Choose Your Parents Wisely (Joe Grabarz Book 2)

by Tom Trott

  I nodded. ‘How much?’

  ‘After the sale of her house, and her remaining assets, the final amount is estimated to be a little over seventy thousand euros.’

  ‘I see.’ I nodded again. ‘Get out of my office.’

  Vogeli must have been smiling about something else as he pulled the cigarette and lighter out of his pocket, probably out of habit more than anything else, put it in his mouth and lit it.

  ‘We’ll accept it in installments,’ he chuckled.

  I slapped him across the mouth, knocking the cigarette across the room. He was so shocked he fell off his chair.

  I towered over him. ‘I told you to get out of my office.’

  He scrambled backwards out the door, into the reception area, and then back up onto his feet. He took his time brushing himself down.

  ‘I don’t want to see or hear from you ever again,’ I told him.

  He wasn’t impressed. ‘I’ll be sending you a letter, Mr Grabarz, with the exact figures,’ he straightened his washed out tie, ‘and I’ll include all research materials for you to examine.’

  He was fully straightened now, what little of him there was. He patted down his errant wisps of hair.

  ‘Good evening,’ he spat, then marched out of the room.

  I heard the street door shut as I went to the sink in the cupboard to throw some water on my face. I took a look at myself in the beaten-up mirror:

  Did I look half-Spanish? What did that even look like? It was bullshit. It was all bullshit. A scam.

  I had broken my oath to stay calm. In fact I had probably broken a record for the fastest broken oath in history. But that was just a practice run. From now on. Again: I will stay calm.

  Then I remembered someone had text me, they needed my attention far more urgently than this. Who was it?

  “Be at mine in 21 minutes,” it said.

  She had given me four extra minutes for the rain, I had wasted more than that already.

  I barely locked up, ran into the rain, to my bike. Twice in two days? That was unlike her, normally it was once a fortnight, if that.

  I rode as fast as I could; zipping down the middle of jams, doing fifty in the thirty zones, sixty in the twenty zones, splashing, skipping, roaring my way there, but still I didn’t make it to hers until three minutes after the deadline.

  I rang the bell. The butler opened the door just a crack. I went to step in out of the rain but it wouldn’t budge. The chain was on.

  ‘Miss Todman asked me to give you a message,’ he said with twitching lips that wanted to smile, ‘you’re late.’

  And then he slammed the door in my face.

  I broke my oath again.

  8

  The Policeman’s Curse

  i promised myself I would never end up back here. The place made me feel sick. The anxiety. The oppression. The cheap, rough texture of anything you touched. Grey under yellow light, the walls and the furniture and the people were so desaturated it was like being colour blind. It was only a few weeks ago that I was in custody. They had kept me the full twenty-four before charging me. Not that it made any difference.

  I wondered how many hours they were going to keep me for this time. I had already told the trout-faced desk sergeant that I wanted to speak to the officer in charge of the Jilani case. She had given me a long, suspicious gaze through the glass shutters, seriously considering that I might be here to confess. Then she picked up the phone, dialled, and whispered down it so I couldn’t hear what she was saying. She watched me the whole time, making sure I didn’t leg it. Then ten minutes passed. Then another ten. Then I got up to ask what the hell was going on, and was told the detective was on his way.

  Then, another ten minutes later, the door into the bowels of the station opened casually and a Rodin lent on the frame, gazing down at me. Someone had painted the statue to look like a real man. They had even added stubble. The finished effect was of a grizzled, stony face; forty-something years old. Hard jaw. Sapphire blue eyes. Thick eyebrows. And slightly greying reddish-brown locks, the type that were combed back once and stayed there because he told them to.

  I knew this face. It was a brilliant likeness of the bastard who had dragged me to court on circumstantial evidence. Sure, I had committed the crime, but that wasn’t the point. This was the man who hadn’t batted an eyelid, hadn’t protested a jot, when I was marched out of court an “innocent” man. A statue then, and a statue now. My nemesis. Richard. Fucking. Daye.

