Stolen

by Tess Stimson

  It’s missing.

  My pulse quickens. I check the folder again, and then around my desk, in case I’ve dropped it, but it’s definitely gone. I’ve rattled enough cages and turned over enough stones for someone to have broken cover.

  Jack may not believe there’s a connection between Lottie and South Weald House, but I’m certain of it.

  And there’s only one person who can help me find it.

  I’m not surprised when Harriet’s mobile goes straight to voicemail. My sister has always been an early riser, especially since she moved to the Shetlands, but our communications over the past two years have been sporadic at best. When we do talk, we don’t seem to know what to say to each other.

  If we ever did.

  ‘It’s me,’ I say, as soon as her recorded greeting ends. ‘Look, I thought I might come up and stay with you for a few days. It’ll be nice to spend time together.’

  I pause. Is that enough?

  ‘I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon,’ I add. ‘I’ll text you when I’m in Orkney.’

  Slipping my phone into the pocket of my sweatpants, I go into the kitchen and insert a K-cup into the coffee machine. One, I think.

  A stream of rich Colombian dark roast hisses into my mug. Two.

  I settle myself on a kitchen stool.

  Three …

  chapter 45

  alex

  My phone vibrates. ‘Hey, there,’ I say.

  Harriet sounds a little out of breath. I imagine her listening to my message and panicking at the thought of having me turn up on her doorstep. I doubt I’m on speed dial. She’ll have had to look up my number and type it in old-school. No wonder she’s breathless.

  ‘This really isn’t a good time to come up here,’ my sister says. ‘The weather’s been abysmal and Mungo only just got back from the rigs two days ago. You know what he’s like when he’s decompressing. I’d love to see you but—’

  ‘Relax,’ I say. ‘I’m not coming up to bloody Shetland. I just said that so you’d ring me back.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Although a more sensitive person might be a little offended by your eagerness to talk me out of it.’

  I mean it as a joke, but it comes out as an accusation.

  I know my sister loves me, just as I love her, but when I think of the closeness Zealy shares with Marc or the friendship many of my friends have with their siblings, I feel a sense of loss. Harriet and I have a strange disconnect, which I’ve never really understood. She isolated herself from me emotionally long before she put such literal distance between us.

  ‘Mum OK?’ my sister says, finally.

  ‘She seemed fine at the weekend,’ I say. ‘A bit tired, maybe.’

  Actually, now that I think about it, Mum wasn’t quite herself. Dad said she hadn’t been sleeping well, but I should check back in with her, make sure she’s OK.

  ‘I heard about what happened,’ Harriet says, abruptly. ‘In London, I mean.’

  It’s as if she’s embarrassed to mention Lottie’s name. I heard about what happened. You know. When you saw your missing daughter on a train four thousand miles from where she disappeared.

  I get it a lot: the embarrassment. No one knows how to deal with grief any more. There’s no template for anyone to follow and so, when catastrophe strikes, we hold candlelight vigils and put up roadside shrines and launch GoFundMe campaigns and then quickly move on, before we have to deal with any of the messiness of actual emotions.

  The Victorians knew what they were doing with their widows’ weeds and black armbands. Their etiquette for grieving a loved one was strict, and it may seem laughable now that the width of a black hatband was dictated by your relationship to the deceased, but everyone knew where they were. They knew what was expected of them. And when a widow cast off her mourning, her black bombazine and crepe, it was a signal to the world she was ready to engage with it again.

  People cross the street to avoid me because they don’t know what to say. It’s extraordinary how many of them don’t even mention Lottie ‘because I didn’t want to bring it up again’, as if the loss of my baby is something I might forget.

  I’ll miss my daughter with every breath I take for the rest of my life, but I’m still human. Sometimes I crave normality so much it hurts: for someone to make a joke and not glance apologetically at me, as if they’ve just farted in church.

  I know Harriet cares about Lottie almost as much as I do and she’s suffering too. But if I can endure my loss and still get up in the morning, she owes it to me to acknowledge my grief and use my daughter’s name.

