Frame-Up (12 page)

"I want to kiss you," he murmurs and pulls me closer. Our lips touch,
the pressure increasing slowly. His tongue reaches to meet mine,
provoking long forgotten sensations. The urge to unite with him becomes
suddenly unbearable.

"Come, Silvio," I murmurs, "I want you."

Before I can fully rise, he lifts me up, kisses me more passionately, and
asks: "Which door?" and then carries me to the bedroom.

Tuesday, 28
^th
October, 6:45
a.m.

I wake with a feeling of utter contentment. I would have liked to have
Silvio still next to me, to stroke his well-toned body, to sense his touch
on mine. He left somewhere around two or three in the morning. I stay
with that feeling of contentment. It has been more than two year since
I’ve made love to someone so passionately, so full of abandon, without
holding back. I wonder how it has been for him.

Why is a wonderful man like this not married? … Or is he? I didn’t
even ask him. He didn’t wear a wedding band, but that doesn’t mean
much nowadays, nor have I ever seen him with a woman. When my
parents split up I made a solemn pledge never to get involved with a
married man. I didn’t want to be the one who made a man stray from his
marriage. My father’s affair with Lucy caused the final rupture between
my parents. My mother went into hysterics for days, screaming at him
every time she saw him, ultimately driving him out of the house for good,
although now, with hindsight, I have come to realize that their marriage
had been one on paper only for years before that. I must ask Silvio.
Maybe I should call him later today. The vague sense of unease lingers.

Finally I force myself to rise. The weather has again turned sour, cold,
a light drizzle from a low cloud cover, visibility maybe two hundred
yards. Nevertheless, I go for a run, come back soaked both inside and out,
and then warm my body with a hot shower. Having missed out on the
planned night of work — hacking into Long’s computer — I want to
make the most of today.

Any change in his spending pattern will be a giveaway. I’ll check if he
has finally bought the penthouse he always bragged about. If possible, I
will also check out some of the other Lewis’ employees, particularly Fred
Garland, and hopefully find out if any of them repaid a substantial part of
their mortgage recently. If that line of inquiry doesn’t lead anywhere, I
will see if anyone suddenly drives a fancy brand-new car.

Tuesday, 8:40
a.m.

On the way to the Bayswater underground station, I walk past my van. It
is still where I parked it the day before. By nine I am at the Land Registry
Office.

I am armed with the phone list of Lewis’ employees that I received
early September. It shows their home addresses, as well as their e-mail
addresses. I fill in the request forms and then pay the three pounds for
each of the five addresses I want to check out. Armed with copies of the
registration documents, I return home.

Long has indeed purchased the penthouse studio. Its valuation is 1.07
million pounds. The change of ownership is dated the third of October,
less than two weeks prior to the Sanvino transaction. That’s when the
equity and mortgage funds must have changed hands, but the negotiations
for the penthouse would have happened on the weeks before. The
settlement date doesn’t mesh in with the transfer of funds for the Sanvino
affair, but it matches the opening of the account at UBS Willis showed
me. Coincidence or significant? I also wonder from where the guy might
have received the equity for such an extravagant apartment?
Unfortunately, the document contains no information on whether there is
a mortgage against the title. But if he took out a mortgage, he would still
have needed about a quarter million of his own funds. He started at Lewis
five years before me. Could he have saved that much? Not with his
lifestyle. From what I saw, his commission income isn’t that great. He is
too lazy to work hard. And could he support mortgage and interest
payments of about 100,000 a year? Or did he suddenly inherit big? If he
really is behind the scam, it is my educated guess that he would have
needed bridging finance. Again, could he have arranged that with his
record?

All I have is questions, but no answers, no promising leads. He though
still remains my most likely culprit. Maybe one of the private land
registry firms can find out the size of his mortgage.

What puzzles me even more is that he never mentioned or hinted to me
that he actually bought the place. I reckon that he would consider even me
a good enough platform for bragging, but then we’ve hardly exchanged
a civil word during the last two months of my employment. Has he, in
fact, told anyone else about the purchase? If he kept it a secret from
everybody at the office, then this could be a strong indication that he
doesn’t want any connection to be made between the purchase of the
apartment and the Sanvino affair. A tenuous conclusion I intend to
investigate further.

The documents for the other junior employees yield nothing of
interest. However, Fred Garland’s is more startling. I would never have
suspected that he lives in a house with extensive grounds, valued at more
than four million pounds. Again, there is no information on mortgages
against the title. I also remember office gossip that he comes from a
modest background, but made it big in the business. Still, maintaining a
mortgage on a mansion of that value can even be tough at his income
level.

Out of curiosity I go to the Google maps sky view. It shows a small
two-storey mansion, pre-WWII style, possibly containing ten rooms, a
fenced-in ten-yard, kidney-shaped swimming pool, a well-kept garden
with ornamental bushes and lawns around the house, the whole
surrounded by tall deciduous trees. In the street view, the house is mostly
hidden behind trees and bushes. The metal fence and gate around the
property alone must have cost a small fortune. I print out an enlarged sky
view and the street view approaching the gate.

I don’t seem to get anywhere. There is no choice but to see if a private
property agency can help. I search the yellow pages and find an outfit
within walking distance at the far end of Craven Road near the
Paddington Railway Station.

Tuesday, 11:50
a.m.

