Perfect People

106

As they sat at the round table in his small office, accompanied by Renate Harrison, it seemed to John much longer than twenty-four hours since Detective Inspector Pelham had entered their lives.

‘Right,’ he said, looking sharp and fresh. ‘Did you manage some sleep?’

‘Not really,’ John said.

‘None,’ Naomi said.

‘You’ll be able to go back home tonight.’

‘Thank you,’ John said.

Addressing Renate Harrison, Pelham said, ‘You’d better get them fixed up with something to help them sleep.’

‘What news do you have?’ Naomi asked.

‘Some progress,’ he said. ‘Not as much as any of us would like, but some. OK, this is the latest position. Our mystery man Bruce Preston is still in a coma following sixteen hours of neurosurgery yesterday. He’s under round-the-clock police guard in the Sussex County Hospital, and if he regains consciousness, we’ll interrogate him as soon as we are permitted. But he has severe brain damage and his prognosis is not good.’

‘Have you found out about his identity?’ John asked.

‘It’s false. I’ve had the FBI check him out and the trail goes cold in Rochester, New York State.’

‘No link between him and the cult we told you about?’ Naomi said.

‘The Disciples people?’

‘Yes.’

‘None so far. We’ve sent photographs of him and the woman in the picture in his wallet to the FBI, and we haven’t heard anything back yet.’ He paused to take a sip of coffee. ‘An analyst from our High Tech Crime Unit, who’s been working around the clock on your two computers, has a number of questions he wants to ask you – he’s coming in at ten.’

‘Did you find anything on Bruce Preston’s laptop?’ John asked.

‘Not yet; it seems he was very careful – or very good at hiding his tracks.’

‘How much longer do you need to keep my own laptop?’ John asked. ‘I need it back pretty badly.’

‘The analyst is bringing it back for you – both your computers.’

‘Thanks.’

‘We got the registration of the red Mitsubishi from the security cameras at the Channel Tunnel late yesterday,’ he announced. ‘The plates are false.’

John and Naomi said nothing.

‘At seven o’clock this morning I got a phone call from France. This car has been found at a small airport in Le Touquet. We’ve managed to ascertain between us that a man and a woman, in their mid-to-late twenties, boarded a Panamanian-registered private jet with a small boy and girl who fit Luke and Phoebe’s description, at half six in the morning yesterday. The pilot had flown in from Lyons and filed a flight plan to Nice. But the plane never showed up there.’

‘Where did it go?’ John asked.

‘It left French airspace, and disappeared into thin air.’

‘Does anyone have information about who owns this jet?’ Naomi asked.

‘We’re working on it.’

‘What’s the range of one of those aircraft?’ John asked. ‘How far could it travel?’

‘I’m told it depends entirely on the size of its fuel tanks. It had taken on sufficient fuel, given that its tanks weren’t empty when it arrived, for fourteen hours of flight. Apparently this particular aircraft has a cruising speed of three hundred and fifty knots. Which basically means enough to get to America and halfway back.’

Going back to his desk, Pelham produced a map of the world, which he laid out in front of them. It had a curved line drawn on it in red ink. ‘This line covers all the destinations the plane could have made safely on its cruising range.’

John and Naomi stared at it bleakly. The line stretched from Bombay in one direction, to Rio in another. And that was without taking into account any refuelling stops.

Their children could literally be anywhere on the planet.