Chapter 12
Kitty and Antoinette’s Airbnb, West Hollywood, Los Angeles
Several phone calls and a rather anxiety-inducing hour later, the cases are finally back in our possession.
And the Uber driver seemed none the wiser about what he’d been transporting around the city.
‘Let’s get you somewhere where you can’t cause me any more trouble,’ I say to Ron as I drag him down to the cellar.
The wine cellar is actually a lifesaver in more ways than one, not only can it keep bodies at a temperature that they won’t start stinking, but it can also store an obscene amount of bottles of wine.
And the owners have kindly left it fully stocked.
I walk around, gently stroking the labels like I’m Belle when she finds the library in Beauty and the Beast. I pull out a bottle of white from its cubby hole.
Burgundy, 2001. I’m about to take it upstairs and pour a glass when I remember that I’m not drinking.
I put it back in the rack.
‘Later,’ I promise the bottle.
We’re sitting outside by the pool now. It turns out that what the villa lacks on the inside, it more than makes up for outside.
Even Antoinette seems charmed by the whitewashed walls and terracotta patio, the pink and white hibiscus and hydrangeas bursting out of impossibly green shrubs.
I saw her gently touching the flowers and I’m sure I heard her whisper ‘pretty’ before she flopped down on a lounger.
There’s a large, covered area for al fresco dining with a table that could seat about twenty, a fire pit and a huge built-in barbecue.
There’s also an L-shaped sofa, which could also seat twenty, and a double hammock that I’m sure to fall asleep in at some point.
I have my laptop and the Aidan Ward spreadsheet open and we’re both stretched out on sunloungers in the shade of a lemon tree.
‘So,’ I say, ‘I’ve been thinking and I reckon we need to explore options other than just therapists.
We can’t just visit every therapist in LA until we find him.
We don’t even know that he’s working over here.
’ I’m sure it’s not that easy now I’ve had time to think about it.
Aren’t there visas and things like that?
Antoinette tilts her head. ‘I agree but where do we start? It’s not like he’s kindly posting updates on his socials, telling us where he’s having brunch today.’
It’s frustrating for sure. Aidan has gone completely dark on his social media accounts.
His Snapchat, which is how we discovered he was in LA, has been deleted, his ‘last seen’ on WhatsApp was weeks ago and, although his Instagram is still technically active, there’s been no activity on it for ages.
How did stalkers operate before everyone was so chronically online?
For a split second I feel a pang of grief for Hen, my former BFF and Antoinette’s sister.
She’s someone I had to murder before she told everyone I was a killer.
She’d have known.
Stalking was kind of her speciality.
‘I don’t know,’ I say with a sigh as I pick up my phone and open Instagram.
I type in Aidan Ward’s name and open his page.
It’s not locked but there aren’t any new posts.
There haven’t been for a long time. Just the same shots of woodland vistas and arty-looking sunsets.
Antoinette’s right. What am I expecting?
A GRWM-as-I-prepare-to-find-my-next-human-punchbag reel?
A pinned fucking location with a caption saying here I am, come and get me?
‘We need to think smart,’ I say. ‘Where would we go if we were Aidan Ward?’
‘That’s the trouble though, isn’t it?’ Antoinette says. ‘What do we actually know about him? Apart from the fact he likes to hurt women? And I doubt there’s a local meet-up group for that.’
‘I bet there’s several online though,’ I say darkly.
But she’s right. We know next to nothing about this man.
I rack my brain, hoping that there’s a nugget of something that might help me.
But all I can think of are those lame band T-shirts he always wore.
And I doubt The Beatles or The Byrds are going to be doing any live shows in the area any time soon.
Oh. But.
‘Can you do a search for like vinyl record stores in the area?’ I ask Antoinette. She raises her eyebrows questioningly. ‘He’s a music nerd,’ I explain. ‘Old stuff. Older than Beyoncé.’ I give her a pointed stare.
Antoinette scrolls on her phone for a bit. ‘There’s quite a few,’ she says after a few minutes. ‘What are we going to do? Just hang around outside them in the hope he comes in?’
