Thursday, 17:00
Jo had spent the last few hours in a haze.
Aiden Jones was a man of secrets, meticulous habits and a singular, abiding special interest. Like the receipts and backs of envelopes she’d found in his archive box, the book had been written in, written on, written around, with text creeping up the sides when a new fact needed to be added in place. Interleaved between the dense-packed pages were letters, photocopies, newsprint, timelines, obituaries, photographs and enough minutiae and ephemera that would make Roberta Wilkinson blush.
Jo assumed the portrait of Evelyn drove his quest. She was wrong. Aiden had been reconstructing the entire family tree, a great flowering of data that put the genealogy sites to shame.
Chen had made green tea. Arthur needed time with his thoughts; Jo needed no walls and an open sky. She and Gwilym walked to the park and sat beneath old trees and green boughs. Even hyperlexic speed reading had been no match for Aiden’s curious scribbled spirals. There were places where the text opened up, became ropy and loose—a mind working faster than a pen. There were places where it narrowed, stuttered, shrank from cramped fingers afraid of losing a thought. Explosive excitement as he made connections, winnowed details, solved the miniproblems of lost family lines.
And as she went, a mantra repeated in her head: he was like me, he was like me, he was like me. She’d lost Aiden even before her mother, but reading his words, she’d never felt so close to anyone. She’d found the family she knew must be there. And through him, she found one thing more.
Her name was Violet. Just like the flowers decorating Evelyn’s portrait or those that sprang up over the buried hope chest: humility, grace and delicate love. From scraps and letters, ancestry searches and medical records, Aiden pieced together the skeleton of the story. Evelyn had indeed died in childbirth.
But the baby survived. And as for the answer Jo had been seeking all this time: Gwen had given the child away.
The travel records before her now revealed that William was in London on business when Evelyn went into labor; he returned to her corpse. Did Gwen tell him the baby died? It seemed likely. Why not keep the baby; why not raise it as her own? She thought better of it, eventually. Strangely, Gwen’s own letters, preserved in Aiden’s notebook, were the first clue:
November 1910, Gwen to someone named Tomlinson: “Please,” she wrote, “if you know or can discover her whereabouts, I would be happy to pay for your trouble . . .”
January 1913: “I can pay for travel to abroad, but I cannot go myself. I have my reasons.”
Another came in the form of scrap paper, a note scrawled in uneven script, but not by Aiden: “Flooding—must get Hobarth.”
Jo looked at the torn paper, it’s edges rust brown. Aiden provided a caption: “Written by the midwife. Evelyn needed a doctor.”
—whom? Jo found some more notes that clarified Hobarth as Dr. Ida Hobarth, the only modern physician in Abington, the same one who, in another letter, told Gwen she was barren and could never conceive. Jo understood the meaning of the other word, too, and it wasn’t about the creeks rising. Flooding stood in as the lingering Victorian word for preeclampsia, a hypertensive, multisystem disorder leading to severe convulsions and hemorrhage. By 1906 physicians could manage the condition with magnesium sulfate. Hobarth would have known that; she could even have performed an emergency C-section, risky as it was. But she didn’t. She never came. Because no one called her.
Aiden wrote more in the margins of these factual notations, as if trying to imagine the scene himself: Evelyn lying above in the secret nursery, alone, in labor, and everything going wrong. The midwife had written the notes to someone, but if it had been the good doctor, then there would be records. What happened?
Jo thought she knew. Ida Hobarth would know the baby was William’s, which meant she’d learned of the affair. To call her would be to invite calumny and shame. Did the midwife send that note to Gwen? Upon refusing to do as asked, did she stand in her nightdress at the bottom of those grand stairs and let her sister die? Or did she leave the house so she wouldn’t hear the cries?
Aiden filled in the details on his own:
Maybe she told herself Evelyn would survive on her own; perhaps she lied to her conscience. The midwife was local, low-class. Someone poor who could be paid off. She couldn’t save Evelyn. Managed to save the infant. Evelyn’s last words were the child’s name; call her Violet. Gwen forced the midwife to take the child with her. When it was over, the house was silent—so silent—too silent. Or did Gwen still hear the ringing of a babe’s weak cry?
