‘Simon Deacon?’ said Mercy. ‘Well, first of all, he’s on the Asia desk so Europe’s not really his area, and second, I don’t know, that seems like a big gun to pull on a tiny little bird.’
‘But he’d have some kind of link into Spanish intelligence, who could make it happen now rather than it taking days, during which time Amy moves on and you lose the trail.’
Mercy was nodding at him but with no show of engaging the gears.
‘Mercy?’ he asked.
‘I’m just thinking,’ she said, ‘how well she’s planned this. She’s been meticulous. Far more meticulous that I was when I ran away.’
‘And?’
‘I’m just thinking out loud, sir. She hasn’t torn off into the night after some huge family row, which is the ultimate vulnerable and dangerous state to be in. She’s rationally and logically executed her plan to leave home.’
‘It’s been difficult for you over these last three years, I know.’ Mercy grunted at the understatement.
‘Part of me is thinking . . . let her go,’ she said and waited for the shocked intake of breath, not just from Makepeace, who had two children, but from the whole of child-centric Britain.
‘What’s the other part of you thinking?’ said Makepeace, shrewd, used to seeing people operating under stressful circumstances.
‘Oh, that’s the usual mess of love, anger, rejection, inadequacy, guilt,’ she said, stumbling on, ‘you know, the whole gamut of emotions of the failed mother.’
‘Isn’t the one influencing the other?’
‘What would happen if we got her back or rather brought her back?’ said Mercy. ‘Or maybe dragged her back is the word I’m looking for?’
‘I suppose you’d go into some kind of family therapy where there was a forum for you all to express your . . . anger, disappointment and frustration,’ said Makepeace, thinking he didn’t like the sound of that much either.
‘Or she could go out into the big wide world and see if she could make a go of it,’ said Mercy. ‘Like I did.’
‘Your father never spoke to you again.’
‘A blessing,’ said Mercy. ‘And I would never cut Amy off. She can come back any time, talk to me whenever she likes.’
Makepeace frowned, couldn’t imagine having these thoughts about his own children.
‘And her education?’
‘She wouldn’t get A levels but she doesn’t want them. She doesn’t want to go to university. She’s not interested. She’s bored by it all. She wants a life,’ said Mercy. ‘But she doesn’t want anything to do with the old life. Karen, her girlfriend, told us that she’s terminated her Facebook and Twitter accounts.’
‘Is Karen in on this?’
‘The one thing I can tell you from looking in my mirror every day is when someone is hurt,’ said Mercy. ‘Karen is hurt and Amy’s the one who’s done it. She’s walked out on everybody, not just Charlie and me. Her friends, family, even her grandmother, although . . . ’
‘What?’
‘I’m suspicious of Esme, but that’s because I don’t like her and the feeling is mutual.’
‘Do you think . . . ?’
‘What I’m thinking my way around,’ said Mercy, waving away the notion, ‘is whether it’s better just to let her go or to hunt her down and force her back to a life that she’s so consciously rejected?’
‘But she’s only a kid,’ said Makepeace, getting bewildered now. ‘What does she know?’
‘I can tell you that she thinks she knows it all and that she doesn’t need any further parental instruction.’
‘But in Spain?’
‘All the CCTV footage from Security at Heathrow has now been sent to Barajas Airport. With any luck they’ll find her on their network and we’ll see if she was met or . . . what happened.’
‘You’re taking this better than I thought you would.’
‘I’m not. I’m just showing you my calm, reasonable, rational thinking kidnap consultant side,’ said Mercy. ‘I think you’d prefer that to the messy side. That way you won’t have to hose down the walls when I’ve left.’
Boxer was with Roy Chapel at the LOST Foundation’s offices. Chapel’s twenty-four-year-old-son Tony, who’d lost his job the previous week, was helping him pack up to make the move to the new office in Jacob’s Well Mews off Marylebone High Street. This new office would normally have come out of the foundation’s budget, but it had been gifted to Boxer by a Brazilian friend for an unmentionable favour he’d done for him in Lisbon less than ten days ago.
