‘Make one,’ Khalil said and hung up.
Back at his hotel, a far cry from the Ritz, he removed the SIM from the mobile phone he’d rescued from the rubbish bin. It was fairly simple to remotely access the server from the SIM card. Stupidly the Moroccan man hadn’t thought to dismantle the phone first: a rookie error, thought Grant. He attached the phone to his computer and watched as the data from the handset downloaded.
There wasn’t much on it, but Grant wasn’t surprised. Burner phones were designed for single use, else why would people use them to achieve anonymity? That was the whole point. But what he did have was two phone numbers. The man had called each number twice and Grant made a note of the times: all were from today. There was also a text exchange. It gave an address in Lyon.
Chapter 17
‘I wish all of my missing persons got this much interest,’ Sylvia said.
Helen looked up from her screen and gave her attention to her new colleague. She had a point, and it sat in the air between them. She couldn’t imagine the pain being suffered every day across the globe by thousands of parents unable to reach loved ones, never knowing what had happened to them.
‘I’m sure you do, Sylvia,’ she replied. She got the impression that Sylvia wanted to chat. The office was large and Helen guessed that it was usually only occupied by the head of Missing Persons. The subject of the crimes made the loneliness of the task more unbearable. Helen knew that a sizeable portion of missing people, mainly children, were trafficked for the sex trade, and the database at Interpol HQ was enormous. The part of Sylvia’s job that most repulsed Helen was the way in which some of those children were tracked down: by flicking through images on hardcore porn sites on the dark web. She wondered whether, as a parent, it would be worse being told that your child had appeared on the grainy images, or not. She’d come close enough to being a parent to appreciate the vulnerability of children, and the stats were brazenly shocking. Children went missing all the time; snatched from streets, play areas and babysitters, eventually ending up as exhibits among Interpol files.
Hakim Dalmani was twenty-one years old, fit, athletic and bright. He wasn’t the kind of target for paedo porn: he was too clever, old and strong. He could fight back.
So where was he? And why?
‘We had a case in the army, oh, years ago, when a group of Artillery soldiers was eventually found guilty of providing street kids to suppliers in Germany. This was before the British barracks over there were handed back to German authorities. It was kept out of the news, in case you were wondering – that’s how long ago it was. Christ, it’d be online in minutes now. I’d just started in the RMP, a rookie officer – all hope and glory, but no idea what people were truly capable of. That’s why I’m still doing it,’ Helen said. She surprised herself with her openness, but Sylvia listened.
‘That makes it all worthwhile, doesn’t it?’ Sylvia said. ‘Catching the perverted feckers red-handed. It makes me sick to my stomach. But the good news is that Hakim isn’t your likely candidate for selling on.’
‘Exactly. It’s something to do with the father, I’ve got no doubt,’ Helen said. ‘He’s worth something, but there’s been no communication between the captors and the father, or at least that’s what he’s told us so far. I haven’t spoken to him myself yet. He’s flown in to Paris – I know that much.’
‘What would he gain from being less than transparent with us?’ Sylvia asked.
‘Either he’s been asked to do something politically sensitive, or he doesn’t trust us to do the job,’ Helen replied.
‘So why would he cooperate at all?’
‘To hedge his bets while he pays his own team to investigate,’ Helen replied.
‘He’ll be hard-pushed to do that with his chief of security missing,’ Sylvia said.
Helen didn’t reply. She knew very well that Grant Tennyson was perfectly capable of running such an operation, she just had to prove it, and find out what he was up to. But she wasn’t ready to share this with Sylvia just yet.
She turned their attention back to the information supplied by the old woman and it was a priority to track down the two men, as well as the van from the address they’d raided. She went over the information they had, going back to Hakim’s journey to Paris.
‘We’ve got Jean-Luc’s phone records here. Look, his phone goes dead somewhere between Algiers and Paris, and is never switched back on.’
‘He turned it off over the Mediterranean somewhere,’ Sylvia said.
Helen nodded.
‘Why would he do that?’ Sylvia asked. It was rhetorical. They were both thinking aloud.
‘He was expecting to be able to communicate in another way once they landed. And he knew he wouldn’t need his phone again,’ Helen said.
‘You think this is evidence he’s involved?’ Sylvia asked her.
Helen sighed and sat back in her seat. ‘In my opinion, when you’re tasked with the security of a principal, communication is vital. He should have been in touch with the chauffeur on the ground, his accommodation in Paris, traffic checks and his boss in Algiers to at least assure him after take-off and confirm timings, etc.’ Helen paused ‘Do we know why Hakim was returning to Paris early? He usually spends the whole summer with his family, but term doesn’t start for another month or so. What was he coming back for?’
‘I don’t know the answer to that. Have you tried the Ritz yet?’ Sylvia asked.
Helen shook her head. She knew that she was putting it off. Part of her didn’t want to speak to anyone who employed Grant Tennyson. Part of her wanted nothing else.
A junior police officer came into the incident room and informed them that CCTV
