Michael started punching keys on his keyboard.
When he still didn’t continue talking after a couple of seconds, I said, “Go on?”
“Well, first of all, I’d have to check if Julian’s mobile signal died the moment the bus exploded. That would be the worst case scenario because ... well, you know. However, if I can detect his signal at any time after the explosion, it would mean that he got out of the bus alive. And if he was all dazed and confused and he wandered off into the woods, I should be able to access his GPS data and see where he went. Unless his phone battery died. Or he lost his phone, or he left it on the bus, or he ...”
“Michael!”
He looked at me with big, crazy eyes.
“I get it!” I said. “Just get on with it, okay?”
“Right. Okay.”
He continued punching keys on his computer for a few seconds before he paused and looked at me again. “That was a brilliant idea, Tummy.”
“Well, I’m not as stupid as everyone thinks,” I said.
Michael shook his head. “Nobody thinks you’re stupid.”
“No?”
“Nobody who matters anyway. Do you really think we’d hang out with you if we thought you were stupid?”
“I … don’t know?”
“Well, no. You can be an extremely silly, obnoxious little twat, but you’re not stupid.”
It meant a lot to hear that from Michael.
“Thanks, I guess.”
And then he did what he always does when he sits in front of his computer. He started hammering the keyboard and running a million different programs and he got his tunnel vision where he didn’t speak and didn’t notice anything or anyone around him.
Meanwhile, I sat down on the couch and kept replaying that ten-second CCTV footage of the crash. There was something funny going on in that clip, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was until I finally shifted my attention from the huge fireball that went up when the bus exploded, and focussed on the motorway instead. There was a car that was pulling over on the hard shoulder just as the bus exploded, and a person got out from the passenger side and ran towards the crash site. Then the video stopped.
“Michael,” I said, “do you have a longer video of the crash?”
“Longer?”
“Yes. I want to see what happened in the minutes after the crash.”
Michael grabbed a tablet computer from his desk and handed it to me. It looked shiny and brand new.
“Whoa, is that new?” I asked.
Michael nodded. “I thought I deserved a little treat when we got back from New York.”
“Cool.”
“Anyway, the video is right there. Bottom left.”
“I already got it,” I said.
I watched the video. The man that got out of the car ran a few metres towards the crash site and then stopped to look down the ravine. Then he ran back to the car, talked to the driver for a moment, and then, as the car took off, the man ran back and skidded down the ravine until I couldn’t see him anymore.
“You need to see this,” I said and walked over to Michael. I handed him the tablet and replayed the video. “Watch that car. And the man. Who is that?”
Michael looked at the video twice, and said, “I have no idea. Probably just another motorist who saw the crash and wanted to help. Then again …”
“Then again what?”
“MINDY,” Michael said, “I need you to check all CCTV footage all the way from the Port of Liverpool down to Milton Keynes at the time when Julian’s coach was travelling. You’re looking for a car with the number plate WTH3F. I need to know when and where that car got onto the M1 and also whom it is registered to.”
“Yes, Michael.”
“If it’s just another motorist,” I said, “don’t you think the police have already spoken to him as a witness?”
Michael shook his head. “This is not just another motorist.”
A minute later when MINDY came back with the results of her search, it turned out that Michael was right.
“The vehicle is registered to the Maddock Media Corporation office in Liverpool. It left the Port of Liverpool at 10:13 p.m. on Tuesday towards …”
“MINDY, when did Julian’s coach leave the Port of Liverpool on Tuesday night?”
“At 10:13 p.m., Michael.”
“Bloody hell!” Michael looked at me. “They’d been following him all the way down from Liverpool.”
“Reporters?” I asked.
Michael shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Have you been able to track Julian’s phone yet? I mean, after the crash.”
“No,” Michael sighed. “Still busy trying to hack my way into the data retention centre. It’s surprisingly well secured. This may take a while.”
“Right,” I said. “Listen, Michael,” I put me hand on his shoulder, “Maybe we should just call it a night. You know, go to sleep, and something will turn up in the morning. What do you think?”
Michael didn’t say anything. He kept staring at his computer screen with a finger on his lips and he nodded. But there was no way to tell if he was nodding at what I’d just said, or at one of his own thoughts that had just gone through his mind. My guess was the latter, so I decided to go.
“Okay, man, I’m off, okay? I’d tell you to try and get some sleep but you’re not going to do that anyway, so ... Just make sure to let me know as soon as you find out anything, okay?”
He still didn’t say anything but he was nodding again, so I guess he’d probably heard me. As I was about to leave he finally turned around and said, “Tummy?”
I looked at him.
“Thanks,” he said.
“No worries.”
I went back to Momoko’s place. We didn’t talk much. We just went to bed, and she held me in her arms as I was crying my heart out because I knew that something terrible must have happened to Julian and that we might never ever see him again.
* * *
The next morning Momoko went into work and I made a couple of phone calls. First I called Michael and asked him if he’d found Julian.
“Still working on it, come by later,” he said and hung up. Then I called Julian’s mum, but nobody answered the phone, and I thought she was probably out at the morgue identifying Julian’s body. I turned on the TV news to see if they had any information, but it was all about the collapse of the government. Only the news ticker at the bottom of the screen occasionally read:
Julian Monk missing after coach crash.
