Jimmy looked at the phone on the counter in front of him. He prodded at the home button, except there wasn’t actually a button there like there was on his Samsung phone. Regardless, the screen came to life. It was black—Milly hadn’t set a screen background image—and all he could see was the time, the date, and the icons at the top of the screen with the signal and battery strength. He pressed again, and the screen changed.
Face ID or Enter Passcode. Six circles and a number pad had appeared underneath the text.
He frowned. The Face ID wasn’t going to work, but what number would Milly have chosen for a passcode? Jimmy squinted at the screen. Six digits. The most obvious one was her date of birth. Two digits for the day, two for the month, and two for the year. He pressed the screen carefully after thinking for a few seconds to make sure he had the right numbers—Hannah always used to chide him about his inability to remember his only child’s date of birth, but since Milly had vanished, the date was burned into his mind. As he did so, the circles became solid discs.
The phone buzzed, and the discs changed back to empty circles after wobbling from side to side. Wrong number. He thought for a moment before trying another combination. Hannah’s date of birth. The response was the same. Muttering under his breath, he tried his own date of birth. Then he tried a couple of the dates of birth again, but this time with just two digits for the months and four for the year. Every time, the phone just buzzed and reset to the original screen, except for when he’d tried the last combination when the message on the screen changed.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Jimmy said out loud. iPhone is disabled. Try again in one minute. He put the phone back on the counter and pulled his battered MacBook out of the kitchen cupboard before returning to the lounge.
Twenty minutes later, Jimmy had a much better understanding of the problem he was facing. According to the websites he’d looked at, he had a maximum of ten tries before the phone either needed plugging into iTunes or wiping itself completely. Milly didn’t own a Mac as far as he was aware—although after the last few days it wouldn’t have surprised him if she had one hidden away somewhere—and he didn’t have iTunes on his own Mac. His laptop was so old that he’d had to strip out every piece of software he could to keep it reasonably quick, and seeing as he didn’t listen to music or watch films on it, he had no need for iTunes. Just to be sure, he checked his computer in case Milly had re-installed it, but it definitely wasn’t on there.
He only had a few more tries left before the phone would become useless. Jimmy put Milly’s mobile back down and picked up his own phone. He scrolled down to Gareth’s contact details and pressed the call button, walking back into the lounge as he did so.
‘Hello?’ Gareth sounded as if he had just woken up, but it was almost ten in the morning. In the background, Jimmy could hear seagulls cawing and remembered that he was on the coast.
‘Hi Gareth, it’s Jimmy.’
‘Hey, how you doing?’ Gareth asked. ‘How’s the head?’
‘Yeah, bit sore,’ Jimmy replied with a sombre laugh. ‘Your Laura, sorry, Laura said you were looking a bit rough earlier.’
‘You’re telling me.’ Gareth paused before continuing. ‘What’s up?’
‘Do you know much about iPhones?’
‘Not really, but I know a man who does. Want me to get him to call you?’
‘Would you mind?’
‘No problem,’ Gareth replied. ‘Are you still going to the game tonight?’
Jimmy didn’t reply at first. He knew that Gareth was referring to their conversation the previous evening. Norwich City were playing at home to a team from London, and while Jimmy wasn’t planning on going to the game itself, the fact that the local team was playing that evening was important to the plan.
‘Definitely,’ Jimmy said eventually. ‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
‘It’s just sometimes things seem different in the cold light of day.’
‘I’ll be there, Gareth. I’ll give you a bell after, let you know how it went.’
‘Good stuff, you be sure to do that.’ Jimmy heard Gareth put his hand over the mouthpiece and cough loudly. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said a second later. ‘I sound like a bloody smoker. This lad who’ll call you, he’s called David. If anyone can help you, he can.’
‘Thanks, Gareth,’ Jimmy replied. ‘I’ll talk to you later.’
‘Good luck with the match.’
‘Cheers.’
Jimmy was dozing on the bed after lunch when the phone rang. He’d had a simple meal of spaghetti bolognese—out of a tin—on toast, but after eating it, he’d been exhausted so lay down. Just for a few minutes, he told himself. When the phone buzzing on his bedside table woke him up, he’d been asleep for almost two hours.
