by Potter, John
‘I hope you find her. She seemed nice,’ the girl said.
‘I will.’ He looked down at her. ‘You should get home.’
She did not nod or confirm, just walked out through the gate, waiting for him and making sure the gate was closed. She followed him up the alley. The dim street lighting seemed harsh in contrast.
Something occurred to him. ‘Why is Simon a legend?’
‘Dad says we used to have loads of problems with some gangs that came from over St. Luke’s. Mostly kids but organised by adults. Everyone being bossed to pay money, shop windows smashed. Half the houses in the street were broken into. People were at their wits’ end. Simon said he would deal with it. Dad says a month later and it all stopped. Says there’s not been a single break-in around here for three years. Anyone here will tell you it’s down to Simon.’
He imagined Simon valued his privacy. ‘I wanted to apologise,’ Adam said. ‘I feel bad for making you show me around.’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘You’re fine. I wanted to.’ And then she turned and walked away. He walked in the opposite direction, only looking back as he stepped onto the kerb by the corner store. The street was empty.
SEVENTY-THREE
It was gone ten by the time Ferreira parked and negotiated the jostle of remaining press, ducking beneath the police cordon and walking self-consciously up to the house and the two constables outside. Andrea’s stepfather ushered her in from behind the door, a genuine if tempered smile beneath his heavy eyes.
He asked polite questions about the drive as she avoided his gaze while removing her shoes in the hallway, then padded in her tights behind him through the kitchen into the dining room and to three faces around the long wooden dining table.
The mother sat opposite, beneath a large wooden crucifix, her mood thunderous and laced with frost. The stepfather scooted a chair in behind Ferreira and took a seat next to the mother. Both the family liaison officer and the constable sat on the left with lush curtains drawn behind them. Their jobs were to serve the needs of the family and witness the interview. They looked like they might have taken the brunt of the mother’s displeasure, offering Ferreira cool nods and pursed lips.
She replied with apology in her smile and dropped her bag onto the floor beside her chair, the bottle from Boer’s study clonking against the table leg. She flushed as she pulled free her notepad and pen, placing them square in front of her. She took a long deep breath, feeling very alone. Nervously, she began.
‘I am very sorry to disturb you tonight, especially at this hour.’ They both looked back at her, the stepfather open and waiting, the mother frail and tired despite her impatience. ‘But one angle that is taking up a lot of our time is why Andrea specifically was targeted.’
‘I would have thought that obvious,’ the mother immediately answered. ‘Andrea was the only child on the street left to wander alone.’ She breathed in as if to say more but did not.
‘Well actually, it is not that uncommon to see children without chaperones in the High Street, regardless of the rights and wrongs, Mrs Smith. And while I certainly empathise we consider the chances of someone waiting on chance, well, it is unlikely given the planning we know went into her abduction.’ She let that hang in the air. ‘So what I would like to do is focus on who might have known, who knew your daughter would be standing outside Boots at that time on Saturday?’
The mother stared with eyes that shifted from questioning to exasperation that for a moment Ferreira thought mocked. ‘I think I already made that perfectly clear, Detective. You’re best talking to Andrea’s father about that.’
‘You did, Liz – can I call you that?
‘I prefer Beth.’
Ferreira amended. ‘Beth then, sorry. You have said Brian is the best person for us to talk to but you also told us there was no aspect of your family you did not know about. So which is it?’
The mother looked as if she had been slapped but immediately came back. ‘One day you may have children, Detective, and you will understand. Of course I know all about my children’s lives but what she does at her father’s is beyond my control, unfortunately.’ The stepfather reached across and grasped her hand.
Ferreira looked at their hands linked on the table and to the stepfather, still struggling to see Boer’s logic. Why was she even here? She looked at the mother. ‘I’m sorry Beth. I didn’t mean that to come out as it did, it’s been a long day this side of the table too. Please understand my main concern is to move our search for your daughter forward. We have to move beyond our emotional feelings or any sense of blame and look at the facts. Knowing who knew could be a key element to finding her.’
