by AD Davies
I lowered the cosh so it rested by my leg. Non-threatening, but visible. “What are you, Benson’s money-man? His accountant?”
Frank wasn’t built like a fighter. That didn’t always mean a lot, though. The guy under whom I first studied Muay Thai was as round as a beach-ball.
Frank said, “I don’t work for Curtis Benson.”
“What sort of police don’t carry ID?”
Tighty-Whitey returned with four pints of Black Sheep bitter and set them down. “Not police, you idiot.”
Black Sheep is a beautiful drink. Doesn’t travel well, though. Brewed a few miles from Leeds in North Yorkshire, I’d tried it down south, but it just didn’t taste the same as it did back home. Although I was tempted to gulp down a half-pint in one go, I kept my focus on this “Frank” character.
He said, “I work for a special unit. Organized crime division. I won’t bore you with the initials.”
“MI5,” I said, and a few things fell into place. “You managed to shut down the police investigation. How? Terrorism threat?”
Frank smiled. Agent Frank, I should say.
“And why?” I asked. “Why would you do that?”
He said, “Phil, take a walk. You too, Rich.”
Cheap-Suit looked kind of insulted. Tighty-Whitey just shook his head and trudged off with his pint. Cheap-Suit followed with his own.
Frank plucked up one of the two remaining beers and took a good gulp. His tone darkened. “It’s not just a missing girl or a missing guy. It’s not just some cash.”
“You’re a bit behind on my progress, Frank.” I secured the cosh in the back of my trousers. “I already know it isn’t about a robbery. Benson wants me to work for him now.”
A tiny shift in his features told me it was new information. “Why?”
“Same reason you want me to back off. Other items in the safe.”
“Go on.”
“Okay. Benson requests the police don’t investigate the theft too much, and the guys he has in his wallet, they tell him ‘no problem’. But really, it’s you who stopped it because you didn’t want to spook Benson or his smuggling friends. Likewise, you blocked the missing persons report because you don’t want Sarah and Gareth to see the cops closing in, and dump whatever they took.” I realized I was talking too much. “Sharing time means it’s your turn. How did you get the police to mothball the miss-per report?”
He considered it a second. “Okay, sharing. Gareth’s known associates are linked to some far-right protests that attacked mosques in the past. As far as West Yorkshire Police are concerned, Gareth and Sarah haven’t disappeared. We say we’re watching them, and we don’t want local plod scaring them off.”
“But you’re not watching them.”
“No.” He fiddled with a cigarette, lit it, and blew smoke away from me. “So why does Curtis Benson want a private eye to do his legwork for him?”
“You’ve been making in-roads lately. Arresting smaller operators in the human trafficking racket. He doesn’t know who to trust.” I thought some more. “What is it that Gareth took?”
“In all honesty? I don’t know. It’s got Benson worried though. Accounts probably, or details of other gangs, maybe politicians and police on their payroll. Who knows?”
“Accounts?” I said, thinking about the shipments every second Monday and their hidden destination. “They really keep those things in safes?”
“It’s called organized crime for a reason.” This time he blew smoke in my face. “So, Benson and his partners, they’re all too paranoid to mount a visible operation? Sounds about right. We’re at a pivotal phase. We need to play it right.”
“Still want me to back off?”
“I let you go about your business, I risk exposing my guys. You get in trouble, they’re good people. Some of them might even blow the case to help a dumb amateur.” He cocked his head with a wry grin. “They’ll kick your head in afterwards for screwing up years of work, but they’ll save your life.”
I had little to come back at him with. He was right. “You’re not looking for Sarah, though.”
“We need what her and Gareth are carrying. If we need to help her, we will.”
“But if Gareth is threatening her—”
“Domestics aren’t our department.”
“You want whatever they took from the safe, but I’m concerned with her. Nothing else.”
Agent Frank stood and faced me, lager-breath mingling with cigarettes. “Then we’re gonna have a problem.”
“Need me to sign a disclaimer?”
