‘Me? I know nothing about kids.’
‘Time you learned, then.’
‘I’d be crap at it.’
‘No, you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t let yourself. Go on. For his sake. He needs somebody in his life that isn’t mental.’
I don’t know why I agreed, but I did. And that’s how it started between me and Jimmy.
I tried to call Joshu from the hospital, but my phone had died. He’d probably have appreciated a little advance warning since he was fast asleep and stark naked on one of the leather sofas when I walked in. It wasn’t a pretty sight. I grabbed one of the cow hides and threw it over him. He grunted and stirred then his eyes snapped open. The sight of me in Scarlett’s clothes provoked a look of total bewilderment.
‘Wassup?’ he grunted, then gave a massive yawn that sent a blast of undigested alcohol my way. Belatedly, he noticed I was alone. ‘Where’s the wife?’ he added with a sly grin. ‘I saw you girls had taken off in my wheels.’ He dragged himself upright and yawned again. ‘Fuck, my head hurts. I need some drugs.’
‘You need tea,’ I said. ‘Because you need to go and check out your wife and son.’ I turned on my heel and marched off to the kitchen. I didn’t trust myself to speak to the shiftless, feckless, heedless little shit.
I’d barely got the kettle on when he staggered in, the cow hide wrapped round his waist like a bizarre kilt. ‘Did you say “son”?’
‘While you were spending your wedding night out on the razz with your homies, your wife was giving birth, Joshu,’ I snapped. ‘Wondering, in between contractions, where your sorry ass was hiding.’
Water off a duck’s back. ‘I’ve got a son?’ He shook his head, incredulous. ‘Am I hallucinating this? I mean, who knows what I took last night, but it was a serious head-fuck. Is this for real? I’ve got a son?’
‘Six pounds two ounces. His name is Jimmy.’
‘But she’s not due for another . . . what? Six weeks?’
‘She got her dates wrong. She’s probably a couple of weeks early, but no more than that.’ I popped a pod into the coffee machine for myself.
He laughed affectionately. ‘Silly bitch can’t count. Well, shit me a rainbow. I’m a dad.’ He rubbed a hand over his hair and lurched towards the breakfast bar where he’d apparently left the contents of his pockets. He grabbed for his cigarettes and lit up. ‘It’s supposed to be a cigar, but this’ll have to do for now. You might have bought me a cigar on the way home, Stephanie.’
‘Funny, it never crossed my mind. You better get yourself cleaned up and over there. Oddly enough, she’s not best pleased with you.’ I plonked a cup of tea in front of him. ‘Get that down you.’
‘Was you there, like, with her?’
‘I was. It was really scary. They had to do an emergency section.’
‘A what?’
In my head, I sounded like my mother. What do they teach them in school these days? ‘The baby got stuck coming out. So they had to cut her belly open and get him out in a hurry.’
He took a tentative sip of his tea, then swigged the whole cup back in one. He shuddered, then straightened up. ‘What? They cut her belly open? That’s horrible. She gonna have a scar and that?’
‘Christ, Joshu. She lost more than half of her blood. They thought they were going to have to give her a blood transfusion. I think a scar was the least of her worries, frankly.’
He gave me a placatory nod. ‘Well, I suppose that means she’ll be OK down there. Like, still tight and that.’
I closed my eyes for a moment, wondering whether I should just throw my coffee over his head. I reminded myself that he was Jimmy’s father and Scarlett’s husband and better that he went to hospital as a visitor than as a patient. ‘You won’t have the chance to find that out for a while, you selfish bastard. She’s had major abdominal surgery, Joshu. You’re going to have to run around after her for months.’
He gave a nervous laugh. ‘I don’t think so. Georgie can sort somebody out to take care of her and the kid, yeah? That’s what we fucking pay him for, innit.’ He grinned again, and I caught a glimpse of the roguish charm that had captivated Scarlett. ‘I’ve got a son.’ Then he frowned. ‘Wait a minute. Did you say she’s called him Jimmy?’
‘That’s right.’
‘No, that’s all wrong. Jimmy Patel? What kind of name is that?’
