The Missing Hours (37 page)

I looked through the peephole, saw a woman in a maid’s uniform with a cart of supplies alongside her.

And so I opened the door.

I don’t remember being Tasered. In the months that followed, myself, the three others who were taken, we would come to piece together what that day must have looked like to anyone who wasn’t having fifty thousand volts shoved into them.

And the best we could come to was this – they came for us separately, a number of different teams hitting us, as best we could figure, simultaneously. Each of us was Tasered and, we think, loaded into the cleaning carts that weren’t cleaning carts at all, taken down the service elevator, out to a waiting truck and away.

They took our belongings, our wallets, watches, the lanyards bearing our conference ID. They distributed them throughout the ballroom.

Then the attack proper began.

The first few days were hazy, for all of us. My assumption is that I was drugged, that some kind of scopolamine-based substance was given to us to keep us quiet, compliant. I don’t know how long it was before I came to and developed an understanding of my situation.

I know that I was alone, in what can best be described as someone’s basement. A deep-set room subdivided into cells for the purpose. I know that it was weeks and weeks before I again saw sunlight.

I’m going to be honest with you. My first reaction, when I realised where I was, what had happened, was to laugh.

I’ve always been a big fan of irony.

In fairness, the laughter was pretty short-lived.

I don’t know how long I was in that first cell, alone with the darkness, my thoughts, three fairly insubstantial meals a day. I know that life becomes a whole lot more focused when you are alone in the dark, that everything that matters becomes sharper in your mind, that the rest of the stuff simply falls away.

I also knew that I wouldn’t die there. That I was going home.

We talked about this, once we were moved from the dungeon to new, damper but slightly less oubliette-like surroundings. It’s the way of things, with a protracted kidnapping, you get moved about, always harder for the authorities to hit a moving target. My leg caused some trouble. I’m pretty sure it’s the first time these guys had ever lifted someone with a false leg. But we worked it out.

That’s the thing with kidnappings. You get to understand the routine, how your abductors work. And if you’re lucky, they get to understand you, begin to relax just a little. They let us out, first one at a time, then, once they’d realised we weren’t going to run, two at a time, and finally all four of us together.

They let us have our conversations, play some cards, keep each other from going crazy.

They couldn’t stop Mick from dying, though.

In their defence, it was the heart condition that did for him in the end. Well, that piled on top of the cold, the imprisonment and the all but inedible food. One day he was there, quiet, troubled, but there. The next he was gone.

Life got darker after that.

With Mick’s death, it seemed that life was telling us not to be too cocky, that all our talk about going home, it could all just be empty wishes. We took it hard.

Then one day they came for me, sat me on a chair, handed me a copy of that day’s newspaper, told me to smile for the camera, and I knew that I was going home.

It took a damn sight longer than I thought it would.

They separated the three of us after that, placing us with our own individual teams. And day after day after day, I waited.

I never tried to escape.

When I talk to people now, they look at me like I’m crazy. Say things like, with your background, why didn’t you just make a run for it?

Well, couple of reasons. First, I had no idea what country I was in, what landscape I was in, if I could speak the language, where the nearest city was. Second, false leg, so, you know, terrain-dependent in terms of mobility. Third and most importantly, I had a wife and two little girls to go home to. I was getting out of there alive. And my best chance of doing that was with a negotiation, a settlement.

I say that, and then it occurs to me that all those reasons amounted to nothing in my head.

I didn’t attempt to run because of Selena. Because I knew she would get me out.

Hurrying to wait

DC Leah Mackay: Saturday, 12.47 p.m.

‘WHAT NOW?’ I
ask.

Beck pushes the chair back from the computer, glances up at me. ‘Now, we wait.’

I can hear Selena, her voice lighter than you would think it could be, the girls’ voices chiming in with hers. She is putting on a show for the children, a pretence that their future does not hang in the balance. Such is parenting. One soothing lie following another in the service of a greater truth.

I nod, a knot of anxiety wrapping my stomach. ‘They’ll get back in touch?’

