Cold Winter Sun

by Forder, Tony J.

‘So he was just going to pitch a tent in the desert where and when he felt like it.’

  ‘That’s as much as we knew, yes.’

  ‘Is Drew an experienced camper?’

  ‘Yes. Woods and mountains, usually. He disappears into the San Gabriels and Lake Arrowhead a couple of times a year. We’re not sure if he’s done a desert before, but he is used to making his own way outdoors.’

  I let that filter. Woods and mountains threw up different creatures and animals to the desert, but there would be less immediate danger from the terrain where he was now. As for the people you might encounter… that was a different matter entirely. A thought occurred to me. ‘Did he take his own vehicle or rent one?’

  ‘The police asked that same question. I think they were hoping he rented a vehicle with a GPS tracker on it. But no, he took his own Kia minivan.’

  I’d been hoping for the same thing. ‘And there’s no sign of that?’

  ‘None, no.’

  ‘How about his mobile? Were the police able to trace that?’

  ‘His cell? I doubt they took it that far. It’s a lot of work, apparently. So they told us, anyhow. Much harder than they make it look on TV.’

  I thought that was most likely true. I also thought beyond law enforcement. ‘Have you spoken with a private investigator?’ I asked.

  There was a slight hesitation before Donna admitted they had. ‘Drew spoke with someone yesterday. They also said it would take a while to obtain any phone records. They are at least looking into it, which is more than the police seemed willing to do.’

  I scratched my head, felt the chill wind bite into my flesh once again now that I had my hood down. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a think about it and get back to you. You seem to have covered all the bases. Your PI will hopefully investigate much more thoroughly than the police did.’

  ‘Oh. Okay, Mike.’ Her voice had become soft. I could hear the unspoken anguish in that tone. Would recognise it anywhere.

  ‘What are you looking for here, Donna?’ I asked. ‘What did you have in mind before you picked up the phone to call me?’

  ‘I suppose I’m not sure, really. Just to bounce it off you. See if you could think of anything we hadn’t yet done.’

  ‘You used Wendy’s phone. Is that so’s you’d know I would answer right away?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I understood then how desperate she must have been. ‘You reported it, so you have the disappearance at least logged in the system. You have a PI who will follow up. I’m not sure what else you can realistically do, given that, from what you’ve told me, the trail effectively went cold more than a fortnight ago.’

  ‘I suppose. It’s just… you tend to think the worst in these circumstances. You end up having to put your faith in people you don’t know, and that makes you anxious.’

  ‘You mean you, or you and your husband both?’

  ‘I guess I mean both of us. Drew doesn’t know which way to turn right now. He’s frustrated. He feels impotent, and I know he believes Vern is in trouble. I feel the same way. It’s hard to explain, but something is not right, Mike.’

  I took a breath. Pulled my hood back up to try and trap whatever body heat I was expelling. I thought I could still detect something in Donna’s voice. Not anything she had said, more an unspoken request. I considered what that might mean, how it might play out and develop. There didn’t seem a lot going for it, with far more unknown than known. Yet I also understood how distressed my ex must be if she was asking for my help. Even if she had not actually uttered those precise words.

  The snow was falling harder now. I enjoyed what it did to the land, and the cold air invigorated me. The winds were harsh and punishing, but even they had a way of making me reflect. My time here had been well spent, my mind healing while my body did the same. Donna’s call had come at the right time. I was done here. It was time for a different challenge.

  ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can make it,’ I told Donna.

  ‘Are you sure, Mike?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure.’

  When I was through with the arrangements I placed a call of my own.

  ‘Terry,’ I said. ‘How do you fancy a road trip?’

  2

  We were met at Los Angeles International airport by my ex and my daughter. Terry and I stepped out glassy-eyed and cramp-legged into the crowded arrivals hall, each of us lugging a hefty Bergen backpack in addition to our carry-on bags. Wendy came rushing towards me, her face wreathed in smiles. She threw herself at me like an Exocet missile and almost cut me in half as her body slammed into mine and we embraced in one mighty hug.

