Gone Cold (26 page)

“I should’ve paid closer attention,” Aubrey says. “I’m a goddamn nurse. How could I have missed the signs?”

“Her death was accidental,” I mumble.

“What?”

But then she follows my eyes to a black limousine as it swallows Mrs. Dunne, then her husband.

“I’m skipping the mercy dinner,” I tell her.

“Then I won’t go either.”

Behind us, Terry says, “Why don’t you both come back to the pub, then? I’ve closed it for the day out of respect.” He rests a hand on my shoulder. “But I trust the three of us could all use a bloody drink or six now, am I right?”

What he means is:
Best you not be alone just yet.

I bow my head.

Terry removes his hand and places his long, thin arm around Aubrey’s shoulder then leads the way to his car.

I follow them.

I don’t pause, don’t glance back at Tasha’s grave.

The most pressing thought running through my head now is:
Will we ever find Hailey’s remains so that we can give her a proper burial, so that she can finally and forever rest in peace next to the mother who so loved her?

Chapter 54

Minutes before eleven o’clock at night Ostermann and I neared Knight’s End, sitting in the rear of one of London’s ubiquitous black cabs. Zoey remained behind at the Corinthia to mind my father. Ashdown, meanwhile, was paying a visit to his flat to collect items I told him we might well be needing later. The real reason I didn’t want Ashdown with us, however, was because Ashdown had a career to protect, and things, if they went as I expected, were going to start getting ugly.

Two blocks away we hit a bit of traffic and Ostermann suggested we go the rest of the way on foot. I paid the cab driver and stepped into another bitter night. A single line of thought had been racing through my mind the entire ride. If only I’d accepted my father’s request to pay us a visit twelve years ago when Hailey went missing. If only I’d welcomed him at Tasha’s funeral. Hell, if only I’d invited him to our wedding seven years before that. He’d have come face-to-face with his old mate Terrance Davies, and none of this nightmare would have happened. If only I’d known their history, Hailey would have never been taken. Because the abductor wouldn’t have been part of our lives.

By locking out my father, I’d doomed my wife and daughter. And I’ll never forgive myself for that.

Trying to escape these thoughts as we ran through the East End, I pulled out my BlackBerry. Slowed enough to go through my contacts and dialed a number that had remained in my phone for twelve years.

An eager voice answered. “This is Rendell.”

“John, it’s Fisk. I hope I’m not calling at a bad time.”

“No worries, Simon. Where are you? What can I do for you?”

“I’m in London. You remember Terry Davies, right?”

“Your English friend, sure.”

“Head over to his bar.”

“All right. And do what exactly?”

“You’ll need to search the entire premises; turn it inside and out.”

“Simon, I’ll need a search warrant. And in order to get that, I’ll need evidence. And time.”

“The bartender’s name is Casey O’Connell. He’s a nice guy but a bit of a mouth-breather. Say whatever you have to in order to get him to consent to the search.”

“And if he doesn’t consent?”

“Search the place anyway.”

“Simon, if I do that, any evidence I find will be inadmissible in court. And anything
linked
to what I find will be thrown out as well. You know that. If you have something, I have to do this right in order to preserve the integrity of the prosecution.”

“John,” I said as I slowed to a halt, “there’s not going to be any prosecution.”

With that, I clicked off the line.

*   *   *

Ostermann and I pushed our way through the outgoing tide of merrymakers and stepped inside the Knight’s End.

The young waiter, Andrew, from earlier in the day was the first one to spot us. “Sorry, mates, but it’s chucking-out time.”

“We’re not here to drink,” I said without stopping.

“Kitchen’s closed too,” he called after me.

I walked straight up to the bar where Lizzy stood with her back to us, wiping down bottles again.

“Where’s your boss?” I said.

Turning, she seemed startled to see me. “We’re closing, love.”

“Where’s your boss?” I said again.

“I told you this afternoon, I haven’t seen him in days.”

“How about his daughter?”

“His daughter hasn’t been—” Her eyes darted past me and she shouted, “What in bloody hell are you
doing,
you prat? Put that lad down
now
before I call the bill.”

