[Adam Park 01.0] The Dead and the Missing

by AD Davies

  “Okay, fine, I’m a coward.”

  “You’re anythin’ but a coward, son.” He pointed his bottle at my chest. “That’s why you end up hurt more often than you would if you just bleedin’ listened to me.”

  “The insurance,” I said, hoping to change the subject. “Benson wouldn’t talk about it. What isn’t in the file?”

  “Right.” Harry sipped from the bottle like it was a wine sample. “I can’t put me source in there in case it goes to court, but it’s a solid mate. On the Monday morning, Curtis Benson filed an official complaint about one of his birds liftin’ money from his safe. Crime number got issued. The investigation lasted one day, then got nixed from way up high. But no one interviewed Caroline. No one. The guy she spoke to was prob’ly one of Benson’s goons. As for the actual police, the missing persons report on Sarah is a separate file. No one’s lookin’ into it. And no one’s investigatin’ the theft.”

  “Who can order a black-out like that?”

  “My source ain’t got clearance to probe deeper.”

  “But the insurance paid out.”

  “Because they got a crime number.” Harry said this as if dealing with a remedial class. “Benson will have to repay any money he gets back, but stoppin’ an investigation dead, it’s heavy duty stuff.”

  “That girl. Lily? I don’t suppose you traced her home address? Surname? Anything?”

  “Why? You already probed her didn’t you?” He sipped his water with a “Carry-On” movie lift of the eyebrows.

  “I got her in trouble.”

  “Jesus,” Harry said. “I assume you don’t mean you knocked her up already. How bad is it?”

  “Provided I do as he says, Benson won’t hurt her any further.”

  “Any further?”

  “He’ll kill her. Or he’ll violate her.” I drank from my bottle. Licked my lips. “Listen to me. Violate. Okay, I’ll say the word: rape.”

  “Rape,” Harry said.

  Still a weapon in today’s gang warfare, the tactic dated back to the beginning of conflict itself. The threat kept both men and women in line, and during the actual invasions, it was seen as a perk of the job. Sack a town, take what you want, do a bit of raping, drink some mead.

  He said, “She’s a stripper.”

  “So’s Sarah. Is Lily worth any less?”

  Harry ran a hand over his face. Rubbed his neck the way he did when he couldn’t find the words, when he couldn’t tell me what he thought I needed to hear.

  “A man,” I said. “He wants another man to do something for him. If the second man fails, the first man will take a young woman, hold her down, and force himself inside her. He will thrust and he will thrust. She will tear and she will bleed.”

  Harry closed his eyes, shook his head slowly. “You’re gettin’ into that zone again, Adam.”

  Yes, I was in “that zone.” The zone where I latched onto some injustice in the world and could not rattle it free from my conscience. Some might call it a flaw.

  “She could fight,” I said, “but if she does they will hurt her even more. She will never, ever forget what happened to her. That’s the reality.”

  “You’re such a feminist.”

  I smiled, although it probably didn’t look like a smile. Yes, I was one of “those” men. I’d heard us referred to by both sexist men and some hardline feminists as “white knights,” a somewhat derogatory term to indicate that, while we were on the side of equality, we tended to dwell there out of guilt, or the sort of protective urge that came across as patronizing. Gorman labeled it “pretentious.” Harry often called it “sanctimonious.” I call it commitment. I didn’t give such terminology a lot of thought, though.

  “Don’t take the mick, Harry. You’re better than that. You know it’s wrong that date-rape isn’t straightforward rape. You know if a man punches his wife in the face and then hugs her and says, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, look what you made me do,’ that’s domestic-violence, while if I punch some random bloke in the pub, it’s simply violence and carries a harsher sentence. This situation, here, now, it’s a real girl. Under real threat from real blokes.”

  “I know. But you need to stay focused. Sarah is the priority. Bring her back, and Lily is fine.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “What you gonna do? Leap in like Batman? Disappear with her in a puff of bleedin’ smoke? Maybe you could stash her in that idiot’s Bat-Boat down the way.”

