Читать книгу Inspector Bliss Mysteries 8-Book Bundle - James Hawkins - Страница 25

A strident, demanding tone of a car alarm was echoing along Junction Road, Watford; the noise coming from an old Volvo abandoned on a patch of wasteland where number 33 had stood until a bomb had blasted the two-up and two-down terraced house to smithereens in 1940, at the height of the Blitz. The owners had never rebuilt. A volunteer fireman had found their mangled remains—still sheltering in the cupboard under the solid wooden stairs in strict accordance with the Ministry of Defence Air Raid Manual. But what to do if a direct hit collapsed the staircase on top of you? “Pray. And be damn quick about it,” was the only advice the fireman had to offer a scared sorrowful neighbour: a thirty-year-old housewife wearing the wartime cares of a fifty-year-old in her mother’s polka-dot pinafore dress, with her prematurely greying hair pushed up under an old beret. “That’s all you can do m’luv if they drop one right on top of yer,” he said. “Put your hands over yer ears and pray.”

The dead couple’s nearest relative, a son packed off to his aunt in Australia—”For the duration,” in the jargon of the day—had intended to return home one day to sell the land, or even rebuild the house as a tribute to his parents. Now he was too old to bother, and too rich to care.

It was only 3:30 a.m. in Watford, a full time zone to the west of the SS Rotterdam, and the rising sun was still an hour shy of trying to brighten up Junction Road, with its tarnished terraces of turn-of-the-century red brick houses.

Finally, fed up with the constant whining of the car’s alarm, Mrs. Ramchuran, at number 70, slipped a dressing gown over her silk pyjamas, tied on a scarf, and stepped into the chilly pre-dawn air. With uncanny timing, her next door neighbour, the “guardian” of Junction Road, readied himself with an arsenal of advice for the offender and snapped open his door.

“Is that your’s, Mr. Mitchell?” his neighbour enquired, nodding to the Jaguar.

Caught off-balance, he laughed, and even his laughter had a clipped cockney ring. “Bugger off, will you. Nah, I’ve not seen it afore. ’T’aint anyone’s round here.”

“Have you called the police?”

“Nah, waste of bloody time. They can’t be boverred with this. Anyhow, they’ve got more important fings to do.”

Mrs. Ramchuran wondered, aloud, if either of the residents on the other side of the road, closest to the noise, had phoned the police.

“Doubt it,” said Mr. Mitchell, an elderly widower who could have turned his knowledge of the street into an entire category of Trivial Pursuit. “There’s no one in at 34, and old daft Jack at 35 would never hear anyfing. He’s as bloomin’ deaf as a post.”

The alarm stopped, mid-sound, as if an unseen hand had wrenched off the battery. Mrs. Ramchuran was startled by the sudden silence. “Oh,” she gave a tiny jump. “Thank God for that.”

Mr. Mitchell, George to his friends at the British Legion, was uncharacteristically wrong about his neighbours—there was someone in at number 34. Trudy was there, Roger’s Trudy. She’d been there nearly a week, although George had not seen her and, as he and Mrs. Ramchuran went back to their beds, hoping the noise would not recur, Trudy was lying in bed, Roger’s bed wondering where Roger was and what he was doing.

“I’ll only be away for a couple of days, Love,” Roger had said the previous evening, “I’ll miss you, Trude.”

Sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed, sorting through computer discs, choosing those that might come in handy as he prepared for his Dutch trip, he repeated, tenderly, “I’ll miss you.”

She didn’t reply.

“I’m sorry … I know you hate being on your own but I don’t have any choice,” he continued, still shuffling discs. “The company says I have to go. I wish you could come with me though. Maybe next time, eh? When you’re feeling better.”

She nodded slowly. Her sad young eyes pleading, “Take me … Don’t leave me here alone.” But she could not ask.

“I’ll be back Friday,” he explained, as he packed selected discs into an old brown briefcase.

She’d been alone before—most days—with Roger at work in the city. But this wasn’t just another day at the office; this would be three days and two nights—it would seem like a week, or a month.

She projected a silent plea to the back of his head, but her thoughts failed to sink in, and he continued, “I’m getting the ferry to Holland tonight. That’ll get me there tomorrow morning about seven …” Pausing to examine the label on one of the discs his brow furrowed in concentration, then he blew down his nose. “Hum … What do you think, Trude?” he asked, showing her the disc. “Do you think I should take this?”

She looked away, fraught with fear—every young partner’s fear: fear of abandonment, fear of someone else—someone prettier, sexier, more exciting, more willing, perhaps; fear he might never return.

“Don’t go—please don’t go,” she willed inwardly, knowing she could not ask.

“I’ll have plenty of time to drive to The Hague,” he continued, unaware of her desperation. “I don’t have to be there until eleven. My speech is at two. Then I’ll get the ship back tomorrow night and, bingo, I’ll be back before you’ve even missed me.”

