A Twist of Fate

by Joanna Rees

  She locked the van and patted its door. She felt suddenly, helplessly, alone. But this was it. This was real. She was no longer in her own private road-trip movie. She was here, and the time had come to do what she’d come to do. To confess. To present her side of what had really happened. To win back her freedom. To clear her name. And then get her son back.

  She walked towards the police station. A granite building, tall and bleak. She imagined the police who’d have staffed it when she’d lived here as a child – those men who’d hunted her mercilessly through the wood.

  She stopped at a phone booth halfway there. She scuffed another cigarette out on the floor as she dialled Lars’s number. In the leafless tree in the middle of the square a robin landed on a branch. She hoped it was a good omen.

  ‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘Please be there.’

  And please, God, let him have dug up something. Something to help her win back Alfie. Something they could take to the Italian and American authorities to prove that Brett Maddox had gained control of Scolari through some illegal means. Something to get Roberto his company back.

  But as the phone continued to ring unanswered, Romy dreaded what she might hear. Because, even though Lars had worked through that last night she’d been in his apartment in Amsterdam, he’d found nothing – not a single example of any irregularities, nothing at all they could use.

  A click, then: ‘Yes,’ Lars said.

  She felt absurdly relieved just to hear his voice. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Oh, Romy. Thank God. Where’ve you been? I’ve been worried sick.’

  ‘I’m here. In Schwedt. I’m calling from a phone-box,’ she said, feeding more change into the booth’s slot. ‘The phone you gave me, it ran out of juice.’

  ‘But you’re OK?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’d still better brace yourself,’ he said.

  She felt a flare of hope rise up inside her then. It was impossible to miss the excitement in his voice. ‘What?’

  ‘I think I’ve finally found something.’

  Romy gripped the receiver with both hands. ‘What?’

  ‘Six weeks ago Maddox Inc.’s new media division bought into CYZ Holdings, a small German media company.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it,’ Romy said, confused.

  ‘Me neither. But it’s not the name of the company that’s interesting; it’s where it was originally registered.’

  ‘Go on . . .’

  ‘Schwedt.’

  As Romy stared out through the grimy phone-box window across the town square towards the brooding police station and the long, thin spire of the church, she felt her heart pounding hard against her ribs.

  Brett Maddox – the man who’d just uncovered all the carefully hidden secrets of her past, all the secrets that had begun right here in this town – he’d recently invested in a company from this town as well.

  ‘Who owns CYZ?’ Romy asked, desperate to hear more now, the implications of what Lars had just told her already multiplying exponentially in her head.

  ‘I thought you’d ask that. So I took the liberty of compiling a list of the directors’ names,’ Lars said. ‘So let’s just see if any of them might in any way have known something about your past.’ Lars began to read out the names: ‘There’s a T. Twigner,’ he said, ‘and an H.G. Solya and a R. Beluzzi—’

  ‘Wait. Hang on. Back up,’ Romy said.

  ‘Twigner?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Solya? H.G. Solya?’

  Solya . . .

  Somewhere in the far reaches of Romy’s memory a dusty, forgotten light switched on. The boys in the orphanage – the bullies she’d tried to forget – rose up clearly in her mind. All those boys who’d always tried to frighten her, but who had always been frightened themselves by something else.

  By someone else. A phantom. A bogeyman. Solya . . . She remembered the whispers in the darkness of the dormitory. Solya’s gonna get you. Solya’s in charge of everything. If you make Solya angry, he’ll crush you like a fly. Solya’s got Lemcke in his pocket. Solya calls all the shots. Those girls are for Solya. You wait and see, one day he’ll get you too.

  The laundry. The orphanage. Solya had controlled both. The children who’d been photographed; the kids who’d disappeared.

  It must have been Solya who’d known about her all along. Who’d pointed Ulrich in her direction. Who’d told Brett Maddox all about her past. In return for Brett investing in his business, Romy guessed.

  Romy felt adrenaline rush through her.

