#taken

by Tony Parsons

  ‘Because they smeared the plates with mud,’ I said. ‘And because they wore masks.’

  ‘And because he froze, Max. Because the worm didn’t do his job.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That too.’

  In an interview room at West End Central, the guard had broken down and confessed. The two men, those men with the skull faces, those men made of darkness, had told him not to get involved. And he followed their advice.

  But in those moments, you do not choose, I thought. There’s no time to choose. You don’t think. There’s no space for thinking. You act or you don’t act. The security guard had not acted. In the terrifying moment, when there was no time to decide what was right or brave, he could not put himself in harm’s way for a stranger. The decision was made for him.

  ‘The job’s not for everyone,’ I said.

  Whitestone laughed bitterly and again I smelled the vodka on her breath. It was early morning. The excuse for her that I had come up with last time – we had been called out in the middle of the night – didn’t work today.

  ‘Did you go to the Black Museum?’ she said, still staring down at the security van patrolling the private estate.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And is Edie up there?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Edie’s there.’

  ‘Good,’ Whitestone said, her voice thick with emotion. ‘I’m glad they’ve got her name in there.’

  We turned away from the window and the young man in the silver-framed photograph by the bed seemed to be smiling at us.

  We all mourn in our own ways, I thought.

  Snezia Jones was waiting for us in the living room.

  ‘Any idea when I’ll get my car back?’ she said.

  Whitestone settled herself in the sofa opposite, studying Snezia as she took her time to reply.

  ‘You’ll get your car back when the police have finished with it, sweetheart,’ Whitestone said. ‘Right now we’re keeping it while our forensic people look for evidence.’

  Snezia squirmed with embarrassment, as if we might think that her major concern was getting back her brand-new motor.

  ‘I was just thinking that if you’ve finished with it …’

  Whitestone shut her up with a lift of her chin.

  ‘Would you like to tell us about someone who wants to hurt you, Snezia?’

  She shook her head, and again I was struck by the paleness of her.

  The hair just this side of snow white, the milky skin. She was undoubtedly beautiful, but it was the kind of beauty that looks like it has never been anywhere near sunshine.

  ‘Snezia Jones,’ I said. ‘Where does the Jones come from?’

  ‘My ex-husband,’ she said. ‘An English boy.’ She examined her elaborately painted fingernails. ‘We separated many years ago. Irreconcilable differences.’

  ‘Does your ex-husband want to hurt you?’ I asked.

  She laughed at the thought. ‘He is happily remarried. An English girl who keeps his house clean and doesn’t ask questions about where he has been and cooks him bangers and chips.’

  Whitestone and I exchanged a look.

  ‘I’ve been looking for someone like that,’ Whitestone said. ‘Bangers and chips? Sounds good.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw Harry Flowers?’ I said.

  I had remained standing. Snezia looked up at me and then back at Whitestone.

  ‘Should I have a lawyer or something?’ she said.

  Whitestone smiled gently.

  ‘You’ve done nothing wrong, Snezia,’ she said. You are not under arrest. Of course not. So you don’t need a lawyer.’ The smile faded. ‘But you are in a relationship that we believe is directly relevant to the abduction of Jessica Lyle. So you have to be completely honest with us. OK?’

  ‘Harry came into my place of work three nights ago. I saw him then. We spoke briefly but he had business that night.’

  ‘And where do you work?’

  ‘The Western World.’

  Whitestone glanced at me.

  The Western World is a club in Mayfair. Table dancing, pole dancing, all kinds of dancing. A high-end strip joint for the black card set. A gentlemen’s club for rich men on shore leave who are possibly not gentlemen.

  ‘Did you have an argument with Mr Flowers?’ Whitestone said.

  ‘What? No!’

  ‘Did you see anyone else have a falling out with him?’ I said.

  She shook her head.

  On the coffee table between us, Snezia’s phone began to play a melody from one of Abba’s greatest hits. She picked it up and frowned at it, pulling at her plump lower lip.

