The Last Witness (54 page)

The shadows only eased from Lorena’s eyes a fraction. Elena once again opted for dramatics to shift Lorena’s mood. She decided to open up more about her son, explain why tomorrow was so important to her.

‘I said that I hadn’t seen him in a while, but I lied. Truth is, I’ve
never
seen him since he was born. I was very young when I became pregnant… and my father gave him away to another family. I was given no choice in the matter.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Lorena said, appearing confused for a second how else to respond. ‘You missed him a lot?’

‘Yes… very much.’
And now I don’t know if I’ll ever get to see him again.
She blinked slowly, but suddenly there were no more welling tears: the see-saw events of the past forty-eight hours, the valerian pills and her mounting tiredness had battered her senses numb. Sometimes she felt completely empty of emotions, little more than a hollow shell. Or was it simply a protective barrier so that any new shock wouldn’t send her reeling and rip her insides out? She was finally battle-hardened for the worst.

‘Was he cruel, your father?’

‘No… just very strict. Impossibly strict.’

‘So he wasn’t someone for you to be afraid of – like Mr Ryall?’

‘No, I suppose not.’ Elena smiled wanly as she made the concession. She’d raised it as a trump card, but Lorena had deftly slipped it back in the deck where it belonged. Of course, she
had
been afraid of her father; but that suddenly put it all in perspective: if Lorena’s claims had substance, Lorena had a
real
fear to face.

Suddenly Lorena was once again the frightened little girl reaching out a hand for help from the back of Nicola Ryall’s Range Rover. And whatever rationale Elena threw across, she knew that she could never shift the lingering fear in Lorena’s eyes. Jail sentence or not, in the end she just didn’t think she could face sending Lorena back to Ryall tomorrow.

Another restless night.

  Elena had been hoping finally to get a good night’s sleep. She was so exhausted and so keen to make the right impression for her big day tomorrow. Get rid of the blood-shots in her eyes and steady her nerves, hopefully not come across how she felt: haggard, desperate, at her wit’s end.
There’s no way this half-crazed woman is getting to see him.

  But, perversely, the worry about how the day might go kept her thoughts churning; and now she still had Lorena to worry about. She’d hoped to at least put that to rest. All she’d said in the end was for Lorena not to worry, she didn’t think that she could send her back. ‘We’ll try and sort something out tomorrow.’ Left that small gap open in case finally there was no choice. Sometimes she wished that she were arrested so that she didn’t have to make the decision. It was frustrating. She’d set her game-plan, was almost there in convincing Lorena, getting her to accept – then suddenly she’d been slam-dunked at the last moment.

The problem was, which was the right Lorena? Had Lorena purely stumbled on hitting the right chord about her father through a child’s naïve bluntness, or had she planned it – her street-wiliness showing through? Was Lowndes right that Lorena had formed an unnatural attachment to her and this was all just a cry for attention, to grab back some of their old bond together? In which case Lorena must have planned everything practically from the start.

Except for one thing: the fear Elena had seen in Lorena’s eyes in the restaurant. That was difficult to fake. She herself was full of concern and panic for what the next day held, but what she’d seen in Lorena in that moment went far beyond that. Whether something was happening with Ryall or not, it was certainly real in Lorena’s mind. So why after all these sessions couldn’t she recall anything?

  The thought had a loop effect: there was no real answer and so it just went around, and Elena let it because it was soporific, pushed her closer towards sleep. She finally dozed off after half an hour, her last thoughts on what she might wear for her meeting tomorrow. Something clean-lined and respectable, but at the same time not too cool and formal: it should be soft-edged, maternal. She’d glanced at the weather forecast before getting into bed to help her decide.

  Overnight lows of 4 or 5, 10 or 11 by mid-morning, rising to highs of 13 or 14.

  For some reason she found the numbers replaying in her thoughts halfway through the night, jumbling with a segment from one of Lowndes sessions:
‘And he was saying some numbers… seven… eight.’

