A Narrow Trajectory Read online

  And she was sure of what she saw.

  Surprise. Followed by … what was that? Relief? Followed by a flash of … amusement?

  ‘You want to know where Jas is?’ Chivnor repeated. But now he sounded slightly confused. ‘But I thought …’ He began, then abruptly stopped speaking. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

  ‘He’s suspicious,’ Hillary said tensely, her voice suddenly sharp in the silent room. Rollo Sale had gone slightly pale, and by her side, Steven had tensed, too.

  ‘I know,’ Steven said. Then added quickly, ‘But I don’t get it. Why? Why should that make him suspicious?’

  But Hillary was hardly listening. She thought she had a pretty good idea why. But right now, she was more intent on watching Jake. Everything depended on what he said next.

  ‘Stay focused, Jake,’ she whispered to the monitor. ‘Keep it together.’

  But Jake was feeling a little flustered. Of all the possible scenarios that he’d gone over with his two bosses, this hadn’t been one of them. Chivnor was supposed to either deny ever knowing Jas, or fob him off, or maybe even tell him flat out what had happened to her. What he wasn’t supposed to do was look at Jake as if he were barmy.

  For a moment, he felt frozen, not sure what to do. Or say.

  But, luckily, Chivnor saved him the need to come up with something.

  ‘Just a minute. You said Jas is your sister?’ Chivnor asked. ‘But her last name’s not Barnes. So what are you trying to pull?’ His tone was slightly aggressive now, and there was no doubting that he was definitely on edge.

  ‘No. Technically, she’s my stepsister,’ Jake said, trying to calm his heart-beat, which he could hear thundering in his chest. ‘But her dad married my mum when she was only little, so we grew up together, like a real brother and sister, you know? She’s Jasmine Sudbury because that was her mum’s name.’

  And trying to get things back on track, he quickly launched into the pre-prepared speech he was supposed to give. ‘I know Jas worked for your boss a while ago, but a couple of years ago she just dropped out of sight. I figured either you, or someone in your outfit would know where she went. Or what happened to her. And I’m willing to give you a cool three-quarters of a million for proof of her whereabouts.’

  There, he’d got the sum of money quickly into the conversation, just as Steven and Rollo wanted.

  And sure enough, at the mention of it, Darren Chivnor’s eyes glinted greedily and he leaned forward in the chair. ‘Not enough,’ he said at once. ‘Besides, you’ve said before that a million was on offer.’

  And slowly, Jake began to relax. He wasn’t quite sure what that little stumble had been about earlier, but now he was back in familiar territory. Steven had told him that Darren would almost certainly demand more money – that it would be an almost automatic reflex. Which is why they’d chosen the sum they had. Because it made Jake’s natural come-back sound both natural and reasonable.

  ‘OK. I’m willing to make it a straight million, but only if and when I actually set eyes on her in person.’ He launched into the response perhaps a little too quickly, for in the office, Hillary shook her head.

  ‘That sounded too quick and too rehearsed.’ Rollo picked up on it at once, unknowingly rising a little in Hillary’s estimation. For whilst it was clear that her new boss might be a tyro at this sort of thing, it didn’t mean that he was slow off the mark.

  Luckily though, Darren Chivnor was too excited by the thought of all those zeros to notice Jake’s surprisingly quick and seamless response.

  ‘And that’s all?’ Chivnor asked, once again with some suspicion. ‘You just want to know about Jas?’

  ‘Yes. That’s all,’ Jake said. Then swallowed hard. Now came the hard bit. ‘I’m not a fool, I know that Jas might well be dead, but if she’s some Jane Doe in a morgue somewhere, or has already been buried in an unmarked grave, I need to know that as well. And you won’t get any of the money until I have DNA proof of her identity.’

  And having gulped out that challenge, he could only stare at the skinhead opposite him and wait for him to either deliver a crushing blow, or to make his day.

  Was Jas dead, or was she, against all the odds and by some miracle, still alive?

  But in the event, Darren Chivnor did neither.

