The Missing Hours (17 page)

I pause at the door to the major incident room, listen to the flurry of voices, will them to wash my thoughts clean.

I push hard at the door.

No one looks up. We are in hour 18 of the custody clock. Beck Chambers has been held for eighteen hours. In another six, we will have to apply to magistrates for an extension. The work is frantic. You can see it in the tight expressions, the hard-edged voices. There is much to be done and limited time in which to do it.

I walk calmly towards my desk, try to look every inch the detective embroiled in a murder case.

But two words chase each other around my head. Devil’s breath. Shimmy the mouse and pull up the Google page. Glance quickly over my shoulder. Type the words.

The world’s most dangerous drug.

I purse my lips at the hyperbole, scroll down. Click on a link. It is scopolamine. It’s used to treat motion sickness. It comes from the borrachero tree. South America.

It can be ground into a powder, is odourless, tasteless, and when it is blown into a victim’s face, it will leave them lucid, coherent and yet entirely without free will.

My stomach flips.

I scroll down.

It produces a zombie-like state in which the victim is completely under the perpetrator’s control. There are cases, many, many of them. People have been led into banks, have emptied out their life savings and handed them over to total strangers, all without any awareness of what they have done. Women have been drugged with it, gang-raped. Parents have had their children stolen out from beneath them.

There is a newspaper report. A chubby, smiling baby. My insides tighten further. Six-month-old Aria Theaks, kidnapped in San Cristobal, Venezuela, after her British parents were dosed with devil’s breath.

I stare at the photo, her rounded cheeks, Cupid’s bow lips.

Could this be it? Could this be what happened to Selena?

Aria Theaks was rescued, eventually, a ransom negotiated. Was found abandoned outside a hospital by a security operative, ex-military.

Why would someone do this to Selena?
Who
could do this to Selena? You’d have to have access to the drug for a start, experience of how it works.

And then the biggest question still remains. Even if this is it, even if Selena was drugged, dosed with devil’s breath, what the hell happened to her during those missing hours?

I pick up the phone, dial quickly.

‘Drug squad, Steve Linden.’

‘Steve, it’s Leah.’

‘All right, Lee. How’s it going? How’re the kids?’

I like Steve, my tutor when I first joined. A large man with a large laugh, four children and a deeply twisted sense of humour. ‘They’re good. Trouble, but good. How’s it going down there in Drugs R Us?’

‘Ah, you know us, Lee. Keeping the world safe, one joint at a time.’

‘Steve, I need to ask you about something. You heard of a drug called devil’s breath?’

‘Um … devil’s breath. Yeah. Nasty stuff. Scopolamine base. Coming out of Colombia. You know,’ he says, ‘it’s funny you should ask. One of our test purchasers came home with a couple of pills last week. Said the dealer was calling it El Diablo. Essentially a tidied-up version of devil’s breath. It’s been a thing in South America for a while now, but this is the first time we’ve seen it here. It’ll catch on fast, though. Nothing junkies love more than a new high.’

‘El Diablo? What can you tell me about it?’

‘We’ve had a look at it. From what we’re seeing, it’s a manufactured drug, same basic components as devil’s breath but they’ve ironed out some of the nastier side effects, made it a bit more fun for all the family. Causes some pretty intense hallucinations. Also has some of the depressant qualities you get with heroin, morphine, that kind of thing. The US authorities think it’s coming from one of the drug groups in the Darién Gap in Colombia. Like I said, we haven’t seen much of it as yet, but give it time. California, especially San Diego, is having a bit of a nightmare with it at the moment.’

‘Okay. That’s … thanks, Steve.’

‘Any time. You kiss those babies of yours for me, okay?’

I grin, hang up the phone and stare at the screen. El Diablo. The devil.

‘Hey, how’s it going?’ Oliver appears, as if from nowhere, before the phone even hits the cradle.

I quickly shrink the search engine on my screen. ‘Oh, you know. Fine. Tired. You?’

‘I’m good.’ He’s watching me intently, and I flush, thinking of a night, what, three years ago now, just barely pre-pregnancy, a Christmas night out in a fancy restaurant, the table slowly descending into alcoholic anarchy. Oliver leaning in, his voice almost vanishing into the sounds of drunken singing, the damp of his breath on my cheek. Why don’t you get shot of that Alex? You know I’d treat you the way you deserve to be treated. The feel of his hand on my bare knee.

