The Disappeared (48 page)

'And
eight years later she sprinkles herself with radioactive dust and jumps out of
the window?'

'No.
Nazim's associates came for her and made it look like suicide.'

'Is
that what Pironi believes?'

'It's
as good a theory as any.'

They
fell into moody silence, Alison nursing her hurt at Pironi's fallibility and
Jenny brooding and wishing she had a ready target at which to hurl her anger.
It was cheap aftershave she could smell on Alison. Pironi had been sweating it
out of his pores as he shot his meagre bolt.

'I
should be going,' Alison said.

'Hold
on,' Jenny said. 'What was the story with McAvoy this afternoon?'

'He
was behaving strangely, apparently. Dave said he started talking to himself,
like a drunk, except he didn't smell of alcohol for once. I don't think he
would have made much of a witness.'

'What
was he saying?'

Alison
shook her head. 'Dave tried to talk to him but he couldn't get any sense. He
kept muttering something about the devil and an American.'

Jenny
waited until Alison had driven out of the car park, then took the jelly beans
from her handbag and swallowed a prophylactic dose three hours before they
were due to knock her out for the night.

What
had happened to McAvoy? He couldn't be going mad. He was stronger than that.
He'd made a career out of his resilience to the insanity of others, weaving in
and out of the minds of criminals and policemen, playing off their delusions.
He couldn't have let her down, not now. His strange behaviour had been a feint,
a tactic to unnerve the opposition.

He
had mentioned an American. Was it the caller who'd threatened to put him in a
casket? Did McAvoy know more about this man than he'd let on? He'd held back on
other things, Sarah Levin in particular, and now Jenny thought about it, Levin
had an American connection of her own - Professor Brightman had mentioned that
she'd been a Stevenson scholar at Harvard. That much could be dismissed as a
minor coincidence, but when her relationship with Anna Rose was factored in, it
became a solid connection.

There
were uncanny similarities between the two young women: like Sarah Levin before
her, Anna Rose had had an Asian boyfriend, she too was very beautiful. But
there were also significant differences. From what Jenny had learned of her,
Anna Rose was a markedly different personality from her mentor. She was feisty
and intelligent, but naive and unformed, still in search of herself. Her
adoptive parents had been surprised at her gaining a place on the graduate
scheme at Maybury, as if they had never conceived of her as a professional
woman, as if there had to be a catch. Jenny pictured the Crosbys' faces when
she'd first seen them in the morgue: their aura of dread tempered with
resignation. Alive or dead, Anna Rose had already seemed lost to them.

And
then it came to her. A single face among the many who had been to view the Jane
Doe that day. The man was tall, lean, in his fifties, with a tanned, weathered
face. She'd noticed his accent: transatlantic. He said he was a businessman
whose missing stepdaughter had been travelling in Europe, last seen in Bristol.
He'd not flinched as he'd stepped up to the open drawer and looked down on the
dead face. She had been intrigued. A mischievous voice in her own head had
said, 'He's used to death.'

Jenny
flicked on the overhead light and reached for her phone and the tatty address
book, spilling frayed pages, in which she had written the Crosbys' home number.
She dialled it; there was no reply. She flicked forwards, dropping valuable
fragments of paper into the footwell, and found Mike Stevens's number squeezed
into a corner of a cardboard divider. After several rings an answer machine
activated. She started to leave a message.

'Hello.
Mrs Cooper?' his voice cut in abruptly. He sounded agitated.

'Yes.
Don't worry, it's not bad news.'

'Right—'

'I
was just calling to ask you something. It may sound irrelevant and it most
probably is, but do you know if Anna Rose had anything to do with an American,
an older man, in his fifties?'

He
fell silent.

'Mr
Stevens?'

'Do
you know who this man is?'

'No
... do you?'

She
heard him breathing, fast and shallow.

'Where
are you calling from?'

Mike
Stevens lived in a former labourer's cottage at the end of a low, stone-built
terrace on the outskirts of Stroud, a gentrified south Gloucestershire market
town of the sort with health-food and bespoke kitchen stores. He answered the
door on the security chain, getting a clear look at Jenny's face before he
would let her in. Immediately she'd crossed the threshold he double-locked it
behind them.

'Are
you all right?' Jenny said.

He
gave a non-committal shrug and motioned her inside.

The
front door opened straight onto a snug sitting room furnished with an elderly
suite and tasteless patterned carpet.

'I
rent the place,' he said by way of apology.

He
was wearing the suit trousers and shirt he would have worn to work. Although
the house was cold, beads of sweat glinted on his forehead. Jenny kept her coat
on and took a seat on the sofa.

Mike
sat in a hard-backed chair opposite her, his face tense and drawn. 'What can I
do for you?' he said.

Jenny
said, 'When you came to the mortuary ten days ago with the Crosbys, there was a
man, tall, suit and tie. He was American — '

Mike
closed his eyes briefly, then blinked. 'Jesus . . .' It came out in a whisper.

'What?'

He
looked at her with wide, frightened eyes.

'What
is it, Mike?' Jenny said insistently. 'It's important. It could be connected
with an inquest I'm conducting.'

'What
inquest? Who died?'

'Two
Asian boys disappeared. It was eight years ago. They were both first-year
students at Bristol. One of them was studying physics.'

She
waited while he sat looking straight through her for a moment, processing this
information. Eventually he said, 'Someone came here last night . . . I've spent
all day trying to work out where I'd seen him before.'

