Lost Lives (Emily Swanson Mystery Thriller Series Book 1) (4 page)

Her tea finished, the old woman folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t talk to the police. See how they treated my poor Andrew when he got attacked. I don’t talk to them and I don’t trust them. You ask me they’re all as bent as each other.”

Harriet’s reaction had been unexpected. If anything, Emily had imagined the old woman would have been first in line to extract information.

“What about the other neighbours? Would they have talked to them?”

“Don’t know,” Harriet said, losing interest in the conversation. “Don’t talk to the other two on this floor. Apparently they’re too busy to crack a smile. You could ask Jerome. He lives right below. Probably heard every fight that went on.”

“It’s strange though, isn’t it?” Emily said, half to herself, half to Harriet. “If your wife had gone missing, wouldn’t you want to stay put in case she came back?”

“Men,” said Harriet, with a disapproving shake of her head. “Got any biscuits?”

***

She ate late, hungrily devouring a plate of chicken and pasta, then climbed into bed. Now, in the darkness of the bedroom, Emily thought about Alina Engel. What could have happened to her? She thought about Lewis—about how he might be getting on in his new house and with his job at the bank. She thought about her mother and was swept up in a great wash of grief. In the midst of that grief came Phillip, and then Emily knew she would not sleep. Not unaided.

Outside, the city embraced night in all of its colours. Traffic sounds and voices still dallied on the air, the more hedonistic of urbanites not ready to retire to their beds.

Getting up, Emily padded into the bathroom and swallowed a pill from a prescription bottle. Perching herself on the edge of the bathtub, she waited for the heaviness to take hold. It began at the front of her head, weighing it down until she could not lift it up again. Then, like rain, it trickled through her veins, numbing each part of her, filling her with thick lead. The last to go was her mind. Down into the lead it sank, disappearing into a thick pool. Down into a black sludge where thoughts suffocated and anxieties drowned. Down she went, deeper and deeper. Until there was nothing left of her but a whisper. Dust.

Il Cuore was a cramped affair. Customers hunched over small tables, their knees pulled together and their elbows tucked in. The space itself was pleasant enough, with varnished floorboards and terracotta walls decorated with prints of sun-blistered landscapes. The aroma of coffee was rich and spicy, with a twist of cinnamon and a hint of chocolate.

Backed up in the furthest corner, Emily’s pulse began to resume a less worrisome rate. She watched the growing queue of office workers on their breaks snaking its way along the counter and up to the door, while two harassed-looking baristas took orders and gestured to each other in heated Italian.

Dressed head to toe in black, Jerome worked the tables, flashing his smile in exchange for tips. Noticing Emily, he saddled up to her with notepad and pen.

“Hello there, neighbour. It’s good to see you again. Are you all unpacked?”

Emily fumbled with a newspaper that had been left behind by the previous customer, pulling it towards her, then folding it neatly in half.

“Almost.”

“Wonderful. When’s the housewarming?” Jerome picked up the used cups and saucers. He frowned as he ran a damp cloth over the table’s sticky surface. Emily had either failed to hear his question or had ignored it. “So what can I get you?”

Emily squinted at the menu board above the baristas’ serving area.

“Coffee.”

“What kind?”

“Regular?”

Jerome jotted down her order. “You’re not from around these parts are you? I’ll be right back.”

Emily watched him slink between the tables and disappear behind the counter. Unfolding the newspaper, she flipped through the pages, skipping past stories of murder, corruption and rape, until she came to the classifieds. She skimmed through the various job sectors, mentally crossing off the vacancies for which she lacked the qualifications or experience. The few jobs remaining included graveyard-shift office cleaning, modelling for ‘exotic’ photoshoots, and temporary secretarial positions.

“One regular coffee, and a little treat on the house. Ossi Dei Morti.”

Emily stared at the plate of pale white cookies Jerome had set down in front of her.

“Bones of the dead,” he said. “Job hunting?”

Picking up one of the cookies, Emily inspected it with the grim fascination of a coroner.

“Just seeing what’s out there.”

“What do you do? Wait, let me guess. I'm good at this. You're a librarian.”

Emily thought about becoming a librarian. It would be quiet and calm. She could lose herself between the pages of books, like she used to when her life had been meaningful and ordinary.

“Okay, not a librarian.” Jerome stared at her with an intensity that made her squirm. “But something similar.”

“What’s it like being a waiter?”

Much to the chagrin of waiting customers, Jerome sat down.

