Chasing Innocence

by Potter, John

  Brian waited on the rest of the sentence but Adam just looked startled and pursed his lips together. ‘Something what about Sarah?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing, he was just really good.’

  ‘Spit it out.’

  ‘It’s long and complicated and I don’t want to discuss it.’

  ‘So give me the quick version.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Jeeses Sawacki, I won’t tell anyone. Cross my heart and hope to die.’

  Adam ran a hand through his hair. ‘Well, Sarah has a bit of history. She assaulted some guy a few years back who turned out to have done all kinds of stuff to her as a child. Boer remembered her.’

  ‘Boer remembered her? That must have been some kind of assault.’

  ‘There was a carving knife involved.’

  Brian quickly re-calculated his appraisal of Sarah. She went up several notches in his estimation. ‘Anything else about the Detective?’

  ‘He didn’t look like he would suffer fools.’ A realisation dawned on Adam. ‘Why, what’s on your mind?’

  ‘I guess it’s make or break time. Give me your phone.’

  ‘Why, what are you going to do?’

  ‘Talk to Boer of course, one of us has to.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Well he’s ringing you for a start, which means he wants to talk. So if you’re not going to, I might as well. He certainly isn’t going away. You never know, he might help us.’

  ‘But he won’t, he’ll think we’re on the run or something.’

  ‘He will if he doesn’t talk to us, which is why one of us has to answer that phone. You can do it if you want.’

  ‘But we have nothing to say to him, do we?’

  Brian sighed, long and frustrated. ‘Can you tell me what new and revealing information your ongoing review of the surveillance has produced?’

  ‘You know the answer to that. The logo just looks like three lions. It might be part of a larger logo.’

  ‘And we’re both in agreement that three lions isn’t necessarily going to narrow our investigation by much.’

  ‘Of course. I need internet access to start cross-referencing logos, maybe find one that looks similar.’

  ‘And apart from the road to nowhere down there, which may narrow our search to the east coast, what else do we have?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘So trust me, Adam, we need to talk to him. You never know.’

  ‘But he’s a policeman, he’ll know I’m with you.’

  Brian wiped his palms on his jeans and held out his hand. ‘Give me the damn phone.’

  Adam reluctantly handed it over.

  Boer had hung up. Brian dialled the number.

  FORTY

  ‘If that’s not Adam who is it?’ Boer asked.

  ‘It’s Brian Dunstan.’

  There was a short pause before Boer spoke again. ‘So you now have coercion and kidnapping to add to the long list of things we need to talk about.’

  ‘I do hope you’re not implying I kidnapped my daughter, detective, because that could piss me off. If you’re referring to Mr Sawacki, he’s here of his own volition.’ Brian glanced across at Adam.

  ‘Where might here be?’ Boer asked.

  ‘Somewhere between Stratford and Warwick. Probably at the site where Sarah Sawacki made her final call last night.’

  At the other end of the phone the background noise faded and he heard a muffled command. Then the detective’s voice returned.

  ‘And what do you have, Mr Dunstan?’

  ‘Right now, CCTV footage from Delamere showing the Rover driver making sure he wasn’t being followed. We have a full mugshot of the guy. He missed Sarah because she was busy checking out his car. Sarah talked to him and followed the Rover out of Delamere, which you already know. There’s nothing in the footage to indicate where they were going.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘What else? How far are you into reviewing the CCTV, all that Sunday overtime been sanctioned yet?’

  Boer ignored the comment despite its accuracy. ‘Tell me what else you have.’

  ‘Not much. We’re here trying to get a handle on where he might have been going. Why the Rover came down this road. It’s mostly used by locals travelling between villages, it doesn’t even feed onto the M40.’

  ‘Part of a misdirection or part of the route home?’ Boer asked.

  Brian liked Boer’s directness. He thought the question over, scanning the countryside and the cathedral trees that marked the road’s passage. ‘Both, I would say. It’s part of the misdirection in that he doesn’t want anyone knowing he came this way. Which means he was probably heading home.’

