Words Can Kill (Ghostwriter Mystery 5)

by C. A. Larmer

  “Oh, um, guten tag! Um ... Sprechen Sie English?”

  Oliver raised his eyebrows at her, impressed, and she gave him a smarmy smile.

  “Yes, madam, this is Mercedes-Benz Head Office, how can I help you?”

  “I’m trying to track down someone in your marketing department. Max Farrell. Do you know if he’s in?”

  “Just one moment please.”

  About twenty seconds later, a singsong, German accent came on the line. “Hello, ziz is Britt Gelsing in Marketing. You are looking for Max?”

  “Yes, yes, I am. You know him?”

  “Of course I know him!”

  She felt her shoulders relax. “Great. Is he around today, do you know?”

  There was a pause. “No, he is not here today. Can I take zee message?”

  She deflated a little. That would have been too easy. “No, you see I need to track him down, for his family. We’ve tried his home and he’s not answering. Do you know if he’s on location at the moment?”

  “Location?”

  “Out on a photo shoot somewhere.” She scrunched her eyes and said, “Like Brazil?”

  There was a slight pause then a burst of laughter on the other end of the phone before the woman said something in German to someone nearby and there was a second burst of laughter. “In Max’s dreams!” she told Roxy. “No Brazilian shoots for him. He has been working in zee factory, taking zee stills.” Another pause. “Who is zis, please? Are you his sister?”

  “No, I’m ...” Now it was her time to pause. “A family friend. We haven’t heard off him, that’s all, and the family is getting a bit worried.”

  “Oooh okay, yes. I talk to Max’s boss. You wait?”

  Roxy told her she would and stared at Oliver hopefully. A few minutes later a man came on the other end. His voice was deeper and more guttural.

  “Hallo. My name is Gunter Heidleburg, who is this, please?”

  “Hello, I’m Roxy Parker. A good family friend of Max’s.”

  “Oh, Roxy Parker, hallo! Max has told us all about you.”

  She gulped. “He has?”

  “Oooh yes. How are you over there in kangaroo country?”

  “Not so many kangaroos here in Sydney, Gunter.”

  He chuckled. “I just teasing you. How can I help?”

  “I’m trying to track Max down, for his sister, Caroline. She hasn’t heard from him in a few days and is worried.” When she said it like that it sounded quite ridiculous.

  “Oh, not to worry. Max is away, but not for us. He is on holidays.”

  Roxy felt a sliver of relief. “Okay, that makes sense. Do you know where he went? For how long?”

  “Of course. He was heading for Mt Pilatus, just for the week. We loaned him a car for his trip, he very excited.”

  “I bet. So he’s due back soon then?”

  “Oh yes, we expect him back on Monday, can I get him to call you then?”

  She didn’t want to wait. “Mt Pilatus, you say?”

  “That is right. It is a holiday place, in Switzerland. You don’t know Mt Pilatus?”

  “No, never heard of it. But thank you, that explains why he’s out of touch.” Perhaps there was no mobile phone reception up there. “You don’t happen to know where he was staying at Mt Pilatus, do you?”

  “Sorry, no I do not.”

  “Okay, no worries, I’ll look into it. In the meantime, if you do speak to him before me, could you ask him to call his family ASAP? Just let them know he’s okay.”

  “Of course! I am sure he is okay.”

  “I’m sure he is too.” She didn’t sound quite as convincing.

  “Okay, well you enjoy the kangaroos,” he said, laughing as he hung up.

  Roxy repeated the conversation to Oliver and as he mulled it over, she reached into her handbag for her iPhone and started tapping away at Google.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Looking up Mt Pilatus. If Max is there, I’m going to track him down, tell him off, and then get back to my life.”

  “Your boring, mundane life?”

  “That’d be the one.”

  Ten minutes and several exasperating phone calls later, Roxy was having a very stilted conversation with a receptionist at a hotel on Mt Pilatus. She had lucked out. There were only two hotels on top of the Swiss mountain and one of them, the Hotel Pilatus-Kulm, had already assured her they had never heard of a Max Farrell and had promptly hung up.

