Missing Dad

by J Ryan

  ‘I s’pose it doesn’t fit with the other information he’s got.’

  ‘Wonder how much information he has on Monsieur?’

  ‘One thing’s for sure; he’s not getting anything else out of us!’

  To our relief DIW doesn’t keep us long at the station. ‘I’ll need you both to come back in the day after tomorrow, and make a formal statement. Can you make it for three o’clock? I’ll send a car at two thirty.’

  I start to say, ‘It’s OK, we’ll take the train’, when Becks grabs my hand with a warning squeeze. ‘That’ll be fine, Inspector.’

  As we walk towards Mum’s Citroën, she hisses, ‘One hint that we’re not being super co-operative, and he could start to take an interest in us as well as Monsieur!’

  Mum turns to us with a little smile as we squeeze into the back seat with Jack. ‘Your grandad’s got a surprise for you, Joe.’

  Becks and I have had enough surprises for now, but I smile back. ‘Cool.’

  ‘Hey, Joe! The dude who took me up the cliff says he runs a climbing club, an’ I can join. They go up the gorge all the time!’

  To my relief, Grandad chips in: ‘You can join when you’re a little older, Jack. I don’t want to watch my grandchildren hanging off cliffs again for a while, thanks!’

  As we reach Stroud, Mum takes a different route from usual, and pulls up outside a garage. A guy in red overalls with a long pony tail comes out, wiping his hands on a rag. He grins at me. ‘Mornin’, Lewis!’ He turns to Grandad.‘Have to say, we’re quite pleased with it.’

  We follow him inside and I stare. ‘This is my car?’

  Grandad runs an appreciative hand along the new paintwork. Then he reaches inside, pulls the bonnet lever and inspects the engine bay. For a strange half-second, I wonder if it’s him I’ve inherited my car craziness from. His voice is careful: ‘Not bad.’

  Becks opens the driver’s door. ‘Can’t be your car, it smells really nice.’

  Jack gets in. ‘New carpets. You’ll have to get busy with the Pot Noodles, Joe.’

  I sit at the wheel. No smell of leather, no sat nav, no massive engine. And no white stuff in the boot, with cameras watching everything you do. No contest. The Bentley’s pants to my Peugeot.

  Chapter 14

  Monsieur

  ‘Shall I come down and collect you when it’s over?’ Mum makes it sound like I’m going on an operating table. It must be the sight of the police car waiting outside.

  ‘No worries, Mum. We’ll get the train.’

  ‘You’d better have some money, then.’ She rummages in her bag and passes me a twenty pound note. ‘Will that cover it?’

  ‘More than. Thanks, Mum.’

  As the driver pulls away, I wave at her small figure standing forlornly at the gate, and I think, ‘This is going to be absolutely the last time she has to look at me sitting in a cop car.’

  When we get to Becks’ house Steve’s waiting with her on the pavement. He grins and gives me a thumbs-up. ‘Good to see you back in the land of the living, mate. What’s ‘shooters’ en français?’

  ‘Shut up, Steve!’ Becks kicks his ankle. He waves cheerfully, and goes back inside. Becks slips into the car beside me, her hair swishing around in a breeze of fresh-smelling shampoo. ‘You look different. Let me guess…’

  ‘The shower’s different. Think I’ve blocked it.’

  ‘Too much information!’

  I keep my voice down as the car moves off. ‘Talking of which – we need to be careful what we say to DIW.’

  She whispers, ‘D’you think he’s going to give us a grilling?’

  ‘Well, he’s going to want a blow by blow account, isn’t he?’ I’m whispering too, now. I don’t think this car has mics and cameras, but I’d rather not chance it. ‘Problem is, he’s obviously convinced that Monsieur’s the boss.’

  ‘Then we’d better unconvince him!’

  ‘I’m not sure how easy that’s going to be, Becks.’

  She looks out of the window as the car takes us down the M5. In the fields on either side sheep are grazing peacefully in the sunshine. We pass Michael Wood services. In my mind, I can see the Bentley rocketing off the motorway and up the slip road, headlights blazing into the dark. Becks turns back to me, green eyes thoughtful. ‘Monsieur didn’t seem surprised by the explosions, did he?’

  ‘That’s point one that we don’t share with DIW.’

  ‘As if!’

  ‘He must’ve known what Big Head was planning, but by then it was too late for him to do anything except get out.’

  ‘He must have known quite a lot. Like, when it was going to start…’

  ‘Point two that we keep to ourselves.’

  The driver reaches up to adjust his rear view mirror; we go quiet and watch the traffic on the M32. As we head towards the city centre Becks leans sideways to pick up her bag, and whispers into my ear, ‘Is there a point three?’

