The Big Mac was cold, but she had gobbled it down. The water she tried to make last. The chamber pot was a blessing, as she imagined the only alternative—short of squatting on the floor—would be for one of them to accompany her to the toilet whenever she needed to go. A chance to wash and change would be nice, though. Surely, they would want to clean her up before they travelled? A bath, perhaps? Fresh clothes. But what was the point of any of it if she was going to die anyway, either before she got to Dhaka, with any luck, or soon after she arrived there, if the worst happened?
Sometimes she thought that she couldn’t take her own life because she still had dreams of escape, hope of being rescued. It was true, these things could happen, though they grew less likely hour by hour. If she didn’t eat, then perhaps she would get ill and die of malnutrition, rather than by her own weak hand. But she thought that would take much longer than they planned keeping her here.
Also, in some of her darkest moments, she had a strange feeling of elation out of nowhere. It was like a smell—not of the sea, but of the seaside—and a vague image of being a little girl walking with her hand in her father’s at Odessa flashed through her mind. A sense of safety and warmth. But it was also neither a smell nor an image; it was an inchoate memory of total happiness she had perhaps never experienced. How could you have a memory of something you had never felt? But that was what it felt like.
In the embrace of that perfect happiness, she had not a care, not a worry, not a thought, but the sheer pleasure of being. No fear of what was to come or regret for what was past. It was pure and simple happiness, the ghost of childhood’s essence.
But it was rare and fleeting. Most of the time she felt a deep and paralysing sense of fear and dread, edging into despair, that no amount of reason or epiphany could dispel.
DRIVING IN York was an absolute nightmare, Gerry thought as she steered her way along narrow streets lined with parked cars, braked sharply for pedestrians, and missed a turning that forced her to make a long detour. But parking was even worse. Finally, in frustration, she pulled into the forecourt of York Explore Library and Archive and threw herself on the mercy of the woman in charge, who told her she could leave the car there until they were finished.
“Next time we’ll take the bloody Poppleton Park & Ride,” Annie said as they crossed the road and walked the short distance down to Pizza Express. The city was bursting at the seams with tourists and locals out enjoying the fine weather, and this area around the bridge was always crowded. It led ultimately up past St. Mary’s and the library to the Minster, which stood at the top dominating everything, a magnificent Gothic construction, its main tower obscured by scaffolding.
Pizza Express was in an old building with a high ceiling on Museum Street near the bridge and opposite the Museum Gardens. The large dining area reminded Annie of a banquet hall in some ancient stately home. They flashed their warrant cards, and Annie asked the girl who showed people to their tables if she might talk to the manager. The girl disappeared through a door to the back and came out moments later with a tanned young man in a suit and tie. He didn’t look old enough to be a manager, Annie thought, but what did she know about the hospitality industry? He introduced himself as Mark Baldini.
She showed him the photograph. “Do you remember a woman called Marnie Sedgwick? Does she still work here?”
“Marnie. Yes, I remember her,” he said. “She left around the beginning of May.”
“Do you remember the circumstances of her leaving?”
“It was so sad,” Baldini said. “Marnie was a good worker. She’d been here about a year, but towards the middle of April she changed. She wasn’t concentrating, seemed to be dragging her feet. She wasn’t attentive, she mixed up orders, delivered things to the wrong tables.”
“What did you do?”
“I liked her. And as I said, she was a good worker, so I took her aside into the office and had a word with her.”
“How did she react?”
“She didn’t react much at all. She agreed she wasn’t doing a great job, said she wasn’t sleeping well, that she couldn’t concentrate. I asked her if she was ill or if there was anything wrong, anything I could help with, and she shrugged and said no. I asked if she thought she could attain her previous high standard of work again, and she said she’d try.”
“Did she?”
“Nothing changed. I hated to do it, but I knew in the end I’d have to give her notice. I was going to tell her she could come back when she was better, like, and I’d do my best to make sure she got her job back, but she couldn’t go on as she was.”