  ‘Turn that thing off,’ Whitestone said, her voice flat and hard.

  Snezia did as she was told.

  I sat down next to Whitestone.

  ‘Snezia,’ I said. ‘We believe that the men who abducted Jessica were planning to kidnap you. We think that they were planning to take you because in some way that we have yet to figure out, they wanted something from Harry Flowers. Even if it was just to hurt him. Do you understand?’

  Snezia began to cry.

  Real tears of shock and regret.

  She picked up something from the corner of the sofa and clutched it to her chest. A pair of pink ballet shoes made of satin and leather, old and worn by a lot of serious dancing. Snezia Jones tapped the shoes against the pale skin of her forehead.

  ‘I’m so sorry about Jess,’ she sobbed. ‘I want her to come home. And I can’t sleep for thinking about her and what might be happening to her. But it’s not my fault and it’s not Harry’s fault. It’s not!’

  ‘You know Flowers is married with two grown-up children, right?’ Whitestone said.

  ‘His childhood sweetheart,’ Snezia sniffed, as if that explained everything and perhaps called his current marital status into question.

  ‘This is an expensive apartment for two young single women,’ I said, looking around. ‘Does Flowers pay the rent?’

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘I make my own money,’ she said. ‘I was making my own money when I met Harry and I’m making my own money now.’

  We waited.

  ‘Harry doesn’t pay the rent on this place,’ she said. ‘He owns it.’

  There was a Rolex on her wrist and a chain from Tiffany around her neck. There must be a lot of money in recycling cars, I thought.

  ‘I just think you’re wrong,’ she said, calmer now. ‘I don’t think Jess being taken is anything to do with Harry.’

  ‘Then what do you think happened?’ I said.

  ‘These men saw Jess and they wanted her,’ she said. ‘They saw her and they wanted her and so they took her. Maybe they were drunk or stoned or just a pair of evil bastards who like hurting women. God knows there are enough of them around. But that’s what I think happened.’

  She inhaled deeply, gaining control of herself. For the first time, she looked at Whitestone with defiance.

  ‘Some women are young and beautiful and hot,’ she said.

  Whitestone smiled and took off her spectacles for a quick clean. She peered owlishly at the smeared John Lennon lenses.

  ‘And Jess – our beautiful Jess – was one of those women,’ Snezia continued. ‘If you saw her, you would understand.’

  ‘Understand what?’ Whitestone said, squinting blindly across the coffee table.

  ‘Why everyone loves her,’ Snezia said.

  We were walking to my car.

  ‘I think Snezia is exactly what she seems to be,’ Whitestone said. ‘A basic pleasure model. She met some old guy while she was doing the fandango upside down in a pair of pants like dental floss – except this old guy wasn’t something big in the City or on the run from Russia. He was Harry Flowers. The only strange thing to my mind – why is she still working? She is the long-term mistress of Harry Flowers and yet she’s still strutting her funky stuff in a tiny pair of pants at the Western World. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’

  ‘Maybe she likes having
a career,’ I said.

  Whitestone laughed.

  ‘Shaking her tail feather in the face of drunken fat cats,’ Whitestone said. ‘Some vocation.’ She paused. ‘Give me a minute, Max.’

  She veered off towards the security guard parked in his van at the entrance to Eden Hill Park estate. The police tape was gone. She tapped on the window and he buzzed it down.

  ‘You sleep all right last night, chicken shit?’ she said.

  The guard was so young there was still a smattering of acne on his smooth cheeks.

  He was a skinny white boy from the outer suburbs. This job – the toy soldier uniform, the car with its big-cock slogan Spartan Security, the responsibility of looking over all these rich folk – must have made him feel all grown up. Today he looked as though he wished he was back in school.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Because I was just wondering how Jessica Lyle slept last night,’ Whitestone said. ‘And I wonder if she’s dead in a ditch or chained to a radiator or locked in someone’s cell.’ She slammed her hands against the side of the van and the boy jumped. ‘And I wonder how many men she has had to have sex with since they took her away. And I wonder if they beat her. And I wonder how scared she is and I wonder if anyone hears her screams.’

