‘Get her under control.’ His voice is high-pitched, panicky.
Is he afraid of her?
‘I mean it.’
‘Cut me loose, I’ll get her under control,’ Julia says, sounding far braver than she feels. ‘Let us go, she won’t bother you ever again.’
‘Can’t do that.’
‘Why? What do you want?’
‘Respect.’ He is disguising his voice and he avoids her gaze. ‘You have our respect – and fear.’ Julia glances at Lauren, sniffling a few feet away.
She feels his eyes on her and drags her gaze reluctantly from Lauren to him. Even behind the mask, she can tell he is contemptuous. This isn’t about her or Lauren – he doesn’t require the respect of women – the notion has never even occurred to him.
‘All right,’ she says. ‘You have a point to make, and you’re using me and my little girl to make it. But does that mean we have to die of thirst?’
He straightens up. ‘I gave you water—’
‘I can’t open it,’ she snaps back.
He places the flashlight on the floor, angling it towards her so the beam dazzles her, then he lifts the twenty-litre bottle with one hand – the bottle she wrenched her back trying to move. He wraps one long arm around the barrel and grips the plastic top with the other. Twists it open with a loud crack, like bones breaking. Julia flinches involuntarily. He looks down at her, then switches his attention to Lauren. His message is clear.
He dumps the bottle carelessly on the floor and a whale-spout of water shoots out, wetting Julia’s jeans.
‘Satisfied?’ he says.
He’s offended that I think he’s cruel. ‘Since you ask,’ she says, ‘I’d like my handbag. There are things I need.’
‘What “things”?’
‘I—’
‘Your phone – is that what you want? ’Cos you know, that’s long gone.’ He must see the disappointment in her face, because he spits, ‘D’you think I’m stupid? Do you – bitch?’
Julia knows men like this. Men with egos like glass; men who will always respond to an imagined insult with their fists. A sudden inspiration makes her say: ‘Women’s things. “Time of the month” things.’ She stares past the mask, into his eyes, and although he looks away, she does not. This is not the time to back down.
He stoops, snagging the handbag by the shoulder strap and flings it at her, catching her in the chest. Winded, she whoops in air.
He takes a step towards her and Julia flinches. Lauren sets up a wail.
‘Easy …’ He retrieves the torch, spotlights the water container, the bag of food, the handbag, the blankets. ‘You got what you need,’ he says, his voice a harsh rasp. ‘Now I want something from you.’
10
Lying is a form of deception, but not all forms of deception are lies.
A UNIVERSAL TRUISM
Aberdeen, Thursday Night
Back in his apartment, Fennimore shucked off his jacket, damp after his walk through the fog, and hung it over a dining chair to dry. His mobile phone thunked against the chair leg and he fished for it in the pocket, came up with a business card. Lazko’s.
‘Crime reporter, Essex Chronicle,’ it read. It seemed Lazko had moved on a step or two along the yellow brick road towards achieving his London ambitions: when he’d raked up muck on Fennimore and Simms five years ago, he was an all-rounder and general dogsbody on a free newspaper in Hampshire.
Fennimore’s first impulse was to shred the damned thing. He slotted the card in the machine, but for reasons he could not explain, held off flicking the switch. Instead, he set up his netbook and started checking the journalist’s story. Lazko had been campaigning for two years; the convicted man’s family for much longer. He found a blog created by Mitchell’s sister, an inevitable Facebook page entitled ‘Justice for Graham Mitchell’. He scrolled back through the timeline to read the posts in sequence. It began with a diatribe against a criminal justice system that assumed guilt when it espoused the presumption of innocence. The outcry of an anguished family unable to acknowledge the terrible truth that their son or brother or father was a killer.
To all appearances, as a story, this was a lame duck. Mitchell was a loner who haunted the red light district of his home town and paid prostitutes for sex or company. He had even confessed to the murder. Lazko had set his sights on a staff position at one of the national newspapers – and this story wasn’t a career-maker. So why had he invested so much in Mitchell – gambling his reputation, convincing his editor to revisit the case, to run appeals for information?
