Without a Trace

by Mari Hannah

  ‘That’s the rule.’

  ‘Well, clearly someone can’t read. Listen, it happens in my own organisation, I get that. I don’t want to make waves or tell you how to do your job, but you need to get on top of this, Euan. There are hundreds of lives at stake here. This is not a minor security blunder, it’s a fucking disgrace.’

  ‘Don’t I know it.’ Chadwick looked away.

  Hank almost felt sorry for the guy. ‘It’s not you I have a problem with. It’s the casual way in which some of your lot seem to approach their jobs that’s pissing me off, as if a breach of security is a foregone conclusion, something to be tolerated, rather than prevented. It’s depressing.’

  ‘Are we done?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  Hank had been thinking about Kate a lot since she’d gone undercover. She was still hanging onto hope, wanting to believe that Jo was still breathing. Until she knew, either way, she was stuck in limbo. Not knowing was destroying her. He wanted to end her misery and, with her back turned, he had the time and space to make enquiries on his own initiative, even though the likely outcome was not one she hoped he might find.

  Chadwick might help, if Hank played his cards right.

  Reining in his frustration, he asked: ‘Mind if I run a scenario by you in relation to Flight 0113?’

  ‘Sure. It might not feel like it, but we’re all on the same side here.’

  ‘One of Northumbria’s criminal profilers was booked to fly, a connecting flight from the north-east.’

  ‘That’s tough. I didn’t know.’

  ‘Her name was Jo Soulsby.’ Hank cleared his throat. ‘Her sons are past themselves – as we all are. Anyway, I know this is a long shot, but I have reason to believe that she was in two minds about travelling.’

  ‘Then she’d have been in touch, surely.’

  ‘You’d have thought so.’

  Chadwick’s expression screamed: she’s gone, mate. Let it go.

  Hank held his gaze, half expecting to be told that he was deluding himself. He wasn’t. Kate was doing that all by herself. Hank kept her name out of it. Until she came to her senses, he’d push on and ask his questions. ‘Humour me for a few moments longer. I arrived the morning the plane went down and questioned ground crew. When I caught up with Adriana Esposito, she wasn’t very forthcoming. She told me that a couple of passengers didn’t board but was unable to ID our profiler as one of them.’

  ‘Why did you think she would?’

  ‘We questioned her very soon after. I was hoping she’d remember.’ Hank paused. ‘I understand that my colleague was one of the last to pass through the gate. I gather there was a delay, and then a mad rush to get everyone on board so the pilot didn’t lose his slot. Understandable, but I was told by someone else that as the final two female passengers entered the tunnel, one of them threw a bit of a wobbler – a fear of flying, according to my source. Apparently, the other went to her aid because she was hyperventilating. Jo has no flight phobia but she is definitely the type to help another passenger in distress.’ Hank took a breather. ‘This is purely conjecture but I wonder if, in that moment of hesitation, my colleague changed her mind about travelling. If that was the case and she’d cleared security, she’d have been escorted landside with the woman who was ill—’

  ‘Can I stop you there for a second?’ Chadwick looked decidedly uncomfortable, like he knew something Hank didn’t and wasn’t sure how to put it into words. ‘You’ve been given a bum steer, mate.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Only one passenger didn’t board.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  A nod.

  Accessing his keyboard, Chadwick began typing. ‘Esposito reported a potential medical risk. It was touch and go whether they would allow the sick passenger on. Those scared of flying can cause anxiety to others if they lose control.’ His eyes flicked to the screen in front of him. ‘In this case, they passed her as fit to travel, but she decided against. One of my team was dispatched to escort her landside.’

  Hank swallowed the bile in his throat. The chance of Jo not travelling had just been cut by 50 per cent. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know the name of the passenger escorted landside, would you?’

  ‘Aren’t you Casualty Bureau?’

  Hank needed that name. ‘Yeah, but I’m not Met Police. I’m an outsider, which means I’m a thick Geordie who pulled the grunt work, interviewing workers in the baggage shed. I’m not allowed out until I’m done.’ He failed to mention that he already was.

