“Do you like flowers Mrs. McKenzie?” he asked, with a bounce of brightness in his voice, hoping to take her mind off Trudy.
“Not much.” Her apartment was overflowing with bouquets from well-meaning well-wishers—three since Margery’s call at lunchtime—and mention of more flowers immediately crumpled her face in thoughts of funerals.
Lisa had spent most of her time in the waiting room staring bleary-eyed at a bulletin board, strewn with pictures of missing people, culled from the Police Gazette. Some bore inscriptions that terrified her: “Missing since October 15th 1982” was boldly printed under the smiling face of one little boy, forever four years-old in the minds of his distraught parents. Another said. “Last heard of in 1991—stated intention of visiting friend in Morocco.” “That’s ten years,” she mused, biting furiously at the quick of her nails.
“She’s not here,” she screamed suddenly, “Trudy’s not here.”
Peter leapt at her scream, flinging aside the seven-year-old National Geographic he’d been scanning.
“Look,” she ordered, her head zipping back and forth in a desperate search for her daughter’s likeness. Peter looked.
The constable came up behind them. “It’s too soon,” he said, with quiet authority. “It takes at least a month for the photos to be in the Gazette. Anyway,” he lightened his tone, “I’m sure we’ll have found her by then.”
Finally, after refusing an offer of tea from a grumpily indifferent sergeant, who had made it clear he would be sacrificing some of his own personal supply, they decided to take a walk around the airport. Everywhere she looked Lisa saw Trudy; every girl with long dark hair grabbed her attention; every female face, and some male, had familiar features. And what if she’d disguised herself? What if she’d cut her hair, bleached it, changed style, altered her entire appearance? No one escaped scrutiny without at least a cursory inspection, irrespective of age, size, or colour. The airport lounges were filled with potential Trudies and an embarrassed Peter eventually dragged her, fairly forcibly, away from the busiest areas.
“She won’t be here Luv,” he said, firmly taking her arm. “The constable has gone to enquire if there is any more information, I said we’d meet him in the restaurant.”
“What about that girl over there?” she tried, refusing to give up.
He looked. “She’s at least forty. Come on. Let’s go and wait for Margery.”
A dark ponytail bobbed in the distance—she struggled in its wake. “Stop it,” he commanded sharply, dragging her toward the restaurant.
“Nothing new,” the policeman said as they met a few minutes later. “I’m sure we’ll find her easily once we’ve got the photo,” he added with a smile to Lisa, hoping to make up for his previous insensitivity.
“Roger might not know anything,” she replied coldly, refusing to get her hopes up. Disappointment had knocked her back into the old kitchen chair too many times already.
Peter stepped in. “We won’t know if we don’t try. Trudy has to be somewhere, and you know how mad she was about that computer. Maybe this guy will know something, or some of his friends might.”
Roger certainly knew where Trudy was, though had no idea what she was doing.
Trudy was typing again. Sending another message to her mother that would get no further than the little green screen. The first message in nearly five hours.
“MUM. WHERE ARE YOU. PLEASE HURRY …” Her fingers paused, the flurry of activity had sapped her energy. Every movement she made away from her breathing hole in the door now requiring more and more effort. She was already completely drained by the time she had crawled to the computer but, with her lungs screaming for air, she willed herself to stay just long enough to keep in touch with her mother.
“GET DAD,” she added, in desperation, and then she was gone again. Her painful pilgrimage starting once more.
“Do you like the herring?” Yolanda enquired, stuffing a large prawn into her mouth, peering at Bliss through the trio of tall white candles, which formed the only barrier between them as they sat in one of the few remaining Dutch restaurants in the tourist resort, a few miles to the north of the port. The ride in the BMW had taken twenty minutes but, as Yolanda explained, they had no choice, unless he preferred Indonesian, Chinese, or American; all of it fast and foreign. Bliss looked at the partially exposed fish skeleton on his plate, debating how and when to finish it; wishing he’d opted for a burger or chow mien.
“Every visitor to Holland must eat at least one raw herring,” she continued as if reading from a Michelin guide. “It is the law.” She kept a straight face and for a moment he could have believed her.
Then he laughed. “You’re joking.”
She smiled, admitting nothing.
“Anyway,” he said, “if they are that good, why didn’t you have one?”
She pulled a face and pretended to spit on the floor. “They’re disgusting. We only give them to visitors.”
“Now you tell me.”
“If you are a good boy and eat all of your herring,” she said, slowly lifting a huge prawn to dangle tantalisingly in front of his face, “you can have another one.” Laughing, she quickly popped the prawn, whole, into her mouth.
The candlelight flickered between them as he studied her. Analysing her face carefully, without staring, trying to identify the one or two unique features that would distinguish her from any other woman. Fashionably unruly short blond hair, baby blue eyes, nicely formed white teeth and a pair of lips some men would kill for.. But such a description could fit thousands of similarly attractive women. As a detective he searched for something more noteworthy, more uniquely identifiable, more defining: The deep dimple in her left cheek, not reflected in the right, was certainly striking, though hardly conclusive. Her nose was perhaps a little bulbous; not unattractively so. But the feature which struck him so positively lay either side of her mouth, where her flesh creased deeply, and perfectly, into a pair of delicately curved parentheses, bracketing her lips and accentuating her smile.
Tiredness dragged him down as his eyelids drifted together and, giving his head a quick shake, he renewed the conversation. “I wonder what has happened to LeClarc.”
“They threw him off the ship,” she replied casually.
“But why? They obviously planned to put him in the truck …”
She interrupted, laughing. “I know, but he was too fat and they couldn’t get him in.”
Bliss laughed with her, “No, I don’t think so … although …?”
Yolanda’s face became serious. “What’s he worth?”
“What do you mean?”
“He must be valuable or they wouldn’t want him. People steal things because of what they are worth.”
“Sometimes,” he agreed. “Usually … But sometimes they take things because they are jealous, to get revenge, or … or lots of reasons.”
“What about the other eight missing people?” she asked, changing tack. “How many of their bodies were never found?”
He thought for a moment while the waiter collected their plates. The herring’s eyes had been staring accusingly at him for at the past five minutes and he was pleased to see it go. “Only one for sure—the woman; the one who committed suicide. There were a few burned bits left from the guy who hit the train, but it must have been like trying to identify a pig by examining a barbecued pork chop.
She shuddered. “Dave, I’m eating.”
“You asked,” he said, and continued, in revenge for the