She wondered what Gentleman was doing, and phoned the mobile she'd left behind his sofa, prefixing the number with 141, so that Gentleman wouldn't be able to trace the call back to her own mobile on the off-chance he discovered the handset before she had a chance to retrieve it. It auto-answered and went to open mike. She could hear movement inside the apartment. It sounded like he was pacing up and down, but the reception wasn't very good. He was definitely panicking, and it crossed her mind to knock on his door, show him her warrant card and wait to hear what he had to say. But there was no guarantee that he could help locate Jenny, or even ID the people who'd taken her.

So, sweating in the heat of the day, Tina sat in her car and pondered her next move while listening to Gentleman as he moved about in his apartment. He occasionally let slip an angry muffled curse, but soon she grew bored of listening to nothing and ended the call. The street was deadly quiet, only the occasional car and pedestrian appearing, and after a while she shut her eyes and dozed off.

She was woken with a start by the rumble of an engine, and as she opened her eyes she saw a dark blue Toyota Land Cruiser with blacked-out windows drive slowly past before pulling up on the other side of the road about twenty yards up from Gentleman's place.

A white man in dark glasses and a baseball cap got out the passenger side and took the briefest of glances up and down the street. The day was warm, mid-twenties and humid, yet he was still wearing a jacket, and even from twenty yards away Tina could see that the pale, almost translucent skin of his face was stretched tight from plastic surgery.

It was the kidnapper who'd threatened Rob.

She grabbed her Nikon camera from the seat beside her and started taking pictures. She managed to get several good ones in profile before the suspect turned and started walking in the direction of Gentleman's flat. She turned her attention to the Land Cruiser, getting a shot of its number plate as the driver accelerated away and disappeared under the railway bridge.

The suspect walked up to Gentleman's building, paused for just one second, and then went directly inside.

Tina tensed, listening. A part of her was pleased. She'd got a photo of one of the kidnappers, and given the way he looked it shouldn't be too hard to put a name to him. But another part of her was extremely concerned, because the manner of his arrival, and his demeanour and appearance, suggested he wasn't here to bolster Gentleman's morale.

She looked at her watch, made a mental note of the time – 2.45 – and phoned the mobile in the flat again, listening as it was auto-answered at the other end.

For the first few seconds there was silence. Then she heard a faint knock on the door, and the sound of footfalls. Gentleman said 'Who is it?' but Tina couldn't hear any reply. There was the sound of the door being unlocked, then Gentleman said something else, but this time it was unintelligible.

And then nothing. Not a sound for at least ten seconds. She thought she heard the door closing again, but couldn't be sure.

Tina frowned. Keeping the phone to her ear, she picked up the Nikon with her free hand.

Thirty seconds passed before she heard the deep engine rumble of the Land Cruiser. She watched in her wing mirror as it drove by her for a second time, heading back in the direction of the railway bridge. As the vehicle reached Gentleman's building, the driver slowed. A second later, the man in the cap and sunglasses walked out the front door.

Tina flinched. He was alone. Where the hell was Gentleman?

She dropped the phone, zoomed in with the Nikon and got off a couple more shots as he opened the passenger door, keeping his head down. As the Land Cruiser pulled away for a second time, Tina picked up the phone again and heard nothing but silence coming from Gentleman's apartment. She began to get an ominous feeling in the pit of her stomach.

She looked up at the second-floor windows. Nothing was moving up there. Cursing, she called Gentleman's landline. It rang and rang, finally going to message. She looked up his mobile number in her notebook and called that. It went to message too.

Either he was no longer at home or, far more likely, he was dead. Tina knew she'd miscalculated. If Gentleman had been killed, there was no way of avoiding the fact that it was her fault, because she was the one who'd set events in motion. 'Shit,' she whispered, 'what have I done?' She knew the answer: she'd acted like an amateur, and now the repercussions were going to be enormous.

She was still professional enough to know that she had some extremely valuable evidence in her possession, however. She pulled her laptop from under the passenger seat, plugged the camera into it, and watched as the photos she'd just taken downloaded. She then opened up her email account and sent the photos to Rob Fallon's and Mike Bolt's email addresses with the same message for both – Do you recognize this man? – before signing out and replacing the laptop under the seat.

There was no point phoning Bolt – she'd left enough messages for him already – so she called Fallon instead, asking him where he was.

'In the West End, looking for a hotel room. What's happening?'

'I'll give you a full briefing later. In the meantime, get into your email account. I've just sent you some photos. Download them on to a USB stick but don't show them to anyone until you hear from me. Understand?'

'Sure,' answered Fallon. He started to say something else but Tina said she'd phone him in an hour, and ended the call.

She stretched in her seat and sighed. What the hell was she going to do now?

Then the passenger door opened and the man in the cap and sunglasses climbed inside, holding a short-barrelled pistol with a silencer attached. 'Start driving now,' he said calmly, 'or you're dead.'

Twenty-seven

Mike Bolt was shattered. He hated inter-departmental meetings at the best of times, but when they dragged on and on, as this one with the people from the Financial Intelligence Unit had, they truly pissed him off. He, Mo Khan, his own boss, Big Barry Freud, and three other members of the team had gone into the meeting room at half past ten that morning and were only just emerging now, almost four and a half hours later, at five to three. Lunch had been sandwiches that tasted of plastic, eaten at the table while various people had continued to drone on, and now Bolt's back was aching badly and he was still hungry.

'Is it just me,' he asked Mo as they walked back to the team office, 'or are we in exactly the same place with Paul Wise as we were four hours ago?'

'I don't know,' answered Mo, sounding dazed. 'I'm too tired to think. But I wouldn't bet on an arrest being imminent.'

Bolt grunted, switching his phone off silent. 'My sentiments exactly.'

The meeting had been a hugely detailed rehash of what was in the report. There'd been the usual promises of greater cooperation between the various departments within SOCA, but aside from a few recommendations from the FIU people, who were going to put a degree of pressure on the various people involved in converting Paul Wise's money from dirty to clean, there was still no plan for bringing him to justice, or even curtailing his activities.

As far as Bolt was concerned, there were way too many meetings in SOCA and it was slowing them all down. Not for the first time in these past few months he hankered for a return to the good old days when he was part of the Met's Flying Squad, facing the comparatively straightforward task of chasing down armed robbers. At least you knew where you were with them.

The phone bleeped and he saw he had three messages, all from Tina Boyd. He wondered what was so urgent that she'd called that many times. As he listened to them, he realized that there had clearly been some major developments in the kidnap case she'd spoken to him about the previous day. Still, he was surprised she wanted to talk to him about it rather than her bosses at Islington CID.