  Instead he simply stared back at Jake for a good few seconds, a mixture of bafflement, uncertainty and something else warring on his face. Clearly he was doing some major thinking. And Hillary Greene, staring at that face on her screen, thought that she might just know what it was that he was thinking so hard about.

  And if she was right, Jake Barnes’s world, and that of Jasmine Sudbury’s parents, was about to implode.

  ‘I have to think about this,’ Darren said at last. ‘I’ll be in contact, yeah?’ And suddenly he pushed the chair back and walked away.

  Taken by surprise, Jake got up and started to follow him. And in the office opposite, Rollo, Hillary and Steven all said, “No!” almost simultaneously.

  Back in the reading room, it was almost as if Jake could hear them, for he suddenly jerked to a halt. But it was common sense that had told him that it would be stupid, and potentially dangerous, to go after the skinhead.

  Helplessly he watched Darren out of sight, then slumped back into his chair. Emotionally drained now, he suddenly felt exhausted.

  Although he’d been alternately dreading and looking forward to this meeting, he had at least been sure that, once it was over, he’d finally know what had happened to his sister.

  Now he felt only a sense of crushing disappointment.

  He looked up as Hillary, Rollo and Steven walked towards him. They’d left the office only when the CCTV had confirmed that Darren had left the building.

  ‘You did well,’ were Steven’s first encouraging words.

  ‘Yes, well done,’ Rollo Sale confirmed.

  ‘But he didn’t tell us anything!’ Jake wailed. If he hadn’t been so upset, he might have realized that Hillary Greene was unusually silent.

  And that she wasn’t quite able to meet his eye.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Back at HQ it was starting to get dark, and as they all trooped into Rollo’s office, Hillary walked to the main window and stared up. There she could just about make out the lights that were starting to come on in the car park, shining with a faint orange glow on the vehicles parked beneath them, playing havoc with their colours.

  As she watched, just above her at pavement level, a set of size ten boots stomped past, and a cigarette was illegally dropped and trodden on. Bloody litterbug, Hillary thought with a grin. The trouble with working from the basement was that it made her feel like a mole sometimes, or one of those forest creatures that lived perpetually under leaf litter. The thought of herself as some busy little dung beetle scuttling about in the dark and trying to deal with all of the dung that life seemed intent on dropping on to her head, made her lips twitch.

  With a sigh, she told herself to stop waxing so damned philosophical, and tuned in to the voices going on behind her.

  ‘At least he didn’t turn you down flat, that’s the main thing.’ It was Rollo who was currently doing the talking, but even with his upbeat take on things, it was clear that Jake wasn’t feeling anywhere near so optimistic.

  ‘But why didn’t he just tell me what happened to her?’ he demanded. ‘Or at the very least, say if she was alive or dead?’ From the way the sound of his voice moved, Hillary could tell that he was pacing restlessly up and down.

  Over at his desk, which was his for the next two days only, Steven wasn’t watching Jake at all. Instead, the outgoing Acting Chief Superintendent was watching Hillary Greene. She had been unusually quiet and he wasn’t at all sure that he liked the carefully cultivated, neutral look on her face. In his experience, when Hillary Greene got enigmatic it was time to sit up and take serious notice.

  So what had he missed? Because something in Jake’s little talk with Darren Chivnor had set her inner sniffer dog quiverin
g.

  ‘He was interested in the money though, wasn’t he?’ Jake demanded. ‘I mean, you could tell he was really anxious to find a way to get it.’

  At which Rollo Sale snorted. ‘Of course he was! Who wouldn’t be?’ the older man said scornfully. ‘But you have to remember, he’s a cautious bastard – working for someone like Medcalfe, he has to be. He knows more than anyone just what happens to those who run foul of his boss. He just needs a little time to think things through and sort out all the angles, that’s all. Don’t forget, the last thing he said to you was that he’d be in touch.’

  Jake turned to look at his other boss. ‘Sir, do you think that’s all it is?’

  Steven took his eyes from the woman who was shortly to become his live-in partner, and focussed on Jake’s unhappy face.

  ‘Yes, I do. And stop beating yourself up. You followed the instructions we gave you as well as any trained officer could have done. All in all, Superintendent Sale is right – the meeting was a success.’

