‘I’m so sorry.’ I put my hand on his arm, and let it stay there longer than perhaps I should, feeling a strange sense of connection to him.
He says nothing. After a while he reaches for his cigarettes and lights one and my hand falls away.
He looks at me. ‘You remind me of my wife. You smile just like her.’
I wipe a tear before it can fall, understanding now why he told the story.
‘She talked a lot too,’ he says with a mournful smile.
I smile back.
‘You wanted to know why I’m helping you,’ he says. ‘This is why.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, my mind still reeling from the story he just told me.
I look at him, seeing him in a whole new light. Konstandin’s level coolness, his one-shouldered shrug and nonchalant expression take on a new dimension, as do the scored lines around his eyes that seem now to have been born from pain, not laughter.
‘We’re here,’ Konstandin says. ‘Do you want to stay in the car?’
I shake my head, looking out the window at a store in a derelict-looking row of shops. This is not the touristy part of town, but somewhere out towards the airport, where there are more high-rise apartment buildings. The shop has bars on the window and an array of electronic goods and jewellery on display. I can’t read the sign but it’s universally obvious that it’s a pawnshop.
‘I should come. I know what her phone looks like,’ I say.
Konstandin nods and together we enter the store. There’s a man in his early fifties with grey hair and a friendly, watchful smile standing at a counter behind thick bulletproof glass. Konstandin walks over to him. He leans an elbow on the counter and says something to the man in Portuguese and the man answers with a few words accompanied by a shrug, his friendly smile fading.
Konstandin looks at me. ‘The man doesn’t know what we’re talking about but perhaps if you describe the phone it might jolt his memory.’
‘It’s an iPhone and the case was a pale pink. Two men brought it here yesterday. You gave them five hundred euro for it.’
The man studies me. Was that a flicker of recognition in his eyes?
‘It was stolen,’ I tell him.
‘Nothing stolen here,’ he grunts in heavily accented English.
‘It’s my friend’s phone,’ I say to the man. ‘She’s missing. We think she’s in serious trouble.’ I let the words sink in. ‘We just want her phone back. If you let us have it I won’t call the police.’
The man scowls at me, indignant at the suggestion he might be fencing a stolen phone, then looks at Konstandin who gives him a pleasant enough smile in return.
‘I told you I no have it,’ he says.
Damn. What if he’s sold it? Or what if Joaquim was lying and they didn’t bring it here? I look at Konstandin, not sure what to do next. Perhaps we should give up or let the police handle it. It’s just her phone after all. It’s not going to give us the answer to where Kate is, but Konstandin has other ideas. He leans forward, so his nose is almost touching the bulletproof divider and says something to the man in Portuguese. He could be asking about the weather from the tone of it but I watch the man’s expression.
He inches back away from the glass, fear darkening his expression. It’s a fascinating transformation and I wonder yet again what magical, dark powers of persuasion Konstandin has. The man is standing behind bulletproof glass after all. It’s not like Konstandin can threaten him with violence.
He mutters something then disappears. Konstandin turns and smiles at me, totally casual in his manner. ‘His memory has been jogged.’
‘What did you say to him?’ I ask but the man is back. And in his hand is Kate’s phone. ‘That’s it!’ I cry excitedly. ‘That’s her phone.’
‘I no know it stolen,’ the man mumbles, making to slide it through the hatch to me before stopping himself. ‘No police, yes? It was mistake.’
I glower at him. There’s no way he didn’t know this phone was stolen, but I decide that getting the phone back is more important than arguing with him so I nod. He slides the phone through the hatch and I grab for it. It’s a connection, however faint, to Kate. I press the home button but the phone’s out of juice and won’t turn on.
Konstandin and the man speak some more in Portuguese.
‘I asked him if he wiped it,’ Konstandin says. ‘He says no. Not yet.’
‘Good,’ I say, worrying that it might not matter anyway if we don’t have the password to access it.
‘Let’s go,’ Konstandin says, slipping his hand under my elbow and moving me towards the door.
