The Missing Hours (6 page)

‘A’tie Ora? Did you bring Mummy home?’ asks Tara, releasing her aunt from her grip so that she can peer behind her, face expectant.

‘Not yet, sweetheart.’ Orla sounds like she will cry, like there is a battle for control raging within her.

I carry on watching Heather. She is still wearing those red patent leather shoes. She is still wearing her coat. I feel the neighbour – Vida Charles, was it? – looking at me, glance up to see her shrug, shake her head. It occurs to me that she seems irritated that her kindness and maternal generosity have gone unappreciated.

‘Heather?’ says Orla. ‘Are you okay?’

The little girl nods. She has dug a gouge now into the untreated table, and I sense Vida notice it, see her mouth open to object. I don’t know why. It’s not her table. An objection on general principles, I suppose. I catch her eye, shake my head once, and she subsides, her mouth moving like she couldn’t quite catch the words in time and that even unbidden they have escaped her.

‘Can I have a cuddle?’ Orla opens her arms to her elder niece, waits.

Heather sits, staring down at the gouge, then pushes herself back from the table, her head down, footsteps those of a man facing his execution. Her aunt enfolds her in a hug, and I think that the little girl will relent, but her back is stiff, her arms pokers at her sides.

Then I hear Orla, her voice a secret that only Heather is meant to hear. ‘She’s coming home, Heather. Mummy is coming home.’

The little girl goes even more rigid, if such a thing is possible, looks like someone has sent a jolt of electricity right through her, and her expression breaks, the flat sea suddenly flaring up into a storm. She starts to cry, long, shaking sobs, her face buried in her aunt’s shoulder.

I look away. God forgive me, I look away. I cannot see any more.

My eye catches Vida’s and I indicate the door, an invitation and a summons, turning before I know that she has accepted, until I am in the quiet sanctum of the hallway. I can still hear Heather crying, but it is quieter now, and the jagged edges that rip into my heart are blunted.

I look to Vida. ‘Let’s go into the living room, shall we?’

It is quieter in here, dark. I move towards the window, look to the sky. The clouds are massing again, dense, a storm waiting to break upon us. It feels like a portent.

‘Well,’ says Vida, ‘awful, isn’t it? Just terrible for those poor children. Imagine losing your father like that, at their age too. And now their mother gone off who knows where. It just breaks your heart. And they’re such pretty little things too.’ She stops, considers. ‘Well, the younger one is. I could just take her home with me. Sullen, the older one. Spoilt, I dare say.’

I think of Heather, her narrow arms holding her little sister tight, singing to her, not letting herself cry, because she is the eldest and she must be the protector now, and I feel anger bubbling up inside me.

‘She’s under an awful lot of strain,’ I say, my voice harder than I have heard it in a long time. ‘I think she is holding it together admirably, given that she is only seven.’

Vida glances at me quickly, then nods. ‘Oh yes. Terrible times. Like I said, poor things. So,’ she said, ‘do you think it’s tax fraud?’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Well, there’s no shortage of money here, is there? Big old house, fancy car. That Range Rover of hers is brand new. I said to my Henry, there’s something funny about her. No sign of her going out to work, car doesn’t move from day to day. Where’s the money coming from, eh?’

I nod, biting my tongue. I don’t know why it bothers me. I don’t know Selena Cole. What this neighbour is saying could be entirely true. But the truth is, it bugs me, this plucking at the missing woman, gets right under my skin.

‘It’s not tax fraud.’ But a little voice whispers to me that I don’t know this. I don’t know anything, only that Selena Cole is missing. Tax fraud. I test the words, like prodding a filling with your tongue. And the thing is, you don’t know anything until you actually know it. So it could be. It could be that there is something else here, something darker that I’m just not seeing yet.

I gesture to the sofa, take the wingback chair nearest the fireplace.

‘So,’ I say, ‘do you know Selena well?’

‘Well, no. Not well. She’s … Mrs Cole and I are from different walks of life, you see. Me and my husband, we’ve been here, ooh, must be forty years now. Seen the area change, we have. Well, you do, don’t you? Used to be a time when we knew everyone in the hamlet. Our children used to all play together out in the fields out back. But now … I mean, you know how it is. People die, people move on. It’s all different now. Henry and me, we don’t know anyone any more.’

