by Rebecca Lang
‘You’re making me blush,’ Anna said, quite unnecessarily, as Seth was clearly noting her flushed face.
‘Good,’ he said, grinning at her.
It’s pathetic, really, she chided herself. The first good-looking, charming man you come into contact with, you turn into a quivering jelly because you’ve been deprived for so long.
She wondered if he could divine something of her reaction to him, hoping fervently that it was not the case. After all, she knew nothing about him…
Rebecca Lang trained to be a State Registered Nurse in Kent, England, where she was born. Her main focus of interest became operating theatre work, and she gained extensive experience in all types of surgery on both sides of the Atlantic. Now living in Toronto, Canada, she is married to a Canadian pathologist and has three children. When not writing, Rebecca enjoys gardening, reading, theatre, exploring new places, and anything to do with the study of people.
Recent titles by the same author:
THE SURGEON’S CONVENIENT FIANCÉE
NURSE ON ASSIGNMENT
A FATHER FOR HER SON
BY
REBECCA LANG
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
SHE had never seen the inside of a private detective’s office before. Now she looked around her, trying not to stare too obviously in front of the secretary who had a desk in the corner of the small waiting room.
In films and novels such offices were rather barren and somewhat seedy. This one was a little better than that, a cut above, although it gave the impression that the owners were trying to keep a low profile.
The secretary stood up. ‘Come in, Ms Grey. Mr Smythe will see you now.’
‘Thank you.’ They went along a narrow passage, bordered on both sides by small rooms. They were in an old house, on the second floor, where everything was suitably anonymous, including the clients and, she assumed, the detectives.
‘Wait in here, Ms Grey. He’ll be along in a few minutes. Have a seat.’
The room was similarly nondescript, with a large desk, filing cabinets, three reasonably comfortable chairs.
Anna Grey subsided gratefully into the most comfortable-looking chair on the door side of the desk, forcing herself to try to relax and not question too much her decision to come here. Certainly over the past few weeks she had been indecisive, then had finally made up her mind.
Even so, there was a certain dissonance in her mind, as well as nervousness. As she waited, she mused about her reasons for being there, as she had done for a long time prior to that moment.
There was a last time for everything, she thought, although frequently we didn’t know it was the last time; if we did, perhaps we would pay more attention to the events preceding it.
She would never forget the night when everything had changed, when Simon had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. For her, that had been the night of the beginning of a loss of innocence, the start of that period of her life when she had understood what it meant to really grow up. It had started when she had waited for Simon and he had not arrived; he had never arrived after that.
‘Ms Grey?’ The detective came into the room, quickly and silently. ‘Please, don’t get up.’ He extended a hand. ‘I’m Hector Smythe.’
He was short and thin, totally bald, the skin of his scalp shiny, and his face was wizened, making Anna think of an elf.
‘Thank you for seeing me,’ she said hastily, shaking his hand. ‘I’m still not sure I should be here, taking up your time. This is the last resort, you understand?’
‘Yes, I do understand. Please, don’t apologise. Most people say something similar when they come to see us here,’ he said as he seated himself at the big desk and fixed her with a shrewd, intelligent stare from alert brown eyes. ‘Your problem is obviously severe enough for you to want to seek help. That’s good enough for us. That’s what we’re here for, and we’re certainly not going to waste your money. If we can’t help you, we say so right from the outset. Believe me, all problems are equally fascinating, otherwise we wouldn’t be in the business. Now…let me see…’
Instead of the usual computer, he opened a simple manila folder that was already on the desk, and Anna found herself admiring the economy and simplicity of the place.
‘Don’t trust computers,’ he said, apparently reading her mind. ‘They are not secure. Neither are cellphones.’
Anna nodded, smiling, relieved that her personal information would be totally safe with him.
‘There’s nothing that can’t be retrieved by an expert from a computer,’ he went on, warming to his theme. ‘Of course, we do use computers for some things, for searches, for instance, but we put nothing personal on them, either about ourselves or anyone else. We have here a man who does forensic data retrieval for us. He’s a genius, in my opinion. Otherwise, in this business, often old-fashioned methods are best. Speak to people face to face when you can.’
Anna nodded again, impressed and already feeling more at ease. A week before coming to this interview she had given details of her case history to the secretary over the telephone—a land line that the woman had assured her, unasked, was not tapped. The agency specialised in tracing missing persons, counter-industrial espionage and surveillance in marital infidelity.
‘I have some news for you,’ Hector Smythe said, looking up, smiling. ‘We have located a Dr S.A. Ruelle right here in the city, right here in Gresham, Ontario.’ He beamed across the desk at her.
‘Oh!’ Anna’s cheeks flushed with a sudden rush of blood as her heart leapt in anticipation and renewed hope. ‘Oh.’