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘This way,’ was all he said and he marched through the steel door into the corridors.

  Phones rang. People milled about. We were moving too quickly for me to take it all in, but I had memories to rely on. I felt like every officer we passed was staring at me, about to shout my name, but of course that wasn’t true. It was just paranoia tickling me.

  We descended at least two stories, and after this labyrinth of low ceilings and easy-fall-down stairs the people disappeared and we arrived in an empty corridor, trudging silently to the end, to the last door. His office.

  The place stank of smoke. Maybe it was just because they were a different brand, but I was sure that I didn’t smell like that. It was heavy, like wearing someone else’s wet coat.

  ‘Take a seat,’ he offered as he took the one behind his desk.

  There was only one other and it was opposite, half plastic, and leaking yellow foam out of a million slashes. It looked like an advert for a chair rescue charity.

  It was dark outside, but it was darker in here. It was so dark down in this basement that I could barely see around the room. Everything was a haze of green and grey and brown and black. There were a few dented filing cabinets. A peeling wood effect unit with a dirty white kettle perched atop and a bevy of powdered drinks stuffed into a scummy mug. Underneath was a selection of chocolate bars, and other high calorie snacks for the all-nighters.

  There weren’t any photographs or certificates on the wall, just a pinned up Ordinance Survey map of the city, extending from Southwick on one side to Saltdean on the other. And from the sea to the South Downs.

  Only when my glance made it all the way round did I spot that there was another man in the room, right next to my face. He was barely older than I was, and had a topknot and a warrior beard about ten years before either was fashionable.

  ‘That’s just DC Watson,’ Daye said, ‘ignore him.’

  ‘Hey, dude,’ the man said with a killer smile.

  Their niceness unnerved me.

  Daye marked the celebration of my visit by lighting a cigarette. It looked as thick as a cigar and the brand might have been called Wet Dog. I fished out one of my thin rollups.

  ‘How do you get away with smoking in here?’ I asked. I had to drag my voice up from a deep well.

  ‘The smoke alarm has been broken for ten years. I keep forgetting to tell them.’

  I looked up but the place was so dark I couldn’t even see where it was.

  I lit my cigarette and smoked it gently. We were all sitting there, all existing separately for now. Us two smoking, and the constable chipping away at a mountain of paperwork, the Anglepoise lamp on his desk the only source of light.

  This must have continued for more than a couple of minutes, both of us enjoying our cigarettes, blowing out the smoke until the walls and the ceiling and the floor became even more imperceptible. The three of us wrapped in grey blankets.

  Daye was as comfortable there as an old oak. You know its roots run as deep below ground as the branches span above, and if you tried to rip it up it would bring the whole earth with it.

  Slowly, the tree began to move, a face emerged out of the fog, and a voice as rough as bark.

  ‘You wanted to talk about Mahnoor Jilani,’ it said.

  ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he rumbled. I could feel the vibrations. ‘Why?’

  ‘Personal interest.’

  ‘Mmm…’

  Then he took the longest
drag of a cigarette that I have ever seen. It lasted for what seemed like minutes, and then he pushed it out through his nostrils, down onto the desk and across it, where it curled up and licked the sides of the room like dry ice on a Hammer Horror set.

  ‘Why are you really here?’

  ‘I’m a family friend,’ I assured him.

  ‘Hmm…’ Those strong eyebrows were raised at me. ‘I think I’ll give you one more chance, and then I’ll ask you to leave. Why are you interested in the Jilani case?’

  What did it matter anyway? I was probably only lying out of habit.

  ‘Someone has asked me to look into it.’

  ‘Someone?’

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know if I’m allowed to tell you.’

  He nodded, in a way that suggested it didn’t matter anyway. ‘There’s a phrase: never send a boy to do a man’s job.’

  ‘I’m twenty-two,’ I reassured him.

  He agreed: I was twenty-two. ‘Why exactly did they ask you to look into it, Mr…?’

  ‘Sweet.’

