‘And the second thing?’ Mike asked intently.
‘The blazer’s been ready for collection since two days after the abduction. The repair took about a week, which tells us Drew took it in about five days before snatching Carclass="underline" let’s say the second of May. Now, we also know that four days before snatching Carl, probably the day after taking the blazer in for repair, he withdrew all the money from the bank.’
‘That just indicates he was acting randomly, without logic. Like a crazy person,’ Mike said.
‘No, I think it indicates that the scheme to snatch Carl all came together quite suddenly,’ Ben replied. ‘Why would he have bothered with the clothes repair, if he’d known he wouldn’t be around for the collection date? That suggests he hadn’t been planning the kidnapping for very long. Something triggered him off, and we can narrow down the moment that happened to sometime between his taking the blazer for repair to the time of the cash withdrawal first thing on the fourth of May. That’s a pretty tight window. He was suddenly in a hurry.’
‘But you said he’d been working on losing the weight all this time,’ Jessica said, confused. Doesn’t that sound like he was planning it all long in advance?’
Ben nodded. ‘Like you said, weight loss doesn’t happen overnight. It’s been a medium-term goal for Drew. But I don’t think he was doing it as part of his kidnap plan. He was doing it for the same reason anyone else would. To become healthier, to get himself together, sober up, clean up his act and maybe, in time, be allowed to see his son again. Then something else happened. Something that made him take this sudden drastic action.’
‘But what?’ Jessica asked. Tears were forming in her eyes.
‘That I don’t know,’ Ben said.
‘This is all guesswork,’ Jessica burst out. ‘We’re just sitting here speculating over tiny details, when Drew is out there with Carl, God knows where, and getting further away every minute.’ She was glaring angrily at Ben.
‘They’re not tiny details, Jessica,’ Mike said, putting a hand on her arm. ‘Ben has done some great work here. If this is right, and we can give a much more accurate description to the police, we stand a far better chance of finding them.’
‘I can’t take this any longer,’ Jessica said in a choking voice. Getting up abruptly from her stool, she excused herself and ran from the room, leaving Ben alone with Mike. A door slammed. They could hear the sound of her crying inconsolably from another room.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ Mike said. ‘She’s under so much strain.’
‘I don’t blame her for a minute,’ Ben said.
‘I think your ideas make sense,’ Mike said. ‘And I’m also thinking I might know what triggered Drew. Don’t tell Jessica I said this, because it’s a sore subject and I don’t want to upset her any more than she already is. But shortly before Carl was taken, I’d been trying to persuade her to sell up here and leave Jersey. Fresh start, you know? A new life, just her and me and Carl, leaving behind the past and all the painful memories. Not to mention that I wasn’t happy living in the house she’d shared with Drew. Sleeping in the same bed.’
‘I understand,’ Ben said.
‘It’s sensitive, you know? We argued a lot about it. Jessica didn’t want to leave, and thought I was trying to force her unfairly. Now, I’m thinking that what if Carl overheard us arguing? What if he’d mentioned it to his biological father? He could easily have called him behind our backs. Couldn’t that have prompted Drew to want to take him away sooner rather than later, before he lost touch entirely? Maybe it drove him into a panic.’
Ben thought about it, and nodded. ‘It’s possible.’
‘And if it’s true, then it means …it means I’m partly to blame. If I hadn’t put that pressure on her…’
‘Don’t beat yourself up,’ Ben said. ‘It was Drew who took him, remember.’
Mike looked relieved. ‘Thanks, Ben. Keep us posted, won’t you?’
‘Of course,’ Ben said, opening the door.
‘I really appreciate what you’re doing for us,’ Mike said. ‘I know you’re going to find him.’
Ben just nodded, and left.
7
The Dover base of Finley & Reynolds Investigations Ltd was situated at the end of a tree-shaded terrace of tall three-storey Victorian houses that were now mostly offices apart from one or two residential properties, on a narrow street on the edge of town. Ben had come across quite a few low-rent gumshoe private dick operations in his time, but Finley & Reynolds wasn’t one of them. A sporty Jaguar was among the cars parked in a railed-off area in front, and a wall plaque engraved with the company name glittered in the late-afternoon sun.
He’d known even before leaving Jersey that these guys wouldn’t talk to him. Improvisation was the key in such cases.
He climbed the steps to the front door, which sported a handsome, gleaming brass lion’s-head knocker below a stained glass window panel. More olde worlde charm, doing a fine job of offsetting the stigma that was hard to detach from the sometimes inevitably seedy domain of private investigations. Ben pushed through the heavy door and found himself in a spacious white lobby filled with artificial plants. A woman smiled at him from behind a desk as he walked over.
He didn’t smile back at her. Instead, he clasped a hand to his cheek and twisted his face as if in terrible pain. ‘Think it’s a bloody abscess,’ he said indistinctly. ‘How quickly can I be seen?’
The woman stared blankly at him for a second, then understood. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said with a frown of sympathy. ‘You’ve got the wrong place. The dental surgery is next door. But I think they’re shut on a Saturday.’
Ben mumbled a tortured apology and hurried out. By the time he’d reached the door, a quick sideways glance had told him the location of the alarm system control box a few feet from the entrance, what type it was and how to disable it. This kind of stuff wasn’t exactly new to him.
But it would have to wait a few hours. Toothache miraculously vanished, the patient walked the half mile back to the bed and breakfast he was staying in. There he sorted through some of the kit he always carried in his bag: the mini-Maglite; the set of locksmith’s picks made to resemble an innocent ring of Allen wrenches; the Yale universal bump key that looked just like an ordinary house key and was disguised on a ring of real ones, capable of opening most locks; and a pair of thin leather gloves. Nothing that could mark him out too obviously as a burglar, should a nosy cop decide to take a look inside his bag.
Ben bided his time quietly until early evening. Having never liked breaking and entering on an empty stomach, sometime after seven he made his way to a nearby pub, ordered a steak and lingered for a long time over a couple of pints of Guinness when what he really wanted was whisky.
He was the last to leave the pub at closing time. From there, he took a long stroll along the seafront, then made his way down onto the beach where he leaned back on a bench and watched the lights twinkling on the water while he chain-smoked the last of a packet of Gauloises. It wasn’t quite his own little secluded stretch of shingled Galway beach, though, and the intrusive Saturday-night thump of music drifting down from a nightclub on the esplanade kept reminding him how he missed his sanctuary in Ireland. When the green glow of his watch dial read one-thirty, he shouldered his bag and began making his way back towards the detective agency.
The parking area in front of Finley & Reynolds’ offices was empty now, the rails gleaming dully by the amber glow of the streetlights. Ben slipped on his gloves as he neared the steps. A plain white van and a couple of residents’ cars sat along the kerbside, but other than that, the street was deserted.