The Lost

by Mari Hannah

  Time to rip up the script.

  ‘Why were you so sure she wouldn’t grass on you?’

  ‘I knew, that’s all.’

  ‘She told you that, did she? And you believed her? With respect, Mr Curtis, before February she was a perfect stranger to you. Regardless of the simplicity of your relationship, you couldn’t have known that she wouldn’t change her mind and drop you in it. And yet it was a chance you were prepared to take?’

  ‘I told you, she was a free spirit.’

  ‘And that didn’t worry you?’

  ‘Not for a nanosecond. I trusted her.’ Curtis picked up the jug of water Floppy had just brought in. ‘Hassle-free is the way I roll.’

  ‘Will there be anything else, James?’ the receptionist said.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Floppy disappeared.

  As Curtis poured himself a glass of water, Frankie exchanged a look with Stone. He’d sat quiet for much of the interview, studying the suspect, allowing her free rein. He pulled his phone from his pocket. When he looked up, she saw a flicker of excitement in his eyes but had no time to dwell on what might have occurred.

  She turned to face the businessman. ‘Did Justine ever ask you for money?’

  ‘She wasn’t a prostitute.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked.’

  ‘It’s what you implied.’

  Frankie waited.

  ‘Then no,’ he said. ‘Though I got the distinct impression that money was important to her. She liked the idea of wealth. So do I, so let’s not hold that against her. It buys the best tables in restaurant, the best seats at the theatre—’

  ‘But not the best men.’ Frankie was taking the piss, letting him know what she thought of the egomaniac, hoping to provoke him into saying something he might regret. Curtis was too clever for that. ‘So,’ she moved on. ‘You were entirely confident that you would get away with your extra-marital affair—’

  Curtis smirked. ‘You’re not married, are you, DS Oliver?’

  ‘That’s beside the point.’

  ‘Is it? Do you have any idea how many married people, men and women, have affairs? If you asked them all why, you’ll get the same answer. It was a risk they were prepared to take. We’re a naïve bunch. It never occurred to me that Justine would blow the whistle. Most single women who play the game like to keep quiet about it, for obvious reasons.’

  ‘So, if I was to ask your wife about your infidelity it would come as a shock?’

  At last, a reaction.

  Frankie one – Curtis zero.

  She hated arrogant men. Curtis was degree standard. That didn’t bother her. Interviewing suspects was what fired her jets. Nothing else came close. In a battle of wills, he’d never win.

  ‘What is it you want, Detective?’

  ‘The truth.’ She allowed a beat of time to pass. ‘How did it sit with your business partner that you were seeing his au pair?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  ‘It’s a simple enough question. Presumably, you told him about it.’

  ‘No. Why would I?’

  ‘You really expect me to believe that?’

  ‘Believe what you like. It’s the truth.’

  ‘There was no banter between you over how good she was in bed, in the back of the car, in the woods, wherever it was you were screwing her?’ Frankie wondered how many names had been taken by the surveillance team the SIO had deployed in the woods. She didn’t believe that Justine was the only person who used that spot as a meeting place. ‘C’mon, Mr Curtis. I work in a male-dominated organisation. I’ve witnessed the male ego first hand. Women have been handed the gossip label, but I know how much guys like to talk.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint. That’s not my style.’

  ‘Did you ever visit Justine at her annex?’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘OK.’ Stone took over. ‘Let’s move on.’

  Frankie tried not to show her frustration. She’d barely started. Her DI’s intervention had been swift and, she suspected, triggered by Curtis’s denial. Stone wouldn’t wish to dwell on the fact that they were waiting on DNA results. He’d put in a fast-track request but Frankie wasn’t hopeful. Like Windy, Detective Superintendent Sharpe was being frugal where his budget was concerned. He wasn’t tight, but neither was he generous. It was the taxpayer’s money he was spending after all.

  Curtis was clever enough to know that if the detectives had evidence against him, he’d be on his way to the station for questioning. It was only a matter of time before they would establish if he’d been telling the truth. It was important to keep up the momentum.

