by John Connor
She started to sob, but stopped herself at once. Appearing like a weak little girl wouldn’t help. ‘Who are you?’ she mumbled again. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’
‘My name is Maxim Sidurov. Ring any bells?’ He shifted position so that he was sitting on the floor where he had been kneeling. He moved the plate back on to the floor beside him.
Sidurov? Something connected to Arisha Vostrikova, she thought. Had she seen him with Arisha? But when? Years ago. She couldn’t work out where. ‘If he doesn’t pay you will have to kill me,’ she muttered. The words came out before she could censor them. She stifled a gasp as she thought about it, and saw him frowning at her. ‘But if you wait until Friday I can pay you myself … that’s the only way we can …’
‘We’ve thought of it already, and that won’t work. Too complicated. How would you arrange it? You would have to make a phone call, at the very least. And that’s too traceable. People don’t just release forty million. They would need proof of life. I would have to cut off a part of you and send it. There would need to be connections with people we don’t know, negotiations. All that involves contact and traces. My DNA moving around. It would be out of our control, out of your control. Someone would inform the police, obviously. Messy, and too dangerous. The people I work for won’t go for that. They’ve thought of it all already …’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ She started to cry as she asked the question, as the implications sank in. ‘Why tell me your name? Why let me see you? I know who you are now. I can identify you. That’s worse than your DNA. So it must be true … you must intend to kill me anyway …’
‘Stop crying,’ he said, very gently. ‘There’s no need for it. Stop it. I need you to be calm and healthy. Not like this. I don’t care if you know who I am. What can you do about that? Tell the police? But you won’t do that, because there’s not just me involved. There are many of us, and if you give my name away then one day one of us will come for you. Then we will kill you. That’s a promise. You understand? Of course you do. This isn’t something personal. It’s just about money. You understand that. It’s between my boss and your father. And your father has plenty of money. No one wants to hurt you, no one wants to kill you. Killing people is counterproductive. If we kill you we will be hunted until we are caught. Your family has a lot of money to throw at hunting us. But this is just like a little taxation for them. Forty million is nothing. So, you see, everything is practical, not personal. Everything is rational … no one is going to kill you …’
‘They will already be hunting you. You killed eight people on my island. Maybe more …’
He waved a hand in the air. ‘No one is going to hunt us for that. Those people were nothing, nobody. Not like you. No one cares if a few people from an unknown tropical island are dead. That’s the way of things. You know how it is. To kill you would be a different matter entirely. That’s why we won’t do it …’
‘Why are you telling me all this?’
‘To calm you. To show you there’s no need for you to be frightened. If you’re frightened you will make my life difficult. I don’t like hurting people …’ He leaned over to one side, reaching back towards the table. His hand closed around the red, insulated handles of a large crocodile clip, lying on the floor, attached to a coiled, electrical flex running out of the ceiling. He pulled it towards her and showed her. ‘This place is a container,’ he said. ‘A converted shipping container. But it hasn’t been used recently for storage. Nothing so harmless. This was in here. I found it. It’s attached to the mains.’ He flicked a switch on one of the grips. ‘It’s live. Don’t touch it.’ He grinned, then flicked the switch again and placed it on the ground beside him. ‘There’s a dried puddle of blood behind you,’ he said. ‘That’s what you can smell. I don’t like to think what they have been doing to people here. But that’s not me. I don’t even want to drug you again. I don’t know whether that would harm you, so I’m playing safe. And I certainly don’t want to use things like that …’ His eyes flicked towards the crocodile clip. ‘I want us to get on and be calm with each other. That way everything is easy. No one gets hurt. No need to use things like that.’
45
They drove back to Hammersmith in Tom’s car. John left his parked in Feltham. He drove, Tom sat in the front passenger seat and tried to summon the strength to concentrate. He had assumed they would get back to the car and his father would call in the kidnapping, maybe not via 999 – better to use one of his connections, get some guarantee of a sympathetic approach, at first at least – but before he could do that Tom had quickly told him the parts he had left out. ‘I think Liz Wellbeck was trying to get you out to the island,’ he had started. ‘I think it was you she wanted, not me. I think someone made a mistake with our names.’ He told him then about the note, as best he could remember it, the letter from Liz to Sara. Then finally told him what Alison had told Sara – that Liz was not her mother. That changed everything. The effect was electric.
