“The right hair is important,” I said, but he ignored me.
“So, moving on to Kristina Galbraith—”
“Now there is someone with hair,” I said.
“Right. So, Russian beauty queen back in the day. Bit of controversy because of her dark hair and eyes; some didn’t consider her Russian enough. Did an MBA after her win then left Russia for Dubai, of all places. It’s the most expensive city in the world, did you know that?”
I shook my head but he was looking at the screen. “Did some advertising on the back of her win – perfumes, etcetera. Set up a chain of beauty salons. She met Bill out there—”
“What was he doing there?”
“Working as a surgeon. It’s tax-free income. You do it for a year and earn enough so you can build an architect-designed house outside Cambridge. Anyway, they got married in Dubai and she sold her business and followed him a year later. She started up a nail bar here in Cambridge—”
“She called it a treatment parlour, something like that.”
“Yeah, that comes later, first comes the juicy bit. The nail bar had to close down because she was caught hiring illegal immigrants from Vietnam. They were living over the shop, four to a room. They, poor buggers, were arrested. She blamed the shop manager but as the owner she was responsible and got fined ten grand. Anyway, she sold the premises and bought somewhere more central. Rebranded under a different name. Her new place gets good reviews even though it’s considered to be overpriced.” He sat back and looked at me.
“Good job.”
“Useful?”
“As you know, Jason, you never know what is going to be useful until it becomes so. But not knowing a thing automatically renders it forever useless.”
“Should I be writing this shit down?”
“Definitely.”
He turned off the computer and stood up.
“You going to help me lug that fax machine downstairs?” I asked, pointing to it.
“Nah, got to get to my punting job, the one that actually pays properly.” He winked at me and left, the ingrate.
24
I WALKED DOWN TO TRUMPINGTON STREET AND BOUGHT A sandwich which I ate as I continued into town, past the Fitzwilliam Museum on my left, where Olivia had taken me several times. I haven’t been in it since she left. I walked past Kings College on my left and Market Square on my right. It wasn’t yet peak tourist season but the place was thick with a large group of teenagers milling around with matching rucksacks. I checked the address on Kristina’s card and turned onto Green Street.
Her salon looked a high-class joint, with frosted-glass front and a swinging black sign on chains with cursive gold lettering that read “Kristina’s Beauty Treatment Parlour”. I walked in, tinkling a bell in the process. A young woman came to life behind a marble-top counter. Classical music played softly from hidden speakers. Behind the counter there were curtained-off cubicles on either side of a central hallway that led to a door at the end. One opened and a young woman in a white coat emerged carrying a bowl. Unlike the painted Caucasian woman beaming unnaturally at me from behind the counter, she was from Southeast Asia, as was another woman in a white coat who came out of a different cubicle with towels. This was obviously not the sort of salon where the women gossiped and read trashy celebrity magazines, like when my mum had gone to get her hair done once a month. Here everyone sat insulated, getting their treatment. I was being addressed.
“Are you waiting for your wife?” An Eastern-European accent.
“Maybe I’m here for a facial,” I said, deadpan. I wasn’t sure what a facial entailed beyond it having something to do with the face. Somehow she managed to blush through her foundation and her smile faltered but she rallied.
“You want a facial?”
“Not really,” I said.
“Usually men come in here for waxing.” I wanted to ask what they came in to have waxed but I didn’t really want to have that conversation with a young woman who was easy to make blush.
“Is the boss in?” I asked her.
“She is expecting you?”
“Not really, but I think she’ll be pleased to see me.”
She shrugged to let me know what she thought of my humour but picked up the phone. I told her my name and she tried to ring through, but had trouble with the phone.
“I’m new here,” she said, by way of explanation. Eventually she managed it, turning her head and cupping her mouth like it would stop me hearing. After a conversation brief enough for the purpose, with the word “sorry” being repeatedly uttered, she led me through between the cubicles. I glimpsed, through a gap in a curtain, another Southeast Asian woman on a stool painting toenails on some fat toes separated with cotton wool. The owner, wrapped in a white bathrobe, was hidden behind a TV soaps magazine, proving me wrong yet again.
We stopped at a door and my escort knocked. There was a tinkle from the street door and she rushed off in pursuit of an actual customer. The knocked-on door opened and Kristina stood there in a high-waisted trouser suit flared at the ankles. She gestured with her head for me to come in and closed the door behind me.
This was the sort of office I should have. Plush leather armchairs, a large antique desk, soft lighting provided by brass lamps, the faint smell of incense. Misha, lying on a small embroidered cushion in the corner of the room, stared at me malevolently and decided I wasn’t worth getting up for. The dog would be a worthy adversary for Stubbing in a staring competition.
I gestured around the room. “Do you do interior design as well?”
“No, but I can give you a name,” she said distractedly, pointing to a chair.
I shook my head but she didn’t see it. I sat where instructed. She sat behind the wooden desk. “I got your message,” I said. “Thought it easier to talk face to face.”
She nodded and clasped her hands. “I’m worried about Bill,” she said, getting straight to it.
“How so?”
