by Adrian Wills
'What about the car business? When did that start?'
'After we left school. We bought a couple of old wrecks, did 'em up, mainly in my dad's garage, and flogged 'em for a decent profit. At first, it was a hobby, just selling to mates, you know cash in hand, but then we started to make some serious cash. Then we found premises, and set up Diamond Cars.'
'So what went wrong?'
'We were making so much money we couldn't spend it fast enough. We were young and carefree. No commitments, no ties. We bought houses and fast cars, and blew the rest on booze, girls, and fancy suits. Then Ken got greedy. He started fiddling the books, creaming off the profits behind my back. The next thing I knew we were filing for bankruptcy, and the business was finished.'
'Embezzlement?'
'He took the whole bloody lot and left us with nothing. And I never saw it coming.'
'But you went to the police?' asked Trent.
'Don't be stupid. We wasn't exactly playing by the rules in the first place, you get me? If the police had been involved we'd have both gone down. Don't go printing that though.' Samson wagged a finger at Trent.
'No, sure. So what did he need the money for?'
'I wish I knew. We were making plenty, but it wasn't enough for him.'
'I don't understand. The guy's positively rolling in it now. And he's injected a shed load of cash into the BFA.'
Samson shrugged. 'Who knows? I've not spoken to him in years. When we fell out, he dropped off the radar for a while. I heard he went to America and when he came back, he was loaded. The next thing he's involved with this bunch of neo-Nazis. What d'ya call them? The BFA? It makes me sick every time I see him on the news.'
'So you were surprised when you heard he'd turned to politics?'
'Sure. He'd never shown any interest in that sort of thing when I knew him. All he ever cared about was number one. I doubt much has changed, despite the appearances. Look, that's about all I know. I hope it helps with whatever you're planning to write about him, but seriously, keep my name out of it, yeah?' Samson stood and shoved his hands in his pockets. 'And don't contact me again.'
Across the lake, a flock of seagulls launched themselves in the air, spooked by a small child chasing towards them as Samson walked off without a backwards glance, affirming the interview was over.
Trent slid his notebook away, and sat for a while contemplating the new information. No wonder Longhurst had been at pains to keep his past under wraps. It was the sort of scandal that could bring a politician down. But Trent sensed it wasn't the full story. It was a good start, but he knew there were many layers still to unravel in the Ken Longhurst narrative.
Chapter 12
Captain Felipe De Santos was contemplating a mountain of paperwork on his desk. A pile of petty cases. Theft. Robbery. Assault. Even the odd neighbour dispute. But nothing of unusual concern. He smoothed a hand over his stomach sub-consciously flattening the material of his shirt over his middle-aged spread. The second helping of feijoada - a stew of black beans, sausages and cuts of pork - he'd taken for lunch was sitting heavily on his stomach. And in the rising afternoon heat, sleep was circling like a ravenous vulture. He could close his eyes just for a moment. No one would know.
He was jolted out of his short-lived siesta by the sharp ring of a phone. He snatched up the handset 'De Santos,' he snapped, as he bolted upright.
'Sir, there's something I think you should look at.'
'What is it, Prieto?' He asked, recognising the voice of the young desk sergeant from the front counter at the Brazilian Federal Police station in Obidos.
'It's a bag. Two fishermen brought it in. They hooked it out of the river about ten miles south-east of here. They thought there might be a reward.'
'Can't you deal with it?'
'I really think you should look at it, sir. It looks new and it's full of clothes. There's also a passport. British.'
De Santos sighed. 'Okay, okay. Leave it in the conference room. I'll take a look in a minute.'
A ceiling-mounted fan rotated slowly, punctuating the air with a rhythmic hum, but had little effect countering the oppressive heat in his small office. The police captain wiped away a bead of sweat from his brow, closed a paper inside a green cardboard file, and set it on the pile to his right. The completed pile. It was about an even height with the "still to do pile" on his left. Sometimes he wondered if he'd ever clear the backlog. As soon as one case was closed, it seemed to be replaced with at least two more.
