by Crin Claxton
“Fix the front door. You got the gift of the gab, all right.” Ashton sniggered.
“I had my back turned to him, holding a board up to the door when he came at me with the hammer.”
“Come on, he’s a frail old man. What reason did he have to attack you? Admit it. You didn’t have anything on him. There is no confession. You were trying to get him to admit to something he didn’t do. Probably trying to record that with your phone. So you got a bit worked up. Did you just mean to frighten him with the hammer, is that it?”
“I didn’t have the hammer. He had the hammer. He hit me with the hammer!”
“Wait a minute. He hit you? Where?” Daniel Solomon ran his eyes over Tony’s head, face, and neck.
“My hands mostly.” Tony pulled her hands up from her lap, resting them on the table. Dark bruises were visible. Tony looked at them with fascination. They hadn’t been there the last time she’d looked.
Solomon’s eyes widened. “Has this bruising and swelling been seen by the doctor?” he asked sharply. He flicked through a couple of sheets of paper in the file in front of him. “I don’t have a doctor’s report here.”
Ashton frowned. He turned to the arresting officer. The officer got up and came to look at Tony’s hands. He looked worried.
“She never mentioned nothing about her hands,” he said to Ashton. “She was asked the welfare questions. Sergeant Lewis asked her. I was there.”
Ashton gave him a warning look. “This has just come to our attention now. Ms. Carson did not inform us that she was injured.”
Solomon straightened up. “Now that I’m looking for it, I can see an enormous bruise on her left cheek. Was that bruise there when you arrested my client?”
The arresting officer swallowed. “Must have been.” He looked anxiously at Ashton. “It didn’t happen when we arrested her.”
A small wave of relief flowed through Tony.
“She needs to be medically examined. We can resume this interview after we know the extent of my client’s injuries.” Solomon shut the folder and stood.
For a second, Ashton remained seated. He frowned at Tony’s hands and then at her cheek. Finally, he nodded at the other policeman, and Tony was helped to her feet.
*
Maya hadn’t slept a wink. Tony’s cell wasn’t even taking messages anymore. Around two a.m. after tossing and turning in her own bed for a couple of hours, Maya had caught a night bus across the next borough to Tony’s apartment.
Maya’s heart had sunk when she’d found the apartment empty. Maya had phoned all the London hospitals. Tony hadn’t been admitted into any of them. Finally, she’d got into Tony’s bed and tossed and turned there until daylight glowed behind Tony’s bedroom blinds.
The theater wouldn’t be open for hours. She called Tony’s dad. He hadn’t seen Tony, but promised to call her if he did. The only other place Maya could think to look was Jade’s boat.
At eight a.m., she stood outside the gate at Poplar Marina. It was going to be a hot day. The sun was pale lemon in a bleached, cloudless sky. The skyscrapers of Canary Wharf stretched into the expanse of space above them. A few cars drove past, but traffic was light. The gentle sound of lapping water drifted over the gate.
Maya pressed Jade’s buzzer several times but didn’t get any answer. Jade’s cell was unavailable. It looked like the number had gone out of service. Maya was worried about Jade, and now about Tony as well. She was banking on them being together, having experienced some bizarre accident that affected both their cell phones.
Maya stared at the line of buzzers in frustration. She knew where Jade kept the spare key, if only she could get through the damn gate. A man walked past with his dog. He narrowed his eyes at her. Maya realized she must look suspicious, glaring at the intercom system. She took a sip of her espresso and smiled at him. He looked away.
Maya started pressing buzzers. She knew it was still early, but she was getting impatient. She prioritized the buttons nearest Jade’s, hoping they corresponded to the boats’ positions as well.
“Yes?” A terse female voice came out of the speaker underneath the buzzer buttons.
“Hi, I’m a friend of Jade’s—”
“Bell eight.”
“Yes, I know, she’s not answering. Listen, I’ve been trying to reach Jade for days. Her cell’s dead. I’m really worried about her. Can you buzz me through so I can check whether she’s in the boat or not?” Maya decided not to complicate things by bringing Tony into the conversation.
