CATHERINE HUNT

Someone Out There

This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Copyright © Catherine Hunt 2015

Catherine Hunt asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780008139667

Version 2015-11-06

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Killer Reads Back Ad

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

Laura was tired and she was late. Sarah had kept her talking in the office and then, because Sarah needed a shoulder to cry on, she’d gone with her to a wine bar to talk things through. Now it was almost nine o’clock and Laura just wanted to get home. The traffic lights stayed obstinately red. She drummed her fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. Rain lashed down on the windscreen.

A car drew up in the lane beside her. A four-wheel drive with tinted windows. Huge and dark and menacing. A monster. It loomed over her, music pumping – a heavy beat pulsing against her driver’s window, drowning out the rain.

It stopped very close to her, far too close, with its bonnet stuck out aggressively in front. She didn’t look across, kept her eyes straight ahead, but she had the feeling that the driver was staring at her. Another idiot, she thought, who’d seen a woman in a sports car and had decided to show her who was boss.

The lights changed and she didn’t try to race it. She would just sit back and let it burn up its tyres on the wet road.

Laura waited but the monster didn’t move. It sat there with the lights at green. A horn sounded from behind. It still didn’t move, just stayed close beside her, and that was when the alarm bell first began ringing in her head. Not much of one, no big deal, no more than a tinkle really.

She drove off then – fast, using every bit of the 0 to 60 in six-point-five seconds that the Audi TT’s engine had to offer. Off and away, leave all the trouble behind. She liked that thought; it fitted her new philosophy for life. She’d moved on, settled down with Joe, and given up the London rat race.

Out in front, she slowed down, back within the speed limit. She looked out for the four-wheel drive but it was nowhere in sight. Her mind went back to thinking about work and especially about the Pelham divorce case.

Her client, Anna Pelham, had rung that morning to say she’d had two emails threatening to kill her. She’d sent them on to Laura. They were vicious, explicit death threats and Anna was certain her husband had sent them, though they had not come from his email address. There had been other emails sent to Anna from the same address, ranting and blustering, but these were the first to threaten her life. These were in a different league altogether and it was a dangerous escalation.

Laura had reported the death threats to the police and pressed them to charge Harry Pelham with harassment. Anna was being incredibly brave. She refused to be intimidated, sticking to her guns over the divorce. In fact, the threats seemed to have made her more determined than ever to protect her interests and especially those of her eight-year-old daughter, Martha. Good for her. If Harry Pelham had hoped to beat her into submission, his plan had seriously backfired.

When Anna had first instructed Laura to act in the divorce, she had explained how jealous and controlling Harry was. His abuse and rages had got worse and worse and then he had started hitting her. She had not wanted to leave him, had tried to keep the family together, but in the end it got so bad she had no choice. On Easter Day, after he’d slapped her hard in the face and said he’d hated her for the last six years, she walked out of the family home taking Martha with her.

Laura had heard similar stories before in her career as a divorce lawyer and she thought she’d stopped being upset by them, but somehow Anna’s graphic descriptions of what she had endured at the hands of Harry had got under her skin. They brought back all the old memories of her parents’ marriage, memories she had tried to bury.

Driving on autopilot, thinking about what more she could do to help Anna, Laura turned off the main Brighton road and into the lanes that led to home. An empty road ahead, no speed cameras here, she touched the accelerator and the Audi surged forward. She liked to feel its power. She knew the road well; the clear straight runs where she could have fun and the two big bends where she had to take care. Her foot pressed harder on the accelerator, the woods flashed by on either side.

A wild wind was bringing down the autumn leaves. They danced across her windscreen, pinned down now and again by the rain, then whirled away by the speed of her passage.

Laura relaxed and the cares of the day dropped away. She thought of Joe waiting for her and smiled. She would soon be home.

The red tail lights of a car in front were coming up fast and she changed down a gear ready to overtake. There was plenty of time before the bend. No doubt about that. She pulled out.

Lights. Headlights. Full on and heading straight for her, fast. Where the hell—Adrenaline pushed the thought from her brain before she could finish it. Too late to fall back. She was committed. Her foot stamped down on the pedal and she’d never been so glad that she drove a sports car.

The seconds played out in slow motion. The lights dazzling, filling her head, illuminating the channels of rain running down the windscreen, illuminating her white knuckles on the wheel. The ear-splitting, never-ending blast of a horn, sowing madness in her mind. Waiting for the impact, for the smash and crash of tearing metal and flesh.

Then she was past. Intact. Back on the right side of the road. Wide, terrified eyes looking in the mirror. The car she’d overtaken was far behind, dwindling at an alarming rate. It had slowed right down, maybe stopped. But where was the other? The one that had almost killed her. No sign of it at all and that was a scary thing, because the road was straight and it had to be there.

Not as scary as the other thing though. The thing that had the alarm bell in her head ringing out loud this time. She had recognized that car. It was the four-wheel drive again. The monster. And now it had disappeared.

Suddenly the big bend in the road was upon her. In her fear she had forgotten it and she hit it far too fast. Braked too hard, wrenched the wheel too far, the car went out of control. It skidded across the wet road and up onto the bank on the far side. For a moment it teetered, poised to turn over, a toss-up which way gravity would take it. Tails you win, heads you lose. The wheels came back down to earth.

It was the bank that saved her, saved her from the trees she would have ploughed into if the land had been flat. It slowed the car enough for her to wrench back control. Thank God there had been no one coming the other way.

Laura stopped the car, pulling off the road at the entrance to a wide track leading into the woods. Her arms and legs were jelly. She opened the door, swung trembling legs to the ground, and sat, eyes tight shut, sucking in great breaths of the cold, wet air.

The sound of a car made her open her eyes nervously and she watched with a jolt of panic as a drop of something more solid and sticky than rain fell on her skirt. There was another … and another. She touched it; put the finger to her lips. Tasted blood. The mirror showed a bloody gash, above and through her left eyebrow.

Another car passed. She could see the faces of the occupants, a young couple looking out at her curiously as they went by. She felt terribly vulnerable. What was she doing sitting alone and injured by the side of the road in a dark wood? She must get out of here. Suppose someone stopped, suppose the four-wheel drive came back?

She was cross with herself. She didn’t scare easily, she shouldn’t let herself get in a state. She’d had a near miss, that was all; a nasty near miss but it was over now. As for the 4x4, she thought she’d recognized it but how could she be sure? There were dozens of them, all the same, hard to tell one from another. But hadn’t she heard that same music again as it tore past her? That heavy beat pulsing in her skull.

She shook her head to clear it and blood spattered on the dashboard. She was a bit dizzy; she wasn’t sure she should drive.

Call Joe. That was the best idea. Get him to come out and collect her. They could leave her car and pick it up the next day. But she didn’t much like the idea of it being left there overnight. She hesitated.

More cars coming, that decided it. She would call him. She reached for her bag on the passenger seat but it wasn’t there. Saw it, fallen on the floor, and stretched down to pick it up and take out her mobile. The movement made her feel faint. She stopped with her head bent down and waited.

She listened to the noise of an approaching car. There was something wrong with it. It was different but she couldn’t work out why. She left the bag, pulled herself upright and as her eyes came level with the passenger window she saw it. In the wood, lights blazing.

That was why the noise had sounded wrong, she realized. It was coming from the wrong direction, it was charging up the track towards her. It was the 4x4.

There was a locked barrier across the track, about thirty feet into the wood from where she was parked. It stopped access for the general public but allowed in forestry vehicles whose drivers had the key. Surely it would stop the monster.

Something told her not to bet on it. Not to wait and see. She knew she had to move. But she sat for vital seconds, fascinated, unable to drag her eyes away from the oncoming lights. No wonder, she thought, that rabbits froze, transfixed in the road, waiting to be run down. With an effort she slammed shut the driver’s door, yanked on the seat belt and started the engine.

It was perilously close to her now but still she hesitated. Vaguely her mind registered that this must be how it had appeared and disappeared so suddenly – by using the woodland tracks. It came to a slight rise in the ground, and as Laura watched, appeared to rear up before her, a huge, malevolent metal beast, eyes piercing and engine roaring. She jammed in first gear and fled, tyres shrieking. Behind her, the barrier disintegrated.

The feeling of faintness had gone, swept away by fear. Her head was clear of everything except the need to get away. She was only seconds ahead, had moved only just in time. She looked in the mirror, saw her pursuer turning out of the wood and onto the road.

There was no doubt any more that it was pursuing her. Who was the driver and what did they want? A small part of her brain told her to observe. Read the licence plate, identify the make of car, pin down the details. Gather the clues to the who and the why. Vital for later, but worthless now. The rest of her brain cared only for safety. It told her to run and run, find sanctuary, nothing else mattered. The chase was on – she was the wildebeest, injured and fleeing for its life.

Sanctuary. Where was sanctuary? On a dark night, an empty road, still eight miles from home.

It was gaining on her. She knew these roads, she was driving a fast car, but it was gaining on her, for God’s sake. Headlights – on full beam, blinding her – filling the car, filling her head. Drive faster, panic yelled in her head, but she took no notice. She knew that if she did, she was going to crash, she was a dead woman.

Sanctuary was other people. She had to reach them. They would make her safe. It could not pursue her then. But she daren’t try to find her mobile; it was in the bag on the floor and she needed all her concentration for the road. In any case, no one could get to her in time.

There was no time. It was right behind, pushing, intimidating, inches from the rear bumper. She heard the music blasting, saw the monster looming over her. Jesus, it was going to hit her!

She tensed for the blow, but it didn’t fall. A car was coming in the opposite direction. The 4x4 backed off a fraction. She started pumping the horn, flashing her lights, hoping for help. It did no good. The car came and went, its driver probably delighted to give them both a wide berth.

The monster surged back and she felt a sudden dread. Oh yes, she thought, I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to overtake, jam on your brakes and force me to stop.

Faster. Go faster. Panic was shouting to her again, screaming at her to run. The Audi could beat off the 4x4 with no trouble. Race away, top speed, before it’s too late, but self-preservation stopped her. She wasn’t ready to die yet.

There was a turn-off not far ahead, she remembered. A narrow road; little more than a lane. She might be safer there, less room for her pursuer to manoeuvre, more chance for her to persuade an oncoming car to stop. Or maybe not. Maybe a narrow lane would be a trap. Should she take it? She couldn’t decide. Her brain felt hot and choked.

The lights behind moved and the engine revved. It was coming out, it was overtaking. Her decision was made.

It was level with her now and she forced herself to look. Observe. Log the evidence. She was a lawyer and lawyers were supposed to be good at that. But there was nothing to see. Desperately, she stared into the night but there was just the rain on the tinted windows and darkness beyond. Impenetrable.

It stayed put. Not passing by, just staying level, getting closer and closer to her. Dear God, she thought, it’s going to run me off the road!

Where was the turning? She should have reached it by now. Please let it be there, she prayed. And then she was on it, almost missing it. She wrenched the wheel violently to the left, so sharply that for a moment she didn’t think she would make it. She felt the back of the car skid on the wet tarmac, collide with the side of the four-wheel drive before peeling off alone into the lane. She changed down into second, brought the car under control, and slammed her foot to the floor.

Nothing in the rear-view mirror. Her pursuer was gone. A wave of euphoria buzzed through her, ridiculous, of course, because it couldn’t be long before it was back. But for the moment that didn’t matter. She had shaken it off, if only briefly, and that was just great. Tears of relief filled her eyes. Hell, she thought, now I can’t even see where I’m going. She wiped away the tears and felt the side of her face sticky with blood.

