Bailey closed her eyes and swallowed. It felt like she was trying to swallow a lump of concrete. She silently tried to work out if Nancy was bluffing or not.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ said Nancy nastily.

‘I don’t believe you,’ replied Bailey.

‘What you’re going to do,’ said Nancy, ‘is you’re going to come to our Gravesend building development. Tonight. At ten o’clock. And you’re going to come alone. No surveillance. No back-up. No wire. No nothing. We’ll be watching closely and if we get the slightest sniff of bacon, we’ll kill her immediately.’

Bailey looked at her watch. It was 7.45 p.m. She had just over two hours. That wasn’t much time. She took a deep breath.

‘I think you’re lying,’ she said. ‘I’ll think you’re just trying to trick me. And this is just some stupid trap. If you’ve really got Jennifer, then I want to talk to her. Right now.’ Bailey desperately wanted not to believe Nancy, but she had a horribly vexing feeling that she was telling the truth.

‘Okay,’ said Nancy. ‘Suit yourself.’

There was a rustling sound on the other end of the phone. Then some ragged female breathing and a voice came on. A woman’s voice. The voice that Bailey did not want to hear.

‘Bailey!’ panted Jennifer hoarsely. ‘Don’t come! They’ll kill us both. It’s a trap. Don’t—’

Another sharp rustle as the phone was torn away from her.

Nancy came on the line again.

‘Just remember,’ she said. ‘Come alone. Or else.’

And then the line went dead.

79

A chill wind blew through the huge concrete skeleton of the apartment block in Gravesend. The walls hadn’t yet been put in and the whole structure lay open to the elements. When it was finished, it would be a luxury residence, constituting three hundred top-of-the-range apartments, but it was currently little more than a bare shell bristling with exposed girders.

Up on the thirteenth floor of this empty building, bathed in the glare of an industrial lamp, stood Nancy, Rick, Shane, Stephen and a collection of other Molloy associates dressed in black leather jackets, a number of whom were toting sawn-off shotguns. And at their feet, lying on the ground with her wrists and ankles firmly bound with silver duct tape, was Jennifer Morgan.

It was night now and the vast building development was silent and deserted apart from this small gathering of people. Down below, the JCBs and concrete mixer lorries sat inactive amongst the rows of Portakabins, whilst around them, here and there, stood huge cranes, looming immobile over the scene like giant sentinels.

Down to one side was a small jetty, for the development was located right on the edge of the water, the River Thames flowing by in the night, the water black as ink. On the far bank twinkled the distant lights of Tilbury Docks, where even now goods were being unloaded from the giant container ships that had come in from all around the world.