The Disappeared (50 page)

'Any
idea where she went?'

'I
know she caught a cab. I heard her call for it.' He nodded to a payphone
screwed to the wall beside the counter.

'Did
she have much luggage?'

'Just
a rucksack, I think . . . she seemed in a hurry. Is she in some kind of
trouble?'

Pretending
not to have heard the question, Jenny grabbed the receiver and pressed redial.
The call was answered by a controller at PDQ Cabs. Short on patience, Jenny
demanded to know where the last fare from the Hotel Windsor had been dropped
off. The controller, a hostile woman with a smoker's rasp, claimed the rules
forbade her from releasing confidential 'passenger information'.

Jenny
said, 'Let me spell it out for you - you don't have a choice. I've no doubt
your office is pretty shitty, but I'm sure it beats a police cell.'

Gary
stepped out from behind the counter and gestured for her to give him the
receiver. 'Let me — '

Jenny
reluctantly gave it up.

'Hey,
Julie, my love,' he purred, 'it's Gary. Look, sweetie, I'm with the lady now,
trying my best to help. So why don't you tell her what she wants or maybe we'll
be recommending a different cab company in future . . .'

Jenny
heard the controller give a bad-tempered grunt and tell Gary the fare had been
to Marlborough Street bus station in the middle of town.

He
came off the phone all smiles and asked if there was anything else he could do
to assist, his eyes dipping downwards towards Jenny's breasts.

'No
thanks. You've been more than helpful.' She drew her coat across her chest.
'See you around, Gary.'

As
she pushed out through the doors she caught his reflection in the glass: he was
flicking his tongue at her like a hungry lizard.

Jenny
didn't notice the midnight blue Lexus sedan tucked in two cars behind her as
she gunned towards the city centre. The sleet had given way to big flakes of
wet snow that were starting to lie. She was out of screen-washer and the street
lights kaleidoscoped through the dirty windscreen. She jostled though the heavy
traffic on the Haymarket, narrowly missed a jay-walking drunk, shot the lights
and slewed into Marlborough Street.

She
pulled up on a double yellow and ran into the bus station. Save for a handful
of weary-looking stragglers waiting at a cab rank, the concourse was deserted.
The only buses in evidence were parked up for the night. A metal grille was
drawn down over the ticket-office window. Jenny hurried between the rows of
silent vehicles: there was no sign of a young woman lugging a rucksack.

Fighting
off a rising fear that Anna Rose had slipped through her fingers, Jenny headed
back towards the timetables. She spotted a man in liveried overalls climbing
down from an empty coach with a vacuum cleaner. She hurried towards him,
fishing her damp and crumpled card from her coat pocket.

'Excuse
me — ' Breathless, she handed it to him. 'I'm a coroner. I'm looking for a
young woman who would have come through here about half an hour ago. Short
black hair. Rucksack.'

The
cleaner, a mild West Indian with heavy-lidded eyes and the weary expression of
a man resigned to a lifetime of joyless, badly paid work, peered suspiciously
at the card.

'Have
you seen her?'

Cagy,
the cleaner said, 'Don't think so.'

'Have
any buses gone out in the last half hour?'

'The
London bus would have left at a quarter to.'

Jenny
glanced at her watch: nine minutes to eleven.

'Was
that the only one?'

'Far
as I know.'

'Does
it go straight through?'

The
cleaner shrugged. 'I never been on it.'

Jenny
ran back to her car, her dainty work shoes slipping on the light covering of
snow. The feet of her tights were wet, her toes aching with cold. Sliding into
the driver's seat she turned the heater on full blast and took off, the back
end of the car fish-tailing as she swung away from the kerb. Fifty yards behind
her, the stationary Lexus flicked on its headlights and followed.

