Last Seen

Book 3: Billie Carlson

by Anna Smith

Genres: Crime Fiction

Synopsis

PI Billie Carlson takes on a thrilling new case in the next instalment of this gripping series. For fans of Martina Cole and Marnie Riches.

Life has changed for Private Investigator Billie Carlson. After years of chasing down every lead possible, she's finally found her son, Lucas, and brought him safely home to Glasgow.

One afternoon, Billie gets a call from an unknown number. The man on the end of the phone refuses to tell her his name, but he explains that his brother, Omar, is being held in prison after stabbing two men outside a block of flats. He wants Billie to investigate what happened that night and find out any information that might help Omar.

Reluctantly, Billie takes on the case. But as she starts to untangle what happened that night, she can't shake the feeling that she's being watched. With Lucas depending on her, Billie is determined to avoid any dangerous encounters. But trouble seems to have a way of tracking her down . . .

Release date: February 1, 2024

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 400

Sample

I know what it’s like to live with nothing but hope. I’d been doing it for the past eighteen months since the centre of my life – my little boy Lucas – was stolen from me by the husband I thought I knew. Of course, I never knew him at all, and that lapse of judgement will always be the biggest mistake of my life. I’d try not to go there, or unpick it, not ask myself what the hell possessed me. So, I’d focus on hope, and that got me out of bed every morning to wade through the day. I suppose if you stretched the ins and outs of what I do for a living, you could include giving people some hope, though sometimes they’re after more than that. I’m a private investigator. And when people walk through the door of my office, it’s mostly revenge that they are after – to take down a cheating spouse or a business partner who has wronged them, broken them emotionally and often cleaned them out financially. By the time they get here, they’ve exhausted every conventional way of getting the truth, or some payback. But now and again I can get them something as close to justice as they are ever going to get. I’m a bit of a soft touch for a sad story, because I know what it feels like to have nowhere to go – I’ve been there. And that’s probably why, that day, when Millie, my front-of-house lady who deals with all my clients and a whole lot more, put her head around my door and said there was some guy with a foreign accent saying he needed my help, I agreed to take the call.

I sat back, took a swig of my coffee and pressed the phone to my ear.

‘Hello. You are Billie Carlson, the private investigator?’

The heavily accented voice was nervous, almost a whisper.

‘Yes, I am,’ I said. ‘What can I do for you? What’s your name, please?’

‘I want to see you. To meet with you. I need help.’

The voice was monotone, and I wondered how good a grasp of English he had.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘How about we start with a name? Then we can perhaps arrange a meeting, an appointment.’

There was a long silence and I could hear him breathing. I waited.

‘I . . . not want to give my name – for now.’

My mind flashed back to the recent drama in my office where Millie and I were held hostage by a couple of hoodlums doing the dirty work for a Glasgow mobster. It was over quite quickly, and clear from the outset that they were just low-rent halfwit thugs.

‘Then I’m sorry,’ I said sharply. ‘But I won’t see any clients without knowing a bit about them. At the very least their name. So how about telling me who you are and why you need a private investigator?’

‘My brother,’ he said quickly. ‘My brother in jail. For murder. You know this murder? Some weeks ago. Two men. Killed in Glasgow.’

These days, trying to think of a random killing in Glasgow was not always easy. The city has a thriving criminal underbelly. People get stabbed or shot and disappear more than ever before.

‘I’m not sure. Tell me more.’

‘The men were Pakistani. Stabbed in the city. Some flats. Where the immigrants live.’

Now it did ring a bell. I remembered the double killing of two Glasgow Pakistani men stabbed to death outside a block of flats where mostly immigrant families from Romania, Syria and Afghanistan were housed. It had caused mayhem in the city, with gangs and revenge attacks; and police and community leaders appealing for calm. I recalled it was a young Syrian immigrant who’d been arrested and charged with the murders.

‘You mean the boy who is charged is your brother? He is an asylum seeker?’

