the morning here. What’s this about?’
‘Sorry, I forgot about the time difference. It’s just…’
Cahill switched on the desk lamp and reached for a pen, writing ‘Tim Stark’ at the top of a blank page in his notebook. He could hear Melanie sniffing back tears and felt a knot of anxiety form in his stomach. Tim was a good friend and something was clearly wrong.
‘Okay, listen, Melanie. I need you to slow down. I mean, let’s start with the basics. You said something about an airport. Which airport?’
‘Denver International.’
Cahill jotted that down underneath Tim’s name in the notebook.
‘Are you there right now?’
‘No. I’m at home in Kansas City.’
‘I’m not following you, Melanie.’
‘It’s the crash,’ she said. ‘It’s all over the TV. Haven’t you seen it?’
The knot in his stomach twisted inside.
‘Give me a minute.’
Cahill got up, still holding the phone to his ear, and went to the couch where he lifted a remote and pointed it at the TV. The screen came to life and he switched to a news channel.
Fractured images showed onscreen in a loop: firefighters tackling a huge blaze and ambulance crews rushing in and out of frame while the blue lights of their vehicles filled the night.
Cahill muted the volume and looked at the info bar scrolling along the bottom of the screen, describing a plane crash outside Denver, Colorado. His home town.
He sat on the couch watching the screen.
‘I see it now,’ Cahill said into the phone, his voice sounding hollow.
‘Tim said he was going to be on that flight,’ she said. ‘He was in Denver and called me to say that he had business in Washington and that he’d got a late cancellation on the flight. He took it and-’
She was speaking in a rush.
‘I’m not sure I understand why you’re calling me,’ he said. ‘Or what you think I can do to help you. I’m based in the UK now. In Scotland.’
‘I know that,’ she said. ‘I found your contact details in Tim’s desk. You were in the Service together, weren’t you? The Secret Service.’
‘We were.’
‘He talked about you and the other guys a lot. About what it was like back then. Said you were the best.’
She stopped talking and sobbed. Cahill didn’t know what to say. The info bar on the TV screen continued to scroll, telling Cahill that there were no survivors expected from the crash.
‘Melanie, I’m real sorry about this. Tim was a good man. A friend.’
Cahill ran a hand over his face and up through his hair, feeling like all he wanted to do was sleep. But he knew that he would not get to sleep with images of the plane wreckage seared into his mind.
‘Tim got fired from the Service in the Fall of last year,’ Melanie said. ‘Didn’t even get his pension.’
‘I didn’t know. He seemed fine when I saw him.’
‘He wouldn’t tell me why he got fired. Then he got another job. Said it was something he couldn’t tell me about but that it paid well.’
Cahill’s antennae started to twitch.
‘But it didn’t pay well,’ Melanie went on. ‘I mean, not so far as I could see. It didn’t pay at all. Not officially. But there were always cash deposits in our account. Nothing huge, just enough for what we needed. Like he was being careful not to put any more in the account. I was worried and I looked for something, anything, to show me what he was doing. I mean, a payslip or a contract. Anything.’
‘And you couldn’t find anything, right?’
‘Yes. There was nothing. And he was away for days on end. Sometimes more than a week.’
‘You do know what that sounds like, Melanie.’
She said nothing.
‘It sounds like he was involved in something bad,’ Cahill said. ‘Something criminal.’
‘I know,’ she said.
She sniffed loudly and when she spoke her voice wavered.
‘But I can’t believe that about him. Not Tim. It’s not like him, you know?’
Cahill did know. Stark had been such a Boy Scout — joining the Secret Service from the FBI after receiving a bunch of commendations for his work there. Mr All-American, a smart, tough operator. And he hadn’t changed in all the years Cahill had known him.
‘It doesn’t sound like the man I know,’ Cahill told her.
‘Thank you,’ she said, sounding genuinely pleased.
‘What’s the problem there? Why are the police not talking to you?’
‘Oh, it’s not that they haven’t been talking.’
A man appeared on the TV. The onscreen caption identified him as a Colorado official of the NTSB — the US National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB would normally be responsible for investigating the cause of the disaster.
‘I don’t understand, Melanie,’ Cahill told her. ‘I thought you said that they wouldn’t tell you anything.’
‘They won’t.’
Cahill sighed.
‘I know he was on that flight, Alex. I mean, he called me from the airport before he boarded and told me the flight number, when he’d get to Washington, the name of his hotel there. But he sounded weird. Not like himself.’
Cahill wasn’t following her at all now and said so.
‘They say they don’t have any record of him on the flight,’ Melanie said. ‘His name isn’t on the passenger manifest.’
2
Now Cahill was wide awake.
‘Have you called Tim’s cell phone?’ he asked.
‘Yes, of course,’ Melanie replied. ‘It defaults to voicemail.’
‘What about his car?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Is it at the airport somewhere, maybe in a long-stay car park or something?’
‘I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘Look, get back in touch with the police and tell them that he said he would be on the flight and that he’s ex- Secret Service. That should get their attention. Ask them to check for his car and call the airline as well.’
She took a few deep breaths.
‘I’ll do that.’
‘They’ll have access to security cameras covering every inch of the airport so if his car is there they’ll find it. But you realise that will just confirm he was at the airport. Not that he got on that flight. Or any flight.’
‘It would be better if he wasn’t on it, you know. They’re saying that there are no survivors.’
‘Take small steps right now. Find out what you can.’
Cahill was about to end the call when something jagged into his mind, a shard of mental glass.
‘Melanie, you said he got fired from the Service. Have you tried calling there?’
‘I did. I couldn’t get past the front desk. It was almost like they fed me a script. I don’t know what’s going on.’ She started crying. ‘I trusted him,’ she said. ‘And he never let me down before.’
‘He was always someone I could trust,’ Cahill told her.