‘Christ almighty! I was right! I was fucking right!’ His father was shouting, instantly animated. ‘Of course. Jesus. It’s true. It has to be.’ He slammed his fist against the dashboard, then immediately started to talk about his case, about Operation Grenser, some theory about it. But Tom couldn’t keep up, quickly lost track. His head was pounding, he couldn’t think straight. All he could see was images of Sara, in the back of some car, men around her, pinning her down.
Something shut down in his head. One minute his dad was talking away, voice raised in excitement, the next they were outside his place in Hammersmith, the car stationary, his dad leaning over him at the open passenger door. ‘Rachel is inside,’ he was saying. ‘She’s a doctor. She’ll check you out. Either that or we take you over the road to the hospital.’
Tom frowned. Had he blacked out? Slept? He asked who ‘Rachel’ was.
‘She’s Lauren Gower’s mother,’ his father said.
‘She’s here, at your place?’
‘Yes.’
‘What? You called her?’
‘God, no. Don’t say anything about this, son. Nothing at all. I’m probably wrong. Very wrong. We don’t want to get her hopes up.’
Tom shook his head. He didn’t follow. What was he not to mention? Had he missed something? ‘Why is she here?’ he asked.
Suddenly his dad looked embarrassed.
Tom sat on the balcony, looking out over the Thames with a fixed stare, while his dad disappeared somewhere – to talk to Rachel Gower. It took longer than Tom thought it would. He was having some kind of a relationship with her, Tom assumed. Maybe she even lived with him.
The sun was coming up, the noise of traffic mounting. He could see the buses going over Hammersmith Bridge. A normal day beginning, just like any other. He slept again, though only for a few minutes.
Then she was standing in front of him – Rachel Gower. Behind her, his dad was saying something, pushing something towards him. He could smell it – a mug of coffee. Rachel looked upset, he thought. Had she been crying? He’d met her before, apparently, a few times, but couldn’t recall details. Had she been sleeping in his father’s bed just now?
He smiled at her and sipped the coffee, burning his lip. She started speaking to him. He thought she sounded odd, like she was trembling. He realised she was asking him to explain what had happened to him. He told her the gist of it. Three blows to the head, at least, in about five days. She started to feel around in his scalp. She had very soft, careful hands. After a while it felt hypnotic, like when the nurse at school had run her hands through his hair, looking for lice. He closed his eyes and answered her questions about how much sleep he’d had, dizziness, sickness, loss of consciousness. Then she produced some instruments from somewhere and looked in his eyes and his ears and nose. She pressed the cold pad of a stethoscope against his chest and he did as she asked, taking breaths. She took his pulse, his blood pressure, his temperature. All the time his dad was watching anxiously. The end result, she decided, w
as that he should sleep. She didn’t know for sure how concussed he was, but thought he certainly must be ‘to a moderate level’. But if there was serious bleeding in his brain he would be showing more ‘dysfunction’. Nevertheless, she wanted him to have X-rays, urgently. He’d lost consciousness, after all – maybe more than once. The caffeine was working already, though, or the hot liquid, or the touch of her fingers. ‘There’s no time for any of that just yet,’ he said. He drank more of the coffee and turned to his dad. ‘What are we doing?’ he asked. ‘What are we doing about it?’
They went up to a room his dad called his study, just Tom and his father. His father then left him there and went back downstairs to make sure Rachel was OK. Again. ‘She’s not so good,’ he explained. ‘It’s complicated.’ He returned looking flustered and edgy. He needed to explain what was going on to her, he said, but didn’t dare.
‘What is going on?’ Tom asked. He was sitting at one side of the desk.
