No Going Back (11 page)

Katya had put the hoodie on, its size swamping her slim figure, and was sifting through the patches.

‘What are all these?'

‘These,' Daniel said, lifting them from her grasp, ‘are my passports to all sorts of places.'

He could see that she still didn't understand and picked out one of the patches, fixing it with its Velcro pad to the breast pocket of the overalls. Then, putting on a cockney accent, he said cheerfully, ‘Good afternoon, love. Come to look at your boiler. Doing a spot check on carbon-monoxide emissions. Won't take a minute and won't cost you anything. You don't get much for free these days, do you?'

Changing the patch for another and his accent for a Scouse one, he said, ‘Afternoon, sir. Telephone engineer. Had reports of an intermittent fault on the line. Have you had any trouble? No? Well, I'll just take a quick look while I'm here, shall I?

‘That's a good one because you can lift a few numbers from the caller display if they don't watch too closely,' he added. ‘See who's been ringing them.'

Katya was frowning again. ‘You've done this before.'

‘Once or twice.'

‘I don't understand. Who
are
you?'

‘I'm probably your only hope of getting your sister back, if you really
won't
tell the police,' Daniel said, sidestepping the question. ‘Why won't you? What are you so afraid of?'

Katya stared at her hands, and after looking at her troubled profile for a long moment, Daniel sighed.

‘All right. Put the cap and shades on and let's get going. And when we get there, you stay in the car, d'you hear me? Whatever happens. This is just a fact-finding exercise, so don't get any ideas about launching a one-woman rescue mission, whatever or
who
ever you might see, OK?'

Katya nodded, her eyes still downcast, but Daniel wasn't satisfied. She had a habit of avoiding his gaze when she was lying.

‘Katya, look at me and promise.'

Her head came up. ‘All right! I promise,' she said, her manner so much that of a sulky teenager that he was reminded she
was
only fifteen.

Daniel made another sortie into the holdall and came up with a grey beanie and a small plastic case from which he took two golden-coloured rings. Moments later, with the aid of the rear-view mirror, he wore one ring in his ear and the other apparently through the left side of his upper lip.

Katya's eyes were growing rounder by the minute. ‘Is that . . . ?'

‘The earring is real; the other's fake, and bloody uncomfortable, too, but facial piercings are great. People can't take their eyes off them – it's all they tend to remember.'

He pushed his hair back off his face and pulled the beanie on low over his eyes, assuming a ‘whatever' attitude. Putting a stick of chewing gum in his mouth, he turned to Kat.

‘What are you staring at?' he demanded, and she shook her head in disbelief.

‘I wouldn't know you!'

‘Well, that's the general idea,' he said with a broad wink. ‘Right, we're ready to go.'

Swinging the old Mercedes between the gates of Moorside House, Daniel felt a quickening of awareness that was familiar from his police days. The slight fizz of nervous excitement sharpened all his senses, and suddenly he realized how much he'd missed it.

The house was a large square structure built of red brick and stone, with a shallow, slate-tiled roof just visible above an ornamental stone parapet. Pillars framed the white-painted front door, which was approached via three steps up from the gravelled drive.

Daniel swung the car left-handed round an island bed of overgrown shrubs and parked facing back the way they'd come. With this between the front door and the car, hopefully no one would notice Katya, as long as she stayed put, and he liked to have a clear run to the gate. You could never be too careful.

‘OK. Stay there,' he told her as he cut the engine. He reached behind the seat for a slim, black plastic case. ‘Whatever happens, you don't leave the car, right?'

Katya nodded. She looked at the case. ‘What are you going to do?'

‘I don't know for sure. I'd like to get a look inside, but I'll have to play it by ear – er, see how it goes,' he amended quickly.

‘What if you see Elena?'

‘I very much doubt that I will,' Daniel said, getting out of the car. ‘Won't be long.'

He slammed the door and headed across the gravel, swinging the black tool case and whistling jauntily, in case there were eyes behind one of the many windowpanes.

