We drove back in silence. For a while I shut my eyes, but I didn't sleep. It was just easier than talking to DS Boyd. I knew she didn't believe me, and I could understand her scepticism, but it was an awful feeling to have witnessed a violent crime and know that a young woman's life was in danger yet have no one take you seriously.
Traffic on the road was sparse and it was barely twenty minutes later when Tina turned into my street.
'Whereabouts is your house?'
'Anywhere round here's fine,' I said, not wanting her to see my crappy little pad after Jenny's flashy apartment.
She pulled in a few doors down from Ramon's place and yawned. 'Get some sleep, Mr Fallon. And when you get up tomorrow have a good long shower. You're not smelling your best.'
I nodded. 'Thanks for the lift, and please, don't give up on this. There's a young woman missing. If we don't do something…'
'I'll make enquiries, I promise.'
'Can I take your number? Please. Just in case I think of anything else.'
She didn't look too happy but produced a business card from her handbag and handed it to me. 'I don't want you to take this as an excuse to keep calling me, Mr Fallon, because it won't help me locate Jenny. And I'm off duty in a couple of hours and I'll be sleeping. Understand?'
'Sure, thanks.'
Reluctantly, I got out of the car and stood in the darkness. DS Boyd pulled away with a small wave and her car quickly disappeared down the street, leaving me alone.
The night was dark and cool, and for a few minutes I stayed where I was. I thought about going to Ramon's place and asking if I could stay there but there were no lights on in his flat and I really didn't want to have to recount what had happened to anyone else and endure their sceptical stares. So I slowly headed down the street.
Home for me was a rented one-bed ground-floor flat in one of the 1950s terraced houses that lined both sides of the road. I'd been there over a year but had never really got used to it. It was small and characterless, and I'd spent far too many lonely hours in it.
Approaching the front door now, I felt the tension rising in me, knowing it was possible that Jenny's kidnappers had already used the information in my wallet to find out where I lived. I looked over my shoulder but the street was silent. I checked the locks on the door but they were intact. Taking a deep breath, I opened the door and stepped inside.
That night at least there was no one waiting for me. I switched on the light and went through to the kitchen, where I poured myself a glass of water and drank it down in one. For the first time that night I noticed how awful I smelled and it amazed me that Tina had volunteered to drive me home. Her car must have reeked, yet she hadn't made a fuss. She struck me as a good-hearted person, even though she had an impressive line in cutting looks, and a good detective as well. There was an air of quiet confidence about her which I liked, and I really hoped she'd do something with this investigation.
I looked at the clock on the wall. It had just turned half past three. I needed my bed. But there was still something I could do before I gave up on Jenny for the night. Something that might shed some light on events.
Even though I really didn't want to have to do it, I located the landline receiver and, taking a deep breath, dialled one of the few telephone numbers I knew by heart.
Six
Dom Moynihan and I had been friends since school. After university, when I was temporarily unemployed, he'd helped get me my first job in the City, at the stockbrokers where he was working; and when, years later, my marriage had finally broke up and I'd returned to London, bitter and defeated, it was him I'd gone to for support. The thing was, Dom had always been there for me when I needed him, and although I'd always appreciated everything he'd done for me, and had told him so on many occasions, I'd never actually done any major favours in return. I would have if he'd ever needed one, but the fact that I hadn't always made me feel that I owed him, even though I knew he'd never call in the debt.
And when you owe someone, you really don't want to shit on them. Nevertheless, I picked up and put down the handset twice before finally forcing myself to make the call.
'Rob?' he groaned into the phone. 'Is that you? What's happened? You all right?'
'Yeah,' I said. 'Sort of.'
'Listen, I'm in Dubai on business. I've got a breakfast meeting in ten minutes. Let me call you back.'
'No, I need to talk to you now.'
'What's wrong?' he asked. 'Is it anything to do with Yvonne and Chloe?'
Dom, more than anyone, knew how hard I'd taken the break-up of my marriage and how much I missed the two of them. He sounded concerned, and I felt a rush of guilt so strong I almost burst into tears. But I forced myself to stay calm.
