Bright Angel

by Isabelle Merlin

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and then I burst into tears. For a few moments, all was confusion, as they both attempted to comfort me. Finally, I managed to pull myself together, and then Freddy told me that she’d spoken to Mum and Dad early that morning – it was night-time in Australia – and that they would be coming over in a couple of days’ time, as soon as they could arrange tickets.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And your mother also said – I’ve told Claire this already, Sylvie – to tell you that she’d heard from Helen’s mother that Mr Radic – Thomas’ father – had done a very fine thing. He’d rung them. In the wake of that hoax death threat, he wanted to tell Helen how sorry he was and assure her that his family did not blame her in any way for Thomas’ death. There had been other problems in Thomas’ life, and this is what had killed him, he said.’

  ‘It’s so brave of him,’ said Claire. ‘Imagine how hard it must have been to pick up that phone.’

  ‘Yes,’ I murmured. Just two days ago, this news would have made me happy. Pleased for Helen, and her family. Relieved they weren’t in danger. And touched by Mr Radic’s kindness, despite the suffering he must have gone through. But now, even the horror of what had happened that day at Wedding Heaven had faded before the impact of new events. I could only think of Daniel, alone in his suffering, and Gabriel, at the mercy of God-knows-what lunatics, targetting, just as the paper had said, the wrong people in their crusade against Benedict Udo and his company.

  Claire said, ‘At least they have some sort of closure now. The Makarios family, I mean. Yes, of course Helen was not to blame at all – he was clearly depressed – but in her heart she must have wondered whether in some way she had contributed. And it would have been with her for ever, that nagging feeling that somehow she could have stopped it.’

  Yes, I thought. Like I feel now. That somehow I could have stopped what happened to Gabriel. That somehow it was my fault even though I knew it wasn’t, that I wasn’t in control and never could have been, any more than I could have controlled what happened to Thomas Radic, just because I’d met his eyes as he came in. Stupid. Stupid. My thoughts were going round in circles and I wasn’t doing any good to myself or anyone thinking like this, getting myself entangled in crazy imaginings.

  ‘I suggest we go off to Toulouse for the day as soon as possible,’ said Freddy with a sideways, anxious glance at me. ‘And don’t say no, Sylvie,’ she went on, misunderstanding my expression. ‘It’s no good sitting here brooding. You need to get right away from all this.’

  I nodded. She gave me a surprised look, then a faint smile. She squeezed my hand. ‘Good. That’s my sensible gal.’

  ‘I don’t want to hang around,’ I said. And that was the truth. My mobile was silent. I knew I wouldn’t hear from Daniel. And Mick hadn’t even contacted me. Dimly, I remembered him saying something about following something up last night. He’d said he’d let me know if he found anything. Well, either he’d not found anything, or–

  The breath whistled in my throat. Whoever was responsible for Gabriel’s kidnap was clearly dangerous. What if Mick had gone following some trail on his own, and come across something which might be linked to them. Perhaps they’d found out somehow – then he’d be in danger. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t rung.

  ‘Hang on, I’ve just got to call someone,’ I said, and fled from the room. They didn’t try to follow me.

  He answered after the third or fourth ring. He sounded surprised. ‘Sylvie? Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes. Well, sort of. Have you read the paper?’ I asked, so relieved to hear his voice that I had to sit down.

  ‘The paper? No. Why?’

  ‘Don’t you remember, the police told us there’d be something in it today?’

  ‘Oh. That. No, I forgot. I’ve been busy. Been up most of the night, actually, emailing internet buddies all over the world who have an interest in investigating organised cyber-crime, stuff like that.’

  ‘Did you find out anything?’

  ‘Not really at first. It was pretty frustrating But I think now I’m on the track of something interesting,’ he said. ‘Just a hint, for the moment. Some Belgian police inquiry – a link made with Fox. Just on the periphery, mind. Can’t tell you much more right now. I stayed overnight in St-Gaudens, at a friend’s place, and want to keep following this up. So I can’t meet up today, if that’s okay.’

