He stood, crossed the room to a desk, and produced a black DVD case from its top drawer. He handed it to me as he sat down again. I opened it; the disc inside was plain, unmarked. On the back of the case, a small orange sticker stood out: NAPALM HEARTS.
“What’s on it?” I asked.
“My wife,” he said. His forehead was creased slightly, but his voice was steady and even.
“When did this arrive?”
“Yesterday. By courier. No return address was provided.”
“Is it a ransom demand?”
“No. At least, I don’t think so. There’s no mention of money or her returning.”
“Well, based on that, I’d say this is not a kidnapping, Mr. Claymore. If it was, you’d have been contacted about money by now.”
He stood to get himself another drink.
When he sat back down, I tried another approach. “I’m going to have to watch this,” I said.
He nodded, working to maintain polite eye contact.
“The fact you haven’t told me what it is means it might be easier for me to simply look at it and make my own judgments,” I said.
He allowed a brief stream of air escape from between his lips. And then, he nodded again. There was a television in the corner, facing the couch I was seated in. He slipped the disc into the player and brought me the remote. “I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said. He left the room.
I turned the remote over in my fingers for a moment, reached for my tumbler, and hit PLAY.
The footage was colour but shadowy, riddled with static. There was no sound. It opened without intro or set-up to two bodies on a bed, a man and a woman. The woman’s hair was red, fiery, curly and wild like wall ivy. The man’s hair was cut close to his skin. He lay on top of her, one arm tucked under her head to bring her face close to his. They moved against each other, slowly, meeting the rhythm of each other’s hips. They picked up speed and, after a few minutes, switched positions. The red hair bobbed in front of his crotch for several moments, and then quickly, she was on all fours. He entered her swiftly from behind, and her back arched slightly. He started moving faster.
They stayed like that for another few minutes. Through the snowiness of the footage, I could make out a first slick of sweat on their bodies. Her breasts swung beneath her, shaking with each thrust. She looked over her shoulder, mouthing something to him.
Shortly after, another man entered the picture and stood in front of the redhead. On his shoulders were faded ink, tattoos of epaulets—the braids you see sometimes on military uniform shoulders. She turned, face level with his abdomen. At one point, Lisa Claymore turned her face directly towards the camera, breaking the voyeuristic illusion for a half second. Her face was blank, her eyes flat and empty, her mouth an open wound.
Whatever this was, it was joyless.
All told, it was about ten minutes. I watched until the end. I made some notes, finished the whisky then waited for Claymore. After a few minutes, he returned.
“So,” he said, sitting across from me again.
“Are you sure that’s your wife?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you know either of the men in the video?”
“No.”
“Do you have any idea where this was shot?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“And this name—‘Napalm Hearts’—have you heard of this before? Does it mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“Do you agree there is no sign of duress upon Mrs. Claymore in this video?”
“Yes, I do.”
I tapped my pen against the notepad on my knee and weighed what I was going to say next. “Are you sure you want to find her?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Mr. Claymore. Not to be too familiar, but may I ask why?”
He sighed. “If you must. Mr. Grayle, this may come as a shock to you, but a man in my position is capable of being close to someone. My wife has been in my life for the last two years, and she has driven me to the edge of my patience many times. This example, obviously, is… extreme.” He paused. “But she’s out there, still. And I’d like you to find her.”
I considered that for a moment. “All right, then.”
“You’ll take the case?”
“Yes.”
For the first time since we met, he looked something resembling relieved.
“I assume there will be a contract to be signed and some arrangements as to when I can expect updates?” he asked, standing.
I too stood. “There is some standard paperwork, yes. I’ll have my assistant send them along tomorrow morning,” I said, shaking his hand. “Also, I’ll need a recent picture and the names and, if possible, numbers of any close friends she had, people she’d turn to if she was in trouble.”
He nodded, turned and walked me to the door. As he opened it, he took pause. Wanted to end strong, no doubt. “Mr. Grayle,” he said finally, “I’m sure you can appreciate I’m trusting you with quite a lot.”
“Yes, I can. But people trust me, Mr. Claymore. I get paid for it.”
“And finding missing wives?”
“I get paid for that, too.” I buttoned my topcoat against the early December air as I stepped outside. I gave his hand a last brief shake, giving him a look in his eye that I’ve been told has been reassuring. “We’ll be in touch.”
4
The office, the next morning. I arrived a bit earlier than usual. I was restless, even a little anxious. The conversation with Claymore, the circumstances of the case, had made me uncomfortable. As little as he and I had in common, it was difficult to watch a man prostrated so badly. Alone, at my desk, I rewatched the DVD several times, looking for identifying features of the location and the people. I scribbled notes, ideas, questions, eventually ripping the pages out of my notepad and spreading them on my blotter. Frozen, the frames quivered on my laptop’s monitor. When I would once again hit PLAY, the lack of sound made the footage all the eerier, like watching a pornographic Zapruder clip.
Charlie arrived around half twelve, with more coffee and some lunch for us.