Ferreira’s apology went unheeded.
‘Don’t you think I know that, but I cannot tell you more than I already have. If there is anyone that knows, then it is quite simply her father. And to be quite honest, Detective, the sooner you find that loser the sooner you will find Andrea. That’s where you should be focusing your efforts, not here.’
Ferreira’s mouth opened and closed. She was right. Her whole purpose for coming here was Boer’s, not her own. As much as she had thought through the angles during the drive, she didn’t really believe she should be there. She needed a time out.
‘Possibly so,’ Ferreira said. ‘But I’m here now and there are details we need to discuss. First, do you mind if I use your bathroom? I could do with freshening up.’
The mother gave a wan smile. ‘You know where it is. Kevin will make you a tea. White, two sugars I recall. I’m sure these ladies could do with a drink as well?’ She looked down the table at smiles and nods.
Ferreira picked up her bag and made for the hallway and the stairs, angry at herself for faltering. Interviewing was what she enjoyed most; it came as naturally as throwing a ball against a wall. Except now the wall was no longer there. She had to step back and embrace impartiality, start feeling for those subtle flaws of human nature. Boer had always made it seem so easy.
SEVENTY-FOUR
The dreams of closed-in spaces became vast horizons of yellow and shows of lightning streaking across the sunset and endless ocean. Her mind eased back to consciousness, her senses busy processing the new environment. She was aware of being in a different space before her eyes fluttered open.
Cool air breezed across her face, carrying the smell of oil or fuel. A gunmetal ceiling and a dim bulb enclosed in wire mesh. She was lying on a comfortable mattress. She slowly sat up, thick-headed as if woken from a deep sleep. She felt a little hung over, sore and bruised and battered but serviceable. She felt rested even. Andrea was not there.
She panicked, swinging her feet onto a bare metal floor, staring directly at a door. She tried the handle but the door was locked. She looked beneath the bed in vain hope.
The room was very small and angular, like it was the corner of a much bigger space. Where was she? Where was Andrea and why had they been moved? The answer to the last seemed obvious now. Simon’s plans had changed. But why? Snippets of their conversation in the kitchen replayed in her mind. She was on a boat. She shouted out load and banged hard on the door and kicked it. She stepped back and kicked beside the handle, angry and frustrated at still being trapped and powerless. She kicked again and then again, each time harder, the sound echoing dull and brief. The door stood solid.
She stopped and listened for any discernible sound or movement, pushing thoughts of where Andrea might be from her mind. Were they moving? There might be a slight sideways shift but she doubted that. She felt sure if they were in the North Sea she would feel something.
She sat on the bed with her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands, trying to calibrate and calm her thoughts, to think clearly. She had to get out of this room. Her mind raced through the detail, trying to calculate meaning and consequences from her conversation with Simon, weighing her options and constantly worrying for Andrea. She was not sure how long she had sat like that but started suddenly at a noise outside. Then the door silently swep
t open and Simon looked in at her. ‘You’re awake.’
She felt immediate relief at seeing him. He was not with Andrea.
‘You’re an absolute rotten bastard,’ she said, moving off the bed.
He smiled uncertain as she stepped lightly over to him, on tiptoe reaching both hands up behind his neck and pulling his head down. She pressed her pelvis against his thigh and kissed him fully on the mouth, his mouth stiff-lipped then softening. Once she was done he stood back and looked at her.
‘What was that for?’
She idled her hand down his arm. ‘A promise of what could be if you stop locking me in small rooms.’ She looked hopefully up at him and he studied her face for intent. Then he ushered her through the door into an area the size of a tennis court, a communal space with a shallow sofa and cupboards. There was another angled wall and a door like hers in the opposite corner.
‘Andrea’s in there?’
He nodded.
