‘OK. Nick.’ She looked around, perhaps to confirm that all the nearby customers were absorbed in their own affairs, as they certainly appeared to be. ‘You’re the guy Martin Caldwell was going to meet in London, right?’
‘You know about that?’
‘Martin told us.’
‘Us?’
‘My boyfriend Kristjan and I. Before Martin went … missing.’
‘How did you and … Kristjan … come to know Martin?’
‘Not sure I want to trust you with that yet, Nick.’
It was then Nick noticed Erla’s hands were trembling slightly. There were hollows under her eyes as well. Her youth and prettiness were hiding a lot of anxiety. ‘You said you were worried, Erla. Just about Martin? Or is there something else?’
‘There’s a lot else.’
‘Maybe I can help.’
‘Maybe. But you’re not the only person looking for Martin. And trusting the last one didn’t work out well for Kristjan.’
‘In what way?’
‘In the police way. He was arrested Sunday night.’
‘How did that come about?’
‘It came about because someone betrayed him.’
‘Do you know who?’
‘Not for sure. But it could be the other person who was looking for Martin.’
‘Would that be a Japanese woman called Mimori Takenaga? Also supposed to meet Martin in London?’
‘That’s not her name. She told us she was only posing as Mimori Takenaga. Her real name’s Umiko Wada. She works for a private detective hired by the Takenaga woman. So she said, anyway.’
‘What happened Sunday night?’
Erla put down her mug and looked intently at him, searching his face, it seemed, for some sign she could be sure he wasn’t trying to set her up. ‘I wasn’t there. I don’t know exactly what happened. What Kristjan and Wada were doing went wrong somehow. Now the police are holding Kristjan and they won’t tell me what they’re charging him with. But I don’t believe they can charge him with anything that would justify keeping him in custody, so there’s obviously a lot of sinister stuff going on behind the scenes. Wada wasn’t arrested and she promised to contact me, but she hasn’t. Her phone’s off. Has been for the past twenty-four hours. I don’t know what that means. But Kristjan went up against some powerful people, I know that. I’m frightened and maybe you should be frightened too.’ She took a breath. ‘Tell me everything about why you’ve come all this way looking for Martin Caldwell, Nick, and … maybe I’ll tell you everything from my side too.’
‘Only maybe?’
‘Yeah. No promises. I have to be certain about you. Which means you have to convince me you’re on the level. Think you can do that?’
Wada had given up trying to persuade Caldwell to release her. He was a stubborn as well as infuriatingly polite jailer. Considerate too, in his way, supplying her with a duvet to keep warm and a pillow to help her sleep. She could reach the loo from where she was chained and he brought her food and drink whenever she wanted it, although the food he gave her was either tinned or frozen. The house had been provisioned for a long but scarcely luxurious stay.
Employees of Quartizon – which meant employees of Peter Driscoll – had done the provisioning. Caldwell didn’t try to deny it. Nor did he deny Peter Driscoll was his friend of student days, Peter Ellery, aka Peter Evans. Caldwell had traced him to Iceland, where he’d evidently met him and been instantly recruited to whatever exactly Emergence was. He never precisely said as much, but Wada couldn’t otherwise make sense of what he was doing. His earlier promises to help Mimori Takenaga identify and track down the man she blamed for her father’s death clearly no longer held good.
He was tight-lipped about Driscoll’s present whereabouts and intentions. He insisted Driscoll wasn’t to blame for Kodaka’s murder – or Shitaro Masafumi’s death back in 1977, come to that. Hiroji Nishizaki was responsible for everything, apparently. And Ohara answered directly to him. When Wada pointed out that Driscoll ultimately answered to Nishizaki as well and had loyally done his bidding for the past forty years, all Caldwell said was, ‘You don’t understand, Miss Wada.’ And evidently he didn’t think it was for him to make her understand.
Caldwell moved Ohara’s car to the barn. He nailed a board over the broken window at the end of the passage and mopped up the blood in the bathroom, passage and kitchen. As for the bodies in the chest freezer, Caldwell seemed blithely confident Driscoll’s representatives would deal with the problem in due course. Out of sight was, as far as Caldwell was concerned, out of mind.
