Little Pink Taxi

by Marie Laval

  Cédric was right. He’d been hard on his parents. He’d been an ass. It was too late to mend his relationship with his father, but he could still work things out with his mother, or at least he could try.

  Now he stared at the digital clock next to the bed indicating it was just after seven, and poured himself a glass of water. He lay back in bed again, threw the covers down, beat his pillows with a hard fist, closed his eyes. And sighed.

  It was no good. That uneasy feeling wouldn’t go away. Unable to go back to sleep, he got up, drew the curtains and stood in front of the window to watch dawn touch the sky with greys, blues and pale yellows as the sun rose slowly behind the tall buildings that lined Victoria Harbour.

  He checked his watch. Hong Kong was seven hours ahead of England. It was just after midnight in Irlwick. Never mind. He just had to speak to Rosalie and check that she was all right. He keyed in Raventhorn’s number, and let the phone ring, but no one picked up and the answerphone clicked on. He tried again, then rang Rosalie’s mobile phone, only to reach her voicemail.

  Where was she, and why hadn’t she phoned him since passing on Fitzpatrick’s message? His London secretary said Rosalie hadn’t called once, even after he’d left messages on the answerphone at Raventhorn and called Fergus at Love Taxis.

  He tried the office at Love Taxis, but there was a message announcing that it was closed until seven the following morning. Could he ring Fergus at home? The old man wouldn’t thank him if he woke him up, especially if he’d just got into bed after putting in a late shift on the switchboard. Torn between his need to know that Rosalie was safe and well and the voice of reason that told him he was overreacting, he paced the floor until he felt he was going out of his mind.

  Since sleep was out of the question, he slipped into his sports gear, grabbed a towel and made his way to the hotel gym.

  An intensive workout only softened the edges of his anxiety. As soon as he was back in his room, showered and dressed in a crisp white shirt and black suit, fear slammed right back into him. He rang Raventhorn and Rosalie’s mobile again, but it was the middle of the night over there, so, of course, the answerphones clicked on. However if Rosalie was at home, she would pick up the phone, he was sure of it.

  He still hadn’t managed to get through to Rosalie when it was time to leave for his father’s service. He had declined the limousine the funeral director had offered and asked the hotel to book a taxi to take him to Diamond Hill instead.

  The funeral service lasted exactly fifteen minutes – standard procedure in Hong Kong, he’d been warned. Feeling empty, drained, and utterly alone, he signed all the relevant paperwork, then loosening the knot of his black tie and slipping his jacket off, he wandered through a nearby park for a while.

  It was after lunch by the time the taxi took him back to the Four Seasons. He calculated that it would be six am in Scotland, which was early, but not unreasonably so. When he still got no answer from Rosalie, he dialled Fergus’s home number.

  ‘Aye. Who is it?’ Fergus sounded sleepy.

  Marc apologised for waking him up, and explained that he was in Hong Kong and had been trying to contact Rosalie but couldn’t get through.

  ‘She must be asleep,’ Fergus replied. ‘The poor lass has worked flat out these past few days. With Duncan still in Edinburgh she’s had to cover two shifts. Pity your lady friend isn’t at Raventhorn any more,’ Fergus added, ‘she might have answered the phone.’

  ‘What lady friend?’ Marc asked, puzzled.

  ‘Kirsty something or other. She told my Marion a lot of rubbish about you and sparked quite a bit of trouble with that no-good cousin of Geoff’s – Rupert.’

  Marc’s throat tightened. What was Kirsty doing at Raventhorn? He’d only instructed her to start the preliminary paperwork for the bus company. There was no need for her to travel to Irlwick just for that.

  ‘She claims you bought Raventhorn and are going to sell it,’ Fergus explained in a puzzled voice, ‘and that not content with putting Roz, Lorna and Geoff out of their home and auctioning all the furniture, you also plan to close Love Taxis down and put our Roz out of business as well.’ He coughed to clear his throat. ‘She said something else too.’

  ‘What was that?’ Marc asked, dread tightening his chest.

  ‘That you and her were as good as engaged and flying off to live in America together soon.’

