by Chris Petit
Collard was sure Becker had recognized his description of Quinn. He could leave now or he could go back. It was a decisive moment.
Becker was in front of the surveillance monitors. He seemed unsurprised by Collard’s return.
‘I only need to know if you have seen the man Quinn who was with my son.’
‘He was here on the day of the crash.’
Collard returned to where he had left Schäfer and Stack, mystified and waiting.
‘There’s a Scottish handler we need to speak to.’
Schäfer led them to the conveyor belts and they followed them to a dispatch point where several handlers were standing idle between arrivals.
It took another twenty minutes to locate the Scotsman sitting alone in a scruffy staff canteen. His sleeves were rolled up and both arms were decorated with tattoos. He had the watchful look of a man who’d had training – Collard guessed the army.
He seemed amused by their appearance. ‘Who are you guys? At least you don’t look like cops.’
Collard showed him the photograph of Nick and explained he had been missing since the crash.
‘Four Americans were here that day and the one that didn’t get on the plane knows Nick.’
‘Who told you about me?’
‘A German Customs officer spoke to you because the Americans were looking for a baggage handler who understood English. Their leader was very tall, wearing jeans and a short suede windcheater, with untidy hair, going bald at the front. He had a moustache.’
‘He said it was a security check.’
Collard couldn’t resist a triumphant look in Stack’s direction. Barry had been in Frankfurt.
Stack was quick to sense the Scotsman might talk more easily to her and asked what had brought him to Frankfurt.
‘My wife’s Turkish.’
His name was McCullough and he was from Renfrew. He had a personal interest in the disaster because he had cousins in the town where the plane had crashed.
Stack asked, ‘Has anyone else asked about the Americans?’
‘A strange thing that, but no. I spoke to management and was referred to the airline but nobody got back to me.’
‘What did you make of that?’
‘They don’t pay me enough to make anything of it.’
The sentence hung in the air.
‘Two hundred marks,’ Stack said.
‘Call it three and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.’ McCullough gave a wry smile. ‘Time is money and I haven’t got long.’
Stack surprised Collard by producing the cash out of her bag.
‘Two hundred,’ she said, ‘and the rest if you make me think you’re worth it.’
‘Try me.’
‘Tell me.’
McCullough had taken the Americans onto the tarmac and they helped load several items directly into a luggage container as it was about to go into the hold of the London flight.
‘They loaded items onto the plane?’ Collard asked slowly. ‘What kind of items?’
‘Regular luggage.’
‘Including a Samsonite suitcase?’
‘Including a Samsonite suitcase.’
Collard wondered how reliable McCullough was beyond repeating everything.
‘Does this kind of thing go on a lot? Bypassing the system and personally loading stuff on planes?’
‘Not to me personally, but you hear stories.’
‘What kind of stories?’
‘American security was often present airside. Frankfurt is part of the American Zone so it’s their show. There were stories about Americans turning up and supervising their own loading.’
Schäfer said, ‘It’s an obvious point that is easily forgotten. West Germany is technically under military occupation and Frankfurt is under American control. We are still under its supervision from the war.’
‘So there was nothing particularly unusual about the behaviour of the men on the day?’ Collard asked.
‘They knew what they were doing and acted like they had the right to be there.’
‘Who did you think they were?’
‘I thought some kind of military police.’ He laughed. ‘When I was in the army I had my share of military police. The only unusual thing was they also took items off.’
‘Took items off?’ Stack repeated.
‘Two identical suitcases from the luggage container.’
‘Removed?’ Collard asked, thinking McCullough’s habit of repeating everything was catching.
‘As in they were looking for something.’
‘Were they also Samsonite cases?’
‘They looked at all the Samsonites.’
Including his, Collard presumed; it would have been in the container.
‘Were they looking for something specific?’
‘It seemed so. They took away the two cases that were the same colour.’
‘Then what?’
‘The tall guy asked for a private room. One of them went inside with the bags for maybe fifteen minutes.’
McCullough’s description of the man in the room matched Quinn.
Thinking of the mixture of celebration and urgency shown by the three men in the terminal, Collard asked how they had behaved.
‘They were very excited. Like they had found what they wanted.’
‘What did they do with the two cases?’
‘Put them back in the luggage container.’
‘Did they position them in any way?’ Collard asked.
‘No. They just chucked them back in.’
‘Can you remember what other items they loaded?’
‘A medium-tan leather grip and a larger black canvas holdall.’
‘No rucksack?’ Collard asked.
The answer was negative. Whatever had gone on it seemed not to have involved anything belonging to Nick.
McCullough looked at his wrist to signal their money was running out.
Stack asked, ‘Did any of the men say anything?’
McCullough answered sarcastically. ‘They didn’t say they were looking for a bomb, if that’s what you mean. At the end the tall man smiled and said, “Job done.’’’
They took the lift from the car park directly up into the Sheraton. Collard left Schäfer and Stack in the café and went up to his room. He didn’t feel much like sharing his thoughts about Nick and Quinn or telling Stack about Fatima Bey, let alone that evening’s party.
