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kidnapped tonight by two men and I need to talk to someone in CID urgently. I'm not making this up, I promise you.'
    'Put her in cell five,' he called over my shoulder. 'So I don't have to listen to her.'
    'Wanker!' she howled before being dragged across the floor behind her boyfriend and through a door to the cells.
    'Please.' I looked at him imploringly. 'I'm not drunk, and I'm not mad. I know what I saw.'
    He stared at me for a long second, then stood up, clearly deciding it was easier just to pass the buck. 'Take a seat and I'll see who's available.'
    I sat down on a hard plastic chair in the corner and waited in the now empty foyer, staring at the posters warning against committing various heinous and not-so-heinous crimes that lined every spare inch of wall. I was absolutely shattered, but it struck me then that it might not even be safe for me to go home. If the kidnappers had searched my jacket, they'd have found my wallet. Then I realized with a sense of relief that there wasn't anything in there with my address on. I never took my driving licence out with me, so it would just be my credit and debit cards, plus my Blockbuster membership. So all they'd have was my name as it appeared on the cards: R. Fallon. Not exactly common, but in a city the size of London there were bound to be a few of us. So I was probably safe. But right then I could have done with something a little more concrete than 'probably'.
    'Mr Fallon?'
    I looked up and saw an attractive dark-haired woman in her early thirties emerging from the door opposite. She was dressed casually in jeans, a sweatshirt and trainers, but straight away I could tell she was a policewoman. There was a toughness and confidence about her that was immediately reassuring.
    'I'm DS Tina Boyd,' she said as we shook hands, 'Islington CID. I understand you want to report a possible kidnapping?'
    'Well, it's not a possible kidnapping, it's a real one. A friend of mine's been abducted.'
    She nodded understandingly. 'Let's talk inside.'
    She led me back through the door, up some stairs and into a small corner room, empty except for a desk with a chair on either side. There was an oldish-looking tape recorder on the desk and she switched it on, motioning for me to take a seat. 'I hope you don't mind. I want to record our interview.' She pulled a notebook out of her back pocket and sat back in the chair, regarding me with eyes that didn't look like they missed a lot. 'So, tell me what happened. From the beginning.'
    I told her everything from the moment I'd met Jenny in the bar to when I'd turned up at the police station, keeping the details as brief and concise as possible. She listened patiently and didn't interrupt at any point, except to take descriptions of the two kidnappers. The thing about her was that she had the kind of face you automatically want to trust, and I felt myself warming to my theme as I continued, ignoring the little voice in my head that told me that what I was saying sounded outlandish.
    'So she was alive when they took her?'
    'I believe so, yes.'
    'And did they make any attempt to molest her?'
    'Not that I saw. They tied her up and they chucked her in the cleaning trolley.'
    'And there's no reason you can think of why they would have taken her? Anything they might have said when you were listening in, for instance?'
    I shook my head. 'From what I can gather they were trying to get her out of the apartment as fast as possible.'
    'OK,' she said, writing something down in the notebook. 'And what's Jenny's last name?'
    My mind suddenly went blank. I'd only ever known her as Jenny, although I had definitely been told her last name before. I racked my brains. 'It's ...Brakestone, Brakeslip, something like that. No, Brakspear. It's definitely Brakspear.'
    'You're sure about that?'
    I nodded, way too vigorously, conscious of how unconvincing this must sound to a police officer. 'Yeah, I'm sure.'
    'And you met her in a bar tonight? I'm assuming you'd had a few