No sign of it. She couldn’t believe it. Kept looking in the mirror but it stayed clear. She thought that time was playing tricks – that what seemed to her, in her terror, like an eternity, when the 4x4 could have turned round and caught up with her three times over, was in reality just a few seconds and it might only now be turning into the lane after her. She stared at the clock on the dashboard and when another whole minute had gone by, she really started to hope. Another turning in the road. She took it. Took every turning she came to, kept driving fast, with no idea or care about where she was going, but each one making her feel a little bit safer, twisting and turning away from danger.

She felt like she was driving round in circles, her heart stopped by every passing car, her eyes strained for lights in the woods as she imagined it chasing her across country, her brain punch-drunk, unable to focus on finding the route home. It was almost ten minutes later that she made it out of the lanes onto a main road she recognized, and joined a welcome convoy of traffic.

Reaction set in seriously then. Her arms were shaking, her teeth were chattering and it was with tremendous relief that she saw the service station. She pulled in, parked by the café and tottered inside.

The man behind the counter looked worried and when she caught sight of her bleeding, tear-streaked face in the mirror, she could understand why. He wanted to call an ambulance but she told him she hadn’t been physically assaulted and she wasn’t drunk or drugged and he settled for her phoning her husband and handed over what she needed most – a strong black coffee.

She sat huddled over it, trying to remember. But there was nothing, nothing she could recall but the dark and the fear and the noise. No make, no model, no part of a licence plate that could be dredged from her subconscious. No clue as to who the driver had been. Not a single fact to tell the police. And she knew the police – without facts and details and evidence, she was wasting her time.

The door opened and she looked up. Joe. How fast he’d arrived, a white knight charging to her rescue in record time. Her battered heart gave a thump of joy. Tall and solid and hugely comforting. Things would be all right now, she thought.

CHAPTER TWO

It was 4 a.m. and Harry Pelham lay awake thinking about the poisonous, scheming bitch who was doing her best to hang him out to dry. He smiled bitterly to himself. No, he wasn’t thinking about his wife, though she also fitted the description; he was thinking about her lawyer, Laura Maxwell.

She had been responsible for the nineteen-page divorce submission designed to crucify him. It damned him as a bully, a wife beater, and a bad father. He could remember every word of those nineteen pages. They sent him into a frenzy of rage and resentment. It was a vile, disgusting diatribe, full of lies and exaggerations. It had lodged in his brain like splinters of glass.

His wife had no doubt provided the raw material but she’d been egged on by the toxic Maxwell woman; she wouldn’t have done it by herself. The weaving together of that deadly, distorted whole, calculated to tick every box against him, had been the lawyer’s work. He was sure of it and he hated Laura Maxwell for it.

His own solicitor, Ronnie Seymour, usually so shrewd, had been like a lamb to the slaughter. He played through in his head the previous day’s conversation with Ronnie.

‘Slight problem, Harry,’ Ronnie had said on the phone, ‘nothing to worry about, though. Come over and we’ll talk it through.’

How many times in the last few months had he heard those words ‘nothing to worry about’ from Ronnie Seymour. Inevitably, they meant the opposite.

Ronnie had been his good friend and trusted adviser for more than twenty years. He had sorted out, with no trouble at all, the frequent problems that Harry had run into with his property development empire. When Harry had gone too far, had bent the rules, had tried rather too aggressively to ‘persuade’ people who stood in his way, Ronnie had been there to smooth out the consequences. Like a few months ago, when old Charlie Rhodes refused to sell part of his back garden, a crucial piece of land that Harry needed for one of his developments.

Late one evening, Harry knocked on the old man’s door with a higher offer. Charlie yelled at him to piss off, called him a piece of shit and Harry lost his temper, pinning the pensioner against the wall by his throat and telling him how much better for him it would be to take the offer. It turned out that Charlie’s son was a police officer, and shortly afterwards, the police arrived at Harry’s office to question him about the ‘bullying and harassment’ of Charlie Rhodes. It was only because of Ronnie’s efforts that Harry avoided being charged.

Ronnie was a fixer and the business had flourished. Harry was rich. That was why he’d been so keen that the man should also sort out his marriage break-up. Ronnie knew his secrets and Harry didn’t want a stranger nosing around in his financial affairs. But although Ronnie might be clever, and spot on when it came to property law or criminal law, he was no expert on divorce or family law. That was another thing, another thing entirely, and Harry thought Ronnie wasn’t up to it. Correction. Harry knew that Ronnie wasn’t up to it.

‘They’ve frozen your business bank accounts,’ Ronnie told him as soon as he arrived. ‘It’s a nuisance but there’ll be no problem getting them unfrozen.’

Harry glowered at the tall, blond-haired lawyer and gritted his teeth: ‘You said there’d be no problem over money. You said the undertakings we gave the court were enough, you said—’

Ronnie held up his hands to stop the protest, his usual smooth manner just a tiny bit ruffled.

‘Different judge, I’m afraid. Frankly, I’m surprised at this. It’s quite unnecessary.’

‘How long before I get them back?’ Harry growled.

‘Depends how quickly we can get it listed for a hearing. Then, when we get it overturned, the court order has to reach the bank.’ He smiled reassuringly. ‘Shouldn’t be too much of a delay.’

‘How long, Ronnie? That’s what I want to know,’ Harry demanded. He had learned long ago never to expect Ronnie to give a direct answer containing a specific fact for which he could be held accountable later. That was the way with all lawyers, wasn’t it? You just had to keep on asking the question.

‘Of course, I can’t give you a date,’ Ronnie said, nettled, ‘but take it from me, it will be all right.’

‘If you say so,’ Harry said without conviction.

‘There’s something else. I’d like you to see a psychiatrist,’ the lawyer said, successfully distracting his client from the bank accounts.

‘Me? You must be joking.’

‘Unfortunately not. The allegations they’re making about the emails, we need to take them seriously.’

Ronnie was on home ground now – the emails had the whiff of crime about them and he was an astute criminal lawyer. He had wanted chapter and verse on everything in the divorce submission. Everything except the email allegations. He didn’t want to hear about them. If Harry had broken the law, and Ronnie knew about it, he wouldn’t be able to act for him in criminal proceedings if Harry chose to deny it later. Better, then, that he didn’t know.

‘Are you intending to say I’m mad?’ Harry snarled. ‘I thought you were supposed to be on my side.’

Ronnie was annoyed. He was doing his best for the man. He’d said at the beginning he didn’t want to take on the divorce. He’d made it clear he was not a specialist but Harry had insisted. Ronnie understood why, but still thought his friend should hire an expert. He had assured Harry that financial disclosure to another lawyer could be ‘finessed’. But Harry would not budge. In the end, Ronnie had reluctantly agreed. He wasn’t going to take any flak, though, now the going had got tough.

‘I’m sorry if you’re not satisfied with the way I’m handling things.’ Ronnie’s tone implied that Harry would be most welcome to go elsewhere.

‘I don’t want to see a shrink.’

‘It’s the only safe way. We need a mental health defence in place in case the allegations cause problems. Prepare the ground for saying that whatever you did, you did it when your mind was unbalanced by the stress and trauma of your marriage breakdown.’

‘If you say I’m crazy I’ll never get to see my daughter,’ Harry said, furious.

Ronnie looked at him impatiently.

‘You’ve got to be realistic, Harry. You’ll just have to take your chances over Martha. There’s a lot of very nasty stuff alleged about what sort of husband and father you are. The priority now has to be to look after yourself and your assets.’

‘That fucking lawyer has twisted everything. It’s lies, all of it. She needs to be taught a lesson, needs to learn she won’t get away with it.’ Harry spat out the words.

Lying sleepless in his bed, the desire for retribution was strong, like acid eating into his soul. He was not going to let some smart lawyer destroy him, a lawyer who had turned his wife into a vindictive, ungrateful bitch of the first order.

Harry had met Anna eleven years ago when she was twenty-two and had applied for a post as his PA at his main office in Hove. By halfway through the interview he was craving her. Not surprisingly, she got the job. A year later they were married. He was thirty-five, his property development business had taken off, and he wanted a wife and children. He had thought her so sweet, so loyal, and so terribly in need of him. But he had been wrong, totally wrong. She had thrown his love right back in his face.

Now her solicitor was demanding a ludicrously large settlement. If she got it, she would close on wipe him out, though Ronnie kept telling him that some of his assets, salted away over the years in various overseas accounts, could be kept safe and undisclosed. But Ronnie’s assurances were proving less than reliable.

‘This Laura Maxwell your wife’s using,’ Ronnie said soon after the divorce began, ‘the judge isn’t going to like her tactics.’

What garbage that had turned out to be, Harry thought savagely. The judges barely seemed to grasp the issues involved let alone the strategies of his wife’s malicious lawyer. Despite the five court hearings he had so far attended and the growing pile of paperwork associated with his case, he’d never seen the same judge twice.

Harry knew the financial damage would be bad. Most of his assets were visible, and however hard he tried, he couldn’t hide the fact that he was a wealthy man. Equality was the yardstick in divorce settlements these days and didn’t Laura Maxwell just know it. Equality – what a joke that was. Harry lay on his back, his body rigid with fury, sweat on his forehead though the night was cold.

He had made what he considered to be a generous offer to his wife, a very generous offer indeed, and a lot more than the greedy cow deserved, but Laura Maxwell had dismissed it out of hand. All she wanted was to confront him and crush him.

Gone 5 a.m. and still no sign of sleep. He thrashed around in the bed. Harry Pelham was good at fighting. He’d needed to be to survive in the cut-throat world of the property developer. He was forceful and physically intimidating. Six foot two, brawny, with a thick black moustache, and dark, deep-set eyes that looked you over as if he couldn’t care less about you, but at the same time, he was sizing you up – calculating your strengths and weaknesses. At forty-five, he had learned to be as hard-nosed as they come.

Harry wasn’t used to losing and he wasn’t going to get used to it now. He’d made other plans. With that comforting thought, he finally fell asleep.

The first time they knocked they didn’t wake him. The second time they would have woken the dead.

Damn postman, he thought.

He dragged himself out of bed, downstairs and opened his front door. Four men stood before him. They didn’t look much like postmen.

‘May we come in?’ said one of them barging past into the hallway.

Harry Pelham was under arrest.

CHAPTER THREE

Laura made tea while Sarah Cole sat miserably in her office clutching the Hakimi file to her chest and picking nervously at a corner of it. Sarah’s dark hair was greasy and her eyes were tired and puffy. She put the file down on her lap, took a Hobnob from the packet in front of her and nibbled at it.

‘Oh my God, it’s such a mess!’ she said.

Laura set two mugs of tea down on the desk and pulled round a chair so she could sit next to Sarah.

‘Don’t worry; I’m sure it can be sorted out.’

Sarah shook her head. ‘There’s no way. Have a look; you’ll see what I mean.’ She handed the file to Laura and took one of the mugs. Her lower lip trembled and she put it back on the desk.

‘The thing is, it’s not my fault. She should have told me,’ Sarah said defiantly, screwing her mouth into a scowl.

Laura opened the file and began to read and Sarah hoped that with all her experience and all the successful cases she had under her belt, Laura just might be able to come up with a solution. She picked up the mug again, dunked the biscuit, and watched as a lump of it broke off and disappeared under the surface of the tea. That was just typical, she thought, of her luck and her life these days.

