photograph suddenly seemed to lie starkly exposed in the center of the table and was all the more shocking because of it.
I heard a simultaneous sharp intake of breath from both my mother and father.
Then my father stretched out and picked up the photo and there was the slightest hesitation in the reach, as though he didn’t really want to look but couldn’t help himself. He took his time studying the image and, when he was done, he glanced across at Sean with taut disdain curling his lip.
“Your handiwork, I presume,” he said coldly.
“No, actually,” I said. “Mine.”
For a second he allowed his bitterness to have free rein before he ruthlessly clamped down on it. But there was something in his face when he looked at me that hadn’t been there before. Or perhaps it was the other way around. Perhaps now when he looked at his only child, the product of both his genes and his nurturing, there was something missing.
I turned away and caught Collingwood watching our frosty exchange with apparent amusement lurking in those mournful eyes. They were a dark brown color, I noticed. That, together with the drooping lids, gave him the appearance of an elderly bloodhound. But one who had suddenly picked up a hot new scent, and was hunting.
“So,” Collingwood said, dropping his hands onto his thighs as though preparing to get to his feet, “no doubt you’ll need to discuss this—”
“I don’t believe so,” my father said, interrupting him. Just when I thought his arrogance had reached new levels, he did cast his eyes sideways at his wife, for all the world like her opinion mattered. She nodded, and the slightest flicker of a smile crossed my father’s thin lips. He turned back to Collingwood. “I’m prepared to help you all I can.”
Collingwood continued to rise, but only to lean across the table and offer my father a solemn handshake. “Glad to hear it, sir,” he said, shaking my mother’s hand also, almost as an afterthought, and subsiding again. He shifted his attention to Parker, waving a hand towards Vondie’s picture, which he’d left—deliberately, I’m sure—on the table. “So, Mr. Armstrong, can you help me to, ah,
My mother gave a start of surprise. “Oh, but surely that’s—”
“The woman who held you hostage—yes,” I cut in to stop her blurting out that she’d watched Sean and me take both her unwanted houseguests prisoner and that they were still being held at our behest. Regrettably perhaps, the only quick way I could think of to shut her up was to remind her. “The woman who allowed her partner to threaten to rape you.”
She paled, then a dark, mottled flush bloomed across her cheeks. Peripherally, I saw my father’s head snap round, but I held on to my mother’s distraught gaze until I saw the understanding creep into it and strip from her tongue whatever words she’d been about to voice.
When I let go, I expected to find my father glaring at me for raking it up. Instead, he had picked the photograph up again and was studying it afresh. It occurred to me that it was probably the first time he’d got a look at one of his wife’s captors. I don’t know how much she’d told him about her ordeal, but it must have been enough.
Parker, who’d missed nothing of my father’s brooding double take, got easily to his feet and came round the desk to shake the government man’s hand. “Would you give us some time to make a few calls, Mr. Collingwood?” he asked politely.
“No problem,” Collingwood said. “I’m grateful for any assistance you can offer.”
Parker favored him with a bland smile. “We’ll see what we can do.”
Sean and I followed Parker out into the reception area, closing the office door behind us.
“Okay,” Parker said quietly. “Get on the phone to whoever’s holding those two and cut them loose.” I nodded and started to reach for my mobile. I had carefully erased the number for Gleet’s farm from the phone’s memory, but I had it stored in my own instead.
“Oh, and tell your guy to make sure he gives them back a cell phone or access to a landline, okay?”
I paused in mid-dial. “Okay.”
He smiled. “Good,” he said, then half-opened the door and added, louder, “Bill, would you show Mr. Collingwood into one of the conference rooms while we make some inquiries on his behalf?”
“Yeah, boss,” Bill said, emerging from behind the reception desk. As he passed Parker, he gave him a slight nod. Obviously, there was something going on here and I didn’t fully appreciate the finer details. But before I could ask, Gleet’s number in the UK began to ring out and I didn’t have time to wonder about it. I crossed quickly to an empty office where I wouldn’t be overheard.
“Good thing, too,” was all Gleet had to say when I passed on Parker’s instructions. “They was starting to stink in there. Even the pigs was complaining.”
“Just watch yourselves when you let them go,” I warned. “The woman’s got a nasty kick to her, and I wouldn’t trust the guy anywhere near your sister.”
I heard Gleet snort even at the other end of a transatlantic phone line. “He’ll be a brave one if he tries anything on with May. She sleeps with that fuckin’ shotgun alongside her under the covers,” he muttered. “Don’t you worry, Charlie. I’ll stick the pair of’em in the back of the van and drive’em round in circles for a while before I let’em go. I’ll make sure I dump’em far enough away that they wouldn’t find the place again in a month of Sundays.”
“Great. Don’t forget to let them have a phone, though.”
“They had one with’em, didn’t they?” he said. “I’ll make sure it’s charged up when they get it back. No worries.”
“Thank you,” I said, heartfelt. “I owe you a big one for this, Gleet.”
“Nah, I’aven’t forgotten Dublin,” he said, and his voice had entirely lost its joky edge to turn stone sober. “I think this just about makes us even.”
We let Collingwood stew for half an hour while we sat in Parker’s office, drinking his excellent coffee as he chatted with my parents. Parker was erudite enough to bring my father out of his simmering silence and coax conversation out of my mother. All things to all men—or all women, come to that. By the end of it, I could see my parents drawing unfavorable comparisons with Sean, but by then I didn’t care.
Sean preferred not to take part in this conversation, sidelining himself. Perhaps he’d tried to talk with my parents too many times in the past, under too many sets of circumstances, and had tired of having the effort thrown back in his face. He wasn’t used to failure. It wasn’t a state of affairs he had to deal with very often.
After I’d finished my phone call with Gleet and joined them, I’d tried to catch Sean’s eye with a question mark in my expression.
Sean had just given me a faint knowing smile.
I shrugged, feeling outside the joke. And that feeling only increased when, some thirty-five minutes later, Bill Rendelson brought Collingwood back through. All Parker did was thank the government man courteously for his time and tell him we’d be in touch.
I expected Collingwood to show some signs of annoyance at what must have seemed a pointless delay at the very least, but instead he just ducked his head in that strange nervous little gesture of good-bye, and limply shook hands again all round.
“I’m sure we’ll meet again soon, sir,” he said to my father, in a hurry to leave now. “As soon as we’ve recovered our rogue agent, I’ll talk to the cops in Bushwick and see if we can get some of this mess straightened out.”
“Thank you,” my father said with understated dignity, as though Collingwood was offering to grant him some minor favor rather than possibly salvaging his entire career. Maybe he just took exception to the veiled threat—no Vondie, no clean slate.
After Collingwood had gone it was my mother, again, who cut to the heart of the matter.
“It all rather sounds like our salvation,” she said, her voice tragic, “but how do we know we can trust him?”
“At this stage, we don’t,” I said. She looked confused, but for a moment the only analogy that came to mind
