by Condor
“Sorry, Boss. Just the regular boiling water. Oh, wait a moment. Boiling. That might have been it.” She risked a wink at Gabriel, who winked back.
“Ooh, not interrupting anything am I?” Susannah said. “You too bonding over the Morphy Richards, were you? Joking about me behind my back when you were dunking your teabags?”
“Sorry, Boss,” Gabriel said. “Won’t happen again.”
Mollified, Susannah put the mug down.
“Here’s what I want you to do next. Go and talk to Eloise Payne’s parents. Get her last known address, associates, mates, hangouts, the usual drill. And Gabriel, I want you to sit down after you get back from wherever they live and start reviewing all the CCTV footage. I’ve got one of my lads cueing it all up from the junction of Regent Street and Mortimer Street down to the bus stop at Oxford Circus. I want the car and I want the bomber. If you did see her, we can hopefully get a face and match it to Eloise Payne.”
19
I Blame the Parents
THE PAYNES’ HOUSE WAS ENORMOUS, a brick-built, double-fronted Victorian villa set thirty or forty yards back from a leafy avenue on the outskirts of Woking. A varnished wooden plaque screwed to the trunk of a horse chestnut tree announced the house was called “Bellavista”.
Chelsea parked the silver BMW on the street, but as they crunched down the pea-shingle drive to the front door, she realised she needn’t have bothered. There was space for two or three more cars on the gravel semi-circle outside the front of the house alongside a metallic pink Jaguar XKR convertible and a British Racing Green Aston Martin DB7. Chelsea pointed at the cars as they approached.
“His and hers?”
Gabriel had the same thought flitting through his own head and smiled.
“Obviously. But whose is which, that’s the question, Holmes.”
Chelsea grinned as she pressed the white china button set into the brickwork to summon, hopefully, the Paynes.
As they waited, Gabriel drew in a deep breath. He’d been in London for three days and was missing the countryside. The suburbs were a poor substitute, but at least out here there were trees. They’d driven past plenty of fields on the journey down to this pleasant commuter town in Surrey, to the south of London. Someone, somewhere, was having a bonfire. The smell of burning leaves filled the air and he picked up the crackle of dry wood burning. A good smell. A bad sound. It reminded him of the distant rattle of automatic gunfire He shook his head. Chelsea was talking.
“What? Sorry, I was miles away.”
She tutted.
“I said, I’ll do the talking. You’re here to listen, OK?”
“Like mother, like daughter, eh?”
“What?” she said, eyes narrowing.
Gabriel pointed at a huge pile of dead flowers and cuttings to the left of the house. “Leaves a trail of destruction in her wake.”
Chelsea relaxed a little, still alert to the possibility she was being made fun of. “OK. Well, like I said, you keep shtum.”
The sound of footsteps approaching the other side of the door ended the edgy banter between them. A bolt scraped back and a key turned in the mortise lock. The door swung inwards.
The man facing them was about five foot eleven. Slim build with just a hint of a paunch under the heather cardigan he was wearing. Cashmere, Gabriel noted. Nice jumper to be doing the garden in. His face was gaunt and yellowish, cheeks hollow, as if he had weighed a lot more and had shed it all very quickly. His expression was watchful, wary, bright-blue eyes flicking from Chelsea to Gabriel and back again. Before Chelsea could say anything, he spoke.
“It’s Eloise, isn’t it? What’s she done now?”
20
All Power Corrupts
WHEN JARDIN HAD SIMMERED long enough, judging by his increasingly twitchy body language, Toron broke his silence.
“What do I think of all this? I think … you forgot something.”
“What’s that?” Jardin said, frowning.
“Power. You need electricity to make cocaine. I don’t see any pylons around here. You got underground cables?”
Jardin smirked, an expression Toron felt he would like to wipe off his face with a slap. “No. Not yet. But among my servants, I have engineers who specialised in hydroelectric and solar power before they joined me. How do you think the air con and the lights work in my house? Yes, I insist my followers live somewhat primitively, but that is part of my brand image. A renunciation of all things corrupting, electrical power among them.”
