Bill flushed and covered by laughing like a startled pony. It seemed I was missing some vital information.
“What pearls?” I asked.
Her face went dark. “The ones she stole. The ones he,” pointing at Galbraith, “gave me. I never wore them anyway. Do I look like the sort of woman who wears pearls?” She gestured dramatically at her slender neck, as if inviting me to assess it for suitability.
Bill, a pained look on his face, raised a hand in a placatory manner and said, “Kristina is still angry, she feels betrayed by Aurora.”
“Bill is wasting his money,” Kristina said, ignoring him. “She’ll come crawling back. She can hardly speak English and has no one else to go to.”
“She seems to have found someone.”
Kristina looked genuinely surprised. “Who?” When I didn’t elaborate she carried on. “I brought her with me from Dubai,” Kristina said. “We’re her family, we look after her.”
“So why did she leave?”
“Because she is like a little girl. She doesn’t know what is good for her.”
“She says she would like her passport,” I said.
There was a silence as they both pretended I hadn’t spoken. I might as well have broken wind. Rather perceptively I was getting the impression that nobody wanted to talk about the passport.
“Is it true that you have it?” I persisted.
“I have it for safekeeping,” she said, shrugging.
Before I could probe further a rapid clicking of claws on the tiles caused Kristina to exhibit genuine delight. “Misha,” she cried. A tiny hairless dog the size of a large rat with disproportionately large ears and bulging eyes came scampering up to her on legs made of Twiglets. It caught sight of me and bared its fangs. She scooped it up, cradling it in her arms and making cooing noises. She started kissing it on its mouth as it licked her lips and waved its little legs. It was as if Galbraith and I weren’t there. He looked uncomfortable at this display. I empathised; I wouldn’t want to be next in line on those lips, however inviting. She stopped long enough to say to me, “If she doesn’t come back I will call the police.” Mixed messages, to say the least. She moved into another room, muttering baby talk to the bald rodent. I turned to Galbraith.
“You didn’t mention any pearls to me.”
He glanced to check that Kristina had gone and leant into my personal space, speaking softly. “The pearls don’t matter, they’re replaceable.” His breath smelled sweet, like liquorice. His eyes had narrowed. There was a dark fleck in the left eye, an island in a sea of blue. “Now, just tell me where she is and we can conclude our business.”
“I honestly don’t know where she is, nor can I contact her.”
“I thought you’d spoken to her.”
“In a public place. She’s going to ring me later.”
“Just get her to bring me the briefcase. I need to speak to her.”
I took a step back. “If the purpose of finding Aurora is to retrieve the briefcase, why don’t I just arrange a trade?”
“What?”
“Her passport for the briefcase. Maybe even the pearls. Everyone’s happy.” Except his wife, possibly, but he was the one paying me.
He crossed his arms and pondered this as he studied me, calculating something. Then he nodded. “I think that’s doable, George. Arrange it as soon as possible.”
9
AGREEING THAT I WOULD RING HIM LATER, ONCE I HAD SPOKEN to Aurora, I left Galbraith and walked back to the pub where I’d parked my car. It was a nice evening so I ordered a drink and found a table in the garden which overlooked a rugby pitch where some enthusiastic amateurs were playing. As I watched them, nursing a pint and mulling over the strange conversation I’d just had, I looked round at the throaty sound of Bill Galbraith’s Porsche as it zipped past. He had sunglasses on, his hair in the wind. Several minutes later Kristina’s Range Rover followed, her sunglasses even bigger than her husband’s. Obviously not a stay-at-home-and-watch-TV kind of couple.
The mobile phone rang on the office number as I got in the car. I hoped that it was Aurora, but Dolores’s voice emerged from the earpiece.
“Mr Kockaryan?”
“Kocharyan,” I corrected, not for the first time. Was it really that difficult to get right?
“This is Dolores speaking.”
“Hello, Dolores, is Aurora with you?”
“She wants me to check that this is your number.” Whose number did she think I’d given her? Perhaps she thought I would trick her into calling her employers.
“This is me,” I assured her. There was a short whispered conversation in Tagalog off-mike between her and someone I presumed to be Aurora. After some rustling I heard the definite high-pitched voice of Aurora.
“Mr George?”
“Please, call me George.”
“Did you see them?”
“Yes I did, and I need to ask you a question, Aurora.”
“OK?”
“Did you take some pearls from Mrs Galbraith?”
“Pearls?”
“Yes, a necklace, jewellery.”
There was a pause. “I gave him pearl,” she said.
“What do you mean you gave him the pearl? You mean the necklace?”
“I found it in office, when I clean. Under sofa.”
I rubbed my temples with my free hand. Was I getting through the language barrier here?
“When you say pearl, Aurora, do you mean pearls, like a necklace?”
“No, just one pearl.”
“Just one pearl?” I echoed pointlessly.
I watched a thirty-something couple in work suits kiss passionately in the car park before getting into their separate cars. They each checked themselves in the rear-view mirror before driving off in opposite directions. My immediate thought was that they were lovers sharing a snatched moment before heading home to their spouses. Such is my world view.
