The Yacht Party

by Perry, Tasmina

  Lara opened a drawer and handed Stella a wedge of takeaway menus. ‘Choose anything,’ she said. ‘The pizza’s good.’

  Stella looked down at the glossy brochures, feeling even more dispirited. She didn’t want to say she couldn’t afford a gourmet pizza and she didn’t want to assume that Lara would pay for it either. Lara was already paying Stella’s wages from her own pocket with little prospect of making anything back from the investigation.

  ‘I’m not that hungry,’ said Stella.

  ‘I’m getting one and it’s two-for-one night,’ she said.

  Stella had the unsettling feeling that Lara saw right through her.

  ‘You sure?’

  Lara nodded.

  ‘Then I’ll try the hoi sin duck pizza. I’ve never had duck on a pizza before.’

  Lara laughed and picked up the phone to make the order. When she’d finished, she beckoned Stella into the next room.

  ‘While we’re waiting for the food, come and look at this.’

  Stella followed her to the spare room at the rear of the boat.

  ‘Wow’, she gasped, ‘You’ve been busy.’

  One wall was covered with photos, maps, and print-outs of news items. It was a visual guide joining all of the threads of the case together. In a Hollywood movie, there would be surveillance pictures taken with a long lens, mugshots from the FBI files and the huge map of New York or Los Angeles with each crime scene joined together by a latticework of bright red thread. Lara had made do with smudged pictures from her ancient ink-jet printer and words – ‘Meyer’, ‘Yacht’, ‘Inner Circle?’ – scrawled on lurid yellow and pink sticky notes.

  It was all a bit ad hoc but it certainly worked as a summary of the evidence they had gathered so far. More than anything, it showed how committed Lara was to the project. This was hours, days’ worth of effort, especially considering Lara had been to Paris and Monte Carlo in the interim.

  ‘Impressive,’ said Stella. ‘It’s not quite Mission Impossible, but it does cover what we know.’

  ‘Which isn’t much,’ said Lara, sounding glum. ‘You know, looking at this, maybe Eduardo’s right. Perhaps chasing Helen and Michael is a bum steer. After all, it was just one post-it note in Sandrine’s pocket. Maybe it was nothing.’

  Stella gave Lara a sideways glance. Her boss looked exhausted, which wasn’t surprising given she had clearly sacrificed sleep to work on the story, but Stella knew she needed to rally her.

  ‘Remember that piece of advice you gave me when I started at the Chronicle?’

  Lara burst out laughing.

  ‘Which bit? Don’t drink at lunch? Always use spell-check?’

  ‘You told me to listen,’ said Stella firmly. ‘You said most journos write a list of questions and stick rigidly to them, then wonder why they don’t get good answers. It’s the same here: we need to stop and listen to what the evidence is actually saying.’ Stella nodded towards the wall chart. ‘The answer is up there.’

  Lara folded her arms and looked at the wall, deep in thought.

  ‘What do rich men fear the most?’ she mused.

  ‘Losing everything,’ replied Stella.

  Lara grabbed her computer and sat down on the bed. Stella grinned, glad to see her boss back in the game.

  ‘We need to make a list,’ she said, tapping away. ‘All of the business interests Meyer and Sachs were involved with. See if we can find any that were going under or in danger of a takeover.’

  Stella opened her own computer, smiling to herself: this was her chance to shine. She could admit she sometimes felt out of her depth with investigations but this was the one place she felt confident. Lara’s training had been old school: you read the cuttings, you phoned people up, you went and knocked on their door, but Stella was a digital native and for her, the answer to every question had always been a click away. It was just a matter of negotiating your way through the dark maze of the ‘net. It could be a rabbit warren of dead ends and distractions, but Stella felt it was the width of information that the internet could provide that gave twenty-first century reporters the edge.

  They worked in silence, even after the pizza arrived. Stella had headphones on, picking at a slice of garlic bread as she scrolled through the data. It quickly became clear that the world of high finance – funds and money management – was quite secretive. There was very little detail about Meyer’s investment business other than it was super-exclusive and invitation-only. Sachs’s business was less opaque – but only just. There were more column inches given over to his philanthropic work – it seemed that everything Sachs touched turned to gold.

