Allowing the music to fill the silence, Harry looks out of the window and after a moment, Tom starts to sing along quietly.
‘You know this one?’ Harry says and Tom almost smiles, speaking more than three words for the first time since their trip began.
‘You don’t?’ His face is incredulous, almost animated. ‘Eartha Kitt, man – it’s one of her most famous songs – it’s a classic.’
He starts to hum along again, a half-smile forming on his lips, as if he is suddenly lost in memory. Harry considers him for a moment before turning back towards the windscreen.
‘I don’t really listen to music.’
‘You don’t listen to music?’ Tom turns to look at him, before returning his attention to the road.
Harry shrugs. ‘Not really.’
‘That’s fucked up.’
There is a beat’s pause and then Harry laughs wistfully, looking out the window. ‘You’re not the first person to say so.’ His mind momentarily retreats to Meg, in the flat in Bethnal Green, several years earlier, not long before she left.
Abruptly, he changes the subject, pushing away the image of her face, a curl of red hair falling across her eye. ‘Where you from, then? That’s not a London accent.’
‘You really are a detective,’ Tom replies. ‘Edinburgh. Left when I was in my early twenties but some things you can’t shake. You?’
‘Irish.’
‘I guessed that much,’ Tom said. ‘Where in Ireland?’
‘Galway.’
‘Nice.’
‘It’s all right. Like you, got out as soon as I could. What did you do in London?’ He didn’t really care about the answer so much as he was grateful for the conversation, any distraction from the memories that threatened to smother him, the image of Anna that still lingered, just out of shot.
‘I was an architect, until the kids were born …’ His voice hardened. ‘One of us needed to stay at home and …’
The sound of the baby stirring cuts him off and when Harry turns, he sees Gabriela coming to, sitting up and reaching forward to comfort her.
‘I think she might need a change. How far away are we?’
‘Not far,’ Harry replies. ‘It’s just past midnight now. We’ll stay the night at a guesthouse in Béziers then drive on in the morning. The house is only a few minutes from there but it’s quite remote and the road can apparently be treacherous, so I don’t think we want to arrive in the dark.’
They leave the guesthouse early the next morning, Harry producing a bag of croissants as they pile into the car, like the teacher on a school trip.
No one speaks; the only sound is the occasional ping from the game Callum is playing on the iPad. Soon, long, featureless roads turn into smaller lanes, twisting and turning around the side of the mountain, folding into a series of pretty roundabouts and footbridges, before closing in on the village. The main boulevard is drenched in light; the forecourt of the Mairie brims with scooters.
Harry signals to Tom to pull over in front of a small café with an adjoining tabac.
‘You speak French, don’t you?’ he says, turning to Gabriela, without waiting for a reply. ‘We’re all going to go inside and order coffees. Strike up a conversation with someone there and explain that you’re moving here to renovate an old house. The plan is to live in it long-term, once it’s complete. You will be home-schooling the kids, if anyone asks.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we want people to know why you’re here before anyone starts asking questions. You want to assimilate without getting too involved. If it comes up, I’m here to help you with the move. OK? Right, let’s do this.’
Madeleine
London, three days after Anna dies
Madeleine hails a cab on Marylebone Lane. It is an extravagant way to travel to the office, she concedes, but if she were to take the tube as normal, it would no doubt be while she was underground without phone-signal that the call she had been waiting for all morning would finally come through. As for the bus – she would rather crawl to Vauxhall, and that would probably be quicker than negotiating all those endless stops, even in a tailored pencil skirt and heels.
Ducking into the back, she picks up the newspaper a previous passenger has left on the seat, partly to distract herself from the nerves building in her stomach with every second that her phone doesn’t ring, and partly to signal to the driver that she is not in the market for chit-chat. Pulling out the croissant tucked in her handbag, she takes a bite.
