Chasing Innocence (12 page)

For some time there was nothing more, just that sense of something small and feral on the verge of panic beside her. Then something heavy moved and she could see a thin vertical sliver of light, growing wider to the sound of heavy stone moving. She tried turning her head, drawing up her legs, but they refused to move. Her eyes struggled to focus, seeing the contrast but not the shapes. The light blotted out as something large moved in.
Don’t, I won’t go.
A small voice pleading next to her.
Stop him, please stop him!
Lifted from beside her, thrashing. Her mind screamed.
Stop, stop, stop!
But she could not move and an instant fury, anger, slashing, blood-stained, standing in the expansive field. Feeling the warm rain on her upturned face. And then the light grew thin and disappeared to the heavy sound of concrete over concrete. Alone, silence but for the blood pumping inside her head, her heart, the glow larger inside her mind, reaching out and slowly reconnecting. Sarah, she was Sarah.

TWENTY-FIVE

Adam was not in the mood for bed when he got home, not for their bed neatly made and minus one. Everything in their flat was Sarah, from the colour of the walls, the sofa, the pictures on the walls. He turned off the lights and lay on the sofa, stretched out with a long measure of Jack Daniels in a glass on his chest, playing through the events of the day. Their argument in the restaurant. Wondering what he might have done to cheat chance and have Sarah sleepily peering around the door, a naked shoulder and hip on show. Wanting to know when he would come to bed.

Everything was chance. He slept in short bursts, dreamed she called to say she was coming home. He woke in starts. The clock on the wall marched past twelve and two and on. Nudging towards five when he suddenly opened his eyes and remembered he had not checked their home voicemail. He juggled the drink as he stood, managing to catch it as the remaining liquid sloshed in the glass. Then two things happened in quick succession. He realised there was a message and as he pressed the button and turned to listen, he looked out through the balcony door, almost shouting with fright when he saw Brian looking right back at him.

He let Brian in without thinking. Then his dilemma was how to listen to Sarah’s message in secret, which was now impossible. So he just got on with it, playing it over several times with pen and paper in hand. Brian stood sentinel by the patio doors, his kit bag still hanging from his shoulder, listening to Sarah’s voice with eyes cast intently on the floor.

Sarah’s message contained every detail from the moment she left Delamere. Of her bag being taken and Simon retrieving it, telling her his name, that she had followed him for almost two hours and of her waiting in the farmhouse. That she used the woman’s phone to leave the message. She detailed where the woman said she was and where the Rover might be heading, a description of the farmyard. Her voice was a monotone throughout, save for emotion at the end and then Sarah had disconnected.

For Adam the message was initially hopeful. The hope quickly turned to dread when he considered a lot of time had since passed. It was now five in the morning, a different day, it was Sunday. And there were no new messages.

For Brian the message was confirmation this woman genuinely believed she was following a car with a child in the boot. Andrea. The message also held a whole lot of new information that started with Delamere. Its location would be important in relation to Hambury and where Simon was heading. All Brian had to do now was prise Adam out of his cosy little nest.

TWENTY-SIX

The gurgling slowed to intermittent bursts then stopped altogether. Adam pulled the pot from the hotplate and poured the coffee, taking both cups in search of Brian. He followed the smell of musty clothes through the hallway, past his empty study and, incredulously, to the bedroom. Brian was stooped, peering at the picture beside the dressing table, of Sarah topless on the beach.

‘Christ, Brian, what’re you doing in here?’

Brian straightened and took the offered cup. ‘Just looking around, trying to see what sort of woman your wife is. Get an idea for how she thinks.’

‘You seen enough to reach any conclusions?’ He failed to keep the indignation out of his voice.

‘Yup.’ Brian grinned back at him. ‘Your wife is hot with a big fat capital H. How’d you pull a bird like her?’

‘That’s totally out of order. I’m a good match for Sarah.’

Brian shrugged. ‘Bet you spend your holidays warding off a beach of hard-ons.’

‘You’re so crude, of course I don’t.’ Adam faltered at his partial lie. Brian had cut straight at his Achilles heel. Adam was tall and decent looking, but photos of Sarah’s previous boyfriends or those he met had always daunted him. Six years on and he was now almost immune to the stares she attracted. He knew she valued who he was above all else. And then he realised the important detail in what Brian had said.