He let himself into the room. It was the oddest sensation trying to picture Nick there with the girl.
The window was high up, overlooking the runway. A plane took off, the thrust of its engine reduced to a whisper by layers of toughened glass.
Nick, Quinn, Beech; all their whereabouts unknown. At least he had been right about Barry. The likeliest explanation he could think of was that Barry had been acting on a tip-off and had either missed the bomb or been betrayed. This would explain the American panic afterwards, especially if they needed to cover up Barry’s error.
Collard looked around. The room had twin beds. He imagined Nick’s disappointment.
As he picked up the phone to call Fatima Bey there was a knock on the door. Assuming it was the maid come to turn down the beds, he opened the door to find Stack.
‘Later,’ he told her. ‘I need to be alone.’
Stack nodded and burst into tears.
Collard had bottled up his own emotions for so long he didn’t know what to do. She stood, rigid to attention, tears streaming down her face. He took her awkwardly in his arms, aware it was his first physical contact with anyone since Charlotte’s brief kiss of welcome in Scotland. He sat her on the bed and fetched a tissue from the bathroom. She dried her eyes and blew her nose.
‘What is it?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said with a weak smile. ‘Not very professional.’
She rummaged in her bag and produced a photograph.
‘It’s about this.’
It was of Nick – another surveillance picture like the one sho
wn by Churton. This time the location was a busy pedestrian shopping area, with Christmas decorations and a sea of shoppers. There was a time code. Khaled was closest to the camera, alone, with Nick several yards behind. The flat perspective made them look closer than they would have been. As with the Beech picture, there was nothing to connect them. At the same time any inference could be drawn.
Collard lost his temper. He didn’t know what else to do. He accused Stack of using him to chase her story on Nick.
‘Don’t look at me like that. It’s not like that.’
‘Where did you get this?’
‘It was sent anonymously.’
‘Is that equivocation or professional integrity?’
The picture again looked real enough. At the same time he wondered why they didn’t just show Nick talking to Nazir or Beech or Khaled, like the one Nick and Quinn in the Cyprus café.
That had been taken with a regular camera, Collard remembered, with no time code on the print.
Becker’s airport monitors and the surveillance pictures of Marwan and Nazir had identical formatting and the same style time code, meaning German Customs and anti-terrorist teams shared the same technical provider. Collard knew from experience it was a small field.
The format and time code of the images of Nick with Beech and Nazir, now this one with Khaled, were quite different, when – if their provenance was German intelligence – they should have been the same. The inference was plain. German intelligence was not the source, which meant Churton had been misled and Stack was probably being used.
He thrust the picture back at Stack. It now looked as though someone was actively promoting Nick as part of the plot.
‘What’s this about?’
‘I was told to follow it up and see if there was a story.’
‘Told by who?’
‘By my editor.’
‘How did he know about the picture?’
‘It was sent to him. He assigned me. He knew you had been in Scotland and asked if we had met.’
‘I’m starting to wonder who doesn’t know about me.’
‘I know,’ Stack said with a wan smile.
‘And is there a story, in your professional opinion? Let me put it another way. Was stringing me along part of that?’
‘Please, I don’t want to fight. I didn’t know what to make of the picture. There’s been no other mention of Nick in the whole of this investigation. But it’s my job to follow these things up.’
He didn’t know whether he believed her. He thought of Nick and the girl in the same room and wondered whether there had been tension between them.
‘I wanted to help,’ Stack said. ‘I thought bringing you with me was a way of protecting you. I hoped we would find a lead to Nick. I wanted to talk about all this on the plane and put it off. That’s my story. You’re quite within your rights to shout at me.’
He walked out of the room instead.
Just Like a Ballerina
Collard took a taxi to Fatima Bey, along the ring road past the Botanical Gardens. When he had called her from the lobby of the Sheraton she said it was a good time to come because her child was being looked after for the evening.
Staring at the numbers of the taxi meter ticking over, his thoughts returned to Khaled. Disposable, a lowly drug runner, a small cog, but photographs were in circulation, rumours too, trying to show he was a terrorist. If someone wanted Khaled to appear involved that meant it was not a random act of terror but premeditated. That frightened Collard because he was growing more certain that Nick had been framed in a similar way. That was the feeling he’d had looking at the security pictures, realizing Nick was in them because someone wanted him there.
Collard stared out at the lights of the traffic and wondered if he would ever feel connected to the world again.
After passing a sports stadium, his taxi turned by a large cemetery. Fatima Bey lived near an autobahn on an estate of medium-rise apartment blocks. The estate was deserted, its tidiness superficial – on a dark winter’s evening there was nothing to hang around for. In succession, Collard passed a crushed syringe, a used condom and a bright yellow stool of shit. He wondered if Nick had stayed there.
Fatima Bey lived on the third floor. He rang her bell and told himself to stop thinking of her as a girl. She was twenty-three, a mother.
She was waiting for him in the open door of her apartment. Her embrace surprised him, so tight it was like she was trying to transmit some desperate message. Collard smelled soap and nerves.