  Stone fired off a question. ‘When DS Oliver interviewed you the first time, you said that your company was in financial crisis. Can you elaborate on that? The reason I ask is that Alex Parker seems to have no idea whatsoever that your business is in trouble.’

  Curtis bridled. ‘With respect, what has that got to do with Justine?’

  Stone stared him down. ‘I’m asking the questions.’

  ‘As you wish. I’ve examined the business accounts and discovered that a lot of money is missing – a regular payment going out to an offshore account I had assumed was owned by Alex.’

  ‘Who signed off on it?’

  ‘Tim did.’ Curtis hesitated. ‘We had an arrangement to repay her stake in our business and I didn’t question it until we got into difficulty.’

  ‘And now?’ Stone asked.

  ‘That’s a matter for me, Tim – and our legal representatives.’

  ‘OK, we’ll leave it there.’

  As they walked away, Stone pulled out his mobile and showed it to Frankie. Sharpe had been in touch. Wise was in the clear. His wife’s oncologist had confirmed his attendance at the hospital while he delivered some devastating news. The couple were captured on CCTV at the main entrance to the RVI fifteen minutes before the appointment. That left Parker, Curtis and Hamilton still in the mix.

  41

  Alex was suffocating, something damp and heavy pinning her down. She sensed her parents before they came into view. They looked blissfully happy but their joy was short-lived. Their smiles faded as she approached. Alex watched them drift away. An attempt to follow was thwarted by something tangled around her feet, preventing her from breaking free. She stopped struggling when she lost sight of them. A crowd appeared in their place, no more than dark blobs in the distance, getting closer. That’s when the whispering began, the voices multiplying the nearer they got, all talking at once.

  ‘Stop!’ Alex yelled.

  You’ll NEVER leave . . .

  ‘Get away from me, Rob! Daniel, come to Mummy.’

  He’s no good for you . . .

  Alex snapped her head around. ‘Mind your own business, Kat.’

  Daddy and I are delighted for you, darling . . .

  ‘Mum? You came back!’

  Are you going to tell her, or am I?

  ‘Tell me what, Tim?’

  Alex recoiled as a hand touched her shoulder, squeezing gently, then it was gone. A dark, forbidding shadow whipped across her face, blocking out the light, but not the heady scent of jasmine and patchouli. Sensual. Deliciously overpowering. Familiar and yet not so.

  The shadow returned, hovering over her.

  ‘Justine? What are you doing there?’

  Her flowing red dress fluttered upwards in the breeze, exposing shapely legs, like the fifties image of Marilyn Monroe’s iconic flying skirt. A wide smile lit up Justine’s happy face. With outstretched arms, she began to fly, soaring like a bird across deep blue sky. Alex wanted to join her. She couldn’t move. Kicking out didn’t help. Her shackles held fast, then suddenly she was free. The red dress was gone – Justine along with it.

  A peculiar sensation enveloped Alex, a drug-induced coma-like state w
here she could see and hear but was powerless to manoeuvre any of her limbs. She felt weightless, cast adrift in the space between slumber and wakefulness, almost there but not quite. She floated in the confusion between the loathsome reality of consciousness and the safety and security of sleep, a feeling of desperation creeping over her. A warm tear rolled down her cheek. Her eyes blinked, open and shut, drawn to a pinprick of light on the horizon. Every step closer to the shiny star produced two backwards. The darkness was strangely comforting, whereas the luminosity stung her eyes, like piercing shards of jagged glass.

  Alex rolled over, senses on high alert, intensely aware of danger. Something was wrong. Drenched in sweat, she slid a hand across the mattress. Tim was missing, his side of the bed cold. Lifting her head from the pillow, she craned her neck to see the blue digital display on his clock-radio: 05:57.

  More whispering, closer than before . . . this time real, not imagined, a threatening tone, muffled through her bedroom door.

