Free You Will Never Find Me by Robert Wilson Page B

cigarettes.’
    â€˜Right,’ said Glider. ‘Just covering our costs. They knew what they were doing and they were up for it. Nobody got hurt and they all got paid.’
    â€˜You slept with my daughter,’ said Boxer, matter-of-fact, not injured by it.
    â€˜She’s twenty-one.’
    â€˜Seventeen.’
    â€˜Well, there you go. Not what she told me. And not a criminal offence neither,’ said Glider, getting riled now. ‘If every dad came hunting for every bloke their daughters had slept with of a weekend this city’d grind to a halt.’
    â€˜Where is she now, Glider?’
    Silence while the import of that question elbowed along Glider’s synapses.
    â€˜So, she done a runner,’ said Glider. ‘Not to me, she hasn’t. None of those girls knows where I lives . . . remember?’
    Boxer was on him in a flash. One foot treading on the hand around the ashtray, the other foot in his crotch, knee on his chest. He reached for the ashtray, emptied it in Glider’s face, who spat out the butts and ash.
    â€˜You want to take a bite of this?’ asked Boxer, ashtray high above his head.
    Glider rested his head on the back of the sofa, showed he wasn’t fighting. He’d seen the speed with which Boxer had moved, and the expertise had made him realise that this was no ordinary unhappy dad.
    â€˜No need for that,’ he said. ‘We’re just talking.’
    Boxer was surprised at how wound up he was. He wanted to ram the ashtray into Glider’s teeth, and he’d have done it if the brute had given him the slightest cause. He stepped back off the sofa, turned and hurled the ashtray into the open-plan kitchen, where it smashed against the wall. Shards cascaded down onto the dirty plates and glasses on the counter.
    Glider eyed him as he would an unpredictable animal, one prone to tail-wagging and seconds later taking chunks out of legs. He didn’t move.
    â€˜You’re going to do two things for me,’ said Boxer. ‘You’re going to put all your feelers out to everybody you know and find out if they’ve heard anything from Amy. And you’re going to be very cool about it. You don’t want to spook her. When you find out something you call me, right?’
    Boxer flipped Glider a card, which landed on his chest. He didn’t reach for it.
    â€˜And give me your number,’ said Boxer, punching it into his mobile.
    The mobile buzzed in his hand. Mercy. She told him about the UK Border Agency, said that Security at Heathrow Airport was going to put together some CCTV footage of the person they believed to be Amy and would send it to her at SCD 7. The Spanish police were already on to it. Boxer hung up.
    If there was any change in Boxer’s demeanour, Glider didn’t see it.
    â€˜You do that for me?’
    Glider nodded.
    Boxer trotted downstairs, nodded at the two hoodies in the stairwell on the way.
    Â 
    â€˜Amy,’ said Mercy, riveted to the screen as she stood watching at her desk, fists planted, checking the clothes her daughter was wearing, the same ones as when she’d left the house, dropped in to say goodbye.
    There were no passport checks on leaving the UK, but the Border Agency had summoned a passport photo of Amy Boxer and sent it to the terminal manager at Heathrow. One of the computer operators in Security, as a favour, had put together footage of the girl they believed to be Amy Boxer arriving at Terminal 1, visiting the ladies’ toilet before heading through security and the departure lounge.
    Once Mercy had seen that clear shot of Amy, arriving at the terminal and heading for the lifts wearing those clothes, despair settled in her stomach. She unplanted her fists, stretched out her hands and sat back in her chair, watching vaguely as the footage jumped to different cameras and angles tracking Amy over the concourse, through security, in and out of shops.
    Mercy stared at