Before I Find You: Are You Being Followed?

by Ali Knight

  CHAPTER 21

  Alice

  Five weeks and three days before

  It was awful hearing a crowd call Poppa a liar and a thief, and watching them stand to cheer. I wanted to jump up and down and fight back, grab little fingers and bend them backwards, grab a clump of hair just behind an ear and yank, hard.

  But I did nothing. These people were intimidating and angry. I had crossed into a new world of difficult business decisions that changed lives, not always for the better.

  Poppa was a fighter, he had come from little and made a lot. This central thing about him was something that had dawned on me slowly as I had grown older. I saw the other girls’ dads pick them up from school, and Poppa wasn’t like them. They were old and muted, with low voices and plain faces, sombre clothes and greyer hair. The teachers fawned over Poppa, turned and smiled at me as if thinking, Wow, who would have thought that the little mouse had this hidden away!

  And I would put my arms around his waist and think, little mice can roar. His charisma and charm have been passed down to me, they’re in my DNA too!

  Sometimes I loved Poppa so hard it hurt. Seeing him here, trying to win over the crowd and show reason, I had a glimpse into what his job entailed and why he did it. He enjoyed the cut and thrust, because he had been battling all his life.

  Poppa was one thing, but Milo was another. He was the reason I was here in this angry place but while I was desperate for Milo to see me – to think I was brave for coming! – I didn’t want Poppa to and I was terrified he might spot me. The meeting had not gone well and he would see it as a failure. He would never want me to witness that failure. I shrank back behind the entrance doors until I saw Poppa hurry away into a waiting car with some other men.

  Milo had clambered on to the stage to shout at people to stay, but no one was listening. I hung around outside the centre and Milo caught sight of me. He came over and kissed me hard on the cheek, but he looked worried, with tired lines around his eyes. He grabbed my elbow and pulled me away from the chanting crowd. ‘It’s going to get ugly, stupid idiots.’ The night was hot and breathless and sour. Mopeds revved aggressively and teenagers hung around in huddles. ‘We need to get out of here.’

  He put his arm protectively round my shoulders and I felt the delicious sensation of being pulled into a protective circle by him. We hurried back to his flat with several others, including Larry. Huddles of people arrived and left in a constant stream. I heard the short burst of a siren somewhere nearby. I wanted it to be just Milo and me but he became distracted, texting and phoning a ton of people.

  The living room was crowded, the kitchen empty. I tailed him into the kitchen. A chorus of shouts drifted from the living room. He lived life in a constant party, in a maelstrom of causes and strategies and front-line activism.

  ‘Alice, how much do you know about your dad’s business?’

  He had opened the fridge and pulled out a beer, popped the top and stood leaning back against the wall.

  I shrugged, because I had nothing to say. Should I have been embarrassed that I knew nothing?

  He looked away and I felt with a stab of recognition that he was impatient for me to be gone. ‘How many people do you know who work at GWM?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I mean, there’s your dad obviously, but do you know the others?’

  ‘Yes, I know them. Well, I don’t really know them. Why?’

  Milo gave me a funny look. ‘I thought you were working there.’

  ‘I am! But I haven’t been there for very long.’ Larry shouldered his way into the kitchen, reaching round Milo to open the fridge.

  ‘Give us a minute, Larry, will you?’

  Larry glanced at me in surprise, took a four-pack and left. Milo stared at me. His eyes were dark and dangerous and I was torn between wanting to jump into his arms and run away. ‘So, do you know all the departments? How they work, that type of thing?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘It’s just that far more people are robbed at the point of a pen than the point of a gun,’ Milo added. He shook his head, as if to dispel something unpleasant. I reached out and touched his T-shirt, felt his warm skin beneath. He said something under his breath that I didn’t catch. He looked at me with those startling green eyes. ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Me? Of course not!’ I said. I want you to be my boyfriend, I was thinking.

  He said nothing and a dark little thought came to me. ‘Why? Do you have a girlfriend?’

