Emily shifted her weight from one foot to the other. This was an unexpected opportunity. One that filled her with a sudden nervousness. Who better to ask about Alina’s whereabouts than the man she supposedly ran away from?
“Perhaps you could give him my number? Tell him there are things I’m not sure he meant to leave behind.”
“Such as?” Paulina pulled up a client file on the screen and began searching for Karl Henry’s details.
“Some personal items.”
Paulina’s eyes narrowed. Closing down the database she picked up the tenant checklist. “Indeed. I’m afraid I don’t have time to call him right now, but I’ll make sure to get hold of him later this afternoon.”
Emily hesitated. “You never mentioned his wife was missing, when you showed me around. You said she’d gone back to Germany.”
Paulina Blanchard folded her arms and met Emily’s questioning gaze. “Well, I’m sure that’s nobody’s business but Mr Henry’s.”
***
The prospect of conversing with Karl Henry occupied her mind as she disappeared into the heaving throng—so much so that there were brief instants when she lost the need to count. When she reached The Holmeswood, she hurried across the road and entered Il Cuore. The café was crowded and heavy with chatter. Finding the only empty table, she sat down and placed her bag in her lap.
Jerome had watched her come in. After taking a few more orders, he made his way over.
“Good morning, Miss Swanson,” he said, bereft of his usual smile. He turned his order pad to a new page and tapped it with the nib of his pen. His eyes found a spot just above Emily’s left shoulder. “What can I get you?”
“I’m sorry,” Emily said. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
Jerome’s gaze moved down to her shoulder then fluttered across her face. He nodded.
“I wasn’t being angry with you specifically. I was being angry at the situation. Please don’t take it personally. I was hoping that we could become friends.”
Jerome slipped into the chair opposite. For a moment, he sat sulking like a scolded child. Then he said, “You hurt my feelings.”
Emily felt her face sting.
“But you were right. I could have done something. I could have called the police on any number of occasions. But I didn’t. I turned a blind eye just like everybody else. Maybe if I hadn’t, Alina would have been saved from a few bruises. Maybe she wouldn’t have disappeared.”
Dozens of indecipherable conversations filled the space between them.
“Then you believe me? You think something might have happened to her?” Emily reached across the table, then retracted her hand.
Jerome shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe she did take off. Or maybe Karl really did do something to her. Either way, I should have spoken up. We all should have.”
Shamefaced, he hung his head. Across the room, unserved customers raised their voices in complaint.
“We all make mistakes,” Emily said, she reached her hand across the table again and this time she kept it there, squeezing his wrist. “God knows, I have.”
Jerome looked up with sad eyes. “I better get back to work.”
“Apology accepted?” Emily asked.
“I tell you what.” A hint of a smile returned to Jerome’s lips. “Come and watch Real Wives of Bognor Regis with me tonight and you’ve got yourself a deal. I’ll even cook up some red pea soup, just like Grandma Miller used to make.”
Emily smiled. “Okay.”
“There’s one more thing. If we’re going to be friends, then you need to let me get to know you. That means no more evasive manoeuvres.”
Across the table, Emily’s heart began beating like the wings of a panicked bird.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A week passed by. The weather grew bitterly cold. Christmas lights appeared over the city, sponsors’ brand names flashing in colourful patterns above Oxford Street. Emily woke early each morning, took her meds and read self-help books until noon. On some afternoons, she’d take a nap and then invite herself over to Harriet’s for tea. On others, she’d cautiously venture out into the wilderness that was London, attempting to acclimatise herself to the chaos. She and Jerome had shared a few evenings together, watching television and taking turns to cook. Emily liked Jerome very much, and it felt good to have someone she could call a friend again. But where Jerome happily volunteered information about his personal life—from the demise of his previous relationship to the uncertainty of his future—Emily still found herself dancing around his questions like a skater around a hole in the ice, giving him half-answers or shifting the focus of their conversations back towards him.
More and more, however, Emily found herself distracted by thoughts of Alina Engel. Another week had passed and she was still missing. Another week and still no one was looking for her. It was the latter thought that had propelled Emily to invite Jerome up to her apartment that evening.
“Leftovers courtesy of Il Cuore,” he said, throwing his coat over the back of a chair and handing her a paper bag filled with butterscotch cookies. “So what’s up?”
“It’s Alina,” Emily said, looking away as she tried to find the right words. “I’ve decided to try and find her.”
Jerome blinked. “You mean like Nancy Drew style?”
“I can’t stop thinking about her. She could be dead somewhere.”
“Or sat on a beach, giving the finger to Karl Henry and our charming British weather.”
“I’m serious. Anything could have happened to her, and knowing what we know, I can’t just sit around and do nothing.”
“And what exactly does your decision have to do with me?”
“I want you to help me find her.”
Jerome was quiet, staring at the floor.
“This could be an opportunity do some good,” Emily said. “A chance to make up for past mistakes.”
Jerome flinched at the sting of Emily’s words.
“And what past mistakes have you made?” he asked, folding his arms.
The question threw her off-balance.
“A woman’s life could be at stake,” she said.
“Or not.”
