CHAPTER 48
Simone hasn’t told anybody – Lucy, then – about Dishes. She has pushed it down in the way she knows best. The same place everything went once. School achievements, friendship dramas, emotional pain. Until she met Damien, who forced it out of her.
They are outside Moody’s office together at lunchtime. He said she should drop by any time, but Simone still wonders if he meant it. But, more than that, she wonders if seeking his advice is truly the right next step. So far, her instincts have kept them hidden.
It’s a stone building, like almost all of them, two storeys, somewhat asymmetric, or maybe it’s just falling down.
MOODY LAW is written on a wooden sign above the door that leads directly to the stairs, and Lucy touches Simone’s elbow right as they’re about to go up.
The stairs are municipal, brown carpets with metal nosings.
A handrail, a door at the top propped open with a wooden wedge, and standing in its frame, waiting for somebody – them?
– is Moody, legs long, arms folded, glasses.
He steps aside wordlessly, not looking at all surprised by Simone appearing, and with Lucy, too, even though she said she was alone. They squeeze past him and into an office.
Inside, Simone takes a steadying breath.
The office is cluttered, papers everywhere.
A fan whirs in the corner, disturbing pages of notebooks that drift up and down like birds’ wings.
Perhaps demonstrably, Moody closes the door, the handle clicking behind them.
Then he crosses to the windows and closes two brown shutters.
Finally, he turns to them.
Just before Simone is about to ask him about confidentiality, he says to them, ‘Even fugitives need a defence lawyer eventually.’
On Moody’s desk is an old-school notebook and pen – he says he doesn’t like computers – with the word KIDNAPPING written in the centre.
He’s drawn several arrows coming off it where he is writing down the evidence they have.
He’s listened intently to their story from beginning to end.
‘You did nothing wrong’ was the first thing he said to them, mostly to Lucy.
He is now upending the pen rhythmically, clearly thinking.
‘For how long did you know it was us?’ Simone asks, feeling a strange combination of trepidation and relief.
‘Followed the story on the news,’ he replies. ‘Suspected it was you when you arrived – and then you spoke, and that’s when I knew. Your Midwest is woeful.’
‘Well, I’m pleased,’ Lucy says assertively. She’s sitting opposite him on the other chair. ‘What we need to do is find him.’ She goes on to tell Moody everything they know about the British man.
Moody holds a hand up. ‘Let me …’ he says. ‘Let me think this through. Properly.’ Simone is glad of this, his thoughtfulness. Of the Innocent book on his shelves. They have to trust him.
He says nothing for several moments, occasionally jotting things down on the notepad. ‘You’ve no idea on name. Just basic looks, accent, that he was from Manchester.’
‘Yes.’
‘How curious. And you have no idea if this might be someone back home? A disgruntled someone, anyone?’
‘No, really, no idea. Neither of us recognize him.’
‘And as to the police – they’re not wrong that duress is a common defence, but kidnappings aren’t usually mentioned,’ Moody continues.
‘Huh.’
He settles his gaze on Lucy. ‘On this pad, write down absolutely everything you know and remember from the kidnapping. No detail too small.’
Lucy takes it and begins scribbling, the scratch of the pen the only noise other than the fan. ‘Why do you believe us?’ Simone asks him.
‘No previous, here for a vacation. A rest stop is not where one would usually do a drug deal, if it were a simple cash/cocaine deal. Anyone could see. They could see a kidnapping, too, but they’re usually so eager for a quick getaway with unpredictable hostages that they are prepared to sacrifice visibility for convenience.
I can’t see why you’d do that for a straight drug drop.
You do not have –’ a small exhale that sounds half amused – ‘the typical profile of drug traffickers. So what I’m most focused on is getting rid of the doubt that there was a kidnapping – that is, the cop’s evidence, at the lodge, and the person on the coach who says they saw you together.
If we can find the kidnapper, even better.
’ He slides a new notebook over to Simone.
