For Jimmy, it was the least she could do.
6
The sun had disappeared behind the wooded summit and with it the warmth of the day. Nick’s plaid shirt was no match for the sharp chill on the breeze that came with the early evening. But if she put on the waterproof jacket in an attempt to keep warm, the damp from the ground would soon seep into Stephanie’s bones, making her even colder than before. It was a conundrum that had no satisfactory answer, but mulling it over kept her mind off what might lie ahead of them.
The front door of the orphanage had opened a couple of times, startling her into sudden attention, the binoculars rammed against her eyes. The first time, a man and a woman emerged in the apparent uniform of dark trousers and white tunic. The man went to one of the cars while the woman jogged down the driveway, undid a padlock and opened the heavy iron gates. The man drove through, then waited for the woman to close and lock the gates again. It was an unwieldy process, but Stephanie liked the time it took. The next departure, about ten minutes later, featured a grey-haired woman in a pink button-through overall, who mounted a motor scooter hidden behind the cars and repeated the performance at the gate.
‘Come on, Simon,’ Stephanie muttered as the scooter grumbled past her up the hill. To relieve the monotony, she called Nick and told him about the people who had left. ‘It takes a while to open and close the gates,’ she reported. ‘So if he does come out, you’ve got a few minutes’ warning.’
‘Are they all going down the hill?’
‘No. One each way.’
‘OK. Then I’ll stay put till you know for sure which way he’s headed.’
There was nothing else to say. Neither of them had any appetite for small talk. Stephanie returned to her vigil, wrapping her arms around her torso to preserve what warmth remained.
And then the door opened again. Even without the binoculars, she recognised Simon. Shirt over his straight-leg jeans, the distinctive walk provoked by his cowboy boots. She could almost believe she heard the clatter of his boot heels on the stone steps. He didn’t close the door behind him and he paused at the foot of the stairs, turning to look back, as if he was calling someone.
When Jimmy came barrelling through the door at full speed, Stephanie stopped breathing. A tightness gripped her chest and her throat closed as if there were a sob trapped within. The boy caught up with Simon, who ruffled his hair as she’d done so many times. They walked hand in hand to a Mercedes saloon and got in. At the gate, Simon went to unfasten the padlock and Stephanie recovered herself enough to stab the button on her phone to call Nick.
‘It’s Simon,’ she blurted out. ‘He’s got Jimmy with him.’
‘Bloody hell.’ She could hear the engine catching as Nick turned the ignition key. ‘Are they heading up or down?’
‘I don’t know yet, Simon’s only just driving through the gate. Hold on . . .’ She watched, the tension in her body growing with every passing minute. Simon drove through the entrance then dawdled over closing the gate. He acted as if he had all the time in the world, which only made her feverish impatience worse. When he finally set the car moving again, the indicator light signalled he was turning left. ‘Down,’ she practically yelled. ‘They’re going down the hill. Come and get me.’
As soon as Simon’s taillights disappeared round the first bend, Stephanie was on her feet, plunging through the narrow strip of hedgerow on to the road. Already she could see Nick’s headlights glimmering through the trees. The day was dimming fast now; at least they would have Simon’s lights ahead of them to make tailing him easier.
Nick’s car rounded the bend and skidded to a halt next to her. She threw herself into the passenger seat, surprised to realise she was panting. Nick grinned and thrust the car into gear. Nervous relief made him crack wise. ‘Isn’t this where you’re supposed to say, “The game’s afoot, Holmes”?’
In spite of herself, she giggled, a hysterical response to his silliness. ‘Just remember, it was Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard who was the real dummy in the Sherlock Holmes stories, Detective Sergeant Nicolaides.’
Nick hurtled round the bends as fast as he dared, catching occasional streaks of scarlet light through the trees ahead. Then at once the red disappeared. They corkscrewed through another couple of bends and suddenly the hamlet was in sight. Stephanie strained to catch a trace of the Mercedes, and suddenly yelped, ‘There, past the inn. The road that goes into the forest. They’re driving down there.’
Nick threw the car into a screaming turn and they shot past the houses and the inn, bucketing from side to side as they went from tarmac to rough track. He tapped the brakes, trying to slow down safely to a manageable speed. ‘Fuck,’ he said, intense and savage as he wrestled with the inadequate car.
