The privacy settings on DS Madeleine Farrow’s phone mean only five numbers can reach her between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.
Still half asleep, the detective groans as she reaches for the handset, her palm fumbling against the surface of the bedside table, the image of the dead man’s protruding feet disappearing into nothing.
Jesus Christ. She squints at the screen in the darkness of the hotel room: 4.30 a.m., which makes it 1.30 a.m. back in London.
‘This better be good,’ Madeleine answers, rubbing her forehead.
‘Did I wake you, hen?’ She is greeted by Jonny Robertson’s familiar Glaswegian brogue.
‘No, I was out on a break-of-dawn jog.’
She struggles to sit up. Bloody hell, her knees. Maybe she should think about doing some exercise, now she’s fifty.
Reaching forward, Madeleine turns on the lamp, blinking as the room comes into focus: the barely touched minibar and flat-screen TV on one side, curtains obscuring the view from the first-floor balcony on the other.
Just visible through the crack, the sky is turning pink. There’s sunrise yoga starting soon: she saw it advertised on the spa listing the night before. She can still make it, if she’s quick. Pulling the soft cotton sheet up to meet her chin, she settles back into the pillow. Tomorrow, or the day after.
‘So, when are you back?’ Jonny continues.
‘Friday.’
‘We could really do with your help here.’
Instinctively, her thoughts turn to her boss, Paul Rittler. Please don’t be dead, not yet.
Jonny answers the unspoken question. ‘A missing kid.’
This job.
‘Why are we involved?’ Madeleine asks, reaching for the tube of oud hand cream on the bedside table.
‘It’s the Swedish ambassador’s daughter – disappeared from school.’
‘When?’
‘This morning – yesterday, actually. It’s barely Tuesday here.’
Jonny pauses, taking a mouthful of what Madeleine guesses are crisps. She can almost smell the faded elegance of the office affectionately known as SCID Row, with its shabby William Morris wallpaper and mismatching desks. Jonny will be leaning back precariously on his swivel chair.
‘The Super said you were done there. I was hoping we might entice you home a couple of days early.’
Oh yes, Madeleine thinks. She is done: done with it all.
‘I’m having a break,’ she says, trying to make the words sound natural. ‘How old is the girl?’
‘Thirteen. You’ll be finished by Friday, when our own little Lord Fauntleroy returns from his travels.’
Madeleine smiles ruefully, picturing Amol Fernandez off sunning himself on his husband’s yacht somewhere. It’s so perfectly his style to negotiate his return just in time for the weekend.
‘There’s something else,’ Jonny adds. ‘The school . . . it’s Wimpole Girls.’
A shiver, like an ice-cold fingernail, runs down Madeleine’s spine. As she leans back, she bangs the base of her skull sharply against the ornate sandalwood headboard.
‘It’s where your niece goes, right?’
‘Yes.’ She chooses not to mention that she herself is a Wimpole alumna.
‘So your niece and the missing girl are in the same year at the same school – what are the chances?’
The question’s rhetorical, but still, she ponders it – the odds aren’t as slim as one might think. Most of London’s one per cent is connected somehow. They use the same private members’ clubs and personal trainers, rely on the same corrupt lawyers and accountants to hide their rotten investments. It’s amazing how easy it is to segregate oneself from the riff-raff with a little effort. The same goes for the five per cent, or whichever bracket someone like her brother falls into: he’s rich enough to own several homes and send his only child to one of the most exclusive independent schools in the country, but he can’t quite stretch to live-in staff or a private island, poor lamb.
Madeleine gets up and walks barefoot to the desk where her laptop stands, pressing the double-espresso button on the coffee machine as she passes.
‘What’s your hunch?’
‘I don’t like it.’ He pauses. ‘Westminster CID have been working with the theory that the kid had a fight with her parents or a boyfriend and has done a runner. But given the lapse of time, the profile of the parents and the girl’s age, we’re being brought in as extra muscle. The problem – or one of them – is that the team is already down to bare bones.’