‘Hello?’ Jimmy said, shaking his head to clear the cobwebs away.
‘Mr Tucker?’ a male voice replied. He sounded young. ‘I’m Dave. Gareth asked me to give you a ring.’
‘Oh, hi. Thanks for calling. Just give me a second.’ Jimmy got to his feet and cradled the handset between his ear and his shoulder while he filled a glass of water from the en-suite. His mouth was parched. Too much salt in that crap he’d eaten for lunch, he supposed as he drained the glass. ‘Sorry, Dave,’ Jimmy said. ‘I’ve just woken up.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ the young man on the phone replied. ‘Do you want me to call back in a bit?’
‘No, no,’ Jimmy said. ‘It’s all good. Now, Gareth says you know a bit about phones?’
‘Yeah, well,’ Dave laughed. ‘More than he does, but that’s not difficult. What’s the problem?’ Jimmy paused for a moment, wondering how much to say about the history of the phone he wanted to talk to him about.
‘I’ve got an iPhone and I’ve forgotten the passcode.’ It was flimsy, but the best he could come up with on the spur of the moment.
‘Oh, okay,’ Dave replied without missing a beat. ‘Are you locked out completely?’
‘No.’
‘How many attempts have you had so far?’
‘Five or six, I think.’
‘What did you set it up to do after ten attempts?’
‘Um, I really can’t remember. I’m not very good with phones, you see.’
‘And you’ve got no idea what the passcode is?’
‘Nope,’ Jimmy replied. The young man on the other end of the line sounded so genuine, so sincere, but could he trust him? Deciding that he could, Jimmy continued. ‘See, it’s not actually my phone. It’s my daughter’s.’
‘Your daughter’s?’
‘Yeah, she’s gone missing.’ There was a silence on the other end of the line which lasted for a while. ‘Are you still there, Dave?’
‘I am, but can I call you back in a minute? I just want to have a quick chat with my boss.’
‘Sure you can, thanks.’
Less than two minutes later, Dave called back.
‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Gareth’s, um, told me about the situation you’re in. I’m sorry to hear that you’re having such a shit time.’ You and me both, kiddo. ‘iPhones are tricky, though. Once you get locked out, that’s pretty much that. Even the FBI can’t hack into them.’
‘I was looking on the internet and there are a few programs you can buy to get into them,’ Jimmy replied. ‘Are they worth looking at?’
‘No, they’re a waste of money. All they’ll do is a factory reset. You can do that yourself, but you’ll lose everything on the phone.’ There was a pause. ‘I’m guessing you don’t want that to happen?’
‘Definitely not. I need to know what’s on it.’
‘What have you tried so far?’ Dave asked. Jimmy outlined his previous attempts to unlock Milly’s phone. ‘Sweet. Most people use a date of some sort. That would have been the first thing I would have said to try, but you’ve beaten me to it. How about letters?’
‘How'd you mean?’
‘Each number has a bunch of letters underneath it. Sometimes people spell out a word us
ing the letters. Have you tried your surname? That’s six letters.’
‘I don’t really get you, sorry.’
‘Have you got the phone in front of you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So the letter T is the number 8, the letter U is an eight as well, C is a two, and so on.’ Jimmy tutted, realising what Dave meant.
‘I’ve never noticed those letters before. Should I try Tucker?’
‘That’s up to you. Do you think she might use it as a passcode?’
‘I’ve got nothing else to try,’ Jimmy said as he prodded at the keyboard. The phone buzzed, and the dots became circles again. ‘Nope, and now I’m locked out for five minutes.’
‘You’ve got three tries left, Mr Tucker.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Yep, that’s it. Then it becomes a paperweight.’
Jimmy thanked Dave and ended the call. He spent the next few minutes trying to come up with other combinations. Eventually, he decided that he would have another two tries. If neither of them worked, then he would hand the phone over to the police. Despite what Dave had said, they might do something if the phone wasn’t wiped.
