‘Oh come on.’
‘Please.’
‘No!’ Rob was almost shouting. He stood up and stared down at the policeman. ‘How can you say that? “We don’t know anything of the fucking sort?” You don’t know what it is like, Detective. You can’t know what it is fucking like. My daughter has been abducted by some fucking killers. I will lose my only child.’
Boijer motioned at Rob: calm down. Sit down. Calm down.
Rob inhaled and exhaled, deliberately and slowly. He knew he was making a scene but he didn’t care. He had to vent his emotions. He couldn’t bottle them up. For a few moments Rob just stood there, his eyes blurred with anger. At last, he sat down again.
DCI Forrester continued, very calmly, ‘I know this is very difficult for you to appreciate right now, but the fact is the gang did not harm, as far as we know, either your daughter Lizzie or Christine Meyer.’
Rob nodded, grimly, and said nothing. He didn’t trust himself to speak.
The policeman pursued his logic. ‘We’ve found no blood, other than De Savary’s, at the scene of crime. Every other time the gang has struck they have, as you say, killed without compunction. But this time they didn’t. They abducted. Why? Because they want to get to you.’
The waters swirling around Rob seemed to weaken. He gazed attentively and even hopefully at Forrester. There was some logic here, some lucidity. Rob wanted to believe: he really wanted to trust this guy.
‘You gave an email address at the end of your article?’ Forrester asked.
‘Yes,’ Rob replied. ‘It’s standard practise. A Times email address.’
Boijer was writing on his pad. Forrester concluded, ‘I predict Jamie Cloncurry will be in touch with you. Very soon. He wants the Black Book. Desperately.’
‘And if he does get in touch? What the fuck do I do then?’
‘Then you call me immediately. Here’s my mobile number.’ He handed a card to Rob. ‘We need to string him along. Convince the gang you have the book. The Yezidi materials.’
Rob was confused. ‘Even though I haven’t got anything?’
‘They don’t know that. If we imply that you do have what they want, that buys us time. Precious time-for us to catch Cloncurry.’
Rob gazed across Forrester’s shirt-sleeved shoulder at the glass partition beyond. He thought of all the hundreds of policemen working away right now, in this building. Dozens of them on this case. Surely they must be able to find a gang of murderers? The trail of blood and cruelty was all over the papers now. Rob wanted to go out into that wider office and shout at people: Catch them! Do your job. Catch these fucking people! How hard can it be?
‘Where do you think they are?’ he said instead.
‘We have a few leads,’ said Boijer. ‘The Italian. Luca Marsinelli, has a private pilot’s licence. Maybe they are using planes to get in and out of the country, private jets.’
‘But these are just kids…’
Forrester shook his head. ‘Not just kids. Not just average kids anyway. These are rich kids. Marsinelli is an orphan. But he inherited a Milanese textile fortune. Immensely wealthy. Another gang member, we think, is the son of a hedge fund manager in Connecticut. These boys have trust funds, private fortunes, Jersey bank accounts. They can buy new cars just like that.’ Forrester clicked his fingers. ‘There are a lot of private airfields in East Anglia, old American airstrips from the war. Maybe they flew your daughter out of the country: we think Italy is the obvious place, given Marsinelli’s connections. He has an estate near the Italian lakes. Then there’s Cloncurry’s family in Picardy. Also being watched. The French and Italian police are up to speed on all of this.’
Rob actually yawned. It was a weird yawn of frustration and bitterness, not fatigue. It was a yawn from too much adrenalin. He felt thirsty and tired and wired-up and furious. The two women he most loved: Lizzie and Christine. Kidnapped; weeping; suffering: lost in the Desert of Anguish. He couldn’t bear to think about it.
Rob stood up. ‘OK, Detective, I’ll keep checking my emails.’