“What? Exonerate my people if you die?”
“Sure,” I said. “Whatever you need. And consider this: you can’t actually stop me going after them. Unless you have time to manufacture some evidence of my terrorist intentions.”
Agent Frank rubbed his face, thinking. “You are one dumb guy, Adam. But you’re right. I can’t stop you.” He stubbed out the cigarette. “But I can give you this warning. If I hear even a hint of you breaking one law, endangering one of my people, or if I get the slightest inkling you’re thinking of returning Curtis Benson’s property to him, there’ll be a European arrest warrant with your name on it before you can say ‘human rights abuse’. You get that?”
I should have been insulted, but it actually felt like progress. I now knew who, in addition to Benson, was following me, and I knew why the police investigation got nixed.
“No backup, no help,” he said.
“Yeah. I get it. You mind if I crack on now?”
He did not reply. Instead, he picked up his pint and the one intended for me, and headed inside the Angel Inn, leaving me with just one loose end to tie up before heading to France.
Chapter Nine
I arrived back at my apartment around ten p.m. Harry handed me a beer and, in my kitchen, the breakfast bar greeted us full of various foodstuff: pizza from a local takeaway, finger-foods from the frozen section of Sainsbury’s, and drinks both alcoholic and soft. Nibbling at this, sat on my tall chairs, were Caroline Stiles and Jayne Riley, Harry’s wife. I hadn’t been expecting all this company, but Harry explained they both insisted they see me before I left.
As soon as Jayne saw me, the first time in nearly two years, she came over and hugged me. She looked at me properly and tutted. Didn’t ask questions, just embraced me again. She smelled strongly of coffee; ten p.m. was roughly two hours past the sixty-four-year-old woman’s bedtime. She finally let me go and opened my laptop computer to the side of the food; she clearly still remembered my passwords. Jessica Denvers’ face appeared, looking off to the side. Jayne smiled proudly.
I said, “Looks like someone’s been keeping up with technology.”
Jayne patted me on the arm. “You know what Harry’s like.”
Harry heard but pretended he didn’t. “Are we all here now?”
We sat around the table, with Jess a disembodied face in one corner.
I said, “The money is no longer the key focus. Curtis Benson has added to the problem in a big way, along with his Odd-Job-wannabe henchman.”
“What’s an Odd-Job?” Jayne asked.
“James Bond villain,” Harry said. “Little chinky guy with the hat.”
Jayne said, “You can’t say ‘chinky’ anymore. It’s racist.”
“Is it? Thought it was like saying ‘Brit’ or ‘Yank’.”
I coughed and they turned their attention back to me. I then outlined everything I learned since dropping Caroline at home, highlighting that Benson believed Sarah was still in France with Gareth.
Caroline said, “Who’s Gareth?”
Harry opened a file on the table and took out two photos. The first was a CCTV still taken from above while Gareth worked the door, showing him to be of rangy build and with short-cropped hair. The second was snapped upon Gareth’s arrest. He had a round face and full mouth, yet his eyes gave off a rodent-like quality. Too small, too close together. He was thirty-three.
“Sarah’s boyfriend,” Harry
said. “Two wives behind him, suspicion of four assaults. All on women. Two convictions.”
Another glance to Caroline, who looked away.
I said, “Men like Gareth are extremely clever. They lavish affection, create dependency, isolate their victim from friends and family. And then the fear starts. The threats. The violence.”
“Lower than whale shit,” Harry said.
“What?” Caroline said.
“Bottom of the ocean, dear,” Jayne replied.
Harry continued. “After his second divorce, his next girlfriend we know of was a more headstrong sort. She fought back, and he didn’t like it. Details are sketchy, but essentially a bunch of her friends missed her for five days and called the police. Found her in the cellar, on a mattress in her own filth. Forced imprisonment, assault, it all cost him five years. He’s been out eighteen months, but was still on license until a month ago. Fancies himself as a landlord now. Bought a new house out in Birstall, bringing in a couple of lodgers. Sarah’s the latest.”
