Boxer unfolded the sheet of A4. At first glance he saw there was definitely some tension in his father’s handwriting.
Dear Charles,
I hope you’re happy, my dear boy. It’s the only thing I would have wanted for you because the truth is I have not been happy. I can honestly say that you have been the only light in my life, the best thing that has ever happened to me. You’ve given me purpose. Without you it would have been so much money earned, so much material bought and nothing much else until the relief of death. I’m forever in your debt and you don’t even know it.
I leave you this tape. It is not for the faint-hearted. I would advise you to destroy it without investigating further, especially if you have achieved the happiness that has so eluded me.
It is not an excuse, only an explanation.
I hid it under the floorboards thinking that you would find it only if you were desperate for some answers. I do not want you to find it. I think it will be very damaging for you. You must take this warning seriously. It is a destructive story you will be embarking on if you decide that you have to watch this tape.
If I were you I would smash it to pieces and walk away. If you feel your life will not be able to progress without the knowledge contained in this tape then so be it. You could, of course, watch the tape and decide that the investigation it demands is not for you and that would be a fine thing as far as I’m concerned. That is why I am not going to tell you of its significance.
All I will say is that you will get your answer just as I got mine.
It is going to lead me to do something that cannot be undone and in the process I will lose the one person I value above all others. You. It is a very high price but there is nothing I can do about it. I cannot resist what has grown inside me. It is after all the weakness of most men.
Do not let the same happen to you. Be strong, my wonderful son. Be strong enough to walk away.
Your ever-loving father,
Dad xxxx
He read it through ten times, maybe more. He didn’t just read it, he fed off it, ravenously. The love within it was what he’d craved these last thirty-five years. It contained nourishment, but he also knew it wouldn’t be enough. He was never going to be able to take his father’s advice. At the very least he was going to have to watch the tape. The only good thing about it was the format. He didn’t have a Betamax player, nobody did. The time it would take for him to locate one would give him the necessary space to contemplate his actions, give him some detachment from his terrible need.
His mobile vibrated in his pocket. Amy.
‘You have to come here, Dad,’ said Amy, her voice on the trembling brink of collapse. ‘It’s Siobhan. She’s … she’s been … Just come here … fast.’
It had taken time for Amy to emerge like a giant chrysalis from her tight white duvet cocoon. She tore the tape from her mouth, spat out what proved to be her pants and went naked through the wreck of the living room to the bathroom. She hesitated before opening the door, panic-stricken at what she might find under the running shower.
The cubicle had cracks running up one of the glass walls; its door was open. Siobhan was jammed up against the tiled wall, her head slumped forward on her chest covered by a towel, which had been white but was now stained pink. She still had her bra on but was naked apart from that. She sat with legs splayed on either side of the plughole, feet braced against the walls of the shower cubicle, her penis shrunken back into the pubis. The water running down the plughole was reddish against the white ceramic base.
Amy turned off the cold shower, ran back to the bedroom, called her father, got dressed as she spoke and went back to Siobhan.
She peeled off the towel. Siobhan’s face had taken some punishment. She was looking at Amy out of the corner of a wild, swollen eye full of fear until she realised who it was. Her hands were tied behind her back.
‘Help me,’ she said.
‘Can you bend your legs?’ asked Amy.
‘Yuh,’ she said, and coughed up some bloodstained spittle from puffy lips, which ran down her chin.
She brought her legs up. Amy rolled her into the foetal position, back facing out of the shower.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Siobhan.
‘Get a knife, cut your wrists free.’
‘Don’t call anybody.’
‘I’ve already called my dad.’
‘All right,’ said Siobhan. ‘But no police.’
Amy came back with the knife. Fresh blood leaked out of Siobhan’s behind, down her buttock and the back of her leg.
‘Oh God,’ said Amy as she cut through the nylon cord. ‘What did they do to you?’
‘Fucking perverts,’ said Siobhan, rolling on to her back, rubbing life back into her wrists. Tears leaked down the side of her face. ‘Help me up.’
Amy got her standing. She limped to the sink and looked at her face in the mirror, hair in sodden rats’ tails.
‘Not so pretty,’ she said. ‘Get this sodding bra off me.’
Amy unhooked the clips. Siobhan ripped it off her shoulders and hurled it into a corner with rage. She turned to the full-length mirror on the back of the door. Bruises had already come out on her upper body, hips and thighs. She rubbed the contoured muscles of her arms. Touched the rack of her visible abdominals, tentatively fingered the blue-black marks on her ribs and checked her small breasts with red nail-polished fingertips.
‘What a mess,’ she said, investigating her shrivelled genitals and wincing at the pain. ‘Now you know … I’m not quite what I appear to be.’
‘So what are you?’ asked Amy.
‘Intersex. XXY. Bit of Siobhan, bit of Sean.’
She had a sudden loss of strength and dropped to her knees.
‘Run the bath for me, will you?’
‘You should see a doctor before you have a bath,’ said Amy. ‘You don’t want to lose any … evidence.’
