Die Alone

can receive calls from us. We’ll know immediately if you use it. You’re to stay inside at the rental address 24/7, waiting for the call to move. It could come at any time. It may take a day. It may take a week. It’s unlikely to be much longer. There’s enough food and drink on site to last you at least a month, so you won’t starve. And you’re used to being cooped up, so it shouldn’t be too much of a chore. Is that all understood?’
I nodded. ‘Understood.’
‘OK, meeting over. I’ll see you again when this is all over and done with. In the meantime, good luck.’
I picked up the backpack and was led out by the two guards, thinking I was going to need a lot more than luck to get out of this one.

7
A few hours later, Lane’s two associates dropped me at the safehouse, a spacious penthouse apartment that must have cost a fortune to rent, set in one of those attractive Georgian squares with a tree-lined private garden running through the middle of it. They didn’t hang around, just threw me the keys and told me to get inside immediately, then drove away, although not before I’d managed to steal a glance at the number plate of their Range Rover.
That was one thing I’d learned as a detective. However well laid a plan, its perpetrators will always make at least one mistake, and that was theirs. They’d been very careful to hide anything that would have helped me identify them, or the place where they were holding me, even going so far as to make me wear a hood for the duration of the journey here. Unfortunately, they’d had no choice but to remove it when they dropped me off.
As soon as I was upstairs and inside the apartment, I pulled out the burner phone they’d given me, found the notes section, and keyed in the number plate details. I had no idea how long I was going to be here for but I was operating on the basis that it could be as little as a few hours, which meant I needed to move fast if I was to turn the odds of survival in my favour.
After spending the best part of an hour scouring the apartment for cameras and finding none, I threw off my clothes and searched for the microchip they were using to track my movements. Now I’m no expert, but I was sure that Lane had been bluffing when she stated that they’d know if I tampered with it. I was also fairly certain they wouldn’t have had the expertise or resources to put it in too far beneath the surface of the skin – and I was proved right when I located a barely perceptible splinter-shaped bump in the small of my back which was still tender to the touch.
Removing the chip turned out to be something of a rigmarole involving a small chopping knife from the kitchen drawer, a lot of manoeuvring in front of the bathroom mirror, and a fair amount of blood, but eventually I got it out intact and left it on the kitchen table, while I pressed the wound with damp toilet paper.
But I wasn’t going to get out of this on my own. I needed help, and I knew the one place where I could get it, which meant making a phone call. The burner phone was no use to me, as it was being monitored by Lane, but I wasn’t deterred. On the way up the stairs I hadn’t heard any noises coming from inside any of the other apartments and guessed that they were probably empty. It was late July after all, and the beginning of the school holidays. Also, in the last ten years huge numbers of apartments and houses in central London had been bought up by overseas investors, often with dirty money, and left empty. All I needed was a working landline.
I picked up a butter knife from the cutlery drawer in the kitchen and went down to the apartment on the floor below. I listened at the door for a good minute, then, satisfied there was no one in there, I wedged the end of the knife into the old-fashioned seventies-style lock and wriggled it from side to side like a key until the door opened, which took all of about twenty seconds.
The apartment was fusty and decorated in an unpleasant style that befitted the lock, but it was clear it was still being lived in, and I was pleased to see a landline phone in the kitchen.
I took a deep breath before I made the call. Involving someone else meant exposing them to danger, and I cared deeply for Tina Boyd, the woman I was falling in love with when I was arrested a year ago. But I also knew she’d want to help if she could.
The two of us had kept burner phones that we used to contact each other on to avoid having our conversations monitored. Clearly I no longer had mine but I was hoping she still had hers. I’d memorized the number long ago but, even so, my hand hovered above the handset for a long moment before I finally picked it up and punched in the numbers.
The phone rang. And rang. Finally it kicked into voicemail.
‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘I’ll call back.’ Then I hung up.
I stood there in this stranger’s apartment for another five minutes, contemplating my next move. The dishwasher was open and half full and there were two empty cups with dregs of tea in the bottom on the sideboard, so I knew that the occupants could be back soon.
I tried the number one more time and waited.
It must have been the tenth ring when she picked up.
‘Is it you?’ she asked, and I felt a pang of something powerful as I heard her