The
main road out of town widened swiftly into the M3 2 motorway. Jenny pushed up
the empty outside lane at eighty miles an hour, cutting virgin tracks through
the slush. What would she do even if she did catch the bus? she asked herself.
She could follow it all one hundred and twenty miles to London, but what then?
Even if Anna Rose was on it, there was no reason why she'd cooperate, and God
knows what she was carrying in her backpack. The rational thing would have been
to call the police and assert her right to take a statement once Anna Rose was
safely in custody. If they were obstructive she could come armed with a High
Court order and insist. Cold, wet and painfully tired, it was an attractive
proposition. Her phone was right there in her handbag. She could be speaking to
Pironi in seconds.

Another
more persuasive voice told her not to be seduced, that she'd never get to speak
to Anna Rose if the police got to her first. She'd be pushed out, gagged, and
issued with threats of dismissal if she threatened to make trouble. The full
might of the terrorist-fighting state would be wheeled out against her.

She
thrust her foot down harder. The needle climbed towards ninety.

On
the margins of the city she took the east-bound lane and swept in a semi-circle
to join the M4. The motorway descended into unlit darkness. Her eyes smarted
with the strain of squinting through the smeared arcs of dirt on the windscreen:
every oncoming set of lights blinded her to the road in front.

Rigid
with tension, she had covered more than fifteen miles when the double-stacked
tail lights of an express coach appeared out of the gloom. It was cruising at a
steady seventy in the inside lane, filthy fountains spewing from its massive
tyres. Keeping the middle lane between them, Jenny drew alongside, trying to
distinguish the passengers' faces, but all she could make out through the bus's
steamy windows was the flickering of seat-back screens.

The
car lit up with strobing light. Startled, Jenny glanced in the mirror. A large,
aggressive vehicle inches away from her rear bumper flashed its headlights a
second time. Dazzled, she swerved left into the centre lane and caught the full
spray from the bus as a Range Rover powered past. Instinctively, she touched
the brakes and swung back away from the bus. A horn sounded behind her; another
set of lights flashed, forcing her to jerk sharply to the left. She barely saw
the Lexus accelerate away as the back end of the Golf flicked out to the right.
For a brief moment she was sliding sideways along the carriageway. She wrenched
at the wheel, clipped the rear corner of the bus, travelled through a long,
slow, graceful one-hundred-and-eighty degrees and came to rest on the hard
shoulder, pointing into the traffic. A huge lorry thundered past honking long
and loud as it swerved to avoid her front end.

Exhilarated
at simply being alive, she snatched at the ignition, brought the engine to life
and slammed the stick into first. The front wheels spun in two inches of snow,
then caught and lurched erratically forwards. Several tightly bunched cars sped
past on the inside lane sounding their horns. Aiming for . the gap before the
next wall of approaching headlights, Jenny stamped on the accelerator, threw
the car sharply left and crunched through the gears past sixty, to seventy to
eighty . . .

She
sped precariously over the skin of snow for over a mile and caught up with the
lorry that had nearly struck her. She edged past and emerged ahead of it to see
the distinctive tail lights of the bus up ahead. It was indicating left and
exiting onto the slip road of a service station. Jenny swerved across two lanes
and made the exit with only feet to spare.

At
the crest of a slope she followed signs to the bus and lorry park. The coach
had come to a halt in the far right- hand corner of the football-pitch-sized
lot. She nursed the Golf across the lying snow, passing rows of trucks parked
up for the night, and contemplated the prospect of coming face to face with Anna
Rose. What if she refused to talk? Or ran off into the night? Hot needles
spread outwards from her chest and down her arms.

She
made for the coach's left-hand side. She was no more than thirty yards away
when the front passenger door swung back. At the same moment, two figures ran
swiftly out of the shadows: wiry, athletic men in black paramilitary overalls
and caps. They reached into their jackets as they gained the bus door and burst
inside. She stamped on the brakes and slid to a halt, watching the blurred,
frenetic movement of bodies behind the misted-up windows. She heard muffled
snatches of shrieks and raised voices. A slight, indistinct figure was bundled
along the aisle.

It
was a glint of reflected light on metal which caught her eye. She looked sharply
left and saw his tall, slender silhouette appear from between two goods
trailers. He was dressed in jeans and a puffy anorak, a baseball cap pulled
down over his forehead, obscuring his face. He stopped at the corner and
glanced briefly towards her.

