Long Time Lost (16 page)

The Spanish Steps were a cascade of crumbling stone, blood-red azaleas and sun-dazed tourists. Miller found a spot towards the top of the steps, in an oblong of false shade being cast by the ochre facade of the church of Trinità dei Monti. He lowered himself on to the baking stone as Christine and Kate perched on the step below.

Rome shimmered before him; a clash of terracotta rooftops, teetering buildings and wayward alleyways. The city hummed with life, with noise, with the plaintive bleat of car horns and the jammer of voices.

He looked towards the knot of people clustered around the boat-shaped fountain at the base of the steps. He couldn’t see anyone climbing towards them, paying them too much attention, scoping them out.

Christine bunched her hands in her lap, rocking slightly. ‘I want to know about Danny.’

‘He’s safe. I told you that.’

‘Is it Steve? Is he here?’

Miller shook his head, still scanning the crowd. Christine fumbled for a cigarette, stabbing it between her lips, flicking a lighter.

‘Do I have to leave this place?’

‘Yes, Christine. You have to leave Rome.’

‘Where am I going?’

‘I don’t know.’

She inhaled raggedly. ‘Who’s she?’

‘This is Kate.’

Miller didn’t elaborate and Christine seemed to assume that Kate was another part of his team. A new member at her beck and call.

‘Did he tell you about Steve?’ She turned to Kate. ‘About my Danny?’

‘Should we be talking like this?’ Kate shielded her eyes and gazed up at Miller. ‘Isn’t it dangerous?’

‘It’s fine.’

And it was. There were people all around them, sitting and admiring the view, eating ice cream, reading. People with their own lives and cares to worry about.

‘Steve’s my husband,’ Christine was saying. ‘
Was
, I guess I should say, although I couldn’t exactly hang around for a divorce, could I? He killed a kid. Hit and run. I was in the car. I reported it, afterwards. Had to, didn’t I? But my Steve is a scary guy. All kinds of scary. He heads up a big gang in Liverpool, see? So Miller here told me I had to get away. I kind of figured I was
dead
anyway. What did I have to lose?’

‘And Danny?’

Her eyes dimmed, as if she was shying away from looking at something within herself.

‘Danny’s my son. I wanted to take him with me but the afternoon I was leaving he was playing at a friend’s place. I went to pick him up but when I got there he was already gone. Steve beat me to it. Steve
knew
.’

But the truth was Steve hadn’t known. It had been coincidence. Sheer bad luck. Miller had told Christine this a hundred times, though he’d long ago come to realise that she’d never accept it. He still couldn’t tell if it was because she honestly thought her thug of a husband had some kind of all-knowing power, or because it eased her conscience to tell herself she could never have got away without leaving Danny behind.

‘So now Miller keeps a watch on him for me. And Hanson sends me updates. Photos, videos, that kind of thing. One day, when it’s safe, Becca’s going to get word to him. Then he’ll come and join me. We’ll be together again.’

There was a toneless, robotic quality to her voice, as if she repeated the scenario to herself several times a day. Maybe she’d even believed it. Once.

Miller ached when he heard her talk this way because he knew the hard reality of Christine’s situation, even if she wasn’t ready to confront it quite yet.

Danny’s eighth birthday had been a month ago and Hanson had managed to clip some photographs from Steve’s Facebook page for Christine to pore over. She’d cried when Miller had shown her – she was often crying – and he hadn’t dared tell her how in awe of his father Danny had become. Steve had poisoned his son’s mind, telling Danny his mother had abandoned them both. Miller doubted there could be a reversal. He was pretty sure Danny was lost to Christine for good. And now, she’d lost Miller and his team, too.

‘Tell me about Clive Benson.’

‘Who?’

‘Don’t do that, Christine. We know he contacted you. We know he came to Rome. You two met. Why? What did you say to each other?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Honestly. I don’t.’

‘He’s in hospital,’ Kate told her. ‘He was attacked. He was beaten very badly inside his apartment.’

‘Well, that sounds shitty for . . . What did you say his name was again? Colin?’

Miller clutched his face in his hands. It was all he could do not to reach out and shake her.

‘Christine,’ Kate said, ‘the men who beat Clive, the men who put him in hospital, we think he could have told them about you. They could be here looking for you.’

‘
Here?
’

Christine turned her head wildly, half standing. Miller pulled her back down again.

