Exposed

by Roberta Kray

  The raised eyebrows above cold accusing eyes. ‘Nine years. That’s a bit of an age gap.’

  But Max had never felt the difference. When you were older these things didn’t matter so much. ‘Is it?’

  ‘And you’ve been married for how long?’

  ‘Two years, just over two years.’

  ‘And would you say it’s a happy marriage?’

  As if anyone under suspicion was likely to say no, that they argued and fought and hated each other. But he hadn’t had to lie. ‘Yes, it’s happy, very happy.’ The words, even as he uttered them, had seemed inadequate, too bland and overused to really describe the relationship and the strength of their feelings for each other.

  ‘And your wife is French, yes?’

  ‘She comes from Paris originally, but she’s lived in England since she was twenty-four, twenty-five. She knows London well; she’s been working here for years.’

  ‘You don’t think she could have gone back to France?’

  ‘What?’ Max had stared at the inspector with pure incredulity. ‘My wife is missing,’ he’d said with more force than he’d intended. ‘She hasn’t gone on holiday. She hasn’t taken off on a whim. And she wouldn’t have gone anywhere without telling me first.’

  ‘Without your permission, you mean?’

  ‘What are you talking about? Who said anything about permission?’ Max had stopped to take a few deep breaths. He’d known he was being deliberately provoked, prodded and poked in the hope he’d let something slip. ‘What I’m trying to explain is that we talk to each other. We call if we’re going to be late home; we leave messages or write notes. She’d never want me to worry, just as I’d never want her to.’

  ‘So would Ann-Marie normally come straight home from work?’

  ‘There is no “normally”. We both lead busy lives. Occasionally she has to stay late. Sometimes she meets up with friends for a meal or drinks. Sometimes she goes round to see my mother and sits with her for a while in the evening.’

  ‘They get on, do they? Your wife and her mother-in-law?’

  Max had experienced one of those weird, surreal, almost hysterical moments where he’d wondered what was going through the inspector’s mind: was the man actually considering the possibility of a seventy-four-year-old woman disposing of her son’s wife? ‘They’re very close,’ he’d said eventually. ‘They always have been.’

  ‘But Ann-Marie hadn’t mentioned any arrangements for Friday night?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay, let’s go over the day again, right from the moment you got up in the morning.’

  Max stared out of the café window. With his elbows on the table and both his hands wrapped around the mug, he sipped the hot sweet tea while he revisited those interviews. They were engraved on his mind, carved so deeply into his consciousness that he could still repeat many of the exchanges word for word.

  The inspector had been called Roberts, a tall stringy man with nut-brown eyes and fingernails bitten down to the quick. He’d deployed the usual technique of repeating most of his questions again and again, couching them in different words. The routine had been slick, a master class in interrogation. A less experienced suspect might have crumpled under the pressure, twisted himself into knots, stammered and stuttered and fallen apart, but Max had held his ground. He’d been army trained and with two tours of duty in Belfast under his belt, he’d learned to always be watching out for the sniper, for the bullet that could come from nowhere.

  Max remembered the sheer frustration of it all. For as long as the police were focused on him, there were no other suspects and the investigation was at a dead end. Meanwhile, the man responsible was at liberty, free as a bird and with time to cover his tracks. Even when Max’s alibi checked out, the law had remained reluctant to relinquish their suspicions; he might not have been physically responsible for Ann-Marie’s disappearance, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t behind it.

  Max gave a low, barely audible growl. There had been a time when he’d had respect for the police, but not any longer. The case was still open, unsolved, with nothing in the way of progress. The law had ceased to care about Ann-Marie Tamer; she’d been consigned to a file in a dusty basement. She was old news. And with nothing proved, he remained tainted by the suspicion of guilt. Not that he cared. He didn’t give a damn about anything these days – other than finding out the truth.

  His gaze flicked away from the station, making a fast survey of the inside of the café. There were only three other customers, two of them with their heads in newspapers, the other smoking a cigarette and gazing into space. It was one of the quieter parts of the day, that hiatus between breakfast and lunch. A song by The Jam, ‘Town Called Malice’, was playing on the radio. The coffee machine made a soft hissing noise.

  Max put down the mug and flexed his fingers. His grey eyes narrowed as he let the memories flood back. His wife, his beautiful wife with her long, red-gold hair. He could see her as clearly as if she was standing in front of him, her head tilted back, her mouth widening into a smile. Two years of marriage. And they had been happy years, hadn’t they? Occasionally doubt crept into his mind. He’d heard it said that in a relationship there is always one who loves more than the other, and if that was true then maybe he’d been that person.

  It didn’t matter, though. It didn’t change the fact the marriage had worked. And perhaps that tiny bit of uncertainty had been what kept him on his toes and stopped him from becoming complacent. It would have been easy to start taking her for granted, but he’d never done that. Every morning, waking up beside her, he’d felt blessed.