  ‘Either Michael Sachs’s hands are completely clean, or he’s very good at hiding the fingerprints,’ said Lara, without looking up.

  Stella nodded, looking more closely at the picture of Michael Sachs that happened to be up on her screen, his arm around his wife Victoria, elegant in her Chanel and pearls. Stella read the caption:

  ImpactAid benefit dinner, The Pierre hotel, New York. Victoria Sachs, founder.

  Stella pulled up the ImpactAid website. According to the ‘About Us’ section, the charity was founded by Michael and Victoria Sachs twenty years earlier, although Michael was no longer listed as a board member or trustee. Stella scanned the charity’s good works: they had built clinics, dug wells and worked on literary programmes in Africa, then after the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, ImpactAid switched their focus to recovery efforts there.

  Intrigued, Stella began researching the charity. To her surprise, Stella discovered that relief efforts in the country had been attracting a certain amount of flak in the press. Despite billions in foreign aid being poured in the country, many Haitians were still living in shanty towns with no running water, the implication being that misuse of funds, poor governance and political turmoil was widespread. ImpactAid hadn’t specifically been singled out, but Stella found it sad that so little progress had been made to help the Haitian people. Suddenly she stopped, fingers frozen on the keyboard.

  ‘British Aid Worker Killed.’

  ‘Lara, look at this,’ she said, swivelling her screen around.

  ‘Check out this news piece. An ImpactAid worker was killed in Haiti in a hit and run. Look at the name of the dead girl…’

  ‘Helen,’ said Lara.

  Stella could feel her heart bumping. Something was telling her this was significant. She was already typing, searching up more stories relating to the girl’s death. Helen Groves… hit by a car while walking back to the ImpactAid bunkhouse…

  Lara was back on her own computer and called out as she found another online news item.

  Grieving Parents Blast Charity

  The parents of an aid worker killed in Port-au-Prince have hit out at the lack of answers from police about their daughter’s death. ‘Nothing can bring our Helen back,’ said Ian Groves, father of the 22-year old Scot, killed in a hit-and-run incident. ‘But we want justice to be served.’

  ‘Charities such as ImpactAid are happy to have young people fly over to work for them, but when something goes wrong, they must help us find answers.’

  Helen was hit by a car and died at the scene. Police were unable to trace the driver.

  ‘No one wants to listen. It’s like they just want to forget Helen ever existed.’

  Lara looked at Stella.

  ‘What’s the date? When did Helen die?’

  Stella scrolled to the top of the news item.

  ‘Two weeks before Sandrine died.’

  Their eyes met.

  ‘We have to speak to her parents.’

  ‘They’re in Edinburgh,’ said Stella, who had already found them online. ‘I can look up their number.’

  Lara looked at her watch. Then she strode over to a cupboard and grabbed her spare helmet.

  ‘Do it on the way,’ she said, shoving the helmet at Stella. ‘If we hurry, we can just make the sleeper train.’

  Chapter 22

  At ten to seven in the morning, Edinburgh felt deser
ted. The sleeper train had delivered them like magic into the centre of the Scottish capital and as Lara and Stella rode up the escalators onto Princes Street, it had the air of a place which had yet to wake up. Lara could sympathise. A combination of their spontaneous dash up to Euston, the excitement of being in an actual cabin with an actual shower cubicle – and the whisky selection in the dining car had meant that they had stayed up far too late. Lara squinted in the grey light and raised a hand to cover her eyes. Stella had, with her customary efficiency, arranged to have a hire car delivered to the Balmoral Hotel right next to the station and the moment she had the keys, Lara slid gratefully into the driver’s seat and flipped the sun-visor down.

  She was running on empty, drained physically and emotionally; Lara knew she was close to the edge. Her skin felt thin, her eyes raw, but even through it all, Lara was struck by the bleak beauty of the city, the sun shining off the grey granite, all the buildings tall and thin, crowded together, spooky burrows in between.

  They drove the hire car out towards Merchiston, a suburb to the west of the city. It was made up of large stone houses, affluent and respectable.