‘What did you say to him?’ I ask as we walk to the car. ‘Before? When you were talking in Portuguese?’
‘Nothing much,’ Konstandin replies breezily.
‘Did it involve the removal of body parts and their injection into small orifices?’
Konstandin smiles and opens the car door for me, but he doesn’t answer.
‘The police station?’ Konstandin asks me once he’s sitting behind the wheel.
I nod. ‘Yes. Thanks.’
I root in my bag for my cash card, because I want to stop at an ATM on the way to get more cash. I’m going to insist on paying Konstandin for all this driving, but I come across a fifty-euro note. How did that get there? I look at Konstandin. Did he slip it back in my purse when I wasn’t looking?
Fine if that’s how he wants to play it. I’ll just hide it better next time.
‘Charge it,’ Konstandin says.
‘Huh?’ I ask.
He nods at Kate’s phone, which I’m still holding, and then at his charger cable.
I quickly plug the phone in and wait for it to power up. As I do my own phone buzzes in my bag and I pull it out, the familiar flame of hope igniting inside me before quickly fizzling out when I see it isn’t Kate – of course it isn’t Kate, I’ve got her bloody phone on my lap – but Toby.
‘Hi,’ I say, answering.
‘Orla,’ he replies, quite formally.
‘You got my message?’ I ask.
‘Yes, she’s still AWOL then,’ he answers, seeming narked. I can picture him rolling his eyes on the other end of the phone.
‘It’s serious, Toby,’ I tell him. ‘Her handbag was stolen, and her phone and her wallet. I really think something’s happened to her.’
A sigh from Toby. ‘She’s probably just gone to a spa for the weekend, or out on a bender, or maybe she’s fucking some poor bloke who has no idea what hell he’s in for later. But maybe, if I’m lucky, she can marry him and take him to the cleaners instead of me.’
‘No,’ I say, confused. ‘She isn’t at a spa. We’re in Lisbon together. We’re on a weekend away.’ How does he not remember this? He spoke to her on the phone on Friday night. He was mad about the charges on his credit card. ‘She’s gone missing,’ I tell him, saying it loud and clear in case he hasn’t understood it.
‘Have you been to the police?’ he asks and I notice a slight hesitation in his voice. He’s starting to wonder if maybe I’m not acting hysterical and that this might be serious.
‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘I was calling to get her mum’s number. I think someone needs to call her and let her know.’
‘Right,’ Toby says. ‘I can text you it.’ Clearly he is dumping that responsibility on me.
‘Thanks,’ I say.
‘Where did you last see her?’ Toby asks.
I run a hand through my hair. ‘We went out to a bar, after we had dinner—’
‘What night was this? Last night?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘Friday night. After you spoke to her—’
‘What?’ Toby interrupts. ‘I didn’t speak to her.’
‘Yes, you did,’ I argue. ‘I was there. You rang her about the credit card.’
There’s a pause on the end of the line then Toby speaks, his tone icy. ‘Orla, I don’t know what game Kate’s playing but I don’t have time for this …’
‘What game? This isn’t a game,’ I
say, stammering. ‘I’m serious …’
‘I haven’t spoken to Kate in over a week,’ Toby snaps. ‘My solicitor told me not to have any contact with her.’
‘But what about the credit card? She told me you had cut it off.’
‘What credit card?’
I rub the deepening crease between my eyes, trying to understand what this all means. I remember Kate distinctly telling me that it was Toby on the phone – that he was angry about the spending and had cut off the card. It’s one of the few non-patchy memories I have of the evening. She was busy texting in the cab before and I watched her outside the window of the restaurant pacing up and down, waving her arms about. When she came back to the table it looked like she’d been crying and she told me it was Toby. So, if she wasn’t talking to him, who was she talking to?
‘So, you didn’t cancel the card on Friday?’ I repeat.
‘No! I didn’t even know she was still on my cards? Damn it to hell, she’s probably fucking spent enough to buy a small island.’
‘And you didn’t speak to her on Friday night, either?’ I ask.
