Surrogate – a psychological thriller (21 page)

Susan watched me from the doorway. "The woman I was telling you about, my wife, her name is right here," I said. Susan moved closer. "It proves the two of them must have known each other before."

Alice's older sister shrugged. "So they went to the same school. It doesn't mean they knew each other."

"It's too much of a coincidence. Are you sure Helen never mentioned my wife's name, Emily Givings? Perhaps you know where her parents live."

"I told you. She were only there for a couple of years. And she never stayed with anybody's family."

"Does the school still exist at least? Do you have an address?"

"Oh yes, they keep sending us begging letters. As if we've got any money to spare."

All the way down to London I kept turning over the revelation that Mole and Alice had gone to the same school. Even if they had known each other – and, at that age there was a big difference between years – did that mean Mole had put Alice up to blackmailing me? And if so, why? What was it about me that my wife hated so much? More important, my wife must know something more about Alice's murder, something she had not told the police. I was coming to the appalling conclusion that my wife was involved in Alice’s death. And if she had not told the truth about that, what else had she not told them? An important piece of the jigsaw had been pushed into place, and my instinct was to rush to the police and tell them everything. Yet another voice urged restraint: softly softly, catchee monkey was another of Dad's sayings. I could picture DI Syal looking defensive and folding her arms while I laid out all my evidence before her. "All of this is circumstantial," she would say. "There is nothing to connect the dots."

The idea of getting in touch with the recycling company Alice had stolen money from came to me on the way back to London. Once at home, absolutely done in from the journey, it took only a few seconds to Google Alice's fraud conviction again. Even though every fibre of my being was stretched to breaking point, I had to keep pressing on. In my mind, police dogs were snapping at my heels. I was the wrong man, running down an alley towards a dead end.

I got through to the recycling company's customer service line when it opened the next morning and was put through to the head-office switchboard. I told the managing director's assistant that I worked for an insurance company investigating a fraudulent claim by one of their ex-employees. Which was kind of true. The hesitant-sounding managing director came on the phone.

"How can I help?" he asked.

"Mr Crowther?" I said. "My name is Hugo Cox, and I work for Berkshire RE, an insurance company. We're investigating suspected fraud by a woman who used to work for you, Helen Noades."

Crowther spoke with the softest Yorkshire accent. "She hasn't worked here for a long time. I don't know if I would be of any use."

"All the same, I would like to come and see you."

"I'm very busy. Could you come and see me in a month? I've got some time then. My secretary can make an appointment."

Now that I had my foot in the door, I wasn’t going to let him get away that easily. "I'm afraid I need to see you before then. Today, if possible. You see, the police are involved."

That gave him pause for thought. "The police? As I said, Helen worked here only for a short time. I really don't see what use I could be."

"I'd like to be the judge of that. You see, this fraud case–" I was reaching here "–it's similar to how she defrauded your company."

"The police, you say ... well, um, I see. I'm free from about two o'clock onward if that helps."

It took nearly an hour to drive from Woolwich to the office building in south-west London. The satnav told me that I had arrived at my destination, a cul-de-sac beside an Asda supermarket. Wordsworth House was a bleak seventies’ building opposite a multi-storey car park. It was so cold in the lift going up that I felt as if I’d lost my hearing.

Phil Crowther struck me as a fussy man. As he came round his desk, I noticed the expensive fountain pen tucked into his breast pocket. He also smelled of chlorine. Beyond the vertical venetian blinds of his office, staff were hunched over computers, faded sales targets scrawled on a whiteboard.

"I've just been swimming," he said, gesturing to a chair. "When you get to my age, you need to keep in shape."

"What kind of work do you do here?" I said, sliding my business card across the desk to him.

"Recycling. We buy white goods – freezers, washing machines, dishwashers – and strip them for precious metals. You'd be surprised how much palladium there is inside. We sell it on to computer manufacturers. It's a big market."

"So, how's business?" I asked, noticing the empty desks beyond the venetian blinds.

Crowther rubbed his Van Dyck beard. I wondered if he was the kind of man who had manicures. "Not so good. The government keeps changing the rules. It's all very precarious, and it's all I can do to keep one step ahead of them. The entire company would collapse if there were a change in legislation. It's almost as if they don't want companies like ours to exist, when all we're trying to do is put a bob or two in people's pockets."

"You would have thought they’d want to encourage the green economy."

Crowther made an odd movement, as if he was about to break into a little jig. "So, how can I help you? You said you wanted to talk about Helen Noades."

"Yes, she's involved in an insurance claim we're suspicious about. I wanted to find out more about her. I read about her conviction for fraud. That's why I'm here. When did she work for you?"