Gwen didn’t murder her sister with the twist of a knife, but she killed her all the same. The greater crime came next; she rejected the baby—hid it from its father, sent it away. Records of work done by the gardeners reveal a cold cellar dug in the basement. It had only begun, but served as the perfect grave for Evelyn. And when the deed was done? Jo imagined Gwen standing before the painting of Evelyn Davies where it hung in the library.
Letters, in the autumn years: April 1931 to “a friend”:
William stays so often in Allerton; we rarely speak. This house is so very empty, Ethel, and I am sick at heart. Won’t you come see me? I cannot stand to be company to myself, and you know so much of my history. You’ll come, won’t you? I think this place is haunted, yet.]
January 1935 to “Dr. Jack”:
He won’t rise again. I went in to see him, but he turns from me. You tell me to take heart, but I must know. Is this the end? There are things I need to tell him. Please don’t preserve me as a lady; the world is already so dark, death is a shadow against night.
February of the same, a letter begun and never finished:
He knows. I know he does. He will not forgive me.
Jo had thought this whole time that Gwen destroyed it out of jealousy, but it wasn’t so. She couldn’t bear the judgment of those eyes. She couldn’t stand the guilt. The garden was still in its glory, then, well fertilized no doubt with phosphates. Perhaps she found the sulfuric acid in a potting shed, property of the gardeners she was about to get rid of. Maybe she even blamed them for the deed. Daughter of a steel magnate, she would, of course, know exactly what such a corrosive would do.
Aiden ended Gwen’s tree, a solitary branch. But for William, the lines went on. Violet had become Viola. She’d been given the last name Taylor at a home for orphans—and then shipped, with hundred of other “home children,” to rural Canada. She’d been “received” by a farmer in Quebec in 1913 at the age of five. The trail went cold until after the First World War; Aiden located a marriage license: Viola Taylor and Edmon Bouchard to be wed in April 1922. The tree branched in 1923, 1925 and 1928. Three children.
“Three,” Jo said out loud. Her eyes had clouded, and she blinked at the sky to try and clear them. “Noah, Olivia and Emile.”
“Last name Bouchard, right?” Gwilym had been fighting to access his genealogy sites via mobile phone.
“Yes, but Noah died in World War II. He was a pilot, flew with the Royal Canadian Air Force, and later the British RAF.” Jo scanned the last pages. The handwriting grew weaker, the entries further apart. The last entry wasn’t about Viola’s children at all; it was a record of her death at the age of fifty-one. Survived by her husband, buried at Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery. Jo checked the date; Aiden himself would have died a month after the last entry. He must have known it was coming, and that his hope for the wedding proposal wasn’t to be. Mortal, he concluded with Viola’s mortality, then locked it away beneath a ring he’d never give his lover.
“God, this is—this is . . .” Jo sank her face into her hands.
“A lot?” Gwilym asked, patting her gingerly on the back. Succinct. Correct. But not nearly enough to cover all the feelings Jo had swelling up.
“They’re out there,” she said, looking at Gwilym through her fingers. “At least, maybe their children are, if they had them. I have family.” Gwilym gave her a curious look. Then he leaned on his knees and looked Tyne-ward.
“You know, Jo. You have family. I mean. There’s Arthur, he counts. And Tula. Imagine what she’d say if you didn’t think of her that way.” He hazarded a glance in her direction. “MacAdams, even. And me. I hope you count me.”
Jo found it suddenly hard to swallow. Do not, she warned her cry muscles. There had been one meltdown this week already and that was plenty, so she forced the sob into something more benign.
“You’re my friend, Gwilym. I’m not entirely sure I’ve even had one before,” she said. “Not a real one.”
“Those are the only kind worth having,” he said. Jo felt a temporary impulse to hug him. Instead, she stood up and offered a hand in pulling him to his feet.
