by Potter, John
It was easy when you found evidence to give it more importance or read into it more meaning than it was due, simply because you wanted it to be the one thing that made the difference. Except Boer had found that vital detail so often. If he thought it important it was pointless thinking it was anything else. Boer also never worked on hunches or instinct, had spent four years drumming that into her. The most obvious paths he seemed to ignore, although she knew he never did. He simply left the obvious to mortals. What he did have was an eye for the flaws of the human psyche. She considered this was because Boer was flawed himself, that he saw his own weaknesses reflected in others, probing into the subtle cracks of human nature and often prising free the truth while all others looked elsewhere.
On this occasion he saw something Ferreira could not see or even comprehend. The scrap of paper had led Boer to a name he circled over and over, the page almost worn through with dark ink. If she did not know Boer so well she would immediately dismiss it as too obvious. There was too little substance. Everything for the stepfather had checked out. She had studied the transcript of his interview and paid keen interest before and after the press conference. The guilty more often gave themselves away because they hid their guilt behind reaction. The stepfather had shown her nothing today but a man struggling to face a harsh reality.
But Kevin Smith was the name Boer had circled. Ferreira picked up the notepad and puzzled aloud, as if Boer might explain himself. She then spent the time as she waited flicking through the case file, shifting backwards and forwards through the pages, unearthing his mobile used as a bookmark between pages of Sarah’s past. The display on the phone listed no missed calls. She pushed it into the pocket of her bag and resumed her study, but there was no other detail she did not already know.
Presently a strobing blue light made itself known across the hallway. She took one last look around the room, pondering whether to take a keepsake from his bookshelves. Her eyes skipped along the shelves and settled on a book she sometimes pondered from the wicker chair. A leather bound pocket Bible. She pulled it out and opened it. It was the type that zipped closed but the zip was broken for the wad of Boer’s notes wedged inside. She was already looking forward to going through it, sliding the Bible into the side pocket of her bag with his phone. She then ran her fingers through his hair, something she had always wanted to do, then kissed him on the forehead and walked downstairs.
Ferreira opened the door to the paramedics and watched as his body was lifted into the ambulance. Then she waited in her car for the square vehicle to pull away, the flashing lights chasing along the houses either side of the street, a few faces peering from windows.
If she left now it would be ten before she arrived. The best time to question suspects as far as Boer was concerned, the last hours before midnight. It made them pliable and more prone to error. Ferreira was inclined not to because she wanted to go home and quietly cry. She did not because finding Sarah had been important to him. She called family liaison and arranged to meet them at the house. There were rules, of course, about interviews, the when and where. This early in an investigation they were rarely refused. She arranged for an officer from the local station to attend as well. She made herself comfortable as she passed through suburbia onto the A34, trying to alter her mindset, working on how she would approach the questioning and not looking forward to it one bit. She could not stop thinking it would be a complete waste of time.
SEVENTY
Adam placed both hands palm down on the reception desk, waiting patiently for the receptionist as she searched through her handbag. Eventually she fixed a smile beneath green eyes and gave him her attention.
‘Do you have a PC with internet access I could use?’
She kept smiling. ‘It’s broken. We provide internet wireless in the rooms,’ she stated as if that was the answer he needed.
He drummed his fingers on the counter. Behind her was a door that opened to a small office. ‘I don’t have a computer, do you have one there I could use? It’s important. I’d only be a few minutes.’
‘I’m sorry, the office is off limits to guests.’
‘Do you know what’s wrong with the internet PC, when’s it likely to be repaired?’
‘It was reported yesterday, there should be someone out this week.’
‘This week!’ He almost shouted. ‘Where is it?’
‘The computer?’ She directed his gaze to a single desk pushed against a trellis that separated the restaurant from reception. On the desk sat a screen and keyboard. He walked over to it, ignoring her protests.
The computer was on but it had frozen, the mouse pointer stuck in the middle of the screen. None of the keys or the mouse worked. He ducked under the desk and pressed the power button, keeping it pressed. The lights blinked off. He pressed power again and waited for it to boot. The fact it had frozen meant there was a problem but it might take minutes or days to happen again. He shuffled the chair closer and waited for the login prompt. When it appeared he pondered the password, tapping a finger against the keyboard. He tried the name of the hotel in various levels of capitalisation. All failed. He looked around reception, did the same for the name of the group that owned the hotel. That failed as well. He was certain help would not come from reception. He flipped the keyboard and smiled, a sequence of eight numeric and alpha digits were sellotaped to the base. He alternated between reading and typing and waited for the desktop to appear.
His plan was simple. He needed information on shipping insurance but was not authorised to access it. Usually companies accessed it via a paid service. Importantly for Adam, these included companies he also ran security reviews for. The shipping terminals were often remote accessed, and the passwords staff used were weak because they were used by so many. His most recent review had been a month before. He was betting they had not even read his report yet, let alone changed the passwords.
Accessing the shipping terminals was as simple as navigating to a central website, selecting the company from the list and remembering the password. Two minutes later he had the terminal glowing in front of him. He was about to enter the final password when the computer froze.
