Gone Cold (30 page)

“You’ve found him,” she said, “the man who stole your daughter all those years ago.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Is she…” She paused. “I was about to ask whether she was alive. But it doesn’t matter, does it? Not for the purposes of this conversation. Doesn’t matter at all.”

Again, she was merely stating fact.

“Simon, I can’t tell you what to do, love. You know that. This is your burden, I’m afraid. You’re the one who will have to live with the consequences, not me.”

I told her I understood and she continued.

“All I can say is, murdering that man will only add another link to the chain of violence. I
know
the desire for revenge. I know how bloody strong it is. But do you need to add to that chain? Or are you better than that?”

“What happened to your son’s killer?” I asked her.

She sighed deeply. “He finally died in prison. A natural death. And I was relieved that it was over, my dealings with the Maryland penal system at least. But I wasn’t happy. Nothing could have brought my son back.”

“Did you forgive him?”

She hesitated again. “Forgiveness is something else entirely, love. It’s something that happened, and I’ve moved on with it as part of my life. I still hate what that man did all those years ago. But I no longer hate
him
.”

She was right, of course. In every way she was right.

Edie was a good person.

Better than me.

She always had been, I’d bet.

And she always would be.

I thought of Rob Roy Moffett back at HMP Shotts in Scotland.

“Guess you and I are just different, then,”
he’d said.

“I guess we are.”

I looked down at Terry. And I pitied him some. He’d a hard life. He’d screwed up one night at a party by letting his temper get the best of him and for that he was tossed out of medical school, his future disintegrated by a single drunken fistfight.

And maybe my father
had
wronged him.

And maybe he really
did
love Hailey like a daughter.

And maybe he
was
truly sorry for everything that had happened these past twelve years.

I thought about all of it.

Then I thought about what he’d done.

I thought about coming home to D.C. to learn from his own mouth that Hailey had been taken.

I thought about that first night and all nights after that, wondering where my little girl was.

And I thought about Tasha. About that first morning. About all those weeks of tissues and snoring.

I thought about the birds.

About her funeral.

About what I’d done.

I lowered myself to my haunches. Looked Terry in the eyes and said, “You’re right. I’m as much to blame for Tasha’s suicide as anyone.”

*   *   *

A half hour later I was back in Terry’s Mercedes, heading east toward Knight’s End. At a red light on Cable Street I braked behind a red double-decker and studied my hand. After a few seconds, I unwrapped part of the bandage and flexed my fingers. Full range of motion had returned and, aside from the lacerated palm itself, the injury no longer hurt.

Half a minute later the light turned.

After another half mile, I passed the double-decker bus and thought back to the scene at the warehouse. What would I tell Ostermann? What would I tell Ashdown and Zoey? What would I eventually tell Hailey?

I drew a deep breath and decided that for the time being I wouldn’t tell anyone anything. Because what could I say?

In the end, the violence I’d done to that man couldn’t be put into words.

Chapter 61

Back at Knight’s End the lights were out. Black curtains were drawn so that no passersby could see in. I stepped up to the front window and inspected my reflection in the glow of the streetlamp.

A few minutes later, Lizzy opened the door. Inside I found Kurt Ostermann seated with Damon Ashdown, each of them holding a pint.

“Is it done?” Ostermann said.

“That part,” I told him.

I walked past them and went to the hidden door. It was slightly ajar. Carefully, I opened it the rest of the way and descended the cold concrete stairs.

In the room below, I found Hailey lying on the bed, her head resting on Zoey’s lap. Zoey held a wet cloth to Hailey’s forehead. In the corner stood the kid waiter, Andrew.

“Gonna be a long road for this one,” Zoey said softly.

“Does she need a hospital?” I asked, knowing full well I couldn’t take her to one. At least not here in London. Not in the UK. Not in the EU. Whatever name she now went by, she was still wanted for the murder of Eli Welker in Dublin.