“I want to take Evelyn home,” she said. Her home. Abington—and Netherleigh Cottage.
“Good plan,” Gwilym agreed. Jo handed him the book; she needed to put her sweatshirt on. The day had been warm, but a cool wind was blowing and brought with it a chill. It was nearly six in the evening, and though the sun wouldn’t set for hours, the sky had grayed. If they crossed the next street, it would be a short walk back to Arthur’s flat; she’d taken that route the day she encountered the butty van driver.
“We should see about getting this into Roberta’s archive,” Gwilym said, tying up the twine.
“If Arthur lets us,” Jo added. “Today might not be the day to ask.”
They stood at the corner, checking for traffic, but someone had just run ahead of them into the street. Gwilym said something about the risk of it—at least she thought he did; the world had just fuzzed out. It happened in moments of hyperfocus: the hi-fi rush of pinpoint attention as everything else desaturated. A taxi stopped to let the crosswalker go by, everything in slow motion. When it all snapped forward again, Jo didn’t think, she just reacted: follow. Across the road, amid honks and shouts and Gwilym cursing in Welsh she went—because out in front was the woman in yellow, the one who had vanished on the moor.
* * *
Stanley Burnhope wore a pale blue sport coat of linen which nearly matched the walls of Newcastle’s interview room. His lawyer, a woman in deep black whose lapels, heels and facial expressions were all equally sharp, looked like she might spit venom. MacAdams took a seat, though Burnhope was first to speak.
“I’m here as a free agent and of my own volition,” he said. “I want to help Dmytro.”
MacAdams made him repeat it for the tape. Then he opened the file, the one with blunt trauma images of Foley.
“Good. You can start by telling the truth,” MacAdams said. “This morning you pretended to be shocked about the seizure of artifacts. But you knew Foley was dealing in stolen goods, and you knew Dmytro helped him. For all I know, all of Hammersmith is in on the deal and those were your goons clearing away the evidence in York.”
“You have just accused my client of a crime. Do you wish to retract?” asked the legal.
MacAdams leaned toward the recording device. “No, I don’t wish to retract.”
“My client does not have goons, as you put it,” she said.
MacAdams ignored her and looked instead at Burnhope. “Sophie caught Dmytro Friday morning. But she wasn’t alone, was she? You and Gerald were there, too. How convenient. But you promise to keep Dmytro out of trouble. Why would you do that? Worried we might trace all of this back to you?”
Burnhope settled his gaze on MacAdams. It was hard to read what might be going on there; when not surprised, he was very good at hiding emotion. Almost as good as MacAdams.
“Foley’s crimes have nothing to do with me, except that I’m Dmytro’s only protection. He is vulnerable,” he said, smoothing a curl behind his ear. “Artem is older; he’s a solid lad. And he’s engaged to Anje. Dmytro—he’s much more alone. I took him under wing; he needed a father figure.”
MacAdams noted that none of this answered his question, but he was willing to be patient. Just not very patient.
“Go on,” he said flatly.
“He struggled. And his behavior had changed in the last few months.” Burnhope’s hands had been folded on the table; now they wandered, restless. “Sophie cornered him, and after he told her, they both came to tell me, his sponsor.”
“On Friday,” MacAdams repeated for the tape.
“That’s right. He admitted he’d been doing work on the side for Foley, a courier service.” Burnhope cleared his throat. “He’s not a stupid boy. He knew it was wrong, but Foley promised to get his family out of the war zone.”
“How would he do that?”
“How would I know? They were lies.”
“You have been telling lies, too,” MacAdams countered. “The meeting with Foley last Friday, that wasn’t about a promotion. You already knew what Foley was hiding in York.”
“No, I didn’t know about York,” Burnhope said, his brow twitching in annoyance. “I didn’t have the first clue—how would I?”
“There is a stolen artifact in Dmytro’s locker,” MacAdams said flatly. “You could have reported it. You could have had Foley arrested and put away. But you didn’t.” MacAdams tapped the tabletop, then slid forward the more gruesome of the photos. “Almost as though you knew Foley wouldn’t be a problem anymore, regardless.”
