Now She’s Gone: An absolutely gripping crime thriller

by Alison James

  ‘Gosh, your dad would have loved little Dolly,’ she said, looking over wistfully at the framed photograph of Ray Prince. ‘It’s seventeen years tomorrow,’ she added, her voice cracking slightly. ‘Seventeen years: I can’t believe it. It still feels like it happened yesterday.’

  ‘I know Mum.’ Rachel, who had forgotten the date, reached for her hand. ‘That’s one reason I wanted to come down tonight,’ she fibbed.

  ‘You should stay on until the afternoon. Gordon and Lindsay are coming over to collect me and we’re all going to go to the cemetery to lay flowers. And the children are coming too. Then we’re going back to theirs for tea afterwards.’

  Rachel shuddered at the thought of spending the afternoon in mournful observance with her sister and brother-in-law. The big age gap and their dramatically different personalities had resulted in constant chafing between her and Lindsay when they were together. ‘It’s a nice idea Mum, but I’ll have to head back in the morning. I’ve got some work to do.’

  This was true. She still needed to try and track down Marie-Laure Fournier, and to arrange to talk to Emily van Meijer’s friend Luuk.

  Eileen nodded and reached for the omnipresent copy of the Radio Times. ‘Let’s see if there’s anything worth watching, shall we?’

  * * *

  After a sound night’s sleep in her childhood bed, Rachel took Dolly for her morning outing and managed to successfully reject one of her mother’s fry-ups in favour of a bowl of Alpen. Then she gathered Dolly’s bowls, blanket and lead, placing them next to the front door. ‘Right, that’s us off. We’d better get back to town,’ she said, kissing her mother on the forehead.

  Eileen Prince looked wistful. ‘That’s a shame, she’s such a sweet, well-behaved little thing. It’s been lovely having her here.’

  Rachel hesitated for a second. ‘I’ll tell you what Mum, why don’t you hang on to Dolly for a few days? It’ll be nicer for her to be here while I’m working, and you can take her up to the park with you. She’d love that.’

  She pressed the lead into her mother’s hand. Eileen beamed.

  ‘Come on, sweetheart,’ she could hear her mother saying as she headed out to the car, ‘You come with me. Let’s see if we can find you a bit of scrambled egg.’

  * * *

  Rachel’s phone rang that evening as she was making herself a salad and preparing to sit down with her laptop.

  Lindsay.

  Of course it was.

  ‘A dog, Rachel?! You’ve gone and dumped a stray dog on Mum? Have you any idea how inconvenient it was when I’d already made all the arrangements for her afternoon?’

  Rachel drew in her breath and counted to five. ‘Okay, first off: she’s not a stray. She belongs to my sergeant. Well, she doesn’t exactly belong to him, she—’

  ‘It doesn’t really matter who it does or doesn’t belong to, it’s the thoughtlessness.’

  ‘Lindsay, if you would just listen a minute, instead of sounding off.’ Rachel exhaled loudly. ‘The dog is only there temporarily. At Mum’s suggestion. And you had the option to either leave her in the house while you went to the cemetery, or take her with you. It wasn’t an issue. You’ve got a dog yourself, after all.’

  Lindsay and her husband Gordon were the owners of an elderly golden Labrador.

  ‘But you know what Mum’s like: she was dithering. She didn’t know what to do with the animal for the best. It got her all stressed, which was the last thing she needed on the anniversary of Dad’s death.’

  ‘All I know is she was happy to mind Dolly. She’s thrilled about it.’

  ‘And that’s the other thing: given the importance of the day, shouldn’t you have stayed down longer and come to the cemetery with us?’

  ‘I had other things I needed to do.’

  ‘I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,’ hissed Lindsay. ‘But you of all people might have made the effort to fit visiting your father’s grave into your busy schedule.’ The last three words dripped with sarcasm.

  Rachel drew in her breath hard, clenching and unclenching her fists. She should hang up now and end the conversation before further damage was done, but she just couldn’t help herself. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Lindsay didn’t even pause for breath. ‘That if it wasn’t for your selfishness, Dad would probably be alive now!’

