by Rhys Bowen
“Let’s not spoil today with talk of the past, Father. I was happy to do it.”
“Yes, but I didn’t mean a bloody great circus tent. What are you planning to put in there—a lot of bloody elephants and a wire walker?” The old man, in contrast, spoke with a soft Welsh lilt. He looked like any other sheep farmer from the area—his face weathered from a life in the outdoors, his high boots caked with mud, his flat workman’s cap on his head.
Hugh gave him a tense smile and glanced swiftly at Henry. “We had to invite all the neighbors, Father. You know what bad feeling it would create if anyone was left out.”
“So what’s wrong with passing around a few beers and packets of crisps at the pub?”
Hugh glanced at his father and realized he was being baited. Old Tomos always had liked to tease. He had always made sure that he put his boys in their place, didn’t want them to get above themselves, no fancy ideas. Luckily he hadn’t succeeded, Hugh thought. He and his brother, Robert, had both done extremely well at Oxford. They had gone into business together, marketing farm products, and had prospered. Now he lived in the stockbroker belt near Guildford in Surrey and had conveniently forgotten he had started life on a Welsh farm. Until now, of course—summoned back here by the old man and his eightieth birthday party.
“I told you nothing fancy,” old Tomos repeated. “I don’t want none of your posh foreign eats.”
“We know that, Grandpa,” Henry said, stepping up on the other side of the old man as he made his way toward the marquee. “It’s going to be a simple cold buffet—ham, beef, prawns—all the things you like, and then they’re going to have a spit outside, barbecuing lambs.”
Tomos turned and smiled at him. “You’re a good lad, Henry. You’ve done well for yourself in spite of everything.”
“In spite of everything?” Hugh demanded. “He was brought up to nothing but the best. He damned well should have done well for himself.” He looked across at Henry. “So what’s wrong with your wife?”
“Nothing, why?”
“I mean why is she not here?”
“The same reason our current dear stepmama is not here, I’d imagine.” He glanced across at his father, went to say something more, and caught his grandfather staring at him. “She thought it was a family thing and she’d feel left out,” he added quickly.
“Still no children?” Hugh asked.
“Not yet.”
“What’s wrong with that wife of yours, or aren’t you trying?”
Henry flushed. “Really, Dad, that’s none of your business.”
“It is my business. I need someone to take over the bloody firm someday. You won’t do it. Val and Nick won’t do it. God knows Suzanne can’t do it.”
“Why—have you asked her?”
“Look at her, as if she could run a multimillion-dollar company,” Hugh said, his voice laden with contempt. “Poor Suzie. What she needs is someone to take care of her. Is she still with old whatshisname?”
“So I gather.”
“He won’t ever marry her, will he? She’s wasting her time.”
“Obviously she doesn’t think so. She’s a grown woman, Father. Let her run her own life.”
“Yes, but look what a mess she’s made of it so far,” Hugh said. “Is she here?”
“Yes, she’s working away, decorating the marquee with Val and Nick.”
“Decorating?” Tomos demanded.
“You can’t expect people to sit down to dinner in a plain tent, Grandpa,” Henry said. “They’re covering the poles with flowers, so they tell me.”
“Bloody’ell,” Tomos said, pushing his cap back on his head. “I hope my neighbors won’t think that any of this poncing up was my idea. A simple get-together was what I said.”
“It’s good for everyone to be busy, Grandpa,” Henry said. “No time to think.”
His grandfather looked at him long and hard. “Maybe you’re right, boy,” he said.
“Right, everyone, thanks for coming in so bright and early on a Saturday morning.” D.I. Watkins surveyed the faces around him. Apart from Evan and Glynis there were two sergeants in uniform, one from Porthmadog and one from Caernarfon, who had been responsible for coordinating the searches.
