Wanted (27 page)

Jackal:
‘Patch them through.’

Three jpeg icons had popped up on Danny’s screen. Swallowing hard, he’d opened them one by one, each time feeling a surge of triumph rushing through his veins. Because, even though the photos been taken over a period of several years, they’d undoubtedly been of the same man.

A man Danny knew.

Adam Gilloway.

A.k.a. the Kid.

Jackal:
‘That’s him.’

Melville:
‘I took the liberty of having a Company contact run the photos through the main European and North American law-enforcement databases, including Interpol and the DVLA. We also checked all the major social networks. But we got no matches for any of these photos either for Adam Gilloway or any other alias he might have used. So far we’ve uncovered no other online photographic matches of him at all.’

In other words, the Kid had pulled off the electronic equivalent of a Houdini disappearing act. He’d vanished into thin air.

Melville:
‘Of course, we could try tracking him down through his name alone. But I’ve got to tell you, there’s a whole bunch of people called Adam Gilloway living in the UK, and a whole bunch more in the States. To check them all would take a lot of manpower and a lot of time.’

Jackal:
‘Neither of which we have. Plus, I doubt there’s a chance in hell that he’d have registered a property, phone, vehicle or anything else we could trace him via in his real name . . .’

Melville:
‘If we had a better idea of where he lives, then at least we could narrow our search and check out the Adam Gilloways living in that area.’

Jackal:
‘But we don’t.’

Melville:
‘Right, so all I can offer is to keep trawling the net for image matches of him.’

Jackal:
‘What about border crossings?’

Melville:
‘There’s no way my contacts could sanction that. Not without knowing who we’re tracking and why.’

And that was the real trouble. On paper, the Kid had done nothing wrong. No one was looking for him or would waste resources on doing so. They were all too busy looking for Danny.

Danny had signed off.

It should have been a dead end.

But it wasn’t. Because what Danny hadn’t told Crane was that he’d made another list, detailing some other information he thought he knew about the Kid. And he’d not shared the second list with his handler. Why? Because even though he now believed he was in contact with the real Crane, there was still the possibility that the real Crane was being eavesdropped on by the US government, either knowingly so or not. And while Danny had needed Crane to help him discover the Kid’s real name, he didn’t need to risk sharing with Crane what he was planning to do with the information. Because if Crane had been compromised, that would only lead to Danny’s capture.

His other list had been even shorter than the first. It had read:

Relatives:

a younger sister, who still lives in Hackney, a single mother with a young daughter called Beyoncé.

One of the great advantages of no longer drinking was that Danny remembered conversations other people forgot. The Kid had been drunk when he’d mentioned his niece’s name. He and Danny had been in a bar in Copenhagen, celebrating the successful conclusion of a job. Danny even remembered the Kid’s smashed rendition of Beyoncé’s ‘Crazy In Love’ making him laugh, when he’d let slip to Danny that his sister had just given birth to a little girl.

All of which had brought Danny Shanklin to this quiet park in Hackney, east London. Adam Gilloway might have disappeared into the ether, but Beyoncé Gilloway had been easier to find. In fact, the UK births database had listed only three in the whole of London, and he’d already visited the other two.

Of course, the Kid might have been lying about his niece’s name. But Danny doubted it. It wasn’t as if it had been part of a wider cover story the Kid had been feeding him. In fact, it was the only personal detail Danny remembered him ever having revealed about his background.

In other words, maybe this was what he had been praying for: a mistake.

Turning the page of his newspaper, he saw ‘DANNY SHANKLIN SIGHTED IN VIENNA’. Below was a blurred photo of a man who looked nothing like him, as well as an interview with an Austrian woman who claimed to have recognized him coming out of a cinema.