The Missing Hours (23 page)

What the hell is going on here?

I push open the door.

‘Leah? What are you doing?’ Finn says again.

I look back at him. ‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘I just have to look at something. Will you … can you trust me for a second? And wait?’

He stares, studying me like he is wondering if I have lost my mind.

Then, ‘Okay. I …’ He looks around the car, then, reaching for the dial, turns the volume back up. ‘I’ll listen to some music.’ ‘Old MacDonald’ fills the car, and my brother grins at me. ‘Take your time.’

I smile, push myself out, tugging my parka tight around me. With careful steps I climb up on to the riverbank. The grass is swampy, thick with the overnight rain. I study the path.

It is overgrown, unkempt. A new cycle track has been built on the opposite bank, its brightly wet tarmac glistening at me. If you were going to walk along the river, that is where you would go. Not here, to this padded-down facsimile of a path, the grass blades fighting back from their long oppression, springing up now that they have been freed from the weight of walkers. I look at the water, allow it to tug my gaze north. You can just about make out the town from here, Hereford’s skyline, such as it is, peeking above the trees. You could technically walk from here all the way into town.

I glance back at the road, where the car sits waiting.

It would have been pretty isolated. Especially late at night, when Selena would have arrived here.

Arrived?

Yes. Had she been here throughout all those missing hours, someone would have seen her, surely. It’s isolated, but there’s a primary school a couple of hundred yards up on the opposite bank, its back gate letting out on to the cycle path. I watch the path; a mother, her raincoat hanging open in deference to the watery sunshine, walks slowly, pushing a pram. A dog-walker on the other bank, a driver passing along the adjacent road. Had Selena been here all that time, surely she would have been seen?

So then, let’s say she arrived. Where did she come from? How did she get here?

If she was kidnapped, dosed with scopolamine and dumped … why? Why here? Why kidnap her at all if there would be no subsequent ransom, no apparent sexual motive, no physical injuries? What would be the point?

I look at the water again, Hereford beyond.

But you could walk here from town.

Selena says she regained awareness here. Sitting on the bank. Shivering from the cold.

I pull my feet from the sunken ground. Begin to walk towards the town, a leisurely afternoon stroll with no real objective to it at all.

I think about Selena at the hospital, her skin so pale it was almost white. Her hands, face streaked with mud. The stain on her top. As I walk, I am back in that hospital, staring at that stain, and in my memory it is mutating now, not mud.

Blood.

She had no wounds. No injuries.

If it was blood, where the hell did it come from?

I think of how Selena looked when I got there, like a kidnap victim. Like how in your head a kidnap victim would look, cold and dirty and damaged.

No coat.

I keep walking.

It is, what, three miles into town?

This spot is quiet. There is no reason to be here at three in the morning. The only explanation that would even vaguely make sense would be if you were a victim, if you were dumped here.

I keep walking.

The wind has a bite to it in spite of the sunshine, winter creeping ever closer, and I pull my hood up to protect my ears from its shriek. My trousers are damp now, a combination of dew and droplets from the river. My black shoes are brown. I glance back towards the car, where Finn still waits, to the spot where I figure Selena was found sitting. Orla mentioned that the taxi had stopped in a lay-by. There are no other lay-bys on this stretch of road. I can barely see it now. The trees have grown denser, are knitted together more tightly, so that even in the autumn you can no longer make out the road. I figure that I must have walked half a mile, maybe more.

Based on what Selena said, there is no reason why she should have been this far downriver. And yet …

What am I thinking?

You would be here if you had walked from town. You would be here if you were not dumped at all, but had walked, under your own steam, from the centre of Hereford.

My heart begins to beat a little faster.

I walk on, eyes down towards the river, let my eyes trail the edge of it, where the water meets the bank.

She looked just like a kidnap victim should look.

When I see it, it feels like déjà vu. As though I already knew it would be exactly where it is. I inch closer to the river, my unlikely shoe sliding sideways against the slick grass so that my knee lands in it, brown mud staining the grey fabric.