“Morning,” she said, handing me my Pret sandwich.
“It’s after noon,” I said absently, flicking the monitor off and taking a bite.
“Trust me—you look like it’s still very much the A.M.,” she said, hanging up her coat and booting up her own laptop. She soon realised I wasn’t feeling too chatty.
After a few moments, she poked her head in. “Hey. All right, there?”
“Yeah. Sorry,” I said back, remembering my other obligation for the day. I nodded to one of the chairs in front of me. She sat without comment, a box of sushi in hand. “So, what exactly is up?”
She cleared her throat. “I’ve been here about a year and a half,” she said. Then stopped. “Anyhow, I’ve been here about a year. And I like it here, but… I just think… Well.”
She stopped again. I waited, but inside, I felt something lurch slightly in my stomach.
“I think it’s time for me to get more serious about the future. So I’m going to go to school full-time starting next semester, finish up my degree, and see what… You know, just get out there. Get a job-job type job, you know?”
“I get that. But why the rush now? I thought you liked splitting things up a bit, work and school-wise.”
“I’m getting too old, for one thing.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re, what, twenty-four?”
“Twenty-seven,” she said. “Thaddeus, look. I just feel it’s time to get going with things.”
I looped my fingers, then released. “Is this about money? We can talk about money.”
“It’s not just money,” she said, her voice a little quieter now, a little gentler. “I mean, I was only supposed to be here for a few months.”
This was true. Charlie arrived via a temp agency, and I pretty much hired her on the spot. She was organised, she was good on the phone, and she worked hard. And she was che
ap; it was only about twenty hours a week labour I had to pay out to keep my wits, sanity and occasional sunny disposition about me. The fact she was here more owed to her sense of duty and the fact we got along.
“Well, if you’ve made your mind up,” I said, conceding. “When do you go full-time in school?”
“Next semester.”
“When’s that start?”
“January.”
“What, next month?” I asked. Incredulity was setting in, slightly.
“Yes. Don’t be annoyed. A month is plenty of time to get another temp in.”
“That’s hardly the point.”
“What is the point, then?”
“I would think it was obvious. You’ve been a good employee, and I like having you here, so I wish you had talked to me first about this.”
“Thank you. But my decision would have been the same.”
We sat quietly, neither looking at the other.
“What are you working on?” she asked after a moment, finally peering up at me from under her bangs.
“That Claymore thing. We met last night at his place.”
“Ooh, right. How’d it go?”
I leaned back in the chair, and fussed with my suit jacket’s top button a bit. “It’s a real damn mess, actually.” Like all employees, part-time or contract, Charlie had full non-disclosure paperwork in place, so I filled her in on the details.
“Wow,” she said.
“Yeah,” I replied. “It’s pretty tangly.”
“You took the case?”
“Yes.”
Something crossed her face.
“Does that surprise you?”
“Not really, no.” Charlie used to smoke, and occasionally would still hold a chopstick like one of her old king-sized Dunhills. She was tapping it now on the edge of her California roll’s plastic tray. “But it’s a bit wilder than what we’ve been dealing with lately.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know about wilder, but it’s definitely different. And I think a little different is overdue. Besides, the money is good, and this girl… I don’t know. Maybe she needs to be found.”
“Or maybe she ran away for a reason,” Charlie said, standing.
I went back to my notes. She stepped out to her desk.
“After I get this billing done, what do you want me on?” she asked from the lobby.
“Andrew Claymore,” I said. “Look him up. Anything you can find on him, his family, his money. And the wife. All of it.”
My laptop went ping, and I checked my inbox. Claymore had e-mailed a picture of his wife and a single name and phone number for Lisa Claymore’s inner circle of close friends—Lotte Guyanpala, whoever she might be. I forwarded it to Charlie, asking her to reach out to her. I also forwarded the pic, asking for it to be filed. The investigation would begin without flashing that around, since Claymore’s privacy was, to him, paramount at the moment.
“On ’em,” she called back from her desk. Then, after a moment, “How was your sandwich?”
I looked at the empty box and crumpled napkin. Despite myself, I smiled a little.
“Thank you for picking that up, Charlie. Just put the receipt in with the petty cash.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, extra-sweetly. I picked up the phone and called Ruddick. He was in. He was free. And he was, as always, amiable to earning a few quid. We arranged to meet at his place. I grabbed my coat and stepped out once again into the East End.
5
Ruddick was big, broad through the chest with the rest of him tapering neatly to a relatively still-trim waist. An ex-Scotland Yard inspector, Ruddick had taken shrapnel to the chest and arm during a bomb attack at St. James’ Park station about five years ago. He cashed out early, took a pretty decent settlement and got to work carving out a tidy little life for himself somewhere in this slightly-gentrified wedge of Islington. My hand disappeared briefly between his thick banana fingers as he greeted me at the door. We walked into his kitchen. He was prepping dinner and offered me some.
