London, the day Anna dies
Madeleine has been trying hard, in the hours since her meeting with Harry, to distract herself from the mental image of Gabriela, with remarkably little success. She hasn’t called to say she is on her way to Devon and Madeleine knows better than to ring her and risk raising an alarm. According to the plan Madeleine had conveyed in the restaurant, Gabriela was to go straight to her North London family home, spend the night there, then head to Richmond the following morning to collect the baby. From here she should instruct Tom to meet her in Devon with the children.
When Madeleine pictures her friend now she still sees the old Gabriela, sharing gossip and fags in the street outside the offices at King Charles Street. Though it’s a terrible thing to think – and of course she would never say it – Gabriela was better before the kids. Some women blossom in motherhood, others wither. Maybe it’s simply a matter of confidence. If she was being kind, Madeleine could put it down to a lack of conviction in herself and her decisions that meant Gabriela was constantly questioning her plausibility as a parent. She cared too much what others thought, but more to the point she could never seem to enjoy it. She would never let herself recognise what she had, or what she could have had if she had given in to it a little.
But this? She doesn’t deserve this. Not even after what she’s done.
If she’s honest with herself, Madeleine resents her friend for never having confided in her. When Harry raised the question of how no one noticed what had been going on with Gabriela, Madeleine had felt defensive. Because she hadn’t noticed either, had she? Sure, she had felt something was off, but she had thought it was probably something to do with the drudgery of domestic life that Gabriela was forever complaining about. There were aspects of her friend’s existence that Madeleine simply hadn’t paid too much attention to. When Gabriela had said she planned to stay at home rather than find a new job after leaving the FCO, Madeleine had known it wouldn’t have been her choice. She had imagined it was Tom’s decision, or that being pushed out by their boss, Guy Emsworth, after she had rejected his sexual advances, had knocked her confidence so badly that she was struggling to find her mojo again. But equally it just wasn’t the sort of chat they had; their friendship was different, better than domestic small talk, Madeleine had thought at the time. Or maybe it was that she was wary of talking to Gabriela about family life. It grated on her how often she complained about the tedium of motherhood – Madeleine wouldn’t go so far as to claim motherhood was a sacred gift, but it was a choice. This wasn’t the Fifties; Gabriela had freedom to choose whether or not she wanted to have children. It wasn’t a choice everyone had the luxury of.
Her mind moves to Harry. She knows he had simply been asking the questions he needed to ask – the ones she, too, would have posed in his position. But how well does she really know him? Enough to think that she has no reason to distrust him any more than anyone else that she could get to do the job. People are fallible. She relies upon this fact, and pays for it, in her line of work; that people are corruptible is a gift as well as a curse.
There are few people Madeleine trusts entirely; and now with Gabriela, there is one fewer. At least, she reasons sardonically to herself, this latest unravelling proves that she is right to remain vigilant. So no, she doesn’t wholly trust Harry, but in this moment she needs someone, and for a job like this it has to be someone outside the agency. Vasiliev is too well-connected; there have been too many leaks over the years, too many evasions. Besides, Harry is a pro. Since their first meeting at an international conference on people trafficking years ago, which he was covering for a newspaper, they have worked together numerous times, always in an unofficial capacity – her offering him leads in return for favours, the sorts of transactions it is best to keep off paper. Harry has never failed to deliver, though admittedly what she has asked of him has never been anything approaching this scale.
‘You free?’ Sean appears holding two cups of coffee.
‘If one of those is for me then I might be. How’s it going?’
He hands her the cup. ‘Pretty bloody good actually.’ He waits for a minute, taking a sip, enjoying the build-up to whatever it is he’s about to reveal. ‘I’ve just been having a chat with an old pal, MI6, thinks she might be able to give us some intel on this case.’
‘Nice,’ Madeleine replies, wondering what this has to do with her – she was only brought in to make contact with Gabriela and arrange the next steps in terms of her vanishing. The case itself is nothing to do with her. For a horrible moment she wonders if Sean is using it as a means to chat her up, but she discards the idea as quickly as it arises. She knows when a man is imagining he might be able to get into her knickers, and Sean isn’t one of them. You could say a lot about him, but at least he understands his own limitations.
‘Apparently one of the companies Vasiliev is involved with – TradeSmart, it’s a multi-billion-pound trading company run by this British guy, Clive Witherall – they were under surveillance for a while a few years back,’ he continues. ‘Something to do with a chemical spillage they were involved in over in Central Africa. The case was dropped mid-way through, but in the process they had human informants inside the house as well as inside his business, who managed to plant probes and also, I believe, cloned a computer drive. Tons of recordings, emails, you name it. It will take some digging but it looks like we might have some work to do.’
‘Right,’ Madeleine says.
‘She’s going to give me a call later today, and, well, because of your connection to Gabriela and the fact that another of the companies we’re watching appears to be a front for human trafficking …’
‘You want me to work with you on the case?’
Sean smiles pleadingly. ‘What do you say?’
Madeleine leans back in her chair, taking a sip from her cup. ‘I thought you’d never ask. But you might need to buy me something stronger than a coffee.’
They head to Pico’s on the Embankment after work, casting their eyes around for anyone from the office, but there’s no one there apart from a couple of stragglers they don’t recognise.
‘So Felicity’s background is in fraud,’ Sean explains, once they are seated opposite each other, drinks in hand. ‘A few years ago, when she was with MI6, she was pulled onto this case involving three corporate criminals. The original reason for looking into them was that they were using offshore companies to commit fraud – all pretty standard stuff. But there was also particular interest in TradeSmart because of its apparent involvement in this chemical spillage in Central Africa. You remember hearing about it? Never made headlines as there wasn’t enough evidence, but there were rumours …’
Madeleine shakes her head. It isn’t that surprising that she missed it; she’s spent so much of the past few years abroad, either in Eastern Europe or Asia. When she was here in London, she was head-down in various ongoing trafficking cases.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Sean continues, unperturbed. ‘Anyway, according to Felicity, it looked like there was a hell of a lot more going on in those shipments. One of the guys involved, an African by the name of Francisco Nguema, was using his shipping business as a means to trade arms.’ He takes a sip of his lager. ‘But then the investigation was suddenly pulled because it transpired that one of the men involved was FCO. They got rid of him in the end, falsified some claims of sexual harassment and sent him out to pasture.’
Madeleine’s mind moves instantly to Guy Emsworth, her former FCO boss who had put so much pressure on both her and Gabriela that they had both eventually left, Madeleine for a career in law enforcement, Gabriela for—
‘Oh my God.’ She feels her heartbeat rise. ‘Did your friend tell you this man’s name?’
Sean shakes his head. ‘Doesn’t really matter. The point is she was working with informants tracking everything that was happening in and out of the house of our new mate, Clive Witherall, up until that point, including the woman who looked after his son’s kids. Same as Popov and his housemaid. I tell you what, if I was up to some dodgy shit, I’d be a bit more careful choosing who I made part of the family.’