  Elena was suddenly wide-awake again, her breath falling sharp and fast.
Magic acts!
She sat up and looked at the bedside clock: 3.26 am. Barely two hours sleep.

  She felt like waking Lorena, screaming out loud that she thought she’d found the key, and they’d both jump up and down excitedly and wake the rest of the hotel. But she needed to know for sure – so she threw on some clothes, grabbed her bag and headed for the nearest phone box. She used her global call card and dialled her home number.

  Gordon, initially pleasantly surprised, almost relieved to hear her voice – perhaps he’d been half-expecting another call from Crowley – berated her for breaking their call policy.

  ‘This couldn’t wait,’ Elena said, still slightly breathless from the rush to the booth. ‘Besides, I’ve used a global call card. It’ll be scrambled through some faceless exchange in Virginia. I could be calling from anywhere in the world.’ She told Gordon what she needed to know – Ryall’s background with children’s magic acts – and why. ‘Where did your investigator get that from?’

  ‘From some old newspaper clipping, I believe.’ No, he hadn’t send them through; but, yes, Gordon could get hold of him now. ‘He works from home. Phone me back in fifteen minutes and I’ll see what he’s got.’

  Six minutes later Gordon had the fax through: three newspaper clippings in total. He scanned rapidly through, his blood running cold as he came to the reference two-thirds of the way into the second article. Elena’s hunch had been right! He tapped his fingers on the table by the phone and read through more thoroughly as he waited on Elena’s call back.

  Elena’s nerves had been wound too tight to do anything more than pace agitatedly back and forth ten yards either side of the call box to kill the time; once again she was slightly breathless. All she could manage was ‘Oh God.
Oh God,
’ when Gordon told her. She’d hoped that she’d be right; but another part of her had hoped desperately that she’d be wrong. She sighed heavily, felt the last remnants wash away from her. ‘The rest now I suppose will have to be sorted out on the psychiatrist’s couch.’

  Gordon again wished her good luck for tomorrow as they signed off. ‘Thanks.’ Hopelessly inadequate for one of the biggest days of her life: decision day now on
two
fronts. But she felt too numbed and shell-shocked to say anything else.

  She stood for a moment by Lorena’s bed before getting back into bed herself: Lorena didn’t appear to have stirred, even notice that she’d been gone. She realized then that she couldn’t say anything: it could later be said that Lorena had merely filled in the gaps to suit. She’d only be able to tell Lowndes, then they’d just have to hold their breath to see if events followed the nightmare path they feared. But the strongest emotion she felt looking on at Lorena gently sleeping was that she was sorry, so sorry for ever having doubted her.

THIRTY

Funicelli located a telephone junction box in a service slip-way fifteen yards along from the
Hotel Montclaire
, the hotel where the English woman was staying. The box also appeared to service three or four other buildings in the first stretch of Rue Berri.

  He picked through and found the wires and switches for the
Montclaire
, then started making the connections. Four minutes, five tops, he estimated. But four or five minutes in the open by a busy street was a lifetime. He’d been uneasy just in the couple of minutes up the telegraph pole outside the Donatiens. But that had been Beaconsfield, peaceful suburbia; now he was in one of the busiest parts of Montreal. The hustle, bustle and the sheer number of things he had to keep a watch out for made it an entirely different proposition.

  He’d chosen to do it early: 8.08 am. Telephone engineers often started at 8.00 am, but by the time their rosters were done and they were clear of the depots, the earliest calls were usually after 8.30 am. So he shouldn’t have to worry about a Bell Canada engineer passing and asking what he was doing.

  But the rest of the city was coming rapidly to life: the flow of traffic and people passing was increasing, the occasional passer-by throwing him a glance. An East Indian by the
deppaneur
on the corner, possibly its owner, studied him thoughtfully for almost thirty seconds before going back inside the shop.

  Funicelli was sweating cobs, his hands trembling on the wires within the first two minutes. This was a nightmare. But Roman had been insistent that they get a bug on the woman’s line.

  ‘We’ve got to know what progress she makes with Chenouda. If anything’s going down, it’ll probably be decided within the next few days.’

