Long Time Lost (19 page)

‘I agree.’ Renner gave him an uncompromising look. ‘One of us definitely should go.’

The three-star hotel Miller selected was one of many similar places only a few streets away from the train station, on the corner of a doglegged alley. He pulled his wallet from his pocket and removed enough cash to cover a couple of rooms for the night.

‘Here,’ he said, pressing the cash into Kate’s hand. ‘Check us in, get some rest, take a shower. Do whatever you need to do. Oh, and do me a favour. Check yourself in under a different surname, OK?’

‘Why?’

‘Variety. Try Grant.’

‘Why Grant?’

‘Because it’s not Ryan and it’s not Sutherland and I can remember it. Grant was my old headmaster.’

‘How long will you be?’

‘Not long. Don’t go out before I’m back. Lock your room and don’t let anyone else inside. I’ll bring food with me.’

Kate peered in through the yellowed glass in the door to the hotel reception.

‘What if they’ve followed us here?’

‘They haven’t.’

‘But you’re worried about my name, which suggests you’re worried that they could track me down. And what if they find you?’

‘They won’t. They’re on their way to Prague or Arles already. They have no idea where I’m going.’

‘Neither do I.’

Miller stepped closer, lifting her chin. ‘I’ll be back soon, I promise. OK?’

Kate held his gaze, then fixed a wry smile on her face and shrugged her shoulders before stepping away and entering the hotel.

Miller waited across the street next to a pavement restaurant, faking interest in a menu board that featured aged colour photographs of the meals on offer. He counted off four minutes and declined two attempts by a waiter eager to get him to sit.

When he was finally satisfied that Kate wasn’t going to reappear, and that nobody had followed her in, he turned and broke into a jog.

He was back in under an hour, by which time darkness had fallen and trade at the restaurant had picked up. The terrace was filled with sunburnt English couples, overweight men in football shirts and teenage backpackers. The night was humid, the air perfumed with the scent of charred pizza dough and sun lotion.

Miller walked into the hotel and approached the woman on duty at reception. She was late fifties or early sixties, short and stocky, with a swollen, pouched face and a matted wig that looked about as tired as her attitude.

Miller told her a friend had arranged a room for him and she scanned his duplicate passport without a great deal of interest before using a biro to enter his name and passport number into a form on a carbon-copy pad, having him sign it and passing him his tear-off receipt along with a room key. Letting the receptionist note down his passport details was a risk, but not a big one. The hotel facilities were basic and Miller didn’t get the impression she was likely to upload his information to a computer database that could jeopardise his stay.

His room was on the second floor of the hotel, immediately opposite an antique caged elevator, and when he let himself in, he found that it was already occupied.

Kate was sitting on the end of the bed. She switched the television off with the remote in her hand and turned to face him. The room was brightly lit. Every available lamp and bulb seemed to be on.

‘You made it,’ she said. ‘Got your passport?’

He lifted it in the air, feeling suddenly awkward and self-conscious. He took a step inside and let the door fall closed behind him. He didn’t know how to stand, where to move.

What was she doing in his room?

‘I suppose I could ask how you got that so fast, but I suspect I’d rather not know. Did you show it to the woman on reception? It’s still in the name Miller, right?’

He nodded.

‘She was giving me a hard time about not having ID myself. She almost wouldn’t let me check in. I told her we’d been mugged. Did she ask you about it?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m pretty sure she hears all kinds of stories from people wanting a room here on short notice.’

‘I guess she does. It’s kind of interesting that you asked me to check in under a different name when you’re still going by Miller. Care to explain why?’ Kate hitched an eyebrow and held his eye for a beat too long before he feigned a sudden intense interest in his new passport. ‘Well, maybe it’s better I don’t know. So, anyway . . . Kate Grant is going to take that shower now.’

She stood and passed through an open doorway on the far side of the room without looking back. Miller heard the squeal of taps being turned on worn washers, the splatter of water, the creaking and banging of the pipes running under the floorboards beneath his feet. He waited for Kate to close the bathroom door but the door remained open.