It is a local paper, folded somewhere in the middle, and she flicks through the pages with limited interest until she reaches the back page and turns it over. She sees the photograph of a glamorous-looking couple, arm-in-arm, and begins to read:
The socialite heiress and magazine editor Anna Witherall has died at her North London home. The mother-of-two was found hanged at the family house on Parliament Hill in South End Green. Ms Witherall, who was editor of luxury interiors magazine House at the time of her death, was married to the late David Witherall. The couple leave behind two daughters, aged three.
David Witherall, who was heir to the global trading company TradeSmart, died just months ago after being hit by a car. Ms Witherall was found hanged at the couple’s £3.5m home. Her body was discovered by a friend who had been looking after the children for the day.
An inquest will follow.
Scanning the page, Madeleine’s eyes fall on the byline. ISOBEL MASON.
Isobel Mason. Madeleine sits forward in her seat, mulling over the name, her mind moving back to the previous week, to the meeting at the women’s refuge in Kentish Town. Madeleine and Dana had arrived first. Maureen, who ran the refuge, was an old contact of Madeleine, since her time investigating human trafficking back at the Foreign Office. It was Maureen who had brokered the meeting between Dana, one of Madeleine’s informants, and Isobel Mason, a local journalist and friend of Maureen who was looking into an attack on a sex worker Dana had been in contact with. Madeleine hadn’t needed to go along but there was no way she was going to let one of her sources, and a woman she cared about, go to meet a reporter alone. If she was honest, she had been reticent about Dana speaking to Isobel at all, but from Maureen’s assurances, Isobel was as fine a journalist as one could wish to meet – not that the bar, in Madeleine’s experience, was particularly high. Isobel’s motives in probing Dana for information, Maureen insisted, were as much about trying to find out what happened to the missing woman as they were about finding a story. At least that’s what Maureen had clearly chosen to believe.
‘Dana has been working with the organisation to help report suspected instances of trafficking. She has been hugely brave in working with Madeleine, and she thinks she might be able to help you,’ Maureen had said by way of introduction once Isobel had arrived.
Madeleine had tried not to look taken aback when she walked in. In the flesh, which frankly she could do with a little more of, Isobel looked about twelve, with rings under her eyes and chewed fingernails – more akin with one of the girls Maureen looked after than an accomplished reporter. Though perhaps her deceptive appearance was part of what made her effective in her job. From the research Madeleine had done ahead of coming along with Dana, Isobel had had her fair share of meaty stories, especially for a local hack who must have been in her early twenties at most.
‘I’m not here in an official capacity,’ Madeleine had confirmed when Isobel eyed her sidelong. ‘Maureen mentioned your enquiries, and I thought of Dana. Maureen tells me you’re a brilliant journalist, and very trustworthy. I thought it would be good to meet you, put a face to a name …’
And here is the same name staring back at her now, attached to a piece about the death of Anna Witherall who was married to the late heir of a company associated with Irena Vasiliev – the Russian boss of the man with whom Gabriella had been having an affair.
Pulling out her phone, Madeleine dials Sean’s number. He answers after two rings.
‘Madeleine. How do?’
/>
‘Listen,’ she says, lowering her voice, though the driver is immersed, tutting along to a radio phone-in, oblivious to her conversation.
‘Are you in the office?’
‘Sure am.’
‘Could we speak when I get in? I’ll be twenty minutes or so.’ She looks out at the traffic as the car moves along Park Lane. ‘Actually, make that half an hour.’
‘No prob—’
Before Sean finishes, Madeleine cuts off the call and sits back in her seat, her mind spinning.
Sean smiles as he runs his eyes over the paper Madeleine has flattened on the desk for him to read.
‘Please tell me you don’t think this is a coincidence,’ she says, her words quickening with anticipation.
‘It’s a hell of a coincidence,’ Sean replies, more neutrally than Madeleine had hoped.
‘Oh, come on,’ she says, prodding him on. ‘TradeSmart is implicated in a chemical spillage and for a while has MI6 on its case … Suddenly the co-owner dies in a hit-and-run – and then his wife hangs herself?’
