by Anna Smith
Rosie wanted to say, Are you kidding me, I’ll be there in a flash, but she held back.
‘Sure. Any time, Christy. Anywhere. You have something on Lewis?’
‘I don’t want to talk on the phone. Can we meet?’
‘Of course. Where and when? You tell me.’
‘How about same place as the last time? It’s handy for my train. About six tonight?’
‘I’ll be there. Great to hear from you, Christy.’
He hung up. Rosie’s day had just got a whole lot brighter.
Chapter Five
From the café off the Champs-Elysées, Helen watched the buzz of the city, the tourists, lovers young and old, feeling like she was watching an old movie. Paris was one of her favourite places in the world, and she used to sit in cafés and bars around here with Alan, marvelling at how far she’d come in her life. She’d never dwelt on how she’d got there. Soul-searching wasn’t her thing. It was here in Paris that Alan had proposed to her, and if she was really honest, that had been the best moment of her life. A moment of triumph, when she knew she was made. She’d known exactly what he would do when he whisked her away that weekend – that she was about to nail down her meal ticket for life. But deep down, the thought stirred her even now, because at the time she’d never felt more wanted, cherished: feelings she’d never experienced before. And even recollecting that made her feel surprisingly emotional. She’d been truly happy at that moment, despite her scheming. What had brought the lump to her throat that night was that somebody like Alan Lewis, a successful, wealthy accountant, would fall for her. He was from a different world, raised with all the privileges and opportunities people like Helen knew were not for them. Ever since she was old enough to work anything out as a kid, she’d sussed that there was a them and us. There always would be. And she was part of the bones-on-your-arse group who were never expected to amount to anything. She hated that. Growing up in the Gorbals in itself was a tag you would carry around with you all your life, like a stamp on your forehead. The name was synonymous with trouble, gangsters, hard men and hard women. You had to be tough to survive, and Helen learned very quickly in her life that she could be the toughest of them all.
Her alcoholic, prostitute mother used to bring men back to the house. But worse than that, she used to charge them for touching her little girl. That was the first betrayal, she recollected, and it burned her for life. It was probably there and then, Helen thought, whenever she actually looked back, that her life was decided. To survive that shit, you had to either get out as a youngster or fight like hell. And she wasn’t getting out. She was on the streets at fourteen – her mother knew and even encouraged it. She was as bold as brass, gorgeous and mouthy, and the men loved that character as much as her shock of long black hair and her steely blue eyes. What they didn’t see were her private tears when she was alone or if she ever took the time to reflect on her life. She was miserable, so miserable that one night, as she stood on the Jamaica Bridge, she thought of just throwing herself off. She was only sixteen. But she didn’t. She decided there and then to survive. She stopped crying, and she told herself she could have everything she wanted. She would just take it.
She packed her bags and left the Gorbals on a rainy morning and boarded a bus for London. She had twenty quid in her purse, no idea what she was going to do, but only that she was getting the hell out of there. On her first night, she was robbed in the hostel she’d found, and it was only later the following afternoon that she was picked up by a woman who saw her outside in the street begging. Instinct told her the woman was a hooker, and when the woman offered to put her up for a few nights, her suspicions were confirmed. She was being pimped out by the end of the week. Older men mostly, business types in fine suits, smelling of cigars and expensive aftershave. But suddenly she found she wasn’t miserable any more. She was making money. She sold coke to punters as a sideline. She had bundles of notes in a stash below her bed. Yes, Helen Lewis was doing all right for a wee tart from the Gorbals.
Helen finished the dregs of her drink and sat back, smoking a cigarette, as the memories came flooding back. She saw herself on the day she came back to Glasgow, by this time working not as a hooker but as a receptionist in one of the city’s slicker hotels. That was where she met Alan Lewis, who was at some business function – he was bladdered and chatting her up. She was in his bed by midnight and living in his flat before the week was out. She quickly lost her rough Glasgow accent in London, and invented a different story than her real life, which Alan had swallowed happily, so wrapped up was he in their wild passion. Life was good. Things were happening. She could see that he was wealthy beyond anything she had ever dreamed of.
Even before he’d asked her to marry him, he was so swept away with her, and blinded, that he began to bring her into some of his business dealings. She’d told him that she’d had an aptitude for bookkeeping at school, and he’d been impressed at how quickly she picked things up. He asked her to help him, and one night, after too much wine, he showed her the sets of books he kept: the one that was completely separate from his business, and the one he showed the tax man. At first, she couldn’t make head nor tail of it, as it was simply a lot of names and money and where he’d put it. The format wasn’t as clear as the conventional way she’d been taught at school, but once she scrutinised the information, Helen’s sharp brain began to get around it. Some were abroad, companies set up, businesses created and then later dissolved. Property had been bought and resold. She wasn’t that daft. She could see money-laundering from a mile away. One or two of the clients she didn’t recognise, but she later saw their names in the newspaper, linked to criminal activity. Alan was a crook with a clipped accent. But what the hell did she care? She was living the life. She began to help him; he trusted her more than anyone else. She moved his money around from one account to another, learning fast how to hide it away. She had her fast car, her gym membership, the trips to the Costa del Sol, the fancy house in Romania. She went along with all of it. She had no plans, nothing to scheme about at that time.
