Swimming with Sharks Read online

  ‘Russian? Are you sure?’ Gillian clings onto the vital piece of information. There were Russians on the island, Russians travelling by yachts and cruisers. They could come and go unnoticed, carrying whatever cargo on-board. In fact, Nasheed did mention his men searched the boats moored on Itsouru, but what sort of search was that! They wouldn’t dare to upset or cause any inconvenience to their Russian patrons. It was more of an afternoon tea from a samovar than a search.

  ‘No, I’m not!’ Nicola exclaims, and looks at Gillian round-eyed and petrified as if she has just been caught red-handed. She starts stammering, clearly in an attempt to muddy the waters again. ‘I can’t be sure they were Russian. I was drowsy, confused … They couldn’t have been Russian. I don’t know where that idea came from. There were a few Russians on the plane, speaking loudly, when I was flying home from France. I guess that’s where I got it from. Sorry, I’m tired.’

  Gillian swallows yet another lie without protest. She is excited. There is no doubt in her mind that Nicola Eagles, despite herself, has just given her something real to hang onto. ‘I understand. Why don’t you take Fritz home – I’ve got his cage somewhere … It must be in the garage. Let me take you there.’ She gets up and leads the trembling Nicola Eagles, and her cat, towards the front door. She tries to sound encouraging and considerate – a friendly little Miss Marple, which she can be when she puts her mind to it. Her hand is on Nicola’s back as she chats softly, ‘Why don’t you have a good night’s rest. Tomorrow I’ll need you at the station to sign your statement. Just a formality, mind, but it has to be done,’ she smiles and immediately adds firmly, ‘We will also need a description of your kidnappers – I’ll organise a sketch artist to work with you.’

  ‘I am a bit fuzzy on –’

  ‘And you’ll be able to collect your belongings,’ Gillian won’t be interrupted. ‘All those items you left on Itsouru – we have them at the station.’

  Gillian watches Nicola Eagles as, hunched and with her head between her shoulders, she braves the rain and limps off home. She cuts a pitiful figure. The cage with Fritz rattling inside bounces off her leg. Soon the night swallows her whole.

  Gillian shuts the door. She marvels at the hapless, vulnerable creature she has just dispatched away. It is astounding that the woman has somehow survived abduction as well as a journey across the seven seas on a bottle of water a day. Strangely, Gillian feels reassured by this miracle. After all, if someone as hapless as Nicola Eagles had made it through all that and come out on the other side, her innocence unscathed, then there was hope for Tara.

  Day Twenty-six

  DCI Scarfe has made himself perfectly clear. The investigation is at an end. The missing person has been found, not in the least through Gillian’s efforts. A sufficient number of police officers around the globe have been antagonised, entirely through Gillian’s efforts. A complaint about police harassment has been made – again thanks to Gillian. Operational funds have been substantially depleted – Gillian. Public relations have been severely strained, especially in the sensitive area of respecting gay rights to privacy – Gillian. Scarfe is foaming at the mouth, the dip in his upper lip livid red. He is sitting upright and tense while Gillian stands before him, pale and desperate to look reverent. A dead goldfish, belly up, in his Feng Shui fish tank, which caught Gillian’s eye and made her feel queasy, doesn’t help with concentration. In the window behind his back Gillian observes Nicola Eagles scuttle away with the treasure box of her belongings. Scarfe hollers, ‘You’ve done enough damage, DS Marsh. More than you bargained for! Now, you’re off the case! No, hang on – there IS no case! Whosever body they’ve got in Madagascar –’

  ‘The Maldives, sir.’

  ‘Don’t interrupt, DS Marsh! Whatever body they’ve down there, it has got nothing to do with us. With you in particular! So you have no case.’

  ‘Sir …’

  ‘No!’ He lifts a foreboding finger. ‘No, no discussion. Let me tell you this, DS Marsh, so that you’re clear about it: I looked into it myself. The description of the kidnappers will be circulated – it’s being sent to Interpol as we speak. That’s all we can do on this count. As for the murder: one – it has been committed outside our jurisdiction; two – the victim is not British. If you bothered to read the postmortem, which I did while you were gallivanting in London, harassing that gay couple … anyhow, where was I?’