‘So you don’t know Selena?’ I snap the words off at their stems, thinking how Finn would laugh at me, how I chide him to be gentler, more patient, and here I am.

Vida leans towards me, tone low, conspiratorial. ‘She always strikes me as very stuck-up. They’ve only been here a couple of years. There used to be a husband, you know. Handsome man. Dead now, of course. He was nice enough. And Mrs Cole used to be all right, if you like that sort of thing. But now, no, she never bothers.’ She drops her voice to a whisper. ‘Proper snob if you know what I mean. Would walk right by you on the street without so much as a hello.’

I see it as if I was there. Selena Cole, magically alone, alive, here. Walking. Just walking. Maybe her sister-in-law has taken the kids for an hour, told her to go out, get some air, grieve. Selena walking, and although her footsteps are falling on these pavements, not being here at all. Instead being in Brazil when a bomb has gone off and the air is dense with sirens and screams. Or perhaps at a graveside, one where she goes to place flowers, even though she knows her husband is not really there, because what killed him was a bomb – do you even get a body back after something like that? Do you get anything? And this stupid, silly woman marching into her grief, demanding to be noticed.

‘No.’ Vida leans back against the sofa. ‘You mark my words, she’s done a runner.’

I’m going to slap her. I swear to God.

‘Why would she have done that?’

‘You know how these women are. Careers, that’s all they care about. Selfish, I call it. Like being a mother isn’t the most important job in the world. It was different in my day. I stayed home, I raised my Theresa myself. I never had a day off. Never asked for one, either. You don’t if you’re a mother, do you? Not like that these days. All these women, their children coming second to whatever nonsense they’re up to all day, shipping the little ones off to day care, grandparents, whoever will have them, it seems to me. No.’ She nods triumphantly, the expression of one who has solved an enigma. ‘You mark my words, she’s walked out. Dumped those little kiddies.’

I look out of the window, watch as the wind whips at the branches of the apple tree, and feel like I have taken a body blow. That this vicious, judgemental bat has reached inside me and taken hold of the worst of me, pulling it to the surface and then throwing it back into my face.

‘Mind,’ Vida’s voice startles me, flicking its forked tongue against my consciousness, ‘you know about the psychiatrist, don’t you?’

‘What?’ I grip the arms of the chair tighter, partly to prevent me from launching myself at her.

‘Selena was seeing some psychiatrist, up in London.’

I study her. ‘You said she didn’t speak to you. How would you know that?’

The elderly woman tosses her head, a light blush creeping across her features. ‘There was a card, from a Dr … Mini-something, in the kitchen. Psychiatrist.’ She looks up at me. ‘Well, I couldn’t help it. It was just lying there.’

‘Maybe it’s someone she works with,’ I suggest. ‘Selena is a psychologist.’

‘No, she’s definitely seeing him. There was an appointment on her calendar for next week.’

‘Right. And where’s her calendar?’

This time she at least has the decency to look shamefaced. ‘The office.’

I feel the sinking begin to recede. This woman is not a credible source of judgement, for me, for Selena. I watch as her eyes dart around the living room, from the tasteful, expensive furniture to the family pictures taken in exotic destinations, and can see her lips tightening in disapproval. She is someone who is disappointed in life, loaded with bitterness. She is not someone who should be allowed to define success. Not mine. Not Selena’s.

I stare at her, let the silence hang. ‘You went into her office?’

‘Well,’ she says, blustering. ‘I was just … checking.’

‘Checking?’

‘In case Mrs Cole was in there.’

She stares at me, bold, the faintest flush of red to her cheeks.

‘Right,’ I say.

