The Vanishing Point

by Val McDermid

  Vivian ignored the drama in the foreground and concentrated on the man and boy. They remained in sight for a few yards then, as the concourse curved round to the right, they cut sharply left. ‘Shit,’ Parton said again.

  ‘That’s an exit, isn’t it?’

  ‘Takes you landside,’ Parton confirmed. ‘You’d be kerbside inside a minute. Then you could be anywhere.’

  Vivian paused the video again. ‘Looks like the lady was telling the truth,’ she said, her voice as bleak as her heart. A child had been snatched and the bureaucracy of airport security had handed the kidnapper a head start. ‘Christ, Parton. How come nobody listened to this woman?’ She was already reaching for the phone again.

  ‘Nobody could understand her at first,’ he said. ‘I swear to God.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s going to cover your back when the lawsuits come down. But as of now, I need you to get me a list of everyone who was on duty this afternoon. We’re going to have to interview them all. Find out who saw what.’

  Parton didn’t move. He seemed fascinated by the hand holding the phone. ‘Parton,’ Vivian said impatiently. ‘Get me that list of names.’

  His eyes met hers. He seemed dazed. ‘He’ll be OK, right? The kid? You’ll find him, right?’

  He didn’t deserve the effort of lies. ‘Alive? Probably not. Now go.’ She watched him stumble over the chair on his way out. Then Vivian took a deep breath and composed herself. She pressed the speed-dial number for her boss. The number rang out, signalling the end of her autonomy on the case of the kidnapped child.

  4

  The urge to get up and pace was almost overwhelming. Stephanie had already tried to stand up, only to have Lopez insist sharply that she stay seated. ‘Don’t make me have to cuff you again,’ she’d warned.

  ‘Don’t I get a phone call or something?’ Stephanie asked. ‘I thought you Americans made a big deal out of people’s right to legal representation?’

  Lopez gave a mirthless laugh. ‘You never heard of Guantanamo Bay? We’re not so keen on human rights when it comes to the kind of people who want to blow us off the planet.’

  ‘But I’m not a terrorist. I’m obviously not a terrorist. I’m a woman whose child was kidnapped in front of her eyes and you’re treating me like I’m the criminal. When is someone going to start taking me seriously?’ In spite of her determination to stay calm, Stephanie couldn’t help her voice rising. She felt nauseous and sweaty, sick with fear and worry. But she had to keep it together. For Jimmy’s sake. For the sake of the promises she’d made.

  They should never have come on this holiday. But she’d allowed herself to be seduced by the idea of California. Beaches and surf, Disneyland and Universal Studios, sunshine and Yosemite. Ever since she’d heard that Joni Mitchell song, the city of swimming pools had held her imagination close. She wanted to know what the waves at Malibu sounded like. Jimmy needing a holiday had just been an excuse to indulge herself.

  Stupid.

  They should have gone to Spain. Taken the car on a ferry to Santander and driven across to the Costa Brava. Or dawdled up the French Atlantic Coast to Brittany. Something that didn’t involve metal detectors and separation. Something that didn’t hand Jimmy on a plate to whoever wanted to steal him away.

  And who would do that anyway? Who would have the nerve and the brains to abduct him in the middle of a busy airport, under the watchful gaze of CCTV and some of the most stringent security arrangements on the planet? It was beyond belief.

  It was hard to believe it was a random abduction, a spur-of-the- moment snatch. Someone had planned this. Obviously it hadn’t been a real TSA officer who had walked off with Jimmy, otherwise Parton or Lopez would have known about it. That meant it was an impostor. But you couldn’t just hang around indefinitely in a lookalike uniform without attracting attention from the real security people. It was hard to resist the conclusion that Jimmy had been a very specific target. And that meant a kidnapper who knew his tragic history. Not to mention their travel plans.

  Please God, let him be OK. She couldn’t bear the thought of Jimmy suffering any more. He’d already gone through more than any five-year-old should have to endure. Sometimes when he snuggled into her at bedtime, she imagined herself soaking up his pain, taking it up into her body like lymph nodes absorbing toxins, restoring him to some magical default state where he hadn’t been hurt beyond bearing. What sort of bastard would be willing to add to that burden of pain and fear?