  A beat of time.

  ‘You didn’t hear this from me.’ Chadwick sat forward, pulling his computer keyboard closer.

  Hank was unable to see what he typed into his system. He was now the one hyperventilating, still reeling from the disclosure that only one woman on the manifest didn’t board. For Kate’s sake, he hoped that the name the security manager was searching for would be Jo’s. Over his shoulder, a printer spewed out a sheet of A4, including a woman’s name and address, together with the scan of a cancelled boarding card, timed and dated after 0113 took to the skies.

  46

  Before Hank passed on the identity of the woman who didn’t travel, he arranged to meet someone from Air Traffic Control to corroborate the information. His name was Chris Mahoney, a mild-mannered man with a mop of grey hair and pewter-rimmed specs to match. Calm and trustworthy were the two adjectives that passed through the detective’s head as they took a seat in a tiny side office. The desk was ordered, much like Kate’s adjoining the major incident room at her Newcastle base. Mahoney either hated clutter or believed, as Kate did, that a ship-shape desk was halfway to a tidy mind.

  He’d already done his homework.

  Lifting an A4 sheet from his desk, Mahoney handed it to Hank, a sheepish look on his face. The reason for that became immediately apparent as the detective scanned the document. Many lines of the text had been redacted from the transcript of the flight log.

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘The part I’m authorised to share,’ Mahoney said. ‘I can’t impress on you how confidential it is. You’ll appreciate why I can only supply you with this section of the dialogue. To give you any more at this stage of the investigation would be inappropriate.’

  A nod from Hank.

  Mahoney’s department were in the thick of it. Anyone with a connection to Flight 0113 would be questioned at length. It was his duty to safeguard the information in his possession. If it fell into the wrong hands he’d be for the high jump. It would do untold damage to the investigation currently being put together by aviation authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. The intercourse between the captain and first officer – before and after the plane left the ground – would form part of a top level and far-reaching criminal investigation should it turn out to be terrorist-related. All indications were heading in that direction.

  Hank reread the document, immediately noticing that the delay was confirmed in a conversation between British pilot Matthew Wilkins and the control tower. Tapping the report, he said: ‘This will go no further.’ The medical risk Chadwick had talked about was now confirmed.

  As he left Heathrow, Hank sent a text: There’s nowt on TV. Fancy a pint?

  A reply: Ten, fifteen minutes suit?

  Perfect.

  Kate wouldn’t question why he wanted to see her. She’d be making the assumption that he’d got through his list of interviewees, that there was news of Nikolaev from Northumbria MIT, that he was missing her company or was merely thirsty. If his life depended on it, he’d never turn down the opportunity to sink a pint of John Smith’s.

  On his way to the pub, Hank was at his wit’s end. How would he break the news when every sentence he formulated in his head was guaranteed to fell her in a way that no other had? However hard it would be, he’d decided to get it over with and stick with her tomorrow when they were both off duty.

  As her 2ic, Hank was conflicted. He had a dual role: supporter and protector to a boss who was in a state, m
ired in the kind of trouble that could seriously damage her reputation, in the middle of an undercover assignment. His first thought was to contact Bright and beg him to pull her out. That would be the sensible option. But ratting on Kate to their guv’nor would be the ultimate betrayal, not to mention a potential career-ending fuck-up.

  Kate had always kept her personal struggles to herself. She’d lived in the hinterland between happy and sad, until she discovered a love she never imagined was for her, one that felt right. And yet she’d allowed her job to dominate her time. Long hours. Harrowing cases. Her appointment as SIO taking up much of her life. Consequently, she was never as close to Jo as she should’ve been.

  Hank had been there, too, with Julie.

  He understood.