‘Why would you want to understand how Sarah thinks?’

‘I’d have thought that was obvious.’

‘Not really, enlighten me.’

‘Understanding how your wife thinks will help us find her and my daughter.’

‘Us, find? Aren’t the police doing that?’

‘Sure they are, but you’re not going to sit on your hands and do nothing are you?’ Brian stepped across to the bedroom door.

Adam stared incredulously at his uninvited guest. ‘What could I do that the police can’t?’

‘A lot. We pull on our thinking caps, there’s a lot
we
can do.’

‘I’m sorry but the best people are already looking for Sarah and your daughter, the police. Where would we start, what would we do?’

Brian did not immediately answer. Instead he looked over at Sarah’s picture, the hopeful smile and those eyes, the body. He walked through to the hall, pausing outside Adam’s study.

‘It’s a shame,’ he said, looking into the study. ‘I was thinking, all this expensive kit and pretty furniture you’d have something more about you.’

Adam followed, wrinkling his nose. ‘There is, but unsurprisingly it doesn’t include finding missing people, and I won’t be made to feel stupid because of that!’

‘I didn’t say you were stupid, you’re obviously not. You’re just not thinking straight. Remove the emotion and finding your wife is just a puzzle to be solved. The police have an advantage but they’re also slow and crippled by bureaucracy. We can do things and go places the police can’t.’

‘You mean like break the law?’

‘No, I mean like do whatever it takes to find your wife. You do want her back?’

‘Of course!’

‘Well that’s a relief, for a minute there I was wondering.’

‘That’s not fair, there’s nothing I want more than Sarah here.’

‘So stop feeling sorry for yourself. I’m going to find my daughter. You can come with me and help put things straight or sit here and face the alternatives.’

‘Which are?’

Brian turned and faced Adam, leaning against the study doorway. ‘For a start I’m not hanging around to be one of those haunted fathers at a press conference, begging for some nutter to let his daughter come home. No chance of that. I’m not going to have everyone staring at me thinking I messed with my own girl. Do nothing and this whole fucking country will be watching our sad little faces over their TV dinners. It’ll be the big game, guessing which one of us is the bad guy. No way.’ His eyes briefly flared, scared.

Adam walked through to the living room, thoughtful. ‘Which one of us? Why ever would anyone think I was guilty?’

‘I guarantee you the police will think your wife took Andrea.’ He followed Adam. ‘When they realise that’s not the case, your wife being missing will put you in the spotlight.’

‘Then I have no desire to make things worse. Besides, and I repeat, I don’t track missing people for a living.’

‘So what do you do?’ Brian dropped down onto the sofa.

‘Digital security.’

Brian looked thoughtful. ‘What’s that?’

‘Mostly it’s about companies paying us to break into their computers and security systems, to make sure their competitors can’t. We profile staff, do background checks and the like. Almost everyone has a digital footprint these days. You’d be amazed.’

‘So you’re like a computer investigator?’

He shook his head. ‘Not at all, a large chunk of what we do is testing internal security. More often security is compromised by the people using it. The important point is I don’t have the first idea how you would find a missing person.’

‘If you can break into a company’s computers you can go a long way to finding your wife. You just have to start thinking straight.’

‘And you are?’

‘I’m what?’

Adam blinked theatrically back at Brian, mostly to give himself chance to think. He had underplayed how good he was by some margin. Twenty grand pay rises were not given to the ordinary, even if he had needed to resign to get it. All he wanted was to deflect Brian’s attempt at recruitment. ‘Are you thinking straight?’ he answered. ‘What qualifies you as being the straight thinker over me?’

‘I didn’t say I was. You don’t need to worry about me, I’ll pull my weight.’

‘You’re a bouncer, Brian!’

‘I wasn’t always a bouncer.’

Adam looked at his unwanted and unwashed guest on the sofa, wondering what Sarah would have to say about that. ‘The police are best placed to find my wife and your daughter. And I’m going to be right here just in case there’s anything else I can do to help.’