“No problem. We want to do everything we can to find this little girl and bring her home, don’t we?” Evan said, and was rewarded with a dazzling smile from Glynis Davies, the other detective constable at the table and Evan’s senior in the department. As always he found himself thinking that those looks were wasted in the police force, as were her brains. She had it all—and she was dating the chief constable’s nephew—on a career track straight to the top, so it would seem. It would be easy to envy her, except that she was also genuinely nice—and a feast for the eyes.
He wrenched his thoughts away from her in time to hear Watkins saying, “And that seems like the only thing we can do right now, eh, Evans?”
“What was that again, sir?” Evan felt Glynis’s amused gaze on him, as if she’d been reading his mind. “Sorry, my brain’s still fuzzy this morning. Working too long without a day off,” he added.
“I was saying there is no point in any additional searches of the area until we’ve located the father. Rough night was it, last night?” he added, with a grin.
“Not particularly.” Evan managed a smile of his own. “And about not searching the area—one thing we haven’t done is to arrange for a search of the bay by boat. I know the waves were small and harmless and the beach stays shallow there, but there’s always the off chance of a rogue wave, isn’t there? We can’t completely rule out the possibility that she was swept out to sea. That would certainly explain how she vanished with no trace at all.”
“Good point,” Watkins said. “Can your boys arrange for that, Jones?” He turned to one of the two uniformed sergeants at the table. He was round and jolly looking, like an off-duty Father Christmas, while the other was small and dour, with the rugged square jaw of the typical Welshman.
“No problem,” the jolly one said. “It’s worth doing, although if she’s drowned, her body will be washed up somewhere around the coast in a couple of days anyway.”
Glynis shuddered. “Don’t let’s think that way. Let’s stay positive and assume that she was snatched by her father. One good thing we know is that he hasn’t left the country yet, unless he’s using false identity documents and a disguise for himself and the child.”
“So he could be hiding out anywhere,” Watkins said. “You’ve been looking into his whereabouts for us, Glynis. Have you come up with anything positive to go on yet?”
“Based on the last address his wife gave us of a flat in Shepherd’s Bush, I’ve been in touch with the Met. They’ve checked the address, and the landlord says he moved out about a month ago. He left no forwarding address.” She looked around the group. “Then I’ve also been in contact with the Home Office, and I’ve got all the details on him from when he applied for asylum. The name on his application is Ivan Sholokhov, but I understand he goes by Johnny these days. Comes from just outside Moscow. Applied for asylum at our embassy in Berlin. Apparently he was on a Russian Mafia hit list because he was a truck driver and he refused to carry their drug shipments among his cargo.”
“A good guy, then,” Evan said thoughtfully. “One with a conscience because you can bet they would have paid him well to do it.”
“Who now has no conscience about stealing his daughter?” Glynis asked.
“Perhaps that is different in his mind. Who knows how the Russian mentality works?” Watkins said. “As her father maybe he thinks she rightfully belongs to him, and he’s outraged by the British system of justice that gave custody to the mother.”
“The mother was awarded custody—do we know that?” Glynis asked.
“You’re suggesting she might have been the one who took the kid in the first place?” Watkins looked impressed. “A caravan on a deserted beach is certainly a good place to hide out, isn’t it? Can you check into that for us,
computer whiz?”
Glynis grinned. “You men would be lost without me, wouldn’t you? It’s not that hard to learn how to use computers, you know.”
“Not for you, maybe,” Watkins said. “I took the course and I’m still in the dark. So you’ll check into the mother and the custody for us. Now what else should we be doing?” He looked around the room again.
“It’s now almost twenty-four hours she’s been missing, so I think it’s time to get the word out,” Sgt. Howell Jones said. “We’ve made up the posters for local distribution, and I’ll have my blokes putting them out as soon as we get the go-ahead from you, but what about going national?”
“We’ve sent out a general alert to the other police forces in the UK to be on the lookout for Sholokhov and the child,” Watkins said, “but we didn’t have a photo of him, just a description. Do we have a photo now, Glynis?”