  Solya was now Director of a Maddox Inc. company. Solya and Brett Maddox were publicly – undeniably – linked.

  Solya was once a gangster.

  She’d found her weapon at last.

  ‘What else have you got on him?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing yet . . . but that’s not to say I can’t find something.’

  ‘Then do it,’ Romy said. ‘Dig up anything – everything you can. ‘Solya’s an animal. A criminal. Tie any of that to Brett Maddox and we’ll be able to bring that bastard down too.’

  Romy pushed through the door of the old police station. Inside, the grubby grey floor led to a high grey reception desk. Posters curled on the wall. A clock ticked loudly in the silence.

  ‘I’m here to talk to a police officer,’ she told the female guard, in German, the words feeling awkward in this once-familiar tongue, even though she’d rehearsed them a thousand times on the journey here. ‘I want to talk to someone about Heinz-Gerd Solya and his connection with the Bolkav State Orphanage. And I want to give a statement about the fire that burnt the orphanage down. My lawyer will be here to join me soon.’

  She’d expected more of a reaction to her grand announcement, but the woman behind the desk continued writing. A long moment later she looked up at Romy. She was wearing a grey uniform and a shade of pink lipstick that didn’t suit her. Romy saw her checking her out – looking at Romy’s stained jeans and roll-neck jumper. Her hair was greasy and tied up in an elastic band.

  ‘I’m afraid we’re short-staffed. The officer you need to speak to is out on a call.’ She looked at her watch. ‘He’ll be back in the hour. Would you like to wait?’

  Romy nodded. ‘Please.’

  ‘It’s warmer in here,’ the woman said. She unlocked the door next to the reception desk and Romy walked into a small glass-sided interview room.

  She stared at the coffee stain on the desk. Every impulse in her body told her to run once more – to get out of here. But she forced herself to stay. She had to do this.

  The clock ticked. Romy shuffled nervously in her seat. This was excruciating. She’d come here to confess. She didn’t want to wait. She’d been waiting all her life.

  ‘Are you OK in here?’ Another police officer stuck his head around the door. He was young, Romy saw, barely old enough to shave. ‘Can I get you a coffee?’

  Romy nodded mutely, wondering how well they’d treat her once they knew the truth.

  ‘What’s your name?’ the female officer asked, finally looking as if she meant business, walking in armed now with a clipboard and a pen.

  ‘My name is Romy Scolari, but originally I was from here. From the orphanage.’

  Now the attention of both of them was caught by the outside door opening and a man and woman coming into the reception area. The man had short hair and when he pushed his sunglasses up into his hair, Romy saw that he had a scar across the left side of his face. But its effect wasn’t sinister, Romy thought.

  The woman, who, from the way she looked at the man, was clearly his girlfriend, had long blonde hair tied in a plait. She was wearing an expensive leather coat with smart trousers and a cashmere jumper and matching blue scarf. Together they approached the reception desk.

  Romy stood up and walked to the glass window.

  And as she watched as the woman on the other side of the glass started talking to the officer, she felt a jolt right in the pit of her stomach. That wasn’t any woman. That was
. . . that was Thea Maddox. She was sure of it.

  She wouldn’t forget a face like that. James had dug out loads of press clippings of her in Milan. When Thea Maddox had tried to take over Scolari.

  Thea Maddox. What the hell was she doing here? Was she involved with Solya too, like her brother Brett? Because there was no way, surely, she could know that Romy was here.

  Then the strangest thing happened. Even though Romy hadn’t moved – hadn’t done anything to catch the other woman’s attention – Thea Maddox turned and stared right at her. Through her, it felt.

  And in that moment it was like looking into a mirror. Romy saw a flicker of recognition in Thea Maddox’s eyes, which quickly turned to shock. She was clearly just as surprised to see Romy.

  She pointed at Romy and then the officer looked at the small office where Romy was. In a moment Thea Maddox and the man had marched into the small meeting room too.

