Unfinished Business

by W. Soliman

  I poured myself a beer and returned to my laptop. Dragging my mind away from my son’s achievements, I rummaged in the drawer where I’d thrown the card Kara had given me. Time to find out a bit more about my visitor before I did anything about her request. The card was for a business called It Takes Two and gave a website address. I typed in the URL and was confronted with what looked like a dating agency, with a difference.

  Kara’s name was given as one director and a Sam Bryce as the other. Samuel or Samantha? There were no pictures of either director so I had no way of knowing. I read the promotional stuff on the home page and discovered It Takes Two didn’t attempt to pair lonely hearts but instead offered organized activities for single people. Walking, dancing, trips to the theatre, stuff like that. As I read on I learned Kara’s singles were enjoying meaningful eye contact over a line-dancing session that very evening.

  Clever. The dating thing had been done to death, but Kara and the genderless Sam had hit upon a niche in the market, getting like-minded people together in a social environment and letting nature take its course—or not—rather than trying to match them up through their star signs, or a mutual desire to save the planet, or whatever the fuck it was that supposedly made strangers instantly compatible.

  By the time I’d finished studying the site I knew little more about Kara than I had at the start. The address on the card was in Hove but I had no way of knowing if that was just her business premises or if she lived there too. Time to make Jimmy Taylor pay for thinking with his prick and blabbing his mouth off. I rang the nick and was in luck. Jimmy was on duty and in the squad room. One of my ex-colleagues yelled for him and his voice was soon on the other end the phone.

  “Hey, mate, how’s it hanging? That little cutie found you all right the other day, did she? Lucky bastard! Don’t know how you do it.”

  “Charm, mate, charm. I wouldn’t expect you to understand. Anyway, that’s what I was calling you about. As a penance for telling her where to find me, you’ve been selected to do me a favour.”

  “Uh-uh, I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “This one’s within even your limited powers of detection.”

  “Cheeky bastard!” Jimmy sighed. “Okay, give, what do you want?”

  “Very gracious.”

  “The man rings me for a favour and expects me to be grateful.”

  “Okay, I owe you a pint.”

  “Too right, you do. Now, give.”

  “Well, I just want all you can get for me on Kara Webb. Age about twenty-seven. I need to know where she lives. I’ve got an address you could start with but I don’t know if it’s her business premises.” I reeled off the one from the card.

  “Kara, hey, isn’t that the redhead from the other day? Hello, hello, don’t tell me she’s broken through heartless Hunter’s cynical barricades?”

  “You lack the ability to think outside the box, Jimmy, that’s your trouble. Get back to me as soon as you can.”

  I cut the connection and dialled another number from memory. My old partner, Joe Newman, now in his early sixties, had mentored me in my early days as a detective and taught me almost everything I knew about being a good copper. He’s one of the most principled people I’ve ever met and still enjoys my unadulterated respect. He’s retired now and lives in a bungalow close to Brighton racecourse. He answered the call on the second ring, his booming voice echoing down the line as forcefully as ever.

  “Hey, Charlie boy!” He sounded delighted to hear from me, which made me feel guilty. He was lonely and I didn’t see as much of him as I should. “What’s up?”

  “Well, I reckon the bass ought to be running a few miles out about now, and since my engine’s in need of a tryout, I thought we could combine the two things on Tuesday.”

  “You’re on. I’ll bring beer.”

  “Now you’re talking.” I paused for a moment and then got down to the real reason for my call. “Oh, and Joe, go back through those meticulous records of yours between now and then and tell me all you can remember about a missing person, Jasmine Webb. It was about fifteen years ago, just after I joined the squad.”

  “It rings a vague bell but why on earth are you asking me about that all this time later?”

  “Well, her sister came to see me—”

  “Ha!” Joe’s barking laugh resonated in my ear. “I might have known there’d be a woman involved.”