I shake my head and grab my own phone, opening the photos app and turning it to face my sister.
‘We show them this and ask if anyone has seen this man.’ It’s a headshot I managed to screen grab from the website of his clinic in London.
Before it was taken down after he unceremoniously dumped the clinic and all his patients and fled the country.
Antoinette peers at the photo. ‘He’s probably changed his look,’ she says. ‘Bet he’s got rid of that crusty beard at least.’ She pulls a face.
‘Gotta be worth a try though, right?’ I say. It has to be. We’ve literally got nothing else. Antoinette swills her drink around in the glass and raises one shoulder in a half shrug. ‘What?’ I say. ‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘It just seems like we don’t really have much of a plan here. Go to therapists and hang around record stores doesn’t feel like a plan, you know.’
I sigh again. I do know. I just don’t know what else to do.
‘We need to think smart,’ Antoinette is saying now like I didn’t just say the same thing two seconds ago. ‘Like, okay, he might not be working as a therapist but he still needs money. And groceries. Stuff like that. Does he know anyone out here? There must be a reason he came to LA of all places.’
‘But how would we know that?’
Antoinette taps her phone. ‘He might not be active himself on Instagram but the people he follows might be. Have you checked his tags?’
I stare at her.
His tags.
Of course.
Why haven’t I thought of this?
We spend some time trawling through the bowels of Aidan Ward’s Instagram tags before we find something that might be useful.
‘Look,’ Antoinette says, pointing to a photo of Aidan on a beach with his arms wrapped around a dark-haired woman. They’re both beaming at the camera, under the shade of a palm tree. It was posted 156 weeks ago.
I click on it.
‘Girlfriend?’ I say.
‘Definitely looks like it.’
The picture appears on the account of someone called Niamh O’Hagan. I scroll through her photos but there aren’t any others with Aidan Ward in them.
‘That’s weird,’ I say to Antoinette. ‘If they were a couple, why aren’t there any other photos of them together? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Unless they had a bad break-up,’ she says, ‘and she deleted all the others. Maybe this one survived the purge.’
I stare at the photo. They definitely have that in-love energy. What happened for her to delete all other photos of him?
‘I’m going to DM her,’ I say to Antoinette, who nods.
I tap out a message.
‘Hi Niamh, I’m really sorry to slide into your DMs out of the blue but I’m hoping you can help me.
I noticed a photo of Aidan Ward on your grid.
I’m trying to find him. He violently attacked my friend a few weeks ago before leaving London for LA.
If you can help at all in any way, I would be grateful forever.
Thank you for your time, Kitty Collins.’
I press send and look at my sister. ‘And now we wait.’
Antoinette nods and looks out at the pool, squinting in the sun. ‘It’s getting hot,’ she says. ‘I think I might have a swim. Coming in?’
I shake my head. ‘I want to keep at this a bit longer,’ I say, indicating the laptop.
She shrugs and stands up, peeling off her cover-up, revealing a white Oséree bikini.
I watch as she dips her foot into the impossibly blue water.
‘Gosh, that’s cold,’ she mutters before arching her back and diving in, perfectly.
She remerges a few seconds later, her teeth chattering.
‘Gosh, that’s really fucking cold!’ She laughs again and swims to the other end of the pool.
‘Kits. What’s that building?’ I follow the line of her finger and see what looks like a miniature version of the villa.
‘I think it’s a guesthouse,’ I say. ‘Funny, the listing didn’t mention that.’
‘Shall we go and check it out? You never know, it might be nicer than the main house!’
‘It’s probably just full of old furniture and pool maintenance stuff,’ I say. ‘I doubt it’s very exciting or I’m sure the owners would’ve said something about it.’ Antoinette’s already hauling herself out of the pool though and wrapping a towel around her waist.
‘I might just go and have a look anyway,’ she says and sashays in the direction of the guesthouse, leaving a trail of footprints drying on the concrete behind her.