by Karen Dodd
They found a café half a block off the main square. As Nico sat across the table from Elle, the intensity of her pale blue eyes struck him again. But rather than refreshing pools that you’d want to swim in, they were deep, icy, as if you’d drown. “So tell me again why we’re here,” he said.
“The ground-breaking cancer drug I was telling you about?” Elle said. “The lead PhD responsible for developing it for Heritage Pharmaceuticals was a woman by the name of Dr. Anna Braithwaite. She’s originally from Malta but she took her husband’s surname when she married. She still keeps an apartment here. Anyway, once her research came to light she got a ton of media coverage—quite unusual for a scientist in the UK—because the drug could target and kill the rarest and most aggressive cancer cells without damaging the healthy ones. It wasn’t a cure for cancer, but it was the next best thing.”
She paused while their food was delivered. Nico unwrapped his cutlery from his napkin, then raised his water glass. “Buon appetito.”
Elle cut into her fried rabbit livers, pink and nestled on a bed of wild mushrooms and fennel. As she chewed with gusto, all Nico could think about were the hares and rabbits he’d observed running freely on the grounds of his hotel. He speared an olive from his plate of ftira, a traditional Maltese dish of tuna, sun-dried tomatoes and capers. And tried not to think of little liverless bunnies. Prematurely balding with geeky round spectacles, he was also pescatarian.
“Anna’s husband, Clarence Braithwaite, was also a highly regarded postdoctoral research scientist who was on the fast track to becoming a professor at Cambridge. He worked with Anna, supervising part of the team that was developing the drug. Word in the research community, however, was that there was some professional jealousy between the two of them.”
“Between a husband and wife on the same team.” Nico shook his head. “That really happens?”
“More often than you’d think. Clarence was working his ass off trying to get the trials approved so the drug could go to market, and when some of the data was found to be faulty, rumors abounded that Anna Braithwaite was trying to pin the blame on him. Clarence allegedly complained to a colleague that thanks to her, his future career was ruined.”
Nico raised an eyebrow. “And you know this, how?”
Elle put down her fork and knife, having finished her lunch while Nico was only halfway through his. “Give me some credit. I didn’t get to be where I am without excellent sources. Now, I need hard evidence. And that, to answer your question, is why we’re here.”
“What, because two scientists were having professional and marital problems?”
Seemingly unaware Nico hadn’t finished eating, Elle threw some euros on the table and got up to leave. “That car bombing I told you about? One of the victims was Clarence Braithwaite.”
* * *
They stood outside the bistro, having finished lunch. Well, at least Elle had.
“Anna Braithwaite’s apartment is here in Mdina? Even if she was responsible for the drug trials going awry, surely that’s a matter for the UK authorities? What are you going to do, walk up to the woman’s front door, ring the bell and ask if she fiddled with the drug trials and tried to pin it on her husband?” Nico berated himself for not asking for specifics when Elle suggested he come with her to Mdina.
“I wouldn’t have brought us up here unless I knew she wouldn’t be at home. I happen to know she’s not even in the country at the moment.”
“So why did we come if she’s not here . . . ?”
Then the penny dropped.
Nico shook his head. “Oh, no, we’re not. We are not breaking into her apartment.”
“Suit yourself.” Elle shrugged. “Ariana would have done it. With or without your help.” And she strode off.
Porca miseria! While his prosecutor’s conscience shrieked in protest, Nico took off down the narrow cobblestone street just in time to see Elle disappear around the corner.
* * *
If anyone had told Nico he’d be standing on a landing, keeping an eye out for unexpected guests while an investigative journalist broke into a respected researcher’s apartment, he would have said they were delusional. While he had caught up with Elle as she marched determinedly down the road that led to Braithwaite’s apartment, he flatly refused to take part in the break-in. One illegal entering in two days was more than he had an appetite for. Nonetheless, he kept his mobile in hand, ready to text her if anyone showed up. She seemed a bit fickle about when he was only permitted to use Yandex versus instant messaging.
At the fifteen-minute mark, he texted her.
N: How much longer?
E: Almost done.
Five minutes later, she emerged with her handbag and mobile in hand. Nico saw a pair of blue Latex gloves peeking out of the bag as she checked the door had locked behind her. He didn’t even want to venture a guess as to how she got inside Braithwaite’s apartment without damaging the lock. For a journalist, the woman certainly came prepared.
They walked in silence back to the car. While Elle seemed in no hurry, he was more than anxious to get the hell out of the walled city in case someone had spotted them. Once back in the car, Nico let out a sigh.
“You’re wound tighter than a piano wire,” Elle said as she started the car. “We should have stopped for a drink on the way out. You look like you could use one.”
“I don’t need a drink.” His lunch roiled in his gut. He wished he had some water. Then he wished he hadn’t thought about that, as it reminded him of his meeting with Mifsud. The detective had probably dropped Nico’s water glass into an evidence bag before he had even left the building.
“Aren’t you going to ask me if I found anything?” Elle said as she maneuvered the car out of the parking area and onto the main road.
