Chasing Innocence (22 page)

‘What’s that fucking mean?’ But Boer had disconnected. Brian turned to Adam and took a step at him. Adam took a step back.

‘What?’

‘The number plate?’

‘The Rover?’

‘Yes the fucking Rover.’

‘So?’

‘You can find out the Rover’s registered address?’

Adam thought for a second and then shock and realisation spread across his face. ‘But…I can’t.’

‘What do you mean you can’t?’

‘I can’t, I could get fired.’

‘Fucking fired.’ Brian took another step forward and Adam took another step back.

‘I don’t want to encroach on your cosy world or anything but there’s the small matter of your missing wife and my missing daughter. Now explain to me the full meaning of “I can’t”.’

‘I could lose my job…’ Adam’s voice failed, realising the futility of the statement. ‘I just didn’t think, it never even occurred to me.’ He looked utterly defeated, his eyes wide and almost panicked with the realisation.

‘Your wife is missing and it never occurred to you, what planet are you on?’

It simply hadn’t, suppressed by that part of him still hoping Sarah would call and say she was home, that this nightmare would be over, suppressed by that part of him programmed not to lose his job so he could pay their mortgage. And now Brian’s disdain seemed to magnify the inadequacy he felt for everything, the responsibility he felt for Sarah being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everything that had been simmering inside of him the last day now boiled over. The anger exploded outwards, he stepped forward and threw everything he had into the punch.

And Brian let him do it, realising Adam’s conflict in the half second before the punch was thrown. He moved his body so the first punch landed against his shoulder, the second harder into his side and then Adam was on top of him. An elbow glanced across his cheek, then Brian turned beneath the next blow and kicked Adam’s feet away. The momentum spun Adam onto his back and he hit the mud hard, knocking all the air from him. He immediately rolled away, coughing and spluttering.

Brian stepped across and pinned Adam to the ground with a knee on his chest, batting away his furious attempts to knock him free.

‘Stop it and listen.’

Adam did after a while, his eyes full of anger and tears.

‘I’m sorry if I was hard on you, but I really need your help here. Now what do you need to access that information?’

‘Internet access,’ Adam wheezed. ‘We need somewhere with a mobile signal and GPRS or better.’

‘Speak English, Adam, what’s that mean?’

‘There’s mobile signal here but no internet carrier. We need to go somewhere that does.’

‘Good.’ Brian stood and held out a hand. Adam ignored it and stood by himself, glaring at Brian as the sun disappeared behind tall trees, the shadows reaching out across the fields. Brian held his right arm.

Adam broke the silence. ‘You’re not an easy person to like, Brian.’

‘Yeah well, I get that.’

‘Did I hurt you?’ Adam asked.

Brian laughed. Adam did not. The shadows reached further across the fields.

‘Tell me what’s wrong with your arm.’

‘It’s not my arm, it’s my back, the nerve endings are all messed up.’

‘How come?’

‘I had a run in with an RPG and lost.’

‘A rocket? When you were in the army?’

‘What’s with all the questions?’

‘Because I need to trust you, Brian, and to do that I need to know at least a little about you.’

Brian relented. Adam was a little earnest but he kind of liked him. ‘I served in the second Paratroop regiment. We were in the Eden they call Helmand. Full of nasty little fuckers.’

‘What did you do as a Paratrooper?’

‘In the regiment you all muck in, my primary role was target acquisition.’

‘Target acquisition?’

‘I was a sniper, Adam.’

Adam was not expecting that, he imagined Brian closer to the action. ‘A sniper?’

‘Sure, and a good one. I could take out the engine block in a moving vehicle at twelve hundred metres and my longest kill came in just under two klicks, although she was sat nice and still. The nerve endings in my back are so messed up now, I can’t pull a trigger and be sure I’m not going to blow my own foot off.’

‘You shot a woman?’

‘They have two eyes and ten fingers, Adam, can press buttons and pull triggers just like any man I ever knew. The tricky bit was not hitting the kid. She had it strapped to her, they do that.’

Adam shook his head and Brian was not in the mood for moral dilemmas. He turned and headed back down the muddy track, passed a crumbling outbuilding on the left, a gatepost without a gate and to the car. Adam followed a minute later.