Zoey shook her head. “When she fully comes to she’ll want a hit. Best to wean her, but given your situ…”

She didn’t need to say the rest. I too was wanted in connection with the murder of Ewan Maxwell in Glasgow. By now, maybe Duncan MacBride in Liverpool as well. We needed to get the hell out of London, and fast. Hailey and I, wherever we went, would be starting our new lives as fugitives from justice.

Cruelly ironic, I thought. When all this started I’d been hunting fugitives. Now I’d become one.

And once that happened, there was no turning back.

“Are you taking her?” the kid asked.

I’d forgotten he was there.

“What’s it to you?” I said, not unkindly.

“I … I just love her, don’t I?”

“You and me both.” I went to the bed and sat next to Zoey. Turned to the kid and asked for some privacy.

Once he was gone, I said, “I feel as though I regained a daughter but lost a sister.”

“Bullocks,” she said. “You and I will always be brother and sister, won’t we? Doesn’t matter that we had different biological mums and dads. Blood doesn’t mean shite, does it?” She paused, looked into my eyes. “Please say no, because if it does I’m right fucked, aren’t I? Being the daughter of that monster and all.”

I held her to me.

Said, “I don’t know what anything means anymore, Zoey. We just do our best and hope for some luck.”

I stared into Hailey’s ghostly white face. “Any way to bring her around?”

Zoey nodded. “Let me run upstairs and fetch my handbag.”

*   *   *

Ten minutes later Zoey held a syringe in her right hand.

“Naloxone,” she’d said when she first came down the stairs with her handbag. “It’s a pure opioid antagonist.”

“Why do you have it?” I asked.

“All heroin users should carry it round. It counters the effects of an overdose.”

“How does it work?”

“Tricks the brain into thinking there are no more opiates in the body.”

“Is it safe?”

“Safer than heroin. Certainly safer than a heroin overdose.”

“Did she overdose?” I asked with some alarm.

Zoey shrugged. “Technically, yes, I suppose. Her life’s not in danger. But she has all the symptoms of an OD. Excessive sleepiness, shallow breathing.” She lifted the lids of Hailey’s eyes. “Dilated pupils. And she didn’t wake when I spoke to her loudly while you were gone. I tried rubbing her chest firmly. That didn’t bring her round either.”

Now she twisted Hailey’s arm, asked me to hold it in place. She removed a rubber tube from her handbag and tied it around Hailey’s upper arm just below her meager bicep. She tapped the inside of Hailey’s forearm, searching for a vein.

“Found it,” she said.

She started the injection.

“How long does it take?”

“She’ll come round pretty much straightaway.”

Before she finished the sentence Hailey opened her eyes. Immediately they filled with tears and she tried to push herself up on the bed.

“Hold her down,” Zoey said.

Hailey was sweating, twitching, crying, pleading for another hit.

I took her by the shoulders and held her down, tears welling in my own eyes, threatening to fall.

“Sadly,” Zoey said, “Naloxone sends you into immediate withdrawal. It’s an awful feeling but it will pass.”

I looked toward Hailey’s gear on the floor, specifically at the half-empty vial.

“Shouldn’t we give her some,” I said, “to make her feel better?”

Zoey looked me in the eyes. “Are you mad? More heroin will send her straight back into overdose.” She leaned over Hailey and said, “It’s all right, love. You’ll start to feel the dope again in about forty minutes and the sick feeling will go away, I promise.”

It was pure agony watching her like that. But I trusted Zoey and I told her that.

“Kind of funny,” Zoey said, “when you really think about it. I used to believe I had a mind for medicine because my father was a doctor. But all along, it was because my father was a bloody career drug dealer and my mum was an addict.”

I leaned over and kissed my sister on the cheek.

She smiled, tears forming in her own eyes. In that moment I saw her clear as day as she’d appeared thirtysome years ago on the opposite side of a loose circle on our primary school playground, singing “The Farmer Wants a Wife.”

With the back of my index finger I wiped a tear away from her cheek.

“Run upstairs now,” she said. “Say good-bye to Damon. He’s a right bastard most of the time. But his heart’s in a good place, innit?”

