Younger (17 page)

“So she was let go?”

Becca shook her head. “No. She fell or jumped under a train at the Oxford Circus Tube station one day after work. You know, at rush hour, one needs to be careful not to go too close to—” She blinked. “I still feel as if I’d let her down in some way. She wasn’t an especially likable person, but I feel terrible that she’d do something like that!”

“How awful! When did this happen?”

“Last winter, just before the acquisition. I guess Mr. Barton decided to scrap that retinol line afterward because he didn’t replace her and the line just went away. Then, after the launch in New York, he told us about your joining us. ‘Top drawer,’ he said, which is one of his highest compliments.” She sighed. “I wish I’d done something to help her.”

Anna aimed for a consoling smile. “You mustn’t blame yourself, Becca. We can’t save everyone. She could have just fallen, and you weren’t close. Anyhow, give the campaign some more thought and we’ll touch base again Monday.”

“Will do. And, thank you, Tanya. It’s very generous of you to give me more responsibility.”

“It’s nothing. You’ll be here long after I’ve gone.”
Good thing I’m not superstitious,
she thought as Becca left.
I could be tempting fate saying something like that
.

As soon as the door closed, Anna took out her iPhone and typed “Olga Novrosky” on its memo pad. She ignored the inclination to run to Pierre Barton demanding, “Why didn’t you tell me about Olga?” Instead, since it was past five, she grabbed her things and left.

She ran down the steps of the Oxford Circus Underground station and swiped her Oyster card at the turnstile; once on the platform, she stood back by the wall, far from the edge and the drop to the tracks. When a standing-room-only car arrived, she slipped on and held tightly to the pole as she was borne through the dark tunnels.

She didn’t go straight home. Instead she headed to a café with free Wi-Fi and took out her iPhone. She connected to the café’s Wi-Fi and then switched to the untraceable Virtual Privacy Network (VPN) connection Rob, whom she now considered her personal security expert, had recommended if she went online with her own electronics.

Then she Googled “Olga Novrosky.” News reports were perfunctory. Olga Novrosky, twenty-three, a Russian national who had recently moved to London, died after falling or jumping in front of a train as it entered Oxford Circus station. A coroner’s hearing was scheduled, blah, blah, blah.

The only paper that had anything more was one of the down-market tabloids. On half a page, eight pages in, it strayed from the official line, asking “How Did Olga Die?”

She read:

A mysterious young Russian woman, recently arrived in London, died when she plunged into the path of an incoming train at Oxford Circus Underground station yesterday at approximately 6:00 p.m. Witnesses said the woman, Olga Novrosky, had pushed ahead of those waiting in front on the crowded platform just as the train was on its approach. “Then she just shot forward and was gone,” said a witness.

Novrosky had been employed at nearby Barton Pharmaceuticals for two months and was on her way home from work.

“It was too crowded to tell much from the CCTV footage,” said a police source. “We see her arrive and move through the crowd. Several people move forward behind her, but that’s to be expected of anyone waiting to board a rush-hour train. Further investigation will depend upon the coroner’s verdict.”

Police have thus far been unable to trace friends or family. Service on the Victoria line was halted for two hours due to the incident.

Swell,
Anna thought,
the Victoria line
. Did Olga usually take it to Piccadilly and change, as she herself did, to get to Gloucester Road? Had Olga had a handy “aunt” in South Kensington? The journalist’s name was Nelson Dwyer. She checked the time. Past six-thirty, but newsmen probably worked longer hours than beauty editors did. She might as well see what she could learn, especially why he’d used the word
mysterious
. An online search supplied the number, then she dug out one of her new cell phones to call.

She was nonplussed by how easy it was. Dwyer sounded pleased to speak to Lisa Jones, an American reporter investigating press coverage of unexplained violent deaths in the post-terror-attack world.

“See, none of these hacks bothered to do anything but take the police statement. Me, I spoke to witnesses at the scene. One woman was hanging around with that ‘I-want-to-be-interviewed’ look on her grill, so I was happy to oblige. She said this Olga had barreled past her on the stairs down to the trains, looking behind her as if someone was chasing her.”

“Worried about being late, maybe,” Anna suggested.