  He turned and opened the fridge door and shrugged sadly. ‘I don’t even know,’ he said quietly.

  I took a step backwards. I was astonished. He had misled me! I felt shame crawl across my skin at how I had let my feelings run away with me.

  He looked at me, offering me a beer from the fridge. He saw my face and became defensive. ‘Look around you, Alice, look outside this door! Someone’s making a ton of money, and it isn’t anyone in this room.’

  I took the beer even though I didn’t want it. I had been dreaming of this moment with him for so many hours, for days, but it wasn’t turning out how I hoped. He was ruining it by insinuating things I didn’t understand about GWM. The problems of the world, and the problems here in Vauxhall, were not my fault. But then he reached a hand out and touched my cheek, his features conflicted. ‘Oh but God, you’re lovely,’ he said softly.

  This was how it was meant to be, his soft hand on my cheek, his adoring eyes on mine. He was the handsomest man I’d ever seen, and he would be mine. I deserved it, so it would be so.

  As I tried to catch hold of him the sound of smashing glass from the other room brought Larry through to get stuff to clear up.

  Milo got distracted and pulled away from me. He bent down under the sink to pull out a dustpan and brush and began asking Larry about someone I’d never met. It was as if the moment shattered. I saw him in his tiny, crowded flat, full of hangers-on, trying to use me. For every kiss another piece of information, for every embrace, a name and number, for every smile and compliment, a video taken or photo shot.

  I walked backwards out of the kitchen, waiting for Milo to plead with me to come back, but he was talking with Larry and he didn’t even see me go. I was out of the flat before I heard him call my name, but he didn’t appear. I tested him, waiting in the dark outside, but he never emerged. Sour and painful thoughts roiled around inside my head and I had to run the gauntlet of menacing groups of young hooded guys lingering by walls and gathered in clumps beside benches and on the greens. The smell of skunk hung heavy in the air. With every step I got angrier that something so glorious and intense had been snatched away. I hurled the beer bottle at a wall, watched in satisfaction as it smashed into pieces, foam spraying up the brickwork like sea spray.

  CHAPTER 22

  Maggie

  Five weeks and two days before

  It was Helene who told me Milo was dead. She phoned, her voice high and fluttering; she was floating on a wave of disbelief and what sounded like panic. She couldn’t get her story out, but I realised that was because she had no story to tell, she had what most people did at a moment of bad news – a desire to know more, to know less, and to repeat over and over. Gabe had phoned to tell her, police in white paper suits were at Milo’s flat, there was uproar on the estate and shock at GWM.

  ‘This is bad, Maggie, this is very, very bad,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry, this is terrible news,’ I said. ‘Did you know him well?’

  There was a long shuddering sigh. ‘He was a wonderful man, a passionate, unique individual,’ she said. I could hear her voice catch in her throat.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘No, of course not … Yes, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I feel this is an attack on Gabe, on all of us. It’s like we are all one step from disaster.’

  ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean,’ I began, but she interrupted me and said she had to go. The line went dead.

  I put my mobile on the
desk and turned to Rory. Before I could even ask him a question, he gave me a full rundown of what he knew of the night before. Simona had followed Gabe home after the meeting in Vauxhall and he had stayed there all night. Rory had taken over her shift at two a.m. after he tipped himself out of a nightclub, but he hadn’t left until he came into work this morning.

  The three of us speculated a bit on the news, but we got more information a couple of hours later when two detectives came to the Blue and White. Detective Inspector Dwight Reed was large, black and bald and his colleague, Gary Burton, was small, white and hairy. I knew they were approaching because I heard a flurry of clanging feet as frightened illegals visiting the immigration lawyer’s next door clattered down the fire escape at the back of the building. You can smell a policeman, even one in plainclothes, from fifty feet.

  It was nice of the police to come to the office, they could just as easily have made me wait hours at the station among the drunks and the drug addicts to take my statement. As a private investigator it’s important to keep on the good side of any police inquiry, and I wanted to give them a statement that I had been on the estate that night as I didn’t want them wasting hours tracking down a taxi someone remembered seeing there. It was also a way for me to find out more information about the case and they knew that.