“How did she respond?”
“I never got to tell her. The next day she got an order wrong, and the customer was very snappy with her. He was one of those pushy, loud-mouthed blokes. You know the sort. Always right, always angry. He shouted at her, called her a stupid cunt, and Marnie dumped the pizza on his lap and ran out in tears. That was the last I saw of her. I made sure we paid her what we owed her, into her bank account, like, a standing order, and that was it. What was it? What was her problem? Do you know?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out, Mr. Baldini,” said Annie. “Was she close to any of her colleagues here? Anyone who’s still here?”
“Yes,” said Baldini. “Mitsuko. In fact, it was Marnie brought her to us, got her the job. I think they shared a flat or lived in the same house or something.”
“Mitsuko Ogawa?” said Annie.
“Yes. Lovely girl. Terrific waitress.”
“Is she here now?”
Baldini glanced around. “She should be.” Finally, he pointed to a table in the far corner where a petite young woman was serving pizza and salad. “That’s Mitsuko.”
“Can you do us a favour?” Annie asked.
“Depends what it is.”
“We’re going to have some lunch here, so could you give Ms. Ogawa an early tea break or whatever and ask her to join us at our table? We won’t keep her for long.”
“Of course. Take as long as you like. We’re not too busy right now.”
It was mid-afternoon, and the place still seemed fairly full to Annie, though she and Gerry had no difficulty getting a table for four. Busyness in a place like this was all relative, she supposed.
When their waitress came by, Annie ordered a margherita pizza and side salad, and Gerry picked a Diavola. Both ordered Diet Cokes to accompany their meals. They had barely got their order in before a young woman joined them at the table. She introduced herself as Mitsuko Ogawa and sat down. Annie guessed that Mitsuko was around Marnie’s age. She was small, with shoulder-length black hair drawn tight from her forehead and fastened at the back. Her eyes shone with concern as she sat down and smoothed her dress over her knees.
“Mr. Baldini said you wanted to talk to me about Marnie,” she said, with a slight Geordie accent. “Do you know where she is? What’s happened to her?”
“I’m afraid we don’t know where she is,” said Gerry. “That’s one problem we were hoping you might help us with. I understand the two of you were close?”
“I thought so,” Mitsuko said.
“What do you mean?”
“Something changed. I don’t know what it was, but she just wasn’t the same after. Did Mr. Baldini tell you what happened here?”
“Yes. He said her work went downhill and she left in tears.”
“That’s about right.”
“Do you have any idea why? What was wrong with her? He said he thought she might be ill.” They had a very good idea of what was wrong with Marnie, but they couldn’t tell Mitsuko; they were hoping she might be able to tell them more than they knew already.
“She wasn’t eating properly,” said Mitsuko. “Or sleeping very well. But I don’t think there was any illness as such. Just a sort of malaise, you know, weariness, depression. She lost interest in everything. But I don’t know why. We used to be friends. When she first moved into the house a year ago, we spent a lot of time together, you
know, just talking, listening to music. We’d go out to the pub, the cinema, concerts. Marnie likes art-house movies—Bergman and Kurosawa, that sort of thing. And she likes goth rock. You know, old weird stuff like Joy Division, Nick Cave, Sisters of Mercy. All that dark stuff. My taste is a bit more mainstream and upbeat. Action thrillers and Marvel. And I prefer music you can dance to. But we liked each other.”
“So you’d say you are close friends?”
“Yes,” said Mitsuko. “Yes, I would. I’ve been beside myself since she left. Has something happened to her? Please tell me if it has. I’ve been worried sick.”
“Not that we know of,” said Annie. “We’re just trying to find her. What’s she like?”
