The Last Witness

by John Matthews

  ‘I’ve been told I should speak to you now about this. Apparently you’re doing all the legwork.’ Ryall made the emphasis as if it was the lowest form of activity. The message was patently clear: he was only talking to Crowley through sufferance, and his patience was already long gone. ‘Now what the hell’s going on?’

  Crowley clarified with Ryall what information Turton had already passed on, then picked up from there. ‘The cash-card trail seems to have petered out in the middle of France. We’ve had no other notification of its use there, or indeed anywhere else.’

  ‘And any sightings of her car in France?’

  ‘No. Nor again anywhere else for that matter. I don’t want us to get stuck on the fact that she might still be in France. So we’ve got alerts out not only with most airports in Northern France, but also border posts with Belgium, Switzerland, Holland and Germany – not to mention airports too that she could have by now reached in those countries. We’re also going through airline passenger records at those airports, plus we mustn’t rule out that she could still be in England. The Euro-Shuttle ticket and the cash-card might have all been just a diversion.’ He didn’t add that he’d soon have to widen the net to cover Italy and Spain as it became possible that she’d reached that far: it made the search sound all the more tenuous, underlined that they really had no idea where she’d gone. He tried to sound confident. ‘Believe me, we’re doing everything we can. Wherever she is, we’ll find her.’

  ‘What about Mr Waldren?’

  Turton had already told Ryall about them putting Mr Waldren on a tight time leash the first twelve hours with the promise of them possibly holding back on charges till then – so Crowley jumped to what had happened since. They’d piled on the pressure by extending the deadline by a few hours, but that now too was well past. They’d applied for a telephone tap on the Waldren’s line along with a record of all calls made the past thirty-six hours, and received both in late yesterday.

  ‘…But nothing interesting from the records or from the monitoring so far. Though that might be because Mr Waldren seems to make the habit of travelling out to call boxes, usually late at night. Which is the other thing we’re doing – following his movements. Two Chelborne boxes and one on the way to Wareham: he uses different boxes each time. And every time he appears to be receiving the calls rather than making them.’ The way it came across, Crowley couldn’t help thinking their efforts sounded quite impressive. ‘As you can see, sir, we’re not sitting on our haunches on this. We’re covering every possible option.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Ryall quickly killed any exuberance. ‘But the end result of all this marvellous activity is that you’re found absolutely nothing concrete?’

  ‘Yes, well, I… I’m not sure what else you expect us to be doing on this?’

  ‘I though that was your job to work out.’ Mix of bristling impatience and sarcasm. ‘But if I think of anything, I’ll make sure to phone you.’ Ryall hung up abruptly.

  Child molester or not – Crowley didn’t want to go near the dangerous area of even attempting to think about it – Cameron Ryall was certainly not a nice person.

  Ryall’s intimation that he might not be doing his job properly had particularly stung him, he felt the strong urge to redress the balance, score back some points. And when forty minutes later the two DCs trailing Gordon Waldren patched in to say that he was on the move ‘…Heading out of the area this time, obviously not seeing local clients’ – he thought he might just have that something. Though he waited for another hour to receive the news that Waldren was on the A421 approaching Northampton before he called Ryall.

  ‘…It could be that he’s going to meet up with his wife, or at least where he’s headed could give some clue to her whereabouts. Certainly it’s a change to his normal routine.’

  ‘Yes… I see. Some activity I suppose rather than nothing. Thank you for phoning. Keep me posted.’

  Crowley’s next call wasn’t for over two hours. ‘He’s gone to Durham, it appears. My men have just watched him park.’

  ‘Which street?’ Ryall asked pointedly.

  ‘What…?’ Crowley was fazed for a second before going back to the other line to ask. ‘Elvet Hill Road.’

  ‘That’s where my other daughter is, you oaf.’

  ‘Your other daughter?’

  ‘Yes, my eldest stepdaughter, Mikaya. She’s at Durham University.’

  ‘…And what would Gordon Waldren be doing seeing her?’

