Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 781 & 782, September/October 2006

Lost Luggage by Mick Herron

Mick Herron grew up in Newcastle and attended Oxford University. He continues to live in Oxford, where his series of “literary” private eye novels are set. The first book in the series, Down Cemetery Road, is not yet available in the U.S., but the second and third, The Last Voice You Hear (10/04) and Why We Die (8/06) have been published by Carroll & Graf.

Her name was Jane Carpenter, she worked at an estate agent’s, and she’d been taken at 7:26 that morning as she cut across the playing field behind the secondary school to reach her bus stop on the other side. She was twenty-three. She had wavy brown hair with fresh blond highlights. Maybe she would, but probably she wouldn’t, go to Malta with her sister this summer; she had hopes her boyfriend Brendan would suggest they go somewhere together instead. These and other details still fizzed through her subconsciousness, but mostly what she was now was a machine for not dying: an unwilled continuation of heart, lung, and nervous system that pumped away, undeterred by the narcotics in her system, the ropes binding her ankles and wrists, the gag, the blindfold, the car boot’s lock.

Her name was Jane Carpenter, but she was currently luggage. And if nobody found her soon, she’d be lost.

The car was parked midmorning at a motorway service station. The restaurant there was brightly lit, and its furnishings fixed in place, so the symmetry didn’t spoil. Laminated menus offered pictures of the food on offer, and the sound system regurgitated an inoffensive medley to match. A man in jeans and scuffed black leather jacket left the counter carrying a tray with the mixed-grill option and a large mug of tea. He hadn’t shaved for a while, nor shampooed, by the look of it. He took a seat near the corner, facing out towards the car park. There weren’t many people in the restaurant, and he wasn’t sitting near any of them.

“What about him?”

“Whom?”

She liked it that he said “whom.”

The couple talking were Peter Mason and Jennifer Holmes, and they’d been an item for somewhere approaching eight months. In that time they’d done most of the usual getting-to-know-you dances, and made one or two of the usual surprising discoveries about shared interests and passions. They’d spent a few weekends together, and enjoyed what they’d learned, but this was the first time they’d come away as a couple — they were heading for a party in a cottage Pete had got hold of, up in the Peak District; somewhere pretty isolated — and their mood was a little scatty. A bit off-the-leash. On the way here they’d talked about their respective weeks at work, then moved on to mildly salacious hints about what the weekend might hold, before reverting — not to get too ahead of themselves — to inconsequential stuff: movies, music, childhood friends. Now they’d stopped for coffee, which had turned into coffee and sandwiches, and Pete had been talking about people-watching; a hobbyhorse of his. It was amazing, he maintained, what you could tell about someone just by observation. Provided you looked in the right way, and picked up on the available clues.

“With a name like yours, this shouldn’t be any big surprise.”

“Jennifer?”

“Ha, ha. Holmes, pumpkin. As in Sherlock.”

“The great detective.”

“Who could deconstruct a character soon as look at him. No villain was safe. No secret undiscovered.”

“Didn’t he have expert knowledge, though? Couldn’t he always tell, I don’t know, that you had your hair cut by a one-armed barber who plied his trade on the Strand every second Tuesday? That kind of cheating knowledge no real person could have?”

“Well, yeah. But the theory is absolute. Observation brings knowledge.”

“You reckon.”

“I reckon.”

“What about him?”

“Whom?”

Jennifer nodded towards the man who’d just sat down on the far side of the restaurant. Sitting side by side the way they were, both were facing him, though he was facing the window. “Him.”

Jeans and scuffed black leather jacket with a faded tee underneath. Probably with logo or slogan, though it was impossible to see from here. He must have been early forties, with shaggy dark hair and a sallow complexion.

“...Well?”

It was meant as a challenge, he could tell.

They couldn’t be overheard. There was no harm in this. The man was a stranger.

Peter said, “Okay. He’s used to these places. Motorway service stations.”

“Everyone is. We’ve all been places like this.”

“But they’re a way of life with him.”

“Evidence.”

“He’s not looking round. He’s focused on his food, see? The surroundings mean nothing to him.”

It was true: He was.

“Maybe he’s hungry.”

“Maybe he is.”

“And it’s not like the surroundings are worth paying attention to.”

“I wouldn’t say that. They’re not tasteful or pleasant, true, but that doesn’t mean they’re without interest. I notice you took in what the menu had to offer. And you checked out the coasters and everything. The posters on the walls.”

“Is that shallow?”

“No. I did too. I’ve been places like this before, but I’ve never been to this particular place. There’s always something new. But I’m guessing there’s a saturation point, and our man’s reached it. Because he didn’t look around when he came in. He barely glanced at the menu. It’s like everything is so familiar to him, it’s not worth paying attention to.”

“Good,” she said. “More.”

Peter thought. “Okay. When he was fetching his food, he didn’t have to puzzle out the system. He already knew what was going on, that you fetch your food that side and pay this side. And where the drinks are, and everything. He didn’t have to go back and fetch a teacup once he’d got to the hot-water urn. He knew to pick up the cup first.”

“I didn’t see any of that.”

“Well, I did. Trust me. And another thing. See where he’s sitting?”

“What about it?”

“Perfect place. He can eat and still keep an eye on his vehicle. That’s the kind of precaution you take when we’re talking about livelihood.”

“Ah. He travels for a living.”

“I think what we’ve got so far is bringing us to that conclusion, yes.”

“Salesman?”

“He’s not really kempt enough for a salesman, is he?”

“Kempt,” she thought. That was up there with “whom.”

“So I don’t know. Maybe a courier of some sort.”

Jennifer turned and looked out into the car park. There were no delivery vans out there. One estate car had writing down the side panels — something about double-glazing — but they’d decided he wasn’t a salesman.

