The Locker (23 page)

forty-six

Ruth charged up the
stairs with Vaslik and Gina close on her heels. This had gone far enough; she'd had it with all the twists and turns and—what was it some politician had once said about being economic with the truth? How about plain bloody lies and evasions? As far as she could tell, that was all Nancy had done so far. She had no solid proof yet, but somehow the shocked mother act was looking just a little shy of the genuine article.

Now this.

She twisted the handle and pushed at Nancy's door. It didn't give. Damn, she hadn't given a thought to a lock before; there had been no need.

“Slik.” She stood aside. There was no time for niceties; this needed a fast entry.

Vaslik pushed the door with his hand to test it, then threw his shoulder against the centre of the panel close to the lock. It burst open with a shriek of wood, and a long splinter came away from the jamb, carrying the metal strike plate with it.

There was a sharp cry of alarm inside the room and Ruth saw Nancy on her bed. She was dressed in a
T-shirt
top, her legs bare. A dressing gown lay across her feet.

She was thrusting her hand beneath the pillow.

“What are you doing?”
she protested. “You have no right!”

“Tough,” said Ruth. “Give me the phone.” She held out her hand, although she guessed it was too late. “Now.”

But Nancy shook her head like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar, denying all responsibility.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she muttered, unnaturally calm and leaning back against the pillow. “I don't have a phone—you kept mine downstairs, remember?” Her eyes were wide and she was almost smiling, as if innocent denial would be enough. She eyed Vaslik, standing by the door, watching silently. “Has he come to watch the fun or are you two dykes going to gang up on me?” She gave Vaslik a coy look and deliberately parted her legs, the cotton
T-shirt
shifting up her thighs. “What do you think, Andy? The charity widow needs a bit of action, is that it?”

“Stop that!”
Gina stepped forward, eyes blazing with anger. “What the hell are you doing?” She grabbed the end of the pillow and ripped it from under Nancy and hurled it across the room, then dragged the dressing gown over her bare legs.

As she did do, a slim, black cell phone slid off the bed and bounced to the floor.

Ruth picked it up. She checked the log, listing calls missed, received and dialled. Empty. She checked the messages log. The same.

Nancy had beaten them to it.

When she looked up, Nancy was staring at her defiantly. She looked angry, but there was something else lurking in her eyes, too.

Was it an expression of
triumph
? Christ, how could she?

“Who are you in contact with, Nancy? Is it Michael?” Ruth tossed the phone to Vaslik, who caught it and dropped it into his pocket. “Never mind, we'll have our techs look at it and they'll know exactly who you've been talking to. Trust me.”

Nancy remained silent. She tucked the dressing gown around her in a belated show of modesty and stared at the floor.

Ruth sat on the bed. “Nancy, I don't know what you're doing—or what you think you're doing. But this isn't going to help us find Beth. You do want her back, don't you?”

“Of course.” The answer was a whisper. If she had any fight or resistance left, she had pushed it down deep inside where they couldn't get at it.

“So what's the thing with the secret messaging? Did Michael arrange for the phone? How did he get it inside? Was it hidden here in your room?”

Nancy's head jerked up in surprise.

Ruth continued, “What—you think we couldn't tell when you began communicating with him? You really think we haven't had this place locked down ever since we arrived?” She pointed towards the window, hoping the fabrication didn't show in her voice. “There's a unit out there can tell when you call or send a text message … and when you receive one. It also has the capability of
back-tracking
on Michael's texts and pinning down his location each time. Sooner or later, we'll know where he is to within a few metres. Is that how you want this to end? Because we're not the only ones who can do this, you know. There are others—and they're not so forgiving.”

A double blink of the eyes. Nancy whispered, “I don't believe you.”

“Tell her, Slik.” She reckoned it would sound scarier coming from Vaslik, and hoped he would pick up the baton and run with it. They had to do something to shake her composure otherwise this could go on forever.