  He nodded. ‘Mr Sweet?’

  ‘I guess they must have asked everyone else.’

  This got a slight smile out of him. ‘Fine. Why have you agreed to do it?’

  ‘This is pretty one-sided at the moment,’ I remarked.

  ‘It is, isn’t it,’ he replied.

  It was no use: I had to jump through his hoops if I wanted to get any further, so I kept jumping: ‘If I find the girl they’ll pay me.’

  ‘So what are you, Mr Sweet, a private detective?’

  That got a slight smile out of me, but nothing more.

  ‘And what are you doing here?’

  ‘I thought I could help you.’

  ‘I see, so you don’t want my help?’ he said with a grin.

  I sighed. What was the point of lying to him? I couldn’t trick him into thinking I was a professional. Or even remotely good at this. He had sat there opposite a million other punks, who all thought they were twice as smart as I thought I was. But it didn’t do them any good, and it wasn’t going to do me any good either. He was like all professionals at the top of their game; like a tailor who can tell your measurements without a tape, or a doctor who can diagnose cancer from a cough. The point is: Daye knew you were going to lie before you even opened your mouth.

  ‘I want your help,’ I admitted.

  He did nothing but tap some ash into an ash tray. He was a class act.

  ‘I have twenty-four hours a day,’ I continued, ‘seven days a week, that I will be spending trying to find this girl. And we both want that.’

  He looked at the wall for a while, as though there was a window there. I wondered what he could see out of it. DC Watson was still scribbling.

  ‘Very well,’ Daye started, ‘I just have one more question.’

  He didn’t even look at me.

  ‘On the fourteenth of September, did you, or did you not, break into a property on Reynolds Road, Mr Grabarz?’

  Bugger. Buggering fucksticks. He had given me the opportunity to lie and I had taken it. Now he was giving me an opportunity to tell the truth. More than I would have done. Although it pissed me off when he called me a boy, he was right. I was a boy. But like all boys I thought I was a man. A big man. And I deserved the same respect that all the other big men got: another reason looking back on this makes me feel sick. If young me walked into my office today I wouldn’t give him the time of day.

  However, man or boy, the useful thing about having nothing is that you can bet it all easily. I barely nodded. That was all he needed, and that was all he was going to get.

  He stubbed out his cigarette, nodded, and then stared out that imaginary window again, lighting another as he went. I didn’t know how he finished them so fast: my thin wispy rollup wasn’t even half done. I guess he’d had more practice than me.

  ‘Will you help me?’ I asked.

  ‘No, it’s ridiculous.’

  I bit my tongue, just muttering: ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You could get hurt.’

  I laughed, which took him by surprise. ‘You’d be the first to care.’

  ‘Maybe so…’

  ‘Look, I’m doing this anyway, so really you’re putting me in greater danger by not helping. And don’t give me any of that “it’s nothing to do with me” crap because that doesn’t sit with someone like you. You have the policeman’s curse.’

  He tapped more ash from the end of his cigarette. ‘Which is?’

  ‘You care.’

  Watson had stopped scribbling, he was listening with his back to us.

  ‘Now, I’ve come and asked for your help politely. You want to find her. I want to find her. Where’s the conflict?’

  He stared at me for a long time. I could feel the clockwork of his brain ticking over like a difference engine. Then he closed his eyes to calculate the result, or whatever the hell he was doing.

  He opened them again. He had reached an answer. Finally, steadily, calmly, it came: ‘To answer the big questions: is she alive? where is she? and who took her? first you need to answer the little questions. Where was she taken from? Was she targeted, or taken at random? If she was taken at random, how and where did she gain the abductor’s interest? If she was targeted, why was she targeted? If you can answer those questions before you leave this room, I’ll help you.’

  It sounded like fun. ‘Do I get to look at the case file?’ I asked.

  He frowned, he hadn’t thought about it.

  ‘It’s hardly fair otherwise, I can’t answer those questions without the same information you had.’

