Stealing People (13 page)
‘He’s a spook … or something like it. What can you ever really know about a spook?’
‘Even spooks need love … probably more than most if they’re living in an artificial world.’
‘You’re clever for a kid,’ said Siobhan. ‘I can tell you listen. Most people don’t. As far as love is concerned, my father doesn’t want anything complicated. I told you, he doesn’t show his feelings. It’s probably a professional requirement, as well as the fact that the poor bastard’s male and English.’
‘So what’s your motive for finding him?’ asked Amy. ‘Are you just being professional under instruction from Mark Rowlands?’
‘Don’t try and get inside
me
,’ said Siobhan, pointing at her chest. ‘You’ll find a big
NO
fucking
ENTRY
sign right here.’
‘But you’re allowed to go around kissing me, winding me up sexually and emotionally, and fucking off without telling us?’
‘That’s my Cuban side. I’m mixed race as well as mixed gender.’
‘We
should
get on, but we don’t because you won’t talk to me. You just give me a whole load of riddle-me-ree.’
‘Riddle-me-what?’
‘My gran’s expression for nonsense,’ said Amy. ‘I’m not interested in riddle-me-ree, so if that’s all you’ve got to give, I’ll keep my distance.’
‘
I’m
the one who does everything for
him
and he tells me nothing in return,’ said Siobhan. ‘Do this, do that, do the other. I’m like his … his skivvy. Then he just walks off into the night without a fucking word and I’m left picking up the pieces, as per fucking usual.’
‘Has this happened before?’
‘No, he’s never left me without a word of where he’s going, but he has left me with a mess to clear up.’
‘What about this time? Was that why you had to get out of here? Was it just for the Percocet, or something else?’
11.00, 16 January 2014
Knightsbridge, London
‘So what was the vanishing act all about?’ asked George. ‘Is that another part of the cabaret you didn’t tell me about?’
‘I was gathering intelligence on Colonel Ryder Forsyth,’ said Mercy. ‘I was told that he was flying in on a Kinderman jet from Zurich, where he happened to be at the time of the kidnap, and that he wouldn’t get here until, well, now, and he’d need some time to sort things out, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to do a bit of digging. Always good to go into an unusual scenario forewarned.’
‘Maybe we should have taken a look at the crime scene,’ said Papadopoulos. ‘And why didn’t you want me there for the intelligence-gathering bit?’
‘I wanted you to be able to observe without preconceptions,’ said Mercy. ‘We’re going into a much more complicated situation than usual and this guy Forsyth is a big personality working for a company with powerful connections in the US government. We have to get off on the right foot. But when I’m acting I don’t always have the best powers of observation, which is where you come in. I’ll be concentrating on forming a relationship with Forsyth, but there’ll be a crisis management committee, which I’m sure will consist of some important people, given the nature of the child’s mother’s ties to Kinderman.’
They pulled up outside 31 Wilton Place, next to the grey brick Victorian church of St Paul’s Knightsbridge. Mercy pressed the buzzer on the intercom, which was answered immediately. She was told to hold up both warrant cards to the peephole before they were admitted. A man in a dark blue suit, who did not introduce himself, took their coats, led them up to the first floor and showed them into a small sitting room, which was empty. He withdrew without offering anything.
The wealth on display in the conservatively decorated room silenced them. They sank into their respective armchairs and did not speak. Thick dark blue velvet curtains kept the gunmetal sky at bay. The grey fitted carpet gave background to a silk weave Tree of Life rug that was so sharp it looked as if it had been painted on the floor. Two prancing statuettes – a bronze of a hoofed Pan playing his pipes, and a fleeing girl – occupied the mantelpiece on either side of a Van Cleef & Arpels gold clock. There was a bookcase with leather bound volumes, which did not look much read, and four paintings, one on each wall.
‘Know anything about art?’ asked George in a whisper.
Mercy shook her head.
‘Above your head’s a Degas, that one over there is a Cézanne and the nude in the bath is a Bonnard,’ said George. ‘This one behind me is a Seurat, I think. That’s about three mil just on these walls.’
‘I’m impressed,’ said Mercy. ‘By you, not the paintings.’
‘I did a history of art option at uni.’
The blue-suited one returned and took them upstairs to another, bigger living room. Sitting on the sofa was a man who seemed to be dressed in clothes he did not wear very often: dark blue worsted trousers and a white shirt under a grey jacket. His shoulders strained against the confinement and his feet looked awkward encased in black brogues. His hard, lean tanned face, which was borderline haggard from too much exposure to the sun, made him look as if he wore a wetsuit most of the year. He had one blue eye that seemed to work but the other eye, fixed in its socket, was made of glass and was brown. He had a number of head scars, as if he’d made the mistake of looking over the parapet just as the bullets started flying. He had long grey hair combed back in rails that rested on the collar of his jacket. The top of one ear was missing and the scar, from a machete blow, went to the corner of his glass eye. He stood, and at six foot four made the room feel small and crowded.
