Marnie Riches - The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows - A gripping thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat

‘Lord Bloom! Aren’t you worried that Jack Frost will come after you?’

He was careful to maintain an air of sobriety. ‘I am here to bid adieu to a dear friend and longstanding business partner. Thank you. Good day.’

Their voices rang in his ears, as he stood in the threshold of Southwark Cathedral’s great stone hall.

‘Are you taking measures to protect yourself, Lord Bloom?’ they shouted.

Inside, an organ ground away at a hymn he didn’t recognize. The place was packed with mourners wearing snowboots and colourful ski-jackets that were at odds with the sombre occasion. All eyes were on him. He nodded to the young man with the plucked eyebrows who stood in the aisle, ushering family to the left and business colleagues to the right. Recognised him as one of his rising stars.

At his back, the journalistic hordes continued to bay for a response.

‘Is it true that the killing was ordered by someone in the criminal underworld? Did Rufus Lazami have many enemies?’

Their questions bounced off him thick and fast; those cadaverous flies throwing themselves against a sealed window. He would not answer. He would not give them the satisfaction. Let the press and Scotland Yard keep digging. They wouldn’t find a fucking thing.

‘What are you going to do?’ Sophie asked, her Doc Martens scuffing up snow onto the hem of her floor-length batik-print skirt. She grabbed George’s hand, as they walked along Millbank.

The Thames was on their left, a white ribbon twisting through a cityscape that looked like it had been dipped in liquid nitrogen. On their right, Millbank Tower loomed: a 1960s brutalist monolith with windows. Somewhere, on one of those dizzying levels that stood sentinel over Albert Embankment, the Open Society Foundation was situated.

George shook Sophie’s hand loose, swiftly switching her rucksack to her right shoulder to prevent her from trying to hold her hand again. She sighed heavily. Wondered whether to say anything about this unlooked-for physical contact. Perhaps some things were better left unsaid. ‘I don’t know. Sally’s on my case. The Home Office is burning my ear about deadlines. If I don’t find that fucking laptop and my USB stick, I might as well apply for a job stacking shelves at Tesco. Maybe my Aunty Shaz can get me back my old cleaning job at the titty bar. It’s at least a years’ worth of work. Gone. Just like that.’

‘What did the pigs say?’ Sophie asked. Her earrings, necklaces and the buckles on her flowery satchel jangled as she walked.

‘Don’t call them the pigs,’ George said. ‘My partner’s a Chief Inspector in the Dutch police.’

‘Your partner? You were slagging him off the other night. Blows hot and cold, you said.’

‘That was then. A lot’s happened since.’ George noticed the expectant expression on her newfound friend’s face. She remembered the awkward moment when Sophie had propositioned her in the pub, and regretted even having asked her back for a coffee with no strings. Today, every gesture of camaraderie seemed like a cloying advance. Every knowing glance on the tube had felt overly suggestive. ‘Right now, I wish I had six foot five of policeman to stand guard over my place. It’s freaky having someone go through your stuff. It happened to me when I was living in Amsterdam.’ She shuddered, thankful for the long johns she wore beneath her jeans, though it was the memory of the Firestarter, touching her things in the little bedsit above the Cracked Pot Coffee Shop that caused the hairs on her skin to stand on end.

The brightness of Sophie’s green eyes seemed suddenly dimmed, or was it just the shadows cast by the covered approach to Millbank Tower’s lobby? George quietly chastised herself for being arrogant.

‘You’re welcome to stay on my sofa again tonight, if you want,’ Sophie said, holding the door open for George. ‘I might not be able to offer you pig protection, but at least I’m on your doorstep if you need me.’

Sophie’s sofa had been less than comfortable. A battered old thing, covered in cigarette burns and cat hair. Next to it, a large coffee table, festooned with carelessly abandoned coffee cups, wine glasses, ashtrays, Rizla packets, a hairbrush, several hefty academic books and the latest by Donna Tartt. But the anticipation that George would join Sophie in bed in the middle of the night had occasioned something far worse than simple discomfort. It had brought on an unwelcome bout of insomnia.

‘Darkest hour is just before dawn,’ George muttered beneath her breath, remembering how the night had felt like it would never end.

‘What?’ Sophie asked.

‘Nothing.’

Together in the cavernous reception area, they signed in. All brown, white and black marble harked back to a time when London was swinging and fabulous. Now, rendered fashionable again by a passion for all things mid-century, George reflected. If she could only afford her own place, she might go for that retro-look too. In fact, she’d settle for bloody Ikea if it came to it. As long as it was hers.

High above the city, George and Sophie sat in comfortable armchairs. Biscuits artfully arranged on a plate. Herbal tea in hand-painted mugs. They were facing a dumpy middle-aged project worker called Graham Tokár. He oozed well-meaning and an energy that almost audibly crackled, directed, quite plainly, towards Sophie. Had Sophie at some juncture also offered him a fuck in a pub over a burger, George wondered?

‘So, I’ve told George, here, about the charity funding initiatives that lessen the poverty and social exclusion of the Roma,’ Sophie said.

‘That’s right,’ Graham said, angling his body towards George but not tearing his gaze from Sophie’s eyes. ‘Musical institutes. Education grants. Lobbying European parliament for change. We work with the poorest people in some of the most financially stagnant and racist environments in Europe.’ He finally looked at George. The spark had vanished. ‘And many of the staff, Europe-wide, are Roma too. Like me. I’ve got a Scottish mother, but a Hungarian Roma dad.’

George looked down at her notes. She followed the line of her pad to Graham Tokár’s shoes. He had a piece of chewing gum stuck to the heel of his left foot. This much, she could see, as he crossed his legs. In his right ear, he wore a small, silver sleeper. He was clearly an articulate and interesting man, but she hated his earring. His ears were wrong.

‘You know you’ve got an infection in your piercing,’ she said, pointing to the inflamed flesh of his earlobe.

He touched his ear self-consciously. George made a mental note not to shake his hand when they left.

‘Have I?’ he asked, face flushing red right up to his hairline where his greying hair had started to thin. ‘Oh, well, did Sophie tell you about—?’

‘Look,’ said George, blinking hard. Checking her phone. No messages from the police about her stolen laptop. Shit . ‘I’m a criminologist. I’m doing research into trafficking. Not the Roma. Sophie asked me to come here today, and it’s nice of you.’ She rammed a biscuit hastily into her mouth. ‘And these biscuits are great.’ Speaking with her mouth full. ‘But to be honest, I can’t see the point—’

George could feel her colleague’s eyes boring into the side of her head. She felt instinctively that both Sophie and this charity project worker thought her an outrageous arsehole. Was she being rude? Probably.

‘I spend a lot of time in prison,’ she said by way of an apology. ‘I’m specifically interested in hearing how the Roma are embroiled in human trafficking. As victims. As perpetrators. Anecdotes. Groups you can put me in touch with. Stats. That sort of thing.’