The Wrong Kind of Clouds

by Amanda Fleet

  ‘Absolutely. That’s why John and I just had to do something. These kids have nothing. I know people might not agree, but surely, it has to be better to give these children a chance in life. If Limbani had stayed in Malawi, he’d have had nothing at all.’

  Did she detect a slight thawing the other end? ‘Limbani…? What was his surname?’

  ‘Nyirenda. But of course, he’s Limbani Saunders now.’

  ‘Of course.’ Summer kept her voice easy despite her rising disquiet.

  ‘Incidentally, how did you know that we had adopted a child from Malawi?’ Mrs Saunders suddenly cut across her thoughts.

  Summer floundered. ‘Oh, I was just given a list of people to contact from my boss. I’m not sure where he got it. Anyway, I think I have all I need. Thank you for your time and for answering all my questions. You’ve been really helpful.’

  ‘Which paper did you say you were from?’

  Her gaze fell on yesterday’s newspaper in front of her. ‘The Scotsman.’ After all a big lie was as bad as a small one.

  ‘Oh. We don’t get that in Kent. But you’re sending us a copy before it gets published, yes?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Well, thank you very much for your time and I’m sorry for disturbing you at home.’

  She rang off and breathed deeply.

  ‘Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.’

  Perhaps Patrick’s disappearance had nothing to do with Kate Hampton and everything to do with Malawian children being adopted illegally. But maybe it wasn’t illegal. Maybe the Saunders had received the blessing of the great-aunt and had followed protocol.

  She texted Moyenda: ‘When did Asala Kalonga die?’

  She swung her feet down and slithered off the chair, needing another coffee. While she waited for the kettle to boil, she forced herself to think widely and consider other options. If all this was above board, what would Patrick have been writing about? Exactly the sort of article she’d pretended to be researching just now? The evidence that there was anything wrong was circumstantial. The timing of the money could be a coincidence. It could have been a donation from either the orphanage or the church to Samala to support the work they did with the orphans. It could be completely unrelated to Limbani’s departure to the UK.

  Her phone buzzed. A text from the same Malawian number as the day before. She opened it.

  ‘2010. Leave it alone.’

  If it was all above board, how could a dead woman have signed the paperwork? And why was Moyenda so scared that he was changing SIM cards almost daily to reply to her? She remembered they were really easy to get hold of. Most Malawians in the city had mobiles; though few had a landline—the country had largely skipped that phase of telecoms technology—but he was obviously reading texts to his old number so he hadn’t merely lost his phone.

  She took her coffee back to the table in the window and started to redraw her mind map, trying to stick to facts and question all her assumptions. She added in all the information from Mrs Saunders, and the details of the money arriving in the account. If only she could find out where the money had originated. Maybe Benedict would be able to trace it? Would she ask him?

  She drew up a list of all the large, unlabelled deposits and the names of the missing children. Leafing through her photograph albums from the trip to Malawi, she found pictures of three more of the children and printed them off, stapling them to the family trees and searching through Patrick’s notes to find out when they’d gone missing. Each of them had gone missing at around the same time as a large deposit had been made into the Malawian account. The payments were all the same value, give or take a few hundred kwacha. Summer chewed her lip. One identical timing could have been written off as a coincidence, but this many? She started again on Patrick’s laptop, chasing up the blogs and web pages he’d bookmarked, this time looking for specific faces. The only other boy that Patrick seemed to have got very far in tracing was Mabvuto, now living in Chicago. He’d gone missing in late November and the new family in Chicago had posted pictures of their Christmas meal in the family blog. The couple were very religious and much of the blog was taken up with thanking God for bringing them a son. Evidently, they’d been childless but they now had Mabvuto, although they seemed to have changed his name to Matthew. She stared at the pictures. Mabvuto had appeared in a number of her pictures and had a thin scar on his right arm and the twisted, rippled skin all down his face that resulted from falling into a fire when he was smaller. Matthew had the same scarring.

