She thought about calling out but knew it would do no good. She shut her eyes and tried to think of something else, knowing that the longer they left her here, the better her chances of being rescued.
And then, after she’d been in the room for what must have been at least an hour, maybe even longer, she heard the outside door shut and the sound of muffled voices again.
There was a pause. Tina took a deep breath, steadying herself as the fear came seeping back. Then the door to the room she was in opened and someone came inside. She could just about make out footsteps coming closer, so light she thought she might even be imagining it.
Except she could feel a presence. Closer now. Right beside her.
‘Hello Tina,’ whispered a voice in her ear, and her blood ran cold.
Because the presence of the woman Ray called The Wraith meant only one thing. She wasn’t getting out of here alive.
46
It was 4.29 p.m. Exactly ninety-nine minutes since Mike Bolt had received Tina’s frantic call, and he and Mo were now in the middle of Tottenham, driving on a quiet residential road just north of Lordship Lane, with Bolt behind the wheel.
The ANPR cameras had tracked the car the kidnappers had used to abduct Tina along the M25 heading clockwise, then down the A10 into north London, before it turned left onto the A406. It had last been picked up sixty-four minutes ago by a camera going south on the Tottenham High Road, so it was likely to be parked up somewhere close by.
Even in an area as busy as Tottenham, which was very well covered by ANPR cameras, this meant it could still be anywhere in a heavily populated warren of streets covering as much as a square mile, which might not have been quite the proverbial needle in a haystack, but was still going to be a serious challenge. Because of the seriousness of the offence, and the fact that the perpetrators were likely to be armed, Bolt had managed to acquire the assistance of four armed response vehicles, an armed surveillance unit, and half a dozen other marked and unmarked patrol cars to aid in the search.
By rights, Bolt and Mo shouldn’t have been there. They both had more than enough to do back at HQ. The French police had arrived at the Brennans’ house in France and found no sign of Mason, which was a setback, and now a lawyer representing Steve Brennan had called Bolt and arranged for them both to arrive at NCA HQ at 6.30 p.m. for a formal interview. But there was no way Bolt was going to stop searching for Tina. Whatever her failings – and, Jesus, she had plenty of them – she was still a former cop, a former lover, and a former friend of his, and that meant he felt duty-bound to help her. DCS Trinder hadn’t been keen but, given that Tina was a person of interest to the NCA in the Ray Mason case, it was in Trinder’s and the NCA’s interests to get Tina back unharmed.
The radio crackled into life. It was HQ. ‘Alpha One to all vehicles. We’ve got movement on suspect car. Just been picked up on camera going west on Creighton Road at the junction with White Hart Lane. Hard stop has been authorized. Repeat. Hard stop has been authorized.’
There was a clatter of reaction on the radio from the other cars, several of which were in the immediate vicinity, as they now converged on the suspect car.
Bolt felt the adrenalin surge through him as he took a quick look at the satnav, got their bearings, and made a rapid three-point turn before accelerating north towards Creighton Road.
The chatter over the radio was coming thick and fast. Within the space of a minute, Tango 3, one of the ARVs, had got a visual on the suspect car, and was following at a distance of about fifty metres. Seconds after that, a second ARV announced that it had just turned onto Creighton Road, ahead of the suspect car, and now had it in sight in its rear-view mirror.
‘This is Tango 4. Two male suspects in front of vehicle,’ the driver intoned, his tone calm but tense. ‘We are unmarked so they haven’t picked us up, but they are now directly behind us. We are ready to move. Over.’
‘Tango 3 to Tango 4. We have car between us and are ready to move when you are.’
‘Tango 4. We’re ready. Go, go, go!’
Bolt heard the sound of car doors slamming and yells of ‘Armed police!’ over the radio, and his hands gripped the wheel tightly as he pulled onto Creighton Road, cutting up a car that immediately let rip on the horn. Bolt ignored it, annoyed by the fact that the pool car he was driving didn’t have a flashing light, which would automatically have given him right of way. Up ahead, he could see the marked ARV parked up in the road with its own lights flashing, the traffic already backing up behind it.
Knowing he wouldn’t get any closer, he pulled the car up on the pavement, threw on the hazards, and jumped out, followed more cautiously by Mo.
A total of six officers – three in plainclothes and wearing black police baseball caps, and three in full uniform – had the two suspects, both white males and already cuffed, lined up against the car at gunpoint, while a handful of passers-by stopped and stared. The boot was already open and one of the cops was looking inside.
Bolt felt the tension shooting through him, fearful that Tina was in the boot, already feeling his anger growing from somewhere deep within. As he ran, he touched the handle of the Glock 26 pistol in his shoulder holster, wanting
