by Elise Noble
“Please could I get three portions of koshary and three falafel sandwiches?”
With Alaric and Ravi busy studying satellite photos and maps of Hounslow, I fell back into the role of errand girl. Everybody needed to eat. The new place around the corner allegedly sold authentic Egyptian street food, but Alaric said it was nothing like the real thing. Cairo was a dusty hubbub of people and cars, apparently, not gentle sounds of sitar music and clinking china. But service was quick, and within ten minutes, I was on my way back to Judd’s townhouse with a bag of food.
Or at least, I was until my father rang. The thought of answering made my stomach sink, but I’d already put off calling him for two days, and he didn’t take kindly to being ignored. What did he want? Was my presence required at another get-together? Had my sister suffered a wedding-related crisis?
No, it was much, much worse.
“Bethie, why didn’t you call me back?”
“Because I was working.”
“I thought you got sacked?”
“I got a new job. And I had prep to do for this week’s tasks.”
I wasn’t about to mention Gemma—rather than concern or sympathy, I’d most likely get a reminder not to associate with somebody who lived in North Acton.
“Not much of a job if you don’t get weekends off, is it?”
Gee, thanks for all the support. “Did you call for a particular reason, Daddy?”
“As it happens, I did. Piers raised concerns regarding that McLain chap you were with on Saturday.” I bet he did. “Concerns I share now that I’ve done some digging.”
“You did what?”
“You’re my daughter, Bethie. I care about you, and it’s not good for you to be associating with that con artist.”
Oh, this took the biscuit. Why couldn’t my father keep his nose out of my life, just for once?
“Alaric isn’t a con artist.”
“He’s a con artist and a thief. Ambassador McLain tried to get it brushed under the carpet, but his son stole ten million dollars, then did a moonlight flit with the money. Goodness only knows where he’s been for the last eight years.”
I almost dropped the bag of food, and a blonde woman swore at me as I stopped dead in the middle of the pavement.
“Ten million…what?” I was beginning to sound like a stuck record.
“The man walked off with ten million dollars in cash and diamonds, money that was meant to pay a ransom by all accounts. He kept the lot, and rumour says he almost got several of his colleagues killed in the process.”
My legs threatened to give way, and I slumped against a wall as if I’d had vodka for breakfast instead of coffee.
“No, you’re wrong. Alaric didn’t do that.”
“I heard it from a friend of the ambassador.”
“Then he lied. I mean, if Alaric had stolen that money, he’d be in jail, wouldn’t he?”
“My source said he’s a sneaky son of a bitch. The FBI could never prove he’d done it, but they sure as hell fired him.”
Could it be true? Alaric himself had told me that he used to be an FBI agent, but he wasn’t anymore. And he hadn’t been particularly forthcoming about his past, even when I’d unloaded on him about my troubles with Piers.
I gave my head a quick shake to clear the insanity. What was I thinking? Alaric wouldn’t steal a bloody ransom of all things. Look at what he was doing for Gemma—he was in the business of saving people, not putting them in danger. And he didn’t exactly live extravagantly. Surely if he had millions in cash lying around, he’d be sunning himself on the beach instead of working? He didn’t even own a house, for crying out loud.
My father’s words didn’t add up.
“Daddy, that’s just not true.”
“Has he brainwashed you? I thought I taught you to be smarter than that.”
Actually, schoolteachers and a succession of nannies had taught me to be smarter than that. My father had had little input into my upbringing. And Alaric hadn’t brainwashed me. He’d helped me. Yes, our initial meeting had been a bit fraught, and he’d made me lose my mind somewhat at the party on Saturday evening, and okay, he was a seriously smooth liar, but a thief?
I was the one who’d been transporting stolen goods, something else Alaric had been remarkably understanding about.
“There’s no way Alaric stole ten million dollars.”
“Are you saying I associate with liars?”
“Of course not,” I said on instinct, years of placating my father ingrained in my psyche. People in his circle lied all the time, usually about affairs, but what was another fib between friends? “What if perhaps they made a mistake?”
