Kingston noir, p.25
Kingston Noir, page 25
“Will do, Gov’,” Foote said. She consulted with one of the forensics, who showed her a stack of documents.
“Is the neighborhood being monitored?” Vassell asked. “Do we have teams in place?”
“He’s not coming back here,” Ross said. “He’s not that crazy.”
“No, but maybe he’s watching us. Maybe he’s just passing by to see what we’re doing.”
“Yes,” said Ross, “he must be that crazy.”
Lucy didn’t quite understand how she had suddenly ended up in this basement, after having been driven in Charlie’s van. And where was she anyway? What kind of place was this?
They had driven up to that large and imposing villa.
She remembered the villa. Hadn’t seen a villa like this anywhere in Kingston so far. Only rich people could live in such a place.
Charlie had gotten out. A man had come out of the villa. A big, burly, black man. Older than Charlie and dressed in a smart suit but without a tie. A distinguished man. And that man had told her: come in, girl, and have a lemonade. This will only take a moment. Then Charlie will drive you home. He and I, we have something to discuss.
And now she was in the basement, seated on a chair and feeling dizzy. Her hands were tied to the armrests of the chair. Her ankles were tied to the legs of the chair. All with nasty and strong adhesive tape. Silver-gray adhesive tape. Why had they tied her up?
She had gone inside. She had left her books in the van. Leave those books in the van, said the other man. It’s only for a little while. Nobody will take them. A lemonade? Maybe a cookie? Come into the drawing room, where you’ll be cozy. Yes, this way.
The lemonade had been tasty. Very sweet. Everything was very sweet in this country. The cookies were dry but soft at the same time. She tasted ginger in them. She had learned to eat ginger, mostly in cookies. Candied ginger.
And then she had waited in the drawing room. She heard voices. From Charlie and from the man. They weren’t arguing, but they apparently disagreed about something. She had been waiting. In the drawing room. The drawing room exuded distinction and was notably serene.
And now she was tied to a chair in a basement. Probably the basement of the villa. Deep underground. Where it was cool but humid. In a basement with only that chair. Nothing else. No window. No door. Maybe behind her, but she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t turn her head that far. That hurt.
She could not figure out how she got from the drawing room to the cellar.
A small cellar. Kind of like her bedroom in mom’s apartment. No bigger.
Tied up.
She wanted to get out of here.
She shouted.
There was no answer.
She shouted again.
A door opened behind her.
Terrence and Anna had walked all the way to the school, had asked about Lucy, but were assured by the last remaining teacher that everyone had already gone home. They walked back to the flat, again interrogating people along the way. No one could remember a mixed-race girl in a school uniform. There were plenty of girls in school uniforms around. But none like her, no.
Terrence caught a glimpse of the man he had seen earlier in the street. The man who followed him. He felt for his gun, but the man had already vanished.
Did that man have anything to do with Lucy’s disappearance? The man from the Middle East. Or a Greek? A Turk?
Had that man kidnapped her? Was he a terrorist? Was he the one who wanted Anna’s locket with the data card? Was he an agent of some foreign power, like in a movie? A spy?
But the man was nowhere to be seen.
If he had kidnapped Lucy, Terrence would not hesitate to confront him with the truth.
He wasn’t going to share his thoughts with Anna. Anna was having a hard enough time as it was. “She’s just someplace with one of the other girls from her class,” he assured her. “They are sitting in front of a TV eating chips. They laugh at a cartoon,” he said.
“She never does that sort of thing,” said Anna. “She knows I would be worried, and she would phone me.”
“I don’t know anything about girls that age,” Terrence admitted, “But I know how I was back then. Without a worry in the world, and I didn’t share any of my little secrets with my parents. I assume girls that age are as unpredictable as I was.”
But Lucy hadn’t returned to the flat, where Tabita was waiting for them. Nor was she around Terrence’s place either.
“I’ll ask around some more,” said Terrence.
Tabita put her hand on Anna’s shoulder. “I’ll make us some tea in the meantime,” she said.
“I want to wait for her here,” said Anna.
Two big black men. Both in dark suits, white shirts, no ties. Big, burly men. Civilized men, Lucy would assume, if she saw them under different circumstances. Spoke English, but with that particular Jamaican accent. Charlie wasn’t around anymore.