  He stared at me for a few moments, then through me for just a second. ‘Andy, fetch Mr Grabarz the case file, and then you had better make us all a cup of tea.’

  It was fascinating to read. I had never read a police file before. It had pictures, statements, interviews, forensic results, every piece of evidence catalogued, every person profiled. I pored through it.

  When my tea finally arrived it was garnished with the flat shimmer of limescale. Flakes luxuriated in a huge mug, that looked like it held almost a pint. It made me think that Daye probably ran on tea and cigarettes and Watson had bought this mug to push back making tea from every twenty minutes to every half an hour. Daye was also one of those odd people who has whole milk, which is at least better than being one of those people who has skimmed milk. Other than that it was the colour of clay. The correct colour. A person is always as weak as their tea.

  The first question was easy to answer, a warm-up of sorts. The tea was still too hot to drink.

  ‘According to this statement from a pupil at Mahnoor’s school,’ I thought out loud, ‘she “walked home alone like always”. If she walks home alone it would be fair to assume she was taken off the street.’

  ‘It’s never fair to assume,’ was Daye’s response.

  Fine, not so easy then, if he was going to play it like that. But half a pint of tea later I was studying pictures of their hallway, and pieces of evidence taken. Especially item number seven.

  ‘Her school bag was in the house. With her keys inside. So she did get home. And she didn’t go out again.’

  ‘Good,’ was all he said.

  ‘Is that a fair assumption?’ I asked pointedly.

  ‘It’s not an assumption: it’s a deduction.’

  Whilst I finished the rest of my tea I read a very long interview with Mrs Jilani, where she confirmed that none of Mahnoor’s clothes were missing: that meant she was still in her uniform. Then a very short interview with Mr Jilani. He seemed to know almost no helpful details about his daughter. There were a lot of I-don’t-knows and she-might-haves. It made a part of my brain itch, like a thought was clawing to get out. I could hear it through the walls, but as much as I tried I just couldn’t find my way to it.

  In my searching I had inadvertently opened the door to another thought: ‘She was targeted.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There were no signs of a break in, and nothing was
missing, so they weren’t waiting in the house for someone else, and she didn’t disturb a burglary. They just knocked on the door and grabbed her.’

  ‘She would scream.’

  ‘They chloroformed her. Stuck her in the back of a van.’

  ‘That image is hard to avoid, isn’t it.’

  ‘She always walked home alone, but they took her from the house. Why?’

  He didn’t say anything, except to offer me another cup of tea. I said yes and Watson boiled the kettle again. It was the slowest kettle in the world, and made far more noise than necessary, it was drowning out my thoughts. All I could picture were calcium crystals swirling around the glowing element.

  Why would they take her from the house? If it was me, the only reason I would follow her home would be if I needed to know where she lived. I looked at the other pieces of assembled evidence. It was mostly the girl’s things. Nothing too exciting.

  After I had finished my second pint of tea I was bursting for the loo. And that’s when I realised Daye’s cruel joke: I wasn’t allowed to leave the room.

  I shifted in my seat, attempting to crush away the sensation in my bladder. I could sense a small grin dancing across his face. Come on, Joe, let’s wipe that smile off his face. Think. Think, goddammit!

  ‘They didn’t know what she looked like!’ I said it before I had even realised it myself.

  ‘What makes you think that?’ Daye asked, not fully able to hide the surprise and interest from his voice.

  Come on, brain, catch up! ‘They were waiting outside the house, waiting for her to get home,’ I was blurting it out now, ‘It’s kidnap!’ I shouted.

  ‘Slow down,’ Daye said.

  But I couldn’t slow down, I was bursting with thoughts and piss. ‘They couldn’t wait until the next day, they had to take her there and then. And there’s no other reason to abduct someone you’ve never seen before. It’s not about her! They’re ransoming the dad. That’s why he’s so shit in his interviews. So… so… what’s the word?’

  ‘Evasive?’ Watson offered.

  ‘Yes!’ I was on a high now, those desperate thoughts free to tear up the corridors of my mind.