He silently swore and re-booted but he had barely logged in and it froze again. He resisted the urge to shout, holding it in as he waited for the computer to reboot. He was navigating to the website when it froze for the last time. He held his head in his hands, it could take all night like this. He needed to start doing what he was good at, which was finding ways through barriers. He stepped back across to reception.
‘Where’s your nearest superstore? One that sells big TVs?’
The receptionist finished typing and looked past him. ‘Out of the doors behind you, straight on, next to the shopping centre. It’s a five-minute walk.’
Eight minutes later he was back in his room catching his breath. The new laptop’s box and packaging were discarded on the bed. It took as long to click through the laptop’s welcome screens as it did to buy it, clicking past the final screens and connecting to the hotel’s Wi-Fi, then going straight into the central website and then the shipping terminal. Another ten seconds and he had access to shipping. He smiled to himself as he splayed his fingers on the desk, breathing in deep and out again. It all came down to this one search. He typed in Cutting Blue, pressed return and waited on the results to appear on screen.
His heart sank. There were fourteen Cutting Blues and none of them were registered to addresses in the UK. He cross-referenced them against Simon Thompson, but all returned a negative. Twelve of the Cutting Blues were flagged as commercial and two private.
He scuffed back from the desk, shocked at the failure. He had been so sure Cutting Blue would be registered in the UK. He scooted back and cross-referenced against Iceland and when that failed, Singapore, clutching at straws. He felt like crying. He stared up at the dusty ceiling for inspiration, running a hand through his hair, trying to think in abstracts while skipping through everything that had happened that day. A
nd then he realised, it was obvious. He opened another browser and searched for the website he had seen the night before, clicking on the link and watching it load. Hakan’s pub on the seafront. It had sunny pictures showing it on the promenade, of tables and customers laughing, the bar gleaming. He paged down to the bottom. His mouth moving as he silently read the small characters that spelled the name of the management company: Ragnorline Holdings.
Barely able to contain his jubilation he flicked back to the terminal and typed in the name. It failed. Without pause he shortened the search to Ragnorline, his heart tripping, certain he was close. It returned an immediate hit: Ragnorline GmbH, Cutting Blue, registered in Hamburg. The words Grimsby Dry Dock glowed bright on the screen as the last insurance location.
He sat back and processed the information. The address in Hamburg was no use to him. He closed the shipping terminal and ran a search he did have authorisation for, against all UK properties insured against Ragnorline.
The search listed twenty-one addresses. He sat blinking at the lines of dark text. Jackpot. Seven of the addresses were in Grimsby. He studied the list, barely able to comprehend the goldmine of information he now had. The local addresses were warehouses in the main, the one pub and two residential properties. All were owned by a mixture of Ragnorline companies. Logic led him to consider the residential addresses as the obvious ones to check first, also the easiest. He already knew one of them was a non-starter; it was the address Brian checked the night before.
He searched for the other address, Eve Hill Way, the map revealing a curved cul-de-sac beneath a grass square. For a while he just stared at the image, dizzy with expectation and hope. He jolted himself from the reverie, thinking on the best way to get the information to Boer. He copied the addresses into an email to himself that arrived on his phone as he plugged the laptop into the wall socket. He would leave it charging in the room in case he needed it again. He forwarded the email as a text to Boer’s number with a brief explanation and called a taxi as he headed back down to reception.
SEVENTY-ONE
He couldn’t see anything, just a dull light at the fringes of the thick material covering his eyes. He was sitting, his hands tied either side of him behind a chair, likewise each of his legs to a chair leg. He moved his jaw and it popped and crunched back into place. He moved it around cautiously, tensing the muscles in his arms and legs as best he could, running through a systems check. A dislocated jaw and bruises seemed to be the worst he had sustained. There was nothing covering his mouth, so they were not worried about noise.
A cold draught drifted across the bare skin of his body. They had removed his shirt and his feet were bare. He was only wearing jeans. The stabbing pains marched up and down his back, but they were the constant. He tested the bonds around his wrist and ankles. Rope could be loosened, the fibres with careful attention would stretch, could give you space to work. Leather and most fabrics were the same. Given time and some inattention when applied, there might be hope. With plastic cuffs pulled tight there was no hope. He moved his hands within the confines of the plastic. It dug into the skin of his wrists and cut. With some movement he drew blood and used it to lubricate and slide the cuffs to the base of his hand. But that was it. If he had no thumb on each hand he would be home free.
So he stopped wasting energy and made himself as comfortable as he could. He slowed his breathing and tuned into the environment, immediately closing down the fear. Panic would get him nowhere.
There was practically no sound, just an occasional klaxon of lorries reversing, drifting in and out on random eddies. The draught came from somewhere out front, carrying with it a thick stagnant smell of refuse and ocean.
He opened his mouth and shouted loud, using the sound to get a feel for the space. It was not big, but there was resonance, maybe another room out front. He was in a smaller space. He didn’t know what time it was, but did know time was a premium. Time passed, an hour, maybe two.