  How did these missing children fit in with everything else? Was there really someone at the MSA involved who hadn’t taken kindly to Patrick discovering all this? Were Patrick’s bruises nothing to do with a loan shark but the result of a warning about investigating this? Was Patrick actually short of money even after he’d sold so much of his stuff? She returned to his laptop and opened up the files of accounts.

  ‘Jesus. No wonder you were in and out of money—these are a complete mess!’

  There were several worksheets in the Excel workbook but she didn’t understand the coding of them. Numbers had never been her strong point—she was a visual person who remembered scenes and faces brilliantly. She stared at the figures on the screen and pulled out the sheet of paper she’d retrieved from Patrick’s flat. None of the numbers were the same as in the spreadsheet. She tussled with it for a few more minutes and then gave up. Maybe Benedict could look at them. She printed out each sheet of accounts, labelled them and added them to the growing file at her side.

  She wondered whether to email Moyenda again. If he was so scared, did he doubt that his email was safe? Or his phone? Could she ask him about the children without getting him into danger? He didn’t have a computer at home and relied on work or internet cafes to check his emails. In the end, she asked him in a text if he could access his emails safely. He replied ‘yes but only soon’ almost immediately from his usual number. She quickly composed a message to him, outlining what she suspected was happening with the boys and asked him where the money had come from on the dates that coincided with the boys going missing. She also asked him if any of the people whose names were boxed in red in the family trees were still alive. She told him that Patrick was still missing, but that a good policeman was helping her to find him. She hoped that the last part was true and clicked on send.

  The mind map was to one side of her pile of notes and she glanced over it. Where the hell was Patrick? What had happened to him? Was he even still alive?

  To quell the flush of green the last question had brought, she started to draw up a timeline, working backwards from Tuesday and using the information she had garnered from Ed, Grace and the dates of the files that Patrick had been working on. Why had Patrick been beaten up? That seemed to be a key point, but as far as she could tell, it could relate to owing money, uncovering a child-trafficking ring, Paul Hampton finding out Patrick was screwing his wife or none of these things.

  She was roused from her thoughts by a hammering on the door. She leaned forward and peered out of the window. It was Benedict. She downed the dregs of her coffee and went to answer the door, pleased to see him. The expression on his face quashed her enthusiasm.

  ‘Have you talked to the press?’ he said curtly, looming large in front of her.

  ‘What? No!’

  ‘You swear?’

  ‘I swear. What are you on about?’

  He thrust the latest copy of The Scotsman into her hands. Summer ran her eyes over the headline article and the name Patrick Forrester leaped out at her. She looked up, eyes wide.

  ‘Not me. I promise you. Not me.’

  He nodded, his face softening. ‘Get your things. We’re going to Patrick’s flat.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I called Edinburgh this morning and got seconded on to the case. Get your things. I need you to talk me through anything we find at his flat.’

  ‘Would you be asking me if you didn’t need me to do that?’

  ‘Yes.’ He smiled. ‘I need your k
eys too. Get your things.’

  Summer ushered him into the hallway to wait while she grabbed her handbag and Patrick’s keys. She picked up her camera bag, and re-joined Benedict in the hallway.

  ‘What’s that?’ He nodded at the bag.

  ‘Camera.’

  His lips thinned but he didn’t comment. Summer followed him out to his car, threw her camera bag into the back and settled into the front passenger seat. Benedict waited while she buckled up and then pulled away briskly. Summer looked across at him, trying to read his mood. Why had he thought she would’ve gone to the papers? And even if she had, did he think that she wouldn’t have mentioned it last night? She was disappointed he thought so little of her.

  ‘So. There’s a proper case now and you’re on it?’ she asked.

  ‘Apparently. Albeit leashed.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Edinburgh, while being grateful to me for taking some of their workload, don’t want me to go stamping around, sullying the reputation of the health minister.’

  ‘Oh. I thought she’d sullied it enough herself.’

