and others that it was a front for human trafficking, although I haven’t found any evidence of that. All he could really tell me was that he’d heard about people disappearing and that when they came back they’d changed. Like, he said he’d heard about this girl, a model who was on smack. Then she vanished for ages and everyone thought she was dead, until she came back and, well, now she’s clean and successful. You’d probably recognise her picture if I showed it to you.’
I scoffed. ‘She’d probably just been to rehab.’
‘That’s what I said. But this guy insisted there were loads of examples. He was going to give me a list, said he’d chat to me online the next day and give me more info. Except he never did. His Facebook account disappeared. All the messages he’d sent me vanished too, like the conversation had been deleted at his end.’
I must have looked like I was finding this hard to believe, because Callum said, ‘I know. It sounds crazy. This person on Facebook was probably having a laugh at the desperate old guy, yeah? Or maybe you think I’m lying. How can you trust me, a total stranger?’
He had taken the words out of my mouth.
‘I can’t prove to you that I have a daughter called Sinead who went missing. I might not be who I say I am. But here are the facts. Your girlfriend has vanished, right? You know Eden is a liar and that she has to be involved. And someone just tried to run your ass over.’
I nodded slowly.
‘I found out that there was another one of these spirituality conventions happening here in New York two weeks ago. I managed to get hold of a woman who works for the company organising it and paid her – okay, bribed her – for a copy of the delegate list. Eden was on it. So I came here to New York to follow her, hoping she’d lead me to this secret organisation and to Sinead. Instead, she led me to you guys.’
‘You saw her at the convention?’
‘I did indeed. It took all my self-control not to march up to her and try to shake the information out of her. “Where’s my daughter, bitch?” But I knew it would be smarter to follow her.’
There were some French fries on my plate, gone cold now. He picked a few up and stuffed them into his mouth.
‘To be honest with you, I didn’t know if you were involved too. So since Eden and Ruth went AWOL, I’ve been following you. I thought you might lead me to them.’ He coughed. ‘That was until someone tried to run you down in broad daylight. So this is my proposal to you: we team up, help each other find Eden, and get our women back.’
‘Our women?’
‘You know what I mean. So, what do you say? Are we going to team up?’
He sat back and waited, folding his arms, though he seemed a little nervous, like he was relying on me to say yes: a yes I couldn’t give without hesitation.
Because the whole story was incredible. Secret organisations? People disappearing and coming back changed?
But the facts were indisputable. Ruth was missing. Eden was a liar and was involved. And though it horrified me to admit it, someone had tried to kill me.
The police weren’t interested. Mona and Jack didn’t believe me. No one else seemed to care and I had no other leads to follow.
‘I don’t really have a choice, do I?’
To my surprise, Callum’s eyes filled with tears and he leaned over and grabbed hold of my hand, squeezing it in his large fist. ‘We’re going to find them,’ he said. ‘We’re going to get them back.’
Callum was renting a short-let apartment on Kent Avenue, close to the Williamsburg Bridge. When I told him I had nowhere to stay, he said I could sleep on his couch.
It was a one-bedroom place, boxy but clean, with A/C that hummed efficiently and windows that all but blocked out the traffic from outside. On the way I had popped into a couple of stores and bought a toothbrush and some spare underwear plus a couple of basic T-shirts. At some point I would have to go back to Jack and Mona’s to pick up my stuff, but right now I couldn’t face them.
Callum made coffee and we sat at the breakfast bar in the little kitchen.
‘Why did we let Eden in?’ I asked. ‘Why did