He heard a sound, a metal door and shuffling feet, two or three people. There was no point pretending to be unconscious or trying to buy more time. It was a matter of getting on with it. So he faced forwards and did not move.
The metal door closed and he heard a single low voice, an American accent, smooth and rich like melted chocolate. A single pair of shoes came towards him. The sound again confirmed the thought he was in a separate room. The shoes stopped a few steps in front of him.
‘Hello, Brian, my name is Baldur. We will spend some time together.’
The shoes moved to the right and the voice continued. ‘I guessed three months ago it might come to this, but nobody would listen to me. A deadbeat, a has-been. That is what they said. He does not even care for his daughter.’ The shoes paced around him, returning to the original spot in front. ‘A drunk and no kind of father. You can understand why they would think that, can’t you Brian. And such a beautiful little daughter who idolises him, she really does. And all you can do is wallow in your own self-pity, a once proud man defined by his life in the army. Incapable of living a life outside of it. No place even with your army friends working the circuit and earning good money. There’s not much call for soldiers with bodies crippled like yours, is there Mr Dunstan? What use is an ex-soldier who cannot even fire a gun?’
Brian swallowed hard. The words hurt as much as anything that would follow. He said nothing.
For a while there was silence. Then wood dragged across concrete, not a chair although something similar and then something more than silence – intent. The pain crashed against his left shoulder, compressing across his chest, something thick and solid with hard edges. It knocked him sideways, forcing him to use what little leverage his feet gave him to stop himself from toppling over.
‘On second thoughts,’ the voice said, ‘I want to see you.’
He sensed a body move close.
‘I want to see you realise there is nothing you can do for your little girl, to see the anger in your eyes. So many chances wasted.’ The material was pulled from his face. Light beat against his closed eyes and another moment of intention and a crushing pain against his other shoulder, just as hard.
‘Open your eyes Brian, it is about time.’
He did. Blinking and focusing, both his arms dead at his side but not enough to douse the constant needling pain of his back.
‘There we are, remember me?’
Brian did of course. Baldur was the tall blond, lean and positively glowing with pink-cheeked health, moving around like a dancer pre-performance. Brian checked through the space; his blindfolded assessment had been mostly accurate. He was in an average-sized room, probably once a workshop, the brick walls partly covered in a green moss. A room much bigger and higher opened directly in front. Rusted rails like small train tracks led to a heavy door at the end, the door newer and too small for anything that might use the tracks.
Brian could see the smaller blond at the far end by the door, sitting on the edge of a wooden chair, watching, one leg straight out as if it was the cause of some pain. Brian had not done that. He briefly thought of Adam and smiled, sensing Baldur move around behind and then a blur and then a pain exploded across his thighs. He cried out.
‘You have caused me so many problems, you and the woman. I told them we must not underestimate you. Men like you work from a different moral code. One minute you do not care, the next you fight to the death.’ Baldur circled.
Brian tried to shift his legs, they weren’t broken but he couldn’t feel his toes. He looked up at the man, staring intently back at him. ‘You just going to hit me with your stick, or get on with it?’
Baldur came around and stood in front of him. The stick was a length of wood at least three feet long, four inches by four inches in diameter.
‘Settle down, we have little time as it is.’ Baldur looked from his watch to Brian. ‘Ninety minutes, in point of fact. Not a long amount of time but more time than you have life.’ He looked around the room as if reminiscing. ‘We use this place occ
asionally. Not so much now people know not to misbehave. It is a very good location because the high tide cleans away any mess, as long as we don’t get too much on the walls, of course.’ He smiled at Brian’s impassive face.
‘Do you believe in God, Brian?’
Brian groaned and shook his head.
‘You should not be so dismissive. It is an important question people must ask, especially a man in your position.’ He moved around the chair. ‘Well, you should know that I do, my faith is very strong.’
Brian nodded but did not say anything.
‘Why are you nodding, Brian?’
‘I agree, you fit the profile, borderline psychotic and deluded. You’d get on with my ex.’
That earned him a wry smile and a hard blow across his chest. It caused his lungs to spasm, struggling to choke in breath. And then immediately another blow hard against the side of his head, the edge of the wood dragged across his cheek leaving a thin trail of splinters and blood. He slumped forward, convulsing, bloody drool from his mouth dripping into his lap and to the floor. Baldur walked away into the adjoining room. The hushed sound of victorious voices as Brian gasped for air.
When Brian eventually sat up Baldur returned. ‘That was from my brother, you will spend time with him soon. Although of course you must know your friend has already met with a very painful death. A shame really, I cannot see he was here for any reason other than chance. Although a noble effort on your part to get him to safety.’
He had no idea what had happened to Adam but thought the boast unlikely, not without some morale-sapping memento on show. Either way there was little he could do about it now. ‘Are we moving on to bedtime stories soon? Your TV accent is really making me sleepy.’
Baldur wordlessly propped the wood against the wall and scooted Brian’s chair around 180 degrees, to face a gnarled old workbench. To one side was Brian’s kit bag and laid across the surface were the tools he had packed into the bag.