“Yeah, well, you see, luv, that might fit with the slipped-and-fell theory, but no one’s in that big a rush if what they plan to do is off themselves. You know what I’m saying? I mean, there’s always another train, ain’t there? Also, the way she fell was a bit queer. Fractures on both wrists. Means she put her arms out to try to stop or break her fall. Not common suicidal behavior. Yeah, I know, means nothing. But after that bit you read was printed, this Ukrainian bird got in touch. Said she’d met Olga a couple nights before in a pub off Queensway where the Russkies gather; Olga was knocking back the tattie wine—vodka, luv—and told her she needed to scarper out of England real soon because of a bad situation. Said Olga from the Volga seemed scared—even terrified.”

“And the coroner’s verdict?”

“It would have been death by misadventure, I think—recognizing the possibility of a big fat shove—but her boss testified, told the coroner’s jury how strangely Olga had been acting lately. So it came in as a suicide. Case closed. That was the end of it as far as my editor was concerned.”

“Her boss?” She held some paper next to the mouthpiece and audibly leafed through it in a notebooky way. “Would that be Pierre Barton?”

“Nah, that’s not the name. It was . . . Manning? Martin? Nope. Madden. That’s it, Clive Madden.”

August 4

Email sent as a blind copy to Anna’s “Friends” list:

Hey, sorry I’ve been out of touch, but I’ve been on the move again! I came and went from London, too expensive in the long run for a thrifty traveler like me. Or almost anyone! Yeah, should have done the big European jaunt when I was young and less fussy about bathrooms down the hall.

So I headed to Belgium. And it’s not at all boring. How did it get that reputation? Bruges was breathtaking. Brussels was all right, but hard for me to warm to, so I went to Antwerp and am loving it. Most Flemish speak excellent English, and the city’s very cosmopolitan, with not just all the diamonds but also designers like Ann Demeulemeester and Dries Van Noten making great clothes featuring clever bias cutting and asymmetric lines. Even the nondesigner knockoffs at half the price are fabulous creations!

I miss you all but have to say I’m having the time of my life. Mwah!

A

Thursday, August 4

I’ve been giving more thought to
YOU
NGER, and now that I do “seem young,” I don’t think it matters at all other than for your Formula One agents. Your forty- and fiftysomething women, while certainly looking much more youthful, will never truly look twenty-five again, so why act as if they can?

In case my imposture wasn’t strictly for Mr. Kelm’s research, I must, in all honesty say, it wasn’t 100 percent necessary. Young people are not this, that, and the other. A twenty-seven-year-old woman dressing like Anna used to and wearing Anna’s old makeup might appear a bit staid but she would never be mistaken for a dowager. Look at Becca. Not every girl on the street is in stilettos or even UGGs. Not everyone under forty, or even thirty, hangs out in clubs. Plenty are shy, subdued, conservative, eccentric.

Tanya is a far cry from the
YOU
NGER poster girl. The
YOU
NGER woman doesn’t want to be a hot young babe. She doesn’t want to be someone
else
; as our tagline states, she wants to be herself but younger. And since she can’t
be
younger, she’s content to
look
younger. Most women my age don’t feel middle-aged or older. They feel ageless. It’s society that labels them. They’d like to have others see them as they themselves do in their mind’s eye. And they want others—especially potential employers—not to be able to take one look before pigeonholing them by age. It’s that simple.

Chapter 14

The next day was Friday, and Anna supposedly had the morning off for her “doctor’s” visit, as she would on a monthly basis. Wearing no makeup, she was conveyed by Aleksei, in his habitual tomb-like silence, to the huge Strand Palace Hotel, where Marianne was waiting in an anonymous room. The nurse took photographs, then lightly scraped a scalpel along the skin of Anna’s cheek and neck, using the scrapings to prepare two slides, which she put in a sealable bag with a cool pack for the laboratory.

Then Marianne applied a light non-
YOU
NGER moisturizer and Anna put on makeup. “Good to see you again, Lisa” was the only phrase to escape Marianne’s lips before “See you next month.” Downstairs, Aleksei waited at the curb. When she got in the back, she noticed a bag filled with her next four-week supply of
YOU
NGER products on the back seat. She was at her desk by ten o’clock.

Becca had a doctor’s appointment at lunchtime, most certainly a genuine one in her case, presenting the perfect chance for Anna to pick Chas’s brain. Over moo shu pork and kung pao chicken, she was relieved to hear he had no interest in Becca’s job. He was working on a novel set in the ad world, and he considered his job at BarPharm a “pretty stress-free” research opportunity.

“What about when that Olga woman died, though?” she prodded. “That must have been stressful.”

“Bad news, yeah. Stressful? Not really,” he said with the insouciance of the genuinely young. “Olga never had much to do with me. Or with Becca, for that matter. She spent a lot of her time holed up in her office or in with Pierre. Uh, Mr. Barton.”

