I dished out the tasks at the morning meeting. I sent one team to go and see Farrell’s wife Martina, who was holed up in their Chelsea flat. The Spanish nanny had been taken to hospital suffering from smoke inhalation, so I sent another team round to talk to her as soon as she was up to it.
Of course, they didn’t have a clue where Jack Farrell had gone to ground. Shortly after I’d spoken to him, a Jeep Cherokee had shown up, driven by a shaven-headed thug I recognized as one of Farrell’s top lads. Farrell had climbed aboard and they’d taken off. I assumed the local cops had demanded to know where they were going. But no. They’d let him swan off God knows where with nothing but his lawyer’s phone number as security.
I wasn’t worried, though. They might not know where Jack Farrell was, but I knew where he’d be. I knew he was a man of regular habits. We’d had a close tail on him a few months back, and his daily routine never altered. It didn’t take many days for us to understand how he’d stayed a cleanskin this long. He knew exactly how to stay one step ahead. Keeping tabs on him was pointless. Jack Farrell never put a foot wrong. I’ve been doing this job for half a dozen years now and I’ve never come across anybody who took so many pains to make sure he stayed untouchable.
I called over the two detectives from the local squad who looked least stupid. ‘I expect you know by now that Jack Farrell’s a bad lad. Now, I want you to talk to Farrell again,’ I said. ‘Nothing too heavy, just go through last night one more time. But press him a bit harder on why anybody would want to target his lovely little girl.’
They swapped uneasy glances. ‘We don’t know where Farrell is, Mr Martin,’ the younger one said, his neck turning pink in embarrassment.
‘I know that. And I’m not exactly sure where he is right this minute either. But I think I know where we can pick him up. Here’s how it used to go every morning before today. At half past seven, a black BMW four-wheel drive rolls up at the gates of Jack Farrell’s mansion. At the wheel, Francis Riley, known as Fancy. He’s the number three man in Farrell’s squad. In the passenger seat, Danny Chu, Farrell’s number two.
‘They drive up to the house and out pops Farrell in running shorts and vest. Chu gets out of the 4∞4, also in running gear, and takes a suit carrier from the Spanish nanny, who’s lurking in the doorway. He stows the suit carrier in the car, then Chu and Farrell set off across the grounds at a nice steady pace. With me so far?’
The two of them nodded like a pair of puppets.
‘Three miles of open country later, the pair of them jog into the car park of Smithson’s, which I am told is the most select leisure club in Hampshire. That’s where Fancy Riley waits with the suit carrier. The three men go inside together. Chu heads for the steam room while Riley and Farrell swim twenty lengths then spend ten minutes in a very noisy spa pool.
‘Then they sit and have breakfast in the club restaurant. Same table every day. Where they talk about sport, their families and the money markets.’
I knew that because we’d had the table bugged. But you can’t bug a swimming pool or a spa pool. And whatever they might be able to do on the TV, in real life it’s almost impossible to pick up conversation between two men jogging across open country.
A couple of days of shadowing Jack Farrell, and we’d known exactly how his empire ran itself. Chu and Riley reported to Farrell during their morning exercises and Farrell issued his orders at the same time. They never spoke about their illegal businesses in their cars, their offices, their homes or their regular restaurants. Anywhere it was possible to be electronically overheard, Jack Farrell came off like he was Mr Clean. The routine was a strength. But it could also be a weakness.
I smiled at the two rural cops. ‘And that’s where you’re going to find Jack Farrell – in his jogging shorts, in the car park of Smithson’s. Failing that, you’re just going to have to spoil his poolside breakfast, aren’t you?’
They looked a little doubtful. The younger one, a carrot-top with freckles like a bad rash, said, ‘His kid’s just burned to death. You think he’s going to be swimming laps at the health club?’ His voice rose in a squeak at the end of the question.
Detective Sergeant Ben Wilson, my bagman on all our major operations, leaned into the chat. ‘Well, it’s not like he’s going to have to worry who’s doing the school run, now, is it?’
They both recoiled as if they’d been slapped. I gave Ben a hard stare. The low-level locals always hate us for steaming in on their patch. There’s no need to give them more reason for their dislike. ‘Ignore him,’ I said, trying to sound like we were all comrades together. ‘He was brought up by wolves. Yes, I do think he’s going to be at the health club, and here’s why.
‘Whoever did this, they did it so that Jack Farrell would fall. Whether they did it for revenge or to move in on his business, it’s all about cutting him off at the knees. I’ve been watching Farrell for a long time, and I think they’ve got it wrong. Katie’s death isn’t going to make Farrell throw in the towel. It’s going to make him dig his heels in. Not only is he going to stay on top, he’s going to crush anybody he thinks might have had a hand in what happened to his girl. So he’s got orders to issue today. And that, boys, is why he’s going to be at the health club.’ I sent them on their way, positive I was right on the money.
Pride comes before a fall, they say. So I should have been ready for the fact that everything would be tits-up by lunchtime.
THE FIRST TEAM BACK were the ones I’d sent to talk to Martina in the plush white flat with the high ceilings and the river view. I knew as soon as they walked in it hadn’t gone well. Heads down, shoulders hunched, they’d lost all the bounce they’d walked out the door with a few hours before.
They plodded up to the desk I’d taken over. ‘Well?’ I asked, eyebrows raised.
‘No, not well,’ the woman DC said. ‘She’s off her face.’
‘She’s off the planet,’ her partner said. ‘On drugs. Not the kind you take when you go out clubbing on a weekend. More the kind that tame doctors feed you when they want to keep you from thinking about your kid being dead.’
‘The doctor’s got her dosed up to the eyeballs on tranks,’ the woman said. ‘We’re not going to get any sense out of her. Probably not in this lifetime, anyway.’
‘You think the doctor’s under Farrell’s orders?’ I asked. I was interested in how it seemed to people who were out of the loop on Farrell’s track record.
The woman shrugged. ‘You lose a kid like that, you’re going to want to be well out of it. I think the doctor’s giving her what she wants.’
‘Yeah, and when she comes back from her space walk, who knows what she’ll remember,’ her buddy added gloomily.
I had to agree with him. It didn’t look like Martina was going to be much use. In that state, she couldn’t tell us anything useful about who might want to burn her daughter to death or why. Even more importantly, from Farrell’s point of view, she couldn’t tell us where he was or what he was up to.
It got worse when the second team drifted back towards lunchtime. They’d gone out looking keen and sharp, the way young CID lads get when they have something to prove. Now they looked shifty, rather than pissed off like the earlier pair. My heart sank. That’s what you get when you send boys on a man’s errand, I thought to myself. They’ve been blown out.
Turned out, it was worse than that. ‘She’s done a runner,’ the shorter, skinnier one said; Laurel to the other one’s Hardy. Not that there was much to laugh about.
Hardy nodded miserably. ‘Not a Scooby-Doo where she is. The hospital treated her for the effects of the smoke, then discharged her. We had a couple of uniforms waiting to talk to her, but she said