Chapter Four
A few hours later, Aster cricked her neck. What she had thought might be difficult was easy, and where she expected to breeze through was proving impossible.
Her first concern was to investigate her stranger. Ari was convinced his behaviour was deeply suspicious, but Aster didn’t feel the same and wanted to know more about him. Her first option had been to look at the metadata on the video clip and was surprised to see it was clean of all IP markers. Without those, she had no way to hack into his system. Had he scrubbed the files deliberately, or was that part of his security measures? Either way, it was a red flag. Next, she re-examined the tape for clues. It was a decent size house with a staircase leading up and down. This was a private residence somewhere in Mayfair and hadn’t been split into flats. The owner was clearly loaded. She looked back at the footage from the room she had slept in and saw various paintings on the wall. Looking closely at one, it looked familiar and she took a screen grab and googled it. A few minutes later, she whistled to herself. Either her rescuer had an inbuilt security system for a collection of pretty prints, or that was a genuine Monet on his wall.
She wasn’t sure if this was a red flag or not. People with that sort of wealth thought they were untouchable. Above the law. Well, they might be, but they weren’t beyond Aster’s version of justice.
Putting her search into him aside for a moment, she tackled the nightclub instead. She had expected this to be tricky, but after only a few minutes she found the club’s router, and after that it was child’s play. They hadn’t even changed the password from the factory settings. And once she was behind the firewall, she headed straight for the security footage.
Watching herself move around the club was less disconcerting than before. So far, she was behaving exactly as she should. She watched as she bought a bottle of water from the bar. No one was near her and she could remember breaking the seal to the bottle. So the bottle was out of the running. She kept scrolling until she saw herself heading towards the bar. The barman handed her her drink, and she put it on the counter. There was some confusion as a champagne bottle careered across the top of the bar, sending drinks flying. For a second, Aster missed it. A hand flashed out of shot. She rewound and this time ignored the champagne bottle hurtling towards the drinks. Instead, she kept her eyes solely focused on her glass and almost missed the hand again, because it didn’t spike her glass. It spiked the glass to her left. The drink the girl standing next to her had ordered. Aster watched as the disembodied hand quickly covered the glass. A few seconds later, her own hands shot forwards to lift both glasses, and then she handed the girl her own glass and Aster walked away with the spiked glass.
She hadn’t been the intended victim. Aster sighed in relief. At least that made sense.
Now she could get to work. Aster picked another camera angle and this time saw her assailant clearly. It was the creep who had followed the other girl from the bar. She watched as he hovered around her for a while and then tried to approach her, causing her to change from polite dismissal to eventually shouting at him to leave her alone. Across the floor, Aster saw herself waving and shouting. She didn’t bother to zoom in. Instead, she returned her attention to the man in question. After half an hour, she had screen grabs of his face, a full body shot and also a close up of his mobile phone screen with his Facebook account on full display.
An hour later, she knew his name, his home address, and his place of work. She sat back, and for the first time that day, she smiled. Somebody’s life was about to become very miserable.
Pricking her ears, she heard the front door click and had an instant rush of panic. Had he found her? Had he somehow tracked her down? Her fear was instantly replaced by a familiar voice shouting at her to undo the chains and deadbolts.
Jumping up, she flew to the front door, undoing all the locks, and threw open the door to see her gorgeous sister staring down at her.
‘Paddy!’
Rushing forward, she hugged Paddy tightly until her sister tapped her on the shoulder.
‘If I could have just a small breath?’
Instantly, Aster stepped back and felt awkward. She never hugged her sisters, but right then she could have squeezed the very air out of Paddy’s lungs. Paddy lived in Cornwall, what was she doing here? As she watched, Paddy turned and waved down to a waiting Range Rover. Hal leant out of the window, gave Aster a quick salute, and then drove off.
Stepping inside quickly, Paddy followed Aster and put a small overnight bag on the floor and then looked her up and down, tears welling up in her eyes.
‘You haven’t even changed.’
Aster looked at her clothes and realised that Paddy was right. She was still in the clothes she had been wearing to the club. In the search for the truth, she had got carried away. Now that Paddy was here, she had to stop and the events caught up with her again.
‘Do you want to go to the police? Report the crime? What can I do?’
Aster paused. ‘I don’t. I…’ She stuttered to a halt. Now that one of her sisters was standing in front of her, she felt a wave of emotions flooding through her again and she was struggling to stay in control. She wanted to tell Paddy she was fine but was terrified that if she spoke, she’d burst into tears and that was not going to happen. She had just got in control of the situation and now her stupid emotions were going to ruin everything.
‘Okay. Physically, are you okay?’ asked Paddy, her face full of worry. ‘You can just nod if you prefer.’
Aster nodded as Paddy continued to stare at her and then rolled into action.
‘Here’s the plan. I’m going to run you a bath and you’re going to get changed into your pjs. Then I’m going to cook us supper. Chicken, rice and peas. And then we’ll have chocolate mousse and hot chocolates. Okay?’
Chicken, rice and peas had been their childhood staple when they were ill and had proved remarkably effective against hangovers as well.
Aster smiled and gave a small laugh.
‘You don’t need to mother me.’
Paddy shrugged her coat off.
‘Are you still standing there? Go get your jammies.’
With a laugh, the two girls ran upstairs as Paddy headed for the main bathroom. Aster headed into her bedroom and changed. From the bathroom, Paddy shouted that the bath was running and to keep an eye on it. Then she headed downstairs, telling her to take as long as she liked.
Aster headed into the bathroom and grinned as she looked at all the face masks, body scrubs and moisturisers that Paddy had lined up. Shaking her head, she slipped into the bath and began to relax.
Half an hour later, Paddy shouted that the food was almost ready. Aster wrapped herself in a big floor-length fluffy dressing gown and headed back downstairs.
Looking her up and down, Paddy nodded in approval and handed her a hot chocolate laden with whipped cream, a flake and marshmallows. The joys of having a pantry stocked for children as well as adults meant there was always a quick treat on standby.
‘Now,’ said Paddy, ‘I know you don’t want to talk about it, but if I’m going to stop Ari from getting on the next flight home can you please tell me something? I’ve already spoken to her and she’s beside herself. We all are.’
Aster headed over to the squishy sofa and tucked her feet up and snuggled down before polishing off the flake.
‘I didn’t know she was going to call you?’
‘She was worried when you mentioned calling Clem. We all know that Clem’s working, she’ll never answer her phone. So when you said that, Ari panicked and thought you had really lost it. So she called me.’
‘Do I look like I lost it?’
‘Not at all. I told her you probably said that just to get her off the phone.’
Aster gave a small wince and a smile.
‘Maybe. So if you didn’t think I was losing it, why did you come up?’
Paddy glared at her.
‘Why do you think? Jesus, Aster, you’ve been assaulted. Wild horses wouldn’t have kept me in Cornwall. I told Hal what had happened. He called the babysitter. I packed a bag and we drove straight up here. He’s staying with friends tonight, by the way. Felt you’d prefer that.’
‘I like Hal!’ protested Aster quickly.
‘No one’s saying you don’t. He just felt that you deserved a bit of privacy, but I tell you what Aster, he was all for packing his guns. This guy who recorded you is lucky not to be looking like a colander.’
Aster shook her head and asked Paddy to pass over her laptop whilst she drank her chocolate. The warm milky sweetness was hitting the spot and she was pleased to notice that internally she was calming down.