Val McDermid - The Vanishing Point

Stephanie gave her a nervous glance. Not for the first time, Vivian felt there was something lurking between them. Something Stephanie didn’t want to give up. Something she didn’t even want to contemplate. She looked down, studying her neatly manicured nails. ‘There is someone it might be helpful for you to talk to. He’s a detective with Scotland Yard. Detective Sergeant Nick Nicolaides.’

Vivian was taken aback. Out of nowhere, two hours into this interview, Stephanie Harker was introducing a cop who had something to bring to the party. ‘Who the hell is Sergeant Nick Nicolaides? And what does he have to do with this?’

‘When Joshu died he was the officer who did all the interviews. He was really sympathetic but he seemed to be thorough too. Anyway, when I had some problems of my own this past year, I rang him because he was the only cop I knew. So he knows Jimmy and he knows the background too.’ She raised her eyes and met Vivian’s incredulous stare.

‘And I’m only hearing about him now?’

‘I’m sorry.’ The talkative Stephanie seemed to have run out of steam. She rubbed her eyes, her face a grimace of pain. ‘None of this is easy, you know. I’ll give you his number, shall I?’ She recited it from memory and Vivian keyed it into her phone.

‘Wait here,’ she said grimly. ‘I need to see what this Nicolaides guy has to say.’

16

With every passing day the soundproofed room seemed to grow more oppressive. Detective Sergeant Nick Nicolaides knew the personal scents of the other five occupants so well he could have picked them out of an identity parade blindfolded. He knew their physical tics; the tapping of a pen against teeth, the soft percussion of fingertips on desktop, the sucking of air through the front teeth, the scratching of fingernails on designer stubble, the endless fiddling with the bridge of the reading glasses. He knew who would crack which kind of joke over the contents of the emails they were working through. He knew who was tweeting his mistress instead of working, who was texting his bookie and who was ordering groceries online from Tesco. And of course, he knew more about the professional and personal lives of News International journalists than any adult human should have to.

When he’d been seconded to the team investigating the allegations of News International’s phone hacking and corrupting of public officials, Nick had been excited. It was a headline-grabbing case, and its potential repercussions for the media and the Met were thrilling. Though not in a good way.

But the glitz had worn thin pretty quickly. News International had handed over three hundred million emails. Three hundred million. Nick suspected they’d dumped everything they could find on to the inquiry in the hope that the trees would get lost in the wood. It wasn’t humanly possible to read every one. He remembered reading about a project to classify every galaxy in the universe according to shape. The astronomers involved had asked members of the public to log on to their website and take part in the process. It was the only way to get enough bodies on the case. Even then, it would take years. But that wasn’t an option here because it was a criminal investigation.

So what they had was a computer program that was gradually working its way through all of the three hundred million, primed with key words and phrases that should, in theory, mean that all the dodgy emails would be spat out into the inboxes of the people grafting away in rooms like this all over the old Wapping printworks. Every team was a mix of the company’s own watchdogs and police officers. Embedded, that was what they called what he was doing. And embedded was what it bloody felt like. Embedded up to the neck in other people’s shit.

Now, instead of actually working real cases and catching real criminals, Nick was locked in a bunker looking for evidence which, even if he found it, probably would never see the light of courtroom day. A few months ago, his career had seemed to be on an upward trajectory. But this was the backwater to end all backwaters.

He clicked on the next email in his queue. It had been flagged up because it contained the word ‘credit’. One of the ways journalists paid backhanders to sources was to list their associates in the credits book. If you wanted to pay DCI XXX for giving you an exclusive tip, you put a payment through to his girlfriend or his mum or his best mate. So every time a journalist or an executive mentioned, ‘taking the credit’, or ‘credit where it’s due’, Nick would have to read the innocuous message. Just in case.

This time, it was from an editorial executive complaining that his company credit card had been refused at the petrol station that morning. Nick sighed and sent it to the ‘checked’ folder and clicked on the next one. The ringing of his phone felt like a stay of execution. A glance at the screen revealed an unfamiliar number. But it was an American number. And there was a good reason to answer a call from America this morning.

‘Hello?’ he said, always wary of giving too much away.

‘Have I reached Detective Sergeant Nick Nicolaides?’ An American voice. Not what he expected at all. A twitch of anxiety in his chest.

‘You have. Who am I speaking to?’

‘This is Special Agent Vivian McKuras of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m based at the O’Hare Airport office.’

‘Has something happened to Stephanie?’ He couldn’t help himself.

‘Sergeant, I need to confirm your ID before I can say anything further. Can you give me a landline number for the police office where you are based so I can do that?’

Now he was seriously worried. What on earth had Stephanie got herself into? He rattled off the number for the major incident team he was nominally attached to. ‘You’ll have to call me back on the mobile, I’m based out of the office at the moment.’ The line went dead.

Nick jumped to his feet and hustled out of the door. There was a shout of protest behind him. He wasn’t supposed to leave the civilians unattended. But he needed to be moving. His long legs ate up the corridors and the wind of his passage whipped his shaggy hair back from his face. Out in the car park, he paced, heedless of the misty rain drifting around him. Wiry and restless, he looked almost feral in his black jeans and untucked denim shirt. Without a guitar in his hands, he didn’t know what to do with himself.

When the phone rang again, he squatted in a corner of two walls and hunched over it. ‘So tell me, Agent McKuras. What’s up that you need me?’

‘I believe you’re acquainted with Stephanie Harker?’

‘That’s right. What’s she supposed to have done?’

‘It interests me that you jump to the conclusion that she’s the doer rather than the done to, officer.’

Nick cursed himself for his impetuosity. ‘It was a lighthearted figure of speech, that’s all. Stephanie’s not a criminal. Can we please rewind and you tell me why you’re making this phone call?’ He was so much better at the face-to-face. What charms he had never seemed to survive the phone.

‘I’m calling you as part of our investigation into the apparent kidnap of Jimmy Higgins—’

‘Jimmy’s been kidnapped? Where? How? What happened?’ It made no sense. Not in America.

‘They were separated in the security area so Ms Harker could undergo a pat-down. A man approached Jimmy and walked away with him. By the time the authorities realised what had happened, they had disappeared.’

It didn’t sound anything like the whole story. But Nick knew better than to push for more right now. If all else failed, he would get Stephanie’s version soon enough. ‘Disappeared? In one of the most heavily surveilled places around? How can that be?’