Fatima Bey turned out to be more Slav than Mediterranean, with dark, almond eyes. She was attractive rather than beautiful and very tentative. Collard couldn’t tell if she was the subject of Nick’s Polaroid; it was too silhouetted. She excused her English and mimed for him to take off his shoes. He felt self-conscious in socks. The aroma of coffee filled the small apartment. She showed him into the living room. Collard watched the traffic on the autobahn and thought of Nick and the young woman who was preparing coffee in the kitchen. In a hundred years there would be nothing to remember, no trace of any of them apart from a few official records stating the bare facts of their lives.
The apartment’s furnishings were cheap and modern. Everything was tidy. There were no toys out. Framed photographs of Fatima Bey and her child stood on a storage unit. They were marked by a sense of enforced brightness and formality that made Collard think of religion. His first impression was of someone fundamentally sad. Several pictures showed an older couple under the same cypress tree.
Then there was Nick.
Not framed. A snapshot as Collard had never seen him: hair longer than in Frankfurt, laughing the spontaneous laugh of someone happy with the moment.
The coffee came with evaporated milk and expensive chocolate biscuits that looked bought for the occasion. The effort she had gone to made him want to cry. Their faltering attempts at conversation were full of shrugs and uncomfortable smiles. Fatima Bey covered her embarrassment by speaking too softly. Even leaning forward, Collard found it hard to hear.
She sat next to him to show her pictures of Nick she had pasted in an album. Many were of him with groups in bars, the flash turning everyone’s eyes red. They were typical snapshots of any travelling eighteen-year-old. Other photographs showed Mediterranean views and shots of Nick sightseeing or in budget-hotel rooms.
Collard was reminded of the photographs Sheehan had made him go through at the crash site. As evidence of destroyed lives they had been almost too much. Collard looked at the images of his lost son, so much more relaxed than he remembered. Sheehan had asked how well he knew Nick. Sitting in that strange apartment, he wondered if he had known him at all.
He was conscious of Fatima Bey next to him, fragile and in need of protection. He supposed Nick had felt that way too. He wanted to put his arm around her, suspecting she was the kind of person who was bound to end up hurt. Her vulnerability invited it.
Between them they laboriously patched together an account of her meeting Nick on her first holiday since the birth of her child. Her mother’s small win on the lottery had paid for her to visit Athens to stay with an old friend. She met Nick sightseeing at the Acropolis. She couldn’t remember the word Nick had used for what happened between them. When her English faltered she reverted to German and he got the gist with the help of a basic dictionary.
‘Clicked,’ Collard eventually said. Her whole expression changed and her face radiated tenderness. Collard saw then how Nick could have fallen in love with her.
They had gone to Cyprus, where Nick had a promise of good money. She didn’t know what kind of work. When her holiday was over and she had to return to Germany, Nick promised to visit. For their rendezvous on that last night at the Sheraton she had arranged for her child to be looked after.
‘He asked me to marry him.’
Collard wondered whether he had misunderstood.
‘What did you tell him?’
She had told him he was too young and needed to do his stu
dies. Then Collard wondered if she had misunderstood Nick.
He asked if Nick had seen anyone else in Frankfurt. He mentioned the man at the Sheraton. Her sad look told him he was asking the wrong questions. He probably was. He just couldn’t see Nick’s proposal. Sensing his scepticism, she excused herself and ran to the kitchen.
He found her sitting crouched, head in hands. She looked up and repeated a sentence in German and wept inconsolably. Collard thought she had said: I was certain he was dead.
In very approximate German he asked if she had heard from Nick. She nodded, half-hysterical. A torrent of German followed. Her lyrical lament took him as much by surprise as her sudden breakdown. He understood its meaning through her transparency of expression. She had mourned for Nick, believing him dead, until he telephoned. He would not say where he was but wanted to see her. He didn’t know when. Every day she waited, hoping.
Collard asked if she thought Nick was in trouble. He showed her the word in the dictionary. She shrank from it and said she had been concerned since the last days in Cyprus when Nick had grown distant and secretive. She described finding him in a café with an American. Nick said the American was just a tourist he had run into but she was sure they knew each other.
Quinn.
She nodded at his description and agreed the man was very thin and looked like a ghost.
Collard wrote a note and left it for Nick, telling him to come home, however bad things were, or at least make contact.
He repeated himself several times, saying, ‘Make sure he gets this.’
There were tears in her eyes again and he left uncertain how much either of them had understood.
The Abyss
The party was high in one of the big new super-towers, in an exclusive space with commanding views of the nocturnal city. Collard kept his overcoat on to give his appearance a semblance of formality. Otherwise he would be in jersey and jeans at a black-tie affair. There was no sign of anyone resembling Nazir.
The party was a world away from the locations he had visited that day and not what he expected, which was a low-key affair reminiscent of dull embassy drinks parties, rather than a brash, noisy gathering with a heaving crowd getting drunk on complimentary champagne. Quite how he was meant to find Patrick Bauer in the squash he wasn’t sure.