  ‘This is the place,’ said Stella, checking the map. As they pulled up, Lara caught a face at the window, pale, fleeting, before it pulled back.

  ‘D’you think we’ll get a warm welcome?’ asked Stella, catching the movement. It wasn’t something they’d really had time to consider before they’d bought their tickets.

  ‘Too late to back out now,’ whispered Lara, taking a breath, reminded of her early days as a reporter doorstepping. Hammering on doors, trying to get exclusive interviews – it was grim, unpleasant work, but it was a rite of passage when you were a young journalist trying to impress the editor and win your spurs. Lara knew she’d been sent out onto the streets more than most, however. They were testing her mettle, seeing if Nicholas Avery’s niece was up to the job. Hoping she would fail.

  The door opened as they walked along the path. A woman stood there, early fifties, shoulder-length beige hair, flecked with grey. She looked as tired.

  ‘Lara?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lara, showing her press card. ‘Mrs. Groves? This is my colleague Stella. Thank you for seeing us.’

  A man appeared at her shoulder. He was tall and lean, older than the woman, but not by much. His was a more genial face. In happier times, Lara supposed you’d find him at Wimbledon, a panama on his head and a Pimm’s in his hand.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ he said with more warmth than his wife, ‘I’m Ian, this is Callie.’

  They were ushered into a pin-neat living room. Lara found herself picturing a teenage Helen sitting on the sofa, flicking through a magazine or her phone, wishing she were miles away from here.

  ‘So you said on the phone that you were looking into Helen’s…’ Mrs. Groves stumbled on the word, then recovered. ‘…Her passing?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lara. ‘I was wondering if you could tell me what happened?’

  ‘You don’t know?’ said the woman, glancing at her husband.

  ‘We assumed you had some information for us,’ said Ian, jumping in.

  ‘I am investigating the circumstances of Helen’s accident. It’s part of a bigger piece about the dangers of young women abroad, but yes, we’d also like to find out more about what happened to your daughter specifically.’

  While Helen’s mother went through to the kitchen to make them tea, Ian Groves told them how he’d flown out to Port-au-Prince within hours of a policeman turning up at their door to tell them about Helen’s tragic accident. He described the frustrations of the delays and the countless meetings he had with the Haitian police and Embassy officials.

  ‘Helen had died instantly at the scene,’ he said, glancing towards the kitchen door. ‘I went to the place where it happened. It was a quiet part of town. It was no wonder there were no witnesses. I know none of this will bring Helen back, but I just want to ask whoever it was: How could you do that and drive away?’

  Callie Groves came in holding a tray. A cup was rattling against the teapot. Best china for the guests. They were grieving, suffering and yet they still needed to keep up appearances.

  ‘Why was Helen in Haiti in the first place?’ asked Lara.

  Callie was concentrating, pouring the tea, but she looked up, her dark eyes fierce.

  ‘Rebecca Robertson,’ she said tersely. ‘If it hadn’t been for that girl…’

  Her husband’s gentle hand reached out to touch his wife’s wrist.

  ‘Rebecca is – was – Helen’s best friend,’ said Ian. ‘Ever since middle school. Inseparable, they were. Whatever the latest fad was, whatever the fashion, they’d be dressing up together. They egged each other on.’

  ‘And it was Rebecca’s idea to go to Haiti?’

  ‘Rebecca announced she was having a gap year after university. So Helen decided she wanted one too. She liked causes, you see, causes and marches. Always raising money or signing a petition. Her dream was to be a human rights lawyer. So before we knew it, they were both off to Haiti to work as volunteers for ImpactAid.’

  Lara saw Callie shake her head in disgust. Lara could see the split here. The mother hating the cause that had taken her baby away, the father who wanted Helen’s death to have some meaning. Neither of them were going to find an easy peace.

  ‘Was Helen happy there?

  ‘Oh yes. She sent emails when she could,’ said Ian, smiling softly. ‘She was proud to be helping people. But she was also pleased to be coming home.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Lara. ‘I didn’t know she was due to come back.’

  Ian took out his phone, then fished out his reading glasses from his top pocket.

