Jack had even tried to provide Tom with a list of questions to ask Nathan, but Tom had merely raised his eyebrows and his brother had laughed. ‘Okay, Detective Chief Inspector, but if I’m going to be checking out this computer I’ll need some idea of what I’m looking for.’
Reluctantly, Tom went to open his front door to Jack’s old friend. ‘Come in, Nathan. Let’s go through to the kitchen.’
Nathan followed Tom and headed straight for the table, where he sat down and opened Hannah’s laptop. He didn’t bother with pleasantries and cut straight to the chase.
‘I’ve tried every obvious password, but nothing works. I’ve written down her full name, mine, our parents’ – although I doubt she would use theirs – all our dates of birth, the name of her first dog. The usual stuff. It’s all here, if your guy can use it.’
‘That’s really helpful. Thanks,’ Tom said. ‘Do you want a cup of coffee? I thought we could talk through what you’ve been doing up to this point to try to find her.’
‘Black, no sugar, thanks,’ Nathan said. ‘Look, I don’t know who this computer expert is, but I’ve tried a couple of people already without success. Your guy needs to be good.’
‘I think he’s okay. Better than average, anyway,’ Tom said, knowing Jack would be grinning at his almost derisory remarks.
‘Pity you can’t bring Jack back from the dead. He’d crack it in five minutes.’
Tom was reaching for a couple of mugs, and his hand stopped in mid-air.
‘Christ, I’m sorry. That was a bit insensitive. I’m used to dealing with hard-nosed gamblers who don’t appear to have much in the way of emotions. At least not visible ones.’
Tom pressed the button on his bean-to-cup machine, and the grinding of the coffee beans covered the awkward moment.
‘You need to know, Tom, that although I seem like a cold, unemotional bugger, it’s all part of the persona. I’ve learned to show very little of how I feel – it’s something of a requirement in my job. But I do care about Hannah. Rubbish brother that I’ve been, she’s still my little sister, and I’m not giving up until I’ve found her.’
Tom turned to his visitor. It was a strange moment. He hadn’t been facing Nathan as he spoke about his sister, but his voice had been rich with emotion. Now, as Tom looked at him, his face was blank.
‘Okay, I get that. Let’s make a start, shall we?’ he said as he walked towards the table with the two mugs. ‘Tell me when she was last seen.’
‘She wrote to me after she’d been away somewhere on the south coast. She went on a mindfulness retreat or some such bollocks.’
Tom smiled. He really couldn’t imagine Nathan Gardner having a high opinion of an activity that involved any form of soul-searching.
‘What made her write to you out of the blue?’
‘They told her on the course that she needed to sort out the demons that haunted her, and I guess I was one of them. Well perhaps not me specifically, but our lack of communication could have bothered her.’
‘So not all bad then, this mindfulness bollocks?’ Tom asked.
‘Hmm. Anyway, I’ve brought you a copy of the letter. It’s probably better if you read it yourself.’
Tom realised that Jack needed to hear at least the gist of it.
‘Why don’t you give me a synopsis, and I’ll read it in full later?’
Nathan shrugged. ‘She starts with the usual stuff about how we’re family and should support each other. She mentions her job, looking after a baby boy she seemed to adore.’
‘Did you manage to track down the family she was working for?’ Tom asked.
‘I did – their details were in her flat – but they gave me short shrift when I called them. They said she had let them down badly.’
‘In what way?’
Nathan shrugged. ‘They wouldn’t say any more than that. It was over three months ago now, but whatever she did, they weren’t impressed – angry with her, I would say. I’m surprised, really. She seemed so happy with the job, and there are quite a few pictures of the baby in her flat. She wouldn’t have had them all over the place if she hadn’t been fond of him, so God knows what she did to piss them off.’
Tom felt a familiar prickle at the back of his neck. When someone did something that seemed out of character, it always made him wonder why. Had there been some traumatic event in Hannah’s life? Could it be coercion? For now he wasn’t going to mention those thoughts to her brother.