Mr. Warren of Cossgrove Land Agents ushers me into his office. On the
way there I pondered what story to invent for my request. In the end I
decided to pretend coming from a credit-checking bureau that needs
verification of financial asset statements made by loan applicants to a
small private lending agency. Warren seems to buy my story, but the cost
of making the two checks, one on Edward Long, the other on Fred
Garland, is a staggering one hundred pounds each. He promises to have
the results by tomorrow early afternoon.

When I come out of the building and set out back toward my
apartment, Mr. Swarthy, the
mafioso
, comes up from behind and blocks
my path. Did he follow me to the agent? Is he shadowing my movements?
I don’t like the thought of that.

I try to step around him, but he puts a hand on my shoulder and says
in Italian: "Wait, woman. I have another message for you." This time he
drops the ‘
Lei
’ and instead uses the familiar ‘
tu’.

My first instinct is to floor him. Nobody touches me on the shoulders
without my consent. But then I think better of it. I might as well listen to
what he has to say. I will learn more that way than by letting my rightful
anger teach him a lesson. So, I wait, facing him.

"It seems that you did not take my first message seriously. It’s now
three days and I have not seen you take any steps to cough up that money.
It’s only another three days till Friday. You would not want to have any
of your relatives come to harm, would you?"

"Signore, do not give me the ‘
tu
’ and do not dare to touch any of them,
I warn you."

"It is all up to you." He actually switches back to the formal ‘
Lei
’.
"Two million pounds. Three more days. I am not kidding." With that he
turns and crosses the street to the railway station.

My father’s family are the only relatives in England. The girls! A
shiver runs up my spine. They are really in danger. It isn’t simply my
florid imagination. I have to warn my father again.

Then it occurs to me that the
mafioso
must have followed me last
Saturday evening when I went to warn my father, or possibly earlier when
I went to visit the girls. I inadvertently revealed where they live. I can’t
think of any other way that guy could have found out. Nobody at Lewis
knows where they live. My father has an unlisted telephone number. Gary
is the only one of my acquaintances who has met him, and I doubt that the
guy obtained that information from him.

The moment I’m back home, I call my father’s office. He is away for
the day and is only expected to be back later tomorrow. I wonder if this
means that he took Lucy and the girls to her parents in Wales. So I call
Lucy. My heart sinks when she answers. She tells me that dad is at a
meeting in Glasgow and will only fly back tomorrow noon.

I don’t let slip anything about the renewed threat by the Mafia guy. It
would only upset Lucy unnecessarily, nor can she do anything about it.
I have to be the one protecting them until I manage to convince my father
to take the threat seriously. I figure that the girls are most vulnerable on
their way to and from school. Lucy usually accompanies them and picks
them up again, but occasionally, especially on nice days, Susan, the older
one, picks up Clara and takes her home. It is only three blocks through
roads with little traffic. At home, they are relatively safe, I reason. Lucy
doesn’t let them out into the street. In the garden, Jack, their golden
retriever will protect them. He is a good guard dog. I see no other
alternative but to be their guard to and from school even if it cuts into my
efforts to find the real culprits of the scam.

Tuesday, 2:50 p.m.

I’m waiting in the shadow of a tree, opposite the school gate, observing
the street, particularly parked cars. I’m in my running outfit, big
sunglasses, my hair hidden under a white cap. I reckon that the Mafia guy
hadn’t shadowed me when I went for a run at seven in the morning. So he
won’t recognize me, nor does he have a reason to suspect me being at the
school.

This time I’ve taken precautions to come to South Kensington. Not
only did I leave the apartment building by a back door, but rather than
take the Circle line from Bayswater directly to the Gloucester Street
station, I changed to the Central at Notting Hill Gate, at Bond Street to the
Jubilee and one station later to the Piccadilly line. All the time I
unobtrusively scanned the people around me for a possible shadow. Once
I even intentionally entered a carriage and, just as the doors closed, forced
my way out again. I saw nobody suspect. I got out at Gloucester Road,
pretty certain that nobody has followed me.

There are several cars parked in the street, some even illegally, with
people waiting in them. Most are women. I rule those out. An elderly man
sits in a Lexus a few steps from me. Not a suspect either. A minute or two
before three, Lucy arrives, together with another woman. Dependable
Lucy making sure to be there when the girls emerge from the school gate.
A gray Ford Focus drives by slowly. I cannot see the driver’s face, since
he has his head turned toward the area in front of the school, but he has
the same short dark hair as the
mafioso
. The car continues down the road,
speeding up. A few minutes later the same vehicle drives up the street on
my side, just as the two girls come running out of school and join Lucy.
I’m tensing up. The driver slows, his face again turned toward the school.
By now I’m pretty certain that it is the
mafioso
. Once past the school, he
speeds up and disappears. Is he gone for good, I wonder, or just making
another U-turn to follow Lucy or even to ambush her in a side street?

I decide to get out of hiding and join Lucy, who is still talking to the
other woman. The girls spot me first and come running to embrace me.

"Ceci is here, mom, look mom!" Susan calls out, trying to draw her
mother’s attention away from the woman.

Lucy turns, a sweet smile lighting up her face. "What a nice surprise!"
she exclaims. The other woman excuses herself, and leaves with her boy.
"Are you on a run?" Lucy queries.

"No, I just felt like seeing you and the girls. The leisure of those out
of a job."

"Oh, you won’t be long out of a job, not with your talents."

"Thanks. In fact, right now I’m not even looking."

We start walking toward their house, both Susan and Clara holding
hands with me. There is no sign of the
mafioso
.