‘Just run the fucking bath,’ said Siobhan viciously. ‘None of this is going outside these walls. Be grateful for that, unless you fancy going down the nick to explain your involvement?’
‘But you … you’ve just been raped.’
‘And?’
‘Nobody should get away with that. Fucking nobody.’
Siobhan cocked her head up like a savaged pit bull and eyed Amy as if she were her dog-fighting owner, sized up her leg, in two minds whether to take a chunk out, unsure whether she was saviour or tormentor.
Amy reached for the taps, ran the bath, got Siobhan to her feet and lowered her into the water.
A knock on the front door to the house. Boxer called out. Siobhan shooed Amy away, sank down into the bathwater to her lips. Amy shut her in.
Boxer surveyed the damage to the flat’s front door.
‘I’ve just called someone to come and repair this,’ he said. ‘How is she?’
‘That’s the first hurdle,’ said Amy. ‘She/he? He/she?’
Boxer nodded as he grasped the import, put it together with what had puzzled him about Siobhan. Amy explained further, told him about the attack and all its violence, but with some omissions about their state of undress at the time. Boxer pulled her to him, hugged her, and she clung on, determined not to cry with relief.
‘What’s the damage?’ asked Boxer, looking over her shoulder at the tossed living room strewn with cushions and clothes, a couple of emptied suitcases. ‘You don’t sound as shaky. How bad is Siobhan?’
‘She’s been beaten up,’ said Amy. ‘They must have waterboarded her or something like it. She had a sodden towel over her face when I first went in. The worst was the rape. She’s got blood coming from down there.’
‘Did they touch you?’ he asked, holding her away, looking her over. ‘What’s that mark on your neck?’
‘They just grabbed me by the throat, said it wasn’t about me and to keep out of it. They tied me up in the duvet.’
‘Will Siobhan talk to the police?’
‘Nope.’
‘How long
were they here?’
‘Three quarters of an hour.’
‘So it was an interrogation, not just a beating?’
‘More like torture.’
‘But the idea was to get information,’ said Boxer. ‘Did you hear any of it?’
Amy shook her head.
‘Did you check whether she was staying at the Savoy with her father?’
‘There was a room booked in the name of Conrad Jensen from the twelfth until this morning.’
‘Ask her if she’ll talk to me,’ said Boxer, releasing Amy, looking in on the state of the bedroom. Amy had a word with Siobhan, nodded him into the bathroom.
‘Just me and Siobhan for the moment,’ he said.
He sat on the toilet. Siobhan eyed him over the rim of the bath with a puffy lid.
‘Don’t start talking to me about police,’ she said.
‘You should get some ice on that eye,’ said Boxer.
‘Thanks, Doc.’
‘I can get you one of those if you want … and she won’t ask questions.’
Siobhan shook her head.
‘Amy said they raped you and that you’re bleeding,’ said Boxer. ‘That’s not something you should ignore.’
‘Like I said …’
‘Are you going to let me help you, or what?’
‘Are you going to accept the job, or what?’
‘Did this attack have anything to do with that?’
Siobhan looked at her nail-varnished fingers. Boxer wondered if she’d manipulated this situation: not the savage assault, but drawing Amy into her world in order to put pressure on him. If she had, it had worked.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the job … on one condition.’
‘What?’
‘Amy stays out of it.’
‘Some things are not in my hands,’ she said, shrugging. ‘Consenting adults and all that crap.’
‘That’s my only condition,’ said Boxer. ‘Do we have a deal or am I out of here?’
‘What’s your daily rate?’
‘I don’t have one for finding missing persons. All I ask is that you make a contribution to the LOST Foundation.’
‘Like what? I don’t do charity. Don’t get it.’
‘It depends on your level of gratitude when the job’s done.’
‘And what if I’m not here by the time the job’s done?’
‘I normally like my clients to be more positive at the outset,’ said Boxer.
‘We don’t know who we’re dealing with yet. We just know the world my father works in.’
‘OK, if you’re dead, you won’t be in any shape to feel satisfied, so … no charge,’ said Boxer. ‘If on the other hand this turns out to be a kidnap situation, then that will change things. I can’t operate under those circumstances because the Metropolitan Police will have to be informed and they have their own kidnap unit.’
‘Would somebody kidnap a person and make no demand for three days?’
‘In this case it would have been more likely that you would have been kidnapped in order to exert pressure on your father to release funds that he has control over,’ said Boxer. ‘So for your father to be kidnapped is unusual but not totally out of the question. What access do you have to any significant funds of your father’s? How easily could they be released?’
‘I have access to data on some but not all, and no right to release on any.’
‘I presume he keeps funds offshore.’
‘Like … who doesn’t?’
‘The other ninety-nine per cent of people in the same world,’ said Boxer. ‘Has there been any unusual movement in the accounts to which you have access?’
‘No.’
‘So you’ve been checking?’
‘I’ve been waiting in a hotel room for three days and Mark Rowlands told me to keep an eye on them and to tell him if anything happened.’
Silence.