  ‘Now what did she say?’ he muttered to himself, scrolling through his messages.

  He paused as if he were about to read it out but then handed over his phone.

  ‘Her last message,’ he said. Lara read the text quickly and then slowed down to take it in once more. Not just reading the words but trying to imagine what Helen was thinking when she wrote it.

  Hello from Haiti! Still having a ball, although I could do with less of the heat. And the mozzies. And I’m yearning for a glass of milk, it’s one thing no one ever has out here. Becky has a boyfriend (not sure it’s serious!) MY big news…drum roll…I’m coming home. Things have got a little complicated recently. I think my time is done here.

  Anyway, I will let you know when I’ve got flights and stuff. Can’t wait to see you all. SOON!

  Love ya, Hxxxxx

  ‘When was this sent?’ asked Lara.

  ‘The week before the accident.’

  ‘“Things have got a little complicated.” Have you any clue what that means?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Ian. ‘We spoke to her a week before the email. She sounded a little distracted but didn’t indicate anything was wrong.’

  ‘Did you show the police?’

  ‘Of course, but they didn’t think it was significant. And obviously, no one in the Edinburgh police wanted to know – why would they? It happened on the other side of the world, not on Princes Street.’

  ‘Was Rebecca still in Haiti at the time?’

  ‘Yes, she was,’ said Callie.

  ‘And was she with her at the time of the accident?’

  ‘No. She was out with her boyfriend.’ The woman snorted, as if this was some deliberate oversight.

  ‘Rebecca was very shaken up by it, obviously,’ said Ian. ‘She left Haiti within the week and came home.’

  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Stella glance at her.

  ‘I’d like to speak to Rebecca if I could. Does she live in Edinburgh?’

  ‘She did,’ said Ian. ‘But I don’t think she’s here now.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because she didn’t come to the funeral,’ said Callie, her voice still terse.

  ‘Do you have a contact number for her?’

  ‘You won’t get through. We tried to ca
ll her before the funeral, but the number appears to be disconnected. Her parents said Becky had gone up north and wanted some alone time.’

  Lara saw Ian look across at his wife.

  ‘If you think it would be helpful to speak to her, I think I know where she is,’ he said.

  ‘Ian, please.’

  Mr Groves turned towards her, a flash of anger finally showing through. ‘No, Callie. I’ve checked up on Miss Stone. She’s a good journalist, fair. I think she can help us.’

  Callie stood up and clattered the tea things onto the tray. They all sat in silence until she carried it out to the kitchen. The tension felt so out of place in this neat, homely space.

  Undeterred, Ian went to a desk at the far end of the room and took an envelope from a drawer. When he returned he handed it to Lara.

  ‘Becky sent a card. It’s got an Ullapool postmark.’

  Lara looked up.

  ‘You think that’s where she is?’

  Ian Groves nodded.

  ‘Becky’s aunt has a rental cottage up there. The girls went a couple of summers ago.’

  ‘Do you have the address?’

  ‘Got a phone number, but I can’t guarantee she’ll be there. Or if she’ll talk to you.’

  Lara stood up and tried to give him a smile.

  ‘I think it’s worth the risk, don’t you?’

  Chapter 23

  Ullapool was a long way in the rain. It was a long way whatever the weather – the hire car’s sat-nav had reckoned over four hours non-stop driving on a good day – but it seemed even further with the grey clouds sitting right on top of the road. The drizzle leaving Edinburgh had been steady up until the Cairngorms, then it had really started coming down. The windscreen wipers had been on ‘full’ since Aviemore and they had been crawling along, terrified of meeting a tractor coming at them around a blind bend. That, or finding a herd of shaggy Highland cattle sitting in the middle of the road. But then every half an hour or so, the rain would stop as if someone had flipped a switch and the wind would swirl the fog away and they would find themselves descending into a gorgeous valley rich with heather or travelling along the edge of a gorse-trimmed loch. Lara would slam on the brakes and they would gaze in genuine wonder, feeling tiny in the midst of such beauty – then all too soon, mother nature would drop the blinds and they would be back in the murk, the windscreen thick with rain.