Charlie, who had betrayed her. Because that’s what he had done: betrayed her. Delivered her into the hands of these people. He didn’t take her home as he promised. He hadn’t planned to do that from the start.
Lucy couldn’t do anything. She was tied up. She wanted to leave; she wanted her mother. She wanted Terrence. Terrence would come and get her. Terrence would save her and return her to her mother.
“She’s fine as far as I’m concerned,” said one of the men. “Although she is not really black.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the other. “You don’t want to be picky all of a sudden, do you?”
Lucy looked at them both. “Please,” she said, in her best English, “let me go. I won’t say anything.”
“Shut up, child,” said one man. “You’re not the first, and by God, you won’t be the last. Accept your fate with patience and humility.”
“Oh,” said the other, “let her do whatever she wants. Let her scream her little heart out. Who will hear her?”
“My nerves can’t stand all that screaming,” said the first man.
“Then what are you doing here?”
“It’s my fate. I too bear my fate with modesty.”
One leaned over to Lucy. “You’re extremely beautiful, you know? A particularly beautiful pikney. We have had beautiful children here, but you are the most beautiful.”
The other, who had complained about his fate, snorted loudly. Outraged. “She’s not your daughter,” he said. “You don’t have to pet her. Not your fucking daughter.”
“She is. Look at her eyes. Wouldn’t you want a daughter like that? A lovely half-blood girl? Look at those calves and knees. Look at what’s hidden under that blouse already.”
“I think she’s a bitch. And that she must be punished.”
“You think all women are bitches,” the first man grumbled.
“They are. And they already are bitches at a very young age. This one is a bitch, for sure. Untie her, and she will bite you.”
“Well, maybe that’s a new sort of experience. Shall we untie her?” the first man suggested.
“No way,” said the other. “Remember a previous occasion, and how that went south? I’ll tell you again: you trust them too much. Once they are here and know what will happen to them, they become monsters.”
Then they said nothing more and just looked at her.
Until that one said, “Where did you leave the knife?”
And the other: “In the car.”
“Why is it in the car? Go get it!”
Vassell and Tim had driven back to the office. There was nothing left they could do in Charlie’s apartment or at the company where he worked. They had left some people in the vicinity, in case—very unlikely—he returned. But they didn’t count on it.
Foote was on the phone. “Forensics says they have found nothing in his papers about a contract with an employer, someone for whom he did jobs, certainly not aside from the company’s customers. We’re looking at those customers now. There aren’t that many, but they’re all schools and clubs and stuff. No private persons.”
“It is all too clear how he found those girls, being around schools, keeping an eye out for them.”
“What else do we know about him?”
“Almost nothing. He’s from Trench Town. Not married. No children. Has been working for that company for ten years. A bank account with some savings. A rental apartment. No car. Nothing really. An unremarkable man.”
“Neighborhood survey?”
“Not until tomorrow, I’m afraid. When we can call some more people.”
“Tomorrow is too late. He’ll be gone by then.”
“My guess, Gov’, is that no one knows who he really is. They see him around in the neighborhood, but everyone is minding their own business.”
“My only question is: where is he now.”
“We are looking,” Foote said.
During all that time, Tim had nothing to say. Foote left them alone in Vassell’s office. They both knew finding Charlie would be all about needles and haystacks. But he had to be found, or the whole investigation would still not be near its conclusion. Even if Tim was right, and Charlie was only a middleman, they needed to have him confess. They needed him to name names.
Vassell was now convinced Tim had been right. In that case, Charlie would be in danger himself. Someone was not going to like the loose tread he represented. Someone was not going to like the idea that Charlie would talk to the investigators. Charlie’s life was in danger.
“Do we have any precedents for this sort of cooperation, where different people play separate roles while murdering people? Except for what crime syndicates do?” she inquired.
“Well,” Tim said, “Britain used to have the infamous case of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, working together, abducting and torturing children to death. There have been others. Like-minded souls who found each other in the executions of the most cruel crimes. Perverse, inhuman souls. You have them everywhere. Sometimes they form an alliance. I can’t logically explain their motivations.”