‘Good. And you can call me any time, Mr Luttrell. Five a.m. I don’t mind.’ The policeman’s eyes seemed to mist for a moment. ‘Rob, I do understand a little of what you are going through. Believe me.’ He coughed, then continued, ‘Cloncurry is an arrogant young man, as well as psychotic. He thinks he is smarter than everyone. People like that can’t resist taunting the police with their cleverness. And that’s how they get caught.’
He shook Rob’s hand. There was a firmness in the policeman’s handshake which, Rob felt, went beyond professional reassurance: there was an empathy there. And there was something in the policeman’s glance, as welclass="underline" a distinct pity, even pain, in the detective’s eyes.
Rob said thanks, then he turned and left the building, walking like a zombie to the bus-stop and then he caught the bus home to his tiny flat in Islington. The journey was gruelling. Everywhere he looked he saw young kids, little girls: playing with friends, skipping along pavements, shopping with their mothers. He wanted to keep looking at them in case, just in case one was Lizzie: even though he knew this was ludicrous. But he also wanted to avert his face: to not look at these girls. Because they reminded him of Lizzie. The smell of her hair after he had bathed her as a baby. The eyes of trusting blue. Rob felt the tidal wave of agony all over again: enormous and crushing.
When he got to the flat he ignored his unpacked suitcases and the decomposing milk on the kitchen counter and he walked straight to his laptop, plugged it in, booted it up, and checked his emails.
Nothing. He checked again, by refreshing the screen; still nothing.
He took a shower, then started to dress and stopped. He unpacked one suitcase, then stopped. He tried not to think about Lizzie and failed; he was so angry and tense. But all he could do was this one ludicrous thing: keep checking his emails.
Shirtless and barefoot he went back to the laptop and clicked. He flinched. There it was, sent ten minutes ago. An email from Jamie Cloncurry.
Rob stared in fear and hope at the title. Your Daughter.
Was it going to be some hideous image of her corpse? Burned or headless? Buried and dead? Or was it going to say she was safe?
The tension and anxiety was unfeasible. Perspiring heavily, Rob opened the email. There was no photo; just writing. It began tersely enough:
We have your daughter, Rob. If you want her back you must give us the Black Book. Or tell us exactly where it is. Otherwise she will die, in a manner I shall not confide. I am sure your imagination can do the rest. Your girlfriend is similarly unharmed, but we will likewise kill her if you do not assist us.
Rob wanted to throw the laptop at the wall. But he read on: there was more. A lot more.
By the by, I read your piece about the Palestinians. Very moving. Heart-wrenching. You do write some quite effective prose, when you aren’t being so predictably liberal. But I wonder if you have ever really thought about the Israeli situation, and what underlies it. Have you, Rob?
Look at it this way: who are you most scared of? In terms of race? Which race most unnerves you, deep down? I’d hazard a guess that it’s blacks-Africans -yes? I’m right, aren’t I? Do you cross the road when you see a gang of black youths in their hoodies, on the streets of London? If you do, you are hardly alone, Rob. We all do it. And fear of black men is statistically sensible-in terms of petty street crime. You are far more likely to be assaulted and robbed by a black man than by a white man, let alone a Japanese or a Korean-given the proportion of black people in the general populace.
But think a little deeper.
I’ve read your articles and I know you are not stupid. You may be an idiot in terms of politics, but you are not stupid. So think. Which race really kills the most? Which one of the human races is the most lethal?
It’s the smart ones, isn’t it?
Let’s go through it. You are scared of black people. But, really, how many people have been killed by Africans, globally? By African armies? By African power? A few thousand? Maybe a few hundred thousand? And that’s for the whole of Africa. So you see, Africans, per capita, are actually not that dangerous. They are wholly chaotic, and clearly incapable of self-government, but they are not dangerous on a global scale. Now take the Arabs. The Arabs have barely mastered the computer. They haven’t successfully invaded anyone since the 15th century. 9/11 was their best attempt at killing lots of people in two hundred years. And they killed three thousand. The Americans could napalm that many in a minute. By remote control.