Then I see it. Her face. Her hair. Her eyes. Like one of those Can-you-see-what-it-is? puzzles. The image swirls for a second in my mind, then, as she draws a few more strides closer, it locks.
Jane Glasson.
Older than the woman in Holly’s photograph. But, like Gareth said, not very different really. There’s no doubt in my mind. It’s her.
She’s past me before I’ve properly registered the reality of the situation. I saw the expression on her face as we crossed – grim, preoccupied – and realized she was barely aware of my presence. Why should she be? We’ve never met before. We don’t know each other. I’m no one who should be looking for her.
I have to make a choice. I guess she’s just been told as much as Intensive Care are willing to reveal about Gareth’s condition. It doesn’t look like it’s good news. But what is good news about Gareth for this woman? Does she want him dead or alive?
I turn round and start following her. No choice really. This is my only chance.
She moves fast. But she doesn’t look back. Not once. She moves like someone who wants to be somewhere else – badly.
Before I know it, we’re back at the entrance. She marches out into the air and pauses to take a few steadying gulps of it. Then she does something really odd. She presses her thumb to her wrist for several seconds, as if measuring her pulse.
I can’t tell if she’s worried or not by the result. She heads down the road and I follow. She pulls her phone out of her jacket pocket and checks something on it. The time, maybe? She picks up her pace. So do I.
It really is her, isn’t it? I’m so caught up with not losing her that I can’t get a fix on the answer to that question. I think it’s her. I feel it’s her. I believe it’s her. It can’t be, but it is. One moment it’s all theory and what-ifs. The next she’s a living and breathing stranger walking fast ahead of me – a real part of the real present.
We reach the corner. The main entrance is left. Opposite is some big high-domed university building. Jane stops and looks right, squinting slightly. What can she see? What’s she thinking?
A tram appears round the corner from the direction of the funicular. Jane darts across the road, heading for the tram stop. I go after her. A car driver blares his horn at me. Fuck. I looked right instead of left. But Jane doesn’t glance round. She’s in her own controlled, concentrated world.
I see the number and destination of the tram. 6. The Zoo. But we’re not going to the Zoo, I guess, as Jane hops aboard and I follow. Some stop short of the terminus? Her home, maybe?
She takes a single seat by the window. I manage to get the seat behind her. The doors clunk shut and the tram starts off. I’ve got no ticket, of course. Better hope no one checks.
As we trundle past the main entrance of the hospital, Jane presses a key on her phone and holds it to her ear. I lean forward, straining to hear. There are a couple of schoolboys nearby, talking loudly. And the tram’s a rackety thing, with lots of clinks and clatters.
But still I manage to catch most of her words.
‘It’s me … It’s bad … I just don’t know … He should’ve used the underpass … I heard it from the park … Such a thump, Filippo, such an awful sound. And when I went over there … I walked away. I had to. I couldn’t involve myself.’ No more doubts, then. Filippo has to be Filippo Crosetti, creator of Elixtris. Which means this woman has to be Jane Glasson.
The tram takes a sharp left. There’s a lot of creaking and squealing from the wheels. I can’t hear Jane over it. I see her press a finger against her other ear to blot out the sound.
The next words I catch are, ‘I know. She has to be our priority … I agree … Where are they putting her up? … Right. Well. I know why they’ve gone for the Dolder. Keep her isolated. That’ll be their plan … What time’s the meeting? … OK … Where? … Christ, that’ll be soulless.’
The tram pulls up at a stop. More noise. Doors opening and closing. Passengers leaving and boarding. The two schoolboys have a fit of the giggles over something on their phones. We set off again. I try to screen everything out except Jane’s voice.
‘Yeah … OK … No, we have … Agreed. My place, nine o’clock … We’ll talk it all through then … Yeah … See you. ’Bye.’
The call ends. Jane cradles the phone in her hand and stares out of the window. We’re going uphill now, round a long bend. She slips the phone into her pocket and goes on staring. I hear her sigh. She shakes her head, regretting something, Gareth’s accident maybe.