  “No, nothing like you’re thinking. You’ve got a dirty mind. She just needs closure and I said I’d see if there was anything you could remember that might help her.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Joe arrived at the marina weighed down by fishing tackle, a heavy-looking cool box, and his daughter, Sarah. I sighed, exasperated. Joe was being his usual less-than-subtle self, and Sarah had yet to learn to take no for an answer. A few years younger than me, she was an attractive divorcée with a daughter the same age as Harry, which she seemed to think joined her and me at the hip.

  I’d foolishly given way to loneliness a few months back and had a brief fling with her. I thought she understood the score and was as wary of the relationship thing as me, but that had proved not to be the case and she’d been a thorn in my side ever since. It didn’t help that Joe encouraged her and took every opportunity to throw us together. Ah well, at least Sarah knows one end of a fishing rod from the other so there was nothing I could do other than to make the best of it.

  “Hi.” Sarah waved. “Hope you don’t mind me tagging along.”

  “Hi, yourself.” I kissed Sarah’s cheek and avoided the more personal form of greeting she appeared to have in mind by stepping onto the pontoon and relieving Joe of his burden.

  I disconnected the shore power, brought the cable on board and started the engine. The tension left me when it sprang smoothly into life. Joe let the lines go and I edged the boat away from the pontoon, elated to at last have the chance to put to sea, albeit on an unusually calm day, which wouldn’t be particularly testing.

  Once we were clear of the marina, I set the autopilot and left Joe on watch several times as I visited the engine room. Two-hundred-and-fifty horses sang to me as I lifted the hatch, no spewing of oil, water leaks or unnatural clanking to spoil the melody. It was a cramped area for a man of six foot two, but I didn’t notice the discomfort as I bestowed one of my rare smiles upon the hunk of metal that had become as familiar to me over the past few months as the curves on a particularly voluptuous woman’s body.

  Sarah busied herself in the newly fitted galley. I didn’t have a clue what she was doing and had no intention of asking, but if she attempted to reorganize my stuff I’d go ballistic. Joe’s eyes were glued to the Fish Finder screen above the helm position, which showed the seabed immediately below us and gave warning of any marine life unwise enough to be lurking within range of the fishing rods waiting in the No Comment’s cockpit.

  “Looks like you were right about the bass.” Joe pointed to the screen after we’d been at sea for about an hour.

  I checked the screen for myself and nodded. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s go and make their acquaintance.”

  I cut our speed to idle and we adjourned to the cockpit. Sarah materialised with a platter of sandwiches and hot coffee.

  “Can’t fish on empty stomachs.”

  She brushed her breast against my arm as she moved past me to place the plate on the table.

  I pretended not to notice and concentrated on setting up the rods.

  I didn’t want to broach the subject of Kara with Sarah in earshot. Predatory females have a tendency to put two and two together and come up with seventeen, which would only make for more trouble I didn’t need. So it wasn’t until we got back to the marina and Sarah scuttled off to collect her daughter from school that I could finally ask Joe if he’d remembered anything.

  “Well, it’s funny.” He popped the ring pull on a can of beer and took a long draught. “But once you mentioned it, I remembered the case without looking it up.”

&nbs
p; “I did too but then it was one of my first as a detective.” I took a swig of my own beer.

  “What made it stand out for you?”

  “Something about the father got my hackles up on that one. He was all over us, threatening us with God alone knew what if we didn’t drop everything and find his daughter. He did the funny handshake bit, said he played golf with the ACC and had his ear, that sort of stuff.”

  “I suppose he was a bit aggressive, but aren’t all parents like that when a kid goes missing? Christ, if anything were to happen to Harry, I don’t think I’d—”

  “Yeah, but this guy was bombastic and arrogant beyond belief, whereas the wife barely said a word. Didn’t even look as though she’d shed a tear. And that didn’t seem natural either.”

  “People cope with grief in different ways, Joe, you know that.”

  “Sure they do, but then the kid phoned home and suddenly the father was just as anxious for us to back off.” Joe shrugged. “You know how it is, after the first flush of relief that the kid’s safe, they usually want us to deploy half the Met to track them down.”