“Pierre will do.” She smiled. “She didn’t report to this whatsisname, Mr. Madden?”

“Clive?” he laughed. “No way! We called Clive ‘Mr. Yes, Your Majesty.’ He’s a marketing expert, but he let Pierre act like everything was his own idea. Now, it’s really Pierre and you, isn’t it? Hugh’s the first person to admit he’s still really just sales VP. Clive’s a great guy, but too leery of making the wrong move. Maybe because he really needs the job. Sick kid, some kind of genetic disorder.”

“Oh, that’s awful. Is that all he has, the one child?”

“Nah, that’s his son and he’s got a girl who’s older. Small children. And I heard he foots the bill for a private-care home for a mother with Alzheimer’s, too. If I were him, I guess I’d worry about finding myself on the street, too.”

“I thought Olga was working with Clive on a makeup line like Madame X that got dropped after the Coscom acquisition.” She hoped he wouldn’t ask who’d told her that since she had just made it up.

He didn’t, but he had nothing to offer, either. “Above my pay grade, ma’am.” He grinned cheerfully. “That was great moo shu. First time I’ve eaten here. Anyhow, as soon as Olga died, whatever she did stopped being done, as far as I know. She didn’t seem to be working hard on the retinol thingy. Or on friendliness. She barely acknowledged my existence.”

“You must not have been thrilled when you heard I was coming.”

“Well, we didn’t know much, did we? But no worries, Tanya. To speak ill of the dead for a sec, she was a prize bitch. You treat us with respect, give us responsibility, and even ask the lowly office boy to join you for Chinese. Who could ask for more?”

“Thanks, Chas, that means a lot. And lunch is on me.” When he weakly protested, she interrupted. “I say, ‘On me,’ but I mean this one’s on Madame X.”

The night before, something had suddenly struck her, and she’d called the journalist Dwyer again to ask about the CCTV tapes from the platform the day Olga died. Did he have copies? “Negative, I’m afraid. You’ll need to go to the rozzers for that. But I might have some stills from the tapes. That help you?”

She couldn’t let this go without seeing them, nor could she go to the police, so she asked him to take a look. “I’ll call after lunch tomorrow and see if you found them.”

Now, telling Chas she had a few things to pick up before going back to the office, she walked him back, then kept going, ducking into a tobacco shop to buy a phone card and ask where she could find a pay phone. She called Dwyer and arranged to meet him at a pub in Soho at seven.

She was uneasy. Something strange was going on, and she feared she’d waded into a mess that could be dangerous, even deadly. Still, she also felt exhilarated. Shuffling Madame X copy she’d already written once for the US launch, guiding Chas and Becca, and scribbling increasingly mediocre fiction for her diary and emails just wasn’t enough. And now that she was growing more certain she was a pawn in someone’s game, she was both pissed off and determined to figure out who was moving the chess pieces.

After work, she went to the big Waterstones in Piccadilly Circus and picked up one of the books Rob had recommended on computer security. Then she moved on to Tottenham Court Road to a discount electronics shop, where she bought a small, inexpensive laptop, some flash drives, and universal electrical adapters. Then she picked up the mousiest light brown hair color she could find. She hoped she would never need any of these things, but for only a few hundred pounds’ cash outlay, she now had whatever might be required should she suddenly need to disappear.

The Wardour Street pub Dwyer had suggested was an old place, reeking of stale cigarette butts. Either regulars smoked illegally during off-hours or the stained velour of the seats was as old as it looked and had absorbed more tar and nicotine than a four-pack-a-day addict’s lungs. Nelson himself fit in with the surroundings: fiftyish and seedy around the edges, wearing a shiny suit and stubble, and with cigarette-stained teeth like walrus tusks. The gleam of sly intelligence in his eyes completed the tabloid stereotype.

He got himself a second pint after draining the one he’d been nursing when she walked in, bringing back a half of cider for her. “So, Lisa Jones, tell me,” he said as he sat back down again, “why hasn’t your newspaper in New York heard of you and why the fuck did you think an old hack like me might believe some cock-and-bull story about suicide in a time of terrorists?”

His tone was light, but she sagged into herself, diminished by her stupidity. “Don’t be glum, luv. Not a bad cover story, but nobody in the world would have any interest in Olga from the Volga’s final Tube journey unless they had a better reason. I’m not refusing to help you, but you need to level with me.” He paused. “And sweeten the deal.”