  The coppers I’ve dealt with over the years have been distant and disinterested. They think PIs are failed police officers, people who couldn’t make the grade. When they find out that I specialise in infidelity they become sullen and suspicious. Too many of their friends are the people I investigate. There’s a high incidence of domestic violence amongst policemen and high divorce rates too. They’re swimming and drowning in the stress and emotional pain of their jobs.

  Dwight had been one of those statistics – a man whose marriage had failed when his wife left him for another man. I knew that because five years ago he and I had had a thing. Strange word that, as if what goes on between consenting adults is impossible to describe. We had a great time, he wanted more, I couldn’t give it to him. I played out the usual ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ excuses. Ours was a story as old as the beds we did it in.

  If he was embarrassed at seeing me again he didn’t show it. But then he didn’t seem that pleased either. He looked good, his divorce long behind him now. In my office he threw me some tidbits of information. Preliminary reports estimated that Milo had been killed between two and three a.m. He had been found the following morning by a mate who had keys and often dropped in as they shared the costs of a printer. There was no sign of a break-in or of a struggle. The crime scene was still being examined, but he had let the killer into his home. It was someone he knew.

  ‘But then,’ as Dwight explained, ‘that doesn’t narrow it down, as Milo was a party animal, had people back in a constant stream to that flat, had friends and acquaintances from a hundred different protests and causes and was very active online.’

  ‘Did he work?’ I asked.

  Dwight smiled ruefully. ‘He was a part-time social worker. There are lots of angles to pursue.’

  ‘Did you find the murder weapon?’ I asked.

  Dwight shook his head. ‘He was hit with a heavy object. He would have been killed instantly.’

  There was silence for a moment as Dwight and I sized each other up.

  ‘Did you see anything worth reporting last night?’ Dwight asked.

  I told him about my walk as closely as I could remember, relating who I saw and where. Dwight seemed impressed at my detailed descriptions. I have a good memory for faces, places and times. ‘Is Moreau a suspect?’ I asked.

  Dwight ran his hand across his bald head, feeling the contours while he considered the question. ‘Everyone’s a suspect until things become clearer.’

  Something struck me. ‘Does Gabe have any previous convictions?’

  ‘I’m not here to make your job easier, Ms Malone,’ Dwight began, but he was being playful now. He was the kind of man who stayed late at a party, hogged a dance floor, showed a woman life was worth living. His partner Gary looked like he’d already booked and paid for his bed at Dignitas.

  ‘Come on, Dwight. Let’s help each other. Spread a little love.’

  He knew that was underhand, but he kept his control. He had been keen for us to carry on, get more serious, but back then I sensed a wellspring of anger about his ex-wife that meant he wasn’t ready. Which was convenient for me, I guess, since I’ve never been ready. Not since Colin. But I kept that fact to myself.

  ‘He’s got no convictions, he’s whiter than white.’

  This news didn’t help the feeling I had that there was something I should be seeing that was obscured. I kept thinking about Mrs Farmley, still in jail for throwing the heater into her husband’s bath. She would have bet her life that Hal wasn’t married to someone else. Finding out he was upended her world and made her do something unspeakable. We think we know the people we live with, and we know them not at all. Most of the time we don’t even know ourselves. We certainly don’t know the people who hire us or who we follow.

  ‘I’ve got something to show you,’ I said. ‘A man turned up at the meeting in this Merc.’ I showed Dwight a mobile phone photo of the Russian’s licence plate.

  Dwight was less than impressed. ‘We’ve had ten calls to the incident line about that car already this morning. No one drives around in that if they don’t want to be remembered.’

  ‘So who is he?’

  Dwight exhaled loudly. ‘That’s Arkady Oblomov’s car. He’s a Russian billionaire who develops riverfront property, it’s how he made his fortune.’

  ‘So what’s he doing turning up at a community meeting in Vauxhall?’

