Scare Me

by Richard Parker

  Anwar was silent for a moment. “The Business and Human Rights Summit.”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s been running in Toronto for eight years now. Ingram always send a delegation.”

  “Amberson and Strick were there?”

  “Only Amberson was an official delegate this year. Strick attended the year before because of his volte-face about bio-energy. The summit was a good place for him to be seen before he was re-elected.”

  “You know this for sure?”

  “I’ve just sent you a link to an online article about it by Strick. Amberson was on the panel for bilateral investment treaties.”

  “It’s a start…” She blinked as she tried to gauge its relevance. “Although it is pretty tenuous…”

  “Have you heard the news about Strick’s ex-private secretary?”

  “Yes,” she replied without elaboration.

  Anwar picked up on that, pausing before continuing. “I’ll see what else there is available, but I might have to pay for the information.” But his petulance had vanished and there was sudden purpose in his voice.

  “Invoice us. Thanks, Anwar.” Carla rang off.

  The Business and Human Rights Summit. If Strick had attended the previous year, it was very probable Monro would have been present as his secretary. It was a major international event though; not surprising that big business and politicians rubbed shoulders there. Was it related in any way? It was all they had.

  She stretched open her eyes and sat up straight in her chair. Refine the search. She opened the article that Anwar had emailed and pinpointed the keywords within it. Her fingers pecked them in and she told herself that each time she clicked through to another page, she was inching closer to Libby.

  Molly Monro in safe custody. Will clasped the news tightly to himself. He’d returned to the park gates he’d entered by, knowing it would be necessary to hail a cab back to O’Hare. Just as he reached them the rain suddenly became torrential and he took cover under a hickory tree. He watched the remaining players in a baseball diamond gather up their gear as the dusty play area turned a deep brown. A cannonade of thunder made him wonder if he should find alternative shelter. Everyone else hovered where they were, as if expecting it to pass. The fresh scent of wet mud and grass was potent.

  Molly was his new talisman. Somebody’s daughter had survived. He wondered if it had been deliberate. No, the families of the first two houses had been shown no mercy. She’d killed them all and would have butchered the Monro child as well.

  Until he’d planted the phone Will had felt powerless. Clawing them one minor advantage made him feel it was possible to alter the course of events. The girl’s escape meant the itinerary was prone to circumstance. The outcome wasn’t as predetermined as the website suggested. She’d made a mistake. Surely the child could identify her, if she’d seen her. The notion emboldened him.

  The face of the man with shoulder length white hair whom he’d met in the Chicago apartment still bothered him. He was sure he’d seen him somewhere before. What had he been doing there? Was he a visitor or a neighbour keeping an eye on the place for Jake? His mobile rang.

  “Anwar thinks he’s found the beginnings of a connection. The Business and Human Rights Summit, both Amberson, Strick and, I assume, Monro have attended in the past.”

  Will waited for more, but felt anticipation deflate. “That’s hardly surprising. The summit would be an inevitable destination for men like Amberson and Strick.”

  “And Ingram.”

  “OK…” It was the first association, but it seemed pretty flimsy. “Plus several thousand other delegates. Are you saying they were there together last year?”

  “Amberson was. Strick the year before.”

  Will tried to energise himself, but it sounded like a long shot. “Anything else?”

  Carla sounded exasperated. “That’s all so far.”

  “Too early for the news to have caught up with what happened here, but the police are already involved. Maybe once they identify the man in the apartment we might have a little more to work with.”

  Nineteen years as man and wife,

  And still so many years ahead,

  Will mentally swatted at the echo of the rhyme. “You’ve heightened security there?”

  “I’ve been assured we’re airtight. Don’t worry, it’s probably unnecessary.”

  Will felt a little better. “So there’s nothing in Ingram US contracts to tie us to either man?”

  “We officially haven’t had dealings with any of Amberson’s UG Group subsidiaries. Jesus…” Her voice was suddenly muffled, as if she’d turned away from the phone.

  “What is it?” Will felt the thistle of pain in his stomach.

  Her voice was crystal clear again. “You’ve got your next instructions.”

  Will traced his cursor over the house. It glowed red and the box appeared.

  Serangoon,

  Singapore TRY TO SLEEP IT’S AN 18 HOUR FLIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “That’s an early shower for us then.” Weaver showed Pope the iPad as they watched the overspill of press outside the apartment block from the other side of East Went Street.

  Pope couldn’t conceal his astonishment, but his mouth was already an argument ahead. “Then this is a bigger deal than simple abduction. It could be connected to some major international transgression by Frost’s company.”

  Weaver shook his head. “And in the unlikely event that we can get our passports Fedexed over to us in time to get on a plane with Frost, do you really think either of us are capable of handling something like this? You know why dogs shouldn’t chase cars, Pope. They might just catch one.”

  “Come on, Weaver. You have to see we can’t quit this now.”

  “This is as far as we take it, Pope. It’s time to offer this to the majors before this…” He jabbed the iPad. “… is nothing more than the game of the event that just happened.”