  Rachel cut the call, her heart pounding. Lindsay’s claim that her younger sister’s past behaviour had somehow contributed to their father’s heart attack was nothing new. But it still felt like a body blow, still made her eyes sting with tears. She had adored her father, and would never willingly have done anything to hurt him.

  Rachel put her salad back in the fridge, too tense to eat, and went outside to walk by the river to calm herself down. It was only eight o’clock, but starting to go dark. The heatwave had passed and there was now, at the end of August, the faintest hint of approaching autumn in the air, a scent of cooling earth and drying leaves. In a week’s time, children everywhere would be returning to school to begin a new term. But not Emily van Meijer.

  She texted Brickall.

  How’s it going up there, loser?

  Brickall replied after a few minutes.

  Doing my best, but it’s like trying to nail jelly to the fucking wall.

  When Rachel returned to the flat, she poured herself a glass of wine and found the remains of the tortilla chips from Howard’s visit the night before. She emailed Dries van Meijer and asked if he could provide contact details for Luuk Rynsberger, then set about trying to trace Marie-Laure Fournier.

  She found an Instagram account, featuring many sultry, pouting photos taken in an outdoor café, usually with a cigarette in hand. The locations in almost all of them were in Lyon, and the few taken at her school were tagged ‘Lycée Privé, Lyon’. So she was a native of the same city as Bruno which, given the way White Crystal recruited, wasn’t that surprising. It looked as though Rachel might have to fly out there, in addition to travelling to Leiden to speak to Luuk Rynsberger.

  Dries van Meijer emailed back with Luuk’s details, and once again offered the services of his plane. Rachel politely but firmly refused, then received the following:

  Do please contact me when you are in the Netherlands. My wife would like the chance to speak to you, and of course we are ready to offer any assistance you should need. You only need to say the word.

  * * *

  Rachel only remembered that it was a bank holiday when she arrived at the office and saw the drastically reduced numbers. She sat down at her desk anyway and logged onto her terminal, checking through her inbox and updating files she had been working on before her unscheduled trip to Scotland. Then she phoned Brickall.

  ‘When are you coming back?’ she demanded, her frustration making her curt.

  ‘My flight’s in a couple of hours. But hold on, where’s the fire? It’s a sodding Bank Holiday Monday – I’m not due in the office until tomorrow.’

  ‘Meet me for a drink when you land. At the Pin and Needle.’

  ‘You’re joking, right? Not only do I miss the league game I was going to go to in Bromley, I have to meet my boss for a drink. At our workplace local. What’s so bloody urgent that it can’t wait until the morning?’

  ‘I just want to hear how you got on, that’s all.’

  ‘Okay, but you can come to me. At the Falcon.’ He named his favourite watering hole on Anerley Hill.

  * * *

  When Rachel arrived there, she was fully expecting to have to endure football on a TV screen, but it turned out to be an upmarket establishment with tasteful dove-grey wood panelling and gilt-framed mirrors, serving cask ales. The daily special on the chalkboard was confit duck.

  ‘Very nice,’ Rachel commented, as she sat down. ‘It’s almost… girly.’

  ‘I’m not a total philistine,’ Brickall grumbled. ‘And you can get the drinks in: I’m knackered.’

  As she returned from the bar with a fancy ale, a glass of red wine and a bow
l of chips, he commented, ‘No Dolly? I thought you might bring her along.’

  ‘Ah… about that.’ Rachel told him about leaving Dolly with her mother. ‘Of course you can go down there and get her back any time you like.’

  Brickall shrugged. ‘No, it’s fine. It’s probably a good idea. It worked okay when we were in Edinburgh – the first time round,’ he added grimly, reminding her that he had made a repeat trip, mere hours after their first visit. ‘But when I’m in the office it doesn’t really work. She needs someone with her.’

  ‘Any luck rehoming her?”

  He shook his head.

  ‘So… how did you get on over the border?’