Her eyes went to the photo on Laura’s desk. A summer’s day somewhere on the South Downs with Laura standing beside a horse, her husband Joe next to her, his arm around her waist. Joe looked outrageously gorgeous with his bright blue eyes and the cleft in his chin. It was a picture that made her wince and hate the world for being so unfair. Sarah’s long-term partner, Andrew, had left her eighteen months ago and moved in with one of her best friends.

Laura remembered the Hakimi case because Sarah had asked her about it at the beginning. It was a situation she had dealt with several times before and she’d been happy to advise how to handle it. That advice had been fine; the mistake had come later, with an awful result.

‘The boy is in Tunisia!’ she exclaimed in dismay before she could stop herself.

‘I know. It’s hopeless, isn’t it? We’ll never get him back from there.’

‘It makes it a bit tricky but not impossible,’ Laura replied with a supportive smile, and carried on reading. Sarah took another Hobnob from the packet. She had put on two stone since Andrew left.

It was a wretched story. When Mary Hakimi, née Walters, had left her Tunisian husband she knew very well there was a chance he might abduct their ten-year-old son, Ahmed, and take him to Tunis. She had done all she could to prevent it, even waiting patiently in her car outside her husband’s house while Ahmed was visiting his father. More than a year ago, she’d come to Morrison Kemp solicitors for help, and Sarah had got a court order stopping Mr Hakimi obtaining a passport for the boy.

Last Friday, Ahmed had met his father after school and disappeared. Mary Hakimi had been frantic and had called the police but, she thought, at least they can’t have left the country. She rang Sarah who assured her that was the case and that the boy would be traced.

And then yesterday, Mrs Hakimi found out Ahmed was in Tunisia. She had rung the Passport Agency and discovered that a passport for him had been issued to her husband the previous month.

‘No,’ she had sobbed down the phone, ‘no, no, please, that can’t be right. You’re not allowed to do that. You must have made a mistake.’

There had been a mistake but it wasn’t the Passport Agency’s, it was Sarah Cole’s. When the twelve-month court order expired, Sarah had forgotten to ask for it to be renewed. The only protection Mrs Hakimi had in place against her husband’s threat of abduction had disappeared.

It was the worst possible situation, Laura knew. Tunisia had not signed the Hague Convention on Child Abduction and that made getting Ahmed back extremely difficult. If he’d been taken to a country which had signed, there was a fairly straightforward process to follow because those countries were required to order his return to the place where he usually lived, in this case England, and an English court would then decide the matter.

But those rules didn’t apply in Tunisia. Mary Hakimi’s only option would be to start custody proceedings in the Tunisian courts under Tunisian law. It would have different priorities and traditions, she would not be on the scene, she would have to communicate with her lawyers from a distance, probably the proceedings would be lengthy and expensive with every chance of failure.

Sarah brushed biscuit crumbs from her black skirt, got up from her chair and walked over to the window. Laura’s office was on the first floor and Sarah looked down onto Black Lion Street, a busy road in the heart of Brighton’s Lanes – the old town full of narrow passages housing shops, restaurants and bars. A strong wind was blowing off the sea, buffeting shoppers and office workers taking an early lunch hour. Sarah watched them, twisting her hands in agitation.

‘She’s coming in soon. Will you see her for me?’

‘Who’s coming in?’ Laura glanced up from the file with a sinking heart. Sarah turned back from the window with a pleading, hunted look in her eyes.

‘Mary Hakimi. I can’t face her. Not today.’

Laura sighed heavily. Her head was throbbing and she felt exhausted. She hadn’t slept much last night. She’d told the police what little she could about the lunatic who’d tried to kill her. They’d written it down, asked a lot of questions which she couldn’t answer and then got out a breathalyser. She’d been outraged, though heaven knows why – she was a solicitor after all and knew the form. Joe had made a big fuss, stomped around, but she’d still had to take the test. She was under the limit, luckily, despite the two glasses of wine she’d drunk earlier with Sarah. When they got home, Joe made her some food, cleaned her wound, cheered her up, but all night long that terrifying chase had played in her head.

‘When will she be here?’

‘One o’clock. I’d be soooo grateful.’

It flitted through Laura’s mind to make an excuse and say she had a lunch appointment. The last thing she felt like today was getting caught up in this. But then she thought of Mrs Hakimi desperate to get her son back and Sarah unable to help and determined not to be blamed.

‘All right, I’ll see her,’ Laura said. She closed the file, put it on the desk and wondered what on earth she could say to Mrs Hakimi. ‘Sorry, we made a mistake, sorry we ruined your life,’ was all that came into her mind.

Sarah blew out her cheeks in relief and flopped down again in the chair. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all, maybe she would get away without too much damage. If she didn’t have to see Mary Hakimi face to face, there was no danger she would admit anything or dig herself a bigger hole. She reached for a biscuit, then frowned at the packet and took her hand away. If she did get away with it, she would pull herself together. There would be no more errors and no more Hobnobs.

She slipped into default mode and started talking about Andrew. He wouldn’t be able to stand living with Mollie for much longer and then he’d come running back to her but she’d tell him to eff off, to start with anyway. Sarah was like a broken record on the subject and Laura knew better than to point out that eighteen months had gone by with no sign of the great man’s return and maybe she should move on.

‘When you first got the court order, did you tell Mary Hakimi she needed to remind you when it was running out?’ Laura asked without much hope.

‘No.’ Sarah looked at the floor then said quietly, ‘no one told me I had to.’

Laura ignored the implication that someone, Laura presumably, should have told her. She was a little hurt that Sarah should try to spread the blame but then Sarah was upset.

‘What about a note in the diary to say when the court order ran out?’ she asked.

It was all basic stuff drummed into trainees from Day One. If you got a court order you had to tell the client, in writing, that they were responsible for letting you know if and when it needed renewing. You needed to put everything in the diary so there was a clear reminder of what needed doing and when. It was routine procedure and part of that most sacred of legal traditions called ‘covering your back’.

Sarah crossed her arms defensively and said nothing.

Laura was not surprised Sarah had forgotten. It was soon after Andrew had left her and she had been close to a total breakdown. In another job, with a more sympathetic boss, she could have taken time off sick. As it was, she had battled on, but only just.

There had been other mistakes which Laura had sorted out. She wanted to help with this one, not just because she felt sorry for Sarah, but because she liked her. They had the same sense of humour and were allies in the vicious swirl of office politics. The problem was that this mistake was much more serious than any of the others had been, and much more difficult to put right.

‘What about Marcus? Does he know yet?’

‘God, no,’ Sarah said, horrified. ‘I was hoping he might not find out.’

Sarah was in a bad way if she could delude herself that an error like this would escape the attention of the firm’s senior partner. Surely the victim – Laura corrected herself – the client, would have been onto him already. If not, she certainly would be if she didn’t get satisfaction from this afternoon’s meeting.

Laura imagined what Marcus Morrison would say. She ought to tell him, she knew, before Mrs Hakimi arrived. She could hear the low angry hiss of his voice. He always hissed when he was annoyed or disgusted, one reason his colleagues had nicknamed him ‘the snake’. The other reason was his slipperiness. He never admitted to anything, never took any blame. He would have no sympathy whatsoever. This was the sort of mistake he would never have made and would never understand.

She tried to think what Morrison would do. What slippery manoeuvre would he come up with to get out of trouble, but nothing occurred to her. Sarah had been careless and there had been a terrible consequence. That was the truth of it. The only real solution was to somehow get the boy back.

Never apologize, never explain. Rule number one. They should have it inscribed over the entrance to Morrison Kemp, Laura thought. But she had to give Mrs Hakimi some explanation. Otherwise it was what it was – negligence – and Marcus Morrison would not tolerate that.

‘I suppose I may have mentioned it to her,’ Sarah said abruptly, ‘when the order was first granted, you know, sort of in passing.’

‘In passing?’

‘All right. I’m sure I told her. I remember now. I said it to her quite clearly, don’t forget you have to tell me if you need this renewed. OK? Is that OK, Laura?’

It wasn’t OK. Not at all. Sarah was lying and Laura knew she was lying, and in any case, it had to be in writing.

Without warning, the door to the office opened and Morrison appeared. He glided across to Laura’s desk and stood beside it, polished shoes neatly together. He had no intention of sitting down, it was easier to intimidate from above. He looked at them seated in front of him and frowned.

Morrison always made Laura uncomfortable, even at the best of times. She felt like he was constantly judging her and finding her wanting, that he thought she was rather lightweight. She tried hard to suppress the feeling because she suspected it was what he wanted her to feel and that his condescending manner was designed to get that very result. She had no reason to feel that way; she’d done a lot more in her career than Morrison ever had, but knowing that didn’t seem to make any difference. Worst of all, she sometimes tried to impress him and that made her furious with herself.

Laura knew she looked younger than her thirty-four years. She had large, hazel eyes and smooth, youthful skin. To give herself gravitas, she wore her glossy black hair tied back in a utilitarian knot, and on occasion – and this was just such an occasion – she put on a pair of heavy spectacles she didn’t really need. Joe teased her about it and he was right to do so because it was pathetic, really it was, and what good did it do anyway? Whenever she met Morrison she still felt like an errant schoolgirl instead of the competent, experienced solicitor that she was.

Morrison saw the Hakimi file on her desk, pulled it casually towards him and tapped it lightly with his index finger. His small, calculating eyes fixed on her like a pair of pincers.

‘We have a problem,’ he hissed, ‘why wasn’t I told?’

There was something chilling about him, Laura thought. A quiet malevolence. She would have felt a whole lot happier if he’d shouted.

‘You mean Mrs Hakimi?’

‘I mean Mrs Hakimi. Tell me.’

His voice was almost a whisper, his eyebrows raised in interrogation. The little steel-grey eyes glinted behind his spectacles.

He must have known the story anyway, at least some of it, otherwise he wouldn’t be here. But she guessed he wanted to hear her tell it, wanted to put her on the spot.

She began, wondering how she was going to avoid dropping Sarah in it without appearing evasive and obstructive. She knew how ruthless Morrison was and she didn’t want to fall out with him. He was powerful, well connected and with a word or two, here and there, he could blight her career for ever.

She came to the tricky bit. Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of that pleading look on Sarah’s face.

‘ … so you see the order wasn’t renewed because we were never told to renew it.’

‘And Mrs Hakimi knew she had to tell us, did she?’

Laura squirmed. ‘I believe so,’ she said, wishing immediately that she hadn’t used the phrase. It was what lawyers always said when they wanted to avoid a question.

‘You believe so. I think you’d better know so.’

‘Yes. So do I,’ she said, stupidly.

Morrison’s long, angular face leaned towards her. He reminded her of a bird of prey; a hawk, maybe, or more likely, a vulture.

‘You see I’ve had her brother on the phone and he claims that no one ever warned his sister that she had to notify us.’

Laura was silent. She hoped Sarah might help her out, but Sarah had been struck dumb.

‘You won’t be surprised to hear that he was extremely angry. Of course, I know we’d never be stupid enough to forget to warn her so I was able to inform him quite firmly that his sister must be mistaken.’ Morrison paused then very softly said, ‘I presume we have it in writing.’

Laura bit her lip and said, ‘Apparently it was more a sort of verbal warning.’

For the first time, Morrison addressed Sarah.

‘Would you mind leaving us for a moment.’

Sarah hesitated, torn between relief at the chance to escape Morrison’s grilling and fear about what might be said about her when she’d gone. He waited, silent, glaring at her, until she got up and left the room.

