“What footage? What are you talking about?”
“YOU, coming out of the Berkeley Hotel with that man. That bastard! The two of you, kissing in the street at two in the morning. The same day you claimed to be in Yorkshire. You lied to me. And then you have the gall to accuse me of having an affair!”
Tracy closed her eyes. She felt as if she were going mad. But then she remembered that this was Jeff’s signature, the way he always used to work, back in the old days. Baffling and bamboozling his victims till they couldn’t tell up from down or right from wrong.
I’m no victim, Tracy thought. I’m not one of your dumb “marks.” This is about you, not me. You and that damn girl.
“I don’t know what you think you saw,” she said. “But the only man I’ve slept with in the last four years is you, Jeff.”
“That’s a lie, Tracy, and you know it. You and McBride . . .”
Tracy lost her temper. “Don’t say his name! Don’t you dare. Alan’s a decent man. An honest man. Unlike you. Go back to your girlfriend, Jeff.”
With a sharp tug, she pulled her arm free and ran.
HOURS PASSED AND THE rain kept falling. Tracy had no idea where she was going, or why. Soon it was completely dark. Eventually she found herself on Gunther Hartog’s street, staring up at his splendid, redbrick house. Just around the corner from his Mount Street antiques shop, Gunther Hartog’s Mayfair home was one of Tracy’s safe places, her happy places. She and Jeff had spent many long, drunken, convivial evenings there, discussing jobs they’d done or planning new capers.
Me and Jeff.
The ground-floor lights were all on. Gunther would be in his study, no doubt, reading books on politics and art late into the night. Jeff used to call him the best-educated crook in London.
Jeff. Damn old Jeff. He’s everywhere.
For the first time all evening, Tracy gave way to tears. The image of Jeff with that awful girl in his arms would never leave her. They were in our bedroom. He was about to make love to her, I know he was. For all I know he’s done it hundreds of times before. Her natural instinct was to want to claw Rebecca’s eyes out, but she checked herself. I refuse to be one of those women who blame the other woman. Why should a young girl like that respect Jeff’s wedding vows if he doesn’t? No, Jeff’s the bad guy here. He’s the liar.
A small voice inside her dared to remind her that she’d been lying too But Tracy snuffed it out.
Hold on to the anger, she told herself. Don’t let go.
She couldn’t barge into Gunther’s house and seek comfort there. She couldn’t go home. Some wild, irrational part of her wanted to knock on Alan McBride’s door. He always made her feel so safe. But Dr. McBride had his own family, his own life. She knew she shouldn’t intrude.
I’m on my own, thought Tracy. Then, reaching down to stroke her barely swelling belly, she edited the thought.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” she said aloud. “I meant we’re on our own. But you mustn’t worry. Mommy will take care of you. Mommy will always take care of you.”
JEFF WOKE THE NEXT morning feeling like he’d been hit by a truck.
Rebecca had left right after Tracy.
“I can stay if you want,” she’d offered hopefully.
“No. Go back to your apartment,” Jeff told her. “And go back to work tomorrow. If anyone’s leaving the museum, it’s me, not you.”
She’d done as she was asked, for now. Jeff knew he would have to deal with the situation eventually. But one crisis at a time.
He tried Tracy’s cell phone. Turned off, of course. Then he tried her friends, acquaintances, contacts from the old days. After twelve hours he had made no progress. No one had seen or heard from her, not even Gunther.
“I’m worried.” Jeff poured himself a third tumbler of Laphroaig from Gunther’s decanter. He couldn’t face the thought of sleeping at Eaton Square—Tracy wouldn’t be back anytime soon, and their bedroom had become the scene of the crime—and Gunther had offered him a bed. Secretly Jeff hoped that eventually Tracy might also turn up on Gunther’s doorstep and Gunther could act as referee while they worked things out. Because they would work things out. The alternative was unthinkable.
“What if something’s happened to her?”
“Tracy can take care of herself,” said Gunther. “Besides, something has happened to her. She’s walked in on her hubby in bed with another woman.”