“It’s McLain who made the mistake by betraying his employer. Bethie, you need to steer well clear of that man.”
“But…but…”
How could I? I worked for Alaric now, and what’s more, he was helping me to find Gemma.
“Are you saying you won’t do this one little thing for me? Your mother and I have been remarkably patient with all your silliness about getting a job, but this nonsense has gone on for quite long enough. The country club’s been holding your seat on the social committee, but they won’t do so forever. It’s time to come to your senses. Look at Piers—he’s moved on already.”
My father’s words made me see red. Silliness? He thought me wanting to earn my own money and live my own life was silliness?
“I’d rather fend for myself than spend every day pretending I care about table decorations. And I happen to like Alaric. He’s been kind to me.”
“He’s been brainwashing you for his next scam, more like. Does he know how much this family is worth?”
“It’s not something that’s ever come up in conversation.”
“I bet he knows. Believe me—he’s bad news. And I can’t entrust half of our fortune to somebody who exhibits such bad judgement. If you refuse to see what’s already obvious to the rest of us, then I’ll have no choice but to cut you off. You won’t get another penny from me or your mother.”
That…that asshole!
True, my father hadn’t given me any money recently, but the safety net had always been there. A stable for Chaucer and a roof over my head if things got really bad. I’d never been truly alone before. Could I handle it? A tear rolled down my cheek, and another, and another, until I was crying in the middle of bloody Kensington.
“Cheer up, love.” A street sweeper paused to fish a packet of tissues out of his pocket and offered it to me. “Might never ’appen.”
Do you know? He was right. The worst might not happen, and if I gave up the little bit of freedom I’d found and crawled back to my parents, I’d always wonder “what if?” Better to be poor and happy than forever miserable.
“Thank you,” I mouthed at the sweeper and wiped my face as he continued on his way. Then I made myself straighten, even though my father couldn’t see me. “Daddy, I don’t need your money. Give the whole lot to Priscilla. She can spend it on a third holiday home and a thousand manicures, or better still, you could send Mother on a shopping spree or ten to distract her from the fact that you’re fucking yet another mistress. You’re such a hypocrite. Your friends are all slugs in fancy clothes, corrupt to the core, and as for Piers… He screwed me over, your daughter, and still you take his side. I wish I’d been swapped at birth.”
“How dare—”
I hung up before my father could finish the sentence, then stared at the phone in horror. What the hell had I just done? Anger had made my innermost thoughts tumble out, one insult after another, and I couldn’t take them back even if I wanted to.
I was on my own now, with just a possible super-thief for company.
Was I scared? Terrified. But also strangely exhilarated.
CHAPTER 39 - ALARIC
GUN OR NO gun? In the US, that wouldn’t even be a question, but in London, where handguns were banned, the risks of being caught carrying could outweigh the benefits. Not that Alaric planned to get caught,
of course… In the end, he liberated a Beretta from Judd’s collection and secured it behind his back in a covert holster. He always had his sport coats cut to hide a weapon, but he’d have to be careful not to get too close to Beth. Until this afternoon, she seemed to have taken his bending of the law in her stride, but since she got back from lunch, she’d been acting differently. Cooler. More distant. Off in the same way that Emmy had been on the phone yesterday. Unless it was Alaric’s imagination? He’d avoided entanglements with women for the past eight years, so maybe his intuition had degraded?
Four p.m., and they were about to head to Ryland’s apartment. They’d studied photos and maps of the area, and Naz had come up with a floor plan of Bellsfield House North, showing the layout of apartment 504 on the fifth floor. The seventeen-storey block dated back to the fifties, the northern-most of two identical towers set on a housing estate a ten-minute walk from Hounslow West Tube Station. When the place was first completed, it had been touted as the future for modern families, but in the intervening decades, urban decay had settled in, along with a local gang and a motley crew of drug dealers. The local newspaper mentioned the Bellsfield Estate most weeks, but rarely in a positive light.
