Finding Milly

by Nathan Burrows

  There were several incoming transfers of three thousand pounds, at least one a month going back as far as Jimmy could see. According to the statement, they were transferred by individuals as they all had a name next to them. Were these the portfolio payments? It wasn’t possible to tell exactly who they were from as they only had an initial and last name next to them. With a heavy heart, Jimmy realised that none of them were from M. Tucker or N. Apollonia. Maybe she had paid for them some other way after all? Jimmy knew in reality that she almost certainly had, but at the same time was desperate to see a payment from her. The ironic thing was if she had asked him for the money, he would have given it to her. It would have been better—far better—than the alternative.

  What irritated Jimmy was the fact that Max earned more for a single photo shoot than he himself earned in a month. Forty hours every week, up at the crack of dawn in all weathers, and humping bins around for about half what Max earned for taking a few photos. Jimmy didn’t normally begrudge other people's success—he was happy enough with how he earned a living—but knowing something of Max’s background made the amount he earned obscene.

  Jimmy whistled when he saw some of the other incoming amounts into the account. He even adjusted his glasses, unsure if he was seeing the figures properly. There was a payment of ten thousand pounds earlier in the month from Hollister Enterprises, and as Jimmy leafed back through the previous statements, there were several more. One of them a few months before was for another ten grand, there were several for five grand, and a lot for slightly smaller amounts over the last six months. Max, and Hollister Enterprises, had been busy little bees, Jimmy thought as he sipped his whisky.

  He shuffled the papers, lining them up so they were in a neat pile and placing them on the floor next to his shoes. Tomorrow, he would go through the statements again with a highlighter pen to try to understand any patterns that there might be. Jimmy looked at his tumbler of whisky, standing next to a photo of Milly. Next to the photo was the lighter that she’d bought him, in its usual spot next to the frame. He picked up the glass, raised it in the photograph's direction, and tipped it down his throat.

  ‘In for a penny, in for a pound,’ he said to himself as he waited for the burning sensation in his throat to subside. He turned the bedside light off and settled back into the pillows. Tomorrow was Wednesday. He had nothing planned, but he had lots to do.

  Chapter 43

  ‘Mr Tucker?’ Jimmy groaned when he heard the familiar Irish accent on the phone. It wasn’t even nine in the morning, and he’d had a sleepless night. Not helped by several nips of whisky straight from the bottle at regular intervals, the last of which was less than two hours ago. ‘It’s Angela, from the hospital?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jimmy replied, his voice gruff. ‘I know.’

  ‘It sounds like I might have woken you up?’ Angela said. ‘Sorry if I have.’

  ‘No problem,’ Jimmy replied, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and shaking his head a couple of times. ‘How are you doing? Everything okay?’ Her laugh tinkled down the phone.

  ‘Hey, that’s my line. You’re the patient, I’m the nurse. Remember?’

  ‘Yeah, sorry,’ Jimmy chuckled. ‘It’s all good my end. I’m awake, therefore I’m still alive.’

  ‘This would be a weird conversation if you weren’t,’ Angela replied with a giggle. ‘So, you’re now overdue a follow up appointment. We’ve just had a cancellation for tomorrow morning. Are you free then?’

  Jimmy thought for a few seconds before replying, but he had nothing planned for the day as yet.

  ‘That should be okay. What time?’

  ‘Nine o’clock for a scan, then in with the consultant at eleven.’

  ‘Why do I have to have another scan?’ Jimmy asked. ‘I had one recently.’

  ‘That’s what the consultant’s written in the notes, Mr Tucker.’ Her voice was plaintive, and Jimmy caught the unspoken plea of “don’t shoot the messenger”. ‘We can go for a coffee after your scan, if you want? I should be able to sort my break out.’

  ‘That’d be nice,’ Jimmy said. ‘Sounds like a plan. So, nine o’clock then?’

  ‘Yep. A few minutes before to sort the paperwork out would be good.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll be there.’

  ‘Excellent stuff,’ Angela replied. ‘I’ll see you then.’ Jimmy could hear the smile in her voice as she said goodbye. He was looking forward to seeing her, but at the same time it would be the first time since he’d seen those photos that Max took, and Jimmy wasn’t sure at all how he felt about that.