As if suddenly aware of Trudy’s needs, Roger paused in his task, brought his face close to hers and ran his fingers across her cheek. Perfect, he thought, absolutely perfect, as he sensed the softness of her fresh, young skin, then stroked her long dark hair and exposed a delicate ear. He loved her ears, adored them—could play with them for hours, gently stroking, teasing, and squeezing, as he controlled his computer with his other hand. But now, as he bent to kiss her ear, she twitched, like a horse bothered by a fly and lashed his face with her ponytail. He shrugged off the rejection and turned back to sorting his computer discs. “It’s exiting isn’t it,” he said, meaning his trip, the tone of his voice matching his words. “Are you excited, Trude?”

She nodded again, but her dark brown eyes swelled with tears.

Roger packed the last of the discs, gave Trudy a triumphal glance, then turned back to his computer—more important things on his mind. Behind him, Trudy’s silent tears kept flowing, glistening droplets trickling down her cheeks, congregating into little puddles on the wide band of foul-tasting sticky tape plastered over her mouth.

Trudy, now wide awake, felt disembodied—her thoughts hovering in mid-air, refusing to be part of the carnage that lay below her on the filthy bed—wondering what had hit her, and how she’d been stupid enough to get in the way. Beneath her, the bruised and bleeding body was in agony; hands and arms the worst: Blood and pus oozed from a huge blister on the side of her fist where she’d pounded against the rough brick walls; her shoulders and upper arms were blue from being repeatedly slammed against the solid wooden door—a living battering ram which had rebounded as readily as a tennis ball off concrete—and the wreckage of her nails, used as screwdrivers on the door hinges, stung constantly. But, at least Roger had left her unbound and had even pulled off the tape—once she’d promised not to scream for help or try to escape.

The hands of her watch (”Happy sixteenth,” her mother had said giving it to her a few weeks earlier) were stuck at 6:23, the time she’d first crashed her fragile body against the door—Roger’s door, the door to the outside world. Now, as she stared at the smashed watch, she found a mirror of her fragmented life in the few sharp shards of glass still held in place by the square gold frame, and screamed. Pain, torment, fear, and loss merged into despair with the subconscious realization that the last strand of her mother’s umbilical cord had been severed.

The computer could have told her the time had she really wanted to know; the only lighting in the room came from its screen; the only sound, its constant “shhhhhshing.” She stared at the screen, detesting it for what it had done, yet pleading with it to help. “What the hell is his password?” she shouted across the dimly lit room, then waited, almost expecting it to respond.

An idea eased her off the bed, drawing her to the computer, and she winced as she pressed a few keys. The message “ENTER PASSWORD” flicked onto the screen and she typed her name. “TRUDY”

“INCORRECT PASSWORD PLEASE TRY AGAIN”

“Shit,” she shouted, convinced she had been right. “What about, ’Trude’?” she asked, trying again. The computer responded soundlessly, “INCORRECT PASSWORD—PLEASE TRY AGAIN”

“This’ll never work,” she muttered. “There must be millions of different words.”

After several more rejections, she quit. Without his password she would never be able to connect with the outside world. Finally, frustrated and angry, she typed. “ROGER—PLEASE COME BACK. PLEASE LET ME OUT. I’LL DO ANYTHING YOU WANT. I LOVE YOU.”

Sitting back, drained, thoughtful, she changed the typescript to a larger font and wrote again. “ROGER— I LOVE YOU—COME BACK”

Roger was not coming back—not at the moment, anyway. His floppy body was still trampolining up and down on top of the life raft mid-ocean. He was alive, conscious, and still wondering why the SS Rotterdam had not returned for him. They threw me a life raft, he reasoned, so they must’ve known where I was.

Nosmo King felt the shift in momentum as the search was called off. No longer wallowing as it steamed slowly round the search area, the ship was now leaping and bucking as it ploughed through the water, back on course toward Holland; as anxious to make up the lost time as the passengers and crew. Ignorant of what was happening, and with a nagging feeling he were being deliberately shut out, King slipped out of the little office and poked his head around the bridge door.

“Come in Mr. King, I forgot all about you,” called the captain, noticing the tired, unshaven and dishevelled man, thinking now he would have looked at home in an airport following a crash—pacing amongst a crowd of worried relatives, anxiously awaiting news.

King moved toward the captain with his eyes captivated by the huge, green waves breaking over the bow. He jumped as a streak of lightning lanced down into the water right in front of the ship. Isolated from the mayhem by huge armour plated windows, the bridge seemed a tranquil place in comparison.

“It’s like watching a movie of a storm,” he breathed, mesmerized, then turned to address the captain. “I was just wondering if you needed me any more. Only I’d like to get a bit of sleep before we arrive.”

“I don’t think we need you Mr. King. Hang oh a minute though, I’ll just check with our detective.”

D.I. Bliss, unseen by King, was in the radar cubicle, still studying the screen for signs of the missing life raft or the missing man.

“Inspector Bliss, do you need Mr. King for anything?” the captain sang out and Bliss emerged from the cubicle with a puzzled expression.