  ‘Excellent. Mr Dunstan, wait a second please.’

  Brian heard muffled sounds then Boer’s voice returned. ‘What about the number plate?’

  ‘What about the number plate?’

  ‘Don’t mess me about Brian.’

  ‘I’m not, the camera was broken.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ Boer answered. ‘So let’s try that again. What is the number plate?’

  ‘What would I get in return?’ Brian countered.

  ‘It’s about time you realised the gravity of your situation, Mr Dunstan. There is no bargaining point here.’

  ‘I am fully aware of the situation, Detective, which is why I’m not still twiddling my thumbs in Hambury. But I can’t afford to give you all I have with no return.’

  ‘Give me a minute,’ Boer said, and then silence.

  Brian wandered to the edge of the farmyard, looking out across the vista of fields beneath the autumn sun. Boer came back.

  ‘I’ll give you the address of the Rover’s registered owner if you give me the number plate.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Take it or leave it,’ answered Boer. ‘I want to find your daughter and Sarah Sawacki, just like you do. Alive is my preference, trust me on that front.’

  Brian turned and faced the sun, feeling the warmth on his face. He told Boer the number plate and Boer’s voice faded again, as if he was talking with someone while turned away from the mouthpiece. Brian felt a wave of pain pulse out across his ribs and his back. He embraced it.

  Boer’s voice returned again. ‘Thank you, Brian. As for the address, Adam can give you that.’

  ‘What’s that fucking mean?’ But Boer had disconnected. Brian turned to Adam and took a step at him. Adam took a step back.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The number plate?’

  ‘The Rover?’

  ‘Yes the fucking Rover.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You can find out the Rover’s registered address?’

  Adam thought for a second and then shock and realisation spread across his face. ‘But…I can’t.’

  ‘What do you mean you can’t?’

  ‘I can’t, I could get fired.’

  ‘Fucking fired.’ Brian took another step forward and Adam took another step back.

  ‘I don’t want to encroach on your cosy world or anything but there’s the small matter of your missing wife and my missing daughter. Now explain to me the full meaning of “I can’t”.’

  ‘I could lose my job…’ Adam’s voice failed, realising the futility of the statement. ‘I just didn’t think, it never even occurred to me.’ He looked utterly defeated, his eyes wide and almost panicked with the realisation.

  ‘Your wife is missing and it never occurred to you, what planet are you on?’

  It simply hadn’t, suppressed by that part of him still hoping Sarah would call and say she was home, that this nightmare would be over, suppressed by that part of him programmed not to lose his job so he could pay their mortgage. And now Brian’s disdain seemed to magnify the inadequacy he felt for everything, the responsibility he felt for Sarah being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everything that had been simmering inside of him the last day now boiled over. The anger exploded outwards, he stepped forward and threw everything he had into
the punch.

  And Brian let him do it, realising Adam’s conflict in the half second before the punch was thrown. He moved his body so the first punch landed against his shoulder, the second harder into his side and then Adam was on top of him. An elbow glanced across his cheek, then Brian turned beneath the next blow and kicked Adam’s feet away. The momentum spun Adam onto his back and he hit the mud hard, knocking all the air from him. He immediately rolled away, coughing and spluttering.

  Brian stepped across and pinned Adam to the ground with a knee on his chest, batting away his furious attempts to knock him free.

  ‘Stop it and listen.’

  Adam did after a while, his eyes full of anger and tears.

  ‘I’m sorry if I was hard on you, but I really need your help here. Now what do you need to access that information?’

  ‘Internet access,’ Adam wheezed. ‘We need somewhere with a mobile signal and GPRS or better.’

  ‘Speak English, Adam, what’s that mean?’

  ‘There’s mobile signal here but no internet carrier. We need to go somewhere that does.’

  ‘Good.’ Brian stood and held out a hand. Adam ignored it and stood by himself, glaring at Brian as the sun disappeared behind tall trees, the shadows reaching out across the fields. Brian held his right arm.