Actually, it was going to be Jimmy Higgins. But I thought I’d leave that revelation for Scarlett. ‘It’s the one she wants. And since you weren’t around when he popped out, I reckon you’ve forfeited the right to have a say.’
‘Fucking Jimmy,’ he said, turning away and stubbing out his cigarette. ‘I’ll have something to say about that. I’m going for a shower, then I’m going over to see my son. And he’s not going to be Jimmy for much longer, you can count on that.’ And off he went, chest puffed out like a bantam cock.
The coffee was bitter and dense in my mouth. I was too tired to taste properly. I knew it was crazy to drive back to Hackney, only to return in a few hours to visit Scarlett and Jimmy. Joshu was about to go out. And there was a perfectly good guest room down the hall. The temptation was irresistible.
15
Hearing Stephanie describe Joshu’s reaction to his son’s birth, Vivian found it hard to resist the notion that he regarded the boy as his property. A man with that attitude would be the natural suspect in a case like this. The over-whelming majority of abducted children were stolen by or on behalf of the parent who didn’t have custody. In a case like this, where the person who had charge of the boy wasn’t even a relative, the father was the obvious person of interest.
‘You said you know where Joshu is,’ Vivian said. ‘I have to tell you, it sounds like he’s the person with the strongest interest in taking Jimmy away from you. Are you so sure he’s where you think he is, and not here in the US?’
Stephanie looked amused. ‘He’s definitely not in the US. He—’
‘Maybe not. But does he have the resources to hire people to kidnap Jimmy and bring the boy to him.’
‘No. If you’d just let me finish what I was about to say . . . Unless I’ve been burgled since we left for the airport, Joshu is exactly where I last saw him. Sitting in an urn on my mantelpiece. Joshu’s dead, Agent McKuras. His and Scarlett’s ashes sit in my living room like bookends above the fireplace. Jimmy says good morning and good night to them every day.’
Vivian felt ambushed. The blood rose in her cheeks and she drummed her fingers on the desk. She wanted to yell at Stephanie, but that wasn’t an option while the woman still might be the repository of information about the kidnap. ‘What happened to him?’
‘Like everything else connected to Scarlett and Jimmy, it’s a long story.’
This time, Vivian was not about to be seduced by narrative. Stephanie Harker was a terrific raconteur, so good that Vivian risked losing sight of the importance of time in tracking down a missing child. And maybe – just maybe – there was a deliberate point to Stephanie’s meandering stories. After all, who knew better than she that she’d be stopped by security? Who was better placed to set this up? She’d been left in charge of a rich woman’s brat with no money to pay for it. Maybe she’d decided to extort some cash from the charitable foundation she’d mentioned earlier. ‘These long stories aren’t taking me any nearer a valid suspect,’ she said, her voice cold. ‘Tell me, Stephanie. If you got a ransom demand for Jimmy, who would pay?’
Stephanie looked startled. ‘I . . . I don’t know. I never even thought about it.’ She spread her hands in a gesture of openness. ‘I don’t have that kind of money.’
‘What kind of money?’
She looked puzzled. ‘Well, when you hear about ransoms, it’s usually seven figures and upwards. I’m not a rich woman. I make a decent living, but I’m not a millionaire. I’d do my best to raise the money, but I don’t have much.’
‘Couldn’t you approach his mother’s charitable foundation?’
‘No chance,’ Stephanie sa
id. ‘It was set up to benefit an orphanage in a remote part of Romania. Scarlett went there in 2007 as part of Caring for Kids – that’s a big charity telethon in the UK – and she was completely bowled over by the children. A lot of them have AIDS, and that’s how her dad died. She was appalled by the conditions there. So she set up the trust to take care of them. The orphanage is the sole beneficiary and there’s no way round it. I’ve got a friend who’s a trust lawyer and I asked her to check out whether I could claim anything for Jimmy’s education or maintenance. She said the trust was watertight. Unless we can transform Jimmy into a Romanian orphan, I’m all he’s got.’
‘What about his father’s estate?’