“Um,” he hummed, “I’m not sure,” and turned to King, “G’morning Nosmo. Ahh … Could you just hang on for a minute. There’s one or two things I just want to check with the captain. Do you mind?”

The unspoken words hung in the air for a few seconds as King struggled for an answer. Did he mind? Yes, he minded, minded very much; minded being left out of the loop, minded being ostracized. There was a time … he was thinking when he realized that the epithet, “ex-police,” carried with it a connotation of exclusion incomprehensible to someone who had never been in the force. His mind was in turmoil; desperately wanting to know what was going on; what they were saying about him; what they thought about him; how they had taken his story. But Bliss and the captain were watching and waiting.

“I’ll just have another look at the radar.” King acquiesced eventually, breaking the stalemate, and he wandered toward the cubicle, his head pounding with the knowledge that somewhere on the ship, Billy Motsom, his client, his tormentor, would be searching for him, desperate for news about LeClarc.

“Something’s going on,” Bliss whispered, nudging the captain to the far side of the bridge. “He knows more than he’s saying.”

“How do you work that out?”

“Well… Did you tell him we’d called off the search?”

“No.”

“Exactly. So how come he didn’t ask? All he asked was, did we need him ’cos he wanted to get some sleep. So why’s he suddenly lost interest in what happened to our man?”

The captain grasped the point. “I agree, but I don’t see what we can do. He’s stuck to the same story right from the beginning.”

“Do me a favour, Captain. Just keep him here for about ten minutes, will you, then make sure he leaves by that door over there.” The captain nodded as Bliss continued, almost to himself, “I’ve got to make some arrangements.” Then, as an afterthought added, “I’ve also got to find LeClarc before we dock.”

Precisely ten minutes later, Nosmo King left the bridge, following a compulsory guided tour. “He was as jumpy as a jib in a hurricane,” the captain told Bliss later. “I’ve never known anyone turn down a chance to have a few minutes at the helm before.”

“You were right, Sir. He’s gone to a cabin,” D.C. Wilson’s voice crackled over the radio a few minutes later, as Bliss was back at the purser’s office, still trying to find LeClarc on a list—any list.

“What number?” he called back. “I’m at the purser’s office, I’ll look it up.”

“2042.”

Running his finger down the list he found the cabin number. “The name on this list says “Motsom” but I wouldn’t guarantee it,” he said, then caught a nasty look from the purser as he added, “These guys don’t seem too sure what they’re doing.”

“What do you want us to do, Sir?” asked the other detective, sobered by time and the sergeant’s accident.

“I don’t know. Just find out what’s going on. Use your loaf if you’ve got one.”

Bliss snapped off the radio and turned back to the purser who had decided he may as well take command of his office early. Roused out of his bunk in the middle of the night, like everyone else, he wanted to make sure his records were straight, just in case there was an inquiry.

“O.K., Sir,” said Bliss. “So how soon will we know for sure if someone’s missing?”

The purser scratched his stubbly chin, realised he’d forgotten to shave in the upheaval, and thought deeply. “Hum. It’s not quite that simple. You see, in theory we know exactly how many people are on board, but, aah,” he hesitated, “in practice …” Pausing, he threw up his hands, shrugged his shoulders, and picked his nose before committing himself. “Anybody’s guess really.”

“What are you saying?” Bliss questioned, incredulously. “Are you saying you wouldn’t miss the odd one?”

“Oh no …” he started, then stopped, tilted his head to one side, threw open his hands, and disclaimed all responsibility. “Well yes, I suppose so, if you put it like that. With nearly two thousand passengers you can never be sure. It’s not like an aircraft—we don’t assign seats, and we often get strays.”

“Strays?” enquired Bliss. Dogs, cats, what? “Strays?”

“Yeah … friends of crewmembers smuggled aboard for a freebie; hitchhikers in the back of trucks, even people hiding in car’s trunks so they can avoid the fare. The vehicles aren’t searched by British Customs on the way out, and the Dutch authorities don’t care if you bought a ticket as long as you’ve got a valid passport.”

“So, how will we know if you lost someone in the night?”

The purser’s shrug told the story, but Bliss heard him out. “You won’t. Not unless a friend or relative reports them missing, or we find luggage in a cabin, or a car on the car deck after everyone’s left.”

Billy Motsom, cabin 2042, tired, furious, and very worried, was having similar thoughts and had a spotlight on King. “So, Mister, what are you goin’ to do if the poxy little shit did go over the side, eh?”

“Look, I was hired to follow him that’s all. Nothing else—nothing dodgy. I don’t know why you want him and don’t care. You paid me …”

“Correction,” cut in Motsom. “We was going to pay you.”

“You’d bloody better. I’ve done my job. I followed him around for three bloody weeks. It was me that found out about this trip. There’s nothing else I can do.”

King rose toward the door but was forced back with a snarl. “You ain’t goin’ anywhere until I tell you—now sit down.”