“Cell phones use microwaves,” he said easily. “When you talk, your voice is encoded into signals which are transmitted to the nearest tower, which bounces them on to the destination device in what's called a pathway or control channel. The nearest tower then tells the device to ring and that's how you get contact. When you send or receive a text message, it's pretty much the same; the signal goes over the pathway in a small packet of data. Darned thing is, Nancy, people think text messaging is easier to hide because it's smaller and faster … the signal doesn't last long enough for anybody to fasten on to it.” He smiled coolly. “Fact is, your cell phone is constantly active, exchanging data with the nearest tower, or if you're moving, checking to find the next tower and so on. Cell phones are like little lost dogs—they hate being out of contact. Didn't Michael tell you that?”

She said nothing, eyes dulled by the shock of what she was hearing.

Vaslik gave a snort of disgust and said, “Over to you two. I'm done here.” He turned and left the room and went downstairs, his footsteps soft on the carpet.

“Where is he, Nancy?” Ruth asked softly. Hard soft, hard soft; it was a common enough technique to wear away at a person withholding information. Hit them with something that would frighten them, then soften them up to coax them into talking. It was a variation on the good cop, bad cop approach. But like many such techniques, it wasn't guaranteed to work every time.

And bad cop had just walked out.

forty-seven

“I don't know what
you mean,” Nancy muttered, and stared out of the window. “Why don't you all leave if you distrust me so much?”

“What did he say in his message just now?” Gina asked. “The one you just deleted.” She ducked her head, forcing Nancy to look at her. “Michael told you to do that, didn't he—right at the beginning? He told you to wipe every message and hide the phone. Why would he do that? What is he hiding? What are
you
hiding?”

“That's rubbish.” But Nancy sounded uncertain and was looking at Gina with a new sense of awareness, as if her confidence had been dented by how much they knew.

“Does he know about Beth?” Ruth asked, piling on the pressure. “He must. He must be worried for her.”

No response.

“What have you told him, Nancy? What did he tell you? He knows we're here, right—from Cruxys?”

Not a flicker. It was like talking to the wall. She decided to go for broke instead, to push her emotional buttons.

“The thing I don't get, Nancy, is what kind of father won't come back for his daughter? It's not the action of a reasonable man, is it—leaving you to handle everything? Why is he hiding? What's so important that he'll risk Beth's life—and yours—to keep it safe?”

Nancy said nothing, but slid down on the bed and lay down on her side, cutting them off.

Ruth shrugged and left the room, with Gina close behind.

As the door closed, Nancy could not prevent a tear rolling down her cheek. But she refused to cry. Whatever happened next, she had to believe in Michael … and fate.

Vaslik was waiting for them in the kitchen. He'd put the kettle on to boil but it wasn't to hide anything they might say. It had gone too far for that. He felt irritated with the reaction of the woman upstairs and her unseen husband, and wanted to explode at her. But that wouldn't help.

He'd encountered a variety of responses in the families of kidnap victims over the years, ranging from the helpless to the outright hostile, as if the police were actively seeking the worst possible outcome. Some were ashamed by whatever had brought about the kidnap—even if it was simply the wealth sought by the kidnappers; some were defensive, closing in on themselves as if that might offer some protection; others were noisily and emotionally fearful of what might happen to the kidnapped person; others still were clearly hiding something—a very few concealing something so awful that they were willing to risk the death of the victim to keep hidden.

He watched Gina and Ruth enter the room. They were clearly as puzzled by events as he, filled by equal parts frustration and anger at the lack of progress.

“She's talking to him, isn't she?” Ruth said. “She's in touch with her husband. Tell me I'm wrong.”

He nodded. There really wasn't much more to say, no other conclusion to reach. She'd fooled them and got round their precautions, even though they were trying to protect her. Short of beating the information out of her with a big stick, they were up against a brick wall.

“What do we do now?” asked Gina. “This isn't a crisis, is it? Why are we even still here?”

“Because there's an innocent child out there,” Ruth murmured. “What's going on is not her fault. And we don't know for sure if Hardman's got any control over what's happening. He must have told Nancy everything's all right but he's hardly proven himself Father of the Year material so far, has he?”

“Right.” Vaslik nodded in agreement. “Whatever's keeping him from coming in, it must be serious. Which means he must know the people who snatched Beth and that they want him bad.”

“If so, what won't they do to get him? And what's he got that's so damned important?”

Vaslik was about to reply when his cell phone rang. He took it out, checked the screen. No caller ID. Probably Drybeck with more threats. “Vaslik.”