‘Yes. My brother – Carim.’

I took a breath. Whoever this guy was, he didn’t need a private eye, he needed a lawyer. Maybe he didn’t quite understand that. And what had prompted him to phone me?

‘Look, er . . . whoever you are. I think you need to get a lawyer for your brother. You might not be aware, but there will have been one already appointed by the state, so they will be defending him when his case goes to trial. I can’t see why you think you need a private investigator.’

‘I do,’ he said quickly. ‘Not a lawyer. I know things. Lots of things. About these people who died, and also, other things. And . . . And also . . . my sister. She is missing. Can you help me to find her? Her name is Mina. Please can I see you? I am Omar. I am Syrian.’

There was a pleading tone in his voice, a desperation that whoever he was, wherever he’d come from, he now had nowhere else to go. That his sister was missing tugged at everything inside me that had brought me to this day.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you.’

When I hung up after arranging to meet him in the early afternoon, Millie stuck her head around the door of my office, wearing that suspicious but resigned expression I’d seen in her so many times when she thought I’d taken someone on who might be dodgy.

‘You’re seeing this guy?’ she asked as she came in.

I shrugged, spreading my hands as though surrendering, and pulled a face.

‘You know me, Millie,’ I said. ‘He sounded desperate.’

She sighed. ‘Did you get name? Anything about him?’

‘Omar.’ I tried to suppress a smile.

‘Omar who? Where from?’

‘Just Omar. For now. He’s Syrian.’

‘Is he a refugee living here?’

I got up from behind my desk and went over to the coffee machine, knowing that Millie’s inquisition was only because she cared about me and was worried. We had new rules now, we’d agreed, and I did my best to follow them. Number one was that we didn’t see anyone without a prior appointment, and number two was that we had as much detail about the client as possible before we met them. And number three was that I didn’t meet a client outside of the office on my own. That one was fairly easy, as big Dave Fowler, the ex-cop from the Highlands who’d been central to police busting a massive cocaine-smuggling operation a month ago, had decided to remain in Glasgow for the foreseeable future, and said he’d be happy to pitch in if ever I needed help.

‘He didn’t say he was living here,’ I told Millie. ‘He’s the brother of that guy who is up for the murder of those two men down at Govanhill. I don’t know why he’s not just phoning a lawyer instead of me, but the thing is – he said his sister is missing and he was kind of pleading for help. I could hear it in his voice.’

Millie shook her head as she took over the coffee machine and fixed us two mugs.

‘I know how that would get to you. But honestly, you need to be careful, Billie. Things are different for you now.’ She looked at me, and as well as the apprehension in her eyes I could see the joy. ‘Your life is different now.’

‘Yes,’ I said, feeling a smile spread across my face. ‘So different. And so absolutely marvellous!’

To my surprise Millie put her arms around me and pulled me in for a hug.

‘Welcome back, Billie. I’m really happy for you.’

We stood that way for a moment, no words needed between us, and I was so grateful that Millie had been such a support to me during the darkness I’d endured for almost two years.

I had seen him. I was sure I had seen my son just before I passed out on the floor of the multistorey car park in the Bronx. Had it been a dream? I remembered being shot as I clung to the wipers on the windscreen of the car that was taking Lucas away from me, and I recalled sliding off the bonnet onto the ground, my breathing laboured, everything I had lived for in the past eighteen months suddenly torn from me. In my head, I could hear a commotion somewhere in the distance, and loud voices. One was Dan Harris, the US private investigator who had been my lifeline in the hunt for Lucas. I was struggling to breathe and was slipping away when suddenly he told me to look, to open my eyes. That was when I saw Lucas.

