‘Yes.’ She jumped up, nerves crackling. ‘I’ll be back two-ish.’
He raised his eyebrows.
‘An old school friend,’ she lied. ‘To see if Ricky has a temper on him.’ She grabbed her bag and scooted outside before he could ask anything further. She didn’t like lying but needs must. She was going to see Dad!
She spent the journey gazing unseeingly down each train carriage, her nerves winding tighter and tighter, until she thought she might start screaming. Christ knows how she was going to react when she saw him. Shout? Fall speechless? Faint? And what about Dad? What was he going through? He’d sounded really keen to see her, really pleased. Why hadn’t he kept in touch?
Lucy galloped off the train and into the terminal. Shiny floors, bright lights, echoing spaces. She found the café. Checked the time. Half an hour early. She didn’t care. She walked up and down the terminal, heart beating fast, trying to keep calm and stop her mind from going crazy. Impossible. Her emotions were at fever pitch and when her phone rang she snatched it out of her bag. Please don’t let it be him cancelling. Please please please…
But when she checked the display it wasn’t her father’s number, nor was it her mother’s. International.
‘Hello?’
‘DC Davies?’ a man asked. ‘Lucy Davies?’
His voice was accented, what with she couldn’t say. It was very foreign, the inflection unrecognisable to her ears.
‘Yes. I’m DC Davies.’
‘My name is Osbert Rahmat.’
Lucy frowned. She didn’t recognise the name.
‘I am head of security at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. A dispatcher here runs a blog under the name Budiwati out of Indonesia. You sent him an email?’
Lucy nearly dropped her phone in amazement. Budiwati the Wise One was making contact!
‘That’s correct.’
‘I am sorry that Budiwati only has a basic grasp of English. Which is why it is me who is calling.’
Lucy moved aside as a burqa-clad woman walked past with two massive suitcases the size of wheelie bins.
‘In your email, you ask about the blog he wrote about the false bomb detectors.’
‘That’s right. He said they came out of Morocco.’
‘Correct. I had to destroy them. It has cost us a lot of money. It was a scam… a very dangerous scam, selling equipment that doesn’t work. I am very concerned, very angry. You must find the person behind this and stop them. Prosecute them.’
Lucy thought fast. It wasn’t her jurisdiction but she didn’t want to say so and piss him off. ‘I’ll do what I can. Do you have any shipping paperwork?’
‘I shall email it to you.’
‘Thanks.’ Lucy thought of Kaitlyn red-flagging Budiwati’s alert and said, ‘Can I ask, did anyone else contact Budiwati from England about this?’
‘Please, wait a moment. I shall ask him.’
She heard men’s voices. Behind her eyes, colours ran vivid orange and yellow. The head of security and Budiwati. How brilliant was that?
‘Yes, he tells me a woman called Kaitlyn Rogers emailed him. She was on the EG220 flight that was bombed sixteen years ago. Do you know it?’
‘Yes.’
‘She wanted to know the name of the company that sold us the defective detectors.’
‘Did you give it to her?’
‘Yes. It is on the shipping document. Tazi & Company, Rabat. I also told her that when we investigated, we found the company doesn’t exist. They took our money and vanished.’
‘Did she ask anything else?’
Again, the head of security spoke to Budiwati.
‘No. But we will forward the messages to you for your investigation.’
‘That’s fantastic. Thank you so much.’
‘We will do it straight away. Please, catch these people. It is not just the money we have lost, but we are concerned the fake detectors are being sold elsewhere.’
He was winding down the conversation and for a moment, she hesitated to mention Kaitlyn’s murder. But what if the killer came after the Indonesians? She couldn’t see why, but since connections were strengthening between the aircraft bombing and Morocco, now Indonesia, she told him. Predictably, he was shocked.
‘This is a murder investigation?’ said Osbert, sounding disbelieving.
‘Yes.’
She heard Osbert talking fast to Budiwati. Their voices grew in pitch, urgent and anxious.
Finally, Osbert returned. ‘Do you think this shipment has anything to do with her death?’
‘I’m not sure.’
He left her for another chat to the Wise One. While they jabbered excitedly, Lucy paced, her mind bouncing here and there like a pinball. Had Kaitlyn found Tazi & Co? Uncovered who was selling the fake bomb detectors in Morocco? She couldn’t think how this was connected to Kaitlyn’s flight catastrophe. Morocco wasn’t a half-baked country who’d use sub-standard bomb detectors. Their security organisations were top-drawer professionals, it just didn’t seem possible.
Why had Kaitlyn contacted Budiwati? Lucy abruptly recalled Kaitlyn’s email alert. It hadn’t been for fake bomb detectors, but for someone called Jibran something… what was his name? She’d just checked the notes she’d made on her phone – Jibran Bouzid – when a man said behind her, ‘Lucy.’
It was her dad.
27
He was smaller than she remembered. Not that he was small by any means, being five eleven or so, but in her memory, he was a giant. He had grey speckles through his hair and lines on his face. Laughter lines and of stress, of life, but the wicked twinkle in his eye was the same.
He was beaming ear to ear.
Any thoughts of hitting or hugging him no longer existed – she was totally focused on the phone conversation, the lead she was chasing.
She pointed at her phone and turned away.
A wailing child forced Lucy to duck her head and put her left hand over her ear when Osbert came back to her. ‘Miss Rogers’ murder is deeply unsettling… Please can you keep us informed?’
‘Of course. But there’s one more thing. Budiwati mentioned someone called Jibran Bouzid in his blog. Can he tell me anything more?’
Brief hiatus as Osbert conferred. When he returned his voice was cautious.
‘Jibran Bouzid is the Defence Minister of Morocco. There were rumours he might be involved in
