The Vanishing Point

37

Nick lingered outside Asmita Patel’s flat, leaning against his car in the chilly night air. There was a whiff of curry spices from a nearby restaurant on the breeze and the constant hum of London traffic. He thought about getting something to eat, but he was too antsy for food. He could go home and pick up a guitar and play till his fingers tired. But that wasn’t going to help Stephanie or Jimmy. Maybe if he went back to the office, he could find something useful to do.

The overhead lights were turned off in the squad room but a couple of pools of illumination revealed where colleagues were working late. As Nick made for his desk, a lone voice called out to him. ‘Jammy bastard, how did you get out of the bloody bunker?’ Davy the Fat Boy Brown had been assigned to the phone hacking and police corruption inquiry at the same time as Nick and he was even less suited to being stuck indoors with a bunch of suits.

‘I found a shittier stick to get hold of,’ Nick said, dropping into his chair and waking his computer from its hibernation. ‘Running errands for the FBI. As glamorous as Dagenham on a Sunday morning.’

Davy lumbered across to Nick’s desk. ‘You got a cup?’ He produced a bottle of Scotch with a couple of inches remaining.

‘You keep it,’ Nick said. ‘I’m too bloody tired already. If I have a drink, I’ll fall off my perch.’

Davy shambled off, grumbling. ‘I thought you Manchester lads were supposed to like partying?’

‘True, Davy. But you don’t have the right kind of tables for dancing on.’ He clicked on his message queue to see what was waiting for him. He scanned the list of incoming mail, ignoring anything related to the task he’d been temporarily spared. There were three others that promised relevance to what he cared more about. The first was from Cambridgeshire Police. The woman Nick had dubbed Megan the Stalker had ended up in a secure mental hospital in their force area so they’d been his first port of call. The email was short and to the point. Megan Owen had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act but she had been released six weeks previously. She was currently living in a supported hostel, where she had been abiding by the terms of her release. At eight o’clock that evening she had been in the common room watching a TV soap with three other residents. She definitely was not in Chicago kidnapping Jimmy Higgins.

That was a relief. It was never good news when nutters got their hands on small children. One down, a couple to go. According to West Yorkshire Police, Chrissie and Jade Higgins were both at home in the house Scarlett had bought for them. Neither woman seemed to be particularly bothered by the news of Jimmy’s abduction.

The other pertinent message was from the local nick in Peckham, which he’d asked to check on Pete Matthews’ whereabouts. Again, the message didn’t waste words. Pete Matthews was not at home. He was working away, according to a neighbour, who said he’d been gone for about six weeks. The neighbour had no idea where he was but said he knew Matthews had worked in the US, the Caribbean and South Africa in the past couple of years.

Nick felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising. Child abduction generally had three motivations. A parent who felt unjustly deprived of their child; ransom; and something deeply twisted. Pete Matthews definitely had a deeply twisted possible motive – he wanted to hurt Stephanie and he wanted to show her who was boss. He’d already stalked her, demonstrating that his take on what was reasonable behaviour was deeply skewed. And Nick didn’t know where he was tonight.

He thought back to his previous run-in with Pete Matthews. He’d had trouble tracking him down then as well, mostly because the man kept irregular hours and didn’t have a set place of work. He’d ended up making a list of recording studios and patiently working his way through the list till he found the one where Matthews had been currently working. If he checked back through his pocket books, that might give him a place to start.

Nick headed for his locker, where he kept his completed pocket books, the records of his daily tasks and accomplishments that would be his aide memoire when cases came to court. He tracked back to the relevant one and sat down then and there to flip through the pages, not caring about the dank smells of stale bodies and questionable drains that permeated the room. The Matthews notes were towards the end of the book, but they were perfectly clear. At the time Nick had confronted him about stalking Stephanie, he’d been mixing a trip-hop album at a place called Phat Phi D up in Archway. Wherever Pete was tonight, it wasn’t there. But they might know where he was.

He replaced his notebook and headed back to his car feeling unreasonably cheerful. He knew from his own occasional session work that record studios did not keep nine to five hours. The chances of finding someone still working close to midnight at Phat Phi D were better than evens, Nick reckoned.

It was nice to be proved right. A percussionist and a keyboard player were working on a backing track for some female singer songwriter, and the producer and the engineer were happy enough to let Nick in to ask a few questions to break the tedium. The studio was small and sweaty, but the equipment looked the business. ‘These kids need that many takes, I’m about dying in here,’ the producer moaned. ‘You said you’re looking for Pete Matthews?’

‘Yeah,’ Nick said, lounging against the back wall as the musicians went again.

‘You seen Pete lately?’ the producer asked the engineer.

‘Not for months. Last I heard, he was going to Detroit to work with the Style Boys.’

Nick’s heart leapt in his chest. His American geography wasn’t brilliant. But he was pretty sure that, in the scale of things on that giant continent, Detroit wasn’t too far from Chicago. In the dimness of the booth, he struggled not to let his excitement show.

‘The Style Boys? The ones that didn’t win X-Factor?’

‘That’s them. Sound like they’re channelling sixties Motown. Temptations, Isley Brothers, that kind of sound.’

‘They’ve got the money to go to Detroit and record?’ The producer sounded incredulous.

‘It’s crazy, I know. But some shit-for-brains twat who thinks he’s going to be the next Simon Cowell loved their sound and decided to bankroll them. More money than sense, if you ask me.’

‘And he chose Pete? To engineer a sixties soundalike album?’

The engineer laughed. ‘Which proves the shit-for-brains bit.’ He turned to Nick. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Pete’s a good engineer. But this is way out of his zone.’

The producer hit the talkback button. ‘One more time, guys. Travis, I need you to be spot-on with the beat, you’re still drifting in the middle bars.’ He rolled his eyes at Nick.

‘How can I find out where Pete’s working in Detroit?’

The producer shrugged. ‘Fucked if I know.’

The engineer pulled out his phone. ‘If you want to know, ask an engineer.’ His thumbs danced over the screen. ‘Paul Owen at the Bowes Festival will know, he’s got the Style Boys headlining for them.’

They leaned back in their seats and listened to another rendition that Nick could tell wasn’t quite on the money. ‘I’m going to fucking kill myself,’ the producer said. ‘Do you get days like that in your job?’

‘All the time.’

‘What are you after Pete for? I wouldn’t have had him down as the criminal type,’ the engineer said. ‘Pretty straight guy, Pete. Well, what passes for straight in this game.’

‘I need to ask him a few questions. Something that happened in his neighbourhood he might have witnessed. But if he’s been gone for the last couple of months, chances are he’s out of the frame altogether.’

The engineer’s phone shimmied across the sound desk, signalling an incoming text. He picked it up and glanced at it, before holding it out to Nick. ‘There you go, mate.’

‘Style Boys @ South Detroit Sounds till end of week. Early mix sounds better than expected,’ he read. Nick smiled. ‘Thanks, lads. Hope your drummer finds his beat.’

All the resources of the FBI were chasing Jimmy Higgins. But the way things were looking, it was all going to come down to a single London copper with a feel for the music scene. Nick smiled. If he could bring Jimmy Higgins home, he’d be a happy man.

And more importantly, Stephanie would be a very happy woman.