“Right here.” Glynis held up a sheet showing a picture of a light-haired man with high Slavic cheekbones. “Shall I send this around now then, and the little girl’s photo with it again?”
“Good idea.” Watkins said. “Now what else should we be doing?”
“Alert the media,” Evan said. “Send them the photos and ask anyone who thinks they’ve spotted them to call us.”
“Right, Evans, do you think you can do that?”
“I’ll give it a try, sir,” he said, with what he hoped was conviction, while really having no clue about how one contacted media.
“Good man.”
“And what about Interpol?” Evan asked. “If he has managed to smuggle the child out of the country, maybe using a false identity, we should alert the Russian police and have them be on the lookout for them.”
“So how do we contact Interpol, sir?” Glynis asked. “That’s something I haven’t had to do yet.”
“I thought you were the only one in the department who knew how to deal with foreigners,” Watkins quipped. “Well, this is something I do happen to know about because there was that case involving the Greek family and the father who was prosecuted for taking his child back to Greece without the mother’s permission.”
“Oh, right,” Evan said. “I remember that one. Under British law he wasn’t allowed to take his child out of the country without permission of the other parent. But that wasn’t in Wales, was it?”
“No, but it came up in discussion at a training session, and the bloke who was doing the training was from the National Criminal Intelligence Service. He talked us through the various steps. So if this now counts as a criminal abduction, then the next step is to contact the NCIS. Then they get in touch with the Foreign Office, and they are our liaison with Interpol.”
“Liaison with Interpol. Well, doesn’t that sound exciting?” Sgt. Howell Jones joked. “What an exciting life you blokes lead. Much better than recovering stolen cars.”
“Do we have a last known address for him in Russia?” Watkins asked, ignoring the comment.
“I’ve got an address of next of kin and a place of birth,” Glynis said. “They would be a good place to start, wouldn’t they? I doubt he’d go back to his last known address before he defected, especially not if the Mafia are still after him.”
“Don’t you think all this may be a bloody waste of time and money?” The other sergeant spoke for the first time, a heavily accented Welsh voice. “I mean, if the father gets as far as Moscow with her, we haven’t a hope in hell of getting her back.”
“Don’t be such a pessimist, Bill,” Watkins said.
“Well, can you see the Moscow police sending him back to us to be prosecuted? Or making him give up his own kid when he’s the rightful father?” the sergeant asked.
“That doesn’t mean we don’t try.” Glynis frowned at him. “And even if he’s the father, that doesn’t mean he has the right to take her out of the country without his spouse’s permission, unless he has been granted sole custody, which we don’t know yet.”
“I’m just saying they might not see the law the same way we do,” the sergeant said. “In many societies the father is the only one with rights, isn’t it? They keep their women in their place at home, not running around like they do here.” He shot a glance at Howell Jones, the other sergeant, and it was obvious that the barb was aimed directly at Glynis.
“Not in Russia,” she said evenly. “In Russia women drive tanks and bulldozers, remember.”
Evan grinned to himself.
“I don’t think it’s up to us to make any decision.” Watkins cut short the discussion before it turned ugly. “Once we hand the information over to NCIS and the Foreign Office, it’s their headache, isn’t it? We’ve done our bit. Glynis?”
“Don’t say it—you want me to contact the NCIS for you. All right.” She picked up her pen and added another item to the list in front of her, then looked up as another thought struck her. “And isn’t there some kind of missing child database? We should definitely get her on that.”
“On the computer, you mean?” Watkins asked.
“All right. Me again.” Glynis laughed. “I don’t know whether to feel flattered or like the general dogsbody.”
“But you’re so quick at these things. It would take Evan and me half a day to turn the bloody thing on.” He got to his feet, nodding in satisfaction. “That should give us enough to get on with, shouldn’t it? Let’s meet back here at four this afternoon. That gives us all plenty of time to do what we have to.”
“And what exactly will you be doing, sir?” Evan asked.