He waved the letter at Nathan. ‘She seems to have thought the retreat was good for her. Did she go there before or after she upset her employers?’
‘Before. She went at the end of September. As you’ll see, she talks about everything she learned about herself – including what a numpty she has for a brother, no doubt. She says the people there were great. One woman in particular had been very supportive. She was planning to see more of her when she got home.’
‘And home is Rusholme, didn’t you tell me the other day?’
‘It is. The heart of curry land. Her flat isn’t in such a good area, though. Had I known, paid more attention, I would have given her some money to move. Most of the flats around her are full of students who are years younger than her, and from what I can gather people come and go all the time. No one notices if anyone’s there or not.’
‘And you’ve told the missing-persons team all of this?’
‘Of course. I know nothing about the woman she met on the retreat, other than the fact that Hannah liked her. I get the feeling from the letter that she thought she’d made a new and important friend. But she doesn’t mention her name, and anyway there’s no reason to think she’d have any clue where Hannah might be now. Having said that, I’ve been trying to track her down to at least ask the question.’
Tom was quiet for a moment. Did Hannah’s participation in a mindfulness retreat signify that she was struggling with stress or unhappiness? Not necessarily. For some it was apparently about seeing the world with greater clarity, and Tom realised he was in danger of pigeonholing Hannah’s mental state to try to align it with Jasmine DuPont’s need for the support of the bereavement group. He had to focus on the facts.
‘I went to some lengths to try to find the woman,’ Nathan continued. ‘If you read to the end of the letter, you’ll see Hannah wrote that her new friend was planning a holiday in Myanmar. She told me about a boat trip up the river and how much she wished she could go with her. The holiday was planned for January, so when I arrived in Manchester and realised Hannah was missing, I wondered if she might have gone too. There was no sign of her passport in her flat, so I took myself out there and sailed up and down that bloody river three times.’
Tom gave him a puzzled look. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I knew the name of the boat and that the booking was for January, but it could have been any one of three trips. At the start of each one I waited at the hotel for the group to arrive, expecting Hannah to turn up. It was supposed to be a surprise! But she didn’t, obviously. So I tried to work out which of the new arrivals might have been on the retreat with her, thinking if I could find the friend, she might have some idea where Hannah had gone.’
Tom was astonished. Nathan hadn’t told him about this when he came to the office. He’d said he had undertaken his own investigations, but then they had been sidetracked by the visit to the mortuary.
‘Did you find the friend?’
‘I didn’t identify anyone, no. She’d talked about a woman, not a couple, so I was specifically looking for single women travelling alone or with friends. There were a few, but the trips attracted mainly older couples, mostly from the States and Australia, so I only had one or two suspects. It was a stupid idea and a bloody waste of time, if I’m honest.’
‘Did you ask if any of them knew Hannah?’ Tom asked.
‘Not outright. I tried to find out a bit about each of the possibles. I don’t have a recent photo of Hannah, and given my lack of knowledge about my sister’s life I was concerned a
bout asking too many questions. They might have doubted I was her brother – I could have been a stalker or an ex-lover with some other motive – and knowing who I was and what a crap brother I had been might have made them even less likely to tell me anything. So I tried as subtly as possible to identify the friend. I used my middle name, Paul. I hoped if anyone did know Hannah they wouldn’t connect her with me, particularly if she had mentioned me in some bloody spill-your-guts group session.’
Tom bit his bottom lip. ‘Any good leads?’
‘Not really. There was a woman on one of the trips who behaved in a very strange way the whole time, but when I asked her where she was from and tried to get some details of where she worked, I freaked her out. She was hiding something, I’m sure of it, and I had planned to find her when I got back.’
‘And did you?’ Tom asked.
‘No. I didn’t know enough about her. People generally don’t share their surnames, and I don’t know anyone smart enough to hack the travel company’s website for more details.’