  ‘The postmortem, sir.’

  ‘Right! Yes! If you bothered to read it, you’d find the bit about the victim’s fillings. Almost definitely Russian. So the victim is Russian. And that means that you will keep your nose out of it. Am I making myself clear?’

  ‘Perfectly, sir.’

  Another goldfish – a big fat orangey one with a tail like a frill – swims up to its dead friend and nudges it with its nose. That generates a small ripple in the tank, but the orangey fish loses interest and glides away.

  Webber pings her a semi-sympathetic smile when she slumps at her desk. Everyone on the floor has heard Scarface bellowing at her from a dizzy height, telling her in no uncertain terms to lay off the Maldivian case.

  Gillian is unfazed. ‘Have you got that postmortem report for me?’ she asks Webber.

  ‘On your desk.’ There is a glint of admiration in his eyes. He has to give it to her: the woman is unyielding, the pit bull just won’t let go!

  Gillian digs in. She reads the whole thing, cover to cover. Something is staring at her from those pages, something she can’t see. She finds the section about the Russian fillings. She doesn’t have to be told twice. The abductors are Russians. The victim is Russian. And yet right in the middle of this whole mess sits Nicola Eagles, a hapless spinster from Sexton’s Canning. How does she fit into it? She has to. Somehow she is part of it. What is her Russian connection? She speaks Russian. She reads in Russian. Gillian recalls her collection of books in Russian, including Anna Karenina.

  Anna Karenina … Count Karenin. He is the missing link! Mikhail Lakso, Nicola Eagles’ very own Count Karenin! Her mystery man, her lover … Finnish, but with a Russian accent. He has to be the Russian connection! She’s infatuated with him. She names him her royalty, her count – Count Karenin! How much more outlandish can it get? Love, the untamed beast! By Amy’s account, Nicola is in love with him. She was so happy and she was flaunting it, Amy’s very words. And if she is in love with him, she will protect him against all reason. That explains why Nicola is covering for her kidnappers. Because they are linked to the man she loves – Mikhail Lakso!

  ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’

  Gillian is having her When-Harry-Met-Sally orgasmic moment. Webber stares at her. ‘You’re all right?’

  ‘Better than all right!’ she grins. She picks up the phone and punches in Jon Riley’s extension. ‘Hurry up, man!’ she urges him. ‘Get off your fat arse!’

  Webber keeps staring.

  Riley answers, ‘Gillian! Thought you’d never phone!’

  ‘I need a favour, Jon. I need fast-track background checks on Mikhail –’

  ‘If that’s to do with the missing woman case then I can’t. Scarface’s strict orders.’

  ‘It’s personal, Jon.’

  ‘It’s always personal with you.’

  ‘Thanks, I knew you’d understand.’

  ‘Who said I did?’

  ‘So the background checks – I want to know his place of birth, nationality. Actually,’ Gillian pauses for thought, ‘it’s two people I’m after: Mikhail Lakso and his – allegedly his – mother, Agaata …’

  This is the point where she finally recognises that something that was staring her in the face from the pages of the postmortem report. She slams the phone down and picks up the papers. It’s right there in front of her, page one: The body is that of an elderly woman, of approximately mid to late seventies.

  Agaata Lakso!

  Nicola is sitting on the floor, contemplating a cardboard box with the word ARCHIVE written on it and Nicola’s name accompanied by a case number. Her m
emories of Mishka are buried in that box. It feels like a funeral.

  She reaches into the box and takes out her spanking new laptop. Plugs it into the wall. It becomes alive with images from the Maldives. It displays her Facebook page as she left it weeks ago – it just went to sleep. It is overdue for an update. But Nicola can’t bring herself to pick it up from where she has left it. The continuum of her pallid, uneventful life has been broken.

  She zooms in on the photograph of Mishka and smiles at the caption: Count Karenin. He is no Karenin, she knows that now. He isn’t a sensible old man; he isn’t as upright, hardly a mainstay of society, nobody’s role model … He is a daredevil, a man with a past! So enchanting: pure glitz and glitter! And that boyish grin of his – full of mischief, and full of promise of amazing things to come … And he made promises, did he not? He said he would not let her go. They would not be separated. He would not let that happen. He said he would take her to St Petersburg and show her the high life. He said she would be dazzled!