  Romy hadn’t expected Thea Maddox to be so beautiful in the flesh. Or so strangely familiar. Her blonde hair and radiant skin seemed to light up the dull grey room.

  ‘You’re Romy Scolari,’ Thea Maddox said, as if she could hardly believe it. ‘I’m—’

  ‘I know who you are.’ Romy couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice. She didn’t want to, either. She wanted to scream.

  Why was Thea Maddox here? Why now? Why here in the police station? Did that mean the police here were corrupt as well? By coming here had Romy just made the biggest mistake of her life?

  ‘I—’ Thea Maddox started to speak again, but Romy refused to listen.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. When your company bought Scolari – stole Scolari – when your brother blackmailed me, I lost everything. Including my son.’

  Thea Maddox’s blue eyes locked with Romy’s. ‘Brett Maddox is not my brother,’ she said. ‘He’s a liar and a cheat. And he blackmailed me too. And when you sold him Scolari, he used it against me to make me resign. Now, I don’t know why you sold to him, but let me tell you, it cost me everything too.’

  The policewoman interrupted then. Romy had almost forgotten she was there.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said to Romy. ‘Your lawyer is here.’

  A smartly dressed woman in her late thirties walked into the office.

  ‘I’m Tegen Londrom,’ she said. She flashed a neat business card and shook hands with Romy. She shrugged off the camel coat that was slung around her shoulders. ‘And you are the police?’ she asked Thea Maddox and the man she was with.

  ‘No,’ Thea said.

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘Never,’ said Romy.

  ‘Then why are you here at all?’ Tegen Londrom demanded of Thea and the man, before turning angrily to the policewoman. ‘My client is here to make a statement about the burning-down of the Bolkav State Orphanage in December 1983, and also to discuss’ – she checked her iPad – ‘a certain Heinz-Gerd Solya, who may once have had connections here.’

  ‘Wait,’ Thea Maddox said, ‘did you just say Solya?’ She didn’t even wait for Tegen Londrom to reply. ‘But, Michael,’ she said, her eyes blazing now as she turned to her male companion, ‘that’s him. Solya was the man in the woods with Volkmar. He was the one . . . ’

  Romy looked between the two of them.

  Then Thea Maddox spun back round to face her and said, ‘What’s Solya to you?

  Romy was so shocked, not only by the question, but by who was asking it, that before she could stop herself, the words she’d meant the policewoman to hear began pouring out of her.

  ‘Solya was connected to the orphanage where I grew up. He did terrible things to the girls there. He—’

  ‘You grew up in Schwedt?’ Thea said, incredulously.

  ‘Yes. In the orphanage. That’s why I’m here. It’s because of me that it burnt down.’

  Something extraordinary was happening to Thea Maddox’s expression. It had started blazing with what Romy could only imagine was some kind of triumph, some kind of hope.

  ‘Your age . . .’ Thea said, stepping closer to her now. ‘Your eyes . . . Do you have any idea who your parents are? Where you came from?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Romy said. ‘I never found anything in the orphanage files.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘No, I tried to find out once. But there was no paperwork. Only an old green blanket.’

  Thea Maddox let out a gasp. Her hand flew to her chest. ‘It’s you,’ she breathed. ‘It’s you. Oh my God . . . ’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Romy asked.

  ‘That’s why I’m here. To find the baby in the green blanket. And if that’s you . . .’ she said, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘What?’ Romy asked. ‘Then that means . . . that means that you’re my sister.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  February 2010

  In the cold morning light at Berlin airport Romy stood on the tarmac outside the arrivals area where the private planes landed. She stamped her feet against the bitter cold, looking up again at the white cloud, waiting for Roberto’s private plane to land.

  She took her phone out of her pocket and looked again at the text Thea had sent her from America, knowing that she must have got up in the middle of the night to send it at the right time.

  ‘Good luck,’ it said, ‘I’m thinking of you xxx.’

  And I am thinking of you, Romy thought. Dear Thea. My sister.