  Once he’d showered to wash the remnants of the previous night’s whisky away, Jimmy walked to the corner shop to get a newspaper. It was bitterly cold outside, and Jimmy had reached the end of his path before he turned back for a thicker coat.

  As he walked along the pavement, Jimmy nodded at a couple of his neighbours who were having a discussion over their recycling bins. He didn’t stop to talk to them, but overheard snatches of a conversation about the previous night’s football match. Norwich City had, for once, put on quite a show judging by the animated discussion the two men were having.

  ‘Morning, Ahmed,’ Jimmy said as he walked into the small corner shop. The owner, a dour man from somewhere foreign, just nodded in reply. Just like he always did. He was short at just over five feet tall, carried an unhealthy-looking amount of fat around his abdomen, and was wearing the same pair of brown corduroy trousers and matching cardigan that he always wore. Milly reckoned that Ahmed had an entire wardrobe full of brown trousers and matching cardigans in the flat above his shop. Jimmy had asked him once where he was from, but just got an unblinking stare by way of a reply. So he was from somewhere foreign. Jimmy only knew the man’s name because it was the name of the shop. Ahmed’s Stores.

  ‘One pound fifty, please,’ Ahmed said in his sing-song accent as Jimmy put a copy of the Eastern Daily News on the counter. Jimmy patted his pocket and, realising that he’d left his wallet at home in his other coat, swore under his breath. Nestling between the two smoke grenades he’d confiscated from the Burnley fan the last time Jimmy had worn this coat—and then completely forgotten about—Jimmy found a lone pound coin. He laid it on the counter in front of Ahmed.

  ‘I left my wallet at home,’ Jimmy explained. ‘Can I stop by with the extra fifty pence later?’ He smiled at the shopkeeper, certain that would be fine. Jimmy had been coming in here almost every day since Ahmed had opened up his shop.

  ‘No,’ Ahmed replied, a hardness replacing his usual melodic accent. ‘Is one pound fifty. That is one pound.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Jimmy said, surprised. ‘I only live round the corner.’ Ahmed picked up the newspaper, and the pound coin, and put them behind the counter.

  ‘I keep it for you,’ the shopkeeper said, glancing at the gold coin on top of the paper. ‘With a deposit.’

  Jimmy chuckled at the earnest expression on Ahmed’s face. He wasn’t joking. Before leaving, Jimmy checked in his other pockets on the off chance that there was a coin larger than a fifty pence piece abandoned in one of them. He didn’t find any money, but he found a screwed-up yellow piece of paper in his coat pocket that he didn’t recognise. Watched by Ahmed, Jimmy unwrapped the paper and smoothed it out on the counter in front of them.

  It was a Post-It note, the sticky portion long since worn off, and on the paper was a random jumble of numbers, letters, and symbols. The shopkeeper looked at Jimmy, his eyebrows raised. When Jimmy realised exactly what the letters were, he spun on his heel and walked toward the door of the shop.

  ‘You want paper?’ Ahmed called after him. ‘Was only joking about deposit.’ Jimmy turned to see him holding the paper in his hand, waving it at him.

  ‘I’ll come back later,’ Jimmy replied as he opened the door to the shop. The only thing on his mind now was getting back home and seeing if the text on the Post-It note was what he thought it was—the password for Max’s hard drive.

  Jimmy’s palms were sweating as
he waited for the laptop to finish booting up. He tried to calm himself down by making a cup of tea, but it didn’t work. As he watched the white bar on the computer screen slowly—inexorably slowly—filling up, he thought about the Post-It note. Had it been attached to the hard drive when Fiona had put it into his pocket the previous night? That was the only thing Jimmy could think of. But that would mean that the note was attached to the hard drive, and surely no-one was that stupid?

  Realising that it didn’t matter how the Post-It note got into his pocket, Jimmy clicked on the icon for the external drive the second his laptop screen came to life and carefully entered the letters and numbers from the Post-It note into the computer. After a few seconds, a window appeared on the screen with a disorganised bunch of folders. Jimmy spent a few minutes organising them so he could see them all—they had names that at first glance seemed to be random, but as Jimmy moved them around, they fell into a sort of order.