  And that was it. Sometimes it took a fella from another generation to show me how dumb I was being. I stood by the morality behind my case, though, despite the fact Lily’s best chance was for me to locate Sarah.

  I finished my water. “Okay, lecture over. But you have to tell me what’s special about this case.”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I need that magic computer tool thingy of yours to show us where she is.”

  “Bollocks.”

  He studied me a second. “Alright. It’s a case you used to jump right into. Girl missing, people bullshittin’ us. Plus…” He smiled as if he’d been caught out at something. “Maybe it’ll do you good. Get back to yer roots. Put this corporate crap behind you. Rucksack on yer back, dirt under yer nails, cockroaches in yer sandwiches.”

  Of course. That corporate crap.

  He said, “I feel bad for Lily. I do. But the best way to help her is keep yer eye on the prize. We’ll make sure Benson keeps his word.” He flashed me his Taser again.

  “You have Sarah’s financials? My magic computer tool thingy should snag a couple of leads you couldn’t access.”

  “I assume I shouldn’t ask how it works?”

  “Doubt you’d understand it anyway, old fella.”

  He gave me a clip around the ear and passed me a small notebook with a spiral binding, a fresh one he’d obviously written up—or rather had Jayne write up—especially for me: bank account numbers, credit cards, phones.

  “If I’d needed you sooner,” he said, “would you have come?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Why didn’t you ask me sooner?”

  “Didn’t need you sooner. I’m pretty good at this, if you remember.”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  He held my eye a second and said, “If yer still in Leeds come Sunday, Jayne’s ordered you round for a roast dinner. Beef.”

  “Thanks,” I said, standing. “I’ll find her.”

  Right after figuring out exactly who all the players were in this annoyingly opaque case.

  Chapter Seven

  I accessed the Deep Detect System via my phone and input the numbers associated with Sarah’s life—financial data, phone numbers, email addresses—and waited. Over the years, Park Avenue Investigations had acquired backdoor access to many banks and financial institutions, which is where the “bot” would start, anchoring itself in the information I fed it. From there, the system would burrow through any matches linked to that data, first in Britain, and then around the world. If it came up against firewalls that could not be decoded, it would shoot spam at a random selection of employees with a virus hidden in a web link; no one opens uninvited attachments anymore. We did not tempt them with penis enhancement or miracle weight-loss, instead bestowing them with retail voucher codes. All they had to do was click the link to their preferred shop, and the redirect site first installed a bot on their computer, then sent them to the genuine retailer for the discount, thus avoiding suspicion. Once anchored within, DDS organizes transactions chronologically and links to any other people’s data with whom the subject came into contact. When tracking complex financial fraud, this would instigate a spider’s web of intel, branching out to nail the perpetrators and their accomplices or paymasters. In the case of a runaway girl, if she accessed any of her regular accounts, we would see which hotel she stayed in, who else stayed there at the same time, the last ATM she used, and any tickets to destinations either inside or outside the UK.

  Of course, DDS has its limits. All it throws out is raw information. It’s up to the user to
interpret it. If the subject is clever about their crime, they will not touch any of their regular accounts or even use their own name if they can help it, and since I already knew Sarah procured a fake passport, it was better to back it up with good, old-fashioned detective work.

  Back at my apartment, I called Caroline to let her know I had a little more information than Harry uncovered, and told her I was confident that Harry had been correct about Sarah absconding to Paris. I would be on the first flight out tomorrow. She thanked me and didn’t ask me to elaborate, for which I was glad because there really was no reason I shouldn’t be on a plane within a couple of hours. But I could not stop thinking about what may have been happening to Lily right now.

  What was happening to Lily, because of me.

  I had to do something.

  Keep yer eye on the prize, Harry said. On the surface I agreed with him.

  No more compromises, my mother told me. Beneath the surface, I agreed with her.