  Adam broke the silence. ‘You’re not an easy person to like, Brian.’

  ‘Yeah well, I get that.’

  ‘Did I hurt you?’ Adam asked.

  Brian laughed. Adam did not. The shadows reached further across the fields.

  ‘Tell me what’s wrong with your arm.’

  ‘It’s not my arm, it’s my back, the nerve endings are all messed up.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I had a run in with an RPG and lost.’

  ‘A rocket? When you were in the army?’

  ‘What’s with all the questions?’

  ‘Because I need to trust you, Brian, and to do that I need to know at least a little about you.’

  Brian relented. Adam was a little earnest but he kind of liked him. ‘I served in the second Paratroop regiment. We were in the Eden they call Helmand. Full of nasty little fuckers.’

  ‘What did you do as a Paratrooper?’

  ‘In the regiment you all muck in, my primary role was target acquisition.’

  ‘Target acquisition?’

  ‘I was a sniper, Adam.’

  Adam was not expecting that, he imagined Brian closer to the action. ‘A sniper?’

  ‘Sure, and a good one. I could take out the engine block in a moving vehicle at twelve hundred metres and my longest kill came in just under two klicks, although she was sat nice and still. The nerve endings in my back are so messed up now, I can’t pull a trigger and be sure I’m not going to blow my own foot off.’

  ‘You shot a woman?’

  ‘They have two eyes and ten fingers, Adam, can press buttons and pull triggers just like any man I ever knew. The tricky bit was not hitting the kid. She had it strapped to her, they do that.’

  Adam shook his head and Brian was not in the mood for moral dilemmas. He turned and headed back down the muddy track, passed a crumbling outbuilding on the left, a gatepost without a gate and to the car. Adam followed a minute later.

  FORTY-ONE

  Boer dropped the phone into his jacket pocket and leaned his head back against the headrest. He closed his eyes.

  ‘You want me to take you home Fran? You could do with a rest.’

  ‘I’m fine, Helen, just thinking.’

  She tapped her index finger against the steering wheel and looked at the clock on the dash. They were running out of day. They had arrived back in Hambury just before three to find Brian Dunstan was not in custody and nobody knew where he was. So they had checked in on the search of his flat. Sparse was not the word. It looked like Brian Dunstan had packed and was not expecting to come back. Andrea’s books and neat piles of clothes indicated she thought she would be. Her diary was now their prize and on its way to the lab in London. Sometime that evening they should get photographed images of the pages. They had left the forensic team in the flat checking through the hidden and microscopic detail.

  They had then driven across town with the intention of talking to Adam Sawacki. They were now parked on the gravel outside his apartment. The fact Brian Dunstan was missing was half expected. Ferreira even suspected Boer put off pulling him into custody for that very reason. But discovering Adam Sawacki was now off their radar was a surprise. To now find Adam and Brian together, neither she nor Boer would have envisaged that. And now Boer was treading a very fine line.

  ‘That could go horribly wrong.’

  ‘I know.’ Boer kept his face angled at the car roof, his eyes still closed.

  ‘You’ve given Dunstan key information relating to a criminal investigation. You have seen his record, he’s not reliable.’

  ‘He’s certainly not a reliable citizen, although a Military Cross might indicate he was a good soldier. At the end of the day I haven’t told them anything. I’m sure it would have occurred to Adam eventually. He’s a smart kid even if he is still in shock. As for Dunstan, I’d rather he was out looking for his daughter than in a cell. He could be useful.’

  ‘He needs to be in the station talking to us, Fran! Not chasing down our bloody leads. The Chief Inspector will want to know what we have on Brian and we have a whole lot of nothing.’

  ‘I just talked to him, he sounded like an OK guy.’

  ‘Francis, you’re an arse!’

  Boer rolled his head sideways and looked at her through heavy eyes. ‘I want to find Andrea and Sarah, and I want them alive, Helen, not to waste days and weeks hoping someone finds their bodies so we can harvest forensics. I want them alive and Brian improves our chances of that happening. He looked at the CCTV hours ago, tech are only just looking at our copy.’

