The Wreckage - Michael Robotham [82]
Plugging the stick into her laptop, Elizabeth opens the audio file and presses “play.” There are background voices, car sounds, wind rustling the leaves. Three voices, one of them North’s, another speaks a guttural-sounding English, his words like gravel rolling in a drum. The other accent is almost too perfect, like listening to someone mimicking Roger Moore.
Voice 1: … you should stop saying these things and calm down…
North: Don’t tell me to calm down… I approved the transfers. I signed off on the details…
Voice 1: You did your job… due diligence… nobody is suggesting otherwise…
North: … it’s a bad sign… the money came from somewhere… it’s going somewhere… tell me.
Voice 1: These are not questions you need to ask. Worry about life, worry about your wife and family…
North: Leave my family out of this.
Voice 1: These things will pass…
Voice 2: We have a proverb where I come from, Mr. North. If you have done nothing wrong, don’t worry about the devil knocking at your door…
North: But I am doing something wrong…
Voice 1: You’re exaggerating… nothing has changed.
There is a garbled section of the recording. North appears to have walked away from the table, but the men are still talking.
Voice 2: … he’s rattled…
Voice 1: … I will call our friend. Tell him we’re concerned…
Voice 2: The time for talking is over… this is what happens when you deal with amateurs…
The recording ends. Elizabeth plays it back and listens for names, but there are too many gaps and unintelligible words. She concentrates on North’s voice, feeling something snag in his chest when he mentions the word family.
This wasn’t a normal business meeting. These weren’t normal business contacts. North told Bridget Lindop that he’d done something terrible and on the tape he talked about wanting to know where money had come from and gone. Perhaps Mitchell was right to be concerned.
Elizabeth looks at the daily log written by Colin Hackett. Before North went to The Warrington, he visited a house in Mount Street, just off Park Lane. She glances at her watch. Rowan won’t be home from nursery for another few hours. Polina can pick him up. Grabbing her car keys and her bag, she gets in the car and programs the satnav for Mayfair. The journey takes her across Hammersmith Bridge and along Hammersmith Road past Olympia and through Kensington to Hyde Park Corner.
Late summer and there are still plenty of tourists in London, eating sandwiches on the grass and taking photographs from open-top buses. London has never seemed like a destination to Elizabeth, but for others it is a postcard, a photograph or the backdrop to their holiday videos.
Mount Street is lined with Edwardian mansion blocks and rows of Italianate houses, every corner has a CCTV camera bolted to the brickwork. Curtains don’t twitch anymore and neighbors no longer study neighbors. Instead cameras record every dropped piece of litter and unscooped dog turd.
Walking up the front steps, Elizabeth presses a large bronze bell. The blue-painted front door is heavy and old. It opens after a moment. A woman in a black smock dress peers from inside. Elegant. Her hair is silver tipped and her features as delicate as a porcelain figurine.
Elizabeth realizes that she should have thought of a story.
“I’ve lost my dog,” she blurts. “I live around the corner. I’m asking everyone.”
The woman shakes her head. “What does your dog look like?”
“Umm, he’s white, ah, he’s a sort of terrier like a Jack Russell.”
“I haven’t seen any stray dogs.”
“Is there anyone else at home? Perhaps you could ask your husband.”
A man’s voice comes from the top of the stairs: “Who is it, Maria?”
“Someone has lost her dog.”
The door opens a little wider. Elizabeth takes the opportunity. She steps into the hallway, glancing up the stairs.
“It’s been two days and my little boy is heartbroken. I thought I’d knock on some doors.