Thursday, 19:50
The man standing in front of Jo wore a tailored suit; hair perfectly set, shoe leather buffed to shine. But his eyes had just widened in their sockets, pulling hooded lids into wells of excess skin folds. Pigeon. Window. Smack.
“Ms. Jones?” he asked, his voice rising on the last syllable, the sharp note of disbelief.
“You’re dead,” Jo said. Because that was the first thought that came to mind, and at the moment shock wasn’t permitting any others.
He opened his mouth, failed to speak and closed it again. Then he gestured to the car door.
“I can explain,” he said finally. “I know it seems incredible, but there’s—there’s an answer. A solution. A very simple solution. Can you? Just come with me, please.”
The sentences came out half-formed; a theory, a question, an imperative. Jo did not like it.
“I’m going to go now,” she said. Except she didn’t. Her eyes kept straying to the dark windows; he followed her train of thought exactly.
“You’re looking for the girl.” He took a step forward—Jo took a step back. “I’m trying to protect her. She’s in trouble.
“Then you should call the police,” Jo said. She thought: Thirty steps to the parking ramp.
“I will. I’m going to.” Foley had recovered from the shock of seeing her. His manner smoothed. “But I don’t want to get Lina in trouble.”
“Why would she be in trouble?” Jo asked.
Foley sighed. “Because the system is broken, that’s why. She’s an asylum seeker.” He waited for Jo to understand. She didn’t. “Undocumented, I suppose, you’d say. She fled to the UK and applied for asylum. But she’s been denied.”
Jo was backing up, slowly.
“What does that mean?”
“It means she’ll be deported. But Lina is safe with me.” Foley looked over his shoulder and gestured to the car. “Do you want to meet her?”
Jo could smell the exhaust; whoever started the engine, it wasn’t Foley. And that bothered her. Everything bothered her almost as much as the not-dead Foley. There were questions she ought to be asking, but they’d bottlenecked: Why was he here, who was the girl . . . who was the dead guy?
What she said was: “Let her out of the car.”
Foley stood with his hands in front of him, palms open, facing out—nonthreatening. He took a step backward, his face near the window of the passenger side. It was, Jo noticed, cracked open.
“Lina, do you want to come out?” he asked. Jo’s breath came quick in her throat as she watched the rear of the SUV. Her brain felt itchy. Something wasn’t right. On the other side of the vehicle, Jo heard a door open and shut. Run, she told herself. Run and don’t look back. Jo spun around and sprinted for the garage doors; she could make it to the street then back to the bridge—
“Gotcha!” Two arms wrapped tight around her middle, and the force almost sent her colliding with the pavement.
“Let go!” Jo shouted, writhing and kicking.
“Put her in the back,” Foley said. He remained exactly where he was, unhurried, arms folded. Jo threw her head backward, trying to find a nose to break.
“She bloody feral,” the man growled. “Open the door!”
Jo saw the back of the SUV in mental flashbulb: black leather seats, black interior, blacked-out windows, and cowering in the far corner was Lina. Under the yellow coat she wore an oversize shirt and leggings. She wasn’t hurt, but the look on her face was one of hypervigilant attention—and possibly confusion. These men were not her rescuers. Jo raised both her knees, shifting the center of gravity. Her captor arched backward to compensate, and Jo kicked down as hard as she could, Doc Martens connecting solidly with both shins.
“Fucking hell!” he squealed and Jo wrenched free.
She didn’t get far. Two rough hands closed on her shoulders, lifted and tossed her into the vehicle as if she was a cast-off rag.
“Nebby hinny, yar?”
Jo caught a glimpse of the man’s heavy jowls and squared-off shoulders before the door closed. The Geordie. She dived for the handle, only to hear the child-safety locks click into place.
“For your own protection, you understand,” said Foley, now from the passenger seat. Jo couldn’t reach him; the SUV had been fitted with a caged partition. The other man—the one she’d kicked—climbed into a seat just in front of it. Jo threaded her fingers through the grate and gave it a shake.
“This is kidnapping!” she shouted.
In the front seat, Foley turned to face her. “I promise, we can work all of this out,” he said. And then, to the man in front of her: “Close the curtain.”
Jo watched as he tugged black fabric. Her window on the world closed by degrees until there was nothing but darkness. Then the SUV lurched forward, knocking her onto the bench seat. Her phone was dead, and no one—not Gwilym, certainly not MacAdams—knew where she was. Jo felt her chest constrict with the urge to hyperventilate . . . and then, a small hand reached out and clutched her own.
“I am afraid,” whispered the girl in yellow.
