Madeleine has nothing but a carry-on bag, expertly packed. After years of business travel, she knows what she is doing. Besides, she will only be staying one night, so she won’t need much.
‘G and T, please,’ she smiles at the air hostess, taking the drink and swallowing gratefully. She won’t have more than one; she has to drive when she reaches the other side, and mountain roads, after all, can be treacherous.
At Frankfurt airport she catches her connecting flight to Linz, exiting by the sign reading ‘car transfer’. She pays for the vehicle in cash and takes the A to Z from her bag. She won’t risk a GPS, which would be far too easy to trace.
Checking her rear-view mirror for any sign that she is being followed, Madeleine follows the map until she spots the exit sign for Steyr. She has never been to the house before, even though she is the one who arranged for them to have it, this part of Upper Austria being removed but conspicuous enough to facilitate the necessary hiding in plain sight. Besides, they are almost unrecognisable from the pictures in the news reports. The family photos Madeleine had issued to the press were intentionally old, and slightly anonymous, their faces caught in shadow. The photo only showed the four of them, anyway: no image of the baby has ever been released.
When Gabriela comes to the door, having been alerted to Madeleine’s arrival by the sound of the wheels in the drive, she looks so different that Madeleine almost wonders whether she has the wrong house. Her hair is cut short and dyed a lighter chestnut brown; everything about her is faded.
Madeleine can’t help but smile. ‘Hello, you.’
Madeleine follows Gabriela through the house, looking around the rooms, taking in the details of family life: the unwashed cups, the discarded school bags on the dresser.
‘The children are in the garden,’ Gabriela says as they settle at the table in the kitchen, overlooking the matchbox lawn where Sadie is holding Layla in one arm, pushing Callum on a rusty swing with the other.
Gabriela pours out two glasses of whisky from the bottle Madeleine has produced from her bag.
‘Where’s Tom?’ Madeleine asks.
‘I’m not sure,’ Gabriela replies, not meeting her eye. ‘He spends a lot of the day away from the house.’
‘How are things with you two?’
Gabriela shakes her head, taking a swig of her drink. ‘As you’d expect. He’s good with Layla, though, and the kids have adjusted to the idea. Or else, they’re building it all up to have a total meltdown later in life … Have you spoken to Ivan?’ The question rushes from Gabriela’s lips and Madeleine looks at her, trying to understand how she could have given it all up for a man she hardly knew. But then she looks away.
‘I went to see him in prison. He’s going to testify, so he will probably get a leaner sentence,’ she says, keeping it top-line. Gabriela doesn’t deserve to be kept informed, not fully; besides, Madeleine doesn’t trust her not to try to contact him or to jeopardise her family’s life once again. ‘The good news, as I mentioned, is that it looks like Vasiliev is going to be extradited as part of some trade-off between the UK and Russia. Turns out she’s pissed off a few of the high-ups over there along the way, which is fucking excellent news for us. Once she’s here, she’ll be tried. Finally, we’ve cracked the encrypted messaging system they – and hundreds of other criminals – have been using … Turns out they had such faith in it, they talked about everything in such detail we have a lot of evidence, on a lot of things …’
There are things she doesn’t want to go into. She doesn’t mention that David Witherall was arrested in Dubai under an urgent Interpol Red Notice thanks to the swift work of the international liaison officers stationed there. She doesn’t mention how Dubai was eager to assist after the Financial Action Task Force gave them a poor rating in their recent evaluation report. She doesn’t mention, either, that no one had contested his extradition to the UK, which meant he was swiftly returned to the UK. And she doesn’t mention how he was found swinging in his cell, despite having been on suicide watch.
Her mind turns briefly to Maria, trying not to picture her face as she fell. The British press had never caught wind of that one. What interest would such a story have to their audiences? A Greek woman stumbling off the edge of a cliff on an island somewhere in the Sporades, whilst out walking on a visit home to see her mother for Christmas, was nothing more than a tragic accident in a far-off land. The media had never managed to connect it to the Witherall family – the daughters themselves were of little interest these days, even if they hadn’t been too young to legally report on.
