Faceless, page 21
‘You’re certain?’ She didn’t have to ask this question, because she knew he’d be right, but she felt an overwhelming need to undermine him.
‘Of course. You know I am, otherwise you wouldn’t have come here.’ It was moments like this, when he was full of this ego macho crap, that she wondered what she’d ever seen in the man in the first place.
‘Are they very common?’ Short sentences helped quell her burning desire to scream at him.
‘Common as dirt and reliable as hell. That’s why, even though they’re old, there’s still plenty of them around. You see them everywhere.’
‘Thanks.’ Another hard word to force out. ‘Thanks for the help.’ She picked up the picture, placed it back in the bag and turned around to leave.
‘That’s it then? No how are you, how’s your sister, nothing like that?’
Dropping her sister into the conversation like that was a point-scoring step too far, even for that sod. She decided that her beloved sister was welcome to him.
‘No,’ she replied, and walked out the door.
Max
The dumpster was close to full, which made his job easier; he only had to lift up the lid and lean in to grab the bag. Its pale-grey plastic was in stark contrast with the large, black polythene bags from the shops. His eyes fell on a cardboard tray of discarded sandwiches and cakes. He grabbed a couple of triangular plastic containers of what resembled ham and chicken salad and three clingwrapped slices. Old habits died hard, and besides, he was ravenous. Waste not, want not. Harry looked agitated when he got back into the car – even more so when his eyes set on the food.
‘Oh, Jesus, tell me you didn’t just pull that out of the bin?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with it. Do you want one?’ He offered a box of sandwiches. Harry shrunk away from it like it carried the plague.
‘No, thanks, lost my appetite.’
Max set the food aside on the floor of the seat well and set his attention to the disposed-of plastic bag. Other old habits died hard, too. He opened the glovebox and poked around until he found a first aid kit. He knew it would be there, it was one of Helena’s things: she was a good Girl Guide and took the ‘be prepared’ motto to heart. He was certain she’d have insisted on Harry carrying the right safety gear. There were probably jump leads in the boot, too. He pulled out a pair of rubber gloves and put them on.
‘Shouldn’t you be taking that to the police?’
‘Yes,’ was the simple answer, but life was seldom that simple.
The handles were knotted loosely and it only took a few moments to release them. The contents of the bag were hardly the stuff of conspiracy: muesli bar wrappers, empty takeaway drink containers. He gave them a sniff: hot chocolate. This was the sort of rubbish that went into the wheelie bin at home, not the kind of thing you drove kilometres away from home to dump around the back of the shops – unless you had something to hide. This was his man, he knew it, he knew it as certainly as he knew his own heart. He rummaged deeper into the bag. Tags – there were several clothing tags, and he pulled them out to examine them in the light. The sizes were all SW – small women’s.
For the first time Max felt a true glimmer of hope. Meredith had challenged him with the likelihood Billy was already dead, and although his heart had refused to believe it, his pragmatic head had told him it was a possibility. But dead people didn’t need new clothes. He rummaged again, and his fingers crinkled against a cellophane wrapper. He brought it to the top and his face curved into a smile as he recognised the small rectangular shape. Tampons, this had held tampons.
‘She’s alive.’ He looked at his son then, and repeated the words to validate them, make them real. ‘She’s alive. This is our guy.’
‘You have to take that to the police then, you have to let them know.’
He should, he knew he should, but even as he envisaged Meredith’s face, he knew he wouldn’t. This was too personal. He had to do this himself. If he delivered this piece of information he’d be thanked and then excluded yet again, probably after being reprimanded for meddling. He couldn’t allow that to happen. Besides which, Meredith was damn good at her job, so she’d come to the same conclusion about this guy and probably sooner rather than later; but for the moment he felt it was up to him. It had been a long time since he’d felt the excitement of the hunt. It was game on.