  ‘That’s fine. No problems,’ I said. ‘I’m going to Toulouse with my sister and my aunt.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ he said, sounding relieved. ‘That’s a great idea. Give you a break.’ His voice sharpened. ‘But hang on, why did you ask if I saw the paper?’

  I told him. When I finished he said, ‘Well! What did I tell you?’

  I was confused. ‘What?’

  ‘I mean the link with Udo and organised crime. That must be what the kidnappers are getting at, right, with the bit about an inquiry into Fox?’

  He sounded way too cheerful about it. I said, coldly, ‘I wouldn’t know. I don’t care what those idiots want. I just want Gabriel to be safe.’

  ‘Sure, sure,’ he said hastily. ‘Didn’t mean to sound heartless. It’s just that it rather confirms a couple of things for me.’

  ‘What, exactly?’

  ‘Can’t say right now,’ he said, evasively, annoyingly. ‘Not until I know more.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Mick, be careful. These people are dangerous.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, don’t worry,’ he said.

  ‘And tell the police, if you really get too close to something bad.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, immediately. He hesitated, cleared his throat. ‘Has Daniel been in touch?’

  I swallowed. ‘No. I-I tried calling him. But he won’t answer his phone. At least, he won’t talk to me.’

  ‘Oh.’ A pause. I heard him clear his throat. ‘I – if you don’t mind me saying so, I think you should leave it. I suppose his uncle’s going to turn up soon, anyway, and he’s not going to want you around.’

  ‘Thanks all the same, Mick,’ I said angrily, ‘but I don’t see what business it is of yours.’

  ‘Just that I don’t want you to get hurt or be at risk,’ he replied softly, ‘and if even a fraction of what I suspect of Udo is right, I’d hate to think of you in his orbit at all, whatever you might feel about Daniel. Which, I have to say, I wish you didn’t. And not just for your sake.’

  There was a pause. I tried to say something, but couldn’t. He went on, gently, ‘Are you still there, Sylvie?’

  I faltered, ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll call you tonight,’ he said. ‘Just you go off and have a good time in Toulouse.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can.’

  ‘Try, anyway, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’ I paused. ‘And, and look after yourself, won’t you, Mick?’

  He gave a little laugh. ‘Sure, darlin’. I will. Speak to you tonight, then.’

  He rang off and I was left there in the hall, staring at the phone, feeling both a bit better but also more confused. And there was something nagging at me. Something that had rung a bell, dimly, somewhere, in a corner of my mind, during our conversation. Something that he’d said, about what he’d found out. Something that sounded familiar, that I’d heard somewhere before. To do with the Belgian police inquiry and the link with Fox Financial. No, not that, exactly. I didn’t know anything about any Belgian police inquiry or Fox, come to that. It was the mention of Belgium, which reminded me of something I’d heard about, or seen, or read. But where, and what the hell was it?

  Head on a plate

  I never thought I could enjoy the day in Toulouse. How could I, with my mind full of what had happened? But Freddy and Claire were determined not to let me get away with brooding. They didn’t let me think. They whisked me off into boutiques and department stores and a beautiful little perfume shop, where Freddy bought me my first ever French perfume. It was Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle, which the saleslady, sleek and elegant as a model, said was just perfect for a jeune fille, a young lady. Sh
e made a big deal about what an important day it was in my life and handed me the smart paper bag with the perfume and a whole lot of little samples of other scents as if she was handing me a sacred object. Honestly, French people can be so funny!

  We browsed in a shoe shop where Claire bought her ninety-ninth pair of shoes, and then in a bookshop where Freddy stocked up on historical tomes, and Claire bought several of Marc Fleury’s books, and I bought a BD, or Bande Dessinée,which is what the French call graphic novels or comic books. They had racks and racks of BDs in the shop. Apparently it’s a really big thing in France. There were some for kids and some for adults, including some really full-on and pretty gross ones! The one I bought was called Le Collége Invisible,The Invisible College. It looked like a Harry Potter-style thing, with a magic school and trolls and elves and wizards and things, except the hero, Guillaume, was always getting things wrong. It looked like fun. I thought I might improve my French reading it. And I thought Gabriel might like it, too.