His assurances about Driscoll cut no ice with Wada. She didn’t believe he was blameless in the matter of Kodaka’s murder. And therefore she didn’t believe she could simply wait for Thursday to roll round, confident that whoever Driscoll sent to Stóri-Asgarbær would release her and allow her to leave. That didn’t seem to her a remotely likely outcome. The longer she stayed where she was, the greater the danger she was in.
But Caldwell had the key to the handcuffs, hidden she knew not where. And he’d made it clear he was determined to see she went nowhere until Thursday, when, in his words, ‘Everything will be sorted out.’
‘Maybe it won’t be sorted out the way you imagine,’ she’d countered.
But that approach had taken her nowhere. ‘You won’t succeed in sowing doubt in my mind, Miss Wada. I’m acting for the best. As you’ll appreciate yourself in the fullness of time.’
Quizzing him about Emergence had proved equally fruitless. ‘If I have to stay here until Thursday, you can surely tell me what is going to happen in the meantime.’
‘No, Miss Wada, I can’t. I’m not obliged to explain anything to you. Remember, I didn’t ask you to come here.’
‘In a sense, you did, by agreeing to meet me in London and then failing to turn up.’
‘I agreed to meet Mimori Takenaga, not you.’
‘So, you are saying it would be different if I really was Mimori Takenaga.’
He’d bridled at that. ‘No, I’m not saying that, dammit. You’re trying to bamboozle me, but it won’t work.’
She’d left it there. Angering him didn’t strike her as a good idea.
As to what might constitute a good idea …
The snow had evidently stopped. A slow thaw had set in. Wada could hear a steady drip-drip from the eaves, though she could see nothing of the outside world, because Caldwell had shuttered the bathroom window and refused to unshutter it. Eighteen hours into her captivity, she’d brought her fear and frustration under control and was now thinking, coolly and logically, about how to escape.
Caldwell, she reluctantly concluded, was the answer. He would have to be induced to set her free. He would have to be made to trust her.
She would have to make him trust her.
Nick decided to tell Erla everything because he could see she was genuinely frightened and only complete sincerity was going to persuade her to open up to him. He showed her pictures on his iPhone of his paintings and the paintings of some of his students. They seemed to convince her he really was the person he claimed to be. And then, of course, there was the famous Western Morning News photograph of Peter Ellery, Martin Caldwell, April Vyse, Caroline Miller and Alison Parker waving their protest banners by the Redruth to Portreath road on Easter Saturday, 1977. Erla recognized Caldwell. And she recognized Nick in his father’s younger self. She recognized the truth.
It wasn’t long before she was telling him the truth from her side as well. She wanted to confide in someone. She needed help and advice. She needed to know what to do.
She’d heard nothing from Umiko Wada since one brief phone call on Sunday night, reporting that the raid on Quartizon’s offices had gone wrong and Kristjan had been arrested, but she’d got away – with something. What that something was she hadn’t said.
‘I phoned round the hotels until I found the one she’s staying in. The Sol, in Ođinsgata. But she’s never there when I call. Late last night.
Early this morning. Same story. I get the feeling she’s left the place.’
‘Surely they’d tell you if she’d checked out,’ said Nick.
‘She hasn’t. But she’s never there. And she hasn’t called me, as she promised she would. So, either she’s run out on me … or she’s in trouble.’
‘I don’t see what you can do in either event.’
‘I can’t do nothing, Nick. You understand?’
He nodded. Yes. That he did understand.
The day passed slowly at Stóri-Asgarbær. Initially, Caldwell was reluctant to be drawn into conversation with Wada, fearing she’d try to talk him round. Eventually, though, he was worn down by the sheer lack of anything else to do. His strategy, as he’d several times made clear, was to wait until Thursday. But a waiting game was a wearing game. So, why not respond when Wada pressed him to say something – anything – about himself?