I guess now it really was an accident. She was waiting for him in the park. It must’ve been a call from her that sent him hurrying out of the hotel – straight into the path of a truck.
What else have I learnt from her phone call? She does work for Harkness. Or with Harkness, somehow or other. And with Filippo Crosetti, who’s been summoned from Locarno to meet Ingrid. So, Ingrid must be the woman the company’s putting up at the Dolder, wherever that is. She and Crosetti are due to get together tomorrow in Zug to discuss ‘contra-indications’ as well as specialist contractor 55. I know that from the Jane Glasson? file.
Now I know something else. Specialist contractor 55 is surely sitting right in front of me. Specialist contractor 55 is Jane Glasson.
The tram trundles on, steadily uphill through the suburbs. People get on and people get off. But Jane stays where she is. And so do I. At some point, I guess we really are going to the Zoo.
Everyone gets off at the terminus. We’re high above the city. I can see the tops of all the buildings and the shimmering water of the Zürichsee.
Jane heads along the road signposted to the Zoo and I follow. There are more people leaving than arriving at this time of the afternoon. Lots of children, some of them clutching fluffy toy animals. They mostly look tired but happy. Zoos do that to some people. Not me. I hate seeing animals in cages.
Jane’s got some kind of pass. She goes straight through the electronic turnstile. I have to buy a ticket. But there’s no queue, so I’m inside before she’s gone far.
She obviously knows where she’s going. She strides off uphill, by various winding paths, moving a lot faster than other visitors. There are signposts pointing the way to different animals – elephants, flamingos, orang-utans. Far as I can tell, we’re heading for the lions and tigers.
Just the tigers, as it turns out. There’s a kind of viewing structure where you look out on them. Well, on one of them, anyway. A big, sombre, loose-limbed, sad-eyed tiger who lifts its head and stares morosely towards us. Jane stands gazing towards it and I’m just a few metres away from her when she raises her right hand and speaks, too softly for me to hear.
The strange thing is I get the feeling the tiger knows her. It looks at her with its cold green eyes and you could, like, almost believe it understands what Jane is saying. Then some kids scamper up, screeching delightedly at their sight of a stuffed tiger come to life and the mood’s broken.
Jane’s off, walking more slowly now, but still quickly enough. We’re going downhill by more winding paths, under a bridge and past enclosures of goats and donkeys, then along an underpass leading into a huge glass-roofed building housing a tropical rainforest. The air’s thick and hot and humid. According to a sign this is a recreated chunk of Madagascar. Jane wanders a little way in and just looks, mostly up, at the high branches of the trees. I try to look engrossed in some lizard I’ve spotted on a leaf. I pull out my phone and pretend to take a picture of it. I actually take a picture of Jane, though I’ve only got her half-face and it doesn’t come out very well.
Jane doesn’t stay in the Madagascar building long either. She walks on through and out the other end, past some aquariums into a souvenir shop, then …
She leaves. We’re out of the Zoo on the other side of the road from the entrance, walking back towards the tram. Jane doesn’t pay anyone – me included – the slightest attention. She’s in her own world.
At the tram stop, she checks her phone, but only briefly. She doesn’t make a
ny more calls or send any messages. There’s quite a crowd by the time the tram shows up and I have to sit a couple of seats behind her.
Down we go, back into the city, while I wonder what the visit to the Zoo was really all about. It meant something, inside Jane’s head. But I can’t get there. All I can do is stick with her and see what happens.
The tram reaches the Hauptbahnhof, where a lot of passengers get off. And a lot more on, but Jane doesn’t budge until we get to somewhere called Paradeplatz. I follow her from there down to the river and over a bridge into a network of narrow, pedestrian-only streets winding between buildings maybe old enough to be medieval.
We come out near the river, where it’s widening to join the lake. Jane dives into a small convenience store, and, rather than trail round after her pretending to shop and maybe getting noticed, I sit at a table outside a café opposite.