  With her fingers crossed, literally this time, Roxy had called the second hotel, the Hotel Bellevue, and waited. It answered with a flurry of what sounded like French and Roxy didn’t bother with the niceties this time. She’d already worked out that most good receptionists spoke the universal language of English and so she’d simply said, “Hello, I’d like to be put through to Max Farrell’s room please.”

  “Of course,” the woman said and then she heard tapping in the background. “Can you repeat the name, please?”

  “Yes, Max Farrell. F-A-R-R-E-L-L.”

  Another pause, longer this time. “Sorry, there is no Max Farrell staying with us.”

  That unsettling feeling lodged in Roxy’s spine again. “Oh, right. I ... we were told he was booked in with you guys this week.”

  “Sorry, he is no longer here.”

  “But he was, right?”

  There was hesitation again. “I am sorry, madam, we do not normally divulge information about past or current guests. Who is speaking please?”

  Roxy took a punt. “This is Max Farrell’s sister, Caroline. I’m calling from Australia on behalf of the family. We need to get in touch. Urgently. Family emergency.”

  Oliver’s eyes widened again and she glanced away. She didn’t normally impersonate others, it went against her journalistic code of ethics, but it was late and she was tired and that icy chill was moving in fast.

  The hotel receptionist hesitated only briefly. “Okay, I look through the computer.” Two minutes and many taps later she was back. “Max Farrell, Berlin address?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was here.”

  “Was?”

  “Yes, you are too late. He has checked out.”

  Damn it. “When did he check out?”

  More tapping. “Wednesday morning, madam.”

  “Wednesday? But we were under the impression he was staying the full week.”

  “He was due to stay until Saturday but he checked out early.”

  “Really? Do you know why?”

  “No, I did not ask him this, madam.” There was a slight sense of outrage in her tone.

  “Did he say where he was going? Leave a forwarding address by any chance?”

  “No, this is not usual. We assume he has gone back to Berlin.”

  Well you assumed wrong, she wanted to scream at her but said politely enough, “He didn’t mention anything about Brazil or Rio De Janeiro, did he?”

  “No, he did not.”

  “Thanks anyway.” Roxy was about to hang up when something Caroline had said got her thinking. “He wasn’t checked in with anyone was he? A woman, maybe?”

  This time the outrage was obvious: “We can not give you that information, madam. Not even to family.”

  “Fine,” she said less politely this time and they hung up.

  Oliver was just getting up to fetch more beers and Roxy followed him into the kitchen as she spoke.

  “I’m not sure whether I should be panicking or telling Mrs Farrell to ‘chillax’ as Caroline puts it.”

  He turned his stubbled jowls back to her. “Oh God, is she still using that term? I was hoping that would disappear from the lexicon by now.”

  “Oliver, you’re not helping!”

  “Okay, okay, chillax.” He reached into the fridge, fetched two bottles of Crown Lager and handed one over. “Get a bit of that in ya, then let’s go through the facts and see what’s what. Come on.”

  Oliver led her back to the sofa and dropped down again, spilling beer all over his faded gre
en and yellow Hawaiian-print shirt but he didn’t seem to notice or care. Roxy shook her head at him and took a few good gulps of her own beer before speaking.

  “Right, so here’s what I know: Sunday just past, Max takes a week off work and heads to the Swiss Alps where he’s supposed to stay until Saturday, which means he should still be there. Instead, he checks out three days early, on Wednesday, tells his mum he’s heading to Rio de Janeiro, of all places, and vanishes.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s all I’ve got.”

  “Okay, I can work with that.” Oliver slurped another sip from his bottle and smacked his lips together. “Right, so, maybe this Mt Pilatus place is boring as bat-dung so he skips out early and heads somewhere else. Maybe he took a detour on his way back to Berlin.”

  “Like Brazil? That’s one hell of a detour.”

  “Yeah, that bit’s bloody odd. Max’s mum must have got that wrong. Why did you ask the hotel if he’d checked in with anyone else?”

