You Will Never Find Me (2 page)

‘This
afternoon
?' said Mercy. ‘But I was in the house then. She
left
when I was in the
house
? She said goodbye, see ya, the usual . . . '

‘She was a cool customer, I'll give her that,' said the sergeant. ‘Very together.'

‘What does her letter say?'

‘I don't know. I haven't opened it yet. She asked me not to till you called.'

‘What the hell is going on here?'

‘I think you'll find your daughter's leaving home was a well-planned and executed departure,' said the sergeant. ‘She said you hadn't been getting on.'

‘That's putting it mildly.'

‘She said that too.'

‘You know, Sergeant, I'm beginning to detect a certain amount of inertia coming down the phone,' said Mercy. ‘Are you going to
do
anything about my daughter's disappearance?'

‘Technically—'

‘Just give me a yes or no.'

‘I'll see how busy we are, get someone to read the letter and call you,' said the sergeant. ‘Has her father been informed?'

‘He's on his way here.'

 

She was in her hotel room getting dolled up. She liked hotel rooms, especially the sort you got in the Moderno, with a big bathroom, a power shower and a bidet with a full-length mirror in the bedroom and room service, which she didn't really need but she'd ordered anyway, hamburger and chips, because she was . . . free.

She was dancing in her underwear, buds in, listening to the music's fizzing beat slamming straight into her cerebral cortex. She was slugging vodka tonic from the minibar and had snorted a tiny scrap of cocaine she'd brought with her from London. She'd need more to survive the night but knew how she was going to get it.

She pulled the buds out, socked back the last of her drink and shook out the red minidress she'd bought in French Connection, slipped it on. She'd blown four hundred quid on clothes at the airport. It was like wearing nothing. So sexy, she spun around and watched the dress flare up. She looked over her shoulder to check her bum in the mirror and did a couple of rotations of her hips. Then came the shoes. No. First the little jacket. It's cold out there. She stuffed the black quilted coat, red skirt, black wool tights and biker boots into the rucksack, took a hundred euros and a few condoms and put them in a pocket in the armpit of the jacket. The passport was still in reception. She slung a small black bag over her shoulder. She'd wanted to leave it in the room safe but she needed a credit card to make it work and she didn't have one.

Now the shoes. Six-inch heels. Ankle-strap courts in black. She stepped into them and the air was suddenly thinner. She practised some of her dance moves, sure-footed as a gymnast on the beam.

This was what she loved about Spain. Coming down in the lift and stepping out into the lobby with the whole of the reception area looking at you, appreciating you for making the effort. Nothing creepy. Nothing furtive. Not like London, where nobody looked you in the eye but stole a glance at your arse, a peek at your tits. You could walk into a bar in Hoxton looking like sex on stilts and nobody'd even talk to you. Now Spanish boys, they wouldn't even let you hang for a few seconds. Walk into a bar and they'd be roaring their approval, clamouring to buy you a drink, talk to you. It wasn't a bed thing either. Well it was, but it wasn't the main thing. What was at the forefront was: thank you for being beautiful, it's made us happy. That was why she loved the Spanish.

She went to the front desk, picked up the passport and tucked it into the small pocket in the armpit of her jacket with the money and condoms.

It was nudging midnight. She strode down the street, smiling at the guys appreciating her, even the ones with stunners on their arms. She had an address she'd been given, written it on her hand because she couldn't remember Spanish names, let alone make a cab driver understand. A Moroccan guy had given her the name of a ‘brother' who knew a people trafficker who'd pay a thousand euros for a valid UK passport with an electronic chip.