‘Ryder Forsyth,’ he said, in a voice that had had gravel raked over it.
They shook hands. Mercy noticed he had a finger missing. Despite her extensive life experiences, she felt like a teenager in this man’s company, while Papadopoulos looked on the brink of taking an aeroplane out of his pocket and flying it around the room.
‘You taken a look at Lyall Mews yet?’ asked Forsyth. His accent, no longer entirely English, had developed a Texan drawl.
‘I went to Thames House for a meeting and then came straight here for our briefing,’ said Mercy.
‘You’ll see why it was chosen,’ said Forsyth. ‘I dropped by on the way here. There was scaffolding covered with plastic sheeting over the house on the right side and the street level window of the flat on the left has security shutters and a blind permanently drawn. I’m told that both places were unoccupied at the time. You might be lucky and find a witness in the mews, but I doubt you’ll find anyone who overlooked the action. I reckon it took ’em less than a minute.’
‘We’re waiting for the forensics from the car, and it would be good to talk to the chauffeur.’
‘I think you’ll draw a blank on both,’ said Forsyth. ‘The gang was very well organised and the girl’s chauffeur was just that: untrained in anything other than driving. Didn’t even lock the doors, according to Mrs Railton-Bass.’
‘Would it be possible to talk to Emma this morning?’
‘Why?’
‘As an investigator I like to have as much information as possible about the victim and the parents: a sense of their relationship, the mother’s view of her child, the girl’s personality, her strengths and weaknesses. All that right down to the clothes she was wearing, any illnesses, teeth missing … you know, everything.’
‘I’m not sure I understand the point,’ said Forsyth. ‘How’s all that going to help you find her?’
‘The point is we never know the detail that’ll help us make the connection to where the girl is being held. We just need to know everything possible,’ said Mercy. ‘The last time we investigated a highly sensitive case of this kind we found that the kidnapped boy played trick football, and that gave us a crucial line of inquiry.’
‘I’ll talk to Mrs Railton-Bass,’ said Forsyth. ‘I’m trying to keep her mind as uncomplicated as possible … you read me?’
‘We also like to form an emotional connection to our subject. It inspires us,’ said Mercy. ‘Have you heard from the gang again since this morning?’
‘No, Mrs Railton-Bass just took that one call. We’ve had no proof of life, just a money demand.’
‘Are you, the family or Kinderman expecting anything other than a money demand?’
‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Forsyth, with an edge to his voice.
‘Kinderman is a big corporation and there’s been a shift in public sentiment against them. They’ve been perceived as gaining unfair access to government contracts. There’s been talk that they actively promoted the Iraq war for their own benefit. They also seem to have dodged a bullet in the oil spill scandal in the US Gulf. Since we’ve been in the austerity years, they’ve come under the spotlight again, as a number of their higher-profile employees are perceived as outstanding examples of the unequal distribution of wealth that might cause people to rise up and start a revolution. On top of that, Anchorlight have killed people in unstable parts of the world. So I’m sure there are people out there who could be looking for some sort of revenge: the Taliban, other religious extremists or maybe just destroyed families.’
‘You’re making some unfortunate implications,’ said Forsyth.
‘Unfortunate?’ said Mercy, frowning. ‘I’m just voicing some of the attitudes that prevail around the world. You don’t have to take them as coming from me.’
‘Whatever. We have people looking into that.’
‘You mean the
CIA
?’
‘I mean them and people contracted to the
CIA
.’
‘You knew my ex-husband,’ said Mercy. ‘Charles Boxer. You were in the Staffords together.’
‘I don’t remember that name,’ said Forsyth, shaking his head, which Mercy could see was a lie. ‘Let me go and talk to Mrs Railton-Bass.’
Forsyth left the room. Papadopoulos looked at Mercy, eyebrows in his hairline. Mercy put her finger to her lips. They waited; neither took a seat. Ten minutes went by. Papadopoulos walked over to a painting, stood there nodding at it.
‘Now you’re not going to tell me you don’t know who this is by?’ he said.
‘I am, George. I don’t have time for galleries.’
‘Picasso? Heard of him?’
‘I thought that was a car,’ said Mercy, flat with irony.
‘Very funny.’
Papdopoulos transferred his attention to some drawings on the wall.
‘Goya,’ he said. ‘Nice.’
Mercy rolled her eyes. Forsyth came back into the room.
‘She’ll see you,’ he said, pointing at Mercy, ‘and only you.’
