The Vanishing Point

4

It was after midnight by the time they returned to Nick’s flat. They fell into bed exhausted, but not too exhausted to take comfort in each other. Afterwards, when Nick had slipped into sleep, Stephanie lay awake, gripped by an abiding sadness. Jimmy was seldom absent from the front of her mind for long. She had imagination enough to create endless scenarios of misery and anguish for him. In spite of everyone telling her not to blame herself for what had happened, Stephanie could not escape the guilt that washed through her in regular waves. If they didn’t find him alive and well, she would feel tainted by her failure for the rest of her life. She’d made a promise to Scarlett and she had not kept it.

Eventually, she drifted into restless sleep and morning rolled around far too soon. By some miracle, Stephanie’s whereabouts hadn’t leaked to the media. Nick was insistent that while the flat was still a safe house, they shouldn’t do anything that meant her breaking cover. That included turning up at George’s office or eating in the sort of restaurant where waiters had paparazzi numbers on speed dial. ‘Poor George was completely stumped,’ Stephanie told Nick after she’d spoken to the showbiz agent. ‘I suggested he could come here. You’d have thought I was suggesting he walk through South Central LA waving a wallet full of dollars.’

Nick grinned. ‘I take it he’s coming here, then?’

‘Of course he is. He said he’d be with us around eleven. He’ll expect biscuits.’

Nick crossed to the kitchen cupboards and produced a bag of cantucci and a packet of Florentines. ‘Will these do?’

‘Another demonstration that men are from Mars and women are from Venus,’ Stephanie said. ‘I couldn’t have these in the house. Well, I could. But they wouldn’t be there the next day. And if I’d known they were there, they wouldn’t be.’

Nick grinned. ‘I’ll bear that in mind. By the way. I had an email overnight from Vivian McKuras. They’re running headlong into a brick wall over there.’

‘All the technology we’ve got now, and yet one man can walk off with a little boy and there’s no way of tracking him?’

‘The trouble with technology is that criminals understand what it can do just as well as we do. So they figure out ways to circumvent it. In a case like this, unless they get a reliable, quantifiable witness sighting, their best chance of tracing the perp and the victim is when they make contact about the ransom or the terms of release. No contact . . . ’

Stephanie bit her lip, stricken.

Nick slapped a hand against his thigh in anger at his stupidity. ‘Jesus, listen to me. Could I be any more insensitive? I’m sorry.’ He spread his arms out.

She didn’t move towards him, but she shook her head. ‘It’s OK. I don’t want to be wrapped up in cotton wool. I need to know the reality of what’s going on. It’s hard, but I don’t want to be an ostrich about this.’

‘OK. But I’ll try to be a bit more considerate about how I express myself. One good thing – I asked McKuras to confirm to my boss that she still needs my input, so I’m cleared to carry on doing whatever unorthodox investigation it is that we’re doing.’

Now she moved into his arms. ‘That’s good. When are you going to talk to the Essex police?’

Nick looked over her head towards the glass wall with its spectacular rooftop view. ‘I wanted to discuss that with you,’ he said slowly. ‘Technically, I should speak to them asap. Suspicion of murder is not something a cop’s supposed to sit on.’

‘No, I can see how they’d take a dim view of that,’ Stephanie said, acid in her tone. ‘I can hear a “but” coming though.’

‘This is a pretty cold case now. And my primary concern is getting Jimmy back. While we’re still stumbling around in the dark on that, I don’t want to do anything that might provoke the abductor.’

‘You think the kidnap and the murder are connected? How? That doesn’t make any sense.’

Nick moved away from her and started preparing the coffee machine. ‘I don’t know what I think. At the moment, it’s all one big confused jumble. For all I know, some demented obsessive is snatching people who were connected to Scarlett. Like a mad souvenir collection.’ He banged the worktop with his clenched fist. ‘Call it superstition, if that helps. I just don’t want the people we’re talking to about Jimmy to freak out because they’re getting calls from cops about a possible murder. There’s nothing more calculated to make people shut up about anything.’