He sat, sensing the simmering violence. Not that he hadn’t been warned. “Real nasty piece of work,” one of the few ex-colleagues still prepared to talk to him had said, “though he hasn’t got any serious convictions.”

“O.K., let me put you in the picture,” continued Motsom, sounding helpful. “This ain’t no game of hide and bloody seek, it’s big business and you’re part of it, like it or not. So we may as well be friends. O.K.?”

King said nothing, unsure whether to be more fearful of Motsom as an employer or a friend, and he buried his head, mumbling into his hands, “Why did I get mixed up in this?”

“Money—Nosmo. Just like me.”

“No. Not like you …” he started, but Motsom cut him short.

“The only difference between you an’ me,” he sneered, “is you’ve done time. You’re an old lag, an excon, a bent cop.”

King, stung by the suggestion, stared into his fingers, thinking: First I get shut out by a snotty D.I., then a piece of dog turd calls me bent. Who’s the criminal here? I didn’t take back-handers; I wasn’t shaking down drug addicts for part of their stash; I’m no crook. But he had no answer, he was trapped by his past.

Motsom took his silence as agreement and, with the air seemingly straightened, softened his tone, “LeClarc has some computer stuff the Arabs want, that’s all, and we was hired to get it, O.K.”

King tried to butt in, “I wasn’t hired …”

But Motsom held up his hand, now the cop, saying, “Wait, I ain’t finished,” and he continued firmly. “We was hired, both of us. It’s just that I only told you what you needed to know.”

“Bollocks! You knew I wouldn’t do it if you told me the truth.”

“Maybe yeah. Maybe no. Who knows. Anyhow it’s too late, you’ve lied to the captain.”

“And the police,” added King, absentmindedly.

“The police?” Motsom exploded, shooting upright, nudging over a beer, which flipped onto the floor and rolled back and forth, spilling drops on the mottled blue carpet.

King quickly bent to pick up the bottle, but Motsom grasped his shoulder and hauled him upright.

“Leave it,” he ordered. “What did you say about the filth?”

King winced at the derogatory term, then shrugged, matter-of-factly, “There’s a bunch of cops on board and one of ’em, a snotty inspector, was making noises about the missing bloke, that’s all. Just routine. Couldn’t resist poking his nose in.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you idiot?” he shouted, “What are they doing here anyway?”

“They’re going on some sort of visit,” he shrugged, his imagination running away with him. “Stop worrying, I didn’t tell ’em anything. They’ve no idea who’s missing and even if they did, they couldn’t connect him to us.”

It was true that D.I. Bliss didn’t know who was missing, if anyone, though he shivered at the idea of any man struggling for survival in the ship’s wake. From his perch in the first class restaurant, high in the ship’s stern, he stared pensively at the evil sea, then slit open another croissant (baked on board every day according to the waiter) and poured coffee for the two contrite constables.

“Drink,” he ordered, and they drank.

Sergeant Jones had not joined them, his purple swollen wrist making movement of any kind painful. He was, in any case, pre-occupied—working up a story to cover his backside.

“Right, you two,” said Bliss, noticing how well the green of the sea reflected in their faces. “We’re docking in half an hour. I’ve looked everywhere on this damn ship and I can’t find LeClarc, so he’s either hiding ’cos he spotted us, or it was him who went over the side and that private dick is lying about the time.”

“So what’s the big plan, Inspector?” asked Wilson, with caustic undertone.

Bliss picked up the sarcasm and twisted it around, “I could always follow your example … get legless, break my wrist…”

“You lost him …” Wilson started, accusingly, but Smythe touched his arm. “Leave it Willy, let’s wait and see. Anyway, what are we going to do about the sergeant?”

Bliss picked up his coffee. “An ambulance will be on the quayside and he’ll be going back on tonight’s ship once he’s been plastered.”

“Good old Serg,” sniggered D.C. Smythe. “Plastered two nights running.”

All three laughed—like a team.

A hollow “boom” from the tannoy system echoed throughout the ship and a singsong voice rang out, “Will all car drivers and passengers please re-join your vehicles for embarkation.”

“That’s us,” said Bliss, downing his coffee as he rose. “Grab our bags and chuck them in the car, then wait for me. I’m going to see if I can spot him getting into the Renault.”

The narrow companionway to the car deck was swamped by a tide of sweaty, struggling, fed-up passengers, with fractious kids screaming, “Are we there yet?” and fractious parents screaming, “Are we there yet?” Bliss squeezed his way as far as a stairwell but his descent was blocked by a vertical wall of miserable humanity. “Police. Let me through,” he called hopefully, but a truck driver inflated himself into a road block, mumbling, “Push off and wait your turn. You’re not in England now.” Bliss retreated, tried two other stairwells without success and was finally swept down to Car Deck B with a crowd. He wanted to be on Deck A—where LeClarc’s car was. Weaving in and out of the slowly moving cars, he reached the deck just in time to see Roger’s green Renault driving off the ramp onto the quayside.