Predictably, Burnhope’s lawyer was ready to interrupt.
“You are insinuating a crime,” she said.
“No,” MacAdams countered. “I’m solving one. Tell me, Mr. Burnhope. Why the lies?”
Burnhope released his grip on the table and forced his hands back to a neutral clasp. Possibly, this was to make him appear more at ease. It had the opposite effect of highlighting contents under pressure.
“Do you know how difficult it is to bring refugees into this country?” he demanded. “There’s already a stigma. People are against anyone who wasn’t born here, and you know it. Dmytro will be lucky if he’s not sent back to Ukraine. Fresh Start will be lucky if we don’t lose our certifications—”
“So you were willing to ignore felonies to save face?” MacAdams interrupted.
Burnhope did not relish being interrupted. “To save lives!” he half shouted. “To bring these people out of war—that’s what we do.”
MacAdams let a few seconds of silence fall between them and this last exclamation. Then he leaned forward on the metal table.
“Let’s try this again. Friday. What happened at that meeting?”
For a long moment, Burnhope said nothing. MacAdams thought he might not proceed at all, and that the interview would terminate, intractable. He was already thinking through scenarios for keeping him in the interview room—even arrest, if that were possible—when he spoke.
“I didn’t know what Dmytro had stolen. I didn’t know why, and the last thing I wanted was to bring suspicion on the poor kid. I thought—maybe—there was some other explanation, and I already had a meeting with Foley.” He looked from MacAdams to the tape recorder. “I didn’t lie about that; we were discussing his promotion.”
“The promotion he’d emailed you about. The one you didn’t plan to give him.”
“We never even got so far,” Burnhope explained. “I demanded answers. He didn’t have any. Instead, he said Dmytro was a liar and a delinquent. He said they were all delinquents.”
“And then what? You argued? It got heated?”
“No. I was angry but could barely speak. He said he was leaving the country—with a woman. I told him good riddance.”
“Was she a refugee, like Dmytro?” MacAdams asked.
Burnhope shook his head. “I don’t know anything about her,” he insisted. “I got suspicious when you showed me the sketch. I hope to God she isn’t. I just wanted Foley gone, out of the business, out of our lives—out of Dmytro’s life. Hasn’t it occurred to you that he is the one most likely to pay for Foley’s crimes? An outsider, barely an adult, a refugee?”
Burnhope’s voice had elevated slightly. MacAdams watched his pulse tick at the vein in his neck.
“Is that why you killed Foley?” he asked.
“Mr. MacAdams,” shouted his legal counsel, but Burnhope held up a placating hand.
“He knows I didn’t kill Foley. I was at the charity ball on Friday night, with more than a hundred witnesses.” Then he fixed his gaze on MacAdams again. “You asked me why I didn’t report Foley—why I didn’t reveal this to you even after his death. It’s because if I did, it would endanger Dmytro. And I was right.”
* * *
Every detective was a cynic. It couldn’t be helped. Humans, even when best intentioned, lied constantly. They lied to others; they lied to themselves. Three eyewitnesses couldn’t tell you the same story standing next to each other. There were biases and vested interests; a witness to a vicious attack suddenly remembered that he tried to help; of course he did. A witness to the regular beatings of a wife by her husband would claim there was nothing to suggest he might one day murder her. People made up endings and filled gaps always with a view to present themselves in the best light; truth was relative and up for revision.
MacAdams walked away from the interview room where a charitable businessman with a supposedly impeccable record claimed his worst fault was in service to a vulnerable teenager on the cusp of adulthood. Even if he wanted to believe him, MacAdams couldn’t afford to take his word. But Burnhope did have an ace; he was at the charity ball. And Green was presently checking the footage.
He found Green surrounded by a cluster of young officers and detectives. Heads down, they were watching Sophie’s footage, with Green offering commentary to eager listeners. It was rare he caught her so candid, and not for the first time he thought she ought to be running a department somewhere.
“What news?” he asked.
