‘I think you’ll find it wasn’t,’ Merle says.
‘And yet we’ve had all the verifications that completion took place this morning.’ He brandishes his phone and begins scrolling for the relevant emails, just as Lucy did earlier.
‘They must be fake,’ Merle says, just as Fi did. ‘Don’t click on any links, will you? They could trigger Trojan malware.’
‘Trojan malware? What on earth are you talking about? Look . . .’ As David hands her his phone, Merle scrutinizes the screen with scepticism before passing it to Fi. Though two of the messages are those from Bennett, Stafford & Co that Lucy has already shared, a third is from another conveyancing solicitor, Graham Jenson at Dixon Boyle & Co in Crystal Palace, who confirms receipt of the funds from Emma Gilchrist’s client account. It is dated 13 January and was sent just before 11 a.m.
‘Dixon Boyle are the Lawsons’ solicitors,’ David tells Merle, and a burning sensation starts to spread across Fi’s chest.
Merle, however, remains cool. ‘The Lawsons in quotation marks,’ she corrects him. ‘And I don’t see any proof of the transfer of deeds.’ Her manner is professional, as if the meeting is being monitored for official purposes and any time she fails to dispute an assertion of David’s, it will be entered into the record as fact.
‘That’s all done electronically,’ David says. ‘Perhaps it might be helpful if you check your bank account?’ he suggests to Fi.
‘If she doesn’t know anything about the sale, she’s hardly likely to have received the money,’ Merle points out, just short of scorn.
‘Sure, but just in case. We’d know the transaction definitely took place, even if she’s . . .’ He falters.
Forgotten, he means. That chronic attack of amnesia she’s suffering from. But when she sees an unusually colossal deposit among the debits for train tickets and groceries and school shoes she’ll think, Oh yes, I did sell my children’s home.
An iPad is produced, her bank’s website found, and it is all she can do to remember her customer ID and pin. At last, with David bearing down on her, she clears security.
‘Is it there?’
‘No.’ Both her own account and her joint account with Bram are untouched.
‘He has an individual account as well, does he?’ David persists.
‘Yes, but I don’t know the password for that. And his phone is out of service.’
Merle makes a fresh bid for command. ‘As I’ve been saying since I arrived, we need to get the police over here. If Bram’s phone’s out of action, there must be something wrong.’
‘A phone could be off for all sorts of reasons,’ David says.
‘Yes.’ Merle’s attention moves between the Vaughans and Fi. ‘But since Mrs Lawson knows nothing about this, don’t you think it’s possible that Mr Lawson doesn’t either? Maybe his identity has been stolen by mobsters, Fi. Maybe he was on to them in some way and they, I don’t know, retaliated.’
‘Mobsters?’ Fi echoes, a deeper new shock seizing her. ‘Retaliated?’
‘Yes, he could have been abducted or something. Perhaps he knew he was in danger and that’s why he arranged to keep the boys at his mother’s while you were away? Maybe he’s already involved the police and you’re under their protection without realizing it?’
‘That all sounds a bit melodramatic,’ David says. ‘You can’t just go around passing yourself off as other people in order to sell their property. You need passports, birth certificates, proper proof of ownership. Funds of this size are checked for money laundering – there are all sorts of hoops to jump through. I know because we’ve just done it.’
‘Even so, I can’t think of any better explanation,’ Merle says. ‘Can you?’
There is silence in the room, a collective sense of held breath. David glances at his wife, not yet ready to say the unsayable. Fi feels her face clenching as she struggles to keep from crying.
‘If you’re right, then this is horrific,’ Lucy says, finally.
‘It is horrific,’ Merle agrees. She turns to Fi with the air that while the Vaughans may have an interesting contribution to make, it is only Fi’s that matters. ‘If you want my opinion, Fi, we need to report an identity theft.’
Fi nods.
‘We need to report Bram missing. Missing and in danger.’
Geneva, 3 p.m.
As he leaves the restaurant, the wine having done nothing to ease the ferment of nerves in his gut, he is unsettled by the presence of a man standing close to the lift controls, his head angled in query as he watches Bram’s approach. He is in his early thirties, lofty, rough-skinned, dressed in a dark-grey suit and well-polished shoes. Business traveller – or plainclothes policeman? A concerned member of the public who has seen an Interpol appeal containing Bram’s photograph?
Bram considers bolting through the doors to the stairwell, but resists. No, calm down, act casual. Interpol appeal? There is self-preservation and then there are delusions of grandeur. Not unlike the sales career he has left behind, his survival is a matter of confidence trickery, and the person he most needs to trick is himself.
Even so, when the lift operates normally, not a word spoken between its occupants and Bram deposited safely at the ground floor, the relief he feels is savage.
Even so, when he slips into a pharmacy on his way back to the hotel, searching the aisles for a good pair of scissors, he glances over his shoulder more than once before he makes his selection and pays.
21
Bram, Word document
For the next twenty-four hours, I heard nothing from Wendy and I wondered if I’d imagined what she’d said. What I’d said. Maybe she’d left before I woke up and I’d had that exchange in the kitchenette with an apparition – Lord knows that between Macbeth and me countless men have been so demented by guilt they’ve given their conscience voice and mistaken it for retribution.
Better still, perhaps I’d never met her; she didn’t exist! But, no, that really was wishful thinking. There’d been a text from Rog in the morning, asking, Good night?, complete with the ‘lucky bugger’ subtext of a winking-face emoji. No doubt he’d told Alison I’d been on the pull. Definitely she’d told Fi. But Fi was the least of my worries, for once.
Nothing happened, I texted back. No emojis.
I didn’t go near the car – by now, I couldn’t even look at it – and as I took the train to and from work, I abused myself ceaselessly for not having stayed on the platform that morning of the conference and bitten the bullet of a commuter delay. What would a late start have been, or even a no-show, a job loss, compared to this inferno of misery?
Then, on the Friday evening, a text came from her. I hadn’t been aware of having given her my phone number, but evidently she had it. Easy enough to discover by calling my office, I supposed, or even snooping while I slept. The message consisted of a link to a story on a Croydon news website:
Reward offered in hunt for Silver Road crash driver
A ￡10,000 reward for information has been offered by the husband of the Silver Road collision victim, a forty-two-year-old woman recovering from critical injuries sustained in the collision on Friday 16 September. The couple’s ten-year-old daughter was also severely injured in the incident.
The police have yet to identify the other party in the collision and are keen to hear from motorists and pedestrians in the area at approximately 6 p.m., the time of the incident.
A spokesperson for the victims’ family said: ‘Two innocent people have sustained terrible injuries as the result of a cold-blooded and cowardly act and we will do everything in our power to help the police find this criminal.’
A ￡10,000 reward, Jesus. It was a bounty on my head.