Chapter 13
A Dead Estonian
ALISTAIR
I am on my second coffee when Henderson arrives.
I pour a third and set it on the counter. There is the warm smell of pastries in the oven—buttery and sweet.
Henderson picks up the coffee without a word.
“How's Ariana?” I ask.
“Pregnancy's going well,” he replies. A beat. “She's not happy that I'm working for you again.”
I nod. Who could blame her?
At 8:05 exactly my phone buzzes. Brodie.
I tap the phone. “You're on speaker,” I say.
“Elena Kuznetsova.” It always catches me off guard, how young Brodie sounds.
“Found her here in London. Took some doing. She buried the trail well—four shell companies, two false identities, a property registered to a deceased Estonian national. Took me the better part of thirty-six hours to unpick it.” A pause.
“But it's her. Luxury serviced apartment, private complex. She's been there at least three weeks.”
Henderson sets down his coffee.
“Send me everything,” I say.
“Already done.”
I thank Brodie and end the call.
Henderson looks at me. “This morning,” he says.
“This morning,” I agree.
The pastries come out of the oven just as Christopher arrives—slightly too loud, slightly too cheerful, carrying the specific energy of a man who has been awake all night.
The smell of warm butter and almond fills the kitchen.
Brumilde sets the platter on the island without a word and disappears back upstairs.
“Morning,” says Christopher, stealing my coffee and reaching for a pastry in the same movement. “You both look terrible.”
“You look worse,” replies Henderson.
“Rude,” says Christopher, sitting down. He takes a large bite of pastry, examines it, takes another. “These are extraordinary. Mildew really is a national treasure.” He drums his fingers on the counter. “So. Hypothetically.”
I look at him.
“Hypothetically,” he says again, “if a person—not me, obviously, a completely hypothetical person—had gotten themselves into a small amount of financial difficulty of a crypto-adjacent nature —”
I inhale deeply and find I’m squeezing the bridge of my nose. “How much?” I reply.
He names a figure.
Henderson makes a sound. I can’t tell if he’s annoyed or impressed.
“Christopher,” I say.
He looks slightly sheepish, but doesn’t feel bad enough to return my coffee. Bastard.
“I'll sort it,” I say. “We'll talk about it later.” There are bigger things to worry about this morning.
Rebecca Bradley arrives at eight-thirty. The front door opens on a gust of cold morning air and she comes through it the way she comes through everything—purposefully, already talking. The dogs are delighted.
“Right,” she says, unwinding her scarf and dropping her bag on the nearest chair.
“I need coffee, I need Ivy, and I need someone to tell me how a charitable foundation registered with the Charity Commission, fully compliant, properly funded, can still be blocked from delivering a community health program in Peckham by a wall of bureaucratic nonsense that makes no sense to anyone.” She looks around.
“Morning, you lot. All okay? Morning, Christopher. You look terrible.”
“Everyone keeps saying that,” replies Christopher, mussing his hair and looking in the mirror.
“Everyone is correct.” She pours herself a coffee and wraps both hands around the mug. “Where's Ivy?”
“Still upstairs,” I reply.
“Of course she is. Bloody lady of leisure now.” She says it with enormous affection, then spots the pastries.
“Oh, thank god.” She takes one and leans against the counter.
“So. The Foundation. We cannot get regulatory sign-off without a senior medical authority attached to the application.
I've been going around in circles with the Charity Commission for two weeks. No one will touch us because of … well, you know.”
“We don’t know,” says Christopher.
“Because your family name doesn’t exactly spell legit business.”
Christopher shakes his head. “Peasants are so judgmental.”
Becks takes a bite of pastry. “You can joke all you like—”
“He’s not joking,” chimes in Henderson.
Becks almost chokes on her pastry. Henderson’s gentle Irish lilt tends to do that to her. Once she’s recovered, she smooths her hair back. “It's a wall.”
Christopher hasn’t finished complaining. “I mean, they’re all up our faces about paying more tax and other pinko propaganda but then when we offer them free money for their dreaded lurgies, all of a sudden they turn their snotty noses up. Bloody ingrates.”
Becks is aghast. “You do realize you sound like Marie Antoinette?”
“Ah, sorry love,” Christopher bats his eyelashes. “Have I put you off your pain au chocolat?”
Becks glares at him and discards the pastry, swearing under her breath.
“It'll come together,” I say.
“It needs to come together by end of week,” she replies. “Or we lose the community space we've reserved and start from scratch.”
At that moment Ivy appears in the doorway, still in her dressing gown, Alex on her hip. He is patting her face with both hands with focused intensity.
“Meeting started without me,” she says. “Hello, Becks, sunshine of my life. Hello, Christopher. You look terrible.”
“Thank you,” says Christopher, to no one in particular.
Ivy and her best friend hug. Becks looks at Alex with uncertainty. Alex looks back at her with round, solemn eyes. He reaches out one small hand toward her coffee mug.
“No,” says Becks.
Alex continues reaching.
“No,” says Becks.
Alex switches from the coffee mug to her hair, which he grabs with impressive accuracy.
“Ow,” says Becks. “Right. Hello.” She extricates her hair with the careful movements of someone defusing a small bomb, and Alex watches her do it with interest. Something almost imperceptible crosses Rebecca’s face—there and gone—before she turns back to Ivy.
“We've run into a problem with Peckham,” she says. “I need you to look at something.”
While Ivy and Becks go over the paperwork at the kitchen table—Alex now transferred to Brumilde, who has reappeared like a benign ghost, and the warm smell of coffee mixing with the last of the pastries—I pull Henderson to the far end of the island.
“Forty minutes from here,” I say, low. “Eleven o'clock. Just us.”
“I'll arrange the car,” he replies.
From across the kitchen, Ivy looks up, suddenly with the hearing of a hunting dog.
“Where are you going at eleven?” she asks.
“Elena,” I reply. “Henderson and I.”
She visibly pales and sets down her pen. “Alistair.”
“It'll be fine,” I reply.
“Can someone else go?” She pushes back her chair slightly. “She's too clever. Something about this doesn't feel right. She let herself be found.”
“Brodie worked for this address,” I reply. “Four shell companies. A dead Estonian.”
“Or she made it look that way,” says Ivy.
The kitchen has gone quiet. Even Christopher has stopped eating.
“I need to be the one to end this,” I say. “Properly. So we know it's over.”