  Policing provided both detectives with structure where there were clear lines, boundaries and the security they needed. While Hank had put his own house in order, Kate’s private life remained a tangle of uncertainty. Relationships outside of work had been formed, but the office environment allowed for them to be kept at arm’s length. That suited her perfectly. Having built a wall around herself, it was hard to let Jo pull it down …

  And now it was too late to reconsider her options.

  Hank’s thoughts swung wildly between paradoxical arguments: the need to look out for her and his duty to safeguard a high-level potential terrorist investigation. He knew which way it would go if Bright got a whiff of this. After Stella’s death, he was a man who understood loss, but he’d make the right decision and withdraw his support, leaving Torres with no choice but to take Kate off the case. With Jo gone, if they pulled her out now – and they would if she was on the brink of compromising an undercover op – it would curtail her autonomy and take away the one thing she had left to live for.

  And now Hank was about to throw her under a bus.

  47

  Hank’s smile was forced as he entered the pub, the door swinging shut behind him. Kate was waiting, leaning with her back against the bar. She looked dreadful, having ignored his advice to take care of herself. Since arriving in the capital, she’d averaged around three hours’ sleep a night. Everything she’d eaten, she’d thrown up. In a matter of days, her clothes were too big, flecks of grey appearing in her hair. She turned forty-six months ago and had told him that the last time she caught her reflection in a mirror, she hardly recognised herself. Tomorrow she’d be worse.

  ‘What are you having?’ she asked.

  ‘The usual.’ He needed Dutch courage to ease the way.

  She ordered the drinks and pointed to a table in the corner.

  ‘Mind sitting out?’ He couldn’t risk talking to her in a public place. ‘I need some air.’

  They moved to the pub’s beer garden. It was empty, but then Hank knew that, having checked it out before going inside. They sat down in the covered area, out of the wind. He was on edge, but she seemed not to notice, merely asked about the injury to his face.

  He explained about his scrap with Patterson in Heathrow’s staff car park, a delaying tactic while he replayed his conversations with Chadwick and Mahoney in his head. He hadn’t told a soul that all hope of finding Jo was in the wind. Kate had to be the first to know. It was killing him to be the death messenger. He didn’t want the job and would have done anything to get out of it, but under the circumstances, who else was there?

  Do it! Get it over with.

  Now she noticed his anxiety. ‘Hank? What is it?’

  He hesitated, sickened by the reaction he might get. He imagined tears, a right hook even. It wouldn’t be the first time a grieving loved one had taken a swing at him. News like this destroyed people. Some didn’t recover.

  Kate never would.

  He took a deep breath. ‘It’s not good—’

  ‘I can see that,’ she said.

  ‘I’m so sorry, but I now have conclusive proof that Jo was on that plane.’

  Kate froze. Of all the things Hank might have said, she hadn’t expected him to confirm her worst fears. A week ago, by no stretch of the imagination was she in a happy place; her father was gravely ill, Jo had taken off for JFK without her, but her murder case was solved and the rest could be fixed. She thought that her life was going one way and, in the blink of an eye, everything changed.

  ‘That’s impossible.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s too early for proof—’

  ‘Don’t do this, Kate. Why would I tell you if I wasn’t sure?’

  She glared at him, heart beating faster.

  ‘There’s no doubt,’ Hank added. ‘I met with Euan Chadwick, the security manager, before I left Heathrow. He told me that only one woman missed the flight, not two as we’d been led to believe. It was a medical issue, confirmed by the transmission between pilot and ground crew before take-off—’

  ‘How does that change anything? Do you ever listen? I told you she’d be last to board. You need to stop jumping to conclusions.’ Kate refused to accept his word, guilt that she’d let her relationship with Jo slide driving her point of view. She simply couldn’t give up on her now. To do so would mean acknowledging that the ghost of a chance to put things right was beyond reach.

  ‘I’ve had enough,’ Hank said. ‘However unpalatable, you need to own this and move on. I realise how hard that is for you, and how you don’t want to accept it, but I can’t help that. A woman took ill before boarding. She was cleared to fly, then changed her mind and was escorted landside by security.’