‘Harry, this is our man. We need to find out everything we can about him so we can find Billy.’ He felt a twinge of guilt at putting the next question to the boy. ‘I know your mother would have a fit, but I really need you to take me to your house so we can get on the internet and do some hunting. I know this puts you in an awkward position, and if she finds out you’ll be in the deepest shit imaginable, but we have to do this, for Billy’s sake.’
‘This isn’t just about Billy is it?’
An astute boy, but then he’d always been the observer, the one who stood back and waited until he was entirely sure and comfortable with something before he’d participate. It was in stark contrast to his sister who, if it looked like a good time was to be had, was in, with no questions asked. To her, parents were just the fun police – and in the end he’d failed to be even that.
‘No, it’s not.’ There was no point in lying.
‘Oh well,’ Harry said, and pulled the car back out onto the street. ‘It’s not like I’m not used to being in trouble.’
Billy
The fine twine of hair feels soothing as she rolls it through her fingers. Beads of sweat pepper her forehead, and when she closes her eyes she can smell the damp sweetness of tropical forest, her skin feels the waves of heat that beat down with the sun and her ears buzz with the murmuring of the sea. She knows she is getting sick, that her back burns like fire and she is hot with fever, but it is comforting to let herself relax into the visions that merge with her reality, and she doesn’t fight them. Her Bubu sits cross-legged on the mat before her, hands moving with hypnotic rhythm and grace over the flax kato she is weaving, while Billy plaits her own strands. Her warm brown eyes hold Billy’s, a smile crinkling the edges with wisdom and knowing. A hibiscus flower flares a bloom of red behind her ear. Bubu is talking to her, but her words sound filtered through water, indistinct and muted. Billy leans closer, closes her eyes to concentrate on each syllable, and like a photographic image the words come into focus. He’s coming back, sweetheart. He’s coming back. Be strong. I love you. He’s coming back? Her senses are wrenched back into the present. He can’t be coming back already? She strains to listen, trying to hear over the whoosh, whoosh of her racing heart. And with a sense of dread she hears something, something that chills her. She hears the turn of the key in the lock.
Bradley
Coming back here was dumb, every ounce of his being told him it was; he should have just driven straight back home to his wife and kids, and sorted his shit out. Yet somehow, here he was, standing again outside the nondescript grey door, arms spread, hands leaning against the door jamb, rocking side to side. That this one door and what lay behind it should hold such a power over his future beggared belief. He was in some warped horror movie: go on, choose a door, they’re all bad. Jesus, the police were looking for her now; he couldn’t take the chance of them finding her here. He had to get rid of her. Fuck, if only she’d taken the money when she had the chance, they would both be free of all this. But she had made her choice, and now, one way or another, they would both pay the price. He leaned his forehead against the door, but its cool surface didn’t do anything to quell the turmoil of his thoughts. How the fuck was he going to get rid of her without her turning around and dobbing him in? Sell her into slavery? If only it was as easy as Googling a solution. What would you type in for that? ‘I accidently kidnapped a girl. How do I fix it?’ Could he still buy her off after all this? Not now he was fucking unemployed; he was going to need every cent he had – but it might be a sacrifice he had to make. With each thought he could feel the pressure building in his chest, the pulse of blood aching its way across his temples, a tic in the corner of his eye. This was all her fault. If she hadn’t smirked at him when he couldn’t get it up, if she hadn’t rejected his offer of cash and freedom, if she hadn’t turned into such a huge fucking millstone around his neck, he could be getting on with his life, he could be plain old Bradley Fordyce, living a simple life, a life that didn’t involve having to lie to his wife. The thought of Ange brought corporeal memories so intense his skin shivered. If there had been one golden lining to all of this it was the reawakening of his lust, and the fulfilment of those feelings of dominance and command over her. It had been divine. But even that could slip away because he was losing his grip on the wheel – and it was all the girl’s fault, the fact his life had turned to such total shit was her fault, it had been fine until she came along, and as the throb in his forehead intensified, and the pressure of his rage built so high he could taste it and he felt overwhelmed by that need, the need to take it all out on something, someone, and the need was so intense and so unbearable, he could imagine the leather of the whip cool in his hand, and his heart began to race in anticipation, anticipation and excitement of what he knew he shouldn’t do, mustn’t do, but knew he would, he had to.