  Brickall took a mouthful of his beer. ‘Well for starters, it wasn’t easy. It’s all very well for Patten to say “find the people distributing the flyers” but the city is full of people handing out invites to events, almost all of them completely innocent. And when you’re a team of one…’

  ‘Didn’t Morag and her team help?’ Rachel took a chip and dipped it into a bowl of mayonnaise.

  ‘They came good in the end, but I did have to threaten them with Patten, like you suggested. In the end, once I’d explained it properly to little More-hag, she kind of got it. After a bit of playing hard to get, you know, to save face. She accepts that they missed a trick with both kids who died having been on White Crystal Trips, and admits there could be some sort of child exploitation happening on her patch that needs looking into.’

  ‘And did you find anyone?’

  He nodded. ‘I hope so. Morag lent me a couple of bobbies, including Kirstie Blair… remember her? The one who knew all about Hazel MacBain’s past. Anyway, we targeted the late-night crowd on Saturday and after buttonholing a dozen or so leafleters we eventually found one who told us who we were looking for. He said he thought they were a couple of Latvians, a man and a woman. Didn’t know their names or anything, but knew a bar where they hung out. So after asking a lot of questions in the bar we were directed to the digs of these guys, in some armpit of a council estate. We found their names by going through the mail in the front hall.’

  ‘But they weren’t there?’

  Brickall shook his head. ‘Course not. That would have been too easy. But Morag and her team organised an arrest warrant, and they’ve got the beat plods and the pandas out looking for them.’

  ‘Let’s hope they find them,’ said Rachel grimly, downing the last of her wine. ‘I’m really looking forward to hearing what they’ve got to say.’

  * * *

  She did not have to wait long.

  A call came in at ten thirty the following morning, just as Rachel and Brickall were returning to their desks following a debrief with Patten. Police Scotland had picked up Maris Balodis and Iveta Kovals at Waverley Station, attempting to board a train to Glasgow. They were holding them in Gayfield Square until someone from the NCA team could get there to help interview them, as long as this complied with the twenty-four-hour custody rules.

  ‘Shit,’ said Rachel. ‘I wasn’t expecting it to happen so quickly. Someone needs to get up to Edinburgh right away.’

  ‘Not me,’ Brickall said hotly. ‘I’ve only just got off the plane back from there.’

  ‘It’ll have to be me then, won’t it?’ Rachel left him and doubled back to Patten’s office to ask Janette to book her on a lunchtime flight. Which left her just enough time to go home and pack a bag and get herself to London City airport in time for boarding.

  As soon as the lift doors opened on her floor of the Bermondsey apartment block, Rachel sensed that something was different. The first thing she saw as she rounded the corner was a shadow falling on the carpet, a man’s shadow, that could only be cast by someone tall standing next to the door of her flat. Her heart started beating faster when she saw a stranger leaning against the doorframe with his back to her, scrolling through his phone screen in the way people did to kill time.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  The man turned round, and Rachel could see that despite his height – he must have been six feet three – he was young; a boy rather than a man. He had thick, sandy hair brushed back from his forehead and a dusting of acne around his jawline. And green-grey eyes. Eyes just like her own.

  Her mind shot back forcibly to a ceiling with bright, clinical lighting above her, the smell of iodine and surgical scrubs, the hiss of oxygen from a mask over face. A pair of gloved hands coming into view above her, holding a bright-pink creature smeared in blood and mucus, arms outstretched in a primal instinct, mouth opening in a bleating cry.

  ‘Are you Rachel Prince?’ the tall boy asked.

  She nodded slowly, frozen to the spot as a strange emotion surged through her; part panic, part deep, fierce joy. Her fingers flew to her neck, her throat closing off, as though something was artificially constricting it.

  He was opening his mouth to introduce himself, but she knew. She already knew.

  ‘I’m Joe. I’m your son.’

  Part Two

  Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.

  Have Space Suit—Will Travel, Robert A. Heinlein

  Fourteen

  Rachel’s fingertips tingled and went numb, and the blood sang in her ears. She clutched the doorframe as her knees sagged beneath her.