“And that’s exactly why we need to find out. Will you help me?”
She watched Jerome, searching his expression, trying to read his thoughts.
“I’m not doing anything illegal,” he said. “Unless it involves fun.”
***
“Alina Engel was forty-three years old, German, and married to Karl Henry.”
They had just finished eating and were now sat at the table, Jerome sipping on a beer while Emily clutched an orange juice.
“First question. Where exactly in Germany was she from?”
Emily shrugged.
“We need to find out.” Jerome grabbed paper and pen and began jotting down notes. “If we know where she came from then we can locate her family and hopefully discover that she has indeed returned to the nest. Mystery solved, we all sleep well at night.”
“How do we go about doing that?” Emily peered over his shoulder as he dropped the pen and reached for her laptop. Jerome clicked onto Google’s search engine and typed, How do I find someone in Germany? Seconds later, they were staring at the homepage of Das Telefonbuch, the national German phone directory.
“How’s your German?” Jerome asked.
“I took French.”
“Well, lucky for you I can order pizza and beer in five different languages, including Deutsch.”
Typing Engel into a box titled Wer/Was, he then clicked on Finden.
“We’re going to need more than just her surname.” Jerome said, chewing on his lower lip. “There are over three thousand Engels listed commercially and over eleven thousand privately.”
Emily tapped the screen. “Put in her whole name.”
Jerome’s fingers moved like liquid across the keyboard. “Two commercial, fifty-three private. But would any of them be her? She was living here for ... actually I don�
�t know for how long. But she wouldn’t have been back in Germany long enough for her name to be registered in the directory.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Emily said, bookmarking the search results. “It’s a starting place at least.”
She picked up her glass and took a sip.
“No beer for you, mein Fräulein?” Jerome watched her with a curious eye. “In fact, it’s been no beer for you all week. How come?”
Emily hesitated, remembering his words in the café. She could say she wasn’t in the mood, or she could tell him the truth. Seeing that she was wavering, Jerome shrugged and returned to the site.
“I’m not supposed to drink alcohol,” Emily said. “It doesn’t react so well with the meds.”
Jerome looked up. “Antidepressants?”
Emily nodded, feeling ashamed, then angry that she should feel any shame at all.
At the computer, Jerome returned his attention to Das Telefonbuch. “If we knew which town or city Alina hails from it would narrow our search.”
“We could ask Karl Henry.” Emily watched him, looking for signs that her admission had changed his attitude towards her. If it had, Jerome was a better actor than she’d imagined.
“I don’t like the idea of messing around with Karl Henry,” he said. “We already know he enjoys getting his point across with his hands, and if you’re right about Alina, then he’s the last person we want to get tangled up with.”
“Perhaps Harriet will know.”
“It’s worth asking. What other information do we have?”
Relaxing a little, Emily leaned back in her chair. “Alina disappeared on Monday the twenty-fourth of August. She called Karl at around nine pm from a bus stop to say she was on her way home from work. No one saw or heard from her again. Earlier that same day, Karl arranged for Bill the handyman to change the lock on his apartment door, then paid him hush money to keep quiet about it. The lock had been broken from the inside, as if someone had been trying to smash their way out. Go take a look. They’ve been sanded down and painted over, but there are scratches and grooves still visible.”
“I believe you. Go on.”
“Some time shortly before Alina’s disappearance, Harriet Golding was woken in the middle of the night by shouting. Karl and Alina were fighting again. Only this time, they weren’t alone. A third person was there. A woman. Harriet couldn’t hear what she had to say to them but whatever it was shut them up and fast.”
“That’s weird. I wonder who it could have been.” Jerome wrote everything down, forming a timeline of events. He stared at the page, thinking. “You know, there is one direct way we could find out if Alina is missing. And it would save us a lot of time and trouble.”
Emily folded her arms, staring out of the window. “Ask the police.”
“Exactly. But I don’t know how much they’re allowed to tell us, not being related or in any way connected to her.”
“Surely they’d be able to tell us whether or not she’s been found.”
“You want to call tomorrow and ask?”
“No.”
The word fled from her mouth like a turncoat.
Jerome stared at her, his brow wrinkled. “Okay. I guess I can do it on my lunch break.”
“Alina was a nurse, wasn’t she?” Emily turned away, her hair falling across her face. “I found part of her uniform in the clothes she left behind, and the missing persons notice said she worked for some sort of foundation.”
“Do you remember the name? It could be worth giving them a call to see if they know anything.”
Emily cast her mind back, picturing the notice pinned to the public board. “The Ever After Care Foundation.”
“Sounds like a funeral home.”
Emily typed the name into the laptop.
“Not so far from the truth,” she replied.
They stared at a gaudily coloured webpage decorated with dove motifs. The Ever After Care Foundation was not a funeral service, but a private hospice for the terminally ill located east of the city in Hainault. Images on the website presented a sprawling manor house flanked by modern annexes and surrounded by woodland. The grounds boasted colourful, topiary-lined gardens, and two large ponds.
Other photographs showed bright and comfortable rooms that, if it weren’t for the hospital-style beds, could have been mistaken for hotel rooms. As Emily pored over the website, an insipid queasiness began to unsettle her stomach. Memories were crawling out of the shadows like insects, moving just beneath her skin.