“We weren’t in bed.”
“Near enough. Who is this ghastly strumpet anyway?”
“She’s not ghastly and she’s not a strumpet,” said Jeff. “Her name’s Rebecca, but she’s not important here.”
Gunther arched a dubious eyebrow. “Apparently that isn’t Tracy’s take on things.”
“Jesus, Gunther, not you too? I told you, Tracy’s the one who’s been having an affair, okay? Not me.”
“Hmm.” Gunther frowned. “Yes. You did say that.”
He found it terribly hard to believe that Tracy would cheat on Jeff. On the other hand, perhaps this was only because he deeply, desperately didn’t want to believe it. Gunther Hartog was old and wise enough to know that every human being is capable of infidelity. Rationally, one must assume that professional con artists like Tracy and Jeff were more capable than most. And Tracy had been depressed lately, not at all herself.
“She’s been lying to me for months,” said Jeff. “Yesterday I saw hard evidence with my own eyes. It’s all on video, Gunther. CCTV. I’m not making this up. It was only after I saw the truth in black and white that I . . . I slipped, with Rebecca.”
“You’ve never slept with her before?”
“Never! I might have been tempted,” Jeff admitted. “But I never touched her.”
“Would you have slept with her,” Gunther asked, “ . . . if Tracy hadn’t walked in?”
“Probably,” said Jeff. “Yes. I would. Tracy broke my heart, for God’s sake! Not that any of that matters now anyway, because Tracy’s taken off into the night.” He ran a hand despairingly through his thick, dark hair. “It’s a mess.”
“You really think she’s been sleeping with this doctor chappie?”
“I know she has,” Jeff said grimly.
“But you still want her back?”
“Of course I do. She’s my wife and I love her. I’m pretty sure she loves me too, despite everything. This baby stuff has thrown us both for a loop.”
“Well . . .” The old man smiled. “That being the case, you will find her. Try not to panic, old boy. Tracy will turn up.”
TRACY DIDN’T TURN UP.
Not that day, not that week, not the next week.
Jeff took a leave of absence from the museum. He knocked on every door of every contact of Tracy’s, however tenuous. Fences and appraisers and restorers whom they’d worked with in the past. Staff at the various prisoners’ charities to which Tracy gave money. Even her personal trainer got a call from a distraught and red-eyed Jeff.
“If I’d seen her, I’d tell you, honest.” Karen, a bubbly bottle blonde from Essex, couldn’t imagine what would possess any woman to run out on a bloke as fit as Jeff Stevens. Even a beauty like Tracy couldn’t hope to do better than that, surely? “But she ain’t been ’ere. Not for weeks.”
Finally Jeff stormed into 77 Harley Street.
“I want to see Dr. Alan McBride. The bastard’s been screwing my wife.”
All the women in the waiting room put down their copies of Country Life and stared at him, shocked. At least Jeff assumed they were shocked. Most of them were in their forties, hence the trip to the fertility clinic, and had had far too much Botox injected around their eyes to be able to register more than mild surprise.
“They’ve been having an affair and now my wife’s gone missing,” Jeff ranted at the hapless receptionist. “I want to know what McBride knows.”
“I can s
ee you’re upset, sir.”
“That’s very observant of you.”
“But I’m afraid Dr. McBride’s—”
“Busy? Yes, I’ll bet he is.” Ignoring the receptionist’s protests, he barged his way into the doctor’s office.
The room was empty. Or so Jeff thought, until he heard voices, a man and a woman’s. They were coming from behind a green curtain that had been drawn around an examination table at the back of the room. Marching over, Jeff ripped back the curtain.
He saw three things in quick succession.
The first was a woman’s vagina.
The second was the same woman’s face, propped up on a pillow, her expression slowly transitioning from surprise to embarrassment to outrage.
And the third was a doctor.
The doctor was about sixty-five, heavyset and, Jeff guessed, Persian. He did not look happy. More importantly, he was not Dr. Alan McBride.
