Days 52 and 53 – Writing exercise

You wake up in a room, a note on the mirror, a whole new identity, and a card with my new name on it.

…

I went to bed Thursday night after a few drinks at the Fox and Hounds with a half dozen or so lads who were having a Stag night for James Aloysius Corbey, the groom-to-be on Saturday.

That’s the first thing I remembered when I woke up the next morning, slightly hungover and vague.  About where I was, and who I was.

Because I woke up in a place I didn’t sleep.  The walls of the room were wallpapered, not painted; the roof was ornate plasterwork, not plain; and the main light was a chandelier, not a round plastic light found at IKEA.

As for the curtains, well, by that time I was beginning to think something was terribly wrong, like the Stag party boys had moved me to another hotel as a practical joke.

A quick glance sideways almost gave me a sign of relief, they had not planted a dead body, or worse, one of the three girls that turned up halfway into the session and ‘performed’ for the Stag.

I hoped his wife would never be found out.  Perhaps that was why they chose to be at least 50 miles away from his town. 

A sheet of paper on the bedside table told me I was in Morden, wherever that was.  Scrawled hurriedly was a note, “pack up your old life and put it in the suitcase, you are no longer that person”.

I shrugged.

It was a condition of joining the service that you left your old life behind.  It wouldn’t be that hard; my old life wasn’t a life; I had just been going through the motions. 

I hadn’t quite considered the ramifications of the change, but now that it was a reality, it wasn’t that hard. 

Out of curiosity, I looked out the window.  It overlooked the lane outside the hotel.  It looked almost like an anonymous suburban house.

I went to the closet, and my clothes were hanging up, the suitcase was on the rack, and yesterday’s clothes were in a laundry bag.  I quickly attended to cleaning the room of any evidence I’d been there.

Then I went into the bathroom, and everything was laid out, like I would have.  The only thing out of place was a handwritten note tacked to the mirror.

Written in spidery but neat cursive script, the calligraphy of a woman rather than a man.  It was neat and just readable.

Jack,

That is your name now, Jack Williamson.  The rest of your details are in an envelope in the drawer beside the bed.  Memorise them and destroy the paperwork in the usual manner. 

Your mission is to find Eloise Margarethe Anderson.

Your new cell phone has an untraceable email with the details of her disappearance.  There is a backpack under the bed with everything you will need. 

You will be contacted in due course, but if you have information or require research assistance, there is a number to call.  It will not be answered; it is for text messages only. 

Good luck.

Unsigned, which was no surprise.

There was a slight aroma of a familiar scent, the sort a woman would use, and I tried to remember who she was.

Tried.  The weight of the previous evening still hung over my head.  Thinking wasn’t easy, so I went and stood under the cold water for a few minutes to wash the cobwebs away.

I should have expected this.

Having graduated, if it could be called that, from training, the sort that taught you skills that most people would never need, and watching a large percentage of the other candidates wash out one by one, I made it to the last ten.

We were told we would learn whether we succeeded or failed within the week, and that we should go home and wait.  That had been five weeks ago, and I was sure I had failed.

Apparently, I had not failed.

Or this was a final test.  A final final test.

It bothered me that I could be transported from one place to another and know absolutely nothing about it.  According to one of the instructors, if that happened, you were as good as dead. 

Had it happened in a real-life situation, I would be.

So, after half an hour, dressed and compus mentus, just the thought of what had happened scared me.  We had been told to be on our guard the whole time, and I had not.

I pulled out the backpack, retrieved the file, discovered Jack Williamson was not the greatest of characters, and that the missing girl was no one of consequence, just someone’s daughter who went to London for a friend’s party and was never seen again.  She was reported missing. The police kept the file open for a month but found nothing substantive. The evidence pointed to the fact that she had purposely left the party. They tracked her to Waterloo Station, where she was met by a young man, and they disappeared into the underground.