‘Don’t think for a moment that I’ve forgotten: you still haven’t given me your word,’ said Boxer.
‘All right, for fuck’s sake, I promise to leave Amy alone,’ she said, trotting it out. ‘We didn’t do anything except snog … that’s all.’
‘She’s only just got her life back together,’ said Boxer, logging the revelation of a kiss.
‘After what?’
‘Too complicated.’
‘Look, it was only sex, we weren’t about to elope or anything,’ said Siobhan. ‘I can’t help it if people get a thing about me, can I?’
‘People do, do they?’
‘Well you haven’t,’ she said. ‘Which is probably just as well.’
‘You’re trouble and you and I know it. You’ve taken this beating as if it’s happened to you before.’
‘People don’t like confusion when it comes to sex.’
‘That was a heavy beating. Forty-five minutes according to Amy,’ said Boxer. ‘What did they want?’
‘To know where my dad was … what do you think?’
‘How did they know where to find you?’
‘Followed me, probably.’
‘You’ve had some training on that front,’ said Boxer. ‘If you know how to follow you must know when you’re being followed.’
‘Not when my mind’s on other things,’ she said, trying a grin but wincing away from it.’
‘Be serious, it’s important,’ said Boxer. ‘Do you think they already knew you were living here?’
‘They didn’t follow us from the gallery. So they definitely knew I was here.’
‘How did you book this place?’
‘Online. A holiday rentals site.’
‘How did you get the key?’
‘The owner of the flat met me here, told me the other two flats were empty but tenants were arriving tomorrow.’
‘And you took a cab from the Savoy with your luggage.’
‘This morning around eleven o’clock.’
‘Any tail?’
‘Not that I could see.’
‘What did you bring with you?’ asked Boxer. ‘Your own things and presumably whatever your father left behind?’
‘Yes,’ said Siobhan, thinking.
‘Was there any of his business paraphernalia in his stuff, like a laptop, papers …?’ asked Boxer. ‘I mean, they’ve tossed the place completely. Were they looking for something specific? What questions did they ask you in their interrogation? And Amy says the one that spoke to her was a Londoner. Is that significant?’
‘You’re asking too many questions for somebody who’s had the shit beaten out of them,’ said Siobhan.
‘Sorry, take your time.’
‘First of all my father does everything on his phone. He doesn’t like information being left around in computers or filing cabinets. He likes it all next to his chest. All his deals – the legal ones at least – are done on his phone.’
‘And the illegal ones?’
‘In person.’
‘You could expand on that if you wanted to.’
‘There’s not much to expand. I was never invited … as you can imagine.’
‘Who was he doing illegal deals for?’
‘Not illegal exactly … just stuff below the radar, as he called it.’
‘OK, but for who?’
‘The Americans were the only people he worked for. If he was doing stuff for anybody else I didn’t know about it.’
‘Did you ever see any of these Americans?’
‘People would come to the flat in Dubai. Some of them were American.’
‘Anybody recently?’
‘A guy came to see him twice before we left. That’s the tenth and the eleventh of January.’
‘Name?’
‘Mike with a weird surname like Klink or Klonk … something onomatopoeic.’
‘Do you know what they discussed?’
‘Nada.’
‘You talked about seeing data from these offshore accounts. What about payments made into or out of them?’
‘There wasn�
��t anything from the US Department of Defense if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘Just answer the question, Siobhan.’
‘Of the offshore companies whose accounts I’ve seen, there were three: Xiphos Technologies Inc., Hoplon International Ltd and Kaluptein Trading Inc.’
‘And where were these companies based?’
‘Christ,’ she said, closing her eyes. ‘Xiphos was in Belize, Hoplon in Bermuda and Kaluptein in the British Virgin Islands.’
‘And these companies paid into which of your father’s accounts?’
‘He didn’t receive anything. My father paid into these companies from accounts he had in the same territories. So his Belize company, called Interceptor Trading Ltd, paid Xiphos; the Bermudan company, called Ferguson Consulting Ltd, paid Hoplon; and the BVI company, called Sunbeam International Ltd, paid Kaluptein.’
‘Why did your father name his companies after Jensen cars.’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘The Jensen brothers made sports cars after the war until the seventies.’
‘My father doesn’t give a shit about cars,’ said Siobhan. ‘I would say he’s only interested in people. Yeah, money and people and how they work together … and how the one fucks up the other. And power, too, or is that the same thing?’
‘So you told these two guys that your father had walked off into the night three days ago and you hadn’t seen him since,’ said Boxer, ‘and they didn’t believe you?’
‘I didn’t end up like this because they were happy,’ said Siobhan. ‘They wanted to make sure I didn’t go to the police. They showed me what to expect if I did and threatened me with worse.’
‘Any indication what they wanted from your father? Money … expertise? Had your father stolen something?’
‘They just wanted to know where he was.’
‘It could, of course, have nothing to do with his business and be something … personal.’
‘It felt like it.’
‘I mean you don’t beat and rape a man’s child unless you want to make a very personal point.’
Stealing People Page 6