Elena’s eyes scanned frantically, leap-frogging for relevant paragraphs. After a moment’s strained silence as she read, she slowly looked up, staring blankly ahead. The beach was deep, and winter winds had blown the sand in banks and ridged eddies. On the stronger wind flurries buffeting the car from the open bay, loose sand was lifted and strewn across the windscreen.
Nadine put on her wipers to clear it as Elena exhaled slowly; a note of winding down, finality: Pregnant at fourteen, signs of being sexually active for some months previous, possibly longer; mystery boyfriend. It was almost a mirror image of her own background, too close for comfort. A faint involuntary shudder quickly shook away the awkwardness and the similarity: in her own case, there had been a boyfriend, but with Mikaya she’d bet anything that he was invented; a ruse to cover up for Ryall. She noted from the file that the boyfriend had never been named. How convenient.
She felt suddenly burning with conviction, and angry with herself that but for a chance sighting of Lorena, she might have left her, forgotten, at Ryall’s mercy.
She thanked Nadine and headed off with the intention of going straight back home, her fury making her drive faster than normal — but as she was passing Mrs Wickens’ store, she decided on impulse to stop. If anyone could fill in the gaps, Mrs Wickens could.
Mrs Wickens nodded sagely. Yes, of course she remembered the whole affair. No, the boyfriend was never named. A few boys were suggested that young Mikaya was known to be friendly with — but she swore it wasn’t them. ‘She says first of all she couldn’t say who it was — then she says she just couldn’t remember. Rarl mystery.’
‘What does she look like?’ Elena asked on an afterthought, about to turn and head off.
‘Beautiful girl, stunning. One of the most beautiful oriental girls I’ve ever seen.’
Cameron Ryall got the first call from Dr Tinsley late that afternoon. The following two calls notifying him that Mrs Waldren had been asking questions around town came the next day, the last prompting, ‘You know, the aid worker who lives with her husband up above the chine,’ as if for a moment he might not be able to place her.
He’d thought of little else over the weeks spanning the two interviews with Lorena, and now it was all possibly springing back again. Just when over this past week, after the tape and the intervention of Edelston, he’d started finally to relax, thinking it was all over.
His first thought was to contact Edelston to warn her off, but then Waldren was a free agent, out of their control. And Waldren’s aid agency would likely take no notice.
He seethed and simmered for hours pondering what to do — his attention to the pressing business matters of the day was sparse and often drifted — before finally deciding that he just didn’t know enough about Waldren to be able to plan the best way to stop her. In the same way that she was digging about his background, he needed to dig about hers.
He contacted a Chelmsford based private investigator he knew from his old Barrister days, Des Kershaw, who he’d used just a few years ago to dig into the private life of a plant manager he suspected of embezzlement. Kershaw was tenacious and thorough: he wouldn’t rest until he’d stripped bare every facet of Elena Waldren’s background.
The first couple of days, Kershaw uncovered nothing ground-breaking, mostly filling in the shades of the last twelve years of her married life with Gordon Waldren, her work with the aid agency and their two adopted children, Christos and Katine.
One thing at least he had in common with the Waldrens, thought Ryalclass="underline" adopted children. Kershaw’s call had disturbed him halfway through an inspection in their micro-chip section, and he was still slightly breathless from stripping off the protective suit. ‘Nothing juicy then yet? No, right… right. Let me know as soon as you’ve got more… if there is more.’
Ryall began to worry that nothing worthwhile would come up on Waldren, she was just as she appeared on the outside — the goody two-shoes aid worker with her two adopted children and finance-broker husband, upper-middle and pristine with her ‘Champion of downtrodden children’ halo — and he’d have to think of other ways of striking back at her, stopping her before she got uncomfortably close.
But Kershaw’s increasingly frequent and fervent calls over the next few days bit by bit quelled his mounting panic, and when the whole picture became clear he realized that he had more than enough ammunition for his purpose: enough to bury Elena Waldren twice over.
Some of it seemed so unlikely and extreme that he found himself asking Kershaw to repeat segments, pressing if he was sure. Ryall was concerned that Kershaw might have been over-keen to unearth some dirt and had tapped some unreliable sources. But Kershaw was sure of his ground.
‘Some of it was hard to find, buried in old articles from Hampstead and Highgate local papers where the George — previously Georgallis — family used to live. Though a couple of incidents managed to warrant small sidebars in the national press. The only word of mouth was an old police contact — but I’ve used him before. He’s reliable. And then the rest is pretty much down to court papers: little room for error there. But when you’ve got the file, if there’s anything you’re unsure about and want me to check again — just let me know. I’d be happy to oblige.’
There was no need for a call back. Kershaw’s report was thorough, detailed, and made sober reading. Two drug busts and a third for a Greenham Common anti-nuclear demo that went awry. From the press clippings, most of it appeared to be a rich ‘wild-child’s’ rebellion against her strongly establishment father, the founder of what at one stage was Britain’s 9th largest merchant bank, 17th overall among financial institutions. Ryall should have twigged when he first saw the original family name: George. Anthony George, whiz-kid financier of the 70s and 80s.
But it was the earlier problems — the pregnancy at fifteen and giving the child up for adoption, then the attempted suicide and the Court’s final ruling that she was too unstable, unsuitable to be a mother — that was the most damming, especially given her current work. Ryall wondered just how much of her background she’d come clean about with the aid agency, or in the adoption applications for her two children.
Giving up her own child, convicted drug addict, attempted suicide, Court-ruled as unsuitable for motherhood: not exactly the best commendations for work with a child aid agency or to adopt children.
Ryall couldn’t resist a wry smile as he penned his covering letters that night to go with copies of Kershaw’s file: one to Barbara Edelston, one to Elena Waldren’s aid agency — but both to the same effect: that he was still being privately harassed by Waldren over Lorena and, given Waldren’s own history, surely she was the last person to be questioning his rights and ethics as an adopted parent; with an added paragraph to the aid agency venting his surprise that they hadn’t more stringently vetted her background.
He paused for a moment, wondering whether to send a copy as well to Gordon Waldren, or whether that would be going too far — just how much of her past had she told him — before finally picking up another envelope. She’d been first to draw the battle lines, had been prepared to destroy him. All’s fair in love and… though this time he didn’t bother with a covering note, just slipped a copy of Kershaw’s report inside on its own.
He sat back, pleased with his efforts. In the background, Prokofiev’s ‘Dance of the Knights’ played. Fitting battle requiem music. Nicole had gone to bed over an hour ago, shortly after Lorena, as usual zonked out on half a bottle of gin and prozac, and suitably unimpressed when he said he had some business to attend to, some letters to write.