You Will Never Find Me (12 page)

‘Jesus. The poor kid.'

‘You don't have to be underprivileged to be neglected,' said Mercy from personal experience. ‘What else about him?'

‘He's bright. Not a genius, but you never know at his age. I would say more orientated to maths than the arts, but I saw some interesting paintings he'd done. He's good at chess. He's an unusual boy. What I like about him is that all these kids are from very privileged backgrounds. They come with a thick artery of entitlement running through them. Some of them are little buggers, you know, really think they're the business. It's what they've been led to believe from year zero. Sasha isn't like that. He always stands up for other kids and especially the more unfortunate ones, the socially awkward ones. I suppose his mother being in that state, he probably did a lot of caring for her. Must be in his nature.'

‘Is he popular?'

‘He kind of disdains popularity. Some kids set out to become popular. They have an innate understanding of PR. Sasha isn't like that. He's never short of other kids wanting to sit next to him, but he never courts the big personalities. He's just himself and, yeah, he's crazy about football. Thinking about it now, he must spend a lot of time on his own because he's the best trick footballer I've ever seen. He can do amazing things with a ball. He can stand there talking to you and just keeping it going on his foot and pop it up onto his head, roll it down his back and arms. Like Beckham. Other kids like that kind of thing. It impresses them. But Sasha never showed off. He could have brought the playground to a standstill but he didn't. It was a private thing. Something he could lose himself in maybe.'

‘Sounds like a really great kid,' said Mercy, dismayed to find her own parental ache intruding on her professional life. Should she be in Madrid with Charlie? ‘What about the father? Did you meet Mr. Bobkov?'

‘Yes, but only once a term. He never came to the parent–teacher evenings. That was Tracey on her own. He travels a lot. He and I have had a couple of good talks about Sasha. He's an impressive guy. I know he's a businessman—he has his own trading outfit in the West End—but he didn't strike me as one.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Businessmen are all about surface. My father's one, and all my father's friends are like that. They know
how
to get on with you. I'm always aware of technique. It's why I didn't want to go into that world myself. My father was furious when I stayed on at Cambridge to do a PGCE. And primary school teaching? He just shook his head. He's the CEO of something in the City and even I don't understand what they do.'

‘And Mr. Bobkov?'

‘Yes, sorry. He was different. He had no artifice . . . at least not with me. From the moment we started talking about his son he just opened up. I can't quite put my finger on it, but you knew you were talking to the real person and not some carefully fashioned image. When I talk to the other fathers, the only real thing they show me is a little bit of condescension, not so much that you'd want to hit them, but just enough to let you know they're unimpressed.'

‘Mr. Bobkov and Sasha, were they close?'

‘I'd say so. Even though I don't think they saw that much of each other. If he was in London they'd always go to a game. They were big Arsenal supporters. Yeah . . . '

‘You're nodding to yourself, Mr. Spencer?'

‘What? Yeah, I know. You only really start to think about people when something like this happens, or maybe it's that the things you thought subconsciously come to the surface. I always felt about Mr. Bobkov that he was operating in a whole other mysterious and unknowable world and that his son was the only true person in his life. Why? I have no idea.'

 

‘Yes, I remember her,' said the male receptionist at the Hotel Moderno. ‘She's a very pretty girl. Red minidress and a little jacket, black, over her shoulders. It was cold. High heels, black too. Bare legs, I think. I remember shaking my head. Oh yes, and a small black leather bag over her shoulder.'

‘And you didn't see her again?' asked Boxer, thinking, guy, late forties, hair thinning. He probably noticed all the pretty girls, every detail.

‘I go off at midnight. The night shift comes on until eight in the morning.'

‘We've spoken to everybody in the hotel at the time,' said the manageress. ‘We're absolutely certain she didn't come back. I'm afraid it's not unusual in this city.'

‘So what do you do when people don't come back to their rooms—with their belongings, I mean? The bill?'