  ‘I want the fucking proof!’

  Hank lost it then. ‘You want it? Well, here it is.’

  He stood up, took something from his pocket and threw it down on the table. Kate felt her face crumple as she read it. It was a cancelled boarding card, clear-cut evidence that a woman called Elaine Hayes had been taken landside, not Jo.

  Suddenly, a light came on in Kate’s head. Seeing Hank so distraught and angry was gut-wrenching, but she wasn’t finished yet. Appreciation of his point of view didn’t equal concurrence. Far from resigned to Jo’s fate, she challenged him on the subject. ‘Did you actually see the woman being escorted landside?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it would necessitate looking through hours of CCTV—’

  Kate shot him a black look. ‘You have something more important to do?’ She ignored his wounded expression. ‘So, instead, you decided to rush over here and feed me this garbage?’ There was more than a hint of sarcasm to her voice.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Kate, I only found out an hour ago.’

  ‘Then until I’ve had eyes on that woman, nothing has changed.’ She stood up, began pacing the garden, before turning to face him. ‘You need to get your arse to Heathrow and secure that footage right now.’

  The word ‘ostrich’ sprang to mind. Hank’s head was pounding. The evidence was overwhelming and yet Kate was refuting it. On her game, rather than overwhelmed by grief, she wouldn’t have. He was running out of ideas, patience and empathy. Suddenly the notion of a return to the North-East to help Robbo find Nikolaev’s killer didn’t sound so bad, but he had to get it through her thick head that this really was the end of the road. He understood her anguish, of course – she’d played a big part in Jo’s departure from the UK and felt guilty for it – but what was done was done.

  ‘Well?’ She wouldn’t let it go. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We’re going to end this now.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Her eyes were like saucers. ‘In case you’re in any doubt, that wasn’t a request.’

  A mobile – his or hers – vibrated in his back pocket. He took out both phones. Her device was showing a missed call from Carmichael. When Kate showed no enthusiasm for calling her back, Hank did it for her. What Lisa told him was impossible.

  48

  Hank wiped his face with his hand. Having gone ten rounds with Kate, he was beginning to feel punchy, struggling to process the information Carmichael had passed on. He took a long pull on his pint, a glance at Ka
te, she at him, a smouldering, simmering rage passing between them. He eyed the cancelled boarding card still in her hand, then walked away, turning his back on her.

  ‘Say again, Lisa.’

  Unaware of unfolding events in London, Carmichael sounded upbeat. ‘I said, I just had a tip-off from Jo’s service provider.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard that bit.’

  ‘Can you raise Kate and let her know?’

  ‘She’s with me now …’ Hank turned to look at her. Kate was staring at him, rigid and grossly unhappy. No tears. Wishing she’d let go, he went back to his call. ‘Switched on for how long?’

  ‘Just a few minutes.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘“What of it?” Are you for real?’

  ‘Means nowt, Lisa.’

  ‘That’s hardly the reaction I was expecting, Sarge. Are you OK? Is Kate?’

  ‘Yes, no. There’s stuff happening this end. I’ll fill you in later. Before you go, I need a chat with Robbo about Nikolaev.’ It was a heavy hint that the conversation was over.

  ‘He’s not in,’ Carmichael said.

  ‘Where is he?’

  There was a pause, as if she was scanning the incident room to make sure. ‘I don’t know, to be honest. We’re flat out this end but very excited by the news from EE, more than you appear to be.’ Carmichael gave Hank more detail, including where Jo’s mobile had been switched on, and the number it had been used to call. The longer she talked, the more worried he became. Given the boarding card still in Kate’s hand, what Lisa was telling him made no sense. He was searching for an explanation and didn’t find one.

  ‘I don’t want to raise expectations—’

  ‘Neither should you.’ Hank chose not to elaborate.

  ‘Kate will be ecstatic when she hears the news though, won’t she?’

  Sidestepping her enthusiasm, he said: ‘Tell Robbo I’ll call him later.’