“It’s not favorable,” she said, eyes still locked on the time stamp. “Not to us, anyway.” She motioned to the picture, which was surprisingly clear and focused. Sophie—and Burnhope—stood on the stage welcoming guests and announcing the silent auction. “I haven’t gone over it minute by minute yet. But he gives the farewell, too, just like he said.”
“And Sophie Wagner?”
“Yup, she’s there the whole time.”
“Not our murderers?” MacAdams sat on the edge of the desk, chewing pride and indignation—and his lower lip. It didn’t mean they were clear of involvement, but they had just been bumped back to square one. Who dealt the killing blow?
“We’ve got other problems,” Green said. “The Lord Mayor’s office called. They want to know why we’re holding Stanley Burnhope.”
“We’re not,” MacAdams said, aware that it came out a bit like a growl.
“Well, thank God you’ve preserved your good humor,” Green replied, but she wasn’t happy, either, he knew.
They had to let Burnhope go. But of course, he wouldn’t go far. He was Newcastle’s golden boy, after all. There was an empty desk nearby; MacAdams threw himself into the chair with enough force to make the springs squeal. What did they have? A terrified kid who had seen too much but somehow not enough to help them, and who was now in danger of prison time or deportation.
“Gerald Standish. I’m sure he’s our receiver,” he muttered.
“Can we prove it?” Green asked.
“No. Not yet.” Maybe not ever, he added silently. “But there’s more that bothers me. He seemed utterly shocked that we’d picked up Dmytro.”
“As in, surprised the kid got caught?”
“As in, that he was involved. Apparently, he and Burnhope are sort of sponsoring him. And to be honest, I don’t think either of them would risk involving the charity.”
“Foley working alone somehow?” Green considered it a moment. “There’s no way, right?”
A golden rule of policing: big jobs are never lonely jobs. The one thread they could follow was that Foley must have plenty of connections. He must have somehow used Fresh Start to make contacts in Syria; that was at least somewhere to begin. Sophie admitted Foley had been involved in the early days; he’d ask Newcastle to call Home Office and have every record checked. Sophie would be brought in for questioning, too, and Burnhope was right—they may very well lose whatever license permitted them to sponsor incoming refugees.
“He’s got people. For one, he has the Geordie—whoever he is.” They didn’t know the van driver, not even with cooperation from Dmytro, and they still didn’t know who killed Foley. At present it seemed their excursion to Newcastle had done more harm than good. MacAdams looked at his palms; he’d been reduced to, literally, going home to lick his wounds.
“Boss?”
MacAdams looked up to see Green. She’d removed her suit jacket, too, and was presently stretching her left shoulder.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Hell of a wrench, but I’ll live,” she said. It occurred to MacAdams that if it wasn’t for Green and Jo, he might be in hospital. Things could certainly be worse.
“Let’s get back to Abington. I want to go over that video frame by frame,” he said—or tried to. A local DS had just started shouting at them.
“Sir! Uniform just found a butty van—matches your description!”
Green jumped up ahead of him. “Where?” she asked. The kid handed her his mobile, coordinates on GPS. “Ah fuck,” she said, handing it over to MacAdams. To him, it was just a dot on a map.
“What’s the trouble, Sheila?” he asked.
She grimaced and spoke through her teeth. “That’s a dumping ground,” she said.
MacAdams stood on the overlook of a quarry-turned-landfill. He’d thought Green meant fly-tipping, the rather notorious practice of trashdumping on an out-of-the-way property. He hadn’t realized it was an actual garbage dump, nor one that provided for a steep dropoff if you were bold enough. The butty van driver got full marks for that.
“Locals reported the smoke,” Green explained. “Had mostly burned out by the time anyone got here.”
They picked their way down to the vehicle itself, awash in the smell of petrol and smoking rubber. The lettering had crisped and peeled, the delivery window smashed in on impact. MacAdams half expected Struthers to climb out of the wreckage, but instead it was a short woman in her late fifties.
