by Alison Bond
She really should have been back by now.
‘I’m really sorry about this,’ she said. ‘Liam, is it? It’s just that Samantha never mentioned you and as you can imagine we get a lot of people claiming to be … well, claiming to be someone they’re not. Sam relies on me to keep the crazies away, you know?’
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘What would you like me to say?’
‘Well, for starters, why hasn’t she mentioned you?’
She doesn’t want people to know she has a brother.
And who could blame her with a brother like him? All their lives he had been holding her back. He was a stain on her reputation, a drain on her resources. He was worse than useless.
‘She gave me her old mobile phone,’ said Liam. ‘How long have you been her assistant?’
‘Long enough,’ said Leanne, immediately getting his point. ‘I’ll call you back.’ She dialled the obsolete mobile number that her brain had stubbornly retained. It rang just once before he picked up.
She believed him. It was a quick way to prove his story, a smart idea, the kind that Samantha might have come up with. A brother. Who knew?
‘You want more proof?’ he said. ‘She’s left-handed, her middle name is Patricia and she’s got a tattoo of a bluebird on her left shoulder.’
‘Really? I would have thought she was far too uptight to get a tattoo.’
‘She hasn’t always been that way,’ he said. ‘Now can you tell me where she is? Please? I really have to speak to her as soon as possible.’
‘I thought she was at her house in London. She’s with, uh, with her boyfriend.’
‘I tried her house,’ said Liam. ‘There was no reply at the front door. I, well, then I nipped over the back fence too but it doesn’t look like she’s there.’
Leanne shivered, a chill momentarily tickling her spine, and confided her growing sense of unease. ‘They’ve been gone longer than she said and it’s so totally not like her. Normally she calls in about a hundred times a day, but, well, I didn’t know. I thought she’d be back by now.’
‘You said she’s with her boyfriend? She’s with Jackson Ramsay?’
‘I’m sorry?’ said Leanne. ‘Say that again?’ Despite her apprehension she grinned. It was so unexpected and yet at the same time it made perfect sense. Samantha and Jackson? How long had that been going on? And how the hell had they managed to keep it under the radar? It was enough to make her wish she was back at Legends. That was the best bit of gossip she had heard in ages, in for ever. Jackson? Really?
‘No,’ she said, ‘she’s with Aleksandr Lubin. He’s …’
‘I know who he is. Listen, what’s your name? Leanne? Listen, Leanne, I have to find her. There’s something she has to know. What happened with her and Jackson? Maybe he would know where she is?’
‘I’m behind on all of this,’ said Leanne. ‘I didn’t know there was a brother and I don’t think anyone knew about Jackson. Clearly she is a woman with a lot of secrets.’
Liam tugged at his hair with frustration. He could finally tell her the truth and now she was nowhere to be found. ‘And you can’t think where they might be? You don’t have any ideas?’
‘Wait!’ said Leanne. ‘There was this other house. I helped her furnish it, and she was always kind of mysterious about it. Nobody knew about it but me. It was in Kentish Town I think. I have the address somewhere.’
‘No,’ said Liam, ‘I know that house. It’s mine. She bought it for me.’
‘So what now?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll keep calling her.’
She couldn’t help thinking that he sounded scared. ‘Something is really wrong, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Something’s happened? Is she in trouble?’
‘Something happened a long time ago,’ he said. ‘And Samantha wasn’t to blame for any of it.’
‘What can I do?’
‘I’ll take care of it. I’ll ask her to call you as soon as I find her.’
Leanne looked at the organized piles of paperwork awaiting Samantha’s return. She couldn’t think of a single reason big enough for Samantha to miss the transfer window, not after all the hard work she had put in. She didn’t care how good the Russian was in bed.
Where was she?
She had a very bad feeling about all of this. And she could only think of one person that might be able to help.
36
Samantha awoke on the floor of her office, her throat raw with a raging thirst. She reached for the bottle of water that was by the desk and tipped it to her mouth although she knew that only pitifully few drops remained. One big gulp and it would all be gone. Then what?
What time was it? Down here in the windowless gloom she could not tell. Her computer said almost nine a.m. That would mean she had been asleep for almost four hours, which was more than the night before.
Should she scratch out the days on the wall to mark the passing of time?
She tried the phone again, but it was still dead of course. Not from the storm, she realized that now, but deliberately.
For the first time she contemplated the seriousness of her position. She was tired, hungry and thirsty, and though she may be able to sleep, there was no water and she had long ago drunk the dregs of a cup of coffee that was down here. The only food was half a packet of mints and a wizened apple that had rolled under her desk weeks ago.
She ate the remaining half of the apple to try to silence the insidious hunger that had been with her now for longer than she cared to guess.
Two days. She’d missed the transfer window, her business was dead. All that hard work, all that investment of time and money, gone to dust. But it didn’t seem to matter any more. Right now she only had one concern. Finding a way out of here.