"She applied for a job in our accounts department. I think we were her first job. She was a very well-presented girl, always willing to work late. At the beginning. It was our finance director who noticed money was going missing. Small amounts at first, then larger. The ledger didn't add up. We confronted her, and she confessed everything. Burst into tears, right in this office, in fact. Still, we had no choice but to prosecute."

"Did she say what she wanted the money for?"

"She told me her father was ill, and that she was paying for his cancer treatment."

"There's something I don't understand. The newspaper said the fraud was discovered in August 2010, yet the police weren't called in until nine months later."

Crowther made a fluttery gesture with his fingers. "Everything always takes longer than you think."

I sensed he wasn’t telling me the whole truth, so I pressed on. "But why did it take so long for the police to get involved? I mean, you already knew she'd been stealing money from you."

"I can't really remember."

I shifted in my seat. "Look, Mr Crowther, perhaps I had better lay my cards on the table. Helen Noades was found murdered last week. You might have read about her in the papers. She was calling herself Alice Adams. It was on the news. Somebody bashed her head in with an ashtray."

Crowther sat back in his chair. Obviously he had not heard. "Good lord. Do the police know who killed her? Why would somebody do that?"

"Wait, there's more. While it's true that she stole money from my company, it's more accurate to say that she took money from me personally. She was blackmailing me."

I went through the whole story of how Helen Noades had come into our lives, leaving out the part about my infidelity. "I know I was being naive, but I thought that once we had rescued our baby, Helen would be arrested and I would get my money back."

"At least your baby is safe. What’s happened to the money? Have you got that back yet?"

I could only shake my head.

"Life never turns out the way you think it's going to, does it?" Crowther got up from his chair and closed the venetian blinds. "As you've been so frank with me, perhaps I should do the same," he continued, clearing his throat. "She blackmailed me, too. I was, uh, in an unhappy marriage, and we started having an affair. When you get to my age, the attention of a twenty-two-year-old girl is, ah, intoxicating. There was something about her ..." Crowther paused, and I wondered if he was seeing Alice as I remembered her, looking behind her and smiling with recognition as I turned her over onto her elbows and knees. "I didn't know what to do when my finance director told me she'd been stealing money from the company."

A thief like my own father, I thought. "And that's when she threatened to tell your wife," I said, finishing his sentence for him.

"Sometimes if you're stuck in the forest and don't know which way to turn, it's best not to do anything."

"You thought that somehow the situation would resolve itself?"

Crowther nodded. "Eventually, though, I had to do something. My finance director threatened to resign unless we prosecuted. I had shareholders to answer to. Still, I never expected Helen to go to jail. The judge said he wanted to make an example of her."

"And your wife, did you tell her?"

Crowther held up his hand and smiled ruefully. He was not wearing a wedding band. "In a funny way I'm grateful to her. I'd been trapped in a cage for so long that I couldn't see the bars anymore. I kept having this recurring dream of standing on a cliff edge holding my son's hand, too afraid to jump. I was so scared of the effect divorce would have on him. I was infatuated with her, you see. When my wife found out, it kind of made up my mind for me."

"And what effect did it have on your son?"

The recycling manager turned the photograph on his desk towards me. It showed a smiling, greasy-haired schoolboy in a school uniform. "Children are resilient," he said. "He stays with me every other weekend." I was about to commiserate when there was a knock on the door. A youngish man about my age popped his head round.

"Phil, there's a problem with Coulsdon. They're not accepting the paperwork. They say it hasn't been filled out correctly." His belly hung over his trouser waistband.

Crowther sighed, "It never rains but it pours." He shrugged, as if to ask whether there was anything else, and I took this as my cue to leave. I stood up, apologised for taking up so much of his time, and we shook hands.

"Oh, Mr Cox," he called as I was halfway out the door. "If the same thing happens to you, make the most of it. They grow up so quickly. And that time is never coming back."

Switching on the Porsche’s ignition, I noticed that my seat didn't feel quite right. So, Alice had played exactly the same game with Crowther as she had with me – instigating an affair and then threatening to tell his wife unless he fed her lots of money. And look how he had ended up: divorced and on his own, just like the other weekend dads. I vowed that this was not going to happen to me. I was going to clear my name and reunite my little family, so help me God. My fingers were still searching for the adjustment button down the side of the seat when they brushed against something. It felt like the foil edge of a pill strip. Scrabbling it up, I found a busted-open package with the brand Cerazette repeated in tiny diagonal writing. It was a packet of contraceptives. The only thing I could think was that Mole must have dropped them, because she was the only other person who drove the car. Then it struck me.

If my wife was infertile, why was she taking contraceptive pills?

