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  As if she was still there, Véronique reached out for a glass that was sitting on top of a cabinet, opened the hotel fridge and poured sparkling water. She took a long drink and sat down on the deep window sill, legs huddled up into her chest.

  ‘There was a telephone call. One of the company lorries had broken down and it needed to be towed to a garage, but it was full of furniture that had to be delivered the next day. Someone had to take out another lorry and bring the goods back to the warehouse. Your father was one of the few people still sober who could drive the truck. I hadn’t wanted him to go, but there was no real option. I remember wanting to go home, but I was persuaded to stay. Mr Jenson, one of the partners, said he would look after me. I hadn’t wanted to seem antisocial.

  ‘As soon as your father was gone, Mr Jenson offered me a tour of the warehouse. He made me feel important, talked about how much they valued my husband, did I want to see his office, and I went. I never thought for a moment … The music was on loudly by then, very loudly. People were singing, dancing, there was a lot of alcohol. We went up to the top floor, which was deserted. I recall wondering why he was showing me, that there wasn’t anything to see. The corridors were dark and there were heavy fire doors between sections of the building. We got to the far end, as far away from the party as you could get, and Mr Jenson told me that was where his office was. He opened the door. There was another man in there, one I hadn’t spoken to but I knew that it was the firm’s other partner, Mr Western. He got up from the desk, came to shake my hand, complimented my dress. Although he didn’t say anything wrong, I remember feeling that I shouldn’t have been there. It felt strange, two men in such a small room with me.’

  Callanach could picture it more clearly than he wanted. His mother – young, incredibly beautiful, too scared to put a foot wrong, to insist that she return to the party. His father’s bosses – entitled, made braver by alcohol and the knowledge that no one could hear what they were about to do. It was a scene that had been replayed through history, across decades, social classes and genders. It was about the powerful and the powerless. It was just because they could.

  ‘I told them I needed the bathroom and that I had to go back downstairs. They had a bit of a laugh about something, I can’t recall what, then I saw Western nod at Jenson. I think I knew when I saw that tiny movement, just how much trouble I was in. That was all it took. The fact that they had communicated with one another, excluding me. They put a …’ She broke off, panting hard, shoulders hunched, head down.

  ‘Maman, don’t …’ Callanach said.

  ‘I have to,’ she replied. ‘They put a bag over my head, something rough, then one of them held me while the other … it was fast. I thanked God for that. And it was only one of them. Then the phone rang and it was as if, I don’t know, they woke up. Like they’d forgotten where they were, or who they were. I was pushed to the floor and Western pulled the bag off my head, threw it at me, told me to clean myself up. There was some bruising on my arms – I’d struggled and they’d been forceful holding me. My hair was a mess from the bag and there was makeup running down from my eyes. I was shaking and clumsy. I think it was Jenson who got annoyed, telling me to hurry up.’

  Véronique stopped, studying the empty glass she was still clutching and forcing her fingers to relax so she could put it down.

  ‘What did Dad do?’ Callanach asked. He needed to move the story along. It was a selfish perspective, he realised that. His mother had had the courage to relive the worst moment of her life and all he wanted was to scrub the image from his mind. He wanted to turn back the clock never to have heard it.

  ‘I didn’t tell him,’ Véronique said. ‘I found my shoes. They’d been kicked across the room when I’d struggled … and I wiped the tears from my face and tried to leave. Western grabbed me just as I was opening the office door. “Tell anyone,” he said, “and your husband is out of a job. We’ll tell him it was you who came to us. And we’ll tell everyone else in this city that your husband stole from us. He’ll never work again. Not so fucking high and mighty now are you, miss pretty French piece of ass?” I heard those words in my head for years. His voice. The hatred in it. I don’t know if it was the picture on your father’s desk that set them off, or the way I spoke and the fact that I was French. But they chose me. They knew what they were doing. They gambled on the fact that I would never be able to tell your father, and they were right. So I went to the ladies’ room and I cleaned myself up. I waited outside for your father for an hour in the freezing cold. I told him I was unwell and he took me home. I vomited as soon as we got back and he must have thought it was the alcohol, so that’s what I let him believe.’

  ‘You couldn’t tell him?’

  ‘Losing his job would have been the best-case scenario, Luc. Your father adored me. He’d have killed them, both of them, for hurting me that way. The thought of losing our house didn’t matter to me, we could have lived on the streets and been happy, moved to France to find work, lived with my parents. But do you think your father would have walked away? Never. He would have ended up in a prison cell and all for the sake of me needing to share my pain. I loved him too much to tell him. Worse things happen to women, Luc. That’s what I told myself. It was easier to stay quiet. Easier to bear my shame quietly, alone. Better than risking it all.’

  ‘So no one ever knew?’ Callanach asked. ‘You’ve carried that alone all this time?’

  ‘I told my mother, after your father died when we moved back to France. Your father’s death devastated me but it released me from the need to stay in this country, near those animals. I was free to take you away and start again, and I was able to stop lying to the man I loved. I’m sorry, you don’t need to hear all this.’