“Quick, follow him,” he shouted to Wilson, as he leapt into the back of their car. Wilson slammed it into gear, stared ahead, ignored the angry horns and voices of maddened motorists, and forced a path off the ship.

They closed up on the Renault approaching the immigration booth, just as the driver’s passport was being handed back. Only two other cars separated them but the immigration officer was in no hurry, his day’s plan ruined by the ship’s late arrival. They inched forward as the Renault disappeared into the custom’s hall. “Hurry up,” muttered Wilson, drumming the steering wheel, waiting for the smartly uniformed officer of the Koninklijke Marechaussee, a Dutch Marine, on immigration control. But Bliss wound down his window impatiently.

“Officer, we’re in a hurry,” he called, flourishing his warrant card. “Someone from your police force should be here to meet us.”

The officer’s English was good, not perfect. “Oh yes, Sir. Over zhere,” he said, pointing toward a dark blue Saab parked against the custom house wall with two men in black leather coats idly blowing smoke rings at each other. Bliss leapt out of the car, warrant card in hand, and ran over to the men.

“What did they say?” asked Wilson as he returned, breathless.

“Everything’s arranged,” replied Bliss. “They’ve really gone to town. They’ve got four units to pick him up as soon as he comes out of Customs.

“Shit,” said Wilson, “The Dutch must’ve money to burn. Four double-manned cars to follow a fat geezer in a poxy Renault, and we only had one.”

“Well,” responded Bliss, “Maybe they’re not as good as us.”

They laughed in relief, their task finally over and, with Roger’s car emerging from the Custom’s shed with the Saab in tow, Wilson mused, “I wonder if anyone did fall off the ship.”

“Don’t know,” replied Bliss, his eye on the departing Renault. “But thank God it wasn’t LeClarc.”

Trudy, in Roger’s house, in Roger’s bed, instructed herself to go back to the beginning, to her first words with Roger on the Internet. Reasoning that he must, at some time, have said, or done, something to give her a clue about the user I.D. and password she now needed to access his Internet server.

They’d “met” four months earlier—Easter weekend—in a chat room—an ethereal cyber-venue where weightless messages pass simultaneously between any number of correspondents; people who have never met, have little in common and, in most cases, nothing better to do.

“Your dinner’s getting cold. What on earth are you doing?” her mother bawled up the stairs as she left for work that evening.

“Won’t be long—just browsing,” Trudy replied, mesmerized by the tiny black and white screen. An hour later she was still there, her foil wrapped dinner balanced precariously in the fridge, on top of a chicken’s carcase.

The chat room emptied as guests drifted away in search of greater stimulation—like an entire fleet of Flying Dutchmen destined to endlessly surf the vastness of cyber-space, destined never to be satisfied—leaving Trudy and Roger almost alone.

“SO, ROGER, DO YOU THINK ONE DAY COMPUTERS WILL CLONE THEMSELVES,” she typed.

“THEY ALREADY DO. WE CAN’T MAKE COMPUTERS WITHOUT COMPUTERS,” he replied. “ITS LIKE PEOPLE. YOU CAN’T MAKE PEOPLE WITHOUT PEOPLE.”

“LIKE—SOMEONE’S GOT TO GET BONKED,” added the only other contributor, a man with the unlikely name of CyberBob, who’d added sexual innuendo all afternoon.

“THANK YOU CYBERBOB AND GOODNIGHT,” flashed onto Trudy’s screen as Roger gave him a hint.

CyberBob didn’t give up and, after a few more exchanges, Roger and Trudy crept out of the chat room to communicate through a private chat client. One-to-one private messages supposedly inaccessible by anyone else.

“I’ve met this really super guy, Marg,” she stage-whispered to Margery, her best, best friend, in social science class the following day. “He’s gorgeous and he’s twenty-seven.”

“Bit old for you, Trude. More my age.”

“Yeah, but I told him I was nineteen, so he reckons that’s O.K.”

“And … when he finds out?”

“I ain’t going to tell him am I? And it’s not like we’re going to meet or anything.”

“Well what’s he like? You know: How tall is he? What’s his hair like? His eyes? Hey, what’s his star sign? My mum reckons you can always tell what a bloke’s like from his star sign. She says Sagittarius is best. My dad’s a Pisces, that’s why she reckons he’s so wet.”

Trudy had no answers, but anticipated each evening’s “meeting” with Roger with the heart stopping palpitations of a waif dragged out of a screaming pack of groupies to have dinner with a teen-star. Dashing home from school, frequently brushing off Margery in her haste so that by six o’clock, or a quarter after at the latest, she was made-up and ready for her date. But Roger never came on-line before seven-thirty, even eight-thirty—she’d wait. Her e-mail message, “HI ROGER—GIVE ME A CALL,” would sit, unopened, in his inbox until he could escape to his room, switch on his computer, and wait for the three most important words of the day: “You’ve got mail.”