‘I’m sorry, Laura, you misunderstand,’ he said when they were alone. ‘That wasn’t a question. I wasn’t asking you if we had it in writing, I was telling you we had it in writing. Have I made myself clear?’

She felt alarm but not much surprise. He expected her to tell Mrs Hakimi that she’d been sent a letter setting out her responsibilities at the time the court order was first granted; he expected her, if necessary, to forge a copy of such a document and he expected her to say to Mrs Hakimi that what had happened was nobody’s fault but her own.

‘Yes, perfectly clear.’

‘Good.’ He waited a moment then said carelessly, ‘I want you to fire Sarah asap.’

This time Laura was shocked. ‘I can’t do that, Marcus,’ she protested. ‘I mean, why would I?’

‘Come on, we both know the answer to that. She is responsible for this fiasco. You’re a senior lawyer here and you know what’s happened, so there we are – get rid of her. This afternoon, I suggest.’

‘But that’s just not fair,’ she burst out. ‘You must see that, after all—’

The look on his face stopped her mid-sentence. More calmly she said, ‘Surely a written warning would be enough. She’s been going through a difficult time in her personal life and—’

‘Spare me the violins, please,’ Morrison interrupted, his mouth a thin line under his hawk nose.

‘It seems very harsh to fire her,’ Laura persisted. ‘Can’t we at least wait and see if this thing can be sorted out?’

‘You disappoint me, Laura. Seriously disappoint me. I thought you were ambitious, wanted to get on, wanted a partnership here. Isn’t that so?’

‘Yes, of course I do. Absolutely, it’s just that … ’

‘Then fire her. It’s not nice, I know, but it has to be done. She’s made a bad mistake, the sort of thing that could mean a large and embarrassing negligence claim if we don’t, ah, sort it out. You see that, don’t you?

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll have to toughen up a bit if you want to succeed in this firm.’

The schoolgirl had been suitably chastised. He started to move away then stopped.

‘Hurt yourself, have you?’ He was staring at the cut on her eyebrow. She’d hoped the thick spectacles would hide it but very little got past Morrison.

‘Oh, that.’ She attempted a laugh. ‘Just an accident.’

‘I hope it’s not too painful,’ he hissed.

Her body tensed. For one horrible moment she thought he might reach out and put his arm around her shoulders. But he didn’t. He wasn’t that sort of person. She relaxed – just a little.

Ten minutes later the phone on her desk rang. Mrs Hakimi, and her brother, had arrived in reception.

CHAPTER FOUR

Harry Pelham sat glowering and silent while the policemen took his home apart. There were four of them: two from Sussex CID and two from London, from the Metropolitan Police’s Specialist Crime and Operations Unit. This was no ordinary police raid. This was a high-powered team tackling an outrageous crime.

‘We’re arresting you, Mr Pelham, on suspicion of downloading and possessing indecent images of children.’

The officer in charge, Detective Inspector David Barnes, laid it out for him. They had information that he was a paedophile. They had search warrants, for his home and his office, and they were looking for child pornography. When the searches were done, he would be taken to the police station for questioning.

He stared at the detective, his face tight with fury. ‘You cannot be serious. I’ve got a young daughter of my own. Jesus, what sort of man do you think I am?’

Barnes stared back. It was clear from the slight curl of his mouth what the answer to that question was.

‘We’ll need to take your computer to check the hard drive,’ he said.

‘Look,’ Harry took a step towards him, ‘I am not a paedophile. The idea disgusts me. Understand that.’

‘That’s what we’re going to check, sir.’ Barnes’s face was expressionless now but his voice oozed disbelief. He was big with broad shoulders, reeking of ambition and confidence, bordering on arrogant. Harry wanted very much to hit him.

‘There’s personal stuff on my computer. What right do you have to look at that?’

‘We can look at whatever we want,’ said Barnes and paused, watching Harry for a reaction, then added, ‘But in fact we only read the things that are relevant to the investigation. We’ll be scanning the photo files and doing key word searches connected to the child pornography we think has been downloaded.’

‘I’m telling you there’s none of that filth on my computer,’ Harry snarled.

‘In that case, sir, you have nothing at all to worry about.’

The urge to smash his fist into Barnes’s poker face was almost uncontrollable but as well, growing stronger all the time, were feelings of fear. Barnes’s assured attitude worried him.

‘What evidence have you got?’ he said more quietly. ‘I’m sure this is all a misunderstanding that I can explain.’

‘We’ll go through that at the station,’ said Barnes smoothly.

They started searching downstairs, clearing cupboards, tipping out drawers, shaking books and magazines to see if anything incriminating would fall out. They made it clear he wasn’t allowed to go anywhere on his own, without supervision. He must stay with them, in their sight, so they could be sure he wasn’t destroying evidence. When he went to the bathroom, one of them followed and waited outside.

They spent most time in the room he used as an office, which was a bit of a mess. The cleaner, who kept the rest of the large house in good order, didn’t go in there because Harry preferred it undisturbed. They sorted through methodically, taking files from shelves and a cabinet, sifting the contents, collecting up memory sticks, CDs, his laptop and iPad, putting everything they were taking away in a pile on the floor. They fired up the main computer, checked it was working properly, then closed it down and separated the parts before taking them out to their van.

They drove it all, and Harry, to the police station at Hollingbury. The place was heaving; busy with the fallout from a drugs raid, and the only free interview room was the size of a small box with one tiny window high up in the wall. Harry paced up and down in it, waiting for Ronnie Seymour to arrive and for the interview to begin. There was a tape recorder bolted to a table. The table was bolted to the floor.

Ronnie had had a not very satisfactory conversation with Barnes before coming to see Harry. The detective had been cagey, reluctant to give away too much of his case, but Ronnie, whose long experience had given him a sixth sense about these things, suspected Barnes had something to justify his bullish approach. As he entered the interview room there was a frown on his round, sleek face.

‘What’s going on, Harry?’ he said.

‘I’ve no idea. What have they told you?’

‘That they think you’re involved in child pornography and they can prove it.’

‘It’s not true. You know that, don’t you?’ Harry demanded.

‘I’m sure it’s not true,’ the lawyer was impatient. ‘But why are they saying it?’

‘I don’t know. I wish I did.’

‘All right. Let’s see what they’ve got.’

Barnes and a detective constable called McLaren, one of the officers who’d searched his home, conducted the interview though Barnes asked almost all the questions. His bulky presence dominated the small room, and right from the start, Harry, who was a big man himself, complained that he felt cramped and claustrophobic, like there was not enough air for all four of them to breathe. McLaren inserted two separate cassettes into the tape recorder and set them running simultaneously. He stated the time and who was present and asked Harry to confirm that he had been cautioned prior to the interview. Then Barnes took over.

‘Mr Pelham, what credit cards do you have?’

‘Hang on a minute,’ Ronnie said at once, holding up his hand, ‘before my client answers anything, I think it’s only fair that you tell him what grounds you have for making these very serious allegations against him.’

Barnes considered. He hadn’t encountered Ronnie Seymour before, but he knew he had a reputation as a wily and effective criminal lawyer. No need to make this difficult, Barnes thought, no need for confrontation. After all, the evidence was clear.

‘OK.’ He shrugged and sat back, putting his hands behind his head with his elbows menacingly pointed out, looking sure of himself. ‘We have information, and material, that implicates Mr Pelham in child pornography, possibly as part of a paedophile network. We have discovered that indecent images of children were downloaded from websites, paid for by a credit card registered in his name.’

‘That’s crap,’ Harry snapped, ‘I’ve never been near that kind of website. The whole idea is sick. Totally sick.’

‘So, what credit cards do you have?’ Barnes repeated.

‘A few of them. Some business, some personal, but I don’t use any of them to buy that muck, all right?’

‘Can I see them, please?’

Ronnie shook his head. ‘I am sure, Detective Inspector, that my client has no objection to showing you the cards,’ he said for the benefit of the tape, ‘but before he does can you please tell us the number of the card you’re talking about.’

The solicitor was anxious to avoid a fishing expedition. He wanted to make sure the police had a particular number that they could reasonably believe was registered to Harry.

Barnes tore a piece of paper from his notebook, flicked through the rest of it with large, rather elegant fingers, then wrote out a sixteen-digit number on the paper. He handed it to Harry.

‘It’s a Visa card number, sir. Is it yours?’

There was a slight nod from Ronnie, and, reluctantly, Harry reached into his jacket for his wallet and took out his Visa card. The numbers matched. The small room seemed to shrink. He started to sweat badly.

‘It’s nothing to do with me. I am not a paedophile,’ he said.

Ronnie sat forward, stroking his chin. ‘As everybody knows, you don’t need to actually have the card in your hand to be able to use it on the Internet. Someone else could easily have got hold of the number and used it. Credit card fraud is very widespread.’

Barnes turned dark, confident eyes on him. ‘That’s why we’re checking Mr Pelham’s computers. To see what’s on the hard drives.’ He managed to make it sound both polite and threatening.

‘There’s nothing on the fucking hard drives. How many times do I have to tell you that?’ Harry leaned towards Barnes and banged down his fist hard on the table.

Barnes looked at him. ‘Are you a violent man, Mr Pelham?’

‘Can we keep to the point, Detective Inspector,’ Ronnie intervened before Harry could react.

The policeman had brought with him a large brown envelope and now he took out of it a set of photographs, spreading them on the table in front of Harry. They were pictures of children. Hard-core child pornography.

‘Have you seen these before, Mr Pelham?’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘Does that mean you have seen them before or you haven’t seen them before, sir?’

‘No, no, no. Of course I haven’t seen them before.’

Harry felt nauseous and his legs were shaking. He opened his mouth to drag in air. Really, there was no oxygen left in this room, he could hardly breathe at all now. He saw Barnes watching him, and for a moment, just before he fell to the floor, was suddenly aware of his own open mouth, the nervous licking of his lips, the sweat marks left by his hands on the table. His body language was shouting out a message, a message that the detective had surely heard loud and clear, that Harry Pelham was indeed a thoroughly guilty man.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘It’s like the end of everything for me because Ahmed’s my whole world. I’m just devastated. I think I always knew it would happen but that doesn’t help, you know, when it does.’

Mary Hakimi, tears rolling slowly down her face, went on to explain to Laura what it felt like to have her son snatched away. She wasn’t ranting, she was just terribly sad which made it all so much worse. She was thirty-four, the same age as Laura, but her face was strained and careworn with lines of worry already carved between her eyes.

‘It’s been the worst time of my life. I can’t even face going into his bedroom. When the news came – that he was in Tunisia – I suppose I should have been relieved that he was alive, but for me it was my worst fear come true; the fact that he was there and then knowing that I won’t be able to get him back.’

Laura glanced at her brother. Clive Walters listened, scowling, simmering, occasionally grunting or puffing air into his cheeks.

‘I was always worried about it,’ Mary Hakimi repeated. ‘That’s why I came to you. And I thought once I had the order from the court that a passport couldn’t be issued, then Ahmed was safe. That’s what I thought. It was all I had.’ She sounded dazed at how stupid she’d been to rely on such fragile protection. As if she’d had a choice.

Laura nodded, tried to say some words of comfort but they sounded wholly inadequate.

‘And to find out that you just forgot to renew it, well, it’s beyond belief and I don’t know how you can make that kind of mistake because it’s people’s lives you’re ruining. My son should have been protected by the law and now he’s been taken away.’

An angry rumble of agreement came from Clive Walters. His fleshy face, with its heavy jowls, looked increasingly belligerent.