“Property,” Jayne said. “Perhaps he’s behind? Needs the money?”
“No,” Harry said. “He pockets a wedge of inflated rent from the tax-payer. Unemployed family living in his Chapeltown property. It’s enough to cover the mortgages on both houses.” He fished out copies of letters from an energy company. “But he cut off the utilities to his Birstall property the day after Mr. and Mrs. Gallway flew to gay Par-ee.”
“What does ‘on license’ mean?” Caroline asked, voice a little high.
“Parole,” I said. “He served his time, then persuaded Sarah to help rip-off a load of cash and run away with him.”
“But … she told me she was coming home.”
“If she’s in love,” I said, “if she’s worried he won’t love her anymore, wouldn’t she take direct action? Mission mode?”
I expected Caroline to break into tears, but crying didn’t seem to be something she did. Not unless she chose to.
Jayne said, “Perhaps we can move on to another subject for now? Like this ‘Mikey’ chap?”
Harry switched to another file. “We think he’s Michael Durant, former Captain of the North Yorkshire Fusiliers, who saw action in the first Gulf War. Most of his unit were killed during an ambush. Left the service right after his tour, and disappeared. Late-nineties-early-noughties, Michael Durant surfaces as a private contractor, leadin’ raids into Bosnia, escortin’ vulnerable people outta war-zones.”
“Sounds pretty honorable,” I said. “Okay, we’ve nothing on Sarah’s phone or bank cards, so we need to get dirtier. We know they got fake cards when they bought the passports but we don’t know the numbers.”
Jess took over. “I’ve hacked the retail arm of BAA—the firm that owns Leeds-Bradford Airport—and we got a few hits on new credit cards.”
To Caroline, I said, “Plenty of people take out a new credit card for holidays. Offers protection against cancelled flights and such-like.”
“Thank you, Mr. Trivia,” Jess said. “I got a list of all cards taken out in the past month paying for goods both in the airport and in Paris, then used DDS to eliminate all those that couldn’t be Sarah or Gareth.”
“That’s extraordinary,” Caroline said. “Who are you people?”
Jess continued. “A couple of cards went on to Spain, one to Belgium, half a dozen to the US, one to Vietnam, some Middle East countries too. But we’re sure she hasn’t left France, right? So we can scratch those spending in onward destinations. Only five cards were all taken out less than a week before Sarah left, only five ceased spending in Paris. No hotels, but one did buy something at an internet café situated in l’Hostel Centrale. The same day Sarah sent her last email. That was the final transaction.”
Jess didn’t say any more. She didn’t have to.
Caroline was the first to speak. “So she’s laying low or she’s … dead.”
Harry said, “We’ll find her, love.”
Caroline hugged her legs. Jayne Riley’s first instinct was to comfort. Caroline’s first instinct was to pull away. “Illegal hacking, gangsters … it’s all so … surreal. It all sounds so dangerous. I don’t know if I want to go this way. I could try the press again, the foreign office—”
“That isn’t possible,” I said. “You know that.”
Jayne refused to pull away. Rubbed Caroline’s shoulders. She said, “What Adam has put himself through in the past so he can help strangers, if I needed someone to find my sister or my daughter, or my niece … I wouldn’t want the police. Nor MI5 or He-Man or James Bond. But Adam. He’s who I’d want looking for her.”
“Thanks a bunch,” Harry said.
Caroline levelled a stone-cold stare my way. “You’ve done this before? With this much danger?”
Harry said, “Tell her about Thailand.”
“I don’t think that’s relevant,” I said.
Harry and Jayne often tried to get me to talk, and Harry even proffered some dumb amateur psychology lesson that maybe it made me more willing to face physical problems than emotional ones. I thought it was bollocks.
“Adam,” Harry said. “This lass needs to believe you can bring her sister home. If you can offer her some hope that you’re actually hot stuff at this travelin’ malarkey, maybe she’ll sleep tonight.”