  He laughed, making the atmosphere finally lift. ‘So, they’ve let me work on the case since I know so much already, but within boundaries. One of those boundaries, naturally, is that the press doesn’t get wind of things.’ He looked across at her meaningfully.

  She threw her hands up. ‘Hey, I didn’t tell the press about Kate Hampton and Patrick.’

  ‘I believe you. But I don’t want anything else to leak out. You’re in a privileged position, Summer. Don’t break my trust in you.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  She fell silent, wishing that he respected her more. LB focused on the road. Her mind churned for a moment. ‘If I didn’t tell them and you didn’t tell them, who did?’

  ‘Good question. Don’t know. The Scotsman wouldn’t reveal their sources. Who else knew? The ned at the MSA? Who else could he have told after you saw him and he put two and two together?’

  ‘Anyone. Everyone?’

  ‘Hmm. Did anyone else know?’

  ‘Well, Paul Hampton of course, but it doesn’t seem likely it was him.’ LB inclined his head noncommittally. Summer continued, ‘Who else? I guess Patrick could have told someone.’

  ‘Who were his confidantes? Who was he closest to?’

  Summer reflected, staring out of the window. ‘I don’t know. He had a huge circle of friends, but none who were bosom pals, I would say. I didn’t see anything that pointed to a best friend. He talked to me when we were together. My guess, uneducated and narrow as it undoubtedly is, was that he talked to the people he was seeing, when he was seeing them.’

  LB glanced across, grinning. ‘Don’t be touchy! Siblings?’

  ‘No. I mean yes, he has a sister, Lauren, but they’re not close. She lives in London with her husband. He wouldn’t talk to her. Certainly not about having an affair. I got the impression she was a very straight-laced woman from the way he spoke about her.’

  ‘So is Kate Hampton from all accounts. Why do you think she’d get involved with Patrick?’

  ‘He’s a charmer. He knows how to flatter, how to be liked. He’s very charismatic. Maybe things with Paul were difficult? Maybe she was in need of a bit of attention?’

  LB shrugged. ‘Okay, so, why would Patrick go for Kate Hampton?’

  ‘Hmm. Trickier one to answer without knowing her. I wouldn’t have said she was his type, but perhaps he fancied a challenge. Perhaps she’s much warmer and sexier in real life than how she comes across on TV. Maybe he was feeling randy one evening, she happened to be the one he shagged and she was shit-hot in bed. Who knows?’

  ‘Would he have targeted her deliberately in order to be able to blackmail her?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. He isn’t that smart at long-term planning for one thing and I honestly don’t think it’s in his nature to be that manipulative. It would be much more likely that something happened with her and then he saw the possibility of leverage.’

  They fell silent again.

  ‘Why are we going to the flat?’ Summer asked after a while.

  ‘I just want to have a look around. See if there’s anything that seems more important than it did when you went there. You’re coming as a guide.’

  ‘Okay. What’s your working theory, about who’s behind it?’

  ‘I’m not sure. The fact that Patrick’s name has come out into the open, but the fact he’s missing hasn’t makes me wonder if the person who leaked the story knows something about his disappearance.’

  ‘Or maybe they don’t know he’s missing and it’s just one of Ed the Ned’s friends trying to make a bit of money.’

  LB nodded, appearing unconvinced.

  ‘I did a bit more digging on the kids in Malawi today and went back through some of Patrick’s notes on it all. I think that the pastor at the church and one of the Malawian government ministers are selling some of the orphanage kids to Westerners and that Samala might be involved. It seems to be on the receiving end of some donations that appear at exactly the same time as the kids go missing. I’m waiting to hear back from Moyenda.’

  LB glanced across. ‘If Samala is involved, will Moyenda tell you?’

  ‘I think so. He seems genuinely worried about the kids.’

  ‘He could be genuinely concerned for the kids but see that a new life in the West has more advantages than disadvantages for them.’

