The Disappeared (40 page)

'I've
got some information.'

She
swept the torch beam over him. He was in a suit and tie, clean shoes.

'I
meant what are you doing
here
?'

'My
car packed up. I caught a cab.'

'Are
you going to stand there talking bullshit or answer my question?'

Jenny
aimed the beam of light at his face. McAvoy shielded his eyes.

'I
didn't want to speak to you on the phone ... I found out who Tathum was working
for when those two boys disappeared.'

'You
spent forty quid on a cab to tell me that?'

'I
didn't mean to scare you. I'll go if you want me to . . . It's just. . .' He
looked down, ran his hands distractedly through his hair. She heard him exhale
wearily. 'The truth? These are dark waters, Jenny. I'm not sure how deep in you
want to get. I thought it better to tell you here, away from everything. You
can make your own decision. No public pressure.'

She
slowly lowered the beam away from his face, responding to the sincerity in his
voice. If he had wanted to hurt her, he could have run straight over or jumped
out of the shadows. He wouldn't have sent her a text, left a trail.

'All
right,' she said. 'I'd better hear it.'

She
unlocked the front door and led him into the sitting room. Straight to
business, she sat at the small dining table and motioned to the chair opposite.
No offer of drinks. Even in forgiving light McAvoy looked tired. Dark shadows
haunted his eyes. His face was drawn, his thick stubble grey in patches. He
knotted his fingers and leaned forward in a way which suggested he had agonized
long and hard, and arrived at a painful decision.

'Remember
Billy Dean, the private investigator?' McAvoy said. 'His son took over the
business. I gave him a call after our visit to Mr Tathum last week, asked him
what he could dig up. He got back to me first thing this morning, just before
you turned up.' He gave a strained smile. 'In Z002 Tathum was registered
self-employed. He declared an income of sixty- five thousand pounds and his
bank records show it came in the form of three payments from the same account.
That account was in the name of Maitland Ltd, a private security contractor
with a registered office in Broad Street, Hereford.'

'Where
did he get hold of that?'

'He's
got someone in the tax office, I expect. His dad always made most of his money
from divorce. Anyway, until the year before Tathum was receiving his pay cheque
from the army. Mid-thirties - I guess he must have done his time.'

'What
do you know about Maitland?'

'According
to their website they're close-protection specialists. Hereford's the home
town for the SAS, so I'd guess that's where they draw their personnel from. I
gather it's something of a local tradition: the ex-special servicemen cross the
road and make their fortunes in the private sector.'

'What
would Maitland want with Nazim and Rafi?'

'They're
just being paid to perform a service. If you're asking me to speculate, I'd say
they provided a snatch squad. But for whom . . . who knows? Could be the kids
were terrorist suspects who were spirited away to God knows where. Or they
could have been agents whose cover was blown, in which case they'll be living
happily in condos in Australia.'

Jenny
said, 'Why tell me now? Why not save it for the inquest? You know how risky it
is for me to talk to a witness. Anyone could turn around and say my inquiry was
tainted and have it overturned.'

'Well,
there's the thing, Jenny - neither of us knows where each other stands, not
truly.' He fixed her with a sad, searching look. 'I've seen and done enough
wicked things in my span to know not to lead you to this lightly. British
citizens disappeared by their own state - is that ever going to be allowed to
be exposed? Call me a hoary old cynic, but I'd say another life or two would
weigh lightly in the balance.'

'But?'
She knew there was a but, that the flame that still burned in his eyes wouldn't
be extinguished that easily.

'You're
not cut from the regular cloth, are you?' McAvoy's worn-out face creased into a
smile. 'I've got a shoulder so sore I've hardly been able to lift a drink all
day.'

Unrepentant,
Jenny said, 'That was for lying to me. And for what it's worth, I think you still
are.'

There
was a pause. McAvoy lowered his head. 'It's a funny thing, Jenny: I made a fine
career out of telling other people's lies for them. The other side were always
the bigger sinners. Even when I was caught out and put away, all the virtue was
with me. But this case . . . I've fixed trials, I've bought and sold witnesses,
I've helped murderers walk free and drunk their good health with a clear
conscience, but this one
fucking
case.' He shook his head and turned his
gaze away from her. 'And then you turned up like the Angel of Desire . . . like
a sorceress . . . what's a spent force like me meant to do with that?'

Jenny
inwardly reeled. The breath left her lungs. The visceral part of her willed him
to touch her, to make the slightest contact so he could feel his charge and let
it happen.

She
knew he could feel the change in her, read what was written in her face.

'You're
a temptation, that's what you are,' McAvoy said. 'A sweet and beautiful
temptation as dark and damned as I am. I can't even touch your hand for fear—'

'Of
what?' Jenny said.

He
shook his head again. 'Let's talk about something else.' He swallowed and
pushed himself on. 'Dr Sarah Levin - she's a beautiful girl, I understand. She
was eighteen years old at the time. She would have been spoken to, I'm sure of
that. Wherever Nazim and Rafi went they would have been interrogated,
questioned within an inch of their lives. It's no coincidence she was the one
who spoke to the police - she wouldn't have had any choice. I guessed as much
eight years ago. Should it be dragged out of her now? Does she have to be
destroyed too? How much damage is enough?'

'Why
would she be on your conscience?'

'She
was a blameless child. Why wouldn't she be?'

'Don't
you think you're idealizing her?'

'Compared
with me, she's the Blessed Virgin herself.'

Jenny
said, 'What about the man who telephoned you, the American?'

'I’ve
no idea, except that whoever took those boys hounded Mrs Jamal to death, even
if they didn't physically kill her.'

'You
don't even know the whole story,' Jenny said, feeling an irrational compulsion
to share her burden. 'There were traces of radiation in her flat and on her
body. Caesium 137.' As soon as she'd said it, she knew it was too much. She
stopped herself from mentioning Anna Rose.