  Pope looked at the screen and the four buildings they’d been shut outside. Only three addresses were left and the next one was several thousand miles away. Much as he hated to admit it, Weaver was right. He had to let it go. Time was running out and soon the website would have as much exclusivity as the multitude of reports being delivered on the opposite sidewalk.

  Tam was sitting with his back to the stack of cages, his arms encircling his legs. He kept his eyes fixed on the dirty wall in front of him, glad of the birds that picked at the ground around him, their low griping providing a bed of sound to conceal his shallow breathing.

  As he’d inched down the steps and around the chicken house while the two men scuffled with each other, he’d figured he was in the right place. It was an area they’d searched and he felt safer here than in the loading bay where they hadn’t.

  The fight had finished abruptly and, as he’d reached his hiding place, he’d glimpsed Skinny Man mopping blood from around his right eye socket with a handkerchief. The girl had remained motionless in the cage. The new, taller and wider man had had his back to him and used his phone. He’d left a message, paced and waited.

  He dared not peep again, just listened and counted. At three hundred and thirty-one the new man’s phone rang.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Pause. “OK, listen, you may have problems, but I’ve got a bigger one. I’m going to have to move Libby.” Pause. “Because it looks like somebody knows she’s here.” Pause. “I don’t know. Manap found some food that had been left for her.” Pause. “It’s under control. He’s got another location we can move her to and has promised to make amends by finding whoever broke in here and slitting their throat himself.”

  Tam couldn’t decipher a word.

  Pope and Weaver had decamped to a couple of leather-covered box seats in the minimalist foyer of the Wintershore Hotel that overlooked Lake Michigan.

  Pope tried to balance himself, phone at his ear. “Mrs Frost?”

  “Don’t you have a flight to catch?” She sou
nded bushed.

  “I take it you’ve contacted your husband. We’ve been waiting to hear from you.”

  “If I really am a consideration then you’ll know exactly what I want you to do next.”

  “That’s just it, Mrs Frost. As of now, we’re withdrawing.”

  A moment of sceptical silence. “So you’ve arrived at a figure. I’m going to have to demand some firm guarantees if you want to be paid promptly.”

  “That’s the problem. We have issues with that.”

  “I can pay the money straight into an account. There’s no issue there.”

  “Professional issues. I’m a reporter. I’m paid to deliver a story. I can’t in all good conscience capitalise on your daughter’s abduction.”

  “In all good conscience?” Her voice sounded too weary to muster any scorn. “Look, I don’t care how you square this with yourself I just want you as far away from my husband as possible. Give me a figure.”

  “I’m just calling out of courtesy. I wanted to let you know we have to hand this over now.”

  “To whom?”

  He could hear her start to pace. “It’s becoming a high-profile story. Particularly given the people involved. Now unless you’re holding out on me, unless you and your husband know exactly who these homicide victims are but are trying to conceal something Ingram doesn’t want out there…” He watched Weaver knot his arms and wriggle impatiently on his leather box.

  “Mr Pope, don’t you think I wish I knew who had taken Libby? Don’t you think I wish I knew why anyone would want to murder innocent people who are total strangers to us?”

  Perhaps she was concealing something to protect her daughter, her husband or her husband’s industry reputation, but the disconsolation in her response sounded genuine. Pope leaned on his elbows. “Like I said, there’s plenty of people who’ll want this–”

  “Be straight with me, Pope, is this a tactic? Because if you’re wasting my time trying to extract information I don’t possess or to arrive at a figure you already have in your head...”

  “It’s not. It’s really not. I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to make some calls.”

  “Mr Pope, do you have children?”

  He had to keep the barrier up. “I just thought you should know. I hope this ends well for you.”

  “How can it end well–”

  Pope cut her off and clasped the phone in his lap, as if he was trying to smother it.

  Weaver’s had waited patiently to voice his disapproval. “I told you not to waste time calling.” But even he sensed Pope’s misgivings about what they were about to do. “It’s the best way to go. Let one of the majors assume responsibility. You should never have taken this on. We held off for as long as we could.”

  “Because of their daughter, right?”

  “Right.”

  Pope wasn’t ensuring they were getting their story straight.

  “This is way above us, Pope. We need to know somebody’s got our backs. We can have a deal negotiated before Frost touches down in Singapore and then it’s up to somebody else.”

  “OK, OK.” He shouldn’t have called her.

  “Where do we start?”

  Pope massaged his eyeballs, but his phone rang before he could reply. He glanced at the display. “It’s Mrs Frost.”

  “Ignore it.”

  Pope answered.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  In the washroom back at O’Hare, Will could smell his own stale body odour. Removing his leather jacket and taking out the package from the inside pocket, he tore the polythene from the wrinkled silk and put it in the waste bin. He pumped soap into his palms and hastily scrubbed his hands under scalding water. After repeating the process for the third time, he held up Libby’s violet garment to examine it.

  It was a slip with flimsy shoulder straps that bordered on lingerie. It evoked every heated argument he’d had with her about how she dressed to leave the house since she’d been thirteen. As another passenger entered, he carefully folded and put it back into his pocket with the bracelet, scarf and amethyst pendant. Those and the laptop were his only carry-on baggage.