He looked about the room. It could have been any one of a hundred other cheap European hotel rooms he’d stayed in these past few years. The bed was a queen, sagging in the middle, the pillows lumpy, the mattress soft, all of it concealed beneath a dark green throw. The dressing table and the wardrobe were cheap self-assembly items, the laminate peeling and scratched. There were plastic drinking cups wrapped in cellophane on a tray by the bed, along with a dusty bottle of sparkling water and a rotary-dial telephone. And, apparently, there was an en suite with a working shower and a door that wouldn’t close.

Miller crossed the room to a fabric armchair positioned beneath a window. He rested a knee on the chair, pushed open the window and looked out at the view. The view was of the grimy plaster of the wall opposite and a corroded drainpipe with a Vespa locked to the bottom of it, but if he craned his neck he could glimpse the pavement restaurant. He could hear the restless noise of the city, and he could feel wisps of shower steam drifting out the window past his head.

He turned and dropped into the chair, gripping hold of the armrests. He thought of Kate standing in the shower. He thought of the water cascading down over her body.

What was it about that door?

Had she left it open as an invitation, and if so, was it one he dared accept?

Or was it an indication of how secure she felt in his company, or of how scared she’d been by what had happened to Christine?

He heard laughter from the restaurant and the faint, caterwauling strain of guitar music.

He crossed his legs. Uncrossed them again. Kate had arranged for the receptionist to hand him a key to this room in particular. There was only one bed. There was the open door and the shower steam and then there was the wrench of taps being turned and the fading hiss and slow drumming of water and finally there was Kate coming through the doorway, wrapped in a white bath towel, her hair swept to one side in a dark red curl, the line of stitches a little raised on her forehead.

The towel wasn’t all that big. The material was thin and it was wrapped very tightly around her body, extending from the tops of her breasts to the tops of her thighs. Miller could see a whole bunch of contours and dimensions, all of them good. No way of avoiding it. She was breathtaking.

She padded across the room, her feet leaving dark prints on the carpet, and sat down on the end of the bed, next to the television remote. She stroked the bedspread, then her hands came together on her thighs, fingers entwined, and she plucked absently at the frayed hem of the towel.

Looking up at him, she said, ‘You’re probably asking yourself about the room situation. You’re probably wondering if I have a key to another room.’

‘Do you?’

‘Do you want one?’

He didn’t say anything to that.

‘It wasn’t like in Hamburg. You didn’t say we’d be staying in separate hotels. You could walk fifty metres in any direction from the front of this place and find fifty other hotels to stay in.’

Still Miller didn’t speak. He was looking at her eyes, the way they were slightly downcast, the lids half closed. But his gaze wasn’t focussed. His pupils were fully relaxed. He was taking in more than just her face. He was letting his gaze blur and cloud around the entirety of her. He couldn’t look away.

She said, ‘I thought that you wanted this. I thought you knew that I wanted it, too.’

Miller kept sitting. He kept staring. He didn’t trust himself to move just yet.

‘I don’t normally shower for that long, Miller. Nobody showers for that long.’

An invitation. An open door.

Finally he stood and moved closer, standing before her at the end of the bed. He lingered a moment before reaching out his big hand and cupping her chin, tilting her face. He smiled and then he lowered his hand and he hooked a finger into the top of the towel, where the cotton rested snug against her breasts. He pulled her to her feet.

‘I do,’ he said. ‘When I have company.’

Later, lying together in the muggy dark, the soft mattress caving in under Miller’s weight, rolling them together, their legs and arms entangled, a warm, gritty breeze drifting in through the window, Miller stared up at the ceiling, thinking about the woman he was holding now and the woman he used to hold, asking himself if he deserved this, if he was allowed it, if he could be trusted to care for another person again.

‘You forgot to bring food,’ Kate whispered. ‘You said you’d bring dinner back with you. That’s when I knew for sure.’

He touched his nose to hers. He could feel a strand of her hair on his cheek. Her hand low down on his abdomen.

‘I thought we could go out,’ he said. ‘There’s a restaurant opposite the hotel.’

‘It’s gone midnight, Miller.’

‘If you’re hungry, I could fetch a takeaway.’

‘No,’ she said, her hand sliding round to the back of his thigh, pulling him towards her. ‘I wouldn’t like that at all.’

Peter Kent, as he was now known, stood in his pyjamas at the bottom of the stairs with a bowl of breakfast cereal in each hand, listening to his daughter, Emily, sing a nursery rhyme in her bedroom. She was singing in French, which mesmerised and confounded him. His daughter’s adjustment to their life in France had been much better than his own.