LOST only covered missing persons in the UK so he’d already told Chapel to stand down on the Amy investigation, but the ex-policeman was reluctant to let it go too early.
‘Wait until you get the final confirmation from the Spanish and then I’ll stand down,’ said Chapel. ‘You never know.’
It was late afternoon when Mercy called with her request. Boxer phoned Simon Deacon from Roy’s already empty office, explained the situation with Amy and asked him for the favour. Gave him Amy’s passport details.
Deacon was appalled, hadn’t seen Amy in years, still had an image of her as very young and innocent.
‘Do you think she’s been groomed by some creep on the Internet?’ he asked.
‘She’s a bit old for that, Simon,’ said Boxer. ‘And way too sassy.’
‘Well, as it happens I do know someone with good connections to the CNI, the Spanish intelligence agency,’ said Deacon.
‘Look, I realise it isn’t exactly a question of national security,’ said Boxer, ‘and I’m certainly not expecting—’
‘I know what you want,’ said Deacon. ‘Just a bit of friendly pressure put on the hotel department of the Cuerpo Nacional de Policía to find out where Amy stayed on Saturday night and whether she’s moved on to somewhere else in Spain, Europe or . . . Africa.’
‘Try not to scare the crap out of me, Simon.’
‘What I meant was, that I’ll make sure that my guy has them looking out for her in Tarifa and Algeciras so she doesn’t get that far.’
‘Right. Thanks. Sorry.’
‘Leave it with me. These guys know how everything works,’ said Deacon. ‘How’s Mercy?’
‘Could be better.’
‘I don’t like the thought of you on your own,’ said Boxer.
‘This is how I am almost all the time,’ said Mercy. ‘I’m O.K. I’m fine.’
He knew she was lying. She knew he knew.
‘I’m coming over,’ he said, which Mercy translated as, ‘I want to go to Isabel’s.’
‘Just leave me alone,’ she said and hung up.
Mercy hated this, couldn’t stand not having a case to work on. Just paperwork or watching TV for the rest of the evening. Flicking through the mediocre crap. Nothing on . . . ever. She was walking around her newly emptied house, which strangely reminded her of father’s place after he’d died. She was searching for something. A vestige. A remnant of family life. In the kitchen she surveyed the clean walls, the white fridge door with not even a magnet on it ready for a photo or a list. She drifted back to the living room, blinking, determined not to allow the tears to well.
A thought occurred to her, a task. She would trace that boyfriend Amy had taken up with in Spain when she was fifteen, lost her virginity. He was seven years older than her. Was that a clue? This Glider, Alleyne had told her, was nearly thirty—thirteen years older. Did she like them mature? Was this her striving for adulthood?
Upstairs was one of those half-rooms that so many London houses specialised in, too small for a bedroom, too big for storage. She used it as a study.
Mercy unlocked the column of metal drawers in the second-hand desk and worked her way through stuff she hadn’t looked at in years. There must be something in here. She remembered a discarded letter she’d seen in Amy’s wastepaper basket: the end of
the unsustainable affair. She’d rescued it, found the sentiments in the Spanish boy’s poor English rather sweet. Had there been an address? Would she have gone back to him? Maybe he was in Madrid now. She turned on her computer with the intention of looking through the photos. He was in there somewhere. What was his name?
Flicking through the papers, she was conscious of not finding anything she expected to. She went through all the papers in her desk, even the ones where she never kept Amy-related stuff. Nothing. Everything had gone. Even the childish drawings and paintings of Amy’s before she went to school had been removed. She clicked on her photo library and saw that this too had been tampered with. None of the old shots were there. Not even the baby shots. Even the holiday snaps in which Amy featured had been either deleted or cruelly cropped. Mercy sat back in her squeaky swivel chair, surrounded by her stupid police paperwork and paraphernalia, a fingerprint kit from some course she’d attended way back in the homicide days. All that was left. Then the tears did come. In rivulets. Streaming to the corners of her mouth, where their saltine sweetness leaked onto her lips.
And then her mobile phone rang.