  The security guard’s face clouded with fear and shame.

  Whitestone took a step back.

  ‘Get out of your little van,’ she said.

  ‘Boss,’ I said. ‘Pat.’

  This was not a good idea. Not with vodka in the mix.

  The security guard looked to me for help.

  Whitestone took another step back, giving him plenty of room.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, beckoning with the fingers of her left hand, the right hand balled as a fist by her side.

  ‘Boss,’ I repeated.

  The security guard slowly got out of his car.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Whitestone demanded.

  ‘Modric,’ he said. ‘Ian Modric.’

  Whitestone looked him up and down and smiled.

  Then she gave him her card.

  ‘You see those men again, you give me a call, day or night, you understand, Mr Modric?’

  The young security guard stared dumbly at her card, as if he had never seen one before.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But they were – you know – wearing masks.’

  ‘So you said in your statement,’ Whitestone said patiently. ‘But sometimes a witness remembers something that they didn’t even know they knew. The shape of a face. The way a man carries himself. Something comes back to them – something important, something valuable that a real policeman can use. And they spoke to you, didn’t they?’

  ‘They said, Don’t,’ Modric said.

  ‘Don’t,’ she repeated, deadpan.

  Whitestone and the security guard looked at each other.

  My phone rang.

  Joy Adams was calling from West End Central.

  When I hung up I stepped between DCI Pat Whitestone and Modric. ‘Someone sent us Jessica Lyle’s clothes,’ I said.

  5

  Jessica Lyle’s parents were waiting for us in the lobby of West End Central.

  They got up as we came through the door, steeled for the worst.

  ‘What have you got?’ Frank Lyle said.

  ‘Please,’ Whitestone said, ushering them through the security gate and into a lift. I hit the button for the first floor.

  ‘A jiffy bag was left outside West End Central an hour ago,’ I said. ‘It contained items of clothing that we believe your daughter may have been wearing at the time of her abduction.’

  ‘There’s CCTV out there,’ Frank Lyle said.

  ‘Items? What items exactly?’ said Jennifer Lyle.

  Again I saw her daughter thirty years from now in the face of the mother. And again the thought – if Jessica Lyle lived that long.

  ‘We are looking at the CCTV,’ Whitestone said. ‘But we suspect the bag may have been left beyond the reach of the cameras.’

  The old man cursed. ‘Typical! Bloody typical!’

  ‘Three items of clothing,’ I said, answering Mrs Lyle. ‘But let’s give you a chance to look at them.’

  The lift stopped at the top floor.

  Jessica Lyle’s mother did not move.

  ‘What items?’ she repeated. ‘I want to know.’

  ‘A sweatshirt. Yoga trousers. And a pair of pants.’

  She sank into her husband’s arms. Whitestone and I held the lift door while they took a moment to recover. Then they followed us down the corridor to Major Incident Room One where Joy Adams was waiting with a young female CSI.

  There were three transparent evidence bags on three separate workstations. Two big, one small. Each contained one of the items.

  Black sweatshirt, black yoga trousers, black pants. The only splash of colour were words written in hot pink on the sweatshirt.

  Last Chance to Dance

  The parents stared at the evidence bags. They could not take their eyes from them. The mother nodded.

  ‘It’s her,’ she said. ‘That’s the name of her company: Last Chance to Dance.’

  ‘It was always a standing joke in our family,’ Frank Lyle said, dazed now, as if talking to himself. ‘I’m not a dancer – never been a dancer; two left feet – and at family weddings, parties, Jess would always say to me, Come on, Dad, this is your last chance to learn how to dance.’ He looked at his wife and he almost smiled. ‘So that was what she called her dance studio, wasn’t it?’

  Mrs Lyle cried out like an animal that had been kicked, reaching for the evidence bags, clawing at them. Whitestone, Joy, the CSI and I all made a move to stop her.

  But it was her husband who gently restrained her.

