into his space and the man steps back in alarm but I’m right there, blocking his exit. There’s no way we’re letting this man get away without telling us what he knows; even if it’s something tiny that leads nowhere, we need to know it.
‘Did you pick her up or not?’ I demand. ‘Answer us or I’m calling the police right now.’
The driver glances over Konstandin’s shoulder at the man behind the desk who is on the phone but keeping one curious eye fixed on us. The taxi driver shakes his head at me. ‘No. It wasn’t me,’ he says in broken English. ‘I did not drive taxi that night.’
‘That man over there told us you picked someone up from outside my apartment at just gone three in the morning …’
The taxi driver darts a furtive glance at the man on the phone – possibly his boss. ‘My cousin drive,’ he whispers.
I don’t understand and look to Konstandin in confusion.
‘He’s not allowed to lend his taxi to anyone else,’ he explains to me. ‘It’s against the rules.’
‘Don’t tell! Please,’ the driver says. ‘I lose my licence.’
‘Where’s your cousin?’ Konstandin asks him.
The man bites his lip and looks away, obviously torn.
‘Please,’ I say, pulling on his sleeve. ‘You don’t know how important this is.’
‘He not do it,’ the man says, hissing at me under his breath. ‘He not bad. He has a wife, children. He not hurt anyone.’
‘We just want to know if he picked her up and if so, where he took her, that’s all.’
‘We won’t involve the police,’ Konstandin reassures him.
The man looks between us, still weighing it up. ‘OK,’ he nods finally. ‘We go see him.’
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Thirty minutes later, it’s almost midnight and we’re on the outskirts of the city, somewhere near the airport where high-rise apartment blocks sprout thick as bushes. We park in a car park beside one particularly run-down one, and the taxi driver who led us here in his taxi, gets out of his car and walks over to ours. Konstandin winds down the window.
‘My cousin come,’ the taxi driver tells us, then pulls out a cigarette packet. He offers one to Konstandin who takes one, then to me. I take one too, to settle my nerves.
The three of us stand outside the car, smoking. Konstandin chats in Portuguese to the taxi driver and I pray silently that this man who is meeting us – his cousin – is the man who picked up Kate on Saturday morning and that he can tell us where he took her and give us another clue to what happened. What if he did something to her though? He isn’t going to tell us that.
The taxi driver keeps checking his phone and finally his cousin skulks out of the building, pulling a beanie hat on low, and shoving his hands in his pockets. He looks suspicious, darting dark glances between Konstandin and I as the taxi driver introduces us. We don’t shake hands. He seems to take some convincing from his cousin to talk to us, but finally he nods.
Konstandin takes over the questioning. He shows him Kate’s photograph on my phone and the man nods. They seem to be speaking a third language, not Portuguese. Maybe Arabic or Turkish?
‘He picked her up!’ I say.
Konstandin confirms it. ‘Yes. He picked her up.’
‘Where did he take her?’
The man starts to wave his arms about, talking rapidly. ‘What’s he saying?’ I ask, impatiently.
Konstandin finishes the conversation and turns to me. ‘He says she told him to follow another vehicle. An Uber.’
I nod. ‘The one with Joaquim and Emanuel in.’
‘She told him that the men in the Uber had stolen her handbag.’
The cousin starts gesticulating angrily. ‘What?’ I ask, tugging on Konstandin’s arm.
‘Money!’ the man says to me. ‘You give. Me. Owe.’ His English is broken and I look at Konstandin.
‘She didn’t pay him.’
I shake my head in disbelief. ‘She had her bag stolen! That’s why she couldn’t pay him.’ I rummage in my bag and pull out my wallet but before I can open it Konstandin is already handing over a couple of ten-euro notes from his own wallet.
‘Did he follow Emanuel and Joaquim back to their apartment?’ I ask, on tenterhooks.
Konstandin asks the question and even I understand the answer.
The cousin shakes his head and then says a few more words.
Konstandin looks at me. ‘He says he lost them. They hit a red light, and then got caught in a one-way system.’