I can see the battle in Beck’s face, the shot of fear, quickly hidden. ‘Yes. They want their money. This is a business to them, don’t forget.’

Finn has taken Seth back to the station, buoyed up like a small child on Christmas Day. Whilst I am here, in the Cole house, where it seems I have been since the investigation first began. Even now, here at the end, I cannot keep my focus, cannot give Dominic’s death the attention it deserves. I feel a spurt of guilt, tempered by resignation. I will see this through here. That, it seems, has been inevitable from the start.

Beck is leaning back in the chair, threatening to snap it before too much longer. He stares at the computer screen, waiting. For a reply, for relief. There is nothing we can do now but wait. I study him while he is distracted. I cannot see what I have seen before in him, the junkie, the alcoholic. He is calm, clean-shaven and neat. He still looks like he could take down a wall by walking through it, and yet it seems that things have shifted for him.

‘Can I ask you something?’ I say.

Beck looks at me from under lowered lids. ‘Sure.’

‘Are you in love with Selena?’

I am expecting anger. I am expecting an explosion and to find myself shoved up against a wall as Seth was. Instead, he laughs.

‘Believe me,’ he says, ‘I’ve got enough trouble without going looking for more. The thing you’ve got to understand is, where I come from, in the military, we’re family. We take care of one another. Ed saved my life. Twice, actually. He got me out when I was kidnapped, he got me clean when I was spiralling. I owe that man everything I have.’

‘Is that why you’ve been watching his wife?’ I ask.

Beck shrugs. ‘Yes,’ he says simply. ‘I … I’ve not been in a good place, the last year, losing Ed, then my job. I’ve been … it’s been rough. I couldn’t do anything to help Selena and the girls. I was a train wreck. So I did that. I sat outside. I watched.’

‘And you saw her being taken?’

He nods. ‘I was in a mess. Shouldn’t have been driving.’ He looks at me shrewdly. ‘If you’re going to arrest me for drunk driving, do me a favour and let me sort out this negotiation first.’

I nod, suppress a smile. ‘We’ll see.’

‘I was kind of dozing. I’d been having issues with the drink, had a run-in with Dom …’ His voice wavers on the name and he coughs, an attempt to pretend that the shake isn’t there. ‘He was mad at me. The drinking … It was rough. I came up here because, well, it was just kind of what I did. A habit, you know? And then I see Selena coming down the bank, talking to the woman. When she got in the car, leaving her kids in the park alone, I knew we had a problem.’

‘You followed?’

He laughs. ‘Well, yeah, but it was a pretty shit follow and I lost them twice. Picked them up coming out of the Brecon Beacons and then lost them in traffic. I had no idea that it was, well, what it was. But I was … concerned. Stepped up my game a bit. Stopped drinking and … everything else. Decided to sit it out, see if it happened again.’

‘What did you think was going on?’

Beck shrugs. ‘I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this much. I thought Seth was a little weasel. Under his influence, anything could happen.’

‘And today?’

‘Today I was clean. I can pull off a much better tail when I’m clean.’

I nod, look around the office.

‘You might as well pull up a chair,’ says Beck. ‘If you’re planning on waiting this one out, you’re going to be here for a while.’

I should go back.

Instead I sink into a chair, lean back on it, stare at the ceiling. ‘You think Orla knew?’

She was waiting for us when we returned, her expression fear tumbled with confusion.

Selena had touched her arm. ‘It’s going to be okay.’ Had forestalled the question that parted her lips with a nod towards the children. ‘I will explain. Once they’re in bed.’

‘What? That her brother was alive?’ Beck snorts. ‘Orla adores her brother. When she finds out what Seth has done, there isn’t an ocean wide enough that she won’t cross to kill him.’

‘Maybe,’ I say. But I don’t believe it. I’m thinking of their marriage, of all that she has allowed to slip by her, unremarked on, unnoticed seemingly.