Up ahead, the red lights intensified as the Mercedes braked. Then it suddenly turned right. Nick slowed down. ‘It’s a gateway,’ Stephanie yelled. ‘Stop, Nick.’
He turned off the headlights and managed to stop the car fifty metres from the gateway. Switching off the engine and the sidelights took seconds, then they were both out on the track, leaving the car doors open. They ran to the gateway, Nick crouching low and crossing to the far side.
Stephanie peered round a rough stone pillar topped with a bear rearing up on its hind legs. The Mercedes had drawn to a halt in a pool of light about thirty metres away. The light came from floodlights mounted on the front of what looked like a hunting lodge crossed with a castle, complete with stone turrets on each corner. Jimmy and Simon were already out of the car and heading for the front porch, Jimmy skipping ahead.
The door opened and a woman emerged, running down the steps, arms thrown wide to greet the boy. She swept him into her arms, spinning round with him. As Simon joined them, she paused to kiss his mouth. It was the perfect image of a family reunited at the end of the working day.
Only the woman was wrong.
7
Stephanie’s knees gave way beneath her. She crumpled to the ground with a soft moan, unable to believe the evidence of her eyes. Her eyelids fluttered and for a moment, she wondered whether she was going to faint. Then Nick was on his haunches next to her, his comforting arms around her. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘Did I just see what I think I saw? Bouncing down the steps of a place that looks like Dracula’s weekend retreat? Was that Scarlett?’
‘I can’t believe it,’ Stephanie said. ‘I was with her till right before she died. I saw her in her coffin.’ She shook her head, as if to clear it of craziness. ‘It can’t be Scarlett.’ Then the light dawned. ‘Think, Nick. Who’s missing? Who’s not where she’s supposed to be?’
Relief broke over him, lightening his expression. ‘Leanne. It’s Leanne.’
‘The devious, twisted bastards,’ Stephanie said, sounding almost admiring. ‘They’ve been plotting this ever since Scarlett told Leanne I was going to be Jimmy’s guardian. She’d grown to love him. She was desperate to keep him. And the selfish, greedy bastards figured out a way to do it that means they get access to a chunk of the money as well, with Simon set up as the doctor in the house. With Simon and Marina controlling the trust fund, I bet Simon and Leanne are sitting pretty out here in their castle in the woods.’
Nick stood up. ‘Thank Christ I didn’t go to Essex police with our theories about Leanne being murdered. I’d have been a bloody laughing stock. Nick the Greek with egg from head to toe.’
‘They’re still criminals, Nick. They abducted Jimmy and, like you said, they must be living high on the hog off the back of the TOmorrow trust. We’ve got as much leverage against Simon and Leanne as we had against Simon and Marina. We can still get Jimmy back.’
Nick’s answering smile was grim. ‘Damn right. I’m ready when you are.’
Fifteen minutes later, they set off up the short paved driveway. Nick had insisted they wait, sitting in the car with the doors open. ‘Don’t close the door. The click of the lock, that’s the kind of artificial sound that really carries in places like this. We’ll giv
e them a little bit of time to settle into their normal routine. That way they’ll be nice and relaxed and not expecting the shit to hit the fan.’
Then he had a better idea. ‘Let’s push the car across the gateway. That way, if they decide to make a run for it or call reinforcements, they’re fucked.’
And so he let off the handbrake, and with scarcely a sound, they pushed the tinny little car forward until it completely blocked the entrance to the house. To get through themselves, they had to treat the car itself as a kind of passageway they had to scramble through.
Nick must be able to hear the thudding of her heart, Stephanie thought as they approached the house. It felt like wading through a fairy story. The house gleamed with recent maintenance, its shutters immaculate, its stucco spotless, its metalwork rust free. Window boxes filled with flowering bulbs perched on every sill and balustrade. Warm light glowed through the blinds in the ground-floor windows. The Brothers Grimm meet a TV makeover show.