‘So you want to wait? Not talk to anyone at Essex police about Leanne until we’ve got Jimmy back?’

She saw his back stiffen and knew he was already preparing himself for not getting Jimmy back. Stephanie wished she didn’t know that. Because there was no way she could let herself concede there was the slightest chance that would happen. Someone needed to keep the flame alive. If that isolated her from Nick, hard though it would be, she’d still make that call.

‘That’s what I’m thinking.’ He turned back to her and raised his eyebrows in a question.

‘You’ll get no argument from me. Nobody but us seems to have noticed Leanne’s missing. I don’t think it’ll make any difference if we sound the alert today or in a month’s time.’

Nick’s reply was cut off by Stephanie’s phone jittering on the worktop. ‘It’s from Leanne,’ she said, grabbing the phone. Nick leaned over her shoulder so he could read the text along with her. ‘Don’t thnk its a gd idea 2 get 2gethr. 2 sad 4 Jimmy & 4me. Soz. Lx.’

Stephanie felt her heart contract. Nick’s guess had been in the ballpark. ‘You got it right,’ she said bleakly. ‘That’s not Leanne.’

‘But it’s someone who wants us to think Leanne is still alive and well. Somebody who doesn’t know we’ve been to Spain.’

‘That doesn’t exactly narrow it down.’

‘It does in a way, Stephanie. It lets her Spanish friends off the hook. Word of our visit will have gone round like wildfire. If any of them was responsible for her death, they’d never have answered your text. Whoever got rid of Leanne, it happened in England, before she went back to Spain.’

Before Stephanie could respond, the entryphone beeped. Nick buzzed George up and went to the door to greet him. George walked in, tentative as a cat on new territory. Stephanie had positioned herself by the glass wall so George would get the full-on smack-in-the-face of the view as soon as he walked in. But he seemed oblivious to the panorama, crossing straight to her. He took her hands in his and gave her his most searching look. ‘My dear Stephanie,’ he said, his voice velvet with concern. ‘You must be beside yourself. What a terrible experience for you.’ He looked over his shoulder at Nick. ‘I’m sure Nick’s already got the bases covered, but if there’s anything at all I can do to help, all you have to do is ask. I am at your command.’

Stephanie squeezed her eyes shut to fight the tears that welled up in response. ‘For God’s sake, George. Can you stop being quite so nice? I can take anything but kindness at the moment.’

He chuckled and pulled her into a chaste embrace. ‘That’s my girl.’ He stepped away and looked around him for the first time, taking in the dozen or so guitars hanging on the walls or sitting on stands. ‘Do I take it you are something of a musician, Sergeant Nicolaides?’

‘Call me Nick, please. Yes, I play a bit.’ He waved George towards the squashy leather sofa that was his only concession to living-room furniture. ‘Please, have a seat. Coffee?’

George caught Stephanie’s eye, one eyebrow raised in a question. ‘Yes, George, it’s safe.’

Nick busied himself with coffee and biscuits while Stephanie took George through the story of the abduction and the disastrous FBI operation against Pete Matthews. The account of Pete’s experience gave him a moment’s grim satisfaction. ‘Serves the bastard right,’ he said. ‘Perhaps now he’ll realise that stalking you is rather more trouble than it’s worth.’

When Nick returned, George got down to business. ‘How can I help you find Jimmy?’

‘We need to talk to everyone who was close to Jimmy or Scarlett. Somebody knows who’s done this. But they might not realise the significance of what they know,’ Nick said. ‘The roots of this offence probably run deep. That’s why we need to dig into the history.’

George puffed his cheeks up and blew out a stream of air. ‘I don’t think I can be of much help,’ he said. ‘To be honest, I had as little to do with Jimmy as I could get away with. I’m of that generation of gay men for whom childlessness was a given. I am not a lover of children. Especially when they are still in the age of intractability. Scarlett knew that and she didn’t impose him on me. Either in person or in anecdote.’ He pulled a face. ‘Why do people always think stories about their dull children are endlessly fascinating?’