Cabs were stacking up in the
plaza
and she'd joined the short queue for one when she realised a guy, late thirties, was standing next to her, looking her up and down with naked admiration. The first thing she noticed: she towered over him in her heels. He was wearing a black leather jacket, an open midnight-blue silk shirt revealing a hairy chest, but in a nice way, with a gold chain. His jeans were tight with a black belt and a metal clasp which had twin scorpions, tails meeting. He was tapping his black pointed boots with silver toe tips on the shiny pavement. He wasn't a looker, but he was built. The silk of his shirt was stretched over the muscles of his chest, his pecs stood out, nipples peaking with the cold, and she could see the rack of his abs too. The cords of his neck were like columns on either side of his protruding Adam's apple. He had black curly hair, a sardonic but sexy smile, white teeth and dark deep-set eyes whose colour she couldn't tell. Confidence radiated out of him. One look told her that this was a guy who'd never have trouble talking to women.

‘
Hola, que guapa, chica. No te puedes imaginar . . . 
' he said and stopped. ‘You don't speak Spanish? How about English?'

‘I do English,' she said.

‘
Mira guapa
, I'm with my friends taking a drink,' he said, speaking with a Latin American accent. ‘I see you coming down the street, I say this is a girl who knows how to dress, this is a girl who knows how to have a good time, this, I bet, is a girl who knows how to
dance
. Am I right?'

And with that he did a couple of disco dance moves which showed he too knew how to dance and, despite his evident musculature, he could move fast and smooth. His two friends, one with a Latina beauty on his arm, gave him some ironic applause. ‘
They
can't dance,' he said to her conspiratorially. ‘That's why they're clapping. They're like cows on ice on the dance floor.'

He performed a Neanderthal two-step which suddenly went horribly awry and sent her into giggles. He came up close to her, his head at the height of her chin. He looked up, eyes penetrating right into her. The nerve of him. Ugly bugger too. She had to bring all of her London cool to bear, and he saw that he'd have to make another push.

‘You know where I'm from?' he said.

She wanted to say ‘the movies' but didn't want to throw herself at him. He didn't seem to be local.

‘Madrid?' she said, ironic. He came in closer.

‘Col-
om
-bia.'

He saw the light come on in her face and knew what it meant.

‘
Te gusta un poco de nieve
,' he said, laughing. ‘You like a little snow.'

He thumped his breast pocket with the side of his fist. Smiled.

‘We have enough to go skiing.'

That did it for her. No need to sell the passport. No need to haggle in the toilets. Free charlie the whole night through. He held out his arm. She took it. His friends couldn't believe it. They came over and slapped hundred-euro notes into his hand, which seemed to her like a lot of money for a bet.

They went to Le Cock and drank mojitos, snorted a couple of lines each and then moved to a nightclub called Charada, where house music was the name of the game. They danced for half an hour and then went to the toilets for another line. He kissed her. She kissed him back. He put a strong hard hand between her legs and felt the heat coming off her. The music thumped through the walls.

‘What's your name?' she asked.

‘
Como te llamas?
' he said. ‘You ask me:
Como te llamas?
'

She tried as he sawed his hand over her crotch.

‘
Me llamo Carlos
,' he said. ‘But nobody calls me that.'

‘What do they call you?' she asked, her stomach wrestling under the red dress with the persistence of his hand beneath.

‘They call me El Osito,' he said, his eyes darkening and narrowing to blade points.

‘And what's an
osito
?' she asked.

‘It's a little bear,' he said, and withdrawing his massive hand from between her legs, held it up to the dim light, ‘
con una pata grande
.'

B
ut it's weird . . . this need she has to justify her actions,' said Boxer. ‘You wouldn't have thought she'd bother. “I'm out of here. Don't come looking for me. Bye.” That's all it needed.'

‘It's personal,' said Mercy shrewdly. ‘Handwritten.'

They were in the sitting room, Amy's note on the coffee table between them.

Boxer leaned forward to reread it without touching it, looking for other levels of meaning, unable to restrain his professionalism. Both of them were used to reading and listening to notes, texts and messages sent by gangs and putting them through a special analysis, but this time there was added parental guilt, anger and denial.

‘She's being rational and organised. She's getting her PR in place. She left here, went to the police station and told the desk sergeant he'd recognise me.'

‘When was the last time you were at that police station?'

