Safe House (15 page)

‘Go ahead and sit down,’ Anderson growled.

I clambered into the chair alongside Rebecca’s. The rich leather moulded itself to the shape of my body and I gripped the armrest with my free hand like I was bracing myself for turbulence.

Erik folded himself neatly into the seat opposite Rebecca. Anderson collapsed into the chair across from me. He opened Rebecca’s bag. Fished around inside. It wasn’t long before his hand emerged holding a clear plastic bag.

‘These the sunglasses you found?’

‘That’s correct,’ Rebecca said.

‘They’re Lukas’s, all right. You say you found them in the woods?’

I nodded. ‘My dog found them. His phone, too.’

I passed the mobile across, conscious of the tremor in my hand, and Anderson placed it on the table next to the sunglasses. His face was set, eyes wary. He was acting like a guy who’d laid down two playing cards in a high-stakes game he suspected us of rigging. He reached inside Rebecca’s bag again, shifting the contents around. He removed her driver’s licence and compared the photograph with the real thing, one eye closed in a squint.

‘Lewis, huh?’

‘Satisfied?’ Rebecca asked.

Anderson grunted. He zipped the bag closed. Returned it to Rebecca. Then he opened his jacket and pulled out a small notebook and pen.

‘We’ll start with your full details,’ he said. ‘Shoot.’

I opened my jaw to reply but Rebecca raised her hand in front of my mouth.

‘His surname is Hale,’ she said. ‘But that’s all you’re getting. For now. First, you can tell us about Lena.’

‘I need details.’

‘Details.’ Rebecca tapped a nail against the tabletop, like she was trying to recall the meaning of the word. ‘Mr Anderson, if you’re as good as your employer thinks you are, you really don’t.’

‘My daughter is missing.’ Erik propped his elbows on the table. ‘Please understand this.’

‘We do understand,’ Rebecca said. ‘We understand a girl has vanished. You claim that she’s your daughter, and if that’s the case then we’re sorry to hear it. But you have to realise that we know nothing about you, aside from the fact you’ve flown here at short notice in a private jet.’ She acknowledged our opulent surroundings with a heft of her chin. ‘All we really know is that Rob was involved in a motorbike accident with a girl whose existence has been denied until now. Two men were with her and you’ve told us you think they may have been killed. You asked us not to go to the police, and we haven’t, despite the personal risk that decision may involve.’ She paused for a beat. Looked between Erik and Anderson. ‘And until you begin to give us some kind of explanation for what’s going on here, I’d say that’s detail enough, wouldn’t you?’

Erik flicked his eyes at me. I nodded, confirming that Rebecca spoke for both of us.

‘Very well.’ He pushed up from the table, standing awkwardly, his head bowed against the low, rounded ceiling. He delved inside the pocket of his trousers. Removed a leather billfold. ‘Lena is my daughter. I promise you this.’ He retook his seat and showed us a photograph that had been placed behind a plastic window inside the billfold. ‘This picture was taken on Lena’s fifteenth birthday.’

The photograph was of Erik with his long arm around a willowy blonde girl. Erik was shirtless and the girl wore a pale-pink T-shirt and a seashell necklace. A white, sandy beach stretched into the distance behind them.

‘That’s her,’ I said to Rebecca. And with my words came an instant flush of relief and a heady sensation of buoyancy – as if a weight that had been tied to my ankles had finally been cut free. At long last, I was talking with people who knew for a fact that Lena was real.

‘Go on,’ Rebecca said to Erik.

‘That picture was taken eight years ago. My daughter was a sweet girl. Innocent. You can see this, yes?’

‘It’s only a photograph, Mr Zeeger.’

He leaned back in his chair. Flipped his billfold closed and slipped it back inside his trousers. ‘Maybe so, but it’s true. Her mother died when she was just four years old. We were very close. Always, Lena would talk to me. Even business decisions, I would discuss with her. But when she was older, this changed.’

‘Sounds like your average teenager,’ I said.

‘No, she was not average.’ There was a wet glimmer in Erik’s startling blue eyes. Raw emotion in his voice. ‘Lena was extraordinary. Smart. Ambitious. She wanted to work for me. Alongside me. Running my company.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Love, Rob. Love happened.’

He was sincere. I could see it in the earnest cast to his eyes, the composed way he held himself. He was beginning to sound like some drippy song. A greeting-card sentiment. But if it bothered him, he didn’t show it.