  ‘And four. I’ve forgotten both of them!’ I try to re-run the thoughts that were going through my head while I was in the shower, but all I can remember is Mum shouting, ‘There’s water coming through the kitchen ceiling!’

  D I Wellington takes us into a room that’s more like a police cell; bars at the window, no carpet on the concrete floor and just a table with three chairs. On the table there’s a tape recorder that looks like it should be in a museum and a closed laptop with a grimy film on the lid.

  Becks glances sideways at me, and I wince as Point 3 resuscitates itself and hisses in my ear. Of course – we should have gone over exactly what we said to DIW yesterday. I bet she’s doing just what I am; racking her brains to remember. I feel as nervous now as I did on the side of that cliff.

  ‘Thanks for coming in, you two. Don’t be put off by the austerity of this place. It’ll give us some peace and quiet away from the phone, to get this interview done and dusted as quickly as possible. Sit yourselves down.’ He switches on the recorder.

  It’s all going fine till we revisit Big Bang Number One.

  ‘How did Monsieur react to the first explosion?’

  Neither of us speaks, then we both speak at once.

  ‘He jumped a mile high, like we did.’

  ‘He said both of us had to get out.’

  ‘One at a time, please. Joe first.’

  ‘He did jump a mile high, then he said we had to get out.’

  DIW looks at Becks.

  She doesn’t blink. ‘That’s how I remember it, too.’

  ‘How would you say he looked, Joe?’

  ‘Really scared.’ I remember Leah Wilks’ nails tearing into the Bentley’s leather seat. ‘Like, his knuckles were white.’

  ‘Very observant of you. And what was your impression, Rebecca?’

  Becks hates being called that, but she doesn’t even wrinkle her nose. ‘He looked like he’d had the shock of his life, Inspector.’

  He stares at us both, long and hard, for a few seconds that feel like hours. ‘Why did you stay on in a burning building to copy those files? Joe?’

  I feel a wash of relief; it’s so much easier to tell the truth. ‘We were hoping there’d be something that you could use to get Bertolini locked up.’

  ‘You must have known that you were risking your lives.’

  ‘Not at the time. We thought we could get out in the lift.’

  ‘And then you found you couldn’t?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t listening anymore.’

  He frowns like I’ve made a cheap joke. Becks jumps in. ‘The lift was voice-activated, Inspector. The smoke must have got into it.’

  DIW shifts and leans forwards in his chair, looking straight at me. ‘I’m going to ask you an important question, Joe, and I want you to think very carefully about your answer. Did Monsieur tell y
ou to copy those files?’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘He was still your employer. It would have been a life-threatening – and illegal – order, but you might have felt compelled to obey it. You won’t incriminate yourself, whatever your answer is. Provided it’s the truth, of course.’

  I look straight back at him. ‘He didn’t tell me to copy the files, Inspector. It was all my idea.’

  ‘Then why do you think he left the computer running?’

  I just knew DIW was leading up to this. It’s Point 4, that I was thinking about before the shower flooded the kitchen. Why DID Monsieur leave the computer running? My brain crashes, and refuses to reboot.

  Becks parachutes in again, green eyes blazing. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? When the building started to explode, everything was going to go up in smoke not long after we’d all left. Monsieur didn’t know we were planning to go back in there. He thought he’d made sure that we’d gone. And he didn’t have long to save his own life. What was the POINT of wasting precious time shutting down a computer?’

  Wow. Becks should be a lawyer; she’d earn zillions. Put like that it all makes perfect sense. DIW must think so, too. Click! He switches off the recorder, shaking his head slightly. ‘Would either of you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘We’re OK thanks, Inspector.’ Becks looks deliberately at her watch and then at the door.

  But I’m not done yet. ‘Are you getting some useful stuff from the memory stick?’

  His voice is cautious. ‘The boffins have made a start. They tell me that some of the files are difficult to get into…’

  ‘Oh…’

  ‘However, the indications are that there’s information on that little stick that could help us seriously undermine a major international drugs cartel.’

  ‘Right.’

  He takes out the tape. ‘But the fact remains that two of our big fish are still out there, fighting fit, and we want them on the barbecue. Until both of these men are in custody, you and your family could still be at risk. You too, Rebecca.’

  A Becks foot starts to tap quietly on the concrete floor. He continues, ‘I want you to be very careful. If someone you don’t know tries to contact you, or if you see anything that gives you cause for concern, you must let me know straightaway. Will you both promise to do that?’

  We nod solemnly.

  ‘I don’t believe it! He still thinks Monsieur’s a drugs warlord!’