  ‘There are counsellors, Maman. Even now it might do you good to get some help,’ Callanach said.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Véronique said, smiling gently at him. ‘I don’t want it to be part of my present. It’s the past. I’m sorry that I didn’t have the strength to tell you before. Instead, I ran. Not from you, though. From the memories.’

  ‘I understand the trauma,’ Callanach said. ‘But you know me. You know I could never be capable of causing the harm those men did you.’

  ‘I do know that. Really, I do. But there’s something more,’ Véronique said. ‘If I don’t tell you now, I never will. Eight weeks after that Christmas party I discovered that I was pregnant. Your father and I had continued having a normal relationship. I knew that if I stopped being with him, he would know immediately that something was wrong.’

  ‘Stop,’ Callanach said. ‘Please stop. Are you telling me …’

  Véronique walked over, knelt before him and took his hands in hers.

  ‘Luc, nothing has changed. You were the only thing that mattered. The man you have always thought of as your father, was the only father who ever had any influence in your life. He loved you so much. When you were born it was as if I lost half of him to you and I never minded, not for one second. His smile was brightest when he looked at you. He would spend hours just holding you, watching you sleep.’

  Callanach stood up. ‘You should have told him,’ he said.

  ‘To what end?’ Véronique asked. ‘If he had known the truth, he would have been blinded by my pain. But I know that he would have loved you no less, no differently, and I have always believed that you are his son.’

  ‘No. Not when Astrid came to you with her lies. For a while, then, you believed something else. Is that the guilty burden you came to shift? That you thought, for however fleeting a moment, like father like son. You thought that my biological father was the man who had raped you, and that I had turned out the same. That’s why you left me,’ Callanach said, picking up his coat and shrugging it on.

  ‘Luc, it wasn’t that black and white. I was devastated by the past all over again. Nothing made sense to me. I ran because I couldn’t hide the pain I was feeling and you had more than enough to deal with. This conversation we�
��re having now, that I always knew we would have to have one day, would have been too much for you back then.’

  ‘It’s too much for me now!’ Callanach shouted, reaching for the door.

  Véronique threw herself in the way. ‘Please, please don’t go. I know how you’re feeling, I want to help you.’

  ‘I’ve just been told that my life may be the result of a rape, and that the man I’ve believed all my life was my father may not be. You have no idea how I’m feeling!’

  ‘I shouldn’t have told you,’ Véronique sobbed, collapsing into the chair, head on her knees. ‘I thought it was the right thing to do. I thought it would help you forgive me.’

  Callanach pushed the door gently shut and sat on the edge of the bed facing his mother. ‘There’s nothing left to forgive,’ he said. ‘Go back to France. You have to give me some time now.’

  He stood up, left quietly and made his way back down to the street. It looked the same as he had left it, yet he felt it should have been different. That it should have changed with him. Everything he thought he knew about himself might be a lie. The solid ground beneath his feet was gone. His mother was even more a victim than him, yet he hadn’t had the strength to be the man she needed, to comfort and reassure her. Callanach turned up his collar against the icy walk home, telling himself as he went that the tears streaming down his face could be blamed on the wind in his eyes.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The main gates to Louis Jones’ car yard were locked and bolted. Leaving DC Tripp in the car, Ava walked the perimeter of the premises looking for a way in. It turned out not to require much effort. A back gate, through which lay a short alley, had been on the receiving end of some well-applied bolt cutters, its lock on the ground in two pieces. Ava pushed the gate fully open with her elbow, pulling on gloves as she entered and switching on a torch. The lot was full of vehicles. All had seen better days, most with dents that no amount of beating would repair. The whole place was surrounded by an eight-foot-high metal fence, the inside of which had been privatised using planks of wood. Jones wouldn’t have wanted anyone noting the licence plates on his vehicles, of course. Ava wondered if any of the cars there had been driven by the man who’d abducted her. She pushed the thought aside. That wasn’t what she was there for, and dwelling on it was a shortcut to misery. What she needed to figure out now, was who had been driving the crashed car.

  Along one edge of the lot was a brick building. There was only one door that she could see and it was sturdy, probably reinforced. The windows, however, were another matter. There were only two and both were smashed, the displaced shards reflecting streaks of torchlight. Louis Jones, by the look of it, was having a very bad day indeed. Ava put her head to the first window, darted the torch around, announced the police presence even though the premises seemed vacant, and jumped in. Someone before her had been kind enough to dash any remaining glass spikes from the lower edge of the window. To the left-hand side of the room was a desk, each drawer ripped open, the contents scattered across the floor. A landline phone lay on the floor beneath an upturned chair, and sad-looking posters of supercars that had once adorned the walls hung in tatters.

  The place had been ransacked. The question was whether the intruders had caused such carnage to send a message, or whether they were searching for something specific. A rack of keys along the right-hand wall was untouched. It wasn’t a vehicle they were after, then. Ava glanced around for evidence of a computer, but outfits like Jones’ rarely kept their records on anything as substantial as digital files. An internal door stood ajar, nothing but blackness showing in the crack. Ava walked to it slowly, kicked it open and drew a can of pepper spray from her jacket pocket. A screech came from the back of the area and Ava ducked, sending out a jet of pepper gas, slashing the torchlight left and right across the room.