There was silence. Then a long breath. “We’re not allowed to let anyone through if we don’t know them.”
“Maybe you do know me. I’m a very good friend of Jade’s. Are you one of her neighbors?”
“Ah-ha.”
“Are you from the Dutch barge with the lovely window boxes?” Maya thought flattery was in order. She was pretty sure the voice was the barge owner’s high maintenance girlfriend. They were moored next to Jade’s barge.
“Ah-ha.” She didn’t sound very flattered.
“Look, I think we’ve met. I’m the American with long, dark hair. I’ve stayed over on Jade’s boat a few times.”
There was another long pause.
“Wait there.”
Maya wasn’t sure what that meant. She hoped it was something good.
The gate opened a crack. Maya made out a scowling face. The woman’s face relaxed a millimeter when she saw Maya. Maya recognized the petite, brown haired, blue-eyed girlfriend of the barge owner. Maya supposed she was quite pretty, or she would be, if her face wasn’t permanently set into a frown. The woman opened the gate cautiously and then peered over Maya’s shoulder. She looked left and right and up the street. Finally, she turned back to Maya.
“I thought it was you. I haven’t seen you for ages.”
“I have been trying to see Jade for a while. There’s a problem with her phone. I wonder if her bell works.”
“Oh, the bloody bell works. It’s been getting on my nerves, buzzing away. I don’t think she’s there, though.”
“Really? Where would she go?”
“How would I know?” The girlfriend shrugged.
“Her girlfriend’s gone,” Maya said.
“What, the Indian girl?”
Maya nodded.
“What, for good?” the girlfriend asked.
“I think so.”
“Thank God for that. Jade’s well shut of that one.”
Interested in what the barge owner’s girlfriend had to say about Suni, Maya took a step toward her. The woman waved Maya through the gate and then shut it behind her. “Why do you say that?”
The barge owner’s girlfriend looked like she didn’t want to say why. Maya leaned in, confidentially. “I don’t like her.”
“I don’t like her either,” the girlfriend said, shaking her head. “There’s something slimy about her. She hit on me once. Jade had only gone out for a paper.”
Maya pursed her lips.
“So they’ve broken up now?”
“Yep.”
The barge owner’s girlfriend studied Maya. “So is she with you now?”
Maya didn’t understand the mental jump. She was about to say no, but then she thought it might work in her favor if the woman thought she and Jade were together.
“Well…” Maya deliberately left the end of her sentence hanging, as if she and Jade were on the brink of something.
“That’s explains why you’re so anxious to see her that you’d disturb people at this hour in the morning,” the girlfriend said to herself. “I’m not surprised you got rid of that awful woman.”
“What woman?”
“The one that looks like a boy.”
“Oh, you mean Tony.”
Maya was about to ask the barge owner’s girlfriend if she’d seen Tony, but she narrowed her eyes at the mention of Tony’s name. She lowered her voice. “She tried to drown me once. I even sent a letter to the marina manager, but they didn’t do anything.”
> Maya bit her lip. The way she’d heard it, the barge owner’s girlfriend had been drunk and fallen in the water. Tony had bravely dived in to pull her out, only to be berated for her efforts. Tony and Jade had laughed about it later. Maya felt a stab of pain at the memory.
“She’s just like a man, that friend of Jade’s, your ex,” the girlfriend said.
“No, she’s not,” Maya said shortly. Every time the woman said Tony’s name it pulled at her heart. She was desperate to go and see if Tony and Jade were in the boat.
“Well, I think she behaves like a man, and she certainly looks like one. Or a teenage boy. Why would you want to go out with a teenage boy?”
Maya bit back her anger. She wanted to lecture the woman about her obsession with gender, and about all the ways that a butch was different from a man. Unfortunately, she couldn’t risk antagonizing her and getting kicked off the marina. Not that Tony even identified as a butch.
“Are you even listening to me?” the barge owner’s girlfriend broke through Maya’s musing.
