along the quiet residential street because as a Londoner born and bred Andrea was never complacent about the potential for street crime, even in an area as upmarket as Hampstead. Criminals moved around these days. They no longer kept to their own patches. They gravitated towards the money, and on Andrea's tree-lined avenue of grand three-storey townhouses, barely spitting distance from the Heath, there was plenty of that.
But there was nothing out of place tonight, unless you counted the fact that her house was in darkness. Andrea tried to remember if Pat had told her that he had arrangements, or whether he'd taken Emma off somewhere. She'd had a stressful day dealing with the management team of one of the five health spas she and her business partner owned. They'd taken it over a year ago and it had underperformed ever since. Now they were going to have to make redundancies, something that Andrea never liked doing, and it was up to her to decide who was for the push. She'd been mulling over who was going to have to go all the way back from Bedfordshire, and still she couldn't decide. By rights, it should be the manager. He was paid well over the odds, and since he was the one who'd presided over the mess the spa was now in, it appealed to Andrea's sense of justice to give him the boot; but with no one to replace him, that was looking less and less viable. Better the devil you know, and all that.
Andrea decided to worry about it tomorrow. For now, she needed a long, slow glass of Sancerre and a relaxing cigarette. Not the healthiest of options, but a woman needs some pleasures in life, especially when she worked as hard as she did.
She pressed the card key against the pressure pad on the security system and stepped through the gap as the gate slid open smoothly. As always when she entered her front garden and left the outside world behind her, she experienced a familiar sense of relief and pleasure. Sheltered by a high brick wall, the garden was a riot of colour, courtesy of the eight hundred quid a month she paid to the gardening company responsible for making it look like something from the front cover of a magazine.
She breathed in the thick, heady smell of jasmine and honeysuckle, relaxing already as she opened the front door and deactivated the alarm.
Then the phone rang.
It was her mobile. She reached into her limited edition Fendi Spy Bag and fished it out. The ringtone was 'I Will Survive', Gloria Gaynor's classic anthem of feminine defiance. It was only later that she realized how much grim irony there was in this.
The screen said 'Anonymous Call', and though she never liked answering her phone to anyone she couldn't identify, she also knew that it was possible it was business, even at this hour, and Andrea never said no to business, particularly when the market was as tough as it was at the moment. As she stepped into her empty hallway she put the phone to her ear and said, 'Hello, Andrea Devern.'
'We have your daughter.'
The words were delivered in a high-pitched, artificial voice which sounded vaguely like a man impersonating a woman.
At first she thought she'd misheard, but in the slow, heavy silence that followed, the realization came upon her like an approaching wave.
'What? What do you mean?'
'We have your daughter,' repeated the caller, and now Andrea could tell that he was using something to disguise his voice. 'She's not there, is she? Look around. Can you see her?' His tone was vaguely mocking.
Andrea looked around. The hallway was bathed in gloom, the rooms leading off it silent. There was no one there. She felt a rising sense of helpless panic, and fought to keep herself calm.
'You can't see her, can you? That's because we have her, Andrea. And if you ever want to see her again, you'll do exactly as you're told.'
Andrea felt faint. Needing some kind of support, she leaned back against the front door, her movement clicking it shut. Keep calm, she told herself. For God's sake, keep calm. If they're phoning you, then it's got to be a good sign. Surely?
'What do you want?' she whispered, her whole body tensing as she waited for the answer.
'Half a million pounds in cash.'
'I haven't got that sort of money.'
'Yes, you have. And you're going to get hold of it for us as well. You've got exactly forty-eight hours.'
'Please, I'm going to need longer than that.'
'There's no compromise. You have to get us that money.'
Andrea began to shake. She couldn't believe this was happening. One minute she'd been thinking about winding down after her meeting, the next she was plunged into a crisis involving the most precious person in the world to her: Emma, her only daughter. She exhaled slowly. It was still possible this was some kind of hoax.
'How do I know you're not lying?' she asked.
'Do you want to hear your daughter scream?' replied the caller matter-of-factly.
Oh, Jesus, no.
'Please, for God's sake, don't do anything to her. Please.'
'Then do exactly as we say, and don't ask stupid questions.'
'She's fourteen years old, for Christ's sake! What sort of animal are you?'
'One who doesn't care,' he snapped. 'Do you understand that? I don't give a toss.' His tone became more businesslike. 'So listen closely. It's ten to nine now. At nine o'clock on Thursday, in forty-eight hours' time, you're going to receive a phone call on your landline. At that point you'll have the half a million ready in used notes, denominations of fifties and twenties. Do you understand that?'
Andrea cleared her throat. 'Yes,' she said.
'You'll be told where and when to deliver it. As soon as we've received it, you get her back.'