I blush, look away.

‘Your brother still crowing over his big arrest?’

I glance up at him, feel my hackles begin to rise. ‘Finn’s doing his job. Perhaps you should try it some time.’

Oliver watches me, looks like he is about to say something and then thinks better of it. Good. I’ve heard enough.

I pull up Beck Chambers’ record, trying to look busy, focus on the screen and wait as Oliver slinks away.

There is a photograph on his file. I study it. You could call him handsome: pronounced cheekbones, dark eyes. If this was anything other than very clearly a mugshot, you would say he was handsome. But the look in his eyes holds you back from that. It is fatigued, beaten, his chin sunk almost to his chest.

I scroll down through his criminal history. It is not insignificant. Assault, drunk and disorderly, driving under the influence, another assault. All alcohol-related. All the result of a quick temper, too-fast reflexes.

I study it for a moment, feeling something tickle at me.

Look back over the arrest record again.

It happens in pools. There are a handful of incidents, around five years ago. The first assault, a drunken brawl in a Hereford pub. Couple of minor irritants after that. Before that, however, there is nothing. Not even a parking ticket.

Then there is a hole, a gap of three years in which Beck Chambers either decided to walk the straight and narrow path, or got way better at not getting caught being windy and wide. Then the same again, arrests for drunk and disorderly, a DUI.

What the hell happened in this man’s life five years ago? What changed? And what changed it back?

‘Hey, Oliver? Do you know this guy?’

‘Beck Chambers? Well, I’ve dealt with him a couple of times. I wouldn’t say we’re close personal friends.’ Oliver pulls his chair closer to mine, peering over my shoulder at the screen. He smells of shampoo and cigarettes. ‘Why?’

‘I was just wondering – do you know what his background is? Where he came from?’

He shrugs, the motion of his shoulder jostling me. I nudge my chair slightly further away.

‘He’s ex-military, I think. I remember Dominic Newell saying something, mentioned Afghanistan. Chambers never told me so himself. The strong, silent type, if you know what I mean. I got the impression he might have been special forces, the way Dominic was talking.’

‘Did he get dishonourably discharged?’

‘Ah …’ He frowns heavily. ‘I don’t think so … No, wait, I’m sure there was some talk of an injury. Did he get shot or something? I’m sure he spent time in Derriford.’

I think of what that would mean. A strong man, a soldier, an injury that takes him out of battle, brings him home where nobody quite understands, where no one really gets it. So he turns to drink, because it mutes the pain, dulls it, so that it becomes manageable.

I get it. I understand.

I think of the responses that he has been trained for, the violence he has been taught. How the alcohol will work, dulling the inhibitions as it dulls the pain, so that you are running on a hair trigger and all it will take is one word and then that violence that served you so well for so long is suddenly unleashed, unbridled and uncontrollable.

‘So …’ says Oliver, and I start. I had almost forgotten that he was there. ‘How are things? With Alex?’

My heart thrums a little faster and it seems that I can once again feel his hand upon my knee. I force a bright smile. ‘Good. The twins keep us busy, as you can imagine, but really good, thanks.’ I try to pretend that this is all he is asking, that there is no undertone, nothing deeper than the words themselves.

‘Well I’m glad, Leah. I’m really glad.’

I nod, moving my cursor across the screen and trying to focus on the arrow, blot out his voice. But it just will not stop coming.

‘I mean, I’ll be honest. I thought for a while there that you weren’t going to make it.’

I pull up Google. Watch as balloons float across the screen. Wonder why they are there. Is there a balloon day? Maybe there is, because that would explain it. The girls like balloons.

‘Anyway. I’ll leave you to it.’ He moves away, more slowly than he needs to, and it occurs to me that he is waiting for me to stop him, to confide all in him. But I won’t do that.

I nod, smile although my jaw aches with the effort of it. Type in the words ‘Beck Chambers’, ‘military’.

I do not know what I am expecting the search to bring. In truth, it was little more than a distraction device, a high-tech something shiny. But results flood my screen, news articles, reports, and I frown, thinking that the distraction device has actually worked.

