The Dead and the Missing: An Adam Park Thriller Read online

  The Dead and the Missing

  A. D. Davies

  Copyright A. D. Davies 2015

  For everyone out there fighting the good fight

  Prologue

  UNITED KINGDOM

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  EUROPE

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ASIA

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  UNITED KINGDOM

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  I live my life with a gun behind the fridge. That’d snag me a five-year prison sentence, just for owning it. Even though I’m sure the danger has passed, and the decisions I made can no longer bite me, I can’t seem to let it go. Tucked away as it is, I can’t even make an argument for self-defence; it’s there in case I feel the need to break it out, and go where the law cannot.

  That isn’t a thought I would have considered a couple of months ago.

  A couple of months ago, I was afraid of a fight, even one I knew I could win.

  A couple of months ago, I had never killed a man.

  But ask me if I regret taking the case, and the honest answer is “no.” Because I don’t care about the part of me that died this summer. All I care about is the outcome, and the good things I achieved.

  The bad things do not haunt me. The mistakes I made do not weigh upon me. I wish they did, because that would prove I was normal.

  So maybe I’m not normal. Maybe that’s why I survived. And why I will survive in the future.

  UNITED KINGDOM

  Chapter One

  As the ocean swelled under a grey sky, my board rose higher than it had all day, and I started to question if I should really be out here at all. The five-foot wave rolled away, curling as it prepared to break, and half a dozen younger surfers scrambled to catch it, surging towards the beach in a line, to be greeted by the whoops and cheers of their friends waiting in the shallows. Like the other regulars, I’d been unable to resist the strengthening troughs and peaks that heralded a twelve-to-fourteen hour storm, a “weather-bomb” the tabloids predicted would destroy every town and village in its path, flooding the southwest back to Biblical times.

  I might be exaggerating that last bit. But only a little.

  It was a grey day, though, the wind picking up steadily, and it started spitting about ten minutes ago.

  In Britain?

  Yeah, in Britain. At the seaside.

  My fellow hardy souls were all younger than me by a good decade and a half, and I shivered in my thermal wetsuit. I was pretty sure the next decent wave would be my final run of the day, so I had to make it count.

  On the beach, a woman studied the horizon, stock-still amid the small audience. Strands of blond hair fluttered in the wind as if it escaped from a ponytail and, even from here, I could see she was dressed in sensible trousers and a padded jacket.

  My curiosity ended, however, when an incoming roller challenged me as only the ocean can. I lay on my front and paddled. This was the wave. My wave. I found my focus-point and scooped faster and faster, shoulders heaving against the water. My speed and the sea’s roll fell into sync. I popped up on my board and carved through the wall of water, nature’s hand embracing me and guiding me toward the sand. I’m a shade under six foot, but this wave curled over me by another head. It should have been terrifying, but I allowed the ocean to propel me forward while all I had to do was not fall off; this illusion of control, this delusion that nature could not simply swat me from existence, it was enough to bring me home.

  As I hopped off my board in the foaming shallows, a smattering of applause sounded and a couple of the youthfully-smooth girls trotted over. Late teens, early twenties. Bikinis under hoodies. I picked up my board and returned their smiles. They ran straight past to a kid peeling off a wetsuit with purple-swooshes, his sculpted hairless torso drawing even my eye. Sure, I was in as good shape as any of the younger guys, but at thirty-six I needed to remember I wasn’t some “Bodhi”-type figure from the original version of Point Break; I was the old dude who turned up on their beach one day, and just about earned his place.

  The only person who noticed me was the mommy-type blonde in the padded jacket. Hands in her pockets, shoulders hunched. About my age, perhaps a tad older, but if she said she was thirty I wouldn’t argue.

  She said, “Adam Park?” Plummy, upper-middle-class. Not quite aristocracy. Poking out of her coat was the corner of a brown envelope about an inch thick.

  I stripped off my hood and upper part of my wetsuit, perhaps hoping to compete with the young stud-muffin and his admirers. They all jogged by without as much as a glance.

  Philistines.

  “No,” I said to the woman. “I’m not who you’re looking for.”

  “Well that’s odd.” She fussed with her zip and slipped a portrait photo from the envelope. “You look an awful lot like him.”

  Even though it flapped about in the wind, I could see it featured a nasty bastard in a thousand-quid suit. The picture used to adorn the lobby to an office, beneath which was printed my name and position within the company—director. I was clean-shaven in the photo and my hair was a sensible length.

  “That’s not me.” I snatched up my kit-bag and headed for the showers at the top end of the beach.