‘Maybe she was bereft, couldn’t cope with life without him … They had two young kids. It can’t have been easy for her, can it?’
Madeleine kisses her teeth. ‘And they all just happen to be associated with Irena Vasiliev, one of the world’s biggest corporate crim—?’
It is a moment before Madeleine realises the ringing is coming from her bag.
‘Hold on a second.’ She pulls out the phone and turns away from Sean as she sees the name flashing on the screen.
Inhaling deeply, she nods at him to hold on a second and presses answer.
‘Is it done?’ she asks quietly into the mouthpiece.
‘Yes,’ the voice at the end of the phone replies. ‘It’s done.’
Harry
Devon, four days after Anna dies
The wind whips off the water as Harry disembarks the boat at Plymouth along with a cluster of fellow foot passengers: bleary-eyed European students, retired couples with ruddy complexions and hiking boots, all, too, returned or arriving from the continent.
As he steps onto firm ground, he has a jolt of memory. He closes his eyes, refusing to acknowledge the face that stares back at him in his mind’s eye.
Pulling his phone from his pocket to retrieve the address of the long-term car park in Plymouth where his own car had been moved to, he thinks of the older daughter’s expression the final time they made eye contact.
It will be a long journey back to London, he thinks, taking a moment for the signal to adjust to its British service provider; when it does, there is a message from Maria. Pressing delete, he logs onto the BBC homepage out of habit; the headline causes him to stop dead in his tracks.
British Family Vanish in France. Below it, their faces: Tom, Gabriela, Sadie and Callum, smiling in a group portrait – the same image he had held in his hands just a couple of days earlier, encased in a plastic key ring.
The car belonging to a British family has been found, crushed, at the foot of a mountain road in the South of France. Local reports indicate that the victims, who include young children, had arrived in the area just days earlier. The couple, who have been identified as Gabriela Shaw and Tom Wilson, are believed to have been building a family home on their plot of land near the sleepy village of Villemagne-L’Argentiere, in South East France.
The car, which contained traces of blood, was found by a passing cyclist who alerted the emergency services. The police have started a large-scale man-hunt and the Foreign Office says it is making efforts to reach the victims’ relatives.
PART TWO
Harry
London, five years ago
It was autumn by the time Harry returned to the offices at South Quay. The secretaries at reception fussed in their seats as they spotted him making his way through the revolving doors.
‘Where you been?’ the older woman asked, sitting taller as he stepped into the room.
Harry tapped his nose. His hair was longer and more unkempt than when he’d left.
‘Here and there, Maggie … How are you, ladies? Looking tan, Crystal. Been on holiday? Oh hey, Dev.’
The newspaper’s personal finance editor slapped him on the back as the pair moved towards the lifts. ‘Hear you caught a big one? You were all the talk at conference yesterday, mate.’
‘Don’t believe a word of it,’ Harry replied, squeezing Dev’s arm warmly. ‘Let’s have a drink soon, eh?’
At his desk, Harry threw his coat down on the back of the chair, letting his eyes move across the office floor with its precarious piles of old newspapers stacked in rows at the foot of a filing cabinet; the familiar drone of the phone that no one in their right mind would ever pick up. God, it felt good to be back, he thought, drinking in that specific combination of freshly printed paper and stale coffee. After six months undercover, it felt great. And he’d done it – he’d got his story. His expression darkened: and he had got away with it, so far.
The editor’s PA looked up at Harry as he approached, her face widening into a smile.
Harry winked. ‘Hey Khadija. How you doing?’
‘I’m good. Feels like I haven’t seen you for ages …’
‘It’s been a while. Can I go in?’ Harry asks.
‘That’s fine, they’re expecting you …’
He tapped his fingers on the edge of the desk before moving towards the office where inside, Eddy Monkton, the paper’s editor, and his direct boss, news editor Corinne Russell, were both waiting.