“You said something about obligations and people with power.”
“Yes. Sometimes that power is purely psychological. One person who has moral power over the other, a truly dominant figure who forces the other to do things that he or she does not actually want to do. Your Charlie fits that pattern. Like the reluctant slave—I have no better word for it—who is able to push his feelings aside.”
“As long as he takes us to the real killer …”
“But you still have no real proof of Charlie’s guilt.”
“No, but he is the first real lead since the case started.”
They sat together for a moment, without talking.
Then Vassell asked, “Tim?”
“Yes?”
“Is that what you’re doing over there, in London, teaching this stuff?”
He envisioned himself in his familiar lecture hall. He looked at the faces of young people, boys and girls, who had probably never seen a dead body, let alone a mutilated one. And who might never see a dead victim. Because victims of serial murder would never end up in their consulting room. The perpetrators would not. Those twisted minds they might have to deal with, not in their private chambers but somewhere in a prison, where they would be trying to analyze the most devious minds and help the justice system to decide if the possessor of that mind would have to be incarcerated forever or walk free again.
But would they be able to recognize psychopaths? Would they recognize the monster as someone who walked into their cabinet one day, perfectly innocent, telling them about their feverish dreams and their terrible urges. Would they see these people for what they were going to become? No, he suspected they would not. As he himself had not been able to recognize certain potential monsters, all through his career.
He had come face to face with the ultimate Evil, which only humanity can produce, and he had not recognized it. At least not always. And probably not often enough.
“What else is there besides teaching?” he asked her. “Can’t go back to the Met, or any other police service, can I? I’ve had enough of that.”
“Really? And yet you came here as soon as I called you.”
“Not right away.”
“No. But you didn’t need much convincing either.”
“Well, maybe I’ve come here for the climate and the beaches and the rum. Although I haven’t gotten much out of these last two yet. So you seriously owe me. May I also remind you that you did not even mention a fair financial compensation for my services.”
“I’ll take you to a beach and to a decent bar when this is over.”
“It’s far from over, Jen.”
Terrence looked at his watch. Lucy was two hours late now. No, almost three hours. Anna was in complete disarray. They had walked to the school again, all the way, and then back, to Anna’s flat, where Tabita had made them very sweet tea. Tabita was worried about Lucy as well. Whatever her feelings for Anna, Lucy was Terrence’s daughter.
Terrence almost felt at home in Anna’s flat, even though he didn’t recognize any of the stuff she had. Yet the flat was everything like Anna—the way she organized the kitchen, the way she hung her clothes, the choice of rugs on the floor and the old, worn sofa against the wall, and the curtains.
The flat was completely Anna.
“We have to get the police involved,” Anna said. “We can’t wait any longer.”
Terrence rose to his feet. He had a strange feeling. Lucy hadn’t just disappeared. There was more to this. He feared the worst: she might be in the hands of the child murderer. The thought filled him with a deep dread. Lucy would become the murderer’s tenth victim, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Yes,” he said, “let’s call the police.”
He stood by the window, curtains partially closed against the sun. The young man he had seen earlier was hanging around in the street, as before. Was he involved in Lucy’s disappearance? Was he in collusion with the murderer? Was he part of some cruel, frightening plot?
Was he himself a child molester?
And then, something inside Terrence snapped.
He didn’t know exactly what it was. Suddenly a suppressed anger within him was unleashed, something he could no longer control.
He hurried outside—down the stairs and into the street.
The young man only saw him when he was close by.
Terrence had drawn his gun.
He aimed it at the young man.
“Where’s Lucy?” he shouted. He was absolutely convinced the young man was involved in her disappearance. Maybe not as an accomplice to the murderer, but as a part in the plot to steal the medallion, the data card. This man might be a terrorist or whatever. Anyway, to Terrence, at that moment, he was the only one who would have something to reveal about Lucy.
The young man held out his hands, palms forward, toward Terrence. A calming gesture. A gesture that said: I am not armed.
But he probably was.
“We don’t have Lucy!” the young man shouted. “We don’t have her!”
“Where is she?” Terrence couldn’t even control his voice anymore. Around them: people scattering, people taking cover, because of the gun. Guns were not uncommon in this neighborhood. But you always avoided a man with a gun.