I order and pay for a tea and wonder if it’ll get to me before Jane leaves the shop. It does, but only just. She comes out with a well-filled plastic carrier bag in each hand and I’m about to get up when I realize she’s walking straight towards me. I kind of freeze. I actually think for a moment she’s going to stop and say, ‘You were at the hospital. You were at the Zoo. What the fuck d’you want with me?’
None of that happens. There’s a side-door into the building housing the café, a few metres to my right. Jane pushes it open and goes in. I wait a couple of seconds, then jump up and move to the door. It’s glazed. Inside, I can see a rack of post-boxes, a flight of stairs and a lift. The lift door’s just sliding shut.
I go in through the door and watch the clock-style floor indicator track Jane’s progress. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. It stops at the top. I look at the post-boxes. Company names, far as I can tell. Except for number 7. A surname only. And not Swiss. Not Glasson either, as if it would be. Townsend. That’s all. No initial.
The lift comes back down automatically. But I don’t get in. Instead, I take the stairs. Quieter. And you can see what’s waiting for you before you get there.
Landing windows give an ever wider view of Zürich as I climb. Roof gardens and clock towers and skylights and aerials. I reach the top, moving oh so cautiously from the last half-landing up.
But it’s not the top. I’m on floor six, with the entrance to Kommerziele Übersetzung AG in front of me. The lift stops here. So do the stairs. Except there’s a door marked 7 where the stairs should continue.
I push open the landing window. There are railings outside and a sort of balconette holding boxed geraniums. I lean out over the railing and look up. There are dormer windows in the tiled roof above me and, as I lean out still further, more railings above that. A rooftop terrace, maybe. It must have quite a view.
I look across at one of the clock towers. It’s 6.20. I know Jane’s expecting Filippo at nine. Maybe she’ll stay put till then. Maybe not. Either way, I don’t want to push my luck.
I close the window and head down the stairs.
No one’s taken my tea away. I sit down and drink it. The early evening crowd flows past along what the map says is Limmatquai. I think of phoning Don to tell him what’s happened, but I decide to leave it till I’m somewhere more private. I check to see if he’s replied to my earlier text. No. That’s a bit unlike him. But he’ll be in touch. I can count on that. I think of phoning the University Hospital too, to ask about Gareth’s condition. But that’ll have to wait as well. I crane my neck and look up the face of the building. I can’t see the dormer windows on the seventh floor from here. But I know they’re there. I know Jane’s there too.
I’ve found her. And I’m not going to lose her.
If Don had hoped to learn any more from Harkness during the drive to Cornwall, he was to be disappointed. His passenger withdrew some of his earlier enthusiasm for the MG when told the rake of his seat could not be altered while the car was in motion. But still he managed to fall asleep, eyes shaded by the baseball cap, before they even reached Okehampton. He did not wake until they were approaching the outskirts of Mullion.
Don had checked his phone while Harkness was asleep and read a brief text from Blake reporting her safe arrival in Zürich. He had not risked replying. He would contact her later.
‘Ah, Mullion,’ said Harkness, yawning and stretching as Don negotiated the one-way system in the centre of the village. ‘Not that much has changed since I grew up here.’
‘You want to go straight to Wortalleth West?’
‘Yes. I think we should see whether French has left his mark there.’
Don’s first impression, as they drew up in front of the house, was that nothing had changed. ‘Aren’t you worried about someone round here recognizing you, Jack?’ he asked before they got out. ‘One word to the police and they’ll realize you’ve done a runner.’
‘They probably already know that,’ said Harkness, in a tone that verged on complacency. ‘I imagine Peter Revell has been in touch with them by now. They’ll take a lot of convincing Fran hasn’t simply left him – the standard assumption when a husband reports a wife missing – but they’re bound to follow up any mention of me.’
Don had decided to tell Harkness nothing about Peter and the scene he had witnessed at 53 Belgrave Square. But it seemed Harkness had deduced for himself what the sequence of events was likely to have been. ‘You think they’re already looking for you?’