‘It’s been years since I dealt with something like this,’ Madeleine says, opening her computer and logging onto the British Airways homepage.
‘Oh, come on. It’s like riding a bike, or falling off one face-first: you never forget. Anyway, we need someone like you. They’re showing signs of closing ranks. The new head of the school is . . . Let’s just say, Fairweather by name, fair-weather by nature—’
‘Lady Fairweather?’ Madeleine interrupts. Looking away from the screen, she makes a quick mental calculation. New? How is that possible? The old goat was well into her fifties when Madeleine was a pupil almost four decades ago. Unless . . . oh, God. Please, no. ‘Constance Fairweather?’
‘Of course you know her! My case is closed.’ Jonny makes a sound that is somewhere between disgust and wry amusement. ‘So you’ll come back?’
Inwardly, Madeleine groans. She promised herself she wouldn’t return to her eccentric little corner of Britain’s equivalent to the FBI before taking the time to think through her options. Problem is, the options are limitless. With this latest secondment over, and just one more loose end to tie up in London, she can go anywhere and do anything.
When she thinks of the scuffed pavements and the hum of traffic outside the first-floor windows of her apartment, a spit and a hop from Wimpole Girls, she feels a tug of yearning for the city, despite the ghosts that lurk on every corner.
She waits for the list of available flights to load.
‘It’s only for a couple of days, and then you can go and retrain as an organic yoghurt-maker, or whatever . . .’
Her eye catches on the breaking-news symbol flashing in the corner of the screen. The ticker tape along the bottom reads Manslaughter journalist in court hearing.
Shit, it’s today? Madeleine imagines the reporter-turned-private investigator preparing to face the music, her expression as inscrutable as ever. Ramona Chang: not yet thirty years old and facing prison over the death of the gang member who tried to kill her. Could they really send her down? She wants to believe it’s not possible.
Glancing at the desk in front of the mirror, she eyes the tourist brochures and the travel journal she bought, in a fit of enthusiasm, at the Mall of the Emirates, still in its plastic wrapper. She looks back at her computer.
‘You still there?’ Jonny prompts, a hint of annoyance in his voice.
‘There’s a flight in a few hours,’ Madeleine replies, composing herself as she presses confirm, reserving a seat in First Class.
Work won’t pay for the upgrade, but it doesn’t matter. If she hurries, she can be at her desk by early afternoon.
‘It’s just for a few days, OK?’ she says. ‘Until Amol’s back.’
DS Farrow downs her coffee in a single motion, turning up the sound on the news. Before her colleague can answer, she clears the call, tossing her phone onto the unmade bed.
There is a pinch in her stomach as she thinks of everything that awaits her back in London. The image of Ramona gives way to that of her terminally ill boss, and finally to the hatred in her sister-in-law Amber’s words the last time they met: You will never see her again. That is the message from your niece. She hates you.
Madeleine shuts off the news and heads towards the bathroom door. She has a flight to catch and absolutely no idea what kind of shit-show awaits her on the other side.
Snaresbrook Crown Court is a former orphanage set within eighteen acres of land in a corner of east London that would once have been shrouded in fields. There are free-roaming swans and a private lake. From the outside, it looks more like a creepy spa hotel than what it is now – one of twelve London courthouses where the most serious offences are tried. Inside, it’s like a motorway services after a zombie apocalypse, but Ramona Chang isn’t there yet.
She stops on the track leading up to the court and adjusts her crutches, checking again that she isn’t being followed. Instead of being escorted by prison van into the back of the court building, where the police cells are located, she is entering this morning by the enormous front doors, along with everyone else who freely comes and goes – as if she were simply here to cover yet another story rather than to enter her plea.
The conditions for her bail mean that as long as she surrenders her passport, Ramona can live at a designated address, her solicitor having successfully argued that she is not a flight risk. The only other condition is that she has no contact with key witnesses, which isn’t hard given that the only witness is dead. This is one thing, at least, to be grateful for.