  Because even though I was sort of enjoying myself doing all these sorts of things, at the back of my mind of course was the nagging worry about Gabriel, and sadness over Daniel, and general anxiety over everything. Try as I might, though, I hadn’t been able to work out just why that mention of Belgium should have struck me. I knew nothing about Belgium except that they made the best chocolates ever. I certainly had never met any Belgian people or anything. It bugged me but I just couldn’t work it out, so I had to leave it alone. Maybe if I stopped thinking about it, it would come to me. It works like that, sometimes.

  We had lunch in a fantastic restaurant, just above the main covered markets in Toulouse. The food was all from the markets, really fresh and delicious and not expensive at all. And really friendly and busy and bustling with no snooty waiters or weird cutlery you couldn’t work out how to use. I was surprised by how hungry I was, and fell on my pâté and pork steak and salad and fruit tart and cream as if I hadn’t eaten for a week. It was lovely but I couldn’t help feeling guilty as I ate, thinking of what Gabriel might be eating, right now, poor little kid.

  In the afternoon, Claire and I went to an internet café while Freddy went off to do some business. I had a look at my emails – the only one of any interest, apart from one sent last night by Mum, basically saying the same thing that Freddy had reported, about Mr Radic ringing the Makarios family, was from Jess. It was weird reading it, like it was a message from another life. She didn’t know about what had happened here of course, and several times I started writing about it but then kept deleting it. She was my best friend, and she’d be very interested, but to her it would be like a story, not really happening, and I sort of shrank from that. In the end I just wrote, Hi Jess, in a rush, good to hear from you, will write more later, xxx Sylvie.

  I went onto Google then and typed in Belgium and Fox Financial but came up with nothing. Then I put Belgian police and Fox Financial. Still nothing. Belgium/Belgian and Benedict Udo. Udo and Belgium. Nothing. Nada. I typed in Udo and Fox Financial and got a link back to the company website which was pretty flashy but not exactly informative, especially for me who knows nothing at all about financial stuff. Benedict Udo was also mentioned in several newspaper reports as a generous donor to charities, which I was quite surprised by. There were pictures of him in various places. He didn’t look at all what I had expected. I’d sort of imagined some huge big guy with a shaven head and a flashy suit or sort of like a rapper with lots of bling, but in fact he was quite small and pretty thin, dressed in a very conservative suit. The only thing I’d got right was the shaven head, but on him it didn’t look intimidating, only kind of vulnerable. He hardly looked like the model of a successful businessman, let alone some sort of criminal mastermind, or whatever he was accused of. He didn’t even look like the sort of guy a nephew would be afraid or wary of. The only hint to anything different, I thought, peering into his magnified face on the screen, was something steely in the eyes – eyes that reminded me of Daniel’s – and a ruthless set to the mouth. But perhaps I was just imagining that.

  His nephews were mentioned only once, on that page I’d glimpsed the other day and Mick had told me about. It was actually part of a blog, which didn’t have any entries more recent than three months ago. The blog entry that referred to Daniel and Gabriel was just a pretty short and vague thing about Udo possibly being associated with certain London criminals but this appeared to consist of the fact that he had gone a few times to a nightclub called Sprouts, which was associated with some criminal gang or other which met there or owned it or whatever. Not exactly convincing, though I suppose Udo didn’t look like the nightclub-hopping type. Still, you never knew with people, did you? The blog also said that he had recently adopted his orphaned nephews, Daniel and Gabriel Aubrac. And that was it. Not much at all for us or the police or anyone else to base a case against Udo. And apart from very recent newspaper references to Gabriel’s kidnap – none of which said anything different to the paper we’d read – there was nothing else about Daniel and Gabriel on the net. They had no Facebook or Bebo or MySpace pages, nothing like that. But then, that figured, I suppose. Wary and suspicious as Daniel was, he’d never trust anything like that, I thought.

