four

Thirteen hours after talking to Elizabeth Chadwick, Ruth cleared immigration and customs at Newark Liberty International airport. A meeting with Richard Aston, her superior at Cruxys, had confirmed that the search for James Chadwick was moving across the Atlantic, his last known location, and that she was required to help out. As she walked out onto the crowded concourse at Terminal B, she saw her name on a square of cardboard being held aloft by a familiar slim figure.

“Welcome to America,” said Andy Vaslik with a grin. He dropped the name card onto a passing baggage cart and gestured towards the main exit. “Out this way.” He didn’t offer to take her bag.

“Please tell me this wasn’t your idea, Slik,” Ruth muttered, “bringing me all the way over here.”

“Not guilty.” He made no response to the nickname, which she’d given him at their first meeting. “Aston figured we’d worked together so well last time, and since I was already here in New York on a visit, it made sense. If you don’t agree I can always send you back.”

“Makes no difference to me. Why should it?” Ruth tried to work out if he was teasing her. They’d last teamed up in London a couple of months back, and after an initial frostiness—mostly on her part, she was ready to concede—had worked well together. It had been Vaslik’s first job since being headhunted by Cruxys. A former New York City cop and then agent with the Department of Homeland Security, he’d proved himself able to adapt very quickly to different environments.

Richard Aston, the lanky former Parachute Regiment officer and now Operations Commander at Cruxys, had avoided telling her who she was going to be teamed with on this assignment, and she thought she knew why; he liked his teams to spark off each other and not become complacent or comfortable. Typical officer mind games, she decided. But it worked.

“It will be an investigator supplied by the New York office,” he’d said briskly, handing her an envelope containing briefing notes and flight details, tickets to be collected from the information desk at Heathrow.

“I didn’t know we had one.”

“As of the end of last week. Greenville agreed to the funding. We’ve already got a senior person from the FBI to set up and run the office, and he’s currently recruiting personnel with suitable backgrounds to staff the office and work in the field. It seems we’re the good boys and girls of the Greenville group at the moment, thanks to your success with the Hardman assignment. They want to follow our operating model more closely.”

Greenville Inc, was a Dutch-US security and salvage conglomerate. Keen to get more market share in the private security business, they had bought a major share in Cruxys. Things had become complicated with one of Ruth’s previous cases involving a child kidnapped by rogue Israeli and American operatives working on an extraordinary rendition exercise against a terrorist banking fund. Thanks to recent American recruit Andy Vaslik and a former Diplomatic Protection Group officer named Gina Fraser, the kidnapped girl had been rescued and returned to her mother. But it had been a close call and for a while the Greenville investment in Cruxys had hung in the balance, the parent company wary of involvement in what had been a messy business with illegal ops implications and questions from Congress.

“So who’s got first call on this?” Ruth had asked.

“This is a cross-company response because of the twin nationalities,” Aston explained. “We have primacy because Chadwick’s contract is with us, but you might need to defer to the locals for their expertise and knowledge. I’ll leave that to your judgement. Any problems, call me.”

There had been nothing more to say, and she had headed for the airport.

Now Vaslik was leading her to an anonymous rental car at the kerb, being watched over by a Port Authority officer. He helped her stow her case in the trunk, then shook hands with the cop, whom he evidently knew, while Ruth climbed into the passenger seat and waited for him to join her.

“Is this your new posting?” she asked. It would make sense, since Vaslik now had experience working with the Cruxys model and knew New York like the back of his hand.

“Actually, no,” he replied, taking the car smoothly away from the kerb. “I was due back in London after a few days here, got the call from Aston to stay on for this assignment. When he told me you were on your way over, how could I refuse?”

“Funny man. So where are we going first?”

“Chadwick’s apartment here in Newark. It’s not far.”

“There’s no trace of him, I take it?”

“No. He’s dropped right off the map. I called his employers but they haven’t heard from him, although they claim that’s not unusual within their corporate structure. Like most of their consultants, Chadwick’s pretty much his own man; as long as he completes ongoing projects and brings in regular business, they don’t keep real close tabs on him.”

“That’s not helpful.”

“I know. That’s why we have a meeting with them later.”

Something in his tone of voice made her turn her head. “That sounds significant.”

“I’m not sure. The woman I spoke to was guarded, as if she didn’t want to say much. If I had an employee go missing, I’m pretty sure I’d want as much help as I could get. I figured it would be better to see them face to face.”

“Makes sense. What about his home addresses?”

“He doesn’t seem to have been the world’s greatest socializer. I checked both places but came up empty. His neighbours either don’t really know him or haven’t seen him in a while.”