When the phone was ready for another attempt, he wiped his hands on his trousers before carefully spelling out the word Millys on the keypad. His reasoning was that it was Milly’s phone, so using her name with an “S” on the end made sense. It might have made sense to Jimmy, but the vibration and screen wobbling told him it wasn’t what Milly thought. He had fifteen minutes to wait for his last try, so he passed the time in his kitchen, washing up the coffeepot and mugs.
By the time he’d finished the washing up and wiped the surfaces down, he could feel a dull ache in the back of his head. Was it stress, or was it his new friend? He still had a lot to do that day, but decided that a small dose of the painkillers the hospital had given him probably wouldn’t hurt. Hopefully, a couple of tablets would see him through to the evening, and he could always take some more before bed.
Jimmy unplugged Milly’s phone from the charger and went into the lounge. His palms were still sweating, and as he sat in the chair with the phone on his knee, he realised that his mouth had gone dry. This is it, he told himself. One last try.
He squinted at the screen as he carefully tapped at it, using the numbers to spell out another six-letter word. Another name. ‘This has to be it,’ Jimmy said as he tapped in the final number. Four, for an H. The last letter of Hannah’s name.
iPhone is disabled. Try again in sixty minutes.
Chapter 28
Jimmy was standing underneath a shop awning on Timberhill in the centre of Norwich, looking at the photography studio. It wasn’t the same shop awning as the last one he’d used when he’d been waiting outside the studio. This shop was full of women’s dresses. Nice ones from what he could see in the window. None of them had prices on them, which made Jimmy think they were probably as expensive as Milly’s were. If you have to ask the price of something, in Jimmy’s experience, that generally meant you couldn’t afford it. Perhaps he should come back here when the shop was open, show the staff Milly’s picture. Maybe she shopped here and they would recognise her? Jimmy couldn’t see how that would help, though.
He had his main disguise wrapped around his neck. Even though it was still fairly early—just before half-past five in the evening—he was grateful of the warmth that it gave him. Normally, it wouldn’t be much of a disguise. It was a scarf. But on a night when Norwich were at home, wearing a bright yellow and green football scarf made him almost invisible. Jimmy glanced down the road, past the photography studio and toward the pub he’d had lunch in the last time he was here. Through the fogged up windows he could see flashes of yellow football shirts as fans had a few beers before the game.
Max lived somewhere near Riverside—according to Big Joe’s source—which was a relatively new development between the main train station and the football stadium. When Jimmy was a boy, the area between the station and the football ground had been industrial, housing various warehouses and factories which had eventually closed and become run-down. In the last few years, the whole area had been gentrified and was now a collection of expensive flats—one of which Max lived in—and bars and nightclubs where honour was lost and won at the weekends.
‘The thing is,’ Gareth had explained last night, ‘if you’re going to follow him to his flat, he won’t look twice at you if he thinks you’re going to the match.’ Jimmy had to admit it was a simple disguise, but brilliant at the same time.
Across the road, a familiar looking purple-haired woman walked out of the studio. She didn’t lock the door behind her, so Jimmy figured Max must still be inside. Rachel walked toward the city centre, her hair visible for a long time. Jimmy was just considering getting a pint in the pub and sitting outside with the smokers to keep watch from there when Max opened the door of the studio. Jimmy hunched down slightly, reaching up and pulling the flat cap he was wearing further over his eyes. He needn’t have bothered. Max didn’t so much as look up the street after locking the door of his studio, but walked in the same direction that his receptionist had done, the slapping sound of his flip-flops on the cobblestones audible even from where Jimmy was waiting. Thinking Gareth’s plan was only going to work if Max went straight home, Jimmy set off after him.
Gareth had been spot on. As he followed Max through the city from a discrete distance, other people surrounded him all wearing some variation of the club’s colours. Max made his way down Roeun Road—briefly Norwich’s primary red-light district until a few years ago when it had been cleaned up. The street traders had promptly moved themselves to another road on the other side of the city to upset the residents there instead. In front of Jimmy, Max walked past an abandoned pub by the river that Jimmy remembered with fondness. It had been called the Ferry Boat, and he’d been absolutely shit-faced there on more than one occasion. Now it stood in the darkness, windows boarded up and roof gradually sinking into itself.
