Mr Reilly turned back to face the screen. Her mind flickered from one possibility to the next. Was there a chance Sean was guilty? The answer had to be no. So what the hell was going on? She felt a constricting pain in her chest. It was getting tighter by the second.
The other man turned to her. He had a long nose and short black hair.
‘My name’s Dick Owen, Mrs Ryan. I’m Assistant Director, Trading Markets Division, at the Securities and Exchange Commission’s New York office. We’ve been investigating BXH for eighteen months now. Earlier today we asked the DA’s office to get involved in this case.’ He had a snooty expression.
Her mind was churning this information, as if her brain had been frozen and was slowly thawing.
‘I received a federal warrant this afternoon to enter this building and seize any evidence related to the commission of any criminal acts contrary to SEC regulations.’
He was reciting something.
‘I think it’s best if we play the recording in full before we discuss anything else,’ said grey hair.
She didn’t want him to play any more of the recording.
She’d heard too much already.
‘Unless you’d like not to be present. If you find all this too difficult.’
‘I’ll stay,’ she said, as firmly as she could. ‘But I want to know where my husband is.’
‘We don’t know where he is, Mrs Ryan, honestly.’ He had a concerned look on his face, which she didn’t like. ‘I think you should see this recording. I think you need to see it, for your own sake. For your safety most of all. That’s what I’m concerned about.’
She gripped the edge of the chair in front of her. Was he implying Sean might be a danger to her?
Had one of these people texted her, not Sean? The message hadn’t mentioned him by name.
This was all way too crazy.
Her knuckles were white against the blue of the chair in front of her. She gripped tighter. The safe world she lived in, her reality until forty hours ago, was disappearing.
‘I’ll watch it, but don’t expect me to believe one word.’
‘I understand your reaction is to deny what’s in front of you,’ said grey hair. ‘It is only natural. All I ask is that you have an open mind to everything you see.’ Then he turned and pressed at the remote control in his hand.
‘I …’ said Sean. The recording continued. He looked pained.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I lost control. I couldn’t stop myself.’
A wave of tears threatened as she heard the genuine sorrow in his voice. She pushed her arms into her sides and held herself tight. She could feel her ribs.
On the screen Sean looked down, as if he didn’t know what else to say. This was so unlike him.
‘Are you aware of clause 47 of our contract with the Institute you work for, Mr Ryan, allowing BXH to terminate the contract with immediate effect, without compensation, should any contract personnel commit an act of serious criminality?’ The voice droned from the recording.
Sean nodded.
What would she say to Alek?
He was expecting his daddy to come home, make a big fuss of him, lift him high in the air.
The screen went black.
Gus Reilly turned and reached towards her, holding out a slim cream-coloured business card. She took it. Her hand was shaking. The emblem of the New York County District Attorney’s office, an eagle and a circle, was embossed on it in pale blue.
‘I’m sorry, this must be a shock, Mrs Ryan, but our investigation of BXH is ongoing. If you know anything about any illegalities in connection with BXH, either here or in London, you have a legal obligation to inform us. And I don’t say that lightly.’
She put the card in the back pocket of her jeans.
‘Don’t believe what you’ve just seen, Mr Reilly,’ she said, loudly. ‘I certainly won’t, until I hear him admit all this myself. Anyone can doctor a video recording these days.’
Grey hair shook his head slowly, as if he felt sorry for her.
She’d had enough. She stood, pushed a chair out of her way and walked fast towards the exit. She wanted out of the place. She couldn’t stay in this ugly room one second longer.
To hell with them all.
As she neared the door she heard fast footsteps behind her, grey hair speaking.
‘Please, Mrs Ryan, Mr Vaughann would like to see you.’ His emphasis on the word Vaughann made it clear that the illustrious Mr Vaughann did not expect to be turned down.
She stopped. It didn’t take much to imagine the self-serving crap that BXH’s UK CEO was going to throw at her.
She didn’t want to hear it.
And then a memory came back to her. Last Christmas Sean had taken the blame after she’d scratched their next door neighbour’s shiny new Lexus. She’d been reversing late on Christmas Eve and had misjudged the size of the space outside their house in the dark. Sean had gone around first thing Christmas morning. He’d told them he’d done it.
He did it because she’d had a run-in with their wonderful Scottish neighbours months before. He’d been trying to protect her, he’d said.
Could he be doing the same thing now? But why, and for who?
She had to meet Vaughann.
Grey hair was talking. She’d missed what he’d said. He had a pop-eyed expression on his face, as if he was about to burst. It was the way she felt.
‘He is waiting for us,’ he said, quickly, as if he was repeating himself.
‘Fine,’ she said.
When they reached the end of the corridor, almost at the elevator, grey hair knocked on a shiny bottle-green painted steel door. He waited for a reply, his head leaning a little sideways, as if he was a hunting dog waiting to be whistled at.
Standing there was like being in school again thinking up excuses outside the principal’s office.
She tried to calm her anger. Someone was trying to make her believe Sean was guilty of something despicable, make a lot of people believe it. But she wasn’t buying it.
‘Why don’t we just go in?’ she said.
Grey hair looked surprised.