“You want the bad news first?” she asked, peeling away a glove. “I’d say they took a blow torch to surfaces even before dousing, lighting and giving the heave-ho. Black as sin in there. I’m Lori Peterson, by the way.”
“James MacAdams,” he said by way of obligatory greeting. “Is there any good news?”
“No bodies,” she said with a shrug. “I did find something potentially interesting. It’s a shoe. I think I found the other, as well, but it’s melted to the frame.” She motioned to a baggie off to one side.
MacAdams knelt beside the evidence wrapped in blue plastic. Not much to look at; possibly canvas—a sort of walking shoe.
“Can you tell what size that is?”
“Wouldn’t fit me,” Peterson said. “Little feet, whoever they were. Why?”
“I need to know if we have a match,” MacAdams said. Because he was thinking of the fancy heels back at the Abington Arms. They had been a 37 Euro size—about a 4 in UK.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Peterson agreed.
Green came abreast of MacAdams. “What are you thinking?” she asked.
MacAdams pursed his lips into a tight line. He was thinking about Jo Jones . . . or rather, about her way of sensing incongruity. Little details mattered.
“The hiker, the one Jo said vanished. We assumed she was another artifact courier for Foley.”
“You don’t think so?” Green asked.
MacAdams shook his head. Jo told him—he just hadn’t really heard her.
“The woman, according to Jo, wasn’t carrying a rucksack the way a hill walker would. Jo sees her walk toward the van; the Geordie claims he hasn’t seen anyone. Now we find lady’s shoes inside? Too much of a coincidence.”
“Shite. We’re talking about Foley’s girlfriend, aren’t we?”
MacAdams started back toward the car, his brain leaping forward onto the new trail. Girlfriend wasn’t quite the word.
“We’re talking about a refugee that Foley managed to shuttle around in a food truck,” he said. One he’d apparently gotten pregnant and made promises to—one he was supposed to meet in Abington the night he died. “She’s in danger.”
Green’s brows furrowed, a sign of the gears turning within. “Okay, let’s think. She went to the hotel; she could still be in Abington.”
“The van is here,” MacAdams said, opening the driver’s door and leaning on it. “Which means the Geordie is here, and the girl, too. I suspect we’re looking for a big black SUV now—like the one in York.”
“Right. But without make and model, we can’t even send out a search.” Green climbed into the passenger seat. “What do they want her for? If she witnessed the murder, surely she’d already be dead.”
MacAdams agreed. There was something else afoot. Was she a threat? A bargaining chip? Something else?
“It would help if we knew who she was—even where she was from,” he said.
Green buckled in. “I think I know,” she said. “I at least know who to ask. Ava Burnhope. I’ve been chewing over something she said.”
“I believe we’ve been kicked out of her house,” MacAdams reminded her.
Green merely gave him a sly smile.
“Just let me do the talking on this one,” she said.
* * *
The day was getting late when Green rang the bell—and this time, Ava answered it herself.
“No. You don’t get to come in and you don’t get to ask questions. My husband has been down at the station for hours and—”
“He’s been released,” Green interrupted.
“Well, he’s not home. And you aren’t welcome.” Ava moved to shut the door. Green wedged her foot and shoulder into the crack before she could manage it.
“You cannot do that!” Ava exclaimed. “Unlawful entry—”
“Do you want me to get a warrant? Because I can. And I won’t be quiet about it, either, Ms. Thompson.”
“It’s Burnhope,” Ava corrected. Green didn’t retreat.
“It was Thompson first. And you might be glad of that, eventually. I saw you perform—everyone here knows you’re brilliant. You’re above him.”
MacAdams hung back, a spectator. And so far, he’d not anticipated a single one of Green’s moves. Apparently, neither had Ava.
“I beg your pardon?” she asked.
Green pushed the police sketch through the door.
“This woman. She was trafficked by Foley into this country. The van they kept her in was torched at the dump. We know because her shoes were in there. She’s still missing and in trouble. Now . . . you said you cared, and I’m asking you to prove it.”
