by Susan Lewis
‘No. It’s Michelle,’ Cavan answered, panic shaking his voice.
‘What about her?’ Michael demanded.
‘She’s … she’s been arrested.’
‘What do you mean, arrested?’ Michael cried. ‘What for, for God’s sake.’
‘Drugs. But it’s a set up. She’s been working with some kids here, getting evidence against the police, I mean like really heavy stuff, and now they’ve arrested her. We’ve got to get her out, Michael. You don’t know these guys … They can do anything. Tom Chambers, you know, the American I told you about, well he reckons the only chance we’ve got is to buy her out. But it’s going to take a lot of money.’
Michael’s face was so pale that Ellen couldn’t bear to look at him. As she turned away, Michael turned too. ‘What about …’ he said quietly into the receiver.
‘It’s OK,’ Cavan assured him, seeming to know what he was saying. ‘Everything else is taken care of. It’s just Michelle we’ve got to worry about. Can you wire some money. We can take care of it, if you can just send …’
‘How much?’ Michael asked.
‘I don’t know. Twenty grand. Thirty.’
‘Are you out of your mind!’ Michael shouted.
‘These guys are rich, Michael. We can’t buy them off with a couple of hundred …’
‘Just a minute, you’re talking about bribing the police? Am I getting this right?’
‘Yes,’ Cavan answered in exasperation. ‘But it’s too complicated to go into now. Just send as much as you can, will you? Send it to Unibanco on Avenue Copacabana, Account 1515 in my name. You’ve got to help us with this Michael, or God knows what’s going to happen to her.’
‘I’ll send the money,’ he said, ‘but I want you to ring me the minute anything changes. Do you hear me? I want you on this phone telling me everything’s all right …’
‘I’ll call,’ Cavan promised. ‘First thing tomorrow. Can you remember the bank?’
‘Yes, I remember it,’ Michael answered and repeated it. ‘Now tell me where …’
‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ Cavan cut in. ‘I’ll tell you everything then, but I’ve got to go now,’ and he rang off.
‘Damn,’ Michael seethed, slamming the receiver back on the hook. ‘Damn, damn and fucking damn.’
Ellen was standing in the doorway, her expression filled with unease as she felt the distance creep between them. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked quietly.
He was standing with his back to her, staring at the wall. His anger and tension were so great she could almost feel it. At last he turned round to look at her. ‘All I know is Michelle’s been arrested for drugs,’ he said, seeming to resent having to say even that much.
Ellen looked away, then jumped as he banged a fist into the wall.
‘God-damnit, I should have known something like this would happen,’ he raged. ‘I should have damned well seen it coming.’
As Ellen looked at him she could feel herself breaking apart inside. ‘I didn’t realize you still cared so much,’ she said.
His head came up and for a moment he glared at her, then, turning away, he walked out into the garden.
He didn’t come to bed that night, nor did he eat any breakfast when Ellen prepared it in the morning. He simply paced up and down, waiting for the phone to ring. She’d heard him talking to his bank in the early hours of the morning organizing a twenty-thousand-pound transfer, but other than that he hadn’t spoken at all. And now, as the minutes ticked by and his temper threatened to explode, Ellen knew that it would be pointless to approach him with anything more than coffee.
At last he reached the point where he could wait no longer and snatching up the phone he dialled Cavan’s apartment. There was no reply.
It continued like that for the rest of the morning, pacing and phoning, pacing and phoning, until finally at around midday he got an answer.
‘Cavan!’ he shouted, his voice heavy with relief. ‘Where the hell have you been?’
Ellen got up from the patio and came to the door.
‘It’s Tom Chambers,’ a male voice at the other end told him.
‘Where’s Cavan?’ Michael barked. ‘I need to talk to him.’
‘Is that his brother?’
‘Yes.’
‘I haven’t seen Cavan since last night, just after he called you.’
‘What do you mean?’ Michael cried. ‘What the hell’s going on down there?’
‘I wish I knew,’ Chambers responded grimly.