  After everything that had happened in the past few months, it seemed unimaginable now to Romy that she’d never known that she’d had a sister. Romy would never forget Thea’s revelation in the police station in Schwedt, and how she’d told Sebastian Trost’s story about the babies being sold in the woods, and the feeling Romy had had – even before Tegen had suggested blood tests – that Thea was right. It had been an indescribable feeling of certainty.

  The fact that she’d actually discovered family – real family – for the first time in her life had made Romy feel as if all her childhood dreams had come true. But it hadn’t been the homely German Hausfrau that Romy had always fantasized she might one day meet. No. Her sister was Thea Maddox. The Thea Maddox, whom everybody knew. The Thea Maddox who was wealthy, influential and smart.

  But she was an altogether different kind of Thea, too, Romy had discovered. A kind, sweet, wonderful, generous and beautiful Thea. A Thea whom Romy was still getting to know. But a Thea whom Romy truly thought of as her own gift from God. Because she’d been there. Just when Romy had thought everything was lost, Thea had saved her.

  It had been Thea who’d stayed right by Romy’s side in those horrible weeks as the police had launched their investigation into the Bolkav State Orphanage fire. And Thea who’d held Romy’s hand as they’d gone back to the site of what had once been the orphanage, and had encouraged her to step through the gap in the white police tent to where the police had dug down through the ruins and rubble. It had been Thea who’d walked first down into the interconnecting basements of the orphanage and laundry, where the police had unearthed rusted cages and cameras, manacles and fragments of human bone. And Thea who’d held Romy as she’d wept.

  It had been impossible not to. As the policeman’s torch beam had swept through the dusty air, the ghostly screams of Lemcke’s victims had rung out in Romy’s ears, and she’d remembered once again the names of those lost children whom the rest of the world had forgotten all about. But she’d vowed to Thea, right at that moment, that she would start remembering them.

  Afterwards it had taken hours and hours of police interviews, but eventually, Romy hadn’t been charged either with the murder or manslaughter of Fox or with starting the orphanage fire. Of the four witnesses – the boys who’d raped Claudia, and Claudia herself – who’d originally made the accusations against Romy, the only two left alive were now serving sentences for various crimes, including rape, in a maximum-security jail. The German State Prosecution Service did not believe that any testimony these men gave could be co
nsidered reliable enough to lead to Romy’s conviction.

  And her description of Ulrich and the boy who’d been there the night Alfonso had died in the Villa Gasperi had been enough to link them both to several unsolved murders and brutal assaults in the region.

  Furthermore, as the investigation into the orphanage had become more public, other witnesses – other children who’d been there – had begun coming forward and telling their stories; and in each case Lemcke’s and Solya’s names had become more prominent. To the point where Solya himself had been arrested at the airport en route for South America and had been taken in for questioning.

  Thea had flown immediately back to the States with Michael, hoping to make public the association of Maddox Inc. and Solya’s company, but Brett had been careful to distance himself. As usual, she said, allegations weren’t sticking, but Thea was determined to find a way to make them.

  More importantly – in part thanks to Tegen, in part to Thea’s authority in managing the proceedings and in part to the integrity of Romy’s version of events – the police had come to believe that Romy had indeed acted in self-defence. They’d decided not to press charges. For the first time in her life Romy found herself truly free.

  And there, waiting for her when she’d been released, had been Lars. She remembered how they’d got back to the camper van, still in the car park – weeks after Romy had left it there – and had hugged each other close. And then they’d kissed. Properly this time, neither one of them pulling back. It had just seemed like the right thing to do. Then Lars had done two more amazing things.

  He’d driven her straight to The Regent hotel in Berlin, where he’d booked a suite. Then he’d given her his laptop and let her write a long-overdue email to Roberto Scolari.

  The reply that had come back had been curt. Alfie was booked to go skiing at Christmas with Cesca’s family. Their reunion could wait, certainly until Romy had dealt with all the press in Germany, and until Roberto had had time to clear her name with the authorities in Italy and remove the charges against her.