‘Two things. Two key things. Firstly – Liz Wellbeck wanted me, not you …’
‘That was my guess. I might be wrong …’
‘I think you’re right. I have a feeling about it, about all of this.’ His dad started to take folders from the bookshelves behind the desk. He placed them on the desk and opened them, one by one, looking for something. ‘I think she was trying to say something before she died,’ he said.
‘Like what?’
‘Like a confession.’
‘That she kidnapped Sara when she was little?’ Tom asked with obvious incredulity. Suddenly he realised where his father was headed. ‘That Sara is Lauren Gower?’
His dad put a finger to his lips and looked anxiously at the closed door. ‘Keep your voice down …’
Tom spoke in a whisper: ‘That’s a mad idea. You’re letting your imagination run away with things.’
‘You reckon? Liz Wellbeck was not her mother. Was that ever mentioned to me, to my inquiry, through several years of investigations and many interviews? In 2003 we spoke to them all again. It was never mentioned. Indeed, they lied about her age.’ He found some sheets of paper. ‘These are copies of an interview with someone called Arisha Vostrikova, Liz Wellbeck’s PA …’
‘The name rings bells. She works for Sara’s father now, I think.’
‘I’m not surprised. In 2003 she told us the kid – Sara Eaton – was twelve years old.’
‘But that’s right. She’s twenty-one now. On Friday.’
‘More like twenty-three, I would say. They’ve probably lied about her age her entire life, forged the birth documents. To put the kid out of the frame. I’d put money on it she’s older. She probably doesn’t even know it …’
Tom frowned. ‘But you don’t know that. There’s nothing to prove that. Nothing at all. You’re just guessing.’
‘It fits. It’s easily done … Plus, in the note, Liz Wellbeck wanted me to meet Sara. Why? There is no other possible reason. I have no connection to Liz Wellbeck except through this case. I’m telling you, she was trying to confess it.’
‘Through Sara? It doesn’t make sense. She would write to you. Why write to Sara? It’s all mad, Dad. Completely fucking mad. Maybe she was trying to get something off her chest – it reads like that – maybe she wanted to confess something, but not that, not that Sara wasn’t her child. It doesn’t read like that at all. It’s something else. And anyway, her father is still her father …’
‘Is he? You said she wasn’t happy about speaking to him …’
‘Doesn’t mean he isn’t her dad.’ Their eyes met, then they both looked away. ‘Does any of this help with who has her?’ Tom asked.
‘Maybe.’ He started pulling sheets of paper out of another box. Tom assumed the boxes – and there were many of them – were copies of material from Grenser. ‘Maybe.’ He found something, a photo. ‘You told me that when you were on the island one of the two gunmen referred to the other as “Max”. Right?’
‘Yes.’
‘That set me thinking. There was one “Max” that came up in the inquiry. Maxim, in fact, but Max could be short for Maxim. Have a look at this photo of him. Is this one of the gunmen?’ His pushed across a photo, a mugshot of a young, blond-haired man. Tom looked at it, knowing it was useless. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see them close up. I didn’t see anyone close up. Except the one Sara shot, in her room. And he was black.’
‘That was taken back in ’90. The man is Maxim Sidurov. He was security for Freddie Eaton and Liz Wellbeck. We interviewed him. He was in the hospital on the day Lauren was taken. He’s Russian. You said one of them might have been speaking Russian?’
Tom shrugged. ‘Maybe. Or Polish. Or something Eastern Bloc. I don’t know.’
His dad wasn’t deterred – not yet. He produced another photo. ‘This is Maxim Sidurov in 2003, when we reopened the inquiry. Thirteen years later. We interviewed him again. Got nothing interesting.’
Tom looked at it with a sigh. ‘I told you. I didn’t see anyone close enough. And besides …’ He stopped. A detail in the photo caught his eye. It wasn’t a mugshot photo, but a very clear image of someone slim and tall, with hard, bony features, cropped blond hair, wearing a smart suit, in a street somewhere.
‘A surveillance team took that,’ his dad said.
‘You watched him in 2003. Why?’ Tom put his finger on the feature that was bothering him. He couldn’t work out what he was trying to remember. ‘What’s this?’ he asked.
