Hostage to Fortune

by Carolyn McCrae

  But now there was Jenna Freece.

  She was a serious threat, putting everything he had planned for in jeopardy.

  He would have to find her and if he couldn’t persuade her to join up with him, to love him, then she, too, would have to go.

  Chapter 29: Guy and Jenna

  Guy did what he assumed the newspapers would do: he checked the online electoral roll for anyone named Jenna Freece; there was only one. He found several addresses for her and was able to track her first at home with William Watkins and Wave Freece, then at various addresses in the London area before settling for the past few years in Tiverton, Devon.

  The day after he had watched Billy grandstand in front of the media he joined the throng of reporters and paparazzi that had gathered around the front gate of a large Victorian town house in a smart part of the town.

  “You’re not one of the usual crowd,” an attractive young woman said in a not unfriendly fashion. “Who are you with?”

  “I’m not a reporter,” he answered before he realised that would lead to more questions.

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I’m a friend of the family,” he hastily improvised. “I just wanted to check she’s okay, what with all this publicity and stuff.”

  “You know Jenna?”

  Guy noticed the others in the group turning to him.

  “No, not at all. As I said, I’m a friend of her cousin. I’ve never met her. He just asked me to check she wasn’t being harassed.”

  He was saved from further explanation when someone called out that the front door was opening. By the time they had realised it wasn’t Jenna, Guy had gone.

  Three days later he was sitting in a café with a good view of her house when he saw her leave and, accepting that he would have to abandon his hired car, he followed her to the railway station, onto a London train, across the city from Paddington to St Pancras and onto a fast train to East Kent where she left the train at Sandwich.

  Through that long day he had plenty of time to work out how he could get to meet her, how he would introduce himself, explain their relationship to each other, persuade her that he was her friend and then, perhaps, even her lover.

  The more he watched her, the more he thought he might get to like her and the more he wanted to find a way to achieve his inheritance without having to get rid of her.

  She was very pretty, her blonde hair framing what he thought was a heart-shaped face. She was very like her father in some ways but in others completely different. She seemed softer, more trusting, more vulnerable.

  He watched her as she gazed out of the window, as she checked her phone at regular intervals, making a couple of calls he could not overhear, and as she tried to read a book she had taken out of her bag obviously finding it difficult to concentrate.

  That evening, settling himself down on a bench in the churchyard from where he could keep watch on the Bed and Breakfast he had seen her go into, he found himself thinking of himself as her protector. He would help her escape from the press, he would keep her safe. For himself.

  The following morning Guy was disappointed to see a group of reporters hanging around the cottage where he knew Jenna was staying. He was just wondering whether he could leave his vigil to find some breakfast when the door opened and Jenna rushed out. Of the group that followed her he was the only one who managed to catch the same train and he followed her to Dover, to Paris where, just behind her in the ticket queue, he saw her purchase a ticket to Valencia.

  For some reason he could not explain he was not surprised at her destination. She could have gone anywhere in the world, but she headed for Spain.

  Sitting in the train for the long hours south through France he had tried to work out why so much seemed to point back to Spain.

  When he had found the letter in his father’s box of old records he had wondered what it was his grandfather had stolen and allegedly buried in the garden in their exotic house in Cartagena or Lorca or Illora. There had been periods, often of many months, when he hadn’t given it any thought. The chances of finding one house in three towns in Spain were, he recognised, minimal to non-existent. But then there were times when he would be glued to the internet looking at maps and earth images of those places. He had no idea what his father’s family name had been, and had no way of finding out, but he could not completely forget the buried cache the letter described.

  Nor had he forgotten that house, somewhere in southern Spain, even as he was working out his plan to inherit his uncle’s billions.

  He had always known that Peabody Three’s destination would be Spain. There he would lie low for a few weeks after Warwick Eden’s assassination and the murder of the fall guy before coming forward, in a blaze of publicity, to claim his inheritance.

  And while there he had always planned to take the opportunity to investigate Cartagena and Lorca and Illora. Perhaps being on the ground would make the task of finding that house less impossible.

  On the second day after Peabody Three had reached Cartagena he had left Arjun with the woman on the yacht and had hired a car to drive to Lorca.

  Guy did not stop in the centre but spent three fruitless hours driving through the countryside around the town. All the houses seemed too small and too modern and he saw nothing that could have been described as exotic. After a brief stop for lunch he set the car’s satnav to Illora.

  He felt far more positive about that town. As he approached it seemed to him that the countryside around would have large properties that would have held something worth stealing. The town was surrounded by ancient olive groves and, Guy thought, rich landowners would have had properties that could be described as ‘exotic’.

  The town, at first view, disappointed him. He had imagined ancient cobbled streets and narrow alleyways but the buildings were concrete and modern. It was only as he turned off the main street that he saw another side to the town. Driving became more difficult as the streets became narrower and the climb steeper; he was relieved when the road began to descend and he headed back onto the main road and followed the satnav instructions back to Cartagena intending to hire the car again the next day and return to Illora.