“I’ve lost you again.” Jerome squeezed her arm.
Emily mustered a half-smile. “It looks very comfortable. A nice place to spend your last days.”
“Is there a phone number?”
Clicking onto the contact page, Emily located the number and Jerome made a note of it.
“You want me to call this one too?”
“I can do it.”
“That would mean switching on your phone, you know.”
“As a matter of fact I already did.”
It was true. As soon as she’d returned home, she’d taken the phone from the drawer, switched it on, and held her breath as she waited to see if Lewis had contacted her. She’d pretended to be indifferent to the empty screen. Wasn’t his silence exactly what she had predicted? But then a solemnness embraced her, wrapping its sinewy arms around her neck. Your life means nothing, it whispered in her ear. You have ceased to exist.
“I’m impressed,” Jerome said. “Maybe I can have your number now?”
Emily took his pen and wrote it down. She stared across at Alina’s painting.
“I was going to ask you about that,” Jerome followed her gaze. “Why have you hung it on your wall? It’s a monstrosity.”
“It got me thinking. Who painted it? Why would they have painted Alina in such a strange way?”
“Maybe it was Karl. He certainly has a warped view of the world. Especially when it comes to his wife.”
“I don’t think so. The artist signed it with the initials AC.”
Jerome wrinkled his mouth in distaste. “If someone painted a picture of me like that I’d be wondering what I’d done to piss them off.”
With leads to follow in the morning, they soon parted ways. As Jerome headed for the door, Emily stopped him.
“Here.” She handed him the spare key to her apartment. “In case I’m locked out again.”
“I’m not sure I’m the best person to—”
“Yes, you are. Besides, my only other choice is Harriet, and as nice as she is, well, you’ve been inside her apartment.”
Jerome closed his fingers over the keys. “Point taken.”
Once she was alone, Emily returned to the laptop and the Ever After Care Foundation website. It really did look welcoming. The staff, whether real or models hired to be in the pictures, had broad smiles and sympathetic eyes. Alina was not among them.
As Emily waded through the various pages, memories returned to taunt her, pulling on her wrist, dragging her through darkened rooms until she found herself at her mother’s house, perched on the edge of the bed. A crumpled form lay swamped by sheets. It moved, twisting its head around to see her. But Emily would not look. Instead, she squeezed her eyes shut and pictured Alina. The shape in the bed began to moan; a pitiful drawn-out cry, riddled with pain, that threatened to go on forever.
Emily shut down the laptop. Tears stung her eyes. She willed them away, willed them to dry until her eyes were like deserts, until her mind was an arid landscape of bones.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The train was half-empty as it pulled out of Liverpool Street station and began its mid-morning journey towards the city outskirts. Office buildings towered on both sides of the track before the train disappeared into a long black tunnel. When it emerged, the scenery had changed. Emily and Jerome stared out at long stretches of industrial estates filled with rows of warehouses and peppered with disused gas holders. She’d read about those enormous, round storage tanks when
studying the Industrial Revolution at school. Leftovers from an age when factory chimneys belched out thick noxious gases and tuberculosis rotted the lungs of the poor, they were now an indelible stain on a modern cityscape of steel and glass.
The train brought them as far as Romford. From there, they took a bus to Yellowpine Way, then began the twenty-five minute walk to the Ever After Care Foundation.
“Welcome to hell!” Jerome grimaced as they made their way through a labyrinth of identical suburban streets. “You know we could have taken the tube almost the entire way instead of your cross-country pentathlon. It’s bloody freezing!”
“I don’t like the tube.”
Emerging onto Romford Road they headed south until they came to an overhead pedestrian walkway, which spanned the width of the four-lane road.
Emily froze.
“That’s the place,” she said, pointing to a bus stop on the opposite side. “That’s where Alina called Karl before she disappeared.”
Behind the bus stop and bordering the edges of the road was a long stretch of forest. Looking over her shoulder, Emily saw a plot of locked up warehouses. She imagined Alina waiting for the bus, illuminated in the darkness by the single street light.
“Come on.”
Emily and Jerome crossed the walkway, passed the bus stop, and located the entrance of the private road that led to the Ever After Care Foundation.
“I’m not sure about this,” Jerome said, pausing to stamp his numbing feet against the ground.
His apprehension was not unfounded. Yesterday’s phone call to the police had proven fruitless. The desk sergeant he’d spoken to knew nothing of Alina Engel and upon learning that Jerome was neither her friend nor her relative abruptly ended the conversation. His next call was to the Missing Persons Bureau. A beleaguered operator advised him that, due to the age and nature of the missing persons report, he would need to submit an email enquiry. Hopefully, someone would reply within five working days.
Emily had taken an altogether different approach. She had called the Ever After Care Foundation and, rather than enquire about Alina Engel, she’d arranged an appointment to take a tour of their facilities. It was a slightly irrational move, she supposed, but now that they were here it seemed senseless to turn around.
Lost Lives (Emily Swanson Mystery Thriller Series Book 1) Page 6