When Nico didn’t reply, she handed him her phone. As she checked her side mirror and merged into the traffic, he scrolled through the photos. There must have been a couple dozen. Some were obviously rooms in Braithwaite’s apartment, the rest looked to be scientific papers. His antenna went up when he got to the last two, which looked like stills taken off a video.
“These look like surveillance shots. Do you know who the subject is?”
“Now you’re asking the right questions,” Elle replied. “I shot those two from an envelope of original photographs I found locked in Braithwaite’s desk drawer.”
Nico cringed. Elle had broken into the woman’s desk.
“That, my friend, is Dr. Clarence Braithwaite.”
“Why would—?” He looked at her. “You think Anna had something to do with her husband’s murder?”
Elle shrugged as she sped up to pass a car in front of them. “You never know what someone might do given the right circumstances. She had incredible stature in the research community. If he knew she was responsible for the faulty research… well, her career would be over.”
“Jesus.”
“Speaking of which, what do you really know about Francesca Bruno?”
What? Nico hadn’t seen that coming. He swallowed his surprise and again tried to sound casual. “Apparently, she was Ariana’s assistant, but they were lifelong friends, going all the way back to boarding school. Why?”
“Ariana never talked about her, that’s all.”
Nico had to admit she’d never mentioned Francesca to him either. But then again, she hadn’t mentioned she had a child either. His child. “Never?”
Elle shook her head. “Who knew you were on Gozo when Lydia Rapa was killed?”
Nico looked over at the sharp outline of her profile. Elle kept her eyes on the road.
His heart sank. Francesca had told him what ferry Lydia would be on and how to spot her. She knew there was only one route from the ferry and how long it took to drive it. But that didn’t make any sense. She would have had no way of knowing Lydia would stop off at The Fishing Eagle. Unless she had eyes on the ground. But what possible motive would she have to do harm to the woman who could have helped solve Ari
ana’s murder?
Chapter Twelve
With his mind still reeling from his trip to Mdina, Nico needed to do what he did best when he was at an impasse: map things out on paper. When he returned to the hotel, he asked one of the staff if they had any butcher paper. The man looked confused. After further explanation that it was used to wrap food, Nico saw a spark of recognition light up the young man’s face.
“We don’t have such an item, Sinjur Moretti, but my friend has the delicatessen down the road.” He snapped his fingers. “Give me ten minutes and I will get some for you.”
In less than that, he arrived at Nico’s door with an enormous ream of brown wrapping paper. He seemed delighted, even as he refused a tip, that he could be of help. He’d also obtained the felt marker pen and adhesive tape Nico had requested.
He closed the door, then ripped a length of paper from the roll and taped it to the wall at eye level. On it, he drew a circle. Around its perimeter he wrote the names of all the people he’d met or knew of during his investigation into Ariana’s death. Next, he drew lines between the people he knew to be connected to others. Then, as he would do in the boardroom of his prosecutor’s office, he paced his tiny room, muttering to himself.
Ariana trusted three people: Francesca Bruno, Elle Sinclair and Lydia Rapa. One, allegedly a friend that dated back to boarding school, another an investigative journalist, and the last an MP who, despite their political differences, became a close friend and confidante. All the other names had a straight line running toward the center. They all had connections to Ariana, but did they have a connection to each other?
He stood back, trying to gain some perspective. Obviously, Francesca and Lydia knew each other because it was Francesca who’d told Nico how to find the MEP on the Friday afternoon ferry. And Lydia admitted Francesca had visited her with Ariana and Max on several occasions. Next, he moved to Elle Sinclair. She said she hadn’t met Francesca and that Ariana never mentioned her. That was odd, given that Lydia Rapa had met Francesca several times.
Nico put the cap on the felt pen and tapped it against his chest. Elle and Ariana had been friends and colleagues since meeting years ago at a charity fundraiser in the UK. Wouldn’t Elle have known about Max? And yet, she hadn’t mentioned him. And wouldn’t Francesca’s name have come up in relation to the boy if anything were to happen to Ariana?
Drawing another line, Nico connected Elle to Alesandru Baldisar. She knew him, both from her investigations into his bank and the society wedding at an estate in the UK. She had thought the man Baldisar was arguing with was possibly Russian, but given the ilk of the bank’s clients both Francesca and Elle had told him about, that could mean anything. Right now, possible money-laundering wasn’t Nico’s top priority. Finding out who ordered Ariana’s assassination was the only thing on his mind. Not to mention finding his son.
Nico drummed the pen against the desk. He was missing something. But what? Absently, he reached out to stroke Gabriela, forgetting she was snuggled up in her new bed downstairs. He dropped to the end of the bed and sat stewing in the growing darkness.
Then there were the two other journalists. Sergio had been unsuccessful in finding out what flight Testa had boarded, and there was no answer when Nico tried calling him back. He never did manage to track down De Rosa. Obviously, both had gone into hiding. But from whom? Ariana’s killer?
So much for the Journalists for Justice code to continue the work of a fallen comrade. It looked increasingly like they had ditched Ariana’s memory in favor of their own well-being. But then again, who could blame them?
