Angus gave him a dirty look, but slid the jacket off so Rod could strap the holster over the shirt.
‘You don’t have to actually get it out,’ Rod said. ‘In fact, you’d better not in case it goes off by mistake. Just unbutton your jacket so he can see it. Okay?’
Angus pulled the jacket back on, replaced the shades and posed in front of the mirror again. He had to admit, if only to himself, that it felt good. He could feel himself getting into the part.
A fax machine in the corner of the room gave a couple of rings and then clicked into life, grinding out sheets of handwritten paper. Rod read each sheet as it came out, passing them on to Angus when he had finished.
‘Fucking hell,’ Angus said as he read.
Joe was still at the Sunday International offices when Fliss called him. It was growing late in the evening and the school had finally noticed that Hugo had gone again. There was an edge of panic in Fliss’ voice.
‘They don’t know when he actually disappeared. No one has seen him since before their games period this morning.’
‘Why didn’t they inform us earlier?’ Joe asked.
‘Another child said they thought he’d gone to matron to get off games. Everyone assumed she’d put him to bed.’
‘No one checked?’
‘Apparently not. And I’ve been out all day, so if he came here there was no one in.’
‘What about your father?’
‘He’s been at some Landowners’ Association meeting, and Rosa went visiting her relatives. There was nobody here for him!’ She was beginning to sound hysterical.
‘He’s probably okay, Fliss. He seems to be able to look after himself pretty well.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘But he’s very little and a lot can go wrong, Joe.’
‘Okay. Have they informed the police?’
‘The local force, yes. They’re out looking for him in Brighton. They told me to check he hasn’t turned up with you.’
‘I’m not at the flat. I’ll try ringing them.’
‘I tried. There’s no reply.’
‘I’ll go straight there. Hold on.’ He stood up and addressed the meeting. ‘I’m sorry, urgent family business. I’ll call you.’ He walked out of the office, talking to Fliss on the phone as he went. ‘His friend Ben, whose people live in Chiswick. Can you ring the school and get their number? Then ring them and check he isn’t there.’
‘Okay.’
They both hung up and Joe started to hunt for a cab. He wanted to get back to the flat as quickly as possible. If Hugo was waiting there, Joe didn’t want to risk him becoming bored and wandering off again. This time, he told himself, they would not be going back to that school. No taxis appeared and he ran to the next street. He could see a few, but their ‘for hire’ lights were all out. He ran on, irrationally thinking that at least he was getting closer to home while he waited.
After twenty agonising minutes he came upon a taxi which was just disgorging its passengers. He raced towards it, shouting, terrified it would set off without him, or someone else would slip in and steal it. When he did finally sink into the seat, he had trouble finding enough breath to tell the driver where he wanted to go.
They crawled through the evening traffic. As the cab pulled up outside the block in Bramham Gardens, Joe saw the accountant getting out of a taxi with a girl. They met at the front door.
‘Hello.’ The accountant grinned cheerfully. It seemed to Joe that the man was a little drunk. The girl had made a big effort for the date and had forced her rather large legs into a miniskirt and dangerously high heels. She too appeared to be drunk, but Joe thought it might just be the outfit unbalancing her.
‘Hi,’ he replied as they made their way to the lift together. ‘Have you been out all evening?’
‘Yes,’ the accountant replied proudly. ‘We’ve been for dinner in the West End.’
‘Now he’s luring me back to his place for coffee,’ the girl giggled, and the accountant looked simultaneously sheepish and triumphant.
‘You didn’t see a small boy hanging around the flat before you left, did you?’ Joe asked as the lift carried them upwards.
‘There was no one in the flat when I left,’ the accountant said. ‘Someone did ring the bell while I was in the bath. But by the time I’d got out they’d gone.’
Joe fell silent, willing the creaking old lift to speed up. If that had been Hugo, perhaps he had just gone to get himself something to eat and would be back later. But then why hadn’t he rung Joe’s mobile to find out what time he would be back? Perhaps he was scared of getting into trouble.
