Before I Find You: Are You Being Followed?

by Ali Knight

  Poppa kept scraping his hand backwards through his hair and looked stressed. I really wanted to contribute and it was a real effort to keep quiet and just take notes. I felt Poppa should have been stronger with these other men, he should have stood his ground more.

  The lawyer kept looking at me. I think he was wondering why I was in the room. I’ve more right to be in here than you! I thought. The lawyer asked for more coffee.

  Poppa looked up from where he was flipping impatiently through a pile of papers on his incredibly messy desk. ‘Alice, can you bring in a fresh pot?’

  I stood reluctantly. I didn’t want to be told to go and make coffee, though that was mainly what I had been doing for the past couple of days.

  While I was in the kitchen, I convinced myself that making coffee was providing a useful service to the important people who ran GWM. But by the time I got back with the warmed pot and the clean cups and the hot milk, the office was empty, and I was frustrated about being cut out.

  I poured a cup for Poppa, making it just as he liked it, hoping he would be back soon. I moved some papers to make sure I could set it down and it wouldn’t spill.

  I paused. From Poppa’s office the hallway is partly visible through the sandblasted glass of the wall and from this angle I could see if anyone was approaching from the rest of the company. I began to casually lift the edges of paper, move sheets around, organise and tidy. I was a fast reader and could scan super fast. I had got to the bottom of the pile and had started on the next when I stopped. Buried under a stapled receipt for red wine was a handwritten note. The words made me take a sharp breath: ‘You owe me. I’m not going away.’

  The writing was scratchy and hard, each letter carved into the paper with such force it would have indented any paper below it. I instinctively looked up and around Poppa’s office, but only bland walls and pale light reflected back at me. I took a photo of the message with my phone, put the pile of papers back as I found them and took the coffee cups to the kitchen. I was holding the handles so hard my knuckles were white.

  CHAPTER 9

  Helene

  Seven weeks and two days before

  I had to come back to the Blue and White because I had forgotten to bring a photo of Gabe with me the first time I came. I could have sent Maggie a photo from my phone, but there was an image of Gabe and me that Alice took a few years ago that I really liked, which sat on a shelf at home. I’m not vain, but it mattered to me that I showed our best side to Maggie. I liked the image of the perfect family, I liked people thinking I lived the dream.

  Maggie took a long look at the picture, turned it over and flipped it out from behind the glass and Rory took it over to the photocopier and made a colour copy. ‘We don’t want to end up following the wrong guy now, do we?’ Maggie had said as we waited for Rory to finish.

  A disconcerting thought bubbled up then and must have been strong enough to show on my face because Maggie raised an eyebrow and asked if everything was OK.

  ‘You follow the men, I get that. But how often do the mistresses pay attention to the family?’

  ‘Pay attention?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘Oh you know, contact the family, follow the wives, perhaps.’

  ‘Do you think this has happened to you?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Think so?’

  Maggie was the kind of woman who dealt in specifics, and I couldn’t give her those. Now I had said it aloud, it sounded ridiculous. I was troubled by losing my keys but didn’t want to tell her that. I was catastrophising. ‘I’m being paranoid,’ I said. ‘It’s a lack of sleep.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ she said. ‘Has anything happened?’

  ‘No, not to me. But have you ever experienced it?’

  A strange look came over Maggie’s face, and she looked away. ‘Not in my years on the job.’ She looked up at me. ‘Were you married before Gabe?’ she asked.

  I shook my head, wondering at her abrupt change of subject. ‘What about you – are you hitched?’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly.

  I guessed trust was difficult when you did her job. I could see her on the hard end of infidelity and I imagined she wouldn’t take it sitting down.

  ‘My problem is,’ Maggie added, ‘I could never stay faithful.’

  She didn’t look embarrassed at all, and I thought, we are so much more alike than you realise.

  CHAPTER 10

  Alice

  Seven weeks and two days before

  I lay awake thinking about that note I found on Poppa’s desk. Who could have sent it and why? What did it mean?