I reach into my pocket, pull free a pair of protective gloves, slip my fingers into them. And keep reaching.

It is well hidden. It has almost disappeared into the mud of the bank, the grey of the river. I hook the brown fabric between my thumb and forefinger, the wool heavy with the weight of the water that has leached into it. I pull, but it is stuck, trapped on something that hides beneath the water: a branch, a stone. I tug, feel it loosening in my grip, then sliding towards me.

I push myself up to standing, holding the coat in my hands.

It feels like a dream, my actions governed by something outside myself. I plunge my gloved hands into the ruined wool coat, my skin stinging with the cold of it. The first pocket is empty. But I can feel the weight in it, think it is more than simply the water. I find it in the second pocket. A small wallet, its outside decorated with flowers. I flip it open. A five-pound note, or what used to be a five-pound note, sits in the billfold, more like papier mâché than anything else now. There are some coins, small change, inside the zip.

Nothing else. Nothing that would identify it as belonging to anyone in particular.

I stand on the bank of the river, the coat heavy in my arms, and I stare at the almost empty wallet, willing it to give me something, anything concrete.

I turn it over in my hands, again, again.

And I see a small flap, an opening that would be so easy to miss.

I slide my fingers inside, no longer breathing.

The paper is waterlogged, comes apart in my hands. But the writing on it is broad, childish, and I can piece the words together.

To Mummy

Happy birthday

Heather

Case No. 41

Victim: Phoebe Hanson

Location: Madison, Wisconsin

Company: Private case, unaffiliated with any insurance provider

13 September 2009

Initial event

At 5.30 a.m. on Wednesday 13 September, Mrs Phoebe Hanson, a forty-eight-year-old stay-at-home mother, left her family home on the outskirts of Madison, Wisconsin, leaving her three children (aged sixteen, twelve and ten) in the care of their father, Mr Christopher Hanson. Mrs Hanson took her own car and drove to Madison airport in order to catch a 7 a.m. flight to New York City. She had informed her husband that she was due to meet college friends there and would return no later than the following Sunday.

At 7 a.m., Mr Hanson received a phone call from an unknown caller, stating that his wife had been kidnapped en route to the airport. A ransom of $500,000 was demanded and the time period for this ransom set at a mere twelve hours. Mr Hanson was warned that should the ransom not be forthcoming, his wife would be executed.

Mr Hanson immediately contacted the airline and confirmed that his wife had not in fact boarded her flight.

Response

Mr Hanson is retired military and served with me (Ed Cole) in Iraq. At the time of this kidnapping, both Selena Cole and I were attending a series of meetings in Chicago. Mr Hanson, knowing that we were in the locale, immediately called on us for assistance.

We arrived at the Hanson home some three hours after the initial call. This left a response window of nine hours remaining.

Immediate assessment of the situation suggested to us that this kidnapping was problematic. Upon arrival at the Hanson home, Selena immediately gained access to the computer of Mrs Phoebe Hanson, in order to verify her travel plans and to track her recent communications. Mr Hanson revealed to us that his wife had planned to see friends in New York City and that the trip had been planned within the last week.

Upon accessing Mrs Hanson’s e-mails, Selena was able to confirm our suspicions that the information given to Mr Hanson was inaccurate, that no plans had been made to travel to New York and there were no flight reservations to this effect. It became clear, after going through Mrs Hanson’s internet history, that she had in fact been engaged in a lengthy correspondence with a man who claimed his name was Rick DeMarco. The correspondence was such that it could be reasonably concluded that an online affair was taking place. It was discovered that in the days leading up to Mrs Hanson’s disappearance, she and ‘Rick’ had spent some considerable time discussing a trip that they would take together to Los Angeles. Further examination of Mrs Hanson’s communications revealed a single coach-class ticket from Madison to LA.