‘Yes, you do.’
The voice came from behind Tom and his heart sank. He closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them he looked at Nathan, whose gaze had travelled to the door to the dining room. His expression hadn’t altered, and there was not so much as a flicker of surprise in his eyes. Tom could see why he was such a good poker player.
‘Jack,’ Nathan said nonchalantly, as if he had been expecting him the whole time.
‘Nathan,’ Jack replied, and walking over to the table, he sat down.
53
Becky wasn’t sure whether to call Tom. She knew he wouldn’t mind, but it was his day off after all, and he deserved some time to himself. He seemed to have lost a bit of his usual chirpiness that morning, and she had the feeling there was something more going on than his frustration with a boring meeting. He was always grumpy about what he called a ‘gathering of the great and the good’, but it was usually little more than a light-hearted moan.
The case they had taken on in Crumpsall was all in hand. Keith was in charge of collating the evidence, and she was confident she could leave it in his hands for now. She was keen to get back to the Jasmine DuPont investigation and would have really appreciated Tom’s input on the latest bit of information they had received.
On balance, though, she thought her news could wait until the next day. There wasn’t much they would be able to do with so few facts, but at Tom’s suggestion they had dug out the file of the woman found on the golf course, and it had proved interesting. She had been missing from home for over eight months before she was found. And prior to that she had been attending a depression support group. It wasn’t a bereavement group like Jasmine’s, but it was close enough to be interesting.
Lynsey had managed to find and talk to the group leader, and the dead woman’s story bore a striking resemblance to Jasmine’s. She had been isolated, although her background was totally different. She had been brought up in care and had never managed to establish any close friendships. As an adult she had become depressed and found it difficult to find a steady job. It was her isolation and her mental state that seemed so similar.
The group leader also told Lynsey that there was an older woman at the meetings who had been very supportive. Once again, frustratingly, people didn’t have to give their real names, but the leader described her as a woman in her early seventies, quite elegant, with long silver hair. Lynsey had immediately contacted the organiser of the bereavement group that Jasmine had attended and asked if anyone following that description had been a member.
They had. It was a woman fitting that description who had been seen walking to the tram stop with Jasmine.
Could it be that someone was targeting lonely young women with little or no support who were struggling to come to terms with something in their lives? A woman in her seventies, though? Had it been a man then it would have made more sense, or a younger woman possibly working as part of a team. But a female pensioner?
Because it seemed such a ridiculous lead Becky decided to keep it to herself for now. She would think about it overnight and talk to Tom in the morning.
54
Tom swivelled in his chair and stared at his brother. What the hell was he playing at?
‘Don’t glare at me like that, Tom. I know Nathan well enough to know that he’s not got any interest in what happened to me and why I’m supposed to be dead.’ Jack turned to his old friend. ‘Have you?’
Tom turned back to look at Nathan. The only sign that he was surprised to see Jack was a slight flaring of the nostrils, as if he was trying to suppress a smile.
‘Nope. Couldn’t care less, but it’s bloody good to see you, mate. And don’t look so worried, Tom. I’m aware no one needs to know about this, and as I’ve got no one to tell we don’t have a problem as far as I can see.’
Jack looked at Tom again. ‘And as you have probably noticed, Nathan is perfectly capable of controlling his facial expressions. If someone mentions my name to him in passing, he’s not going to blush and stammer, is he?’
Nathan grinned. ‘I’m not, but you want to watch your reactions, Tom. You nearly dropped that bloody mug when I mentioned Jack’s name.’
The two other men laughed, but Tom was not amused. Now wasn’t the time to read Jack the riot act, but he had made a stupid, irresponsible decision.
‘I was fed up with just listening. It’s good to be able to have a conversation in something other than Spanish, for one thing,’ Jack said, alluding to the fact that he had most probably been living somewhere in South America. ‘And for another, I can help you find out where Hannah is. I owe Nathan that, Tom. He’s a friend.’