“I’m so sorry,” he said smoothly. “Wrong room.”
Back in the waiting room, the receptionist glared at him.
“As I was saying, I’m afraid Dr. McBride’s on holiday.”
“Where?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“WHERE?” Jeff bellowed.
The girl crumbled. “Morocco. With his family.”
So he has a family, does he? Bastard.
“When will he be back?”
The receptionist regained her composure. “I must ask you to leave now, sir. This is a doctor’s office, and you’re upsetting our patients.”
“Tell McBride I’ll be back,” said Jeff. “This isn’t over.”
Outside, he walked along Harley Street in a daze. Where are you, Tracy? Where in God’s name are you? He took a cab to Eaton Square as he did every day, just in case Tracy had decided to return to the house. His heart soared when he saw a woman standing in the front garden, bending low over the rosebushes, but as he approached he saw that it wasn’t Tracy.
“Can I help you?”
The woman turned around. She was in her early forties, blond and had the sort of hard, overly made-up face and heavily lacquered hair that Jeff usually associated with newscasters.
“Who are you?” she asked him rudely.
“I’m Jeff Stevens. This is my house. Who are you?”
Newscaster lady handed him a business card. It read: Helen Flint. Partner, Foxtons.
“You’re a real estate agent?”
“That’s right. A Mrs. Tracy Stevens has instructed me to put this property on the market. My understanding was that she is the sole legal owner. Is that not correct?”
“No. It’s correct,” said Jeff, his heart beating faster. “The house is in Tracy’s name. When did she instruct you to sell it, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“This morning,” Helen Flint replied briskly. Pulling out a house key from her Anya Hindmarch handbag, she began unlocking the front door. Now that Jeff had confirmed the fact that he wasn’t a co-owner, he’d become an irritation.
“Did you see her?” Jeff asked. “In person?”
Ignoring him, the agent punched in a code to turn off the alarm and walked into the kitchen, taking notes. Jeff followed.
“I asked you a question,” he said, grabbing her by the elbow. “Did my wife come to your offices this morning?”
Helen Flint looked at him as if he were something unpleasant that was stuck to the bottom of her shoe. “Let go of me or I’ll call the police.”
Jeff did as she asked. “I’m sorry. It’s just that my wife’s been missing for more than two weeks. I’ve been terribly worried about her.”
“Yes, well. Your personal problems are none of my business. But in answer to your question, your wife instructed me by telephone. We haven’t met.”
“Did she say where she was calling from?” asked Jeff.
“No.”
“Well, did she leave a number, at least?”
“She did not. I have an e-mail address. She said that would be the best way to contact her.” On the back of another card, the agent scribbled something down. “Now, if you don’t mind, Mr. Stevens, I really must get on.”
Jeff looked at the card. His heart plunged for a second time. It was a Hotmail address, generic and untraceable.
“If she contacts you again, Miss Flint, please ask her to get in touch with me. It’s really very important.”
The real estate agent gave Jeff a look that clearly translated as Not to me it isn’t.
Jeff went back to Gunther’s.
“At least you know she’s alive and well.” Gunther tried to get Jeff to look on the bright side at dinner.
“Alive and well and selling our house,” said Jeff. “She’s dismantling our life together, Gunther. Without even talking to me. That’s not fair. That’s not the Tracy I know.”
“I suspect she’s still very hurt.”
“So am I!”
It pained Gunther to see Jeff fighting back tears.
“I have to find her,” he said eventually. “I have to. There must be something I’ve missed.”
REBECCA MORTIMER WAS GETTING ready for bed when the doorbell to her apartment rang.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me.” Jeff Stevens’s gruff, gravelly voice on the other side of the door made her heart skip a beat. “Sorry to come by so late. It’s important.”
Rebecca opened the door.
“Jeff! What a lovely surprise.”
“Can I come in?”
“Of course.”
He followed her into a living room littered with half-drunk cups of coffee and books on Celtic manuscripts. Rebecca’s hair was wet from the shower and the nightshirt she was wearing clung in places to her still-damp skin. Jeff tried not to notice the way it rode up when she sat down on the sofa, exposing the smooth, supple skin of her upper thighs.