Sasha Bobkov came round into a world of complete and impenetrable darkness. The fear leaped from his stomach and fluttered into his chest. He could feel his heart ticking in his neck. His eyelashes brushed against some sort of mask which was stretched over his head and the top part of his face, but left his nose exposed. A strip of material passed over his top lip but nothing covered his mouth. Everything was pulled tight by some sort of clasp at the back of his head. He was panting. His mouth was dry, couldn’t find a bead of mositure in it. If he shook his head he thought his tongue might rattle.
His hands were tied behind his back and he was lying on some wooden slats. He could feel the gaps with his fingers. He reached out a foot and found the edge was about half a metre away. He reached his hands back and felt the wall. It was panelled wood, unpainted, unvarnished.
He lifted his head, felt dizzy, thought he was going to be sick. He lay back down again and tried to call out, but produced nothing but a dry cough.
A minute later the door opened and someone came into the room, bringing no sense of the outside world with him, as if this room and beyond were well insulated. A male voice spoke in accented English.
‘You awake?’
Sasha didn’t answer, couldn’t. His fear had closed up his throat.
‘I heard you cough,’ said the voice.
Sasha opened his mouth but no sound came out.
He felt a spout pushed between his lips, liquid trickled over his parched tongue. He licked his lips.
‘How you feel?’ asked the man in a voice that didn’t care, that was angry even.
‘Is my mum all right?’ asked Sasha in a whisper. ‘She’ll be . . . she’ll be worried, you know.’
Silence. Nothing. Sasha felt the man’s eyes measuring him. ‘You scared?’ asked the man.
Sasha nodded.
A finger poked him hard in the chest. He felt its point between his ribs.
‘You stay that way,’ said the voice. ‘Then you don’t get hurt.’
Mercy flickered into consciousness, her eye drawn to the corner of the ceiling where the lining paper had come adrift. She was back here again. Not in her own bed. The black muscular back of Marcus Alleyne was lying next to her. How was it that the obvious mistakes she was making were becoming so irresistible?
He’d called her at a moment of particular vulnerability, asked her over. She’d known with absolute clarity that this was not an invitation she should accept. He had called her. How had he got her number? He was working on her. She knew it. And before she could say ‘No spliff this time’ she was out the door and in the car on the way to Brixton. She recognised everything. All her pathetic motivation revolved in her mind as she headed down Coldharbour Lane, which, to her, had always sounded like a place of last resort.
Then she was drinking a Cuba libre and trying to refuse a joint, which within two puffs was making her giggle uncontrollably.
Miraculously she found herself naked, her throat so clogged with lust she had to loosen it with more Cuba libre from the bedside table. She’d never been noisy during sex, but now something had been released from deep within her, something that had come up from her viscera and raked across her vocal cords so that she’d had to sink her teeth into Alleyne’s hard, smooth shoulder to muffle her shouts.
Mercy put a closed fist to her forehead. This was going to have to stop. This crazy reinvention of herself was no way for the mother of a runaway child to behave.
‘I can hear you thinking,’ said Alleyne without turning. ‘I can hear you blinking, Mercy, you know that?’
‘That’s because I’m screaming at myself for being such an idiot and I’ve got loud eyelids,’ said Mercy, getting out of bed, needing to wash and leave.
‘I told you something really important last night,’ said Alleyne, rolling over.
‘Really important?’ she said doubtfully.
‘You’ve got to rela-a-x, Mercy,’ said Alleyne. ‘You know you can do it. You’re just fighting something that’s in your head. I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman that’s so . . . What’s the word? Conflicted, that’s it. You ask me, what you’re going through now hasn’t got anything to do with Amy. She’s gone, Mercy. She’s out of your hair.’
‘You know nothing,’ said Mercy, quick and vicious.
‘Calm down, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Stop telling me to calm down. And what did Amy say to you about me, about running away, about whatever it is she . . . ?’
‘You’re still right on the edge, Mercy. All it takes is one little word out of place and all that guilt comes rushing to the surface.’
‘Tell me what she’s said to you.’