  They had met after Max left the army and set up a high-end personal security business, protection for the rich, the famous or the simply neurotic. It was surprising how many people wanted protection even if they didn’t actually need it; it was a status symbol, perhaps, a self-important look-at-me kind of thing. But so long as they paid, he didn’t give a toss about their motivation.

  An American actor, over for a season at the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly Circus, had been one such client. The guy was not well-known, in fact so far adrift from famous that Max could no longer recall his name. Only an impression remained of a smallish arrogant pug-faced man with tiny hands and feet. But anyway, that was how he had come to be at a West End theatre one morning, twiddling his thumbs while Mr America sat on stage and ran through his lines at an early rehearsal.

  Max was used to being ignored when he was carrying out his duties, both by the client and by everyone else. The occasional nod, a vague smile, but on the whole he was made to feel invisible. That day people had been scurrying around, their hands filled with pages of dog-eared script, bits of scenery, props, plastic cups and endless bottles of water. Nobody had paid him any attention. He was like a piece of furniture, solid and immovable, not even human.

  No one, that is, until Ann-Marie. She had scooted past, stopped suddenly and retraced her steps. ‘Are you all right?’ she’d asked in that seductive Parisienne accent. ‘It must be very tiring standing there for hours.’

  Max had looked down on a slim, pretty woman with wide inquisitive eyes. ‘You have no idea. Luckily, I’m in peak condition. A lesser man would probably collapse from the strain.’

  ‘You don’t get bored?’

  ‘It depends on the company.’

  She had peered around him, looking towards the American on stage. ‘Is he in much danger, do you think?’

  Max had grinned at her. ‘Only from the audience. When the play opens.’

  She had smiled too and put out her hand in a sweetly formal gesture. ‘I’m Ann-Marie Allis, costume department.’

  ‘Max Tamer. Guardian angel, protector of the good and righteous.’

  She had shaken his hand, her gaze fixed on his face. ‘Are you sure you’re in the right place?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ he’d replied. ‘Believe me, I’ve never been more sure.’

  Max winced as he recalled that moment, the chance meeting that had cha
nged his life for ever. It was painful to revisit the past, but that was why he did it. He had to keep the agony alive, to keep scratching away at any healing wounds. It gave him the impetus to carry on. Without the rage and bitterness, he would have no reason to get up in the morning.

  He glanced over towards the door of the police station. How long had Eden been in there now? About half an hour, he reckoned. When he had driven over to Islington this morning, it had only been to check out the address, to take a look at the place where Tom and Eden Chase lived. He’d had no intention of following her.

  After parking on the corner, Max had walked slowly down the street, his shoes crunching on the crisp white blanket of snow. He’d counted off the numbers until he came to twenty-four, a three-storey Victorian terrace conversion, red brick with a smart white trim. His gaze had shifted up to the first-floor flat with its wide window and dark blue curtains. He’d almost expected to see someone there, a face behind the glass, but there had been no one.

  Not wanting to be spotted, Max hadn’t lingered long. He had walked to the end of the street, where he turned around and retraced his steps. It was as he was approaching the house again that the front door opened and the girl with the long red hair stepped out. She was wearing a cream woollen coat, a pale green scarf and boots. Was it Eden Chase? He couldn’t know for certain – all three flats must share the same entranceway – but he felt in his bones that it was.

  Max had followed her on to Upper Street and from there to Angel Tube. She had bought a return ticket to Oxford Circus from the machine, and he had done the same. There had only been a short wait on the platform before the train roared in. He had sat at the far end of the carriage, well away from her, and had taken care not to look at her too much. It was odd how you could tell when someone’s eyes were on you, a sixth sense that you were being watched.

  At King’s Cross, she’d changed on to the Victoria line and travelled a couple of stops to Oxford Circus. He had wondered if he was on a wild goose chase, tailing some random girl who had decided to go up West and spend the day shopping. It was only after she’d turned into Savile Row and walked into the police station that he had been sure of her identity.

  Max sat back, let out a sigh, glanced at his watch and considered buying another mug of tea. But then he’d need to take a slash and it would be just his luck if she came out of the station at the precise moment he was emptying his bladder. Not that it really mattered. Chances were that she’d be going straight home again. But he wanted to see her face, her expression, after the police had put her through the wringer. He wanted to know how bad things were looking for her husband.

  Tom Chase. The man was a pathological liar. Max cursed under his breath, thinking of all the time he had wasted. But Chase had been credible, convincing, he’d give him that. And Max hadn’t taken much persuading; from the moment he’d set eyes on him, he’d been sure that this wasn’t the bloke he was searching for. Now, looking back, he could see how easily he’d been fooled, and how he’d been blindsided by that bloody photograph.

  But he was getting ahead of himself. With nothing else to do but wait, he may as well go through events in a methodical fashion. It was important, necessary, to keep everything in order, for it all to be perfectly clear. No more mistakes. He would put the pieces together like a jigsaw until the picture was complete.

