Deadline

Mo nodded. 'OK, boss, but only as long as it doesn't. If it looks like the pressure's getting too much . . .'

'It won't. I promise.'

'But if it does, I'm going to have to say something. You understand that, don't you?'

'Yeah, I understand that.'

Bolt started to turn the key in the ignition, but Mo's next words stopped him dead.

'You were in the Flying Squad when you were seeing Andrea, weren't you?'

Although there was nothing accusatory in the tone, the meaning was clear. The Flying Squad dealt with armed robberies. The woman Bolt had been having an affair with was also sleeping with an armed robber. The potential for corruption was obvious, and it wasn't as if the Flying Squad hadn't had its fair share of corruption problems in the past. Bolt wasn't offended, but it hurt him that his friend had felt the need to ask the question.

'As soon as I found out she was seeing Galante, I finished it,' he said firmly.

'Good. That's all I wanted to know.'

There was another awkward silence. Bolt had crossed the line with Mo once before, two years earlier, and the implicit trust that had always existed between them had come under a lot of strain. It felt like something similar was happening again.

'Come on,' he said, starting the engine, 'let's go.'

Twenty-six

Home for Mike Bolt was a spacious studio apartment on the third floor of a converted warehouse in Clerkenwell, one of the quietest places in central London, and not far from where he'd first been based as a uniformed cop. He'd been there for four years now, having moved in the year after his wife's death, and ordinarily he'd never have been able to afford a place one quarter of the size on his SOCA salary, but the rent he paid was minimal. The reason for this was that it belonged to a wealthy Ukrainian businessman, Ivan Stanevic, whom Bolt had helped out years before in his National Crime Squad days.

The case was remarkably similar to the one he was involved in now. Stanevic's twelve-year-old daughter Olga had been abducted from the street by business rivals of her father's, and Bolt had led the team tasked with getting her back. On that occasion it hadn't taken long to find out who they were dealing with and consequently where Olga was being held. It was Bolt who'd personally negotiated her release with the kidnappers, and she'd been freed unharmed, for which her father had been eternally grateful. It was the only other kidnap case he'd ever been involved with, and the grim irony wasn't lost on him as he stepped inside his apartment and shut the door behind him.

Usually he loved this place. It was hard not to love it since it had been refurbished with absolutely no expense spared. The floors were polished teak; the high, angular ceiling was crisscrossed with mighty timber beams carefully restored to their former glory; but the piece de resistance was the way the old windows had been knocked out and replaced by a huge strip of floor-to-ceiling tinted glass that ran the entire length of one side of the apartment, facing east out on to the bright lights of London, with the high towers of the Barbican rising up behind the buildings opposite. Only the night before he'd sat in his armchair with a glass of 2005 Cotes du Rhone staring out across the city while an old Herbie Hancock CD played on the stereo, feeling quietly satisfied that the money laundering case had been brought to a successful conclusion, and looking forward to a weekend away with Jenny Byfleet. The world then had seemed a good, decent place, and for the first time in a while he'd actually felt contented. And all the time the clock was counting down to when it would all go suddenly and horribly wrong. Just like it had that night five years ago when he and Mikaela waved goodbye to the friends they'd spent the evening with, got into his car and driven off to their doom.

It had just turned eight o'clock as Bolt kicked off his shoes and poured the remainder of the previous night's Cotes du Rhone into an oversized wine glass, taking a big slug and trying hard to relax. He'd phoned Jenny on the way home and, trying to sound as casual as possible, had apologized for the fact that he was going to have to postpone. She'd asked if he wanted to rearrange, and he'd said he'd get back to her, hearing her disappointment down the other end of the line as he'd hung up. That was probably it for the two of them, but he was past caring about that. All he could think about was the case, about how Andrea had come back into his life and, even after all these years, managed once again to turn everything upside down for him.

He sat down in his armchair, but almost immediately stood up again. It didn't feel right resting his legs. Not with his mind going like the clappers. Instead he paced the room, thinking about what Mo had said about Andrea not being entirely truthful, and holding something back. He remembered Isobel Wheeler's words: Watch her. And most of all he thought back to his own experience with Andrea, and of how one night fifteen years ago, a mere eight weeks into their relationship, she'd dropped such a bombshell that it had ended everything between them with a bang that echoed even now.

He recalled the night perfectly. It was in the days when mobile phones were still the size of house bricks, and long before Bolt had taken to carrying one as a matter of course. He'd arrived home after a few drinks with a couple of Flying Squad buddies to find that he had a message from Andrea on his answerphone, asking him to call her urgently if he received the message before 10.30, giving him a number he didn't recognize, and adding that under no circumstances was he to call the number after that time. If she didn't hear from him before then, she'd call back later when she got a chance. The message had been left at twenty to ten, just fifteen minutes earlier, and Andrea had sounded uncharacteristically scared. He'd called her back immediately, and she'd picked up on the first ring, obviously waiting for the call.

'Mike, thank God you've called. I don't know how to tell you this.'

'Whatever it is, you can talk to me about it, OK? I can help.'

She took a deep breath and spoke quietly. 'There's going to be an armed robbery. Tomorrow morning, between ten and ten thirty. A police van carrying a load of cocaine for incineration from Lewisham Nick to Orpington.'

The shock of her announcement left Bolt cold.

'How do you know about this, Andrea?' he asked.

'I just do,' she said unconvincingly.