They climbed the four steps to the porch as quietly as possible. Then, ignoring the doorbell, Nick hammered with his torch on the heavy wooden planks of the door. They heard no footsteps approaching, so closely did the door fit its frame. Without warning, it swung back on its hinges. The woman who answered it wasn’t facing them. She was looking over her shoulder, laughing at something someone inside had said or done.
Stephanie thought she was going to throw up.
The woman turned to them and all the animation and colour drained from her face. Lot’s wife must have looked a lot like that, Stephanie thought irrelevantly. Time itself seemed to slow as she struggled to make sense of what – or rather who – she was seeing. ‘Hi, Scarlett,’ she said. She heard Nick’s sharp intake of breath behind her. ‘Aren’t you going to ask us in?’
8
Stephanie’s words galvanised Scarlett into action. She tried to slam the door on them, but Nick was too fast and too practised for that. His arm shot out and he leaned his whole weight against the edge of the door for maximum leverage. Scarlett was forced to give ground. As she skittered backwards, Stephanie and Nick pushed their way inside.
‘How could you?’ Stephanie said, her voice scarcely above a contemptuous whisper.
The sound of chopping came from a brightly lit room to the right, followed by Simon’s voice. ‘Who is it, love?’
Stephanie carried on into the warm kitchen. Simon stood at a wooden butcher’s block dicing onions. Seeing her, he stopped in mid-action, the knife clattering to the board, his mouth flapping like a panicked goldfish. At the same moment, Jimmy saw her and clambered out of his chair, hurtling across the short distance between them. ‘Stephie,’ he shouted happily. ‘I love you.’ He threw his arms round her legs, laughing and whooping. ‘Are we going home soon?’ he added, oblivious to the stunned and horrified faces around the room.
‘Steph’s just come to visit, to make sure you’ve settled in,’ Scarlett said, sweeping past Stephanie and grabbing Jimmy. In one seamless motion, she handed him off to Simon. ‘You go and play upstairs with your Lego with Simon. I’ve got things to talk about with Steph.’ Her smile was as convincing as an octogenarian’s toupee.
‘I’ll go with the boys,’ Nick said, following Simon.
‘Stephie,’ Jimmy’s voice was sharp with longing as he was carried out of the kitchen, arms stretching over Simon’s shoulder.
‘Later,’ Scarlett said, shutting the kitchen door behind them. For a dead woman, she appeared in remarkably good health. She was lightly tanned and looked fit, eyes sparkling and skin smooth. Her hair had grown back, a thick and multi-shaded blonde that spoke of expensive visits to a good hairdresser. Probably not in the local village. It was loosely fastened with a silver hairclip. She spread her arms in an invitation to embrace. ‘I am so sorry, Steph. You have no idea how much I hated keeping you in the dark.’
The warmth of Scarlett’s approach almost wrong-footed Stephanie. Almost, but not quite. Struggling to speak, the blood pounding in her ears, she finally found her tongue. ‘How dare you? After what you’ve put Jimmy through. How dare you try to shrug this off like it’s no big deal?’
Scarlett took a bottle of Prosecco from the big American-style fridge and calmly popped the cork. ‘Jimmy’s fine. You saw that for yourself.’ She reached into a glass-fronted cupboard for a pair of champagne flutes. As she poured, she shook her head in a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger way. ‘You know better than anyone how bloody impossible my life was, especially after the cancer. I couldn’t go anywhere, do anything without a pack of paps on my tail. I couldn’t live like that. Nobody could. I’d had it up to here, Steph. The stress made me ill. Literally, they nearly killed me.’
Sweat prickling the back of her neck, Stephanie was struggling to find an even keel in this conversation. Scarlett was so matter-of-fact. Offhand, almost. Not like a woman who has been caught out faking her own death and abducting her own child a continent away. And her own emotions were swinging wildly between relief that her friend was still alive and rage at what Scarlett had done. ‘You could have retired from public life. Moved abroad where nobody knew who you were.’ Stephanie gave a bitter little laugh. ‘Somewhere like bloody Transylvania. I bet you can shop here no trouble without being mobbed.’