“Me? I’m supervising, coordinating, and I might pay Mrs. Sholokhov another visit too. Just in case there is something she’s remembered or hasn’t told us. And I’m bearing responsibility on my shoulders, so none of your cheek. Got it?”
“Oh, yes sir, absolutely.” Evan and Glynis exchanged a grin as they left the room.
“Glynis, do you know how one goes about contacting media?” Evan asked as they came out into the hallway. “I haven’t a clue how to start.”
“Don’t ask me, I’m already doing nine-tenths of the work,” she said. “Check the Yellow Pages. Look up newspapers, call the radio and TV companies. That should do it.”
“Right.” Evan went to find a telephone with a sinking feeling in his stomach. He had never had a good relationship with phones—probably a phobia inherited from his mother, who still held a phone six inches from her head and yelled into it. He started off with the news desk at BBC Wales. The person who took the information spoke Welsh and seemed so interested and concerned that Evan then felt confident enough to tackle the English television channels and major newspapers. All promised to run something on their regional news and on national if they could fit it in. It was a good start, and Evan felt rather pleased with himself. This was such new territory for him.
He located the D.I. in the cafeteria, finishing up a cheese-and-tomato roll and a cup of what might have been either tea or coffee. It was hard to tell in the cafeteria. Evan was tempted to make a quip about relaxing on the job but decided against it. He and Watkins had developed a good working relationship and even a friendship when Watkins had been a sergeant. Now he was an inspector, and Evan had to remind himself that the dynamics had changed. He got himself a cup of tea and a beef-and-pickle sandwich and brought them to Watkins’s table.
“If you say anything about me slacking off while you’re run off your feet, you’re fired,” Watkins said cheerfully.
“The thought never crossed my mind,” Evan said, pulling out a chair beside the inspector. “I just wanted to tell you that I’ve pretty much covered the media. Channel Pedwar C is going to do a piece on it tonight. They’re sending up a cameraman and a reporter, and they’d like you to call them and let them know when they can meet you at the caravan park.”
“Excellent,” Watkins said. “Local television exposure. Couldn’t be better.”
“And I’ve got promises from all the big boys in London that they’ll try and squeeze it into their newscasts—at least the regional ones.”
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“Well done. We’ll have you as our media consultant before you know it.”
“If I’m your media consultant, do you want me to come along for your TV spot today?”
“To coach me on what to say?”
“To check your makeup.” Evan grinned.
“Cheeky bugger. I’ll have you search that mountain again if you’re not careful.”
“So what would you like me to do now?” Evan asked.
“I don’t suppose you can give Glynis a hand, can you?”
Evan made a face as he took a sip of his tea. “You know my computer skills are about as good as yours. I’d be more of a hindrance than a help, I think.”
“You’re going to have to learn how to do it sometime,” Watkins said, “but I agree this isn’t the moment. Speed is of the essence, isn’t it? We want this bloke found and brought in before he finds a way to skip the country.”
“Remember to ask the mother for details of Ashley’s medication when you see her today,” Evan said.
Watkins nodded. “Good point. And that’s something else you can ask them to mention on the TV broadcasts, isn’t it? They like the human drama angle, don’t they? Little transplant victim’s life could be in danger unless she’s found straightaway. Makes it more newsworthy somehow. You can give the media that tidbit when I’ve got the facts straight from the mother.”
“Right,” Evan said, not relishing the prospect of repeating all those phone calls.
Watkins took a last bite of roll, scattering grated cheese over his plate, then got to his feet, brushing crumbs from his raincoat. “I’m off then for my TV spot and my next grilling of Mrs. S.” He paused and looked back at Evan. “Was this supposed to be one of your days off, too?”
Evan nodded.
“Why don’t you take a couple of hours to yourself then? I won’t need you before four, only take your mobile along this time, just in case something comes up, okay?”
“Okay. Thanks. As it happens, I’ve got something I’m dying to do.”
“Take a nap?”
“No, dig out a sewer line,” Evan said, with a smile.