Alaric didn’t want Beth with them, not remotely, but given that the latest news story had detailed the theft of a catalytic converter, stolen in under ten minutes while the vehicle’s owner ran into the local Co-op to buy a sandwich, it seemed a good idea to leave somebody in the SUV if they wanted to drive it away again afterwards.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
Beth and Ravi both nodded from the other side of the table. Ravi was supposed to be on his way to the US to snoop around a media mogul’s Hamptons home for one of Judd’s projects, but that had been put on hold. They’d all agreed that finding a missing woman took priority.
“How long will you be inside?” Beth asked.
As little time as possible. “If Willis is home, long enough to assess whether he’s a likely suspect. If he’s not there, we’ll take a view on whether to wait, or talk to the neighbours, or leave and regroup.”
“And you’ll definitely keep me updated?”
She sounded nervous, and Alaric wished Judd was around, or even Naz, and Naz’s driving was appalling. Should he call Emmy? Her driving wasn’t much better, but nobody would steal the damn wheels off the car if she was sitting in it. He almost reached for his phone, but then he recalled the way Emmy had distanced herself. No, Sirius could handle this.
“All the way, Beth. Just keep your phone ready.”
Alaric had been born with not just a silver spoon in his mouth but a whole set of cutlery. At first, it had seemed normal, being driven in a limousine to the international school near whatever embassy his father happened to be posted to at the time, but an insatiable curiosity combined with teenage rebellion had led him to sneak away from the sanctity of wealth with increasing regularity. He’d seen how the other half lived, and when he walked out of his own life with little more than the cash in his wallet and the clothes on his back, he’d experienced it for himself. Six weeks in a Brazilian favela, a trip to Palestine, passage across the South China Sea on a fishing trawler, a month picking grapes in a Spanish vineyard while drinking too much Rioja, the stint as a deckhand in the Similan Islands…
He’d travelled the world, but he’d never seen any place as grim as Bellsfield House North. Kevin’s apartment block was luxurious in comparison. Many of the apartments on the Bellsfield Estate were now in private hands, but the outside of the building and the communal areas made North Korea look vibrant. The two towers, no more than six or seven metres apart on their short sides, cast giant shadows over the rest of the estate and plunged gloomy corners into full-on darkness.
“Was that a mouse?” Ravi asked.
“More like a rat.”
They’d dressed down for the occasion in jeans, lightweight rubber-soled boots, and plain dark-coloured T-shirts, but Alaric still felt out of place. A hazmat suit would have been more appropriate. The elevator yawned open like the gate to hell, so he opted for the stairs instead, jogging up the ten half-flights of bare concrete steps that led to Ryland’s floor. The stairwell was in a permanent state of twilight, most of the lightbulbs blown, the echoing space shaded by the monolithic south tower. Alaric caught a glimpse of a pale silhouette in the window opposite and paused. A teenager in a white hoodie stared back with mild disinterest, almost within touching distance. From his stance, he appeared to be urinating.
Alaric kept climbing.
He had two options if the man answered the door—firstly, he could pretend he was looking for someone else, that he’d made a mistake with the address, and use any resulting conversation to fathom Ryland out. Would he be glib? Shifty? Downright hostile? Or Alaric could push straight away and ask about Gemma. He’d have roughly five seconds to decide which path to take based on first impressions and a lifetime of honed instincts.
The trouble was, both Emmy and Beth had Alaric doubting those instincts today.
On the fifth floor, Ravi paused outside the door, listening while he checked out the lock—a simple mortise by the look of it. “All quiet inside. Wanna knock?”
“Yes, to start with.”
In the absence of a doorbell, Alaric rapped lightly on the wood with his knuckles.
Silence. Ravi was right. Either there was nobody home or Ryland was lying low. The question was, which? If they went in uninvited, they had no plausible excuse for being there whatsoever. Logic said to back away, but what if Gemma was incapacitated inside?