She began by persuading him to describe his working life in the insurance business. He must have thought this was safe ground. And so it was. But the object of the exercise was to accustom him to confiding in her. If that meant hearing about the intricacies of annuities, endorsements, endowments, moral hazard and mortality tables, as it turned out it did, she wasn’t about to object.
Because, inevitably, Martin Caldwell revealed more and more of Martin Caldwell as he went on.
‘I was never much of a salesman, Miss Wada. I didn’t have the gift for instant rapport. Still don’t, I suppose. I was more at home in the back office, calculating the balance of risk. Many people dismiss insurers as leeches, happy to take their premiums but ready with an excuse not to pay out when the worst happens. That’s really not how it is. When I did go out in the field, it was as a loss adjuster. And I never tried to exploit the fine print of a policy to reject a claim. It was a matter of principle. And principles are important to me. That’s not to say I never took a firm line. Fairness cuts both ways. I’m afraid there are lots of people out there in the world willing to make false or exaggerated claims. Naturally, I had to make sure they weren’t rewarded for their dishonesty, however entertainingly ingenious their methods sometimes were.
‘Let me give you an example. It must have been, oh, some time in the late nineteen eighties when this happened. I’d better explain the background to the case. Then you’ll appreciate the irony of the situation as it developed. It does have its funny side.
‘So …’
‘It’s incredible to think you’re Peter Driscoll’s son,’ said Erla, gazing at Nick over the rim of her coffee mug. They were at her flat in Stúdentagarđar now, not far from Reykjavík Roasters. An eerie sense of emptiness prevailed in the corridors and along the walkways, most of the other students having left for the Easter vacation.
‘I’m having some trouble believing it myself,’ said Nick. ‘But there doesn’t seem to be any doubt about it.’
‘A father you’ve never met. I mean, I don’t see much of mine. He split from my mother when I was just a baby. But never? That’s something else.’
‘Is that Kristjan in the picture behind you?’ Nick felt uncomfortable having the strangeness of his paternity pointed out to him by a woman twenty years his junior and seized on one of the photographs drawing-pinned to a cork board on the kitchen wall as a way of changing the subject.
The photograph showed Erla and a tall, thin, wispily bearded man who looked a few years older than her. Both were swathed in hiking clothes: parkas, scarves, gloves and woolly hats. They were grinning into the camera in some wilderness location of lichened rocks and gushing streams.
‘Yeah,’ said Erla, swivelling round to look at it. ‘That was when we walked the Laugavegur trail last June. Freezing, even at that time of the year. But beautiful.’
‘How long have you known him?’
‘Since a few months before we did that hike. He loves the country. I mean, the land. He has a connection with it. So do I, but not like Kristjan.’ She looked back at Nick. ‘Quartizon are trying to take the land from us. But it doesn’t belong to them. It belongs to us.’
‘Not my father?’
‘Absolutely not your father. But I wouldn’t want to be held responsible for some of the things my father does, so …’ She shrugged.
‘Kristjan and Wada were going after proof of what Quartizon are doing. Proof only Wada would be able to understand. Right?’
Erla nodded. ‘Right.’
‘And she got something, but we don’t know what.’
‘No. Because since that one brief phone call I’ve heard nothing from her.’
‘Have you been to her hotel – or just phoned? I mean, are you sure she’s really never there? She could have instructed the front desk to say she was always out.’
‘I guess she could. But why would she do that? She knows I’m anxious to speak to her.’
‘I don’t know. But maybe we should go there late tonight – or early tomorrow morning – and see if there’s any sign of her. Does that sound like a good idea?’
‘Yeah.’ Erla nodded. ‘It does.’ She looked relieved.
‘And this guy Ragnar. Do you know where he lives?’
‘Yeah. I know.’
‘So, why don’t we drop in on him and see how he explains what happened?’
‘He’ll deny ratting on Kristjan.’
‘But when he denies it, will we know whether he’s lying or not?’
‘Maybe. Probably.’
‘I’ll settle for that.’
‘OK, then. We’ll go. But, Nick …’ She hesitated.
‘What?’
‘You’re looking for your father, right? Are you sure you’re ready to find out he’s a scumbag?’
