by Linda Coles
So, where did she want to be? While the answer wasn’t yet obvious to her, Paris most certainly no longer felt right, if it ever had. Too many people bustled and jostled; backpack-laden tourists headed for famous landmarks, locals zipped and zoomed, busy, intent on their own business. Everyone around her appeared to know their plan for the rest of the day: where they were driving to, where they were sleeping, where they might be in the evening. But Susan knew none of those things and it bothered her. She still had some cash, she’d been frugal, but the ferry, backpackers and food so far had meant a chunk had already gone and there was no way of getting any more. But what could Paris offer her now? Busy meant a summer job wouldn’t be too hard. Busy meant a youth hostel or similar on a budget. And busy meant she could disappear easily. Yet she felt Paris wasn’t it. She checked the phone for the time. Maybe it was time to let go of it. It wasn’t like she could use it much, only listen to messages and read texts to keep up the pretence of being Tabitha Child. But to what end? Who knew Tabitha was ‘missing’? And no one would suspect Susan Smith had a dead woman’s phone, why would they? But the GPS aspect had been gnawing at her of recent: what if someone had put two and two together? It was coming up to 3 pm.
There was, however, a tiny feeling of comfort that she was still somehow connected to her old life, though it was absurd. It was like finding comfort in someone else’s soft blanket. Marcus would be worried no doubt and she contemplated that for a moment, a smile creeping across her mouth. She’d loved him once. They’d ambled on doing their own thing, trying to carry on the farce and be the model affluent couple. If he could see her now, sat on a bench in Paris, dressed as a scruffy hitchhiker, he’d have something to say and it wouldn’t be pretty. The smile vanished at the notion. Dull years had taken their toll on their relationship and their feelings for each other. Her own contract work had not been met with his approval and had been the subject of so many rows, but he’d conceded to her keeping it part-time. While he didn’t know much of what she did, it had allowed her to bring in her own contribution to the household. He just never saw any of it. Had the day to go it alone always been on her own agenda? Is that why she’d built up a reserve? Tabby was tempted to draw on some of that money and check into a hotel. A hot shower and a decent meal were a strong pull, but she also knew that Marcus spied on her. Did he also know about her other accounts? She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of tracing her. She’d manage as she had been up to know.
Abruptly she stood up, the decision of what to do next as clear as spring water running down the French Alps. Move on south. To Albi. It sounded like a wonderful place to get lost in with its medieval buildings and cobbled streets, and a tourist trade to help her find work. While her French wasn’t up to much, she’d force herself to become fluent as quickly as possible. Being immersed in it daily would be the best way of learning. A job waitressing wouldn’t be hard to find, she felt sure. But she needed to get there first. She set off walking towards the main road where Albert had dropped her off a couple of days ago, all her worldly belongings in her backpack. All she knew was it was about seven hours south, depending on the route she found herself taking. It wasn’t the hitchhiker that made that decision but the driver of the vehicle you happened to be travelling in. And a zig-zag journey was to be expected. But Albi sounded like the place she’d feel a little more at home in. Not the bright lights of a bustling capital city. Not any more anyway. Once upon a time in her life, it would have been; a handful of days ago, it would have been; but that was all behind her now. Going forward, Tabby Child, as she was now known, would be looking for work and a place to call home for the foreseeable future. When she reached the busy road, she stuck her thumb out and hoped for a safe travelling companion. A moment later, a woman’s voice caught her attention as it called out close by behind her.
“Where you headed?” It was English accent and she turned to see who was enquiring. “Thought you might be English,” the woman said. Tabby gave her a look that said ‘how?’ to which the woman, somewhere in her early thirties, caught on. “Your pale skin. Only us Brits have skin that colour,” she said, laughing, and her eyes appeared to dance without the cover of sunglasses that rested between her fingers. “So where are you heading?”
“South. To Albi, eventually. Are you going that way?”