‘Mind you,’ he went on, ‘the two first names are not the same as the ones you gave me, but those can be changed. He calls himself Seth Alexi Ruelle. It seems more than coincidence that the initials should be the same. The surname is unusual enough that there can’t be too many doctors with that name and the right initials.’
‘No.’ She stared at him, scarcely able to breathe, even more nervous now as all sorts of questions rushed through her mind. If Simon were here in Gresham, why wouldn’t he have contacted her or returned to his job at the hospital? After all, she was easy enough to find, even though she had left her job at Gresham General Hospital recently to look after her son. Her hopes had suddenly skyrocketed and then plunged again as she’d looked at the problem from a common sense point of view.
‘We are in the process of checking where he trained,’ Hector Smythe went on. ‘We’ve managed to access the Medical Association files for the province, which are available to the public, if you know where to look, to ascertain that he is registered as a medical practitioner in Ontario. As you know, a doctor cannot practise here without being registered.’
‘Yes.’
‘According to the records, he trained in Boston. But I think the graduation dates may not be quite right for your Dr Simon Ruelle, so that makes me doubt that he’s Simon, but we’re going to check him out anyway. This doctor seems somewhat older than your man would have been, I think. Do you know when Simon graduated?’ He looked at her across the expanse of the large desk.
Again, Anna flushed. ‘I don’t actually know,’ she admitted, shamefacedly. ‘There are certain things I don’t know about him, that perhaps I should know, but, you see, I sort of accepted him at face value and did
n’t ask an awful lot of questions in the time that we knew each other.’
‘Not very wise,’ he said softly, looking sad.
‘You see…it all seemed so…right…our being together.’
‘It usually does, at least for a time,’ he said gently, looking at her kindly and seriously, with only a hint of cynicism in his demeanour.
‘Let me just get you to confirm a few things that my secretary wrote here, Ms Grey,’ Hector Smythe continued, breaking into her jumbled thoughts. ‘You have a three-year-old son, fathered by a Dr Simon Angelo Ruelle.”
‘I…Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I have a son.’
‘Forgive me for asking this, but I must yet again, Ms Grey, although I know my secretary asked it. Is it at all possible that this Dr Simon Ruelle knew of your pregnancy and did a moonlight flit?’
Anna smiled wanly. ‘No, he didn’t know,’ she said emphatically. ‘At that point, I hadn’t told anybody. I was going to tell him on the day he disappeared. I know that seems significant, but it couldn’t have been.’
‘Mmm. It does seem a little too convenient for him that he should have disappeared just at the time you needed him. Not that I wish to say or imply that he would not have wanted to be with you, or support you. It is merely something that we must consider, seeing as it is a very common mode of behaviour, as you must know.’
‘Oh, yes. But he didn’t come back to his job. He had been accepted into a surgical residency training programme, which is not easy to get into. There was no way that he would have given that up unless something serious had happened to him. I was not able to make enquiries on my own because I was not next of kin. No one would talk to me because of issues of privacy. We were not even engaged or living together. I had only known him really well for four months. That was the time we were going out together…’ Her voice trailed away, a familiar feeling of hopelessness coming over her.
‘Let me see what we have here…’ Hector Smythe said, consulting the brief notes in front of him. ‘Simon Ruelle was born in Zimbabwe, trained in Boston, came to Gresham, Ontario to take up a surgical fellowship at Gresham General Hospital here while he was waiting for the surgical residency training to begin. Is that right?’
‘Yes. That was going on for four years ago,’ she said. ‘I met him in the operating suite of that hospital, where I was working as a nurse. I’ve recently given up my job to look after my son and to help my mother take care of my father temporarily…he’s been ill, and needed an operation.’
‘Is he going to be all right?’
‘Yes, I’m pretty sure he will be. He had prostate cancer, which was in the early stages, thank God. It hasn’t spread so the prognosis is good. Before that happened, my mother was looking after Finn, my son, while I worked part time,’ she explained, feeling more at ease talking about her everyday life.
‘I see. It certainly seems very odd that this Dr Ruelle should have disappeared just then.’
‘His fellowship would have soon ended,’ she confirmed, ‘and he was so much looking forward to starting the residency. He felt privileged to be there. I think something awful must have happened to him.’
‘Is it possible, do you think, that the offer of the residency could have been withdrawn from him at the last moment?’ Hector Smythe said.
‘I…don’t think so. That’s something that hadn’t occurred to me.’ She stammered slightly. ‘I—I think he would have told me, and he would have been upset, to say the least. When I last saw him, when I worked with him, he seemed on top of the world. Even when he knew his mother was not well, he didn’t think it was anything serious.’
The man opposite her looked at her steadily. Although his face was bland, his expression nonjudgmental, she knew he must be thinking she was naïve. Well, she was, and she knew it. At least, she had been. Being a mother, especially without a significant other, made one grow up fast.
