The Locker (8 page)

thirteen

“I'm sorry to do
this. It must seem pointless but I want to go over a few things with you.” Ruth took the armchair while Vaslik stood by the front window. Gina was watching the CCTV monitors in between patrolling the house, automatically trying door and window handles and noting any movement outside.

“What sort of things?” Nancy was on the settee clutching Beth's teddy, Homesick, against her tummy. Ruth was shocked by how fragile she looked, and asked if she should call a doctor. But Nancy wouldn't hear of it.

“I'm fine. Just tired, that's all. What do you want to know?”

“I'm trying to understand what the link is between your husband and why Beth would have been taken. There's clearly a connection and we need to isolate that if we stand any chance of finding out who took her and why.”

Nancy shook her head, her eyes strained with exhaustion, and Ruth wondered if some sleeping tablets would work. She might speak to the tame doctor Cruxys kept on call. “But why should it involve Michael? It could be anything or nothing. These things are so random, aren't they?”

Ruth went over the words on the card again. “I've seen kidnap notes before, Nancy. Some in live situations, lots of real examples used in training. They all follow a similar format and carry the same message: it's usually
We've taken someone of value to you
and
Don't tell the authorities.
If not immediately, there's usually a
follow-on
shortly afterwards saying what they want in return.”

“Isn't that what this one says—not to tell the police?”

“Yes. But that's not all. It tells you that they've taken your daughter, but there's no demand. No phone calls, no
follow-on
communication, nothing. However, there is one difference: they tell you to tell your husband. Believe me, that's significant.” She paused to let that sink in, although by the way Nancy's eyes were fluttering, she wasn't certain it was making much headway.

“The punctuation is very specific,” she continued. “It says
Do NOT call the police. DO tell your husband.
Two seemingly separate statements but meaning one thing: they want Michael to know what's happened. That's so pointed it has to be for a reason, don't you think?”

There was no response, merely a drained look of utter incomprehension.

Vaslik came and sat down alongside Nancy. She flinched but didn't move.

“Whoever wrote that note,” he said softly, “wants your husband to know. But why? He's hardly ever here and you handle all the household finances and stuff, don't you?”

She nodded, apparently beyond being curious about how he would know that.

“So if it's not money they're after, what could Michael give them that you couldn't?”

“He's right,” Ruth added. “The lack of explanation or demand means they're giving you time to contact him. But why?”

“I don't know!” The words were squeezed out with a high keening sound, and Ruth felt the hairs on the back of her neck bristle. She leaned forward and took Nancy's hands in hers. It was like holding onto two steel rods. She looked into her eyes with as much intensity as she could muster, waiting for her to calm down. The last thing they needed right now was for this woman to suffer a breakdown.

“It's all right, Nancy,” she said firmly. “We're going to find Beth. But to do that we need to understand what could have brought this thing on. Why they took her.”

Nancy relaxed by degrees, demonstrated by a slow softening of her bodyline. Her eyes became more focussed and her shoulders lost their tension. Instead, silent tears flowed down her face. “I'm sorry … I just want Michael and Beth to come home.” She found a handkerchief and wiped her eyes, slowly regaining control before saying, “Tell me what you want to know.”

“I want you to try and remember which agencies your husband has worked for—and where. It doesn't have to be the last one; we checked the number you gave me but there's no reply. They could be out in the field somewhere. We'll keep trying. In the meantime it would help if you could recall any other names or details.”

For a moment Nancy didn't reply, and Ruth wondered if she had pushed her too far. Then the woman stood up and walked out of the room towards the front of the house.

Ruth looked at Vaslik, who shrugged and made a motion for her to wait. Gina was out in the hallway and would keep an eye on her.

Five minutes later, Nancy returned. She was carrying a small address book. She dropped it on the coffee table. “I'd almost forgotten about this,” she murmured. “It's Michael's. He didn't use it much. One day he sat down and said he wanted to make a list of the agencies he might work for and the places he wanted to go. He said it was a kind of wish list.”

“Did you help him?”

Nancy nodded and gave a wan smile. “He didn't want me to, but I needed to be involved, to be a part of his work. It was important to me that we share it. In the end he let me help.”

Ruth opened the address book. It was
leather-backed
, with pages for the recording of basic information such as phone, address and email, and a short space after each contact for brief notes.

It was like looking at a UN list of aid organisations, with the big names first, such as Oxfam, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Save the Children, followed by many names Ruth had either only vaguely or never heard of before.

“I wasn't much help, really,” Nancy confessed. “I could only think of the obvious names like the ones you hear about in the news.”