  ‘I don’t know, for God’s sake,’ Ryall blustered. ‘Maybe abducting her as well. A full bloody house!’ Though he did know. An icy tingle ran up his spine, made his whole body rigid. His secretary had looked up with his raised voice, was still looking concernedly through his glass office partition. He looked down, lowered his voice to an urgent rasp. ‘Look – you’ve got to stop him seeing her.’

  ‘I… I don’t know if we can do that. It’s not our job to deal with preventive crime management just because you think something might happen.’ Now it was Crowley’s turn to be condescending. ‘Besides, Waldren’s not even meant to know we’re tailing him. And he’s not exactly going to get far with anyone with my two men sitting right over his car.’

  ‘But you’ve got to do something. I don’t want him speaking to her – is that clear?’

  No it wasn’t, not really; but with one daughter now missing for over forty hours, Crowley conceded that Ryall’s reasoning powers were probably heavily bruised. ‘As I say, I don’t think there’s much we can do. But you could of course phone her yourself – warn her off from meeting him. If that’s what he’s got in mind.’

  ‘Thanks. You’ve been a big help.’

  For the second time Crowley found himself left holding a dead line with Ryall.

  Ryall tried Mikaya first in her dorm room: no answer. Then he tried to raise her through her tutor or whatever lectures she might be in at that moment, but still no luck. All he was left with was the Registrar secretary’s consolation: ‘We’ve got messages out for her with the note that it’s urgent. I’m sure she’ll call you back as soon as she’s able.’

  ‘Yes… Thank you. I’m sure she will.’

  By then it would probably be too late. Waldren could already be with her in a study room or quiet corner, questioning her. Ryall started trembling, a tingling heat rising up through his neck to his face. His secretary looked away as he looked up sharply.

  Turton’s revelation that the main reason given for Lorena’s abduction was for her to undergo psychiatric counselling, and now Gordon Waldren confronting Mikaya: it was like a one-family all-out assault! He doubted that conventional child-psychiatry would uncover much – but with repeated sessions the odds could rapidly worsen. Who knew for sure? Each extra hour with no news on Lorena tightened the tourniquet on his nerves, made him want to scream out loud: part anxiety and fear, part exasperation at the lack of control – so alien to him.

  Mikaya too probably wouldn’t recall anything – but what worried him most with her was the time that had since elapsed. How long did something like that stay buried at the back of the mind before it could finally be recovered?

  TWENTY-TWO

  Elena observed her hand shaking as she put her cup of herbal tea back in its saucer. The shaking was less now, but still evident.

  Another three squad cars she’d passed that afternoon with her nerves on a knife-edge until they’d finally gone from view. She should have known that trawling door to door across half of Montreal, the chances of crossing the path of the police would be greatly increased – but the rationalisation did little to ease the tight-rope pressure. She didn’t know how much more she could take of this.

  She’d dived into a local chemists after squad car number two – which slowed for a second while the passenger officer gave her the once-over as she gave her by now standard door-step pitch to Stevens family sixteen or seventeen, she’d lost count – and grabbed a bottle of natural nerve-calming tablets. Their main ingredient was something called Vale
rian, and the label advised to take two tablets at four hour intervals. She swilled down four straight away with an orange juice from a deppaneur.

  Then she started to recall the advice given by Gordon’s doctor for him to combat stress and high blood-pressure and head off another heart attack. Avoid fatty foods, dairy produce and high sugar intake; avoid stimulants such as coffee and coke; brandy and vodka were a definite no-no, but beer was okay in moderation and whisky was actually good for him ‘…Has a calming effect and also thins the blood, actually improves the circulation.’ But again in moderation.

  She’d miss the kick-start of her normal five or six cups of fresh caffeine a day, and already the craving for it was excruciating with the energy badly needed, but sadly lacking, to plod around yet another six or seven doors that evening before finally calling it a day. The herbal tea was a poor substitute.