Jo stared into puffy, red eyes. She couldn’t be more than eighteen. Get a grip, Jo told herself. Vagus nerve. Autonomic stimulation. Four belly breaths and hold . . . She gave the girl’s hand a squeeze.
“I’m Jo,” she said.
* * *
Sherlock Holmes would count the turns in the streets or identify route by sense of smell. Jo didn’t know Newcastle well enough for any of that to matter, but she paid special attention to the time. Thirteen minutes from where she’d been; that was the radius. She tried to think of the GPS map and scale; it included a lot of ground on both sides of the river, but they were still in the city’s center . . . somewhere. The vehicle came to a halt in a pouring rain; Foley opened the door, holding an umbrella.
“I need you both to come with me,” he said.
“No way,” Jo said, scrabbling backward—into the broad chest of the Geordie.
“Ye dee as yer telt!” he boomed.
“Tie you up if it was up to me, an’ don’t tempt me,” said the third man, guiding them out of the car.
Two men on both sides of her, one behind, all within touching distance. Jo’s skin crawled. Focus on the ground, she told herself. New asphalt, wet streaked beneath the black umbrella. A parking lot, but in a moment they were under the awning of a building. She heard Lina whimper: “Where is Habibi?” The word teased Jo’s memory; she’d heard it before.
Foley just answered by saying, “Everything will be fine.”
The umbrella came down once they were inside; the space was cavernous. Polished stone, cut glass and a fountain in the center. Atrium? Office building?
“Why are we here?” she asked.
“I have something to attend to,” Foley said. “It won’t take long.” He led them to an elevator, and when it dinged open, the Geordie herded them in behind Foley—but the other man stayed behind. He turned to go, and in the barest stripe of visual before the doors closed, Jo could see a handgun tucked into his waistband.
Oh shit oh shit oh shit, she breathed as the floors counted up—six, seven, eight floors; nine, ten, eleven. The elevator didn’t open to a hallway, but a whole floor.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” Foley said, pointing to a sunken area with shiny sofas and a heavy coffee table. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Are you serious?” Jo asked. Lina just stared at him, wide-eyed.
“Where is Habibi?” she asked again.
“Let me get you that tea,” Foley said. “And then we can talk about everything.” He stepped up to the peculiar platform that circled the room, a sort of display area for various awards. To one side was a small counter and tea maker. Jo looked for the door but found the Geordie instead. He stood in front of it firm and joyless as a salt pillar. And for the first time, Jo noticed the sheath buckled to his belt. It wasn’t a gun, thank God. It was a knife, which was almost as bad. Jo swept her eyes back to center.
“You kidnapped us.”
“I invited you,” Foley corrected. “Do you take milk? I’m sorry I don’t have any biscuits to offer.” He set two cups down, one for Lina and one for Jo. “You were more hospitable, I know.”
Jo was afraid to drink it. Lina wasn’t in a state to deny; she gulped it thirstily.
“This doesn’t feel like an invitation. Someone’s blocking the door. And the man downstairs had a—”
“A temporary arrangement,” Foley completed.
“Nar, us has a deal,” said the Geordie. “Got to get gannin; wot you waiting ’ere for anyways?”
Foley clenched and unclenched his hands against the blue blazer, then turned back to Jo in smiling composure.
“Ignore him. I just have some paperwork to take care of. Then we can talk about—everything.”
“Can we talk about who the dead man is?” she asked.
Foley’s smile went brittle like plastic. “It’s just a misunderstanding,” he said, but Jo wasn’t having it.
“There is a man in Abington morgue, and he’s not misunderstood,” she said. “He’s dead.”
“Dead?” Lina rose to her feet. “Who is dead? Please not Habibi!”
Habibi. The meaning escaped Jo before but returned in a flash. She’d seen it on the cover of an Arabic language-learning book she’d edited; it was a term of endearment. It meant my love. Jo’s brain skipped forward to MacAdams’s kitchen; “Foley had a girlfriend.” The girlfriend was the missing hiker. The missing hiker was Lina, who begged for news of her lover. The man standing before them was the same man who arrived on Jo’s doorstep in the rain. But he was not Ronan Foley.
21:00
The case had never made sense, because the very first piece of evidence had been wrong. Ronan Foley supposedly shut the attic door between himself and Jo Jones at 11:00 p.m. on Friday. Since then, it had been questions with no answers: why Jo’s cottage instead of Abington Arms? How did he get there? Where was his car? Why was the body iced? Why the stolen towels and soap?
Green had said it best; the case would make more sense if Jo got the timing wrong. She didn’t. Instead, she’d mistaken the man, who had convinced her he was someone he wasn’t.