  Prospects. Hopefuls. Next. Done.

  He started with the folder called Prospects. When Jimmy opened up the folder, there were a bunch of other folders, all titled with female names. There was a Katherine, a Sarah, a Charlotte, and an Alex. Inside each folder were copies of e-mail trails. Jimmy opened up Katherine and scanned through the e-mails between Max and Katherine after arranging them in date order. The conversation started with a query from a web form, presumably off Max’s studio website. The initial response was from Rachel, the receptionist, and then it got passed to Max at some point. According to the latest e-mail in the trail, Katherine was coming in for a photo shoot later that month. The last e-mail was from Max to Katherine with his bank account details for the payment and a note telling her to call him if she wanted to discuss alternative ways to pay.

  The Hopefuls folder had a lot more in it. Like the other folder, the files inside were organised by women’s names. Twenty of them, perhaps more. Jimmy opened one of them which—according to the title—belonged to a woman called Rebecca. There were e-mails, and a further two folders—Portfolio and Payment. Inside Portfolio were a series of photographs showing a slim, fresh-faced white woman, maybe early twenties, in a variety of poses. Jimmy cycled through the photographs. He had to hand it to Max—he knew what he was doing behind a camera. Rebecca was beautiful in them, raven-haired with porcelain skin. Innocent, but at the same time erotic. Any suggestion of Rebecca’s innocence was shattered the minute Jimmy opened the folder called Payment. He only had to look at the first photograph to realise that, and as he cycled through the other photographs, the extent of Max’s depravity became more and more obvious.

  ‘Jesus wept, Max,’ Jimmy muttered to himself, getting up from the table to finally make the cup of tea he’d almost made earlier. ‘You dirty, dirty fucker.’ A whirl of emotions was running through his head, the most pressing of them was whether he would find a folder with Milly in it.

  Jimmy sat back down at the table and, with a heavy sigh, opened up Next. There was one folder in there. Hayley.

  He opened the folder and looked at the contents. More e-mails, first between Rachel and the woman called Hayley, and then more between Max and the woman. Jimmy opened Portfolio and clicked on the first photograph. It was Angela.

  She was lying on a sofa in the photograph wearing a thin satin-looking slip, with the only part of her clearly visible her face. The rest of her was in shadow. Whether this was from the lighting that Max had used or done in Photoshop, Jimmy didn’t know and didn’t care. Angela was looking at the camera lens, the expression on her face a combination of reticence and excitement. The next photograph in the series had her sitting on the edge of the sofa, thin hands crossed over her small breasts as if she had been surprised or interrupted somehow. Fingers trembling, Jimmy worked his way through the rest of the photographs, but there was nothing among them he would class as explicit. Erotic, most certainly, but not explicit.

  Jimmy’s finger was shaking badly as he moved the cursor over the folder titled Payment. He knew what was in it, and was desperate to look inside to validate what he thought, but he didn’t want to see Angela doing the things that Rebecca had done. Or having the things done to her that Rebecca had had done to her. One thing Jimmy knew for sure—if he opened the Payment folder, he didn’t think he’d be able to talk to Angela again.

  Knowing that he would never be able to unsee what might be in the Payment folder, Jimmy moved his finger away. He had one more folder to look in, the one titled Done. His whole hand started trembling as he realised that Milly might be in this folder.

  Jimmy took a deep breath, held it, and tapped his finger on the mouse.

  Chapter 44

  Jimmy stared at the new folders on the screen. There were nowhere near as many of them as there were in the other folders. Each folder had a woman’s name underneath it. He stared at the folder on the far right of the row called Nikki for a few seconds, which turned into a full minute, before deciding to open one of the other folders first. He chose the one as far away from the one labelled Nikki as he could, resolving to work his way through the others before deciding whether to open that one.

  Rhiannon, although that almost certainly wasn’t her real name, was the folder he opened first. Inside were more folders, set out just like the others, along with e-mail trails. He didn’t bother looking at any of the e-mails, even though that would have revealed the woman’s real name. Jimmy didn’t really want to know her real name. He clicked his way into Portfolio and had just opened the first photograph in the folder when the doorbell rang.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Jimmy muttered as he got to his feet. He walked into the hall, peering at the silhouette standing on his doorstep before opening it.