  And then he told her she would be better off without him …

  She finds her summer dress, rolled up in a bundle with other items. She wore that dress to the French restaurant. She presses it to her face – she can just about detect the scent of his aftershave. She still doesn’t know the brand but she would recognise it any time.

  She wore that same dress the first time they met when she was slumped to the ground, disorientated and frightened, crying her eyes out, desperate to go home to Fritz and the strawberry fields behind the cottage. Today, she cares little for the fields and the cat can look after himself better than she ever could. Everything paled into insignificance the moment that man picked her up from the ground and took her home, and offered her a drink of water …

  He loves water. He told her so. He told her about the Black Sea. He gave her an underwater kiss of life, pressed a starfish into the palm of her hand and showed her miracles. He promised to show her more. He promised …

  Nicola puts the dress on the floor and throws more clothes on top: pairs of sensible knickers, a one-piece swimsuit, shapeless tops and a Laura Ashley skirt – her old, orderly life without a reason or purpose. Fritz sniffs around the pile and plonks himself on top of it. He looks content in his nest. It is cosy and the smells are familiar.

  Anna Karenina, in Russian, is at the bottom of the box. Nicola takes the book out. She never used to like the heroine. That was before, however. Now she knows how Anna felt: she was plainly and simply in love. There is no escaping it. There is no going round it. There is no biding time. She was condemned to follow her heart and be damned for it, but at least she had the courage to live, and to love. It was worth it. Given a second chance, Nicola knows now, she would have done it all over again. Those few precious moments justified everything. Excused everything.

  Mishka is Nicola’s Alosha Vronsky. He is no Karenin! He’s Vronsky! He is her sin. Probably he will be her doom, but before it comes to it he will take her to St Petersburg and show her the high life. He will laugh with her. He will make love to her. He will be her knight in shining armour. Even if it is only for another five minutes, it will be well worth it.

  Between the pages of Anna Karenina, in Russian, she finds a scrap of her itinerary with Mishka’s address and telephone number scribbled on it. It is meant to be!

  She shows the paper to Fritz. ‘Sorry, Fritz, I’ll have to love you and leave you. It won’t be for ever. I’ll send for you as soon as I can.’

  Fritz presents her with a disdainful glance and whips his tail once – a cue for her to go away and leave him alone.

  Day Twenty-eight

  Things have been moving slowly. Infuriatingly so! It was the boss’s decision that took the time. Scarface took an age to make up his mind despite the facts that Gillian put in front of him. Undeniable facts! Her instincts have been vindicated again. Riley was able to verify that Mikhail and Agaata Lakso left Russia for Finland fifteen years ago and as soon as physically possible changed their surname to Agaata’s maiden name. Riley further confirmed that Agaata never returned to Finland after their holiday in the Maldives. Mikhail travelled on his own. What’s more, he failed to report Agaata missing. Gillian briefed Nasheed on the latest developments. It wasn’t hard to convince him that the unidentified body in the Malè mortuary was that of Agaata Lakso. From then on she had to leave it in Nasheed’s hands. It was his murder – his investigation. It would no doubt lead him to Finland. She wondered how he would take the change of air. At this time of year Finland was in the cold grip of winter.

  As much as it wasn’t difficult to convince Nasheed, it was near impossible to do so with DCI Scarfe. He took his time to thrust his chest forward and puff up his feathers before getting down to business. After he reprimanded Gillian for disobeying his orders and pursuing the matter behind his back, he sat down in his chair, pursed his cleft lip and sulked while Gillian presented the facts of the case. He wouldn’t budge when she suggested that Nicola Eagles was implicated in Agaata’s death and that she was covering for someone, in all probability for Mikhail with whom she’d had an affair.

  ‘And you have Amy Gray-Ludlow’s word for it, plus your powers of deduction to substantiate it?’ he retorted. ‘That won’t stand up in court!’

  ‘He didn’t report his own mother missing, sir.’

  ‘So that’s your rock-solid proof that he – and Miss Eagles – killed her. What would be the motive?’

  Gillian didn’t know.