Stephanie snorted her ridicule. ‘What estate? Joshu spent money like water. Faster than he could earn it, latterly. He was too fond of drugs and fast cars and stupid women. The only thing he left Jimmy was his music, which is all boxed up in a storage unit. It might make a few grand if I sold it off on eBay, but not enough to pay a ransom. No, if somebody’s taken Jimmy for money, they’ve made a serious error of judgement.’ She ran a hand through her hair. ‘But at least they’ve got a vested interest in keeping him alive. Which is better than the alternative.’
‘Which means we’re back to square one.’ Vivian couldn’t help showing her impatience. ‘If you can’t take me closer to a viable suspect, who can?’
Stephanie gave her a nervous glance. Not for the first time, Vivian felt there was something lurking between them. Something Stephanie didn’t want to give up. Something she didn’t even want to contemplate. She looked down, studying her neatly manicured nails. ‘There is someone it might be helpful for you to talk to. He’s a detective with Scotland Yard. Detective Sergeant Nick Nicolaides.’
Vivian was taken aback. Out of nowhere, two hours into this interview, Stephanie Harker was introducing a cop who had something to bring to the party. ‘Who the hell is Sergeant Nick Nicolaides? And what does he have to do with this?’
‘When Joshu died he was the officer who did all the interviews. He was really sympathetic but he seemed to be thorough too. Anyway, when I had some problems of my own this past year, I rang him because he was the only cop I knew. So he knows Jimmy and he knows the background too.’ She raised her eyes and met Vivian’s incredulous stare.
‘And I’m only hearing about him now?’
‘I’m sorry.’ The talkative Stephanie seemed to have run out of steam. She rubbed her eyes, her face a grimace of pain. ‘None of this is easy, you know. I’ll give you his number, shall I?’ She recited it from memory and Vivian keyed it into her phone.
‘Wait here,’ she said grimly. ‘I need to see what this Nicolaides guy has to say.’
16
With every passing day the soundproofed room seemed to grow more oppressive. Detective Sergeant Nick Nicolaides knew the personal scents of the other five occupants so well he could have picked them out of an identity parade blindfolded. He knew their physical tics; the tapping of a pen against teeth, the soft percussion of fingertips on desktop, the sucking of air through the front teeth, the scratching of fingernails on designer stubble, the endless fiddling with the bridge of the reading glasses. He knew who would crack which kind of joke over the contents of the emails they were working through. He knew who was tweeting his mistress instead of working, who was texting his bookie and who was ordering groceries online from Tesco. And of course, he knew more about the professional and personal lives of News International journalists than any adult human should have to.
When he’d been seconded to the team investigating the allegations of News International’s phone hacking and corrupting of public officials, Nick had been excited. It was a headline-grabbing case, and its potential repercussions for the media and the Met were thrilling. Though not in a good way.
But the glitz had worn thin pretty quickly. News International had handed over three hundred million emails. Three hundred million. Nick suspected they’d dumped everything they could find on to the inquiry in the hope that the trees would get lost in the wood. It wasn’t humanly possible to read every one. He remembered reading about a project to classify every galaxy in the universe according to shape. The astronomers involved had asked members of the public to log on to their website and take part in the process. It was the only way to get enough bodies on the case. Even then, it would take years. But that wasn’t an option here because it was a criminal investigation.
So what they had was a computer program that was gradually working its way through all of the three hundred million, primed with key words and phrases that should, in theory, mean that all the dodgy emails would be spat out into the inboxes of the people grafting away in rooms like this all over the old Wapping printworks. Every team was a mix of the company’s own watchdogs and police officers. Embedded, that was what they called what he was doing. And embedded was what it bloody felt like. Embedded up to the neck in other people’s shit.
Now, instead of actually working real cases and catching real criminals, Nick was locked in a bunker looking for evidence which, even if he found it, probably would never see the light of courtroom day. A few months ago, his career had seemed to be on an upward trajectory. But this was the backwater to end all backwaters.
