Stealing People Read Online Free Page A

M25. The operation had taken three and a half minutes.
     
    By midday, DCS Oscar Hines, the new head of the Metropolitan Police’s Kidnap and Special Investigations Unit, had made all his decisions. He had told no one. Since his appointment, which had come with the news that DCS Peter Makepeace was now the new head of the Organised Crime Command, he’d realised that the offices were rife with rumours of cuts and redundancies. Under those circumstances nobody liked to see their new boss working in total secrecy on new plans.
    He looked through the numbers on his contact list and made his first call of the day to DI Mercy Danquah, who was away giving a course on Special Investigations techniques.
    ‘This is DCS Oscar Hines,’ he said.
    ‘Hello, sir. How can I help you?’ said Mercy tentatively.
    ‘I’d like you to come back to the office and present yourself here first thing tomorrow morning.’
    ‘Can I ask what it’s about, sir?’ she said. ‘As you know, I’m giving a course here. I can’t just walk out. Something has to be said.’
    ‘You don’t have to worry about that. I’ll see to everything,’ said Hines. ‘Just make sure you’re here tomorrow morning. Thank you. Goodbye.’
    Mercy clicked off her phone and looked around the people sitting with her in the canteen. They all stared back, some with food on the way to their mouths.
    ‘Got to go,’ she said, standing. ‘Sorry.’
    She went into the lobby and out into the rain, where she stood under the canopy of the entrance and made a phone call to her lover, Marcus Alleyne.
    ‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘What are you doing tonight?’
    ‘It sounds like I might be doing something with you, whereas I had been thinking of having a quiet night in on my own,’ he said. ‘You all right, Mercy?’
    ‘No, I’m all wrong,’ she said. ‘I’m booking a table and we’re going out to dinner. You come round to mine and we’ll catch a cab. We are drinking tonight.’
    ‘You’re sounding very … purposeful, Mercy.’
    ‘This might be the last time we go out for quite a while,’ she said.
    ‘And why’s that?’
    ‘I think I’m about to lose my job.’
     

 
     
     
     
     
    3
     
     
     
    17.00, 15 January 2014
    LOST Foundation offices, Jacob’s Well Mews, London W1
     
     
    ‘I want you to find my father,’ she said, in a deep voice with a little croak in it, sexy.
    ‘How long ago did he disappear?’ asked Boxer.
    ‘Three days,’ she said, sitting back in the white leather chair.
    ‘Only three days,’ said Boxer. ‘You know the LOST Foundation doesn’t—’
    ‘Yeah, I know it doesn’t.’
    ‘So what are you doing here, Siobhan?’ asked Boxer. ‘The nearest police station is where you want to be.’
    ‘I don’t want to go to the police.’
    ‘Any reason?’
    ‘I know my father wouldn’t want them – or anybody else – nosing around in his affairs.’
    Boxer leaned back from the bare table in the initial meeting room: no phones, no computers, no interruptions for the families they saw there. The young woman stared at him. Her broad shoulders relaxed inside a pricey grey leather jacket with oversized fur collar and zips going every which way. Her elbows rested on the arms of the chair with strong hands hanging down over a high-waisted long black leather pencil skirt, which had ridden up to show muscular calves enclosed by black ribbed tights. She crossed her legs with no protest from the leather.
    ‘Why come to me?’ he asked, trying to work out how old she was, the expensive clothes going a long way to disguising her youth.
    ‘I was advised.’
    ‘Who by?’
    Silence. Her foot started nodding with her thoughts.
    ‘Going to give me a name?’ asked Boxer.
    ‘That’s my business,’ she said.
    ‘Just out of interest, where are you from?’
    ‘Not relevant.’
    ‘Not strictly, I know. It just helps me … culturally. You sound English but with a slight American accent and you have the look of a South or Central