‘Nothing. No-thing. I’ve met her once, then again at the airport. Five minutes both times. She’s a cool kid. I liked her. You got nothing to worry about with that one. She’s going to be fine.’
‘But she’s spoken to you about me. All that “conflict” shit.’
‘Yeah, the “conflict shit”. That’s good. Good description of the bind,’ said Alleyne, as if tying something up tight. ‘Know what I mean?’
‘No.’
‘I’ve seen the conflict shit for myself,’ said Alleyne. ‘I don’t need anybody to tell me about it. I can feel it inside you. It’s like you want to come but you don’t think you should, it’s not ladylike or something, but then it gets too powerful for you so you drop your barriers and it all comes pouring out. That’s what you’ve got to do, Mercy. Stop interfering. Just—’
‘Just relax. Yeah, I know. Get stuffed, Marcus,’ said Mercy brutally. ‘Some of us have to stay focused. I relax and people die. What do you want out of this?’
‘What I’m getting,’ said Alleyne, hands open. ‘I like you, Mercy. I don’t know why, but if I start poking around in that too much I might end up not liking you. And that would be a sad day.’
Mercy stormed off to the bathroom.
‘Take a real shower,’ Alleyne shouted after her. ‘A nice hot shower. No need for any of that bird-bath shit you did the last time you were here.’
She looked at herself in the mirror. Naked. Taut. Looked closer. Was there the worm of something dangerous in her eyes? She smiled at the ‘bird-bath shit’, shook her head.
The shower was good. She could feel it tenderising her. All the tension flowing away down her back, pouring off her hamstrings. She dried herself with a big towel he’d put out for her, went back to the bedroom, got dressed.
‘Amy went to Spain,’ said Mercy. ‘Madrid.’
‘How did you find that out?’
‘The UK Border Agency.’
‘You got some connections.’
‘What about yours?’
‘I gave you Glider. Did you go see him?’
r /> ‘I sent somebody else.’
‘Like who?’ asked Alleyne, looking nervous. ‘Just so I know.’
‘Amy’s father.’
‘Oh shit. The heavy dude.’
‘“The heavy dude”? I thought Amy didn’t tell you anything.’
‘She told me you were a cop and her dad . . . ’
‘What?’
‘I’m struggling to find the right word for him, Mercy. Don’t want you getting the wrong idea again.’
‘Try using Amy’s words.’
‘Dangerous,’ said Alleyne. ‘No, she didn’t say that. I thought that. She said he’s secretive. That’s the word she used. He hides things. He looks like Mr. Straight, like he was in the army and a detective . . . ’
‘That’s right he was.’
‘But up here,’ said Alleyne, tapping his temple, ‘he’s different. He likes gambling. High stakes. She told me when she came back from Tenerife that the reason she didn’t want to go to Lisbon with him was that he’d play cards all night.’
‘He likes poker. It’s not a crime.’
‘He keeps a gun under the floorboards in his flat. How about that?’
‘What?’
‘I’m just telling you what Amy told me.’
‘I think she was probably just showing off, Marcus.’
‘Maybe you’re right, Mercy. Let’s hope so. We don’t want to find Mr. G with a bullet out the back of his head, do we?’
Mercy returned home and went straight into cop mode, as Amy would have it. She picked up the fingerprint kit and a torch from her study and stood in the doorway of Amy’s room and inspected the smooth surfaces. She turned off the light, flicked on the torch and walked around the room, angling the torch light across the bedside table, dressing table and chest of drawers looking for patent prints. She was astonished to find that all the surfaces had been carefully wiped down. She double-checked by dusting one for latents. Nothing. She dusted the handles. Again nothing. This girl had learned too much.
She inspected the windows and their handles, the sills. Not even a partial print. She went to the built-in wardrobes and all these had been wiped too. She looked inside to check the shoe racks and drawers. Nothing. She sat back on her heels and looked up at the full-length mirror on the inside of the wardrobe, and it was in the angled light of her torch that she at last found a complete set of Amy’s fingerprints on the glass where she’d pushed open the door.