“No thanks,” I declined. He shrugged and resumed the chopping of peppers and cucumber, reaching over to stir a pot of some hair-thin noodles.
“Pics are in the folder,” he said, tilting his chin to the table in front of me.
“Cheers,” I said, pulling out a chair. I took a flip through—clean, sharp, well-lit. I had long suspected that Ruddick might be a bit of a frustrated artist, and his pics were very close to having a try-too-hard feel to them. Adobe-edited and carefully cropped, with the colour contrast jacked up, they stood out quite a bit from typical surveillance shots. But good work, as always. Just another yellow manila with unbending proof of someone’s dead love. Ruddick and I had stopped getting queasy over it all long ago. I pulled out an envelope with some cash and pushed it across the table.
“Thanks, but no rush, you know,” he said. I smiled. There was always a rush for this with Ruddick, whether he liked to admit or not. He did have a taste for the finer things—the kitchen has just been re-done and there was some wine on that rack older than me—but I allowed him his faux indifference to remuneration. We all have a few little lies we like to tell ourselves.
“I never ask a man to do something for nothing,” I said.
“Well, it would never be for nothing,” he said, and now it was his turn to smile. “Just being mannerly, I suppose.”
I nodded.
He noticed I was lingering. “That everything, squire?”
“That’s up to you, actually.” I sat back, tilting the chair a bit. “Like I said, I might have some more work, if you’re available.”
“My schedule is flexible, you know that.” He wiped his hands and sat across from me.
“I need some info. For a client. His wife is missing, and he got a DVD of her in the mail.”
“Proof of life?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.” I gave him the dirty.
“Bloody hell. And nothing in the video can help?”
“Nothing. There’s no sound, the picture quality is a bit crap, frankly, and there’s not much to go on with the participants.” I gave him quick descriptions of the three.
“So someone’s messing with him,” he mused.
“Seems that way,” I agreed.
“Right. Tattoos could be something, though. Well, what do you need and when do you need it?”
I pulled the DVD case from my coat. I pointed to the sticker on the back. “Seen this before?”
“No.”
“I need to know what it is. That’s the first part.”
He took out his phone and got in close before snapping a pic of the logo.
“What’s the second?”
“That depends on what you find out,” I said.
“I’ll make some calls. I know some folks who might be into this, or at least on to it. What’s your timeframe?”
“Can you get me something by tomorrow? And you got anybody who can keep track of her credit cards?”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. Usual rate, full day?”
I nodded. We shook hands again. I stood, sticking the case back into my coat pocket.
“Anything else I need to know?” he asked.
“Only that discretion is important. But it always is, right?”
He chuckled a bit as he walked me to the door. “Mouths shut and noses clean. Same as always.”
“For us, anyways.” I stepped into the night. He gave a quick wave before ducking back inside, and I hailed a cab.
6
Later that night. As had become my night time habit in the last couple of years, I was sitting in my flat on Seven Sisters Road, idly flipping through channels and sipping a Diet Coke. Charlie had pulled together some background on Lisa Claymore, including her social media presence. It had all been pretty quiet the last year or so. Before that, it had been the typical girls-night-out duck face pics and a few motivational quotes on her Facebook, plus a lot of party shots on Instagram. Not much to go on there, then. She had been told,
in my professional opinion, to rein it in a bit by her new husband.
Charlie also included a pile of search-engine generated documents and a few articles that mentioned Mr. Claymore. It all confirmed the little I had already suspected about my new client, but the big takeaway was this: Claymore was loaded. He came from a well-connected family. He was—of course—an Etonian who apparently had not heard ‘no’ a lot in his time. And like a lot of men in such life circumstances, he had married the wrong girl.
My mobile buzzed. It was Charlie.
“Hey,” I said.
“Evening, boss,” she chirped.
“Well, well. We’ve got the timeframe right at last.”
“I’m writing a presentation. I’m laser-focused on all the details right now.”
“You at the office?”
“No. I’m with my mum.”
“What’s up? I mean, obviously I enjoy our easy banter, but you are off the clock.”
“I’m taking a break.”
“Me too. Good work on this file today.”
“Thanks. How’s it going?”
“Well, everything about his life kind of makes me want to punch him.” I laughed, a short dour chuckle. “But nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. He’s a rich guy who married a younger woman. He probably thought she’d stay in line and he’d have some arm-candy for a long time.”
“Yeah… so that didn’t happen.”
“Not even close.” I finished the Coke and tossed the can into a blue box in the kitchen. My place was nothing fancy, a simple one-bedroom, but I did try to keep it at least borderline tidy.
“You know, every time you feel like smirking derisively at his poshness, you might want to remember the DVD and acknowledge that he’s kind of going through something pretty crappy right now.”
“Oh, I know it, all right. How’s your mom?”
“She’s all right, thanks for asking.” About two months ago, Charlie had asked me to leave early so she could take her mother to the doctor and nothing since in our conversations had ever suggested it was simply a one-off. That was all I knew, and I had decided that was Charlie’s call.
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