Our House(37)

‘Wait a minute,’ David interrupts sharply, breaking Merle’s hold. ‘We’re not going anywhere. This house was sold to us fair and square.’

‘I think you’ll find it wasn’t,’ Merle says.

‘And yet we’ve had all the verifications that completion took place this morning.’ He brandishes his phone and begins scrolling for the relevant emails, just as Lucy did earlier.

‘They must be fake,’ Merle says, just as Fi did. ‘Don’t click on any links, will you? They could trigger Trojan malware.’

‘Trojan malware? What on earth are you talking about? Look . . .’ As David hands her his phone, Merle scrutinizes the screen with scepticism before passing it to Fi. Though two of the messages are those from Bennett, Stafford & Co that Lucy has already shared, a third is from another conveyancing solicitor, Graham Jenson at Dixon Boyle & Co in Crystal Palace, who confirms receipt of the funds from Emma Gilchrist’s client account. It is dated 13 January and was sent just before 11 a.m.

‘Dixon Boyle are the Lawsons’ solicitors,’ David tells Merle, and a burning sensation starts to spread across Fi’s chest.

Merle, however, remains cool. ‘The Lawsons in quotation marks,’ she corrects him. ‘And I don’t see any proof of the transfer of deeds.’ Her manner is professional, as if the meeting is being monitored for official purposes and any time she fails to dispute an assertion of David’s, it will be entered into the record as fact.

‘That’s all done electronically,’ David says. ‘Perhaps it might be helpful if you check your bank account?’ he suggests to Fi.

‘If she doesn’t know anything about the sale, she’s hardly likely to have received the money,’ Merle points out, just short of scorn.

‘Sure, but just in case. We’d know the transaction definitely took place, even if she’s . . .’ He falters.

Forgotten, he means. That chronic attack of amnesia she’s suffering from. But when she sees an unusually colossal deposit among the debits for train tickets and groceries and school shoes she’ll think, Oh yes, I did sell my children’s home.

An iPad is produced, her bank’s website found, and it is all she can do to remember her customer ID and pin. At last, with David bearing down on her, she clears security.

‘Is it there?’

‘No.’ Both her own account and her joint account with Bram are untouched.

‘He has an individual account as well, does he?’ David persists.

‘Yes, but I don’t know the password for that. And his phone is out of service.’

Merle makes a fresh bid for command. ‘As I’ve been saying since I arrived, we need to get the police over here. If Bram’s phone’s out of action, there must be something wrong.’

‘A phone could be off for all sorts of reasons,’ David says.

‘Yes.’ Merle’s attention moves between the Vaughans and Fi. ‘But since Mrs Lawson knows nothing about this, don’t you think it’s possible that Mr Lawson doesn’t either? Maybe his identity has been stolen by mobsters, Fi. Maybe he was on to them in some way and they, I don’t know, retaliated.’

‘Mobsters?’ Fi echoes, a deeper new shock seizing her. ‘Retaliated?’

‘Yes, he could have been abducted or something. Perhaps he knew he was in danger and that’s why he arranged to keep the boys at his mother’s while you were away? Maybe he’s already involved the police and you’re under their protection without realizing it?’

‘That all sounds a bit melodramatic,’ David says. ‘You can’t just go around passing yourself off as other people in order to sell their property. You need passports, birth certificates, proper proof of ownership. Funds of this size are checked for money laundering – there are all sorts of hoops to jump through. I know because we’ve just done it.’

‘Even so, I can’t think of any better explanation,’ Merle says. ‘Can you?’

There is silence in the room, a collective sense of held breath. David glances at his wife, not yet ready to say the unsayable. Fi feels her face clenching as she struggles to keep from crying.

‘If you’re right, then this is horrific,’ Lucy says, finally.

‘It is horrific,’ Merle agrees. She turns to Fi with the air that while the Vaughans may have an interesting contribution to make, it is only Fi’s that matters. ‘If you want my opinion, Fi, we need to report an identity theft.’

Fi nods.

‘We need to report Bram missing. Missing and in danger.’


Geneva, 3 p.m.

As he leaves the restaurant, the wine having done nothing to ease the ferment of nerves in his gut, he is unsettled by the presence of a man standing close to the lift controls, his head angled in query as he watches Bram’s approach. He is in his early thirties, lofty, rough-skinned, dressed in a dark-grey suit and well-polished shoes. Business traveller – or plainclothes policeman? A concerned member of the public who has seen an Interpol appeal containing Bram’s photograph?

Bram considers bolting through the doors to the stairwell, but resists. No, calm down, act casual. Interpol appeal? There is self-preservation and then there are delusions of grandeur. Not unlike the sales career he has left behind, his survival is a matter of confidence trickery, and the person he most needs to trick is himself.