  Stephanie pushed the thought away, refusing to acknowledge that she knew anyone who could contemplate such cruelty. But the rogue notion wouldn’t be hushed.

  She needed to do something that would shift her focus. ‘Isn’t there some sort of system for sending out an alarm about kidnapped children? I’m sure I saw a TV programme about it. You signal to drivers on the motorways or something?’

  ‘You’re thinking about the Amber Alert,’ Lopez said. ‘When there’s a child abduction, they put messages up on the gantries on the highway. But it goes a lot wider than that. They broadcast it on the radio, they put a ticker on the TV news stations. A lot of people subscribe to SMS messages too. It’s been real effective in a lot of cases.’

  ‘They should be doing that for Jimmy.’ Stephanie grabbed her hair on either side of her head and clung to it. ‘They should be doing it now.’

  ‘Officer Parton has the matter in hand.’ Lopez didn’t sound too convinced.

  ‘You’ve got a radio there. Can’t you find out what’s going on? Please?’

  Lopez looked embarrassed. ‘There’s nothing I can do. Believe me, the wheels are turning now.’

  ‘But not fast enough,’ Stephanie said savagely. ‘There’s a little boy out there who’s growing more and more scared the longer he’s away from me. I hope you can live with that, Officer Lopez. Because when I get out of here, yours will be one of the names in the headlines. I have media contacts that would make your eyes water. And I will be putting them to good use.’

  ‘I don’t think threats are the way to go right now, ma’am.’

  ‘From my perspective, threats are the only way to go. Because appealing to you people’s humanity isn’t working, is it? Maybe I need to start appealing to your self-interest. Do you want a future in this career, Officer Lopez? Or do you want to come out of this as one of the good guys?’

  Lopez took a step towards her. Stephanie expected anger or fear, but what she got was something completely different. Lopez laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m going to pretend you never said any of that. You’re scared. I get that. But my advice is to dial back on the threats till you get some place you can act on them. This organisation doesn’t need much excuse to hold people incommunicado.’

  On the surface, it sounded like gentle reason. To Stephanie, it seemed a more chilling threat than anything she could have come up with.

  Vivian McKuras put the phone down gently, as if she didn’t want to startle it into biting her. She’d expected her boss to rip the kidnapping case from her grasp and assign her to going through passenger lists or something equally mindless. Instead, she’d interrupted what sounded like a major alert. He’d gabbled – gabbled! – that they’d intercepted a credible suicide bomber threat to an imminent political rally featuring the First Family. Every available body – except hers, obviously – was out there trying to close down the risk before it spiralled beyond control. Normally, she’d have been unsettled by such a display from a man who had apparently adopted cool as his watchword in high school and hadn’t veered from it since. But today, she welcomed it. Because today it meant she had control of her first major case. Twenty-seven years old and she had her own major case. Never mind that her boss had told her to bring in her airport colleagues to run things with her. She preferred to think of that as a suggestion rather than an instruction. This was her case. This was where she got the chance to turn things round for herself.

  The first thing she had to do was to set up the Amber Alert. She needed a description of the chi
ld and a recent photograph. Luckily, all that was at her fingertips. Literally. Vivian opened her email and sent an urgent message to her opposite number at ICE HSI, the catchily named Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security Investigations.

  Hi, Kevin. I’m inquiring about a minor child your team admitted this afternoon. No immigration issue, but it looks as if the boy may have been subsequently abducted. He came in from the UK accompanied by Stephanie Jane Harker, UK citizen. According to my info, she was carrying British court papers authorising her to travel with the child. We have to put an Amber Alert together, so I need copies of everything you’ve got asap – the child’s name, DOB, description. If you’ve got a photo, either from the passport or the system, so much the better. We’ve got CCTV images, but they’re never hi-res enough to do much with. Also, any notes you’ve got regarding the paperwork would be helpful. Thanks.

  And because she was a belt-and-braces kind of woman, she sent Kevin a text message to alert him to her request.