  He wouldn’t budge when she proposed an alternative possibility. ‘According to Miss Eagles she was abducted and then released without a ransom. Without a ransom! If we believe she was abducted, we can’t possibly accept that there was no ransom. There had to be! Who paid it and why? Did Lakso pay it? If he paid for Nicola, why didn’t he pay for his mother?’

  ‘We may never find out. Be it as it may, Miss Eagles is alive and well.’

  ‘And that’s what doesn’t make sense, sir. Why is she alive and well while the other woman is dead? If we take Miss Eagles’ word for it, Agaata was on the same boat, presumably kidnapped by the same people. Why did they let one of them go? Why did they kill the other? It doesn’t make sense. Nicola Eagles has to do better than that. She knows more than she lets on. She is up to her ears in it!’

  ‘You are throwing idle accusations at a woman who has been through quite a lot. We are not bringing her in, and that’s final.’

  He only relented when Gillian offered a compromise. ‘Sir, could I at least interview her as a witness? I’ll visit her at home. I won’t put her out in any way and won’t bring her to the station. An informal interview, how about that? New facts have come to light. We may have the identity of the victim. We need to put this to the witnesses – to Miss Eagles, our only witness.’

  At last, Gillian is knocking on Nicola Eagles’ front door, about to knock the truth out of her. It has taken a day of to-and-fro, but now she has Scarface’s blessing to get to the bottom of it. She won’t be taking prisoners. The damned woman is protecting Lakso and Gillian wants to know why. She also wants to know exactly what happened and what led to Nicola’s release and Agaata’s death. In her bag, Gillian carries the unsightly photographs of Agaata’s corpse, fished out of the ocean. She has every intention of showing them to Nicola. Maybe that will refresh her memory!

  There is no answer to her persistent knocking. Only Fritz appears on the footpath from behind the cottage, followed by none other than Mr and Mrs Devonshire. Fritz rubs himself on Gillian’s legs and purrs, which is a welcome departure from his habitual yodelling. Mrs Devonshire speaks, ‘Fancy finding you here, DS Marsh! What brings you back?’ She doesn’t wait for an answer and hurries to inform Mr Devonshire of her discovery even though he is only a step behind her and can see it all for himself. ‘Look, Vincent, dear! Look, who we have here: DS Marsh!’

  ‘I need to speak to Miss Eagles.’

  ‘You’re not in luck, I’m afraid. She’s gone, isn’t she, Vincent?’

  ‘Gone wh
ere?’

  ‘To Finland! Where else?’

  Mr Devonshire nods affirmation.

  ‘Would you believe that she left us in charge of Fritz? We’re only doing it for poor Eunice if you must know. Nicola has proven herself very unreliable in the past, you may remember? Oh yes, she said it’d be only a few days, but that’s what she said the last time, didn’t she, Vincent? And look what happened then!’

  Day Twenty-nine

  The taxi driver drops her at the end of the hard-beaten track. He won’t go any further. It is a country road: windy and unpredictable. Flat, snow-covered fields lie on both sides of it, the monotony of them occasionally broken by a gnarly white birch or some other specimen of sub-arctic fauna.

  He points to a distant dwelling and in broken English tells her to head in that direction. The house she wants is there. He can’t venture to drive her to the doorstep. His small-tyres weren’t designed for the deep ruts of country paths.

  Nicola pays him, and he drives off.

  She sets off in the direction of the house. All she can see is a high-pitched roof and dark, wooden decking. This is a cold, desolate place, like Siberia. It is moody and unrestrained. It feels like the very soul of Russia.

  Even though she is dressed for winter, the dry, cold air penetrates through her coat, to the bare bone. She wraps her arms around her and trudges on through snow that reaches up to her calves. The snow cracks and crumbles under her feet like a meringue.

  The light is already thinning though it is only three in the afternoon. Nicola detects tyre tracks. Mishka has been driving in and out, getting supplies for the house: fresh bread, milk, fruit … Agaata has started on the dinner. They will be so surprised to see Nicola! Mishka may even be angry at first. He told her to stay away, but that was in Marseille. He had to get away from those nasty characters, couldn’t afford to have his hands tied up with Nicola lagging behind him. She accepted that. That was then. This is now.