“The disk you gave me,” said Jeff. “The footage of Tracy with McBride. Where did you get it?”
For a moment Rebecca looked nonplussed. Then she said, “Does it matter?”
“It does to me.”
She hesitated. “I can’t tell you, I’m afraid.”
“Why not?”
“I’d be betraying a friend. It’s complicated but . . . you’ll just have to trust me.”
Now it was Jeff’s turn to hesitate. “Do you have another copy?”
Rebecca looked surprised. “Yes. Why?”
“I destroyed the original you gave me. I was angry and I wasn’t thinking straight. But I’d like to look at it again. I’m hoping there might be some clue in there, something I missed the first time that might help me find Tracy. Can I have it?”
Rebecca pouted. “All right.” She’d hoped, assumed, that Jeff had come here tonight to see her. Doing her best to mask her disappointment, she walked over to her desk drawer. Pulling out a disk, she handed it to him.
“She doesn’t love you, you know.”
Jeff winced.
“Not like I do.”
He looked at Rebecca, genuinely surprised.
“You don’t love me. You barely even know me.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes it is. Believe me. Besides, I’m far too old for you.”
“Says who?” Rebecca coiled herself around him like a cobra, kissing him with a passion that caught Jeff completely off guard. She was a gorgeous girl, but he wasn’t ready for this. Gently but firmly, he pushed her away.
“I’m married,” he said. “What happened between us the other day—”
“Almost happened,” Rebecca corrected him.
“Almost happened,” Jeff agreed. “Well, it shouldn’t have. I was hurt and angry, and you’re a beautiful girl. But I love my wife.”
“Your wife’s a whore!” Rebecca’s s
weet, innocent features twisted suddenly into an ugly mask of jealousy and rage. Jeff stepped away from her, shocked. He had never seen this side of her before.
A horrible thought struck him. As if someone had cut the cable of an elevator he was taking, he felt his stomach lurch and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
“How did you get the footage?” he asked again. “Tell me!”
“I won’t!” snapped Rebecca. “Can’t you see you’re missing the point here? Tracy’s been screwing around behind your back. That’s the headline. Who cares how I caught her. The point is I did. I did it because I care about you, Jeff. I love you!”
But Jeff was already gone, the disk clutched tightly in his hand.
AT SEVEN O’CLOCK THE next morning, Jeff sat in Victor Litchenko’s basement office in Pimlico, staring at a screen.
Victor was an old friend and one of the top audiovisual experts in the London underworld. A master at doctoring footage, both images and sound, Victor Litchenko described himself as a “digital artist.” Few who’d worked with him disagreed.
“It’s actually not a bad piece of work,” the Russian said at last, sipping at the double espresso Jeff had brought him. “The most common mistake amateurs make is to go for something too complex. But here she simply doctored the time line and changed the lighting. Very easy. Very effective.”
“So it is Tracy?”
“It is Tracy. The footage itself is genuine, nothing’s been superimposed or patched together. All she did was to change the time clock in the bottom right-hand corner. You think this was shot at two A.M. because there’s a set of numbers there telling you so. If you strip those out, like so”—he tapped a few keys—“and remove the superimposed shadowing she used like . . . so . . .” Some more tapping. “Voilà! Now, what do you see?”
Jeff frowned. “I see the same exact thing but in the daytime. There’s Tracy, coming out of the hotel. And there’s her lover.”
“Ah, ah, ah.” Victor interrupted him. “Look again. What makes you think that’s her lover?”
“Well, they’re . . . She kisses him. Right there,” said Jeff.
“On the cheek,” said Victor. “How many women do you kiss on the cheek every day? And then what happens?” He fast-forwarded the footage in slow motion. “They embrace. A friendly hug. They part ways. Shall I tell you what that looks like to me?”
Sidney Sheldon's Chasing Tomorrow (Tracy Whitney) Page 6