Brian sighed and pinched the skin above the bridge of his nose, creasing his forehead. He gestured to the armchair across from the sofa. ‘Sit down.’

Adam shook his head. ‘I don’t see there’s much to discuss. I’d rather stand.’

‘You’re starting to piss me off, Adam, sit down before I lose my temper, you stubborn fuck.’

Adam remained still. He wanted to be alone and to get his bearings. Looking at Brian he realised just how exhausted the man looked, his right hand shaking as it had the night before. He stepped across to the chair and sat down.

‘Your wife is missing and you’re going to wait here for a call?’

‘Yes I am.’

‘Then wake up, open your eyes!’ Brian placed his empty cup on the floor and glared across the room. ‘The reality is you and me are the best chance Andrea and your wife have.’

‘No, the police are the best chance they have.’ Adam’s voice was higher in pitch than he would have liked.

‘So tell me, good citizen, how often do you see stuff like this end with smiling faces?’

The realisation spread across Adam’s face.

‘I didn’t think so. What’re you going to do, get up every morning and wait for news that two bodies were found in some muddy copse, or washed up on some beach? Before you know it you’ll be standing over Sarah’s battered body in a morgue, wondering how that body could have got so messed up. Imagining what must have happened and doing that for the rest of your life. A life wishing you had tried, had actually done something.’

It felt like a punch in the face, flashing vivid images through his mind. It made Adam angry and indignant. ‘Don’t go unloading your guilt on me. You’re the one that started all this. If you hadn’t left your daughter to roam the streets none of this would’ve happened.’

For a moment Brian looked like he might physically react, then he looked away and used the pad of his thumb to smooth his moustache, gazing through the patio doors at the emerging morning. They sat in silence for almost a minute. Adam spoke first.

‘You don’t know Sarah or me and have no basis with which to make judgements. So stop pushing me, as if I am the one at fault here. It’s not fair.’

‘Fair!’ Brian suddenly turned on him, almost snarling. ‘Fucking fair! To think I spent ten years fighting for this country and people like you. You march about with this sense of self-righteousness, wasting your time with decisions on fucking hair wax and shades, what up-your-arse car to ponce about in. As if you’ve a divine right and deserve everything. Fucking fair! I expect you think bad stuff only happens to bad people and they might even deserve it. Well wake up, because the real world just came knocking on your door. Nothing is fair.’

‘I’m not like that.’ Adam struggled to say anything more expansive.

Brian expelled the air from his lungs, his whole body deflating. He slowly pushed himself up off the sofa.

‘This is getting repetitive. You’re obviously smart but you’re deluded. I’d hoped there might be something about you, the same get up and go your wife has. Seems I was wrong.’

He hauled up his kit bag that lay like an oversized draught excluder by the balcony door. Inside metal clanked against metal, a noise like a ratcheting chain.

‘When I find your wife I’ll be sure to send her your love. I’ll use the front door if you don’t mind.’ His heavy boots reverberated across the laminate as he stepped from the living room into the hallway and out of sight towards the front door.

The blood thumped through Adam’s head, ceaseless and roaring. Images of Sarah flew through his mind’s eye, a frenetic slide show of smiling pictures punctuated by washed out greens and a broken body on a morgue table. His mind pin-wheeled, imagining the detail. He was not even sure where the words came from.

‘You were a soldier?’

Seconds ticked by with only Brian’s motionless shadow visible on the hallway wall. Then Brian reappeared in the doorway.

‘Fuck me, Sawacki, I thought you were letting me leave!’

He ignored the comment. ‘You were a soldier?’

‘The best kind. Two Para.’

‘And you really think that qualifies you?’

‘Qualifies me? No, this qualifies me.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘The training comes in handy.’

Adam drummed his fingers against the arm of the chair, working on regaining order in his mind. ‘Soldier or not, you’re totally out of order, spouting off your bullshit psychology.’

‘I’m not putting anything on you that you haven’t already put on yourself.’ Brian took a step into the living room. ‘Andrea’s missing and yes, part of that’s my fault. But someone set her up and someone took her. There was nothing I could do about that. But I do intend finding her and I need your help.’ He swung his bag onto the floor and sat back down.