“I'd be the same,” Ruth agreed, flicking through the pages. “I've never heard of most of these. How did you find them?”

“Michael researched them at the library, although I think he already knew about a lot of them.” She looked sheepish. “I'm afraid you'll think we're Luddites—we don't have a computer. I guess that makes us really unusual, doesn't it?”

Ruth didn't say anything. Checking the household computer had been on her list of things to do, but that was clearly not an option. She wanted to ask why, but Vaslik beat her to it.

“You don't like technology?” he said. He sounded shocked.

“Michael doesn't trust it,” Nancy explained. “He prefers to use the library if he needs to access the Internet.” She shrugged. “We get by. I don't need one apart from at work so it's never been a problem, but I suppose Beth will want one someday—” She stopped suddenly, realising what she was saying, and looked down at the teddy.

“She will,” said Ruth firmly. She pointed at the book where some of the names listed had ticks against them. “What do the ticks mean?”

“I put them there. I got into the habit whenever Michael went away of ticking off the name of the agency he was working for.” She looked a little wistful and even guilty. It became clear why. “He would rarely remember to tell me who the latest assignment was for, so I decided to keep track myself. But after a while I realised it was pointless.”

“Why?”

“Because Michael does his own thing. He changes his mind at the last minute. He says it's because he feels different priorities—places where he's needed more and where he can do the most good.”

Sounds a regular saint, Ruth thought drily. “Didn't he realise that was hard for you, disappearing like that without a word?”

“Sort of. But it made no difference. He's so committed … it took over his life. Our lives.” She twisted her fingers together. “I rang a couple of agencies once when I needed to get in touch with him. Beth was really unwell and I was panicking because nothing I did seemed to do any good.”

“What happened?”

“I was told he wasn't working for them. At first I was sure I'd got the numbers wrong. Then one of them said he'd failed to turn up as planned, and called to let them know. I found out when he came back that he'd switched agencies to help someone out.” She shrugged at the memory, pushing it into a deep recess.

“What did he say?”

“He wasn't very pleased. He accused me of checking up on him. So I stopped.” She looked like a little lost girl who'd been caught out with her hand in the biscuit box.

Ruth slipped the address book in her pocket, wondering if there was any significance in what Nancy had told her. Probably not. The man was an idealist and, by the sounds of it, as selfish as hell. But the list of agencies might bear studying later. Whether it would turn up any ideas was doubtful but right now it was all they had.

“There's one other thing,” she said. “Back at the beginning, you didn't seem to know much about the Safeguard contract, other than having to ring a number and give a reference code if something bad happened.”

“Code Red, yes. You must think I'm a helpless woman.” She looked Ruth in the eye and said, “You're probably right. All I knew was what Michael told me: if anything happened, ring the number.”

And that was good enough for you?”

“Of course. Why wouldn't it be?”

Ruth felt like telling her she wasn't a doormat, that was why. Instead she changed tack. “Earlier you agreed that all the household finances and official dealings are in your name.”

“Because Michael's away so much, yes. So?”

“Where is your bank account held?”

“In Edgware. I've had one there for years and never got round to changing it.”

“And Michael?”

“We use my account for everything.”

“So he doesn't have one?”

“I—That's right.” She paused as if realising for the first time how odd that might seem. “It's a little unusual, I suppose, but that's the way we do things.”

“How does he support himself while he's away? Do you send him money?”

Nancy's face went stiff at Ruth's tone and the intimate line of questions. She blinked repeatedly. “Why are you so interested in bank accounts? What does it have to do with my daughter's disappearance? How will it help Beth?”

“That's what we need to find out, Nancy. If your husband has money—even if it's money you don't know about but somebody else does—that could be what these people are after. Ransom, pure and simple.”

Nancy swallowed. When she spoke, her voice was hesitant. “Michael never says much about when he's out in the field. And I've never asked. I know that might seem strange to you, but he takes care of all that—it's how we are. I think it can sometimes get too much for him, all the misery and tragedy, so I let him deal with it in his own way. What makes you think he has an account I don't know about?”

“Because we know you didn't pay for the Safeguard contract.”

No reaction.

“There's really only one other person who could have done, isn't there?”

There was a lengthy silence as Nancy absorbed the implication of what Ruth was saying. The only sounds were the ticking of the immersion heater, the drone of a car moving along the road outside and the shrill squeak of a child laughing in a neighbouring garden. “I don't follow,” Nancy said. She had jumped at the child's laughter, no doubt sharply reminded of Beth, and was looking alarmed, her
eye-blink
rate increasing rapidly.

“You never wondered about it? Where the money came from? The policy isn't cheap.”