Harkness nodded. ‘Probably.’
‘Then surely—’
‘Believe it or not, Don, I came down here to help Fran. My original exit route was a small airfield in Kent and a fast car across France to the Swiss border. I have dual British and Swiss citizenship and the Swiss don’t tend to give up their own, whatever they’re accused of. As it is, though, here I am. Ready to do as much as I can.’ Harkness turned and looked at Don. ‘Does the same go for you?’
‘You know it does.’
‘Let’s move, then. As you’ve just pointed out, I don’t have an unlimited amount of time at my disposal.’
The house was locked, but the alarm was off. It was fair to assume Fran had been there, probably with Pawley, but Don would have expected her to set the alarm on leaving. He knew she had the code. He had got it from her in the first place.
Inside everything seemed entirely normal. The stillness and emptiness of the place were exactly as Don remembered. He followed Harkness into the lounge and on through to the study. Harkness looked around, nodding to himself as if working his way through a mental checklist.
‘What are you looking for?’ Don asked.
‘Some sign that French has been here.’
‘And so far?’
‘Nothing. Let’s try upstairs.’
They went up and glanced into several bedrooms, before arriving at the master. ‘Are you going to look in the dressing-room closet?’ Don asked provocatively.
‘Why don’t you do the honours, Don?’ Harkness appeared unabashed. He was clearly going to continue admitting and denying nothing where the panic room was concerned.
Don headed past him into the dressing room and opened the closet. His reflection gazed back at him from the mirror at the end. He walked up to it and pressed his hand against the frame. The mirror swung open. And there was the steel door – as firm and solid as ever.
But something else was not.
‘You should see this, Don,’ Harkness called from the bathroom.
Don hurried to join him. ‘What?’
Harkness was standing in front of a jagged hole in the plaster covering the wall backing on to the rear of the closet. Beneath the plaster was a steel surface.
‘Are you going to tell me that isn’t the reinforced wall of a panic room, Jack?’
‘All I’m going to tell you, Don,’ Harkness replied, stooping and running his fingers over the surface of the steel, ‘is that someone’s tried to smash their way through here, probably with a sledgehammer, only to realize it wasn’t quite man enough for the job.’
‘French.’
‘He’s the obvious candidat
e.’
‘Maybe he’s planning to come back with something more powerful.’
‘Maybe. Or maybe he hopes he won’t have to. I suspect he did this before he ran into Fran.’
‘Here?’
‘It could well be. Let’s go back downstairs.’
They descended to the hall. Harkness went into the study again and looked around more carefully. Then he headed for the kitchen, with Don right behind him.
Nothing looked out of place to Don at first glance. The work surfaces were clear and clean. He saw only what he had expected to see. Then Harkness switched on the light, unnecessarily, it seemed.
But what the glare of the light revealed, as Harkness prowled around, with Don in tow, was a set of scuff-marks on the floor tiles, deep, dark scuff-marks radiating from an area near the telephone.
‘What would you say caused those, Don?’ Harkness asked, in a tone that suggested he already knew.
‘No idea.’
‘Probably because you haven’t seen anything like them before. There I have the advantage of you. The kitchen of a Moscow apartment owned by a deceased business associate of mine. Recently deceased, at the time. It happened in the kitchen. The flooring was cheap lino, not this ridiculously expensive Tuscan ceramic Mona chose. But the marks are strikingly similar. And there’s another common element. Zlenko. He’d paid the Moscow apartment a visit. And I think we can be sure he was here too.’
‘How did your business associate die?’
‘Strangled. With his own tie, actually. Poor old Igor was particularly fond of that tie. Old Harrovian. Which naturally he wasn’t. The marks were caused by the heels of his shoes as he kicked in his death throes.’
Don stared in horror at the marks on the floor. ‘You don’t think—’
‘Killing Fran would have made no sense, Don. Besides, I insisted on speaking to her when French phoned. And he was using his mobile. Which doesn’t work here.’
Panic Room Page 27