  ‘I think it’s ‘godfather’… or ‘supremo’?’

  ‘Whatever!’ Becks shakes her red hair impatiently, as we walk past shops that are closing down for the night. ‘What are we going to do about it?’

  ‘What can we do? Look, we copied hundreds of files off that computer. There’s got to be some stuff that points the finger at Big Head and takes the heat off Monsieur.’

  The sun sinks slowly through trails of pink and gold clouds, as we wander along the docks. Becks keeps pushing her hair behind her ears. She’s still fizzing with anger. I look at the low sun shining on the water and the swans cruising lazily around, feeling a rush of thankfulness for just being able to see sunlight again when I once thought we never would.

  We get to the ruins of the blue-glass office block. No smoke is rising now. It’s just a huge pile of twisted girders and rubble, maybe fifty feet high. No more leather sofas, luxury apartments and fine wines. Barriers fence off the site. Cranes, bulldozers and diggers are all lined up, ready to start work tomorrow. Becks stares at them, and I can see that another thought has started to bob around in her brain. ‘In between those loud noises, did I hear you ask Monsieur if he knew your father?’

  ‘Monsieur was in the photo of Dad that Mum gave me.’

  ‘Why did you wait until the roof was falling in to ask him if he knew your dad?’

  ‘It was only when we were in the cave room that I knew for sure I could trust Monsieur.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘That he’d worked with Dad once… but everything had changed. He sounded very sad.’

  ‘That was it?’

  ‘Then you and I had an urgent appointment with the lift.’

  We walk slowly on in the direction of the station. Becks takes a last glance back. ‘Do you think Monsieur got out?’

  ‘How will we ever know?’

  ‘If he’s caught and arrested?’

  ‘He’s too clever for that.’

  ‘Then you do think he got out?’

  ‘I hope so. If he did I know how he’ll get away from the police.’ I tell Becks all about Monsieur’s yacht. ‘He can sail back to France and no one can stop him. I bet that’s what he does.’

  Becks twirls a strand of hair thoughtfully. ‘What if it was Monsieur who blew up the building?’

  I stop dead and stare at her. ‘Why would he nuke his own offices?’

  ‘He told us he wasn’t the boss. So the boss must be Bertolini. Suppose he’d been forcing Monsieur to let him use the wines business as a cover for the drugs?’

  ‘You mean, he had some kind of hold over Monsieur?’

  ‘It’s possible, isn’t it? Maybe something in Monsieur’s past… like, Bertolini was blackmailing him?’

  ‘So… what changed?’

  ‘Us getting the police onto Bertolini?’

  ‘If Monsieur laid the explosives, it would explain why he told us to get out. And why he wasn’t surprised at the Big Bangs. But he lost everything…’

  Becks says quietly, ‘He must have hated Bertolini, to let it all go like that.’

  My brain’s going faster than it was ever designed to. ‘But, what kind of hold could Bertolini have had over Monsieur?’

  ‘Whatever it is, he could still have it. The police haven’t caught him yet.’

  ‘And he won’t be too happy about what Monsieur’s done to him. In fact… if he knows that we tried to help…’

  ‘Bertolini will be after us all now, won’t he? Like he came after you?’

  Organisations like this never forget. They’re a kind of Mafia.

  ‘I s’pose that’s why DIW told us to be careful. But boss man must have other things on his mind, with the police on his back.’

  Becks shoves the strand of hair behind her ear. ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that. He pulled out all the stops to give you a job to die for, didn’t he? C‘mon, we’d better go for the train.’

  I owe you my life, Joe.

  I don’t move. ‘If Monsieur laid the explosives, why was he still there when we arrived?’

  ‘Unfinished business? He was on the computer, emailing maybe? He must have known how to get out so the police wouldn’t see him.’

  ‘So, why did he say he owed me his life?’

  ‘Because of the bullet Bertolini had lined up for him – that’s what we thought, wasn’t it?’ Becks turns to me, frowning. ‘No, you’re right. It doesn’t compute if Monsieur did the blowing up.’

  I wish my brain would slow down, but it won’t. ‘I don’t think he was going to leave, Becks.’

  Her voice is quiet with shock. ‘He was… why would he?’

  ‘Because of this hold that Bertolini has? Maybe nothing mattered anymore, except putting an end to the drugs.’

  ‘And then… we turned up. And he changed his mind – why?’

  I gaze at the bombed-out office, seeing me and Monsieur hurtling round the test track in the mighty Bentley. ‘I’ve got to talk to him, Becks. He’s the only person on the planet who could maybe help me find Dad.’

 

 

 
er: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share