  ‘You don’t think then, that he didn’t say anything because he doesn’t actually know what happened to Jas?’ Jake asked the question that haunted him the most. ‘I mean, Medcalfe’s got quite a few lieutenants in his gang and he could have assigned any one of them to deal with Jas’s situation. Whatever that was,’ he added quietly. ‘And there’s no guarantee that he would have known the details. Is there?’

  The two senior men exchanged a quick glance. Both of them had a pretty good idea why Darren hadn’t simply leapt at the bait and spilled his guts then and there.

  And Jake, who was nobody’s fool, not only caught the look that passed between his two bosses, but also noticed that Hillary Greene, the one person in the room he trusted more than any other, was keeping conspicuously quiet. Not only that, she was staring out of the window with her back firmly to the room, as if distancing herself from what was going on.

  He swallowed hard. ‘OK, so what am I missing?’ he asked helplessly.

  He pointed the question at Hillary’s turned back, but it was Steven who felt compelled to tell the young man what everyone was thinking but nobody was actually saying.

  ‘Jake, if Darren could have taken you to your sister then and there, or even told you where to find her …’ Steven began, then hesitated as he tried to think of a gentle way of finishing the sentence. Realizing that there wasn’t one, he shot Hillary’s turned back a brief, worried glance, then continued, ‘… then he probably would have done so – or at least, confirmed that he could do so. That is, if she were still alive and working for Medcalfe, and if he could have been sure he could collect the money before giving up what he knew.’ Steven sighed. ‘And don’t forget, he’s had a lot of time to figure out a way to make sure that he gets his money before giving you what you want. So once he knew what it was you were after, it would have taken him only moments to figure out how he could play things.’

  Jake blinked. ‘So the fact that he didn’t …’

  Steven heard Rollo shift uncomfortably in his seat, and spread his hands silently.

  ‘You think it proves that she’s dead,’ Jake finished flatly.

  Rollo Sale coughed slightly.

  Hillary Greene, neck craned right back, continued to stare silently out of the window. It had started to rain. No – actually, from the glimpses of white flecks that she could see drifting down in the rays of the orange-coloured street lamps, it was beginning to sleet. December had come in meaning business. Who knows – perhaps this year they’d even have a white Christmas.

  ‘It seems the most likely answer, yes,’ Steven said softly behind her. ‘And Chivnor knows full well that if she is dead, he’s going to have to be very careful about having you discover her remains.’

  Rollo sighed and took up the baton of educating the youngster. ‘Look at it from his point of view, Jake. He can hardly lead you wherever she is without implicating himself in murder, can he? Or maybe even worse from his point of view, in implicating his boss in murder. And that’s the last thing he’s likely to do, because he knows that if he drags Dale into this, he can forget about getting twenty years to life in a cosy little cell somewhere at Her Majesty’s pleasure – he’s likely to end up dead himself.’

  ‘So what are you saying? That this has all been a waste of time?’ Jake wailed.

  ‘No. Of course not,’ Steven put in quickly. ‘Like you said, he wants the money. By now he can practically taste it. And he’s obviously got a certain amount of low cunning. He didn’t get to rise as far as he has in Medcalfe’s outfit without having more than his fair share of brains. He’s just got to think of a way of giving you what you want without risking his own skin, that’s all. And that may take him a little while to come up with something – or not – depending on the circumstances.’

  ‘Either way, you’ve just got to be patient now,’ Rollo chipped in. ‘He’ll call you, don’t worry about that. He won’t be able to resist the thought of that million quid, believe me.’ He sighed. ‘Look, I know you wanted more from this meeting,’ he conceded, ‘but if you stop and think about it, Jake, you’ll see that that was never really very realistic.’

  Jake dragged in a ragged breath, then his shoulders slumped and he sighed in defeat. ‘OK. I’ve got to go and phone my parents. They’ll be expecting … well … something.’

  ‘Then tell them that things are progressing well. That you’re much closer to the truth now than ever before,’ Steven advised. ‘But they, like you, are going to have to be patient a little bit longer.’