He needed to talk to Elle and find out what more she could tell him about the journalists’ organization. After sending her an encrypted message for her to contact him, Nico sat at the tiny desk in his room and reviewed the notes he’d tacked to the wall. Four women, two of whom were dead, the third was missing and could well be dead. They all knew about the existence of Max. Was Francesca snatched because they thought she knew what Ariana was about to expose? If so, if she did know more than she’d let on, that could be the one thing that could save her. But after that? Nico’s blood ran cold. If she couldn’t or wouldn’t tell them what they wanted to know, then all bets would be off.
He rose from his chair and paced the small room. A ping from his computer signaled a message from Elle.
E: Turn on the news!
N: Why?
E: Just turn it on!
He found the remote buried under a pillow and clicked on the local news station.
The banner along the bottom of the screen read, Breaking News. He hit the button to unmute the sound.
“We’re just now learning that a few hours ago,” the female news anchor announced with great drama, “police staged simultaneous raids on Malta’s most prestigious family-run private bank and several of its clients. FBI and Europol agents jointly launched what sources tell us was a highly orchestrated siege on Baldisar Bank branches in the UK and Malta, as well as at the home of the bank’s CEO, Alesandru Baldisar.”
Nico sat down heavily on the bed. There was a close-up of what were apparently the banker’s wife and children standing in their nightclothes outside a house, shielding their eyes from the television camera lights. His heart went out to them. But where was Baldisar himself? He wasn’t there among his terrified family. Out at a “meeting” in the wee hours of dawn? Or had someone tipped him off and made sure he wasn’t there for the police raid? Leaving his family to take the brunt of the police and media assault.
The anchor was back on-screen, and she took a quick breath as if even that might rob her audience of life-sustaining information. “The bank has often been cited for having dragged their heels in implementing stringent FINTRAC regulations. The charges leveled against Baldisar Bank include money-laundering, conducting business illegally in the UK, and not providing financial regulators with proof of adequate oversight in a timely manner. On a personal level, Mr. Baldisar has been charged with fraud, corruption and bribery.”
Again, the camera swept away from the reporter’s face and a grainy video clip appeared on-screen. It showed someone reported to be Baldisar exchanging an envelope with a second man. Nico’s throat went dry. Elle had told him of this exact exchange at Dingli Cliffs.
He leaned forward and squinted at the screen. The tall man accepting the envelope looked familiar. Wait, no, it couldn’t be . . . ? In reaching for the package, the man’s shirtsleeve rode up and on his wrist was a distinctive Rolex Oyster watch. Exactly like the one he’d observed Investigator Pezzente wearing.
As the reporter’s voice faded into the background, Nico’s thoughts ran amok. Surely the PM’s investigator couldn’t be behind this? He felt sick. From Lydia Rapa being deliberately run off the road to Francesca’s disappearance—Pezzente had known Nico’s whereabouts the entire time he’d been in Malta. And from what Elle had said on the drive to Mdina, he’d lied about the car bombing outside the hotel in St. Julian’s. He said they’d been killed for skimming off a money laundering operation. The only thing Nico prayed Pezzente didn’t know was where he was currently staying.
He flipped through the TV channels again. Nico was beginning to fear that it was more than a coincidence that only a day after he’d been attacked and Francesca had disappeared, news of Baldisar Bank was breaking.
After turning off the television, he remained perched on the end of the bed, in the dark. He was ready to call Pezzente and tell him what a son of a bitch he was and report him to the authorities. But then the reality of what he’d just seen sunk in: When it came to investigating Ariana’s murder, Pezzente was the authority. The shocking realization that Pezzente could be both the investigator and the investigated hit Nico like a sucker punch to the gut.
He unclenched his fists and shook the tension from his neck and shoulders. As angry as he was, he had bigger fish to fry. The authorities could deal with Baldisar and Pezzente if, indeed, they were connected. At this stage, he didn’t really give a rat’s ass about two men
in a sea of corruption. The authorities in both countries could sort that out. Or not. It appeared to have nothing to do with Ariana’s murder, or Max.
If he was going to find his son, he needed to play his cards close to his chest. Francesca had said she didn’t know where Max was but based on what Elle said driving back from Mdina, Nico was no longer sure. While he didn’t know either woman very well, he was inclined to trust an accredited journalist over a part-time assistant cum nanny. If there was even a remote possibility that Francesca had lied to him, he needed to find her alive and well. She could be the sole person who could tell him what Ariana was about to announce before she was killed. And Max’s whereabouts.
* * *
Early the next morning
“Where the hell have you been?” demanded the man’s wife. “I’ve been trying to reach you all night!” Her voice was so shrill he held the phone away from his ear as he paced the deck of his private yacht. “And that cheap tramp the paparazzi caught you with. I don’t care about your affairs, we passed that bridge a long time ago, but your children. How do you think they feel?”
“Settle down, Paola. I’ve got this.” When has the woman ever worried about being shamed? His frequent affairs were public knowledge. They’d been going on for years—behind her back for a while, but now he didn’t even bother hiding it. All that mattered to her was that her place in Malta’s high society was sustained, and he’d given her that and more. Secretly, she was probably happy to be written about in the society papers.
“Take the children and go to the country house,” he said. “You’ll be safe from prying eyes there.”
“We can’t go anywhere, you stupid man! There are photographers everywhere.”