  I was getting fed up with all this fruitless trawling, but as a last resort I put in ‘Sprouts’. Up came all this irrelevant stuff about alfalfa sprouts, and Brussels sprouts, and, hang on, wasn’t Brussels the capital of Belgium? Feverishly, I typed in, ‘Sprouts nightclub London Brussels.’ And there it was, an Associated Press report, just a few lines. Apparently there was another Sprouts nightclub in Brussels. At least, there hadbeen. It had closed down a year ago, after a mysterious fire, suspected to be arson, had razed it. There was some mention of ‘international underworld interests’ owning the nightclub, dodgy transactions taking place there, and a suspicion that gang warfare was involved in its destruction, but no mention at all of Ben Udo.

  That must be the police inquiry Mick was referring to, I thought. Mystery solved. But how did it tie in with Daniel’s uncle? As far as I could see, the only vague link he had to the underworld was Sprouts nightclub. But in London, not Brussels. And no way was that enough. But there must be more to it than that, if the kidnappers had made a specific demand about Fox Financial and their activities. Somewhere, there must be a connection between all these things, but I just couldn’t see it. Maybe Mick and his full-on, never-sleeping geek friends might, though.

  Then it struck me. I might have found out what the Belgian police inquiry Mick referred to was, but why should Ihave felt a sense of familiarity when he mentioned it? I’d never heard of Sprouts nightclub before, whether in London or Brussels. I wouldn’t have known it existed. It was just the mention of Belgium that had done it – something I’d read about in another context – but what was it? What the hell was it? I just couldn’t get it. And yet, I had a gut feeling it was important, that if only I could remember it, a piece of the puzzle would fall into place.

  But our session was up. Freddy had come to get us, and was impatient to leave. I’d have to let it go for the moment and hope that it would come to me.

  But it didn’t. And I was tired. Much more tired than I’d thought. I was dozing in the car on the way back, drifting gently to the hum of Freddy and Claire’s conversation in the front seat, when my mobile rang, startling me. It was Mick. ‘Have the police been in touch with you?’ he asked, without even saying hello.

  I felt a flutter of fear. ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Something’s happened,’ he said. His voice was tight, nervous. A bit hysterical, even.

  My heart clenched tight. My voice went up. ‘What? What?’

  Freddy and Claire had stopped talking. Claire had turned around to look at me. She mouthed, ‘What’s up? Who is it?’

  I flapped a hand at her to tell her to be quiet. I said, ‘Mick, please tell me.’

  ‘Captain Gaudry rang,’ he said. ‘Sylvie, I’m sorry.’ I heard his gulp quite clearly.

  I felt sick. I almost ye
lled, ‘For God’s sake, Mick, what happened?’

  ‘It’s Daniel,’ he said, and my stomach lurched with horror. ‘He’s disappeared.’

  For a beat, I couldn’t speak. Then I said, from a dry throat, ‘What do you mean, disappeared?’

  ‘He’s, they, he’s been taken too.’ His voice faltered. ‘Oh God, Sylvie. I’m so sorry.’

  I licked my lips. ‘How? When?’

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘Last night?’ I repeated, feeling the words drop into me like stones. Last night? Last night, I’d been over there. But I’d seen nothing. Heard nothing. Except a lit window. A car, starting up. And Daniel’s breathing, on the phone. My scalp crawled. ‘What time was it when he–’ I couldn’t finish my sentence.

  ‘They’re not precisely sure. The policeman who was meant to be on watch – he got knocked out. Not bashed. They think it was by a syringe. Sleeping drug. He doesn’t remember anything about being attacked. But the last time he looked at his watch was around midnight.’

  So it must have happened after that. I’d called Daniel at 1.30. He’d answered. Or rather someonehad. Shivering, I said, ‘I have to tell the police.’

  ‘Tell them what?’

  ‘That I-I tried to call Daniel in the night. I even sent him a message. It might help them to fix the time it happened.’ I was going to say that I’d been over there too, but I was uneasily aware of Freddy and Claire listening, and didn’t want to worry them. Or get screamed at. ‘They should have called me already,’ I said, ‘if they found his mobile.’

  ‘I don’t think they did,’ said Mick. ‘Otherwise, they’d have called you.’

  I was struggling to think. ‘Why did they call you?’

  ‘Actually, it was me who called the Captain,’ said Mick, ‘to tell him about what I’d been looking into. It was then he told me.’

  I said, ‘Did he say if the kidnappers had made any more demands?’