  Jake nodded, glanced across at Hillary, who was still watching the fall of rain and snow above her, and opened his mouth to say something. Then he obviously thought better of it and instead turned and left.

  Once the door had shut behind him, Rollo groaned. ‘The next few weeks are going to be hard on him,’ he predicted. ‘We have got eyes on Chivnor, haven’t we? Just in case he takes it into his head to go and check out wherever they got rid of the body.’

  Steven nodded, although he thought it highly unlikely that Darren would be so accommodating. Then he said quietly, ‘Hillary?’

  But Hillary merely turned away from the window and began making her way to the door. ‘I need to check in with Jimmy and Wendy. I asked them to do some legwork for me this afternoon on the Lydia Allen case.’

  It wasn’t until she’d almost got to the door that Rollo Sale realized that he’d missed something – something that Crayle had clearly picked up on. Because as she reached for the door handle, Steven said, a shade more sharply, ‘What? What is it? What’s going on?’ And he clearly wasn’t asking about the Lydia Allen case.

  Hillary looked across at him, seemed to hesitate for the briefest of moments, then shook her head. She didn’t feel comfortable putting her neck on the line before having enough facts to back up her theories. Not even for Steven.

  ‘It’s like Superintendent Sale said, sir,’ she murmured blandly, ‘the next few weeks are going to be hard on Jake. We’ll have to keep a really sharp eye on him.’ And that was as much of a hint as she was willing to give.

  And with that, she opened the door and slipped out. Back in the communal office, she wasn’t surprised to see that both Jimmy and Wendy were back from their afternoon’s fishing expedition. Outside it was now fully dark, and probably perishing.

  ‘Anything?’ she said, by way of greeting.

  Jimmy, caught in the act of dry-swallowing two aspirin, nodded, but obviously wasn’t in any position to speak, so it was Wendy who answered her.

  ‘We think his name is probably Kyle Karastrides, guv,’ she said.

  For whilst she and the others had been overseeing the meeting between Jake and Darren, Hillary had asked Jimmy and Wendy to see if they could discover the name of the student that, by all accounts, Lydia Allen had been so taken with just before she went missing.

  ‘First we got a list of students from St Bedes for the years in question,’ Jimmy took over, ‘deleted the women and the Anglo-sounding names from the mix, and ran
the rest of them past her mother.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘Did Diana recognize any of the names?’

  ‘No, guv, but she confirmed that Lydia had seemed to think that marriage might be on the cards in the near future – which had to be wishful thinking on her part, I dare say, but we had to check it out. So next we ran the list through various databases, but very few of them got married here in the UK during the timeframe we’re talking about. Two were arrested on minor charges, one died, and three applied for British citizenship. Of course, if she did run off or elope overseas with one of them, then that might be why her mother hasn’t heard from her in all this time.’

  Hillary sighed. They both knew how likely that was. Fairy tale endings, where the call girl with the heart of gold actually ended up marrying her rich, handsome foreign prince only happened in Hollywood films. Or really bad literature.

  ‘And it’s gonna be one hell of a job trying to track down the current whereabouts and married status of all the foreign students now that they’ve either gone back home or scattered to all four corners of the globe.’

  ‘Right.’ Hillary winced just at the thought of it. ‘Don’t even try to bother. So why do you think this Kyle fella might be the one then? I can’t see any dean or bursar of an Oxford college giving you the names of past students who liked to dally with the local paid talent.’

  Jimmy actually snorted with mirth at the idea, then bit back a yelp as his heaving shoulders and ribs made his lower back suddenly flare up again.

  ‘No, guv,’ Wendy said. ‘It was one of our street contacts who came up with the name.’

  Hillary cocked an eyebrow at Jimmy. ‘Street contact, huh?’ she said, trying to look and sound impressed by the way the goth nonchalantly threw out the term. This time, Jimmy was wise enough to merely content himself with a grin.

  ‘Yeah. One of the girls who knew Lydia said she was bragging about marrying this rich Greek guy,’ Wendy said.

  ‘Apparently he was a bit of a regular on the circuit, and he wasn’t quite as much of a one woman punter as Lydia thought,’ Jimmy put in cynically. ‘Imagine that!’