“Certainly are. Well, Toulouse actually, but Albi isn’t far from there. Get in.” The woman pointed with her thumb at the seat behind her own and Tabby opened the door. Putting her head inside first, she quickly took stock before committing her whole being to the back of yet another stranger’s car. Along with the woman were two men, both about the same age as her, one of whom was driving. He turned to greet her, and Tabby found herself looking straight into his eyes. They seemed friendly enough.
“Welcome aboard,” he encouraged as she shuffled herself and her bag on to the back seat and smiled at the other occupant, sitting alongside her, who held his hand out in greeting.
“I’m Will,” he said and nodded to the other two up front. “And that’s Kirsty and Jez.” She introduced herself as Tabby, which now seemed like the truth, fastened her seatbelt and the car pulled away from the kerbside. Remembering she still had the phone, she pulled it from her bag and let it slip out the open window. It landed on the tarmac behind them. Peering out and behind, she could only just make out the slim, dark shape as it lay where it had landed. Her ‘lifeline’ had gone, as had any GPS.
“Didn’t you want that any more?’ Will asked, a bemused smile filling his mouth.
“No, not where I’m going, no.”
If she had felt all alone earlier on, she felt totally alone now.
There was no more Dominic either.
Chapter Forty-One
He breezed through passport control and headed out towards the exit and the taxi rank.
Dominic hadn’t bothered to take much more than a clean shirt and underwear on his trip to Paris. He knew he wouldn’t be long. He certainly wasn’t intending to stay long. Pick up Tabitha Child and get her the hell home, back to the safety of her secure location. Or to another if need be. What had she even been thinking about going off on a silly jaunt without mentioning it to him? It was a great way of getting herself killed.
Charles de Gaulle Airport was vast but well equipped to deal with the number of visitors that passed through daily. The centre of Paris was only about fifty minutes away by taxi and he joined the queue, which thankfully moved forward quickly. The taxi coordinator at the front allocated rides, doing a wonderful job, arms directing waiting passengers in two directions. Dominic only had to wait three or four minutes before he was able to slip inside his own car and head away from organised mayhem.
“Paris centre, s’il vous plaît,” he directed and he pulled out his phone. The driver nodded and they moved off in silence. Dominic had plenty of time to give him the exact location closer to their arrival. On his phone, the dot flashed its location, which he noted hadn’t moved much at all while he’d been on the flight. She’d only travelled a few streets over from the last position he’d recorded. That was a good thing, he mused, and he hoped she stayed put until he got there himself. He also hoped she was going to accompany him without a making scene, because if she started being stroppy, he wasn’t sure how he was going to get her back to the airport and home without attracting the interest of the local police. There was also the small matter of explaining how he’d come to locate her in the first place, because there was only one feasible way he could have known. That alone would generate anger. Nobody liked to feel spied on. But Dominic didn’t want the formality of letting the French police know of his plans. If he kept under everybody’s radar and managed to get the woman back quickly and quietly that would be ideal.
Dominic laid his head back on the cracked leather headrest and closed his tired eyes for a few minutes. They felt gritty from the plane and the change of dirty air blowing around the airport. These were never the cleanest of places, and certainly not easy on the e
nvironment. The faint odour of aviation fuel seemed to have accompanied him into the small space of the taxi. Forty minutes later, he was aware of a voice nearby – he’d fallen asleep. When he finally opened his eyes, he was looking straight at the driver, who had pulled over and was trying to raise an actual address out of him in broken English. Dominic sat up and lifted a finger in instruction to wait a moment and the driver screwed his face up in a frown. Dominic checked the icon on the phone. Tabitha Child had moved. He studied the road, recited the address and, without any further communication, the driver pulled away aggressively, a horn blaring from somewhere behind them. Dominic was jostled in his seat as the driver took his annoyance out on the steering wheel, throwing the vehicle around bends roughly. All the time, Dominic watched the flashing marker as they gained on it and when he was close enough, he instructed the driver to pull over.