  Dwight shrugged. ‘Unclear. Him and his wife are in the copy of Hello that’s by the coffee machine at the station. There’s never been any chatter about him being dodgy, and I imagine Milo’s community protests are too small-scale for him, but we’re looking into it.’ He gave me a level look. ‘So what’s your connection to Mr Moreau? My guess is you’re doing surveillance on him.’ My silence was his confirmation. ‘The wife’s hired you, hasn’t she? She’s suspicious of her handsome property millionaire husband. Let me think, she can’t wait for you to catch him red-handed so she can take him to the cleaners in the divorce.’

  I don’t mind that Dwight is bitter. He’s had experience of a bad divorce. My days are filled with bitter men and women. It shows they can feel. It shows they can love. ‘I spend a lot of time with cheats and liars, that’s true.’

  ‘Being unfaithful isn’t against the law.’

  ‘But it’s against the rules,’ I snapped back.

  Dwight gave me a look I quite liked. ‘It can feel good to break the rules,’ he quipped. The stir of transgression I felt deep inside was broken by Dwight’s partner Gary muttering, ‘What the hell is this?’

  Dwight felt he needed to explain. ‘Ms Malone and I already know each other.’

  I could have added ‘in the Biblical sense’, but I held back. ‘She’s one of the best private detectives in London.’

  That was sweet of Dwight, no contest. I was reminded of one of the reasons we had got on so well.

  ‘So where did Moreau go after the meeting that night?’

  Simona spoke now. ‘I tailed him home and Rory took over at two a.m.’

  ‘He was there all night,’ Rory said. ‘So were his wife and his daughter,’ he added.

  ‘So the Blue and White agency has given Gabe Moreau an alibi for murder.’ Gary Burton said it as if we’d done something wrong.

  We had reached the end and Dwight and Gary got up to go. ‘A friendly piece of advice, Ms Malone, don’t overstep your remit,’ Dwight added. ‘I will be very unhappy indeed if something you do jeopardises any future case we have. I mean it.’

  Rory and Simona said their goodbyes and I opened the office door and Dwight and Gary and I stepped out into the corridor. The policemen began to descend the stairs. I saw a man’s legs disappearing throug
h the window of the corridor on to the fire escape.

  ‘Please don’t send the immigration boys round, you’ll cause a breach of the peace,’ I said.

  Dwight turned back round and leaned his elbows on the banister. ‘I bet you can deal well with chaos. You probably thrive on it.’

  ‘I’d pull you out of a burning building.’

  ‘I’d let you,’ he parried back.

  So I’m a flirt, deal with it. Gary threw his hands up and muttered something under his breath and walked downstairs. Dwight ignored him and stayed where he was, his smile on full wattage.

  I didn’t want him to go, I was having too much fun. ‘There’s something else,’ I said. ‘Gabe Moreau has got two phones. I’m trying to find out if one of them contains something interesting to me, and maybe to you.’

  ‘Why, Ms Malone, you should have been a copper.’

  ‘There’s always time,’ I said before walking back into the office and closing the door.

  My smile faded pretty quickly when I saw Rory and Simona’s faces.

  ‘Ditch this case, right now. He’s toxic. So is she,’ Rory said.

  I sat down, a bad mood beginning to wash over me. ‘You’re overreacting.’

  ‘Rory’s right. I think we should pull out,’ Simona said.

  They were both standing by my desk, like they were doing an intervention on me for alcohol or drug addiction. Rory handed me a sheaf of papers. ‘Here is some of the stuff I’ve been working on. GWM is worth £150 million. It’s majority owned by Gabe Moreau. He built the company from nothing. You don’t make money in this kind of market with this kind of competition without being really ruthless. Now someone directly involved, standing in the way, no less, in one of his big deals has just been murdered. Whatever the real story is and whoever is responsible, I know for sure he’s going to be paranoid, guilty, secretive and watchful. And we’re going to be following him around 24/7 to find out if he’s shagging. If he finds out about us—’