‘Show me,’ she commanded and watched as he unlocked and opened the door. Sarah stepped in, her relief so great she almost punched the air. An identical room, Andrea lay asleep curled in a ball. It struck her straight away. ‘Where’s her bag?’
‘Back at the house.’
She turned and burrowed her eyes into his. ‘But all her stuff’s in there. Everything she still has!’
‘I know. That’s why it’s back at the house.’ He directed her out of the room. ‘She won’t be needing it.’ He locked the door and put a hand on each of her shoulders. ‘It’s a zero risk right where it is.’ He manoeuvred past her, climbing the steps. He waved for her to follow.
She contemplated Andrea’s locked door then carefully climbed the steep steps and emerged onto the main deck and the open night air. The change was glorious. She breathed deep the sea air and welcomed its embrace of her body and face, looking out across a wide expanse of water to a distant container vessel amid busy cranes and varied bright lights.
Simon directed her through an outside bar with a covered sofa and a mounted TV in a clear plastic case. Glass stretched almost the whole width of the wide deck with sliding glass doors in the middle. She could see a high tower brightly reflected in the glass as Simon rattled keys. She turned to look. The tower was beside the dock entrance, which looked like an enormous version of a canal lock.
‘This is huge,’ she said with more than a degree of natural wonder.
He slid open one of the doors and wordlessly directed her into a sumptuous living area with thick carpet underfoot, curving white leather sofas facing each other from both sides of the space, the carpet giving way to marble set in an abstract mosaic and a gleaming dining table surrounded by chairs. The sound of keys again as he locked the glass door then walked her through to more steep steps that went up and also down to a lower level.
She had a brief moment to look around. She was high up, as if looking from a second floor window through floor to ceiling glass, the glass stretching all around her to a curve at the front. Outside to the left she could see a floodlit quay, at the right the expanse of shimmering water. Simon directed her down the steps.
They descended to a passageway walled in polished wood. Simon followed her along the corridor to a narrow door and into a large bedroom, bigger than the main bedroom in her flat and more luxurious than any hotel she had ever stayed in. A low king-size bed sat directly in front of her. All the surfaces were the same polished wood or mirrored, all the colours were tones of burgundy red or complementing contrasts, the time marked by an old-fashioned brass clock, the second hand busy tripping around.
She sensed Simon had not followed her into the room, turning to see his body framed by the door.
‘There’s an en suite everything through there,’ he said. ‘Including a glass-sided shower that looks out over the water, which you will find much more appealing when we’re in the Mediterranean. I’ll be back soon. The guy doing the loading must be on an hourly rate.’
‘You can’t touch her.’
‘I won’t,’ he said and swept the door closed. She listened to the keys turn, wondering at the logic of locks on a boat. Immediately she began a very thorough investigation of her new environment, beginning with confirmation the door was locked. When she was sure there was no way he could see her, she pulled two blades from the back pocket of her jeans. The blades were wrapped in a strip of material from the red blanket. She had taken them in the hope of an unexpected opportunity, and was very glad she had.
Her problems remained though. She had repeatedly drawn a blank on effective methods of attack, even trying them in her mouth. They did balance on her tongue but were too big, the edges cutting into the roof of her mouth when she swallowed or tried to speak. She wrapped them in the red material and pushed them back into her jeans.
SEVENTY-FIVE
Getting to the dry dock took Adam from suburbia into an industrial estate, over a level crossing and past endless giant warehouses interspersed by whole tracts of land given to row upon row of cars. His destination was a colossal wall of concrete. It ran a long street’s worth either side of him and up to a plateau way above his head, a row of sheds the size of houses butted to the edge. He had not known what to expect, imagining all kinds of security. Even requesting the dry dock as a destination seemed improbable. The driver had simply nodded his head.