  It had been eighteen months since I had seen her, and it felt so good to hold my little girl in my arms again that I did not want to ever let go. My daughter was fourteen and fast becoming a woman other than inside my head, where she would forever remain the same child I taught to belch the alphabet and from whose bedroom I regularly chased scary monsters. My nose buried deep into Wendy’s sun-bleached hair, I breathed her in as I had when she was a baby. I wanted to soak up all of her essence so that it could remain within me wherever I went. She had grown so much since the last time we were together, and was slender but with healthy musculature. I peered over her shoulder, blinking away tears of unrestrained joy. Standing to one side, I noticed Donna was looking a little sheepish, her own smile forced and strained. When Wendy finally withdrew her arms from around my neck, I took a step back and made introductions.

  ‘Wendy, Donna, this is my good friend Terry Cochran. Terry and I served in the Royal Marines together, and he also saved my life last summer.’

  ‘And Mike saved my life also,’ he said. ‘For the second time, I might add.’

  Terry was not overly tall, but cut a striking figure all the same. His hair was dark, short, and spiky in that unkempt kind of way that didn’t seem to matter. He had shaved off the full bushy beard I had become familiar with, and in its place had some designer stubble going on. I had ribbed him about it on several occasions during our flight, and in return he found a way to drive an elbow into me every time he got up to visit the toilet. He looked about ten years younger without the beard, but no less robust. I had no idea how much he weighed, but I imagined ninety-nine per cent of it was muscle. His skin was the kind of nut brown that could only come from decades exposed to the sun.

  Wendy surprised us all by jumping forward to give Terry a warm hug of welcome. ‘Thank you for helping my dad,’ she said, stepping back from the embrace. ‘He told me all about it. I’ll never forget what you did for him.’

  ‘You’re both very welcome,’ Terry told her, clearly touched and also slightly embarrassed, I imagined, by the show of affection from my daughter.

  Donna stepped forward to shake his hand. ‘Thank you for coming, Terry. We met once before if you remember?’

  ‘We did. At the hospital.’

  I had forgotten all about that meeting. It was after I was wounded at Umm Qasr in Iraq in March 2003, less than a month after Wendy was born. I was flown to Germany for surgery and then back home two weeks later. Wounded in the same firefight, Terry had returned via the same route and was sitting with me in my room at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham on the first day Donna visited me. It was hard to imagine ever forgetting that precious moment when I laid eyes on my daughter for the first time, as she lay cocooned in a lace shawl, pink cotton hat protecting her delicate head. I guess I had simply whitewashed my friend from that memory.

  Wendy held my hand about as tight as she could as we navigated our way through the terminal and into the multi-storey car park, where we eventually piled into Donna’s Chevy Tahoe. Having my daughter insist on sitting with me in the back was a thrill, though it left Terry to ride shotgun with my ex. We all made a commitment not to discuss our reason for being there until we’d reached Donna’s home, so we chatted about the flight and other meaningless drivel.

  The drive north from the airport along the I-405, following on to North Sepulveda Bou
levard through to Bel Air in the foothills of the Santa Monica mountains, took little more than an hour in Donna’s SUV. It was a warm and sunny day for the time of year, and everything around us seemed to glisten beneath an ice-blue sky. The blanket of smog that usually hung over the city like a brown stain that could not be erased, seemed to have been temporarily brushed aside in order to better welcome us. The roads were jammed, cars swooped in and out of lanes with alarming regularity, passing on either side of us. Though it was slow going, at least the traffic flowed reasonably smoothly. We made decent progress.

  The grey stone and clapboard house painted a Wedgewood blue was part of a gated community, and for the first time I saw the opulent lifestyle my daughter had been enjoying for the past few years. As we drew up outside a triple garage, I had to acknowledge the small part of me that was envious. Yet I also recognised how tremendously fortunate Wendy was to be growing up in a place like this. I could not begrudge my daughter any of it.