He turned the key and stepped through the portal to his other world, the world where he was God and his heart sang as his subject genuflected before him. He would allow himself five minutes, five minutes to soothe his frustrations before he went home and faced the potential fallout of being out of a job, if he even had the guts to tell Ange. Five minutes was just reward for his shit of a day, he deserved it. He felt his breath quicken as his fingers curled back around the smooth leather of the whip.
Max
Helena’s new home was more humble than he had imagined. It pained him to admit his retreat from life had cost them both, on many levels. His need to run had been so powerful, so consuming, he hadn’t even considered what it would mean to her, and to Harry. His instinct to protect himself ignored everyone but him, so he had lost all capacity to hold the needs of others in his heart, even those most dear. The blackness had descended with such finality it was irresistible. Now, emerging from the dark, it shamed him to see what he’d done – to them all. Looking at the 1970s carpet, the faded curtains, smelling the faint mustiness, it all weighed his heart down further. They had been living the dream in their new home in the poshest subdivision. It hit him like a punch to the chest that they – well, she – had probably lost the house in a mortgagee sale. It would have been yet another insult after so much trauma.
‘My room is this way.’
Max followed Harry down to the end of the hallway and then paused in the doorway, felt the floor shift beneath him. Gone was the bedroom adorned with All Blacks posters and his cycling heroes; the sports trophies were nowhere to be seen. It was clear the last remnants of Harry’s fourteen-year-old self had been overlain by what appeared to be some slave to Satan. The curtains were black; the posters on the wall were all of death-metal bands with images of skulls and demons and creatures that brought a shiver to his spine. The room had a television and a games console on a dresser over by the window. They’d always been adamant they would never let the kids have a television in their room. It appeared many standards had slipped. Harry had slid into a chair in front of a large computer screen perched on a cheap and tiny wood-veneer desk. He hit the space bar, and Max noted the boy had password-protected it; from his mother’s prying eyes, no doubt. He pulled up Google.
‘What’s the guy’s name?’
‘Bradley Fordyce.’
The letters appeared across the screen and within seconds lines of hits scrolled down the page. ‘It’s not a common name, so most of these hits must be for him. You can find out all sorts of shit about someone on Google. It’s always a good place to start.’
Max’s urge was to correct the boy’s use of language, but judging from the room, it was probably just symptomatic of the newfound attitude. Harry’s fingers flew across the keyboard and guided the wireless mouse in a minute ballet. ‘Here we go, he works at Prime Insurance Company. Looks pretty geeky in the photo.’ Now he was in his own territory, it was as if Harry was coming out of his shell.
Max leaned over to look at the photo. Bradley Fordyce had blondish hair, slightly receding, but well cut to hide it. His face looked open and friendly, and boyishly handsome, with just a sprinkle of wrinkles around the smiling eyes. Was this the face of a kidnapper? A felon? A murderer? Looked like a typical middle-aged male. Actually, not all that typical. His face was lean, he had the look of someone who looked after himself well, someone who hadn’t succumbed to the extra kilograms many men of that age packed on when they decided they were too old to bother working at it.
He was still examining the picture when Harry flicked it onto another screen. This one was familiar. Facebook. ‘We can look at his profile.’ Wife, Ange; two kids, Katie and Ellie. Cute. Max had barely taken it in when Harry had flicked onto another page – his rate of absorbing information and moving on was phenomenal. Each time he changed pages there was a gentle whirr from a printer on the floor by his feet. ‘Ha, he’s particular about his privacy settings, but his wife’s not. There’s all sorts here on her page.’
‘Have you done something like this before?’ Max asked.