“Minimum wage, long hours, the exquisite charm of the general public—it’s a real winner. Job satisfaction on every level.” He reached over, picked up one of the thin white biscuits and twirled it between his fingertips. “Waiting tables is a means to an end. Like most of the waiters in this city, I graduated from drama school with the absolute certainty I’d ace my first audition and become an overnight success. Or failing that I’d be spotted by some nefarious talent agent who’d encourage me to sleep my way to the top, starting with them. Instead, I’m living off tips and stuck at home every night, watching reruns of crappy shows I wouldn’t be caught dead in and most likely never will. I know what you’re thinking—what a cliché, huh?”

“Where I used to live, waiters were just waiters.”

“And probably better off for it. Where did you grow up?”

Emily looked around the busy room. “Nowhere. You won't have heard of it.”

“Someone has secrets,” Jerome teased. “Well you’ve come to the right place to bury them. You have friends here?”

“Not really.”

“Family?”

Emily shook her head, stared into her coffee.

“Well now,” Jerome said, eyeing her with concern. “You know this isn’t the easiest place to make new friends. Most people are floating around in their own little bubbles, or too busy fighting each other for a seat on the tube. But that’s just London—it doesn’t like to get too comfortable. You’d think with millions of people crammed together in one place there wouldn’t be room to get lonely. I guess what I’m saying is if you ever want to watch some bad TV, you know where I live.”

Emily looked up and gave him the briefest of smiles. “Thanks.”

Behind them, waiting customers mumbled passive-aggressive complaints.

“Back to the grindstone.” Jerome stood and for a moment was lost in thought. “Actually, now some time has passed ... you’re a teacher. Am I right?”

Colour drained from Emily's face. “How did you know that?”

“Lucky guess. See you later, Emily.”

But she didn’t hear him. In an instant she was there again. At the school. A circle of colleagues forming a barrier between her and a mob of scarlet-faced parents, who snarled like wild dogs.

When she looked up again, Jerome was halfway across the room. She had forgotten to ask him about Alina Engel.

Feeling miserable, Emily pulled her coat from the back of the adjacent chair. Her bag, which had been concealed beneath it, was gone. She stared at the empty space, then dipped her head beneath the table. Everything was in that bag. Her apartment keys. Her wallet. The picture of her mother she kept in a sealed manila envelope. Like a magic trick they had all vanished.

The air thickened like treacle around her, clogging her lungs. Her hands and feet grew numb. She stood up, pulling the chair out and knocking it into the customers sat on the next table. People were staring.
Why did they always have to stare
?

“Are you all right?” Jerome had returned. He gently grasped her elbow.

“It’s my bag. Somebody’s taken it.”

The surrounding customers immediately checked their own belongings and finding them still there, returned to their conversations.

***

Emily tried to shut out the crowds as she and Jerome crossed the street towards The Holmeswood. They were all laughing at her. Laughing and pointing. The angry note she had seen posted on the lift was gone. An old man dressed in dark overalls rubbed polish into the doors.

“Is it working again?” Jerome’s voice echoed through the foyer.

The old man waved a hand.

They took the stairs in silence, with Jerome stealing worried looks as they climbed. His apartment was identical in design to Emily’s. It was strange, as if someone had replaced her living room furniture with a small tatty sofa, a cheap table and chairs, and a bookshelf half-filled with play scripts and film subscription magazines.

“Here, sit down.” Jerome guided Emily to the sofa, then disappeared into the kitchen. He returned with two glasses and a full bottle of malt whiskey. “Drink this. It’ll help to calm the nerves.”

He handed Emily a glass and she stared at the amber liquid. Before she could change her mind, she swallowed it down. Her insides ignited as the burn of alcohol turned her veins into trails of blazing gunpowder.

“One more. Doctor’s orders.”

After draining the glass for a second time, Emily felt the panic beginning to recede. Minutes later, the iron grip on her chest relaxed. She drew in a deep, steady breath.

Jerome fetched his laptop from the bedroom. After searching online for the relevant phone numbers, Emily spent the next twenty minutes cancelling her cards. Then, she made an awkward call to Paulina Blanchard who agreed to stop by in an hour with a spare set of keys. When she was done, she handed Jerome his mobile phone, thanked him, and paced over to the window. A sad spray of drizzle clung to the glass. Daylight was coming to an end.

“You sure there’s no one else you want to call?” Jerome asked, watching her at the window.

Emily was quiet for a long time. She shook her head.

“How could someone have taken my bag without me seeing? It was right there, right next to me.”