‘We can’t help you until we know what you talked about. So tell us now. What did he come here to say?’

She cast her cigarette around in careless loops, looking up at Miller with a familiar pleading in her eyes. She’d often looked at him that way whenever she’d asked him about Danny, and sometimes when she’d asked him for other things, a form of comfort he couldn’t possibly provide.

‘I’m sorry, Miller. Really, I am.’

‘Forget sorry. I need answers. I have to know what you talked about.’

‘Just . . . nothing.’ Her lip trembled. ‘The life, you know. We understood each other, I guess.’

‘Did you talk about me?’

‘A little.’

‘And Hanson? Becca?’

‘I don’t remember too well.’

‘Try, Christine. What else?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve been pretty messed up. Look, I’ve been taking some stuff. I don’t think it’s been good for me.’

The tears were starting. They might have been genuine, though Miller doubted it. She wiped at her face with the hand holding the cigarette.

‘Your personal stories?’

She shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t tell him that. Why would I tell him that?’

Because you just told Kate, he thought. You just opened up to her right away. As if your story was there to be shared. As if the secret wasn’t keeping you alive.

‘How did Clive contact you? It wasn’t in the Dungeon Creeper forum. We’d have seen.’

‘That was stupid. I should never have replied to him.’

‘Replied to him how?’

‘Look, I was dumb, OK? I get that now. But there was this one time I used my username on another site. A chat site, for soap fans.’

Miller groaned and pounded his fist into the stone step.

‘I
know
. I screwed up. I’m sorry.’

‘And Clive found you there how?’

‘He said he googled my username. It came up, so he sent me a message.’

‘And you just replied? Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?’

Her shoulders bunched and she curled in on herself, crocodile tears rolling down her cheeks. She stubbed her cigarette out on the stone steps.

‘I was lonely, OK? And he sounded nice. He knew all about you. I could tell he was one of us. I could just tell.’

‘Jesus.’

‘I wouldn’t have replied otherwise.’

‘What about the others? Did he try and contact any of them? Did you?’

‘Not me.’ She snivelled and wiped at her face again. ‘I wouldn’t know how. I deleted my account from that other website after I met him. He told me to do that. He was careful, see?’

‘And Clive? Did he say if he’d contacted anyone else?’

‘I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him instead of me?’

‘Because he can’t speak, Christine. He’s in a coma. He’s probably going to die.’

He was being aggressive but he didn’t particularly care. She’d risked her life. Risked all of their lives. And for what? A chat. A moan. Maybe even a quick, sad tumble with a sad and lonely man.

‘Please, Christine,’ Kate cut in. ‘If Clive told you
anything
you have to tell us so we can stop this before anyone else gets hurt.’

Christine looked between them, lifting her face to stare up at Miller, then bowing her head and reaching for her shoe, tugging idly at the laces.

‘I haven’t spoken to anyone else. I don’t
know
anyone else. I don’t think Clive did, either. Nobody else had used their username online. You’re right. I’m probably the only one daft enough to do it.’

So maybe the rot hadn’t spread as far as Miller had feared. Maybe the rest of the system really was safe. For now.

But Hanson would need to fix things. He’d have to sweep the Web for their usernames. He’d have to change all their logins. Find a new forum, too, probably.

‘What happens now?’ Christine asked. ‘Where am I moving to?’

‘I honestly have no clue.’

‘When will you know?’

Miller shook his head, scanning the shimmering rooftops, lifting his eyes to the piercing white sun that was burning down and pinning him there.

‘I’ll never know, Christine. You’re on your own now. I can’t help you any more.’

Only her eyes moved, growing wide in her head.

‘You made it so that I can’t trust you, Christine. And if I can’t trust you, I can’t work with you. None of us can. You broke the rules. You’re out.’

‘But . . . you can’t do that.’

‘It’s already done. You did it yourself.’

She looked at Kate for help.

‘I don’t understand. What am I supposed to do?’

‘I taught you the life, Christine. Now you have to live it for yourself. I won’t be around any more. There’ll be no Hanson. No Becca.’

And no photos of Danny. No updates on her son’s life. He saw the brutal reality of it hit her then. The stupidity and the absoluteness of what she’d done. She started to cry again and this time he had no doubt the tears were real.

‘No. No.’ She was shaking her head over and over, shaking it like she had when Miller had told her they couldn’t get Danny out, that she had to leave the UK without him. ‘Don’t do this to me. You can’t do this to me.’