  I knew about notes – it was how Mr Dewhurst and I communicated. Notes had a power that stays with them; I lingered over them too long.

  When Poppa and Helene went out to dinner I decided to have a look around their bedroom to see if I could find anything else that might have been sent to Poppa. Some people might have seen this as snooping, but it was all for a good purpose. I respected people’s privacy. After opening all the drawers and looking under the bed I found nothing, so I did the same in the home office; I checked under and above things. Then I rummaged through the wastepaper basket. At the bottom I found a collection of bits of ripped paper. I began to set them back together again on the desk. Slowly the picture became clearer as with each piece of paper more letters and words appeared, eventually spelling out ‘You owe me. I deserve better.’ I also managed to construct an envelope from the remaining paper shreds. Poppa’s Bosnian surname, Gabe Buric, was written on the front. It was a name and a past he escaped a generation ago. There was no stamp, the message had been hand-delivered. I opened my phone and looked at the photo of the note I had found in the office. The writing was a match and the dark pen and thin white paper was the same. I took a photo of the note.

  The doorbell rang and I jumped so high that the pieces of paper scattered across the floor. I threw them all in a hurry back into the wastepaper basket and opened the front door. It was an Amazon delivery for Helene. I stared at the box, suspicious. Even though I knew I shouldn’t, I opened it. It was six wine glasses. I carefully taped the box together again and left it by the front door.

  What was it that Poppa owed? Was somebody trying to hurt him? Did Helene know about it?

  I balled my hands into tight little fists. No one was going to hurt my beloved daddy, I thought.

  CHAPTER 11

  Maggie

  Seven weeks before

  Helene wasn’t surprised that I had never married. I could see her calculating the impossible odds of falling in love when I spent my days unmasking love gone sour. I was glad she thought my single life was down to what I spent my waking hours doing. There was no way she would ever need to hear the name Colin Torday. I certainly wasn’t going to tell her the truth.

  There’s a reason why I was good at my job. I’ve done what those I tailed did. I knew that for some people, it was impossible to stay on the right side of their marriage vows. They are condemned for that, exposed and divorced for that, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t sometimes victims too.

  But it’s hard to feel sorry for a victim like that, and I didn’t see Gabe Moreau as a victim. I saw him as money to be made and a reputation to cement.

  We had started Operation Gabe Moreau on Monday morning and went at it for five days straight. With the basic details that his wife provided we had the means to completely open up Gabe Moreau, to strip him of his privacy and scrutinise his every move. And it was all legal. There’s no privacy in the Internet age. If you care about that kind of thing, invent a time machine and go back to yesteryear.

  To watch someone, really watch even the devious and careful ones, required two people working the day shift and often someone at night as well. We did a lot of our tailing work in a London taxi; no one gave a second glance if they saw it hanging around in a street. It also doubled as a convenient space to change outfits. I took the day shift with Simona, Rory always preferred to work nigh
ts. When he wasn’t tailing our clients’ spouses he was falling into or out of an all-night bar or club.

  It rarely took more than ten days to get irrefutable evidence of an affair. It was like playing hide and seek with a small child; they stand in the middle of the room and put their hands over their eyes. They think, if I can’t see you, you can’t see me. Cheaters are like toddlers, running full pelt towards their sex sessions with no regard for who is standing by, recording their every move. And for the record, most cheaters like to visit their lovers every five days. Human beings are funny creatures – full of enough vanity to fancy they are original when really, we’re all the same.

  When we first saw Gabe and Helene’s home, Simona and I knew we’d got lucky. It was three floors of Georgian property porn designed to turn on those of us who squeeze into poky spaces or wake to the roar of trucks on the A40. The house was part of an elegant, curving terrace and sat three in from a quiet corner in Islington, north London. A small alley ran from the corner down the back of the houses and gave access to the gardens and we had several parking options that enabled us to watch the front door and alley simultaneously. Large London plane trees were accommodating enough to throw a pleasant shade over the taxi. I thought this job might even be enjoyable – staking people out at home is often a challenge of double yellow lines and nosy neighbours.