  But he did not return.

  That evening Arjun had told him an old woman had been poking her nose around the yacht and might have seen the woman in yellow. That was when Guy knew that to protect himself he had to get rid of both Arjun and Diane and to do that he had to leave Cartagena.

  He had not given up on his hopes of continuing his search for his grandfather’s family’s house so he had checked the charts and found a small leisure marina due south of Granada, within easy reach of Illora, and decided that would be a good place to head, losing both Diane and Arjun on the way.

  But when he had arrived, alone, at the marina near Almuñécar, he had read the news of his father’s death and the prospect of Warwick’s billions had seemed far more tangible than some illusive exotic house that may or may not have existed in or near a town called Illora, so he had returned to England.

  And now he was heading back to Spain.

  It seemed that Fate wanted him there.

  He was sure Jenna had no idea she had been followed from Devon, across southern England and through France to Valencia. She showed no signs of concern; she was, to his mind, innocent of care and responsibility. An easy target though he would prefer not to have to harm her. He felt he knew her so well yet she did not know him. He began to resent the fact that, even if she had seen him, she would have had no idea who he was and how important he was to her.

  After they had spent a day in a library, separated by only a few metres, he had almost decided to talk to her; not to tell her who he was, or even that he knew who she was, just to make conversation as two English people in a foreign city. He wanted to invite her to have a drink, or a meal, with him. He wanted her to know him.

  But he had not
talked to her; instead he had taken her photograph and posted it on social media. He thought it touchingly naïve that she used her own name rather than, as he had always done, an anonymous identity. He had given the image a title, ‘Beautiful Lady Reading’, meaning to use it as his opening gambit when talking to her the following day.

  The next morning he waited outside her hotel for her to leave. He was going to follow her, not knowing whether she would return to the library.

  He waited more than an hour, thinking she might have slept late but there was no sign of her.

  “This girl, have you seen her?” he asked the woman sitting in the small hotel reception office as he showed her the image on his phone.

  She said nothing, just shaking her head.

  “Is she staying here?” The thought occurred to him that he had made a mistake, that she hadn’t been staying at this hotel; perhaps he had mistaken the street.

  “She check out,” the receptionist said dully.

  “When?” Guy was impatient and hassled the woman for an answer. “This morning? Yesterday afternoon? When?”

  The woman slowly stood up and walked over to a large book on a desk and laboriously ran her finger up and down the page. Guy thought it a ridiculous show as the hotel could not possibly have had many guests.

  “Hoy, she leave today,” the woman eventually said.

  “What time? When?” Guy shouted.

  He could not have lost her now. She had been so naïve, so lacking in subterfuge. Why had she left suddenly, now, just as he was about to talk to her?

  The woman shrugged and turned back to the book she had been reading.

  Unable to control his frustration and disappointment he picked up a vase from a table by the reception desk and threw it as hard as he could at the wall.

  Watching it shatter and the water it had contained spread out across the tiled floor he calmed down. “I’m sorry. Sorry. Here.” He placed some euros on the reception desk and left.

  He had always found it difficult to cope with frustration and disappointment.

  When he had still lived at home – it seemed a very long time ago – he had found drink or drugs that would see him through to understanding that it wasn’t his fault that things had not gone his way and to channelling that frustration and resentment against the person who had thwarted him. Usually that person had been his father, but now it was Jenna.

  He had to find out more about her. He had to go to England to see her mother. She would know where Jenna had gone, if anyone did.

  He walked quickly back to his hotel, checked out, caught a taxi to the airport, bought a ticket and within seven hours of discovering he had lost track of her he was standing outside the house where Billy Watkins and Wave Freece lived.

  He had invested too much of his energy and his time in his mission to acquire what was rightfully his.

  He would not give up now.

  Chapter 30: Guy Lies

  “Wave, first I should thank you for taking my call and second, I should thank you for meeting up with me. It must be such a nuisance having all those idiots parked outside your front gate.”

  “I wish Billy had never got us into this,” Wave said as she placed a cup of tea on the table in front of the man who said his name was Kevin Langley.

  “It must be impossible to go about your lives normally with all those people camped outside your house all the time.”

  “It is. Mind you, it’ll be worth it when Jenna gets her money.”

  “That’s what I’m here to talk about. Is Billy around? Will he be back soon?”

  “He’s gone to the pub. He’ll get back in a couple of hours, though I shouldn’t think you’ll get much sense out of him; those journos ply him with pint after pint thinking he can tell them where our Jenna is, but he can’t because we don’t know.”

  “When did you last hear from her?”

  “Just after the funeral, when all this kerfuffle started up.”

  “Not since?”

