, gun, all in place. Thank the lord for padded coats and all that could be concealed in them. Then they were back in Petra’s little hatchback and on their way.

  Chapter 45

  The newly arranged safe house was on the edge of a modern, part-built estate, set apart from the rest and concealed behind a high fence at the end of a cul-de-sac. They could see as they drove up that it backed onto an abandoned industrial space. Cranes and demolition equipment were parked beside what looked like old factory. Eventually this house would be at the heart of the site but for now, it felt almost isolated.

  A few families had moved into the houses on the other side of the estate, close to the show homes and the main road, but deeper in, the roads had not yet been made up and the next batch of homes scheduled for sale was not due on the market until well into the new year.