He clicked on the next email in his queue. It had been flagged up because it contained the word ‘credit’. One of the ways journalists paid backhanders to sources was to list their associates in the credits book. If you wanted to pay DCI XXX for giving you an exclusive tip, you put a payment through to his girlfriend or his mum or his best mate. So every time a journalist or an executive mentioned, ‘taking the credit’, or ‘credit where it’s due’, Nick would have to read the innocuous message. Just in case.
This time, it was from an editorial executive complaining that his company credit card had been refused at the petrol station that morning. Nick sighed and sent it to the ‘checked’ folder and clicked on the next one. The ringing of his phone felt like a stay of execution. A glance at the screen revealed an unfamiliar number. But it was an American number. And there was a good reason to answer a call from America this morning.
‘Hello?’ he said, always wary of giving too much away.
‘Have I reached Detective Sergeant Nick Nicolaides?’ An American voice. Not what he expected at all. A twitch of anxiety in his chest.
‘You have. Who am I speaking to?’
‘This is Special Agent Vivian McKuras of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m based at the O’Hare Airport office.’
‘Has something happened to Stephanie?’ He couldn’t help himself.
‘Sergeant, I need to confirm your ID before I can say anything further. Can you give me a landline number for the police office where you are based so I can do that?’
Now he was seriously worried. What on earth had Stephanie got herself into? He rattled off the number for the major incident team he was nominally attached to. ‘You’ll have to call me back on the mobile, I’m based out of the office at the moment.’ The line went dead.
Nick jumped to his feet and hustled out of the door. There was a shout of protest behind him. He wasn’t supposed to leave the civilians unattended. But he needed to be moving. His long legs ate up the corridors and the wind of his passage whipped his shaggy hair back from his face. Out in the car park, he paced, heedless of the misty rain drifting around him. Wiry and restless, he looked almost feral in his black jeans and untucked denim shirt. Without a guitar in his hands, he didn’t know what to do with himself.
When the phone rang again, he squatted in a corner of two walls and hunched over it. ‘So tell me, Agent McKuras. What’s up that you need me?’
‘I believe you’re acquainted with Stephanie Harker?’
‘That’s right. What’s she supposed to have done?’
‘It interests me that you jump to the conclusion that she’s the doer rather than the done to, officer.’
Nick cursed himself for his impetuosity. ‘It was a lighthearted figure of speech, that
’s all. Stephanie’s not a criminal. Can we please rewind and you tell me why you’re making this phone call?’ He was so much better at the face-to-face. What charms he had never seemed to survive the phone.
‘I’m calling you as part of our investigation into the apparent kidnap of Jimmy Higgins—’
‘Jimmy’s been kidnapped? Where? How? What happened?’ It made no sense. Not in America.
‘They were separated in the security area so Ms Harker could undergo a pat-down. A man approached Jimmy and walked away with him. By the time the authorities realised what had happened, they had disappeared.’
It didn’t sound anything like the whole story. But Nick knew better than to push for more right now. If all else failed, he would get Stephanie’s version soon enough. ‘Disappeared? In one of the most heavily surveilled places around? How can that be?’
‘We’re still investigating,’ she said repressively. ‘However, because Jimmy and Ms Harker are both UK residents, we’re having some difficulty in developing any credible suspects or leads over here. Now, she seems to think that you might be able to assist us in that regard, since you are already acquainted with the boy.’
Nick’s mind was racing. There was one obvious answer to that question. What he couldn’t work out was why Stephanie hadn’t reported it herself. The only reason he could imagine was that even after everything she’d gone through, she still wanted to think the best of Pete Matthews. While it made him furious that she could waste a shred of positive emotion on that piece of shit, he had to admit it spoke well of her loyalty. But still. She should have coughed about Matthews herself, not left it to him. Clearly the bastard had done her more damage than Nick had realised. ‘I do know Jimmy’s history, it’s true. You’ve not heard anything from the kidnappers?’
‘Nothing as yet. There’s nothing to point specifically to a kidnap for ransom. Can you think of anyone who might have a motive for stealing the child? I wondered about family, on either side.’
The Vanishing Point Page 12