'To
make it look like terrorists,' McAvoy said. 'Dirty bastards. At least regular
criminals only kill their own. You wouldn't find a man above the gutter to hurt
an old woman. Only godless government and mad mothers can tar a man's soul that
black.'

Jenny
made a faint noise that was almost a laugh.

'What?'
McAvoy said.

'The
way you talk.'

'How
do you make sense of things?'

'I
don't.'

'You
should try poetry, or scripture, both preferably. You seem like you could do
with it.'

'When
I came to court, I didn't mean to hurt you ... I don't know what possessed me.'

'There's
a question . . .'

The
faint smile, the longing behind the eyes. The grizzled face masking a spirit
that was already inside her, touching her, knowing things about her she didn't
know herself.

'Tell
me you're for real, Alec,' Jenny said. 'Swear that you're not using me or being
paid.'

'What
words can I say that are worth their weight? I came here to tell you that
you're not alone, that's all. . .' He held her gaze. It seemed to take every
ounce of strength. 'And that I know I scare the hell out of you, but if it's
any comfort the feeling's mutual.'

He
pushed up from his chair and made for the door.

'You're
not going?' Jenny said.

'I
better had, don't you think?'

'Can
I drive you?'

'I'll
be just fine.' He lifted the latch, then paused. For a moment Jenny thought he
might turn back, sweep round and break the unbearable tension between them, let
their bottled-up forces explode.

Without
allowing himself to look at her, he said, 'When this case is over, can I see
you again?'

'Yes
. , . yes, we must.'

'Goodnight,
Jenny.' Then, with a hint of a smile, 'I'll see you in court.'

McAvoy
let himself out, closing the door gently behind him.

She
tugged back the corner of the curtain and watched him walk down the path. She
remained at the window until long after he had gone, willing him to come back,
even though she knew he wouldn't.

There
was mail to sort, food to cook, messages on the machine including a plaintive
request from Steve for her to call, saying there was something he needed to
say, but she could think of nothing except McAvoy. He'd gone with a promise to
return, but left a deep sense of incompleteness behind him. It was as if he'd
come to make a confession and stalled. The atmosphere in the cottage hung heavy
with it: there was something Alec McAvoy had yet to tell her, and it was
weighing on his conscience. She could tell.

Jenny
woke, palpitating, as abruptly as if she'd been kicked in the ribs. There was
no dream lingering, just a sense of having been disturbed by a threatening
sound. She imagined footsteps on the flags outside, a man's breath. She lay
still and alert for more than twenty minutes, flinching at every faint creak
and groan of the old house. But whatever phantom it was that had disturbed her
had retreated to its hiding place. Nothing stirred except the breeze. As her
eyelids grew heavy she thought of Ross, and of David sleeping soundly next to
his happy, pregnant girlfriend, and wondered what she had done to be driven out
onto such a lonely limb. 'I think you'd do almost anything to avoid causing
pain,' Dr Allen had said to her, and on the same day that she'd picked up a pen
- the
irony
- and thrust it into McAvoy's shoulder . . . McAvoy. Looking
at him was like looking into a mirror and seeing her dark shadow looking back.
That was it, that was the thrill: the sense that in knowing him she might truly
know herself.

Jenny
climbed out of bed before six with a pressing sense of urgency. The inquest was
due to resume in twenty- four hours and there were vital decisions to be made.
Hurrying a shower, she felt a pang of guilt at the almost intimate moment
she'd shared with McAvoy and the fact that thinking about him was crowding out
thoughts of her son. What kind of mother was she? Recognizing the signs of
rising anxiety - tingling fingertips and a pounding heart - she rushed down to
the freezing kitchen wrapped in a towel and swallowed her two jelly beans with
the dregs of a week-old carton of orange juice. She felt like an addict forcing
down the vinegary liquid. The new pills were like magic: by the time she had
dried and dressed she was at the helm. Mrs Jenny Cooper, coroner, with
important business to attend to.

She
ate a breakfast of stale cereal at her desk in the study while she searched for
Maitland's website. She found it in the online Yellow Pages and clicked through
to a largely anonymous yet somehow exclusive-feeling site which presented the
minimum of information. The registered office was a Hereford address, which
accorded with what McAvoy had told her. The MD was listed as Colonel Marcus
Maitland. The company's chief areas of expertise were listed as 'foreign and
domestic close protection, operational assessments and security planning, and
strategic security services'.

The
explanation was limited and the jargon dense and oblique: it could have been
describing an investment consultancy. There was no mention of former special
servicemen or mercenaries.

Only
McAvoy's word connected the company to Tathum, but even if the link were
fictitious, even if Madog's story about the black Toyota was a fantasy or a red
herring, she felt obliged to call Colonel Maitland as a witness, if only to
disprove the allegations once and for all.

Jenny
printed off a pro-forma witness summons and completed it by hand, requesting
Maitland to attend her inquest on Wednesday, 10 February. It was unreasonably
short notice, but it would flush him out and make him pay attention if nothing
else. Rather than trust a courier to collect a signature on delivery she
decided it was safer to take it herself. Reluctant witnesses were apt to claim
the summons had never arrived. She wanted no arguments: if Maitland or Tathum
refused to comply she would have them committed to prison for contempt. There
weren't many perks to being a coroner, but the power to bring to heel those who
normally thought themselves above the law was one of them.

It
was shortly after eight and barely light when she drove into Hereford and
parked in a quiet street a short distance from Maitland's office in the city
centre. There was no reply when she rang the buzzer to the first-floor suite
and no sign of lights in the window. Faced with a choice between killing time
in the coffee shop four doors along or the cathedral opposite, Jenny turned up
her coat collar and crossed the road.