A crease in the filthy sheet on Roger’s bed irritated her aching left shoulder but, as she manoeuvred into a more comfortable position, pressure on her blistered hand made her cry out in pain. Once settled, she went back to her thoughts and recalled the evening, just a week after their original meeting, when “love” first appeared.

Coming home from school, she’d surrounded herself with a tide of cookies, crunchies and chocolate, which flooded the table and swept over the cereal bowl, still containing a few soggy cornflakes, which she’d abandoned in order to check her messages before school that morning. A sheet of writing paper, wrenched from an exercise book, had been brushed off the bowl by a pack of pretzels and now lay on the floor. The lipstick message, a random mix of upper and lower case letters, looked more like a suicide or ransom note than a mother’s message to her daughter. “I’n NOT clearing up AGAIN—I’ve WARNED you. You left the MILK out again. the cat got it. I’ll be back at ten—MAYBE.”

Their messages flew back and forth that evening. “At lightning speed,” according to Roger.

“HOW FAST IS THAT?” she enquired, but found little interest in the possibility of her written thoughts zipping round the world six times a second.

“WOW,” she wrote—who cares, she thought.

“I DID MY HAIR RED,” she wrote

“WOW,” he replied—who cares, he thought.

Hard-drives, soft movies; gigabytes, teen-TV; RAMs and ROMs, music and make-up. Their words crossed though never met.

“I GOT A NEW Z360,” he wrote.

“WOW,” she wrote.

“I’M GETTING A WATCH FOR MY BIRTHDAY,” she typed.

“WOW,” he replied.

The stilted conversation continued, the cut and thrust of debate, perfected by Senators before Christ, now blunted by the lightning speed of twentieth century technology—what truly masterful advertising genius had persuaded people that progress was to turn a thirty second phone call into an hour-long marathon of typing and reading?

Later, much later, in their exchanges, with all meaningful information exposed, she fished for his thoughts, his feelings.

“I THINK YOUR REALLY NICE,” she typed, her misspelling unnoticed by either. “WHAT DO YOU THINK OF ME?”

“U ARE REALLY SUPER TRUDE. I’VE NEVER MET ANYONE AS NICE AS YOU. I WISH I COULD SEE U. I BET U LOOK LOVELY. I THINK I’M FALLING IN LOVE.”

“Oh my God,” she breathed, feeling a warmth as the words sank in. What would Margery think of that? Margery with her string of admirers; Margery always knowing the right thing to say to a boy; Margery with her cool clothes, “in” lipstick and the right footwear. “Height matters,” she’d said, flaunting her new fourinch chunky heeled boots.

Trudy saved the message log on her hard drive, would have printed a copy but was out of paper. “I think I’m falling in love,” she read, and re-read, luxuriating in the words; listening to them roll off her tongue; watching her expression in the mirror; imagining Roger saying them: “I think I’m falling in love.”

“TRUDY—R U STILL THERE?” Her screen was saying.

“YES.” she typed back quickly, suddenly realizing that she’d not responded to his earlier message. “I’M HERE, AND I THINK I’M FALLING IN LOVE TOO.”

They could have picked up the phone, spoken directly, said what they wanted to say, heard what they wanted to hear, yet neither did, preferring to add another veil to the eternal dance. Lovers, fumbling in the dark, excited by the uncertainty of what they may find, deliberately delaying gratification—or disappointment.

Trudy called for Margery the following morning, something she rarely did of late, but she was unable to contain her excitement. Margery’s cigarette-thin mother, a length of ash dangling precariously, answered the door to Trudy’s cheery, “Hi—is Mar …”

She got no further. “Hang on, Luv,” she said, flicking the ash past her onto the street. “It’s for you Marg,” she shouted, turning to face the stairs.

“Go on up, Luv. It’s time she was up for school,” she called over her shoulder as she turned back to the kitchen.

Margery was miffed, “I thought you’d found a new friend,” she sneered, dived under the bedclothes and buried her head in the pillow. One foot stuck out, her azure toenails—”Chic” according to one of her mother’s magazines—contrasting sharply to the chalkiness of her skin.

“You’re still my best friend, Marg,” Trudy tried soothingly, closing the bedroom door behind her. “But Roger is sort of cute.”

“Cute! Cute! You don’t know what he looks like for gawd’s sake,” she shot back.

“I do so.”

“Bollocks you do.”

“Yeah, well that’s where you’re wrong, see.”

Margery leapt up, almost knocking Trudy off the edge of the narrow little bed—a cheap standby bought for a nine-year-old eight years earlier. “You’ve met him?” she asked excitedly.

“Not exactly, Marg. But I know what he looks like, and he’s sending me a photo. He’s tall, well fairly tall anyway, and he’s got dark skin. Not Paki or anything like that—just sort of tanned. Oh, and I nearly forgot, he’s got brown eyes the same as mine. He’s got a really posh job as well—some sort of computer programmer in the city.”