Mercy followed him out into a dark corridor. He shut the door behind them and turned.
‘I understand I’m reporting to you,’ she said. ‘Am I going to meet the other investigators, those
CIA
contractors you mentioned? Or are we not going to pool our resources? I’ve just met three
CIA
guys this morning and I’m not sure they were very excited at the idea of any collaboration.’
‘Don’t worry about that. They’re operating at a different level,’ said Forsyth. ‘You’re on the ground, using your London knowledge. They’re putting out their feelers in the spook world looking at terrorist networks, criminal organizations, that kind of thing. If they give me intelligence that I think would be useful to you, and vice versa, I will facilitate it, but I doubt your paths will cross.’
‘This has all the feeling of a military operation about it,’ said Mercy. ‘You’ve got separate entities progressing towards a common goal with commanders in charge. I always think kidnaps work better with a more creative dynamic. That way we—’
‘Kinderman don’t care what you think. They just want you to do your job.’
‘You sound like you don’t trust me,’ said Siobhan.
‘My dad warned me, said you were at best economical with the truth.’
‘So you listen to your dad,’ said Siobhan, curious, ‘and obey everything he says, like a good little girl?’
‘He’s had to deal with some difficult people: nasty, violent, manipulative, untrustworthy, cunning, lying, treacherous little bastards … and that was just me when I was a teenager.’
‘Thank God for that,’ said Siobhan, spurting with laughter, ‘I thought you were going grim on me.’
‘I listen to him because he’s not an idiot like most other dads I know, and I learn stuff from him, a lot of stuff. My mother, too.’
‘Can’t wait to meet
her
,’ said Siobhan. ‘Dinner must be a hoot around your place.’
‘So where did you go?’
‘I was following up a lead.’
‘Without telling the people you’ve asked to help you?’ said Amy, hardening. ‘Maybe you should tell me about this lead.’
‘I went to see a guy my father knows, someone from his world.’
‘Why wait until now?’
‘Because he’s not the sort of person you find very easily,’ said Siobhan. ‘You have to go through others, tell him what it’s about and be patient.’
‘When did you kick this off ?’
‘After I’d called Mark Rowlands.’
‘Does he know about this guy?’
‘No. He’s just the lawyer, he doesn’t know anything about the everyday work,’ said Siobhan. ‘My father always told me to call Mark Rowlands if there was a problem. He also told me where to find a telephone number I could use, but only in a crisis. Once the days went by and I found myself calling Mark for the fourth or fifth time, I knew it was a crisis, so I went to get the number.’
‘Where from?’
‘A dead drop. Know what one of them is?’
‘Got an idea. Sounds a bit olde worlde. Finding shit in bird boxes in parks.’
‘This is buried in code on a computer website, which they change every week,’ said Siobhan. ‘Anyway, some guy answered and asked for my name and number and told me I would hear from them. A few hours later somebody called me back and asked me the nature of my business. I told them Dad had disappeared and they said they’d get back to me … which they did, this morning.’
‘So, talk me through it.’
‘I had to go to a park bench on Highbury Fields, sit and wait. Eventually a guy came along, walked up behind me and asked me not to look at him. He sat at the other end of the bench, glanced across at me as you do, and then talked straight ahead, barely moving his mouth. I’d also told them I needed Percocet and he’d seen the damage to my face in the glance and asked me what had happened. I told him …’
‘Did you tell him it was something to do with your father? That they’d questioned you about him? Raped you?’
‘I said nothing about the rape, but I told him the rest. He said he would drop a glove when he left; the Percocet was inside, and I should take it and then come after him with the glove as if he was a stranger.’
‘Did he have any idea who it might have been who assaulted you?’
‘No, but I could see he was … not exactly showing concern, because these types don’t show anything, but there was a flicker. As if he knew who they were or who’d sent them or something like that.’
‘Did he have any news about Conrad?’
‘Nothing. He said: “It’s gone very silent out there.” As if normally there’d be something, like white noise at the very least, but this time there was a total blank.’
‘So what are our chances of finding him if these “friends” of Conrad can’t pick up anything on the airwaves?’ asked Amy.
‘I would say the chances of you finding him are small.’
‘Did they say they’d get back to you if they heard anything more? And … who are
they
anyway?’
‘They didn’t say they’d get back to me, but they did ask where I was living, as if they might be keeping an eye on me. Who are
they
? God knows. Dad worked with a lot of people and I suppose he built up a network of highly trusted amigos and these are the guys he can rely on when something goes wrong.’
Boxer caught a bus to Green Park, took a call from Simon Deacon, who told him that Walden Garfinkle would be in touch. He was crossing the road to get the tube up to Highbury and Islington when a call came through from Garfinkle.