When I’d woken in the hospital after what I’d later found out was five hours of emergency surgery, I’d been crying and confused, unsure if it had all been a dream. I was alone in a recovery room, afraid to buzz for the nursing staff. I was afraid to ask if it was true, that I’d seen Lucas, in case they looked at me sadly and said nothing. If it had been a dream, I’d wish I’d slept on, because if Lucas was gone then I’d have no reason to live. I could feel warm tears trickling out of the side of my eyes and down my cheeks, because I just didn’t know any more what was real and what wasn’t. Then suddenly the door of my room opened, and there he was – Lucas, in the arms of Dan Harris. Whatever happens to me in my life, nothing will ever touch the moment when I saw him, his face a little bewildered but filled with something primal that told me everything was going to be fine. I’d lived to see this day and now I could live through anything. I stopped my tears and wiped my eyes and nose with the back of my hand as Harris, smiling broadly, stepped across to where I lay hooked up to machines monitoring my heart and blood pressure. A nurse stood behind Harris, glancing at the machines, her eyes filling with tears as he gently placed Lucas to sit on the bed beside me.

‘Hello, my baby boy,’ I’d said, reaching for his soft little hand and holding it as he gazed into my eyes.

I looked up at Harris.

‘I need to get out of here, Dan. I want to take my boy home.’

Harris smiled. ‘I know you do, Billie. I asked the doctor. He said the operation went really well. The bullet went straight through you. You’re very lucky it didn’t hit any internal organs, but your shoulder is going to hurt for a while.’

‘I want to go home,’ I insisted.

‘Sure you do,’ he said. ‘The doc says it will be a couple of days.’

I caressed Lucas’s soft blond hair and whispered to him.

‘We’re going home, aren’t we? Home to see all your cuddly toys, Lucas.’

‘Home,’ he said.

I looked up at Harris.

‘If I can stand up, and if I can walk, then I’m out of here tomorrow.’

‘Okay, Billie. I’ll talk to the doc.’

But it hadn’t been tomorrow, or the next day or even the day after that. It was five days before I was strong enough and the pain had subsided sufficiently for me to be on mild pain relief that would allow me to handle a long flight with a child in tow. On top of that, there was a whole heap of red tape – that thankfully Harris waded through for me – between the NYPD and the FBI, both of whom had an input while I was in hospital having surgery. Turns out it hadn’t taken them very long. Within a few hours they’d located the car to Long Island and the Russian mobster who had crashed in on the ransom deal I’d made with a small-time lowlife New York hood who’d demanded twenty grand in cash to hand over my son. After that, a whole operation had swung into action, from medics examining Lucas to social workers being brought in to assess his emotional state. The social workers had also talked to me at length in my hospital bed and listened as I explained to them the full story of Lucas’s short life, how he seemed to have been shunted from pillar to post since he was taken by his father from our home in Glasgow. Following his rescue, he’d been in the care of foster parents and was well looked after and eating normally. The social workers had come to the conclusion that although Lucas seemed quiet and a little distant, they’d studied him playing with toys and drawing with crayons on paper and decided that going home to a stable environment with his mother as soon as possible was what he needed. I was grateful for their help. It had taken only a day to obtain a British passport for Lucas after the British Embassy had been brought in and interviewed me at my bedside, where I gave them his birth certificate and they helped fill in the application form. We were almost there.

I turned to look at him – again – his little face, the mop of blond hair, his eyes filled with wonder as the flight attendant secured the hefty aircraft door closed, sealing us in. Nothing could stop us now. We were going home. I was bringing my Lucas home, and every time I thought about it my chest was so tight with emotion I could barely breathe. I reached across and squeezed his hand, and the feeling of pure joy when he curled his fingers around mine is something I know I will revisit in my head for the rest of my life. I had waited so long for moments like this, yearned for the warmth of my little boy’s touch, but always accompanied by the dread that I may have to learn to live with the agony of never seeing him again. As the engines roared on the flight from New York, Lucas turned to me, uncertainty in his pale blue eyes. He clutched my hand tightly as the aircraft taxied down the runway, and I wondered what was going through his tiny mind, if he was confused about why he hadn’t seen his mummy in such a long time. But that was something to think about another day.