  Alex turned to face it, propping herself up on one elbow, straining to hear what was being said – and to whom. It was impossible to make it out. She tried not to panic. Tim had always been a light sleeper. This morning, she understood why he might be up and about early: James Curtis had called him at midnight, off his face and ready for a fight, ranting on about Stone and Oliver’s appearance at the office earlier in the day. The main thrust of his call was to tell Tim that their partnership was over. No longer interested in rescuing the business, he was suggesting they file for bankruptcy. The row lasted a good half-hour, Curtis wanting to throw in the towel, Tim dead against such a drastic course of action. They were bulls locking horns . . .

  Her husband’s fury arrived in Alex’s head, albeit a one-side conversation, what she could remember of it: Over my dead body! Are you fucking crazy? The courts will sequestrate our assets. We’ll lose everything. The credit-rating we’ve spent years building up will be wiped away in an instant. You and I need to talk, James. You do nothing, you hear me, nothing until I return from London.

  Alex rolled over on her back. She agreed wholeheartedly with her husband’s point of view. What Curtis suggested last night was insane, bankruptcy a very last resort. There were alternatives the two men should consider first. Never had she seen Tim so livid. And when she tried to advise him, a gentle tug on his arm to attract his attention, he’d pushed her away, telling her to keep the hell out of his business. It was the first and last time he’d lay hands on her.

  Then, as now, it made her think of Rob.

  When Curtis hung up on Tim, her husband had flown into a rage, throwing his whisky tumbler across the room where it smashed against the wall. As Alex bent to pick up the pieces, she’d asked him when he was planning on telling her about his financial problems. I wasn’t, was the answer he gave, then he rounded on her, yelling at the top of his voice: That fucker’s been raking off money left, right and centre and he’s not getting away with it. I was handling it without worrying you—

  But she was worried: about Daniel’s future, her marriage, her beautiful house. Tim had reassured her that they wouldn’t lose it. The way things were going, a small villa in Majorca was all they would afford. Eventually, Tim calmed down, apologising for his behaviour. To make amends, he got down on his hands and knees to help her clear up.

  It’ll be OK, Alex.

  It didn’t sound OK.

  The row beyond the bedroom door continued. For the first time since she’d fled from Rob Scott, Alex’s future looked bleak. Since Majorca, her perfect life had disintegrated. Bizarrely, what was happening was even more frightening to her than physical abuse.

  Her nerves were frayed by it.

  She crept out of bed and tiptoed to the doorway. As she leaned towards it, her husband raised his voice, a threatening nasty tone that was increasingly becoming the norm. Before she could identify the target of his aggression, the alarm on her bedside table went off. She shot back to bed and shut her eyes as the door creaked slowly open.

  42

  Alex wasn’t the only one who was disturbed; Stone was too – by his own emotional rage. His relationship with his nephew had never been good. Now it was even more strained and uncomfortable. David was childless – the way he liked it – and Ben had thrown a grenade into the room. A bit of emotional blackmail when his uncle’s guard was down. Well, it wouldn’t wash, family or not.

  He waited for the lad to stop his whining. ‘You’ve got a neck, asking for bed and board,’ he said. ‘I have neither the time nor the inclination to listen to you. Neither do I have the space to put you up, which you might have found out, had you ever visited your great grandmother for longer than the time it took for her to open her purse. How long did it take you to spend your inheritance, Ben? A week? A fortnight?’

  ‘I’m not asking to live with you. I just need a crib till I get myself sorted.’

  ‘It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?’

  ‘Uncle Dave—’

  ‘Drop it, son. You’re wasting your breath. I’m running a murder enquiry here and you’re tying up a very busy phone line. I suggest you bunk in with one of your university mates. Believe me, you’ll have more in common with them than you do with me.’