Mr Hanson immediately contacted the carrier named on this ticket and was able to confirm that his wife had indeed boarded the flight to LA, and that the flight was currently airborne.

Closer examination of Mrs Hanson’s communications with ‘Rick’ indicated that he had approached her in a chat room and had enthusiastically pursued her. An online investigation was unable to find the existence of anyone by that name who met the personal criteria supplied by ‘Rick’.

Our conclusion was that this was a virtual kidnapping.

A colleague of the Cole Group who is based out of LA was able to go to LAX in order to meet Mrs Hanson’s flight upon landing, thereby confirming her safety and our conclusions.

Despite an initial unwillingness to admit her duplicity to her husband and children, and a brief attempt to convince our LA colleague that she had in fact been taken by force and placed on the LAX flight against her will, Mrs Hanson was eventually persuaded to be candid. She had, it seems, left her home in the full and complete understanding that she was about to engage in a sexual affair with ‘Rick’, who, it must be noted, she had never met, nor had any video calls with. Mrs Hanson was then informed of her role as the victim in a virtual kidnapping. Our LA colleague noted in her report that Mrs Hanson seemed more distressed by the fictitious nature of her ‘lover’ than she was about the distress caused to her husband by the threats to her well-being.

Extensive conversations with the Madison Police Department and the FBI confirmed that ‘Rick’ was in fact a criminal gang operating out of northern Mexico who have been responsible for more than a dozen incidents in which unsuspecting people have been ‘catfished’ and their families subjected to hefty ransom demands. This virtual kidnap ring operates through the US and Canada and is, at the time of writing, a significant problem to law enforcement.

Mrs Hanson was returned to her home some thirty-six hours later, and, following a lengthy consultation with Selena Cole, referred for therapy in order to help her better deal with the issues that had made her vulnerable to this ‘catfishing’ incident. She and Mr Hanson have also been referred to a marriage counsellor.

A victim or a liar?

DC Leah Mackay: Friday, 10.35 a.m.

SELENA COLE OPENS
the door on the second knock. She looks surprised to see me standing there.

I smile brightly. ‘Hi, Selena.’ My voice comes out so chirpy that even I do not recognise it. ‘This is DS Finn Hale. Finn, Selena Cole. We were wondering if we could come in for a moment?’ I shiver, dramatically. It is, after all, a cold day. Of course we should come inside.

Selena studies me, and there’s a look in her eyes, wariness or fear, I can’t really tell. She looks from me to Finn, her expression warping to calm. She smiles, and it looks like it has taken no effort at all.

‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Please, come in.’

I had stuck my head back into the car. ‘Finn, give me an evidence bag.’

‘Okay …’ He reached into the glove compartment, pulling a large bag free.

I hoisted the coat inside, sealing it, passing it across to him.

‘What the hell?’

Slipped the key into the ignition, started the engine. ‘I found it. On the riverbank. It’s Selena Cole’s.’

I watched as Finn slid the evidence bag into the footwell, the chocolate wool drawing my eye through its plastic cover, over and over again, in the way that one’s eye is drawn to a scar on a picture-perfect face. It was the piece out of place, the portion of the jigsaw that stood out proud. Something is wrong here, it screamed.

‘So …’ he said, aiming for casual.

‘So,’ I said, ‘it wasn’t where it was supposed to be.’

The tyres felt light on the still rain-slicked road. I thought about Selena’s story, how ephemeral it seemed, that if you reached out, tried to take hold of it, it would evaporate before you. She vanished. She reappeared. She claimed that she had no recollection of the intervening hours.

‘So … what are you thinking?’ asked Finn.

I looked across at him. ‘I’m thinking Selena is lying.’

I drove with half an eye on the coat. I should have assumed that she was lying. Right from the beginning, when I first heard the story, I should have assumed deception. Because when we get right down to it, isn’t deception the most likely cause? And yet I didn’t. Not didn’t. Couldn’t. Why? What was it about her that rendered me so incapable of seeing a lie? Or at least the possibility of a lie?