  “That’s right. Webb did a complete about-face.”

  “Yeah, he said she was safe and that was all that mattered. She’d told him on the phone she was struggling with college work and needed some space, which he intended to give her.”

  “So he did. He didn’t know where she was or who she was staying with but was adamant she’d be all right.” Didn’t sound like the reaction of the control freak Kara had described to me.

  “He said she’d be back home in a week or two and we didn’t need to do anything else.”

  “I didn’t buy that and nor did you,” Joe said. “You wanted to carry on delving into it but the brass pulled us off.”

  “Yeah, I was a bit suspicious because no one at her college thought she was struggling.”

  “No, but we didn’t get the chance to ask many questions before the plug was pulled, remember? You still wanted to go back and sniff around a bit more.”

  “Well, there’s keenness for you.”

  I remained in the cockpit for a long time after Joe left, drinking beer, listening to Hank Jones on the stereo and staring up at the sky. I mulled over the whole business of Jasmine Webb’s disappearance and her parent’s peculiar reaction to it. Presumably they’d got over that but now had the death of their son to cope with. Coincidence? Somehow I didn’t think so. Why, I couldn’t say but none of it made sense and I’d bet the No Comment there was something very wrong with the whole shebang.

  Something tickling her eyelids woke Nadia from a sleep invaded by images of Brett. She tried to brush it away, but it persevered. Cautiously she opened her eyes, unable at first to remember where she was, and stifled a scream. A face, Brett’s face as it had been when he was no more than seven or eight years old, stared directly into hers. Relief flooded through her. He wasn’t dead. She must have imagined it all. The pills Igor gave her sometimes messed with her head. She waited for the fuzziness to dissipate. As it did so she wondered why Brett looked so young.

  “Brett, what—”

  “Mummy, wake up, Mummy.”

  Her relief fizzled out when she realized it wasn’t Brett, but Sergei, her seven-year-old son. Nadia loved him unconditionally but couldn’t quite suppress her disappointment when the brutal truth struck home. The fact that her son was a mirror image of her brother at the same age had once given her comfort. It now only added to her torment every time she looked at him. She hid her reaction by hugging the child close.

  “Why are you always sleeping in the daytime, Mummy?” he asked accusingly.

  “I’m not always sleeping, darling.” She sat up cautiously, aware the room would spin if she moved too quickly. “Where’s your sister?”

  “Here, Mummy.”

  Saskia was seated at Nadia’s dressing table, still in her nightdress, red hair—the same colour Nadia’s had once been—a tangled mass around her shoulders. The priceless diamond choker Nadia had worn last night to wow Igor’s guests was wrapped ’round the four-year-old’s neck. She was in the process of applying her mother’s scarlet gloss to her lips, missing her target and smearing most of it over her face.

  “Why aren’t you both at school?”

  “It’s Saturday, Mummy,” Sergei said impatiently. “And you said we could go sailing today.”

  “So I did.” The thought of spending the day on the water with her children ought to have cheered her, but she doubted she’d be able to summon up sufficient energy to go through with it. Since Brett had died—since she had caused his death—she didn’t seem to have enough energy for anything. “What time is it?”

  “Almost nine o’clock.”

  Nadia nodded. Igor would have been up for hours. He was one of those people who didn’t seem to need much sleep and was always busy, keeping on top of his business affairs. Cautiously she eased her legs out of bed. A tap at the door and the children’s nanny entered.

  “There you are,” she said in heavily accented English. “I’m sorry, madam, if they disturbed you.”

  “They didn’t, Olga. Why should they? Have they had breakfast?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then see to it, please.” Nadia couldn’t face any breakfast herself. “Then we’ll go sailing.”

  Olga frowned. “Mr. Kalashov didn’t say anything about going sailing.”

  “Did he not?”