‘Never been there in my life. She was just winding up the desk sergeant and sticking it to me at the same time. Telling him we're both coppers so we should feel right at home with each other,' said Mercy. ‘Did you know she had a driving licence?'

‘No. I asked her if she'd like to learn, thinking I'd pay for some lessons as a birthday present. “And what would I do with a car in London?” she said. “Who's going to buy me one? Who's going to insure it?” All in that withering, patronising way of hers. I'm not sure how much of this is to do with us,' said Boxer, irritated by the defensiveness that even he could hear in his own voice. ‘It's convenient to blame us: the people who'd had the temerity to bring her into this godforsaken world. And she has a go, as you'd expect . . . but almost as an afterthought. “It bores me being a child, your child.” What's more striking to me is her despair at the way her life is unfolding. She seems to want to jolt herself out of the predictability, of knowing what's going to happen tomorrow.'

‘And yet there's something in that last line that smacks of . . . a challenge.'

‘I'm with you on that. She's definitely throwing down the gauntlet to us, the professionals, to come looking for her.'

‘And she's arrogant enough to think we're not going to hack it.'

‘Do you think there's part of her that wants to be found?'

‘Why challenge people if you don't?' said Mercy.

‘Maybe she just couldn't resist goading us. She knew, because we're the people we are, that we were going to be on her case from the moment we saw that note. This is her saying, “You haven't got a chance.”'

‘Do you think she's laid down some elaborate smokescreen to make us look like idiots at our own work?'

The doorbell rang. Mercy left the room and returned with two police officers and an eyebrow raised to Boxer. They were not friendly. The expected professional bond was not there, but rather the ‘suspect distance'.

‘I'm Detective Inspector Weaver,' said the male officer, taking in the couple in front of him: a tall slim black woman with cropped hair and almond-shaped eyes and a blond-haired man with intense green eyes who looked as if he kept himself in fighting condition.

‘And I'm Detective Sergeant Jones,' said the female officer.

‘We'd like to see Amy's room,' said Weaver.

‘And the note,' said Jones, staring down at the coffee table.

Boxer handed it over. The note passed between the officers.

They all went up to Amy's room.

‘Have you established what she's taken with her?'

‘Well, as you can see, there's nothing in here. She's stripped it bare.'

‘Without you noticing anything?' asked Jones.

‘I've been working on a very demanding case this last week and she was supposed to be staying with her grandmother up in Hampstead. But clearly she was dropping in here after school and removing all her stuff,' said Mercy. ‘Tonight was her first night back home. She said she would join us at a restaurant in town but didn't show. I came back, checked her room, found the note.'

‘I understand from the desk sergeant that you saw Amy when she left the house this afternoon,' said Jones.

‘She had a small rucksack, that was it.'

Mercy described what Amy had been wearing. The officers didn't take notes. They asked for all the details of friends and relatives, the places Amy was known to frequent, her money situation. Mercy talked them through it but omitted Amy's involvement in the previous weekend's cigarette smuggling jaunt between the Canaries and London that she'd uncovered. She wanted to investigate that little scenario herself. She told them what she knew about Amy's finances—that she had a debit card and a bank account but didn't know how much she had in it.

‘We'll need some up-to-date photos,' said Weaver. ‘And er . . . a DNA sample would be helpful. Hair? A toothbrush?'

Mercy was momentarily frozen by this: the possibility that they might have to match DNA with a body. She gave Boxer a curious glance, which he didn't understand, and went to the corner of the room where she knew Amy dried and brushed her hair, but not a single strand of her long ringlets remained.

‘I don't believe this,' said Mercy. ‘She's hoovered the room.' ‘Let's go back downstairs for the next bit,' said Weaver. ‘And we'll check the vacuum cleaner while we're at it.'

In the kitchen Mercy gave them the vacuum cleaner but the bag had been changed. Mercy blinked at the thoroughness. She offered tea and coffee, which were politely refused. They reconvened in the living room. Boxer and Mercy sat. The policemen stood in front of the fireplace.