  She scrambled in front and pushed the envelope into my bare chest. Which did surprise me. You see, I didn’t really look like the sort of guy who people can push about. As well as my physique, my facial hair grows thicker and more quickly than the average person, so after five days without shaving, I sported a near-full scraggly beard. Still, it matched my hair that hadn’t seen a barber in two months, yet this prim-and-proper lady wouldn’t let me leave.

  She said, “Can I at least buy you a drink? If you’re still not interested, then fine. I’ll go.”

  I carried on up the sand, the woman striding to keep up. “How’d you find me?” br />
  “Harry.”

  “Of course Harry.”

  “He said you were hiding down here but I should try anyway.”

  More of the surfers were coming in now, my wave being the first in a succession of six-plus footers, a rarity in this part of the world. The horizon had darkened as black as night, although it was only four o’clock in July.

  “I’m not hiding,” I said. “I’ve been on holiday.”

  “For two years?”

  It took me a moment to calculate but yes, she was correct. I’d now seen two Christmases with only myself for company.

  “I needed a break,” I said.

  We paused by a row of showers at the foot of the access road.

  I said, “Daughter?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  I flicked on a shower and stood beneath it, one eye on the blue-grey clouds. “Someone’s missing and Harry’s obviously out of ideas. Your daughter? Son?”

  “My sister,” she said. “She just turned eighteen.”

  I glanced at the envelope through the stream of fresh water. “Why are you talking to Harry and me instead of the police?”

  “Because the police say she stole a bag of cash and went on the run. And we don’t think she is still in the country.”

  “How much did she steal?”

  “Nothing. She wouldn’t do that. She’s either been kidnapped or hurt or she’s … I need to know.”

  No one’s loved one is ever to blame for criminal acts. They’ve always been coerced or kidnapped or threatened.

  “Fine,” I said. “So who did she allegedly steal from?”

  “Her boss. She was working in a strip club, of all places. Harry thinks he’s the one obstructing the investigation.”

  “Got a name?”

  “He’s called Curtis Benson.”

  Curtis Benson. I’d never met the man, but I’d heard of him. Investigators at my company had encountered his businesses in the past, but it was difficult to get a firm read on him. The grapevine gossips whispered that he’d risen too quickly to be an honest man, and opinion was divided as to whether he was just a dodgy entrepreneur who from time to time indulged in a spot of brown envelope action with the powers that be, or a serious playa in the crime community.

  “Bloody Harry,” I said. “He’s supposed to be retired. Jayne’ll be doing her nut.”

  “He’s my uncle.”

  I almost laughed. “Came out of retirement to help a niece I’ve never heard of?”

  “My father was Harry’s brother. When my mother remarried we didn’t really stay in touch, except for Christmas cards and birthdays, that sort of thing.”

  Harry had a brother who died back in the eighties—the Falklands War—so there was no reason to think this woman was lying. It happened before I started working with him, meaning I had no definite frame of reference. Except—

  “But if your sister is only eighteen…”

  “My half-sister, then. But still my sister. Please. My mother isn’t with us anymore and Sarah’s dad left a long time ago. Harry was willing to look into it if I paid his expenses, but now we’re seriously short. He thought you would help.”

  I switched off the shower and toweled down as best I could. “Why would he think that?”

  “He said you have more money than God, and you are soft as shit, and you’d probably take pity on me if I cried.”

  “You’re not crying.”

  As I rubbed the towel over my scruffy hair, she fixed her eyes on mine and, through what looked like sheer willpower alone, a solitary tear rolled down her cheek. She said, “Do you have a hankie?”

  Okay, I thought. That was impressive.

  I said, “One drink.”

  I recommended Sanjay’s Bar, a fifteen-minute stroll to a perch far enough back from the cliffs to be safe but sufficiently exposed to observe the approaching storm. I threw on a Fat Willie fleece and, with practiced ease, dressed my nether-regions under my towel. When suitably decent, I gathered my things and set off up the steep, narrow road, trying not to show how difficult it was to walk in a straight line with the wind buffeting my surfboard like a sail. I think I did okay.

  “Right,” I said. “Let’s hear it.”

  “The last I heard from Sarah was an email.” She slipped a sheet of A4 from the envelope wedged in her coat. I had no free hands, so she gripped it in both hers, flapping close to my face. “She said she went on holiday. Didn’t say where, but promised to be home soon. Then she stopped communicating altogether.”

  The name of the sender was Sarah Stiles. The recipient Caroline Stiles. I assumed the woman before me was Caroline. Sarah wrote that she was sorry for causing any worry over the past week and that, yes, as Caroline said, she’d be home soon. Actually—

  “It says ‘we will be home soon’,” I said. “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “I don’t know. Harry doesn’t either.”

  “Boyfriend, then?”