He pushed himself away from his desk. The casters of his chair rumbled on the tiled floor. He picked up the finished paperwork and filed each report in metal filing cabinets that ran along the length of one wall at the back of his office. When he was done, he pulled open the door and strode down the corridor.
The bag turned out to be a bright red rucksack with grey straps, and apart from a few scuffs appeared to be brand new. As promised, the desk sergeant had left it on a table in the middle of the conference room. It had suffered remarkably little damage from having been submerged in the river as the two fishermen had claimed.
De Santos unclipped two catches securing the bag closed and emptied the contents onto the table. The desk sergeant had diligently compiled an inventory, which was clipped to a board next to the bag. De Santos mentally ticked off each item as he came to it. Two plain T-shirts, one white, one red. Both pressed and folded neatly as if they had come straight off the shelf of a clothing store. A pair of canvas shorts, barely worn. Four pairs of cotton boxer shorts and three pairs of white sports socks. A torch with four fully charged batteries, a silver compass in a leather pouch, and some foiled-wrapped ration packs. Strangely, there was no wash bag or soiled clothes.
Lastly, he found the passport zipped into a separate compartment and wrapped in a protective plastic bag. A burgundy cover with a gold leaf coat of arms. A unicorn and a crowned lion standing proudly either side of a crest under the motif: 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.'
The police captain flicked through a number of blank pages until his thumb came to rest on the final page. He examined the photograph of a young man with blank eyes, short dark hair, and a glazed, emotionless expression. No more than early twenties he speculated without checking the date of birth. Someone's son. No doubt one of the hordes of young backpackers who chose the adventure of the Amazon after finishing school and before committing to a lifetime of employment drudgery.
Finally, he checked the name. He read it twice to make sure he wasn't mistaken. The name was familiar to him. He was sure he'd seen it somewhere, and then remembered. He snapped the passport shut and hurried back to his office to double-check.
Chapter 13
Captain De Santos ran his finger down the page of the report he'd hooked out of the filing cabinet at the back of his office, and found the number he was looking for. He glanced at his watch, made a quick calculation, then picked up the phone and dialled the number.
'Hello?' A woman's voice. Soft and suspicious.
'Mrs Lucy Chapman?'
'Who's this?'
'My name is Captain Felipe De Santos of the Brazilian Federal Police. It's about your brother, Nicholas.' De Santos hesitated, trying to find the right words. His English was excellent but he struggled with how to break the news. 'We've found some of his belongings.'
De Santos was a fastidious man who liked to do things the right way. With more than twenty-five years’ experience, he'd earned the respect of his fellow officers for his attention to detail. His uniform was always immaculately pressed, and his thick head of hair well groomed. On his desk, he kept his pens in a neat line, and couldn't abide stray sheets of paper and folders left strewn about. The product of a dysfunctional mind, he told himself. Similarly, the loose ends of an unsolved mystery unsettled him, poking and needling him like a petulant child craving attention from a parent.
It was therefore with some relief that he recognised the name in the back of the passport. He matched it almost immediately with
the file on a man who'd been reported missing some months previously.
He'd opened the file at his desk, and examined the photograph stapled to the inside cover to compare the likeness. It was a close enough match to satisfy him that it was the same man. Nicholas Richards, a twenty-year-old from Britain.
A report in the folder described how he had set out to trek along the Amazon alone during a gap year from university, but had disappeared without trace. He had been scheduled to phone home when he landed at Rio de Janeiro, but the call was never made. The authorities had carried out enquiries around the airport, and at hotels and hostels. They had checked mortuary records for unaccounted bodies, but nothing turned up. Every line of enquiry proved fruitless. It looked as if he had simply vanished.
As a matter of routine, a missing person file had been sent to police stations around the country, and had ended up on De Santos’ desk for filing. The captain had assumed on an initial inspection that the Briton had most likely disregarded advice to avoid Rio de Janeiro's sprawling slums, and probably been mugged and killed for his wallet or camera. A sad but inevitable case.