His dad came round the table and looked over his shoulder. ‘A scar,’ he said.
Tom felt his heart trip. He took a breath. ‘A V-shaped scar,’ he said, very quietly.
‘Yes. It’s distinctive. A war wound of some sort.’ His dad looked down at him. Their eyes met. ‘You’ve seen the scar before?’ his dad asked, suddenly getting it.
‘No,’ Tom said. ‘But Sara has. She saw it through the weapon sights. She told me. A V-shaped scar on his cheek. Distinctive. It could be him.’ But already he was thinking of all the possible coincidences that might ruin that conclusion. He was still thinking about them when his father spoke again.
‘We put a team on him because in 2003 he was working security for a big-time Russian mobster called Dimitri Barsukov.’
‘Barsukov?’ Tom stood up quickly. ‘I don’t believe it. This guy works for Barsukov?’
‘You know Barsukov?’
‘No. But I was meant to get to know him. Less than a week ago. I’ll tell you about it.’
They stood looking at each other.
‘OK,’ Tom said, frowning. ‘That’s one coincidence too many.’
His father nodded. ‘You’re getting the same feeling I have.’
‘Not that Sara is Lauren Gower. Definitely not. There’s nothing pointing to that at all.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘But maybe Barsukov has her,’ he said, uncertainly. ‘Maybe Barsukov is behind all of this.’
46
Her mind kept going to the crocodile clip. It was right by his leg, almost within her reach. She just had to move a little closer to him to get it. The shackle was attached to a short chain and that was bolted into the floor. There was a lock. He would have the key. She had to get him feeling safe with her, then get the clip. Attach it to him, switch it on. Electrocute the fucker.
She ate the food. She thought that might relax him a bit, make him think she trusted him, and anyway, she was starving and damaged and it would help. She needed a clear head. There was nothing to suggest he would try to poison her. He talked while she ate, sitting on the stool and rambling on in a morose, depressive voice, telling her about her family, how he had met them, where, when. He talked slowly, avoided eye contact. She stuffed a whole sandwich in and chewed without tasting, then drank about a litre of water from a bottle. She expected to be sick, but she wasn’t. Instead, she very quickly started to feel better, just as he had predicted. Her head began to clear, her heart started to slow, she was able to think.
‘There were rumours,’ he said. ‘Rumou
rs that Liz Wellbeck couldn’t have a child.’ He looked directly at her. ‘Maybe you heard those rumours. That she stole someone else’s child?’
She frowned. She didn’t know what he was talking about.
‘But that was all before you were born,’ he said. ‘I don’t know who told you she wasn’t your mother. But maybe they heard those rumours, and got it wrong.’ He stood up and walked across the floor, leaned against the wall, back to her. He looked more agitated now. She had no idea why. She checked the clip again. It was in reach, she thought. But he wasn’t. She shuffled forward on the mats a little, watching to see if he would notice. He didn’t move from the wall.
‘I was working for her when you were born,’ he said, talking into the wall. ‘Liz Wellbeck was your mother. There were no children stolen. Those rumours were all rubbish. You should believe me.’
She took another drink of the water, spilled some, wiped her mouth with her sleeve. ‘Why do you care?’ she asked him. ‘She’s dead. Doesn’t matter if she was my mother or not – you’re not going to get any money from her.’
She started to move again. If she dived, she thought she could get her hands on the clip. He turned his head slightly, looked at her, then immediately looked at the clip. Like he’d read her thoughts. She froze. He pushed himself off the wall, walked over to the clip and kicked it back, away from her. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Why should I care?’
47
It was after nine by the time they could get everything ready, but still Tom hadn’t been able to sleep for longer than about fifty minutes. Standing in the foyer of Barsukov’s Knightsbridge address, he leaned on the counter between himself and the man he had spoken to and let his eyes close momentarily. The man was standing back from the counter, phone to his ear, speaking in hushed tones to communicate Tom’s presence to Barsukov’s people in the apartment far above.