  “Dunno, something Caroline said got me wondering.” She shook that off. “Listen, there’s two more overseas calls I need to make. Do you mind?”

  He sighed his consent and she picked up the receiver again. The first was to Max’s mobile phone, which seemed to ring forever before it suddenly picked up. Roxy’s heart somersaulted when she heard his voice and then settled again when she realised it was just the voice mail clicking in.

  She took a deep breath, trying to swallow her guilt in the process, and said, “Max! Hi. It’s Roxy. Umm ... Could you give us a call? Caroline’s hassling me to find you. You’ve got your mum a little worried; you know what mums are like.” She tried to laugh but couldn’t manage it. “Anyway, just call as soon as you get this message. Let us know you’re okay.” She paused, wanting to tell him she was sorry, that she missed him, but she didn’t want to scare him off so she simply hung up.

  Next, she reached for her smartphone and began scrolling through for Max’s Berlin apartment. Caroline had e-mailed the number many months ago and while she had gone to the trouble of logging it into her speed dial, she had never quite found the courage to use it. She tapped the number into Oliver’s home phone and pressed dial as she dumped her iPhone back into her bag. After many seconds, an automated English voice came on the line informing her she’d reached the apartment for Max Farrell and Jake Conway and was to leave a message.

  Roxy growled and hung up, then stared forlornly at Oliver who was now flicking through a copy of People magazine. There was a creeping feeling settling into Roxy’s bones again. Max had always accused her of being a drama queen but now she wondered whether she wasn’t being dramatic enough.

  A sudden beeping sound caught Roxy off guard and she jumped, startled, before realising it was coming from her handbag. She leapt upon it, retrieving her iPhone and clicking it back to life. She looked up at Oliver’s eyes and smiled.

  “It’s a text message, from Max!”

  He scoffed. “See, I told you it’d be all right. What does he say?”

  She tapped on the in-box and then stared at the screen for a few seconds, attempting to scroll down.

  “What?”

  Still staring at the phone, Roxy held it out for him to see. There were only three letters on the screen and they didn’t make any sense: PMP

  “PMP? What the hell does that mean?” Oliver said.

  She stared at it again. “I’m not very savvy with texting jargon, could it be an acronym like LOL—Laugh Out Loud?”

  He thought about it. “I don’t think so. I mean, I’m a jargon junkie and I’ve never heard of it. Here, give me the phone for a sec.”

  She handed it over and he stared at the screen for several minutes. Eventually he said, “Pre Menstrual Princess? Piss-off Miss Parker?”

  Roxy glared at him. “That’s four letters, Olie.”

  He laughed. “Sorry, it’s probably just a mistake or maybe he’s trying to tell you he doesn’t speak your language anymore. I know, maybe it stands for something in German.”

  He laughed again but Roxy wasn’t laughing as she chewed on her lower lip trying to think. It had to mean something, surely? Max hadn’t been in touch in six months, why send this message now, unless it meant something? She waved two fingers at Oliver and he placed the phone back in her outstretched hand, then she stared at the screen for many minutes, her brain working overtime, her teeth doing their best to chew through her lower lip.

  Just as Oliver was returning to the Miley Cyrus crisis, Roxy looked up and said, “It couldn’t be.”

  “What?”

  “Could it?”

  “What?!”

  She scooted across to where he was sitting and held the phone closer so he could see. “Okay, I don’t want to be alarming or anything but—”

  “But you’re Roxy Parker and you can’t help yourself?”

  She whacked him across the shoulder. “Just look at those letters on my iPhone key pad: PMP. What else do you see?”

  Oliver stared at each letter in turn and then back at Roxy. “Er, gobbledygook?”

  “Look again.” She began tapping on each key. “See, the key for P is also the key for Q, R and S. And the key for M is also the key for N and O.”

  He sighed. “Roxy, it’s late, I’ve got important gossip to read, get on with it.”

  “Okay, okay. What if Max was in a hurry for some reason, and didn’t have much time so just pushed the first letters but really meant to push the other letters connected to those keys?”

  “Huh?”

  “Look again: He pressed PQRS then MNO then PQRS: maybe he meant to say SOS.”