Ava didn’t say anything for a moment, as though each of Green’s sentences had to make an emergency landing in her mind.
“Her shoes,” she said finally, and opened the door. “God.”
Ava was wearing the same shimmering duster from earlier in the day, but her gait was no longer ethereal. She walked, heavy soled, on the earth the same as anyone, stopping when she reached the kitchen.
“Do you want tea?” she asked, and MacAdams had the distinct impression she was speaking only to Green.
“No, thank you.”
“You won’t mind if I have some,” Ava said, pouring from a carafe into a nearby mug. She wrapped her fingers around it, held on without drinking. A talisman, or something for her hands to do. “What do you want, Detective?”
“The truth,” Green said. And Ava . . . laughed. It was an empty, sad sound. The only sound. MacAdams realized he could hear no children.
“Doesn’t everyone,” she said. “They aren’t here, if you’re wondering. I sent the children to my mother’s. And Maryam, too.”
Green walked farther into the kitchen and leaned against marble countertops.
“You’re angry, aren’t you?” she said quietly to Ava. “But not at us. I’m guessing you didn’t know about Dmytro and Foley.”
“Stanley told me this morning, after you left.” The pale lashes closed slowly before opening again. “Because he knew I’d find out eventually.”
“Foley wasn’t just bringing artifacts into the country. He was bringing people. A person, anyway. And she’s carrying his baby.”
The mug hit the counter hard enough to spill tea over the lip.
“Everything I’ve worked for is wrapped up in refugee work,” Ava said, turning away. She delivered the rest while staring at the cupboards. “I gave up my career for this—for my children and people like them. For Maryam. For the charity.”
“When news of this gets out, it’s going to play hell with reputation,” Green said. “Stanley lied. Sophie lied.”
“To protect Dmytro!” Ava said, snapping back around.
“Yeah?” Green asked. “Why him? Why not think about all the others? He’s put everyone in jeopardy, and not just at Fresh Start. What about Maryam? What about your kids?”
Ava made a noise of disgust, almost a bark.
“I asked him that, myself,” she said, finally drinking the tea—possibly to hide a look of white-hot anger. It reflected in her eyes, anyway.
“Did he give you an answer? He didn’t, did he? He didn’t give us much of one, either.” Green unfolded the sketch again. “You know what I think? I think this woman is key to a whole lot about a whole lot. I want to know who she is, and I want you to tell me.”
MacAdams braced himself, but Ava didn’t erupt. She looked honestly confused.
“I told you, I don’t recognize her,” she said.
Green nodded. “I know. And I believe you meant it. I just don’t think it’s true.” She held up the page to the light. A rounded face, strong jaw but pointed chin, broad nose and almond eyes beneath dark brows. “Do you remember what you said? You asked if she was a refugee. Why?”
“It was a guess—she had dark hair, dark eyes—”
Green bucked her chin. “You said it because you do recognize her, unconsciously, at least. She reminds you of Maryam.”
Ava bristled. “Because she’s Syrian? So what, you’re saying I think all Syrians look the same?”
“Ava, listen to yourself. I didn’t say this woman was Syrian. But you just did.”
“It’s where the artifacts came from, the papers said. I just—It’s coincidence,” Ava remonstrated.
“Is it?” MacAdams asked. “Or are these matters all connected? You saw that face and you thought of Maryam. We told you this girl is in trouble; you said all refugees are in trouble. So maybe you should tell us why Maryam remains frightened of the police?”
“It was just a filing error—it’s been sorted—she has a passport and everything!” Ava said, which told MacAdams at least half of what he wanted to know.
“Her entry into this country was complicated, is that it?”
“But not illegal!” Ava said, though without the firm conviction she’d used a few days before.
Green nodded in her direction. “Well, something illegal is happening here. And meanwhile, we have a missing person on our hands. If I were you, Ms. Burnhope, I’d get a solicitor. For yourself, the kids and Maryam, too.”
Ava’s glassy eyes held unfallen tears, but the line of her mouth was surprisingly resolute.
“Call me Ms. Thompson, please.”