Story: The Disappearance (XX)

(Part O , XIX , XXI)


The surveilance cameras were useful, more useful than a moose in a snowstorm, and we quickly settled down to looking for patterns. The unconscious Commissioner turned out to be less of a problem than I thought he would be, as my old friend Swanson was on security and upon seeing him laid out on the floor simply chuckled evilly and helped us secure him with some police 'keep out' tape. The preposterous moustache couldn't conceal his mirth as I explained everything, nor could it conceal his seriousness when I got to the commissioner hypnotizing Carter to do her dirty deed.

"I'll take care of him. What about the girl?" He looked pointedly at Agnes, who had now become about as useful in the real story as she is in my narrative.

Agnes looked steadily at Swanson. "I really have nothing to do, nothing to offer, it's as if the whole world has opened up and swallowed me whole. The family business is a lie, people have died, and there's nothing left."

"There's plenty left, Agnes. The feisty strong woman who I met a seeming eternity ago was plugging through a doctorate. Maybe you should go buckle down to that for a while."

The mercury returned with that direct strike. I didn't leave her a moment for the comeback. We didn't have many moments left right then, or so we thought. "You'll go with Swanson. He's a good man. See if you can get anything useful out of Rolf." I nodded at Swanson, who had been on penalty security duty for six months and they went out. He started chatting to Agnes about bluebottles and honeytraps as he went. Suddenly I wondered why he was on penalty duty. I settled back down to watching the patterns, but it was really Carter's speciality and I could already see the structure underlying the traces she was tracing on the computer map.

"Is it conclusive yet, Danielle?"

"Not quite, but it looks like the most suspicious trucks are all depositing at a warehouse next to the castle district. Then a private ferry service is going from the warehouse to a location near the prison. There's a fogginess to the surveilance data in that region."

"Fogginess?"

"The data is being steadily corrupted, getting less complete as the search goes further back in time. I think it's a worm."

"Something else to think about in the aftermath. Leave a note for Swanson and a duplicate for Cheryl. Is there a delivery soon?"

"If they keep their pattern, there'll be one pulling out of the warehouse in forty five minutes. If the pattern holds." She sounded dubious. "Who knows, now that the temporal gap has closed?"

"We will. Get your coat."

The car ride was uneventful, as car rides usually are in the mid-afternoon in a nondescript saloon. We circled the warehouse a few times and then parked in the castle car park, munching on the sandwiches and fruit we had brought with us, looking for all the world like a couple desperately looking to get lunch away from the office.

As the camera in the rear view mirror rolled and the sandwiches - from the canteen, and not the best in the world - faded into just a memory, we sipped coffee from a thermos and chatted over old times. The events of the last few days had brought us together, not as it had been with my first partner Wiggins, but in a new and different way.

Danielle was just starting to nibble at the edges of my former life when a truck pulled out of the warehouse and my bacon was saved for another day. All she said was "Next time" in an ominous tone of voice and we were off. I always have loved being driven places by women. The truck driver was suspicious but we pulled out all the old tricks and continued on when she pulled in to an old airfield turnoff past the prison. I looked at Carter.

"Does it fit?"

"It fits."

"Then call it in, and then we go in."

To be concluded...