“He’s stressed, distracted.”
“He’s a surgeon and has a TV show so I—”
“No, it’s not that.”
I waited for her to put some flesh on it but she left it there, bony and insubstantial. Prodding was needed.
“Well, there’s Aurora’s leaving.”
She flashed her eyes dangerously. “Why would that upset him? Has he said something to you?” she asked, sweeping her hair back with both hands and baring her teeth.
I left that question hanging. Missing patient notes aside there were several answers and one obvious one, but maybe she just needed me present to have a conversation with herself.
“No,” she continued, jabbing a finger at me. “There was nothing like that going on and I don’t like what you are suggesting.” As I hadn’t actually suggested anything, I kept quiet. I could have told her that she might be the last person to know if something was going on between Bill and Aurora but thought better of it. I was spared further finger-jabbing by her phone ringing. She picked up and impatiently replied to questions with “yes” and “no” answers.
Although the idea of Bill and Aurora had occurred to me, I was unable to convince myself that they’d been exchanging Valentine cards and love poetry. I could see that he may have coerced her into something sexual, given he was in a position of power as her employer. It happens all the time and it would explain Aurora’s antipathy to returning to the house. The other possibility was that he genuinely thought he was in love with her, but that it was unrequited, which might explain why he wanted to speak to her – maybe he was planning to tell her that he was going to leave his wife.
“I know you’re new,” Kristina was saying, annoyed. “But try a little bit harder, please.” She hung up, took a breath and forced a smile at me.
“Staffing problems?” I asked.
“It’s difficult finding people at short notice.”
“Is that why you hire foreigners?”
She stared at me then waved my question away. “We’re getting off the subject,” she said.
“Perhaps Bill has somehow learnt of my own… situation?” She stared at me meaningfully until I realised what she was asking.
“We’ve already had this conversation. If he knows, then it wasn’t from me; it’s not what I was hired to look into.”
“So you say. You didn’t really explain why you were at the hotel.”
“I often work on more than one case at a time. That’s a popular hotel for couples to meet, so…” Of course I didn’t know that, but having seen the place it seemed fit for purpose.
“So when you watch people you actually go into the hotel they are in?”
“Is this why you asked me here, to quiz me about my working methods?”
“Something is bothering Bill and I want to make sure it isn’t… this.”
“Did you know that sometimes people learn that their spouse is having an affair from the person they are having an affair with?”
She flinched and paled and I guess she hadn’t considered the possibility. Or maybe she just didn’t like me saying “affair” out loud.
She shook her head dismissively and the phone rang again. She snatched it up and for something to do I clicked my fingers at Misha who was curled up half-asleep on his cushion, a paw over one eye. He ignored me with a disdain I didn’t think dogs were capable of.
“So why did he hire you?” Kristina asked, after hanging up and disturbing my bonding with Misha.
“You know why, you were there.”
“So have you found her, Aurora?”
“Yes, as it happens.”
“Has she said anything to you?”
“About what?”
She shrugged and pursed her lips. “About Bill,” she said. “Or me?”
“What are your concerns?”
She shook her head as if she didn’t really have any. “Did she tell you why she left?”
“You don’t know? Have a suspicion?” I asked.
She swept some imaginary debris from her desk.
“Maybe she just wants to get her passport back and see her daughter,” I said.
“Yes, yes of course,” she said. “Since you’ve found Aurora is your work over?”
“I hope to conclude business with your husband tonight.”
“What’s happening tonight?” she asked.
“He gets his briefcase. Aurora gets her passport.” The money was none of her business and, given her view of Aurora, she might convince Bill not to hand any over.
“That’s interesting,” she said, standing up.
“What do you mean?”
She looked at a bracelet on her wrist, then I realised it was a watch. “Because he won’t be handing over any passport unless I give it to him.” She walked to the door and opened it expectantly, her face set in polite stone. I walked out and heard the door close behind me. The woman wasn’t big on hellos and goodbyes.
25
STEPPING OUT INTO THE CAMBRIDGE AFTERNOON SUNSHINE, I reflected on what I’d learnt, if anything. She was fishing, that’s for sure. Maybe I’d put my foot in it about the passport. Maybe he’d planned to acquire it from her without her knowledge, and now she was alerted would take steps to make things difficult. Also, if she had the passport, then what had he been planning to give us at the last aborted meeting? The only definitive conclusion I reached was that the sooner the Galbraiths were out of my life the happier I’d be.
I walked on to Market Square to buy some things for dinner from the food stalls. I felt like I hadn’t seen Linda in ages and wanted to entice her over before the briefcase-passport exchange, if it was still going ahead. I now had my doubts after what Kristina had just said.
I rang Sandra and asked her to see if she could establish, woman to woman, whether Aurora had had any relationship with Galbraith.
“You want me to ask her if she had sex with him?” she asked.
“Erm, yes, but perhaps not that directly. And if she did, was it consensual or not? She has a problem with going back to the house.”