  ‘We can’t touch any of it,’ he said. ‘There could be evidence we can’t even see, Jen. Some defence lawyer could get it thrown out of court if we go anywhere near it. OK? We can’t give the bastards that chance. There could be all sorts of things on there, Jen. Fibre transfer. DNA.’

  Whitestone glanced at me.

  He had left out blood and semen.

  His voice broke. ‘It’s ripped,’ he said, indicating a tear in the seam of the sweatshirt. ‘They ripped it.’

  Whitestone nodded at Adams.

  ‘Mr Lyle,’ Joy said. ‘Can you confirm that, to the best of your knowledge, these items of clothing belong to your daughter, Jessica Lyle?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice hoarse.

  Then he took his wife in his arms as the CSI deftly gathered the three evidence bags and quickly left.

  Whitestone nodded her thanks.

  Frank Lyle’s eyes drifted to the massive HDTV on the wall.

  It contained a dozen mugshots of known MDMA dealers. Someone in the Met had told someone in the media that we were looking at convicted drug dealers in connection with Jessica’s abduction. The men – and they were all men – were of every race and creed on the planet but they all stared at the camera with exactly the same dead-eyed defiance. The brotherhood of drug-dealing scumbags. Frank Lyle kept staring at them until I hit a key on my computer and the image disappeared.

  He helped his wife into a chair. And then he turned to face us. Because the former cop had a theory of his own.

  ‘Did you ever think that Harry Flowers is playing you?’ he said.

  He indicated the blank TV screen.

  ‘I imagine your initial investigation is, inevitably, into any drug dealers who might possibly have business problems with Harry Flowers. But did you ever think that all this could be set up by Flowers himself? Think about it. An innocent young woman gets abducted and the full weight of the Met comes down hard and fast on all of Harry Flowers’ rivals.’

  His hard old face twisted into a savage grin.

  ‘That would be convenient for him, wouldn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Whitestone conceded. ‘But we have absolutely no evidence that suggests that Harry Flowers was involved in the kidnapping of your
daughter. We think that whoever did it was after Jessica’s flatmate because of some grievance with Flowers – possibly from years back. We also believe that Flowers got out of the recreational drug market some time ago.’ She indicated the blank TV screen. ‘And those men on the screen? Yes – they are all known and convicted MDMA dealers. But we don’t know if they are or have ever been Flowers’ rivals. It would be remiss of us to not look at these guys. But it is a case of trace, interview and eliminate.’

  ‘Were you aware that Snezia was involved with Harry Flowers?’ I said.

  Mrs Lyle raised her tear-streaked face.

  But her husband answered.

  ‘Do you honestly think we would have let our daughter share an apartment with her if we had known?’ he said. ‘Do you think we would have let our grandson anywhere near her? We thought Snezia was just some good-hearted girl from a poor country who was trying to earn an honest crust however she could. We knew she danced in some dodgy joint. Jess laughed about it.’ He shook his head. ‘But not this. We knew nothing about Harry Flowers. And I want him arrested now. Do you understand me? I want him brought in and I want that bastard charged and I want it done today. The petrol-can man. Oh yeah, I know that story too.’

  ‘We can’t do that, sir,’ I said. ‘Harry Flowers is not a suspect. He claims to be a legitimate businessman. Waste disposal. He recycles old cars.’

  Lyle’s face twisted with contempt. ‘And you believe all that crap, do you?’

  ‘Until we get evidence to the contrary, we have to believe that’s exactly what he is. And I will tell you why, sir – because we can’t waste time and resources chasing Harry Flowers if he had nothing to do with Jessica’s abduction.’

  Lyle stood up and faced me.

  ‘Then I’m taking over,’ he said. ‘I’m going to call a press conference. I—’ he looked at his wife. ‘We are going to tell the world about our daughter and what’s happened to her. We’re going to get her story out into the world. I want the newspapers all over it, candlelit vigils, marches, social media saturation – the lot. I want the world watching.’

  ‘Sir,’ I said. ‘We have Jessica’s clothes. There is still a chance she’s alive.’