‘Oh Jesus Christ,’ Michael muttered. ‘I’m coming down there. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
‘You can get a message to me through the concierge at the Rio Palace Hotel,’ Chambers told him and the line went dead.
Michael hit the connectors, then quickly dialled again. ‘Sam,’ he said to the agent who took care of the house and garden, ‘I need to get to Rio the fastest route possible. That’s right, Rio de Janeiro. No, I’m not kidding. I’m on my way to the airport now, fix up what you can and I’ll call you when I get there.’
‘Michael,’ Ellen said, as he started towards the bedroom.
He turned back.
‘What about us?’ she asked, knowing how inappropriate it was, but having to say it anyway.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Now’s just not the time.’
Her head went down, then suddenly, surprising herself as much as him, she felt an anger rising in her that she just couldn’t control. ‘Well, I think that maybe it is,’ she said tightly. ‘In fact, it’s the perfect time, because it’s not about London and LA, is it? It’s about me and Michelle. Or, more accurately, Michelle, because it’s always been about her …’
‘You don’t understand,’ he said.
‘Then explain it.’
‘There isn’t time,’ he answered, and walked off into the bedroom.
Ellen went after him. ‘You still love her, don’t you?’ she challenged. ‘That’s why you’re going …’
‘For God’s sake!’ he cried, spinning round. ‘She’s got my son, OK? We’ve got a son and he’s down there with her, and now Cavan’s missing too. So what do you want, that I sit by and do nothing? Would it make you feel better if I just ignored … Oh Christ!’ Seeing the stricken look on her face had stopped him and turning away, he dragged a suitcase from the closet and threw it on to the bed.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Ellen whispered, still so shaken she could barely find her voice.
‘I don’t want to discuss it,’ he barked.
‘But …’
‘Just leave it, OK,’
‘Then tell me about Cavan,’ she shouted. ‘Has he been arrested too? I mean, what the hell is happening down there?’
‘How the fuck am I supposed to know until I get there?’ he shot back.
‘OK, you don’t have to take it out on me,’ she shouted. ‘I’m just the person you’re leaving behind. The person you say you love, but couldn’t even tell you had a child. I had to have it yelled at me as though it was my god-damned fault he’s down there. And now you can’t wait to get away from me because Michelle, the woman you really love, the mother of your son, needs you. Well, fuck you!’ and she stormed out of the room.
‘I’m taking the car to the airport,’ he yelled after her, ‘so if you want to come too, you’d better start getting yourself together.’
‘I’ll get a cab,’ she yelled back. Then, returning to the bedroom, she said, ‘And when all this is over, when you’ve done whatever the hell you’re going down there to do, don’t start thinking about us again, because as of now there is no us. Do you hear me? We’re through. Finito. I’ve had it with you and your god-damned secrets. I don’t want to see you ever again after …’
‘OK, you’ve made your point,’ he cut in, snapping his suitcase shut and lifting it off the bed. ‘Now, if you’re not coming with me, would you mind getting out of the way.’
‘No!’ she cried through her teeth. ‘I want you to tell me you’re doing
this for Cavan and your son. I want to hear you say you don’t love her any more. At least tell me that.’
‘We’re through, remember,’ he responded coldly.
‘You bastard!’ she seethed, her hand cutting him hard round the face.
‘OK, now please, get out of the way,’ he said.
With tears streaming down her face Ellen took a step back and allowed him to pass. She was so traumatized by her temper and the shock of finding out he had a son that all she could do was rest her head against the wall and sob.
She could hear him starting up the car and willed him to come back. But he didn’t. And she knew, then, that the feeling she’d tried so hard to ignore that she was going to lose him had been right, because she just had and there wasn’t a single damned thing she could do to change it.
Chapter 24
AN IMPRESSIVE DISPLAY of international flags flapped smartly in the breeze as Michael got out of a taxi and walked swiftly along the red carpet into the lobby of the Rio Palace Hotel. It was just before midday. The sky was as blue as polished sapphire, the sun as brilliant as newly cut diamonds. Across the avenue the ocean crashed on to the beach, spreading its waves like a jealous embrace, while near-naked women with shiny bronze flesh and exotic eyes strutted their beauty for the world to admire.