  That’s why, instead of catching the last flight of the day to Paris, I watched over Blazing Seas from a £5 parking spot two streets away in a Vauxhall Astra, the least conspicuous car I could hire at short notice. I used my time to call Harry via one of three brand new phones that Jess procured via PAI’s Tech-Hive: one for this venture, a cloned duplicate and a nuts-and-bolts text-and-voice model whose battery would last over a week. I informed Harry of my plans for the night, and asked him for background on Gareth Delingpole. I gave him a brief list of other items, some of them costly and, using the other smartphone, I transferred more cash than he’d need, just in case.

  Following an hour of nothing suspicious, I moved to a bench beside Leeds Art Gallery, a hundred yards back from the road. I flicked through Empire Magazine and, between reading how cool the latest superhero movie was and saying hello to Jason Isaacs, I could see anyone entering or leaving Benson’s club.

  About eight-thirty, after the sky dimmed and the traffic calmed to a steady stream, Lily emerged alone in sweat-pants and a green coat, and hobbled into a white BMW that pulled up and flicked on its hazards.

  As the car pulled away, the impressive lens on my phone zoomed in on its plates and snapped a photo, which fed into DDS. The system returned a name of Marley Holdings, based in the tax haven of Jersey. Marley Holdings was then cross-referenced with as many bank accounts as the system could find, whilst simultaneously whittling away at the company’s charge card. I split the screen on the phone and saw the card purchases ping up on one half, with the suspected links to Marley Holdings on the other.

  One thing that drew my attention was a regular shipping manifest leaving Liverpool docks on the second Monday of each month, dating back over a year. I could find no destination on DDS, but if there was a kink in Marley Holdings’ security, I’d soon know exactly where those shipments were headed, and what they allegedly contained. Every link to the company, though, hit a dead-end right there, a combination of firewalls and fake account numbers. In the hope she could dig more deeply, I emailed Jess all the data so far, and switched off the illegal software. All I had were theories and more questions.

  In a way, the supposed theft was good for Benson: I return the money, he bags it up, disappears the thieves, and the insurance has still paid out. Double-bubble on the cash and send a message to anyone else thinking of stealing from him.

  Was his reputation that important? I doubted it. He’d tried to throw in a clause under the radar: any other items in their possession. Gareth’s SD card was the obvious theory. Perhaps that linked to the shipments.

  Let’s talk about that.

  No, let’s not, you clever arsehole.

  If Benson employed people who could hack through PAI’s firewalls, he had access to either high-level politics or law-enforcement, or even interested foreign parties. Whatever Benson’s source, Roger Gorman was taking extraordinary steps to oust me from a controlling position, skirting closer to the legal line than I’d ever seen. He avoided tax without an ounce of guilt, and circumvented international sanctions through a network of companies more complex than the human nervous system, yet here he was, willing to bribe a dodgy psychiatrist to certify me unfit to make decisions at an executive level.

  But, with Sarah missing, and Lily under threat, I had no time to address Gorman’s plot.

  Yesterday’s storm was creeping north, almost blown out, but carrying a fair amount of drizzle. For no other reason than I didn’t particularly want to get soaked, I decided it was time to do my thing. I stood up sharply, and ran as fast as I could around the corner, waving my arms like a madman.

  Chapter Eight

  Okay, it’s a bit of a hack trick. I mean, like, first year spy-school stuff. Or PI school. Harry actually taught me this in my second week after agreeing to work with him. Move quickly, move suspiciously, but do it unexpectedly. Take in as many reactions as possible, and if you have a tail, you’ll get the reaction you want. I got that two seconds into my sprint.

  The guy was in his forties, sat at a table outside a coffee-shop with a near-full cappuccino. While everyone else gawped at the crazy dude who suddenly took off running, this guy, in his cheap grey suit and blue shirt, kept his gaze firmly on the book he was pretending to read.

  The second tail was walking towards me. Others heading the same way rubber-necked as I passed them but, like his colleague, this slightly-overweight chap in a way-too-tight white t-shirt gave zero reaction.

