Wrong Place Wrong Time(52)

‘Who’s Joseph Jones?’

‘Do not look into Joseph Jones either,’ he says, his tone as vicious and as sharp as a snake’s.

They stand there in silence for a few seconds, Jen still in his arms.

‘Kelly – I … you’re asking me to –’

‘Just – stop. Whatever it is you’re doing. Stop.’

Jen hates this tone of his. It provokes an ancient emotion in her. Her body wants to run, she wants to escape: fear.

‘Why?’ she says, barely a whisper.

Kelly’s fuse finally reaches its end. ‘You’re in danger, Jen,’ he says. She steps back from him in shock. Her shoulders are covered in goosebumps. She begins to shiver, feeling so alone. Who can she trust?

Kelly looks at her. Behind the sorrow, she is sure she can make out an emotion on his features that she hasn’t ever seen before on him, that she can’t read.

She tells him not to come home with her if he won’t tell her anything else, and he doesn’t. He leaves. She doesn’t know where he goes, almost doesn’t care. The takeaway bag sits there, its brown sides buffeting slightly in the wind. She picks it up and takes it home, for Todd. For once, she has no appetite.





Ryan





Ryan is loitering before the emergency briefing led by the sergeant, Joanne Zamo.

Leo, Jamie and Ryan are standing along the back wall of the briefing room. ‘One for you,’ Jamie says, right before Zamo starts speaking. ‘OCG is Organized-Crime Group.’

‘Thanks,’ Ryan says. ‘I knew that.’

‘All right,’ Zamo says. She’s in a trouser suit, flat black shoes, holding a coffee in her hand. Her weight is on one leg, and she’s clearly thinking, staring at the floor but probably at nothing, her brow lowered. ‘Surveillance are feeding some stuff through to us now. Everybody ready?’

The briefing room is ablaze with adrenalin in a way it isn’t usually. A copper whose name Ryan doesn’t know is erecting a board, pinning various items on to it. Two others are on the phone, talking more and more loudly.

‘Okay,’ Zamo says. ‘Surveillance have told us that the OCG were targeting an empty house. Then they saw a BMW idling on the driveway next door, keys in the ignition, engine on. So they took it.’ She folds her lips in on themselves, dimples appearing either side of her mouth. ‘What they didn’t know is it belonged to a new mother who was intending to go on a night-time drive to get her baby daughter to sleep. She secured her in the car seat, then left her there for just a few seconds while she dashed in to get her phone …’

Something turns over in Ryan’s chest. He can see it all. The panic. The terror. The woman seeing the car begin to move. Rushing out after it. The 999 call …

‘And now it’s five hours post. The car hasn’t been sighted, but we have eyes on the port, where it was heading.’

Ryan thinks of that baby, with criminals. Or on a ship, in international waters, in the back seat of a car, alone.

‘We have surveillance looking at ANPR for it, but we suspect they will have swapped the plates. We’ve put a stop on all ferries. Now let’s find baby Eve.’

Leo throws Ryan a look he can’t read.

It’s his job, now, Ryan assumes, to go and get the names off his corkboard, and they’re going to dispatch more surveillance officers to watch all of them, to see if they can find the car, and the baby.

Ryan stares at the missing poster pinned to the board. He reaches a finger out to touch it. The paper feels soft and thin.

The baby is beautiful. Ryan has always wanted children. Two, a boy and a girl. He knows that’s so passé, but it’s always how he’s felt. Two kids and a woman who could make him laugh. Building his own family unit again, from the rubble of his upbringing. If those you’ve left behind don’t stack up, create new people, in front of you.

She’s four months old. She has the most beautiful eyes, like a soulful little lion. And it’s his job to find her.

‘All right, Ryan,’ Leo says an hour later. ‘Sorry for the delay. Been getting authorizations for more coverts.’ He sips his coffee.

Ryan really wants that drink. He’s so tired. He worries that he’s beginning to prefer it, the station coffee, that he might start drinking from plastic cups at home.

‘Where will they take the baby?’ Leo asks Ryan. ‘In your opinion.’

‘The easiest place. They won’t care what happens to her. The baby.’

‘Right … so – the port?’

‘They will fulfil the order, whatever that is. That’s their priority. They might ditch the baby somewhere on the way. They won’t take A roads or motorways because of ANPR. They’ll go rural. That’s what my brother would do, anyway,’ Ryan says, the words feeling like a betrayal to him. His older brother. He had always protected Ryan, sort of, but now look. ‘“The feds are always watching,” he always used to say.’

‘You’re an asset,’ Leo says. ‘Because of the brother thing. You know?’

Ryan shrugs, embarrassed now. ‘I mean –’

‘There’s no need for modesty,’ Leo says. He rises from the chair. ‘My point being: you know this stuff and yet you’re here. You grew up there’ – he holds his left hand out, far apart from his side – ‘and you arrived here.’