Michael noticed none of it. He’d had a long wait at Miami, he was tired, in need of a shower and was beset by an unease that was fast getting the better of him. He’d tried Cavan’s apartment again as soon as he’d landed and still there was no reply. Nor had he managed to learn anything about Michelle. There had been no mention of her arrest in the British papers he’d tracked down in Miami, but they had been two-day-old editions.
Finding the concierge’s desk empty, he dropped his bag on the floor and managed to restrain himself to one hit on the bell. Immediately, a short, grey-suited man with a pear-shaped face and a smile that squashed his ruddy cheeks appeared from a rear office. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ he said, in heavily accented English.
‘My name is Michael McCann,’ Michael said. ‘I need to contact an American, Tom Chambers. He said you could get a message to him.’
‘Ah yes, of course,’ the concierge replied. ‘Senhor Chambers informed me you would be arriving some time today. My name is Franco. I am happy to help in anyway I can. Senhor Chambers has already made you a reservation at the hotel. The General Manager has ordered the installation of an extra telephone line in your room and we have put a car and driver at your disposal. If there is anything else, you have only to let us know.’
As the man spoke, a fast-moving alarm was burying into Michael’s chest. An extra telephone line, a car and driver … Why? What the hell had been happening while he was on his way here?
‘Senhor Chambers requested these things on your behalf,’ Franco explained. Michael watched the man glance around the spacious reception. A couple of bellhops and a group of linen-suited businessmen were the only people in sight. The check-in desk was deserted. Michael followed the concierge’s eyes, then looked at him again, expecting him to speak, but the man only smiled.
Irritated by the theatricality, Michael’s tone was brusquer than he’d have liked as he said, ‘How can I get hold of Mr Chambers? I need to speak to him right away.’
Immediately Franco picked up a phone and dialled. A few seconds later he compressed his lips in disappointment. ‘His mobile phone is switched off,’ he said.
‘What about his home?’
‘He resides here, at the hotel, and I know he is out at the moment. Perhaps you would like to go to your room and I will let you know the instant I manage to contact him.’
Reining in his impatience, Michael followed a bellhop up to the seventh floor, tipped the boy in dollars, then closed the door behind him. Walking straight to the window he pulled back the billowing folds of muslin and stepped out on to the balcony. The air was so hot and humid it was hard to inhale. The sun was blinding. Slipping on his sun-glasses, he took in the magnificent sweep of the ocean and the long, elegant curve of the Avenue Atlantico, with Sugar Loaf mountain rising like a giant thumb at the far end of the bay. It couldn’t have been more spectacular, nor the room, when he turned back inside, more accommodating, but again it wasn’t the trappings that interested him, it was solely the whereabouts of his brother, and the son whose existence he had so long tried and failed to deny.
Going to the phone, he dialled Cavan’s number again. Still no reply. Fighting the dread tightening in his gut he flicked open his suitcase, took out some fresh clothes and went to take a shower.
Half an hour later he was pacing the carpet. He’d tried Cavan’s number several more times, but there was still no response. Franco had given him Chambers’s mobile number, but the recorded message repeatedly informed him that the phone was disconnected. And the woman at the British Consulate had refused to give him any information on Michelle Rowe, as he was neither an accredited member of the press nor a relative. By now, his frustration was growing to such a pitch that when the phone finally rang and he heard Jodi’s voice at the other end, he yelled at her that he didn’t have time now and slammed the receiver down so hard he toppled the lamp on the nightstand.
In the end, unable to take any more, he snatched up the phone again, punched in Franco’s number and told him he needed the car. The driver was waiting as he emerged from the hotel. Giving him Cavan’s address, he got into the rear seat and tried to free his mind of all its encroaching trepidation as they headed off along the Avenue Atlantico towards Leme.