  “She’s left her flat and she’s not answering her messages. I think she must have lost her phone or something because she’s a good girl and she’s fond of her mum so she wouldn’t want me to worry.”

  “Are you worried?”

  “Not really. She’s always been a bit of a loner, self-contained, getting on with her life her own way, you know?”

  “But she’s never been out of touch this long?”

  “Of course she has, it’s only been a week, but this seems different; the whole world and its wife seems to be looking for her. Who was it you said you were?” Wave was suddenly, belatedly, suspicious.

  “My name is Kevin, Kevin Langley. I am, or was, one of Warwick Eden’s executive assistants. I’m here to discuss what is to be done about his will.”

  “His will?”

  “Actually, the absence of any will.”

  Wave frowned. She left anything to do with money to Billy, and had ever since they had started living together. She wasn’t good with words or numbers and she didn’t like thinking about money. She certainly didn’t want to talk about something as important as this. But she knew she had to, she knew Billy too well. He would be uncompromising and aggressive, he would expect Jenna to inherit everything.

  “What does that mean? Are you saying there wasn’t a will?” she asked tentatively, gesturing to her visitor to sit down.

  “It means that there will be a delay in sorting everything out. Warwick made it known to those close to him that, if anything happened to him, he wanted everything he had to go to the movement, to England Force that is, but he never made that wish official. And now Jenna has appeared on the scene it’s going to be difficult to achieve what it seems he wanted. Tell me, do you know if Warwick ever knew he had a daughter? He never said anything to me and I was very close to him.”

  Wave shook her head slowly.

  “You never told him?”

  Wave shook her head again. “No.” She did not want to admit that she hadn’t seen the father of her daughter since the day after her baby was conceived.

  “Did you never claim any money from him? Upkeep, maintenance, that sort of thing? I can find no records but that doesn’t mean to say there aren’t any.”

  Again Wave shook her head. She was worried that Billy would be angry with her for saying as much as she had.

  “So you’ve nothing to prove your claim that she was his daughter?”

  “It’s not a claim as you put it. It’s the truth.”

  “But you don’t have anything, other than your word and a few photographs?”

  Wave shook her head. She knew what she said was true but she was becoming increasingly worried that it wasn’t something she could prove. “Surely DNA, or whatever, can sort that out. She is his daughter. You have to believe me. I wouldn’t lie about something like this. I don’t want any money. I don’t want anything. That’s all Billy. I just want to know my Jenna is safe and well and…”

  “Okay. I believe you.” ‘Kevin Langley’ smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring fashion. “But isn’t it in everyone’s interests to get it all sorted out as soon as possible?”

  Wave nodded. “I just want everything to get back to normal.”

  “I think it would help if I met with Jenna, don’t you agree?”

  Again Wave nodded. She trusted this pleasant, articulate young man who seemed nothing like the other people from England Force who had been in touch with her and Billy. “I think we can trust you.”

  “The papers don’t know where she is,” ‘Kevin’ continued. “But if you know where she might have run to you must tell me. As you say, she’s left her flat.”

  “I don’t. We don’t.” It didn’t occur to Wave to ask what ‘Kevin Langley’ intended to say or do that might help resolve everything. She was simply thinking about DNA testing being necessary to prove that what she kn
ew to be true, was. She didn’t like the idea that people didn’t believe her. She was a truthful person, she always had been, and she felt the injustice of being doubted sharply. She wished Billy had thought of all this before going to the press.

  “Why did your daughter run away, Wave? I can call you Wave, can’t I? Doesn’t she want to get everything settled?”

  Wave didn’t know how to answer and was relieved to hear Billy’s key in the door.

  “Why the fuck do they think they can hang around here? Wave? You there? You need to call the rozzers, tell them to get this lot to fuck off. Hello? Who the fuck are you?”

  Guy stood up and held out his hand. “I’m Kevin Langley, I worked for Warwick Eden.”

  “And what the fuck do you want?”

  Billy sat himself down in the chair Guy had been occupying leaving Guy, for the first time since he had walked in the door of the neat semi-detached house, uncertain of himself.

  “I’m here to help sort the situation out.”

  “Now what situation would that be?” Billy asked.

  “Warwick’s wish was that England Force should benefit from his estate. I am here to see if we can make that happen.”

  “Jenna is his daughter.”

  “I was asking your wife whether Warwick ever accepted that he had a daughter, whether he had ever paid anything towards her upkeep, her education. That is, I am wondering if you have any evidence to back your claims.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She said you had never told him and had never asked for anything.”

  “That’s not—” Wave began.

  “She shouldn’t have said anything. This is all for lawyers to sort out,” Billy interrupted.

  “But lawyers will be expensive, won’t they? They’re always the ones to win, aren’t they? I was hoping we could sort something out between ourselves. That’s why I was asking your… I was asking Wave where Jenna was so I could talk to her. She’s, what? twenty-something?”