‘No,’ he exclaims impatiently. ‘Look, are you sure this isn’t some fucking drama-seeking, attention-grabbing plot that she’s come up with? It seems like a typical bloody Kate thing to do. Trying to get me to notice, I’m guessing. Probably going for the sympathy vote so I’ll take her back.’
I open my mouth to argue with him. As if she’d do all this just to get back at Toby or to muster sympathy. And what does he mean, take her back? She dumped him for being unfaithful. She couldn’t have cared less about the break-up. At the same time though, Toby isn’t wrong about Kate being an attention seeker.
But no! I shake my head. She wouldn’t go this far. ‘Of course it’s not an attention-grabbing plot!’ I protest. ‘That’s ridiculous! She wouldn’t do this.’
I hear Toby laugh under his breath – it comes out as more of a snort really.
‘What?’ I snap back, infuriated at his attitude.
‘You don’t know her at all, do you?’ he sneers.
‘Of course, I do,’ I exclaim. How dare he? I know her a lot better than he does. They got married after a three-month affair and have only been together a few years. I’ve known her almost twenty.
‘I bet she told you all about it, didn’t she?’ he continues on. ‘Everything I did to her, the shit I put her through, how terribly I treated her. I can just imagine the stories she told you.’
I don’t say anything. I can’t lie – she did tell me everything he put her through, and it wasn’t pleasant.
‘Did you ever stop to wonder whether any of it was true?’ Toby asks.
‘What are you saying?’
‘Your friend’s a lying bitch. And you fell for it. I feel sorry for you, Orla.’
Tears sting my eyes as though I’ve been slapped. ‘How can you—?’ I splutter but Toby cuts me off.
‘I bet she’s just fucking with you,’ he says. ‘Call me when she shows up. Or better yet, don’t bother. I couldn’t give two shits whether she’s alive or dead. In fact, I hope she is dead, and rotting in a gutter somewhere. At least then she won’t get her hands on money she doesn’t deserve. And, if she does show up, well, remember that I warned you.’
With that he hangs up. I stare open-mouthed at the phone, wondering if I just imagined the conversation, but my ears are still ringing from his words.
‘Everything OK?’ Konstandin asks.
I shake my head, unable to answer.
‘What did he say? He sounded angry.’
I nod. ‘He thinks Kate’s faking it.’
Konstandin double-takes at me while driving, not understanding.
‘It was her ex-husband, Toby. He said I didn’t know her at all. He told me she was a liar, that she’d lied to me about things.’
‘What things?’ Konstandin asks, frowning.
‘I don’t know. He didn’t say.’ What did he mean?
‘Do you want to go in still?’ Konstandin asks and I look around, confused, before seeing that he’s pulled up and parked opposite the police station.
I blink at the low brick building. Shit. My head is all over the place. My heart’s beating so fast it’s as if I’ve taken speed. It’s anxiety. I recognise the symptoms. My chest is tight and I’m finding it hard to breathe. I need a few moments to pull myself together. What am I going to tell the police? Toby’s words keep dinging around my head like bullets, tearing all my previous suppositions to shreds. What if she has done this as an attention-seeking plot?
I’m so tired my brain isn’t functioning right. How can I believe Kate would do something like that? I look down at her phone, charging in my lap. It’s got five per cent battery. I press the home button and the screen lights up. It asks me to input a passcode. Damn. Though honestly, what was I expecting?
I look at Konstandin. ‘Do you think she is faking it?’ I ask, slamming my mouth shut the moment I’ve asked it, ashamed of myself for voicing doubt. It’s Toby’s fault.
Konstandin’s expression becomes very opaque. He sighs and turns to look out the front window of the car, his hand fumbling as usual for his cigarettes. He doesn’t light one, just plays with the box. ‘She already deceived you once. She hired those men, one of them to sleep with you. So, if you’re asking me if she’s capable of lying and faking something, then yes.’
He does have a point.
‘Look,’ he says. ‘I don’t know your friend. But I will tell you this: in my experience humans are more capable of deception than we give them credit for. Everyone lies all the time. The question would be why though? Why would she do all this? Why would she want to put you in this position?’