“No,
I-I
never thought about it until now. Michael must have mentioned it before, I guess, but …' She shook her head as if it might help process the information. “How did he pay for it?”

“By cheque through a bank account in Kensington. The renewals will be paid out of the same account.”

“Kensington?” She blinked rapidly. “But how can that be? There must be a mistake. We don't have an account there. It's in Edgware—I told you.”

“Did he have an account when you first met?” Vaslik asked.

“I don't know. I suppose so, for getting paid and stuff. It wasn't something we talked about.”

Ruth felt a brush of impatience. Nancy was, intentionally or not, giving them the
run-around
. One minute angry and defensive, the next playing the helpless woman. Yet the latter role didn't equate with her handling all the household finances and paperwork, or even her accounts job. If she was organised to cope with officialdom in all its forms, keeping track of another bank account should have been a piece of cake.

Or was it another pointer to her husband not telling her everything?

fourteen

“I need an hour
of down-time,” Ruth told Vaslik. After the session with Nancy she was feeling drained. Life was a lot easier dealing with suspects; at least you could get heavy with them with some justification. But grieving mothers with daughters who'd gone missing and whose husbands turned out to be something of a mystery were altogether different.

In spite of them trying different lines of questioning, Nancy had continued to maintain that she knew nothing about any Kensington bank account, even agreeing that it was probably a remnant of Michael's previous life. But Ruth sensed that she was being deliberately vague. If so it could be simply out of embarrassment at not knowing something key about her husband's financial affairs, or that she was in denial. In the end she decided not to push it. There had to be another way of getting some answers.

While talking to Nancy a question had occurred to her; something that needed to be dealt with by her alone. She handed Vaslik the note she'd made of Hardman's Finchley address. “Could you check on this place while I'm out? See if anybody remembers them. They left a while back but there might still be somebody around who remembers them.”

She was relieved that they were able to split the tasks between them; trying to check out all the details together would take too long. At least this way they could spread the load.

“No problem,” he said easily. “Call if you need me.”

Ruth's parents lived in a neat maisonette near Gerrard's Cross. It was actually Denham but they liked to think that they rubbed shoulders with the wealthier neighbours up the road. You could still hear the twin traffic flows on the M40 and M25, Ruth always reminded them, but they claimed she was deluded. It was a harmless pretence on their part, and she played along with it willingly.

She visited them whenever she could, which was less than they wanted. Her father had retired after
twenty-five
years with the Met Police and a further ten years as a corporate security advisor. He now played regular golf—badly—and the two of them danced more than adequately with a local ballroom class.

On the way, she picked up the CD Vaslik had given her and slipped it into the player. The music was cheerful, upbeat and different, and she switched it off after ten minutes. Maybe she'd get him some English folk music in retaliation.

“Nail down the silver,” her father said as she stepped through the front door. It was his usual greeting followed by a hug. He still had the build of the rugby player he had once been but was showing signs, she noted, of thinning hair and liver spots.

Ruth's mother, ten years younger and slim, rolled her eyes at him and gave Ruth a kiss and a long squeeze, then went to make tea.

“What's up?” her father queried, walking through to the living room.

“Does there have to be anything up?” she replied, then gave in when he looked at her with raised eyebrows. He could read her and most other people like a book. “Sorry, dad, but I need to run something by you. Do you have time?”

He smiled and sat back. “Always got time for you, Ruthie. You still with that bunch of corporate mercenaries?” It was the one piece of grit between them, partly professional disapproval on his part, the other part concern for her safety. It had been just the same when she joined the MOD Police, although the differences between their two policing jobs were less marked. The question also signalled his continued interest in what went on in the world, especially where crimes and trouble were concerned. And he looked on Cruxys as a connection to both.

She told him about the kidnap and the events that had followed, and the brick wall they had encountered with Michael Hardman's whereabouts. While she was talking, her mother joined them, pouring tea and offering biscuits.

“Sounds a bit rum,” her father agreed mildly. “You'd think he'd have left some better contact details for his wife at least. Mind you, anybody takes out a Safeguard contract with your lot has got to be a bit shy of a good, normal life, haven't they?”

“Jim,” his wife cautioned gently. They both knew from Ruth that Safeguard contracts were taken out by executives and others working in “difficult” regions of the world. “He was doing the right thing, in case he got … you know.”

He pulled a face but didn't argue. Instead he reached over to a side table and picked up a small black diary. He riffled through the pages, then stood up. “Be back in a minute.”