The measure for murder – as opposed to manslaughter – is ‘a guilty mind’, the intention to kill or to cause grievous bodily harm. Given that you did not intend to kill Mr Knowles, but rather you were acting in self-defence, you will be charged with committing ‘a guilty act’, i.e., manslaughter. You understand that if you plead guilty to manslaughter there is a potential custodial sentence? In the circumstances we can hardly contest that it was you who inflicted the injury. But we will dispute the facts of the prosecution’s case.
Ramona remembers nodding along to the explanation, the movement of her neck feeling disconnected from her body.
But she’d understood. Mens rea versus actus reus was one of the rudimentary legal concepts she had learnt after joining the newspaper and teaching herself the basics. Still, in the context of her own life – and given the strength of the painkillers she has been taking in the weeks since the attack – none of it made much sense to her that afternoon as her solicitor spoke, the words swimming in her head.
Returning her attention to the here and now, she places her crutches in the X-ray machine, one at a time, and heads towards the security arch.
On the other side, she holds up her arms to be checked for weapons and other contraband, staring straight ahead. Her sightline meets the information board on the wall opposite. There’s a list of various cases being tried across the building’s twenty courtrooms.
With a flinch, she imagines her former colleagues clocking her name – Regina v. Chang.
‘Walk through.’
When the man at the security desk signals her on, Ramona reclaims her crutches and heads straight past the empty reception, skirting the waiting area where the usual assortment of ashen-faced families, defendants and barristers sit cheek by jowl. Some are hunched over in attempts at private conversation; others laugh in a performative display of gallows humour.
The row of chairs directly outside Courtroom One is empty, and she sits, exhaling loudly enough that a passing policeman glances in her direction.
Closing her eyes, she attempts to clear her mind of thoughts, but the image comes to her again: Daniel Knowles’ body crumpled at the bottom of the stairs in her flat, his face slowly moving to look at her. Pleading.
Opening them again, she breathes deeply, her leg suddenly throbbing.
He’s gone. It’s over.
The metallic taste of blood alerts her to the fact that she is biting down hard on her lip. Releasing the pressure, she pushes her finger to the cut.
Of course, none of this is over. And as one of their rivals noted on the social media accounts Ramona scans daily under a fake profile, O’Keegan sent one of his pussyoles and he got delt wiv. The fact that Ramona ‘dealt’ with Daniel Knowles doesn’t mean that his boss won’t send another of his men to try again. The difference is that this time Ramona will be ready.
The click of the lawyer’s heels foreshadows the sound of his voice. ‘Ready?’
When Ramona looks up, he gives her a stiff smile. ‘We’re not waiting for anyone?’
Her eye spasms in response.
‘And you’re choosing to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter, on grounds of self-defence?’ Mr Armitage continues.
Ramona nods, feeling too sick to speak.
‘Right then.’ He checks his watch. ‘This is it.’
A pale sun peers through cotton-wool clouds as the taxi sets off from Heathrow for Snaresbrook Crown Court.
‘Good trip?’ the driver asks.
Madeleine makes a show of inserting her earbuds as she stretches out on the back seat to familiarise herself with the case of the missing teenager.
She had half hoped it might be tied up by the time she touched down in London. According to the statistics, 81 per cent of missing children are found within a day, 91 per cent within two.
But it is now more than twenty-four hours since thirteen-year-old Freya Sjöberg vanished into thin air in the middle of one of the most heavily surveilled cities in the world. How is this even possible? Unless, of course, the girl wanted to disappear.
Logging onto the system, the detective studies a photo of Freya. The Swedish ambassador’s daughter has shoulder-length fair hair pulled away from her face with an Alice band, revealing a square jawline and hazel-coloured eyes. Searching her features for clues in the slight clench of her mouth or the way she holds her hands in her lap, Madeleine finds it impossible to look at the image and not think of Bella.
It’s been three months since Madeleine last spoke with her niece. Since then, her calls have been diverting to voicemail, her texts going marked as unread.
Pushing the thought away, she returns her focus to the matter in hand.