I wheeled around, spotted Ostermann holding the kid waiter up against the wall by the throat. Christ, I thought. But before I could utter a word, he set the boy down on his feet, gave him a light tap on the face, and said, “There’s a good chap.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d had to remind myself that Kurt Ostermann did things differently. I flashed on the evening two years earlier in Berlin when, in a dark alley behind the infamous SO36 nightclub, Ostermann knocked out cold the two kidnappers I’d chased from Paris. As a result of what happened in that alley in Kreuzberg, the kidnappers, Dietrich Braun and Karl Finster, ended up dead. Not by Ostermann’s hand but by the Turks who’d hired them.

He started toward the rear of the pub.

Palms sweating, hands trembling in anticipation, I took one purposeful step in his direction before he stopped me cold with a look of pure fortitude chiseled into his face.

“I know where she is,” he said. “Follow me.”

Chapter 55

TWELVE YEARS AGO

At Terry’s pub, Aubrey and I sit across from each other at a tall but intimate bar table, both of us watching the rain slice through the night under the light of the streetlamp on the corner. In front of Aubrey sits a piping cup of black coffee, in front of me a pint of Harp. Terry is behind the bar, mixing his second gin and tonic of the past ten minutes.

For me, the beer is going down like drain cleaner. I want to numb myself but I know I’ll never get more than one or two pints into my stomach before I toss them back up. It occurs to me there have long been rumors that Terry still sells illicit drugs. Right out of the bar, supposedly. I’d known nothing about it while I worked here and I wouldn’t have wanted to know. What Terry did back in London to earn a living after being tossed out of law school and sent to prison for two and a half years, all for a single drunken fistfight, was his business. But in college I’d had my eye on becoming a federal cop and I hadn’t wanted to do anything to risk screwing that up.

Since becoming a federal marshal I’d ignored the rumors. See no evil, hear no evil. But I admit, I’ve always been curious. Particularly since I know the bar inside and out and in four years I’d never come across anything so much as suspicious. All he has is the one large storeroom in back and at one time or another, I’d seen every inch of it.

Still, I wonder.

For a few minutes I consider asking Terry if he has anything stronger than beer. Like weed. Like coke. Like smack. Then I think better of it. I’ve never done an unlawful drug in my life and now’s no time to start. Even though my career is no longer a consideration.

“I’ve decided to resign from the Marshals,” I tell Aubrey.

My words catch her by surprise. “Really? Do you know what you’ll do?”

I shake my head. “There’s no rush though. I’ll sell the house in Georgetown, take a little of the money to pay a one-year lease on a studio somewhere here in the District, and return the rest of the proceeds to Tasha’s parents.”

“The Dunnes won’t take the money back, will they?”

“I’m not going to leave them much choice. They can take the money or I’ll write a check to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They can’t object to that, can they? Maybe I’ll even present that as their first option.”

Aubrey lifts her brows. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Tasha used to tell me that her dad’s favorite saying was, ‘Charity begins at home.’”

I can’t help but smirk. “It doesn’t mean what he thinks it means. When the phrase was first coined, the word
charity
didn’t mean aiding the poor or helpless. Charity was more a state of mind, a mentality of warmness and kindheartedness. Like just about everything in this world, the phrase was eventually corrupted. Some attribute the quote to the English churchman Thomas Fuller, but all he did was add to the phrase. And what he added is now gleefully omitted by those who’ve shanghaied the words.”

“What did this Thomas Fuller say?”

“He said, ‘Charity begins at home, but should not end there.’”

“Jeez,” Aubrey says, shaking her head, “the way it’s used today, it sounds like it came straight from Ayn Rand.”

“More’s the pity, isn’t it?” Terry says as he sets his gin and tonic on the table and takes a seat between us. He motions to Aubrey’s coffee. “Sure I can’t get you anything a bit stronger, love? I make a hell of a bone-dry martini, don’t I, Simon?”

“He does,” I say, though I’m fairly certain I’ve never had one. I detest the taste of gin.