“Hey, Andy.” It was Eric LaGuardo. He sounded excited. A buzz of background traffic told Vaslik he was outside, away from the office. The geek must have found something good.

“What's up?”

“Uh … those faces? You sure about them being in London? I mean, absolutely certain?”

“I'm sure. I saw them myself in a vehicle not a hundred yards from where I'm standing.” He turned on the loudspeaker and told Eric to keep talking, that the other people in the room were trustworthy.

“Uh, right. Hi, folks.” Eric sounded guarded.

“Why do you ask, Eric?”

“Because,” Eric's voice echoed around the kitchen, “if you're right, they both used to work for
you-know
-who.”

“Langley?”

“Jeez, don't say that! Haven't you heard of keyword analysis?”

“I have, but come on—a single word in the ether? They'd need more than that.”

“They wouldn't, believe me.” He didn't sound mollified.

“Okay, no more keywords. What have you got?”

“Well, these two subjects are listed as
ex-employees
, but that's all I can tell you, except that … hell, how do I put this?” He breathed heavily, the noise coming out of the speaker like a snorting bull.

“Just say it, Eric,” Vaslik told him coolly. “Spit it out and you can go home.”

“OK. The work these … two used to do—they were in a specialist unit overseas. Then they ran into some trouble over their treatment of detainees.”

“Abu Ghraib?” The Baghdad prison where systematic abuse had been discovered being meted out against detainees, including
water-boarding
and mental abuse. It had created a storm of international protest and sullied the US military for a long time.

“No, not that. Field prisoners.”

“Fighters.”

“Yes. Some disappeared after being taken. Others had accidents.”

“They probably deserved it.” Gina's voice was flat. She shrugged at looks from the other two and a signal from Ruth to zip it .

“Pardon me.”

“What happened to these two?”

“They disappeared. Shipped out fast on a military transport … then gone like smoke. Google their names and you get zilch. Believe me, it takes muscle to disappear a person just like that.”

Vaslik grunted. It certainly did. But for some the muscle was there. If you wanted things to vanish off the radar, they could. All you had to do was know who to call.

“How come they're still around?” said Ruth.

“Simple: they never left. It's smoke and mirrors. You'd be amazed at how much of that shit goes on around here. These guys went private sector and their records disappeared into a big, black hole. It happens all the time. Nobody's admitting it but there's talk, you know? You get a feel for the subtext when you work in this business long enough.”

“And what are they doing now?” Vaslik asked. He was guessing Eric knew; this was way too juicy a subject for the geek to have ignored, and he'd have done a lot more digging to find out more.

He was right.

“What I hear is they do contract work for some shadow organisations with connections in
you-know
-where.”

Washington. The centre for all things shadowy, where the very air was heavy with intrigue. Vaslik exchanged a look with Ruth but said nothing. He was suddenly wishing he'd taken this call in private. Too late now, though.

“Doing what?”

“I don't know. But it can only be one thing, right? Heavy stuff. What else is there for their kind?”

Anti-terrorism
. The biggest game in town and for people like Eric was describing, the only game they knew how to play. For seasoned pros who had seen it and done it all, there was always a call for their skills, always a budget for their deadly commitment.

Vaslik found himself holding his breath, trying to entertain just a healthy glimmer of doubt. But there was none. Either Eric had been drinking or what he'd stumbled on was absolutely genuine and buried in a file deep in the archives.

But Eric wasn't interested in booze; his kicks came from a different source. Eric had a wild imagination and an enquiring mind. It was what made him so good at his job. Put the two traits together with the kind of computer skills he possessed and he couldn't fail to go hunting bugs. Or, in this case, spooks. And because he was trusted and had undoubtedly been vetted down to his grandfather's socks and back, he had access to some seriously scary information. All it would have needed was a start, like the photos Vaslik had given him, and a couple of lines of data that hadn't been correctly expunged by the keepers of the records, and it would have been enough to set him off.

For that reason, the glimmer of doubt faded and vanished.

“Should I be worried?”

“Hell, yes. If I was you, I'd get out of that place right now and find a deep hole to hide in. From what I've heard, if they've got you under surveillance it's for a reason—and they're not trained to take prisoners.”