Freya Sjöberg’s disappearance is being treated as high-risk. According to the notes on the system, the courts have agreed to implement an injunction to prevent any media reporting on the case. Knowing the speed at which news travels online, and the heightened sense of propriety people feel over others’ lives these days, it’s anyone’s guess how effective official restrictions will be at containing the story: the law is the law; the systems of our ungovernable techno-feudal overlords are another matter.
Madeleine pictures the staff at Wimpole Girls and their reactions to what is unfolding on their watch. She can only imagine the PR disaster they are preparing for once news officially gets out about the sudden disappearance of a child from a school favoured by high-net-worth individuals. Even without the world’s media descending, it will be bad enough the families of the other pupils knowing. Constance Fairweather will be pulling her hair out. Every cloud, etc.
Chastising herself, Madeleine returns her attention to the image of the missing girl.
She can’t claim to have personally heard of the Swedish ambassador and his wife – Peter and Linda Sjöberg – but then she’s not tuned into that world any more.
A quick scan of the places Mr Sjöberg has been stationed offers no immediate clues as to why the family might be under threat: New York, Brussels, Oslo and London. Hardly Khartoum, or even Kabul, for that matter. A rudimentary Google search doesn’t provide much more insight, throwing up several images and a few fawning mentions of the Sjöbergs in society columns. As couples go, they are undoubtedly photogenic, and this hasn’t gone unnoticed by the world’s press.
Madeleine finds a translated article from Swedish Vogue, entitled ‘Golden Couple’.
Peter and Linda Sjöberg first met in Sweden, as lovestruck twenty-somethings.
The ambassador was raised in Stockholm, the only son of renowned modernist architect Adam Sjöberg and actress Inger Johansson, both now deceased.
Linda Sjöberg (neé Blom) grew up in Stockholm, where she met Peter, and later became a full-time mother and ambassador’s wife.
Neither Peter Sjöberg nor his spouse appears to have a social media presence, which is hardly surprising, given Peter’s job. Madeleine sits back in her seat, returning her attention to the skyline as they close in on the city.
Freya Sjöberg could be anywhere. Best-case scenario, she has run off, following a fight with a parent or a friend. Madeleine doesn’t let her mind move to the possible worst-case scenario – not yet. A case like this can change course in a heartbeat. With any luck, by the time Madeleine is back at her desk, Freya will be safely home where she belongs.
Madeleine imagines being greeted by her colleagues in the shabby old mews house just off the Strand. Just as easily, she can picture the route from there to the official residence of Sweden’s ambassador on Portland Place: past the National Portrait Gallery and Leicester Square, cutting through Chinatown and Soho, then past Broadcasting House.
Her mind moves to Detective Inspector Paul Rittler’s empty chair, his voice replaying in her mind: I’m dying, Mads. They think I have six months to a year. I want you to step up and take over once I’m gone.
She gazes out at the pebbledash sprawl along the dual carriageway before it gives way to Walthamstow. This version of London is so different from her own, just a few miles from here. And once schools close for the summer, the divisions in the city will be even starker. While the wealthier residential pockets will empty out to second homes and luxury villas in Padstow and Hydra, other parts will be jam-packed with hyperactive children and crazed-looking parents.
Again, she pictures her boss, and this time an image of Rittler’s wife creeps into the frame, along with their twin boys.
This is not how it is supposed to be.
Looking up, Madeleine spots a figure on the pavement and calls out to the driver. ‘Stop!’
When Ramona comes out of court, the day is fresh, a still, blue sky overhead. The steps down from the building are drenched in sunlight.
‘Well, that’s it for now. How are you feeling?’ her lawyer asks.
‘Fine,’ Ramona responds, her voice as tight as her expression.
Despite how desperately she wants a cigarette, she doesn’t light up yet.
‘Can I call you a cab?’
Ramona wishes she could take him up on the offer, which she couldn’t, even if her legal-aid travel expenses covered it. There is something she has to do first. ‘I’ll be fine.’