She had spent a lot of time trying in vain to connect to the internet or walking around the space with her mobile phone aloft searching for some hitherto unknown pocket of signal, all so that she could call someone for help.
She stood sentry at the basement door, pounding on it and yelling in case maybe her neighbours would hear her screams. She planned what she would do if her captor returned, how she would attack him, going for eyes and balls like you were supposed to, disabling him long enough to run up the stairs and be free.
But nothing. Nobody was coming. She was on her own.
Once, not that long ago, she had thought her home office marvellously spacious, another symbol of her blistering success. Now, not at all. It must be her imagination, but the walls felt closer today than yesterday.
Who would be missing her?
Alek. She had promised to call him and she had not. He had sent her roses once, he would know her address. Why hadn’t he come?
Leanne. She was expected back in Krakow to sign off on a number of contracts, contracts she had spent the last few months negotiating and that were supposed to allow her business to launch. Deals totalling millions. Surely Leanne would be worried? The transfer window was closed now. Her dream of a new start was over. If this had been Liam’s final desperate act of sabotage then it had worked. Was he really so determined to see her fail?
Another wander around her prison with mobile phone and laptop computer held high. No friendly neighbour’s wireless signal to piggyback, no bars on her mobile phone.
She struck out at the wall in her frustration.
Surely soon somebody would come?
Liam would be back. She was his sister. Whatever he had done in the past, no matter how warped his perception had become, he wouldn’t leave her here. Not indefinitely.
A few hours passed and she was on the chair clawing at the ceiling, hammering it with a broken piece of shelving, and wishing that she had paid more attention when the builders were renovating her cellar. She had no idea how thick the ceiling was, but she had made a small hole in the plasterboard and there was a space beyond it. On top of that, what? The kitchen floorboards, one of them was loose. Maybe if she could find that one …
The futility of her attempt w
as crushing. But she had to try, because what was the alternative? Shattered, and getting nowhere she sank back to the floor and closed her eyes.
How long was she expected to fight? Nobody could be expected to struggle for ever. It was too hard.
Congratulations. You win.
She woke up shaking, realizing that she might die here. A lonely London death.
She thought of her mother.
For the very first time she cried for her loss.
Her eyes fell on her Businesswoman of the Year award. The tacky gold-plated champagne bottle was mocking her, because champagne and gold, success, meant nothing. Success was worthless when you started to dwell on life and death, on freedom. And so it finally occurred to her, as she slumped on the floor, hungry and afraid, that perhaps her entire life had been a waste of time.
He broke in carefully. Deadening the sound of shattering glass with his old leather jacket, wincing when the shards clattered on the kitchen floorboards and then stretching through the jagged hole to manipulate the back-door handle, reaching down to the first bolt and snapping it open, using the rake he had already stolen from the garden shed to pull up the floor bolt. The door finally swung wide and he stepped into the dark house as silent as a cat.
He studied the locked basement door carefully then twisted the key in the lock and crept down the stairs into the darkness.
Liam Sharp had never broken and entered before and couldn’t help thinking that he seemed to be rather good at it.
Then out of nowhere something incredibly heavy struck him across the back of the head and he crashed to the floor before he even had time to cry out.
Samantha stood over him with a gold-plated champagne bottle, her heart racing, her breath coming in short, fearful bursts. Despite the ache in her wrist she held the bottle in mid-air as she looked down at her brother.
Liam.
He was out cold. She knelt down, overwhelmed by an unexpected rush of love for him. His face in repose looked so like it did when they were children. She stroked his hair, the exact same colour as her own.
And when she drew her hand back it was covered in blood.
‘Don’t panic,’ said Lubin. ‘Stay right where you are, I’m coming. You are sure he is breathing?’
‘Yes,’ whispered Samantha. She had held a mirror beneath her brother’s nose to check and when she saw the mist on the glass she was so relieved she started to cry again. She was scared to feel herself drifting towards hysteria. She hadn’t meant to hit him so hard, just enough to get past him. She wanted to call a doctor, an ambulance, but she was terrified of what would happen next. Would Liam be arrested? Would she? So she had run upstairs and called Lubin because Samantha Sharp couldn’t do it on her own any more. She needed to be rescued.
‘Can you secure him?’ asked Lubin.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Can you put a locked door between you?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She would close the cellar door. ‘Please hurry.’
‘It’s okay, Samantha. Calm down, okay? I will be there as soon as I can.’
She put her mobile phone in her back pocket, keeping it close by. Then she poured herself a glass of water and drank it down in one, feeling the lurch of her surprised stomach and almost throwing up. She poured herself another glass and sipped it more slowly this time, nibbling cautiously on a cracker too.
Then she splashed her face with water and went back downstairs.
There was nothing where he had been except a dull brown bloodstain on the tufted wool rug.
Liam was gone.
She instinctively reached out for the gold champagne bottle. ‘Liam?’