  Gabe came out the front door at five to seven with a young woman with red hair. Helene had told us this was his daughter Alice. They drove away in his car.

  Gabe Moreau looked better than his photo. He was taller, with a little less hair and a little more attitude. He wore a suit but carried the jacket over his arm. He opened the passenger door for his daughter and smiled as she got in. He cast a look around the street before he folded himself into the car, but his gaze never rested on us.

  It never did. I prided myself that Gabe would never know I was there. I was bloody good at my job.

  The next few days were routine – we waited for long periods outside his office in a large building on Upper Regent Street, north of Oxford Circus, followed him into coffee shops, sat at the bar at busy restaurants and endured the crush of after-dinner pubs and bars.

  We took photos of the people Gabe met.

  One evening after work he walked to a private members’ club in Soho. For all the places you cannot follow someone or the private rooms you cannot enter, there is always a bribe you can pay. Always. For doormen, bouncers, fixers, cabbies and drug dealers, the cash-in-hand enticements work wonders.

  Moments after Gabe had gone inside the members-only club Rory and I approached the door. While he acted silly, distracting the girl on the desk, I went over to the doorman and shook his hand, making out I knew him. I palmed a fifty into the breast pocket of his jacket while asking who the man who had just arrived was drinking with.

  The doorman did a quick calculated glance left and right, smiled and walked away. A few moments later he stepped outside to tell me that he was drinking with a middle-aged man. It was the easiest fifty quid he had ever earned.

  I thought about the people I tailed all the time. I spent time anticipating what they were going to do, how they would act. It was a power trip. Certain things immediately stood out about Gabe Moreau. He was effortlessly popular. Riotous laughter would often erupt from his restaurant table, making other diners look over in envy at the good time a group that didn’t include them were having. It was often his arm up calling the waiter for more wine, more desserts. He was an exhibitionist, a showman, the centre of attention. He was a big tipper.

  On the Friday I wanted to check the inside of his office building and followed him. GWM Holdings was on the fourth floor. I went up to five and walked down the fire escape. I glanced through the doors of GWM and saw a normal-looking office. I walked to the top floor of the building and called the lift. Several people got in with me and I rode down and stopped on four. The doors opened and Gabe got in.

  Not good. There’s one rule about tailing a target – don’t ever let them see you. Ever. A private investigator should be as invisible as air, as quiet as smoke. And less than a week after I’d started the job, he was staring right at me.

  And then he wasn’t. His gaze didn’t linger, his eyes swept across my face with as little interest as if I were an office chair or a cup of coffee in a bin.

  He turned round to face the doors and I knew then that he wouldn’t remember me. My face was one of thousands he saw every day as he forged through life. It was crowded in the small lift, and Gabe’s neck was inches from my face. I studied the shape of his head, the fall of his hair, the shadow of his shaving line, the knife crease down the back of his blue Oxford shirt.

  I smelled him; a faint whiff of aftershave, something expensive. He spoke to the woman next to him but kept looking straight ahead. She was eager to please, smiling and answering his questions. They shared a comfort that comes with many hours spent working with someone. I made her as his secretary.

  The woman turned and looked round at me. Was that some animal instinct of self-preservation? An atavistic reaction to scrutiny – like being hunted?

  Cheats are opportunists, because they are human. They end up close to home. They cheat with their colleagues or family friends, or with people they pay. And the first suspect on the list is always the secretary.

  Helene had seen him with one woman, but that didn’t mean there weren’t others. I once tailed a grandfather who was seeing five women.

  This lady was middle-aged, wore a wedding ring, high heels that looked like they would be giving her grief by the evening. She wore a peach blouse in a drapey fabric and her hair done up in a tight bun.

  I knew it wasn’t her. Gabe had a pack of papers in his hand and the lift was crowded. He adjusted his hand and brushed against her arm. She instinctively reeled back, a small, delicate movement that preserved her private space. Everything a person I was tailing did could be read by me.