The flat was dark and silent, and Joe felt a cold shiver of despair running through him. His child was lost and he felt as if his whole world had spun out of control. He had no idea what to do next. The accountant ushered his date into his room, and went down to the kitchen to make the coffee he had promised. Joe dialled Fliss’ number. It was engaged. It seemed an age before he did finally get through to her.
‘I’m at the flat. He’s not here,’ he said, the moment she answered.
‘Ben’s parents haven’t seen him either,’ she told him. ‘I’ve given them both our numbers so they can call if he does turn up there.’
‘I’m going to check the fast-food joints around the area,’ Joe said. ‘Then I’ll come back here and check he hasn’t turned up. I’ll call you again.’
‘Should one of us go down to the school in case he turns up there?’ Fliss asked.
‘What good would that do?’
‘I just need to be doing something. We might be able to make the police take it more seriously.’
‘Let me think about it.’
‘I can’t just sit here, doing nothing, Joe,’ she protested, but he had already hung up. He was having enough trouble coping with his own emotions, he couldn’t cope with hers as well, not yet, not till he had sorted out his thoughts and decided on a plan of action.
He grabbed a picture of Hugo off his bedside table and ran out of the flat. He took the stairs. He couldn’t bear the thought of being stuck in the lift again as it laboriously ground its way from floor to floor.
Once outside, he ran in a circuit around the area. Within a quarter of an hour the muscles in his legs were screaming with pain and he could hardly get enough breath into his lungs to ask at each sandwich bar and fast-food joint he went to whether they had seen the little boy in the picture. Some of them barely gave the photo a second glance before shaking their heads. Others stared at the picture for what seemed like several minutes before deciding that they didn’t think he had been into their place that evening.
When Chris Rose emerged from customs at Heathrow, having just stepped off the flight from New York, he was surprised to find a driver waiting for him, holding up a piece of card with his name on.
‘I’m Christopher Rose,’ he told the big, uniformed man. ‘Is this car for me?’
‘Yes, sir,’ the chauffeur replied, with a broad, disarming grin.
‘I didn’t order one.’
‘Courtesy of Miss Maisie,’ the driver said, taking over the wheeling of the trolley and heading out to the limousine, which was parked on the tarmac in its designated area.
The driver opened the back door and Rose got in, sinking his tired frame into the brown leather seats. The driver stowed the luggage in the boot and climbed into the driver’s seat. He started the engine and indicated to pull out into the traffic. Just as the car moved forward and Rose poured himself a scotch from the decanter in front of him, the door on the other side opened and Angus stepped in, sitting himself down next to Rose.
Rose heard the locks on the doors click automatically, and the screen behind the driver’s head purred up to provide privacy as the car accelerated away.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ Rose asked.
Angus looked just as sinister as he had intended – an undertaker with attitude. He had tried out a number of accents on Rod and they had both decided that a Scottish burr, with just a hint of Glaswegian, was th
e most threatening.
‘My name is not important, Mr Rose,’ he growled, looking straight ahead as he spoke. ‘You only have to listen to what I have to say.’
‘I don’t have to do fucking anything,’ Rose protested, and Angus was pleased to note there was a quiver of fear in his aggression.
‘You might as well,’ Angus said. ‘We have to pass the time somehow.’ He allowed a long pause and Rose didn’t interrupt. ‘It has come to the attention of my employers that you have been involved in a little import/export business.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘Just shut the fuck up and listen!’ Angus barked, still without turning his head. ‘We’re willing to turn a blind eye to everything that has happened so far, and not even ask for any commission, provided you do as we ask.’
Rose said nothing. He waited for Angus to continue. Angus made the pause last as long as he dared before going on.