‘Bloody hell!’ Corinne was unable to keep the smile from her face as he entered the room, stopping short of kissing him on the cheek. ‘Don’t they have phones west of Paddington? Anyone would think you were in Damascus, not Wiltshire, for all we’ve heard from you, you elusive bastard.’
‘Sorry, Cor.’ Harry leaned down to hug her before she could protest. ‘If it’s any consolation, I imagine the food would have been better in a war zone … But I think you’ll forgive me when you hear what I got for you.’
Harry moved forward to shake Eddy’s hand, noting the speed with which he broke contact again.
‘So, Harry, what you got?’
Eddy pushed himself back in his seat on the other side of his desk.
Harry leaned against the wall and signalled Corinne towards the chair. ‘Trust me, you’re going to want to sit for this.’
‘Right, so the top line is: respected British charity who claim to support fair-trade movements across Asia and Africa have provable links with arms traders.’
‘Exactly. Though they don’t just claim to support fair-trade movements, they do support them,’ Harry corrected Corinne. ‘The vast majority of members are well-meaning, sometimes painfully worthy, campaigners who do a lot of good work. But as ever, where there is access to fractured or vulnerable communities, there are those who seek to take advantage. And yes, I have emails I’ve intercepted as well as recorded conversations that prove that members of the group are being funded by renowned arms dealers in both Africa and Asia.’
Eddy said nothing for a moment. Harry wasn’t sure whether it was awe or contempt that moved across his face. When he finally spoke, his tone was uncharacteristically reverential. ‘Well, if this stacks up …’ He puckered his lips, as if the act of paying Harry heed caused him pain. ‘That’s a cracker of a story.’
It was almost a week later by the time he had run his recordings past the various department heads in order to close in from all angles, finally getting the sign-off from legal ahead of the planned splash. There were seven of them seated around the table in Eddy’s office in that last meeting, a flat-plan spread out between them, adrenaline ricocheting off the walls.
‘We’ve got Carl writing the leader on accountability in the third sector, touching on the other recent exposés around improper behaviour by charity employees. Foreign are working up a map of trade routes used by the arms dealers with whom the charity is known to have connections, together with a brief history of the conflict in
the area and the subsequent involvement of international organisations. Comment, we’ll need something from you on the white man saviour complex. Maybe get MJ on that?’
Eddy turned his attention to Harry. ‘Right, so you’ll give us a straight five hundred-word news exposé on charity workers found to be in cahoots with arms dealers, plus another six hundred on the undercover operation; a bit of colour on where you were based, how you infiltrated the group, without giving too much away, obviously. Picture desk, we’ll need to pull stills from the button-hole cameras, and mix them up with stock images of the accused … Any questions?’
‘I just want to be clear: we’re willing to risk legal action over this?’ Corinne asked.
‘No one is taking anyone to court,’ Eddy replied. ‘These fuckers are all about reputation. There is only one possible response to a story like this, and that’s to chop out the rotten parts and fling them as far as possible from the scene.’
‘That’s a beautiful image,’ Harry commented without looking up from his flat-plan.
‘We’ve got nothing to worry about. That’s right, isn’t it, Dwyer?’
Eddy’s eyes lingered on Harry’s a moment too long.
‘That’s right,’ he said, holding Eddy’s gaze. ‘There is nothing to worry about.’
Aside from the night editors, most of the newsroom had already headed home by the time the paper went off stone, just after ten. Five of them remained, skimming over the final words, nursing cans of beer Corinne had pulled out from the mini fridge beside her desk.
None of the pieces associated with Harry’s scoop were due to go online until four, ensuring rival papers couldn’t pick up on them and run a version of the piece through their late edition, so there was no way he would be hanging around to see them go live.
‘Hey, you want to grab a drink?’ Harry asked Corinne as they moved out of the office into the brisk night air.
She waved her keys back at him. ‘Better not. Iris is sick and the au pair is freaking out. Can I give you a lift?’
The Second Woman Page 9