The Last Witness (23 page)

  ‘Yes, yes, certainly. I understand.’ My, my, she had touched a nerve.
Boyfriend?
‘You’ve been very helpful. Thank you.’ She bowed out swiftly, getting the distinct impression that if she’d pushed an inch more, Tinsley would have hung up on her.

  Elena dialled Nadine Moore’s number straightaway. She was out, so Elena left her number for a call back. She tapped her fingers impatiently for a second by the phone, then went downstairs to pour a fresh coffee. The first few sips and the aroma made her feel a bit more alert; she hadn’t slept well the night before after seeing Lorena pass by.

  No call back had come by mid-morning with more news from Megan, so after half an hour of thinking through tactics, she’d decided to start on trying to help Lorena. Not sure how far she’d get, and feeling a bit like a frantic juggler given her own dilemma – self-examining for a moment if it was just because of the lull, killing time so as not to dwell on her own uncertainty. No, she’d have made time regardless. She couldn’t have lived with herself knowing she’d simply deserted Lorena at the first obstacle; she had to at least give it one last try.

  Gordon was out for a few hours seeing some local clients, so at least the pressure was gone of him lurking around. Megan and Terry’s bill was already up to £830, £300 beyond what she could manage from her own account. She’d made an excuse to Gordon about problems with her car: new disk brakes needed, according to the garage. But what about the next £300, and the one after that; she’d either have to become inventive, or bare all to Gordon. She shook her head: such a momentous secret kept for so long, how could their relationship survive it?

  Two hours later she was sat at the back of Chelborne Sands in Nadine Moore’s car, the two of them like drug dealers or lovers on a clandestine meet. More secrets.

  ‘It’s all there. Everything regarding Mikaya Ryall.’ Nadine passed the file across. ‘I can only let you read the file, not take it anywhere or copy it. Make notes if you like – but if anyone asks you where you got the information, it wasn’t me. Right?’

  ‘Yes… of course.’ Elena was only half listening as she rifled hungrily through the file. Nadine had protested strongly about digging out and sharing the file, and Elena had to push hard:
‘If you’re happy with what Ryall did, taping our conversation; and if, despite that, you’re satisfied he has nothing at all to hide and everything’s alright with Lorena – then fine, don’t help me.’
Nadine had against her better judgement finally relented, though was still muttering and complaining now that she shouldn’t be doing this. ‘I must be crazy. I could lose my job if this got out.’

  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 Ryall: 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, 17
^th
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.

  Outside, a gusting wing buffeted against the high asp windows ahead, and the muffled surge of the sea could be heard in the distance – but inside the music filled every corner of the grand room, bouncing back from the high windows and vaulted ceiling to the reaches of the gallery library behind. A strongly resonant sound chamber with just the right balance of absorbent wood: how such music was meant to be heard – with only him at its centre to receive it. He could feel its rhythm and cadences reverberate through his body, rallying his senses, his spirits rising, soaring. He started waving his hands elaborately to the strident, staccato violin bursts, drawing substance and power from what he’d just done that made him feel suddenly master of all around: master of this grand room and this house, master of the village and its petty minions who dutifully passed information back to him, and now master of all those who dared interfere in his life, the Elena Waldrens and their kind.

  He froze for a second, lifting one hand to his right cheek. He swore he could still feel where little Lorena had kissed him. The dutiful ‘Goodnight Daddy’ ritual of every night. And every night he could sense too her clinging anxiety as she came close and pressed her lips to his skin, her eyes darting and her small heart hammering as furiously as a humming bird’s wings, that in a way made the whole ritual all the more angelic, endearing. The sense that he had such power over her, yet only a part of her knew how or why.

  He looked up, straining his ear to the house upstairs beyond the music, wondering perhaps whether he should make sure Lorena was okay, soothe her brow for a moment: a small victory visit. But he decided in the end to wait a few days: then he could be sure that that victory would be lasting. Nobody would ever trouble them again.

The tears hit Elena as she rounded the bluff beyond Chelborne.

  It was one of her favourite views: almost two hundred feet sheer elevation from the sea, with the rolling contours of green hills and pastures ahead spilling gently into the yellow trimmed expanse of Chelborne sands and the deep blue of the bay. On days when the sea was wild, like now, she liked it all the more: white caps could be seen stretching out towards the horizon, more lines of conflict and contrast. She’d captured the view twice before on canvass, but still felt she’d missed the key that made her soul soar when she rounded the bluff on a stark, clear day.

  The day was clear now, the wind brisk, aftermath of the previous night’s gale. But Elena felt nothing but empty, desolate, as she looked out across the sweep of the bay.

  ‘I think that’s it… I’m afraid. We’ve hit a stone wall. The chances of ever finding him again now are virtually nil, in Terry’s view.’
Megan’s words of first thing that morning.

  She hadn’t cried then, just the same empty, gut-voided feeling as now. Terry had discovered that the Stephanous had changed their name by deed-pole to Stevens some ten months later, then simply disappeared off the face of the earth. No forwarding address, nothing on electoral registers or credit files. Like her father, the name was now completely anglicised: George Stevens. Megan and Terry were probably right: with no link traceable to the Stephanous, she’d never find him
. ‘I’ll bury him out of sight and out of reach. You won’t find him.’
Her father’s words, all these years later, suddenly having crushing resonance. Still a part of her life, despite her fighting so hard to be free from his shadow, was in his grip and control.