Toron smiled, slowly. “You really are a very evil man; you know that? God must be feeling very forgiving when he looks at what you are doing out here.”
“God? Listen, Diego, I know you have your Catholic faith to fall back on like a big spiritual crashmat, but some of us have to make our way in this world alone. And, please, your business operations? Your baptisms? He is OK with all of that?”
“I am a good Catholic. I go to confession. God knows I am weak, but I love my family, I attend mass, and I help the poor. Perhaps,” he said, straightening his jacket after a sudden gust of wind blew it back to reveal the butt of a dull black pistol in a shoulder holster, “we should save our theological debates until we have a bottle of something suitable on the table between us. So, we have electricity, or we will have?”
“Enough to light this place up like a Christmas tree any time we want. It will take some time, but I can have a team start work tomorrow.”
“Then yes, I think it will work. I will have some plans drawn up for a facility and then we can talk about a schedule, supply routes, and all the other million details our start-up will need attending to.”
“No need,” Jardin smirked again, stroking his beard and smoothing his fingers along his moustache. “I have architects, too. Let’s go back now. We can settle a few terms of business over something cold.”
21
Where Eloise Went
“MR PAYNE? I’M DETECTIVE SERGEANT Chelsea Jones. I’m with the Metropolitan Police. This is Gabriel Wolfe. He is working with us as a consultant. May we come in?”
The man sighed and beckoned them across the threshold.
“I’m Barry Payne. Hold on.” He turned away from them. “Lucinda,” he called. “It’s the police. We’re in the lounge.”
Then he turned back to Chelsea and Gabriel and indicated that they should go through a white-painted, panelled door to their left.
The room was large, maybe eighteen feet wide by thirty long. At some point in the house’s history, the owners—maybe even the current occupants—had knocked down the wall that had originally separated the front room facing the road from the dining room overlooking the garden. Barry Payne sat heavily in a cream leather recliner chair and motioned for them to sit opposite him on a matching sofa. As he opened his mouth to say something, his wife bustled in, wiping her hands on a blue and white tea towel. She was wearing an over-bright smile, as if she’d been told she was going to be on television. Her hair was lacquered into place, shining in the light from a chandelier suspended on a fake antique brass chain, and she was wearing lots of makeup, which reinforced her media-ready appearance. She stood by her husband’s side, a hand on his left shoulder. Her face was taut with the effort of maintaining the smile. Gabriel noticed a muscle twitching beneath her right eye, which was highlighted with a broad sweep of shimmering green eyeshadow.
“Mr and Mrs Payne,” Chelsea began. “Can you tell us the whereabouts of your daughter, Eloise?”
“Why?” Lucinda Payne said. “Is she in trouble? Oh, Barry, it’s those bloody awful people. I told you we should have gone and got her back.”
“We just need to know where she’s been living and who she’s been associating with. Am I right in thinking she doesn’t live with you?”
As her husband’s scowl deepened, scoring deep lines across his forehead and at the sides of his mouth, Lucinda perched on the arm of his chair. He seemed content to let his wife do the talking.
“She moved out a few years ago. The
re was a bit of trouble. With drugs. What’s this all about please? Why won’t you say?”
“We know about Eloise’s drugs charge, Mrs Payne. We’re not here to talk about that. Can you tell us where she’s been living these past few years, please?”
The woman seems on the verge of tears. The smile was slipping, the chin trembling. Barry Payne finally roused himself from his reverie.
“I’ll tell you where she’s been. With a bloody religious cult, that’s where. The Children of Heaven, they call themselves. More like the bloody Morons of Never-never Land, if you ask me.”
Gabriel and Chelsea exchanged a quick glance. Cults do crazy things.
“No address, I suppose?” Chelsea asked, flipping open her notebook and jotting down ‘Children of Heaven’.
“Strangely, no. We don’t have their bank details either, before you ask, although they clearly had Eloise’s. Emptied her accounts out down to the last bloody penny.”
“Barry!” his wife said, her eyes widening. “These officers are only trying to help. There’s no need for that tone.”