There was a long silence on the other end of the line.
'Mrs Chapman?'
'Yes, sorry - I'm here.'
'Nicholas' rucksack was brought in by two fishermen who found it in the river yesterday morning.'
'In Rio?'
'No, I'm phoning from Obidos, on the Amazon river. The rucksack was found floating in the water.' De Santos paused to allow the man's sister to process the information. 'We looked inside and found a few of his things. There wasn't much I'm afraid. Some clothes, a torch, and a few accessories. And, of course, his passport.'
'And Nicholas?' the voice on the line asked weakly.
'No sign, I'm afraid, although I'm sending two of my men to the spot where it was found to look for clues. But I have to warn you it's a remote area, and the river is particularly fast flowing at that point, so I'm afraid we don't hold out a great deal of hope. I'm sorry.'
'Of course. I understand. Thank you. But at least that's some proof, I guess. If you found Nicholas' rucksack in the Amazon then he must have made it out of Rio.'
'Yes, I suppose - '
'So he must have arrived safely in Brazil. We just need to work out how he reached the Amazon. Somebody must remember something.'
'Well, yes but - '
'And just because you found his rucksack doesn't mean he's dead, does it? He could have lost it. Perhaps he was robbed. And without his passport he'd be completely stuck. What about his wallet?'
'There was nothing else in the bag.'
'He could have found a job and earned some money to keep travelling.' Her voice faltered as she spoke. 'Maybe he injured himself and he's being looked after in one of the villages along the river. There are hundreds of remote communities out there aren't there? I was looking on the map.'
'Mrs Chapman, I think we need to be realistic.'
'You need to widen your search, Captain. Can you put some more men on the case?'
'Your brother's been missing for weeks. He could be anywhere. Do you have any idea how big the rainforest is? He could have fallen in anywhere along the river, and his bag could have been carried for miles. I'm sorry, but I don't have the resources to carry out that sort of search. The best I can do is issue a description to some of the riverside villages, but I think you need to prepare yourself that Nicholas is probably dead.'
De Santos immediately regretted his bluntness. He could sense that his words had stung her. He should have realised that news that Nicholas' belongings had been found would have given her a moment's belief that her brother could still be alive.
'I understand. I just thought - ' Her words trailed off.
'Mrs Chapman, I'm very sorry.'
'Yes, well thank you for phoning. I'm sure you're very busy.'
Captain De Santos heard the line click dead and hung up. He closed the missing person report, and smoothed his hand across the cardboard folder. He knew there was virtually no chance of the body being found. If it hadn't been washed away, then it had surely fallen prey to the many predators that roamed the rainforest. He stood up and replaced the file in the metal cabinet.
Case closed.
Chapter 14
Lucy Chapman banged hard on the door until her mother, tea towel in hand, answered.
'They've found Nick's rucksack. I wasn't going to tell you, but I thought you'd want to know,' she said, gunning out the words.
Her mother sighed and walked back into the house, leaving her daughter on the doorstep.
'Some fishermen on the Amazon found it near their village,' Lucy persisted. She stepped over the threshold, and was hit by the familiar smell of beeswax and wood smoke. 'I had a call from a policeman.'
Lucy hurried into the kitchen after her mother. Since Nicholas' disappearance, she'd imagined a hundred and one scenarios to explain why he'd vanished, but none involved his death. She wouldn't even contemplate the idea. The discovery of the rucksack confirmed in her mind that he must still be alive.
'Don't you see, Mum? If they found his rucksack, then he must have made it to Brazil and out of Rio. I told you, didn't I?'
'Darling, please don't do this. Nick is dead. Why can't you accept the facts?' Emily Richards said, standing with her back to her daughter, her hands resting on a worktop. 'I find it as hard as you do, but we have to move on. 'When she spun around, her eyes were red, her cheeks streaked with tears. 'Don't you see? We can't live the rest of our lives in the past. Now, I don't want to hear any more about it.'