It wasn’t long now until Emily would start as a pupil at the local primary school. She’d be taught in French and her friends would be French. With every day that went by, a little more of the Emily he knew would fade from him, and he feared the process of letting go.

There were important arrangements to be put in place before then, of course; contingencies to be planned, responses to be rehearsed. And there were the smaller, more ordinary matters to be taken care of. Like buying Emily a new bag for school.

The bag would have to look different to the Peppa Pig knapsack on the hook behind the front door. They couldn’t ever be confused. The knapsack was there for emergencies only. It contained everything Emily needed if they ever had to leave in a hurry – her passport (as well as Pete’s), spare clothes, a double of her favourite teddy bear, a photograph of her mother. It was the last thing Pete saw whenever they left the house and the first thing he checked when they got home. It was a constant reminder of their very particular situation. As if he could ever forget.

He’d been lonely to begin with. Life in Arles had been tougher than he could have believed. But in the past year, things had begun to improve. They’d made friends, so there were people he could talk to. His broken French was getting better and he was starting to find that he could even think in French sometimes, without that awkward delay while he translated in his own mind what it was he needed to say.

He still missed home and family. He still missed talking with his friends back in England and he didn’t imagine that would change. There were no phones in the house whatsoever. Not a landline. Not a mobile. It was a safety precaution insisted on by Miller, but one he was more than willing to comply with, since it was a mobile phone that had led them to their life here in Arles in the first place.

You’ll never guess who I’ve just seen on this flight. Seriously weird! Will call soon x.

That was the last text Pete ever received from his wife, Zoe. As far as he knew, it was the last message Emily’s mother sent out into the world.

Zoe had worked as a stewardess for a company that leased executive jets. Over the years, she’d flown with pop stars, with movie stars, with high-profile businessmen and wealthy families.

Normally, there were only three staff on any flight – Zoe, the pilot and the co-pilot. Zoe handled everything inside the passenger cabin. She served the drinks and the meals. She chatted with the clients if it seemed appropriate to do so or kept her distance if not. She was good at her job. She was professional and charming and she was always beautifully dressed and made up.

Perhaps too beautifully. That had bothered Pete a little. They’d married young, when Zoe had worked as cabin crew for a long-haul carrier and Pete had been starting out in air traffic control. He knew she loved her new job, that she was caught up in the glamour of it, and he’d been nervous about how she might react if one of her rich clients made a move.

Which should have been the least of his concerns. Because it turned out it wasn’t only famous or wealthy people who hired executive jets. It was also people who needed to travel from country to country without ever being seen.

Pete never did guess who was on that flight. Zoe never had the chance to tell him. And he was certain it wasn’t anything he ever wanted to know.

Zoe had been found in the toilet compartment of the jet by a ground crew at a remote airport on the eastern fringes of Ukraine. Her throat had been cut. The pilot and co-pilot had been shot through the back of the head, still strapped in their chairs.

Wallets, ID, jewellery and phones had been taken from all three of them. The phones included the mobile Zoe had texted Pete on shortly after they’d landed, in all likelihood just moments before she was killed.

The first he knew of her death was when the police showed up at the airport control tower in Manchester and ushered him into a side room. Later that night, when Emily was finally asleep and the family liaison officer had hugged him and left with a promise to return first thing in the morning, there was a knock on his back door and he met Nick Miller for the first time. Miller knew about Zoe and he knew about the text. He said he even knew who her mystery passenger had been.

The text was a big problem, he told Pete. It was as good as a death sentence for him and anyone he might have spoken to that day. Miller claimed that the British security services had colluded in the flight out of Manchester. He had images on an iPad that proved to Pete that the family liaison officer he’d just hugged wasn’t a police officer at all. Miller said that he and Emily were in great danger and that there wasn’t anyone Pete could turn to. Except for him.

And so Pete had. Because he believed what Miller had told him. Because he was afraid for himself and for Emily. Emily had lost one parent in bizarre circumstances already and he couldn’t handle the idea that she might lose them both.

So now here they were, coming up for a year later, living in Arles; alive, adjusting, about to begin a new day.