Case No. 16

Victim: Victor Cannon

Location: Beirut, Lebanon

Company: Cannon-Kane Financial Services

3 September 2006

Initial event

Mr Victor Cannon, founding partner of Cannon-Kane Financial Services, failed to arrive home from work on 3 September. Mr Cannon is a UK national, but has operated his business out of Lebanon for the past ten years. At 7.15 p.m., Mrs Hala Cannon, Mr Cannon’s Lebanese-born wife, became concerned for her husband and contacted his office. Concerns were further raised when it was ascertained that Mr Cannon had left his office at 4.45 p.m., indicating that he was returning directly home. According to Mrs Cannon, he should have arrived by 5.30 at the latest. All attempts to raise Mr Cannon on his mobile or to identify any locations in which he might have stopped were unsuccessful.

A search of the local area was conducted. Mr Cannon’s car was found in the car park in which it was usually left, with no sign that he had in fact returned to it.

At midnight, Mr Cannon’s business partner, Mr Soad Kane, raised the alarm. An initial call was placed to Cannon-Kane’s insurers, Biltstrom, in which Mr Kane expressed fears that Mr Cannon had been kidnapped en route to his vehicle. This fear came on the back of a series of kidnap-for-ransom events experienced by employees of the Cannon-Kane company in previous years.

Response

The response team consisted of myself (Ed Cole) and Selena Cole. Having received the initial call at 2.16 a.m. on 4 September, we were on the ground in Beirut twenty-four hours later. The Cole Group was familiar with both Mr Cannon and the Cannon-Kane company, having provided consultancy services on all three previous kidnap-for-ransom events experienced by the company in its recent history.

Upon arrival at the scene, a command room was immediately put in place within the buildings of Cannon-Kane, and contact was made with all relevant parties. What then followed was highly unusual within the case history of the Cole Group.

We received no contact from the kidnappers.

Seventy-two hours passed, in which the emotional state of Mrs Cannon became increasingly fragile. No calls were made to either the Cannon home or the Cannon-Kane offices. No ransom demand was received.

At the end of this seventy-two-hour period, Selena Cole put forward the idea that there might be more to this kidnapping than first appeared. As a consequence, she spent some considerable time sitting down with Mrs Cannon, Mr Kane and the various employees and acquaintances who made up Mr Victor Cannon’s daily life. Her goal was to obtain as full and complete an understanding of the hostage as possible.

Within a relatively short period of time, Dr Cole had reached the conclusion that Mr Cannon’s state of mind prior to his disappearance was unstable enough to cause her no small degree of concern.

It became apparent that Cannon-Kane was in fact close to financial collapse, and that the most likely outcome for Mr Cannon would then be bankruptcy. Although reluctant to discuss such personal matters initially, following much prompting, Mrs Cannon revealed that she and her husband had recently discussed separating and that their marriage had been going through an extremely difficult time of late.

A search of Mr Cannon’s office and questioning of his employees revealed that he had been drinking heavily and had made, on more than one occasion, references to the fact that the world would be improved should he be removed from it.

Another search of the local area was organised, this one concentrating on isolated spots, abandoned buildings, etc. Five days after the initial call was placed, Mr Cannon’s body was eventually located in a disused warehouse approximately half a mile away from the Cannon-Kane offices. He had hanged himself.

Note

In the aftermath of this case, ongoing psychological support was set up for Mr Cannon’s wife and colleagues by Selena Cole. Following our experiences in the Cannon-Kane case, the Cole Group expanded its portfolio of services to offer training in trauma risk management (TRIM) for each of its clients, as well as establishing a crisis line available 24/7 for those employees in a state of immediate crisis.

Eighty-two days

DS Finn Hale: Tuesday, 5.36 p.m.

I FLOP INTO
my chair. The office is still busy, people coming, going, even though the light is beginning to fade. I look out of the window, my own reflection looking back at me, lines of traffic criss-crossing my face, people heading out after a long working day. It’s different for us. We won’t be going anywhere any time soon.

‘Christa,’ I call. ‘You get anything back on Beck Chambers?’

She looks up at me, seems to take a moment to shift from what she’s doing to what I’m asking her. ‘Chambers … no. Not yet. He paid us a visit this weekend. Spent the night in one of our superior rooms after a night of heavy drinking. Was released Monday lunchtime and has, apparently, vanished into thin air. We’ve got a team trying to dig him out.’ She glances at the clock, spares me a quick grin. ‘They’ll be racking up the overtime tonight.’