She took a state-of-the-art bug finder she’d bought on the internet a few months earlier from one of the bedroom drawers and proceeded to walk the whole house with it. Only when she was convinced that there was no device anywhere did she finally return to the bedroom.
‘Well, Ray,’ she said, ‘I’ll give you this. It’s never boring with you around.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ he said with a grin. ‘But you’ll be pleased to know I’m going to leave in a couple of hours, as soon as the coast’s well clear.’
‘They may have this place under surveillance.’
‘Would they? They’ve searched the house so they must be pretty certain I’m not here. I suppose it’s possible they might put you under surveillance. But that could work to our advantage. If you drive off somewhere, you’ll draw any surveillance team with you. Then I can make my move.’
‘But where are you going to go? You’re on foot.’
‘I think I might have someone who can help.’
Tina frowned. ‘Who?’
‘Someone who owes me a big favour.’
19
As Mike Bolt walked back to the car with Mo along the village high street, he passed the pub where a long time ago he and Tina had spent some happy evenings. He didn’t miss her. It hadn’t been a smooth relationship. Mike knew he wasn’t easy to be with, and Tina sure as hell wasn’t either. But they’d had some good times, and their relationship had ended amicably, and it was for those reasons that he still cared about her. He genuinely wanted her to be innocent of any wrongdoing where Ray Mason was concerned, and he was relieved she hadn’t been harbouring him. However, he also knew Tina was a woman who was prepared to risk everything in the pursuit of justice, and this had always made her dangerous and unpredictable.
He looked at his watch. It was a quarter to ten and he’d been at work for three hours already. If the Kalaman killing hadn’t occurred last night, he would have been enjoying a day out in Brighton with his new wife, Leanne, something they’d both been looking forward to. He’d be glad when all this was over and he was retired, which if all went well was going to be less than a year away.
‘So what do you think, boss?’ said Mo. ‘Has she been in touch with him?’
Bolt looked at him. ‘God knows. To be honest, Tina could be right. Ray Mason may have nothing to do with this. For all we know, he was abducted from that prison van by people who then killed him. He had enough enemies.’
‘We’ve got a witness sighting of a man matching his description leaving the scene,’ said Mo.
‘An anonymous one. That raises more questions than it does answers.’
‘What about Andy Reeves’ testimony?’
They’d interviewed the man who’d briefly been taken hostage in his apartment by Kalaman’s killer, and whose car the killer had stolen, only an hour earlier. Although the killer’s face had been concealed, he fitted the overall description of Mason, and when they’d played Reeves an audio clip of Mason’s voice they’d found from a police press conference several years ago, he’d claimed to be 90 per cent sure that the man in the clip was the same one who’d held him hostage. He’d also described his assailant as calm, professional, and even courteous, and that fitted with what Bolt knew of Mason too.
‘No, you’re right,’ said Bolt. ‘On balance, I think Mason’s still alive, and I think it was him who carried out the killing last night.’
Mo gave him a sidelong smile. ‘I know I’m right, boss. Listen, I don’t want to speak out of turn, because you know I respect you more than anyone, but don’t go soft on Tina because of your past.’
‘I won’t,’ he said, resentful of Mo for pointing out the obvious. ‘But the fact remains Mason wasn’t at Tina’s house just now.’
‘That’s true, but you know as well as I do that he’s been getting help from somewhere, otherwise we’d have found him by now. And he and Tina have got history, you can’t deny that. I think it’s worth putting surveillance on her, just in case she leads us to him.’
‘She’d spot it a mile off.’
‘Not if it was done properly.’
‘I’ll have a word with the boss,’ said Bolt, thinking it somehow ironic that he and Mo now worked for Sheryl Trinder, the woman at the NCA who up until a little over a year ago had been Ray Mason’s boss.
They were back at the car now and Bolt was just about to get in when his phone rang.
It was DCI Kay Searle of Westminster’s Murder Investigation Team, who were assisting the NCA with the Kalaman murder. Bolt had been talking to her down at the crime scene a couple of hours earlier, which meant there had to have been some development.
And there had. ‘We’ve got a CCTV image of a possible suspect leaving Andy Reeves’ apartment building last night just after the reported time of the killings. I’m looking at it now, and it’s good quality. Something else too – the man in it might be bald and bearded but it looks one hell of a lot like Ray Mason.’
20
Tina needed to know whether or not Mike and his team were keeping her under surveillance, and there was only one way to do that.
An hour after Mike and Mo