‘She told me she was in a relationship,’ he said, ‘on her seventeenth birthday. I did not approve. The man she spoke with me about was much older. They had been together some months already. You can perhaps understand why I did not like this.’

‘You were her father. Of course you didn’t like it.’

‘Lena, she did not understand.’ The corners of his long mouth drooped downwards. ‘I forbade her from seeing this man. I told her this was unhealthy.’

‘And Lena rebelled,’ Rebecca put in.

Erik lifted his hands, then seemed confused about what to do with them. He dropped them back down on to his lap. ‘There were parties. Drink. Drugs. I lost my Lena to it.’

‘With all due respect, this doesn’t sound all that unusual,’ I told him. ‘There are kids all over the Isle of Man doing the same thing.’

Erik smiled, as if indulging me. ‘And do these children have trust funds worth many millions of euros? Are the parties they attend in Spain? Ibiza? Are they on yachts? In villas? With criminals? Drug dealers?’

I shook my head. Embarrassed by his intensity.

‘It is like I tell you, I am rich.’ Erik circled a finger, taking in the jet we were sitting in. ‘Lena, too. This is the world she moves in. Everything, it is bigger, no? The world she has access to.’

‘And the trouble she can get into,’ Rebecca said, as if finishing an unspoken thought.

‘Exactly this.’

‘So is that how Lena came to be in the Isle of Man?’

‘No.’ Erik glanced at Anderson, then down at his hands. ‘This is not why. Not directly.’

‘So why mention it?’

He sighed. ‘Eventually, the man Lena was with found another girl. Younger even than Lena had been. I was relieved. But Lena did not come home to me. She . . . blamed me. So she found somebody else. Someone she knew for sure I would hate. Again, he was older. Again, she fell in love. They became engaged.’ He paused. Looked at me. Looked at Rebecca. ‘Two months ago, the man my daughter planned to marry was killed.’

Silence. I decided to fill it.

‘Was his death an accident?’

Erik turned to Anderson. The powerful American moved his jaw around, like he was chewing gum. ‘The man we’re talking about was a British national. He was found in an apartment Lena was renting in London. Area of Primrose Hill.’ Anderson’s bass American voice expanded, filling the cramped interior of the plane. ‘Victim was poisoned. A cyanide derivative. The killer left no fingerprints. No real evidence. Got clean away.’

‘Witnesses?’ Rebecca asked.

‘None.’ He rested his squared-off fingers on the edge of the table. ‘Lena was there when he died. They were drinking vodka together. But the vodka had been spiked with a sedative. Knocked them out cold.’

Rebecca shook her head. ‘That still doesn’t explain why Lena was in the Isle of Man, or why she’s gone missing.’

‘She was here for protection,’ Erik said.

‘From?’

‘The killer. The people the killer worked for.’ Erik looked pained. ‘There had been . . . threats.’ He turned to Anderson. I got the impression he was being cautious about the level of information he was prepared to give us.

‘The threats were coded,’ Anderson explained, opening his hands. ‘But legitimate. We took them seriously. It was my strong belief that Lena would be at risk if she stayed in London. We figured the guy’s death was a warning.’

‘What about the police?’ I asked.

‘We couldn’t trust them to protect her.’

‘And how did they feel about that?’

Anderson didn’t answer. Erik looked away.

‘Wait.’ Rebecca’s head jutted forwards. ‘Are you saying the police didn’t know she was here?’

Erik’s hands tightened into fists. ‘We had to protect my daughter.’

‘Did she at least talk to the police in London?’

‘You must understand. I was prepared to do everything I could to keep her safe.’

‘So who got to her?’ I asked. ‘The people who threatened to kill her?’

‘We think so.’ Erik’s knuckles had whitened.

‘Then I’m sorry.’

He tilted his head up. ‘It is much worse than you know.’

‘Worse, how?’

‘The man who was killed was Alex Tyler. Perhaps you have heard of him?’

I shook my head.

‘He was the leader of an organisation called the Green Liberation Group. They like to think of themselves as eco-activists. I call them terrorists.’ Erik hesitated, waiting for the impact of his words to register on our faces. ‘You begin to understand, perhaps, what this means for me. What it means for my Lena.’