  Marc took a deep breath. ‘That’s rubbish.’ At least that last claim was rubbish. The rest was the truth.

  ‘I do hope so, lad,’ Fergus said in a serious voice, ‘because we’ve grown to like having you around here. Anyway, I can tell you’re worried about Roz, so I’ll go to Raventhorn as soon as I’ve had a cup of tea and I’ve cleared my drive. It’s been snowing hard all night and it might take me a wee while to get there.’

  Fergus promised to call from Raventhorn as soon as he arrived. Marc gave him heartfelt thanks and put the phone down. His anxious wait resumed. It might be an hour or so before Fergus rang back. To keep busy, he ordered lunch, enquired about flights to Denmark from both Hong Kong and London, and dialled Kirsty’s mobile. He couldn’t care less about waking her up. She owed him an explanation. Unfortunately the call went straight to voicemail. He hung up with a frustrated sigh.

  He didn’t have long to wait for Fergus to call back.

  ‘It’s odd,’ the old man said. ‘Rosalie’s cab is in the courtyard, but she’s not here. Perhaps she’s staying at Alice’s.’

  ‘Call Alice and ask her if she knows where Rosalie is. If she doesn’t, then call the police. I’ll come as soon as I can. And by the way, Kirsty was right on one point only. My father did buy Raventhorn. For everything else I need you to trust me. Now, please, call the police and report Rosalie missing.’

  His nerves were so taut that his hand was shaking as he dialled Luc’s number. Rosalie was missing. She may be in danger. His only hope was that his friend would know what to do.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Marc pulled up the handbrake and leaned back against the headrest of his hired Range Rover with a frustrated sigh. He might as well switch off the engine. The A9 was at a standstill. He was stuck in a queue of cars and lorries, and wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. He’d been driving for over an hour since picking up the car at Inverness Airport and hadn’t even reached Tomatin yet. What should have been a straight forward one hour road trip to Irlwick had turned into a nightmare journey because of a snow blizzard engulfing the whole of Scotland.

  In front of him flickered a long line of red lights from the cars and trucks. He was jet-lagged, cold and hungry. Above all, he was worried sick about Rosalie and frustrated by the police’s lack of interest in her disappearance. According to them, Rosalie hadn’t been missing for long enough, there was no reason to suspect she was in any danger, and the emergency services were too stretched with the ongoing blizzards to spare any of their staff.

  Marc glanced at the phone he’d thrown on the passenger seat after his last call to Luc. His friend may have left the French Intelligence Service but he still had useful contacts and together with Cédric, he had been digging up information for Marc.

  As if on cue, the phone rang.

  ‘Where are you now?’ Luc asked in his usual brisk manner.

  ‘Only ten miles from the airport. I’m stuck in a massive traffic jam.’

  ‘Damn.’ Luc paused. ‘I have news and it’s not good. Jake Tyler was released on parole three weeks ago. I have an address for him – a flat in Croydon registered under the name of Richard Tyler, his brother, currently in jail for fraud – and where his daughter Cheryl is supposed to be living too. The thing is, when my agent checked earlier today, there was nobody home, and according to neighbours, Cheryl and Tyler have been away on and off these past few weeks.’

  Marc sighed. ‘I don’t like this, Luc. I can’t help thinking that Tyler is involved in what has been going on at Raventhorn. From the information Cédric gave me, the man is a nasty piece of work.’


  ‘He was still in jail when the hoax calls began, and since his release he has attended all his scheduled meetings with his probation officer in London.’

  ‘He could have instructed his associates to make the calls, smash the cab’s windscreen or go after Rosalie in the forest. Now I understand why they didn’t report the accident on the mountain road. Even if they didn’t cause it on purpose, it wouldn’t look good for Tyler’s probation if the police discovered Tyler outside his parole licence area. It also explains why they left the holiday lodge straight away. They were scared the police would start asking questions.’

  ‘I found out a few more interesting facts about Tyler,’ Luc said. ‘Although there was never enough evidence to prosecute him, he was suspected of organising and taking part in several robberies and racketeering, not to mention involvement with a Russian gang headed by Anatoly Bazanov, a mobster who has managed to evade arrest for years. Tyler is a nasty piece of work indeed.’