“Sorry, I was thinking about something else for a minute.”
“God, are all lesbians like men? Anyway, I was saying, you and Jade are much better off with each other. You’re both quite normal. At least Jade used to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“I used to like Jade. She plays reggae too loud sometimes, but mostly she’s chilled.”
Maya resisted rolling her eyes and telling the woman that Jade pretty much exclusively played soca not reggae.
“She’ll lend you anything. But she’s been dead weird lately,” the girlfriend continued.
“Weird, how?”
“She’s been withdrawn. You know how she’s usually up on the deck a lot, even in winter. Any little bit of sun, Jade’s out there. I saw her lying out on a sun lounger one Christmas day, in a ski suit. She didn’t care, as long as she got some sun on her face. But not lately. In fact, she’s hardly left the boat at all. The few times we’ve seen her, she’s ignored us. Not even said hello. Vince, my boyfriend, thought he’d upset her, or I had. He always thinks he’s done something wrong. I knew it was nothing to do with us. She looked sad. I wondered if someone had died. Oh yeah, and that awful, bloody, droning voice.”
“What voice?” Vince’s girlfriend had Maya’s full attention.
“A male voice droning on and on, and some kind of God-awful screechy music. Self-help CDs is my guess. All hours of the day and night. It was a real pain when we sat on our deck. I could hear it even inside our boat. Vince said he couldn’t. I wanted to complain, but Vince said to give Jade some slack. Especially if she was grieving.”
“What was the voice saying?”
“I couldn’t hear. It was loud enough to bother me but not loud enough to make out the words. Anyway, I started wearing earphones on our deck. Thank God that’s stopped now. Yeah, now I think about it, it’s been really quiet since yesterday morning.”
“Okay, well, thanks for that. I’m going to check on Jade now.”
Vince’s girlfriend watched Maya from the towpath to her barge. Maya resolved to come back when everything was sorted out and have a good conversation with Vince’s girlfriend about concepts of binary gender.
Maya walked onto the deck of Jade’s boat. She knocked on the bright red front door. There wasn’t a sound from within.
Maya knocked again.
There was no answer. Maya turned the handle and pushed the door. It opened inward. Maya glanced back. Vince’s girlfriend was still watching her. Maya stepped inside the boat, straight into the galley kitchen.
The sink was full of unwashed cups and plates. Open cereal boxes sat on the counter. The two-ring hob was filthy. Jade wasn’t the tidiest person in the world, but she kept a clean kitchen, and she put everything away because there was so little space.
“Jade,” Maya called out. “Tony?”
The only sound was water lapping against the hull of the boat and the throaty quacks of a nearby duck.
She walked down into the dim living area. All of the blinds were drawn. Maya looked at her watch. It was eight thirty, still early, so that wasn’t totally unusual. Maybe Jade was sleeping. She felt a flicker of hope. It wasn’t unusual for Tony and Jade to share a platonic bed.
Maya went straight to the bedroom at the other end of the boat. She walked past piles of things pulled out of cupboards.
Maya knocked on the bedroom door.
Again, silence.
Cautiously, Maya opened the door.
The room was dark. It was in the same state of disarray, and there was no sign of Jade. Or Tony.
Her heart sank.
Maya stepped inside, flipped the light switch on, and sat on the edge of the bed.
She picked up one of Jade’s sweaters that was lying across the duvet. It smelled of Jade’s perfume. She held the sweater just under her nose. Jade, where are you? She might not have supernatural powers, but Maya knew something was terribly wrong.
She called Tony’s cell again.
It just cut her off.
Her eyes traveled to Jade’s shelves. Where were the African carvings?
Maya began opening drawers and looking inside the wardrobe. Whole drawers of Jade’s stuff were gone.
Maya went back into the living space and opened all the blinds up.