I stuffed another chicken pakora in my mouth and chewed slowly. All eyes remained on me until I swallowed.
I said, “Give me another beer.”
I had lived in Thailand a little under four months when a third local case pinged into my email account. According to John Baldwin, his wife, Sheila, had disappeared from their Bangkok hotel room two days earlier. John told me Sheila used to have a gambling problem and suggested she might’ve got involved with that sort of crowd. I had tracked maybe fifty people, and studied martial arts on three continents, so I knew I could handle anything.
I didn’t even think to check out his version of events, just blundered head-long into the Bangkok nightlife. I was pulled beyond the cigar-fog of backroom poker sessions and into the world of high-stakes hold ’em, where a hand could lose or win you a Mercedes, and a bluff without the finance to back it up could cost you a lot more. I flashed Sheila’s picture, asked questions with no replies, bribed barmen and waitresses and even a policeman to provide the flimsiest of rumors about possible games. Eventually, as I was about to give up, they came for me.
I awoke on the floor of a wooden construction far from any traffic noise; a room, ten-foot square, heat radiating off each wall. I was covered in sweat and grime and a sticky patch of blood from where they’d knocked me out, though I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious. I insisted it was all a misunderstanding, but the four heavily-tattooed Thai men who guarded me did not want to talk, so I soon gave up trying and threw up on the dusty concrete.
The four men stepped back and one of them spat on me. They dragged me out of the room by my legs, and down a short passageway and out into a yard with two mongrel fighting dogs slamming against their chains and yowling to get at me. The dogs’ jaws chomped down inches from my feet and the men would not let me back up. Not that I could go far.
The street beyond the hip-high wall was deserted, lined with small square houses whose paint had peeled off long ago. The road was once tarmac but a combination of human neglect and the willpower of nature had other ideas, and the humid night air made the stench of open sewer even meatier in the back of my throat.
Two of the men moved to position next to the poles to which the fighting dogs were attached, while another watched the street. The fourth sat beside me and observed in silence.
About half an hour later, the man in the suit arrived.
He climbed out of a 4x4 that I could not focus on, and pushed open the gate. The dogs shut up immediately. He came straight up to me, crouched, and spoke in accented but precise English.
“Stop looking for the woman.”
Then he stood and turned. Evidently he thought this would be sufficient.
I sa
id, “No.”
The man in the suit waved a hand and the thugs reached to release the dogs.
“How much did he owe?” I asked.
“Who?” An open palm halted the dog handlers.
“Sheila’s husband.”
By then, I’d heard enough about John. He was the gambler, not her. I checked up on him quietly and learned he ran an online poker school back in Britain, but further research revealed these places were about as useful as those books “guaranteed” to power you to a career writing Hollywood movies.
The man in the suit gave me an oddly-camp look. “You think he owes us money? His debt is paid.” He then spelled it out like I was four years old. “He wagered his wife against my apartment in central Bangkok. He lost.”
If I hadn’t been so woozy I’d have gasped or showed some level of shock. “I could buy her back,” I said. “Forty thousand US dollars.” It was the sum total of my savings. “Cash,” I added.
“It is too late for that.” To his men he said, “This person is no threat to us. Make sure he knows it.”
The man in the suit sauntered out of the yard, and my four jailers closed in and dragged me back inside.
When they had finished punishing me, I felt like everything in my body was broken. My lips were swollen and bloody, one eye closed entirely. I don’t know how long we drove for in their stifling van, but I eventually found myself being dragged yet again. This time I landed with a soft whumpf. I heard the van drive away, and I lay there. Hurting.
I slowly became aware of a texture. I moved an arm. Pain shot through my shoulder. My hand touched the ground. Sand.
Through the blood pounding around my head, I heard the ocean. I was on a beach.
Voices. Kids, adults.
Someone expressed concern. Then shock. Then revulsion. A man told a woman to keep the kids away. A shadow fell over me. A British voice asked if someone could hear him. Me. He was asking if I could hear him.