‘Please make a list of everyone on that coach for me. Anything you recall about him that you haven’t said, too. Or anybody else you may suspect.’
‘I will,’ Simone says, taking a pen. On it, she begins to write down anybody she suspects. The cop who she lied to. Lucy’s taxi driver.
‘I assume this is a business model where people who are likely to be searched at border crossings choose people who are not, to transport their drugs,’ Moody remarks, as they’re writing. ‘It surprises me that the kidnapper would therefore get on the coach.’
‘That is such a good point,’ Simone says, getting a feeling, one that says this is the wrong direction, that they’re not looking for the right person.
‘Do you think a jury would believe us?’ Lucy asks. ‘If we can’t find him?’
‘That’s a hell of a question.’
‘Care to provide a hell of an answer?’ Lucy says lightly, which Simone both winces and smiles at.
Moody’s eyes go to Lucy. ‘With a normal lawyer, fifty-fifty. With me, better. But we should be able to find someone who was on a very specific coach.’
Lucy gasps at his odds. She looks at Simone. But they simply can’t spin the roulette wheel on this, can they? Simone would if it were just her, but it’s Lucy, too.
‘But the thing is,’ Simone says, ‘even if we find him … what are we going to do? Hope he does it again? I can’t imagine there will be proof of Lucy’s kidnap.
Every ransom instruction was destroyed. The only evidence is a call from a number that was blocked.
He was careful not to even speak to Lucy. ’
Moody gives her a look that Simone can’t easily decipher. The understanding of the risk, maybe. Or is it something else? He lets his face drop again after a couple of seconds, back to expressionless, and she thinks of the magnitude of the trust they’ve placed in him.
Sunlight winks its way around the shutters. Moody holds her gaze.
‘Those odds are not good enough,’ she says.
‘More than fifty-fifty and we’d be free,’ Lucy says, but she doesn’t know what she’d get, Simone is thinking. She desperately wants to ask Moody what Lucy, specifically, would be looking at, but can’t.
‘Let me investigate it, properly,’ Moody tells them. ‘Let me think about what you’ve told me, and the evidence, and let me try.’
‘Why do you want to help us?’ Simone asks.
He gazes at her. His stare is almost hypnotic. ‘I like to help the innocent.’
‘And, presumably, the guilty.’
‘OK, if we’re going to talk about the rule of law.’ He rolls his eyes, then stops himself. ‘Anyway,’ he adds, ‘you don’t get many interesting cases in a place like this, and I’m bored.’
‘Bored?’
‘You don’t become a lawyer to do paddock ownership land transactions all the time. Give me a few days.’ Moody runs a palm over his mouth. ‘And lie low – while you’re here. It’s a small place. I had already worked it out. Don’t try your accent on anyone else. OK?’
‘OK,’ Simone says. ‘We can pay you – we have cash.’
Moody raises his hand in a dismissive wave. ‘Pay me after I’ve helped you. Until then, pro bono.’
‘No –’
‘No argument.’ He gets to his feet. ‘And … I’m really sorry,’ he says, taking the notepads. ‘For what happened to you. I have no doubt it occurred like you said.’
He lets them out, into a hot pool of afternoon sunlight. It’s silent out here. He turns to them, his hair catching the light, and meets Simone’s eyes. ‘I’ll be in touch. Let’s go find him.’
Simone wakes at four o’clock once again the following morning, this time from a dream Lucy’s toddler hand has slipped from hers on a train platform. Simone shouted after her, but no sound came out.
As she comes to, she thinks that, one day, Lucy will live without Simone. She will get up every morning without her, go to bed every morning without her and, oh, how does any parent ever cope with this?
Damien hasn’t messaged her. Simone types hello, then waits five minutes, ten, but there’s nothing today.
She waits an hour, then two, then sleep comes for her again, as traitorous as ever, a human need that can’t be fought, no matter how much you want to stay awake, no matter who needs you.
When she wakes again at eight, he still hasn’t replied.
She checks the news, just in case he’s been found, but there’s nothing new today.