The front of the porch was overgrown with some kind of creeper and the inside had been a spider's larder for some time. Without looking directly at it, Daniel noticed the still, unblinking eye of a lens high up in a cobwebby corner, and there was a spyhole in the centre of the door.

Beside the button for the doorbell was a speaker unit, and next to that a brass plate announced that the premises were home to Hot Images Photographic Studio. Interesting.

Daniel prodded the button, and after a moment or two, a light came on in the porch and a voice asked what he wanted. Affecting not to hear, he turned his back on the door, put his tool case on the step and stuck his hands in his pockets, looking out over the drive and chewing his gum. It was gone five and the light was fading.

The question was repeated and Daniel began to whistle cheerfully. For the benefit of the CCTV, he then looked at his watch and turned to prod the button again.

The voice became decidedly testy and after a short interlude the door was opened by the morose individual whom Reynolds had claimed to be his brother, and whom Kat had subsequently identified as Anghel. Tall, olive-skinned, black hair and eyes, annoyance writ large.

‘What do you want?' he demanded without preamble. His English was heavily accented and in the house doorway he seemed much larger than Daniel had remembered.

‘Ah, you
are
there,' Daniel observed, adopting a Bristolian brogue. He took a notebook from his pocket and flipped a couple of pages. ‘Mr Patrescu, would it be?'

‘He's not here,' the Romanian said, half closing the door.

‘Well, I don't want
him
, as such,' Daniel admitted. ‘It's your telephone, actually. My name's Johnson – I'm an engineer. We've had reports of an intermittent fault on the line in the area and I wanted to check yours was OK. Is it all right for me to come in? It won't take a minute . . .' He pocketed the notebook, picked up the black case and waited expectantly.

The man looked beyond him to where the Merc was parked.

‘Where's your van?'

‘Garage. Bloody alternator's on the blink.'

‘Who's in the car?'

‘Work-experience kid,' Daniel said dismissively. ‘And that's a bloody joke, that is! I've had 'em before and work's about the last thing they're interested in experiencing, if you ask me. This one's more interested in sending text messages to his mates. Left 'im to it. Quicker on my own. It's no skin off my nose if he wants to waste his life.'

The man was frowning, plainly finding it hard to follow this diatribe, and Daniel took advantage of his bewilderment by taking a step forward and saying, ‘So, where's this phone, then?'

After a momentary hesitation, the man stepped back, allowing him to pass. Daniel seized the opportunity with alacrity, finding himself in a spacious cream-painted hallway with several doors leading off it and a gracious sweep of stairs to one side.

‘Thanks, mate. And you are . . . ?' He put the case down and took his notebook out once more.

‘I work for Mr Patrescu.'

‘Yeah, look, mate, I need a name for the records. Have to say who let me in. Regulations, see? Got to dot the “i”s and cross the “t”s.'

The man hesitated, then said, reluctantly, ‘Macek. Anghel Macek.'

Daniel scratched his head with the back end of the pen, then started to write. ‘So that'll be M-A-T—'

‘C,' Macek cut in, spelling it out for him.

‘Right. So what kind of photography do you do?' Daniel enquired, chattily. ‘Portraits? Glamour? Arty-farty?'

‘Why do you ask?'

‘Oh, just being nosy – saw the sign outside the door. So, where's your main phone?' He looked from side to side at the closed doors.

‘It's in the office. Look, I'm not sure Mr Patrescu . . .'

‘I'll be in and out in five – he'll never know,' Daniel said.

‘The door is locked.'

‘Well, don't you have a key?'

‘I . . . It's not . . .'

Macek was clearly in an agony of indecision and Daniel kept up the pressure by saying off-handedly, ‘Look, if you're not happy for me to go in there, that's fine. It's all the same to me. Ten-to-one I won't find anything wrong, anyway – they're buggers, these intermittent faults – but if you
have
got a problem, you could lose your Internet connection and then you'll have to call someone out to fix it. I just thought I might save you the hassle – not to mention the expense . . .'

He made as if to head back to the front door. He was talking absolute rubbish, but most people were easily blinded by IT science, and the threat of being offline – even for a short time – in this technologically dependent age, usually induced something approaching a panic attack.