  Stone looked up from his desk. Frankie had a face like thunder. She’d be giving him earache over this later but he couldn’t help that. She wasn’t his mother – although she acted like it sometimes – and she only had half the story. He and Ben had history, the kind the DI could do without. The lad was a selfish, self-opinionated waste of space who didn’t give a shit about anyone but himself. He’d made the last years of his father’s life a misery and Stone wasn’t about to hand the lad the opportunity to do the same to him. Luke had been so worried about his son he’d resorted to asking advice on how to handle him. Together, the brothers had dug Ben out of many a hole, only to discover that he’d found a new hole to plunge into the minute their backs were turned.

  Ben was muttering down the line.

  ‘Speak up,’ Stone said. ‘I can’t hear a word you’re saying.’

  ‘I said I can’t move in with them.’

  ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’

  ‘Please, Dave—’

  ‘I told you already. No one likes a loser, least of all me. And while we’re on that subject, you show an appropriate level of respect to your father this afternoon or I’ll have something to say about it. You dress up, you hear me? Suit, black tie, clean shoes.’

  ‘I’m not in the fucking army.’

  ‘I’m warning you! You turn up wasted and, believe me, Luke won’t be the only one they put in the ground.’

  ‘Boss!’

  A black look shot across Stone’s desk like an Exocet missile, stopping him in his tracks. Frankie flicked her eyes towards a huddle of detectives, a heavy hint that his uncharacteristic loss of control had drawn, not only her attention, but the entire team’s. He slammed the phone down, got up and walked out.

  So, Mr Cool had left the building. Frankie was horrified by what she’d heard. Stone was bigger and better than that. How could he be so cruel, turning his nephew away when his father hadn’t yet been laid to rest? The boy was an orphan who needed help and Stone, his next of kin, the only close family around to offer it. Frankie glanced at the door. The temptation to charge out of the room and confront him was overwhelming. It was also dangerous.

  Still . . .

  She got to her feet, pushing her chair away from her desk, gathering up her mobile. She wandered over to a nearby desk. ‘If anyone asks, I’m incommunicado.’ She was about to leave the room when her internal telephone rang. Trotting to her own desk, she snatched it up.

  ‘Oliver.’ It came out like a bark.

  ‘Blimey, Frank! Did someone slap you with a complaint?’

  ‘Have you got something for me or not, Mitch? Because if you haven’t, piss off and bother someone else.’

&
nbsp; ‘Yes, Sarge.’ Mitchell wound his neck in.

  ‘C’mon then, out with it.’

  ‘I’ve been out to see Marjorie Smith, the retired lady who lives at West Cottage, near the crime scene. She’s not sure about the jogger she saw. It could’ve been Justine. Equally, it could have been someone else. She’s sure it was a female and the clothing she described fits. She also remembered seeing a cyclist that no one else seems to have spotted.’

  ‘Any update on the missing phone?’

  ‘None, although her service provider confirmed it’s not been used since the morning of her death.’

  ‘Did you check on her bank account like I asked you?’ When Curtis mentioned large amounts of money leaving his business account, it had Frankie wondering if Justine had set up an offshore account for the sole purpose of fleecing her men friends. It was a long shot, but the detective sergeant needed a break.

  ‘Her agency has only one account listed for her at a Westminster branch of Santander.’

  ‘Did you call them?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Let me guess, they fobbed you off?’

  ‘Quite the opposite. The manager was very cooperative now that her customer is deceased. There have been no transactions from Justine’s account to an offshore bank or any other foreign financial institution since she started banking there ten years ago. The account was opened in her hometown in France. They’re sending us a printout with all the details.’ Mitchell paused. ‘Can you hold a minute? Gaynor just walked in. I’m worried.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She has a smile on her face.’

  Frankie laughed, her dark mood slipping away.

  Gaynor (who half the shift called Gloria) was the office gopher who never cracked a smile unless there was a cream cake or an almond Magnum on the go. A lovely girl but with little or no sense of fun. Mitchell had moved the phone away from his face. Frankie could hear them talking.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Gaynor said in that sulky voice of hers that made it sound like she was being ironic. She walked away, high heels click-clacking on the wooden floor.