  Caroline folded the email and slipped it back in the envelope. “She never mentioned one, but Harry said we should work to that assumption.”

  “She sent it 22nd of June. That’s nearly a month ago. The police still weren’t interested?”

  “I explained that already. They don’t believe she’s a victim. They think she’s a thief, on the run with her accomplice.”

  “Right,” I said. “The ‘we’.”

  She adopted a “duh” voice. “Miss Stiles, youngsters do this when they’re in trouble. She’ll come home when the money runs out.” Back to normal. “All they’ve done is put her photo on their missing-persons website and told me to start a Facebook campaign.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “Not even the prime minister can phone up a police station and say, ‘Hey, stop investigating this will you?’ At least not without a compelling national security issue. Presumably Harry doesn’t think the boyfriend is a terrorist?”

  “Do you believe Harry would let it lie at that? Do you think I would? We went to our MP and she parroted the same nonsense. I tried the press, and they ran a story about how Sarah’s lovely boss was now struggling to pay his staff because the money was gone. So I did the Facebook thing, and some other sites. But all the horrible people who post comments and false leads, it’s … it’s horrible, there’s no other word for it.”

  “Trolls,” I said. “They’re called trolls.”

  We reached the car park of what looked like an Edwardian London abode, all grey brick and tall white-framed windows. Sanjay’s Bar. The smokers’ enclosure was empty, and the only remaining outdoor furniture was the bolted-down tables. We carried on round the side where Sanjay kept a space for my VW Camper, a burgundy 1974 beauty with a white roof and chrome wheels.

  I said, “So no leads at all from social media?”

  “Maybe one. A woman who thinks she met Sarah in Paris shortly before she sent that email. But she didn’t leave a contact number or anything, so…”

  I opened the VW’s back door. “If she’s with a boyfriend, she’s probably fine.”

  “No.” She set her mouth and eyes firmly. “If someone else is involved, some guy, it was he who put her up to it. Forced her to take part.”

  I maneuvered my board through the gap between the fold-out bed and kitchenette. I guessed Harry told her to emphasize what a turd the boyfriend must be.

  “I’m sorry to be such a pest,” Caroline said, “but I’ve virtually run out of money. Harry looked as deep as he could and found enough evidence leading out of the country, but—”

  I wedged the board in place. “She definitely left the UK?”

  “She definitely obtained a fake passport.”

  “Phone?”

  “Turned off. No records in the digital cloud, no photos, nothing.”

  I shut the door. “Look. Caroline. They say it’s a small world, but really … it isn’t. It’s huge. I mean ridiculously big. Even if she’s still in Paris, that is one colossal city.”

  “Are you willing to help us?”

  “Le
t me get this straight. Your sister goes missing a month ago. Possibly with a boyfriend. But no one else, I assume, is reported missing?”

  She nodded reluctantly.

  I said, “Maybe she stole a bunch of cash from a reputed criminal, maybe a case of mistaken identity. You can’t afford to keep your detective, so you hop on a train in the hope of convincing an ex-private investigator to take over. For free. Do I have that right so far?”

  “Almost,” she said. “I couldn’t afford the train. I used a coach.”

  “From Leeds?”

  She nodded.

  Leeds to Cornwall. That’s a long journey.

  “Bloody Harry,” I said.

  As the drizzle graduated to full-on rain, I hurried toward the pub’s entrance, the wind blowing my hair every which way.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Inside,” I said. “If Harry sent you, I never really had a choice. I’ll look over the case. But you’re buying me that drink.”

  The original Sanjay’s Bar overlooked Aragon Bay, a white-sand beach in what Sanjay thought of as his wife’s special corner of Sri Lanka. But when the 2004 tsunami smashed that to a billion splinters, Sanjay sold his ruined land to the government, and followed his university-bound kids to England. Pictures from before, during and after the tsunami adorned the walls even now. Sanjay says he likes Bude almost as much as he did Aragon Bay, but he still misses his wife. Now he runs this pub in a small town on the North Cornwall coast. It’s like any other in this part of the world: a fire, booze promotions, quiz nights. Like any other pub, that is, except the main food menu sizzles with garlic and ginger, boasting twists on British staples as well as the traditional fare of pie and mash. Which leaves Sanjay himself—leather-skinned and fifty years old—who still dresses in sarongs and sandals, as he did back home, and insists on the same over-the-top welcome as when I first plodded up from the beach and flopped onto a beanbag on his deck.

  “Adam, my good friend!” he called from behind the bar.

  Caroline and I eased through the thin crowd, an odd mix of surfer dudes and gals fresh from the ocean and local drinkers who thought surfers were birthed by some demon to destroy society. Sanjay recommended the local brew, Bude-iful Day, and Caroline ordered two pints.