'The
American?'

He
nodded and held his head in his hands, fighting off tears.

'What
is it, Mike?'

'I
woke up in the night... I was
woken
. . . with a knee in my chest and a
gun at my head.'

It
was Jenny's turn to fall silent.

'This
man ... he had an American accent. He said, "Tell me where the fuck she is
or you end up in a casket." I said I didn't know . . . He punched me hard,
here.' He tugged open his shirt and revealed a violent black bruise that spread
across the entire upper portion of his ribs. 'I couldn't breathe. I thought he
was going to kill me.'

Jenny
thanked God for her pills. A fierce heat broke out across her chest and neck,
but she could still think and reason.

'What
did he do then?'

'You
don't want to know.'

'Tell
me. Please.'

He
looked away and focused on a spot on the ceiling, gathering strength. 'He held
my nose . . . and he urinated in my mouth, until I choked.' His eyes were
suddenly shot through with red veins. 'Then he left.'

'Did
he say anything more?'

Mike
shook his head.

'Have
you told anyone?'

'I
was going to call the police tonight but I didn't want to use the phone ... I
was trying to figure it out . . . Who the hell is he?'

'I
don't know. Let's talk about Anna Rose for a minute. Do you have any idea where
she is?'

'No.'

'How
was she behaving before she went?'

'She
seemed fine, just her usual self ... a little quiet, maybe.'

'Since
when?'

'About
a month ago, I suppose.'

'What
about this Asian guy her parents saw her with last autumn? Salim someone.'

'He
was just a college friend. A post-grad of some sort.'

'You
know him?'

'I've
asked around.'

'Spoken
to him?'

'Left
a few messages on his mobile.'

'Do
you know where he lives?'

'I
tried calling the university. They won't give out personal information.'

'I'll
talk to them.' Jenny made a note to call. 'You know I spoke to you before about
whether she could have got hold of radioactive material.'

'Yes.
What was that about?'

'Long
story, but traces of caesium 137 turned up in an apartment in Bristol.' She
gave a brief account of Mrs Jamal's struggle to achieve an inquest, and her
sudden and violent death. 'It looks like the caesium could have been brought in
on someone who was contaminated.'

'Anna
Rose spent her entire time in an office. She wouldn't have clearance to go
anywhere near anything hazardous.'

'Are
you sure?'

'Completely.
It's out of the question.'

'You
sound angry. Why does that question make you angry?'

'I
don't know . . .'

'Yes
you do.'

He
looked down at the ugly patterned carpet. 'It's not possible, there's so much
security . . . But she was so . . .' He trailed off, unwilling to complete the
thought.

'So
what?'

'So
. . .
innocent
, I suppose. And every man in the place fancied her. You
couldn't not.'

'Are
you saying she played up to it?'

'Occasionally.'

Jenny's
mind raced ahead, putting together what he couldn't bring himself to say.
'You're frightened she could have been talked into something, used by someone?'

He
shrugged. 'Of course, I've thought about it - I haven't thought about much
else.'

'Any
theories?'

'I've
been hoping she'd call. She said she loved me, I believed her.'

'Do
you think she's alive?'

It
took him a moment. He said, 'She's been picking up messages, or at least her
phone has ... I'd have told the police only I wanted to speak to her first.'

'Do
her parents know?'

A
pause. He shook his head.

'Can
I have the number?' She rummaged in her bag for her address book. 'Who else has
got it?'

'I
don't know. It's a phone I gave her on my contract - so we could keep in
touch.'

She
handed him the pen and watched him print the numbers in an even, meticulous
hand. He was dependable, not bad-looking but no prize. She pictured his family
as teachers or civil servants, people who lived within tightly drawn,
reassuring boundaries. She could understand why Anna Rose might have been
attracted to him - he was safe - but the young woman he'd described wouldn't
stay for long and he knew it. He'd ridden his luck, even splashed out on an
extra phone, but this was the moment at which he was finally being forced to
let the fantasy go. Wherever she was, Anna Rose wasn't coming back to him.

Jenny
glanced over at a framed photograph hanging on the wall above the television:
Mike in lab coat posing with a glass trophy,
Graduate Trainee of the Year 2004
,
written at the bottom in gold type. She noticed a now familiar object clipped
to his breast pocket.

Jenny
said, 'You wouldn't happen to have a dosimeter in the house?'

He
looked up abruptly. She saw the alarm in his eyes and knew that she had assumed
correctly: he hadn't been to work today. The fustiness in the room was the
smell of prolonged confinement.

'You
noticed it before you left this morning?' she said. 'He was contaminated . . .
and you couldn't go to work because it would have been detected on you. There
are radiation monitors everywhere, right?'

He
nodded dumbly.

'How
bad is it?' Jenny said, feeling a return of the panic she'd experienced in
court earlier that day.

'Two
hundred milliSieverts ... it was in his urine.'

Jenny
said, 'Should we be here?'

Mike
said, 'Downstairs is safe enough. I wouldn't go upstairs ... I don't know what
to do.'

'You've
no idea what connection this man might have with Anna Rose?' she said. 'No.'

'You'll
have to call the police.'

'I
should have done it this morning.'

'You've
done nothing wrong. You'll be fine.' She attempted a smile. 'Just do one thing
for me - leave it an hour before you make the call. I need to go somewhere and
I don't want to be snagged up with the police all night.'

His
eyes darted to the telephone sitting on the sideboard. 'An hour?'