Dead Man's Grip

Chardonnay on the plane, had not been such a good idea. She’d thought they might calm her and help her to sleep for a few hours, but now she had a blinding headache and a parched mouth, and was feeling decidedly spaced out.
    It was strange, she thought. She’d brought Tyler to New York as a pre-Xmas treat last December. They’d both felt so excited in this queue then.
    She dialled home, anxious to check on him. But just as her mother answered an angry-looking man in a uniform was in her face, pointing at a sign banning the use of mobile phones. Apologetically, Carly hung up.
    Finally, after another twenty minutes, she reached a yellow line and was next. The immigration officer, a cheery-looking plump black woman, chatted interminably with the spindly man carrying a backpack who was in front of her. Then he moved on and Carly was summoned forward. She handed over her passport. She was asked to look into a camera lens. Then she was told to press her fingers on the electronic pad.
    The woman might have smiled and joked with the previous person, but she was in no laughing mood now.
    ‘Press harder,’ she dictated.
    Carly pressed harder.
    ‘I’m not getting any reading.’
    Carly pressed harder still and finally the red lights changed to green.
    ‘Now your right thumb.’
    As she pressed down hard with her right thumb, the woman frowned at her screen.
    ‘Left thumb.’
    Carly obeyed.
    Then the woman suddenly said, ‘OK, I need you to come with me.’
    Bewildered, Carly followed her behind the line of immigration desks and through a door at the far end of the room. She saw several armed immigration officers standing chatting and several weary-looking people, from a mix of ethnic backgrounds, seated around the room, most of them staring vacantly ahead.
    ‘Mrs Carly Chase from the United Kingdom,’ the woman announced loudly, seemingly to no one in particular.
    A tall man in a checked sports jacket, plain white shirt and brown tie, ambled over to her. He spoke with a Brooklyn accent.
    ‘Mrs Chase?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’m Detective Investigator Lanigan from the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. I’ve been asked by your police department in Sussex, England, to take care of you while you’re over here.’
    She stared back at him. In his fifties, she guessed, he had a powerful physique, a pockmarked face beneath a greying brush-cut and a concerned but friendly expression.
    ‘I understand you have the home address of Mr and Mrs Revere for me?’ she said.
    ‘Yes. I’m going to take you there.’
    She shook her head. ‘I have a car booked. I need to go alone.’
    ‘I can’t allow you to do that, Mrs Chase. That’s not going to happen.’
    The firm way he spoke made her realize that the decision had been taken and was not going to be reversed.
    Carly thought hard for a moment. ‘Look, OK, follow me to their place, but at least let me go in alone. I can handle myself. Can I please do that?’
    He stared at her for some moments.
    ‘It’s about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from here. We’ll go in convoy. I’ll wait outside, but here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to text me every fifteen minutes so I know you’re OK. If I don’t get a text I’m coming in. Understand what I’m saying?’
    ‘Do I have any option?’
    ‘Sure, you do. I can have Immigration put you on the first available flight back to London.’
    ‘Thanks,’ she said.
    ‘You’re welcome, lady.’

78
    In the back of the Lincoln Town Car it was dark and silent. Carly sat immersed in her thoughts, occasionally sipping water from one of the small bottles in the rack in the central armrest. Maybe she should have said yes to the New York detective and let Immigration put her on a flight back to England. She felt a lump in her throat and a chill of fear running through her, worsened by the cold air-conditioning in the car.
    The black leather seats and blacked-out windows made the interior feel as gloomy as her mood. The driver seemed in a bad mood, too, and had barely said two words to her since leaving the airport. Every few minutes his phone rang. He would gabble a few angry words in a language she didn’t know and hang up.
    Each time it irritated her more. She needed silence. Needed to think. She’d phoned home again as soon as she’d got into the car and her mother told her all was fine. She reminded her about Tyler’s dental appointment in the morning and wished her good luck with the scan.
    Her grandmother had