As they flew above the clouds, lulled into a wordless torpor by the thrum of the jet engines and subliminal hiss of the air-con, George thought about her father and the notification on Interpol.
‘Missing,’ she said, swallowing down raw, indigestible emotions. Guilt? Loss? Fear, definitely. She struggled to compartmentalise her feelings for her father in the way that she didn’t with Letitia. Letitia was easy. She was a bitch. ‘For years, I felt nothing for Letitia. Now, I suppose I feel a daughterly duty towards her, but sod-all else,’ she told Van den Bergen, laying her head on his jumper-clad upper arm, then thinking better of it when his shoulder jutted into her ear. ‘But my dad? Jesus.’
At her side, Van den Bergen was staring out of the widow at the rising sun. He turned to her. Sympathy and melancholy in those large grey eyes. He took her hand into his and kissed it, being careful to rub any excess saliva from her skin – the way she preferred. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Your dad was working in a really dangerous part of the world. Honduras has the highest murder rate … of anywhere. It makes Amsterdam seem like an idyllic village.’
Snatching her hand away, George glared at her lover. Suddenly irritated by his slipshod empathy and foot-in-mouth well-meaning. ‘Thanks a fucking bundle. You could at least reassure me and offer me hope. For Christ’s sake! My mother’s buggered off to who knows where and though I’ve ostensibly been receiving emails from him, now I find my long-lost dad has, in fact, vanished too. In the murder capital of the world! You can be such an insensitive bastard sometimes, you know.’
‘Keep your voice down!’ he said, glancing nervously over the tops of the seats at the other passengers. ‘It’s a long way to bloody Prague. This lot don’t need to hear—’
‘It’s all right for you,’ she said, folding her arms. Lowering her voice only slightly. ‘You know exactly where your nearest and dearest are.’
Van den Bergen nodded. Returned to staring out the window. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And when you disappear off on some ill-conceived adventure that almost gets you killed, that’s all right, is it? Because I know where you are, so I couldn’t possibly understand what it is to worry.’
‘Twat,’ George said, rummaging in her bag at her feet for the cheese sandwich she’d hastily thrown together from stale ingredients in Van den Bergen’s fridge before leaving for the airport.
‘Can I have some?’ he asked, his attention refocused on the side of her face.
‘Buy yourself some peanuts, old man. This is my sarnie. Not yours.’ Taking an aggressive bite from her disappointing breakfast, she contemplated the information that Marie had finally managed to unearth. Chewing defiantly to make sure Van den Bergen knew she was annoyed.
‘So, apparently my dad went out there as a contractor for a British engineering company in 2011. Aeronautical engineering, working on building a prototype for some passenger jet or other that’s better equipped for landing on short runways, surrounded by mountains, like the airport in Tegucigalpa. I don’t know. Some shit like that, anyway.’
Though she stared at the seat back of the passenger in front, she felt Van den Bergen watching her. Tutted and reached into her bag to bring out a second packet of sandwiches. ‘Go on, then.’
He grinned. ‘You made these for me?’ As he opened the tinfoil, he wore an expression of pure boyish delight on his lean, ageing face.
‘It’s only a fucking sandwich, Paul. Not a birthday present.’
Winking. ‘You made it,’ he said, biting hungrily. Speaking with his mouth full. ‘I should frame it, never mind eating it.’
Narrowing her eyes to convey her discontent, she was betrayed by the smile that curled up the corners of her mouth. Nudged him, playfully. ‘Anyway, I fired off this email to the place where he’d worked – Earhart Barton plc – and they said he caught a company bus to work every morning from the company’s HQ in Centro Contemporáneo in Tegucigalpa to the factory in the countryside.’ She tried to imagine the sort of life her father might have been living for years. Did he have a house or an apartment? Had he lived alone or had there been some woman – possibly a second family – waiting for his return at the end of the working day? Letitia had filleted him so cleanly from their lives at such an early juncture that her memory of the warm and loving Spanish man George remembered from being a small child had decayed like an old, old photograph, rendering him nothing more than hairy forearms, swinging her onto his shoulders; the smell of spicy aftershave and tobacco; an almost-faceless ghost of a family life lost.
She wiped the solitary tear that escaped the turmoil inside her head on her sleeve, turning to the aisle, lest Van den Bergen see her pain and heroically, irritatingly try to ease it with empty platitudes.
‘How did he go missing, then?’ he asked.
‘The bus was hijacked by members of a gang, according to the local rag. They only took him. Nobody else. So, I’m guessing they wanted him for a specific skill or his perceived worth in terms of ransom.’ She pictured the bus, filled with white-collar workers in their smart, short-sleeved shirts and Sta-Prest slacks, heading for a day’s work at some giant, clinical facility in the middle of nowhere. Gun-toting thugs boarding the bus at a stop light. Shots fired. Shouting. Her father staring down the barrel of an Uzi, perhaps, standing with his hands in the air as some muscled brute, wearing the terrifying, dehumanising tattoos of the maras on his face like an inked balaclava, barked instructions at him to get off the bus. No struggling or else. ‘Kidnapping specialists for money or services rendered is apparently a thing out there.’ She held her breath. Exhaled slowly, trying to dispel the mounting anxiety in her chest. Massaged her temples. ‘It’s not unusual for police to discover mass graves in the country, where poor snatched bastards have been used up by the cartels, spat out and buried. The missing report was from 2013, Paul. 2013! He’s not been seen since.’
Van den Bergen clasped her hand and pulled her head to his chest. She could hear the comforting loping beat of his heart. Her breathing slowed.
‘Try not to think about it,’ he said. ‘When we get back, I’ll make contact with their Chief of Police, if I can. I’ll ask him to pull the missing persons file and get it translated. I’ll say it’s part of this tainted meth investigation. If Minks won’t cough up, I’ll pay for it myself.’
‘Aw, you’re a good man, Paul van den Bergen,’ George said, stroking his goatee. ‘But you wouldn’t need to translate it. I’ve got that covered. Hablo español. Remember?’
Van den Bergen raised an eyebrow. Treated her to a quizzical grin. ‘So that’s why you learned Spanish? Because of him? I thought your dad left when you were little.’
‘I guess I wanted to keep him alive in my mind,’ she said. ‘Get in touch with my roots, because they were mine to get in touch with. Letitia couldn’t strip his genes out of my body and she never gave enough of a shit to find out what subjects I took at high school or studied on the side. So, yes.’ She tapped her forehead. ‘I’ve got Spanish installed up here instead of having photo albums full of happy family snaps.’
‘How did a drop-out berk like me end up with you?’ Van den Bergen chuckled. ‘Any chance you’ve got Czech lurking in that cavernous brain of yours? Because we need to shelve your dad for now, if you don’t mind, and give some thought to the legend of Nikolay Bebchuck and his apparent network of Czech meth labs.’
‘I can’t believe Minks is forking out for this trip,’ George said, as the lights came on overhead, reminding them to fasten their seat belts. The plane jolted over a pocket of turbulence, beginning its descent in earnest. Her ears felt full. She yawned to unblock them, wincing with the pain. ‘What a difference compared to that bastard Kamphuis. He still has the hots for a gay serial killer but is happy to back your hunch. Have you got a bit of a bromance going on there?’
Van den Bergen turned to her and smiled. ‘Oh, I think it’s you he’s sweet on, Dr McKenzie!’