A two-tone notification warned Fennimore that someone was trying to reach him on Skype. He checked the caller ID: it was Kate Simms. He accepted the call and a moment later, Kate was onscreen. He saw a bay window behind her and darkness beyond it.
‘Hey, you’re back,’ he said, smiling into the webcam.
She peered into her own laptop screen. ‘I’m guessing you are, too. Unless you saw sense and stayed home.’
‘No, I went.’
‘Flying visit,’ she said.
‘Literally.’
‘Find anything useful?’
‘Not yet,’ he replied honestly. He saw in her face that she suspected he was up to something. ‘So how come you’re up so late,’ he asked, to change the subject. ‘Jet lag?’ It was almost midnight.
‘It’s the cocktail hour back in St Louis. It’ll take a while to adjust,’ she said. Then: ‘Did you just avoid my question?’
‘You look great,’ he said, and meant it. Her dark hair gleamed under the lamplight.
Kate narrowed her eyes: she knew every diversionary tactic in his repertoire.
‘All right … I acted on your advice,’ he said.
‘Hmm …’ she said. ‘That sounds a lot like evasion.’
Her eyes, normally a warm hazel, flashed amber, and he knew he was testing her patience.
He took a breath. ‘All right. I’ve accepted that they might never chance to walk down that same street again, that I can’t be there all the time and I can’t watch the place twenty-four/seven.’
She sniffed the air, wrinkling her nose. ‘There’s a definite whiff of bullshit in the air.’
He shrugged. ‘What can I say – you’re not the only one who needs time to adjust.’
She nodded. ‘Fair enough.’
‘So,’ he said, relieved, ‘how was the homecoming?’
‘Muted,’ she said. ‘Becky’s exams have finished and she’s away in London, visiting old school friends. Tim is punishing me with indifference and Mum disapproves of the fact that I “abandoned” my family in the first place.’
Fennimore was intrigued that she hadn’t mentioned her husband. He couldn’t help asking, ‘And Kieran?’
She seemed to consider. ‘He’s okay – he popped home to see me after work, but couldn’t stay – rehearsals, prize-giving – end-of-term stuff. Since he got this promotion to Head of English, he’s rarely home before seven – it’s expected in the private sector.’ She stopped.
Fennimore wasn’t the best at reading people, but he heard the defensiveness in her tone and, judging by the flush on her cheeks and her unwillingness to meet his eye, she was aware of it too. It had been five years since Kieran had learned about their hotel ‘tryst’ from Lazko’s headline, and he also knew that she and Fennimore had worked closely since then on the I-44 killings in the US.
‘Has the media interest died down?’ she asked. Kate always had a knack for reading his mind. ‘I haven’t heard a thing from Carl Lazko.’
‘He came to find me at the university this evening,’ Fennimore said.
‘He what?’
Fennimore related his strange encounter with the journalist. He also told her how Josh Brown had appeared out of the fog like an avenging ninja, but backed down after Lazko claimed to have recognized him.
‘Suspicious, no?’ she said, raising an eyebrow.
‘You’re a cop,’ Fennimore said. ‘Your default setting is suspicion
.’
She rested her chin on one fist and smiled. ‘You’re a scientist – isn’t your default setting supposed to be scepticism?’
He dipped his head. ‘Fair comment.’
Simms watched him for a few moments longer. ‘So – will you take Lazko’s case?’
Fennimore glanced at his notes on the table. ‘I haven’t decided.’
‘You should think about it,’ she said, a hint of mischief still in her eyes. ‘Might keep you out of trouble.’
* * *
He stared at the screen for a few minutes after she disconnected.
He hadn’t been lying when he told Kate that he’d accepted he couldn’t hang around Paris watching for his daughter. He had, however, done the next best thing, paying a visit to his favourite climbing shop before his flight and splurging on some serious gadget purchases.