  ‘Harry, I need to ask you something,’ I say, abruptly. ‘Do you remember that place in Devon we used to stay when we were kids? South Weald House?’

  ‘Of course,’ she says, sounding surprised. ‘Why?’

  ‘You used to be good friends with the housekeeper’s daughter, didn’t you?’

  ‘Cathy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Years ago,’ Harriet says. ‘I haven’t seen her since I left London. She was at UCL, you know, same as you.’

  ‘I saw an old photo of her the other day when I was going through the albums with Mum,’ I say. ‘Eating ice-cream with us on the lawn. I really need to speak to her. Are you two still in touch?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask Marc for her number?’ Harriet says.

  ‘Why would Marc have it?’

  The dead air between us is suddenly freighted with tension. In the silence, I can hear the wind whipping around her tiny croft hundreds of miles away.

  ‘You really don’t know?’ Harriet says, at last.

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I’m not superstitious. I don’t believe in women’s intuition and sixth senses.

  I grip the phone a little more tightly. ‘What are you talking about, Harriet?’

  ‘Marc Chapman coached Cathy, when she was on the UCL football team, that’s how she and Sian became friends. Alex, I thought you knew.’

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘Catherine Lord,’ she says. ‘Cathy. She was Sian’s maid of honour.’

  chapter 46

  No one gives us a second glance when we venture out now, though I still keep our outings to a minimum. We blend into a crowd of millions here in the city, but it only takes one person to recognise her.

  Except the girl doesn’t do well cooped up inside hotel rooms all the time. It’s been too long since she had playmates. She’s restless, bored, full of pent-up energy that manifests itself in tantrums and bouts of fury. She requires constant attention, constant entertainment.

  I worry she’s mentally unstable, that she’s been irrevocably damaged by everything that’s happened to her.

  Or perhaps it’s just me. I’ve never been a hands-on mother before.

  Either way, I can’t keep her indoors all the time. It’s not healthy for her to spend hours staring at a screen and she’s starting to look peaky.

  We need to leave the city and go somewhere she can get outside and run around. Somewhere rural, where people keep themselves to themselves, but not too far off the beaten track that strangers attract notice. A place used to tourists and new faces in the village shop.

  I rent a cottage on the coast and pay cash, three months upfront, but I don’t plan for us to be here anywhere near that long. The skinny kid at the lettings agent doesn’t ask for ID, though I have my fake passport ready. He’s too busy counting bank notes.

  The girl’s photo is no longer on the front pages and, in this remote backwater, her name isn’t on people’s lips. I don’t think anyone will be looking for her here, after all this time, but I can’t be sure.

  I’m careful when we go out, because people might be looking for me, too.

  Every day, when I check online, I wonder if today’s the day I’ll see my own face staring back at me.

  I can’t believe no one’s made the connection. For all my caution and planning, I couldn’t tie up every loose thread. One tug in the right place and my carefully c
onstructed world will unravel.

  But with every day that goes by, I feel a little less anxious about being discovered, a little more confident no one’s coming for the child.

  She’s stopped asking where her ‘mummy’ is, now. She doesn’t demand to go home any more.

  She knows how upset it makes me.

  chapter 47

  quinn

  Quinn admires Zealy’s tight arse as she follows her into a bright, open-plan sitting room with a spectacular million-dollar view across the Thames. There must be family money here somewhere or maybe a sugar-daddy; Zealy Cardinal is a dance teacher with a struggling studio in Islington and there’s no way she could afford the Chihuly glass sculpture on the bookshelf or those Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs if she wasn’t being bankrolled by someone.

  Zealy folds herself gracefully into one of the chrome and leather chairs, tucking her bare feet beneath her. Quinn’s eyes are drawn to her nipples, clearly visible beneath her white cashmere tunic.

  ‘You’ve got fifteen minutes,’ Zealy says.

  Quinn puts her phone on the glass coffee table between them. ‘Mind if I record this?’ She indicates her withered arm. ‘I find it difficult to take notes.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘What can you tell me about Catherine Lord?’

  Zealy looks disconcerted. ‘Catherine? You said on the phone you had information about my brother.’

