The Last Witness (46 page)

  Everything Lowndes had said in his last session had begun to stack up in her mind as uncomfortably true. All the signals were there: her close attachment to Lorena going back all the way to Romania, Lorena’s distance not only from her stepfather but also Nicola Ryall; her being the first person Lorena had called for help, Lorena’s ready agreement to the abduction and her excitement at times on the trip, almost as if it was some sort of holiday, then finally Lorena asking if she could stay with her permanently.
‘Maybe I could keep your Katine company and play with her – be like a sister.’

  Even if the mosaic didn’t slot together so well and Lowndes had somehow got it wrong – there was nowhere left for her to go with it. They’d tried their damnedest to uncover something with Ryall and still no light in sight: further sessions would just hit the same stone wall. And she couldn’t possibly return to Lowndes with this. Now that he felt he had the right bone in his mouth, he’d just continue gnawing at Lorena’s attachment to Eileen. Lorena would either crumple under the pressure or her abduction would finally be uncovered. No, she’d decided just before going in to see the nuns, there was no option left but to put Lorena on the first flight back to England.

  ‘Are you feeling better now, Elena? …I was very worried about you.’

  That gentle, angel’s wings touch of fingers on her shoulder. Elena shuddered at the thought of what she had planned for her: Lorena would no doubt see it as a form of betrayal, or at the least that she was once again being discarded, given up on. But there was no choice.
No choice!

  ‘Yes, I’m fine now… fine.’ She nodded and closed her eyes again for a second. At least that might now help soften the blow: she could tell Lorena that they’d be flying back to England together. Nothing left here for either of them.

  Elena sensed Bernadine hovering to her side as if she wanted to say something. Bernadine glanced anxiously back towards the door of Sister Therese’s office, then slipped a piece of paper from the folds of her habit and pressed it into Elena’s hand.

  Elena looked at the piece of paper almost indignantly. ‘What is this?’ Ticket perhaps to the convent fête as apology for giving her such a hard time. She unfolded it: two names, Claude and Odette Donatiens, and a Montreal address.

  Bernadine leant over, whispering conspiratorially. ‘That’s where he’s gone. But I haven’t given it to you, okay?’ Another nervous glance back to Sister Therese’s office.

  ‘Okay.’ Barely audible mumble. Elena stared at it blankly a moment more. She should have felt elated and leapt up and hugged Bernadine until she turned blue. But clearly Bernadine wanted her to stay subdued, secretive, and a part of her still felt numb: just when she’d let free the last thread, it was back in her grasp again.

  ‘I should have told that man too when he came all those years ago. He was sat exactly where you are now, head in hands when he found out he wouldn’t be able to see the boy.’

  ‘What man?’ Elena was still in shock, reeling from the game-plan constantly changing. And where did that leave her now with what to do with Lorena?

  But as Sister Bernadine sat down next to her and explained, nothing could have prepared her for this one final change, pulled from the hat as if Bernadine was some cruel magician. Elena felt her whole world turned upside down, its very foundations shaken to the core. She felt herself close to fainting again and shook her head, refusing to accept. But all she could think of was rushing to the first phone box to speak to the only two people who could possibly explain, set her world to rights again: Uncle Christos and her mother.

TWENTY-FIVE

Roman had insisted he know urgently of any developments on tape, so Carlo Funicelli checked them twice a day – lunchtime and early evening – with sometimes an extra check midnight or early hours if he was downtown late.

  For the early evening session he usually stayed the longest, forty minutes or sometimes an hour, and he’d grab a sandwich and an espresso on the way in if he wasn’t heading later to a restaurant. The tapes were all on sound-activate, so the one fed from the bugs in Donatiens’ penthouse would usually play through in eight or ten minutes: the only sounds so far had been the increasingly frantic messages left by Simone, plus the occasional social or business related call, all seemingly innocent.

  But now with bugs also at Donatiens’ parents in Beaconsfield, the tape there was running longer. A lot longer: the house was a haven of activity with Odette there most of the day, her husband and her talking, dining or watching TV in the evening, and then the various calls from friends, neighbours and Claude Donatiens’ business partner or his golfing buddies.

  Funicelli quickly became bored. He started winding through for more interesting sound-bites, and almost missed the one conversation that didn’t quite fit in the pattern. He wound it quickly back to the beginning of the call.

 
‘…My name’s Waldren. Elena Waldren. I’m sorry to trouble you like this, but I’ve just come from St Marguerite’s, and they gave me your number. It’s regarding your stepson, George. I… I really need to see you and talk to you about him.’

  ‘Why… what’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing… nothing. But it is nevertheless a bit delicate, personal. Something I’d rather discuss with you and your husband in person rather than just over the phone.’

 
‘I see.’
Heavy pause, static over the line.

 
‘…And I have come quite a long way for this – all the way from
England
in fact.’

  Funicelli picked up on the caller’s agitation. She sounded anxious, very anxious that Odette Donatiens might not agree to see her. Whatever it was, it was important. The prawn salad roll held poised by his mouth the last ten seconds, he finally took a bite out of. Maybe that was where Donatiens was holed up: England.

 
‘Well… I suppose so. But you know – sometimes we don’t see him from one month to the next, so I don’t know how much help we’ll be. You’re sure there’s nothing wrong – he’s not in trouble or anything?’

 
‘No, no… really. Nothing like that. This is just a catching-up exercise from someone he hasn’t seen in a long, long while.’

  Funicelli munched steadily. Odette Donatiens still sounded uncertain, but it was difficult to tell which was paramount: her concern due to the secrecy or her curiosity not being immediately sated. She obviously wanted to know more than her caller was willing to give at that moment.

  The caller said that she’d just left St Marguerite’s and was still fifty miles up-Province. Odette Donatiens said that her and her husband were planning to go out that night anyway – so in the end they arranged that she should come to their house at 1 pm the next day.