Margery, stirred into momentum by Trudy’s excitement, decided she might as well get up. She’d slept naked under the bedclothes, and now stepped, unashamedly, in front her friend, to examine her neat little body in the cracked, full-length mirror on the back of the door. “I think they’re getting bigger, what do you reckon, Trude?” she said as she turned to face her friend, her hands pushing under the little mounds of flesh, squeezing every available gram of fat into her breasts.

Trudy, her mind fixated on Roger, raced ahead. “He commutes, you know.” Is that an achievement or what? “He gets the train. Reckons he travels first class ’cos his firm pays. Oh, and wait for this, he’s got his own house. Sounds pretty posh, too. And you’d never guess where it is.”

She didn’t wait for Margery’s guess. In any case her friend was showing little interest, more concerned with retrieving various bits of clothing from around the room, carefully sniffing each.

“It’s in Watford,” she concluded triumphantly. “Not bad. Eh!” she added, carefully emphasising each individual syllable, and then repeating them for even greater emphasis, “Not bad. Eh!”

Margery didn’t think it was bad, not that she thought it was good either, so said nothing. Her choice of knickers selected, she put them on, coyly turning away from Trudy as if she’d suddenly discovered she had something to hide.

“Just think, Marg. Watford on a Saturday,” she said dreamily, her mind on the famous soccer club.

“Didn’t think you wuz interested in football, Trade,” Margery said at last, just to be annoying.

“Don’t much. But I might get to see Elton John. They reckon he’s there nearly every week.”

Margery was not a John fan, never had been, couldn’t understand anyone of her own age idolizing a strange little bald man old enough to be her grandfather. “Oh great!” she mocked, “Just what I always wanted.”

Trudy’s conversations with Roger had continued. Becoming longer; more intimate, more revealing, and even more desperate, as the tentacles of two lonely souls reached out to mesh with each other. Her mother, concerned mainly about the rising cost of the phone bill, had warned her about getting too involved. “You don’t know anything about him really, Trudy love,” she’d said, kindly, when her daughter had been explaining, excitedly, about some clever remark Roger had made. “Just be careful, that’s all. He might be married, or weird, or … or, I dunno. You’re only sixteen, plenty of time for boyfriends yet. Anyhow, you know what blasted liars men are. Remember your father?”

Of course she remembered her father, how could she forget her father; although, thinking about it, she was surprised to discover she hadn’t visited him for more than a year. His new wife, younger and definitely prettier than her mother, didn’t like her, had never liked her. “It’s like going to see him in hospital,” she had complained to her mother after her last visit.

Her stepmother had fussed around them all afternoon like an over-attentive ward Sister, insisting they do nothing. “You two have a nice little chat,” she had said, bustling in and out with cups of tea, finicky sandwiches, and fancy cakes from Marks & Spencer’s on a silly little silver coloured cake stand, that, Trudy thought, looked as though it had been pinched from a one-star hotel. Her stepmother, the “Sister” was determined Trudy would go home to tell her mother how much better her father was being cared for now. But, beyond the smiles, and the seemingly kind words, there was a coldness, a distance, a chasm, and her father was being slowly drawn across it. Trudy was left standing on one side of the ravine as her father was being led by his new wife to the other, and by five o’clock her stepmother had had enough, repeatedly checking her watch, hinting about the bus times, anxious to ring the bell to mark the end of visiting time.

“Remember the time we caught him?” her mother was saying now. Though Trudy, only ten at the time, didn’t feel she’d been personally involved in catching her father—although she’d certainly been there when he was caught.

“You should have seen his face,” her mother continued, dreamily, forgetting for a moment that Trudy had.

He had been sitting at a corner table in a little Indian restaurant; she, her stepmother-to-be, stroking one of his hands with both of hers. The flame from the flickering pink candle warmed both their faces as they held each others’ gaze, unwilling, or unable to let go; neither of them bothering to examine the plates of sizzling food the waiter was carefully placing on the pink tablecloth in front of them.

“Please be careful, Sir. It is very hot,” warned the waiter, wondering why he was wasting his breath, before retreating. Trudy’s mother wasn’t retreating. She’d watched from across the room and now marched to attack. “So this is ’working nights,’ is it?” she accused, her mouth taught with emotion. Then she swung on the other woman, biting out the words, “I’m his wife—I’m his day shift. I bet he hasn’t told you about me.” Without leaving any opportunity for a reply, she continued, in a sort of singsong voice. “And this is Trudy his little girl. Say hello to Daddy, Trudy.”

Trudy, confused, upset, alarmed by her mother’s uncharacteristically powerful performance, mumbled, “Hello Dad.” Then, watched, terrified, as her mother reached out with both hands and tipped the plates of sizzling food into their laps. The startled lovebirds shot backwards, and the woman’s chair tipped over, her legs spread-eagled and flailing in the air as her head hit the floor with a noticeable “thud.” Panicking, she screamed, and scrabbled at the table in an effort to pull herself up. Catching only the tablecloth, she pulled hard and sank under a deluge of crockery, cutlery, and the single red rose, which he had so lovingly given her ten minutes earlier. Trudy’s father rushed to rescue his new love and, as the waiters came running, Trudy’s mother caught her hand, instructing calmly, “Say goodbye to Daddy,” as if nothing had happened.