There was nowhere in the room to hide. She knew every inch of it now. Upstairs she called his name, but there was no reply. He must have slipped by her upstairs and got away while she was making her phone call. Mostly she was relieved. Lubin would surely have insisted that she call the police and she didn’t know if she was ready to do that. Her breath came more easily and she thought about calling him again to tell him this latest development.
She enjoyed the sensation of freedom.
Then she heard a flush from the bathroom and Liam stepped into the hallway rubbing the spot on his head where she had struck him.
‘Sammy? What the hell?’
They stood in the stillness of the house and stared at each other, frozen, as if seeing each other for the first time in years. The seconds dragged on until Samantha broke the silence.
‘All I ever wanted was to help you,’ she said. ‘How could you?’
She walked towards him, no longer afraid, feeling a remarkable sense of calm. He was her big brother, but she didn’t have to try to look up to him any more and be confused and lost when she couldn’t.
‘First you frame me,’ she said, ‘then you make sly little calls to the press, telling them things I told you in confidence because I trusted you. God, I trusted you. I’m so stupid.’
He was her enemy. The one she never thought she had. She circled him, walking tall and proud, like she was wearing four-inch Louboutin heels.
‘Sam, stop, you’ve got it all wrong.’
She stood behind him and leant close to his ear. She knew that she was scaring him and it felt good. ‘Then you keep me prisoner in my own home to make sure that I miss the window and fail all over again. What’s the matter, Liam, did I not fail enough for you the last time? Or did you just want me to know how it feels to be locked up?’ She could see the matted patch of hair on the back of his head where he had bled.
He ventured a glance over his shoulder at her, and was shaken when he saw the tears tumbling down her face.
‘I trusted you,’ she whispered.
When they were little sometimes she would stay awake in front of the television waiting for their mother to come home and get so tired that she would start crying. He would try to make her go to sleep singing the songs that she liked and hoping that she would dream of bluebirds and not disappointment. The memory of it clawed at his heart.
‘It wasn’t me,’ he said. ‘I would never do that to you.’
‘Why not? You have every reason to hate me.’
‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘I love you. And I don’t need a reason for that.’
The guilt that Liam had been carrying with him had grown monstrous upon his release from prison. He had spent the last few weeks searching for a kind of absolution, an escape from the endless grinding remorse. But nothing had been able to help.
The answer came to him late one night in a sudden moment of inspiration. All this time he thought he needed Samantha to forgive him, or simply to forgive himself, but he had been looking for forgiveness in the wrong places.
He wanted to visit the graves of the people that he had killed.
Maybe then he could make peace with what he had done.
It didn’t take him long to locate the final resting place of the man who had died that night. A few simple phone calls and within a couple of days he was able to lay flowers on a forgotten grave in south-east London.
When he wiped the polished granite headstone clear of debris he said a prayer and walked away feeling an unfamiliar lightness in his soul.
It was symbolic, nothing more; he knew that a few flowers and some unspoken words could never be enough, but it was all that was possible. He had done all that he could do.
But the woman who had died had been harder to find.
At first there was a veil of bureaucracy concealing her whereabouts, but eventually his search led him to a beautiful church in Knightsbridge, tucked back from the bustle of the high street. A noble kind of place set in its own pristine grounds. A sense of calm came over him almost immediately. He clutched his bouquet of white roses tightly, their sweet scent filling his senses as a thorn stabbed into the flesh of his thumb. Soon this would be over.
There was a sermon taking place and he slipped into a wooden pew at the back. He was struck by the simple elegance of the church, the stained-glass windows dep
icting scenes from Christ’s life in clean lines and muted colours, the candlelight casting angled shadows across the warm golden stone of the walls and floor. It was the first church he had been in since the day they’d buried their mother and yet thinking of that day didn’t make him feel bitter as it usually did, just sad.
It was a moment before he realized that the robed minister addressing the congregation was not speaking English. It was a language he had not heard before, except maybe once, that night, that awful night. The memory made him shudder and he went back out into the churchyard searching for the plot where she was buried.
It was a deceptively simple headstone, black like so many others, but not granite. Onyx. Discreetly but ludicrously extravagant.
He knelt before her grave, this woman that he had killed, and remembered her soft laughter in the back of his car that night, her red hair falling onto the shoulder of her lover, happy. He thought of the price that he had paid, the long lonely years in prison – was it enough? The ground was cold beneath his knees, and he knew that it would have to be. His punishment and his remorse were all that he could give her now. And finally he felt truly free.
He thought of his sister, of Samantha, and love flowed into his freshly open heart. He could face the future with hope.
He stood up and traced the name on the headstone. Natasha.
And then he froze. For he suddenly realized what language the minister had been speaking. And why the name on the headstone had seemed faintly familiar to him. And that his sister could be in terrible danger.
In the middle of his story Liam paused and reached out for Samantha’s hand. She let him take it because with every word he spoke she knew that he was telling the truth. Just by listening.
‘Sammy,’ he said, ‘the woman I killed that night was Natasha Lubin.’
Lubin.