“Arrête, s’il vous plaît.” Although probably not entirely grammatically correct, it would have to do. At least he’d tried to speak the language. The taxi pulled over and Dominic handed over his credit card. There’d been no time to exchange a few notes to euros and he made a note to find an ATM. He grabbed his small bag and slammed the door shut. The driver was apparently still indignant as he peeled away back in the direction of the airport.
But Dominic had more pressing things to think about than a stroppy driver and he headed off in the direction the tracker was showing him. According to the location, she was only a hundred metres or so in front of him. He took a deep breath in and held it a moment before releasing the air with a whoosh. He only had one crack at this and he had to get it just right. His eyes searched the heads bobbing up and down as their bodies carried them forward, looking for the shaggy blonde he’d come to know so well. At least it wasn’t raining, he thought, umbrellas would have made things tricky and spotting her would have been virtually impossible. He picked up speed, pushing through the dense foot traffic of rush hour in Paris. With one eye on the tracker he could see he was close, only a few feet away. But still he couldn’t see her head. Had she dyed her hair? he wondered. But as he scanned the women ahead of him, he saw that, unless she was wearing a long-haired wig, nobody fitted the bill.
“Damn,” he said quietly to himself with annoyance. “Where the hell are you?” He increased his speed to get further ahead of the crowd and when he looked back at the tracker, he could see it was now behind him. “What the…” He pulled into a doorway and scanned each face heading toward him, but he knew she wasn’t one of them. Another glance at the blue blob that flashed at him, and he knew instantly what had happened.
Somebody else had Tabitha Child’s phone. And they were stood three feet away.
Chapter Forty-Two
At ponderous times such as these, Detective Alan Davies found the best thing to do was find something to nibble on. He was a giant after all, and giants needed regular fuelling. The mere motion of his jaws working through a bag of peanuts jostled his grey matter into a productive combustion engine. At least peanuts were a tad healthier than a bag of Maltesers, though the fat content and the size of bag he was currently troughing through wouldn’t be kind on the calorie front. Bridget’s almond idea had a lot to answer for. Still, he needed the fuel for his brain and it gave his fingertips something to do other than push a mouse around a mat. He was searching the police database for Tabitha Child again. An unidentified body lay in a fridge back at the mortuary and the only name left on the pathologists’ list was hers. And now her name had shown up on a passenger list for an afternoon ferry to Calais on the day of the train crash. And since nobody had reported the woman missing, which was odd in itself, Alan was beginning to wonder if something much more complicated was going on. He had the woman’s passport picture on the screen in front of him and he’d emailed a copy across to the pathologist. If the woman staring back at him was the woman with the tattoo, then how on earth had she also made it through passport control? He dialled his colleague Carl, the man that had so graciously let him clear up the sweet-and-sour leftovers on Friday night. And the one who’d recognised the drawn-over tattoo.
“What can I do you for?” he answered brightly. Alan could hear waves in the background.
“Are you at the beach?” he enquired, jealousy sounding in his own ears. An ice cream and a walk along a promenade would be nice right about now.
“I am indeed. Come on over and join us. I believe the water is cold as all hell,” he said, laughing. “You’re only an hour or so away, you can be here for fish and chips later.”
“I’ll pass, thanks. But listen, I’ve had a bit of luck on a case I’m working on and it might be linked to another. Did you manage to find out anything on that tattoo I showed you?” A seagull squawked overhead, filling the otherwise empty phoneline from Carl.
“I was about to call you. Are you ready for this, my friend?”
“What have you found out?”
“Well, here’s the problem: the file is locked and that means one thing under the circumstances.” Alan knew what that meant. It also explained why the pathologists had no prints or DNA to work with.
“Protected witness,” he said. It added up to what he knew already. It made complete sense. “So that tattoo has been covered up. We didn’t imagine things.”
“It seems not. Look, keep me in the loop, would you? Out of interest?”