Ravi raised an eyebrow. He already had his picks in his hand, so his opinion was clear.
Ah, fuck it.
“Let’s go in.”
Twenty seconds later, the lock clicked open, and Ravi peered through the crack.
“What the…?” He pushed the door open wider. “Shit.”
Shit indeed. The apartment was empty. Devoid of life and furniture. Apart from a trail of rat droppings on the beige carpet, the place was bare. Except…
Ravi made a face. “What the hell is that smell?”
Had a rat died in there? Alaric glanced around the living room, then checked the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. No decomposing carcasses, but the odour reminded him of his first solo job as a CIA agent. He’d found the missing informant he’d been sent to locate, but unfortunately, it had taken a DNA test to identify the poor bastard.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to know.” Alaric tapped the floor with a heel. Concrete, not wood. Nothing in the built-in bedroom closet either. “But it’s safe to say Ryland isn’t here and neither is Gemma.”
“Try the neighbours?”
Something buzzed past Alaric’s face, and he smacked a fly away.
“Might as well. The worst that can happen is they’ll tell us to fuck off, and this apartment gives me the creeps.”
At least, Alaric hoped that was the worst that could happen. Almost unconsciously, he checked the gun at his back was still within easy reach. He didn’t plan on using it, but…
“Left or right?”
“Left,” Alaric said out of habit. Back in the days of Emmy, she’d joked that she was always right so he must be left. It had stuck.
Again, he knocked and waited. And waited. Just as they were about to give up, he heard footsteps, and the door opened an inch, blocked by a chain. The girl could have been anywhere from eighteen to thirty, slight in build, and she barely looked strong enough to hold the baby on her hip.
“Hallo?”
“Good afternoon, Miss. I’m from Hounslow Borough Council, and I’m hoping to speak to your next-door neighbour—Ryland Willis—but he doesn’t seem to be in. Could you tell me when you last saw him?”
“The council?” She repeated the words haltingly. “I have papers. I am allowed to be here.”
“We’re just looking for your neighbour. Next door.” Alaric waved his hand to the right for emphasis, and as air wafted past, he sniffed. Smelled like soup. “We had a
complaint that he’s keeping a cat in there.”
More puzzlement. “Next door? There is nobody next door.”
“A man? A tall man? Big?”
“Nobody. Empty.”
“Empty how long?”
“Since I came here. Three weeks. Nearly four.”
So Ryland had left a month ago at least? Dammit. Where the hell had he gone?
“I appreciate your help.” They stepped back to leave, but the door opened a fraction wider.
“Speak with Eunice. The other side. Five-zero-five. Eunice, she knows everything.”
This time, Alaric’s smile was genuine. “Thank you.”
Except Eunice wasn’t in. He knocked and waited, then knocked again. The tower was far from silent—footsteps echoed in the stairwells, and a couple was arguing on another floor—but nothing stirred in apartment 505. They had no choice but to cast the net wider.
By the time darkness fell, Alaric had been spat at by a kid on a skateboard, shouted at by a group of teenagers, and narrowly avoided a broken nose when the living incarnation of Homer Simpson slammed the door in his face. Ravi materialised at his elbow as he paused in front of yet another apartment. At least Beth was holding herself together. She’d sounded nervous each time Alaric checked in with her, but the car doors were locked, and he heard the engine running in the background so at least she could make a quick getaway if necessary. Still, he didn’t want to leave her on her own for much longer.
“Anything?” Ravi asked.
“Either the guy’s a ghost or people here just like keeping their mouths shut.”
“Or perhaps it’s a case of see no evil, hear no evil.”
“That too.”
Alaric pressed the doorbell, and a scratchy tune rang out, entirely too jolly for the surroundings. Please, let this one be a woman. Women had less of a tendency to threaten bodily harm in response to a simple question. Nobody answered, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw a girl barely older than Rune pause at the other end of the hallway, her grip tightening on the hand of the toddler beside her. She wanted to run, but the kid prevented her from doing so.