I can see Freddie, her face illuminated by the light from the TV screen in her living room. Lovely, loyal Freddie. She deserves a better friend than me.
She is sipping a glass of wine. Of course she is. I am smoking another cigarette. Well, not smoking. Holding. Last one for a long time, I promise myself.
Spring is almost here and the trees in her road are ready to unveil their new foliage. It is dusk and the street-lamps have flickered on. New, sterile white ones that remind me of an operating theatre. I miss the yellow of sodium. It was less clinical, the tones of my childhood; warm and safe.
Although, that’s nostalgia talking. Childhood is rarely warm and safe. Mine certainly wasn’t. Jess’s . . .
I watch a worm of pulsing light crawl around the periphery of my retina. Inside it are tiny blue and silver fragments of cubic zirconium. The events at the casino have left me prone to the visual disturbances of migraines, although not the headaches. No doctor can tell me why that should be. So now I just live with the light show they provide. It fades after ten minutes.
I should get out of the car and ring Freddie’s bell, but I am hesitating. I have been hesitating for almost an hour.
Many weeks have passed since I was released by the police in Romania without charge. Self-defence, they decided. Especially when it transpired that I had killed Oktane, the well-known international assassin.
Or one of them.
I denied having anything to do with the TED device that detonated and blew out the circular sea door. Why the throat mic? they asked.
Well, it was a voice-activation device for the explosives. Like Siri or Alexa. Except, my electronic helper was called Freddie – saying her name, coupled with Vesuvius, triggered the explosion. But I didn’t tell the police about that. Play dumb, my lawyer said. There was no playing in it. Numb and dumb, that was me. I told them it was just part of the body-armour kit, designed to communicate with partners. But I had no partners. I had acted alone. Charge me or discharge me. They chose the latter.
After they had let me go, I went back with Tom. He nursed me as best he could. I wasn’t an easy patient. Over time, some sort of equilibrium was re-established between us. Not like the old days. It could never be like that. But someone to hold me when I cried, that was often more than enough for me.
But he is gone now. Back to France. He cut some sort of deal with Leka. He wouldn’t tell me what. But it was like he had a penance to serve or he was an indentured servant. My guess is he’s bodyguarding Elona and her kids. That would be ironic. Tom gets my old job, while I . . . I what? How do you describe what I have become, what I am about to do?
Best not give it a name.
I spoke to Freddie on the phone several times while I was up north. She is disappointed in me. She has two good legs now. She wants to move ahead with Winter & Wylde, the all-female PPO agency. I told her I have much to do before then. And I don’t have much time to do it. Although, at that point I didn’t know just how little.
She told me that Adam had separated from his wife Kath. She had been having an affair with his boss, apparently. He quit the paper and is writing a book set in Albania. No, not about the war and that actor, Anthony someone. About two freelance bodyguards. Inspired by actual events, he says.
And what about me? I have work to do, too. On the seat next to me is a folder containing photographs of six people. I don’t really need the pictures. Their faces are burned into my cerebral cortex, branded there by hot irons. Lungs, heart, liver, kidneys . . .
But my mental images can’t be processed through facial-recognition technology. If these people are out there in cyberspace, I can find them. That’s why I need the photographs.
If what Bojan said was true, these six have pieces of my Jess in them. Pieces they didn’t deserve. Parts they acquired illegally.
And now, they’ll have to pay.
And there is at least one doctor involved. Someone had to harvest those body parts. So, he or she or they will have to be struck off. Permanently. It is getting to be quite the to-do list.
Of course, I only have Bojan’s word for what happened to Jess, and his word wasn’t worth much. Almost everything he told me was all smoke and mirrors. It might be I am mistaken. Jess might be alive.
I relish that word. Alive.
And if she is, then tracking down those people on the film might lead me to her. It is worth the effort, no matter what the outcome.
And there is still this question: how did Bojan beat me to the punch? How did he get to Jess at her school first? So, at some point, I’ll be talking to Matt. A drug dealer with a Frankenstein hand couldn’t be that hard to track down. And if the answers aren’t there, I will pay a house call on Dieter. And maybe I’d say hi to Aja again. I suspect the answer to Bojan’s success lies somewhere in that trio.
And then there is Leka. He had told Tom about The Void. Had he been instrumental in setting me up to go to Constanta and find what Bojan had done? After all, Leka and Bojan could easily have known each other. Especially if Bojan really was an Oktane. Or if Bojan went back after we left Calais and struck a sick deal with him. Had I been suckered into the whole encounter in Constanta?
There are lots of questions to be asking. I suspect the answer to the last one, though, is a resounding yes.
Truth will out eventually. Even if you have to drag it into the light kicking and screaming.
But first I will find them, these six people from The Void, and use them to find out exactly what happened to my daughter.
‘Why didn’t you come and get me, Mummy?’
I am, my love. I am. This time for real.
I look across to Freddie once more. I suspect I won’t be seeing her for a while and it hurts. But she doesn’t understand what I have to do. How could she? How could anyone?
I came here tonight with big news. But I don’t know how she will take it. I run my hand over the bump of my belly the way I do dozens of times a day now, as if I can’t quite believe there is something growing in there. Someone, I correct myself.
I haven’t told Freddie yet. Hell, I haven’t even told the father. But the little he or she inside me won’t change anything. I have a baby growing in me, it’s true. But I still have another child, out there in the world.
I drop the unsmoked cigarette out of the window, raise the glass up, start the car and move off, glad it has begun at last.