FORTY-ONE

Boer dropped the phone into his jacket pocket and leaned his head back against the headrest. He closed his eyes.

‘You want me to take you home Fran? You could do with a rest.’

‘I’m fine, Helen, just thinking.’

She tapped her index finger against the steering wheel and looked at the clock on the dash. They were running out of day. They had arrived back in Hambury just before three to find Brian Dunstan was not in custody and nobody knew where he was. So they had checked in on the search of his flat. Sparse was not the word. It looked like Brian Dunstan had packed and was not expecting to come back. Andrea’s books and neat piles of clothes indicated she thought she would be. Her diary was now their prize and on its way to the lab in London. Sometime that evening they should get photographed images of the pages. They had left the forensic team in the flat checking through the hidden and microscopic detail.

They had then driven across town with the intention of talking to Adam Sawacki. They were now parked on the gravel outside his apartment. The fact Brian Dunstan was missing was half expected. Ferreira even suspected Boer put off pulling him into custody for that very reason. But discovering Adam Sawacki was now off their radar was a surprise. To now find Adam and Brian together, neither she nor Boer would have envisaged that. And now Boer was treading a very fine line.

‘That could go horribly wrong.’

‘I know.’ Boer kept his face angled at the car roof, his eyes still closed.

‘You’ve given Dunstan key information relating to a criminal investigation. You have seen his record, he’s not reliable.’

‘He’s certainly not a reliable citizen, although a Military Cross might indicate he was a good soldier. At the end of the day I haven’t told them anything. I’m sure it would have occurred to Adam eventually. He’s a smart kid even if he is still in shock. As for Dunstan, I’d rather he was out looking for his daughter than in a cell. He could be useful.’

‘He needs to be in the station talking to us, Fran! Not chasing down our bloody leads. The Chief Inspector will want to know what we have on Brian and we have a whole lot of nothing.’

‘I just talked to him, he sounded like an OK guy.’

‘Francis, you’re an arse!’

Boer rolled his head sideways and looked at her through heavy eyes. ‘I want to find Andrea and Sarah, and I want them alive, Helen, not to waste days and weeks hoping someone finds their bodies so we can harvest forensics. I want them alive and Brian improves our chances of that happening. He looked at the CCTV hours ago, tech are only just looking at our copy.’

‘But the Chief…’

‘I’ll give Anne what she needs. Don’t you worry on that account.’

‘But she’s going to want him front and centre with the mother tomorrow.’

‘Has she confirmed that already?’

‘Yeah, she called while we were driving back. You were asleep.’

‘No I wasn’t.’

‘Yes you were, Fran, your chin hit your chest just before the M40 and it didn’t come up again till we came off the A34. You were out for over thirty minutes.’

‘I was thinking. I wasn’t asleep.’

‘OK Fran, whatever way you want it.’

‘Why didn’t she ring me?’

‘You never answer her calls.’

Boer returned a shallow nod in acknowledgement. ‘What did she say?’

‘Press conference midday tomorrow. We haven’t wasted a week here hunting through the local hotspots, she’s going national straight away. With Sarah’s background and a pretty girl missing the media will be all over it. It could be her big break.’

‘God, Helen, you’re starting to sound like me.’

‘So, do you want the good news?’

‘She wants you sat right beside her?’ he said.

‘No, me and you.’

He groaned. ‘What does she want me there for?’

‘I guess she sees this as your last big tango. She wants you right next to her so she can bask in the glory.’

‘What glory?’

‘You’re one of the most decorated officers outside London, Fran, legitimately decorated and you’ve never used your influence to get a seat upstairs. You work in Hambury when you could have gone anywhere. We look up to you and she wants some of that.’

He grunted. ‘She’s going to be pissed when I don’t show then.’

‘Francis…’

‘No, I mean it Helen. We’re trying to find a kidnapped child and a missing woman, not work on our TV portfolios.’

‘That’s going to look bad for both of us.’

‘You can handle yourself. Everyone knows what I’m like. Chief Inspector Anne Darling can kiss my bony arse. Besides what’s the worst she can do, fire me? I could be dead in a week.’