“No, no, I’m telling the truth! We don’t have her. Has she disappeared? We will help!”
Terrence pointed the gun over the man’s head and pulled the trigger. The bang reverberated off the facades.
The young man cowered. His right hand disappeared under his jacket.
Another man stepped into the street.
Terrence only saw him out of the corner of his eye.
He turned to the newcomer, who had his own gun pointed at Terrence. “Put the gun down, Mr. Mason,” the second man said.
English, both with the same accent.
Arabs. Or whatever.
They would shoot him without further ado. But they didn’t.
“Put the gun down, Mr. Mason. Then we’ll talk about this. If Lucy is gone, we have nothing to do with it. We will help you find her.”
Terrence pointed his gun at one man and then at the other.
Both had now drawn their weapons.
A siren. In the distance.
Police, here in Trench Town?
Police, immediately responding to a shot? That was truly exceptional. But there were more police on the streets these days. Because of the child murderer.
The two men looked at each other.
“We don’t have much time,” said one. “The police will be here shortly. And then things are out of our hands.”
They’re not terrorists, Terrence thought.
They would have shot him immediately if that were.
“Who are you?”
“Mossad,” said the eldest of the men. “Israel secret service. We are Mossad agents, and we want back the item your lady friend brought from Brussels. It is property of the Israeli government.”
The other man looked at his companion but said nothing.
“I want Lucy back,” Terrence said.
The siren was nearby.
Both men lowered their weapons.
They stepped back, their eyes on Terrence.
He also lowered his weapon.
Then both men disappeared.
“Kidnapped?” Foote said. On the phone. “Where? In Trench Town?”
Vassell looked up.
Foote listened carefully to what the phone had to tell her.
“Okay,” she finally said. “I’ll tell the boss.”
“What?” Vassell asked.
“Trench Town. A local resident with a gun threatens two men in the street, also armed. But no gangs involved, no local crime. He is looking for his daughter, who didn’t come home from school. Local school’s uniform. But she’s a mixed race. His wife—ex-wife—recently arrived in Kingston, a white woman from Europe.”
“Is the neighborhood being monitored?” Vassell asked. “Do we have teams in place?”
“He’s not coming back here,” Ross said. “He’s not that crazy.”
“No, but maybe he’s watching us. Maybe he’s just passing by to see what we’re doing.”
“Yes,” said Ross, “he must be that crazy.”
Lucy didn’t quite understand how she had suddenly ended up in this basement, after having been driven in Charlie’s van. And where was she anyway? What kind of place was this?
They had driven up to that large and imposing villa.
She remembered the villa. Hadn’t seen a villa like this anywhere in Kingston so far. Only rich people could live in such a place.
Charlie had gotten out. A man had come out of the villa. A big, burly, black man. Older than Charlie and dressed in a smart suit but without a tie. A distinguished man. And that man had told her: come in, girl, and have a lemonade. This will only take a moment. Then Charlie will drive you home. He and I, we have something to discuss.
And now she was in the basement, seated on a chair and feeling dizzy. Her hands were tied to the armrests of the chair. Her ankles were tied to the legs of the chair. All with nasty and strong adhesive tape. Silver-gray adhesive tape. Why had they tied her up?
She had gone inside. She had left her books in the van. Leave those books in the van, said the other man. It’s only for a little while. Nobody will take them. A lemonade? Maybe a cookie? Come into the drawing room, where you’ll be cozy. Yes, this way.
The lemonade had been tasty. Very sweet. Everything was very sweet in this country. The cookies were dry but soft at the same time. She tasted ginger in them. She had learned to eat ginger, mostly in cookies. Candied ginger.
And then she had waited in the drawing room. She heard voices. From Charlie and from the man. They weren’t arguing, but they apparently disagreed about something. She had been waiting. In the drawing room. The drawing room exuded distinction and was notably serene.
And now she was tied to a chair in a basement. Probably the basement of the villa. Deep underground. Where it was cool but humid. In a basement with only that chair. Nothing else. No window. No door. Maybe behind her, but she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t turn her head that far. That hurt.