  She and I had spent the past ninety minutes catching up, and I could hardly escape her enthusiasm for the way her life was going. The one dark cloud had been those few days over the previous summer, during which both the Los Angeles police department and the FBI had been virtually encamped at the house waiting for me to contact Wendy. At that time I was supposedly on the run after murdering a gangster and abducting a young woman and a child. Which was another topic off the table until we were settled.

  Drew and Donna had not listened to my assertions that Terry and I would be fine at a local motel. Drew had paid for our flights – to our surprise and delight we had been given first class seats – and offered me and Terry two of the house’s five bedrooms. It was sixty hours since the phone call, and still I didn’t know how I felt about staying in the home in which my ex-wife now lived with her second husband. And our daughter. On the one hand it meant I got to spend more time with Wendy, for which I was grateful. On the other, I would be forced to occupy some time with a man I had never met, but who was shacked up with the woman I still loved. It was the place where love and pain collide, and pain remained the overriding feeling.

  Wendy could not wait to show me around. The interior was all cream walls, brown stone flooring with underfloor heating, dark wood, and a minimalist feel that I took to immediately. Spacious and cool, this was a home in which you could breathe and grow. Wendy’s bedroom was about the size of our old barracks house in Plymouth, and from her private balcony she had a breath-taking view of the ocean glimmering away in the distance between the mountain ridges. Directly beneath the balcony was an oval pool whose blue illuminations had just flickered into life in the gathering gloom. We joined Donna and Terry out on the lower decking where they sat already nursing a sweating bottle of beer each amongst the jacarandas and palms, fuchsias and crane flowers. I reached for a third bottle on the table, whilst a cola had been poured for Wendy. Ice cubes bobbed and crackled in her glass.

  ‘You two getting along okay?’ I asked.

  Terry looked up at me and nodded. ‘Famously,’ he replied.

  ‘Terry has been filling me in on some of what happened over the summer.’

  I nodded awkwardly and put away half my beer in a couple of swallows. I smiled then, and raised the bottle. ‘I couldn’t have had one of these back then. If I’d had one I would not have stopped drinking for the rest of the night. Or the following day.’

  Wendy had clung on to my arm when we sat down, now she hugged it tighter still. ‘That was so scary, Dad,’ she said. She wore purple jeans and a plain white polo shirt, a pair of Vans sneakers taking pride of place on her feet. Her face lost its smile for the first time since she and Donna had met us at arrivals. ‘The police and FBI said such horrible things about you. I thought they were going to hunt you down and shoot you like they do over here.’

  ‘But you knew I was innocent and you stuck up for me, right?’ My smile grew broader, as I recalled Donna telling me after it was all over how Wendy had shouted at anyone who dared suggest I might be guilty of murder and abduction.

  Nodding, Wendy said, ‘I knew they were wrong. I knew you must be trying to help that woman and little girl, not hurt them.’

  I kissed the top of my daughter’s head. I didn’t want to dwell upon what might have been. What I had right here and now in my arms was all that mattered. ‘Thank you, kiddo. That means the world to me.’

  ‘It’s just a shame that woman died in the end.’

  I glanced across at Terry and raised an eyebrow. ‘She did so rescuing Charlie, though. She did a very brave thing that night.’

  ‘I still don’t know everything that happened,’ Wendy said, peering up at me with her large, brown, soulful eyes. ‘Only what you told me when you called. Everything was still so confused and messed up at the time.’

  I looked over at Donna, who shrugged and nodded. I gave my daughter the highlights – or lowlights. On a particularly bad day back in July of the previous year, I had witnessed a man being shot and killed in a lay-by. Because I couldn’t reach my own car I ended up taking the victim’s in order to get away, only to discover his daughter and her nanny lying in the rear footwells. A short while later I also discovered that the victim was a big deal in organised crime, and had been murdered by a serving officer with the National Crime Agency. I sought the help of an ex-colleague, who was shot and killed when she drove from London to Wiltshire to meet me, and then had to rely on another ex-colleague – Terry Cochran – to help us evade capture. By this time I was being hunted by the police, the gangster’s brother and, as we were to later discover, a mysterious armed unit intent on killing us all. Three battles later, and with Terry now too injured to continue and the young child snatched from us, I had to ignore my own wounds and work with the nanny and the gangster’s brother to both get the girl back and bring down our adversaries.