  ‘I’m sorry, give me a minute,’ she mumbled. She closed her eyes and breathed deliberately for a few seconds, in and out, in and out, until the tingling subsided. Once she had collected herself, she fumbled in her bag for her key. Her voice, when she managed to force it past the constriction, emerged as a croak. ‘You’d better come in.’

  Struggling with disbelief and shock, there she was, back in the hospital again. ‘Congratulations,’ a disembodied voice was saying to her. ‘Here’s your baby.’

  She made a strangled little gasp.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine, it’s just…’

  Her voice trailed off and Joe followed her inside. He looked around the flat, weighing it, scenting it like a pet being introduced to a new home. ‘Have a seat,’ she said. ‘Can I get you a drink? Tea? Coffee?’

  ‘Tea would be great – thanks.’ As Rachel switched on the kettle and reached out for a mug and a tea bag, he went on. ‘Look, sorry, to be all like… I suppose this must have been a massive shock.’ He spoke with a neutral Home Counties accent, tinged with teen patois. Rachel took in the skinny jeans, logo T-shirt and backpack. Standard teenage stuff. Only the expensive watch and trainers hinted at privilege.

  ‘Well yes… sort of,’ she answered him. ‘I mean, not entirely. Obviously I knew you turned eighteen a few weeks ago…’

  ‘The first of August,’ he prompted.

  ‘Yes, the first of August. I remember. I was there.’ The attempt at humour was risky but he responded with a lopsided smile. A smile much like her own.

  She didn’t tell him that every first of August for the past eighteen years she had mentally measured him against a doorframe, wondering how much he had grown in the past twelve months, how tall he was. Very tall, as it turned out.

  ‘I knew there was a chance you might come and find me. I just didn’t expect it to be quite so soon.’ She poured boiled water into the mug, adding hastily, ‘Not that I took it for granted you would. You would have been perfectly within your rights not to want to… I suppose I assumed someone from the adoption agency would be in touch with me first.’

  ‘If you want to find your birth parent you have to have a session with an adoption counsellor,’ he told her. ‘Then they allow you to send for a copy of your original birth certificate. And my mate Charlie, who’s like this brilliant hacker, helped me find your address online. But I planned it ages ago. For as long as I can remember, I intended to come and find you. So that’s what I did.’

  The measured way he spoke reminded her of his father. So much. Biology is powerful, she thought. That had also been her first thought when the midwife placed her son in her arms: He looks just like his father.


  ‘They always do in the first weeks,’ the midwife had said with a smile. ‘Mother Nature’s little trick. So the dad doesn’t reject them.’ Then she had looked embarrassed, remembering Rachel’s decision to have her child adopted. ‘It’s not too late to change your mind,’ she had urged. ‘There’s no stigma in being an unmarried mother these days.’

  ‘I’m married,’ Rachel had reminded her. ‘But my husband and I are separated.’

  ‘Well, in being a single mother then. It’s completely acceptable.’

  The staff had pressured her. Her family had pressured her. Lindsay especially, pregnant with her own first child and committed to the concept of nuclear families, had pressured her. But she had stuck to her decision, insisting that it wasn’t a social issue that was inhibiting her from keeping her baby. She just wasn’t in a place in her life where motherhood was an option for her. In her mind there was no going back. It was simply too late.

  ‘Do you live here alone?’

  Joe’s voice jolted her back into the present.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’ She suddenly remembered why she was there and, as she checked her watch, felt a surge of panic course through her, leaving her light-headed all over again. This was a disaster: she had to go and Joe was only halfway through his cup of tea.

  ‘Has your home life been… okay? Have you been happy?’

  ‘Yeah great. No worries there.’ He gave a broad smile meant to reassure and she felt her heart expand in her chest.

  ‘Good. That’s good. I always worried that… well, there’s always a fear that things might not work out in the new family.’ She closed her eyes momentarily. ‘A huge fear, if I’m honest.’

  ‘I’ve had the classic, secure Home Counties upbringing. Lovely home, functional family.’