  That was the other thing Funicelli had to worry about. That no faults were reported on any lines within that time to make engineers open up the junction box and discover his bug. They couldn’t risk leaving something like that inside the box for any length of time.

  For the last minute he hardly paid attention to who might be passing or looking at him, his concentration was fixed intently on securing the last few wires in place.

  He glanced at his watch as he slammed shut and locked the box. Four minutes twenty-two. Not bad. He let out a slow sigh as he walked down to his white van parked round the corner, but still his hands were shaking slightly as he opened its back doors and threw his tools inside.

  He nodded briefly to Frank Massenat parked ten yards back on the far side as he jumped in the driver’s seat. Funicelli had kept look-out on the hotel until 10 pm, then Massenat had taken over for overnight.

  Take the van back, change, breakfast, coffee, and check his cousin hadn’t burnt down his shop while he was away, then he’d return to take over again from Massenat at 10 am.

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ Massenat commented as they changed over. ‘Except that at half-three she suddenly comes out and makes a call from that booth over there. Then she paces up and down as if her ass was on fire before making another call. Then back to the excitement of watching people sleep.’ Massenat shrugged. ‘And no signs of life yet this morning.’

  But just over an hour later that changed as Funicelli watched her leave the hotel, girl in tow. She made a quick call from the same booth Massenat saw her use, then hailed a taxi. Funicelli followed through the mid-morning traffic two or three cars behind. A light drizzle started falling halfway along René Lévesque and he put the wipers on intermittent. He’d already phoned Roman two hours ago to tell him that the bug had been successfully placed, but as he saw the taxi pull up outside RCMP HQ on Dorchester Boulevard, he took out his mobile to call again. Roman would want to know this news straight away.

The first half-hour of questioning was mostly fact-finding and low key. Apart from a couple of jump-backs to fill in small details at first overlooked, Elena ran through everything in historical and hopefully – to Staff Sergeant Michel Chenouda patiently listening – logical sequence: her father, Dr Maniatis with the birth certificate, the Stephanous, the orphanage at Baie du Febvre, and finally the Donatiens.

  Michel Chenouda sat directly opposite her at an oval table and the papers she’d produced were spread between them. At the end of the table a tape ran while another officer at its side made brief notes. For the most part Chenouda stayed silent with the occasional thoughtful nod as she ran through the background, appeared on the surface at least to accept her story. But she couldn’t help sensing that underneath he was uneasy, harboured underlying doubt. And then the questions started to reflect that doubt, become more intent; the pressure was turned up a notch.

  Chenouda shook his head. ‘But what I don’t understand is why you left it until now to try and make contact?’

  ‘Well, for a long while I blanked it from my mind. Then I adopted two children of my own and I started working with children in need in orphanages in Eastern Europe, mainly Romania. I think part of that was to push away the guilt that I’d given away my own child.’ Elena looked down, then towards the corridor outside. Three doors along Lorena, aka Katine, waited in an open RCMP general office. ‘It was in fact a problem with one of the Romanian children, not much older than my own daughter, Katine, that started me thinking again about my son. I’d told myself all along that he’d have been alright, he’d have gone to a good home somewhere. And suddenly it hit me that that wasn’t always true.’

  ‘What sort of problems?’ Chenouda looked at her keenly.

  Elena felt the intensity of his stare like a blowtorch on her cheek, and her heart skipped. They’d probably known all along, and the chain of seemingly standard questions had all been leading to this coupe de grace now. She tried to cling again to the steely nerve that had made her able to walk in here in the first place. She’d paused just before the building’s wide glass doors, taking a deep breath. She thought she was okay, but walking along all she’d been able to hear was the pounding of her heart; she couldn’t even hear her own footsteps or any of the movement or activity around. Now, again, it was drowning out all else: the officer at the end was scrawling in his notepad, but she couldn’t hear it. She swallowed hard in an attempt to clear her ears. Perhaps Chenouda was just being thorough, didn’t know anything after all.