17

AS GLASSES AND spoons clanked in the background, I leant forward and riffled through the paperwork around me. There was all kinds of stuff, but nothing that gave me a clue about where they were being held. The Savills brochures were for houses around the £500K mark, countrywide. School prospectuses invited dutiful parents to invest almost half that figure to ensure their kids got to wear the right kind of tie. Next to the Mac was a list of local papers Nadif had logged onto. Several were crossed out.

‘Of course you can trust me, Nadif. That’s why I’m here. We’re desperate. Whatever I have to do, I’ll do. I just need to be able to speak to them. I need to know that they’re alive.’

‘Tell me, Nick. Do you own a home? As well as your car?’

‘I’ve just bought a flat in London.’

‘What about the other families? Do they have homes?’

‘Justin’s family live in a council house.’ I knew fuck-all about them, but I wasn’t going to admit it, and I needed to keep his expectations low. ‘Tracy’s sister rents her place. She hasn’t much money. But don’t you worry, Nadif. We’ll find some way of getting there.’

Guys like Nadif didn’t miss a trick. They’re negotiators, the middlemen between the hostages and the clans. He was going to make it work both ends.

And judging by the contents of his archive, I could see he was a whole lot more than a broker. He was the spotter, too. During the negotiation he’d be looking to find out as much as he could about the payers. He had to make sure he was squeezing out every last drop. If a family claimed they were doing everything they could to raise the cash, he’d go round to the house and make sure it was up for sale. And if they couldn’t come up with an interim payment, he’d be telling them to sell the BMWs in the drive. If they claimed that they were trying, he’d say, ‘I didn’t see any details in the local newspaper. Maybe it would be best to go to a dealer.’ Or, with just the right degree of sympathy, ‘Your three children are at Marlborough. Wouldn’t they prefer to have their auntie back home with them?’

You could depend upon Nadif to do his level best to help.

I wondered for a moment whether the school prospectuses were for his own kids. With the sort of hostage numbers Jules was talking about, business must be good. This shithole certainly wasn’t where he lived. It was a bedsit without a bed. He probably lived near the university, in a townhouse that would put anything that cost as little as £500K to shame.