They did not get on a train, underground or overground, and did not leave the station, at least as far as CCTV could see.  Conclusion: she did not want to be found.  The meeting at Waterloo was planned, and the man was known to her.  There were photos of her and the man, both identified.  There was a copy of the police file, and it showed they’d gone the extra mile.

Why?

Something didn’t add up.

I guess that was why it had become my first, and quite possibly last, mission.

….

The hotel was a few minutes from Morden underground station and then to Waterloo.  I didn’t waste time thinking about the how or the why of getting there; I figured that it was their way of saying that whatever you had before was gone, this is how it’s going to be, a different place, a different name, a different case.

There was no one at the hotel to ask, and even if there had been, I was sure any questions would be met with blank expressions and no information forthcoming.  It was probably a safe house.

Going out the front door, having seen up one from my room to the foyer, and after dropping the room key in the box provided for self-checkout, I saw an elderly couple going in as I went out.

“Good morning for a walk,” the lady said.

“Sounds like a good idea,”  I said, holding the door open for them, then heading off.

It was a short walk to the station, then a short wait for the Northern Line train.  I had enough time to read up on Waterloo Station, its entrances and exits, and some interesting station plans.

There was an interview with the girl’s father; her mother had left a few years earlier, abandoning them both for a work colleague.  The ex-wife did not paint the husband in a good light, subject to bouts of unemployment, heavy drinking, and domestic violence.  An interesting question, why leave a young girl in his care?

The neighbours didn’t see him much, not since his wife left, and said that he had changed.  The girl had been taken into child care, but he had managed to get her released into his custody on probation.  Nothing had happened until she disappeared.

If things were all right at home, why would she just up and leave?  He would not have let her go to the party if he didn’t trust her.

There was a document listing social media profiles found by the IT specialist assigned to the case, for the girl, her friends, particularly the one she went to the party with, and several email accounts for the father, mother and the two girls.

There was another, for the man she went to meet at Waterloo station.  The last message he received and the last message she sent told Jim which train she was on and the estimated arrival time.  After that, both phones went dead and hadn’t been reactivated.

I had photos of the two the last time they were picked up by CCTV, at the end of the Northern line arrival platform at Waterloo.

It was my starting point

…

Standing at the end of the platform, I looked up and saw the camera that had recorded their presence.  Behind me was the dark tunnel, and while they could have escaped that way, it was unlikely.  The CCTV would have been monitored, and they would not have got far.

I sat down at the very end, the last seat, and looked at the photograph.  Nothing special.  It was just one blurry shot taken from the continuous feed.

I sent a message to the email on the phone, “Can I see any CCTV footage relevant to the two at the end of the platform?” And waited.

In an idle moment, I loaded the Times crossword and started filling it in.

Five minutes, a reply, “Yes.”  There was an attachment, and I opened it.  Three minutes, walking to the end, talking, sitting, exactly where I was sitting, then getting up and retracing their steps, just as a train arrived and a lot of people got off.  That was where the CCTV lost track of them.

But…

Why were they sitting here?

Out of curiosity, I felt under the seat, expecting to find old chewing gum, but instead found two cell phones tucked under the metal fold, held in place by double-sided tape.

I made sure that anyone watching the current CCTV would not realise what I was doing.  I was going to assume they’d either thrown them on the tracks to be smashed or tossed them in a rubbish bin.

Not leave them to be retrieved. And if they did leave them, expecting to retrieve them, why hadn’t they come back?

They would be dead now, and I would have to recharge them.  It didn’t explain how they disappeared.

But on the way up to the main overland concourse, I checked all the CCTV locations against those labelled on the plan.  Three were missing, or at the very least, I couldn’t find them.

Three that would make it easy for them to leave without being noticed.  Having lost them at the station, they checked the CCTV footage outside it, but there were gaps.

I sent another email asking for CCTV coverage at any location for the exit near the three missing cameras.  This time it took 15 minutes. There was a reply, but no sign of them, and there was a black hold.