‘We have to wait,’ he whispered.
‘You could have just told me what Sean said. You didn’t have to show me that video.’
He knocked on the door again, then turned to her. ‘Mrs Ryan, BXH has only your best interests at heart, honestly. You are the spouse of someone who may well be a danger to others. We take our duty of care seriously. We understand most people instinctively deny a partner’s wrongdoing. That’s why it was important for you to see with your own eyes what your husband has admitted to, not for us to relay such news to you or interpret his words.’
‘Yeah, BXH really cares,’ she said. She closed her eyes. She didn’t like being told she was in denial.
‘Yes, Mrs Ryan, it does.’
She pressed her lips together.
The door opened. She was looking at the sombre face of Mr Vaughann.
‘Mrs Ryan.’ Vaughann sighed. ‘I expect you’re having trouble taking all this in.’
61
Four to Invoke the One. Henry shook his head. If someone was trying to re-enact this ancient ritual they hadn’t much time left to finish the job. The moon would rise soon in London and in about four hours in New York, where Sean Ryan was.
Henry was still in the monitoring room in Whitehall. It was almost one thirty in the morning now. His FBI contact had finally responded.
Surveillance of Isabel Ryan was being initiated. Her current whereabouts were known. She was in the BXH building on Lexington Avenue.
He’d looked up the BXH building. It was an art deco rival to the nearby Chrysler skyscraper. The majority of its floors were still in use as BXH offices. It also had some urban myths connected to it. One stated that a dozen men had died on a single day during its construction, when an underground fall-in had occurred. Apparently the building had been declared as cursed by a construction workers’ union soon after.
But none of that had kept him in the office this late. What worried him was the discovery of a woman who had been mutilated in her hotel room not far away, in the Waldorf Astoria. That was very concerning.
The woman had had her tongue removed. And it was missing. The FBI officer had passed on the details after he had read how the dancer had died in London and had spotted that there was a possibility that her murder was part of some blood soaked serial-killing spree.
And the fact they still hadn’t located Alek Ryan, Isabel and Sean Ryan’s little boy, had given him nightmares. Because the final death in the ritual in the book was that of a young child.
The act of crushing heretics or non-believers was praised by some in ancient Byzantium, he had read, as proof of an unshakeable faith. And rituals involving such acts could be used to bless a major enterprise, such as the beginning of a siege defence or the commencement of a war.
Twenty-first-century sensibilities made most people squeamish about such things, but when fighting for survival meant fighting against people who wanted to take over your city and put everyone you knew to the sword, such rituals would have been acceptable.
He understood the connection between the recent murders now, and he had read how horrific the other deaths in the manuscript were. Now he had to make sure the FBI had everything they needed, that he had done everything he could to prevent such an evil twisting of faith ever being played out again.
The Metropolitan Police had set up road blocks in the Fulham area of London, looking for witnesses who might have seen a boy being moved around, but so far they had come up with nothing substantial.
Henry was also checking if the boy had been taken out of the country, perhaps by the woman who’d been minding him.
Sean Ryan was in Manhattan somewhere, BXH had confirmed that. Perhaps he’d arranged for his son to be taken there too.
He went to his UK flights arrivals and departures passenger identification software again. He keyed in the search terms. A boy travelling to the Eastern seaboard of the US in the last forty-eight hours, probably listed as three to five years of age.
Two hundred and twenty-six children were now listed as having travelled to the US in the period from UK airports. He looked through the photo IDs of them all.
Twenty-six new images had been added from the last departing scheduled flight, which had taken off, late, ninety minutes before.
It took seconds to scroll through them all. But none of the children bore any resemblance to the ID picture he had on his screen of Alek Ryan. Then something came to him.
What about private planes or private charters?
He opened another tab on his browser, then pressed his fist to his forehead.
He was tired, and his migraine was back, but he had to keep going.
No one deserved to die the way that book described, especially not a child.
It was the sickest thing he had ever read.
62
‘Isabel, I’m so sorry about all this.’ Vaughann’s sympathetic smile might have been put in place with staples, it looked that phony.
‘You must have had a terrible shock. Please, come on in. You know we can find you support services, counselling, if you need it.’ He stepped back.
‘I won’t need it,’ she said. ‘What I’d like to know is where my husband is.’
Vaughann stepped further back. ‘I’m sorry, I simply don’t know,’ he said. ‘But come in. We will try to help you.’
She went into the room. Grey hair disappeared. This room was similar to the other one down the corridor. It had the same red-brick walls, painted floor and sixties-style fluorescent lighting.
‘I saw Mrs Vaughann,’ she said. ‘Did she find you?’
‘Yes, she did. Thank you for asking.’
The floor here was less scuffed, and the room was a good deal smaller, more of a meeting room. In fact, this looked like the room in Sean’s video, where he’d done that interview.
She could feel Vaughann staring at her.
In the centre of the room there were old-fashioned heavy wooden tables facing each other in a rectangle. Plastic chairs were pushed in neatly around the tables.
There was a row of iron eyelets protruding from above the wall at the far end of the room. God only knew what they had been used for in the past.
