rocky time, Ari had given him the book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. It had helped him go some way towards understanding the mental gulf between men and women (but not all the way).
'You're a hard man to get hold of,' she said, and tossed her head, flicking her long brown hair away from her eyes. 'I left four messages.' 'Yeah, I'm sorry.' He raised his hands. 'I've two of my team off sick and two away on holiday. I understand how you must feel.'
'Do you? Do you have any idea how I feel? I'm meant to be getting married on Saturday and my fiance's been missing since Tuesday night. We have the church booked, I've got my dressmaker turning up for a fitting, two hundred guests invited, wedding presents pouring in. Do you have any idea how I feel?' Tears rolled down her cheeks. She sniffed, fumbled in her handbag and pulled out a tissue.
'Look, I'm sorry. I have been working on your - Michael - your fiancee's disappearance since we spoke this morning.'
'And?' She dabbed her eyes.
He cradled his beaker of coffee, which was too hot to drink. Had to let it cool. 'I'm afraid I don't have anything to report, yet.' Not strictly true, but he wanted to hear what she had to say.
'What exactly are you guys doing?'
'Like I said this morning on the phone, ordinarily when someone goes missing--'
She cut him short. 'This isn't ordinarily, for God's sake. Michael's been missing since Tuesday night. When we're apart he rings me five, ten times a day. It's now two days. Two fucking days, for Christ's sake!'
Branson studied her face carefully, searching for giveaways. But he found nothing. Just a young woman desperate for news of her loved one. Or- ever the cynic - a fine actress. 'Hear me out, OK? Two days is not in ordinary circumstances enough for alarm. But I agree, in this situation, it is strange.'
'Something's happened to him, OK? This isn't some normal missing persons situation. His friends did something to him, put him somewhere, sent him somewhere, I don't know what the hell they did to him -1--' She lowered her head as if to hide her tears, fumbled for her bag, found it, pulled out a tissue and dabbed her eyes, still shaking her head.
Glenn was moved. She had no idea, and this wasn't the moment to tell her.
'We're doing everything we can to find Michael,' he said gently.
'Like what? What are you doing?'
Her grief lifted momentarily, as if she was wearing it like a veil. Then another flood of tears and deep, gulping sobs.
'We've done a search around the immediate vicinity of the accident, and we still have people there - sometimes people get disoriented after an accident, so we're searching all the surrounding area - and we've now put out an all-points alert. All police forces have been informed. Airports and seaports--'
Again she cut him short. 'You think he's done a runner? Jesus! Why would he do that?'
Using a subtle technique he had learned from Roy Grace to tell if someone was lying, he asked her, 'What did you have for lunch today?'
She looked at him in surprise. 'What did I have for lunch today?'
'Yes.' He watched her eyes closely. They moved to the right. Memory mode.
Human brains are divided into left and right hemispheres. One contains long-term memory storage, and in the other the creative processes take place. When asked a question, people's eyes almost invariably move to the hemisphere they are using. In some people the memory storage is in the right hemisphere and in some the left; the creative hemisphere the opposite one.
When people are telling the truth, their eyes swing towards the memory hemisphere; when they lie, towards the creative one. Branson had learned to tell which by tracking their eyes in response to a simple control question such as the one he had just asked, where there would be no need for a lie.
'I didn't have lunch today.'
Now he judged it was time to tell her. 'How much do you know about your fiance's business dealings, Miss Harper?'
'I was his secretary for six months, OK? I don't think there's much I don't know.'
'So you know about his Cayman Islands company?'
Genuine surprise in her face. Her eyes shot to the left. Construct mode. She was lying. 'Cayman Islands?' she said.
'He and his partner' - he paused, pulled out his notebook and flipped through several pages - 'Mark Warren. You're aware of this company they have there? HW Properties International?' She stared at him in silence. 'HW Properties International?' she echoed.
'Uh huh.'
'No, I know nothing about this.'
He nodded. 'OK.'
The tone of her voice had shifted subtly. Thanks to Roy Grace's teaching he knew what it meant. 'Tell me more?'
'I don't know much more, I was hoping you could tell me.'
Her eyes shot to the left again. Construct mode again. 'No,' she said, 'I'm sorry.'
'It's probably not significant anyway,' he said. 'After all, who doesn't want to avoid the tax man?'
'Michael is shrewd. He's a clever businessman. But he would never do anything illegal.'