But that all changed when Frankie Mallon walked over to their table at a function and sat down. When Alan had introduced him to her, it was as though a spark caught fire: she fell for him. She should have steered clear. It began as sex – that’s all it should ever have been. But Frankie told her that he really had feelings for her, that they could have a proper relationship. He coaxed her to leave Alan, take what she could. But she told him there would be so much more if she stuck around for a bit. She didn’t want to risk having to work or go back to poverty. When she left, she would take it all. Poor Alan. He hadn’t a clue. He was more involved in business and travelling abroad – and whatever other kicks he got from his foreign hookers.
That was when they hatched the plot. When Frankie came back from Romania, with the job done, he was triumphant at first. They planned how she would play the heartbroken wife when she reported her husband missing. She would bide her time, and then they would move to Spain or some far-off land. The police search came and went, and it seemed they had got away with it. But then Frankie changed. One night he told her it was over. He had never wanted her in the first place. She was a means to an end. I want your money, he told her. All of it – it’s what I do, he said, with a grin on his face that she could still see now. I love you, she told him. Tough shit, he’d said, for falling for my charm. She shuddered at her stupidity. Fuck him. He deserved what he got. Blackmailing her, threatening her, he’d already taken nine grand from her, and demanded everything else she had. Well, nobody fucked with Helen Lewis. If Frankie Mallon thought he was hard, he wasn’t even in the same street as her.
Helen steeled herself with these thoughts when she felt lonely. She drove herself on, convincing herself that everything she did, she did to survive. It was dog eat dog. She knew no other way. She shook off the shoddy ghosts from her past. Her new life started here.
Helen walked back to her hotel slowly, enjoying the cool of the night and t
he beauty of Paris. The streets were busy, and even in the side street where she crossed to her hotel there were people in the pavement cafés. She toyed with the idea of having one for the road, but decided to call it a night. She had a flight to Grand Cayman tomorrow morning from Charles de Gaulle airport, and she wanted to be fresh for the journey. As she passed the café she thought she saw a man look at her, and for a moment thought she recognised him. But she couldn’t have. She didn’t know anyone here. It was only when she was in the lobby of her hotel and climbing the stairs to the first floor that she suddenly remembered the face. He was the guy from the café in London, the one she’d also seen on the Eurostar. Coincidence, she told herself. Was he following her? Christ! She was being paranoid. She opened the hotel bedroom door, glanced back in the darkened corridor, and quickly went inside and locked the door.
She prepared her case for the morning, took off her make-up and was about to get undressed when she heard footsteps in the corridor. Then they stopped. Outside her door. She held her breath. Christ, for a tough bird, she was jumpy tonight. It was all part of the stress of the last couple of days. She needed to get away. She listened at the door again, and heard the footsteps move on, fade. She stood at the window smoking a cigarette. Then a few moments later, under the lamp post, she saw the man from the restaurant looking up.
Chapter Six
Rosie had to take a closer look when the tall young man came through the swing doors of the bar and glanced around. At first she didn’t recognise Christy Larkin without his glasses, and his hair was closely cropped, instead of the mid-length, foppish style it had had when she met him the last time. He spotted her from across the room and came striding towards her with a big smile.
‘Hi, Rosie. Good to see you.’
She stood up, and shook his hand, then to her surprise, he leaned in for a bit of a hug. She put her arms around him in the kind of friendly hug you would give to your favourite cousin. When they parted, he studied her face.
‘I saw that story about the serial killer, and the other one, earlier, when you were in Pakistan. You’ve been up to the capers, Rosie. I’m glad you’re still alive.’ He put his hand up for a high five. ‘But big respect for your work. You sail a bit close to the wind.’
Rosie smiled. She liked this boy. He was like a breath of fresh air the way he breezed in, and his face spoke of youth, and the enthusiasm of a bright person with his whole life in front of him.
‘It’s all good fun really,’ she joked. ‘Sit down, I’ll buy you a drink and you can tell me about your travels.’
When she returned from the bar with a pint of Guinness for Christy and a glass of red wine for herself, she was prepared for some small talk. She didn’t want to delve straight in and ask why he wanted to talk to her.
‘So where have you been since I last saw you? It’s nearly two years, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah. Just about. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Rosie.’ He took a long drink of his pint. ‘Actually, I felt like phoning you a few months ago, but I was waiting to get a bit more information.’
‘I’m intrigued,’ Rosie said. ‘Where did you get to?’
‘I was a lot of places. Did that gap year thing, Australia, Indonesia and stuff, then I came back and went to France for a bit. But one of my pals I met on my travels had worked as an aid worker, you know, an NGO, with some charity in Romania, and he was telling me about it.’ He looked at Rosie. ‘I think I’m a bit like you in some ways, I get a feeling for things like that. You know, with the refugees and stuff, up at the council? The way you had an instinct. I always feel really touched by refugees and people like that.’ He paused, stretched his long legs out. ‘Anyway, my mate, who’s English, said it was great working over there, that it was tough, but you really thought you were doing something good, because you were on the ground in these orphanages. So I decided to give it a try. Kind of get it out of my system.’