She could not figure out how she got from the drawing room to the cellar.
A small cellar. Kind of like her bedroom in mom’s apartment. No bigger.
Tied up.
She wanted to get out of here.
She shouted.
There was no answer.
She shouted again.
A door opened behind her.
Terrence and Anna had walked all the way to the school, had asked about Lucy, but were assured by the last remaining teacher that everyone had already gone home. They walked back to the flat, again interrogating people along the way. No one could remember a mixed-race girl in a school uniform. There were plenty of girls in school uniforms around. But none like her, no.
Terrence caught a glimpse of the man he had seen earlier in the street. The man who followed him. He felt for his gun, but the man had already vanished.
Did that man have anything to do with Lucy’s disappearance? The man from the Middle East. Or a Greek? A Turk?
Had that man kidnapped her? Was he a terrorist? Was he the one who wanted Anna’s locket with the data card? Was he an agent of some foreign power, like in a movie? A spy?
But the man was nowhere to be seen.
If he had kidnapped Lucy, Terrence would not hesitate to confront him with the truth.
He wasn’t going to share his thoughts with Anna. Anna was having a hard enough time as it was. “She’s just someplace with one of the other girls from her class,” he assured her. “They are sitting in front of a TV eating chips. They laugh at a cartoon,” he said.
“She never does that sort of thing,” said Anna. “She knows I would be worried, and she would phone me.”
“I don’t know anything about girls that age,” Terrence admitted, “But I know how I was back then. Without a worry in the world, and I didn’t share any of my little secrets with my parents. I assume girls that age are as unpredictable as I was.”
But Lucy hadn’t returned to the flat, where Tabita was waiting for them. Nor was she around Terrence’s place either.
“I’ll ask around some more,” said Terrence.
Tabita put her hand on Anna’s shoulder. “I’ll make us some tea in the meantime,” she said.
“I want to wait for her here,” said Anna.
Two big black men. Both in dark suits, white shirts, no ties. Big, burly men. Civilized men, Lucy would assume, if she saw them under different circumstances. Spoke English, but with that particular Jamaican accent. Charlie wasn’t around anymore.
Charlie, who had betrayed her. Because that’s what he had done: betrayed her. Delivered her into the hands of these people. He didn’t take her home as he promised. He hadn’t planned to do that from the start.
Lucy couldn’t do anything. She was tied up. She wanted to leave; she wanted her mother. She wanted Terrence. Terrence would come and get her. Terrence would save her and return her to her mother.
“She’s fine as far as I’m concerned,” said one of the men. “Although she is not really black.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the other. “You don’t want to be picky all of a sudden, do you?”
Lucy looked at them both. “Please,” she said, in her best English, “let me go. I won’t say anything.”
“Shut up, child,” said one man. “You’re not the first, and by God, you won’t be the last. Accept your fate with patience and humility.”
“Oh,” said the other, “let her do whatever she wants. Let her scream her little heart out. Who will hear her?”
“My nerves can’t stand all that screaming,” said the first man.
“Then what are you doing here?”
“It’s my fate. I too bear my fate with modesty.”
One leaned over to Lucy. “You’re extremely beautiful, you know? A particularly beautiful pikney. We have had beautiful children here, but you are the most beautiful.”
The other, who had complained about his fate, snorted loudly. Outraged. “She’s not your daughter,” he said. “You don’t have to pet her. Not your fucking daughter.”
“She is. Look at her eyes. Wouldn’t you want a daughter like that? A lovely half-blood girl? Look at those calves and knees. Look at what’s hidden under that blouse already.”
“I think she’s a bitch. And that she must be punished.”
“You think all women are bitches,” the first man grumbled.
“They are. And they already are bitches at a very young age. This one is a bitch, for sure. Untie her, and she will bite you.”
“Well, maybe that’s a new sort of experience. Shall we untie her?” the first man suggested.
“No way,” said the other. “Remember a previous occasion, and how that went south? I’ll tell you again: you trust them too much. Once they are here and know what will happen to them, they become monsters.”
Then they said nothing more and just looked at her.
Until that one said, “Where did you leave the knife?”
And the other: “In the car.”
“Why is it in the car? Go get it!”