‘And don’t try telling us it’s not your fault,’ he said. ‘You won’t get away with that one. I’ve been onto your boss and he says there’s no doubt that Mary would have been sent a letter about renewing the order. That’s crap and you know it. She never got sent any letter.’

Mary Hakimi seemed not to have heard what her brother had said; she was still in that dazed world of her own.

‘You have to understand, it’s my family that’s gone. Have you got children?’ she asked.

Laura shook her head.

‘Then maybe you won’t understand how this has torn my life apart.’

Laura picked up a piece of paper from the file in front of her. Sarah had thrust it into her hand as she was on her way to the conference room on the ground floor where Mrs Hakimi and her brother were waiting for her. It was a copy of a letter – the letter that had supposedly been sent to Mary Hakimi. Sarah had just written it.

It did the job. Most likely it would get Morrison Kemp off the hook. She could see no easy way it could be challenged. All she had to do was hand it to them. Clive Walters would be furious, would deny his sister ever received it, but he would have the devil’s own job proving it.

She put the letter firmly back in the file and took a deep breath.

‘Mrs Hakimi, I do understand and I want you to know that I will do absolutely everything I can to get your son back.’

There was a spark of hope in the woman’s eyes but her brother was having none of it.

‘Hang on a minute. Empty promises are no good to us. It’s your fault he’s been taken. You were negligent and we want compensation. How much is what we should be talking about.’

Laura kept focused on his sister. ‘Mrs Hakimi, as you know, it’s only possible to get a court order for the return of your son if he’s been taken to a country that has signed the Hague Convention. Unfortunately Tunisia hasn’t and so you have to rely on the courts in Tunis and start custody proceedings there.’

‘You are joking, I take it,’ Clive Walters interrupted. ‘She’s got sod all chance of winning there as I’m sure you’re well aware.’

‘I’ll get in touch with a lawyer in Tunis who deals with this sort of case,’ Laura continued. ‘I assure you we’ll do everything we can to bring Ahmed home to you. Every possible avenue will be explored.’

It sounded better than it was – she was painfully aware there were no grounds for optimism.

‘And you think we’re going to be satisfied with that? No way. There’s been a major cock-up and I want to know how much you propose to pay in damages.’

‘Mr Walters, I’m afraid I must make it clear that Morrison Kemp in no way accepts any liability for what has happened, although, of course, we very much want to help in any way we can.’

‘I know what’s going through your mind,’ he growled, ‘you’re thinking that I can’t prove it. Can’t prove there was no letter reminding Mary about the court order. Well, let me tell you that whatever you say, I will make the most tremendous fuss. I’ll go to the press, to the Law Society, whatever it takes to get justice. Your name will be mud.’

‘Please, Clive,’ said his sister. ‘This isn’t helping. All I want is to get Ahmed back.’

Tears flooded her eyes. ‘Anything you can do, I’d be so grateful,’ she choked out.

‘You can trust us to do all we can.’

‘Trust you,’ burst out the brother, ‘why should she trust you now when you couldn’t be trusted to do the job properly in the first place?’

Good point, thought Laura. Excellent point.

‘I know it won’t be easy,’ Mary Hakimi swallowed hard, ‘but I’ll try anything, anything you can think of. Please let me know.’

Clive Walters looked at her with disgust. He’d seen the chance of a big fat pay-out and he wasn’t going to let it slip away. But for now he was stuck. He had no claim, he wasn’t the injured party. It was up to his sister and his sister was off in cloud cuckoo land. Reluctantly he got to his feet, refused to shake Laura’s hand and instead put his arm around his sister’s shoulders and guided her out of the room.

The second they had gone, Sarah came through the door.

‘What happened? Did you show them the letter? Did it work?’ she said, slumping down in the chair just vacated by Mary Hakimi.

‘I don’t think that letter was … ’ Laura stopped. Sarah was likely to lose her job over this; that was bad enough, there was no point in rubbing her nose in how badly she’d screwed up.

‘I told them I’d talk to a lawyer in Tunis and see if he can help. Mrs Hakimi was keen to give that a try.’

‘Great. With a bit of luck she won’t make any more fuss to Marcus then and I should be in the clear.’ Sarah gave a short nervous laugh, realizing what she’d said sounded uncaring and Laura didn’t look too happy.

‘I feel so sorry for Mrs Hakimi,’ she added quickly, ‘I’ll do all I can to help get the boy back. You know I really didn’t want to write that letter, but Marcus insisted, he said if I didn’t produce it that minute and give it to you before you saw Mrs Hakimi, I was out of the door there and then. He was really scary, you know how he is,’ she tailed off, looking at Laura for approval.

Laura knew exactly how he was. She could imagine him in another life, as the head of the secret police presiding over a reign of total terror without ever raising his voice.

She nodded and felt a stab from the headache. She pressed her palm to her forehead and held it there, trying to push the pain further back inside. Sarah thought she was safe now she had done what Morrison wanted. He, on the other hand, would be expecting Laura to sack Sarah at the first opportunity. Well, she wasn’t going to do it. Not yet anyway, not until she had tried to get the boy back.

‘Do you think we can get away with it?’ Sarah asked in a conspiratorial voice. It had occurred to her that Laura was up to her neck in it too, now that she’d handed over the forged letter to Mrs Hakimi.

Laura swallowed the urge to snap back that she wasn’t trying to get away with anything. She was losing patience with Sarah, who was so clearly concerned with saving her own skin. Her eyes smarted from lack of sleep and a wave of tiredness hit her.

‘I need to make some calls,’ she said, standing up to leave.

CHAPTER SIX

When he woke it was with the memory of fear, though he couldn’t immediately recall what had caused it. He was in the Royal Sussex County Hospital in a room on his own, off the main ward. He saw Ronnie sitting in a chair beside his bed, reading a newspaper, and then he remembered. So, it was not a bad dream after all.

‘That was one way to stop the interview,’ Ronnie said when he saw Harry was awake, but neither of them laughed.

‘What happened?’

‘You collapsed. At the police station. You were being questioned.’

‘I remember.’

‘How are you feeling?’ Ronnie said drily.

‘How do you think?’ Harry said, glancing at him. In the second before Ronnie looked away, he saw something in the man’s eyes, something very like revulsion, and it sent a chill through him.

‘I did not download that muck, Ronnie. You’ve got to believe me.’

‘We will have to wait and see what they find on the computer.’

‘They won’t find anything because there’s nothing to find. This is all complete rubbish.’

‘Let’s hope so.’

‘For God’s sake, man, how long have you known me? Twenty, twenty-five years? Do you really think I would do this?’ Harry demanded.

There was no immediate reply.

He doesn’t believe me. He thinks it’s true. Harry wondered what else Barnes had said to Ronnie.

‘The police will want to finish questioning you when they think you’re fit enough,’ Ronnie said eventually, his eyes shifting away again.

‘Then they’ll release me, right? I mean they’re not going to keep me in, are they?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. No reason why you shouldn’t get bail. There may be conditions though.’

‘What sort of conditions?’

‘They could restrict your contact with Martha,’ Ronnie said coldly. ‘And there’s likely to be a condition that you don’t contact your wife in any way. I should tell you the police believe you’ve been sending her death threats and want to question you about those as well.’

‘That’s bollocks. Of course I haven’t.’

‘They say Anna has recently received emails threatening her life.’

‘If she has, it’s nothing to do with me.’

‘Anna’s solicitor is claiming they are deliberate harassment calculated to scare your wife into backing off in the divorce,’ Ronnie continued as if Harry had not spoken.

‘This is bullshit. Laura Maxwell bullshit. It’s just the sort of thing she would invent as part of her campaign to destroy me,’ Harry said furiously.

‘Do you know a man called Paul Giles?’ Ronnie asked.

Harry hesitated. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell. Should it?’

‘It should do, yes. Supposedly he’s an old friend of yours. He sent the death threats to your wife.’

Harry stayed silent.

‘Don’t lie to me, Harry. I don’t like it.’ Ronnie looked disgusted.

‘All right, I was going to tell you before but you didn’t want to know, did you? It’s what those allegations in the divorce submission are all about. Paul Giles is an account set up by me.’

Ronnie grimaced. ‘You set up an email account, in a fake name, with the specific purpose of threatening your wife. Is that correct?’

‘No, it damn well isn’t. All I did was send her a couple of harmless messages.’

‘If they were so harmless why did you pretend they were from somebody else?’

‘Because I knew if she saw they were from me she’d just delete them, straight away, without reading a word. I just told her to stop … ’ he sucked air through his teeth, ‘being so fucking unreasonable.’

‘And when that didn’t have the desired effect you became more and more aggressive and then, still masquerading as Paul Giles, you explicitly threatened to kill her.’

‘No, I did not! It’s all being twisted, turned into something it isn’t.’ Harry’s hand touched the other man’s arm. ‘Come on, Ronnie, it’s what Laura Maxwell does.’ He said the name as if it was an obscenity.

Ronnie shook off the hand and finally looked Harry in the eye. ‘Let me give you some advice. If you have done what they say you’ve done, any of it or all of it, then it would be better to admit it now. The sentence will be lighter that way.’

‘I’ve told you everything there is to tell,’ Harry said stiffly. Fear rose inside him. So far as he could recall, in all their long acquaintance, the lawyer had never before suggested admitting anything.

‘I see.’ Ronnie’s disbelief was obvious. ‘I should let them know you’re awake,’ he said abruptly, getting up from his chair and saying a curt goodbye.

Harry assumed he was talking about the nurses until, as Ronnie opened the door to go, he caught sight of two of the policemen who had searched his home. They were standing outside his room and Ronnie stopped to talk to them.

He realized then that he had a police guard.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Laura swallowed two more paracetamol, took off her glasses and tentatively touched the wound on her eyebrow. It had bled a lot at the time but the cut wasn’t deep and it hadn’t needed stitches. She had been lucky. A shiver went over her; she was not looking forward to the drive home tonight.

She began searching for the phone number of the lawyer in Tunis. She had met him a few years ago at an international conference on child abduction. He had been a ladies’ man, a bit of a pest really, but she thought he would remember her and might be willing to help. It would be almost impossible to get Ahmed Hakimi returned through the Tunisian courts. But there was another way; something she knew had been done before in this sort of case. It was a slim chance, it depended on luck and being in the right place at the right time. You wouldn’t want to pin your hopes on it, but it was worth a try.

Before she could find the number, there was a call from Monica at the front desk to let her know that Anna Pelham was in reception.

‘She hasn’t got an appointment but she says it’s urgent. Can you see her?’

Anna often dropped in unannounced though she always apologized for it. She rang up a lot too, but it didn’t bother Laura the way it sometimes did with other clients. Anna had had a rough time, was still having one, but she was determined not to be a victim any longer and to do the best she could for her daughter, Martha. Laura liked her for her guts and for never giving in to self-pity.

Anna had been putting on a brave face about Harry’s death threats but Laura thought she must be badly worried by them.

‘OK, no problem, I’ll be down in a minute.’ She picked up the Pelham file and went downstairs to the conference room where Anna was waiting for her.

‘I know I should have told you I was coming in, but my mind’s been all over the place. To be honest, I’m a bit scared.’ Anna smiled apologetically.

As usual, Anna was underplaying her own feelings and trying not to make a fuss. She didn’t often show signs that the divorce, or her husband, was getting to her, kept it all bottled up inside. For her to say she was ‘a bit scared’ most likely meant she was absolutely terrified. Laura guessed her self-effacing behaviour was the result of years of Harry’s abuse. He had conditioned her to stay quiet about what was happening to her in the hope of avoiding more punishment. Her own feelings were unimportant; she should keep her views to herself and take what she got without complaining.