  ‘But the Chief…’

  ‘I’ll give Anne what she needs. Don’t you worry on that account.’

  ‘But she’s going to want him front and centre with the mother tomorrow.’

  ‘Has she confirmed that already?’

  ‘Yeah, she called while we were driving back. You were asleep.’

  ‘No I wasn’t.’

  ‘Yes you were, Fran, your chin hit your chest just before the M40 and it didn’t come up again till we came off the A34. You were out for over thirty minutes.’

  ‘I was thinking. I wasn’t asleep.’

  ‘OK Fran, whatever way you want it.’

  ‘Why didn’t she ring me?’

  ‘You never answer her calls.’

  Boer returned a shallow nod in acknowledgement. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Press conference midday tomorrow. We haven’t wasted a week here hunting through the local hotspots, she’s going national straight away. With Sarah’s background and a pretty girl missing the media will be all over it. It could be her big break.’

  ‘God, Helen, you’re starting to sound like me.’

  ‘So, do you want the good news?’

  ‘She wants you sat right beside her?’ he said.

  ‘No, me and you.’

  He groaned. ‘What does she want me there for?’

  ‘I guess she sees this as your last big tango. She wants you right next to her so she can bask in the glory.’

  ‘What glory?’

  ‘You’re one of the most decorated officers outside London, Fran, legitimately decorated and you’ve never used your influence to get a seat upstairs. You work in Hambury when you could have gone anywhere. We look up to you and she wants some of that.’

  He grunted. ‘She’s going to be pissed when I don’t show then.’

  ‘Francis…’

  ‘No, I mean it Helen. We’re trying to find a kidnapped child and a missing woman, not work on our TV portfolios.’

  ‘That’s going to look bad for both of us.’

  ‘You can handle yourself. Everyone knows what I’m like. Chief Inspector Anne Darling can kiss my
bony arse. Besides what’s the worst she can do, fire me? I could be dead in a week.’

  ‘Come on, Fran, don’t be like that. You’ve been managing. There’s been no change for almost a year, has there?’

  ‘It’s different now. I’m tired of it all Helen, this constant rat race of people going all out to get more for themselves and not giving a damn what they do and who they do it to. I’m just about done and glad of it.’

  ‘Done with the job, or done with life? Because if it’s the latter Ricky wants your TV.’

  Boer laughed and pushed himself upright. ‘That’s my girl.’ He pressed the palm of his hand into his stomach. ‘It’s time for you to step up, Helen. If anyone ever told me the best partner I’d ever have would be a woman, I’d have struggled with that. But a lot has changed these last twenty years. This is not my world anymore, it’s yours. You sit beside Anne with my best wishes. I won’t be there.’

  ‘Thanks!’ she said. They sat in silence.

  ‘Where to next then, boss?’

  ‘The station. I think we’ve wasted enough time today. We need to get someone over to the Rover’s registered address. I’ll be lucky if that’s done before tomorrow. Should give Brian time enough.’

  Ferreira reached for the ignition.

  ‘And I want you to check this out for me.’ She stopped and watched him produce a piece of crumpled notepaper from his jacket.

  ‘What’s that?’ She took it from him. There was a phone number neatly penned across the middle. ‘This is Andrea’s handwriting. Where did you find this?’

  ‘Questions, questions.’

  She stared hard at him. ‘You old dog, you found this in her room. Where was it?’

  ‘Behind the photo of her and Brian.’

  Ferreira slapped the palm of her hand against the wheel and let out a long low frustrated groan. ‘Don’t die just yet, I obviously still need you. Whose number do you think it is? We should call it.’

  ‘Did that already.’

  ‘You did, who answered?’

  ‘Ali.’

  She thought for a second. ‘Brian’s boss? What did you say?’

  ‘I hung up.’

  She stared out of the window trying to imagine the various scenarios. ‘Brian’s boss!’ She said again. ‘What do you want to do?’