Before It's Too Late Read online

  Hui Zhang started to translate but the older man cut through his words. “No.”

  “What about any of your staff?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m sorry.”

  They left the restaurant, crossed the road and entered the Arcadian precinct. Red lanterns hung merrily over head. They paused at a shop offering acupuncture, the window inset with an ornate red Chinese dragon, and moved inside. A middle-aged Chinese woman with a bobbed hair cut looked up from behind the dark counter and smiled, but as soon as Jackman introduced them both, her head bowed. When he showed her the photo she cast her eyes to the floor and shook her head. They tried the restaurant next door and faced the same response.

  “I bet if we were ordering food they’d understand us perfectly,” Gray said as they left.

  A mixture of heat and irritation was bubbling beneath Jackman’s skin as they continued down Cathay Street. He halted near the end, just outside a Chinese supermarket and wandered inside.

  The shop assistants behind the till were all busy serving customers. Jackman glanced around as they waited. He was just examining the wide range of different rice beside the door when Gray nudged him. He turned his head to find that the queue had run down and two of the assistants stood idle.

  Jackman moved in towards the one on the end, raised his card and smiled. He held up a photo of Qiang and asked the assistant if she’d seen him.

  She shook her head, short sharp shakes. A colleague peered over her shoulder and said something in Chinese and they both exchanged a look. Jackman swore he saw a flicker of recognition on their faces.

  He leant in closer. “Qiang Li,” Jackman repeated. “He may have been using another name. Do you know him?”

  The second girl looked up at him, bit her lip anxiously. “I… ” Suddenly she gazed past him and froze. Jackman heard footsteps behind him and turned to see a Chinese man walking towards the tills.

  He could hear shuffling behind him as the ladies dispersed. He raised his card, held up the photo.

  The man glared at him and shook his head. “The girls need to work.”

  Jackman ground his teeth as he left the shop. He would come back tomorrow. Maybe he’d have more luck with the local officer or an interpreter on board. He hoped so.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  All afternoon I ground the nail into the concrete, working the metal over the same line, time and time again, to deepen the groove. It was cathartic at first. I imagined it was my captor. I was carving my name into his chest, pushing the sharp edge in deeper with every mark. Even when my fingers ached I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. I had no idea how much longer I had and now that I’d set my mind to the task I wanted to complete it.

  Finally I sat back and surveyed my work. My name stood out, clear as day, etched into the concrete. First in English, then in Chinese. It wasn’t neat or tidy. The ‘M’ was wonky, the ‘I’ too long, but it was clear. A slight moment of pride was almost immediately smothered by a blanket of sadness. If I died in the pit, this would be like an epitaph on my gravestone.

  My knuckles were bleeding. The earlier grazes stung as new dust became ingrained in the crevices. I looked around for some relief. I couldn’t spare any water. My eyes rested on my skirt. I grabbed the corner, pulled hard. A slight rip. I pulled again with all my might, tore a strip of material off and wrapped it around my knuckles. The silk was soft and slipped through my fingers as I wound it around and around.

  The skirt had cost £30.00. More than my food budget for a week. I’d seen it in a shop window in Stratford centre weeks ago and wandered past it several times, looking on longingly. Finally, last weekend, I plucked up the courage to go inside and try it on. The assistant told me it suited my slender figure and she was right. I loved the way the grey silk glistened in the sunshine and swished around my calves as I walked. I’d lived in my student jeans for so long, but this felt feminine, different. It cheered me up, made me feel special.

  A lump filled my throat as I looked down at the torn material. A broken nail snagged the fabric as I ran my finger along the ragged edge. It had meant so much, and yet today it just looked like a grubby rag cast aside in the gutter.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  A couple of hours later, Jackman pulled off the main dual carriageway and turned left into The Grove industrial estate. The car park was heaving and he had to drive up to the far end to find a parking space. He got out of the car and surveyed the surrounding area. A mechanic’s garage was flanked by a factory unit that made car parts. A printing company sat in the corner.

  Davies reached up and gave him a wave. She was stood outside a long metal unit with a glass front at one end and a rolling factory door at the other. The blue sign above the door read Atom Conveyors.

  “Any luck with the uncle?” she asked as he approached.

  Jackman shook his head. “Nothing yet. How’s it going here?”

  “Okay.” She made for the side of the building and gave a sideways nod indicating for him to follow. He climbed over the blue and white police tape and paused next to three large, pink industrial waste bins huddled together, the bright livery on the side advocating the fight against breast cancer. A few scraps of paper and a sliver of cardboard indicated the space where the brown bin used in the ransom drop had stood.

  Davies tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “These bins are rented by Atom Conveyors. They have three 1100 litre bins,” she pointed her toe forward, “for landfill waste and one for cardboard recycling which houses all the packaging that comes through this place – that’s the one used for our drop. It’s collected once a week on a Wednesday morning, usually between 10am and 12pm. We’re working our way through the staff, interviewing everyone, then we’ll take it wider to the neighbouring units. No potential witnesses yet. Biggest problem is the time of the drop. Most of these units shut up shop by 7pm. Even if somebody had forgotten something and popped back, they were likely tucked up in their bed by midnight.”