“Of course. I thought that was all put to bed a couple of years ago, the ringleaders behind bars?”
“But now a woman with the same tattoo turns up dead.”
“From a train crash, remember? Nothing sinister there but I hear you. Thanks for that, Carl. I’ll speak to you later.”
Alan sat back in his office chair, swivelling it slightly from side to side as he popped another couple of nuts and chewed. The office was almost empty now, colleagues gone home for the night, a couple of night-shift staff making a start. He noticed Bridget was still at her own desk. He moseyed over.
“Can you get into a locked file on the database?” he enquired nonchalantly.
“Only if I want the sack,” she said, swivelling round to look him in the eyes. “And no, I don’t want the sack, so don’t bother asking. There’s no way to not leave a trail, even if I could get in.” That wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but he’d no intention of pressing the issue.
“You’ll need someone with a higher pay grade than me.” She turned her chair back to her own screen and carried on typing furiously. Discouraged, and obviously dismissed, he went back to his own desk to think about what to do next. He called back over to Bridget.
“Did you, by chance, ask for the CCTV footage from those afternoon ferries?” Her head shook side to side, no. He double-checked his list of names and the ferry time and made the call himself. Security agreed to put the file on a USB for him to collect. Alan checked the clock – full-blown rush hour. The motorway would be like a car park for the next two hours. He wondered about the two women, the PI and her PA, Chrissy and Julie. They said they were heading down to the ferry. Would it be out of place for them to pick an envelope up for him?
“Of course it would, you moron. Plus, they’d be able to feel it was a USB stick easy enough.” But it was tempting and would save him a great deal of time. If they were heading back this way anyway… and he did want to confirm who was using Tabitha Child’s passport. Because as he glanced back at the woman still staring out at him from his screen, he had an inkling just who that might be.
The missing Susan Smith. But he needed proof.
Chapter Forty-Three
It made sense to ask the PI duo to pick up an envelope. Surely they wouldn’t consider snooping at police evidence? That would buy the pair a whole heap of trouble. They were passing through anyway, it was no different than using a courier service for one lousy tiny package.
“Except this one contains evidence, I hope,” Alan mumbled as he found Julie Stokes’ telephone number and dialled. Her familiar purr made his pulse spike like an arrhythmic attack, though he did his best to ign
ore it. Never having met the woman, he wondered what she looked like – perhaps she’d be a blonde.
“Alan,” she purred. “How nice to hear from you again. I’m putting you on loudspeaker… How can Chrissy and I help you?”
The spike stabbed him harder in the chest. He cleared his throat before attempting to speak. “And hello to you, Chrissy,” he said, out of courtesy. A moment later a different voice filled his ears, one without the soft purr. This one was gritty, and more assertive, like a tradeswoman – Chrissy Livingstone.
“Hello to you, DS Davies. What can we do for you? Do you have news?”
“Nothing else to report, no. But are you, by chance, still passing through the Dover ferry terminal at all?”
“We are, yes. Almost at Dover in actual fact. Why?”
“Could I trouble you to bring a small package back this way? It’s at the information desk in the ferry terminal. Only, it would save me a trip and if you’re already there… Makes sense. But only if you don’t mind, I don’t want to put you to any trouble.” He winced at the saccharine coating he’d added to his words, as if he were talking to a young child or an elderly lady.
“It sounds exciting. What’s the package? Don’t tell me it’s drugs?”
Julie laughed at her suggestion. Of course it wouldn’t be drugs.
“I can tell you for certain it’s not drugs, but it is important.” He could hear mumbled words in the background as if they were having a private conversation.
“Hold on a moment, please,” Julie said, and Alan struggled to hear the conversation between the two women. He caught the words “couple of days” and wondered what they were discussing. Chrissy spoke next.
“What Julie failed to mention is we’re planning on going across to France for a day or two so we won’t be heading straight back. Is that too long for you to wait?”