‘Five days?’
‘He left his bags at the hotel but he has his mobile and his passport with him, and he has money. I think they thought he was going to come back.’
‘Why didn’t they contact the police immediately?’
‘I don’t know.’
She felt sick, she said, and sat with her back to the church. It was unlike Eric to do anything without telling anyone where he was going. It wasn’t like him to disappear. He knew better than that. He wouldn’t do this deliberately. He wouldn’t just disappear. He wouldn’t. It was too easy to imagine something going wrong. Some trouble. Some accident. The wrong place at the wrong time. Too easy to picture.
5.5
A long evening spent in Marsaskala. Ford avoided the small crowd of families, mostly villagers, people in any case who appeared to know each other. When the display began he found a bar beside the church and retreated to the counter, beer in hand. Unsettled by the noise — the gunshot clatter and sudden bangs and light firing through the square — he kept himself separate, irritated at his reaction, but the noise, each time, drove into him.
She almost saw him, would have seen him if she had looked up, but with a phone in her hand Anne Powell turned her back to the firework display, and kept her head down as if struggling to hear the person she was speaking with. Ford concentrated on the woman and thought she might be wearing the same clothes as the previous night, and looked, again, presentable, smart, cosmopolitan. This, in any case, was certainly how he saw her. Done talking, Anne Powell walked away, in the same manner as the previous night, focused, a little angry, he couldn’t tell, but she cut directly through the tail of the crowd and headed up the street away from the town.
He left his beer on the counter and followed after, cringing at the expectation of more noise; finding it less easy to push through the crowd he plugged his fingers into his ears and shoved his way through. Another display started up, rockets whistled over their heads, cut out, and exploded above the narrow street. The fireworks pulsed with a stuttered delay, the thump echoed off the walls and amplified in his chest. Away from the crowd it was just her and him, the rockets’ shrieks, and a steep climb. She walked without paying attention to anything around her, oblivious to the sound and the night sky burning about them. At the top of the steps she turned right, walked on, faster now, then began to run so that he thought that he had spooked her, that she had somehow sensed him behind her. Encouraged that she was heading away from the village Ford followed after. The villa would stand by itself, abandoned, a little decrepit. One floor or a suite would be in decent enough repair for occupation, but the remainder would be in ruins.
Anne Powell did not slow her pace until she reached a building set on its own, large and stern, sheer-sided. Up on the roof, occasionally illuminated, a number of the residents watched the display.
Eric had exaggerated or was mistaken. The villa was not abandoned. It wasn’t isolated. Neither was it private, but busy and occupied. This clearly wasn’t the hideaway the boy had promised.
Ford waited for lights to come on in one of the apartments, then counted the floors: one, two, three. At the entrance he studied the list of occupants. Ca’ Floridiana. Third Floor. Suite 5.
Disappointed, he walked along a black road, relieved to have his back to the display, more relieved when it finished and the night sank into more regulated noise: cicadas, the beat of an approaching car, the blank unquiet night. He asked himself what would he do as Sutler? Sutler would return in the morning, reassess his options, adjust to the circumstance. Ford would give up, surrender to circumstance. Sutler would persist.
5.6
The consul’s assistant kept her waiting. Anne sat beside his desk in an office subdivided by small temporary walls, feeling a little more confident, allowing the language of the office — a bank-like odour and finish: sensible furnishings, beech-wood veneer, blue carpet squares — to convince her that business was accomplished here: at these desks, on these phones, problems were approached and pragmatically addressed. In such an environment the answers would come as a simple yes or no. Anne sat bolt upright with her arms folded, reassured by the openness and order.
On the desk, weighted by a folder, were a series of faxes and printed documents from an email account.
The assistant arrived out of breath. His shirt, crisp and white and tight; his tie, fat, red, and out of style. Not much to like, and a little too young, it occurred to her that she was saddled with a junior clerk. He made his apologies sound like an aside.
‘So, this is our man. Eric Powell.’ He pushed the file aside and picked up the papers, reading as he spoke. ‘We don’t think we have anything to worry over at this point. We have information from the Turkish authorities. They have been helpful, although there’s nothing much they can tell us at this point. They are in contact with the people he was travelling with. Has your husband heard anything?’
Anne nodded. ‘The university contacted him yesterday. This is how we heard.’
‘So you have no news today? Nothing direct for how many days?’
‘Five.’
‘You heard from him five days ago?’
‘No. I heard from him last week, I think last week, perhaps the weekend before. Before I left New York.’
‘And is he regularly in contact — in other situations?’
‘He’s a student, so…’ Anne hesitated, not wanting to give the wrong idea. ‘This is very different, he was supposed to join me. According to the airline he hasn’t tried to change his ticket, he just didn’t make the flight. He usually, he always calls me before he comes home, or when we meet up.’
‘Sometimes people don’t realize the trouble they cause.’
She couldn’t place the man’s accent. Not southern, and not identifiably urban. She could never place the East Coast accents.
‘In most cases these are simple matters. At this point there’s nothing to signal that we should be alarmed. No previous misdemeanours, no offences. We’ll find him in some hotel, I don’t doubt. He’s young, looking for adventure. He might have met someone. I’m absolutely sure.’ The idea bloomed promisingly between them. With the help of Eric’s companions the man was confident that they would track him down. He didn’t doubt that they would soon hear from him. ‘But just in case, here’s what we do—’ The assistant began to describe the usual checks and procedures. They were keeping an eye on the hospitals and clinics. The embassy in Istanbul would distribute a description of her son, and they would check anything that came up from such a search. In these situations they would know immediately if he was arrested or if he was in an accident. ‘It happens, very rarely, but it happens. People end up in hospital without identification. It would be rare for someone his age to disappear without provocation, and from what we have here there’s nothing to worry about. There’s no history of drug use, no family problems. Is he most likely to contact you or his father? Mark?’
Anne corrected the officer. Mark was not Eric’s father. The man apologized, still smooth — almost utterly disengaged.
‘I should be doing something.’
‘Until you hear otherwise you have to assume that everything is all right, and that this is, one way or another, his choice. That is, until we know something which otherwise changes the situation.’
* * *
She called her husband from the street and found that speaking increased her anger.
‘They have nothing. Nothing. They aren’t doing anything. The man is retarded. He’s a child. They employ children who speak about themselves in the plural, who talk about procedures, about what could be done without doing anything. He talks about nothing. He said nothing. We have to wait. They won’t do anything until more time has passed. Do nothing other than what we’re already doing. He thinks he’s having an adventure.’