  It had been two months after his wife’s disappearance when the woman had called out of the blue, a former colleague of Ann-Marie’s who had been working abroad and only just heard the news. Her name was Katherine Standish. She’d been flustered, apologetic.

  ‘It’s probably nothing. I wasn’t even sure I should ring. I don’t want to… I mean, you’ve got enough to deal with without…’

  It had taken Max a while to get the information out of her. ‘Please. Anything could be useful.’

  ‘It’s just one of those things that stuck in my mind. It was my last day at work, the Friday, the same day Ann-Marie went missing. She went out at lunchtime to get a sandwich and when she came back she said… Well, she told me that she’d bumped into an old friend from Budapest. She was saying what a coincidence it was, after all the years, strange, you know, that they should meet again like that.’

  ‘Did she give you a name?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I’ve been racking my brains, but… We were really busy and it was just one of those quick conversations.’

  ‘What is a man or a woman?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure it was a man. Yes, she definitely said “he”.’

  ‘And did she say whether she was going to see him again?’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that. But they’d gone for a coffee together, for a catch-up, you know? She was a bit late back and… she didn’t say much more than that. I don’t think so. We were rushing around trying to get the costumes sorted for the evening. She just seemed amazed, amused, to have bumped into him again.’

  The first name that had sprung into Max’s head was Tom Chase. The man Ann-Marie had fallen for at the age of twenty-one. The man she’d followed to Budapest from Paris. The man she’d described as ‘the type who you know is bad for you but who you fall in love with anyway’.

  By this time, having lost all faith in the police, Max was conducting his own investigation into Ann-Marie’s disappearance. He had turned his back on the law and sought help from another source. Terry Street was a villain, a gangster, a man who operated outside the normal moral boundaries; he was part of the dark underbelly of London, a place of violence and shadows. If the good guys couldn’t help, Max was more than prepared to do business with the bad.

  It was Street who had put the word out, requesting information on Ann-Marie or Tom Chase. And it was Pym who had come up with the photographer in Covent Garden. With Drury Lane being within spitting distance of the piazza, Max was convinced that this must be the same Tom Chase that Ann-Marie had bumped into, the same Tom Chase she had been in love with all those years ago.

  He had gone through all her photographs and found the three black-and-whites from Hungary. Two of the pictures were of her with a couple of hippy-looking girls in the middle of a crowded market, the third of her sitting outside a café with a man. The guy was broad-shouldered, dark-haired with a rather arrogant expression. His head was inclined to one side, his arm around Ann-Marie’s shoulder. On the back of the picture she had written simply: Budapest.

  Max had stared at the photograph for a long time. He had stamped the image of the man on his brain. But he still hadn’t come close to understanding. It had crossed his mind – of course it had – that after Chase and Ann-Marie had met again, something had been rekindled between them, a spark, a fire, and then… But then what? She’d agreed to meet him that evening, had run off with him without a word? Decided to ditch her marriage, to throw away everything they’d built up?

  No sooner had the thought entered his head than he was engulfed by shame. To even think about her doing such a thing was a betrayal of their whole relationship. No, it would have been Chase who had wanted more, who had wanted her back, and when she’d refused to go along with it…

  Max had stood for a long time in the piazza at Covent Garden, staring up at the studio window. He’d craved a drink, something to take the edge off, but had resisted the urge. He needed to be lucid, to be thinking straight. One foot in front of the other. Stay calm and in control. Think. Breathe. Preparation was everything. Across the square, past the church. Eleven more steps until he reached the door. As he pressed the buzzer, he knew he could be on the brink of coming face to face with his wife’s murderer.

  A woman’s voice, smooth, upper-class. ‘Hello?’

  ‘I’m here to see Tom Chase.’

  ‘Come on up. It’s the first floor.’

  A click as the door opened. Max had walked through the red-carpeted hallway and climbed the stairs with grim determination. He could have passed the information about Chase on to the police, but his trust in them had long since been destroyed. No, this was something
he had to do himself. He wanted to look into the man’s eyes, into his soul, and see the darkness that was there.

  The receptionist was a sultry brunette. She smiled as Max approached the desk, a professional smile that didn’t stretch further than her red-lipped mouth. ‘Good afternoon. How can I help?’

  ‘You can’t,’ he’d replied abruptly. ‘I want to see Tom Chase.’

  The smile had faded at his tone. ‘Do you have an appointment?’

  Max had ignored the question. ‘Where is he?’ Glancing around, he’d spotted the closed door that must lead through to the studio and made a beeline for it. By now the adrenalin was streaming through his body. He was pumped up and ready to beat the truth out of Chase if he had to.

  The receptionist was instantly on her feet. ‘Hold on. You can’t go in there. You can’t just —’

  But Max was already through the door, only seconds away from a confrontation that could change everything. He was coiled, ready to pounce. What he saw, however, pulled him up short. The only other man in the room, currently in the process of setting up a camera, was definitely not the man in the photograph. He was a sleek, fair-haired bloke, a completely different physical type. Max stared at him. ‘Are you Tom Chase?’