Laura remembered how her own mother had behaved the same way, worn down to timidity and obedience by her domineering father, spending her life walking on eggshells, trying not to trigger another outburst.

‘I’ll get onto the police again; push them hard to take some action.’

‘That’s what I came to tell you. The police have been to see him. One of the neighbours rang me, she said they were at the house this morning. I thought you might be able to find out what’s happening.’

‘Of course I will. Did she say anything else?’

Anna shook her head. ‘I hardly know her. She only had my number because I once had to ask her to look after Martha for a couple of hours. She just said she thought I might want to know.’

Harry had discouraged Anna from talking to the neighbours, discouraged her from getting close to anyone or keeping up with her friends. He thought it best, Anna said, that they ‘kept themselves to themselves’. It was what men like Harry did; they isolated their victim, shrank their world so they rarely talked with anyone else, so they came to think the abuse was normal.

‘I’m worried what he might do next. I mean if they tell him I’ve complained about the threats, he’ll be really mad.’ Anna’s voice was shaky.

‘He’d be a fool to do anything with the police on his tail.’

‘I don’t think that will stop him. He does what he wants.’

At their first meeting, Anna had reluctantly told Laura what Harry had done to her for years. She had not wanted to give details but gradually Laura teased them out of her. Mental, sexual and physical abuse, he had ticked all the boxes. It had got worse after Martha was born.

‘When was the first time he hit you?’ Laura asked.

Anna’s face shadowed and she stared at the floor for a while.

‘Martha was three weeks old. It was a Sunday afternoon and we’d taken her out along the sea front when we ran into one of Harry’s business mates,’ Anna said, haltingly. ‘He made a big fuss of her, said what a cute baby she was. When we got home, after I’d put Martha down to sleep, Harry accused me of flirting with the man, smiling at him in a provocative way. I said that was ridiculous and then he punched me in the face. Just like that, no warning.’

Anna looked up from the floor, straight at Laura, suddenly worried. ‘I hadn’t done anything, really I hadn’t. The man asked me about Martha and I had to speak to him, didn’t I? I smiled at him, but it was just a normal smile, because I was happy to have such a lovely baby.’

The punch had split open both her lips. Harry had been sorry, terribly sorry. It would never happen again, he said.

By then, Anna was well aware of how sexually jealous her husband was. He was obsessed with details of her sex life before they met, made her write down all her previous sexual encounters in a small black notebook he kept locked in his desk.

Anna sat up straight on her chair, smoothed out the creases in her dress. She looked her usual immaculate self despite the stress she was under; careful make-up, manicured nails, smart clothes. She had every right to look a mess but she never did.

‘He liked me to look nice,’ Anna had told Laura. ‘Soon after we got married, he started telling me how to dress because he thought the clothes I usually wore were too slutty.’

Harry told her how to style her hair, how to behave and who she could talk to, which was hardly anyone; if she ever got it wrong, he would scream abuse at her.

‘I never knew what was going to upset him. He’d be OK one minute, then go crazy the next.’

As time went by, he hit her more often.

‘No matter how hard I cried in front of him, no matter how much I begged for him to stop hurting me and no matter how many times he said he was sorry and promised he’d stop, he never did.’ Anna’s voice was flat, desensitized.

Her words brought a vivid picture into Laura’s mind; her childhood self creeping out from her bedroom and tiptoeing down the stairs, listening to her father screaming at her mother, criticizing her, hearing her mother’s constant, feeble protest, ‘Don’t say that, darling,’ as she tried to placate him.

‘Is there any chance of getting him locked up?’ Anna asked.

‘No chance, I’m afraid. It would take an actual assault before that could happen.’

‘He’s done it often enough.’

‘The trouble is he’s never been charged and found guilty by a court.’

‘I should’ve reported it, I know that. But every time he was sorry and I thought that maybe if I could stop making so many mistakes, act better, not make him jealous, then it would stop.’

‘You didn’t make mistakes, Anna, he made you think you did but you didn’t. It’s what wife beaters always say – she made me do it.’

Anna nodded, took a tissue from her bag and blew her nose. ‘Sorry, Laura, sorry to make such a fuss. I’ll be OK in a minute.’

‘Let me talk to the police and find out what’s going on.’ Laura found the number in the file and called it while Anna waited. The officer she wanted wasn’t there and she left a message.

‘If we can persuade them to charge him with harassment, he’ll probably get bail but with a bit of luck there’ll be a condition that he can’t come anywhere near you.’ Laura thought for a second. ‘And we’ll press ahead with getting a non-molestation order from the family court to keep him away from you.’

‘Sometimes I think he’s watching the house.’

‘Have you seen him?’ Laura asked, worried.

Anna hesitated. ‘Maybe. I don’t know for sure. I get this creepy feeling like there’s someone out there. Martha gets it too.’

‘Is there anyone you could go and stay with for a few days or could come and stay with you?’ Laura instantly regretted the question. She’d asked before about family and friends and Anna had told her there wasn’t anybody; she was an only child and her parents were both dead. She had no close friends, Harry had seen to that.

‘I’m all right,’ Anna said, suddenly fierce. ‘I can cope. He’s not going to get away with it any more.’

There was a look on Anna’s face that Laura had seen before. A set, purposeful look and it meant that Anna had gone into fight-back mode, like a switch had flipped in her brain; the victim mentality was banished, replaced by total determination never again to let her husband bully or control her.

‘Don’t let up on him, Laura. I don’t want to give him an inch.’ Anna’s eyes were bright, not with tears this time, but with a kind of crusading zeal. The traumas she had gone through seemed to have given her strength; she wasn’t bowing her head now.

‘We’ll get there in the end. You’ve done fantastically well so far,’ Laura encouraged.

‘I couldn’t get through this without you, I’d fall apart.’ Anna shuddered then looked at her watch. ‘I should go, I have to pick up Martha.’

‘Soon as I hear from the police, I’ll you know.’

Anna stood up to leave and Laura stood too, gave her a hug.

‘Take care,’ she said.

Anna eyes went to the cut on Laura’s face. ‘You take care too.’

‘Oh, that. It’s nothing. Just me being careless.’

There was a knock on the door and Sam O’Donnell, the office manager and IT expert, stuck his head in.

‘Laura, sorry to interrupt but could I have a quick word when you’re free?’

‘It’s OK, I’m just going,’ Anna said.

Sam shut the door carefully behind her. He was a big bear of a man who liked a chat and a joke but now he stood silent, fidgeting with a piece of paper he had in his hand.

‘I thought you should see this. It was posted on our divorce forum.’

It was from someone with the username ‘themaxwellbitch’. Laura felt her face turn scarlet.

Morrison Kemp had a divorce message board on its website where members of the public could share experiences, give opinions, or ask advice and it was part of Sam’s job to keep an eye on it. The message had been added to a thread called ‘Final Settlement’.

‘I’ve removed it and blocked the sender so they can’t post any more,’ he told her.

Laura read it, conscious of Sam’s eyes on her. She hoped he wouldn’t be chatting about this.

‘Do you have any idea who did it?’

‘Afraid not. Whoever it is, is a bit of a joker though. The email they’ve used is registered as “marcus.morrison3”.’ Sam grinned awkwardly at her. ‘I know the boss can be a bit of a shit but I don’t think it’s him.’

Laura couldn’t raise a smile.

‘Sorry, Laura.’ Sam cleared his throat. ‘Lousy sense of humour.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘Laura Maxwell, you are an evil bitch. You destroy lives. You feed off men’s misery – you take their daughters away from them. Understand how much I hate you. I think about it all the time, how to put a stop to you, how to settle the score. I’m not planning on settling in court. I have other plans for a final settlement. Better watch out.’

It was not the first time in her career that Laura had been called a bitch and threatened; in fact, she’d been called a lot worse and had had to grow a tough skin over the years. Really, she thought, the posting should not have rattled her as much as it did. But the last twenty-four hours had left her jittery.

Laura watched Joe as he read the message; saw his expression change to one of outrage. They’d been together for five years now but she never got tired of looking at him. He was distractingly handsome; tall and muscular, without being too beefy, he had thick black hair and a broad smile that brought dimples to his cheeks. His eyes, framed with long lashes, were blue and dazzling.

‘Charming. Any idea who sent it?’ he said.

‘I’m wondering if it could be this guy Harry Pelham. I’m representing his wife and he’s been sending her death threats. Maybe he’s lashing out at me too.’

They were sitting on the sofa after dinner, cosy in front of the TV, half watching a programme about the hotel industry. Joe had wanted to see it as it featured a hotel he knew further along the coast but he’d lost interest, complaining it was rubbish and only interested in negative, headline grabbing stuff. Laura took the chance to raise her own problems. She didn’t often discuss her work with Joe but tonight, just for once, she had an urgent need to spill it all out. She’d had a night and a day from hell and it had left her feeling anxious and vulnerable. She reached for the wine bottle on the table and poured herself another glass.

‘Have you talked to the police?’ he asked.

‘I got some info from them this afternoon. Harry Pelham was arrested this morning but now he’s in hospital for some reason. He’s under arrest there apparently, but I couldn’t get any more out of the duty officer and can’t speak to the guy in charge until tomorrow.’

Laura wished she had more contacts in the local police and could use the back channels to find out more details, but she hadn’t been around long enough to get to know many of the officers. The name of the man running the Pelham investigation, Detective Inspector David Barnes, meant nothing to her.

Joe picked up the remote and turned off the sound on the TV. He put his arm around Laura’s shoulders and kissed the top of her head.

‘Sounds like the crazy Mr Pelham needs locking up permanently.’

‘Fat chance. Best I’ll get is a restraining order to keep him away from his wife.’

‘If he’s threatening you too now, they need to do something.’

‘The trouble is Sam says it’s impossible to prove who posted the message. Whoever it is has hidden their tracks well.’

‘So it might not be him at all.’

‘No, it could be one of my other admiring fans.’ Laura forced a laugh and snuggled up against him, touching the cleft in his chin, then running her fingers down to his chest.

She told him about Mary Hakimi and how Morrison had behaved, and Joe called Morrison a pathetic old wanker and then did his impression of him which made her laugh for real. It was good to be able to talk to Joe about work for a change. He hardly ever asked about it and she knew he found it a difficult subject. She had had, was still having, a very successful career. He had not. Of course, he’d chosen the most precarious and unpredictable of jobs. He’d wanted to be an actor, and although he had the looks of a Hollywood leading man, he’d never made it. His biggest claim to fame had been playing, if that was the right word, a corpse in Holby City. Now he was playing second fiddle to his younger brother in the family hotel business.

Laura understood why it might bother him and never gloried in her own success. She thought it was not her success that rankled with him, he was not that petty, but his own failure, at the age of thirty-five, to have done much in the world, to have made any kind of mark. She hoped his reinvention as a businessman would change things. As a mark of faith she had invested a substantial sum of her own money in the Greene hotel chain. She loved him very much and it had been one way of showing that love.

Joe had resisted joining the business. Since his father died ten years ago, his mother had run it with the help of her younger son, Peter. Helen Greene had been an iron lady, managing the family’s four hotels with tremendous energy and sound business sense accumulated over more than thirty years. But two years ago, when she was only fifty-nine, she’d had a stroke. It had paralysed her and she’d recovered only a bit. She could talk but her mental sharpness was gone and she could walk no more than a few steps. The hotels would have to soldier on without her for Helen Greene was not coming back. Now she lived in a nursing home on the South Downs, a few miles out of Brighton.