‘She paid the bill in cash on arrival. Two nights. One hundred and eighty-six euros.'

‘So how did she make the booking?'

‘Online.'

‘With a credit card?'

‘Of course. That's how we take the booking from the website she used and then they pay however they want to on arrival or when they leave.'

‘In whose name was the credit card?'

The manageress scrolled through the computer. ‘Mercy Danquah.'

‘That's her mother,' said Boxer. ‘What about her things?'

‘She paid for two nights, so we just cleaned the room on Sunday morning. We didn't need the room on Monday, but today we have a conference so we put her things into storage and changed the room.'

‘Was there anything in the safe? Her passport?'

‘I don't know; I'll call housekeeping,' said the manageress.

‘The passport,' said the receptionist. ‘I remember now. She picked it up from the front desk on her way out. It was a busy time when she arrived so she left it with us so that we could take the photocopy and fill in the registration details. When she came down she signed the registration document and picked up the passport. I remember she put it in a little pocket on the inside of her jacket. It had a small button. She had to fiddle with it. You know the jacket? It was very short. It only came to here.'

The receptionist chopped himself on the ribs not far below his armpits.

‘A bolero jacket?' said Boxer. He didn't know the jacket, had never seen it.

‘Yes, like the horsemen wear in the
feria
in Sevilla,' said the receptionist. ‘It's just that I would have expected her to put the passport in her handbag.'

‘Maybe it felt safer to have it close to her in her jacket.'

‘She was going dancing,' said the receptionist. ‘You don't wear a jacket for very long when you go dancing.'

‘If I'd been her I'd have left it in reception,' said the manageress.

‘How do you know she was going dancing?'

‘She asked the concierge for some good places to go.'

‘Is the same concierge on duty now?'

‘Until midnight.'

‘Can I have a look at her things?'

Boxer shook hands with the manageress. The receptionist took him to the storage room behind the reception area, which he unlocked.

‘Everything in the room we put in her rucksack,' he said, pulling it down from a shelf. ‘Apart from that jacket hanging there.'

‘Can I take a look at her stuff in here?'

‘Sure. I'll be on the front desk if you need anything. Let me know when you've finished and I'll lock up.'

Boxer started with the jacket, checked all the pockets. He knew this coat—she'd had it since last winter, more than a year. In the inside pocket was a note to Amy from her class tutor at Streatham and Clapham High School. It was a nothing note about a change of time for a rehearsal, but it somehow made Amy's presence in the city come alive. He smelled the coat's lining and his eyeballs pricked and he had to blink back the emotion.

He opened the rucksack: jeans, pants, T-shirts, tights, a jumper and her favourite Converse trainers. Nothing unusual. He checked the jean pockets and found a bill from French Connection at Terminal 1 Heathrow for a Calling Apollo Dress £150, a mini Adventurers jacket £92, and Tiarella ankle-strap courts £120. Nearly four hundred quid on clothes, paid in cash. This was a new side to Amy—maybe just an expression of freedom. She didn't have to ask for anything any more.

The rucksack sagged, his daughter's life reduced to this. He checked the side pockets, found a bikini he recognised from last summer. A pair of cheap earrings he'd bought for her in Brazil and been surprised that she liked so much. On the other side was a book. The
Footprint Handbook to Morocco
. He flicked through it. Places had been marked and there were scribbles in Amy's handwriting. A slight weakness entered his arms. The book felt heavy. He dropped it, pushed his hands through his hair. Something
had
gone wrong. He'd tried to ignore it up to this point, but this book with its determination for onward travel confirmed it to him. Something had stopped her in Madrid. He breathed in, trying to keep positive, she could have just fallen in with some people.

A knock at the door: the manageress. Housekeeping had confirmed that the safe had not been used. She offered him a room for the night, no charge. He thanked her, asked if there were CCTV cameras in reception or outside. She shook her head. You hate it in the UK, all that constant surveillance, he thought, and then, when you really need it, it's not there.