  ‘Bear with me. I’ll get to that.’

  Zealy plays with the slender silver bangle on her wrist. Her fingers are long and elegant, like the rest of her. ‘I can’t tell you anything,’ she says finally. ‘I don’t really know her.’

  ‘But your brother is close to her?’

  ‘Not really. Marc coached her at college. She’s Sian’s friend, not his. He introduced them, that’s all.’

  ‘Have you seen Catherine since the wedding?’ Quinn asks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about your brother? Has he seen her?’

  ‘I don’t know. I doubt it. I told you, she was Sian’s friend, not his. I shouldn’t think he’s seen her since the divorce.’ She sweeps her hair back from her face, looping the braids in a careless knot at the nape of her neck. ‘Look, I don’t see what any of this has to do with Marc.’

  She’s a heartbeat from telling Quinn to leave.

  ‘You don’t like Catherine much, do you?’ Quinn says mildly.

  Abruptly, Zealy leaps up from her two-thousand-dollar chair, clasping her slender arms around herself as if an Arctic blast has swept through the room.

  Bingo.

  ‘There’s something off about her,’ Zealy says. ‘The whole time we were in Florida, she was just always … there. Every time you turned around. Listening in corners, watching you. It was weird. And she sucked up to Sian all the time, but I think she actually kind of hated her. One of those women who just doesn’t like other women, you know?’

  Quinn suspects Zealy has met a lot of women like that.

  ‘What about Alexa Martini?’ Quinn asks. ‘How did Catherine get on with her?’

  She shrugs. ‘They only spoke a couple of times.’

  ‘Did you ever suspect she might’ve had something to do with Lottie’s disappearance?’

  Zealy rubs her upper arms nervously. ‘No. Maybe. I don’t know.’

  Quinn turns off the recording on her phone. ‘Look, this is off the record,’ she says. ‘Just between you and me. Whatever you say won’t go any further than this room.’

  Zealy chews her lip. ‘I don’t have any proof.’

  ‘I’m not asking for proof. What did your gut tell you, Zealy?’

  The other woman’s ambivalence plays across her face. She returns to her chair, perching nervously on the arm like a bird ready to take flight.

  ‘I thought at first Catherine was just trying to fit in, you know, like people do when they’re kind of on the fringes of things,’ she says. ‘She hardly knew anyone at the wedding. Sian said she only picked her as a bridesmaid because she needed an ugly one. I know she meant it as a joke, but she was never super nice to Catherine to be honest.’ Zealy looks away, an ugly flush stealing across her caramel skin. ‘I don’t suppose I was, either.’

  The ugly one. Quinn feels the familiar tingle along her nerve endings.

  That’s how Ian Dutton described Catherine, too.

  Back in Dubai, Quinn and her cameraman, Phil, had patched Dutton up as best they could.

  He’d refused to let them take him to hospital, so they’d poured a quarter-bottle of Scotch into him and settled him on the sofa with an ice pack.

  Whoever had beaten him up had been very professional about it. They’d been looking for information, same as Quinn. They’d particularly wanted to know who he’d told about his plans to elope with Sanaa.

  Dutton was adamant he hadn’t breathed a word to anyone. They’d broken his nose and several ribs before they’d believed him.

  ‘You’re sure Sanaa didn’t tell anyone either?’ Quinn had pressed. ‘Not even her parents?’

  ‘They’d have gone straight to Sanaa’s husband,’ Ian said.

  ‘Maybe someone followed you? Or overheard something?’

  ‘We were careful. No one knew where Sanaa was. There’s no way—’

  He broke off suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘One of the bridesmaids in Florida. She was like a peeping bloody Tom.’ His words were distorted by his broken nose: peepung bloodeh Tom. ‘I’d forgotten till now. I saw her lurking around one day when I was talking to Sanaa on the phone. I suppose it’s possible she overheard me.’

  ‘Which bridesmaid?’

  He frowned, then winced with pain. ‘The ugly one. I forget her name.’