  She pursed her lips in thought. “One thing they were able to tell us is that the bin’s stacked out by Wednesdays. So much so, they’ve even been considering ordering another.”

  “It’s collected every Wednesday? The collection company stick to that?”

  Davies nodded.

  “And it’s always placed in the same location?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, we are possibly looking for someone local, someone who knew what the bin contained, the collection times. When they sent that demand, they knew the bin would be almost full. It’d make it easier to retrieve a package if it sat on top of something.” Another thought nudged Jackman. “Aren’t industrial bins usually locked?”

  “According to the staff they were locked every night. The keys hang in the office. But we’ve already checked and the keys are pretty universal. There are only about three different types out there. Even the secretary said they’re easy enough to source on the internet.”

  Jackman glanced at his watch. It was 4.10pm. He looked back at the remaining bins, “What about those?”

  “They’re emptied on a Monday.”

  Jackman walked back towards the car park and turned around. What struck him was the complete lack of vegetation. No trees, hedging. It was like a concrete jungle. “No cameras?”

  Davies shook her head.

  “What? I thought Birmingham was the home of CCTV?”

  Davies chortled. “Oh, there’s plenty on the main roads. We’ll get those checked. But this is a private estate. They have an alarm for out of hours and a security firm does a beat call at night. Didn’t see the need for cameras. A couple of companies have their own, but they’re situated further up.” She pointed along the line of businesses. “We’ll get them checked of course, but it wouldn’t be difficult to avoid them. They hang off the front of the buildings like beacons.”

  Min’s parents had confirmed that the drop was made at 12.30am. Min was due to be released half an hour later. He looked back down the row of bins. The bin in question was situ
ated at the far end, obscured by the others. He tried to imagine someone rummaging through in the darkness. Even if a car had passed it was unlikely they’d have been spotted tucked away down there. It was the perfect location and somebody had gone to great lengths to seek it out.

  Jackman wasn’t sure what made him turn, but as he looked around he saw a taut, pointed face at the window. He stared at it a moment before it moved back, away from the glass. “Who’s that?”

  Davies followed his eye line. The outline of the figure was just about visible in the distance, although he’d turned and appeared to be having a conversation with somebody else in the room. “Oh, that’d be Mr Lewis, the managing director. Very austere. Something tells me he’ll be happier when he gets his new bin and we stop keeping his staff from the production line. If time is money, he measures every second.”

  Jackman shot a fleeting glance back to the window but Lewis had disappeared completely now. He turned three hundred and sixty degrees, glanced at the surrounding area and then back at the spot that had housed the bin. “Shame he’s not so vigilant in the early hours of the morning. We’ll need a background check on him and all of his employees. Check out the company that rent the bins too – the collectors will be familiar with the locality, and the security firm. Whoever organised this must have been here several times to examine the area. See if anyone spotted anything untoward over the past few weeks, or earlier that evening.”

  The intermittent loud beeps of a vehicle reversing swallowed his words. He looked up to see two long metal pipes protruding from the back of a lorry’s rear bed as it approached. Thick diesel fumes filled the air. A couple of men in navy coveralls emerged from the factory to talk to the driver, another hopped into a fork lift and reversed, carefully avoiding the police tape as he worked.

  Jackman fished his buzzing mobile out of his pocket. Celia’s name flashed up on the screen. He moved back down the side of the building, away from the drone of engine noise before he answered.

  “Hi, Dad!”

  The bright intonation brought an inadvertent smile to his lips. “Hi, what’s up?”

  “Oh, nothing. I’m at Sam’s and she’s got some of the old crowd together from school. Bit of a reunion. Her parents are away so we’re gonna have a BBQ over here and catch up. Just calling to say don’t wait up. Looks like it’s going to be a late one. Might stay over.”

  He could hear the babble of chatter in the background. Celia giggled as if she was having a two-way conversation. “No worries. You have a good time,” he said. “See you in the morning.”

  “Sir?”

  Jackman turned to see Keane marching towards him as he ended the call. His yellow tie hung loose around his neck. “How did you get on?”

  “Bloody hopeless,” Keane said through panting breaths. He took a tissue out of his pocket and wiped his brow line. “There’s no CCTV at the internet cafe. I’ve spoken to the guy who was working the shift when the email was sent and he reckons it was really busy. He can’t remember anything. The shops opposite don’t seem to have cameras either.”

  “What about payment records?”

  “Nothing. It’s a dirty little two-booth cash-only operation. I asked if he has any regulars, thinking of people we could interview as potential witnesses but he said most of his customers are visitors to the area. They only come in once or twice. Sorry, sir. I think we’ve hit a dead end.”

  He sat down on the wooden bench and propped his rucksack up beside him. A late afternoon breeze had gathered, whispering through the branches of the surrounding trees.

  A family sat on a rug nearby, a blanket in front of them laden with a messy array of empty plates, half-eaten sandwiches and beakers of juice. A tin with the lid slid off exposed a collection of cupcakes. The woman was not unlike the opaque memories he held of his own mother, buried in the depths of his mind. Slender and petite, she was dressed in a white shirt and floral skirt that had risen up to expose her bare knees. As he watched, she leant forward and ruffled the hair of the man next to her.