Peter was ahead of her. “There’s all kinds of couriers these days. You don’t have to wear a uniform and drive a brown truck. Maybe he delivers cars.”

“Cars?”

“You rent a car to drive to the airport, but for one reason or another you don’t need it for the return journey. Maybe you’re flying back somewhere else, because you got a deal on the flight or you’re going to visit your mother or something.” He shrugged. “Somebody has to fetch the car, take it back to its starting point.”

“You know so much.”

What he liked about this was the absence of any trace of sarcasm.

“It’s all just speculation,” he said modestly.

“Well, of course it is. But what speculation. Tell me more.”

He said, “Well... Looks to me like he’s on the skids.”

“I’ll go along with that.”

“But he used to be prosperous. This motorway service-station life, this is something that’s happened to him. It’s not the way he started out.”

“Evidence,” she said again.

He was ready for this. “Take his jacket. It’s nice, but old. You buy a jacket like that because you want to look good, you want to look cool.”

“Leather jackets get cooler the more worn they are.”

“Point. But you have to wash your hair for the full effect. Nobody interested in their appearance is going to leave their hair unwashed for so long that you can tell from this distance it’s dirty.”

“So what do we deduce from that, Sherlock?”

Peter said, “Like I said, he’s on the skids. He used to be a man who wears a jacket like that, and now he’s a man who’s still clinging to the jacket, but can’t do the rest of it anymore... Watch his hand as he raises his fork to his mouth... There!”

“He’s not wearing a wedding ring.”

“Clever girl. But what else?”

“You’re going to tell me there’s a white band of flesh there. That he used to wear a ring but doesn’t now.”

Pete was shaking his head in admiration before she’d finished. “Damn, but you’re good at this.”

“Sure. Except I don’t believe it. I can’t see any such thing from here, and you can’t either, can you?”

“Well, no. But what are the chances a guy who used to wear a jacket like that never had the chance to marry? And he’s certainly not wearing a ring now.”

“Perhaps he’s gay.”

“Perhaps he is. But in the absence of evidence one way or the other, let’s go with the odds.”

“His marriage went down the pan.”

“About the same time his old job disappeared.”

“And you can tell that from...?”

“That’s the way it so often happens, isn’t it?” For a moment they shared a look brimming with confidence that this wouldn’t happen to them. “One day you’ve got it all nailed down, but when one thing gives, everything else follows.”

“The domino effect.”

“They wouldn’t have given it a name if it didn’t happen.”

“Whoever ‘they’ are.”

“Oh, they’re a smart bunch. Your turn. What do you think his old job was?”

Jennifer watched the man for a moment or two. He didn’t look their way. He glanced at the car park once, just for a second, but other than that he concentrated on his food.

She said, “I think he wore a uniform.”

He said, “Evidence?” and enjoyed saying it.

“He has that air of invisibility. I mean, when you wear a uniform, you get noticed, right? Except you don’t, not really. People see the uniform, but they don’t see the person wearing it. So if you ask somebody to describe, say, a policeman, they’ll say, well, he was a policeman. He was wearing a police uniform.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And the way he’s sitting there now, you can tell, I don’t know... that he doesn’t expect to be noticed. And that he’s used to that. It gives him a kind of freedom.”

“Freedom,” Peter said. “That’s interesting.”

“Not the open-road freedom he gets from his courier job.” She flashed him a smile with this. “A different kind of freedom. The kind that lets you get away with stuff.”

“Stuff.”

“You know. A life spent tootling up and down motorways, there’s lots of temptations out there. The kind of person who’s used to being invisible could get up to mischief.”

“He could pick up hitchhikers, for instance,” Peter said.

“He could pick them up,” Jennifer agreed. “And then... whatever.”

“Jesus,” Peter said. “I think we’ve just caught ourselves a serial killer.”

They both laughed.

Their sandwiches were finished. They still had some way to go, and neither of them had to say it out loud for both to know they should be on their way. But as they stood, Peter said, “You know, I think I’ll go have a word with him.”

“You can’t!”

“’Course I can. It’s no big deal. I’ll just verify one fact.”

“Which fact? How?”

“I’ll tell him we had a bet. That he used to wear a uniform. What harm can it do?”

“He might get angry.”

“I’ve never met an angry man yet,” Peter said, “that I wasn’t able to run away from. You go out to the car. I’ll join you in a second.”

She stood by the car, waiting. Peter came out two minutes later, holding his mobile to his ear, but whatever he was doing with it he finished before he reached her. “Just checking my messages,” he said, putting it in his pocket.

“And?”

“Nothing important.”

“No, silly. The man. What did you find out?”

“Well...” He was drawing this out. Then he smiled. “You were right, clever girl. He used to drive a bus.”

“A uniform. But completely invisible.”

“Well,” he said, “I don’t suppose that actually makes him a serial killer.”

She looked back through the restaurant window. The man was still sitting there, but he was watching them now, the look on his face completely unreadable from this distance. Or maybe it would have been unreadable even close up. He had the air of being one of those people it wasn’t possible to know much about, no matter how good you were at observation. She shivered a little, then got in the car.

“Cold?”

“No, I’m okay.”

“Good.”

“A little excited, to tell you the truth.”

Turning the ignition, Peter smiled at her. “Good,” he said again. Then they drove off.

Their names were Peter Mason and Jennifer Holmes, and in the eight months they’d been together, they’d made one or two surprising discoveries about shared interests and passions. And now they were heading for a cottage Pete had got hold of, up in the Peak District; somewhere pretty isolated, for a private little party. Just the two of them, plus their luggage.

Everything they needed was in the boot.

Copyright © 2006 Mick Herron

“You say it wasn’t stalking, but by your own admission, everywhere that Mary went you were sure to follow!”