The Rift by Rachel Lynch (good book recommendations txt) 📕

Look.’ He tapped his keyboard, and a face appeared on screen. He showed her how he divided the face into almost ten thousand parts and took each one, entering data for each section until a three-dimensional profile was created. He tapped some more and an identical face popped up next to the photo, showing how it had been replicated.

‘This one’s ready – see how it recognised the face?’ he said.

She patted him gently on his shoulder with a cup. ‘You are so clever, my love. Keep that on,’ she told him, pointing to his harness. She walked away with all eight teacups jangling in her hands and closed the door. Mustafa went back to work, only slightly uncomfortable that one of the photos he’d been working on looked exactly like a man he’d seen on TV. He noticed him because his Afghan dress was so like his native attire of Morocco. The last thing Mustafa was doing when Fatima brought him more tea was looking at another photo of the man on his iPhone – he’d googled him out of curiosity. Sure enough, he was high up in the new Afghan government in Kabul.

Mustafa was no expert, but he didn’t think an Afghan warlord would need a drone to get secure Amazon deliveries.

But that was none of his business.

Chapter 37

Helen ran along the river. It had been quite a week and tomorrow was Saturday, but she didn’t expect a day off. The early-morning sky shone blue and pink over the city, and she tried to imagine what six days of captivity looked like for a young man of only twenty-one. The profile given to them by his family was one of strength and resourcefulness. Hakim’s university had similar praise to give; his chef de la faculté said that he was a top-grade student, who was diligent, talented and popular. A gregarious man, as well as an intelligent one, would find imprisonment challenging; not that it wasn’t hard enough for anyone, but an alert brain, used to absorbing and processing information, might be his saving or his undoing.

Lots of studies had been done into the minds of captors and their hostages. It wasn’t rocket science, and Helen knew that Khalil had sent his eldest son on courses to learn about just those scenarios. At first, she’d thought it odd, though impressive, but then, when she’d thought about Khalil’s wealth, exposure and vulnerability, it made sense. Celebrities stalked by nutters did it all the time. As she ran, Helen went over in her head the content of the programmes that Hakim had followed. He’d been well instructed as far as she could tell. He would have been trying to find ways into his jailers’ hearts with human contact methods, patience and obedience. This only worked, of course, if one had a warder who cared, and, by its very nature, the business of keeping fellow human beings in degrading, difficult and terrifying isolation attracted a certain kind of person, normally without grace, compassion or capacity to feel much at all.

She shuddered. The image of Hakim’s face she’d seen in numerous photographs burned into her head: his deep brown eyes, his soft skin and his open smile. How was he doing? Was he even still alive? She briefly tried to imagine his mother’s pain, when her mobile phone jolted her out of that agonising spectre. She stopped running and answered it, taking it hastily out of its pouch attached to her arm. The bridge was empty – the summer tourists weren’t awake yet. The number was from Interpol. A flutter of excitement made her rush to speak.

The junior finishing her night shift gave her the news that the lab had come back as promised and the report was ready for Major Scott.

‘Can you open it, please?’ Helen asked, short of breath. ‘I’m looking for confirmation of DNA found at the address at the top of the report and if any of it matched our victim: Hakim ibn Khalil Said Dalmani. It should say his name on the report too.’ She waited and paced up and down, as her heart raced from exertion. A young man and woman could be seen in the distance pushing a pram. She looked away.

‘Right, I’m in the document now,’ said the junior officer. Helen looked across the river at the huge building that was Interpol Headquarters and willed the woman to scan carefully.

‘There’s a match.’

‘What?’ Helen almost didn’t believe what she was hearing. She stared at the river beneath her.

‘There’s a match. Hakim Dalmani was in that flat.’

‘Christ,’ Helen said. ‘I’ll be in the office in an hour.’ She hung up and sprinted towards her apartment building. She dashed past the couple with the pram, forcing herself to look away from the vision of domestic normality. The couple looked at her as if she was a madwoman. And that’s what she felt like: a madwoman on a mission to finally catch up with Hakim’s abductors. They were getting closer, but it tasted bittersweet. What if they were too late? When had he been moved and was he still in Lyon? She felt her hope wither away as her feet pelted the pavement.

Her pace never faltered all the way back to her street, and when she reached the entrance, she bent over and held her knees, thinking she might throw up. It took her back to her training, when they’d march with heavy weights up near-vertical hills, past cadets bringing up their breakfasts in what was affectionately known as the tactical chunder. Her body shook, but she managed to gather herself together and take the lift to her floor. She raced into the apartment and stripped off her running gear as she walked to the bathroom, turning on the shower and ripping the last of her underwear off. The hot water soothed her, and she washed quickly, hoping that her body would cool down quick enough from her run to allow her to dress straight away and catch a