‘It’s OK, George. I’ve seen your face when Jimmy made a beeline for you,’ Stephanie said. ‘We didn’t really expect you to have noticed anyone behaving oddly around him. But we do need to talk to Marina and Simon. Obviously, we can reach Simon at work, but we don’t have contact details for Marina. I know you’re one of the trustees for TOmorrow, so I reckoned you must know how to get in touch with her.’

George produced his best ‘cat who’s got the cream’ smile. ‘My, but you are out of touch, Stephanie. You won’t find Simon at the clinic these days.’

‘No? Has he got a new job?’

‘New job, new country. He’s joined Marina in Romania. Simon is now the medical director of the TOmorrow project. He takes care of all the little orphans.’ Seeing Stephanie’s astonishment, his smile widened. ‘That’s surprised you, hasn’t it?’

‘I’m gobsmacked,’ she said. ‘Are he and Marina an item, then?’

George pulled a face. ‘You know me, darling, never one to gossip . . . But there would have to be something quite pressing to make one abandon a well-paid job in a private London clinic for the wastes of Transylvania, wouldn’t you say?’

Stephanie looked up at Nick, perched on a high guitarist’s stool. ‘I never saw any signs,’ she said. ‘They kept that well under wraps.’

‘They were rather thrown together during Scarlett’s final illness.’

‘I know, but I didn’t have her pegged as his type.’

George’s expression fell somewhere between mischief and distaste. ‘Some men find the more pneumatic sort of woman quite irresistible. I suspect Simon had never met anyone quite like Marina before. And she’s a bright girl. She has a degree in economics from Bucharest.’

For the second time in their conversation, Stephanie was completely wrong-footed. ‘She never mentioned that.’

‘I don’t imagine it came up.’

‘She was always very reticent about herself,’ Stephanie said, feeling the need to defend herself against her own guilt at not taking enough interest in Marina. ‘I used to have this fantasy that she was escaping a chequered past. That she worked so hard for Scarlett as a form of atonement.’ She blushed, embarrassed at revealing what felt like silliness.

‘She always seemed very capable to me,’ Nick chipped in. ‘Not that I had much to do with her.’

George winked. ‘She’s certainly proved herself capable of whisking Simon off from under our very noses. Are you thinking of going to Romania to see them?’

His words snapped Stephanie back to the reason for their conversation. ‘The FBI are getting nowhere. We’re clutching at straws, George. Marina – and Simon too – are the only people we can think of who might be able to come up with a lead. So yes, we’ll go where we need to.’

‘And Leanne? Have you spoken to her?’

‘We’ve been to Spain,’ Nick said. ‘We went to her house – to make sure Jimmy wasn’t there.’

George finished his coffee and stood up, shaking the creases back into his trousers. ‘Splendid. Mind you, from your description of what happened, one would have to conclude it was far beyond Leanne’s mental capacity to organise.’ He moved towards the door. ‘I will have Carla email you the contact details for my fellow trustees when I get back to the office.’

‘How’s the trust going?’ Nick’s question was apparently casual, making conversation on the way out.

‘To be honest, I don’t pay much attention,’ George said. ‘I’m really only there to make up the numbers. Marina and Simon do all the donkey work. After the estate was settled, there was a lot of money swilling round in the trust – something approaching five million, I believe. They’re doing great work out there, and Simon’s got a team of volunteers organising another Scarlett Swimathon. Which of course has a marvellous knock-on effect on the book sales, as you know, Stephanie. It looks like the Swimathon might become an annual event. There’s a lot of interest.’

‘Good for them. Thanks for coming over, George.’ Nick clapped him on the shoulder.

George turned and waggled his fingers at Stephanie. ‘Bye, darling. Don’t be a stranger, now. I have a couple of projects in the pipeline that are right up your street. I’ll talk to Maggie.’ It was the last thing on her mind then, but Stephanie knew she couldn’t ignore work indefinitely. Bills had to be paid, obligations met. ‘Thanks, George.’

The door closed behind him and Nick leaned against it. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Simon and Marina. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

Stephanie took a deep breath. ‘There’s only one thing stopping them from being the perfect happy family?’