Petrucci wasn’t really expecting to find anything else in the apartment: it looked to him as if Holden had kept everything to do with his computer in the study. They’d told him that nobody, not even his wife, should know what he was doing. They had also told him not to take backups, but even if he had, Petrucci was confident they were now in his carrier bag.
He returned to the study. The deletion program had finished so he ejected the disk and pulled the computer’s power plug out of the socket. He took a last look round to ensure that he’d left nothing behind, then picked up the carrier bag and left the apartment.
Inspector Hussein glanced at his watch. ‘If there’s nothing further, gentlemen, I suggest we drive over to see Mr Holden now. He’s confirmed that he’ll be at home this afternoon. Is there anything else before we leave?’
‘Only the use of your communications equipment to talk to the American Consulate.’
The inspector led Dawson down some stairs and ushered him into a room protected by a steel door. The noise hit them immediately: a constant whistling, chattering hum generated by the sound of air-conditioners, fans running inside cabinets, relays opening and closing, all overlaid by the faint noise from speakers and headphones.
‘I’ll get you connected.’ Hussein pointed to a chair in front of a desk, on which stood a red telephone. The inspector spoke to the communications officer, and ten seconds later the phone started to ring. Hussein nodded to Dawson, who picked up the receiver.
‘American Consulate,’ announced the voice in the earpiece.
Dawson pulled a small notebook out of his jacket pocket. The inspector left the room as the American spoke into the microphone. ‘Richard Owens, please,’ Dawson said, using the contact details Grant Hutchings had recorded in his neat script.
Five minutes later, Dawson emerged from the office to find Hussein and O’Hagan waiting outside. ‘Any problems?’ the inspector asked.
‘None at all,’ the American said truthfully. In fact, it had been a lot easier than he’d anticipated. Owens, the ranking CIA officer at the consulate, had been expecting Hutchings to contact him, and he’d been happy to provide an update over the phone.
Not that there was very much to update. Two further victims had died from injuries sustained in the Manama explosion, but there was still no further information about the perpetrators. According to Owens, the conclusion drawn by the Bahraini Special Intelligence Service was quite likely to be correct.
Hussein stepped out of the lift and strode down the corridor to a blue door. Dawson and O’Hagan stopped beside him as he knocked.
There was no answer. Hussein shrugged and knocked again, still without result. He flicked open his mobile phone and pressed a few keys. All three could hear a phone warbling inside. Hussein let it ring for a minute.
‘I don’t understand this,’ he said. ‘I rang Mr Holden at lunchtime and he said he’d be staying in all afternoon.’
‘Maybe he went out to buy something,’ Dawson suggested. ‘Does he have a mobile you could try?’
Hussein rang again and they heard a distinctive trilling ringtone from within. Again nobody answered it.
‘It’s not a problem,’ Dawson said. ‘Let’s go grab a drink somewhere and come back in half an hour.’
Ten minutes after they’d left the building, a light-coloured saloon car stopped on the opposite side of the road, about fifty yards from the apartment block. Paul Richter got out and followed Michael Watkinson into a nearby café.
Sitting near a window, with an uninterrupted view down the street, was a fair-haired middle-aged man dressed in casual clothes and apparently reading the Daily Telegraph.
‘George Blakeney,’ Watkinson introduced him. ‘This is Paul Richter. Any movement since I called?’
Blakeney shook his head. ‘Nothing since he came back from the café at about eleven. He read the Express, smoked three cigarettes, drank two cups of coffee, and went home.’
‘Three cigarettes?’ Watkinson observed. ‘Usually he just has two.’
‘His nicotine intake’s increasing, but I doubt that’s significant. He’s had no visitors that I’m aware of. People go in and out of that building all the time, but they’re mainly Arabs. Holden doesn’t seem to have many Arab friends — or many friends at all, in fact.’
The two men left the café and crossed to the apartment building. Watkinson pressed the lift button for the third floor.
Five minutes later, he called a number on his mobile. ‘George? We’re outside Holden’s apartment, but there’s no answer. We’ve tried his landline and mobile and we can hear the phones ringing inside. Are you certain he never left the building?’ Watkinson listened to Blake-ney’s reply. ‘Right, I’ll try again. But if I can’t raise him, I’m going to blow the whistle.’
Watkinson looked at Richter. ‘Blakeney’s certain Holden didn’t come out of the front door, and there’s no exit at the back because there’s another apartment building directly behind. There’s a fire escape on one side, but it leads to the street, so Blakeney would still have seen him. I don’t like this at all.’
He hammered on the door again, then pressed his ear to the faded paintwork and listened closely. ‘Nothing,’ he said, after a few seconds.
Richter examined the keyhole. ‘This looks like a fairly standard Yale-type,’ he said. ‘I’m not that good with locks, but I think even I could get past this one.’
‘The local police take a very dim view of breaking and entering,’ Watkinson warned.
‘I’m not breaking anything,’ Richter replied, ‘and I think any minute now you’ll recall that this door was slightly ajar when we arrived here. If the flat’s empty, we’ll just walk away. If something’s happened to Holden, whether the door was open or closed is going to be the last thing on anyone’s mind.’
He pulled out his wallet and selected a yellow card. ‘Now, let’s just see how helpful the Automobile Association can really be.’ He slid one corner between the door and the jamb, moved it down until he felt the catch of the lock, then jiggled the card until the corner eased under it. Then he pushed firmly, and with a sudden click the door opened.
‘We haven’t got gloves,’ Richter reminded him, replacing the card in his wallet, ‘so don’t touch anything apart from the outside of the door.’
The hall was a tiny square space with two doors leading off it. Richter pushed the outside door closed, then wrapped a handkerchief around his hand and opened the door to their right. That revealed a small toilet, so he tried the other one.
Immediately the two men stepped into the lounge, it was obvious that the place had been ransacked, clothes, books and magazines scattered about the floor, furniture upturned or pushed aside to allow easier access to the drawers and cupboards.
‘This doesn’t look like a burglary to me,’ Watkinson remarked, glancing round. ‘A thief would have taken the DVD player at least, and probably the TV.’
Richter walked across the room to where the flat-screen television was positioned on a stand. ‘That’s odd,’ he said, looking down. ‘All these DVD cases have been opened but not closed again, and the discs are still inside them.’
Watkinson shrugged. ‘Maybe Holden’s the lazy kind and doesn’t bother shutting them.’
‘On one or two, maybe, but on all of them? I don’t think so. And there’s a digital camera and an iPod on that table over there. Whoever did this was searching for something in particular.’
‘Makes sense to me. But where’s Holden?’