Whoever the boy was, he wasn’t Jimmy.
PART 3
pursuit
1
Heathrow Airport, London, three days later
Stephanie hauled her two suitcases off the luggage carousel and dragged herself towards the ‘Nothing to Declare’ channel. She was about to enter when a man in a suit stepped in front of her. ‘Miss Harker? Miss Stephanie Harker?’
Not again. Not now. ‘Yes, that’s me,’ she said, almost too worn down to speak.
‘If you’d like to come this way?’ He gestured back towards the baggage hall.
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m with the immigration service. If you’d follow me?’
‘Do I have a choice?’ It wasn’t a challenge, merely a token and he knew it. Stephanie turned and followed him through a door into another airport back corridor. It was an environment that made her feel like throwing up. All those hours with Vivian McKuras, and for what? Embarrassment all round and a triumphant Pete Matthews crowing about the figure he was going to sue the FBI for.
The man opened a door and stepped back, indicating that she should enter. And for the first time in days, Stephanie’s spirits lifted a fraction. For it wasn’t a stranger sitting at the table in the interview room. It was Nick Nicolaides, and when she walked in, he sprang to his feet and pulled her into a tight embrace, his hand stroking her back in a timeless gesture of comfort. He leaned his head on top of hers and said, ‘I’m sorry, love. Sorry for your pain, sorry for Jimmy, sorry you had to go through it all by yourself.’
Stephanie closed her eyes and drank in the very particular smell of him. Even fresh from the shower, Nick smelled like himself. It was comfort beyond measure. For three days, she’d had nothing to anchor her to her life, only a deepening sense of misery faultlined with crisis and disaster. ‘Thank you,’ she mumbled.
They stood wrapped around each other, not speaking, for as long as it took. Then Stephanie gently tapped on his shoulder and they moved a little apart, holding hands as if they couldn’t quite let go of each other. ‘Thanks for coming to meet me,’ she said.
‘I told my boss you needed a police escort, and he agreed with me.’
She gave a dry laugh that had no mirth in it. ‘Good line.’
Nick stretched his face in a grimace. ‘It’s not just a line, Steph. There’s a media mob out there with your name on it. No reason why you would know, but Jimmy’s abduction has been the only show in town for the last three news cycles. And everybody wants your story on how it happened. So I’m here to take you out the back way.’
She groaned and leaned her head against his chest again. ‘I suppose that means I can’t go home either?’
‘Not unless you want to be doorstepped from dawn till dusk.’ He half-turned his head as if he didn’t want to meet her eyes. ‘You could stay at my flat. You’d be very welcome. And if you wanted to be alone, I could bunk down with a mate.’
This time there was warmth in her smile. Nick’s bachelor flat was far from ideal for two, but that was the least of her worries. ‘There’s nowhere I’d rather be. And I don’t want to be alone, thanks all the same. I’ve had enough of feeling isolated these last three days to last me a lifetime.’
‘Sorted, then. Come on, time to get moving. We can talk in the car.’
Ten minutes later, they were heading for London without any discernible tail. ‘I bet it’s been like a rat’s nest over there, everybody looking for somebody else to bite,’ Nick said.
‘I think part of the problem is that there isn’t anybody to bite. It was nobody’s fault, not really. Just a bizarre coincidence.’ So bizarre it had taken hours to sort out. Hours of Pete screaming that he wasn’t a paedophile, that the kid was not his son, that he was just a fucking babysitter. Even though he was at the other end of the hallway in the FBI Detroit office, she could hear him bellowing like a baited bull.
The story, when it emerged finally, was stupidly straightforward. While he’d been in Detroit, Pete had taken up with Maribel, the day receptionist at South Detroit Sounds. When they spent the night together it was usually at her place because it was easier for her than finding overnight care for her six-year-old son Luis. But her mother up in Traverse City had been rushed into hospital with a suspected stroke and Maribel had turned to Pete for help. She hadn’t given him the chance to say no, simply handed him the kid and the keys. Pete had decided to go back to his own place, which had a better TV and music system and where he could bed Luis down in the spare room. Hence the report of a crying child and the two bodies on the thermal image screen.
The following day had consisted of an endless rehash of what had gone wrong. And of course the media got hold of the abortive raid and ran it as the day’s bleakly comic item. In the midst of it all, Stephanie kept telling anyone who would listen that they needed to redouble their efforts to find Jimmy. When Vivian managed to escape the inquest, she assured Stephanie that efforts were continuing but that they had no leads.
‘We now know the kidnapper flew to O’Hare from Atlanta. But that’s another major hub airport. He could have come from anywhere. And if he doesn’t try to take the kid out of the US, they can just disappear.’ Vivian looked harried and haunted. Probably by the ghost of her career, Stephanie thought.
They’d sat down to look at the CCTV footage that had been isolated of the bearded man who had become the fake TSA officer. Stephanie had no idea who he might be. ‘He could be anybody behind that beard,’ she complained.
‘What about the way he walks? It looks like he has a limp to me.’
Stephanie shook her head. She’d spent months in physiotherapy after her accident, trying to walk properly again. She knew the difference between real and fake when it came to leg injury. ‘He’s putting that on to hide his own gait. It’s not consistent. See, there? Look, he dodges out of the way of that little girl running down the concourse and he forgets himself. He recovers almost immediately, but I think he’s only pretending to have a limp.’
And that was how they’d left it. No further forward, waiting to see if any of the calls to the Amber Alert hotline panned out. They hadn’t wanted her to leave the US, but Vivian told her how Nick had fought Steph’s corner with her boss. The bottom line he kept returning to was that Stephanie was a victim first and foremost. That she was a respectable citizen who would happily return to a US court to testify in any future trial. When the chips were down, they had no reason to hold her, and unless they were going to send her to Guantanamo Bay, they’d better put her on a plane home. There had been impish pleasure in Vivian’s eyes when she mentioned Nick playing the Guantanamo card. Stephanie formed the distinct impression Vivian wasn’t in love with the concept of legally questionable detention.
So here she was, feeling curiously bereft in spite of the fact that she’d only had Jimmy in her care for nine months. Not even long enough to complete the adoption process. Her next interview with the social worker would be interesting. ‘Sorry, I seem to have mislaid the kid . . . ’
‘There is one silver lining,’ Stephanie said.
‘Really? I’m impressed that even an optimist like you can find anything good in this mess,’ Nick said.
‘I think Pete’s finally decided chasing me is more trouble than it’s worth.’
Even in profile he looked sceptical. ‘I hope you can still say that in six months’ time.’
Nick had filled his fridge with fruit, salads, cheese and cold meat. The bread bin was stacked with ciabatta rolls, bagels and croissants. And Stephanie knew there would be as much good coffee as she could possibly want. Food and drink were, apart from guitars and gigs, his only extravagances. But what she wanted more than brunch was a long hot shower. The FBI had installed her in a safe house that Stephanie reckoned was as much about keeping her under surveillance as protection. It wasn’t conducive to anything other than quick showers hunched over like a self-conscious teenager after school swimming class.