“Mr George, I only took briefcase. I am not stealing.”
I refrained from pointing out the lack of difference between stealing briefcases and stealing jewellery. She must have heard me thinking.
“I took briefcase because maybe my passport in it. Did they say I stole necklace?”
“You can see how it looks to them, Aurora. The pearls go missing, then you disappear with the briefcase.”
“Yes,” she conceded. “It look bad. But I not take necklace. She broken it maybe. He knows it broken because I gave him pearl. Honestly. I swear to God. I just want passport. I need to go home.”
“To the Philippines?”
“Yes. My girl…’ Her voice broke and faded and Dolores came back on.
“Mr Kockaryan. This is not acceptable.” Nor is constantly mangling my name, I wanted to say.
“Is her daughter ill?”
“Yes,” her voice dropping to a whisper, “she has cancer. She hasn’t seen her for many years.” There was more whispered Tagalog and Aurora came back on the phone.
“Can you please get passport?” she asked in a broken voice.
“Yes. If you give me the briefcase then I can get the passport in return. He said he was happy to trade.”
“Maybe you tricking me?”
“To do what?”
“To give him case and no passport for me.”
“Aurora, why can’t you just ask for the passport yourself? If you just explained the situation to them—”
“No, you not understand.”
“What is it?”
“I will not go there,” she said emphatically.
“To the house?”
“I will not.”
“OK then. Do you want me to exchange the briefcase for your passport? Can I pick it up this evening?”
“No no no. You trick me. We meet somewhere, tomorrow. I will call you.” With that she hung up. Blimey, hard work.
I started the engine then turned it off as the phone rang again. Different number.
“I’ve been trying to call you.” It was Galbraith, in
an assertive mood.
“I was about to ring you. I’ve just come off the phone with Aurora.”
“You’ve already spoken to her?”
“Yes I have. Isn’t that why you’re ringing?”
“I wanted to make something clear before you spoke to her. What did she say?”
“I can get the briefcase back to you. I’m just arranging for her to hand it over to me, hopefully tomorrow.”
“I thought so, that’s why I rang. No, that won’t do at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“I need to speak to her in person. Just tell her to come home and we’ll sort it out.”
I massaged my temples again, willing the woman who worked behind the bar in the pub to come out on roller skates with a cold beer held aloft and pass it to me through the window. It didn’t work.
“I have to tell you,” I said. “She doesn’t seem overly keen on that idea.”
“I don’t care whether she’s keen or not. I’m paying you, not her.”
“True, but that doesn’t include me compelling her to do things she doesn’t want to.”
“Why don’t you just tell me where she is, like I paid you to.”
“Because I don’t know where she is. Like I said earlier, I met her in a public place.”
“But being a private investigator, you could find out, presumably?”
No hint of sarcasm in his tone, just a slight pause before “presumably”. He was right, of course; if she was staying with Dolores then I could, since Dolores worked at Addenbrooke’s. But before I could come up with a half-decent deflection he was speaking again, this time in a more conciliatory tone.
“You’ll be seeing her tomorrow, then?”
“Yes.”
“Tell her we would like to speak to her. She is family to us and we wouldn’t want things to end on a sour note. Tell her we’d also like to give her compensation. Call it redundancy pay. And she probably wants to pick up her things – she left everything behind. Could you pass that on?”
I told him my passing that on was entirely possible before I moved on to something more meaty.
“She is adamant that she didn’t take the pearls. She says she found a single pearl which she handed over to you.”
There was a lengthy silence at the other end and I could hear the muted sound of some dreadful symphony coming to a crashing end, followed by the monotonous tone of an announcer, whose words I couldn’t make out. I envisaged Galbraith sitting in a car, in a car park, just like I was.
“Tell Aurora it’s not too late for us to call the police,” he said before hanging up. Blimey, they were both hard work.
I drove home and called Sandra. I could hear the TV, and her boys laughing in the background.
“Do me a favour, will you, tomorrow morning?” I asked.
“Hang on, George. Turn that bloody thing down!” she shouted. The TV sound was lowered and she came back on. “What is it?”
“Foreign domestics. I need to know what the situation is with visas and passports for people brought here as domestics by their employers.”
“OK. I hope you’re not being sucked into something you don’t need to, George, ’cause I’ve just taken on another background-check job this afternoon.”
“Just doing some due diligence, Sandra.”
“I know you, you’re a soft touch for women in trouble.”
“Get Jason started on the online aspect and I’ll take it from there.” Jason’s role with the agency was now limited to doing online research and computer support. In the past I had used him on some cases but the last one he was involved in resulted in his fingers being broken by a sadistic hoodlum which put the kibosh on his burgeoning music career as a keyboard artist, such as it was. Sandra had forgiven me, eventually, but he was no longer allowed to wear out any shoe leather for me, that was made clear.
“I’ll look into it. I’m in the middle of making supper if you want to stop by? Nothing fancy.”
“Thanks, Sandra, but I’ve already eaten.”