'Well I need to know the truth, even if you don't. We owe him that much.'
'Lucy, they found his rucksack, that's all. It had to turn up at some point. It doesn't change the facts. Nick is gone, and he's not coming back.'
'Mother, you can be so infuriating. How can you write him off so easily?'
'He'd changed, Lucy. You must have seen that.'
'Of course I did, but - '
'I didn't recognise him anymore, and neither did you. I don't know who he was or what he wanted out of life. He'd moved on from his family - from us - and there was nothing we could do about it. He made his own choices.'
Although Lucy was older by six years, she and Nick had been close as children. In retrospect, it was probably a natural reaction to their father leaving when they were small. It was only in their teenage years that they'd drifted apart as their interests varied. And after Nick had fallen with their mother, he'd cut her out of his life too. She often wondered whether she could have tried harder to reconnect, and the guilt of not doing so haunted her. But she'd been newly married, and starting a business. She had lots on her plate, her own life to worry about.
His announcement that he was off to Brazil had come as a shock to both of them. He'd never shown any interest in travelling before. The farthest he'd been was to France with the school.
'We could have tried harder to get through to him,' said Lucy.
'You mean I could have tried harder?'
'No, Mum, I didn't mean that.' Lucy pulled out a chair at the kitchen table where they had shared so many happy meals together. It seemed a lifetime ago.
'I thought it was just a phase, and that if we gave him some space he'd get over it, and we'd get him back again. When he phoned to say he was sorry for everything, I really believed it. And then he announced this ridiculous trip to South America.'
'We thought it would do him some good, remember?' said Lucy. 'And that maybe we could start afresh when he got back.'
'You know I believed him when he said we'd sort our differences when he came home.' Her mother wiped away a tear. 'I told him I forgave him for everything.'
'I know, Mum. But something must have happened to him in the airport. He promised he'd call the moment he landed. We have to find out what went wrong. What if he's lost and trying to get home?'
'Stop it, Lucy. I don't know what happened, and neither do you. But it's time to let go.'
'I'm not
giving up on him, Mum.'
'I'm being realistic, Lucy, for Christ's sake. What do you suppose happened to him? He was in the wrong place at the wrong time in a country he had no idea about.' The venom in her mother's voice surprised her. 'He met the wrong people, maybe they wanted money, his camera, his passport, I don't know. And knowing Nick he tried to fight back or argue his way out of the situation.'
'But what about his rucksack? If it was found in the Amazon, then he made it out of Rio!'
'Rio, the Amazon, Timbuktu. It's all the same. The wrong place, the wrong time.' Lucy's mother slammed her fist on the worktop to emphasise her point.
'So it's easier for you to believe he was murdered so you can start living your life again? Well, I'm not ready to accept his death quite so easily, thank you. I know he's still alive somewhere, and I'm going to find him, whatever it takes.'
Lucy realised they'd both raised their voices to the point that they'd ended up screaming at each other. God knows what the neighbours must have thought.
'Mum, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. I only came because I thought you'd want to know about the rucksack.'
'Thank you, but it's probably best if you left now. I have things to do.'
Her mother had started fussing over the dirty worktop and clearing away dishes on the draining board, turning her back on any problem life threw up, just as she always did.
'Mum?'
'Just go please.'
Lucy stood, and slung her handbag over her shoulder. 'I'll call you later then.'
'Yes, you do that.'
Chapter 15
Lucy Chapman and her husband arrived at the Brazilian Embassy fifteen minutes before her scheduled appointment with the ambassador. But she had to wait more than thirty minutes before a lean man in a neat suit ambled down the corridor to meet them. He introduced himself as Miguel Alves, the ambassador's private secretary, and ushered them to his office where they took seats in comfortable, high-backed leather chairs around an ornate, marble coffee table scattered with glossy magazines.
'I'm so sorry for keeping you waiting,' said Alves, with an apologetic smile. 'I'm afraid the ambassador is very busy today and won't be able to see you personally, but I hope I'll be able to help.'