“He was a busy man, according to his wife.” She gave him a summary of what Elizabeth Chadwick had said, and a summary of the state of their marriage.

“Is it possible he could be off somewhere having an extramarital fling?”

“You mean revenge sex?” Ruth shook her head. “He doesn’t sound the type. Too intent on his job for any hanky-panky.”

He looked across at her and grinned. “Do people actually say that—hanky-panky?”

“Well, I do. But I’m quaint like that. If you’ve already checked his apartment, why are we going again?”

“Because there’s something I want you to see. I need your take on a situation.”

He refused to say anything else, and soon they were driving through a residential district of Newark, with apartment buildings on either side. It looked a little run-down in places, which possibly explained Elizabeth Chadwick’s initial reaction on hearing the location. But the streets were wide and full of activity, and no worse than a lot of other cities Ruth had seen.

They passed a large hospital and Vaslik turned off the main road and pulled up in front of a neat, cream-clad apartment block with balconies on each floor. The street was quiet, lined with trees, and the area looked prosperous and pleasant—another indication that James Chadwick wasn’t short of money.

“Chadwick’s apartment is on four. He’s been here a little over six months, according to the super. Travels a lot, keeps to himself but seems pleasant enough.” He jumped out and led the way into the building. They took the elevator to the fourth floor and he led her along a short landing and stopped outside a door, where he produced a key.

“Is this legal?”

“I borrowed it from the super, so yes.”

He pushed the door open, and Ruth followed him inside. They were in a small foyer area with wood-block flooring, a shoe rack, a row of coat hooks and a side table. Neat, unfussy. But the air smelled musty, as if the place hadn’t been used in a while.

She waited for Vaslik to say something, give her a hint about what she should be looking for. But he merely gestured ahead towards the main living area. She stepped forward and stopped dead.

The place had been trashed.

A small tornado might have caused less damage, but not by much. Cushions had been gutted, fabrics slashed to ribbons, a small television lay disembowelled and drawers had been emptied onto the floor. A large Afghan-style rug had been tossed aside and even a couple of the wooden floor blocks had been dug up and left where they lay.

She looked at Vaslik. “Should we be in here?” To any civilised police force in the world, this was now a crime scene. By standing here, they were importing all manner of contamination from the outside.

He nodded. “True enough. But I wanted you to see it with no preconceptions.” He took two pairs of disposable plastic overshoes from his coat pocket, and they slipped them on. “I already gave it the once-over,” he said. “But I don’t think a forensic search will show anything we can’t figure out for ourselves. Carry on looking and tell me what you think.”

Ruth stepped through the debris into a small kitchen, an even smaller shower room and toilet, and two single bedrooms. Whoever this had been designed for, it wasn’t a family or anybody who liked a feeling of space.

The same level of destruction had been visited on each room, and whoever had done this had taken their time and missed nothing. Broken lights, crockery, and mirrors; books, magazines, and DVDs open and torn; woodwork ripped apart; even the sink panels torn open and the waste pipes wrenched away from their mountings. The refrigerator was lying on its side, the carcass bearing signs of boot damage and a white patch where water had spilled out and dried. The door was open, with the cooling system humming desperately, but there was nothing inside for it to cool down. In fact, it looked unused, and she could only conclude that Chadwick didn’t spend much time here.

Lucky for him.

She wondered if the neighbours were deaf; all this damage must have made a hell of a noise. She checked the flooring in each room and the walls, but there was no sign of the one thing that might have existed had James Chadwick actually been here at the time of the search—blood. No smears, no splatter, nothing to suggest a struggle might have taken place.

Bizarre.

She returned to the front foyer, where Vaslik was bending to pick up something lying in the corner behind the door. It was a slim address book.

“I didn’t notice this before,” he said. “They must have missed it, too.”

Ruth looked at it. Maybe it hadn’t been considered important enough to trash, or they’d been interrupted and forced to leave in a hurry. She took it from him and opened it.

As she did so, three of the pages fell loose. She turned them over.

The first page was from the E section. It held the entry for Elizabeth Chadwick, her cell phone number, and the London address. It had been outlined several times in bright, vicious red, the paper torn where the pen nib had dug into the page. Ruth felt a tug of alarm and checked the second page. It was from the B section and listed the phone number and address of Ben Chadwick’s school. It was also outlined in red.

“They didn’t miss it,” she concluded. “This was deliberate.” She turned over the third slip of paper with a feeling of foreboding. It was a blank page for notes, and it carried a chilling message:

Do as we say or lose them.