I turned off the TV and the radio, because I didn’t want to see or hear anything, and since I didn’t know what else to do, I started cleaning Momoko’s flat. It was funny, really. At home me mum and dad had always complained how I didn’t do enough chores around the house, and here I was making the bed and cleaning the toilet and doing the dishes by me own free will. That made me think of Julian and how he said there was no such thing as free will, and I started to wonder if anything we ever did had any purpose at all. I was trying to get me mind off things, but I couldn’t. I kept thinking of Julian and of everything that had happened in the last couple of weeks and, indeed, ever since I’d known him. I thought of the funny things he used to say, and of the few times he had genuinely smiled or even laughed. I thought of the times in primary school when other kids had been bullying me until one day Julian and Michael suddenly stood up for me. I thought about how they’d always accepted me as their friend, and of all the great times we’d had together. I thought about how these times were now lost and gone forever, and that things would never be the same again because now Julian was dead. And I thought about what Julian would make of the fact that I was praying for him to be okay even though I knew that it was probably useless. It may not have helped him, but it helped me feel less helpless when there was nothing else I could do.
In the afternoon me phone rang. It was Ginger.
“It’s me,” she said.
“Hey, you.”
“I’m in a cab on the way home from the airport. I just talked to Michael. He wants us to come over.”
“Did he find out anything about Julian?”
“He wouldn’t say. But if he had found him, I guess he would have said so. I’ll see you at Underground Zero in an hour, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Ginger?”
“Yes?”
“It’s good to hear your voice.”
After a moment of silence she replied, “It’s good to hear your voice too, Tummy.”
I called Momoko, but it went straight to voice mail because she probably was in a meeting or in the studio or something, so I left her a message, telling her that I was off to Michael’s, that I made her Teriyaki chicken and put it in the fridge for her, and that I loved her.
When Ginger and I arrived at Underground Zero, it was obvious that Michael hadn’t slept a single minute since I’d left the night before. I found him in the same position I’d left him in, staring at his computer screen with one finger on his lips, still wearing the same clothes, his hair all greasy and in shambles.
“Okay, talk to us,” Ginger said.
Michael leaned back in his chair, stretched out his arms and legs and then folded his hands behind his head.
“He’s gone.”
Ginger shrieked. “What?!”
“Are you telling us he’s ... dead?” I asked anxiously.
Michael shook his head. “I’m telling you he’s gone. As in: he’s not here. Not in London, not anywhere in the UK or Ireland. I finally managed to gain access to the phone data retention centre and track Julian’s mobile.” Michael pointed at the computer screen. “Here, the signal appeared last night when Julian and Tholen entered Irish airspace on their way back from the States. They landed in Dublin and made their way to the harbour. Then there was no signal for about eight hours as they crossed the Irish sea, but as expected, the signal appeared again at the Port of Liverpool upon their arrival there. We can then follow them all the way down to Milton Keynes where the signal from Julian’s phone finally disappeared at 1:49 a.m. yesterday. Notice something?”
“At 1:49 a.m.?” I asked. “But didn’t the timestamp on the CCTV footage of the crash read 1:31 a.m.?”
“You’re getting really good at this, Tummy,” Michael said. “Yes, not only did we lose Julian’s signal 18 minutes after the crash, we also lost it four miles down the M1.”
“What? How?” Ginger asked.
“I’ve come up with a hypothesis,” Michael said. “Last night my young research assistant here,” he winked at me, “spotted something strange on the CCTV footage from the crash site.”
He played the video of the car pulling over and the man getting out.
“Right after the explosion, a car pulls over on the hard shoulder. A man gets out from the passenger side of the car, looks at the crash site, then comes back and talks to the driver. The car drives off, and the man starts making his way down the ravine. I’ve checked footage from the cameras at the nearest exit. As you can see, the car in question leaves the M1, and then what happens next we can only guess. All we know is that 15 minutes later the same car enters the M1 again and continues its southbound journey. Now look.”
Michael pulled up a map of the crash site and the surrounding area.
“My guess is that the car left the M1, took a right turn down that road here which would lead the driver directly back to the crash site at the bottom of the ravine. He picked up Julian, Tholen, and his mysterious friend, and then they made their way back onto the M1. A few minutes later, both Julian and Tholen switch off their mobiles, or had them switched off by someone else. Through traffic cameras I’ve followed the car all the way down to here.”
He pointed at another map on the screen.
“Luton?” Ginger asked.
Michael nodded. “Luton Airport, to be exact. And that’s where I lost them. They got to the airport at around 4 a.m. Scheduled flights from Luton don’t start until 6 a.m., but their names are not on the passenger lists of any of the flights leaving from Luton that day.”
“Do you think they might have used different names?”
“Unlikely, because they have to pass through security and have their passports checked. Unless …”
“Unless what?”
“Unless they got on that unscheduled flight that left Luton at 5:45am. It’s a private jet. And that is everything I know. There is no flight number, no call sign, no information about that private jet whatsoever. Nothing.”
“So what are we going to do now?” I asked.
Michael shrugged his shoulders. “Damned if I know.”
Ginger kept staring at the computer screen. “Michael, can you triangulate mobiles in every country in the world?”
“Well, in theory, yes, but I’d have to hack into each country’s phone grid, which would take some time, and given that there are 200 countries in the world it would take...”
“I need you to do something for me,” Ginger interrupted him.
“What is it?”
“Can you pull up a map of Heathrow Terminal 5?”
Michael shrugged. “Sure. But why?”
“When I flew in from Tokyo earlier, I saw a woman at the airport who looked like Julian’s mum. I thought I was mistaken, because with Julian having been in an accident and now missing, it didn’t make any sense that his mum would go on vacation. But what if she was on her way to wherever it is that these guys have taken him?”