by Sam Christer
‘Enough,’ calls Hunt. ‘For what it’s worth, I’ve put a call in to the editor to complain.’ He shrugs. ‘I guess we have little choice but to hold a news conference and answer their damned questions.’
‘You could consider a complete news blackout, sir,’ suggests the press officer. ‘It’s defendable on the basis that the young woman’s life is at risk.’
Hunt throws his copy of the paper down on the table. ‘What’s the point? The news is already out there!’ He looks around the faces and then back to Mallory. ‘Kate, we can’t conduct an inquiry of this scale if the press know about it before our own operational staff. Do your best to find out who leaked. I want a full investigation into this sloppiness.’
The door to the conference room opens and the Chief Constable’s PA leans in. ‘Vice President Lock is here, sir. He has two men with him who say they are from the FBI.’
87
While Chief Constable Hunt briefs Vice President Lock another tense meeting is under way in an office just down the corridor. FBI agents Todd Burgess and Danny Alvez are face to face with John Rowlands and Barney Gibson.
‘I’m really hoping we can help you guys,’ says Senior Supervisory Agent Burgess. Tanned and toned, he looks half his forty-five years. ‘Both Dan and I know Thom Lock and the President well and we can keep heat off your backs, providing of course you’re open and honest with us.’
Gibson understands classic Yankspeak when he hears it. Tell us everything and we’ll tell you nothing. ‘Who’s top of your likely list when it comes to kidnap gangs? Thom Lock especially piss anyone off?’
Both Americans laugh.
‘Thom has pissed everyone off,’ says Burgess. ‘New York organised crime families, Chicago animal liberation groups, west coast environmentalists, even the Russians over in Brooklyn.’
‘Then there are the terror groups,’ adds Alvez. ‘He’s a Republican who backs the War on Terror. A hawk in foreign-policy terms. Al-Qaeda, the Colombians, the FPM, PLF, ANO, they all stick pins in effigies of Thom Lock.’ He switches the heat back to Gibson. ‘What have you guys found so far?’
‘Not much,’ confesses the commander. ‘We’re working with intelligence services to grab everything we can. Data, email, voice messages. Anything that’s out there about Caitlyn, we’re on it.’
Danny Alvez is mid-thirties, Hispanic with dark eyes and short black hair. He’s been waiting for his chance to ask the big question. ‘What do you guys make of the tape?’
Rowlands gives him a straight reply: ‘We haven’t had feedback from the tech staff yet. To me it sounded genuine, though I’m suspicious of why they used audio tape and not video.’
‘Agreed,’ says Alvez. ‘It’s certainly Caitlyn though. We talked to Thom and Kylie and the information about the ribbon and book is accurate and to the best of their knowledge has never been made public.’
‘We pinged the tape to Quantico via a secure upload,’ adds Burgess. ‘Our labs say it contains multiple edits, made on several digital sound layers. They think an initial taping was done with Caitlyn, then it was drop-edited on to another recording device and the completed message played down the line from Paris.’
‘Why?’ asks Gibson. ‘Why would they do all that rather than just put her on the phone?’
‘They’re real pros,’ says Burgess. ‘They probably know all recording devices, even digital ones, leave a kind of sound DNA. By over-recording like this, you mix up the sample evidence. Machinery and source become much harder to detect.’
‘I just wonder,’ says Rowlands, ‘if the explanation is simpler than that. If the recording was faked somehow. What if Caitlyn’s voice was actually recorded here in England, sent to Paris and then played back down a French phone line?’
Alvez shakes his head. ‘Our analysts say the call was definitely made in France. They lifted the background atmos and they’re sure it was Paris.’ Rowlands’ theory grows on him a little. ‘Suppose the background noise could have been mixed in from the French side, but it seems a stretch.’
Gibson isn’t convinced. ‘Come on, they could have gone through the tunnel and been in Paris within four hours of the abduction. Thousands of illegal aliens get across the channel every year, it would be nothing for a professional gang bold enough to target a politician’s daughter.’
Burgess agrees. ‘Or by private plane, coast to coast in half that time. That’s the way I’d do it.’