  Nadia disliked the Russian woman her husband employed to care for the children. Since her first day, she’d insisted upon speaking in Russian almost all the time even though she knew Nadia’s knowledge of the language had been sketchy at the time. It was as though she was trying to make her an outsider in her own family. She’d ignored Nadia’s early attempts to win her friendship and refused to address her as anything other than “madam.” She was a distant relation of Igor’s. Nadia had never been able to work out exactly where she fit into the extensive Kalashov family tree and couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that Olga spent as much time watching her as she did caring for the children.

  That was ridiculous, of course. She was being paranoid. Igor loved her without reservation. Why else had he gone to such lengths to persuade her to marry him? It was just that, as he often explained to her, he had many enemies who might try to get to him through her, or anyone else close to him. That was one of the reasons why she’d agreed to change her identity and never see her family again.

  “Well, Olga, I’ll tell Mr. Kalashov of our plans myself.”

  “You can’t. He’s out for the day.”

  “Well then, it hardly matters. Is Anton here today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, he can come with us.”

  Nadia wasn’t permitted to leave home without one of Igor’s men to protect her. To protect her from what exactly she’d long ago given up trying to figure out. Sometimes ignorance was a good thing. Anton was her favourite amongst her husband’s employees. The children liked him too. Nadia suspected he was a little in love with her. Not that he’d dare to do anything about it, and Nadia certainly didn’t encourage him. She loved her husband and, besides, she had no wish to cause problems for Anton by forming too close a friendship with him. All the same, it would be a relief to have someone with her whom she felt she could trust and with whom she could be herself—or as close to the person she’d become over the past fifteen years as it was now possible for her to be.

  Viktor, her husband’s right-hand man, sometimes watched over her but seemed to think the duty was beneath him. Something about his attitude gave her the creeps. His flat eyes never betrayed any emotion, reminding her of a dead fish. She was glad she wouldn’t have him with her today.

  “As you wish,” Olga said coldly. “Come along, children.”

  She left the room, talking in rapid Russian as she closed the door behind them. Nadia sighed, crossed the room on unsteady legs and headed for the shower.

  Chapter Three

  “Joe doesn’t remember anything about
your sister’s case that’s likely to help.” I leaned back and lifted the bottle of lager Kara had just bought me to my lips. “So you’ve had a wasted journey, I’m afraid.”

  “What exactly did he say?” Kara fastened her eyes intently upon me. “Did he remember Jas?”

  “Yeah, it stood out for him because your father was keen for us to find Jasmine and equally keen for us to stop looking once he knew she was alive. And that much we knew already.”

  “Yes, I suppose we did.” She lapsed into silence. I made the most of it, knowing it wouldn’t last. “You know,” she said speculatively, “I’ve never understood why he didn’t do something himself to look for her when you lot pulled out. You know, hire someone to track her down, start a poster campaign, offer a reward for information. That sort of thing. There was loads of stuff we could have done, but when I suggested it he was adamantly opposed. He said she’d be home when she was ready.”

  “Hardly the sort of reaction you’d expect from a controlling father with a young daughter adrift in the big city.”

  “No, I can see that now.”

  We were at a table outside a pub on the upper storey of the parade of shops and restaurants attached to the marina. Gil was spread-eagled on the floor with a bowl of water, the type that comes in a fancy bottle and costs as much as a beer. Kara insisted on purchasing it for him in spite of my assurances that the tap variety possessed all the necessary components to titivate Gil’s doggy palate.

  I’d phoned her that morning and told her I hadn’t been able to find out much, hoping it would make her appreciate the futility of her task. But I wasn’t holding my breath. Which was why I hadn’t been surprised when she’d pushed for a face-to-face meeting. I reluctantly agreed but knew it was a mistake when she made it clear she wasn’t going to let the matter rest and fully intended to enlist my help.

  And the bugger of it was that my interest was piqued, my mind already buzzing with other ways to pursue the enquiry. Did she but know it, she wouldn’t have to push too hard to keep me involved.