  They were professionals. His hands hadn’t slid over the most intimate parts of her body; she was a foreign country to him.

  By the end of that first week, we had nothing. I wasn’t worried. What Helene didn’t understand was that Gabe Moreau was a slam-dunk cheater. In my business the client was usually right, because ninety per cent of the time, if someone came through the door wanting my services, it was because there was something to find. There was no smoke without fire with infidelity.

  CHAPTER 12

  Helene

  Six weeks and three days before

  I knew the Blue and White had been following Gabe for a few days. Maggie, Rory and Simona were watching his every move. It was a strange sensation. When darkness fell last night I imagined they crept up the alley at the back of the house and watched us in the kitchen from over the back fence. I had no idea what they witnessed, how many secrets or embarrassments they were privy to. It made me try and behave better. It made me wish Gabe would.

  What would someone think, looking in on our evening together? I had thought we enjoyed a happy family, a good relationship, but is that how Maggie would see us? How big is the gap between appearance and reality? When Gabe and Alice got back from work he was called next door by our neighbour who was in a jam trying to erect a trampoline for her grandchildren. I started listening over the garden wall as she tried to help him with steel supports and badly translated Chinese instructions. In the end she good-naturedly gave up and went to make tea to help him along.

  There would be balloons, she said, and Gabe had described how he would like to play balloon tennis with the kids across the garden wall. I wouldn’t normally have eavesdropped on their conversation, but I see Gabe in the cloakroom with that woman and every scenario takes a new and dangerous form. Even when he was giving our elderly neighbour a helping hand. Every failure of mine is accentuated including my inability to have children. Gabe would have loved nothing more than to play with our own children. His innocent neighbourly chat is like a screwdriver being pushed into my heart and twisted.

  Hu
rry up, Maggie, I thought, hurry up and find me some answers.

  There was clattering by the door and Alice let her friend Lily in.

  It was a hot evening and while Alice was still dressed in her work clothes, Lily had spent the day outside somewhere. She was wearing hotpants and a crop top and her hair was tied high on her head. She was a show pony, large doe eyes staring up under a thick mane of dark hair. Alice is a serious girl and I was intrigued she was hanging around with someone so flighty. It was faintly comical to see Alice in her dark and sombre office clothes and Lily in little more than a bikini. But they seemed happy enough, nattering away about something I didn’t understand and throwing fruit in a blender.

  I was trying to get Gabe to pay attention to the charity auction we were planning in a couple of weeks. He came in from next door’s garden and washed his hands.

  ‘Shall we do wagu beef or the chicken satay at the auction?’ I asked him.

  ‘Is that how you pronounce it? I thought it was wayju.’ He tried a Japanese accent on for size.

  ‘It’s wagu,’ Lily said confidently as she threw chia seeds into the blender.

  ‘Sorry,’ Gabe confessed. ‘It’s not my first language after all.’ He opened a kitchen drawer and pulled out a spatula. ‘Can’t we just have beef burgers?’ He mimed flipping one and then tried to poke me in the ribs to get my attention.

  ‘Put it away,’ I said, irritated, ‘it’s not like you can cook with it.’

  He was not taking this seriously. We were doing this party to try to oil wheels with our financial supporters so that they will lend us the money to finish not just Connaught Tower but Connaught Two. We paid above the odds for the site, and we beat a lot of competitors. We were stretched, with high debts and onerous repayments. And I understood what made businessmen – make that most men – tick. They didn’t like to lose. Partridger, the American conglomerate, lost and Peter Fairweather, the east coast CEO of the company, would be angry. He’d have dented pride, shareholders and even more senior managers in New York to placate. Partridger wanted the Vauxhall site as the first wave of its expansion into London. Questions would be asked, doubts would be sown, his place in the Partridger hierarchy would be less secure. He would feel more paranoid; every morning he walked in the office he would secretly wonder if it would be his last. I knew how he would be feeling because I once had the ear of other men like Peter Fairweather.