He retrieved a Samsung tablet – another new purchase – from his shoulder bag, flipped the cover, converting it to a stand, and opened an app on the device. An image filled the screen: a dark street, lit on two levels. On one side a high grey wall, on the other a lower wall, lit by swan-necked lamps. The street was cobbled; it sloped down to what he now knew was a gravel walk running alongside the River Seine. He clicked through to the settings icon and made an adjustment. Instantly the screen divided into multiple images: the same stretch of road from below; from east and west; and three more showing views of a bridge.
11
Abduction, Day 2
‘I think he’s gone, Mummy,’ Lauren whispers.
‘I think you’re right, love. I think you scared him away,’ Julia says, hearing the wonder in her own voice.
‘Me?’
‘Well, perhaps YP, rather than you.’ When the man said he wanted something from her in return for the handbag, Julia had steeled herself for something far worse than moistening the seal on an envelope. He hadn’t touched them – wouldn’t so much as look at Lauren after she lashed out at him. Bizarrely, he had even gone part-way to an apology: he was only checking her bindings, he’d said.
Lauren has fallen silent, and Julia knows she is thinking about her new-found power.
Julia drags her handbag closer with her right foot and reaches down with her left hand to rummage through it. Tissues, Lauren’s sweets, some spilled at the bottom of the bag. No phone, no scissors – not even a nail file. He must have turned it inside out to make sure there was nothing she could use to get them out of this terrible place.
Julia dumps the bag on the floor, blinking back tears.
‘If he comes back, I’ll hit him,’ Lauren says. ‘Why’s he have to wear that horrible costume, anyway?’
‘I think he’s hiding behind it,’ Julia says, without thinking. A memory itches at the back of her mind, just out of reach.
‘Well, he looks like a big black spider.’
‘Shh! Don’t say that.’
‘Why?’
What can she say? We wouldn’t want to hurt the kidnapper’s feelings when he’s been so nice to us? Julia can’t help herself; she giggles.
Lauren responds in kind: ‘I’ll pull his nasty spider-legs off and jump all over him and squish him and squash him.’ She makes squelching sounds, one hand to her mouth to amplify the rude belches of noise. ‘What’re you laughing at, Mummy?’
Julia snorts and they both screech with laughter.
Lauren stops first, subsiding in hiccups and gulps, and finally silence.
Julia goes on, crying with laughter until her ribs ache.
‘Mummy?’
You have to stop. Appalled, she finds she can’t.
‘Mummy, stop,’ Lauren begs. ‘Please – stop, you’re scaring me. Mumm-ee-ee!’
Her little girl’s fear penetrates Julia’s hysteria and at last she gets herself under control.
‘It’s all right, poppet,’ she says, hoping that the faint aura of light from above won’t betray her; that Lauren’s sharp eyes won’t spy the snot and tears running down her cheeks. She sighs, wiping her face with her free arm.
‘Sorry, sweetie. Something just tickled my funny-bone.’
Lauren giggles and that almost sets her off again. Find a distraction. Maybe if she wraps the tissues around her wrist it will dull the pain of grinding the plastic against the metalwork of the loom again.
She’d begged their captor to switch the bindings to her left wrist and right foot – her skin is raw – but he didn’t even reply. Just stood with his hand stretched out, that damned envelope quivering in his fingers.
‘Lick it.’
She had turned her head away, but one long arm flicked out, seizing her hair. She recalls the shock of it: his reach was freakish. His arms too long for his body.
Something clicks in her mind and Julia experiences a series of prickling shocks from the base of her skull to the crown of her head; chills run down her arms to her fingertips.
Oh, dear God, I know this man.
He might wear a mask and change his voice, but she knows him. She tries not to think. Won’t even allow his name to come to mind in case it finds its way to her tongue. He has just sent a ransom note – why else would he go through that pantomime, making her seal the envelope? The mask; disguising his voice – surely he means to let us go?
He does, she thinks. He will.
If she doesn’t fail. They are safe only for as long as he is convinced of his anonymity. If he suspects for one moment that she knows who he is, they are lost.
12
The exhausted mind is obsession’s easiest prey.