So, Mole must have been on the pill throughout our marriage. All that business about her being infertile, about our needing to go down the surrogate route, had been another lie. Why? I felt as if the answer was staring me in the face and I was too stupid to see it. Mole and Alice must have met each other at school and subsequently concocted this scheme together to strip me of everything I owned, that was clear. But it still didn't explain what had driven Mole to do this. I mean, she could have married me and then ruined me in a divorce settlement, that was common enough. Questions crowded my mind, each one piling on top of the other. Hang on, I reasoned, if Mole really was on the pill, then why didn't her gynaecologist spot it? He would have seen her tests. At least that was one question I could get an answer to, I thought, digging my BlackBerry out of my jacket.

"Doctor Forget's surgery."

"May I speak to Doctor Forget, please? My name is Hugo Cox. My wife is a patient of his."

The busy doctor's surgery murmured in the background. "I'm sorry. Doctor Forget isn't in the clinic today. May I take a message?"

"Could you ask him to phone me? He has my mobile number. It's important."

"Of course. I don't know if we're expecting him today."

"Please, just tell him. As soon as possible."

"I'll pass on the message the moment I see him."

The car dashboard clock told me I had less than an hour to meet Bob Grauerholtz at his hotel. Grauerholtz, chief executive of Continual Life, had summoned me to lunch, having flown in from New York last night. I thought about driving to Liverpool Street, but that seemed even more of a hassle than dumping the car back home. Whatever it was that he wanted to talk to me about, it couldn’t be good.

Dad used to bring me to The Imperial for tea when it was a slightly shabby, old-fashioned place with big chintzy armchairs. One of the big hotel chains had taken it over, and now the reception area was all sombre wood and discreet lighting. There was a kind of reverent hush around reception, where a Mao-suited concierge directed me to the restaurant. I preferred it the way it had been.

Grauerholtz was studying the menu when I found him. "So, how are you finding the jetlag?" I asked, sitting down. Given the time difference, he looked annoyingly perky. "Been running and answered some emails," he said, glancing up briefly. He was handsome in that classic jut-jawed American way, with black, almost dyed-looking hair. Dressed in a white shirt and grey business suit, he could have been a Mormon. "Jesus, do they just do a plain steak?"

I had read somewhere that The Imperial had become a fashionable meeting place, and the hotel restaurant hummed with people eating. Looking around, I vaguely recognised some of the faces. The room reminded me of a fish tank, in which some of the most dangerous of the species were swimming.

Grauerholtz snapped his menu shut. "So, how'rya? How you been keeping?" he smiled, revealing a perfect set of teeth. All Americans had good teeth. Shark teeth.

"Oh, good. Keeping busy, you know."

"Yeah, uh, listen ... we read about that stuff in the papers. About your surrogate mom. Jeez, I can't imagine ..."

"I know. It's been a terrible strain."

"How's your wife bearing up? You must have been so relieved to get your daughter back."

"Oh, she's coping. She's gone away for a few days," I said vaguely.

"And the cops ... Are they any closer to finding out who did it?"

I shook my head. "They're still appealing for witnesses. The forensic investigation didn't come up with much."

"Listen, uh, Hugo, if you need to take time off, we'd understand. I mean, you've got so much going on."

I could see where this conversation was leading, and I wanted to head it off. "No, I don't want to do that. You can only do so much sitting at home. Work is the best medicine." I gave him my brightest salesman's smile, putting across a confidence I didn't really feel.

"I gotta tell ya, the board isn't happy. My chairman was on the phone just before I came downstairs. What I'm trying to say is, everybody understands–"

"No, I'm fine. Really."

Grauerholtz dropped his smile, and we sank down to a deeper level. Now it seemed as if the two of us were alone in the room, sitting in darkness. Here it comes, I thought.

"Perhaps I'm not making myself clear. I'm not asking you to take time off-"

"You're telling me."

"Hugo, listen," he whispered, placing both palms down on the table as he leant forward. "Do you think this is just about you? Have you any idea how this plays to our shareholders? Our stock market price? The chief executive of a company we're trying to buy involved in a murder investigation? It just doesn't play well." He had dropped his folksy tone, and there was a harder edge to his voice.

I desperately wanted a drink of water. "The police have not arrested me. They only questioned me. I've got nothing to hide–"

"In this business, perception is reality. Brokers don't give a shit if there's a difference over here between being arrested and charged. Same difference." Grauerholtz sat back and tried looking magnanimous. "Look, buddy, all we want to do is bench you until the heat cools down."

"What does my father say about this?"

"He agrees with me."

The waitress appeared at our table asking if we wanted something to drink. Grauerholtz switched his smile back on. As he gave her his best good ol' boy charm, the sound of the room came back. "Honey, I'll have a ginger ale and my friend will have–"

"That's all right. I'm not staying," I said, getting up from the table.

"Hugo, be reasonable."

