Chapter 6
‘Poor sod,’ Poe said for the second time in an hour. ‘No wonder she’s so angry.’
Esmerée had told her story and Poe had said he’d call her the following day with news, even if the news was that there was no news. She didn’t have a phone, so she’d agreed to pop in instead. She’d then left the office and almost skipped down the stairs.
‘It is a sad case,’ Bradshaw agreed.
‘Let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘Esmerée’s mother, Océane Blue, was shacked up with some rich arsehole in the States.’
‘Vincent du Buk,’ Bradshaw confirmed. ‘He had a house in New York State and an apartment in Manhattan.’
‘Esmerée’s a bit fuzzy on their arrangement, but it seems he was something like her mother’s sugar daddy. Océane was basically at his beck and call.’
Bradshaw nodded.
‘On the surface, Vincent du Buk was a respectable businessman. He worked for a private equity firm on Wall Street. He had no criminal record and he wasn’t on anyone’s radar. According to your preliminary research, he was worth upwards of fifty million dollars.’
‘He was a very rich man, Poe. And no one in law enforcement was investigating him or his businesses.’
‘But according to Esmerée, if we scratched the surface we would discover that Vincent mixed with some unsavoury characters. Esmerée had lived with Vincent since she was born. She said he had only ever been nice to her. To her mother too. But then, about a year ago, something happened. Océane snaps and sticks a knife in Vincent du Buk’s neck.
He bleeds out and dies before anyone can call an ambulance.
Océane runs, leaving Esmerée to fend for herself.
Esmerée grabs some of Vincent’s loose change and flees too.
She hears nothing from her mother for six months so assumes Vincent’s friends caught up with her and had her dissolved in acid or something.
She uses the last of her money to cross the border into Canada.
She sneaks onto a campsite in Alberta and steals the passport of an eighteen-year-old girl who looks vaguely like her.
She gets a flight to Gatwick, then moves up north, where she gets a job as a cash-in-hand chambermaid at Musgrave Hall, a country hotel on the outskirts of Carlisle. ’
Poe took his time with the next bit. Controlled his breathing.
‘She works there for six months, fending off the sexual advances of the manager, Adam Malloy. Eventually he threatens her with a good old sacking if she won’t at least watch a film with him.
He tells her he’s downloaded the new Mission: Impossible.
When they get settled, it turns out to be a porn film.
She tries to get away, but he restrains her.
As he’s doing that, she glances at the screen and sees her own, supposedly dead mother front and centre in the bloody porn film Adam Malloy is forcing her to watch.
She’s got her back to the camera, but Esmerée recognises the tattoo on the sole of her foot.
And as it’s a recently made film, judging by the Taylor Swift Eras Tour poster on the wall, she concludes that far from being dead, her mother is alive and well and making porn.
‘Esmerée freaks out. She scares Adam Malloy, who thinks she’s having a fit. In the confusion, she makes her escape. On her way out, she steals his wallet. Have I missed anything?’
‘Other than Esmerée hiring us, I don’t think so.’
‘And the facts check out. Vincent du Buk was murdered, he did have a knife stuck in his neck, and six months ago, a girl called Elizabeth Robbins, the name on the passport Esmerée claims to have stolen, did fly into Gatwick from Calgary.’
Bradshaw yawned. ‘I’ll have in-depth profiles by tomorrow,’ she said. ‘But I have work I need to finish for Alastor Locke first.’
‘Some national security nonsense?’
She nodded.
‘More interesting than this afternoon’s shenanigans?’
‘Gosh, no,’ she said. She picked up their mugs and made her way to the sink in the waiting area that divided their two offices. She ran the hot tap and put the mugs in to soak; she said she had to, as Poe took his coffee so strong it stained everything. ‘You’ll start with Adam Malloy, I assume.’
‘I’ll go and see him first thing tomorrow morning,’ Poe agreed.
Bradshaw nodded. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Don’t hurt him too much.’