Max made his way over the pedestrian bridge just next to the abandoned pub and turned left. Jimmy slowed down for a second, wondering what the best thing to do was. The stadium was to the right, not the left, but he realised that a lot of fans were also turning left. He realised that was the direction of the pubs in Riverside, so picked up his pace.
When he got to the end of the bridge, Jimmy thought he’d lost Max. He looked frantically for him, eventually seeing his distinctive man-bun about a hundred yards away. Breaking into a trot, Jimmy tried to make up the ground but Max was heading for the entrance door to a block of flats. As he approached, a security light activated, which lit him up like a beacon. The photographer held up a keycard of some sort to the lock and pushed the door open. Jimmy tried to reach the door before it swung shut, but he was about ten seconds too late.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Jimmy muttered, trying to get his breath. A few months ago, a few weeks even, he would have covered that ground in half the time. ‘What now?’ He resigned himself to at least identifying the block that Max lived in and walked over to the other side of the road before turning and looking up at the apartments.
Each floor had a long walkway that extended the entire length of the building. Jimmy knew that on the opposite side of the block there were individual balconies, each with their own semi-private river view, but this side just had one long balcony allowing access to the front doors. He rubbed his fingers over the lighter in his pocket a couple of times, just as he always did when he was nervous, and regarded the walkways carefully.
Jimmy’s patience was rewarded a few moments later when he saw Max emerge from a lift at the end of the walkway on the third floor. Reaching into his pocket, Jimmy brought out his phone and started the camera app. He didn’t trust himself to remember which door Max was heading for so, as the photographer reached an apartment door and waved his keycard at it, Jimmy raised the camera and snapped a couple of pictures. He swiped at the screen as the apartment door closed to make sure that he’d captured it. He had. Fourt
h flat from the left on the third floor. He added a note to the picture with the floor number just in case.
So, Jimmy thought, mission accomplished. That had been a lot easier than he’d thought it would be, although Gareth had told him it would be straightforward. He glanced at his watch. Just after six o’clock. Kick off wasn’t until quarter to eight, and Jimmy turned to look at the football stadium. Above the ground, the bright gantry lights were already on. Maybe he could get a ticket to the game? As a normal supporter, not a steward. He was dressed for it, and the painkillers he’d had earlier were still doing the business.
Jimmy was about to make his way to the stadium to see if they had any casual tickets—if not, he could call in a favour with Robbie who he knew would let him in one of the side entrances—when he caught some movement on the third floor of the flats opposite. Jimmy looked up sharply to see that Max’s apartment door had opened.
A woman stepped out of the apartment. Although Jimmy was on the other side of the street, he could see that she was slight, blonde, and in a hurry. She closed the door behind her and half-jogged, half-ran down the walkway and toward the lift at the end. Jimmy made his way as quickly as he could to the door outside the apartments that Max had disappeared through, and by the time the woman opened the door and stepped out into the street, he was standing not far away from her. Just another football fan waiting for the game to start.
The security light outside the door flicked back on, and Jimmy got a good look at the woman. She was wearing a calf-length brown coat which she clutched tightly around her midriff and was wearing a pair of trainers. No socks, thin bare legs as far as Jimmy could tell. The woman glanced briefly at Jimmy as she hurried out of the door, and he tried not to stare at her. She had an angular face, high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. Very attractive. Apart from the tears in her eyes and the fact that one of her cheeks was far redder than the other.
The woman set off in a fast trot towards the football ground. Jimmy waited for a few seconds and then set off after her. He had to hurry to keep up, but she slowed down after a few hundred yards, much to his relief. He wasn’t sure why he was following her, but he did anyway. The look on her face as she’d glanced at him, seeing him but not really seeing him, had got to him. Jimmy’s feelings towards Max had definitely taken a turn for the worse when he’d seen the look on her face.
Gareth Dawson Series Box Set Page 50