There were white mug rings on Jade’s prized mahogany coffee table, and food stains on her fluffy white cushions. There was a big dark stain across her designer Robin Day sofa, and a bright red splash across Jade’s white sheepskin rug. All of Jade’s framed photos were missing. In fact, almost anything personal to Jade was missing: books, CDs, her laptop, her e-book reader, and the painting that had hung on the wall over the sofa. There had been a few clothes in the bedroom but no carvings or other knickknacks, no jewelry and no accessories. Where were all the thick wooden bangles that Jade always had weighing down her arms?
The bathroom was filthy and there were no cosmetics or toiletries in there at all. There wasn’t even a roll of toilet paper.
Maya was shocked. It was very, very odd.
Had Suni stolen all of Jade’s stuff? But why? And where was Jade then?
Maya decided to have a look around the outside of the boat.
She walked up the steps, past the galley kitchen, and stepped out onto the deck. Vince’s girlfriend had disappeared.
There was nothing out of place in the front deck area. Mind you, there was usually nothing on the deck to be moved except Jade’s plants.
They were gone.
Maya walked around the boat to the small storage area behind it. Jade kept her sun loungers under a little porch. They were there propped against the side of the boat as usual, but in front of them was a collection of debris. Maya went in for a closer look.
Inside a plastic crate were Jade’s carvings. The elephant’s trunk was broken clean off. Unbelievably, Jade’s tablet and e-reader were there. Maya’s stomach tensed. There was no way Jade was staying somewhere else. Not unless she’d been committed to a psychiatric hospital.
Maya pulled out the tablet. It powered up briefly and then went dead. Maya glanced back to the crate. Underneath where the tablet had been, and in pieces, was Jade’s cell phone. Maya picked up the leopard print skin Jade had bought at Camden Lock market. It had the little rip in the top right corner that had appeared two weeks after Jade had bought it.
Maya went through the rest of the items in the crate. They were all personal things that Jade loved. There were pieces of jewelry, photos of Tony and Jade’s family, signed copies of novels from her writer friends, and CDs from the musicals she’d been in, some where the sleeve had been signed by the entire cast. There was no way Jade would leave this stuff outside in a crate. She was either really ill or…
Maya’s mind flashed to the blanket on the backseat of Suni’s car. It had taken up the entire backseat. Oh God, was it possible that had been a person, lying on the seat?
Had that been Jade?
Maya’s mind rac
ed. Even if it was Jade, where was Tony?
Tony was already missing when Maya had seen Suni leaving. Was there any possibility Suni had abducted both of them?
Maya thought quickly. Why on earth would Suni do that?
But why the hell would Suni drug her former lover?
The stuff covered in a blanket had been pretty bulky. It could have been two unconscious people.
There were a couple of sheets of paper at the bottom of the crate. Maya pulled them out. The top sheet was a printout of the advert Maya remembered seeing weeks back for a cabin in Scotland. Clipped to it was a receipt. Two days previously, Suni had booked the cabin for the same week. At the bottom of the receipt was a phone number and an address for Glenford Rentals.
Maya dialed the number.
Someone picked up on the second ring.
“Glenford Rentals, can I help you?”
“Yes, please. My name is Suni Ghosh. I’ve rented one of your cabins and I’ve stupidly mislaid the address.”
“Ah, yes,” the cheerful Scottish voice said, “I see you’re on a mobile phone. Can I text that information to you, pet? You’d best have a satellite navigation reference. It’s right in the middle of the forest. Very peaceful.”
“Thank you so much.”
Maya grabbed the crate of Jade’s stuff and set off, almost at a run. She needed to move fast. Suni had a day on her. Maya still didn’t have any real reason to think that Suni was going to harm Jade, or that Tony was with them, but Maya wasn’t going to take the chance.
Maya needed to get home, pack, and get on a plane to Scotland.
*
Tony felt like crap. Despite being given painkillers, her head and hands still hurt, and she felt nauseous. She wanted to sleep, but she was too wound up. She was in one hell of a predicament with the police. And overriding all of that, she was terrified for Rose. What if Rose died? Tony kept seeing her lying on the floor. She hadn’t looked good.
Why had Somers attacked Rose? How did he even know where she lived? He had some game going with the police. God, he was a slippery bastard.