Pink was how Trudy would best remember that event. Everything seemed pink. Even her father’s girlfriend’s dress had been pink, although it had clashed with the pink of the tablecloth and the pink of the wallpaper. Her father’s face had been the pinkest of all as she looked up at him and snivelled, “Goodbye Dad,” then felt the tug of her mother’s hand, dragging her from the devastation.

A spider, one of many in the tiny room, climbed onto Trudy’s left leg. She twitched involuntarily to dislodge it, and woke sufficiently from her daydream to remind herself it was Roger she was trying to recall, not her father. It was Roger’s password she needed now.

“Roger,” she called forlornly into the gloom, “what’s the password?”

They’d started dating almost immediately—meeting daily through the electronic wizardry of their computer modems. His wit and repartee were puerile—funny, she thought—and his crudeness gave him a slightly dangerous edge, adding to his mystique while re-enforcing her self-perceived adulthood.

“It’s your own fault, Trude. You shouldn’t have told him you were nineteen.” Margery warned her, when she bragged of his sexual innuendos.

“But you always lie about your age, Marg,” riposted Trudy. “You told that bloke in the pub the other night you were twenty-one and he believed you.”

“That’s ’cos he wanted to believe it, Trude. Anyhow, it’s different when you’re talking to someone. They can see when you’re lying. Roger doesn’t even know what you look like for certain.”

Trudy lay thinking about her conversations with Roger, realizing that, after what had happened, nothing he’d said could be relied upon. They’d even discussed passwords once. She’d told him her’s in a flash. “IT’S MARMY,” she wrote. “THAT’S OUR CAT. HIS NAME IS MARMADUKE REALLY BUT WE CALL HIM MARMY, LIKE MARMALADE, ’COS THATS WHAT COLOUR HE IS. SORT OF ORANGEY, GINGER. WHAT’S YOUR PASSWORD ROGER?” She sat back, staring at the blank screen, until she worried he’d logged off without warning, and sent him another message. “U DONT HAVE TO TELL ME IF U DONT WANT 2. I DONT MIND, HONEST.”

Her screen flicked back to an incoming message almost immediately. “I DON’T MIND TRUDE. IT’S JUST THAT I USE LOTS OF PASSWORDS AND SOME R A BIT RUDE. I’LL TELL U IF U WANT.”

She typed back. “GO ON. IM AN ADULT REMEMBER. NOT A KID.”

Instantly, her screen scrolled as a long list of words appeared. Beginning with “ass” and ending in “wank”; he’d included every crudity she knew, and several she didn’t. She’d giggled as she saved the file, naming it “password@roger,” and sending it to her Wordperfect directory.

“It’s disgusting, Trude,” said Margery. “Better not let your mum see it.”

“Don’t worry,” she replied, “Mum doesn’t know what I do on the computer.”

Willing herself back to the present she posed the question, “What if he was telling the truth?” Completely awake now, her mind raced with hope as she started the painful process to raise herself off the bed. “What if one or more of those words were right after all?”

It was 8:30 a.m. in Watford as Trudy tried to reconstruct Roger’s list from memory. The damp streets were alive with the noise of traffic and the sounds of children going to school, though Trudy heard none of it. The railway station, at the end of Junction Road, was still crowded with commuters lucky enough to start work in the city after the nine o’clock rush hour, or unlucky enough to have overslept. A discarded newspaper lay next to a litterbin on platform 4 and a young bank clerk—a late starter—held it in place with his foot as he idly read the headlines. “No trace of missing 16 yr-old. Police are still mystified over the total disappearance last week of Leyton schoolgirl Trudy McKenzie.” He moved his foot an inch or two and examined the accompanying photograph. “Not bad,” he said under his breath.

At precisely the same moment it was nine thirty in Holland, and D.I. Bliss, with his two constables, set off past the lines of waiting cars as they tagged along behind the Dutch police Saab. Custom’s formalities had been waived for the visiting officers, and they found themselves being guided through a gate in the security fence, emerging directly at the exit lanes.

Bliss glanced to his left—there, just as he expected, was the little green Renault leaving the Custom’s shed; a blue Ford with two Dutch detectives tucking in neatly behind it. There was Roger on his way to The Hague. Roger LeClarc—computer expert; Roger LeClarc—the man who’d unwittingly caused such a commotion on the ship; Roger LeClarc—safe and sound. Bliss let out a self-congratulatory sigh, gave his front seat companion a thumbs-up and took one last confirming glance at the Renault’s driver.

“Oh Fuck! Stop, stop.”

Bliss didn’t wait, couldn’t wait. Leaping from the still moving car, arms waiving madly, he dashed across the road, leapt the fence and almost threw himself onto the bonnet of Roger’s Renault. Dutch police officers came running from all directions. And in the driver’s seat, terrified beyond speechlessness, sat Nosmo King.