Madeleine had checked in on Stella and Rose, out of a sense of guilt for what had happened, though she knew that it wasn’t her fault. Given that she had assisted Maria in getting her and David to the UK, she feels partly responsible, even if she knows she isn’t. Not really. Those children had lost everyone, and Madeleine had felt obliged to know what would become of them. It was some comfort to learn that David and Anna’s old friend Meg, who had given her information on Harry, was applying to adopt them.
She thinks, then, of her and Meg’s initial conversation, under the bridge after the inquest. The resentment in the woman’s tone as she told Madeleine about how she had first met Harry, when she was an intern at the paper he wrote for – how he’d tried to recruit her to spy on David – had been palpable. She hadn’t known that Harry had turned his sights on Anna, how he had manipulated her, once it became clear that Meg wouldn’t be sucked in. She hadn’t seen Anna for years, she said, not until David’s funeral.
Madeleine could tell that Meg had felt a degree of remorse for what became of her old friend, of responsibility for not having been around to save Anna. She hadn’t known Harry was involved in the way that Madeleine now knew, definitively – the way that the world would soon, once the trial was over – but she knew enough to sense something wasn’t as it seemed. She had, in her own words, smelt a rat.
‘Does he know that we’re here?’ Gabriela asks and Madeleine is momentarily confused by her drifting thoughts, but then she remembers and her expression hardens.
‘Popov? Of course he doesn’t. No one knows, apart from me and a couple of my colleagues from the Protected Persons Unit who helped facilitate the relocation. We can’t risk anyone knowing, ever … You understand that, right?’
‘Of course I do.’ Gabriela looks away.
Madeleine doesn’t mention the threats he has already received in prison. She doesn’t mention the likelihood that one day they will no longer just be threats, given Vasiliev’s web of contacts.
A few moments pass and then Gabriela speaks again. ‘What about Harry, the guy who brought us here? I liked him.’
Madeleine takes another sip of her drink, unwilling to divulge the details of his arrest. ‘I liked him too. So, what about you – do you have enough money?’
Gabriela nods. ‘We have the rent from my mum’s old house, which keeps us afloat, thanks to the account you set up for us. We’re going to be OK, I think.’
Madeleine nods tentatively.
‘I read the story in the Mail, the latest theory about the unexplained death of an English family in the French mountains,’ Gabriela says. ‘Did you arrange Saoirse’s interview with them?’
Madeleine shakes her head. ‘God, no.’ The truth, though she wouldn’t say it to Gabriela, is that it had been helpful, the implication from Gabriela’s oldest friend that she had been depressed and had intentionally driven off the side of the cliff. In the end, the papers had moved on to something else, for the moment at least – the absence of bodies put down to wild boars.
‘Do you think she really believes that I’d have done that?’ Gabriela asks.
‘I don’t know,’ Madeleine shrugs.
‘In the interview, she didn’t mention the baby,’ Gabriela adds quietly.
‘Perhaps she was trying to protect you.’
‘Do you think she knows?’ Gabriela says, and Madeleine frowns.
‘Of course not. Unless you told her, which you didn’t …’
‘I didn’t,’ Gabriela replies. ‘I just said I was in trouble and I needed her help.’
Madeleine reaches for her drink. ‘So then she helped you.’
‘Yes,’ Gabriela says, as though working something out. Her gaze remains fixed at a point somewhere in the distance, her expression unchanging though her eyes finally fill with tears, which she makes no effort to wipe away.
Madeleine says nothing as Gabriela reaches for her hand. They sit for a while in silence, their fingers resting next to one another’s, watching the children through the window.
‘Thank you,’ Gabriela says, after a while, as though the thought has just occurred to her. ‘I don’t think I said that before. You’ve been so good to us, you’ve saved our lives.’
Madeleine takes a final sip of her drink. She looks away. ‘What choice did I have?’