'They're fine,' I replied. 'The reason I phoned you was…It's about Jenny.'
'Jenny?'
'Jenny Brakspear. You know, your ex-girlfriend. When was the last time you saw her?'
'Christ, ages ago. Why?'
'She's a normal girl, right? She doesn't have any secrets or anything, does she?'
'Of course she's normal. Why are you asking me all this?'
I took a deep breath. 'She was kidnapped tonight. About three hours ago.'
'What? How do you know?'
'I was there.'
'Where?'
I paused before answering. 'At her apartment.'
He asked me what I'd been doing there, and then listened while I gave him a brief explanation.
'I'm really sorry, Dom. I didn't mean to do it. It just happened, you know? And when she told me that you were still trying to get back with her, that was it. I said I wasn't interested.' This was bullshit of course, but sometimes a lie causes far less harm than the truth.
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone and I waited, wondering if this meant the end of our friendship.
'Did she honestly tell you I was trying to get back with her?' he asked eventually.
'That's right, and when she said it, I told her-'
'Are you sure?'
'What do you mean?'
'Are you sure that she actually said it?'
'Of course I'm sure. It was only a few hours ago.'
'That's weird.'
'Why?'
'Because,' he replied, sounding strangely distant, 'I haven't spoken to her in at least six months.'
Seven
Unlike everyone else I'd spoken to that night, Dom didn't question my version of events, and he sounded genuinely worried about Jenny. But then, like me, he knew her personally, and I was beginning to realize what a difference that made.
He wasn't back from Dubai until Wednesday morning but said he'd do anything he could to help before then. Unfortunately, he didn't even have her mobile number any more, so I wasn't sure what he'd be able to manage from three thousand miles away. In the meantime, he told me not to give up pressing the police for action, and we agreed to talk the next day when I'd update him on where we were with things.
No mention was made of where all this left our friendship, but I knew that one way or another it was going to be affected. However, for the moment, it was going to be put aside while we tried to find out what the hell had happened to Jenny.
'I can't understand it, mate,' Dom said before he rang off. 'She's just a normal girl,' he added, using my exact description of her. 'Just like anyone else.'
Just a normal girl.
But she wasn't, was she? Jenny Brakspear was a liar. And if she'd lied about something like that, then what else had she lied about? It could have been the sort of white lie I'd just told Dom, but the thing was, I couldn't think of an innocent or beneficial reason for her telling me that he was trying to get back with her when he wasn't. Given the events of that night, something about it seemed suspicious, and I wondered what it was that Jenny had got herself involved in.
As I finally got into bed and pulled the covers over me, I was determined more than ever to find out.
Eight
DS Tina Boyd leaned back in her seat and yawned as she surveyed the morgue-like emptiness of the CID office – a drab, impersonal place littered with cheap furniture that always had that just- been-abandoned-in-an-awful-hurry look – and wondered what had happened to her career. Five years ago she'd been on the fast track to success – one of the new breed of female graduates who were destined for senior positions within the police service – the Met, if not the world, at her feet, yet here she was, stuck in the office alone at four a.m., desperate for a cigarette she wasn't allowed to smoke and a drink she wasn't allowed to drink. And with no one to talk this new case through with, because the other shift guy, DC Hunsdon, had done the sensible thing and phoned in sick with one of his all-too-regular bouts of 'the flu'.
Tina wasn't sure what to make of Rob Fallon's story. On the one hand it was truly outlandish, with no evidence at all to back it up. Yet her instincts were telling her that something wasn't right. First and foremost, he was acting too much like a man telling the truth. It was, of course, possible that he'd had some kind of episode and as a consequence did genuinely believe what he was saying, but Tina had come across plenty of mentally ill people in her ten years in law enforcement, and even though Fallon had smelled pretty appalling, which was sometimes a sign of mental illness, he just didn't fit the bill. He'd been lucid and detailed in his account, had managed to give a plausible explanation for his unfortunate odour, and his details matched the layout of Miss Brakspear's
