Val McDermid: The Vanishing Point

Stephanie felt her shoulders drop a fraction. At last, someone who was capable of talking sense. ‘Thank you for clearing that up,’ she said. ‘So have you put out an alert for Jimmy?’

Vivian looked her straight in the eye. ‘We’re in the process of gathering the necessary information to do just that. I’ve examined the CCTV footage of what happened in the security area but unfortunately we can’t see the face of the man who took your child.’

Stephanie swallowed hard. ‘He’s not actually my child.’ Vivian nodded. ‘We are aware of that. And I’m going to be asking you some questions about that shortly. But right now, my priority is to get this alert out there. First, what’s the boy’s name?’

‘Jimmy Joshu Higgins.’ She watched as Vivian typed. ‘That’s Joshu, without an “a” on the end. After his father. He was a DJ.’ Stephanie couldn’t quite keep a note of contempt from her voice.

‘You don’t think much of his father?’

‘No. I don’t.’ There was more to that story, but it would keep.

‘OK. How tall is Jimmy, would you say?’

‘He’s about three foot six. Quite gangly and skinny. He’s light for a five-year-old. He weighs just under three stone.’ Seeing Vivian’s frown, she added, ‘Around forty pounds.’

‘Thanks. We’re going to need a description, to put out with a photograph of Jimmy.’

‘He’s got thick black hair, cut quite shaggy. Did you ever see Jungle Book ?’

Vivian looked at her as if she was crazy. ‘No. Is that a movie?’

‘It’s an animation. The kid in the cartoon, he’s called Mowgli. Jimmy looks kind of like him. Same hairstyle, similar kind of cheeky face. I don’t know how else to describe it. Google Mowgli, you’ll see what I mean.’ Frustrated by her inability to communicate an image of Jimmy, Stephanie thought for a moment. ‘Don’t you have his passport? It was in the same bin as mine.’

Vivian turned to Lopez. ‘We got that, Lia?’

Lopez shook her head. ‘No, ma’am. Only Ms Harker’s passport. There was nothing in the bin for the boy. I’ll check again, but . . . ’ She crouched down and began searching the plastic boxes.

‘What about his backpack?’ Stephanie asked. ‘The man he left with picked up the backpack. He must have grabbed the passport too.’

‘Nothing here,’ Lopez reported.

‘Shit,’ Stephanie said. Then she brightened. ‘My phone. I took a couple of pictures of him at the park last week. Would that help? My phone’s in the bin, right?’

Lopez stood up, waving the phone. ‘Here it is.’ She looked to Vivian for guidance. ‘Is it OK to give her the phone?’

‘Give it to me.’ Vivian quickly brought up the photo store and tapped the last photograph. A man in a denim shirt was sitting on a high stool, bent over a National steel guitar. His hair obscured most of his face. Obviously not Jimmy Higgins.

‘That’s a friend of mine,’ Stephanie said. ‘Try going back a bit.’

Another shot of the guitarist, this time with his head thrown back, the tendons in his arms and neck standing out. Then a small boy grinning at the camera, arm thrown out in an expansive gesture towards a clutter of ducks milling nearby. ‘That’s him. We were feeding the ducks.’ Her voice wobbled and tears pricked at her eyes. ‘He’s only little. You have to find him before something really bad happens to him. Please.’

5

Stephanie wasn’t sure how the hierarchy ran between the FBI and the TSA, but now Vivian McKuras was on the case, things were definitely improving. Vivian had departed, promising she’d be back once the Amber Alert was in place. In exchange, Stephanie had volunteered to let Lopez pat her down in the approved TSA manner, which was definitely more like a minor sexual assault than a security procedure. Lopez tried hard to maintain her distance and her dignity, but it was a struggle.

‘It’s not so straightforward when you’ve got to know the person you’re frisking, is it?’ Stephanie said, trying not to flinch at the hand probing the inside of her waistband.

‘It’s for your own safety,’ Lopez said. ‘You’d be pretty unhappy if you got blown up in mid-air because I didn’t do my job.’

‘You strike me as far too smart to fall for that bullshit.’

‘You want a cup of coffee?’ Lopez said, stepping back and peeling off the blue nitrile gloves.

It was ridiculous to feel weepy in response to such a banal kindness. But the longer she was separated from Jimmy, the more vulnerable Stephanie felt. Before Jimmy, she’d never known the responsibility of another person depending totally on her. There had been times in the previous nine months when she’d felt overwhelmed by the weight of it, and times when she’d had sudden flashes of unexpected delight that had made her heart swell. The very burden of the duty made the joy all the more devastating. She would have sworn the sensation was physical. And now he was cast adrift in the unknown, she felt lost. How much worse it must be for him.

It was ironic, for a woman who had never had any desire for motherhood. But she had been so beguiled by her life with Jimmy, in spite of all its complications and difficulties, that it was hard to remember what life had been like without him. Her initial reluctance to take him on now seemed an incomprehensible memory. Helping him to rebuild his happiness in the face of so much loss had become her mission, and every step on his journey had made her rejoice. And all those hard-won steps might count for nothing now he had been ripped out of his reconstructed life.

‘Coffee would be lovely,’ she said. ‘But aren’t you afraid I’ll take off if you leave?’

Lopez gave her an odd look.‘Why would you do that? Unless there’s something you’re not telling us about the man who walked off with your kid.’ As her hand gripped the door handle, she turned her head and gave Stephanie a pitying look. ‘Not to mention there’s a guard on the other side of the door. The guy who already tasered you, if you really want to know.’ Talk about mixed messages, Stephanie thought. Lopez was a mash-up of Good Cop and Bad Cop, all in one package. She wondered whether that spilled over into her private life. Stephanie shivered. She’d had enough of relationships with men who hid their truth behind a mask of false benevolence. She thought of the man with the guitar and allowed herself a moment of warmth. She’d broken the habit with him, she was convinced.

But Stephanie was smart enough to know that didn’t mean she was free of her history. And right now, the coldest fear in her heart was that Jimmy was the latest victim of her past.

The dregs of the coffee were stone cold by the time Vivian returned, and Stephanie’s anxiety had soared to new levels. ‘What’s happening?’ she demanded as soon as the FBI agent entered the room. ‘You’ve been gone nearly an hour.’

‘I had to pull together all the available information then speak to the Emergency Alert System people. I’m sorry it took so long, but I needed some information from Immigration before I could go ahead. We’re also pulling in all the CCTV footage for the whole terminal. We need to backtrack the kidnapper’s movements, to see if we can figure out where he came from. If he was dropped off kerbside or if he came in on public transit.’

‘What about forensics? Surely there must be fingerprints or DNA or something?’

Vivian shook her head. ‘There’s nothing meaningful we can pick up from the security area. Too many people pass through there. And because we didn’t realise right away what was going on, other people passed through after the abduction. I’m sorry, but that’s a dead end.’ She sat down and placed a digital voice recorder on the table between them. ‘Now everything’s running, it’s time for you to fill in a few blanks for me. According to the documents you presented to the Immigration Service, Jimmy’s not your actual son? But you’re responsible for him?’