The Family Remains(83)

They sit silently in the foyer of their hotel and wait for Kris to message them from the restaurant. Marco’s phone buzzes at eight minutes past eleven and they all jump.

We are in the back left-hand corner, near the bar. He looks like shit.

They get to their feet, ready to leave the foyer, when two men in dark clothing bowl through the front door and head sternly towards the front desk. Instinctively Lucy moves herself and the children out of view and watches as one of the men pulls a badge from his pocket and asks the receptionist, in a low rumble of a voice, if they have a guest by the name of Marie Caron currently staying with them. Lucy herds the children quickly from the building, her eyes taking in the shape of an unmarked police car parked outside, before swiftly bundling them all around the corner and into a waiting Uber.

She’s about to shut the door when she feels a force being exerted from the other side, sees a man’s face at the window, a police badge held against the glass.





56




Samuel


I get back to Charing Cross at 6 p.m. Donal called me an hour ago to say that the interview was not progressing. I told him to keep going. Just keep going.

As I enter the interview room, I can see Libby Jones is tired. And so is Miller Roe. Donal has some juice left in him, but even he, I can see, is beginning to flag, after three hours of fruitless interviewing.

But I have something new to introduce to the room. I sit heavily on the spare chair and I look from Libby to Miller. I slowly pull my phone from my jacket pocket, and I turn it on.

‘Here,’ I say, turning it towards them. ‘See this?’ I tap the screen. ‘This is Lucy Lamb, checking into a hotel in Chicago three days ago with her children. What is she doing there?’

I fully expect Libby Jones to defer to Miller, but she does not. She takes the phone from my hand, quite suddenly, and she stares at the image on the screen. I see that she is close to crying and I do not breathe while I wait for her response. But then she rallies. She pulls back her shoulders and hands me the phone.

‘I told you. She’s on holiday.’

‘So this is Lucy Lamb. Your sister?’

She nods stiffly.

‘Not Marie Caron, your friend?’

She shakes her head.

I feel Miller Roe bristle. He is very protective of Libby Jones, this big, hirsute man. He cares more for her than he cares for himself.

‘On holiday? With her children?’

‘Exactly.’

‘But without a phone?’

‘Yes.’

‘She went on holiday to Chicago with her children, in the middle of school termtime, and she didn’t take a phone?’

‘I told you this all before. She wanted it to be a proper holiday with no distractions.’

I sigh so hard that it moves a sheet of paper on the table.

There are many things I want to say but I pull myself back, because I am feeling annoyed, and I have had enough now, enough of this stuff and nonsense.

‘Libby, please, just be honest with me. We now know where Lucy Lamb is staying and there will be local operatives there even as we speak. I am certain that the moment you leave here, the first thing you will do will be to call your sister or your brother to warn them that we are coming, but it will be too late. So please. Just save us all the stress and bother of this pretence. Just tell me. Now. Why is your sister in Chicago and what is she running from?

‘Fine. Fine,’ she says. ‘I’ll tell you. She’s not running from anything.’

Miller stands and puts a big arm out towards Libby as if he is about to usher her from the room, but she pushes it away.

‘It’s pointless now, Miller,’ she says to him. ‘They know where she is. It’s pointless.’ And before he can interrupt her again, she starts to talk.

‘Lucy is not my sister. She’s my mother.’

I am felled slightly by this pronouncement. It is a killer twist that I did not see coming.

‘She gave birth to me when she was fourteen. And the reason she’s gone to Chicago is to find my father.’

‘And who is he, your father?

‘My father is Phineas Thomsen. The real Phineas Thomsen. Not the one that Henry pretends to be. I’ve never met him, and Lucy, my mother, hasn’t seen him since she was eighteen. But Miller managed to track him down for me and we thought he was in Botswana but it turned out he wasn’t in Botswana, that he was in Chicago. So first of all Henry went over and then my mother followed him.’

‘Just to see Phineas?’

‘Yes.’

‘And? Have they seen him?’

‘Not as far as I’m aware.’

I shift my position. This still makes no real sense. ‘I understand that your brother, Henry—’

‘He’s not my brother, he’s my uncle.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Of course. Your uncle. I understand that he was infatuated with Phineas. When they were children. To the extent of changing his appearance to make him look more like Phineas? And now of changing his entire identity?’

‘I have no idea. I wasn’t there.’

‘No. No, of course you weren’t. When did you first meet them? Your mother, your uncle?’

‘Last year. Around about this time. A few weeks after my birthday.’