Scarlett held a glass out to Stephanie, who waved it away. Scarlett put it down on the counter close to her instead. ‘As it happens, I can. And we did think about that. But it was complicated. A doctor like Simon doesn’t make a lot of money in Romania. And even though it’s cheap to live here, it still cost us a bomb to do this place up. Then there’s other things that don’t come cheap. Satellite Internet, multichannel TV, that kind of thing. And if you want anything better than the basic shit, you have to pay through the nose. So we needed to make sure the money kept coming in. I earned the right to a decent life, Steph. But those fucking jackals were robbing me of it.’
There was something shocking about Scarlett’s complete lack of shame. ‘So you set up the terminal cancer and the Swimathon to make sure the TOmorrow Trust would keep you in the style to which you’ve become accustomed?’
Anyone else would have flinched at Stephanie’s bitter sarcasm, but Scarlett merely smiled and tipped her glass towards her former friend.
‘Pretty much, yeah. Obviously, the orphanage gets a bloody good cut too. Otherwise there would be no reason for them to go along with the set-up. Marina is the go-between. She makes sure everybody’s happy. And they get Simon’s services for next to nothing, which is a big deal when you’ve got as many disabled kids as they have to deal with. You make it sound like we’re on the make, Steph, but we’re doing a lot of good here.’
‘You pretended you were dead.’ The tide of anger had risen high enough to sweep away Stephanie’s initial shock. ‘I wept for you. I held your son while his little body shook with sobs because he’d already lost his dad and now he’d lost his mum too. Do you have any idea the grief you caused to the people who loved you?’
Scarlett’s mouth quirked in what might have been embarrassment. ‘It’s not like there were many of you. Not that knew me. Really, it was only you and Jimmy and George that I gave a shit about. Obviously Simon and Marina were in on it, so they were only pretending. Look, I’ve said I’m sorry, and I meant it. If there had been another way to do it, I would have gone for it, believe me. But I had to keep you in the dark. Somebody’s grief had to be authentic. So Simon and Marina could figure out how to react.’
Stephanie’s mouth fell open. The notion that her personal pain had meant nothing more to Scarlett than a control in a psychological experiment was beyond her comprehension. How could someone treat another human being like that, let alone one who was supposed to be their best friend? ‘You callous bitch,’ she said, her voice quiet, almost strangled.
Scarlett drained her glass and refilled it. ‘I was playing for high stakes, Steph. I’ve always done what it took to get where I needed to be. Don’t act like it’s a surprise. You wrote the book, after all.’
Stephani
e felt like her brain was slowly dragging itself up to speed after being mired in a swamp of lies. ‘I saw you dead. I saw you in your coffin.’ Scarlett smiled like a poker tournament winner released from the tyranny of keeping a straight face, and Stephanie suffered another moment of terrible understanding. ‘Oh my God,’ she gasped. Her hand flew to her mouth, as if by stopping the words emerging she could kill the knowledge.
Scarlett nodded. ‘She was fucking impossible, you know that. She wanted Jimmy, she wanted me to sign over the Spanish property to her, she wanted an income. Like any of that would have happened, even if I had been dying.’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘Silly cow thought she could threaten me with exposure.’
‘If she had talked it would only have been a nine-day wonder, Scarlett. You could have called her bluff. By then, you were the brave cancer heroine. The fact that you’d used Leanne as a body double bad girl might actually have earned you a few Brownie points.’ Stephanie’s bitterness leaked into every word.
But Scarlett looked puzzled rather than upset. ‘It wasn’t the body double thing I was worried about. It was Joshu.’
9
Now it was Stephanie’s turn to look baffled. ‘What about Joshu?’
‘Leanne knew about the morphine.’ Scarlett rolled her eyes as if she was dealing with a particularly stupid pupil.
‘What about the morphine?’ Stephanie persisted.
‘Joshu didn’t steal the morphine from Simon. Simon gave it to him. He made out that he was doing it as a favour, so Joshu would leave me alone. But he’d swapped the labels. Joshu thought he was shooting up a low dose, but it was really the highest one legally available. Leanne had seen Simon in the kitchen doing something with the labels and when Joshu died, she put two and two together. But she thought at first it was Simon trying to get Joshu out of the way so he could have a clear run at me. She didn’t realise we were already head over heels in love with each other by then.’ Scarlett smiled sweetly at the last memory, as if that erased the awful truth she’d just revealed.