Barry Payne jerked his chin towards Gabriel.
“Officer. Singular. Didn’t you hear her. He’s a bloody civilian, just like you and me. And I’ll use whatever tone I like in my own home, thank you very much.”
“Mr Payne,” Gabriel said, deciding in a split-second to disobey Chelsea’s instruction to keep silent during the interview. She whirled round and glared at him, mouth open. He pressed on. “You’re right. I am just a civilian. However, I’m working in an official capacity alongside the Metropolitan Police. My own background is in British Army Special Forces. I’ve been accredited to work with the police because of my specialist skills and experience. Believe me, all we want to do is find the people who did this. Your daughter may have been duped or brainwashed, but we think she may have been mixed up in the bus bombing in London. So if you can help us in any way, you’d be doing a lot of good.”
Payne cleared his throat, then wiped a hand over his face.
“Of course. I’m sorry.” Then his eyes narrowed. “‘Mixed up’ you said.”
“Pardon?”
“You said Eloise was ‘mixed up’ in the bus bombing. What precisely do you mean by that phrase?”
Chelsea was glaring at Gabriel. She looked down at her notepad then up at Payne again. “We found her fingerprint on a component of the bomb.”
Barry Payne’s face turned white. Beside him, his wife clutched his shoulder so tightly he yelped in pain as her manicured fingernails dug through the fine wool of his cardigan into the flesh beneath.
“Was she there?” she said, in a half-sob.
“We don’t know, Mrs Payne. We’re still trying to ascertain all the facts. But I’m afraid it does look like she was involved in making the bomb.”
At this, Lucinda Payne broke down completely. Her face crumpled, all the features moving independently of each other, the mouth twisting, the eyes squeezing shut, the nose wrinkling. Then she howled. A wide-mouthed moan that started deep in her chest and escaped from her stretched lips in a wail of grief, horror and despair. Payne leapt to his feet and wrapped her in his arms. He looked over his shoulder at Chelsea and Gabriel.
“Her room is upstairs at the end of the hall. Look around all you like, take whatever you like, then leave, please.”
Chelsea stood and Gabriel followed her out of the room and up the stairs. Over the sound of Lucinda Payne’s pain-wracked crying, Chelsea whispered to Gabriel.
“Think how much worse it’s going to be if the head turns out to be hers.”
Then she opened the door to Eloise’s room. And gasped.
22
A Bomber’s Bedroom
THE BLOODSTAINED CUDDLY TOYS DANGLING from nooses were the first things to catch Gabriel’s eye as he and Chelsea walked into the last known abode of Eloise Payne. A row of teddy bears hung from the curtain rail on lengths of string as if the sandman had tired of his good guy role and opted for a new career as begetter of nightmares. Posters on the wall featured skeletally thin young girls with ladders of scars climbing their bony little arms and slogans advocating self-harm. IF IT FEELS BAD, CUT IT read one, in scratchy red type echoing the razor marks on the model’s skin. He hoped she was a model, anyway.
There was a montage of printed-out photos on the wall above the bed. Teenaged girls in ragged net skirts, torn stockings and smoky black eye makeup draped over each other in poses that appeared to suggest their friendships were based on shared needles rather than music or cat videos.
They stood, silently, for a second or two, taking in this shrine to dysfunctional adolescence. Then Chelsea spoke.
“Seen it all before. Teenage junkie. Hates her parents. Hates the world. Hates herself. Blah blah blah. Right, toss it and collect anything that might give us a lead to where this cult was. Or is.”
She started by pulling out the drawers in the girl’s bureau and rummaging systematically: to the back, the left, the right then to the bottom. As Gabriel looked around for somewhere to start, and found himself unaccountably nervous, she hissed out a triumphant, “Yes! Diary. Right, we’ll have that.” She looked round. “Haven’t you started yet?” Then she returned to her rummaging.