Joe had been forced to give up his job as a director with a small experimental theatre in London and become Peter’s business partner. It had made up Laura’s mind. She was burning herself out working for a big London legal firm and beginning to wonder why. Yes, she had a big salary and a glittering CV and great prospects, but she was into her thirties now and she wanted other things in life, was keen to have a family. She had been happy to scale down, move out of the fast lane. She would aim for a partnership in the provinces and maybe become a big fish in a regional pool.

Joe had not been so happy. He loved the theatre and found it hard to knuckle down to the hotel business. He’d had a few run-ins with Peter but Laura was keeping her fingers crossed it would work out in the end.

She felt his hand massaging the back of her neck, soothing and reassuring.

‘If he did post that message, maybe he also had something to do with what happened last night?’ she said.

‘I think that was just some scumbag who thought it would be fun to scare the life out of a woman in a sports car.’

‘I guess so. Probably worrying about nothing.’

‘Of course you are, hon. You’ve had a lousy day and it’s no wonder you’re stressed out.’

He was right, she thought, and felt some of the tension leave her. She sat up, pushed her hair back behind her ears and took another large swig of the white wine, draining her glass. She picked up the bottle and frowned at it. It was empty too.

‘I think we might need one of the Greene specials.’ Joe grinned and went to get another bottle, one of the good ones he liberated from the hotel supplies. By the time she had drunk another glass or two, the cares of the day – and the night before – had slipped from her shoulders. She leaned her head on Joe’s shoulder, closed her eyes, and began to giggle.

‘What’s the joke?’ he said, laughing too.

‘I was thinking. Married couples – the awful things they do to each other.’

‘And that made you laugh?’

‘I know. Not funny. Sad. Did I ever tell you about this guy, this husband with really, really long hair who came in wanting a divorce? They’d been having problems for a while but the thing that brought it all to a crunch was when his wife told him he couldn’t have a cat. So he said, right, I shan’t cut my hair until you let me have a cat. And so it went on. No cat, no haircut, until by the time I saw him he had hair down to his waist.’

‘Sounds a bit of a shaggy cat story to me.’

Laura opened her eyes and looked at him. ‘Love you,’ she said.

CHAPTER NINE

Detective Inspector Barnes called Laura at work early the next day and told her what she had expected – that Harry Pelham would not be held in custody. He also told her what she hadn’t expected – that Harry was suspected of being a paedophile. That was the main reason for the raid on his home though the emails were also being investigated. They’d seized computers from the house and from his offices in Hove, which they’d raided simultaneously.

She pressed the policeman for more details, but either he didn’t know any more or he wasn’t going to say. He agreed to tell her when Harry was well enough to be questioned again. Doctors at the Royal Sussex had not been able to find anything obviously wrong with him, but he was being kept in for observation for the next few days. At the moment, Barnes said, officers were guarding him but he didn’t have the resources to leave them there for long. It was likely Harry would be given bail later that day and the officers would be withdrawn.

Laura pushed for conditions on the bail preventing Harry from going anywhere near his wife or threatening her in any way and Barnes agreed to consider that. He told her that after they’d finished questioning Harry and looked at what was on his computers, they’d decide if there was enough evidence to charge him, either over the child pornography or the death threats. If there was, in either case he’d most likely get bail. Regarding the pornography, it would depend on the seriousness of the offence – was he part of a paedophile network, had he been distributing the material, was it for his own use, how much did he have and how long had he been doing it. But it would have to be very serious for him to be locked up; just downloading and possession of indecent material would not be enough.

It was the same story with the death threat emails. If the police could prove that Paul Giles was in fact Harry, by finding evidence on his computers, they would charge him with harassment. But it wouldn’t warrant a custodial sentence – a restraining order only, would be the likely result. There was a silence on the phone. The conversation was over unless she had any more questions. She hesitated. She told Barnes about the website posting but decided against mentioning the car chase. She was afraid he might think her a little over-anxious.

Laura had slept well after the wine and a couple of Nytol and she felt a whole lot better today. The car incident didn’t seem so threatening. She liked that description – the ‘car incident’. It minimized the whole thing, brought it down to manageable proportions. The thought of it didn’t make her heart beat as fiercely as it had.

Twenty minutes later, after talking to her friend Emma Fletcher, Laura felt better still. Emma always cheered her up, right back from when they were at school together. Laura’s mum had used to call Emma ‘Mrs Brightside’ because she was always so positive.

Emma’s life had been very different from Laura’s – she had a husband and three sons and a part-time job as a primary school teacher – but the two women had stayed close friends and now Laura had moved back to Sussex, they saw each other a lot.

‘I agree it sounds like a random piece of bad luck,’ she said, when Laura told her about the chase. ‘Joe’s probably right that it was some nutter who wanted to frighten a woman in a sports car. Why not go green and trade that gas guzzler in for a smart car. No one will be chasing you then. Not even Joe.’

Laura laughed, said she’d give it some thought, and Emma suggested meeting up on Sunday to go shopping. Her husband was taking the boys to Speedway and she’d have most of the day to herself.

That suited Laura well because she wanted to chat to Emma about her father. He had been in touch again, asking to meet up, and Laura wasn’t sure what to do. She hadn’t seen him for nearly seven years, not since her mum’s funeral, and most of her didn’t want to see him now or ever again. But a part of her did, an annoying, nagging part; despite everything he had done to her mum, he was still her dad.

Michael Maxwell had never been aggressive towards his daughter, he loved his little girl and, although Laura heard his verbal attacks on her mother, she never once considered he might be hitting her. He made sure none of his bullying and abuse happened in front of Laura, not the shouting, not the humiliating, and certainly not the punching. He did it in the evening, after dark, when he thought his daughter was safely tucked up in bed. He was not the only wife beater to act that way. Anna had said the same about Harry Pelham – he only hit her when Martha was not around to witness it.

But from her bedroom, Laura could hear her father’s hectoring, intimidating voice. She would get up and creep closer, listen to him rant at her mother, telling her how stupid and worthless she was, laying down the law about who she could talk to, and where she could go. It upset Laura but it also irritated her. She wished her mother would fight back, would stop letting herself be such a victim. If she would only stand up for herself, her father would back off, Laura was sure.

She felt guilt flood her, the way it always did when she remembered her young, self-righteous self. She should have done more to help her mum, she should have confronted her father. She should have understood. She had never been able to forgive herself for not realizing how serious the abuse was. She had never heard anything that sounded like violence and her mum had done her utmost to hide it, but that was no excuse. She should have known.

A memory came to her, stark and raw, of the morning a starling had fallen down the chimney and got trapped in the living room. She called out for her mum to rescue it, but when there was no response, ran upstairs to find her. Her mum was in the bathroom and nine-year-old Laura burst in just as she was getting out of the shower. Her buttocks, hips and breasts were covered in yellow, black and blue bruises. She saw the shock on her daughter’s face and immediately related a story of how she had tripped at the top of the library steps and fallen heavily down them. She must have had the story ready always, just in case. Laura knew that now but at the time she hadn’t questioned it, had all but forgotten it in the excitement of freeing the panicky bird. Laura’s mum never again left the bathroom door unlocked.

It was years later that Laura had to face the truth and it left her in bits. She was living in London and in the middle of her law exams when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctor who found it also found serious bruising, vaginal and anal scarring and signs of old injuries. She had rung Laura, and the police, to say she suspected domestic abuse.

Jenny Maxwell left her husband but refused to give evidence against him and he was never charged. She came to live with Laura for nine months while she sorted out her life and beat off the cancer, but she would never speak about the violence however gently her daughter raised it. Just once, when Laura was going cautiously round the houses trying to approach the subject, she interrupted sharply, ‘Never let yourself be a victim. Never. That’s all I’ll say.’

A year later, when Laura was twenty-five, the cancer came back and this time Jenny Maxwell lost the battle. In an agony of guilt and regret, Laura wondered if the years of abuse had brought it on in the first place and whether, if she had realized what was going on and had spoken out, her mum would still be alive.

Laura forced the thoughts away. She picked up a dog-eared business card from her desk. It had the details for the Tunisian lawyer and she called his number.

CHAPTER TEN

The police guard made it impossible to get near Harry Pelham without explaining who he was and the reason for his visit. Ben Morgan had no intention of doing either. He’d had dealings with the police before and he didn’t want to renew the experience. He had been lucky to miss them at Harry’s house the day before and he had been lucky again to find out about the guard before it was too late. He arrived at the ward to find Harry nowhere in sight, so he asked a nurse for directions. She pointed to a side room and told him he’d have to ask the police officers if he could see Harry. There were two of them and one was standing outside the door to the room.

‘Why are they here?’ he asked.

‘No idea. All I know is any visitor has to get their permission if they want to talk to him.’

‘Do you think they’ll be staying long?’

She shrugged, then said, ‘He’s lucky he’s not handcuffed to one of them.’

Ben laughed nervously at that and the nurse said she wasn’t joking. She had heard them talking about it but, in the end, they’d decided not to.

‘Are you family?’ She peered at him curiously, as if he might be related to a serial killer. He was late thirties maybe, tall and skinny with a patchy beard and pale, restless eyes.

‘No.’ He hesitated, and when she obviously wanted more, said, ‘Just a friend.’

‘Looks like he needs one.’

‘Would you be able to give him a note for me?’

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. She didn’t reply and started walking towards the policemen.

Ben Morgan turned the other way and fled, making himself walk at a normal pace. Then he heard the nurse call to him and he ran down the stairs and out of the building, hurrying away from the hospital as fast as he could.

He jogged for fifteen minutes along the sea front until he came to a bar beside Brighton beach. He went inside and asked for an orange juice. He didn’t dare risk alcohol. He ordered a sandwich but was too wound up to eat it. He sat by the window staring out to sea. It was wild today, whipped up by a strong onshore wind which had blown away the earlier rain. He could feel his high mood turning sour. He was edgy and irritable, frustrated that he hadn’t been able to talk to Harry.

‘I do not have to get angry over this,’ he muttered. ‘I am choosing not to get angry. Just chill out.’

Ben Morgan had been in Brighton for almost a month now. He had forced himself to be cautious and to check out the situation thoroughly before making his move. For once, everything he had done had been carefully planned. He was pleased with himself about that. He hadn’t jumped straight in with both feet and no thought as to the consequences. He had a habit of doing that when he was feeling good, he knew, and it needed to be controlled.

The medication did control it pretty well but he wasn’t always so good about taking it; it had been a bit random lately. He noticed that his right leg was bouncing up and down on the floor and with an effort he stilled it and took a few deep breaths to try to calm himself down. He recognized the signs. The anger, the desire for action, the ideas racing through his head, the total confidence in himself. He had learned to be wary of these things. Learned the hard way.

He had been watching Laura Maxwell, following her, studying her routines and gathering details about her life. When he first arrived he had stood across the road from Morrison Kemp waiting for her to come out. What a shock it had been to see her again, what nightmare feelings the sight of her had aroused, feelings he had tried to bury deep but which kept bubbling back to the surface. The experience had literally made him ill. He had scuttled away and been sick in an alleyway.

Ben Morgan felt sick now thinking about what had happened to him. And Harry’s case was so similar to his own – his torture, at the hands of Laura Maxwell, so exactly what Ben had endured. When he had discovered that, he had wanted to die. It brought back, in technicolour, all the trauma of six years ago.