*

Lena was nowhere to be seen. Lukas had checked every room. Twice. The apartment was not big. A living room with an open-plan kitchen at one end, a corner sofa and a television at the other, and a modest dining table in between. A cramped study with a desk, an office chair and a laptop. A bedroom with a double bed, a wardrobe and an en-suite bathroom.

No Lena. No sign of her.

Lukas rested, bracing his hands on the kitchen counter. His temples pounded. He was hot and sweating. He could feel a soggy film on his back and neck. He lifted his palms and saw that he’d left two wet prints on the black granite.

He was out of ideas. Out of options.

There was a telephone in the study. Lukas had seen it, next to an answer-machine. He limped slowly through the living room and dropped into the cushioned office chair. Reached for the phone. Smoothed his greasy thumb over the buttons.

He knew Anderson’s number. Knew he had to make the call. But the call would mean that he’d failed. Let Mr Zeeger down.

He delayed. Asked himself if there was anything else to be done. Asked himself what Pieter might try.

Then it came to him. The man with the sling. Maybe he could find a name for him. Personal details. Enough, perhaps, for Anderson to use.

There was a grey metal filing cabinet in the corner of the room. It might contain papers – bills and bank statements and personal correspondence. But Lukas was a gadget guy, a computer fiend. So the first thing he did was to open the laptop.

The machine was heavy and cheap. It was slow. The hard drive whirred and hummed and chattered. The operating system was three years out of date.

The screen turned blue. An icon appeared in the centre.
User 1
. Lukas clicked on it with the trackpad. The screen went blank. Then a desktop image materialised. A photograph. The man in the sling and a woman. Arms around one another. Smiling. Laughing to camera.

Lukas pushed back from the desk. Raised a hand to his forehead.

A small charge detonated in his chest.

Lukas recognised the woman.

How could he not?

And the sight of her changed everything. 

Chapter Twenty-one

I did understand the importance of what Erik had told us. I’d recognised the golden tulip insignia on his pilot’s blouse and the tail fin of his jet. The motif is featured on gas stations throughout Europe and beyond. On oil rigs. On tankers. On lorries. On the fairing of TT bikes and Formula One cars. SuperZ Oil is one of the world’s leading petrochemical companies, and from the way Erik had talked, I got the impression he was high up in its command.

‘What’s your role exactly?’ I asked Erik.

‘My role?’

‘Your job. For SuperZ.’

He didn’t even blink. ‘I don’t work
for
SuperZ, Rob. I
am
SuperZ. I own this company.’

So now I knew. Erik had told me that he was rich but the truth was he was way beyond wealthy. His company’s turnover probably dwarfed the GDP of most nations.

No wonder he’d been so uncomfortable with Lena’s choice of fiancé. Alex Tyler’s role as a prominent green campaigner would have been a source of embarrassment for Erik. More pressing, though, must have been the fear that Tyler was only interested in Lena because he could use her to harass Erik in some way.

‘Did you suspect Tyler was behind the threats to your daughter?’

‘Originally, yes,’ Anderson said.

‘And now?’

‘Now we figure we’re dealing with a dissident branch of his organisation. Assuming his relationship with Lena was genuine –’

‘They were getting married, right?’ Rebecca put in.

Anderson paused. ‘We don’t think it was legitimate to begin with. The guy was no saint. But over time, we figure that changed. And we think there are members of his group who didn’t like that it changed.’

‘So what, they killed Tyler?’

‘Maybe.’

‘And now you think they have Lena?’

‘It’s a concern.’

Rebecca whistled. ‘You called them terrorists,’ she said to Erik. ‘Just how radical are they?’

He closed his eyes. ‘They are capable of terrible things.’

‘Have they contacted you yet?’

‘No. But if you are thinking these people would seek a ransom, I’m afraid you are mistaken. To them, my money is tainted. They have no interest in it. They wish only to hurt me.’

‘Why hasn’t this been in the press?’ I asked. ‘I don’t remember reading anything about Tyler’s death.’

Erik pursed his lips, as if I’d mentioned something distasteful. ‘There were a few early reports. We could not help this. But since then, my company has worked hard to keep things discreet.’

‘You mean you smothered the story,’ Rebecca said.

His expression became strained. I waited for Rebecca to back down or apologise. She didn’t.

‘Seems to me you’ve asked enough questions.’ Anderson shuffled forwards in his chair and gestured at me with his notepad. ‘You said you wanted to help us find her.’