10 more minutes, I received another message and a file.  The file showed, a half hour later, what might have been the girl and man getting into a taxi.  Different clothes, hats hiding their faces, the man with a backpack.  Nothing conclusive, just a feeling.  There was a taxi registration and where it could be found.

I found a three-star hotel and checked in.  On the way from the station, I found a shop selling chargers for the two cell phones, and my first job was to charge them.

…

By the time the two phones were charged, I had the cab’s location and the driver’s number; the driver was an owner who went home at the end of his shift.  He would be there first thing in the morning, and so would I.

As Detective Inspector Strange, or so it said on the warrant card, with a rather interesting photo of my face.  Someone had assumed it might need one.

The phones were password-protected, but then entering the notebook computer solved that small problem.  I’d expected a treasure trove of data, and was immediately disappointed except…

On the man’s phone, photos showed the locations of the CCTV cameras that issued the alerts and a set of images charting a course around the dark spots.

Those photos were from a month ago, so was this disappearance planned? And planned meticulously.  There were no other messages, and the call histories on both phones had been erased except for her last call and one from his phone.

I sent it to my invisible assistant, and it came back with a surprise.  The number belonged to the cab driver who picked them up.  I went back to the CCTV footage and realised the taxi had been waiting for them to appear as they came out of the exit, not hailed by the man.

This was too easy.  How had the police failed to see what I was seeing?  Back to the police file, it seemed once they lost track of them in the station, they had only done a cursory check shortly after they disappeared, thinking they’d head straight for the exits.  They hadn’t.  They had found a place to change, away from prying eyes.

With a few hours to wait for the taxi driver to come off shift, I put my head down to get some rest.

I was woken several hours later by the vibration of the cell phone warning me of an incoming message.

It showed the taxi’s track from the time it picked up the two, including the stops it made afterwards.  It was an address in Guildford, Surrey, about 40 miles away.

A car had been ordered and would be out front of the hotel in an hour. I was to proceed with caution in establishing whether the two were in the house and to report back.

Once again, while washing the cobwebs away, I had to think that this was too easy, that there was something I was missing. The police would have gone through the same processes I had.

I took my time getting there, then parked some distance from the house. It was exposed, and they would see me coming, especially if someone was watching from the upstairs windows. If I had to make an assessment, it would be ideal. More importantly, in an emergency, they could get away quickly without being seen from the front of the house.

It wasn’t a random selection. A lot of thought had gone into this disappearance.

So, given the circumstances, I decided to drive to the front of the house and walk straight to the front door, with purpose, giving the impression I had a purpose to be there.

When I got out of the car, a curtain moved in a window from the house over the road, and I thought I saw movement in the upstairs window. No hesitation, I headed towards the front door, waited for a few seconds while I pretended to check my phone, then knocked, not forcefully, but loud enough for them to hear.

Nothing. No movement, no sounds behind the door.

Don’t knock again too soon and sound impatient. I waited, then knocked again. The same tempo. Not in a hurry.

This time, there were sounds from behind the door, then, with a flourish, it opened.

“Hello, Jack. Come on in.”

I tried not to look surprised. How did these people know I would be turning up on their doorstep? Unless…

The girl and the man were sitting in two chairs opposite someone I instantly recognised.

One of my instructors. The one who had supervised my final test. The one who gave no inkling as to what he was thinking, or believed in giving feedback.

“You’ll be pleased to know that eight out of ten candidates fail this test. It proved to us that you can find people who don’t want to be found. The thing is, we were not sure if the measures we put in place to protect these people were sufficient, and they are not.

But, more to the point, we now want you to find Eloise’s mother, Margarethe. The files will be sent to your phone imminently. In the meantime, a hotel has been booked for you at Heathrow, and you are booked on a flight to Vienna. ” He stood. “Well done. Now, off you go. Progress reports as per protocol.”

I got to sit down for all of five minutes.

Vienna! Wiener Schnitzel and Apfelstrudel. If there was time.

…