Gabriel opened the wardrobe. The clothes were all black, red, or white. Lots of vintage lace, silk, and nylon. He squatted and reached to the back, breathing in—but not wanting to—the smell of a troubled girl who was almost certainly dead. Patchouli and sandalwood—joss-stick aromas that made him think of Middle Eastern cafés. He stretched his hand out, craning his neck to keep his face away from the wispy, filmy fabrics, and paddled his fingers blindly over what felt like a shoe box. He grabbed it and pulled it out.
He lifted the lid off, then he turned to Chelsea.
“I’ve got something.”
The box was full of club flyers, gig tickets, postcards, photos, and other artefacts you might associate with a typical teenage life.
She looked over. “Bring it.”
After another ten minutes, when they’d failed to turn up anything else, Chelsea felt might lead them closer to the people behind the bombing, she straightened, knees popping. “Come on. I don’t think there’s anything else here. We can always come back.”
They went downstairs together and for one surreal moment, Gabriel felt as though they’d been staying as guests of the Paynes. The faces of the parents dispelled this dreamlike feeling immediately. Both had been crying, and now they were trying to compose themselves for a final conversation about their daughter.
“I know what it looks like. Up there,” Barry Payne said. “Some sort of museum of self-harming. But she was a good girl. Used to ask us to give her Christmas presents to charity when she was a little girl, didn’t she, Luce?”
“She had her problems. Like we all do, but we thought she was turning the corner. We thought she’d joined a church at first. Like the Alpha Course. You know, happy clappy Christians. Then, one day, she just, just …”
She broke down for a second time, sobbing onto her husband’s already damp shoulder.
“She didn’t come home,” he said. “We got a postcard. It’s there on the mantelpiece. Take it. Now please, leave us. And if it turns out she’s … gone, please phone ahead. I don’t want my wife in any more distress.”
Chelsea took the postcard—a red squirrel holding an acorn—and read the message aloud: “Hi Mum and Dad. I am with lovely people. The Children of Heaven. I know it sounds a bit dorky, but they’re so cool. I love you. Eloise. Three kisses.” She looked up at the Paynes. “Thank you, Mr and Mrs Payne. I’m sorry we had to bring you such distressing news. We’ll be in touch.”
Then she led Gabriel through to the hall, out of the front door, across the scrunching shingle and into the BMW.
“Fuck!” she said. “I hate those visits. And I’m probably going to have to go back there with even worse news.”
“You were brilliant. And I think deep down, they already know. He does, at any rate.”<
br />
“Yeah. But it doesn’t help, does it? Come on, let’s get this lot back to Savile Row and show the Boss. At least she’ll be pleased.”
As Chelsea drove them fast along the A3 back towards London, Gabriel realised he had enough of a grip on the mission parameters to call Britta.
“Hi, you,” she said.
“Hi. I know this is short notice but are you free tomorrow? We could do the same place, same time. It’s OK if you can’t, but I’d really like to …”
“Don’t be stupid, Wolfe. Of course I’m free. I’m on holiday by order of the Lord High Mucky Muck of MI5 international cooperation division. Or had you forgotten?”
Gabriel laughed. “No, I hadn’t forgotten. I just thought maybe you had other plans.”
“Nope. No plans. Though I might go and buy a new dress just for you.”
“OK, so see you tomorrow?”
“Ja, det är perfekt! Six-thirty. French House. Dry white. I’ll be there.”
The call ended, Gabriel sighed and put the phone back in his pocket.
“Someone special?” Chelsea asked, keeping her eyes looking straight ahead, hands at the ten-to-two position on the steering wheel.
“No. I mean, yes. A friend. She’s Swedish.”
“Is she now? Swedish.”
“Nothing wrong with that, is there?”
She shook her head, grinning. “Gabriel’s got a girlfriend,” she chanted.
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“No, sweetheart, of course she isn’t. She’s your friend, isn’t she? Your very special Swedish friend. Who’s a girl. With long blonde hair and bright blue eyes and big boobs and perfect teeth.”
“Not true,” he said, smiling now despite the interrogation. “She has red hair and small boobs and gappy teeth.”
Ninety minutes later, they pulled into the police station car park and were in Susannah's office five minutes after that. Chelsea placed the shoe box full of souvenirs and the diary dead centre on her boss’s desk.