“He's still got the little black book, then,” said Ruth. It was something she'd been counting on. Her father's list of useful contacts had been as legendary in the family as it was among his police colleagues, and was a habit he'd obviously found impossible to break. Many of the names listed were probably long gone by now, but she knew he tried to keep them up to date. It was his way of keeping in touch with his past.

Ruth's mother nodded. “It's got more names in more businesses than 192,” she murmured. “I bet you he comes back with someone to talk to.”

Five minutes later she was proved right. They heard the ting of the phone being replaced in the hall, and her husband walked back in and handed Ruth a slip of paper.

“George Paperas,” he said. “He knows more about charity organisations than any man walking. He's worked with the best, including the UN, and still gets called in for advice on disaster response. He knows everybody in the field of aid relief. If anybody can help it'll be him. Buy him a pint and he'll write you a book on it.” He looked at her with a proud smile. “With a kiddie out there missing, I'm guessing you'll want to see him straight away. He's waiting to hear from you. He's a hop and spit from your offices, so he'll be easy to call in if needed.”

Ruth stood up and gave him a squeeze, then did the same with her mother. “Sorry about this, mum. Dad's right—it's already been several hours and we need to keep on top of it.”

Her father stopped her as she opened the front door. He looked serious. “I know they said no police, Ruthie, but you know they'll have to be brought on board sooner or later. You can't not tell them; when it gets out, they, the Home Office and the media will crucify the lot of you for keeping it quiet. Especially if it turns bad.”

She nodded, the reminder giving her a sick feeling in her stomach. “I know, dad. But it's not my call.”

She left them standing at the door and drove back into London, calling Paperas on the way and setting up a meeting at a pub near where he worked as a charities consultant. Then she tried Vaslik's number. The signal kept dropping out. She called Gina for an update.

“All quiet,” Gina replied softly. “No calls, no visitors. Nancy's upstairs.” She hesitated then said, “I gave her one of my sleeping pills.”

“What?”

“I know—I shouldn't have. But she was pretty pissed about all the questions. I told her it was standard procedure, but she looked like she was about to freak out with exhaustion. I figured it might help if she got her head down for a bit.”

“All right.” Ruth saw the sense in what Gina had done. But it wasn't a clever move if anything went wrong and it turned out the person protecting her had shared prescription drugs with her, no matter what the reason. “But no more pills, right? We'll call in professional help if we have to.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“What about you—how are you feeling?” The idea that Gina was carrying sleeping pills and might be relying on them to combat the trauma of the shooting kicking back in was a worry. It was another sign that she still wasn't fully fit and therefore in no real state to be looking after the mother of a kidnap victim, let alone carrying a weapon.

“I'm fine. I'm not using the pills, if that's what's worrying you. I just had some with me.”

“Fair enough.” She checked her watch. Time was trickling by. “Could you call Slik for me?” She gave Gina the name of the pub where she was meeting Paperas and said, “Get him to meet me there.”

Andy Vaslik exited East Finchley underground and turned north, pausing to check the map on his phone for the location of the Hardman's original address. He walked the length of the street, his target number 24. But instead of a house he found a flower shop nestling alongside a restaurant, a pizza shop and a drug store, all with apartments overhead. The buildings were of red brick, with dormer windows looking out over the road, and the surroundings were neat, unassuming and suburban. The people here were not overtly rich, he guessed, but prosperous enough and proud of their homes. A good sign, since they would notice and remember more about their neighbours than most. Anybody unusual would stand out.

He walked round the block, checking for rear access behind the shops. There were doors, but none that looked like openings onto individual apartments. He returned to the front and entered the florist. A woman in a nylon coat and gloves was trimming the stems of some red roses, and turned to greet him, brushing away a fringe above her eyes.

“Hi. Can I help you?”

“I hope so, but I may have the wrong address.” He showed her the slip of paper with the Hardman's address and phone number, and explained that he was trying to trace the family for a firm of solicitors. “It's a bequest situation,” he added.

The woman looked puzzled. “I think your information's incorrect,” she said. “All the flats upstairs belong to the shops. I've been here five years and there's never been anyone else here. What was the name again?”

“Hardman. Nancy and Michael. They had a small daughter, Beth.”

The woman looked apologetically blank. “Like I said, there must be a mistake. The newest tenants here are the family running the Mahal restaurant next door—and they've been here three years.”
She went on to explain that the turnover in the area was low, which made the movement of neighbours easy to track. “We get to know each other quite well around here; it's like a small village. The name doesn't ring a bell, I'm afraid.”

Vaslik thanked her and stepped outside. His phone was buzzing. It was Gina, with directions to a pub close to Piccadilly where Ruth was meeting a contact.

“On my way,” he said, and disconnected.