Sandra agreed to see what she could get out of Aurora and ended the call. Having bought a couple of steaks and salad, I was choosing some olives when I saw Kristina striding across the square, Misha’s head sticking out of her large bag. I quickly paid for the olives as she walked by the council building that dominates one side of the square and turned towards the multi-storey car park. As she was going in the general direction of my office I decided to follow.
I thought I might lose her going into the car park as there’d be little point me following, but she went through the Grand Arcade, Cambridge’s temple of upmarket consumerism. She wasn’t shopping, though. We went quickly through it and emerged onto St Andrew’s Street, where she turned right. She skipped across the junction of Downing Street just as the lights were changing and I had to run so I wasn’t left behind. That meant I ended up fairly close behind her. Misha spotted me and started yapping. Kristina addressed him without stopping which quieted him, although his large ears were pricked in high alert as he watched me drop back. She ducked into a bar and I looked through the large windows as I passed.
I caught her in a quick clinch with Mr Suave Suit from the hotel before they sat at a table towards the back. The pavement was too narrow here to hang around unobtrusively and opposite the bar was Emmanuel College, so no shops to lurk in. I decided to try to take a photo with the mobile phone. I brought up the camera app and walked back past the bar, holding the phone up and pressing what I hoped was the right button. I repeated the process going the other way then I had a quick look at the photos: selfies of me reflected in the window.
I went into the arts cinema two up from the bar they were in and headed upstairs. The cinema has a bar-cum-café that overlooks the street although I realised it might be difficult to see the pavement directly below to spot them leaving. There was only one way to find out.
The place was full of young mothers with babies. I made my way through the pushchairs to the one empty seat near a window and peered out. Yes, by leaning close to the glass I could make out the pavement and see the tops of people. There was a cough behind me and I turned to see a young woman in a black apron and T-shirt with tattooed arms. She looked embarrassed.
“I was just about to come and order something,” I said. They weren’t usually this anal about people sitting here without food or drink.
“Erm, it’s a mothers-and-babies-only screening this afternoon,” she said, sweeping an arm over the scene in case it had escaped me. I became aware that the level of chatter had dropped and I was being scrutinised by bemused women, some of whom were breastfeeding. A few scowls greeted my transgression, but mainly smiles.
“Ah. And I am neither mother nor baby.”
She nodded and I slunk out.
Back on the street I looked in the bar window again but Kristina and her fancy man had gone. I headed back to the office.
It was after three when I got behind my desk. I left a message for Linda, asking if she wanted to come round to eat later. I told her I would have to go out again afterwards on business for a couple of hours at most.
I received a text on my personal number from Kamal:
I think you should come talk to my lodger.
Can’t do tonight. Tomorrow? I replied.
Now is good if you’re free…
Better be worth it.
There are known unknowns & there are unknown unknowns…
See you in 15!
* * *
Kamal’s lodger Chris was biting his nails and jigging his knee up and down as he sat at the small table in Kamal’s room. Kamal had told me that Chris had come home after lunch feeling ill and that he was a little jittery. He didn’t look ill to me, just jittery.
“It’s about that story in the paper about the sacked director,” Kamal said as he sat on his bed and I sat opposite Chris. Chris wasn’t much older than Jason. Freckle-faced with flyaway brown hair, he was still in his work suit with his tie undone.
“Tell George here what you told me,” Kamal prompted.
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“I’m not sure. Feels a bit disloyal to me.”
“I work by a strict code of confidentiality,” I told him. “What’s your area of work?”
“Clinical audit.”
“Which means?”
“We analyse the quality of clinical care, you know, patient outcomes, complication rates, things like that, and compare them to the national figures, to see if there are any outliers. We also monitor critical incidents to make sure procedures are tightened if they’re a result of poor processes.” It sounded terribly dull.
“That sounds like important stuff,” I said. “Right, Kamal?”
“Absolutely. It’s about putting patients first. Holding clinicians accountable,” he said, winking at me. Kamal had obviously picked up some jargon while wheeling people around the hospital.
“So I imagine that you’re careful to make sure patients’ names aren’t used, that sort of thing?” I said to Chris, who was removing a hangnail with his teeth.
“Confidentiality is very important,” he said.
I nodded vigorously. “Exactly, it’s the same for me. As professionals we have to make sure that people can trust us with information, right?”
Chris nodded and turned to Kamal. “And you’re sure it could be important to whatever this case is?”
Kamal leant forward, elbows on knees. “It might also help exonerate your boss, if you really think he’s innocent.”
“There’s no way he downloaded that stuff. He’s married with young kids, why would he be interested in that sort of porn?”
I looked at Kamal questioningly.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s worse than I was originally led to believe. The police have taken the computer away.”
I turned to Chris. “The truth is he could be a devout Christian volunteering his spare time in a hospice, giving blood regularly, being a loving father and devoted husband and still look at that stuff.”
Chris just shook his head. “It’s just a bit of a coincidence.”
“What is?”
He glanced at Kamal who gave him an encouraging nod. “There was this confidential audit meeting set for Monday. It was arranged by my boss, who is… was the director of information, and involved just the clinical director and the chief executive. Just those three. The meeting’s now been called off, obviously.”
The Runaway Maid Page 12