Vassell and Tim had driven back to the office. There was nothing left they could do in Charlie’s apartment or at the company where he worked. They had left some people in the vicinity, in case—very unlikely—he returned. But they didn’t count on it.
Foote was on the phone. “Forensics says they have found nothing in his papers about a contract with an employer, someone for whom he did jobs, certainly not aside from the company’s customers. We’re looking at those customers now. There aren’t that many, but they’re all schools and clubs and stuff. No private persons.”
“It is all too clear how he found those girls, being around schools, keeping an eye out for them.”
“What else do we know about him?”
“Almost nothing. He’s from Trench Town. Not married. No children. Has been working for that company for ten years. A bank account with some savings. A rental apartment. No car. Nothing really. An unremarkable man.”
“Neighborhood survey?”
“Not until tomorrow, I’m afraid. When we can call some more people.”
“Tomorrow is too late. He’ll be gone by then.”
“My guess, Gov’, is that no one knows who he really is. They see him around in the neighborhood, but everyone is minding their own business.”
“My only question is: where is he now.”
“We are looking,” Foote said.
During all that time, Tim had nothing to say. Foote left them alone in Vassell’s office. They both knew finding Charlie would be all about needles and haystacks. But he had to be found, or the whole investigation would still not be near its conclusion. Even if Tim was right, and Charlie was only a middleman, they needed to have him confess. They needed him to name names.
Vassell was now convinced Tim had been right. In that case, Charlie would be in danger himself. Someone was not going to like the loose tread he represented. Someone was not going to like the idea that Charlie would talk to the investigators. Charlie’s life was in danger.
“Do we have any precedents for this sort of cooperation, where different people play separate roles while murdering people? Except for what crime syndicates do?” she inquired.
“Well,” Tim said, “Britain used to have the infamous case of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, working together, abducting and torturing children to death. There have been others. Like-minded souls who found each other in the executions of the most cruel crimes. Perverse, inhuman souls. You have them everywhere. Sometimes they form an alliance. I can’t logically explain their motivations.”
“You said something about obligations and people with power.”
“Yes. Sometimes that power is purely psychological. One person who has moral power over the other, a truly dominant figure who forces the other to do things that he or she does not actually want to do. Your Charlie fits that pattern. Like the reluctant slave—I have no better word for it—who is able to push his feelings aside.”
“As long as he takes us to the real killer …”
“But you still have no real proof of Charlie’s guilt.”
“No, but he is the first real lead since the case started.”
They sat together for a moment, without talking.
Then Vassell asked, “Tim?”
“Yes?”
“Is that what you’re doing over there, in London, teaching this stuff?”
He envisioned himself in his familiar lecture hall. He looked at the faces of young people, boys and girls, who had probably never seen a dead body, let alone a mutilated one. And who might never see a dead victim. Because victims of serial murder would never end up in their consulting room. The perpetrators would not. Those twisted minds they might have to deal with, not in their private chambers but somewhere in a prison, where they would be trying to analyze the most devious minds and help the justice system to decide if the possessor of that mind would have to be incarcerated forever or walk free again.
But would they be able to recognize psychopaths? Would they recognize the monster as someone who walked into their cabinet one day, perfectly innocent, telling them about their feverish dreams and their terrible urges. Would they see these people for what they were going to become? No, he suspected they would not. As he himself had not been able to recognize certain potential monsters, all through his career.
He had come face to face with the ultimate Evil, which only humanity can produce, and he had not recognized it. At least not always. And probably not often enough.
“What else is there besides teaching?” he asked her. “Can’t go back to the Met, or any other police service, can I? I’ve had enough of that.”
“Really? And yet you came here as soon as I called you.”
“Not right away.”
“No. But you didn’t need much convincing either.”
“Well, maybe I’ve come here for the climate and the beaches and the rum. Although I haven’t gotten much out of these last two yet. So you seriously owe me. May I also remind you that you did not even mention a fair financial compensation for my services.”
“I’ll take you to a beach and to a decent bar when this is over.”
“It’s far from over, Jen.”
