The Family Remains(89)
‘Are you sure?’
My expression freezes. ‘Yes. I’m quite sure. And you know, actually, I have a few things I need to take care of. I think I should probably get going.’ I drop a few ten-dollar notes on to the table to cover my scrambled eggs on toast and Bloody Mary and pull my jacket from the back of the chair.
Kris gets to his feet suddenly and puts his hand out towards me. ‘No,’ he says, a note of panic in his voice. ‘Don’t go. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out. It was just – it seemed, I don’t know – please, stay, finish your drink at least.’
His eyes go to the door again and mine follow them. I see a dark car pull up outside and park haphazardly in the road. I see two doors open in unison, two men in dark clothing step out.
I turn and look at the back of the restaurant, see a corridor leading to the kitchens, and run.
60
Samuel
Donal and I return to our desks. For a minute we sit in a stunned silence, unable to believe what has just happened.
Lucy Lamb has just delivered us her brother.
My contact in Chicago is on his way with a colleague to the restaurant where Lucy informed us that Henry Lamb would be breakfasting with a male friend. Very soon we will find out whether or not we will be able to question him about what happened to Birdie Dunlop-Evers. Very soon, I hope, we will be able to put away these files and these papers, put away the world that the bag of bones found by Jason the mud-larker on the banks of the Thames two weeks ago has built inside my head, the world that fills my quiet moments and my sleep and all the gaps in between, this world of abuse and darkness and wealth, this world that spewed four vulnerable children out on to the streets and left them to fend for themselves.
But first we need to hear from Henry and for now there is nothing for Donal and me to do other than sit here and stare at the wall.
‘Kind of hot, don’t you think?’ Donal pronounces, suddenly.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Lucy Lamb. Those dark eyes. The sunken cheeks. Very … hot.’
I roll my eyes at him. His live-in girlfriend left him about three months ago and he has gone from being the sort of man who tells you all about putting up shelves at the weekend and taking the kitten to the vet to the sort of man who talks only about hot women. He needs another girlfriend, very soon. This lasciviousness does not suit him.
I open up my email for something to do other than discuss Lucy Lamb’s cheekbones with Donal. There is one from Philip Dunlop-Evers. He writes every day. Just checking in. I know you’re busy. I’m sure you’ll let me know when you hear anything.
I press reply and type.
We are very close to interviewing a prime suspect, a man who was a teenager living in the house at the time of Birdie’s disappearance. We have also tracked down Justin Redding, who was very helpful but was not, it seems, living in London at the time. I am hoping to have something to share with you by the end of the day. I will send you an update, or please feel free to call me.
He won’t call me. He’s too polite. He imagines that I am too busy to take phone calls. He is a very nice man. Nicer, so it seems, than his sister, who has been painted in very troubling colours by both Lucy Lamb and Justin Ugley. I think of those tiny bones, so delicate that we thought at first that they belonged to a child. But now it appears that they belonged, quite possibly, to a monster.
Donal and I both jump then at the sound of my ring tone. I grab my phone and press reply.
‘Hello. DI Owusu. This is Agent Jacobs calling from Chicago. We have your interviewee ready for you. Are you ready to join us on video?’
‘Yes. Yes, we are. Give us three minutes. Thank you so much.’
I glance at Donal and I nod. He nods back and we head once again to the interview room.
61
July 2018
Rachel checked into her hotel in Nice and immediately threw off her clothes and took a ten-minute shower, to wash off not just the sweat of the day, but the feeling of Michael’s company. She had not intended to say all she’d said, she’d been planning to play it cooler, stay longer, talk more, find out more about his finances. But she’d managed to gather quite a lot of information during the fifteen minutes or so she’d had alone in his office, more than she’d expected, and she felt an extraordinary glow of centredness after what she’d said. Not closure. Nowhere close to that. Not while Michael had ￡600,000 of her father’s money. Not while that red Maserati sat obscenely on his driveway. Not while every time Rachel closed her eyes she saw the imprint of those hideous photographs in her consciousness, and the shamed outline of her father’s back to her as she looked at them on his laptop in his cosy little study.
She put on a silky blue skirt that skimmed her ankles and a black vest top, slung her bag across her chest and headed out into the sultry night air. The centre of Nice felt like a different world tonight to the one she’d experienced back in February. The air was loud with music from restaurants, from fairground rides, from the dozens of buskers and street entertainers that lined every square. Men stood outside restaurants waving menus and trying to entice her inside to eat and she allowed herself to be tempted into one of the restaurants on the main square by a man with tumbling grey locks and a white shirt straining over a wide girth. She ordered a minute steak and frites and a carafe of white wine. The middle-aged waiters buzzed around her, feigning attentive service, oozing paternalistic sexual predation, but she didn’t care. She was like a smooth stone at the bottom of a lake teeming with fish. She was solid, immovable, centred. She looked at her phone when it buzzed. An email from Jonno. His ‘contacts’ were still going through all the information she’d sent across earlier on. Nothing to report yet.