I click on the first link.

British hostage freed

British hostage Beck Chambers has been freed from his prolonged captivity. Taken by a criminal group operating out of Mexico City while working as a security operative, ex-Pathfinder Platoon hero Chambers had been held for five months with little hope of release. It is believed that the criminals holding Chambers were part of a major operation running kidnap-for-ransom attacks throughout Mexico. Chambers was finally released earlier today after extensive negotiations with his captors. He is believed to be in reasonable physical health.

I stare at the screen. I do a swift mental calculation. Five years ago. This was what happened to Beck Chambers five years ago. This is why his entire life fell apart.

I am trying to concentrate, trying to focus my attention on Dominic Newell’s murder, I really am. Because Dominic was a good man, and he deserved that, to have my full and undivided attention. But it is there, and I cannot ignore it. That in ten years in the police force I have never come across the world of kidnap for ransom, and yet here it is twice.

There is something there, something right in front of me that I’m not seeing. What is it?

I pull up the record of Beck’s first arrest in the current batch, after his three years of good behaviour. Search the file.

And there it is.

Employer: the Cole Group.

The trouble with a closed case

DS Finn Hale: Thursday, 9.15 a.m.

I PUSH OPEN
the door to the major incident room. Beck Chambers, it seems, passed a comfortable night in the cells without providing too much trouble for anyone. I looked in on him on my way in, found him lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. There’s something about this man. Whenever I am around him, it is like I am back in the furious desert, a heartbeat from death. It is, I think, that thousand-yard stare of his. You see a lot of that when you are in a war. Men and women simply waiting for their number to be called, already resigned to their own death. I look at Beck and I see a battle. I wonder if he has ever left the war zone, in his head at least.

It is busy in the major incident room as the custody clock winds its way down. And at the end of it, that phone call, the CPS saying ‘charge him’. And then a new battle will begin for Beck Chambers.

‘All right, Sarge?’ Christa grins at me. ‘Heard the Chambers interview went well. Nice one.’

I shrug. ‘Well,’ I say, shooting for modesty, ‘I mean, he didn’t confess. But give me time.’

I try to push back the wave of guilt that is riding just behind my success. Do I believe that he did it? Beck is a force of nature, there is no doubt about that. A walking bundle of anger. Dominic was on his way to see him, wasn’t seen alive again. And yet …

Leah is at her desk, is staring at the screen, her top teeth worrying at her lower lip. Something is preying on her mind. She could never play poker.

‘You okay?’ I ask.

She looks up, a brief smile. ‘Yeah.’ Waves to the monitor. ‘I’m just starting to plough through Dominic’s e-mails. Although,’ she flips back to the inbox, ‘I may be here a while. Guy liked to mail.’

The teeth again, sawing into her lower lip, like they will hack it free.

‘What?’

‘What?’

‘You’re worrying about something.’

Leah looks up at me, snorts.

‘Okay, you’re worrying about something specific right at this moment.’

She turns away, focuses on the screen. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘Seriously. Come on.’

‘Are you sure?’ she says.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Tell me.’

‘No. I mean, are you sure? That it was Beck Chambers?’

I wasn’t expecting that. And yet I should have expected that. My sister has always had the uncanny ability to see right through the front I put up and get to the secrets behind it. I pull a chair up, sink into it. Sigh. ‘I don’t know, Lee. The SIO is pretty clear where he stands on it. And Chambers has got form, an alcohol problem … I don’t know.’ I study her. ‘What’s making you doubt it?’

She frowns a little, a glance at me, quick, assessing, then back to her monitor. ‘I don’t know. I’ve been doing some research on him. You know he’s ex-military, right?’ She pulls up a forum page dedicated to service personnel, points to a post. ‘Pathfinder Platoon.’

I nod. ‘I know. They’re a reconnaissance unit in the British army. Not special forces, but their training is pretty much on a par with it. Beck served in Afghanistan. He was in Musa Qala, this huge battle against the Taliban. They … It was a tough op. Incredibly so.’

‘It’s weird,’ she says. ‘I just can’t make it gel. The idea of this guy’ – she gestures at the monitor – ‘being the same guy who stabbed Dominic in the neck. It just … it doesn’t seem to fit together.’