The driver weaved like a maniac through the deafening noise and choked up lanes of traffic, while Michael closed his eyes against the terror he was struggling to keep at bay. That Michelle could have got herself arrested was bad enough, but the danger she had inflicted on their son was unthinkable. God only knew what she’d been doing when they’d picked her up – Cavan had mentioned drugs, but he’d also said it was a set-up. Michael was ready to believe that, but he also knew how reckless she could sometimes be and heedless of the peril she was putting herself in. If it were just her he had to worry about then there was every chance he’d let her rot where the hell she damned well was, but it wasn’t just her, and right now he was angrier with her and more afraid than he had ever been in his life.
When at last they came to a halt outside a towering apartment block that rose from the hub of a colourful market street, he told the driver to wait and ran inside the building, hoping to find a doorman or concierge who could help him. Spotting an old lady dusting a couple of cheap leather chairs, he put on his most charming smile and summoning the full extent of his Berlitz Portuguese he approached her with, ‘Boa tarde, Senhora. Meu nome é Michael McCann. Eu sou …’ he stopped, realizing he didn’t have the first idea how to say brother in Portuguese. ‘Meu frero, Cavan,’ he said, giving it a shot.
For a moment the woman looked confused – obviously he’d missed the target – then to his relief a light started to dawn in her watery old eyes. ‘Ah, Seu Cavan?’ she said.
‘Sim,’ Michael nodded, wanting to hug her for even trying to understand. ‘Have you seen him? I’m looking for him.’
To his alarm her expression turned suddenly grave and she started to shake her head.
‘Come,’ she said in Englsh and, beckoning for him to follow, she took him into an iron-gated elevator, pressed a button for the eighth floor, then led him along a dull-yellow corridor to the furthest apartment. ‘Here,’ she said, looking up at him worriedly as she stopped at the open front door. ‘I find like this. Seu Cavan, I no know he is.’
Michael’s heart was thudding as he went past the woman into the chaos. Everything, from the chairs to the table to the mattress leaking feathers all over the wreckage, had been smashed, broken or totally ripped apart. Clothes had been torn from drawers and closets, books and papers had been slung across the floor and the drapes had been yanked from their rails. The shutters had been kicked open, the balcony was covered in broken pots; the guts of the phone were strewn
across the floor and bright patches of wallpaper marked the spots where pictures had been wrenched from their hooks, then torn from their frames.
‘Who did it, do you know?’ Michael asked, going further into the room.
‘I find this morning,’ the old lady answered. ‘I call police, but they no come yet.’
Michael looked down at a camera lying open at his feet. The film had been ripped out and lay entangled in the springs and stuffing of an old armchair. His throat closed over, for the camera had been a birthday present from him to Cavan the last time Cavan was in England.
Moving on, he pushed open a door and found a small kitchenette awash in food, smashed crockery and doors hanging from their hinges. The only other rooms were the bedroom and a shower room where the devastation was much the same. It was as he was leaving the bedroom that his foot knocked against something and bending down he picked up a wooden photograph frame. Turning it over he looked down at Michelle’s lovely face smiling up at him from behind the fragments of splintered glass. It was as though she were looking at him through all the shattered pieces of their love. His chest started to tighten and for a moment the enormity of what he could be facing stole over him in a huge debilitating wave.
‘I come this morning, it like this,’ the old woman told him again. She seemed about to say more when she stopped at the sound of the elevator gates opening and someone walking down the hall towards the apartment. Her eyes were on Michael’s, then, signalling for him to stay where he was she went to investigate. ‘Ah, Seu Tom!’ Michael heard her exclaim as she reached the door, and as she launched into an unintelligible stream of Portuguese, he quickly put down the photograph and started across the room after her, assuming, in fact praying, that it was Tom Chambers.
The two men almost collided at the door.
‘I guess you’re Michael?’ Chambers said, holding out a hand. ‘Tom Chambers.’
‘Glad to meet you,’ Michael answered, shaking his hand. ‘Any news? Do you know where Cavan is?’