Aubrey, never one to bow to peer pressure, switches topics by asking, “How did the two of you meet?”

“He used to work for me,” Terry says, extracting a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his suit jacket. “Here at the pub.”

“I remember Simon working here all four years of college,” she says. “But I also remember thinking it was odd he went to work at a bar since he didn’t seem to like them very much. When we were at school, Tasha and I literally had to drag him out for a few drinks on Thursday and Friday nights or he’d have spent those evenings in the gym or alone in his room reading crime fiction.”

Terry purses his lips. “I met him on your campus actually.”

“At American?”

“Right, love. If I recall, I was putting up flyers for me Grand Opening. I stopped him to ask for directions to some building or another. And eventually talked him into escorting me personally. I caught his accent, of course, and once he confessed to being born in London, I told him he had to come work for me. He argued he wasn’t much of a bartender. I said, ‘Bullocks. You can start as me barback and work your way up from there. It took some convincing.
And
a substantial hourly wage. But I eventually got him to come round. Next thing you know we’re best mates.” He winks at Aubrey. “Or at least that’s what I told the young lasses who came into the pub just to get an eyeful of him.”

“Important thing is, we remained friends,” I tell Aubrey. “So I had someone to spend time with once you started stealing Tasha away more and more frequently.”

Aubrey smiles. To say it’s the saddest smile I’ve ever seen is an understatement. I realize now that I love Aubrey like a sister. Love her like I’d love Tuesday if she were still in my life. If our father hadn’t broken our family into pieces and spread us out on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Terry lights his cigarette. “You won’t believe what I read in the rags his morning. Those geezers in the mick parliament are proposing to ban smoking in pubs. In
pubs
.” He takes a pull and blows a stream of smoke up toward the ceiling. “And the daft journo that wrote the story says the Yanks are likely to follow suit sometime in the next few years. Can you believe it? Ban smoking in
pubs
. Might as well ban
drinking
in pubs while they’re at it.” He takes another drag. “Arseholes they are, every last one of them. Couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery. Never mind what banning fags will do for business. Imagine the aggro, will you? There may come a bloody day when I can’t light up in me own boozer.”

I throw back a sizeable portion of my pint. I love Terry too. Love him like a father. Like the father I’ve always wished I had.

Tears well and threaten to fall. So I lift the rest of my pint and carry it across the room. All the while wishing the rain would end without really having a sound reason why.

Why the hell should I care?

What concern is it of mine?

Let the skies open. Shouldn’t matter to me. Might as well rain forever now for all the good the sun will do me.

Chapter 56

Ostermann ran his hand down the far wall, feeling for a seam. He looked back at the kid waiter, who motioned for him to look lower.

“Brilliant,” Ostermann said as he kneeled before the hardwood paneling. “Here it is.”

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a switchblade. “Eleven-inch Italian stiletto,” he said as he flicked it open. “An anniversary present from Magda.”

Sliding the knife between two innocuous-looking wooden panels, he used the blade like a crowbar and slowly pried open a heavy, hidden door, which stood only three and a half feet in height.

And opened onto complete darkness.

Still on his knees, Ostermann removed his phone from his pocket. He tapped an app titled Flashlight and a beam as strong as a miniature Maglite appeared. Directing it into the hole, the beam illuminated a steep set of concrete stairs.

“Simon,” he said softly as he rose to his feet, “I think it’s best you remain up here while I go down.”

Wordlessly, I stepped past him, ducked my head, and cautiously started down the stairs.

The air was stale. Like an attic you haven’t entered for years. It was cold at the top, and the temperature dropped relentlessly the closer I came to the bottom. By the time I reached the last step, my breath was forming a fog so dense I could barely see past it.

With Ostermann right behind me shining the light from his phone, I stopped directly in front of a sealed metal door.

I felt my fingers curl into fists. Since Liverpool my left had been regaining strength and range of motion. Now it, like the rest of my body, was operating of its own accord.

I consciously opened my right hand and pressed my palm against the cold steel.

My breathing quickened.

My pulse raced.

Despite the temperature, beads of sweat began to form at my hairline.