“What did he look like?” asks Ruiz.
“Dark hair. Medium height. Foreign looking. I couldn’t place his accent. There was something different about him. His eyes. Something cruel. It was like he hated being in his own skin.”
Ruiz presses her again, wanting more detail, but she gives him a disapproving scowl. “I don’t have a photographic memory, sir.”
He apologizes. “What did this man want?”
“Mr. North had a small Moleskine notebook about this big. It was black with an elastic strap.” She uses her fingers to show the dimensions.
“What was in it?”
“Lists of some kind.”
“Lists?”
Miss Lindop cocks her head to one side. Her opinion of Ruiz isn’t improving because he keeps repeating things that she’s said.
Luca and Father Michael have returned with a tray of mugs. Miss Lindop delves into her bag and produces a small pillbox of saccharine tablets. She smiles at Luca, perhaps imagining having a son his age.
“North was always scribbling notes,” she says, “but he stopped whenever I walked in.”
“This man that came to your house-did he say anything else?”
Miss Lindop gazes sadly at Elizabeth. “He said Mr. North was sleeping with someone. He wanted to find her.
“I called him a liar and said Richard was a good husband and father, but the man just laughed.”
“Did he mention a name?” asks Elizabeth.
Miss Lindop hesitates, not wanting to inflict more heartache.
“What name?”
“Polina.”
Ruiz checks himself. How did this man know about North and the nanny? The police only made the connection in the past twenty-four hours. At some point during the winter, somebody photographed North and Polina together at a cafe. The images were sent to him as a warning or a threat.
“The man wanted an address for Polina,” says Miss Lindop. “I told him that I might have one upstairs. I thought if I could distract him I could use the phone and call the police. But he followed me.”
“How did you get away?” asks Luca.
“He was searching the spare bedroom when I locked him inside.” She looks at her hands. “He was yelling terrible things and kicking at the door, but I ran… I have a bicycle; I know the cycle paths and shortcuts. I can pedal pretty fast for someone my age.”
Behind them a door opens and an elderly man in a homburg dips his hand in the holy water, making a sign of the cross, before taking a seat in the shadows. Kneeling. Praying.
“Why didn’t you call the police?” asks Luca.
Miss Lindop frowns. “Afterwards, I thought maybe he was a detective and I was going to be in trouble for locking him up. I didn’t go to work today. It’s the first day I’ve missed in eight years, but ever since Mr. North went missing I’ve had nothing to do. They took everything away.”
“The police?”
“The lawyers. They went over his appointments book and diary, wanting to know who he spoke to and where he went…” She glances at Luca. “They asked me about a journalist: Keith Gooding. Is that you?”
“A friend of mine.”
“They wanted to know if Mr. North had ever spoken to him.”
“What did you say?”
“I had no idea. I don’t think so. Then they made me sign a confidentiality document. They said I’d go to prison if I talked to anyone. Am I going to get into trouble?”
“No,” says Ruiz.
Elizabeth squeezes the older woman’s hand, surprised at the shallowness of her own grief. Ruiz glances over his shoulder. The man praying in the rear pew has gone. The church is empty again.
Outside the sun is coming and going, giving little warmth. Ruiz pauses on the pavement. Ponders his next move. Every new detail comes back to the notebook. The murder of Zac Osborne. The break-in at Elizabeth’s house. The search for Holly Knight. Richard North had been investigating certain accounts, according to his secretary. That was his job as a compliance officer, but these inquiries were private. Hidden.
Elizabeth lets out a cry of pain and muffles the sound with her fist. Another contraction, this one is real. It forces her to lean back, legs splayed slightly, trying to take pressure off her cervix.
“How often are they coming?” asks Ruiz.
“I don’t know.”
“Since the last one?”
“Ten minutes maybe.”
Ruiz holds his hand to her forehead. “You’re burning up.”
“I’m fine. Claudia isn’t due for three weeks.”
“I don’t think Claudia is going to wait.”
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital is less than fifteen minutes away. Ruiz parks and waits as Elizabeth fills in a form and changes into a hospital gown. A midwife is summoned, bell-shaped with blue trousers and a white blouse. Ruiz feels clumsy and out of place.
“I can wait outside,” he says, fidgeting with his car keys. “Is there someone I can call?”
“You can give me my phone back,” says Elizabeth, who is sitting on the bed, her knees together and hands flat on the mattress. Ruiz puts the SIM card in her mobile.
“How long since you’ve been in a place like this?” she asks.
“Thirty-two years. My wife was having twins. They wouldn’t let me stay. Not that I minded. I didn’t really want to see the business end of things.”
“The business end?”
“You know what I mean.”
The midwife pulls the curtains around the bed and asks Elizabeth to lie back and part her knees.
“You can stay away from my business end,” says Elizabeth, motioning him to the top of the bed.
Grimacing slightly at the intrusion, she stares at the ceiling, letting her left hand reach across the gap and take hold of Ruiz’s fingers.
“You’re six centimeters,” announces the midwife. “Call who you have to call-this baby is coming today.”
Fifteen minutes later Ruiz watches as they wheel Elizabeth along the corridor and into the lift. Her father and brother are on their way. They’re going to welcome a new addition to the Bach family-another limb to the family tree, a dynasty in progress.
Ruiz uses a payphone in the visitor’s lounge.
“Capable.”
“Mr. Ruiz. Sorry. Shit! No names. Stupid of me.”
“Relax.”
“OK. Yeah.”
“Any messages?”
“Your friend called. Is he really a professor? I’ve never met a proper professor.”
“What did he want, Capable?”
“Ah, I wrote it down, he said, ‘Holly remembers the notebook’ and he gave me an address.”
Ruiz jots it down on the back of his hand. “Another favor, Capable, I want you to find someone for me. Polina Dulsanya. She might be working as a nanny. You could try the agencies.”
“What do you need?”
“An address.”
22
As the last rays of token sunlight strike the towers of Canary Wharf, four divers tumble backwards from the Zodiacs. Slick as seals, they disappear beneath the surface leaving barely a trace save for the brown bubbles that fill and pop.
The officer in charge is short and barrel-chested, clad in a wetsuit that makes him look as if he’s carved from ebony. He swings an air tank into a boat and uses a towel to wipe his face and neck before washing out his mouth with bottled water.
Campbell Smith is standing on a narrow strip of beach that bleeds back to a stand of willow trees.
“We found the body about eighty yards from here,” says the senior diver. “You can see the orange marker buoy. They weighted the body with chains and breezeblocks.”
Campbell glances at his shoes, which are sinking into the fetid ooze. Paul Smith brogues. Unsalvageable.
“How?”
“One bullet. Back of the head. Execution style.”
“We likely to recover a shell?”
“Entry and exit wounds. We’ll keep looking for the murder weapon but it’s blacker than black down there. Visibility nil. We’re working a circular search pattern from a single anchor chain, moving further and further out, working by touch.”
Behind him, a white tent has been raised around a bloated and discolored torso, strung with weed and wrack. The body is curled in an embryonic position, with drying mud giving it the color and texture of desiccated leather.