  Deep breath.

  Until she had some information to work with, there was nothing more she could do to set the Amber Alert in motion. Time to talk to Stephanie Jane Harker.

  When a woman walked into the room instead of Randall Parton, Stephanie felt irrationally relieved. Years of working in an industry where the women were as likely to put the shaft in as any man should have cured her of such gender-based optimism, but she couldn’t help it. Especially where children were concerned, she still expected a smidgeon of solidarity from another woman.

  This one looked as if she meant business. She glanced at Stephanie, then took Lopez to one side and bent her head to speak softly to the TSA officer. How would I describe her if I was writing about her? It was Stephanie’s default position when she met anyone new. Her clothes were neat but anonymous – dark-grey trousers, navy blazer, dark-green shirt with only the top button undone. A flash of gold chain at the neck, plain gold studs in the ears. Short brown hair, feathered round the ears and forehead to emphasise looks that might have been elfin if it hadn’t been for the square jaw. A lazy writer would have made something of the hint of Irish in the green eyes and faint dusting of freckles across nose and cheeks. But although Stephanie knew she was no great shakes as a writer, she’d never been quite that lazy. This was America, land of the melting pot. Not a place to make easy assumptions about roots.

  Now the woman turned back to face her, flashing a perfunctory, formal smile. ‘I’m Special Agent Vivian McKuras,’ she said, pulling out the chair and sitting down. ‘Federal Bureau of Investigation.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ Stephanie said. ‘A proper law-enforcement official at last. Presumably you know my legal rights?’ She was pleased to see a flash of surprise in the agent’s eyes.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, Ms Harker, you’ve made an allegation of a serious crime. That’s my sole interest in you. I don’t see why you would need a lawyer to make a crime report. At some point, my colleagues in the TSA will want to give you a pat-down, since you set off the metal detector at the security point, but I don’t see why you’d need a lawyer for that either.’ She flipped open a tablet computer and woke it from its hibernation. ‘As far as I’m concerned, the most urgent thing right now is to track down a missing child.’

  Stephanie felt her shoulders drop a fraction. At last, someone who was capable of talking sense. ‘Thank you for clearing that up,’ she said. ‘So have you put out an alert for Jimmy?’

  Vivian looked her straight in the eye. ‘We’re in the process of gathering the necessary information to do just that. I’ve examined the CCTV footage of what happened in the security area but unfortunately we can’t see the face of the man who took your child.’

  Stephanie swallowed hard. ‘He’s not actually my child.’ Vivian nodded. ‘We are aware of that. And I’m going to be asking you some questions about that shortly. But right now, my priority is to get this alert out there. First, what’s the boy’s name?’

  ‘Jimmy Joshu Higgins.’ She watched as Vivian typed. ‘That’s Joshu, without an “a” on the end. After his father. He was a DJ.’ Stephanie couldn’t quite keep a note of contempt from her voice.

  ‘You don’t think much of his father?’

  ‘No. I don’t.’ There was more to that story, but it would keep.

  ‘OK. How tall is Jimmy, would you say?’

  ‘He’s about three foot six. Quite gangly and skinny. He’s light for a five-year-old. He weighs just under three stone.’ Seeing Vivian’s frown, she added, ‘Around forty pounds.’

  ‘Thanks. We’re going to need a description, to put out with a photograph of Jimmy.’

  ‘He’s got thick black hair, cut quite shaggy. Did you ever see Jungle Book?’

  Vivian looked at her as if she was crazy. ‘No. Is that a movie?’

  ‘It’s an animation. The kid in the cartoon, he’s called Mowgli. Jimmy looks kind of like him. Same hairstyle, similar kind of cheeky face. I don’t know how else to describe it. Google Mowgli, you’ll see what I mean.’ Frustrated by her inability to communicate an image of Jimmy, Stephanie thought for a moment. ‘Don’t you have his passport? It was in the same bin as mine.’

  Vivian turned to Lopez. ‘We got that, Lia?’

  Lopez shook her head. ‘No, ma’am. Only Ms Harker’s passport. There was nothing in the bin for the boy. I’ll check again, but . . . ’ She crouched down and began searching the plastic boxes.