  It transpired that the nanny had been the primary target all along, having worked for and been the lover of a man seeking titles and power, whose past included selling arms to the Taliban. The repercussions for Terry and me were minor, although his off-the-grid life had been exposed. I still felt bad about that, and I figured that had been one reason for my penitence up in the Scottish Highlands.

  ‘How many times were you shot?’ Wendy asked, interested in the gruesome aspect of the story as any teenager would be.

  ‘Twice. Neither was bad enough to put me out of action. Terry got the worst of it.’

  Wendy nodded solemnly. I thought she was perhaps reflecting on what might have been. The extra squeeze she gave me indicated I was correct.

  ‘So what do you do with yourself now, Terry?’ Donna asked.

  Terry shrugged. ‘This and that,’ he said. He drained his beer and wiped his lips.

  ‘Ah. Sorry, I should have known better than to ask.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. It’s just… hard to quantify is all.’

  I chuckled. Working private security black ops was impossible to fully explain in most company at the best of times.

  ‘How about you, Mike?’ Donna said, turning her laser-like focus on me. ‘How is your business going?’

  I set my bottle down and spread my hands. ‘Let’s just say I won’t be floating it on the stock market any day soon. My appetite for the banal no longer exists. In truth, I was probably wrong to think it ever really had.’

  ‘What you went through last year would have made anyone reflect on their life.’

  ‘It did that, all right. It came at too high a cost, though. For some. On the other hand, I suppose I found myself again. I’m not cut out for the humdrum, it would appear.’

  Donna laughed. ‘I could have told you that.’

  ‘Yeah, but you weren’t around to do so.’

  The words were out of my mouth before they had even scanned through the filter in my brain. I saw a flicker of hurt pass across Donna’s face.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean that the way it came out. All I meant was, you would probably have talked me out of what I was trying to
do, which is why I didn’t tell you before launching myself into it. You weren’t there, so I didn’t have to run it by you. I forgot that you always give the best advice, whereas I simply suck at it.’

  It was a good save, and Donna smiled and lost tension from her shoulders.

  ‘If you’re at a loose end you could always come over here to live,’ Wendy said, giving me a hard squeeze around the midriff.

  ‘Well, it’s not quite as simple as that, kiddo. But I’m here now, so let’s make the most of that.’

  ‘How long are you staying, Dad?’

  I glanced across at Donna. ‘To a degree that depends on what Terry and I discover when we go looking for Vern. But I’ll also find time to spend with you, sweetheart. I promise you that.’

  I was still feeling guilty at not having flown over to see Wendy following all that had happened during the summer. We had spoken – often – but despite knowing full well that Wendy so desperately wanted to spend time with me, until now I had made my excuses not to travel. It was never a question of my not wanting to be with my daughter. If it were down to me I would be with her every day of my life. The simple truth was, I had struggled mentally to deal with everything that took place. The emotional wounds lasted far longer than the physical ones.

  The mood having turned distinctly sober, we all looked up as the door leading from the kitchen onto the patio slid back. One or two photos that Wendy had sent me included Drew Mason, so I recognised the man now joining us. He was tall, lean, tanned and fit-looking. His suit looked as if it cost as much as my entire wardrobe. He smiled a greeting, but there were rings of neglect beneath his eyes, and his face was pinched with concern.

  Introductions were made. Hands shaken. Drew joined us for a drink while Donna got some food going. I let her husband unwind a little before asking, ‘Any updates while we were in the air?’

  He sipped some bourbon and savoured the smoky flavour before responding. ‘Nothing so far. The investigators I hired are supposed to be the best in the business, but the way they tell it the trail went cold in Vegas and has stayed that way since.’