Peter James - Dead Tomorrow

‘What you have to think of, Mrs Beckett – may I call you Lynn?’

She nodded, blinking away tears.

‘What you have to think of are the alternatives. What are Caitlin’s chances otherwise? That is what you must be thinking, no?’

Lynn sank her head into her hands and felt tears rolling down her cheeks. She was trying to think clearly. A quarter of a million pounds. Impossible! She thought for an instant about some of her clients at work. She offered them payment plans spread over years. But an amount this large?

‘Perhaps you could raise a mortgage on this house?’ Marlene Hartmann said helpfully.

‘I’m mortgaged up to the hilt already,’ Lynn replied.

‘Sometimes my clients get help from family and friends.’

Lynn thought about her mother. She lived in a rented council flat. She had some savings, but how much? She thought about her ex-husband. Malcolm earned good money on the dredger, but not this kind of money – and he had a new family to take care of. Her friends? The only one who had money was Sue Shackleton. Sue was divorced, from a wealthy guy, and had a nice house in one of Brighton’s smartest districts, but she had four children in private school and Lynn had no idea what her finances were like.

‘There is a bank in Germany that I work with,’ Marlene said. ‘They have arranged finance in the past for some of my clients. Five-year-term loans. I can put you in touch.’

Lynn stared at her bleakly. ‘I work in the world of finance. At the tragic end of it, the debt-collecting end. I know that no one is going to lend me that kind of money. I’m sorry, I’m desperately sorry, but you’ve had a wasted journey. I feel so stupid. I should have asked you on the phone yesterday and that would have been the end of it.’

Marlene Hartmann sipped some more tea, then put her cup down.

‘Mrs Beckett, let me tell you something. It is ten years now that I am doing this work. Not once, in all this time, have I made a wasted journey. This may seem a lot of money to you at this moment, when you have not had time to think clearly. I will be here in England for a couple of days. I want to help you. I want to do business with you.’ She handed Lynn a business card. ‘You can reach me on this number 24/7.’

Lynn stared at it, through her blur of tears. The printing was tiny. And her hopes of raising the money were even smaller.

Rares clutched the electronic game in his hands, staring out of the rear window of the Mercedes at the passing English countryside. It was a windy day, with fat, puffball clouds shunting across the blue sky. In the distance he saw a range of tall, green hills that reminded him a little of the countryside where he had lived for his first few years as a child, in Romania.

They drove across a roundabout, past a signpost to a place called Steyning, and he mouthed this name to himself. The car accelerated hard and he felt the seat back pressing against him. He was excited. Soon he would see Ilinca again. He was thinking about her smile. The soft feel of her skin. The trust in her nut-brown eyes. Her confident, independent spirit. She was the one who had found this German woman, who had arranged for their new lives. He loved that about Ilinca. The way she could make things happen. The way she seemed to be able to take care of herself. And he loved the way she told him he was the only person in her life who had ever looked after her.

He wished they could have travelled together, but the German woman had been adamant. Ilinca first, then him. There were reasons why they could not travel together, good reasons, the German woman had assured them. They had trusted her.

And now they were here!

The two men in front were silent, but that was fine. They were his saviours. It was good to be quiet, to have time to think, to look forward.

The road narrowed. Tall, green hedgerows on either side. Music played on the car radio. A woman singer he recognized. Feist.

He was free!

In a short while they would be together again. They would earn the good money they had been promised. Live in a nice apartment, perhaps even with a view of the sea. With every passing tree, hedge, road sign, his heart beat faster.

And the car was slowing now. It made a left turn through a grand, pillared gateway, past a sign which read WISTON GRANGE SPA RESORT. Rares stared at the name, wondering how it was pronounced and what it meant.

They were winding up a narrow tarmac driveway, past several warning signs, which he could not read:

PRIVATE PROPERTY

NO PARKING

NO PICNICKING

STRICTLY NO CAMPING

The hills lay ahead of them. One of them had a clump of trees on the summit. They wound past a large lake on the left, then entered a long, straight avenue of overhanging trees, the verges covered in fallen leaves. The car slowed, went over a sharp bump, then accelerated. Rares could see manicured grass to the left of them, with a flag on a pole in the centre. Two women were standing on the grass, one of them holding a metal stick, about to tap a small white ball. He wondered what they were doing.

The car slowed again, went over another sharp bump, then accelerated again. Finally, at the end of the drive they stopped outside an enormous, grey-stone house, with a circular tarmac driveway in front. Rares had no concept of architecture, but it looked old, and very grand.

All kinds of smart cars were parked here. He wondered if it was a very expensive hotel. Was this where Ilinca was working? Yes, he decided, that must explain it, and he would be working here too.

It seemed isolated, but that would not matter so long as he was with Ilinca, and they had a place to sleep and be warm and food to eat, and no police threatening them.

The Mercedes turned sharply right, passing under an archway, then pulled up at the rear of the house, which looked less smart, beside a small white van.

‘Is Ilinca here?’ Rares asked.

Cosmescu turned his head. ‘She’s here, waiting for you. You just have to have a quick medical and then you will meet her again.’

‘Thank you. You are so kind to me.’

Uncle Vlad Cosmescu turned back in silence. Grigore looked over his shoulder and smiled, revealing several gold teeth.

Rares pressed down on the door handle, but nothing happened. He tried again, feeling a sudden stir of panic. Uncle Vlad climbed out and opened the rear door. Rares stepped out and was then steered by Uncle Vlad up to a white door.

It was opened, as they reached it, by a big slab of a woman in a white medical tunic and white trousers. She had a square, unsmiling face with a flat nose and her black hair was cut short, like a man’s, and gelled back. Her name tag read Draguta . She looked at him with stern, cold eyes, then her tiny, rosebud lips formed the thinnest of smiles. In his native Romanian tongue she said, ‘Welcome, Rares. You had a good journey?’

He nodded.

Flanked by the two men, he had no option but to step forward, into a clinical-feeling, white-tiled corridor. It smelled of disinfectant. And he felt a sudden, deep unease.

‘Ilinca?’ he said. ‘Where is she?’

The puzzled look in the woman’s small, dark, hooded eyes instantly deepened his unease.

‘She is here!’ Uncle Vlad said.

‘I want to see her now!’

Rares had lived by his wits on the streets of Bucharest for years. He had learned to read expressions in faces. And he did not like the exchange of glances between this woman and the two men. He turned, ducked under Cosmescu’s arms and ran.

Grigore grabbed the collar of his denim jacket. Rares wriggled free of it, then was felled, unconscious, by a single chop on the back of his neck from Cosmescu.

The woman hoisted his limp body over her shoulders and, followed by the two men, carried him on down the corridor a short distance, then through double doors into the small, pre-op room. She laid him out on a steel trolley.