‘Please sit down, Isabel,’ said Mr Vaughann. His tone was pleasant, but cool. The kind of tone you might take with contractors that were embarrassingly far beneath you.
If Sean ever spoke to her like that she would know exactly who he was copying it from. And it would be grounds for divorce.
She sat on a chair at the corner of the rectangle of tables.
‘My husband was in this building earlier with you,’ she said, as he made his way around the tables to the far side.
‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘But I have no idea where he is now.’ If he sounded any smoother, he’d have slipped off himself.
Could she believe anything that came out of his mouth?
‘Why am I down here?’ she said.
‘This is where our staff watched the second Obama inauguration,’ he said. He gestured, as if he was giving her a guided tour.
She looked around. ‘That was a big celebration at BXH?’
‘We had balloons up. We gave everyone an hour off. If they wanted to watch it at their desks they could have. We have a lot of responsibilities.’
Would this be a good time to ask him about his corporate jet and his art collection? Sean had told her about the rare Byzantine tapestries that lined the walls of Mr Vaughann’s office in London.
‘I’m here for one reason, Mr Vaughann: to find my husband.’
‘I do understand.’ He smiled, like a vulture watching over its prey.
There was a noise behind her. She glanced around expecting to see her grey-haired friend hopping from foot to foot.
What she saw instead were people trouping into the room. First, Dick Owen clutching a black leather folder. Then there was a policewoman with a badge hanging from the belt of her black pantsuit. She had a pained expression on her wide crumpled face, as if she was unhappy. Or maybe that was the way NYPD officers look at ten on a Saturday night, when they should be at home. Another thin, owlish-looking man in a blue suit followed her in.
Isabel stared at them.
‘These people want to see you, Mrs Ryan. That there is Mike Brock,’ said Vaughann, pointing at the last man who came in. ‘He’s the nearest thing we’ve got to a criminal lawyer. I thought it would be in your interest to have him here.’
‘Why?’
Vaughann ignored her question. ‘You know Mr Owen from the SEC already, I believe,’ he said.
Owen waved at her, then headed for a seat on the other side of the rectangle of tables. The policewoman was standing nearby. Isabel could feel herself being examined.
‘This is Detective Tess Grainger, Isabel. She’s with the NYPD. She wants to ask you some questions. I agreed to let her meet you here only because of the highly unusual circumstances. I do think you should have your own attorney present, but in the meantime, Mike will make sure everything is done correctly.’
The lawyer smiled at her. The guy was good at making it look like he cared.
She looked up at Detective Grainger. There was a sheen of sweat on the detective’s forehead. Isabel got a feeling that she was about to pull handcuffs out and arrest her.
‘How you doing, Mrs Ryan?’ said Detective Grainger.
‘I’m not good,’ said Isabel. Detective Grainger leaned down. ‘I’ve got some urgent questions we need answers to, like an hour ago. But you don’t have to do this with these people here. We can do it all somewhere else, if you want. Down at the station, maybe?’
Isabel waited. She looked from face to face.
‘I’ve got nothing to hide.’ She emphasised each word. ‘Ask me anything you want, I mean it. Anything. I don’t care who’s here.’
‘Okay,’ said Grainger, a little tentatively, as if she
was working out the best way to play this. She looked at Vaughann, then back at Isabel.
‘But I’ll want to see you on your own some other time, down at the station, Mrs Ryan,’ she said. There was a protective note to her comment, Isabel noted.
‘You don’t have to agree to answer any questions you don’t want to,’ said Mike, the criminal lawyer.
‘He’s right,’ said Vaughann. Then he leaned over the table towards her. ‘Your husband was one of our most trusted contractors, you know. I do have some idea about what you’re feeling. So remember, you really don’t have to say anything, if you don’t want to.’
She looked at Vaughann. ‘You know what gets me, Mr Vaughann?’
He shrugged.
It was time to tell him a few things.
‘You don’t understand what BXH’s culture does to people. BXH has stolen my husband, as far as I’m concerned. He put everything into working for you, and this is where we end up.’ She waved dismissively at her surroundings.
Vaughann’s eyebrows went up. A vein in his forehead was throbbing.
Isabel leaned forward. ‘You were at that club in London too. The one that poor murdered dancer worked in. What were you doing there, setting an example?’
‘Your husband has confessed,’ said Vaughann, softly. ‘I understand why you’re angry, but I don’t think you can blame me for what happened. Not at all.’ He looked around for support.
Was she the only person who could see the truth?
‘You don’t get it, do you? I don’t believe that Sean’s guilty. And I won’t believe it, until I hear it from his own mouth as he stands in front of me.’
He shook his head, as if he was dealing with a stubborn child.
‘Maybe, if your husband was here, Mrs Ryan,’ said Detective Grainger. She was sitting on the chair next to Isabel now. She turned it a little more towards her, scraping it horribly on the floor. Her accent sounded like bins rolling.
She had short straight blonde hair. It sat in an unruly bundle on her head halfway over her eyes, making her push at it now and again.
‘Do you know where he is?’ said Grainger.
‘No, do you?’ Her mouth was painfully dry, her lips hard from the cold, the tension. The pounding in her head was low-key.
The Manhattan Puzzle Page 20