She let out a sigh as if she were being slightly deflated and I ended the call. I’m no gourmand but Sandra’s cooking was just an extension of her coffee-making. One of the things I missed about Olivia was her cooking. Her cookbooks were one of the few things she’d taken with her to her new life in Greece. She was probably cooking the same meals for that woman as I stood in my empty house, my empty stomach rumbling. Adept at recognising the onset of self-pity, I went to the kitchen, put on the radio to a station that was playing some Bach and rustled up a cheese omelette which was gooey in the middle and perfectly folded. I washed it down with the dregs of a bottle of white wine left by Linda and decided that my life was, at that very moment, OK.
10
I WOKE ALONE – SOMETHING I’VE BECOME USED TO, AND NOT an altogether unpleasant feeling. I liked having Linda over, but I’d lost the knack of domesticity that I had acquired with Olivia. Linda kept none of her stuff here, preferring to bring an overnight bag. This suited me on the one hand, but on the other hand something was lacking, and I was left feeling dissatisfied. These contradictory thoughts bounced around as I showered, shaved and made coffee before driving to work.
As I turned onto the drive of my office building I noticed two guys standing against a black Ford Focus parked on the other side of the road. One was white, blond, bearded, longish hair tied at the back. The other was darker and smaller, squat but with a weightlifter’s torso and shaved head. He wore a T-shirt tight enough to show off his gym membership. His blond companion was dressed like a preppy. Any health consciousness was offset by the fact that they were both smoking while ostentatiously checking their phones. In my mirrors I could see them looking at my car as I parked. Over the years, in my game, you get a feel for people who are up to no good, and to be frank a lot of career-criminal types are not of the highest intelligence, lacking any subtlety or finesse. These two seemed a little out of place; there was nothing on this road one would hang around for. There was a doctor’s surgery next door but that had a car park. On the side they were parked was a department of the university but that also had its own car park.
I wrote down the number plate as Maggie, one of the women co-occupiers of the building, arrived on her bicycle which she locked onto the covered bike rack. She smiled as I got out of the car. In her fifties, she had a full head of striking grey hair, plaited down to her waist. I liked the fact that Maggie didn’t colour her hair, and wasn’t trying to recreate a younger version of who she was. She was a relationship counsellor, and sometimes I referred people to her when the shit hit the fan and I thought they could still make a go of it, which to be honest wasn’t often after they’d been through my office. She was the only occupant of the building who gave me the time of day. The others thought I disturbed the flow of the building’s chi; a walking black hole of negativity that sucked at the positive energy of their holistic endeavours.
“Morning, George! You ruin any marriages yet today?”
“No, but it’s still early. What about you? How’s the relationship business?”
She checked around her before saying, “Cambridge has a never-ending supply of troubled couples with disposable income so I’m not complaining.”
I laughed as I opened the building door for her. “Let’s go get ’em.” I left her in the communal kitchen and headed up to the top floor. Jason, Sandra’s son, was in the office hunched over her computer, tapping away.
“Boss,” he said, by way of greeting, without looking up. He’d taken to wearing his hair shaved at the sides but long and slicked back with gel at the top. Coupled with his stubble he looked like an arse. I didn’t say anything but his mother characteristically didn’t hold back and to his credit he weathered her scorn with stoic self-assuredness. He loved the investigation business; and if it wasn’t for his mother he’d be doing a lot more, were it not for that finger-breaking incident. Since he was over eighteen, and I was an adult, we could have overruled his mother, but you did that at y
our peril.
“What’s the rumpus?” I asked him, going behind him to the window, where an obsolete fax machine waiting on the floor to be taken to recycling got in my way.
“I’m just doing some online research on this guy you’ve been asked to background check.”
“Who’s the client again?”
The two men, whom I nicknamed Bill and Ben, had now got into the Ford Focus and were blowing cigarette smoke out of the open windows.
“It’s the software company,” he said. “In the Science Park. They think the guy they’re hiring, some computer whizz, might be working for a rival.”
I moved to my desk as the phone started to ring. “It’s good to know that industrial espionage still needs bodies on the ground in this digital age.” I silenced the phone.
“Cambridge Confidential.”
“Mr George?” The high voice was becoming familiar.
“Aurora. How are you?”
“We meet today?” There was some general hubbub at her end.
“Of course. Where and when?”
“At hospital. In the main area. Twelve o’clock.”
“At Addenbrooke’s? Are you sure you want to meet there?”
“Yes, why not?” she asked, sounding unsure.
“Mr Galbraith works there, remember?”
“Oh! No, he not here today, he making TV show.”
“Fine, I’ll see you at midday.” Sounded like she was already there – probably went in with Dolores.
I hung up and looked through the post that Jason had put on my desk. Nothing that Sandra couldn’t deal with, although where was she? I could never remember when Sandra was supposed to be working. Jason took out a metal comb and ran it through his hair. I stared at him in distaste.
“Where’s your mother?”
“She’s on her way. Said she had some phone calls to make.” I didn’t ask what calls in case it was her other job, although I thought those would be nocturnal events rather than straight after breakfast, but what did I know about it?
The Runaway Maid Page 5