He walked to the end of the wall, the night air full of sea and the busy sounds of industry, of lorries reversing above all others. He came to a narrow road on the right, a three-storey building on the opposite corner with the top floor illuminated. He continued around the concrete structure, realising it was a giant wedge. Parallel tracks ran from the sheds, descending at a gradual gradient, down through silt near the base. At the far side a boat was silhouetted, mounted on scaffolding. Although small, from where he stood it seemed like some distant beached behemoth. A trawler with long winch arms protruding like insect antennae.
Adam’s stomach fluttered. He was contemplating whether to walk back around or across the sloping concrete, when a door opened from the building behind. A man in a luminous jacket and hard hat emerged. Adam’s anxiety turned to relief at the sound of a friendly voice.
‘You OK there pal? You’re looking lost.’ The man was at least sixty, a face that looked like rock shaped by weather.
‘I am, I was looking for the Cutting Blue?’
‘You found her right enough.’ The man gave him an appraising look and nodded at the distant trawler. ‘And I’ll admit we do sometimes get the odd visitor that’s interested in her history.’ He gave Adam another up-and-down look. ‘And I gotta say you don’t look like any of them.’ He had a smile on his face.
‘Well, I was actually looking for Simon Thompson. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of him?’
The man laughed. It was genuine and told of a lifetime of smoking. ‘Now would I know Simon Thompson? Well, like a lot of guys here I crewed with Conley a lot of years, many of them on that very boat. Knew Conley’s boy too, I crewed with him sometimes as well. He’s all grown up now and spends his summers working on that boat, and damn glad of his company I can tell you.’ He nodded across at the boat. ‘Does all the work himself. How he managed to sail her back from Singapore is the stuff of legend around here.’
Adam nodded cautiously. The man had come alive, as if recounting an all-time favourite story. The man caught his breath and continued.
‘Although if you’re looking for Simon this night, you’re skulking around the wrong boat.’ He turned and pointed beyond the building. ‘Simon cleared customs an hour ago. He’s waiting over there for the dock gates.’
Adam squinted but only saw the top half of an illuminated tower distant. ‘Where’s there?’ he asked.
‘Over there lad! You can’t miss the bloody thing. Bigger than a damn house, not even a yacht to my mind but impressive there’s no doubt.’ He ushered Adam back to the road. ‘Head along there till you come to the warehouses on your right. You can wend through them, don’t mind the noise, that’s ju
st the generators, or carry on till you get to the road then follow that to the right. Either way you’ll find yourself on the Royal Dock. Passing Dream is birthed at the far end.’ He looked back at Adam. ‘You got that?’
‘Think so. Warehouses, big boat, far end.’
The man smiled. ‘You got it.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘How’d you say you know Simon?’
‘I don’t,’ Adam answered, thinking quickly. ‘My wife wants to charter a yacht next summer. Simon was recommended although he’s been hard to find.’
The man looked at him with amused eyes. ‘Your wife often get these sudden impulses in the middle of the night?’
Adam laughed to buy himself a few seconds. ‘Well, she asked me to do this last year. Now I’m on an ultimatum and left it to the last minute, and the clock’s ticking.’ He shrugged and grinned at the man. ‘Wouldn’t be here now if he wasn’t so bloody hard to track down, he doesn’t advertise at all.’
Nodding knowingly the man winked at him and walked past. ‘Doesn’t need to. And don’t let the look of him put you off either, that lad’s only got eyes for the ocean.’
Adam watched the man head across the concrete towards the shadowed trawler, stepping over the first set of rails. He started jogging along the road.
SEVENTY-SIX
Simon had been right about the shower. It was the size of a bedroom. The floors were a warm brown slate and the walls gleaming black tiles. Three giant shower heads faced a wall of glass that overlooked the dock. There were shutters that whirred down at the press of a button, although when she realised she opened them immediately. After days in a tiny room the wide expanse of the dock was a luxury. She stood beneath the warm water in the dark, looking out in awe at a luminous halo of light over the distant container vessel, the kaleidoscope of colours shimmering across the water.