‘Some of the girls who have been under your scalpel are still carrying…packages. We want you to do the operations to remove them.’ Another pause. ‘We then want you to provide the highest-quality reconstructive surgery to all the girls you’ve botched up so far. We want them to be as perfect as they were when they first met you. We don’t require them to look like page three pin-ups, but we don’t want them to look like they’ve just crawled out from under a multiple pile-up on the motorway either. We know you can do it, Rose. You have the finest of reputations.’
Rose made a rumbling noise which could have been a denial or an acceptance of his own genius with the knife.
‘The operations are to be carried out at the Wimpole Clinic,’ Angus continued. ‘And you are to cancel all other patients until every single girl has been repaired to our satisfaction.’
‘And who is going to pay for all this work?’ Rose asked, his courage beginning to return as he realised that whoever this man was, he wasn’t connected to the police or customs and excise. ‘I don’t come cheap, you know.’
‘This will be your charitable contribution to a group of people less privileged than yourself,’ Angus said.
‘Fuck off!’ Rose yelled.
‘Perhaps,’ Angus said, keeping his tone low in dramatic contrast to Rose’s shouting, ‘you had better read this before you make any final decisions.’
He passed over a few folded pieces of paper. Rose switched on the reading light beside him and unfolded them. Angus was grateful for the extra light. The gloom of the car’s interior had been almost impossible to penetrate through Rod’s Ray-Bans. The papers were faxed copies of what looked like a school essay, handwritten on lined paper. As he started to read, Rose felt a wave of nausea ripple through him. His forehead throbbed and his stomach churned. Max had written down the entire story, including Rose’s part in it, in minute detail.
‘This is a complete fucking fabrication,’ Rose blustered as he got to the end, taking a swallow of whisky and slopping most of it down the front of his Armani jacket. ‘You realise that, don’t you?’
‘Of course,’ Angus bowed his head in acknowledgement. ‘If you say so. But if we were to give this to the police, and then introduce them to the girls, some of whom still have kilo bags of coke in their tits, and the rest of whom are left with some pretty appalling stitchwork over their ribcages, they would be bound to ask a few questions.
‘If, for example, they were to ask those same girls whether they knew who had done this to them, and every single one of them pointed their dainty little fingers at you…’ Angus let his words hang in the air. ‘Do you see how they might be forced to think that this statement had more than a little truth to it?’
‘Who the fuck are you, you bastard?’ Rose asked.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Angus said. ‘Please give me your passport. We’d like to ensure you don’t leave the country until this job is completed. Once all the girls are restored to good health, we’ll return it to you.’
‘Piss off!’ Rose said.
For a second Angus wondered what he should do. Then a genuine anger at the man’s arrogant face got the better of him. With a roar, he leapt across the car and grabbed the startled surgeon by the hair, slamming his head back against the window.
‘Give me the fucking passport!’ he shouted and, to his surprise, realised he had a gun in his hand and was pushing it up the distinguished surgeon’s nostril.
Rose handed the passport over as meekly as a chastised schoolboy. Angus slipped it into his pocket and reholstered the gun. This was what they had always told him at drama school. If you wanted to give a convincing performance of an emotion like anger, you had to feel it.
He leant forward and poured himself a drink with slow, easy movements. Rose sank down into his seat, his head spinning with a mixture of pain and confusion.
Angus hadn’t enjoyed himself so much in years, not since his last season in pantomime. As soon as he had dropped Rose at his house, he would take himself off for a night’s clubbing. No point having the free use of a limo if you didn’t do a bit of cruising.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It was a nightmare from which they had no way of waking. As the hours ticked by and the streets began to empty for the night, it became more undeniable to both Joe and Fliss that Hugo had vanished. Joe had half hoped that, as people disappeared from the crowded pavements into their homes, his son would be left standing there, suddenly visible.
As they telephoned each other, back and forth, they racked their brains to think of places he could have gone to. They tried to visualise all the things that might have gone wrong, searching their minds for clues as to where he might have ended up, constructing scenarios, many of which were almost too terrible to bear.