‘I’m ready for the truth, Erla. Whatever it is.’
‘I let my job become my life, Miss Wada,’ Caldwell said ruefully as his reminiscences about the insurance business wound back on themselves. ‘It was only when I retired that I realized how empty my existence was. My fault, of course. No one else’s. You think there’s time to put right your mistakes, to alter the way you present yourself to the world. Then, suddenly, time runs out. And you find yourself facing a dismal old age.’ He was talking to himself as much as to Wada now.
‘Moving back into the house that holds so many memories of when I was young and my friends were young probably wasn’t a good idea. The past is always there, despite how much the building’s been altered. It’s always waiting to tap me on the shoulder. And it doesn’t stop at Barnfield Hill. There was an army surplus store round the corner, in Magdalen Road. It’s long gone. But whenever I walk past where it was I remember the brass-buttoned greatcoat I bought there that I thought made me look so cool. If I go into the Mount Radford, the pub at the end of the road, I’ll remember the gang sitting round the table with me, though I’m not sure all eight of us were ever actually there at the same time.
‘Alison in particular is never far away. I adored her. I loved her as I’ve never loved anyone else. I’ve probably idealized her, of course. It’s easy to do that with the dead, especially those who died young. But her energy, her passion, her determination, were … intoxicating. I’d have done anything for her. For the nine months we lived under the same roof I was a completely different person from what I was before or have been since. I know it was me, but sometimes I can’t quite convince myself of that. I believed in the things she believed in. I was committed to the causes she was committed to.
‘So were the others. Well, Caro and April anyway. And Peter, of course. He was older than us. And wiser, as we thought. He enjoyed planning our campaigns and seeing them carried through. He was adrift, after Cambridge and his parents’ deaths. He needed a purpose, a mission. We helped him find one.
‘Looking back, I can’t really say whether he or Alison was the driving force behind the things we did. Perhaps they fed off each other. Together, they were unstoppable. Which meant we all were. Or felt as if we were. It was a good feeling. The best, in fact.
‘The world seemed old and stale to u
s. It needed changing. Protesting outside the nuclear submarine base at Devonport or sitting in front of bulldozers destroying ancient woodland on the route of a new dual carriageway? That made us feel as if we were making a difference, as if we were actually altering the way society was run. Nonsense, of course, in the greater scheme of things. We weren’t altering anything. And we were never going to. But we hadn’t lived long enough to understand that.
‘There’s no point pretending we were always thinking straight. The pot-smoking didn’t amount to much, but Geoff was a source of some seriously mind-bending stuff as well. I steered clear of it as far as I could, but that wasn’t quite as far as it should have been, especially not when Alison was the one encouraging me to try something new. It probably made us … over-confident at the very least, so I suppose it was inevitable that, sooner or later, we’d overreach ourselves.
‘The end of term was approaching – the end of our time together. I was worried I’d never see Alison again. My attempts to tell her I loved her had all misfired. She didn’t take them seriously. What she really took seriously was our latest cause: exposing what was going on at Nancekuke. No one outside the base knew sarin was being produced there until long after production had ceased in the late fifties, although there were rumours it hadn’t really ceased at all. What was known, when we started to take an interest, was that Nancekuke was manufacturing CS gas on a large scale. We staged a roadside protest at the start of the Easter holidays and got our pictures in the paper. Well, the local paper. “You are entering a chemical warfare zone.” That line on the banner was Alison’s idea. She always had the best ideas.
‘The picture in the paper caught the attention of Tom Noy, who’d worked at Nancekuke, and, like quite a few others employed there, had gone down with a series of mysterious neurological disorders. He got our address from the university office and, one day, showed up on the doorstep. Thin as a lath, ferret-eyed and twitchy from the nerve damage, he wasn’t someone you’d feel inclined to socialize with, but Alison and Peter wanted to hear what he had to say. We were the only ones at home at the time. We took him down to the Mount Radford and plied him with beer while he coughed his way through half a dozen cigarettes and told us his story.
The Fine Art of Invisible Detection Page 19