‘It’s okay, sweetheart,’ I said, leaning in so our heads almost touched. ‘Don’t worry, my darling. I promise you everything will be fine.’

‘Home,’ he said. ‘Mummy’s house.’

I knew in my heart that he might not know what that meant, he’d probably forgotten. I’d said it to him many times from the moment we were reunited in New York, so he was probably just repeating it. But maybe there was a tiny space in his psyche that remembered where he’d lived, where he’d slept in his bed with his arms wrapped around his favourite cuddly toys.

The plane soared up into the night sky, and again the hesitation in his eyes.

‘Don’t be frightened, sweetheart,’ I said, stroking his hair. ‘Mummy will take care of you forever now.’

I felt the catch in my throat, the one that I’d felt so many times in the past five days, since everything else in my universe stood still as my son was handed into my outstretched arms.

*

At some stage of the flight I must have dozed off because when I woke the captain’s voice on the tannoy was announcing that we would soon be starting our descent into Glasgow. Lucas lay across my lap sound asleep, snuggled beneath a blanket the flight attendant had handed us in our seats at the front of the plane in first class. I’d been surprised at how quickly he had settled, fiddling with the toys and picture books I’d bought for him, then polishing off a pasta meal. I suppose being dragged around for such a long time by his father, he’d become used to adapting to wherever he was told he was living. The social worker had suggested as much and told me that although outwardly he might seem fine in the coming days and weeks, there may be a lot of things bubbling under the surface and I had to watch out. He just needed time and patience and lots of love. And though part of me hoped he hadn’t forgotten where his home was, and that he had memories somewhere of me and the life we’d had, the other part of me hoped he would be able to blot out the last few months, especially if his father was living a chaotic life. And I prayed that he would somehow have erased the memory of his father suddenly not being there, and being taken to New York from that shithole of a house in Cleveland where we’d been given a breakthrough by a girl called Lena, who’d agreed to help us.

*

I’d called Lena to thank her once I had Lucas, and had stayed overnight with him in the home of the foster parents, where I’d bathed him and put on his pyjamas and settled him into bed. When I softly got off the bed thinking he was asleep, he’d clung to my hand, so I’d lain beside him in the double bed, feeling him snuggling into me, the gentle rhythm of his soft breath on my chest lulling me to the sleep of my life.

Before Harris drove me to the airport, he’d brought Lena to say goodbye to me, and when we hugged and stood back, I saw the tears in her eyes, because she knew that she could never have a day like this, that her own child had been adopted, and she would not see him until perhaps some day the kid made the decision to track her down.

*

As the ‘fasten seatbelt’ light came on in preparation for landing, I gently woke up Lucas and sat him up and got him to drink some water. Millie had offered to come and meet me at the airport, but I decided against it; there had been so many different people in Lucas’s life in recent days I thought it might be best to bring him home with just me and get him settled. Millie had been to the supermarket and left the fridge full of food, though. She was beside herself with excitement. I’d already shopped for a suitcase full of new clothes, added to the ones I’d bought a few weeks ago when I thought I was bringing him home then. But this was really it this time. The aircraft engines cut down and I watched out of the window below, where I could see the city clouded in grey. But today it was sunny to me. I buckled up Lucas’s seatbelt and held his hand as we hit the tarmac, taking in the look of wonderment on his face. I held his hand all the way to the terminal building. As we approached customs and passport control, they nodded us on, smiling, as they’d been informed of the new passport issued by the British Embassy in New York, and the circumstances. Then we were through baggage and out of the terminal into a taxi. My stomach was churning all the way to the city centre, never really knowing what Lucas was thinking as he’d been sitting with his face pressed against the window. Then the taxi pulled up to Blythswood Square on the corner where my flat was on the ground floor overlooking the gardens. The driver helped us out of the car and lugged the bags to the front door. After I paid him, I stood for a moment with Lucas before I opened the door, because I wanted this moment, just standing here like this, to be something I would remember to savour, but also to watch if there was a flicker of recognition in his eyes. He showed nothing that I could put my finger on. I turned the key in the door, pushed it open and Lucas watched as the automatic lights came to life in the hallway. I opened the door to my flat and took him by the hand as we walked in, along the hallway and into the living room.