‘I don’t know.’ Why did she lie to me about Toby calling? Who was she talking to outside the restaurant if it wasn’t him? Who upset her so much she came back to the table in tears?
‘And if the men didn’t drug you, who did?’ Konstandin asks.
I shift uncomfortably. ‘The barman?’ I ask. ‘A stranger? Maybe I wasn’t even drugged. Maybe I was really drunk.’ I press the heels of my hands over my eyes and stare into a dark void. It had already crossed my mind that it was Kate but hearing Konstandin say it too makes it all too obvious that it was her.
I hear her scream the word ‘bitch!’
‘You told me you were drugged,’ Konstandin says, touching me lightly on the arm so I look up. ‘I believe you.’
A sob rises up in my chest unexpectedly. ‘You really think Kate might have drugged me?’ I ask, removing my hands and blinking away stars.
Konstandin takes a cigarette from the pack. He taps it against the dash before lighting it. ‘Maybe,’ he says, inhaling.
‘But why would she do this?’ I ask, my foot hitting the car door as my frustration leaps out of me.
‘That’s the big question. If you can work that out, maybe you can find out why she is missing and where she is.’
Chapter Seventeen
Before I go into the police station I call Rob, but he doesn’t pick up so I leave a message, then I summon up the courage and call Kate’s mother. It’s strange to hear myself explain the situation to her. I can hear my positive reassurances that I’m doing all I can to find her daughter and will keep her updated, and I listen in wonder to how calm and how collected I sound. I don’t tell her about the escorts or the drugs of course. All I tell her is that Kate’s missing and that I’ve reported it to the police.
‘Do I need to be there?’ she asks.
I stammer, unsure what to say. In her shoes, if it were Marlow who was missing, I’d already be on my way to the airport. I wouldn’t be asking anyone their opinion. There’s not a stone I’d leave unturned to find her either.
‘I think it might be a good idea,’ I suggest. Partly because I don’t want to be here on my own anymore. I need help with this.
‘I’m getting my hair done,’ she tells me, with a sigh. ‘When I get home I suppose I’ll look into flights.’
‘Right,’
I say, bewildered at the lack of emotional response to the news her daughter is missing, before remembering that Kate has always said her mother is a narcissist who only cares about herself.
‘I’m about to go and talk to the police,’ I say. ‘I’ll let you know what they say.’
‘Is it really that serious?’ she asks, finally seeming to realise the severity of what I’m telling her. ‘Hasn’t she just gone off somewhere? She’s done this before you know. She ran away when she was sixteen. Didn’t even leave a note, just vanished without a word. I didn’t know where she’d gone until she called me a few days later to tell me she was in Ibiza. She had no care for how worried I was.’
A vague memory of Kate telling me this story comes back to me, with a few more hilarious anecdotes thrown in about how she’d stolen money from one of her mum’s boyfriend’s wallets to pay for her flight. She didn’t tell me that she hadn’t left a note telling her mum where she’d gone.
‘I don’t think it’s like that,’ I say but for the first time I hear that a note of uncertainty has crept into my voice. I was so convinced something terrible had happened to her. Not fifteen minutes ago in the car with Konstandin I blurted out that I thought she was dead. And now here I am, after speaking to Toby and her mum, entertaining the idea that maybe Kate’s faking it all. I want to dig my fingers into my skull and yank out all the conflicting thoughts so I can untangle them. Is it true that I don’t really know her? Though I claimed to know Kate better than Toby, can I really say that? Do I honestly know her better than her own mother? Better than the man she married and shared a bed with for years?
‘I’ll let you know if I manage to get a flight,’ her mum says, and then she hangs up on me.
I make for the door of the police station. I’ll go in and tell the police what I’ve found out, then I can leave them to investigate and untangle all these threads, because it’s clear I can’t do this alone anymore.
As I wait for Detective Reza to come out to the waiting room to meet me I upload Kate’s photograph to Twitter and ask for anyone in Lisbon to keep an eye out for her.
The Weekend Away Page 13