‘Don’t you worry, we’ll find him,’ Hector Smythe said. ‘If this Dr Ruelle is not the right one, it’s possible, perhaps, he may be able and willing to help us to locate him, as he has inside information about the workings of the medical profession. The profession is a small one in the sense that medical information is shared the world over—there are international meetings, co-operation in research and all those things which will work in our favour. So, what I want you to do, Ms Grey, is go round there where he has his office and take a look at him.’
He made it sound so easy, like going to look at a house that was for sale or something, while she was consumed with feelings of apprehension.
For another twenty minutes they continued to talk, then Hector Smythe stood up. ‘If you are in agreement, Ms Grey, you can see Dr Seth Ruelle today. If he is not the right one, you may as well see him to rule him out right away. That will save us a lot of legwork and undercover stuff.’
Anna stood up too, not particularly flattered by the broad hint that if this man was Simon he might be scared away from her. ‘I can see him today?’ she said incredulously, with that nervous, sick excitement that one felt in anticipation of a longed-for moment.
‘We took the liberty of making an appointment for you, by saying that we were looking for a missing person and that he might be able to help us,’ he said. ‘I doubt that he is Simon Ruelle, as Simon would most likely not return to Gresham to practise medicine, having left it so abruptly. I have to say that your name appeared not to mean anything to him but, then, we did not tell him the whole story. You will have to explain yourself more fully when you get there. Considering that we were not willing to give him much information over the telephone, he was very gracious in agreeing to help us. I thought it better if you explained the situation to him, face to face.’
‘It does seem a bit…er…cloak and dagger,’ she said, smiling.
‘Yes, it does.’ He laughed. ‘That’s how we prefer to operate. And I told him so.’
Anna decided not to ask any more questions just then. She would just go with the flow for now. ‘All right. Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m very grateful.’ Events were moving on faster than she had anticipated after years of stalemate and frustration.
‘How old are you, Ms Grey?’ he said. ‘I don’t seem to have that information here. And I’d like your son’s exact age. I’d also like some other information, about your professional training, and so on…just in case at some time in the future you need to claim financial support.’
Anna subsided into the chair again. ‘I’m twenty-seven,’ she said. ‘I started my nursing training at the university here in Gresham when I was eighteen. And I graduated four years later.’
‘I see. And your work experience?’
‘When I was at university I worked for a good part of each summer at Gresham General Hospital, then, after graduation, I got a permanent job there. I went to work in the operating suite in October of that year—that’s when I met Simon. We…we became seriously involved the next year.’
‘You were twenty-two when you met him?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what about Finn?’
‘He was born on the first of April, three years ago,’ she said. ‘He was actually due to be born on the twenty-second of March, but first babies are often late.’
It had not taken her long to realise she had fallen pregnant, but it had taken her longer to summon up courage to tell Simon. She had left it too late.
‘How old is Simon?’ he asked.
‘He’s…um…thirty-one now,’ she calculated.
‘It’s almost certain that this Dr Seth Ruelle is not Simon, as from some preliminary enquiries we’ve been able to make, he’s a few years older. However, not to worry. We really want to elicit his help. Now, our secretary, Janet, will give you the instructions about where he is.’ He flicked back his sleeve to look at his watch. ‘It’s in the old medical arts building on the edge of the university campus. You have three-quarters of an hour in which to get there.’
‘I know the place. Thank you.’
‘Don’t get your
hopes up too much right now,’ he said kindly. ‘This is just a start and it may get us somewhere eventually by association, with the names being the same. Could you call me later today to let me know what happened?’
‘Yes. Goodbye,’
On the ground floor of the house she went into the women’s washroom and stared at her pale face in a mirror, knowing that she looked tired and washed out, certainly not ready to meet someone who might be able to help her. Being a mother of a young child and helping her parents in a time of crisis were taking their toll on her. Often she felt that her first flush of youthful beauty had gone. With her very pale skin, her fine, straight fair hair and blue eyes, which had a haunted quality, she looked like a waif. Hastily she added a touch of lipstick to her very pale lips.
Having answered Mr Smythe’s questions, she now relived some of the anxiety she had felt when getting up her courage to break the news to Simon, then the despair she had experienced when he had disappeared.
Out in the street she put up her umbrella against the cold autumn rain, glad of the little partially closed-off world that it enabled her to inhabit as she hurried along the wet pavement towards the nearest subway station. She needed time to think, when there was little time. Still not sure whether she was doing the right thing in pursuing Simon, it seemed that events were carrying her along, not entirely within her control. Well, she had started the ball rolling again and to a certain extent she must have the courage to follow where it took her. It was required of her to go with the flow.
If the Dr Ruelle she was about to see was indeed Simon, what would he think of her now? Presumably he had agreed to see her of his own free will. He could have refused. Now that she was out of the detective’s office, she could think of several questions she should have asked.
Feeling confused and scared, Anna paid her money and pushed her way through the turnstile of the subway station. Don’t get your hopes up, Hector Smythe had said. Well, she wasn’t going to. Very soon the suspense would be over.