‘I'm sorry for what you're going through,' she said. ‘I have a daughter, fourteen years old.'

‘Is the room that Amy used available?' he asked.

‘I can arrange it.'

He picked up his cabin bag from behind reception, took it up to the room with Amy's rucksack. He walked around the bed, looked in the mirror, tried to imagine her in those clothes, getting ready to go out. He called Mercy.

‘I'm at the hotel,' he said, ‘in the same room that Amy had.'

‘What's the news?'

‘She was definitely here. I've got her rucksack and clothes. Her passport details are in reception. She used your credit card to book the room and paid in cash.'

‘That was big of her.'

‘She bought some clothes at Heathrow. Going-out, partying clothes. If I give you the details and product numbers of what she bought could you Photoshop her into them and send me the image? I'll make up a flyer, push it around the bars and discos, see if I can get a lead or at least a sighting.'

Boxer talked her through the bill while she looked the items up online.

‘Have you seen the state of this dress?' said Mercy.

‘Calling Apollo . . . ?'

‘More like Screaming Sex,' said Mercy. ‘This is what I'd expect Karen to flooze around in if she had better legs.'

‘I thought they all dressed like that nowadays.'

‘Hooker chic,' said Mercy. ‘And light on the chic.'

He could sense Mercy trying to keep it all at bay with her savage humour, making light of it so she didn't drop down the worry hole. He wasn't going to tell her about the Moroccan guidebook.

‘You all right?'

‘I'm working,' she said, ‘which is better than not.'

 

‘I could have had him, you know,' said Darren. ‘El O-fucking-sito. All strength, you see. No technique, Dad. Know what I mean?'

‘I'm glad you didn't,' said Dennis. ‘I had the feeling if you'd dumped him the guns would have come out. I had no idea you were—'

‘I came third in the British Novice Championships hundred-kilo-plus class in November last year,' said Darren, refilling their glasses from a litre bottle of Mahou beer.

‘Not bad,' said Dennis. ‘And next time, Darren, just stick to the arm-wrestling, don't volunteer to take on another hundred kilos when you haven't got the first bloody idea whether we can shift it.'

‘We can shift it,' he said, chiding his old dad. ‘I know guys who want to open another five crack labs in Brixton and Stockwell alone. I know there's been a bit of a lull in the City since the credit crunch, but now they're back to screaming for it.'

‘That may be the case,' said Dennis, puffing his cigar back to life. ‘You might have
heard
that, but you don't
know
it. We haven't done the research on it. Do you know how much we have to come up with for an extra hundred kilos?'

‘Go on, then.'

‘Two million quid.'

‘Shit.'

‘That's two million a month. And if we can shift it, we end up with six million more we have to send to the laundry and that has to be set up. It doesn't happen like that,' said Dennis, snapping his fingers. ‘And if you can't shift it, where do you put it? The longer you store gear the more likely it is to be found. The risk levels go up. That's why you don't make commitments to people like El Osito unless you know you can keep to them. Otherwise you'll be flushing gear down the crapper just so you don't end up with half a ton of inventory.'

‘So now what?'

‘We're going to have to talk him round. Talk him back down. We're going to have to persuade him that we want to take on the extra gradually.'

‘He's talking about us taking on five hundred kilos a month by the end of the year.'

‘So we have to say we'll take twenty-five kilos more a month for four months and then see how it goes before we agree anything more.'

‘He doesn't look like a gradual kind of bloke to me, Dad.'

‘The good thing is he likes you. You didn't show him up in front of the Mexicans and that's important. He'll remember that. You must never mention it, mind. But that's what you've got between you, right? Are you with me?'

‘So you want me to talk to him about it when we go out tonight.'

‘We'll be going drinking in bars and clubs. We won't talk about it then. I'll leave early. I'm too old for all that crap. You've got to find the right moment, in private, to talk to him about it. Like if you go back to his flat, or the Mexicans' place. Somewhere like that. Not in public. All right?'

‘It'll have to be, won't it?'