It
was him. The American. The man who'd come to the mortuary claiming to be
looking for his lost stepdaughter. His attention snapped back to the bus. He
raised both hands and took aim as the two men manhandled their prisoner down
the steps.

Some
reflex made Jenny stamp on the throttle and accelerate towards him. A burst of
orange light issued from the barrel of his gun, then another; several more
flashes issued from the direction of the bus. The American staggered and
reached out a hand to the side of the trailer. Jenny spun past him and slewed
to a stop.

Ten
yards to her left the two men threw a small, dark- haired female into the back
seat of a Range Rover, leaped inside and took off over the kerb, crashing
through the thin hedge separating the bus park from the exit road beyond.

The
fleet of police cars and unmarked vehicles arrived less than two minutes later.
A helicopter followed soon after, illuminating the scene from above with an
array of searchlights. The bus park was sealed off. Jenny was rounded up
together with the hysterical passengers from the bus and a handful of
bewildered truckers. All were frisked and relieved of their mobile phones,
cameras and other electrical equipment, before being herded towards the
service-station building. Jenny refused to move and was protesting to a
uniformed officer that she was one of Her Majesty's coroners on official duty
when she saw DI Pironi, with Alison in tow, striding angrily towards her.

'I'll
deal with that woman, Officer,' he shouted at the constable, waving his warrant
card.

The
constable took a reluctant step back.

Pironi
erupted. 'Do you think you're bigger than all this? Someone's running around
with a dirty bomb and you're playing beat the detectives.'

'I've
a legal right to speak to Anna Rose.'

'You
have a right to remain silent, Mrs Cooper. Withholding information — '

Jenny
shouted over him. 'I saw the American. He was right there.' She pointed to the
corner of the trailer. 'He took a shot at those men snatching Anna Rose.'

Pironi
fell silent for a moment. 'Where'd he go?'

'He
took off just after they did. I think he might have been hit.'

'Stay
here.'

Pironi
strode over to the corner of the trailer.

'What's
his problem?' Jenny said to Alison.

'He's
been told to nick you.'

'Who
by?'

'There's
a question.'

'What's
that meant to mean?'

'He
doesn't know. It just gets passed down the line.'

'And
what are you here for, moral support?'

'I
think he needed to talk.'

Pironi
marched back towards them. He looked at Alison, then at Jenny, fear and
indecision in his eyes. 'Did you get a look at his face?'

'I
saw him at the mortuary ten days ago. He claimed to be looking for his missing
stepdaughter.'

Pironi
looked down at the dirty snow. 'You weren't here. Get lost.'

Jenny
said, 'What about my car?'

'Give
me the keys. Wait over there.'

She
handed them over. 'Are you going to tell me who this man is?'

'We
haven't got a fucking clue.'

The
events at the service station played repeatedly behind her eyes like a
disturbing fragment of rolling news. After all her efforts, they had got to
Anna Rose first. And as surely as they had put her beyond reach, they would by
now have silenced Sarah Levin. Jenny felt nothing except an absence of
sensation. Like her own frustrated inner journey, her inquest had reached the
foot of an unscalable cliff.

A
thin crust of snow lay on the ground outside Melin Bach. The earlier storm had
passed, leaving the air deathly still. The night was as silent as any she'd
known. Even the restless timbers of the house had stopped their quiet groaning.
There was only the sound of her breath and her footsteps on the flagstones.
Huddled in a nightgown and cardigan, she paced restlessly to and fro from the
living room to the study groping for any argument or authority that might keep
her inquest alive. She was beyond the territory covered by the textbooks. They
spoke grandly of a coroner's powers to apply to superior courts for orders for
production of witnesses and documents, but they presumed a due process, a
system of law that didn't bend to political pressure, impartial judges who
looked on all agencies of the state as equal. They didn't provide for tricks,
fixes, official denials and deliberate misunderstandings.