Alvez nods. ‘Me too.’
John Rowlands is outnumbered three to one, but he doesn’t care. ‘She’s here. I’m sure she is. My gut tells me this tape is a wild goose chase. Caitlyn Lock is still within our reach.’
88
Publicly, Kylie Lock hasn’t said anything about her daughter’s disappearance. She let her husband fix everything with the British police, the Secret Service, the FBI and the President’s office. He’s good at all that. Despite all their differences, she knows he cares about Caitlyn’s welfare every bit as much as she does. If anyone can get those people to find her, it’s Thom. No doubt about it.
But sometimes he’s wrong. Out of line. Not that he’ll ever admit it. Oh no. Even now he won’t accept that it was a stupid mistake to have Eric look after Caitlyn instead of a Secret Service detail. Everything always has to be done his way.
Well, today is going to be different. Today it’s her turn to step up. And step up is what she is going to do. In a way only a mother can. From the heart. That’s why she’s called a press conference.
Kylie looks in the mirror a final time, hides her eyes behind her low-profile black Prada sunglasses. She is wearing a mid-length grey Givenchy dress, her blonde hair is swept and tied back. She’s ready for anything the world can throw at her.
After taking a deep breath, she walks into the top-floor conference room at the Dorchester. Settles behind the long trestle table covered in an immaculate white cotton cloth. It’s topped with a small angled sign bearing her name and she can see a cluster of microphones and Dictaphones. She looks up and the room seems to convulse. An explosion of shutter clicks and blinding white light. She can see the editorial heads of the BBC, ITN, Sky, AFP, Reuters, PA, CNN, Inter Press, Pressenza, EFE and UPI. And a million others. They have risen from their seats, out of respect for her, not as a famous actress but as a worried-sick mother.
She can feel the heat from the blisteringly hot TV lights strung on their steel poles. People everywhere. At the rear a long line of video cameras are sited on a raised platform. She is flanked by a giant suited bodyguard and a round-faced black woman in her early fifties. Charlene Elba, a rough-and-ready veteran of her Hollywood press campaigns. Elba taps the main desk mike, gets the ball rolling. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. All of you are aware of the great efforts being made by law enforcement agencies in many countries to find Caitlyn Lock. Both Kylie Lock and Vice President Thom Lock are immensely grateful for the endeavours of those detectives and individuals. However, this morning we will not be addressing any issues relating to the inquiry.’ There is a pause. ‘Today Kylie would like to directly address whoever has her daughter. Afterwards, she will do interviews. The press session will last ninety minutes, after which Kylie has to leave for a personal meeting with the Chief Constable of Wiltshire and representatives from the British Home Office and the FBI. We thank you again for your attendance.’
Kylie takes a second to compose herself before attempting the task of making an impression on the audience. She can feel the cynicism. Hazard of the profession, she guesses. She takes off her sunglasses. Her eyes are bloodshot and it’s apparent that she is not wearing more than a brush of powder. The features are familiar to all of them. ‘Whoever you are, whatever you want, please don’t hurt my baby.’ There’s a tremor in her voice. ‘Think of your own mother, think of your own wife or your own sister. How would you feel if they were in Caitlyn’s place? What would you say to whoever had them? You’d say this. Please, please don’t hurt the person I love most in the whole world. Please let them go.’
She has no notes in front of her, just a plain piece of paper and a pen. She looks down at them for what seems an over-long period of time.