  Marc’s throat tightened. ‘Cédric did mention that when I saw him in Paris. And now Rosalie is missing and the police won’t do anything to help. They even suggested she might have gone Christmas shopping in Glasgow or Edinburgh! I asked them to interview Elaine and Rupert McBride but they said there was no reason to do so.’

  The cars in front of Marc started crawling forward. ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘It looks like we’re moving at last. I’ll call you back.’

  It took a further hour to reach the services outside Aviemore, where he bought a large black coffee and a ham sandwich, and another to get to Irlwick. The small town looked empty in the blustery snowstorm as he drove through. He had to slalom around a couple of jack-knifed lorries and half a dozen abandoned cars on the road through Corby Woods, and finally he turned off the main road and onto the bumpy lane leading to Raventhorn. At last he was home.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The man’s voice grated through her consciousness. It was a cold, slightly raspy voice, filled with barely suppressed anger and the threat of violence. Rosalie remembered it, and just like when she was little, it triggered one panicked thought inside her.

  Leave. Escape. Now.

  She opened her eyes to pitch darkness, felt the soft mattress and a cotton duvet beneath her and knew she was on a bed. She wasn’t tied up, but someone had removed her boots. As her eyes got used to the darkness, she started distinguishing shapes. A window with the curtains drawn. A wardrobe, a dressing table. The room smelled of plastic, of new furniture and cleaning products. No sound came from outside, other than from the wind lashing at the window.

  She must be in a holiday let, possibly even in the same lodge she’d visited before with Marc. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she sat up and slid her legs sideways so her feet touched the floor. Every move made her head spin and her shoulder throb with pain, and brought tears to her eyes. Slowly she rose to her feet and, her legs wobbly, tiptoed towards the door.

  The men now seemed to be arguing, then the one whose voice made her skin crawl with cold shivers spoke. ‘If Cheryl and Joe don’t find that blasted diary, I’ll have to go back down there myself.’

  The diary. Rosalie’s blood froze. If that’s what he was after, then she knew exactly who he was – but Geoff had said he was in prison.

  ‘Damn,’ he snarled. ‘Things haven’t worked out the way I’d planned. That idiot Rupert is hopeless. When I ordered him to dispatch McBride to a better world so that he would inherit that bloody castle and could then tear it apart, he wasn’t even capable of doing a proper job of cutting the brake lines of the Porsche.’

  Rosalie pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp. So it was Rupert who’d sabotaged the Porsche! On Jake Tyler’s orders.

  There was the sound of a match being struck, and the smell of cigarette smoke drifted through the bedroom door.

  ‘And last night he botched things up again and knocked the girl out, so we had to bring her here and Cheryl had to give her some sedative to keep her quiet all day until we figure out what to do. What a bloody mess.’

  So she’d been drugged … No wonder she felt weak and sick.

  ‘I suppose we can always cut our losses,’ the other man suggested, ‘go back to London pronto before the probation officer pays you a visit, and make a few bob selling whatever Cheryl and Joe manage to grab from the castle. They took the inventory of valuables Rupert drew up when he was working for McBride. That will help them. Rupert is a liability indeed, but he can be fixed. As for the diary, perhaps the woman never had it, or she lost it. It’s been a long time.’

  ‘Hmm. She had it all right. I know she did. And she would have kept it as leverage against me, in case I ever found her again. No, I can’t let it hang over me. You know what would happen if the Russians found out about it. I must get my hands on it.’

  ‘What about the girl? She may know where it is.’

  The girl. Rosalie held her breath. They were talking about her. Well, she wouldn’t wait in the dark for them to come and get her. She may have wanted to run away before, but now she would show him she wasn’t afraid.

  She pushed the door open and stepped into the living room.

  ‘What about me?’ she asked, trying hard to ignore the burning pain in her shoulder, her throbbing headache and the fear that, despite her earlier resolution, made her heart beat too fast.