Fliss started phoning the casualty wards of hospitals in Brighton, London and all places in between. No one had had an unidentified child brought in to them. She had been ringing the school every hour. When she detected a hint of impatience in the headmaster’s voice on the fifth or sixth call, her self-control gave way and she screamed abuse down the line at him, threatening to sue the school for every penny they had. Paolo gently took the phone away from her, apologising on her behalf before hanging up.
The police were as soothing as they could be, their highly-trained, impersonal voices assuring both parents that it was early days and the chances were still high that he had simply fallen asleep somewhere and would turn up in the morning. Just the thought of their tiny son curled up asleep in some unknown corner was too much to contemplate.
While Fliss spent her time making frantic phone calls, Joe kept tramping round the streets. He had instructed the accountant to ring him on his mobile immediately if Hugo turned up at the flat. No one else had come home and the accountant was now blissfully asleep in the arms of his plump date.
The London police came to Fliss’ house at about one in the morning. They assured her they were doing everything possible, and asked questions about Hugo. Fliss called Joe and he walked up to the house from Earls Court, peering into every darkened corner as he went.
When he was finally sitting in Fliss’ kitchen with a cup of tea and a policeman and a policewoman asking solicitous questions, he found himself unable to stop crying. The police obviously expected Fliss to try to comfort him, but that would have been impossible. They had not touched, not even shaken hands, since the day she had announced she wanted to leave him. Fliss had to avert her eyes from his tears and busy herself sorting through photographs of Hugo, trying to find a good likeness. Fliss’ father squeezed Joe’s shoulder as he left the room with Paolo. Both of them felt they were intruding on the broken couple’s private grief.
When the police left, Joe went back out onto the streets. He was a man in a trance, too tired and unhappy to make any rational decisions. At half past five it felt as if a new day had started without Hugo being in it, and Joe didn’t think he could stand the pain. Sitting heavily on a waste bin outside a bookshop he dialled Rod’s number. He was surprised how quickly his friend answered.
‘Di
d I wake you?’ Joe asked.
‘No,’ Rod laughed. ‘I just got back from a run.’
Joe didn’t say anything, not knowing where to start and unable to trust his voice not to crack.
‘You okay?’ Rod asked.
‘Hugo ran away from school again yesterday morning. He hasn’t turned up anywhere.’ Joe spoke as succinctly as he could, afraid that if he used too many words he would not have the strength to prevent himself from crying again.
‘Twenty-four hours is too soon to think the worst,’ Rod said.
‘Easy to say.’
‘Sure. Where are you?’
‘Earls Court Road.’
‘Go home and lie down for an hour. I’ll come over as soon as I can.’
‘Thanks.’
Joe was grateful. He felt in need of someone who would be able to tell him what to do next. Fliss had Paolo and her father. Joe felt lonely. The flat was silent. He couldn’t tell if the others had got back and were asleep in bed, or whether they were still at Gloucester Place. For a few seconds, as he opened his bedroom door, he thought he might find Hugo tucked up in his bed, but there was no one, just a palpable emptiness. He lay down and closed his eyes, not expecting to be able to sleep.
The next thing he heard was the accountant’s alarm clock going off in the next room. He was startled to find himself lying on the bed fully dressed. Then the horror of the situation came back to him. He forced himself to get up, and went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. He had just put the kettle on when the doorbell rang and he heard the accountant letting Rod in. Joe poked his head out of the kitchen door to let his friend know where he was. He was surprised to see Rod carrying a pile of newspapers.
‘Hello, mate,’ Rod said, putting his arm round Joe’s shoulders and giving them a squeeze. ‘How’re you feeling?’
‘Numb,’ Joe said. ‘What’s with all the papers?’
‘You’re not going to believe this.’ Rod slapped them down on the table. All the front pages carried pictures of Mike and Maisie Martin.
‘What’s happened?’
The headlines didn’t make sense to Joe. He was too tired to be able to focus his mind on the text.
Pretty Little Packages Page 24