“My grand-daughter Melissa…is missing,” he said heavily. “Maybe kidnapped, maybe even murdered. I don’t know…and not knowing is hard. She disappeared yesterday, just forty-eight hours short of her eighteenth birthday.”
“Any signs of foul play?” I said, doing my best to sound like I knew what I was doing. “No sign of a struggle, or…”
“No. Nothing.”
“Then maybe she just took off. You know teenagers…”
“No. There’s more to it than that. I recently changed my will, leaving everything to Melissa. The Hall, the money, the businesses. The rest of the family get nothing. It was supposed to be strictly secret, of course. The only people who knew were myself and the family lawyer, Jarndyce. But three days ago he was found dead in his office, butchered. His safe had been ripped right out of the wall and broken open. The only thing missing was his copy of the new will. Shortly afterwards, the contents were made known to every member of my family. There were…raised voices. Not least from Melissa, who had no idea she was to be my sole heir.
“And now she’s gone. Nowhere to be found. No sign of how she was taken. Or how her abductors got into the Hall, unseen by anyone, undetected by any of my security people or their supposedly state-of-the-art systems. Melissa has vanished, without a trace.”
I immediately thought Inside job, but I had enough sense to keep that thought to myself, for now.
“Do you have a photograph of your grand-daughter?” I said.
“Of course.”
He handed me a folder containing half a dozen eight-by-ten glossies. Melissa Griffin was tall and slender, with long blonde hair and a pale face completely devoid of makeup or expression. She stared coldly at the camera as though it was something not to be trusted. She wouldn’t have been my first choice to leave a business empire to. But maybe she had hidden depths. I chose one photo and tucked it away inside my coat.
“Tell me about the rest of your family,” I said. “The disinherited ones. Where they were, what they were doing, when Melissa disappeared.”
Jeremiah frowned, choosing his words carefully. “As far as I can ascertain, they were all in plain sight, observed by myself or others, perhaps even conspicuously so. It’s not usual for them all to be present in the Hall at the same time…It was the same the day before, when Jarndyce’s office was broken into, and he was killed. But I can’t really see any of my family as suspects. None of them would have the backbone to go up against me. Even though they were all mad as hell over the new will.” He chuckled briefly. “Actually horrified, some of them, at the thought of having to go out and work for a living.”
“Why did you disinherit them?” I said.
“Because none of them are worthy! I’ve done my best to knock them into shape, down the years, but they never had to fight for things, the way I did…They grew up with everything, so they think they’re entitled to it. Not one of them could hang on to anything I left them! And I didn’t spend centuries putting my empire together with blood and sweat and hard toil, to have it fall apart because my successors don’t have the guts to do what’s necessary. Melissa…is strong. I have faith in her. I’ve since hired a new lawyer and had a new will drawn up, of course, replacing the lost document, but…for reasons I don’t propose to share with you, the will is only valid if Melissa returns to sign certain documents before her eighteenth birthday. Should she fail to do so, she will never inherit anything. I need you to find her for me, Mr. Taylor. That is what you do, after all. Find her and bring her safely home, before her eighteenth birthday. You have a little under twenty-four hours.”
“And if she’s already dead?” I said bluntly.
“I refuse to believe that,” he said, his voice flat and hard. “No-one would dare. Everyone knows Melissa is my favorite and that I would burn down all the Nightside to avenge her. Besides, there’s been no ransom demand, no attempt at communication. It is possible she just ran away, I suppose, intimidated by the responsibilities lying ahead of her. She never wanted to be a part of the family business…Or, she might have been afraid of what the rest of the family might say, or do to her. But if that was the case, she would have left me a note. Or found some way to contact me. No, she was taken against her will. I’m sure of it.”
“Any friends who might be sheltering her?” I said, to show I hadn’t given up on the running away idea.
“She only has a few real friends, and I’ve had them all checked out carefully, from a distance. They don’t even seem to know she’s gone missing yet. And that’s the way it has to stay. You can’t tell anyone, Mr. Taylor. I can’t be seen to be vulnerable, or distracted.”
“An impossible case, with impossible conditions, and an impossible deadline,” I said. “Why don’t you just tie both my legs behind my back while you’re at it? All right, let me think. Could she have fled outside the Nightside, into London proper?”
“No,” he said immediately. “Impossible. None of my family can ever leave the Nightside.”
“It always comes back to the family, doesn’t it?” I said. I thought for a while. “If she’s out there, I’ll find her. But you have to face the fact that she could already be dead. Murdered, either by someone in your family’s employ, to prevent her from inheriting, or by one of the many enemies you’ve made in your long career.”
“Find my grand-daughter,” said the Griffin, his voice cold and relentless. “And in return I will pay you the sum of ten million pounds. Find out what happened, and why, and who is responsible. And either return her to me safely, or bring me her body, and the name of the man responsible.”
“Even if it’s family?” I said.
“Especially if it’s family,” said Jeremiah Griffin.
He pushed a briefcase across the table towards me, and I opened it. The briefcase was packed full of banknotes.
“One million pounds,” said the Griffin. “Just to get you started. I’m sure there will be expenses. You get the rest when I get Melissa. Are you all right, Mr Taylor?”
“Oh sure,” I said. “Just having breathing difficulties. Money is only numbers to you, isn’t it?”
“Do we have a deal, Mr. Taylor?”
“We have a deal,” I said, closing the briefcase. “But understand me, Mr. Griffin. You’re hiring me to bring you the truth about what happened. All of the truth, not just the bits you want to hear. And once I get started, I don’t stop till I get to the end, no matter who gets hurt in the process. Once you unleash me, even you can’t call me off. Do we still have a deal, Mr. Griffin?”
“Do whatever you have to, to find Melissa,” said the Griffin. “I don’t care who gets hurt in the process. Even me. They say…you have a special gift, for finding things and people.”
“That’s right, I do. But I can’t simply reach out and put my finger on your grand-daughter. That’s not how it works. I need a specific question to get a specific answer. Or location. I need to know which direction to look in before I can hope to pin her down. Still, I can try a basic search here, see if my Sight can reveal anything useful.”
I concentrated, opening up my inner eye, my third eye, my private eye, and my Sight came alive as my gift manifested, showing me all the things in the conference room hidden from everyday gaze. There were ghosts all over the room, men and women reliving the moments of their murders over and over again, trapped in endless loops of Time. Jeremiah had been busy here. I grabbed his hand so he could see them, too, but his face showed no emotion. There were other creatures, too, not in any way human, but they were only passing through, using our dimension as a stepping-stone to somewhere else. They’re always there. And finally I got a glimpse of Melissa, running through the conference room. I couldn’t tell if she was running to someone, or from someone. Her face was cold, focused, intent.
And then my Sight was blocked and shut down by some outside force.
I staggered backwards, and almost fell. My Vision of the greater world was gone, closed off from me. I fought to force my inner eye open again, to See Melissa again, and was shocked when I discovered I couldn’t. This had never happened to me before. Only some incredibly powerful force could shut down my gift, like one of the Powers or Principalities. But that would mean the involvement of Heaven or Hell; both of whom were supposed to be barred from intervening directly inside the Nightside. Jeremiah grabbed my shoulder and thrust his face into mine, demanding to know what was happening, but I was listening to something else. There was a new presence in the conference room, something strange and awful, building and focusing as it struggled to find a form it could manifest through. The Griffin looked around sharply. Still linked to me, he could feel it, too.