You Will Never Find Me by Robert Wilson Read Free Book Online Page A

seen this guy for five minutes and he was eight, maybe ten years younger than her. She leaned forward searching for the glint of recklessness in her black pupils.
    Up the steps to the front door, rang the bell, heard his feet rumbling down the stairs. Opened the door. And there he was: tall, good-looking, short dreadlocks, high cheekbones, dark brown eyes, perfect white teeth, a scar on his temple. He was wearing dark blue jeans and a white shirt open so that she could see the hard rack of his stomach, no shoes, long bare feet.
    â€˜Hey,’ he said, ‘I was expecting somebody else.’
    â€˜You got me,’ said Mercy, holding up her warrant card. ‘Police.’
    â€˜Then you’d better come in,’ he said, smiling, not a flicker of nervousness.
    He led her up the stairs, buttoning up his shirt, took her into the sitting room, where there was an orange three-piece suite that had seen better days and some lime-green cushions. Mounted on the wall was a home movie system with a fifty-five-inch LED screen no thicker than a slim paperback. Alleyne slipped on a pair of top-range Nikes and lay back on the sofa.
    â€˜You don’t know me,’ said Mercy.
    â€˜That is very true,’ he said.
    â€˜But I know you.’
    â€˜You do?’ he said, eyebrows raised, still smiling, enjoying the view.
    â€˜You are Marcus Alleyne and you met my daughter coming off a plane from Tenerife on Sunday 11th March. You took a large suitcase from her containing cigarettes which had been brought into this country illegally.’
    She leaned forward and showed him the photo she’d taken at Gatwick on her mobile phone. Alleyne raised an eyebrow, which nearly communicated surprise.
    â€˜That’s interesting,’ he said, unmoved.
    â€˜Why should it be interesting rather than, say, alarming?’
    â€˜Because it doesn’t look as if you’re here with the full force of the law.’
    â€˜So you already know what that looks like.’
    â€˜Seen a bit of it in my time, you know, nothing heavy, no SWAT teams at dawn kind of thing. More like weary plods in the rain,’ he said. ‘And I can tell you none of it has been as pleasant as this little visit. So what’s it all about, Inspector Danquah? Isn’t that a Ghanaian name?’
    She nodded. ‘And you?’
    â€˜Originally?’ he said. ‘Trinidad. Several generations ago.’
    Silence.
    Mercy couldn’t fathom what was going on in her chest. As if there was a thin translucent membrane stretched tight by all her loves and losses, so tight that it was about to split, and if it did she would lose all control.
    Alleyne sat up, could see some sort of crisis going on in her face. He clasped his hands between his knees, shook them up and down as if he had dice in them.
    â€˜You all right, Inspector Danquah?’
    â€˜My daughter . . . ’ she started but couldn’t continue as the membrane swelled.
    â€˜Something happened to Amy?’
    â€˜She ran away from home last night.’
    â€˜All right,’ said Alleyne, relieved that this wasn’t some horror for him and he wouldn’t be heading for the cells on a Sunday night. ‘What you need, Inspector Danquah . . . is some tea . . . maybe coffee, if you’re not the tea kind. The real thing, no shit from a jar.’
    â€˜I’ll take the “no shit from a jar” coffee,’ said Mercy, needing him out of the room so she could get a grip. ‘With milk, thanks.’
    Alleyne went into the galley kitchen off the living room, shook his head at the six different espresso machines he had there, selected one, turned it on, looked for some coffee pods that would fit. He heated some milk in a steamer and under the noise of it made a call to the woman who was supposed to show up and told her not to come unless she wanted to share an evening with DI Mercy Danquah. She