Then she looks up. Her eyes fix on the cameras and the watching press pack and they are brimming with tears. ‘My Caitlyn has a heart of gold. She is the most caring, loving, wonderful daughter that a mother could have. Her whole future is ahead of her. Half a century of life in front of her. She has the right to meet the man of her dreams and fall in love, to raise her own family, to sit her own grandchildren on her lap and to know she has made the world a better place with her presence and her legacy. Please don’t take that from her. Don’t take away all that love that she can give, all her dreams, all her future.’ She quickly blots a running tear from her cheek. ‘I would gladly give everything that I have to get my daughter back. And that is what I am prepared to do.’ She turns over the sheet of plain paper in front of her and holds it up to the cameras. ‘This is my bank statement. I am lucky. I have ten million dollars to my name. I promise that I will give you that whoever you are. Everything I have, everything I can raise. In exchange for the safe return of my daughter.’ Her eyes narrow and her face hardens. ‘But be aware of this, I am also prepared to give that money to anyone who successfully leads the police or any other investigators to your door and who can recover Caitlyn safely and bring you and anyone involved in taking my daughter to justice.’ She takes a long slow breath, seems to relax her shoulders a little. She gestures to the giant beside her. ‘This man is Josh Goran.’ She puts her trembling hand on his broad forearm. ‘He is America’s most successful private investigator and bounty hunter.’ She takes strength from talking about him. ‘He is a former major in America’s Air Force Special Operations Command unit. For the foreseeable future, he will be working solely for me and will be completely dedicated to securing my daughter’s safe return.’
Goran points a big finger straight down the eye of the nearest camera lens trained on him. ‘For those who have Caitlyn, I have a message. Please take the lady’s money now and give her up. It’s an honest offer that Kylie Lock has made. She means it.’ He looks around the room, up at the ceiling. ‘Please take up that offer. You’ll be sorry if you don’t. Real sorry if I have to come and take her from you.’
89
Megan is trying to forget being dropped from the Lock case and concentrate on the silver dog tag Jimmy Dockery has placed in the palm of her hand. It’s from around the neck of Tony Naylor, the missing bum case that Tompkins dumped on her desk just as everything else was getting more interesting.
The cheap tag had been handed in by a jogger out on Salisbury Plain and listed on a CID lost and found circular because of the inscription on the back: ‘Happy Birthday T. Luv Nat x.’ Jimmy had noticed the tag matched the one Tony wore in the train station picture taken with his sister. To round things off, Nathalie Naylor had just confirmed it as the one she’d bought for her brother.
What’s interesting Megan is not that it was found but where it was found. A lay-by in the middle of nowhere. But not any old nowhere. A nowhere on the closest main road to the burned-out barn where Jake Timberland’s body was discovered.
Jimmy is staring at her staring at the small silver block. ‘You trying to contact the dead?’
She turns the tag over. ‘I wish I could. I’d certainly ask Tony Naylor what he was doing out on that road. Not the kind of place you go for a walk. It’s bleak, desolate, unattractive.’ She hands the tag back to her DS. ‘Naylor was a drifter, no money, no home, certainly no car. How did he get so many miles from a town or village with nothing around but unploughed fields and scrub?’
‘Someone must have driven him out there or he hitched a lift.’
‘Why?’
‘Maybe he heard there was farm work?’
She looks at Tony Naylor’s photograph in the file on her desk. The thin-faced twenty-five-year-old has been unemployed most of his life. When he has bothered to earn a living, it’s never been far from a town centre and a pub. Back-breaking shifts as a crop-picker or farm labourer out in the middle of teetotal-nowhere-land are not his style.
Naylor is dead. She knows he is. She thinks it and she feels it. And she knows that very soon she’ll be picking up the phone in front of her and breaking bad news to his twin sister.
‘Jim, see if you can get operational support to divert some men from the barn and run radar over the field.’
‘You think he’s buried out there?’
Megan nods. ‘I don’t think it. I’m sure of it.’
90
There comes a point when you have to take the game to the opposition.
Change defensive into offensive.
Be proactive rather than reactive.
Gideon runs all the axioms through his mind as he stands nervously outside the office of D. Smithsen Building Contractors. It’s an ugly collection of Portakabins on a rundown industrial estate. In the yard are old and dust-ridden flat-bed lorries. Pot-holed tarmac is covered in boils of spilled gravel and cement. Incongruously, there is also a pristine, personally plated black Bentley.
Gideon takes a deep breath and breezes into the latent hostility of a sour-smelling and grubby reception area.
‘Good morning. I’m looking for Mr Smithsen. I have some work I need doing.’