*   *   *

Ashdown’s heart
was
in a good place, I decided. Upstairs, shortly after Ostermann excused himself and went outside for a smoke, Detective Chief Inspector Damon Ashdown conceded that he had been able to intercept my call from D.C. because he’d issued an alert for the name Simon Fisk the very day he was assigned to Interpol Manchester.

“I never imagined we’d meet under these particular circumstances,” he said as he set down his empty pint glass. “But when I first discovered your name linked to the young American girl who went missing in Paris, I figured I might one day be of assistance. Possibly in getting your arse out of hot water with UK authorities.”

“You put yourself at considerable risk these past few days,” I told him. “Your career, your safety. Your very
life
a time or two. Why, Detective? Why take those chances for someone you’d never even seen before?”

He grinned. “You were family, weren’t you? At least once upon a time you were, even if we’d never had the opportunity to meet in person.”

“You did all this for Zoey,” I said. “You want her back, don’t you?”

His grin faded as he shook his head. “Want her back? No. No, Simon, that ship has sailed. I know we can never be a couple again. But I
do
love her. Love her more than I’ve ever loved anyone. And I’d go to war with the devil himself if I thought it would do Zoey a lick of good.”

I nodded but said nothing.

He said, “She’s had a rough go of things, hasn’t she? Time and again she’s walked through the fire. And each and every time she’s come out the other side that much stronger. I love her, sure. But more important, I admire her. And after four decades on this earth, half of them spent rummaging through the wreckage of unfinished lives, there aren’t many people I can still say that about.”

Chapter 62

An hour later Hailey and I were in Ostermann’s suite at the Corinthia. Hailey was resting in the bedroom while Ostermann and I stood across from each other, reluctant to say good-bye this time, because both of us knew, it was probably our last.

“Where will you go?” he said.

“Better if you don’t know,” I told him.

He motioned with his strong chin to the bedroom. “Does she know what’s going on?”

“Not really. When she finally came around and started feeling better, she kept asking for Terry.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I tried telling her who I was.”

“And?”

“And there was no recognition in her eyes. None at all. She asked me where Terry was again, and I told her I didn’t know. She went ballistic, so Zoey told her Terry was all right. That someone else brought Jack Noonan the ransom.”

“Probably for the best for the time being.” Ostermann turned and paced the length of the room. “Stockholm syndrome, I’d suspect.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe something more than that.”

“It’ll take time, Simon. Time and patience.”

“It’ll take that, all right.”

“And your father? Where is he now?”

“He headed back to Heathrow as soon as Zoey told him we’d found Hailey. That’s the last we’ll ever see of him.”

Now that I knew the truth, now that I knew
why
he’d taken me from my mother and Tuesday in London, I could probably forgive him that. But I could never forgive him for all the secrets and lies, for all the bullying and emotional blackmail. I could never forgive him for the way in which he raised me in the States over the next decade. I could never forgive him that.

My BlackBerry buzzed in my pocket. Ashdown’s number appeared on the screen. With a sudden feeling of foreboding, I pressed the phone to my ear.

“You need to get the hell out of there, Simon,” he said urgently. “They’re on their way.”

“Who?”

“The NCA. They have your location. Which I can only assume means you still have Eli Welker’s bloody phone.”

Christ, how could I have made such a stupid mistake?

I dug Welker’s phone from my pocket and ripped the battery from it.

“They’re after Shauna Adair, specifically, Simon. But chuck your phone out as well. Just in case.”

I nodded. “Right. Soon as I hang up.”

“Which needs to be now, Simon. Good luck.”

Before I could thank him Ashdown was off the line, and hints of red-and-blue lights entered the room through the open curtain.

I tore the battery off my BlackBerry and tossed both phones onto the bed.

Ostermann grinned. “You have no manner of luck, Simon, do you? No manner of luck at all.”

“Help me with Hailey,” I said.

Together we ran into the bedroom.

*   *   *

“I’m experiencing a bit of déjà vu,” Ostermann said in the stairwell minutes later.

“That’s been going around a lot these days.”

Only this time Ostermann and I were heading downstairs rather than up as we had in Berlin two years earlier. And thankfully, we wouldn’t be jumping off the roof onto another building this time.