‘Lucas’s house. Mummy’s house.’ I crouched down to look at him. ‘Do you want to see your bedroom?’

His big blue eyes looked back at me but said nothing. His trainers squeaked on the wooden hall floor, then I pushed open the door.

‘Lucas’s bedroom. See? Look at all your toys. Your teddy bears, your ducks, your rabbit?’

He stood for a moment, his eyes roving the room, taking everything in. Then he let go of my hand. He walked across to the window to his single bed, standing and looking at it, surveying the toys all laid out the way they’d been since he vanished so long ago. He went across and ran a hand along them, as though it was triggering something inside, then he picked up the rabbit. He looked up at me and a smile lit his sweet face.

‘Lucas rabbit,’ he said.

I went across to the bed and sat down, and began to sing a little song we used to sing together. He looked at me, his big blue eyes a little empty at first, then his brows knitted as though in concentration. He turned away from me and gazed out of the window, clutching the bunny to his chest. I stood up and turned to go out of the room, to leave him for a few minutes with his thoughts. Then I heard the soft, gentle sound of his voice singing.

‘Hop, little bunny, hop hop hop!’

He was home.

From the day I took Lucas home, I knew that my life had to change. Big time. There was so much to do, to organise now that I had my son back in my life, and I was loving every moment of it. I took six weeks off work and left Millie in charge of the office, with Dave Fowler pulled in to take up the slack on any investigations.

Dave was proving to be a rock, and over the past weeks I’d met him a couple of times in the city as I was out walking with Lucas, and we both watched in delight as Dave’s Border Collie seemed to fall in love with him. It had been so long since I’d had my son at home that I’d almost forgotten the routines, the early-morning rises, the food preparation, the constant washing and ironing of clothes – so much of that had been done by his father while I was out working as a police officer. I tried not to regret missing all of those things, but I couldn’t help feeling the odd stab of guilt that this had all come to pass because I hadn’t been around enough, that I’d taken my eye off the ball.

Now my days were filled with plans for getting Lucas settled into a nursery, as he was four and had missed out on interacting with other children. I was grateful to find one close to St George’s Cross, not too far from my flat, and I’d already spoken to the staff and explained the circumstances. They’d advised me to bring Lucas in and be with him there for a couple of days to see how he reacted to being around other children, and to gradually increase the time I left him at the nursery so that he’d become used to being there alone. That had been hard for me, and I was filled with paranoia when I walked out of the door knowing he was in there without me, when he’d not left my side since he’d come home.

The first time I took him, Lucas gripped my hand at the door and refused to take another step without me. The teacher came forward and bent down to talk to him, to cajole him, telling him there were lots of toys and friends. She’d looked up at me and said just to let him go, that they would deal with him, assuring me he would be fine once he was inside. It took a lot for me to walk away seeing Lucas look up at me with tears in his eyes, and it choked me that he might be wondering if I was ever coming back. But the teachers were right, and by the time I picked him up an hour later, he was bouncing and happy and ran into my arms. From then on he was fine, but it was me who was having the problems. I was anxious and worried all the time I wasn’t with him, and sat outside in the car counting down the minutes until it was time for me to pick him up. I’d stand outside watching through the little window on the door to the nursery and could see that he was playing, but occasionally, he looked around him and seemed forlorn, as though he was worried he’d been abandoned. The staff at the nursery told me he was settling in, so after a couple of weeks I was able to leave him there for a few hours at a time, but it was agony for me. Soon, they told me, he would be staying the en. . .