  ‘Hey, Mr Tucker,’ Laura said with a bright smile. ‘Hope you don’t mind me popping by.’ She raised her hand to show him a Tupperware container filled with what looked like food. ‘I just wanted to drop something off for you. It’s some lasagna.’

  Jimmy stared at the container, momentarily lost for what to say. No-one had ever just popped in to give him some food before.

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ he said. ‘Come on in.’ He stepped back to let Laura into the house. She breezed past him, leaving a faint but intoxicating smell of perfume in the air.

  ‘Thanks,’ Laura said over her shoulder. ‘I’ll just pop it in the kitchen.’

  When Jimmy caught up with Laura, she was kneeling in front of the fridge. Jimmy looked at her, hoping that she didn’t look too hard at the other things in there. Several of them were quite a long way past their expiry date,

  ‘I cooked it last night for Gareth,’ she explained as she got to her feet, ‘and there was loads left over so he suggested I bring some round. I hope that’s okay?’ Laura suddenly looked uncertain, as if she wasn’t sure if she’d done the right thing or not.

  ‘That’s a lovely thing to do, Laura,’ Jimmy replied, forcing a smile onto his face. ‘I’ll bet it’s delicious. It’ll save me a trip to the chippy later.’ Laura giggled in response, her dimples appearing briefly as she did so.

  ‘I think I might have put a bit too much garlic in it,’ she said, ‘so you should be safe from vampires for a day or two.’

  ‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’ Jimmy asked. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t offer the woman a drink, no matter how much garlic there was in the lasagna.

  ‘That’d be lovely,’ Laura replied, her gaze floating past Jimmy and onto the laptop on the kitchen table. Her smile flickered for a split second, and then completely disappeared. Her cheeks coloured as Jimmy watched, and he turned to look at the laptop screen. There was no hiding the fact that the woman in the photograph on Jimmy’s laptop wasn’t wearing much in the way of clothing.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ Laura said, her voice forced. ‘I’ve, erm, I’ve interrupted you.’ She flicked her wrist to look at her watch. ‘I should go,’ she said as a frown creased her forehead. ‘Didn’t realise how late it was.’

  Jimmy strode to the table and closed the laptop, hiding Rhiannon’s photograph from v
iew.

  ‘It’s not what you think, Laura,’ he said. In truth, he had no idea what the poor woman thought. Other than the fact that she’d come round to give him some food and caught him looking at pornography in his kitchen.

  ‘Honestly, Mr Tucker,’ Laura said, her face full of concern. ‘I’m really sorry to have interrupted.’

  ‘Laura, please,’ Jimmy replied. ‘Let me explain.’ They looked at each other in silence for a few seconds before Jimmy continued. ‘How much has Gareth told you?’

  Twenty minutes later, Jimmy had told Laura everything. Well, he reasoned, almost everything. There were one or two bits that he left out, conscious of the fact that Laura was a lawyer. So, he told her about meeting Fiona, but hadn’t described the exact circumstances of their meeting. Or the breaking and entering part of the story. One thing he hadn’t touched on was Gareth’s involvement in the sting on Simon; Jimmy took full credit for that, sure that Gareth wouldn’t mind.

  ‘This Max, the photographer. He’s the key to it all,’ Jimmy said as he put a fresh cup of tea in front of Laura. ‘I mean, Martin Hollister’s at the top of the pyramid, but it’s Max who’s the key. He’s recruiting them, using them, and setting them up with this network.’

  ‘So how does Milly fit into it all?’ Laura asked. ‘And where is she?’

  ‘My best guess,’ Jimmy replied, hoping that what he was about to say was true, ‘is that she’s done a runner. Got involved with this Max bloke, ended up with the network and realised she was in way over her head.’ He sipped his tea. ‘And instead of facing up to breaking the law, she’s run away.’ He thought back to when Milly, at the tender age of nine, had been caught nicking sweets from a corner shop. He’d found her a couple of hours later hiding out in the shed at the bottom of the garden, complete with food and a sleeping bag. ‘She’s done it before, kind of.’