‘Don’t be fooled,’ Beck says. ‘You’re thinking that since Seth is a cheating, lying scumbag and Orla lets that slide, then maybe she’ll let this slide too.’ He grins when he sees my expression. ‘I’m not just a pretty face. I’m telling you, Orla had no clue.’ He shakes his head, seems to deflate before me. ‘I should have known. I should have seen what was happening earlier. If I’d been sober …’

‘How could you have known?’ I ask. ‘How could anyone?’

Beck stares off into the middle distance, forehead creased. ‘The drugs. I should have known because of the drugs.’

‘The drugs …’

He sighs, looks back at me. ‘They say confession is good for the soul, right? I … sometimes the drink, it’s not always enough, you know, to get my head to quieten down. Sometimes I dabble … pills, that kind of thing.’

I think of the surveillance team who identified him as being in Hereford on the night of Dom’s murder. Purse my lips. ‘Okay.’

‘Lately, I don’t know, I’ve been doing more than I should. Anyway, it was one day last week. Friday, I think. I go to my guy to get some stuff, and he says he’s got something new. Just arrived in the UK but that it’s setting Colombia on fire.’

I think of what drug-squad Steve told me. ‘El Diablo.’

‘El Diablo,’ he agrees. ‘I knew as soon as I saw it what it was going to be about. Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, they’re all being hit pretty hard by it. It’s a nasty little pill and its creators, Escorpion Rojo, they’ve been making some big waves in the K and R world.’

‘Bombing Brazilian hotels?’

‘The very same. They even offered me a job once, operating as a mule for them. I don’t know, I must have the look of the junkie about me.’ He gives a wry grin. ‘So, my dealer tells me that they’re here. That they’re trying to break into the UK market with El Diablo. He even gave me a pill to take away. A freebie.’

‘Did you take it?’ I ask, curious.

Beck shakes his head. ‘Nah. Been there before. I made the mistake of popping El Diablo one time out in Medellín. Not long after we lost Ed. Had wrapped my case, got my hostage safely home, so decided to reward myself with a little treat. I woke up three days later. I’d ripped my hotel room apart, busted my hand, missed my flight. It left me with nightmares for months after.’ He shakes his head. ‘I’m not doing that again. But, see, if I hadn’t been so out of it on the booze when Selena was taken, maybe I’d have pieced it together. The thing is, El Diablo. Once I saw it, I knew there was something wrong. I just didn’t know what.’ He leans his head back against his chair, looks older now, sadder.

‘If it helps, I don’t think you could have known. I don’t think anyone could have known,’ I offer.

He isn’t who I thought he was.

‘I’m sorry that things have been so rough for you.’

Beck nods, turns in his chair so that he is facing the computer again. ‘Well, it is what it is. Lots of people have done a lot of things to help me. I couldn’t help Dom in return. Maybe I can help Ed.’

‘It seems to me that Dom really cared about you.’

He isn’t looking at me. A set, rigid not-looking that from another man I would assume meant emotion swelling. ‘He really cared about lots of us. Never stopped trying to get us better, get the drink, the drugs to release their hold. I guess you could say it was his calling in life.’

I nod, think back to something Finn told me, what seemed like a lifetime ago. ‘That’s what Fae said too.’

‘Well, she would know,’ agreed Beck. He shakes his head. ‘It’s … it’s such a tough thing. And she’s so young. But these drugs, once they have you, they don’t let go. I wish … I wish I could have been a better man. More like Dom. Protected her from herself.’

I frown. ‘What do you mean?’

He turns, his gaze dropping. ‘The El Diablo. I … I gave it to Fae.’

None so blind

DS Finn Hale: Saturday, 6.00 p.m.

SHE IS AT
home. A tiny box of a home, one among thousands on a modern estate. I knock on the door, my heart thundering, and wait.

Footsteps, one, two, three.

She has been crying. Is wearing leggings, an oversized T-shirt. Looks smaller still in the fading light.

‘Fae,’ I say.

She stares at me, and it seems that her mind is spinning, trying to place me, here where I don’t belong. I feel a grim kind of satisfaction at that.