She heads back to the tube station, moving as fast as she can. Her jaw clenches as she waits at the lights. She glances at the reflections in shop windows on the other side of the street, and her heart lurches as she spots a figure in a tracksuit behind her. The mind is a complicated machine, but it is quick to reduce things to what it knows, and what it anticipates and fears. But it’s not him, she reminds herself. Daniel Knowles – one of two men who assaulted her and killed JJ, on Michael O’Keegan’s orders – is dead. Because Ramona stabbed him.
Soon, the absconded crime boss will be brought back to the UK to stand trial for all that he has done, and some sort of justice will be restored. Then Ramona will be able to move on with her life, once and for all. Possibly. Her thoughts land on the PI request she found in her email inbox this morning. The subject is ‘cheating wife’. Will she take it? It’s not like she has much choice.
When the green man shows, she crosses, resisting the urge to turn around, to give into the nagging sensation that she is not alone. She moves steadily ahead, keeping her head down to avoid the attention of the pedestrians and the cameras that line the street. Of course she’s not alone. None of us are. We are all being watched, all of the time. By CCTV, and dashboard cameras, and lenses embedded in cyclists’ helmets. By our own phones. Though on this count, at least, Ramona is an anomaly. She can’t rely on her old brick of a Nokia for much, but she can rely on it not to record, predict and attempt to shape her every movement and half-formed thought.
Resistance is futile, but right now it’s all as she has.
Sliding right, she grips her hands around the handles of her crutches as a figure behind her closes in and then overtakes with a small apologetic gesture when she flinches.
No one is following her.
The thought is vaguely soothing. Reaching her destination, Ramona crouches down, running her right hand along the ground under the hedge until she feels the flick knife she stashed there on her way to court. She slides the knife into her back pocket and pushes herself to standing.
‘Ramona?’
‘Bloody hell!’ With a jump, she turns, exhaling sharply at the sight of Madeleine, her sometime-boss, standing astride the pavement.
‘Sorry! What were you doing down there?’
‘Dropped a quid,’ Ramona replies, too quickly. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I was just making a little tour of London’s bleakest suburbs, and here you are.’ Madeleine smiles.
For a moment, there is an awkward pause as they work out the correct greeting, and then Madeleine leans in and hugs Ramona with such force that she staggers back a little. When she lets go, a cloud of sultry perfume lingers in her wake.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner.’
‘You didn’t call at all,’ Ramona replies, matter-of-fact.
Madeleine makes an apologetic face. ‘I’m here now. How’s the leg?’
‘Still attached to my body . . .’ Ramona shrugs, wavering with the sudden ambush of emotion and then clearing her throat. ‘And I’m not in prison, yet . . . So all in all, you know, living the dream.’
‘What happens next?’
‘I’ve issued my plea. There’s going to be a Newton hearing, in place of a trial, to decide on the issue of self-defence. And then sentencing. I might need you as a character witness.’
‘Why not?’ Madeleine shrugs. ‘I’m a pretty good liar.’
There’s a small pause, neither woman quite sure where to take the conversation next.
Ramona finally breaks the silence, glancing warily at Madeleine’s suitcase. ‘Where are you off to?’
‘I just got back.’ Madeleine’s tone is still unconvincingly light. ‘I wanted to show moral support.’
‘You came all the way out here to be my cheerleader?’ Ramona raises her eyebrows. ‘Ten minutes too late, by the way.’
Madeleine checks her watch. ‘I’ve got to get to the office, but if you fancy a catch-up later . . .?’
‘Sure.’ Ramona shrugs. ‘I have a probation meeting in a bit, but then I’ve got no plans until the moment they decide whether or not to throw me in jail.’
‘OK.’ Madeleine nods, her expression turning serious. ‘Later, then. I’ll call you.’
SCID Row is a hive of activity. ‘Here she is!’ Jonny Robertson looks up from his desk. ‘Alright, hen?’
‘Jonny.’ Madeleine smiles at the sight of her favourite colleague: the army sniper turned Met detective turned surveillance manager, with a potential sideline as a Jonny Vegas body-double.
Then her expression turns grim. ‘What the fuck is that smell? It’s like a GM strawberry farm in here.’ She dumps her suitcase in the corner of . . .
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