“You'd be amazed how easily it's done. A crowded room. People milling up and down. You've got small-time thieves working in rings all over the city and the police can't seem to do anything about it because they're too busy dealing with all the serious crimes. Rape, murder, gang warfare ... I guess if you're going to squeeze all these people into one place you're going to have your fair share of problems—most of them being the human kind. Theft like that isn’t worth reporting, unless you have insurance.”

Emily watched the tops of umbrellas moving back and forth.

“Like I said, London’s not easy,” Jerome continued. “But you’ll get used to it after a while. All the noise goes away. You learn to push and shove. And you can choose to be as invisible as you want.”

“Did you grow up here?”

Jerome shook his head. “Who does?”

Turning her back on the street, Emily thought about the contents of her bag that she would never get back. She didn’t care about any of it except the photograph of her mother. It was the only one she’d kept, and she had been saving it; sealing it in an envelope, waiting until she could bear to look at it again. And now it was gone. The only images she had of her mother remained in her mind, and they were not how she wanted to remember her.

Jerome was talking, oblivious that she had slipped away. She didn’t want to think about her mother. She didn’t want to think about what had happened in the café. Her thoughts turned to Alina Engel.

“Did you know the people who used to live in my apartment?” she asked, returning to the sofa.

The question caught Jerome off guard. “You mean the married couple? A little, I suppose. Although I probably heard them more than I actually saw them.”

“Harriet said they fought a lot.”

“That’s an understatement! Although fights are usually two-sided. This was more of an ‘I’ll shout, you’ll shut up and listen’ sort of situation. That asshole certainly liked the sound of his own voice.”

“What did he shout about?”

“Hard to say. The ceilings aren’t thin enough to make out actual words. He was always pissed off about something though. And poor Alina. She’d never cry in front of him. She’d wait until he’d stormed off somewhere. I would hear her in the bathroom, her sobs coming down the pipes. And then one day, it all went quiet. According to Harriet she left him, went back to Germany. Good for her.”

Emily leaned forward. “Are you sure that she left him?”

“What do you mean?”

She told him about the missing persons notice in the supermarket, about the painting of Alina she’d found in her apartment.

Jerome poured out another couple of whiskeys.

“The police came around not long after things went quiet. Knocking door to door, asking if anyone had seen Alina. I told them about the fighting, but that was before we heard she’d left him. Perhaps Karl did report her missing but that doesn't mean she actually was missing. Maybe she thought, screw you, asshole! I'm out of this chicken shit hell hole! It would be a nice way to get back at him—to disappear in the middle of the night and make him sweat for a while. A few weeks later, the police track her down at her family home back in Germany, and it’s divorce courts, alimony, case closed.”

Emily sipped her whiskey. The alcohol mingled with the fluoxetine in her bloodstream, leaving her lightheaded and disconnected.

“It’s plausible,” she said. But who told Harriet that Alina had gone back to Germany?”

“Karl Henry.”

“Exactly. The word of a wife beater. The word of the man she supposedly ran away from.”

“But why would he lie?”

“If your wife went missing, why would you move out of your home? What if she came back? How would she find you? Wouldn't moving out be the last thing you'd do?”

“Unless,” Jerome said, “she’d turned up alive and well in Germany.”

Emily scowled. “Her clothes were still in my apartment, all bagged up. If she was planning on leaving wouldn’t she have taken them with her?”

They were both quiet, the silence an awkward reminder that they were not yet friends.

“Tell me about being a teacher,” Jerome said.

Emily’s shoulders stiffened. She drained her glass. “What do you want to know?”

“What did you teach?”

Another long silence. Emily crossed her arms. She began to scratch the back of her hand. Jerome stared at the thin scars scored into her flesh there.

“I taught English,” Emily said, quickly pulling her sleeves over her hands. The conversation had just stepped onto an old rope bridge that clung to the sides of a black, bottomless chasm. She got up again, pacing back over to the window, aware that she was acting strangely.

“So you appreciate the arts? What were the kids like? I bet there were some real pains in the ass.”

The ropes creaked. The knots unravelled with each step forward.

“My parents used to despair,” Jerome said, when Emily didn’t answer. “Every day there’d be a call from the principal.
Jerome stole from the petty cash. Jerome wrote obscenities on the whiteboard
. And then along came Miss Davey, the drama teacher. Suddenly, I had an outlet. She showed me how to channel all those feelings. To make characters out of them. I wonder which of your kids will look back one day and say, she was the one. She got me.”