  She’d picked up three whisky miniatures at the same depanneur and had downed the first just before the next door call; but she’d held herself in check since, hadn’t taken any more. She hadn’t slept well the night before, and with her eyes slightly bloodshot and her nerves frayed, she was starting to look increasingly like a woman on the edge: she couldn’t help noticing that the doors were being opened more cautiously, tentatively, some people talking through only foot gaps. If she started enveloping them in whisky fumes, she’d be given even less of a welcome.

  The thought put a faint ironic smile on her face, and from the side of the café she noticed Lorena smiling back at her, coming out in sympathy. Elena smiled more openly. Lorena was zap-crashing her way through Tombraider on a game machine, for the moment seemed happy, untroubled: brief respite from the pressure of the sessions and the tedium of reading Harry Potter or listening through the half-dozen more cassettes Elena had bought her to help pass the car-waiting time while she continued with her door-stepping vigil… each time hopefully the last one. The one that would suddenly smile and invite her in rather than the succession of knit eyebrows and shaking heads.

  I’ll bury him out of sight and out of reach… Who was she kidding? Two days, and she didn’t even have the faintest sniff of a lead. And the way the sessions were going with Lorena, it didn’t look likely that anything would be uncovered there either. Her father had got the better of her, and now Ryall too. Dominant men, story of her life: why should she be so surprised? Her hand gripped tight on her teacup as she took another sip. At least she was consistent. And when she returned to England defeated, maybe even as soon as tomorrow – she was facing a jail term for this. Gordon had made that clear on their last phone conversation: the deadline for no charges being pressed was now almost twelve hours past. No possible reprieve. Don’t pass GO, don’t collect £200, go straight…

  A plump woman in a thick quilted parka brushed past her heading for her table, broke her from her mental maudlin. Middle-aged, Afro-Caribbean. This area of East Montreal around Rue Hochelaga had a heavy Caribbean population, both French and English, with an equal mix of French Canadians and a wider ethnic mix than probably any other area of the city making up the remainder. Halal butchers jostled next to Greek steak houses, burrito bars and deppaneurs selling yams and cassava, with every so often shops that were boarded up and covered with posters and graffiti.

  There were actually some areas of the city where Elena hoped she wouldn’t find him: she didn’t want to face the added guilt that his life might have been tough, underprivileged.

  She decided to try and buoy her spirits with some calls in a better area. She paid, hung over Lorena’s shoulder a moment while she finished her game, then they headed north to the block between Rue Beaubien and d’Iberville – a Stephanou this time.

  Halfway through the day it had suddenly struck her that her enquiry line was incomplete. She’d ask if there was a Nicholas, Maria or George Stevens in the house, give respective ages and some background – then that was it. There was nowhere else to go. She couldn’t ask if they might be relatives, because Stevens was an assumed named. And she began to wonder too about the choice of Montreal: if the sole purpose of the change to Stevens was a common anglicised name to help bury them deeper in the city – then why not Chicago or New York where the population was almost completely anglophile? Maybe the choice of Montreal was because they had relatives there. She checked the phone book: eight Stephanous. It added to her door-call burden, but at least she could feel assured that she was covering all the bases. She’d called on two earlier, and this now was Stephanou number three.

  The street was wider and tree-lined, and her hopes raised for a second when the elderly man that answered said there was a Maria in the family. But the age was wrong, thirty-four, and she’d moved to Montreal only nine years ago.

  Elena’s shoulders slumped and she closed her eyes for a moment as she sat back in the car. 6.40pm. She’d hoped to squeeze in three or four more calls before calling it a night, but the way she felt now she didn’t think she could face it. Washed-out, dejected, her nerves in shreds, she hardly felt able to raise an ounce of spirit or energy for anything.

  ‘I’m sorry you haven’t been able to find him yet,’ Lorena said thoughtfully, almost worriedly.

  ‘That’s okay.’ Elena was about to add mechanically ‘It’s not your fault’, but instead chewed at her lip for a second before commenting: ‘I’m sorry too to trail you around so much like this.’ She reached across and gave Lorena’s hand a gentle squeeze. ‘You’ve been very good. Very patient.’