  “SOS? As in the universal distress sign for ‘I’m in deep shit’?”

  She scrunched her face to one side. “Maybe this is a cry for help.”

  He looked at her like she’d finally flipped. “Rox, that’s a big stretch, even for you. He’s probably just playin’ with ya, knowing how your mind works. I reckon he’s teaching you a lesson for ignoring him for six months, probably laughing his head off right now knowing exactly how your crazy mind works.”

  Roxy thought about that. Max wasn’t rude nor was he into playing games; that was her territory, it was one of the many reasons he had lost patience with her.

  “Just text him back. Tell him off.”

  “Nope, I’m calling again.” She pressed Max’s mobile phone number. This time it didn’t have a chance to ring. Instead the automated voice message came straight on telling her that the phone number she had called was “currently switched off or disconnected”.

  “Switched off or disconnected? It can’t be! I just called him, you idiot! He just sent me a text message!”

  “What’s going on?”

  Roxy shook her head, confounded, and then tapped in a quick text reply: “Hey Max. Got message. V. worried. Pls explain! xo R”

  They both then sat staring at the phone, silently willing it to ring or beep or give some indication that Max really was okay. After ten excruciating minutes, Roxy could stand it no longer. She grabbed her smartphone and began to tap away again.

  “Now what are you doing?”

  “I’m booking a flight to Berlin.”

  “Seriously?” Oliver’s eyebrows were knitted together like a big, bushy V. “By the time you get there, Rox, it’ll be Monday morning and he’ll be sitting at his desk wondering what all the fuss is about.”

  “Good. Then I’ll have the pleasure of telling him off, FTBF.”

  “FTBF?”

  “Face To Bloody Face!”

  *******

  Max’s face was not working. It was as though it had been rendered in fast-drying cement. He couldn’t move his lips, could barely open his eyes. The ringing sound had woken him from his haze and he had tried to answer it, knew he had to answer it, but his fingers, too, were stiff and immobile.

  He took several desperate breaths and tried again. He pulled the phone closer, pressed “reply” then tapped in a letter, then another, then one more before the cement s
tarted to solidify. He only had the chance to press “send” before he dropped into the darkness again.

  Chapter 3

  It had been many years since Roxy Parker had taken an international flight on a large jumbo jet and she would have been impressed were she not so strung out with a sickening mixture of worry and dread. Worry that Max really was in trouble, and dread that Oliver was right, and they were flying 16,000 kilometres for nothing.

  “My God, there’s over a thousand entertainment channels, would you believe?” squealed Caroline beside her, jabbing at the small screen in front of her seat. “And look, it says there’s 150 movies! How on earth could you ever watch that many?”

  Roxy tried to feign enthusiasm but couldn’t manage it, nor was she too enthusiastic about Caroline joining her on the journey to Berlin, but then she was Max’s flesh and blood. Plus, she was paying for the flights.

  “I absolutely insist,” Caroline had said when she’d broken the news to her later that Friday night.

  Roxy had tracked her down at yet another dance party and, to her credit, Caroline had deserted “the hottest event of the year” to join her at Oliver’s place to start planning. She wasn’t at all convinced they should be heading for Berlin but a late call to her mother had put paid to that.

  “She’s now in a complete lather and says I simply can not let you go alone. She’s convinced that text message Max sent really is a cry for help.” She had stopped then and stared at Roxy with a strange mixture of awe and alarm. “Your mind really does work in strange ways, doesn’t it? I mean, SOS? Who else would’ve picked that up? Anyway, thanks to Mum it looks like you’ve got company.”

  “Really, that’s not necessary—”

  Caroline held a finger up to stop her. “It’s not a biggie. Besides, I’ve always wanted to visit Berlin, I hear it’s the place du jour.”

  “Seriously, Caroline, there’s no point both of us going. I can look for him myself.”

  “I beg to differ! Four eyes are better than two.”

  Oliver opened his mouth to say something and Roxy glared at him. “Don’t even try,” she said, pushing her thick glossy black Ray-Ban spectacles into place.