‘Well?’
‘How often do I have to say this? There is no such evidence. Energi will say that it made the investment in d’Amuseo as a step towards securing its future by diversifying into other sectors.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because my contact has already asked the CEO, and that was his reply. Energi is just another investor. If this does turn out to be a fraud, and the owner of Energi is behind it, we have a perfect circle, pretty much a perfect crime.’
I sighed. ‘So that’s it?’
‘That’s it.’
‘How about Lidia Bromberg? Does she have a past?’
‘Not one that I can uncover.’
‘And Sebastian and Willie, where do they fit in?’
‘Who the hell are they?’
I’d forgotten he didn’t know; I explained.
‘Hired heavies,’ he declared, at once. ‘Hit-men, bought and paid for. You’ll never find them either. Nor,’ he continued, ‘will you ever find a trace of Frank and his mother, if they’ve been as efficient with that end of the operation as they seem to have been with the rest.’ He must have heard my reaction. ‘Sorry, Prim. They’re your family. I shouldn’t have been so blunt, but it’s the truth, I’m afraid.’
‘It’s a truth I’ve been trying not to face,’ I admitted. ‘But I can’t avoid it any longer. They’re gone, and the door’s closed on the affair. I suppose all I can do now is thank my lucky stars that they didn’t kill me too when they had the chance.’
‘What do you mean?’ Mark asked sharply. I filled him in on the only relevant piece of the story that he didn’t know (I’ll never give him all the detail; not the personal stuff), and added Alex’s view of the reason I’d been spared.
‘You are undoubtedly crazy,’ he told me, when I’d finished. ‘You are also very lucky, for I don’t buy your pal’s theory. Suppose you had disappeared along with the others? Yes, it would have made news, but given your history, when no bodies turned up, it would have been written up as Primavera buggering off again. A lot of money was spent searching for you once before, remember. I don’t believe that would have happened twice.’ I could almost hear him shake his head. ‘A taser,’ he murmured. ‘Jesus.’
‘Hey,’ I retorted. ‘I was shot with the fucking thing. Now I know for myself how effective they are, I’ll be getting another one.’
‘Not in Britain, please. They’re illegal.’
‘Why should the bad people have all the advantages?’ I protested.
‘Because that’s the way real life is,’ Mark replied seriously. ‘Look at the thing we’ve just been investigating. We think it’s a crime, but it isn’t, not yet at any rate. We’re no further forward.’
As I thought about that, I realised he was wrong. ‘We are,’ I countered. ‘We might not know who Alastair Rowland is, but we’ve got a sample of his handwriting, in that law office in Luxembourg.’
‘You know,’ he said, ‘sometimes you can be smarter than you usually act. Leave that one with me. I’ll call you if I make progress.’
‘Okay. If it’s more than a couple of days, you’d better use my temporary mobile. I’m heading home on Thursday.’ I gave him Adrienne’s number.
‘Thanks, but. . there’s something else. When you go back, could you do it via London?’
‘That’s what I am doing. I could rearrange my flights, I suppose, and stop over.’
‘Do that. Come to my place, but let me know when you’ll be arriving.’ He gave me an address, and said it was near Paddington.
‘I’ll do it,’ I promised, ‘but what’s this about?’
‘Someone wants to meet you, that’s all.’ If I hadn’t known him as well as I did, I might have thought he was being evasive.
Thirty-seven
Although I couldn’t help wondering what my mystery meeting in London was about, I put it to the back of my mind during the rest of my stay with Dad, trying to concentrate on him and on him alone. The night before I left, my sister rang from California, as she does at least twice a week. She was surprised to find me there, but pleased too. She’s never said so, but I suspect that she’d hoped I’d raise my son in Auchterarder, and look after our father at the same time.
We had a chat and she agreed that Tom and I should visit her the following month. I said nothing about the situation, deciding to leave that until I saw her. Dawn’s excitable: she deals with things better when she hears them face to face.
When Thursday came around, I found myself regretting that I was leaving so soon. Being back in Scotland had done me good, and I had no valid reason for rushing back to Spain, but my arrangements were made and by that time I couldn’t cancel them. Dad and I were up at six and on the road half an hour later so that I could catch an early flight to London. Before we left, I humoured my father by taking some of his unwanted gifts from Adrienne: half a dozen children’s books for Tom and a small adult selection for myself.
I’d told Mark to expect me at eleven, but the Heathrow Express ran more frequently than I’d thought and I found myself with time to kill at Paddington, before I could pick up a taxi at the rank and head for the address he had given me. It turned out to be a block of art-deco apartments, not unlike the place where Poirot lives in the television series. I was impressed: having been a Londoner myself, when Tom was very young, I know how much such a place, in such a location, is likely to cost. There was a concierge on duty. I told him who I was visiting and he directed me to the lift. ‘Ninth floor,’ he said. ‘I’ll call Mr Kravitz. He asked me to let him know when you arrived.’
If I wasn’t surprised by the style in which Mark lives, I was when he opened the door. In truth, I was shocked. He was in a wheelchair, his hair was mostly grey, and he seemed to have lost about twenty pounds in weight. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been a strong, athletic, dark-haired guy. My thoughts must have been written on my face, for as he reached up to shake my hand, he murmured, ‘Tell you later. Come on through. And be serious, please.’
I wondered about his remark as I followed him into a big reception room. There was no carpeting anywhere that I could see, not even a rug. The floors were polished wood, streaked in places by the rubber wheels of the chair. The space was brightly lit, by two windows, and by the french doors they framed. They were open, and a light, cooling breeze fluttered the curtains. There was a massive plasma screen on the wall to my left, above a desk, its surface lower than normal, upon which sat a computer and every electronic toy imaginable. Heaven for Tom, I thought.
There was a third person present; a woman, blonde (not real; I am, and I can tell the dye jobs), power dressed, maybe ten years younger than me. She wasn’t pretty, she had rat-like features that made me think of a plague carrier: I didn’t take to her. She sat on a black-leather sofa, stiffly upright; I read her posture as a sign that this was not an informal gathering. Mark wheeled himself over to a table, poured me coffee from a cafetière, added a little milk and brought it to me. ‘This is Moira,’ he said, as I took it from him, ‘the person who wants to talk to you.’
‘Fine,’ I replied. ‘Nice to meet you, Moira, but it had better be interesting, given the cost of changing my plans.’
‘Frankly,’ she drawled coolly, in a crusty accent that made me remember how much I dislike Trinny and what’s-her-name, ‘I don’t care whether what I have to say interests you or not, as long as you get the message and act appropriately thereafter.’
All of a sudden those two fashion gurus weren’t so bad after all. ‘Better try me,’ I told her. ‘But first, maybe you’ll begin by telling me who the hell you are.’
‘That’s not important. What you need to know is that I have the authority to be here. Word has reached the ears of my service that you have been telling a story about us.’ As she spoke, I had a flashback, to Frank, in the Conquistador. I thought of him telling me of his recruitment to MI5 by an unnamed woman. Moira fitted his description pretty well.