Macek was no exception. ‘Wait! No broadband?'

‘It's possible. But I'm sure you'd get someone out to reconnect you in a day or two,' Daniel added cheerfully.

While the beleaguered Romanian was weighing up the two evils, an interruption occurred in the shape of a young girl in denim dungarees and a jumper, who appeared running down the green-carpeted stairs.

She was giggling and looking back over her shoulder as if she were being followed. For one disbelieving moment, Daniel thought his luck was in and it was Elena, but as she neared the bottom step and turned to face them, he could see that it wasn't. Probably a year or two younger than Elena, her colouring was similar but she had a more rounded face and her waist-length dark hair was a riot of curls.

When she saw the two men standing in the hall, she stopped so abruptly that she had to clutch the banister rail to keep her balance, her mouth opening in an almost comical ‘o', which was then covered by her hand. Her dark-lashed blue eyes, opening equally wide, were the most beautiful Daniel had ever seen.

Even as the child froze, a voice called, ‘Molly, come back!' and a young woman appeared at the turn of the stairs. Taking in the scene with a swift glance, she also stopped.

The Romanian said something sharply in what Daniel assumed was his own tongue and the woman replied in kind, her expression sulky. More striking than beautiful, with olive skin and long, improbably red hair that fell forward, hiding half her face, she wore a long flouncy skirt and looked a little like a Spanish gypsy. With time to study her, Daniel estimated she was probably somewhere in her late twenties.

Macek spoke again and her eyes flashed defiance, but she merely held out her hand to the young girl, who had been eyeing Daniel with the candid interest of the young, her eyelids lowered almost sleepily.

‘Molly! Come!'

After one last look at the Romanian, the child turned and went with the young woman, obediently taking the proffered hand.

‘Kids, eh?' Daniel commented lightly as the two disappeared from view.

Whether it was because the interruption had unsettled him or whether it was the hovering threat of losing their Internet access, Daniel didn't know, but Macek beckoned him to follow and crossed to one of the closed doors, saying over his shoulder, ‘You must be quick.'

‘Only take a minute,' Daniel said, moving up quietly behind him. He was assailed by a strong smell of garlic and was near enough to see a scattering of dandruff on the shoulder of the man's black turtleneck. More importantly, he was near enough to see Macek enter a series of numbers into a keypad on the wall next to the door.

There was a faint click as the lock opened and the Romanian turned his head, his face registering surprise and some annoyance at finding Daniel so close.

Daniel smiled. ‘After you,' he said politely.

The room they entered had been adapted for use as an office with total disregard for the aesthetics of its Regency past. Boxy black leather furniture sat on bare floorboards and grey metal shelving units stood against the sage-green walls. A bar carrying spotlights had been screwed to the ornately plastered ceiling and Venetian blinds hung in the elegant windows.

A computer desk stood against one wall and it was towards this that Daniel was directed. The surface of the desk was disappointingly uncluttered, carrying only the computer keyboard, a pot of pens, two cardboard files and a phone with speaker unit.

Daniel put down the black case, picked up the receiver and listened briefly. It emitted a low hum, as he'd expected it to, but he nodded slightly for the benefit of his companion and asked when the unit had last been used.

Macek shrugged. ‘How would I know?'

‘Never mind. It'll be on here,' Daniel said, indicating the phone's display. ‘Do you mind?'

He was answered with another shrug, which was academic as Daniel was already bringing up the unit's recent dialling history. Taking his notepad out again, he first made a note of the memorized security code for the office door and then swiftly took down the last four numbers on the display, feeling that any more would be pushing it.

‘It is all right, yes? How much longer will you be?' The Romanian's nerves were clearly on edge.

‘Nearly done,' Daniel reassured him. ‘Just need to check your Internet connection. Couple of minutes, that's all.'

Opening his case, he took out a pair of headphones, which had once belonged on a personal stereo. On one end of the wire he'd fitted a small suction cup, and this he now held against the computer modem. With the earpieces in place he pressed the first of five speed-dial buttons on the phone.