Michael Robotham - The Wreckage

The recording ends. Elizabeth plays it back and listens for names, but there are too many gaps and unintelligible words. She concentrates on North’s voice, feeling something snag in his chest when he mentions the word family.

This wasn’t a normal business meeting. These weren’t normal business contacts. North told Bridget Lindop that he’d done something terrible and on the tape he talked about wanting to know where money had come from and gone. Perhaps Mitchell was right to be concerned.

Elizabeth looks at the daily log written by Colin Hackett. Before North went to The Warrington, he visited a house in Mount Street, just off Park Lane. She glances at her watch. Rowan won’t be home from nursery for another few hours. Polina can pick him up. Grabbing her car keys and her bag, she gets in the car and programs the satnav for Mayfair. The journey takes her across Hammersmith Bridge and along Hammersmith Road past Olympia and through Kensington to Hyde Park Corner.

Late summer and there are still plenty of tourists in London, eating sandwiches on the grass and taking photographs from open-top buses. London has never seemed like a destination to Elizabeth, but for others it is a postcard, a photograph or the backdrop to their holiday videos.

Mount Street is lined with Edwardian mansion blocks and rows of Italianate houses, every corner has a CCTV camera bolted to the brickwork. Curtains don’t twitch anymore and neighbors no longer study neighbors. Instead cameras record every dropped piece of litter and unscooped dog turd.

Walking up the front steps, Elizabeth presses a large bronze bell. The blue-painted front door is heavy and old. It opens after a moment. A woman in a black smock dress peers from inside. Elegant. Her hair is silver tipped and her features as delicate as a porcelain figurine.

Elizabeth realizes that she should have thought of a story.

“I’ve lost my dog,” she blurts. “I live around the corner. I’m asking everyone.”

The woman shakes her head. “What does your dog look like?”

“Umm, he’s white, ah, he’s a sort of terrier like a Jack Russell.”

“I haven’t seen any stray dogs.”

“Is there anyone else at home? Perhaps you could ask your husband.”

A man’s voice comes from the top of the stairs: “Who is it, Maria?”

“Someone has lost her dog.”

The door opens a little wider. Elizabeth takes the opportunity. She steps into the hallway, glancing up the stairs.

“It’s been two days and my little boy is heartbroken. I thought I’d knock on some doors.”

The man has gone. She didn’t see his face. The woman ushers her into a large front room with dormer windows and a fireplace. Every piece of furniture seems to fit perfectly. Antique or expensive copies, they match the artifacts-Byzantine mosaics, swords, pottery and statues displayed around the room. The beauty of the items seems to distract Elizabeth, who doesn’t realize she’s being spoken to.

“I beg your pardon?”

“What is the dog’s name?”

“Ummm, ah, well, his name is Fred, short for Frederick.”

The woman is almost ageless with a casual elegance that makes Elizabeth feel clumsy and shabbily dressed. She could be Middle Eastern. She could just be wealthy.

“Where do you live?”

“Around the corner.”

“What road?”

Elizabeth can’t think of a neighboring street. She mumbles something and Claudia kicks her as though punishing her stupidity.

“Do you have a photograph?” asks the woman.

“Pardon?”

“A picture of the dog. You could put it on lampposts.”

“Yes, what a good idea.”

Elizabeth wants to ask her about North and why he came to the house. She has the photographs in her handbag. What would the woman say if she just came straight out and showed them to her? She raises her eyes to the ceiling, hearing something upstairs. “Maybe your husband has seen Fred.”

“He’s busy.”

“What does he do?”

The woman ignores the question and stares at Elizabeth for a long time. “Why are you really here?”

Elizabeth’s skin prickles with embarrassment and Claudia squirms wetly in her belly.

“I feel so bloody silly. I didn’t work out what I was going to say.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My name is Elizabeth North. My husband came here about a week ago. It was a Friday afternoon. Now he’s missing. I’m trying to find him.”

The woman is watching her with her almond-shaped eyes, giving nothing away. Elizabeth takes the photographs from her handbag. They are curling now at the edges and stained with something sticky that Rowan put in her handbag.

“Who took these?”

“A private detective.”

Suspicion flares in the woman’s eyes. “Watching this house?”

“No. He was following my husband. I was concerned about him. I knew something was wrong. He came here. Is one of these men your husband?”

The woman stands and straightens her dress, brushing it down her thighs. “I don’t know who you are-or what you’re doing, but I want you to leave.”

“I’m telling you the truth. His name is Richard North. Can you just ask your husband?”

The woman walks to the entrance hall telephone. “Do I have to call the police?”

“I’m leaving,” says Elizabeth.

As she tries to step past the woman, a hand shoots out and grips her wrist. “Tell me why you’re following us.”

“I don’t even know who you are. I’m trying to find my husband.”

Elizabeth feels a sudden sharp cramp in her abdomen that takes her breath away. She has to lean on the edge of the table, breathing in and out against the pain.

The woman lets go and her voice softens. “You should go home.”

“I know he came here.”

“I will ask my husband-but you must leave.”

A voice from above: “Is everything all right, Maria?”

It’s one of the men from the photograph-the one with the clipped English accent. Taking off his glasses, he studies Elizabeth, his eyes neither hostile nor interested.

“I’m looking for my husband, Richard North. He met with you.”

“And what makes you say that?”

“I have photographs.”

“What photographs?”

“You were sitting at a table outside The Warrington. There was another man with you.”

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”

Elizabeth can feel the skin on her forehead itching. She fumbles through the photographs, looking for the right one. Pulls it free. Holds it up. The man doesn’t want to look at her pictures. He hasn’t moved from the stairs.

“The other man in the picture-do you know his name?”

Nothing alters in his face, which has all the emotion and depth of a pie plate. Elizabeth presses on. “I just want to find him. Do you know where he is?”

“Show her to the door, Maria.”

Elizabeth wants to make him listen. “I know about the transfers,” she blurts, making things up as she goes along.

The man scratches at the corner of his mouth with a fingernail. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please leave my home.”

He turns away, pulling a mobile phone from the sagging pocket of his sweatshirt.

Elizabeth finds herself on the front steps where dead leaves are chasing each other in a circle of wind. The man was lying to her. Hiding something. Had she made a mistake coming here? Claudia has stopped kicking, but her heart still races, beating like the wings of a bird against the bars of a cage.

Colorful saris, black chadors, minarets and Halal butchers-it could be Bangladesh or Mogadishu or Hackney or Lambeth. Extended families. Illegal immigrants. Sweatshop workers. Flotsam washed up on British shores.