Well, this time the result would be different, he would make sure of that. He had been there and would not stand by and let it happen again. Hatred and bitterness filled him. He was going to put a stop to it, once and for all.

Ben Morgan shook his head and tried, unsuccessfully, to get the ugly memories to go away. The Maxwell woman had made him seem like a complete danger to his young daughter, a father with a serious personality disorder. His medical notes had been taken to pieces by her, selective quotes taken from his psychology sessions, from his psychiatric assessments, from his previous medical history – he had been destroyed as a person and as a father. She had consigned him to hell.

He had sat in court listening to her make judgements about him, biased judgements designed to make him suffer, along with social workers and other so-called experts who discussed his bipolar disorder, discussed his behaviour and thoughts and emotions as if he were invisible, as if they were able to understand what was going on in his head. The whole inside of his mind had been invaded by her – someone who knew nothing about him or his illness. He had been violated and degraded and he felt it again now just as keenly as he had done at the time. The taste of acid filled his mouth.

He remembered how tormented he had been over what to do about it, what action he should take. Sometimes it had been so bad it was like a physical pain. It had only got better when he had stopped thinking about possible consequences and started following his instincts. But that, of course, had not worked out well. He had stabbed a police officer, been sectioned for hospital treatment, and lost all contact rights to his daughter.

The bar was starting to fill up with the lunchtime rush. He hated crowds and noise. They stressed him out and could trigger off his illness. He wanted to run. It was one of the few strategies he had for coping with stressful situations – to run through the streets, faster and faster, until all he could think about was the burning in his lungs and his legs. He liked to think it was a positive thing, a definite plan to help himself, but in his darker moods he felt that all it amounted to was running away.

The afternoon was cold and the rain was spitting again. Ben Morgan stood for a moment gazing up uncertainly at the heavens with a tense and troubled face. Then he set off at high speed for his appointment, his tall, thin figure racing towards the café near the crumbling West Pier.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Tunisian lawyer, Karim Chehoudi, did remember Laura and he was happy to help. She was grateful and agreed to meet him for dinner next time he visited London. He knew much more about child abduction cases than she did and she noticed he was careful not to raise her hopes of success too much. Given that he wanted the dinner date, he was probably trying to sound as optimistic as possible, and secretly rated her chances as zero.

She gave him the details for Ahmed and his father, sent him their photographs, and he promised to pass them on to the Tunisian immigration authorities with a request to be informed if the pair left the country. If they went anywhere which had signed the Hague Convention it might be possible to intercept them there and get the boy returned to England.

Karim Chehoudi said he had good contacts among the immigration officers and assured her he knew how to get them to take his request seriously. Laura wondered if he meant money and whether she should offer to pay for any necessary expenses. But she worried he might take offence so she said nothing except how much she appreciated his help. He sounded pleased and she hoped she had done the right thing. Now she could only wait and keep her fingers crossed that the chance came up. It was all she could do for Mary Hakimi. She thought that it wasn’t very much.

There was an email from Anna in her inbox asking if she could find out from the police how long Harry was going to be in hospital and how long he would be held for questioning. Anna desperately wanted reassurance that action would be taken to protect her and Martha before, as she put it, ‘that vile man is on the loose again’. Laura had called her earlier to tell her the news from Barnes, and Anna had been very shocked and disgusted to hear what her husband was suspected of.

‘I can’t have him seeing Martha any more, Laura, I just can’t,’ she sobbed down the phone. ‘Really, I couldn’t cope with that. It makes me wonder if … ’

Anna hadn’t been able to finish the sentence but Laura knew what she was wondering. Had Harry ever abused his daughter? He had never been violent towards Martha, Anna had said, but what else might he have been doing?

Laura pulled a bundle of papers from the Pelham file, details of Harry’s financial affairs. There were property developments, options for building projects, company directorships and various bank accounts, a number of them overseas. Some of these had slipped his mind when he’d listed his financial resources for the court. Anna had filled in the gaps and Laura was preparing to raise the discrepancies at the next hearing. Anna knew that Harry was concealing large amounts of money and had done her best to gather evidence to prove it.

‘He’s been cheating and hiding things for years,’ Anna had said in one emotional outburst. ‘He thinks I don’t know but I do and I want the judge to know exactly how mean and deceitful he is.’

Laura warned against personal abuse or appearing too vindictive because it didn’t go down well. Of course, Harry must be honest about his financial resources and if there was evidence that he was not, the court would take that very seriously. But the judge wouldn’t be interested in dishing out blame or hearing vitriolic attacks by one partner on the other. The court’s sole aim, after ensuring Martha’s welfare, would be to achieve a fair settlement between husband and wife. It wanted compromise not retribution.

It was Laura’s duty to advise Anna of these things, it was up to Anna if she took any notice. She didn’t. Laura may as well have been talking a foreign language that she didn’t speak a word of. Anna was haunted by the terror that if she showed the slightest weakness, the slightest sign of wavering, he would take advantage and somehow return to controlling and manipulating her.

‘If I ever told him “no” he wouldn’t accept it. He just insisted on what he wanted until my “no” became a feeble “yes”. I didn’t know how to stand up to him, but never again,’ she said.

It was the reason Anna at first refused point-blank to take part in mediation.

‘I’m scared stiff of meeting him again, Laura, he’ll just try to get power over me.’

Laura did eventually manage to persuade her to give mediation a try but it had gone badly. Laura had not been there but heard about it from Anna. Harry was loud and domineering, wanting everything done his own way. Seeing his behaviour again at close quarters had triggered her intense fear of him.

She had screwed up her courage and told the mediator how she’d been forced to leave home because of his increasing violence. She hadn’t known what he might do next or if Martha was safe. Harry went mental over that, Anna said, shouting that he’d never hit anyone and would never harm his daughter.

The mediator had tried to get the session back on track and to talk about important things that needed resolving, such as Martha’s future, and her financial arrangements, but Harry had started accusing Anna of having an affair, calling her a slut and demanding to know how many other men she’d slept with during their marriage. Anna had surprised herself then; for a moment she’d forgotten to be frightened. She fought back, defiantly giving details of her husband’s extreme, mindless jealousy.

He was obsessed with the idea that she had a lover. He’d bugged the entire house. The telephone, the toilets, every room had been wired for sound. She hadn’t even been able to visit the bathroom without being recorded. There’d been a couple of cameras, one hidden in a clock, the other in a smoke alarm. He’d read her emails, monitored her mobile phone calls. He’d even tested her clothes for semen stains with something called a semen detection kit.

The mediation had come to a swift, unhappy end. Afterwards, Anna became even more determined to stand her ground.

Laura once asked Anna why she had married Harry.

Anna hesitated, then said, ‘There was a boy I loved, when I was young, but it didn’t work out,’ she paused again, ‘then Harry came along. He was strong and he said he loved me and no one had ever said that before. It made me feel happy and safe and I liked it. Of course I didn’t understand then why I liked it and that I wasn’t safe at all.’

She realized now that she had liked it because of her own neediness and low self-esteem. She’d never had any confidence, had been badly bullied at school; it was as if she attracted abusers. She thought Harry Pelham had sniffed her out as a victim and homed in on her as someone he could dominate and control.

The phone rang. It was Morrison, abruptly summoning Laura to his office. She had been waiting for it, she’d been lucky to get away without seeing him the previous afternoon. He would have been expecting an update on Mary Hakimi. He would be annoyed that he’d had to ask.

As she arrived, Sarah was coming out. Laura said ‘Hi’ but Sarah brushed past with her face averted.

Morrison gestured towards a chair. He provided two sorts of chair for his visitors; which one they were offered depended on their status. Important clients, and people he was on friendly terms with, were ushered into a large, comfortable leather armchair which mirrored the one on his side of the desk. Laura had first sat in it when she came for a ‘chat’ – there had been nothing so crude as a job interview – about moving to Morrison Kemp from her prestigious London firm. She had occupied it on every occasion since. But today she was faced with the other one, a small, hard, functional chair that was lower than Morrison’s so that anyone offered it, unless they were a giant, would find themselves having to look up into the cold grey eyes opposite.

Laura was not very tall and she realized at once how effective the chair was in making its occupant feel inferior. The familiar, uncomfortable impression was upon her that he thought she wasn’t quite up to the mark, that he had expected great things from her, which she had not delivered. She shifted in the chair, trying to find a position in which she could relax, in which she didn’t feel like an underperforming pupil in front of the headmaster. She was wearing her glasses but they weren’t helping much.

He leaned towards her, putting his elbows on the desk and his hands underneath his chin. ‘So,’ he said softly, ‘the Hakimi fiasco. What have you got to tell me?’

The shrewd little eyes fixed on her as if she was a specimen in a jar. She considered asking him what Sarah had told him, but decided not to – he was unlikely to tell her and would interpret the question as a sign of weakness.

‘I’ve talked the problem through with Mary Hakimi and assured her we’ll do all we can to get her son back. Obviously she’s very distressed but she agreed that was the best way forward for now.’

‘And how exactly do you plan to get the boy back?’ He made no effort to hide the scepticism in his voice.

Laura told him. As she spoke his eyebrows rose and his lips set in a thin line.

‘Snowball’s chance,’ he said dismissively.

‘Well, yes, I know it’s a long shot but there might … ’ Laura stopped. It was stupid to start justifying herself; it would only further undermine her. She changed what she had been going to say. ‘I felt it was really important to demonstrate that we cared and we wanted to help.’

‘We always care about our clients, Laura. You’ll be aware that that is one of the guiding principles at Morrison Kemp.’

‘I was quite honest with her,’ Laura continued, ‘I told her I couldn’t promise anything.’

‘Of course you were honest with her. I hope you’ve been honest with her at all times, Laura.’ He paused, took off his glasses and put them down on the desk. He sat up straight in his chair and leaned further towards her. ‘I trust she understands that this firm is not to blame in any way for what’s happened?’

He was waiting for her to dig herself into a hole. She guessed Sarah had told him she had given the forged letter to Mary Hakimi because, so far as Sarah knew, that was what she’d done. She also guessed that he would deny ever telling Sarah to write the letter and was busy distancing himself from the whole thing. She wondered if he had come to some arrangement with Sarah and if that arrangement meant dumping the blame for the deception squarely on Laura. If he believed she had handed over the letter, he would realize at once that it made her vulnerable. He would be licking his lips at the sight of a scapegoat.

‘Absolutely. I hope I was able to convince her of that. By the way,’ Laura added, smiling sweetly at him, ‘do you still want Sarah Cole fired? I met her coming out of your office just now and I was hoping you might’ve had second thoughts.’

He retreated across the desk, replacing his glasses on his hawkish nose. He sat back in his big chair, steepled his fingers together and frowned.

‘I’m afraid she told me a very worrying thing which I don’t think can be right.’

Laura waited, not asking. He wanted her to, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. He’d have to tell her anyway if he was going to put the blame on her. It didn’t take long.

‘She says Mrs Hakimi was never sent a letter telling her to remind us about the passport order. She tells me that a copy of a letter to that effect, which you gave to Mrs Hakimi yesterday, was in fact a fake and you were well aware of that when you gave it to her.’

It was what she had expected but she still felt shocked that he could be so shameless. How did he sit there and brazenly ignore the truth of what had happened? He showed no sign of embarrassment or regret. Instinctively, she knew what his reaction would be if she reminded him of his involvement. He would give her that thin-lipped, patronizing smile and she would hear him whisper, ‘I think you must be mistaken, Laura, and I think I’ve been mistaken about you.’ Then he would throw her to the wolves.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.