  Summer frowned. ‘Hmm. He’s not like that. He acknowledges all the disadvantages of Malawi but would rather change the country than sell the kids.’

  ‘Changing countries is a noble idea, but not one that’ll happen in his lifetime. Maybe he’s working at changing the country and trying to achieve a decent future for the kids. I’m not saying this is my view, but let me play devil’s advocate for a moment. The kids have no family and a precarious future living in an orphanage with none of the network of contacts that I assume smooths paths in Malawi as much as it does here? Some Westerner sees these kids, feels really sorry for them, knows they can offer them a life of plenty over here. They find out how to adopt them. Legally, this might be difficult but the pastor of the local church knows someone in the government and knows that things can be arranged and the correct paperwork obtained. The Westerners pay a fee, shall we call it, for these services, some of which lines the pocket of the pastor, some of which lines the pocket of the minister and some of which goes to Samala and the orphanage to keep them sweet and, more importantly, quiet. The kid gets a great new life in the West, some people in a very poor country make some money, the charity and the orphanage get some money which helps the kids who are left. Tell me who’s losing out?’

  ‘The kid, who loses all his roots and culture.’

  LB shrugged. ‘Maybe not too high a price to pay to have all the advantages he’ll gain.’

  Summer chewed her lip, finding it hard to argue. LB looked across.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded.

  ‘It’s just wrong. And the picture you paint is very rosy. Where’s the guarantee that the kid is better off? He could be sold into the sex trade or abused.’

  ‘Fair point. Maybe the pastor vets the couples?’

  Summer looked out of the side window, wishing she had a stronger argument. ‘Maybe. Maybe we’ll never know.’

  ‘So how does the scam work, do you know?’

  Summer paused before answering, trying to ensure that her evidence supported her theories and checking mentally where the weak spots were, determined that LB wouldn’t pull the rug from beneath her again. How much should she tell him about what she’d done?

  ‘This is all based on what little Patrick had put together. As far as I can tell, the pastor makes the arrangement at the orphanage and the minister signs the paperwork. Usually there would need to be permission from any remaining family to allow the child to leave the country. Patrick had got family trees drawn up of the missing kids and some of the names were outlined in red.’

  She stopped
. Gentle violet had leached away at these half-truths, and clashing colours were almost overwhelming her. Why was it so important to tell him everything? She didn’t know. She just needed to.

  ‘The one family I’ve managed to talk to said that it was this relative who agreed to the adoption,’ she said, relieved that the jarring mosaic started to subside with her words. ‘Except that the person died years ago. Long before the couple had even met the child, never mind started the adoption process.’

  ‘Hang on. You said the one family you’ve managed to talk to. Who have you spoken to?’

  Summer explained.

  ‘What else have you not told me?’ His hands tightened on the steering wheel, the tendons white over his knuckles.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Seriously, Summer.’

  ‘Seriously! I called Mrs Saunders yesterday as part of a fishing trip. Then this morning I called her again before you came over. The only other thing I’ve done is to look at the file of accounts on Patrick’s laptop and try and draw up a timeline of his life. I’ve got both of them with me and you’re welcome to have them! I wasn’t deliberately hiding the fact I’d contacted Mrs Saunders from you, we just hadn’t got round to talking about it. You’ve been full of questions about Kate Hampton.’

  LB nodded, his jaw set. Summer stared at him for a moment.

  ‘Why are you more interested in Kate Hampton today? Is it really just because the news of Patrick has broken? Ed could have broken that and still not been involved in Patrick’s disappearance.’

  He smiled, his eyes twinkling. ‘Something I tried to teach you last night has stuck. Yeah, Ed could have said something. You’re a reporter for The Scotsman, say, and have this big scandal about a politician you want to reveal, but you know that you have to be right because otherwise, the aforementioned minister is going to sue your arse. Would you take Ed’s word?’

  ‘No. Not without proof.’

  ‘Bingo. What proof has been offered? And who would have it?’