  Elena looked again at her list and checked the map: one Stevens only five blocks away, another within a mile. She should at least check these two while she was here, then see how she felt.

  She could sense that Lorena wanted to say something else. It finally came as she started up and pulled out.

  ‘You know what the doctor asked – about where I might go. Was it wrong that I mentioned perhaps staying with you?’

  ‘No, no… not at all, I –’

  ‘I mean, is that something that could happen… if I had to leave the Ryalls? Maybe I could keep your Katine company and play with her – be like a sister.’

  She’d jumbled it all together before Elena hardly had a chance to think about it. Elena reminded herself that Lorena could at times be cute to get what she wanted – leftover from her having to become streetwise before her time to survive in Bucharest – but the raw plea in Lorena’s voice came through strongest. She was obviously deeply concerned what might happen to her. Elena’s throat tightened. Ashamedly, she’d spared little thought to where Lorena might go: a good family somewhere, yes, without saying; but not necessarily hers.

  ‘Yes, of course – you know that I’d love to have you.’ Her voice was laden with assurance. She pushed from her mind the chain of procedural nightmares that might make it impossible: the whole mess uncovered with giving up her own child and her now being an abductor no longer made her exactly ideal adoption parent material. But she sensed that right now it was more important to keep up Lorena’s hopes of a familiar, welcome alternate home to hopefully ease the block in her mind.

  Yet another deceit to add to the heap, albeit well-meaning. She tried not to dwell on the ludicrousness: making promises to Lorena when with the jail-term probably ahead she’d have trouble even caring for the two she already had.

  As she slowed to a stop at the next junction, she noticed her hands were still shaking steadily on the steering wheel. But at least the Valerian pills had helped in one respect: they made the lying easier and numbed some of the crushing burden of the problems she faced; she felt oddly distanced from reality, driving through the night-time streets of a city strange to her with more purpose and more at stake than she’d ever known before, yet feeling totally aimless, lost.

  * * * *

  ‘So, what sort of problem is it with my father?’ Mikaya Ryall arched an eyebrow.

  ‘As I said, nothing serious.’ Gordon had already assured her on first approach that her father wasn’t ill or anything. Looking agitatedly each side in the bustling univer
sity corridor, he’d added that all the same it was something he’d prefer not to discuss too openly. Guarded nod from Mikaya after a second, and they’d headed to a nearby café. ‘Has he phoned you in the last couple of days?’

  ‘No, why?’

  Strange, thought Gordon. Either the Ryall’s panic with events had kept them from phoning her, or it was an indication of some distance and barrier between them. He’d introduced himself as Donald Benham, one of his clients, because he hadn’t wanted her blurting out Waldren? Aren’t you the people who’ve abducted Lorena? She’d have refused to speak to him. They’d taken a seat by the far wall of the small café. It was only a third full with about a dozen people interspersed. The smell of bacon frying was heavy in the air, but there was a no-smoking policy so there was only one pollutant to cope with. Gordon held one hand out and made an expression of strained apology.

  ‘Well, it’s young Lorena, you see… she’s been taken. Your stepparents know the person who has taken her, so there’s nothing to fear for her safety. But it is the reason why I’m here.’

  That eyebrow again. ‘Are you with the police?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. I know both Lorena and the person who has taken her – though it’s more the reason why she’s been taken that’s brought me here.’ Gordon launched into the dramatic chain of events, interrupted only by their coffees being brought to the table: Lorena and the two social services visits, her stepfather blocking psychiatric counselling, and then the final abduction. All the while he watched Mikaya’s expression, especially her eyes: large, dark-brown with only a slight slant, but he was looking more for the shadows, her reaction as he spoke. Five-six, slim, with sleek dark hair almost to her waist and a warm if cautious smile, she was stunning. It was hard to get away from the thought that Ryall chose his stepdaughters primarily for their beauty. Heavier shadows as he mentioned Lorena possibly being interfered with – but that could have been just the shock reaction most people would have to such news.