  ‘What about his backpack?’ Stephanie asked. ‘The man he left with picked up the backpack. He must have grabbed the passport too.’

  ‘Nothing here,’ Lopez reported.

  ‘Shit,’ Stephanie said. Then she brightened. ‘My phone. I took a couple of pictures of him at the park last week. Would that help? My phone’s in the bin, right?’

  Lopez stood up, waving the phone. ‘Here it is.’ She looked to Vivian for guidance. ‘Is it OK to give her the phone?’

  ‘Give it to me.’ Vivian quickly brought up the photo store and tapped the last photograph. A man in a denim shirt was sitting on a high stool, bent over a National steel guitar. His hair obscured most of his face. Obviously not Jimmy Higgins.

  ‘That’s a friend of mine,’ Stephanie said. ‘Try going back a bit.’

  Another shot of the guitarist, this time with his head thrown back, the tendons in his arms and neck standing out. Then a small boy grinning at the camera, arm thrown out in an expansive gesture towards a clutter of ducks milling nearby. ‘That’s him. We were feeding the ducks.’ Her voice wobbled and tears pricked at her eyes. ‘He’s only little. You have to find him before something really bad happens to him. Please.’

  5

  Stephanie wasn’t sure how the hierarchy ran between the FBI and the TSA, but now Vivian McKuras was on the case, things were definitely improving. Vivian had departed, promising she’d be back once the Amber Alert was in place. In exchange, Stephanie had volunteered to let Lopez pat her down in the approved TSA manner, which was definitely more like a minor sexual assault than a security procedure. Lopez tried hard to maintain her distance and her dignity, but it was a struggle.

  ‘It’s not so straightforward when you’ve got to know the person you’re frisking, is it?’ Stephanie said, trying not to flinch at the hand probing the inside of her waistband.

  ‘It’s for your own safety,’ Lopez said. ‘You’d be pretty unhappy if you got blown up in mid-air because I didn’t do my job.’

  ‘You strike me as far too smart to fall for that bullshit.’

  ‘You want a cup of coffee?’ Lopez said, stepping back and peeling off the blue nitrile gloves.

  It was ridiculous to feel weepy in response to such a banal kindness. But the longer she was separated from Jimmy, the more vulnerable Stephanie felt. Before Jimmy, she’d never known the responsibility of another person depending totally on her. There had been times in the previous nine months when she’d felt overwhelmed by the weight of it, and times when she’d had sudden flashes of unexpected delight that
had made her heart swell. The very burden of the duty made the joy all the more devastating. She would have sworn the sensation was physical. And now he was cast adrift in the unknown, she felt lost. How much worse it must be for him.

  It was ironic, for a woman who had never had any desire for motherhood. But she had been so beguiled by her life with Jimmy, in spite of all its complications and difficulties, that it was hard to remember what life had been like without him. Her initial reluctance to take him on now seemed an incomprehensible memory. Helping him to rebuild his happiness in the face of so much loss had become her mission, and every step on his journey had made her rejoice. And all those hard-won steps might count for nothing now he had been ripped out of his reconstructed life.

  ‘Coffee would be lovely,’ she said. ‘But aren’t you afraid I’ll take off if you leave?’

  Lopez gave her an odd look.‘Why would you do that? Unless there’s something you’re not telling us about the man who walked off with your kid.’ As her hand gripped the door handle, she turned her head and gave Stephanie a pitying look. ‘Not to mention there’s a guard on the other side of the door. The guy who already tasered you, if you really want to know.’ Talk about mixed messages, Stephanie thought. Lopez was a mash-up of Good Cop and Bad Cop, all in one package. She wondered whether that spilled over into her private life. Stephanie shivered. She’d had enough of relationships with men who hid their truth behind a mask of false benevolence. She thought of the man with the guitar and allowed herself a moment of warmth. She’d broken the habit with him, she was convinced.

  But Stephanie was smart enough to know that didn’t mean she was free of her history. And right now, the coldest fear in her heart was that Jimmy was the latest victim of her past.