Harry looked a little uncomfortable. ‘We had to search a few things for school projects.’ Max knew a lie when he heard one, but he wasn’t about to pursue it. He’d come to the conclusion everyone was entitled to their secrets; the world worked better that way. Mind you, if what they were doing right now was anything to go by, it didn’t stop people trying to pry into them. It would seem his son wasn’t the squeaky-clean kid he’d left behind. Part of him felt bad about that, but another part…
‘Do you smoke?’
The boy’s head snapped around, a look of mild panic in his eyes. Max fixed him with what he hoped was an indifferent look. Harry pushed his chin out and looked him in the eye.
‘Yes.’ He didn’t add the ‘and what are you going to do about it?’ Well, not in words, anyway.
‘Good, I need a cigarette. You got one?’ The boy’s face changed from one of shock to a shy smile. He leaned over to the bottom drawer of the desk, pulled out a pencil case, unzipped it and removed a packet of cigarettes and a lighter.
‘Mind if I join you?’
After a short break on the back porch and then another fifteen minutes of searching, they had a reasonable background for the guy – it was scary how easily they had amassed information. They knew that Bradley Fordyce attended a gym in the city centre and had come eighteenth in its 2011 annual stationary rowing challenge, which was fifteen spots better than the previous year. They knew his paternal ancestry back for one hundred and eighty-seven years, courtesy of a relative who was into genealogy and had posted it all online. Fordyce’s family had emigrated from Britain and been in New Zealand for five generations – which didn’t help them much for the purposes of today – but dear second-cousin James had been kind enough to post everyone’s birth date. That was handy. They also discovered that his wife, Angela, or Ange as she was known, sold Tupperware and belonged to a book group called Readers Anonymous. Not so Anonymous after all. So far, so ordinary. It was good background stuff, but Max wanted specifics.
‘Go onto the Auckland City Council website.’
‘Sure.’ The fingers danced over the keyboard. ‘What are you wanting?’
‘Rating information, I want to find out about their home.’
Harry typed in the address and the information flashed up in moments. ‘Rateable value of 1.6 million dollars. Newish. Sweet. Bet that’s flash.’
‘Probably just pretty average. This is Auckland after all. In some suburbs that would barely get you a shack, especially if it was a shack with a sea view or was in the right school zone.’
‘True,’ Harry said as he scrolled further down the page. ‘Bet they have a decent mortgage, though.’
‘Not necessarily. Look, the house is owned by a company, Robinson Group.’
‘That’s the wife’s maiden name, isn’t it?’
‘Can you look up the company? Go to the Companies Office. I want to see if they have any other properties.’ This guy had Billy, he was sure of it. But where? If you were holding someone against their will, you had to be pretty confident she wouldn’t be found, and that she wouldn’t escape – which meant having somewhere secure to keep them – secure and isolated. Otherwise the neighbours might notice the screaming. He couldn’t picture Fordyce secreting her away in a hallway cupboard at the house. The wife would be sure to notice. Auckland was a sprawling city, there were plenty of places to lose someone.
‘Okay, here we go, they have eight properties. Not a bad portfolio for a mum-and-dad company. Odd they’ve done it as a company instead of a trust. Probably some creative form of tax evasion. I thought the government was tidying up those kinds of loopholes.’
Max looked at his son again. Things had changed a lot in a few years. Here was his boy talking about portfolios and company structures. He had a lot to catch up on. ‘We can Google Street View them all if you want?’
‘Knock yourself out.’
The first four properties were clearly residential rentals, all modest-looking homes in modest suburbs. She’s not there, his head told him. Too many nosy neighbours, too close. You’d hear any kind of commotion – hell, one of the houses looked close enough to the neighbours’ boundary you could probably hear them fart. The retail and industrial properties were more likely prospects, but the Street View photographs showed all of the premises were occupied and there were plenty of vehicles around. It was a good idea, but looked to be a dead end. Max went to push the hair back from his forehead, but was met by stubble – there were plenty of new things to get used to. His eyes flicked to the time, shit, it was after eight o’clock, he’d completely forgotten to check in with Meredith. The intensity of the day weighed down on him, and he slumped forward, eyes closed, resting his forehead on his hands.