‘Come on, Fran, don’t be like that. You’ve been managing. There’s been no change for almost a year, has there?’

‘It’s different now. I’m tired of it all Helen, this constant rat race of people going all out to get more for themselves and not giving a damn what they do and who they do it to. I’m just about done and glad of it.’

‘Done with the job, or done with life? Because if it’s the latter Ricky wants your TV.’

Boer laughed and pushed himself upright. ‘That’s my girl.’ He pressed the palm of his hand into his stomach. ‘It’s time for you to step up, Helen. If anyone ever told me the best partner I’d ever have would be a woman, I’d have struggled with that. But a lot has changed these last twenty years. This is not my world anymore, it’s yours. You sit beside Anne with my best wishes. I won’t be there.’

‘Thanks!’ she said. They sat in silence.

‘Where to next then, boss?’

‘The station. I think we’ve wasted enough time today. We need to get someone over to the Rover’s registered address. I’ll be lucky if that’s done before tomorrow. Should give Brian time enough.’

Ferreira reached for the ignition.

‘And I want you to check this out for me.’ She stopped and watched him produce a piece of crumpled notepaper from his jacket.

‘What’s that?’ She took it from him. There was a phone number neatly penned across the middle. ‘This is Andrea’s handwriting. Where did you find this?’

‘Questions, questions.’

She stared hard at him. ‘You old dog, you found this in her room. Where was it?’

‘Behind the photo of her and Brian.’

Ferreira slapped the palm of her hand against the wheel and let out a long low frustrated groan. ‘Don’t die just yet, I obviously still need you. Whose number do you think it is? We should call it.’

‘Did that already.’

‘You did, who answered?’

‘Ali.’

She thought for a second. ‘Brian’s boss? What did you say?’

‘I hung up.’

She stared out of the window trying to imagine the various scenarios. ‘Brian’s boss!’ She said again. ‘What do you want to do?’

‘I don’t know, that’s what I was thinking about. I didn’t want to jump to any wrong conclusions.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like immediately assuming this number means Ali’s involved. There’s a lot of reasons for this number being in that picture frame. I think I have most of them figured.’

She looked from the paper to Boer and back down. ‘I’ll dig up what I can.’

Boer clicked his seat belt into place. ‘You focus on that number and I’ll start chasing down loose ends. You never know, we might even have the diary by the time we get back.’

FORTY-TWO

Adam found the internet signal he needed as they entered Warwick. Brian pulled over and turned sideways in his seat, watching intently as Adam logged into his company’s web portal. His nerves led him to hit all the wrong keys and two attempts to log in. Two attempts that would be flagged on some log that may or may not come to the attention of a human. Just as the government bureau maintaining the databases also ran audits that had to be quantified against sanctioned requests. If they ever flagged this one the penalty was a large fine and his job.

He paused and concentrated and typed the correct password, clicking through the screens. He was finally presented with a search box and a blinking cursor. His moment of truth. And now it was here it seemed irrelevant. So pointless. He was sat in a car surrounded by looming medieval buildings, connected via a wireless signal to a distant faceless computer. He typed in the number plate and seconds later he was looking at an address in Peterborough. Feeling a little jubilant he turned the laptop so Brian could see.

Three hours later they were standing in a village street, in the dark, a few miles north of Peterborough’s main suburban spread. The village was on the verge of countryside, the street full of former council houses now neat and prim. Brian parked at the end of the street and they both walked to the house, the registered address of the Rover’s owner. A battered Mondeo was parked on the drive, beside a concrete path that led down the side of the house to darkness. Green light glowed through closed curtains at the front of the house.

Brian stepped up to the front door and knocked. When there was no answer he knocked again and they waited. There was little sound save for the distant drone of the main road. The night air was cold, their breath misting. He stepped onto the lawn and rapped on the window. Still nothing.

‘Maybe he’s gone out?’ Adam offered.

Brian turned to him. ‘Eight on a Sunday night, a place like this. I doubt it. Everybody’s cosied down thinking about work tomorrow.’

He stepped around Adam and along the shadowy path beside the house, stopping at the back door. He knocked and waited and when nobody answered he tried the handle. The door opened. Adam half whispered, half shouted a rebuke as Brian stepped inside.