So, they had all betrayed me: my wife, Alice and now my father, stabbing me in the back along with the rest of them. I was just the patsy, whether it was for Dad’s fraud or for Alice's murder. "You know what, fuck this," I said, throwing my napkin down.

Grauerholtz looked surprised as I lurched towards the stairs. Other diners looked up, sensing disturbance. Fucking Americans. They promise you everything, but it's all a pack of lies. You couldn't trust anything they said. Well, they were all going to pay, all of them, I was going to make sure of that. Fuck you, I thought, fuck the lot of you.

My plan was to drive up to the Lake District school where Mole and Alice had apparently first met. I could still make it before dark. The Ashurst College website had shown photos of studious girls sawing away on violins or caught mid-action playing hockey, splendid thighs thundering around a sports field. I had phoned up first thing this morning pretending to be a prospective parent, asking whether it would be possible to meet the headmaster. His crisp secretary made an appointment for late that afternoon. Another four-and-a-half-hour drive up. What I really wanted, though, was an address for Mole's parents; presumably the school must have one. And if I had an address, then I could confront them about their daughter’s whereabouts. I wondered if they even knew she was married, or that on paper at least they were grandparents. How would they react when I told them their daughter had pretended they were dead? I would take grim pleasure in finally telling Mr and Mrs Givings the truth, payback for all the lies their daughter had told me.

I descended to the underground car park, which was so cold you could taste the cement at the back of your throat. My footsteps rang out as I clicked my car doors open. Lights flashed. That was when I sensed that I was being watched. A bright shiver ran through me. "Hello?" I called out. "Is anybody there?" My echo died in the empty car park. Christ, you have got to stop being so spooked. Nothing is wrong, nothing is the matter, this is all in your head.

My plan was to put the car on the Woolwich ferry, the car platform that crosses and recrosses the Thames. After that I would drive north through London until I connected with the M25. Ten minutes later, I was stuck in a queue of cars waiting to board the ferry. Supposedly this was the quickest way to get north of the river, but it didn't feel like it. Come on, come on, I muttered, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. Drivers were getting out, wondering what was going on. The ferry was still unloading on the north side of the river, a process that at this rate was going to take hours.

That was when I saw the Range Rover is my rear-view mirror.

It was black with smoked-glass windows that you couldn't see inside. Just sitting there, watching me. Stop being so paranoid, I told myself, there are probably hundreds of black Range Rovers in central London. It was the first good day of spring, and motorists farther back were getting out of their cars. Nobody got out of the Range Rover, though. Cars edged forward again, and my forehead felt clammy. There was a pain in my throat, as if somebody was pressing down on my Adam's apple. I found it hard to swallow. A ferry worker in a hi-vis jacket waved at us to come forward, and cars ahead of me started rolling down the ramp and onto the deck. My turn next. I glanced into my rear-view mirror again. The black Range Rover was three cars behind me, as alien and menacing as a spaceship. There was space for about two more cars up ahead and, if I was lucky, I might just make it on board and leave the Range Rover stranded. Now it was my turn. The man in the fluorescent jacket circled his arm for me to keep advancing, and my car clunked down the hydraulic platform while another worker guided me into a tight parking space. "Whoa," he said raising his hand. Looking back, I was dismayed to see the Range Rover rolling onto the ferry deck, the final car to be allowed on.

Ferry workers got busy preparing to cast off. Drivers got out of their cars again to enjoy the warmth of the sun. England had been wreathed in fog for weeks, and this was the first good weather for ages. I, too, got out of my car, pretending to stretch my legs but really wanting to get a closer look at the Range Rover. Still nobody got out. Oz-like, Canary Wharf lay in the distance, and I walked over to the ferry rail to admire the view. My heart was thumping because I knew what I had to do. Any moment and I was going to make a run for it.

Was this the car that had been parked outside Alice's cottage, the one police suspected of belonging to her murderer?

If so, he had me in his sights.

The hunter had become the hunted.

Move, now.

I made a run for it, slipping through the gate as it was closing. "Hey, come back," one of the ferry hands shouted. The hydraulic platform was rising, separating from the car deck. If I took a running jump, I might just be able to make it. Instead, I mistimed my step and only just managed to grab the greasy metal lip. The ramp was rising too quickly, and I hung on for dear life. I was dangling, trying to haul myself up. My legs flailed uselessly as I tried lifting myself onto the ramp, glimpsing oily black water below. Ten feet. Fifteen feet. My muscles screamed as I clung on, hanging over open water, but my weight was becoming too much and I could feel myself slipping. Desperately I tried to get a hold, but my fingers were sliding off the corrugated metal. I could not hang on. Why wasn't anybody helping me? Terrified, I glimpsed drivers watching me from the disappearing ferry. My fingers slid a little more. I closed my eyes and prepared to let go. This it is, I thought, the moment of my death.