  Both men swung round to stare at her. One of them, a short, bulky man with dark cropped hair and ruddy cheeks, sprang to his feet. It was one of the men she had seen at the Stag’s Head the day of the accident on the mountainside.

  The other man drew on his cigarette and narrowed his eyes to consider her as she walked towards him.

  So here he was, at last. Jack Tyler. Her father.

  ‘Well, well. It looks like sleeping beauty is awake at last.’ He leaned back against the back of his armchair and blew a cloud of smoke that hid his blue eyes and his pale, handsome face for a few seconds.

  ‘Are you not even going to ask who I am, princess?’

  ‘I know who you are.’

  He rose to his feet, and she was able to take a good look at him for the first time. He was tall and lean. He had deep grooves on either side of his mouth, a straight nose and very clear blue eyes. Despite the grey streaks in his dark hair, it was difficult to guess his age. He could just as easily be in his early forties as in his late fifties. What was obvious, however, was the icy threat radiating from his person.

  He flicked the butt of his cigarette on to the floor and put it out with the heel of his boot, not caring that he’d burnt a hole in the beige carpet, then he looked up and smiled. It transformed his whole demeanour from ruthless to charming. It was odd and disturbing and she watched with a mixture of fascination and revulsion.

  ‘You’d better take a seat, princess,’ he said, gesturing to the armchair vacated by his friend. ‘We have a lot of catching up to do – the best part of twenty-five years, to be exact. How did you work out who I was?’

  ‘You were in the lodge with that girl the evening I came, weren’t you? It was your voice I recognised – your voice I must have heard countless times shouting at Mum when I was little, before she left you.’

  His jaw clenched but he said nothing.

  ‘I have nothing to say to you. You disgust me.’ She forced herself to remain still as he stepped forward, even though fear tightened her insides and all she wanted to do was to run away. There was nowhere to run to, anyway. He stopped smiling.

  ‘I asked you to sit down.’

  ‘Do as he says.’ The other man took her arm and pushed her into an armchair. ‘Sit down,’ he growled.

  Rosalie cried out in pain.

  ‘Leave us alone, Sam. Go have a smoke outside, or take a walk. My girl and I have things to talk about.’ Jake Tyler sat opposite her, and lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘You don’t look much like me.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment, shall I?’

  He arched his eyebrows, then smiled again. ‘I looked for you ever
ywhere, do you know that? I’ll never know how she managed to elude me all these years. She’s the only one who ever ran away from me. The only one.’

  He was talking about her mother with so much spite and hatred, it made Rosalie go cold. ‘She even died before I could get to her, and deal with her, the bitch.’

  Rosalie felt the insult like a slap to the face. Suddenly the fear was gone. There was only loathing. Ignoring the pain in her shoulder, she leaned forward too.

  ‘My mum was the bravest, the kindest, the most wonderful woman who ever lived. What she ever saw in a man like you, I’ll never know. You’re nothing but a thug and a criminal. Don’t even try to play the long-lost father sentimental rubbish because I really don’t care.’

  Surprise flickered in his blue eyes. He whistled between clenched teeth. ‘And I thought you were just a dumb girl in pink. I guess I was wrong. Nobody talks to me like that. You’ve got guts, girl.’ He drew on his cigarette. ‘Aren’t you even going to ask me how I found you?’

  ‘It was the article about Love Taxis, wasn’t it?’

  He nodded. ‘It was indeed.’

  No wonder Geoff had got so mad at her when he’d found out.

  ‘I was in the nick then. I can’t tell you how happy I was to finally find out what had happened to you and your mother.’

  Rosalie swallowed hard. She was this man’s daughter. She had his blood, his genes. ‘How could my mother fall in love with a man like you, how could she throw away her relationship with her family, her career, her hopes for the future, just to be with you? It makes me sick.’

  A twitch appeared at the side of his face. ‘Careful, princess, I may be willing to tolerate a bit of tongue-lashing from you, but don’t push your luck. Anyway, how’s your head, and your shoulder? That idiot Rupert hurt you pretty bad. He’ll pay for that, don’t you worry. Nobody touches my girl.’