Terrence looked at his watch. Lucy was two hours late now. No, almost three hours. Anna was in complete disarray. They had walked to the school again, all the way, and then back, to Anna’s flat, where Tabita had made them very sweet tea. Tabita was worried about Lucy as well. Whatever her feelings for Anna, Lucy was Terrence’s daughter.
Terrence almost felt at home in Anna’s flat, even though he didn’t recognize any of the stuff she had. Yet the flat was everything like Anna—the way she organized the kitchen, the way she hung her clothes, the choice of rugs on the floor and the old, worn sofa against the wall, and the curtains.
The flat was completely Anna.
“We have to get the police involved,” Anna said. “We can’t wait any longer.”
Terrence rose to his feet. He had a strange feeling. Lucy hadn’t just disappeared. There was more to this. He feared the worst: she might be in the hands of the child murderer. The thought filled him with a deep dread. Lucy would become the murderer’s tenth victim, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Yes,” he said, “let’s call the police.”
He stood by the window, curtains partially closed against the sun. The young man he had seen earlier was hanging around in the street, as before. Was he involved in Lucy’s disappearance? Was he in collusion with the murderer? Was he part of some cruel, frightening plot?
Was he himself a child molester?
And then, something inside Terrence snapped.
He didn’t know exactly what it was. Suddenly a suppressed anger within him was unleashed, something he could no longer control.
He hurried outside—down the stairs and into the street.
The young man only saw him when he was close by.
Terrence had drawn his gun.
He aimed it at the young man.
“Where’s Lucy?” he shouted. He was absolutely convinced the young man was involved in her disappearance. Maybe not as an accomplice to the murderer, but as a part in the plot to steal the medallion, the data card. This man might be a terrorist or whatever. Anyway, to Terrence, at that moment, he was the only one who would have something to reveal about Lucy.
The young man held out his hands, palms forward, toward Terrence. A calming gesture. A gesture that said: I am not armed.
But he probably was.
“We don’t have Lucy!” the young man shouted. “We don’t have her!”
“Where is she?” Terrence couldn’t even control his voice anymore. Around them: people scattering, people taking cover, because of the gun. Guns were not uncommon in this neighborhood. But you always avoided a man with a gun.
“No, no, I’m telling the truth! We don’t have her. Has she disappeared? We will help!”
Terrence pointed the gun over the man’s head and pulled the trigger. The bang reverberated off the facades.
The young man cowered. His right hand disappeared under his jacket.
Another man stepped into the street.
Terrence only saw him out of the corner of his eye.
He turned to the newcomer, who had his own gun pointed at Terrence. “Put the gun down, Mr. Mason,” the second man said.
English, both with the same accent.
Arabs. Or whatever.
They would shoot him without further ado. But they didn’t.
“Put the gun down, Mr. Mason. Then we’ll talk about this. If Lucy is gone, we have nothing to do with it. We will help you find her.”
Terrence pointed his gun at one man and then at the other.
Both had now drawn their weapons.
A siren. In the distance.
Police, here in Trench Town?
Police, immediately responding to a shot? That was truly exceptional. But there were more police on the streets these days. Because of the child murderer.
The two men looked at each other.
“We don’t have much time,” said one. “The police will be here shortly. And then things are out of our hands.”
They’re not terrorists, Terrence thought.
They would have shot him immediately if that were.
“Who are you?”
“Mossad,” said the eldest of the men. “Israel secret service. We are Mossad agents, and we want back the item your lady friend brought from Brussels. It is property of the Israeli government.”
The other man looked at his companion but said nothing.
“I want Lucy back,” Terrence said.
The siren was nearby.
Both men lowered their weapons.
They stepped back, their eyes on Terrence.
He also lowered his weapon.
Then both men disappeared.
“Kidnapped?” Foote said. On the phone. “Where? In Trench Town?”
Vassell looked up.
Foote listened carefully to what the phone had to tell her.
“Okay,” she finally said. “I’ll tell the boss.”
“What?” Vassell asked.
“Trench Town. A local resident with a gun threatens two men in the street, also armed. But no gangs involved, no local crime. He is looking for his daughter, who didn’t come home from school. Local school’s uniform. But she’s a mixed race. His wife—ex-wife—recently arrived in Kingston, a white woman from Europe.”