‘Fine. But it was one thing asking Nathan to bring Hannah’s computer so you could take it away and perform your magic. It’s another to expect me to sit here while you illegally hack into various databases right in front of me, because I guess that’s what you’re going to do, isn’t it?’ he asked.
‘First things first. We need to get into her computer and check her social media and email accounts to see if there’s anything interesting that might suggest where she’s gone. If they come up blank, we’ll check out the people who attended the mindfulness retreat and see if there’s any correlation with the passenger list for the boat. I can also see if Hannah’s mobile has a signal anywhere, although I would guess that has been tested already?’
Nathan shrugged. ‘I don’t know if the police have checked it out, but I paid for it to be done. There hasn’t been a signal for months – since November. In the couple of days before her phone disappeared off the grid she was all over the place, or at least, her phone was.’
‘Okay,’ Jack said. ‘We can look at that later if we need to. Let’s get into her computer first, check out anything she’s posted and then see if we can find out what that retreat company was called.’
Tom pushed his chair back. ‘I’ll let you two get on with it. I’ll go and sit on a stool at the island, far enough away so I don’t know what you’re doing.’ He didn’t add that he wanted to be close enough to hear what was going on.
He saw Jack pull a lead from his pocket and plug it into Hannah’s computer. The other end went into his, and he started tapping on his keyboard. Without asking the question, Tom was sure Jack’s computer was communicating with Hannah’s in some weird and wonderful way. He gave a small shake of the head and walked out into the hall to grab his briefcase. He might as well look at some of this morning’s scintillating reports while he listened with one ear to what was happening at the table.
He was back on his stool and had only read through about half a page – none of which he had taken in – when he heard a mumble from Jack.
‘And…we’re in,’ he said, a small note of triumph in his voice. He spun the laptop back towards Nathan. ‘Have a look. Make sure you’re okay with me rooting around in all her personal stuff.’
Nathan spun it back to Jack and dragged his chair round so he could look over Jack’s should
er. ‘I don’t really care what you find on there. All I care about is finding out if she’s alive and well and in Honolulu, or some other such place she’s got it into her head to visit.’
‘Okay, here we go.’
Tom could hear keys tapping, and there were various grunts and murmurs. He had given up pretending to read and was listening to everything the two men said.
It was only a few moments before Jack spoke.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘There’s an email here confirming her reservation on the mindfulness retreat. There’s nothing of any interest after her return. She hasn’t booked anything, hasn’t chatted to anyone on Facebook. It could be she preferred to communicate by phone, so we’ll have a look at that in a minute. Or it could be in Messenger. Hang on. I’ll open that through her Facebook account.’
Jack tapped away again, and Nathan pushed back his chair and stood up, stretching his arms above his head. He walked over to Tom.
‘Don’t look so worried. Jack is absolutely right to trust me. If he can help me find Hannah, I’ll disappear and I’ll never mention him to anyone.’
Tom knew he was telling the truth. It wasn’t Nathan’s responsibility anyway. It was Jack’s. He could only hope his brother knew what he was doing.
‘Nathan! Come and look at this list.’
Nathan turned. ‘What have you got?’
‘I’ve managed to get into the reservations system for the retreat. There were twenty people on the same course as Hannah – most of them women. Have a look and see if any of the names mean anything to you.’
‘She didn’t mention the woman by name in her letter, but I can check if one of them matches anyone I met on the boat.’
Nathan sat down at the table and read through the list. Both Tom and Jack watched him to see if there was any reaction, although being Nathan, that was unlikely. Finally, he pushed the laptop back towards Jack.
‘Nothing. Sorry. I don’t recognise any of them.’
‘Not to worry,’ Jack said. ‘It was just a shortcut to save hacking the tour company’s database. Give me their name and the dates of the sailings, and let’s see what we can find.’
Come A Little Closer Page 23