Miller didn’t respond.

‘You
can’t
. I’ll die without Danny. You won’t do it. You won’t.’

But he already had, and she saw that now. Saw it in his face. In the way he glanced away from her.

She sobbed and flailed her arms, batting his legs.

People were beginning to look. A lot of people.

‘Stop it, Christine. Stop. Listen to me.’

But she wasn’t listening and the audience were getting restless. Men and women were murmuring, shaping up to approach.

‘Christine,’ Kate told her. ‘Christine, it’s OK. He doesn’t mean it. He’s just angry. We’ll help you. We will.’

Miller fixed his jaw and glared at Kate but she leaned over and took Christine in her arms, stroking her hair.

‘You’re not alone. We’re here for you. You’re not alone.’

‘Your life is in her hands,’ Miller reminded Kate. ‘Think about that.’

‘You’ll help her. I know that you will.’

‘I’ll just stay here.’ Christine wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘I don’t care any more. I’ll just stay where I am.’

‘You can’t. Clive compromised you. There’s a man here looking for you. He’s already been to the hotel. He could be watching us right now.’

‘So help her,’ Kate urged. ‘One more move, Miller. Set her up somewhere new. A new name, new identity, all of it.
Then
you walk away. That’s fair, isn’t it? That’s reasonable.’

Miller knew he shouldn’t have looked at Kate in that moment. He knew he shouldn’t have let himself see how badly she wanted to believe in him. Probably, on some level, she was comparing Christine’s situation with Danny to her own aborted search for her brother. Perhaps, because of that, she couldn’t stand to see Christine cut off from her old life completely.

But what did Kate know about reasonable? What did anyone?

‘One more move.’ He grunted and pushed up to his feet, dusting off his hands. ‘But that’s it, Christine. That’s all I can do for you. You’ve chosen your own path.’

The Galleria Porta di Roma, located just off the A90 ring road to the north of the city, looked like most of the shopping malls Wade had visited back home. The complex was a low-level concrete box surrounded by austere landscaping, acres of tarmac, and thousands of parked cars.

It was just as familiar inside. About the only thing that told Wade he was outside the UK were the Italian signs on the shops that surrounded him. But the store he was interested in had a sign that didn’t rely on any language. It was a symbol of an apple with a bite taken out of it, and he found it on the first floor of the mall.

Wade didn’t own many Apple products but he’d been in plenty of their stores over the years and this one looked much the same as all the others. There was a lot of glass at the front, then a series of pale wooden tables loaded with iMacs and iPhones and iPads and i-Whatevers. There was a scrum of customers hanging about. Some were testing products, some were making use of the free wifi. And some were gathered at the back of the store where the Genius Bar was located.

Wade was no Luddite. He was familiar with the standard four-digit security code that protected most handheld Apple products, so he was aware that the system blocking his access to the stolen iPad was something more specialised. And no matter how clever some of the nerds working in this particular Apple Store might be, Wade was pretty sure that classing them as geniuses was playing fast and loose with the term. So he had no intention of queuing up for the supposed expertise of some pimple-faced kid.

But there was one thing Wade was relying on, and that was simple human nature. In his experience, like-minded people tended to stick together. Wade was a thug and a crook, and because of that, he knew lots of thugs and crooks back home. So it stood to reason that geeks in Rome would know other geeks. And somewhere in the city, just waiting for Wade to come find him, there had to be a kid who was so good with computers that working in an Apple Store for him would be like Ronaldo selling football boots in Foot Locker. And just like Ronaldo, this kid would have fans. He’d have admirers who’d recognise that he was the absolute best at what he did. And some of those admirers would be working here, for Apple, masquerading as geniuses while the real genius lurked in the shadows.

‘Can I help you?’

A chubby teenager who didn’t look quite old enough to shave was smiling at Wade. He had on thick-frame glasses, a bulging blue T-shirt and a lanyard hanging from his neck. Maybe Wade should have been insulted that the kid could tell he was English just from his appearance, but right at that moment, he was grateful for it.

‘I’m looking for someone.’

‘Someone who works here?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘I don’t understand.’ The teen blinked. ‘Who are you looking for?’

‘See,’ Wade said, pressing a hand down on his shoulder, ‘that’s what I’m hoping you can tell me.’