It wasn’t possible for Burnhope to get from the charity ball to Abington and back if he had to hunt down and murder Foley. But it was possible to dump a man he’d murdered and iced earlier that day. Much earlier, in fact. MacAdams had checked with Struthers first: the stomach contents test had failed because the stomach was empty. Jo’s guest, on the other hand, ate a package of Jammie Dodgers.
Next came the trousers. The muddy ones were a size too small . . . because they belonged to Burnhope and not Foley. A side-by-side comparison on film proved it: he returned to the stage in trousers that bagged off his more slender frame. Not counting on the mud, he’d ruined his and needed to take from the dead man. Then there was the raincoat. They hadn’t found “Foley’s” because it wasn’t Foley’s at all. It was Burnhope’s, because Stanley, not Ronan, “rented” a room in Jo’s cottage. Once that domino was set to fall, the others followed:
Why had Burnhope called the Abington Arms? To see if Foley was expected.
Why had he wanted to know if the hotel was busy? A busy hotel might not notice an impersonator, especially if he laid on the Irish accent a bit thick. He was in for a surprise, however; staff had never heard of Ronan Foley; he’d been there under an alias. Then Arianna, mistaking his question as a need for peace and quiet, suggested a cottage rental.
Why the ice? Because Foley died at four thirty in the afternoon and had to keep it from smelling for the rest of the night—which also kept him fresh enough to have died much later. He packed him into his car, then used Foley’s phone and credit card to book Netherleigh Cottage. He might have stopped there, but he didn’t—not Stanley Burnhope. Too clever for his own good, he determined to collect a duffel of Foley’s clothes. A random assortment, a hand-grab of toiletries. First stop: dump the body where Foley’s connection in the butty van was sure to find him. Then he drove to Jo’s cottage, intent on leaving the duffel as further proof that he was still alive while Stanley was at the charity ball. He’d planned to be back well before the closing remarks—and if things had gone to plan, they’d never be the wiser. But Burnhope hadn’t counted on torrential rains and muddy ditches—and he hadn’t counted on Jo Jones.
“Warrant granted!” Green shouted from across the room. “Uniform are ready to back us up.”
“Good.” MacAdams threw on his jacket and checked his watch. “Burnhope should be home by now; we’ll approach from the side street.” The Burnhope residence was twelve minutes away—and they had a search warrant, too. All the soap and towels in the world wouldn’t stand up to a forensic investigation.
“You realize this means he kept a dead body in his car for hours,” Green said as they sped down the A167. “Damn cool headed.”
“That’s why he needed to scrub it out,” MacAdams said, thinking of Jo’s comment days earlier. “He’s married. He might even share the car with Ava.”
MacAdams had to admit, Burnhope made one hell of a villain. Yet he’d lost his composure when they told him about the York building. Why? Because he thought he didn’t know about it. MacAdams didn’t have all the pieces yet: he was sure now that Burnhope and Foley were in the trafficking. But Foley must have been double-crossing, doing a side business. It made sense of the two types of operation: professional and international, sloppy and local. No doubt Burnhope thought ending Foley fixed everything—but the York business? One more of Foley’s messes he’d have to clean up, and it threatened everything else, too. Burnhope was a man unused to paying for mistakes. How far would he go to cover his tracks?
The radio brayed to life: “We’re getting close—do you want to make first approach?”
MacAdams very much did. He switched to fog lights and coasted to a halt on the corner. They would walk up.
Once again, they found themselves on the well-trimmed drive. The lights were on downstairs. MacAdams rang the bell and waited. No answer.
“Think he has the wind up?” Green asked as he rang again—but this time, they heard the slide of a lock. It was Ava.
“Oh. It’s you.” Her whalebone cheeks had color for the first time; they had been pinked with wine. She waved a half-empty glass at them. “He’s not here. Not even a phone call.”
She took in the intensity of MacAdams’s and Green’s expressions, and fear flickered across her features. She could see something was wrong, even through the cloud of Pinot Grigio, and backed away from the door. MacAdams walked right inside behind her.
“Could you give us your husband’s license plate number, please,” he asked.
“No need. Car’s in the garage.”
“Both vehicles are here?” Green asked.
Ava’s hair had been hastily pulled up, but a strand kept falling against sharp cheekbones. She tucked it clumsily behind her ear before going on.
“We just have the one. His solicitor—or barrister, whatever you call the criminal defense—took him to the station and never brought him back. And—” she took a long drink “—and he hasn’t called. I think I said.”