STEPHEN KING, LISEY’S STORY
Aberdeen, Friday, Early Morning
With one eye on the street views captured by his e-tablet, Fennimore had returned to the Mitchell case. At 5 a.m. multiple tabs were open on his computer screen, and a mass of papers and doodles littered his sitting room floor. Kate could be right: working on a case might keep him out of trouble – holidays were always difficult for him. Too much time to brood. But before he made up his mind, he needed more data. He ducked his head to take a look under the table at the document shredder. One edge of Lazko’s business card was just visible in the feeder. He plucked it from the machine and dialled the journalist.
‘No promises,’ he said. ‘But you can send over the case summary.’ This done, he got a few hours sleep.
Just before 9 a.m., Fennimore put a fresh pot of coffee on to brew and sleepwalked to the shower. He heard an electronic trill. He opened the cubicle door to listen: it was the intercom for the flat. No one ever visited him here. Puzzled, he grabbed a towel and checked the video monitor.
Lazko.
He snatched the receiver up. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
The journalist was at the gate to the rear of the property. He leaned out of the driver’s window to speak into the intercom; the fish-eye lens distorted his round, shiny face until the camera finally came into focus on the narrow bridge of his nose and one large brown eye.
‘You need to buzz me in,’ he said.
‘How the hell did you get hold of my address – did you follow me home last night?’ Fennimore watched the journalist take a breath – a sure prelude to a lie. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’
The enlarged eye blinked. ‘D’you want to see this or not?’
Fennimore considered cutting the connection. Let the little Hobbit stew for a bit. But curiosity – at once his greatest asset and most wretched failing – made him press the entry button.
He was dressed by the time Lazko arrived at his door, panting and red in the face, carrying a large cardboard box in his arms.
‘Could use some help,’ Lazko wheezed.
‘If it’s CPR you’re wanting – you can forget it,’ Fennimore said. ‘I’d rather give mouth-to-mouth to a basking shark.’
Lazko dumped the box so that one corner inched over the threshold, which was at least a variation on the foot in the door. Fennimore made no move to help and the reporter leaned against the door-frame for a momen
t, sweat trickling from his thinning hairline and gathering in his eyebrows. He gave Fennimore a baleful look before turning to the stairs. The professor watched him go, but when he heard the journalist begin the return trip, he hooked his keys from the table and sauntered down the stairs. Four more boxes were stacked at the bottom of the stairwell.
‘Two more in the car,’ gasped Lazko, continuing past him up the stairs, the rasp of his shoe leather on the sandstone drowned out by the rasp of his breath.
‘Wait a minute,’ Fennimore said.
The smaller man stopped, easing his burden on to one of the wide steps.
‘What is this?’ Fennimore demanded.
Lazko armed sweat from his face with his shirt sleeve. ‘Police interviews, witness statements, evidence logs, postmortem reports, lab results, court transcripts …’ He shrugged. ‘Everything you need.’
Fennimore trotted up the stairs till he was at eye level with the journalist. ‘I asked for a summary.’
Lazko jammed a knee against the box to prevent it from falling, plucked a slim folder from the top and pressed it into Fennimore’s hand. ‘The summary,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a word with Mitchell’s family and his new defence team: you’ve got full access.’
‘I’ll say it again,’ Fennimore said. ‘I haven’t decided to take the case.’
Lazko grinned. ‘You will. And when you do, you’ll want everything.’
Fennimore took the summary file and walked past Lazko to his apartment. He edged the first box outside his door with the toe of his shoe.
‘I’ll call you when I’ve read the summary,’ he said.
The reporter’s eyes bulged. ‘What am I supposed to do with this lot?’
Fennimore smiled. ‘I’m sure you’ll find somewhere to stick it.’
He closed the door and set the intercom to mute before heading to the kitchen to get more coffee.
After two hours, he called the journalist on his mobile. ‘I’ll take the case.’
A few seconds later, he answered a knock at his door. Lazko stood outside; beside him, eight boxes neatly stacked in sets of two.
Truth Will Out Page 6