 
‘My husband more often than not stops by for lunch – so I’ll make sure he’s around tomorrow when you call.’

  Funicelli stopped the tape and phoned Roman straight away.

  ‘Sounds promising. Could be the break we’ve been looking for,’ Roman agreed. He was thoughtful for a second. ‘Look – you stay there and listen to the tape live tomorrow. And I’ll make sure to get someone parked looking on at the house for when she shows.’

  ‘There was no conspiracy, no collusion between me and your mother to keep things from you. Believe me, Elena, it just wasn’t like that.’

  ‘Then tell me, Uncle Christos – what was it like?’ Elena could practically hear the swallow, the catching of breath at the other end of the line in London.

‘Well – all I knew was that your father tried to find young Christos, George as he was then, not long before he died. But I’d been sworn to secrecy by your mother, and in any case I had no idea where he’d gone to try and find him. There was nothing useful I could have told you, and by then you’d already narrowed it down to Montreal or Chicago. Why do you think I was urging you so hard to go and see your mother? She said she’d in turn been sworn to secrecy by your father, but I just had the feeling that if you told her that you’d finally decided to try and find him, that you were at that moment desperately searching – she’d have opened up and told you what she knew.’

‘Right.’ Now it was Elena’s turn to swallow hard. She almost lost a part of it, had to strain her hearing with the noise of a long trailer passing on the highway close by. She was still at the same service station where she’d leafed through directories to get the Donatiens’ current address and number and bought a ‘global-call’ card to phone England straight after their call. The phone kiosk was halfway between the service station building and the road, and at intervals the traffic noise imposed. ‘I… I thought that was just you banging the same old drum. Trying to patch up old family differences, get us all back together again.’

‘I began to tire of banging that drum long ago, Elena. Or hadn’t you noticed I’d hardly mentioned it the past year or so? Maybe in the back of my mind I saw it as an opportunity for some of the old wounds to be patched – but my first thought was that your mother might be able to help. Have you spoken to her yet?’

‘No, not yet. I wanted to speak to you first.’ The shaking was heaviest in her legs. Build-up of the emotional helter-skelter of the past days and the final twist in the tail at St Marguerite’s, or the fact that she’d now been standing for almost twenty minutes on the same phone? She noticed the cashier starting to look out the window at her at intervals. ‘Why did he suddenly decide he wanted to find him after all those years?’

‘Because he was dying, Elena. Don’t forget, he knew about the cancer a good three years before. In fact, the doctors only gave him eighteen months, two years. As I say, your mother hasn’t really shared the details with me – but I think he saw it as a last chance to make some amends.’

A lump suddenly rose in her throat; she found it hard to swallow. But in the end he hadn’t made it:
‘…He was sat exactly where you are now, head in hands when he found out he wouldn’t be able to see the boy.’
The wave of empathy that hit her felt so strange, alien, that it made her shudder. She hadn’t felt that way about her father since… well, since almost the age young George had been when he left St Marguerite’s.

‘There’s something else, Elena. Something I do know more about, and I think should tell you now. You know that money I used to send you now and then?’

‘Yes.’ She’d blankly refused to touch the money left in trust for her or take any money from her father. Then when she’d run into problems, which was probably more often than she’d have liked on the hippie trail – Uncle Christos would send money. It wasn’t a fortune, but given the timing and the dire circumstances, it was practically a lifesaver each time. Then in addition he’d send generous sums for her birthday, Christmas, her patron-name’s day, Buddhist New Year – whatever excuse he could think of. She was sure she’d never have survived those years without Uncle Christos’ help.

‘Most of that money was from your father. I’d send a bit for your birthday, thirty, forty pounds, whatever – but he’d insist on sending the other two-sixty or seventy. Or when you had problems, a lot more. And he’d swear me to secrecy each time: he knew that if I said it was from him, you’d refuse it.’

  Elena felt as if her life was like a set of plates in a Greek restaurant. Just when she had the table set again,
‘Right. Okay. That’s what my life was like,’
some mad waiter had come along and again spun the plates into the air to fall smashing on the ground. She found it hard to find her voice; she sounded frail, tremulous. ‘But, why… why didn’t he say something later. Tell me what he’d done.’

  ‘You know your father. Proud to the end. Proud and obstinate.’

  ‘I know. I know.’ She leant against the kiosk and closed her eyes, sighing heavily. Suddenly it wasn’t just a problem with her tired, trembling legs; her whole body and mind felt weary, not a spark of energy or clear thought left. 

  ‘I think he’d have seen it as admitting that he’d made a mistake with you. And you know your father was never very good at that – admitting he was wrong. It was the cause of probably ninety-percent of the arguments I used to have with him.’ Uncle Christos risked a small chuckle.

  ‘Is that it? Or is there something else maybe I should know – like perhaps he wasn’t a hot-shot businessman after all but secretly head of the Hampstead Hare Krishna’s. Or, surprise, surprise, he’s not dead, but living in some commune in the Himalayas along with Elvis and Lord Lucan?’ She’d aimed for humour as an escape valve, but the acid, tremulous edge in her voice left little doubt: she was angry. Angry and confused.

  ‘I’m sorry, Elena. I know how you must feel. But, no – that’s it, that’s as much as I know. As to why your father made that last trip to try and see George and what happened when he was there – only your mother knows the details. When are you going to phone her?’

  ‘Well… straight away, I suppose.’ It seemed a stupid question given how much she desperately needed to know what had happened – but she picked up the concerned edge in Uncle Christos’ voice. He was afraid it would be like his hopes of her finally seeing her mother these past years: she’d put it off and in the end would never do it. ‘I’ll call her as soon as I put the phone down now.’