  Two boys, still in school uniform, were perched on the edge of the blanket, picking out tufts of grass and throwing them at one another, menacing grins on their faces. The man sat forward and stretched, then laid back and rested on the grass. The younger boy looked up, shouted to his sibling and they immediately ran over and jumped on their father in mock-combat. Their father roared as he rolled around with them. Their mother’s white teeth gleamed as she trilled in the background.

  He was mesmerised by the display. His own childhood had been filled with an invented little world of playmates, imaginary friends who fitted in with whatever game or scenario he wished to play. He became good at it, adjusting his tone for the different characters, throwing his voice like a ventriloquist to make it real. More than once his mother had knocked on the door of his room, labouring under the misapprehension that he’d brought friends home to play.

  Friends. He thought back to his school days. The boys taunted him, called him weird, picked him last for team games while the girls laughed in the background. Only a few of the plain girls showed him any kindness and that never lasted long. No, from an early age he had to satisfy himself with friends of his own making.

  As he entered his teens, he learnt that the only way to gain his father’s attention was through his school grades. His father pored over his reports, as if his life depended on them. So he decided to work hard at school and charm his teachers in an effort to reach out to his father. And he figured out how to sit on the periphery of friendships, so that he didn’t stand out, the lone kid.

  He looked back at the family. They’d stopped playing. The mother was gathering up the leftover food and packing up the basket. The boys nudged each other as they collected rubbish. The man brushed blades of grass from his trousers. For the briefest of moments they tugged at his heart strings, raising an ache that reached up through his chest and into his throat.

  The man bent forward and pecked his wife’s cheek. She turned and winked at him as he drew back. In that split second everything changed. And the ache that had gripped him so tightly turned his heart to stone.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  By 8pm Jackman was back at the station in Stratford, studying the statements from Min’s friends.

  DS Gray had established that Min’s uncle had left his flat last summer. Where had he stayed in the meantime? And where was he now? Jackman was convinced that somebody in the Chinese Quarter knew something. DS Gray promised to call him as soon as the local beat officer landed, but that wasn’t going to be until tomorrow.

  He re-read another statement and cast it aside. He wasn’t really sure exactly what he was looking for, just something a little out of the ordinary, or someone that Min had met or spoken about.

  None of the friends’ statements indicated anyone that had been hanging around, watching or bothering Min. None of the tutors remembered seeing anyone at the college. Even Tom hadn’t noticed anything and she seemed to spend most of her time with him.

  A thought jabbed at him. Maybe Min had tried to trace her uncle and ran into something untoward?

  He shuffled the statements around and skimmed through each one lingering on the one from Lauren Tate, Min’s best friend, who hadn’t been at the party on Monday night.

  Jackman sat back in his chair as Alice entered his head. Many days she’d come home from work full of stories. Stories about friends’ or work colleagues’ lives, some that he’d never met or would never likely meet. Her capacity to care about the most intimate details of other people’s lives, often strangers, always surprised him. He learnt very early on to listen quietly whilst she shared her news. She reminded him of a heated kettle that needed to empty itself of every drop of hot water before it had a chance to cool down.

  He turned this over in his mind. If Min had a secret who would she be more likely to talk to? Tom? Possibly. Although they’d argued the night she disappeared. There was the pregnancy, the issues with her parents. Were there other problems
? Maybe she wasn’t sure she could trust him. But a best friend…

  Jackman stared at Lauren’s statement. He had to do something. He considered it for a split second before he grabbed his phone off the desk and dialled.

  Lauren Tate wound her ankles uncomfortably around the chair legs. She was a short girl with broad shoulders and horsey features. Sleek brown hair hung down each side of her face like a pair of silky curtains. A fitted black t-shirt sat atop faded denims that clung to her thighs.

  Lauren’s mother had greeted them at the door of her modern semi on the edge of the north side of the town as their car pulled up, her face contorted into an expression of concern. Jackman was glad he’d phoned ahead. A brief phone discussion with Mrs Tate had laid the groundwork nicely and she couldn’t have been more obliging. She poured fresh coffee for all, then made a concerted effort to leave her daughter with Davies and Jackman in the kitchen alone. She didn’t mention Min after the phone call, although he could see that the disappearance of her daughter’s best friend was on her mind.

  The Tates’ kitchen was a large room that spanned the rear of the property. Dull sunbeams filtered through the skylight and glinted on the varnished table. The gentle babble of the television could be heard from the next room.

  Jackman smiled. “Thanks for seeing us, Lauren.”

  She stared back at him with large eyes, then shifted her gaze to Davies beside him.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” he said with a kind smile. “You aren’t in any trouble. We are just building up a picture of Min at the moment and wondered if you could help fill in the gaps?

  She thrust a sharp nod, but said nothing.

  Jackman cast a quick glance at Davies before he continued, “In your statement you said that you weren’t at the Old Thatch Tavern with Min on Monday night?”