“Marnie? I suppose she struck me as fairly complicated, really, serious, sensitive, deep-thinking, but she can also be pretty happy-go-lucky a lot of the time. She’s great fun. We had some laughs. She loves life, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t see the problems in the world. She’s especially serious about climate change. That Greta is a real hero of hers. Or should I say heroine? She’s generous, thoughtful, interested in people. I got the impression she was maybe a bit secretive. Like, you’d spend an evening with her and realise you’d told her your deepest darkest secrets but you hadn’t learned much about her in return. Enigmatic, I guess. But I suppose we all are, to some extent.”
“Did she tell you about her life?” Annie asked.
“Not much,” said Mitsuko. “Bits and pieces over the time we knew each other, I suppose. But that’s how it happens, isn’t it? I mean, you don’t usually sit down and tell your new friends your whole life story at once. You find out about people slowly, over time. Bits and pieces come out when something reminds you of a particular incident or sparks a memory. That’s what it was like. She comes from down south somewhere, but I don’t remember where, if she ever even told me. It was near the sea, I think. I know she missed the sea. But she could be annoyingly vague on details. She’d just moved up here when we first met a year or so back. Wanted a change of scene. I could relate to that.”
“Did you make such a change?”
Mitsuko smiled. “Yep. All the way from Sunderland. My dad came over here to work for Nissan when they opened the plant in 1986. He and my mother liked England so much that they stayed. I was born here.”
“Why did Marnie move to York? Was she a student here?”
“No, she wasn’t at uni. And I don’t know why she moved—except for that change of scene I mentioned.”
“I see. Are you sure you can’t remember where she came from? We’re really keen to find her, and anything to speed that up would help us a lot.”
“I’m sorry. She talked about her father quite a lot, what a great guy he was, how kind and gentle. Hang on, though. She did say something once about it being Hardy country. Her dad liked Hardy. We did him at school. That’s Wessex, isn’t it?”
Annie had no idea. She shot Gerry a glance.
“That’s right,” Gerry said. “Well, Wessex isn’t a real place, but Hardy based it mostly on Dorset. Plenty of sea around there.”
Annie rolled her eyes at Mitsuko. “The benefits of a public-school education.”
“We never did Hardy at school,” Gerry protested. “Far too risqué. I read him off my own bat one summer holiday when I was at uni. Tess of the d’Urbervilles. You should try it.”
“Life’s too short,” said Annie. “I’ll stick with Martina Cole and Marian Keyes.” She turned back to Mitsuko. “What did Marnie have to say about her childhood?”
“She said she had been happy growing up. I got the impression it was a pretty ordinary childhood. You know. Caring parents, and all. Like mine, really. Did well at the local comp. She was all set for uni, and she said she’d done her first year at Nottingham, studying History, I think. But she soon realised she simply couldn’t afford to finish it, that she’d end up so much in debt she’d never get it paid off. I mean, History might be fun, but it’s hardly a passport to a high-paying job, is it? Not that I think that’s what uni should be about or anything. Her folks were great, she said, but they didn’t have a lot of money, and she wasn’t going to even ask them to help her out. So she dropped out.”
“And came here to work at Pizza Express?”
“Yes. That’s about it. I suppose you could say both of us are trying to figure out what to do with our lives, where to go next. I mean, this job isn’t meant to be permanent for either of us.”
“And you?”
“I’m at uni,” Mitsuko said. “English Literature. Also pretty useless for the job market.”
“Did Marnie ever tell you anything about the other job she had?”
“You mean the posh parties?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I think she only worked a few, but she said she got paid as much for one of them as she did in a week working here, so that was a big incentive to do more. She didn’t care much about all the celebs and so on, but I think she kind of liked the job in a way. She said most of the time she was in the kitchen, or driving back and forth from base. It was like some sort of industrial kitchen on MasterChef, she told me. She did talk about a footballer she met—she knows I’m a big Sunderland fan—and what an egotistical jerk he was. And a guitarist from a band I liked who didn’t have anything much to say to anyone. Little vignettes like that. There were a lot of boring old politicians and businessmen there, too, but she didn’t have a lot of contact with them. She worked behind the scenes.”