  He was still sucker-punched by the distance he now had to travel, but one significant consolation sprang to mind – he was moving closer to her.

  Singapore was an eight hundred and eighty-mile flight south of Bangkok airport. His sudden extraction from the US left him with no inkling as to how the victims were connected, but he got a definite sense he was being moved nearer to an answer.

  Ingram had no association with Singapore, but it bridged the territories. There were only two houses left on the website before his own. There was the simple, cinder block structure and grey door of the next. To its right was the frosted entrance of its neighbour, set into crude yellow rendering. Easton Grey finished the row.

  Would he really be allowed to return home? It was pointless trying to speculate what pay-off had been devised or even if the cut-out of the last address was anything more than a cruel decoy. Southeast Asia had the potential to swallow a small percentage of the people it welcomed. Was that why he was being lured there?

  He withdrew some more funds and got them changed into Singapore dollars. Next he called Carla and got her to extract the contract details from the files she’d pulled on Ingram’s Eastern Seaboard ops. Four years earlier they’d laid pipes for raw water supplies to industrial estates and factories in Chonburi and Rayong. Were they tied in? If so, what sort of party would have engaged the services of a woman who butchered innocent families?

  When he’d worked in the country he’d learnt of the Thai Mafia’s associations with the Yakuza and heard stories of contract killings and territorial protection rackets. It wasn’t something Ingram had ever got embroiled in. Anwar would have known about it if they had. If it were the case, how were Amberson, Strick, Monro and the dead man in Chicago relevant?

  Carla emailed him the PDFs of the contracts to study during the flight. It was going to be the longest eighteen hours of their lives.

  “It’s a bluff.” Weaver popped in a fresh nicotine gum.

  “Are you telling me she concocted the story about the phone being planted in the few seconds she had between calls?”

  “So what if it is the truth anyway, means she’s probably hiding other information from us. And I thought we’d agreed this was way out of our league.”

  “It is, but it’s going to be worth a hell of a lot more if we can clinch the story ourselves. She’ll let us assume credit. We’ll not only be reporting the crimes, we’ll be leading the police directly to the perp. All she wants is for us to hold fire until they have their daughter.”

  “Till the whole thing is over, you mean. Even if she does have a lead on the killer, how good are these promises of immunity from prosecution going to be if their daughter shows up dead?”

  He remembered what Mrs Frost had said. Weaver didn’t have kids. Pope knew that if he did he wouldn’t have written off the girl’s life so nonchalantly.

  “We both know that’s how the majority of these things end.”

  “We haven’t come to that yet.” Pope’s irritated response drew the attention of a nearby family.

  Weaver momentarily stopped mashing gum with his jaw. He lowered his voice.” This is just another ploy to delay us.”

  “Of course it is. But we’re agreed the website is calling the shots?”

  Weaver suspected a trap and stalled his reply. “Yes.”

  “We know that Strick had only just arrived for a weekend with his estranged family and the other homicides have taken place in populated neighbourhoods. So we can assume the victims aren’t murdered until shortly before Frost arrives. Let’s say we agree to Mrs Frost’s terms and she gives us the GPS information for the phone. If the person being tracked turns up at the location before the specific address appears on the site, we’ll know she’s telling the truth.”

  Weaver chewed again, nodding quickly, but almost indiscernibly as he considered it. “And if s
he’s not?”

  “There’s two addresses left after the next and the story is still ours. She knows that, it’s why we’ve got nothing to lose.”

  Weaver scratched noisily at the thickening stubble on his chin. “OK, call her. But we’re not getting on another plane until we know if this GPS is for real.”

  Pope dialled, slowly exhaling through his pursed lips. Was he relieved because he didn’t have to relinquish their involvement or because he could go back to Mrs Frost and tell her they hadn’t sold her daughter’s life on? “We’ll check in to this hotel and get our passports Fedexed. Regardless of where Frost has to go in the meantime, we certainly want to be there the moment we send the cops in.”

  Having temporarily secured Pope’s silence Carla put the phone down on him and collapsed into Will’s seat. Her temples sang. She hunted through the drawers for aspirin, but found none. Her emotions were tapped out, but at least another complication to contend with had kept her from torturing herself about Libby’s situation.

  She’d bought them some more time, kept them off the media radar for a little while longer, but now she had to hand over the GPS password. She’d neglected her observation of it while she’d negotiated with Pope, but now it looked like less of the bargaining chip she’d sold it as. There was no red dot.

  Carla tried not to panic. Coordinates were mapped using land masts so she was sure it was because the woman had boarded a plane. They knew exactly where she was headed. Like them, Pope would have to wait until they’d both reached Singapore.

  Darkness had ambushed her again. She walked to the window and observed the tiny lights of aeroplanes winking in the blank void over the skyline. She wobbled on her heels and stepped out of them, releasing the pressure on her toes. It felt good, but she was still unsteady on her feet, almost drunk with the exertions of everything that had happened. She slid her feet back into the shoes and the pain reinvigorated her. Had to keep awake. Carla checked the clock on the taskbar, 1.22am. She went to make some coffee to pour into herself.