“Sweeten the deal?”
God, did this tabloid hack want a king’s ransom for the photos?

He tapped his red-veined nose. “I have a feeling, Lisa Jones, that you’re investigating a hot trail gone cold. Eh? And hoping Olga’s tragic ‘passenger action,’ as they call it, might lead to something on the real story, eh? Getting warm? Needless to say, if there’s a story there, I want it first for the UK, with a shared byline, if you please.”

“Well—” In the dead silence that followed, she was surprised Dwyer couldn’t hear the gears of her brain racing around like a hamster in its wheel. She needed to pass for the savvy journalist he thought she was. “Shared byline for the UK, I take it? Not for the US, too?”

“Well, it’s a necessity to have both, innit? Otherwise, it will look like your mate Nelson gave you the good stuff only to be fobbed off with just a wee British byline, won’t it?”

She sighed as if in reluctant agreement, then said a silent prayer that the new lie she’d just worked up was slicker than her last. “A source told me that some names that must not be named—
serious
higher-ups—are involved in subsidizing and protecting a Russian and Eastern European call girl ring, the clients of which comprise a roll call of celebrities, city wheeler-dealers, and peers straight out of Debrett’s—a list harder to get into than the Royal Box at Ascot.”

He laughed. “Depends which royal’s box you’re thinking of, pet. If you mean the Royal Enclosure on Royal Ascot Day, it holds so many people you could be there all day without setting eyes on a bloody royal. But I get your drift. And I’ve heard whispers, too,” he bluffed. “You were told this Olga was involved?”

She nodded. “Attractive Russian girl, working in some half-assed marketing job, unfriendly to her coworkers and out of the office on ‘appointments’ a lot. Could be nothing. But your write-up grabbed my attention.”

“The other papers dropped the ball. Looked at the statistics and shrugged it off. See, about eighty people end up under a Tube train each year, more than ninety percent of them jumpers. Most of the others are written off as slip-and-falls, what with folks shoving to get in front at rush hour. If, at a coroner’s hearing, some muckety-muck from the office says, ‘Yeah, Olga wasn’t herself lately, acted weird and depressed,’ then Bob’s your uncle, the verdict’s going to be a jumper. So by that point, it doesn’t strike anyone as odd that, for all intents and purposes, Olga Novrosky didn’t exist. Police never managed to trace a family; no one ever reported her missing.”

“I’m going to do some more digging,” she said. “If I need to call you, I’ll just say it’s Lisa from Wardour Street, all right?”

He chuckled. “You’ll be having the lads thinkin’ I’ve got some bimbo in a knocking shop. This part of Soho was all brothels once upon a time,” he explained. “Still not exactly Pall Mall.” He reached under the table and pulled up a manila envelope. “Here. Typical crap CCTV quality, I’m afraid.”

They bent their heads together over the copies of the photos. “See, this is her. Now, look here: in this sequence either of these two blokes could be following her on purpose.” He pointed to two indistinct blobs.

“Dark hair, both of them?”

“Nah, black caps, I think. Like watch caps. That’s clearer in the other photos. Here, this is immediately after she went under.” The two men’s heads were now closer, and the figure that had been Olga was no longer to be seen. “So, siren’s going off now, announcement being made to clear the platform.” He leafed through a few more photos and then spread out three. “And here they start to leave.”

The faces beneath the dark caps were indistinct, but the two were moving separately and didn’t seem to be together. It was hard to make out any one person moving toward the cameras; all were partly blocked by others or out of focus. And then, staring at those last three, flipping through them to see one after another quickly like CCTV footage, Anna caught something that almost made her gasp.

Walking toward the camera—not 100 percent clear but in sharp enough detail to be recognized, not with the dark-cap men at all—was Martin Kelm.

She didn’t tell Dwyer she’d recognized anyone; she just tucked the photocopies into her bag, paid for the next round, and made inconsequential small talk as best she could about her imaginary journalism work in America. She felt a little skeevy lying to him; on the other hand, there was an actual chance of his one day getting his scoop.

It was easy to find a Pakistani-run call center and Internet café near Leicester Square. There, she fed Olga Novrosky’s name into every search engine she could find. Dwyer was right: she’d existed no more than Tanya Avery did.

She went onto the BarPharm website, vaguely remembering seeing photos of staff parties in the newsletter archives she’d skimmed while seeking background on Pierre. There were plenty of photos, most with the subjects identified—but no Russian names.