Rosie looked at him, full of admiration. So many lads his age would be thinking only of having fun and making their way in the world. She’d always admired aid workers wherever she met them, because they put themselves in all sorts of difficult circumstances. But she also recalled that the trouble with them was that they found it almost impossible to fit into normal life back home. Once you’d seen the grim reality of the refugee camps – the sickness and death – and lived with the people and witnessed their suffering, the kind of things that pissed people off back home just seemed so trite that most of the aid workers she’d encountered went back time and again, often from one trouble spot to another. It was as though they couldn’t fit back in to normal life at home. A bit like her, she’d supposed, only more so.
‘Good for you, Christy. You’re a better man than me,’ she joked. ‘I’ve done more than my share of refugee camps over the years, but I was only in and out. I always admired the guys like you who stayed on and did the nitty-gritty day in, day out. So how was it? I was there myself a few years ago, in these Romanian orphanages. It’s awful, toddlers hanging onto you, desperate for a hug, any kind of touch at all. Heartbreaking.’
Rosie didn’t want to say she’d always felt guilty the way they moved in and out of these kids’ lives, tormenting herself that they probably believed that this stranger in their midst was actually going to make their lives better. But all she was doing was highlighting their plight. Visiting the orphanages after the fall of the dictator, Nicolae Ceauşescu, had been one of the most difficult jobs she’d ever done, and their little faces had stayed with her for years.
‘Yeah, it’s tough. I think probably when you go in temporarily, like you or other media, or even doctors from abroad and stuff, you get really affected by it. But when you’re working there on a daily basis, you’re too busy to get upset by it. You just do the stuff you have to get through, and there’s shedloads of work, to be honest.’
‘How long did you stay? When did you get back?’
‘I’ve been back six weeks now. I was there for nearly eighteen months, but I felt it was time to move on. But I saw some horrible sights, and I was told about other things that I can’t prove. But there’s bad stuff going on. So that’s why you came into my mind.’
Rosie leaned across closer to him. ‘I’m intrigued, Christy. The country was a mess when I was there, ripe for the corruption that followed. Gangsters running the show now.’
‘Exactly. And exploitation.’ He shook his head. ‘Of the kids. That’s what I want to talk to you about. But it’s going to be really hard to get to grips with.’
‘Well, let’s hear it. Everything is hard at the beginning, but if there’s a way to do it, then I’ll find it.’ She looked at him. ‘What’s the Alan Lewis connection? I know he had business interests there. A vineyard and wine importing.’
‘Yeah. That’s right. But that’s not the full story. I was away from the UK when he disappeared, and other than seeing something on the TV that a Brit had disappeared, I didn’t see much news or bother with it over in Bucharest as I was so busy all the time. But it’s only when I came back and I heard the news the other day there about his wife being missing, and then your piece on the background, that I thought, this stinks.’
‘I couldn’t agree more.’
‘But tell you what. As soon as I saw his name in your story, I remembered that I recognised it. From Bucharest.’
‘How come?’
‘I saw some papers while I was over there, someone showed me them one time, on kids that were being adopted.’ He made inverted commas with his hands as he said ‘adopted’. ‘But in fact they weren’t being adopted, they were being sold. It was around that time I saw his name on a document I was shown in relation to a charity, and some other known figures – Romanian and also Russian. I even thought of getting in touch with you at the time, because I had suspicions then. But I had nothing much to go on apart from what someone was telling me and I didn’t want to waste your time. Look, Rosie, I might sound crazy at the moment, and this could be a wild allegation, but I th
ink Alan Lewis and this charity, or someone putting themselves across as a charity, was involved with gangsters over there, and they were selling children. Maybe they still are.’
‘Christ almighty! Seriously?’
‘That’s what it looks like to me. Proving it is a different matter.’
‘Jesus! Maybe there’s more to his disappearance in Romania than we thought.’ She couldn’t mention what she’d been told in her conversation with Donna – that Helen Lewis had sent Frankie Mallon to kill him. But if he was linked to selling orphans, this was a much bigger story than a greedy wife wanting rid of a boring husband.
‘I think there is more to it,’ Christy said. ‘He could have been bumped off, or something. I’ve no idea about anything like that. But all I have on him is this . . .’
He reached into his inside pocket and brought out a sheet of A4 paper. He slid it across the table to Rosie and she strained her eyes in the half-light. It looked like a whole list of payments and names of people and a charity, Hands Across Europe. Alan Lewis’s name was on their list of trustees as Director of Accounts.
‘I’ve heard of this Hands Across Europe charity. I’m sure they have some kind of base in Scotland as well as down south. I wish you’d called me, Christy. You should never worry about wasting my time with a tip-off like that. Even if it turned out to be way off the mark, I’d rather hear than not hear.’
He nodded. ‘Okay. I’ll remember the next time.’
She looked up from the sheet of paper. ‘Where did you get this, Christy?’ She put a hand up. ‘I don’t mean you to name names, but I mean, I have to have an idea of where it came from – to make sure it’s authentic. You understand?’