“Can you give us their names?” Gerry asked. “The footballer and guitarist. We may have heard of them.”
Mitsuko looked puzzled but said, “Sure,” and told them. Gerry had heard of the footballer but not the guitarist. Annie knew of neither.
“What about the man who threw the parties,” Annie asked. “The man whose house it was? Connor Clive Blaydon?”
“Was that his name? She never said. Just that she was working for an old friend of her boss.”
“Did Marnie say exactly what she did there?”
“A bit of everything. Dogsbody, she said. Loading and unloading the dishwasher, arranging trays of canapés, opening wine bottles and tins of caviar. She’d lend a hand with just about anything if they got busy or someone didn’t turn up.”
“What about meeting the guests, serving drinks and so on?”
“She got to serve drinks occasionally, but she didn’t like it much. Mostly they had a bunch of scantily dressed women to do that.” Mitsuko lowered her voice. “She did say there was stuff going on, you know. Escorts and that sort of thing.”
“Did she mention anyone in particular, anyone who had shown interest in her?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What about unasked-for attention?”
“Uh-oh. Well, that’s always a given, isn’t it, for someone like Marnie? Even here. She isn’t exactly beautiful, but she’s definitely striking. And sexy, I suppose. In that innocent sort of way, you know, without realising it, or at least without emphasising it or playing it up at all. She just is, you know.”
“Natural?”
“Very.”
“Anything serious? At the parties.”
“She got offers, you know. A thousand quid if you spend the night with me. That sort of thing. Some old wrinkly who liked young girls. Maybe the occasional pat on the bum.”
“How did she react?”
“Shrugged it off, mostly, like you do.”
“Did she mention any names?”
“Apart from the footballer and guitarist? Not really. Not that I remember.”
“The name of anyone who propositioned her?”
“No. I don’t know if she even knew their names. I mean, I’m not saying it happened a lot, just that she thought it was a bit of a laugh, that’s all.” Mitsuko paused and frowned, as much as her tight forehead would let her. “Is this going somewhere? Why are you so interested in the parties? Did something happen to Marnie there?”
“I don’t know,” said Annie. “Did
something?”
“It wasn’t long after her last party gig that she . . . you know . . . Did something bad happen to her there?”
“Did she talk to you about that particular party?”
“No. That’s when she . . . she went strange. We never got to talk about it. Oh, my God. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Something happened to her. Is she hurt? Is she dead?”
“Nothing like that.” Gerry rushed to reassure her. “We’re just trying to find her, that’s all.”
“But something happened, didn’t it? Please tell me. Was it drugs?”
“I’m sorry, Mitsuko,” Annie said. “We can’t give you any information. Right now it’s confidential. You mentioned escorts. Did she talk to you about the things that went on at these parties? Sexual things, or other stuff.”
“She said there were drugs. Mostly cocaine. But she never took any. She wouldn’t do that. And she thought some of the women with impossibly big boobs were hookers. They would sometimes disappear with a guest for a while. Apparently, the place had a lot of bedrooms. Sometimes people got lost, she said, and wandered into the kitchen and got embarrassed. And once she saw some naked girls swimming in the pool.”
“Sounds pretty exciting,” Gerry said.
“Marnie didn’t think so,” said Mitsuko. “She just thought it was sad. Or funny. But it paid well.”
“Did she ever mention Charlotte Westlake?”
“Her boss?”
“Yes.”
“Once or twice, just in passing, like.”
“Did she say how she first heard of Charlotte?”
“No. She didn’t tell me. And I never thought to ask. It was just a job, you know, like this. I did . . . never mind.”
“What were you going to say?” Annie prompted her.
“Nothing. It was just an impression, but from the way she talked, I sort of felt she’d known this Westlake woman from before.”
“From before? When?”
“I don’t know. But don’t you just get feelings like that sometimes, from the way someone talks about someone? I don’t know, body language, a facial expression. It was just a passing fancy.”
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