  Around the next corner, I slowed to a walk. I donned a baseball cap and allowed a smooth wooden cosh to slide out of my sleeve and sit discreetly in my hand. The object had been a gift from a Japanese Catholic priest, presented to me upon my departure from the Tokyo soup kitchen in which I was volunteering. It was inscribed with Japanese kana meaning, “Love, peace and happiness.”

  The reflection in a bank’s window confirmed one half of the tailing pair followed. I continued down a commercial street called The Headrow, noting new stores had opened since my departure, then turned right onto Briggate, once a major city-center thoroughfare clogged with diesel fumes, now a sand-blasted precinct of a shoppers’ paradise. It still had its narrow, enclosed alleyways branching off, though. Up one of these lurks the Angel Inn, which may have seen a number of renovations over the years but it is still, at its heart, a pub for drinkers. Compact and narrow, I passed by the entrance and slipped round a corner into what regulars call “the courtyard”—basically a scattering of bolted-down tables and chairs to one side of the narrow passage. It was empty at the moment. I used the cosh to nudge the three floodlights upward, and within seconds the motion sensors got confused and extinguished the bulbs, darkening the alley. Not completely, but enough to conceal my movements as I backed into a recess that used to house a drainpipe.

  Seconds later, Cheap-Suit and Tighty-Whitey came in from separate ends. Tighty-Whitey stopped a few feet away as a third man approached from Cheap-Suit’s direction. Seemingly immune to the fine rain, he sat at a table and lit a cigarette. He wore a blue suit and had greasy hair and a square-ish head, like a doughy Frankenstein’s monster.

  The third man said, “Alright, let’s be all civil then.”

  I stepped out of my hiding place and approached the trio, stopping an arm’s length away from Cheap-Suit. I said, “Not so covert any more then?”

  Cheap-Suit said, “Want a word is all.”

  “Okay. Go for it.”

  “Back off.”

  “That’s two words,” I said.

  Cheap-Suit came a step closer.

  The cosh sat conspicuously in my hand.

  Cheap-Suit said, “We don’t want you in the way. Don’t want you getting hurt.”

  “Right,” Tighty-Whitey added. “None of your business.”

  The third man said, “Hey guys, this gonna get violent?”

  “It might,” I said.

  “Okay.” He shifted away from us, and positioned himself for a better view.

  Cheap-Suit said, “It doesn’t have to get violent.”

  “Then
I’ll be seeing you,” I said.

  Cheap-Suit reached in his pocket. Before he could remove whatever was in there, I kneed him in the balls and he doubled over. As Tighty-Whitey moved forward, I swung the cosh in an arc—a foot-and-a-half of wood, infused at the business end with a couple of pounds of lead—and slammed it down on Cheap-Suit’s thigh. The third man laughed throatily.

  “Hey.” Still unable to stand fully-erect, Cheap-Suit held up an item.

  I stepped back to improve the angle, Tighty-Whitey gearing up for another shot at me. But Cheap-Suit flipped out a warrant card: West Yorkshire Police. Detective Inspector.

  I said, “Oops.”

  Cheap-Suit said, “Yer under arrest, smart-arse.”

  The third guy ceased laughing. “Nah, don’t worry about it.”

  Cheap-Suit deferred to him. In turn, the doughy monster-guy came round this side of the table and perched himself casually on the edge.

  He said, “I’m Frank,” and held out his hand.

  I still held the cosh on my shoulder, ready to strike, the pose usually associated with coppers fending off a mob of protesters. I said, “What the hell is this?”

  Frank lowered his hand. “Rich, grab four pints, hey?”

  Tighty-Whitey frowned.

  Frank said, “Now would be great.”

  Tighty-Whitey limped off. My guess was he was a copper too, not used to being ordered to bring refreshments to someone they were tailing. For whatever reason.

  Frank said, “My investigation has no room for civilians, Adam. Go back to your surf-school.”

  I said, “What if I don’t want to?”

  “If you bugger off now, we won’t requisition the CCTV of you assaulting a couple of police officers.”

  “Let’s see some ID.”

  Frank shook his square head. “I’m not the sort of guy who carries ID.”

  “But you get to order around local cops who do carry it.”