  ‘Police, stay where you are,’ she shouted. There was no reply. ‘There’s another officer at the front door,’ Ava lied. ‘If you attempt to leave the premises, you will be stopped with force.’ She stood up, focusing the light and her eyes on the rear of the room. Panicked fluttering and squawking filled the air.

  Ava stepped forward, conscious that the ground beneath her feet had softened. Flicking the light downwards she saw that the floor was strewn with bedding. A mattress was overturned in the corner, and clothes that had once inhabited an upturned chest of drawers were everywhere. Straightening up, she noticed a large cage in the corner containing two parrots. They were staring, making her feel oddly self-conscious.

  ‘What sort of person keeps caged birds in this day and age?’ Ava muttered. The response was further screeching as she neared the parrots. There was a huge pile of bird seed on the floor of the cage and an empty packet on the floor. ‘Someone knew they weren’t coming back for a while, didn’t they?’ she asked the birds.

  Jones had obviously been living in the back rooms. A toilet and shower were situated in a side room, separated from the bedroom by a plastic curtain. In the corner, a microwave, toaster and kettle provided cooking facilities. Ava cursed quietly as she realised she would have to arrange for the SPCA to collect the birds. Making her way back through to the front office, Ava read the scrawled handwritten notes scattered across the floor. No wonder Louis Jones was reduced to living on a mattress on the floor, if that was how he did business. She picked up the landline, plugged it back in and dialled recall for the last number that had phoned in, scribbling it down before leaving. The scene would have to be secured, by which time the driver of the crashed vehicle might have been located unharmed. Unless it really had been Louis Jones, Ava thought, in which case maybe a broken limb or two wouldn’t be such a tragedy.

  She went back out to the car and climbed in next to DC Tripp.

  ‘Pair of parrots need taking care of,’ she said. ‘Ask the SPCA to come out in the morning. They’ve got plenty of food to keep them going until then. Have some uniforms come and secure the premises until we’ve located the owner.’

  ‘Is it a crime scene, ma’am?’ Tripp asked.

  ‘Looks like it, unless the owner decided to redecorate in a rather unconventional manner. At the moment, though, we have no burglary complainant and no grounds for doing much. I don’t know what’s going on yet and I’m not kicking off an investigation until I do.’ She dialled DS Lively’s number.

  ‘Haven’t found the driver yet,’ he said. ‘Do we know anything more from Jones’ file?’

  ‘Nothing I can share,’ Ava said. ‘Who’s in charge at the scene?’

  ‘Chief Inspector Dimitri. He’s getting it all packed up now, having the car towed. The dogs have been recalled.’

  Ava considered the name. ‘I’ve met him. He was the officer in charge at the Chief’s suicide; he seemed very kind. Begbie would have liked him,’ Ava commented. ‘Take a note of this phone number, would you?’ She read out the last number that had called in to Jones’ landline. ‘Check it out for me. Details for my eyes only at this stage. Jones’ file is still confidential. Whatever’s happened to Louis Jones, given the way he lived, I very much doubt there’s an innocent explanation.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Cordelia Muir was feeling under the weather, which was infuriating given the meeting she was due to have that morning. A large corporation was looking for a charity to sponsor and Crystal was on the shortlist for potential recipients. Those sorts of donations were invaluable. Smaller scale fundraising was a wonderful, personal way of people changing the world, but it was the big money that made a substantial difference on the ground. She hadn’t slept well now for a few days, waking up sweating and feeling nauseous although she’d stopped short of actually being sick. Things had improved slightly over the weekend, but the meeting was scheduled for 3pm and with only an hour to go, she had a headache that was proving unresponsive to painkillers.

  The new volunteer, Jeremy, knocked then put his head around her door. ‘I’ll be off shortly,’ he said. ‘Is there anything I can do before I go?’

  ‘Cou
ld you get the conference room ready for the meeting, please?’ Cordelia asked weakly.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’ Cordelia was known at the office for never asking anyone else to do jobs she had time to do herself, no matter how humble.

  ‘Thumping headache,’ she said. ‘I’d do it myself, only …’

  ‘No w-worries,’ Jeremy said. ‘Happy to help.’

  ‘Thank you. I don’t suppose I could push my luck and ask for a cup of tea as well? I’m so thirsty.’ Cordelia took a handkerchief from her bag and dabbed her face with it.

  ‘Sure. Shall I have Liam cancel the meeting?’ Jeremy asked.

  ‘No! Gosh, it’s too important for that. I’ll be all right.’ She pushed her hair back from a damp semi-circle across her forehead. ‘Maybe I should try to eat.’

  Jeremy disappeared off to the kettle, watching as Liam Hood got up from his seat to go and speak to Cordelia. Jeremy had decided he didn’t much like Liam. He was the sort of person who listened to your conversations whilst pretending to be busy, who would read emails over your shoulder. Jeremy had only been volunteering there a week, but he could see the good the charity was doing. Since Crystal had opened its doors eight years earlier, the initiative had provided clean drinking water to vast areas of Africa, village by village. Cordelia Muir was a woman with vision and spirit. Jeremy admired her.