The woman behind the cheap desk looks annoyed at the interruption. She puts her magazine down and gets to her feet. ‘Take a seat, I’ll see if he’s busy.’ She jerks open a sliding door, leans in and then turns back to Gideon. ‘You can come through.’ She drags the door wider and steps to one side.
David Smithsen rises from a torn leather chair to greet his visitor. ‘Mr Chase, how are you?’ He gestures to a seat.
‘I’m okay, thanks.’
Smithsen sits back behind his desk ‘You certainly look better than when I saw you last.’
‘That wasn’t a good moment.’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t. Now, how can I help you?’
‘Thought it was about time to get that work done. You know, the repairs to the study, the damaged brickwork. And the roofing.’
‘Roofing?’
‘You mentioned you were going to do some for my father. He’d given you a deposit.’
Smithsen slaps his forehead with his palm and smiles. ‘Of course. I’m sorry. I remember now. I thought you meant roofing over the study.’
Gideon smiles. It’s time to stop the pretence. He has no intention of hiring the builder. It was simply an excuse to confront the man. ‘When you came out to Tollard Royal, you went upstairs and snooped around, went through some of my father’s private books.’
Smithsen looks horrified. ‘I went to check out the safety of your ceiling, that’s all.’
‘No, you didn’t.’ Gideon’s voice is calm but he feels increasingly nervous. ‘Mr Smithsen, I knew exactly how and where I’d left those books and you’d moved them, tried to look for something and I think I know what.’
The builder stays silent.
‘You were looking for the same thing as the man who broke into the house, the one who left me in the fire.’
Smithsen tries hard to look offended. ‘Mr Chase, really I—’
Gideon cuts him off. ‘Listen, I know what you are part of. What you believe in. You think I want to expose you or stop you?’ He shakes his head. ‘The Craft is thousands of years old. I understand how important it is.’ He leans forward across the builder’s desk. ‘I want to be part of it. Talk to the Henge Master. Talk to those in the Inner Circle who have to be spoken to.’ He pushes the chair back and stands. ‘Then come back to me, Mr Smithsen. You have my numbers.’ He is halfway out the door when he stops and leans back inside. ‘By the way, the books have been moved. And I’ve arranged for couriers to deliver very detailed extracts and a personal letter to the police in twenty-four hours, unless they hear directly from me.’ He gives him a parting smile. ‘The clock is ticking. Be sure to contact me very soon.’
91
At six o’clock, Megan shut
s down her computer and leaves to pick up Sammy. Adam is looking after their daughter and wants to buy them all dinner. Play happy families again. Despite instincts to the contrary, she finds herself giving in.
The Harvest Inn is not far from his house, so they walk over and sit outside. Adam brings a pint of lager, a large glass of white and an apple juice to the weathered wooden table and benches. He takes Sammy to the small swings while Megan orders their food. She sits looking at the evening sun dip behind the play area and for a moment things seem like they used to be.
Sammy runs from the swings to a sandpit. Adam makes sure she’s safe, then leaves her there to scrape up a mess and wanders back to the table. ‘She’s growing so quickly.’ He sits down and raises his drink. ‘Here’s to the great job you’re doing with her.’
‘And to you.’ She tilts her glass his way. ‘You’re a lousy husband but a good dad.’
‘I know. I realise that now.’ He looks towards Sammy, bent like a puppy scrabbling sand between her legs. ‘She is part of you and part of me. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her and …’ He seems to run out of courage, then adds, ‘… and nothing I wouldn’t do to have you back.’
‘Adam—’
‘No, please. Let me finish. I messed up. I’m sorry. Really sorry. Can’t we wipe the slate clean?’
Megan looks down at the table. ‘Things like adultery can’t just be wiped clean, Adam. It’s not spilt milk.’
The food comes and saves further embarrassment. By the time they’ve finished, Sammy is asleep on her father’s lap. They walk back to his house and Megan puts her to sleep in the spare room. Adam opens a bottle of brandy. The one they bought in France on their last holiday before Sammy was born. They end up talking. About work. About Sammy. About the reasons behind his affair. They talk until all the poison has seeped out and there’s no more cleansing and talking to be done.