MacAdams exchanged a glance with Green. Ava was more than a little tipsy, and if they didn’t get her to a sofa soon she might well be on the floor.
“Would you like to sit down?” he asked.
She laughed. “How kind. You’d think you lived here. You’ve probably been here enough.” She made a gesture toward the adjacent sitting room, then a reasonable attempt at leading him there. Green provided a little support, and at last she was resituated on the white leather camelback. A laptop was open on the coffee table. She’d been looking up “family law”—divorce lawyers.
“Ms. Burnhope—” he began.
“No.”
“Ava,” MacAdams corrected. “We have a warrant to search the house and vehicle for evidence. We also have a warrant for Stanley’s arrest. If you have any idea—”
“I’ve lots of ideas. But I already tried the club. And his mother. And my father. And all of our friends.”
“His solicitor?”
“Oh, I definitely called her.”
“What about a confidant—someone from work?” Green asked.
“If you mean Trisha, you’re wrong. And you still have Sophie at the station. And frankly—” Ava’s eyes wandered till they found Green’s “—if he had a lover, I wouldn’t be likely to know, would I?”
MacAdams had messaged the officers; they’d start the search soon, and that would likely put Ava off. He knelt to be nearer her level.
“Do you think he might have?” he asked.
“No. But until this morning I didn’t know about Dmytro’s theft, or that this Foley person was—doing whatever he does. Or that Maryam’s papers only got authenticated a month ago.”
“Wait . . .” Now Green was kneeling, too. “Maryam’s papers. You mean she wasn’t legally here?”
“Oh. She is now. Funny, I thought bureaucracy was to blame. That’s what Stanley told me; just messy paperwork. But no.”
“She wasn’t sponsored by Fresh Start?” Green asked.
Ava shook her head. “She applied for azslm—excuse me, asylum—instead. It’s—It takes a long time.” She swallowed wine in a gulp. “And s’not guaranteed. But we could have appealed, for fuck’s sake.”
MacAdams had missed something. He backtracked.
“Are you saying her asylum status was rejected?”
“Yes—no. I don’t know.” She rifled through the papers on the coffee table. “I just know this is new.” She handed him a document MacAdams didn’t understand, but the date was clear enough. Maryam might be legal now, but Burnhope had done it through the back doors. Had he greased the wheels?
“Why would he lie to you about her status?” he asked instead.
“Apparently, that’s what he does,” Ava muttered bitterly. Then she seemed to think better of it. “Not to worry her. Not to worry me. Or—he knew I wouldn’t let him take a shortcut. Pisser.”
“Ava,” MacAdams interrupted. “I know this is a lot all at once. But please think back. How often did Stanley travel for Hammersmith?”
Ava picked up the glass, saw that it was empty and put it down again. “He didn’t. Practically lived in his office downtown,” she said . . . and MacAdams felt another puzzle piece click into place.
“Ava, have you ever been to the Hammersmith building?” he asked.
“Not—not since the kids,” she said.
“Not for five years. Why might that be?” he asked.
Ava clasped her hands in front of her, forearms leaning on her knees.
“If you’d asked me yesterday, I would have told you I wasn’t interested in architecture—or that I was busy with the kids and the charity work. Just separate spheres and all that. I’d have said it, and I’d have believed it, too.”
“And what’s your answer today?” Green asked.
“I just don’t think he wanted me there. And I can only think of terrible reasons why not.”
MacAdams could hear the officers as they made their way through the house: footfalls upon the stairs and in and out of rooms above them. But they were in the wrong place.
“Green, back to the car. We need to get to Hammersmith—now.” He’d already run for the door, nearly colliding with forensics coming through.
“Why there?” Green asked as they made it outside. “You don’t think it’s the scene of the crime, do you?”
“Both crimes,” MacAdams said. “That’s why I asked if he traveled.”
“I don’t follow,” Green said. They’d made it back to the car and MacAdams belted in and started the engine in a single motion.
“Burnhope never gets his hands dirty. Foley is the one who does the deals—he’s a liability. But there’s a paper trail somewhere, and Burnhope must know we’re getting close to a warrant.”
“He’s going to destroy the evidence,” Green said, smacking her thigh. “Shite.”
MacAdams couldn’t agree more. He’d largely retraced their earlier route, though they needn’t go as far as the station. He could already see the round glass sides of Hammersmith’s tower above tree-lined street. There were lights on up there, glowing sodium yellow against the haze of rain.
“Gotcha,” he said, pulling into the car park. Beside him, Green gripped the dash.
“Boss? We better call for backup,” she said. Parked to one side, not far from the entrance, was a large, black SUV.