If they wanted to pay her three quarters of a million now it could only mean one target. Ray Mason.
Jane couldn’t resist a small chuckle. The Kalamans clearly didn’t have a clue that it was Alastair Sheridan who had ordered their boss’s murder, and that he’d already hired Jane to sort out the mess. But then, why should they? What it meant for her, though, was a double payday. If she played this right, she could kill Mason and collect payment both from Sheridan and the Kalamans. She was looking at well over a million dollars. She’d have to kill at least a dozen individual spouses for that kind of money, and would probably have to wait years for that number of jobs to come along. This way, she could be completely retired within the next few weeks.
It was too tempting a possibility to turn down, and even though she didn’t have a clue where Mason was, she knew that with the combined resources of the Kalamans and Alastair Sheridan hunting him down, he wasn’t going to be that hard to find.
‘I’ll be in London tomorrow morning,’ she wrote, not wanting to let DWolf know she was already in the country, in case it aroused suspicions. ‘Consider me in. I’ll need clean tools and a down payment.’
She had to wait less than five minutes before she received a reply: ‘Good. Both are available. Call this number as soon as you arrive.’
She wrote down the number using the hotel stationery, shut down the laptop, and finished off the wine.
She was back in the game.
33
Tina and her lawyer, Arley Dale, were sitting next to each other in an interview room at NCA HQ, facing a very pissed-off-looking Mike Bolt across the desk, while Mo Khan sat next to him, his own face making little attempt to hide the contempt he felt for Tina. It was 11.45 p.m. but she was feeling wide awake.
Arley had once been a high-ranking commander in the Met and been groomed for the top job of commissioner. Then one day, seven years earlier, when she’d been forty-five years old, her life had been torn apart. Her husband had been murdered and her two teenage children abducted and used as pawns to blackmail her by a terrorist group. It had been Tina who’d managed to get the children back safely, killing their captor in the process, but unfortunately, before that happened, the terrorists had forced Arley to reveal secrets that had resulted in a number of police officers being killed, and because of this she’d spent the next four years of her life in prison where she’d spent the time studying for a law degree, and on her release had started a small but successful legal practice.
She and Tina weren’t close, but they’d remained in touch, and when Tina had called on her for help earlier, Arley hadn’t hesitated to offer her assistance.
The air in the interview room was warm and close as Bolt exhaled loudly and ran a hand through his closely cropped hair. He was dressed in the same clothes he’d been in when he’d come to see Tina fourteen hours earlier so he had clearly had a long day. Weirdly, it made her feel sorry for him.
‘Where’s Ray Mason?’ he asked her now.
She met his gaze with confidence. ‘I told you both this morning, I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since before his arrest last year.’
He and Mo exchanged noncommittal glances.
‘Where were you last night between nine p.m. and midnight?’
‘What’s this got to do with anything, DI Bolt?’ asked Arley. Her tone was firm but not confrontational. ‘Tina’s come in tonight to give you her witness statement regarding the murder of her neighbour, Mrs Mary West.’
‘Tina’s come here tonight because she was arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender,’ said Mo.
‘Which is a claim she completely denies, and which you have, as far as we can see, absolutely no evidence to back up.’
‘Listen,’ said Bolt, ‘you’re both former career police officers, so why don’t you just cooperate and answer the questions as they’re put to you?’
Tina sighed. ‘Last night, I went for a drive. I needed to think. I’ve been having a tough time of it recently.’
Bolt looked exasperated. ‘Come on, Tina. Your car was picked up on CCTV less than a mile from where the car used in the Kalaman hit was abandoned.’
‘One point six miles to be precise,’ said Arley, ‘and you’re not trying to accuse her of that, are you?’
‘No,’ said Mo. ‘But we believe Ray Mason was responsible for it, and we believe you picked him up after he abandoned his car. There were also reports of shots being fired.’
‘But I don’t know anything about it,’ said Tina. ‘You’ve tested my hands for gunshot residue, it’ll show there was none.’ She was well aware, just as Bolt and Mo were, and indeed Arley, that gunshot residue only stays on the skin for a maximum of six hours.
‘We’re not saying you fired the shots,’ said Mo. ‘But we believe you were there.’
‘Well, I wasn’t.’
‘Tina,’ said Bolt, doing little to hide his exasperation, ‘if you’re lying, you’re going to be in a lot more trouble than if you tell us the truth now, and help us find Mason. As you know, we’re searching your car and your house for DNA samples, so if he has been with you, we’ll know.’
‘I can’t help you because I don’t know where he is,’ said Tina, but she knew she was on much shakier ground here. She’d got the car valeted on the way home from London earlier that evening, and she’d got Ray to wash the bed sheets, but if they searched