  Quinn had her suspicions then, but she’s certain of it now: Catherine Lord is the woman who took that video of Ian and Sanaa eloping and sent it to the police.

  Either she hated Dutton enough to land him in a world of hurt just for the fun of it, which, given she didn’t even know him before the wedding, seems unlikely.

  Or she was protecting someone else.

  The so-called ‘thin man’.

  Who did Catherine really see carrying a child along the alley by the hotel that night?

  two years and seventeen days missing

  chapter 48

  alex

  Jack leans across the table to refill my wine glass and then tops up his own. I have to be up early tomorrow for a Zoom call with a client in Istanbul and this will be my third glass of a very heady Italian red, but I don’t stop him.

  ‘To answer your question, Alex, no, I don’t think you’re being paranoid,’ he says. ‘But I do think you’re tired and under an incredible amount of stress.’

  ‘Subtext: I’m being paranoid.’

  ‘Maybe. But in your place, who wouldn’t be?’

  His fingers brush mine on the tablecloth. Jack wants to get into my knickers a little bit. I’m not foolish enough to take it personally. He’s one of those men who simply loves women; wanting to get in their knickers is his default setting.

  I move my hand. ‘To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to have one friend with a dark secret may be regarded as a misfortune,’ I say. ‘To have three looks like I need new friends.’

  ‘Hardly dark secrets,’ Jack says, taking his cue from me and leaning back in his chair, putting a little distance between us. ‘Pale grey, at most. Newsflash: your platonic male friend is carrying a very unchaste torch for you. Who’d have thought? And Catherine Lord turned out to have gone to the same college as you, and met the same football coach. As conspiracy theories go, it’s not exactly up there with the grassy knoll.’

  ‘Ah, but you’re forgetting about Ian Dutton.’

  ‘Yeah, OK. I’ll give you Dutton. That was pretty weird.’

  ‘I’m planning a TED talk later in the week: Poor Judgement or Why We Pick Men Who Elope With Other Women. It’ll be followed by a Q&A on Sociopaths: the Science of Not Sleeping With.’

  He grins wolfishly
. ‘You just haven’t slept with the right ones.’

  If Jack didn’t combine his supreme sexual confidence with a nice line in self-deprecation, he’d be insufferable. As it is, he’s hard to resist.

  I’ve occasionally taken a man into my bed over the last two years, when the loneliness has been unbearable. The encounters have been physically satisfying, but emotionally uninvolved: it’s safer that way.

  Jack, on the other hand, is far too risky a proposition. He’s attractive on multiple levels and I have no time for a relationship, even if it was on offer. My focus has to be on finding Lottie and I can’t afford distractions, however urbane and charming.

  ‘Everyone has secrets, Alex,’ Jack says, suddenly serious. ‘Dutton’s was more operatic than most, but we all have baggage. You could do a deep dive into the background of everyone at that wedding and you’d find something fishy on all of them: affairs, embezzlement, tax fraud—’

  ‘Christ,’ I say. ‘What sort of friends do you have?’

  ‘Politicians,’ Jack says dryly.

  ‘What about you?’ I ask. The wine has gone to my head: my tone is more arch than I intend. ‘What dark secrets do you have, Jack?’

  ‘I’m married,’ Jack says.

  I laugh. Jack Murtaugh is famously single, a permanent star in the most-eligible-bachelor firmament of the gossip pages.

  Jack doesn’t laugh with me.

  ‘Her name’s Amira,’ he says. ‘We met in Libya about nine years ago. She needed to get out of the country in a hurry, so I brought her to the UK. Totally fake marriage. I haven’t seen her in at least six years.’

  A shadow passes across his face.

  ‘You’re not kidding,’ I say. ‘How d’you keep that quiet?’

  ‘I told you, I have friends in low places.’ He swirls the wine in his glass, but doesn’t raise it to his lips. ‘She lost her entire family in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. I couldn’t just leave her there.’

  The marriage may be fraudulent, but Jack clearly feels something for his fake wife or he wouldn’t have risked his career to help her. I’m curious how they met, but I suspect, even if I asked, he wouldn’t tell me.