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  For a brief moment Fortune believed that he understood how his daughter had felt, faced with such unreasonable, uncaring authority. He realized that he was holding his shoulders hunched and tight and he relaxed them, sat slumped.

  ‘Get some help,’ said Marsh. ‘Do yourself a favour.’ He walked to the door and opened it and left without looking back. After a while, Fortune stood and followed him out of the room, and made his way to the entrance of the police station, a journey he’d made too many times now.

  Jackson didn’t look surprised so much as weary when he opened his door to see Fortune standing at the top of his steps.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, whatever it is, piss off.’

  But Fortune had anticipated a reception along those lines and didn’t say a word, just pushed past Jackson with all the strength he had left. In the entrance hall, he turned, and Jackson, still standing at his front door, holding it open, said, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Just tell me,’ Fortune said. ‘Just tell me the truth. I need to know.’ There was supplication in his voice and he hated himself for it, hated himself for having to beg to this man, this lazy, assured, entitled bastard. But it was for his daughter, for Sophie. He needed answers.

  ‘I’m calling the cops,’ said Jackson, taking out his mobile. Fortune reached forward and pulled it out of his hand, throwing it down the steps, into the street, where it burst apart with a pleasing noise. He closed the door, turned to see Jackson looking at him in disbelief.

  ‘Look,’ said Fortune, ‘I just …’ He blinked, blinked again and kept his eyes closed. He couldn’t get breath into his lungs and he could feel his legs beginning to go. He lowered himself onto the first step of the staircase in Jackson’s hallway. The floor was tiled, a Victorian pattern. His chest hurt; it felt like it was strapped up and somebody was pulling it tighter and tighter. He took a breath, took another, tried to control his breathing. He felt transported, as if he was having some kind of out-of-body experience, weightless, fuelled by the fury he felt. What had this man done to Sophie?

  ‘Get out of my house,’ said Jackson.

  Fortune tried to control his breathing, regain control. He felt like he’d been underwater for too long, his chest straining with the lack of oxygen, burning. At last he looked up. ‘I want to know where my daughter is.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Jackson. He bent down and took hold of one of the lapels of Fortune’s coat. ‘I. Don’t. Know. Understand? I don’t know what happened to that psycho bitch daughter of yours, and I don’t give a damn.’ He let go, stood up straight. ‘Do you get it?’ He raised his voice, almost a scream. ‘I don’t give a damn.’

  ‘What was it?’ said Fortune. ‘She was going after you, so you thought you’d take it to her? Leaving those comments on her blog. Telling the police lies about how she was harassing you. Is that it?’

  Jackson put his hands to his head, rubbed the sides of his face, hard. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘How did you get the money out?’

  ‘What money?’

  ‘The money.’ Fortune put a hand on the banister, pulled himself to his feet. Jackson was looking at him in disbelief, like Fortune was a chimpanzee who’d somehow found its way into his house. ‘What was it, a message? Because it worked. I’m here.’

  ‘You’re as crazy as she was,’ said Jackson. ‘Out of your mind.’

  That was the second time that day Fortune had been compared to his daughter. He had no problem with that. She was his daughter, and he loved her. And he was going to find her.

  ‘I’m not leaving,’ he said, ‘until—’

  ‘Charlie?’ Fortune was interrupted by a voice, a female voice. He turned to see a girl at the top of the stairs, a very young girl. She was holding a sheet around her and looked scared, her mouth open. ‘Charlie? Charlie, what’s happening?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Jackson. ‘Go back upstairs.’

  ‘How old are you?’ said Fortune. He turned to Jackson. ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Old enough,’ said Jackson. ‘Now will you please leave?’

  Fortune took out his phone, held it up and took a photo of the girl. ‘She doesn’t look old enough.’

  ‘Charlie? Who is he?’

  ‘I know people who worked with my daughter,’ said Fortune. ‘On the magazine.’ He took a step back from the stairs, two, and caught Jackson and the girl in the same shot. ‘If you don’t tell me what I want to know, they’ll be getting this.’

  ‘Charlie?’ said the girl, panic in her voice. ‘I don’t want my dad to know.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Jackson. ‘Shut up, shut up. Shut up.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Fortune said to the girl. ‘I’m not here to hurt you.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Has he done anything to you?’

  ‘Who?’ she said, looking confused. She was young, couldn’t be older than sixteen. Fifteen. ‘Charlie? No.’

  ‘Is he keeping you here?’

  ‘What?’ She frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Against your will,’ said Fortune, trying to be patient. ‘Is he keeping you here against your will?’

  ‘No. Who, Charlie? No.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘None of your business,’ the girl said, guilt in her voice along with defiance. ‘Charlie? Charlie?’

  Jackson looked up at the girl, then at Fortune. ‘What do you want?’ he said.

  ‘My daughter.’

  ‘I told you. I don’t know where she is. The police already asked me. I wasn’t even in the country when she went missing.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. No, no, no. I was in the Caribbean.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Between the time she was last seen and when they … when she was reported missing, I wasn’t in the country. I wasn’t here. Understand? I don’t know what happened to her. I. Don’t. Know.’

  Fortune had a sense of things falling around him, as if he was standing beneath a disintegrating tower block, the ground giving way beneath him. Like nothing would ever be the same again, a point of no return.

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Yes, it’s true. It’s true. That, what’s his name, Marsh? Kept me in overnight. Kept asking, asking and asking and asking. I wasn’t here. I wasn’t in the country.’

  ‘If I call him? I’ve got his number.’

  ‘He’ll tell you. He’ll tell you, because he knows. I don’t know anything about your daughter.’ Jackson held both hands in front of him, fingers open like he was clutching an imaginary football, trying to crush it. ‘I wasn’t here.’

  Fortune thought, thought hard and quickly, worked out what he could do. He’d broken into a man’s home, a man who was a household name. He had no right to be here, no grounds. Jackson hadn’t been in the country. Fortune believed that. He couldn’t lie himself, but he knew when people were lying to him; it was part of the job. Part of management. What now?

  ‘How old is she?’ he asked, putting his phone away.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ said Jackson.

  ‘How old are you?’ said Fortune, looking at the girl, who looked back at him with the baffled innocence of a child.

  ‘Charlie?’ she said.

  ‘This didn’t happen. Okay?’ said Fortune. ‘You say nothing, I say nothing.’

  Jackson shrugged.

  ‘I’m going to leave you alone now. We’re done.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Jackson. ‘Just get out.’

  Fortune walked past Jackson, opened the front door and walked back out into the day. At the bottom of the steps he passed the wreckage of Jackson’s phone. At least, he thought, he’d accomplished something.

  twenty-six

  4/3

  I have to get this down, need to get it down properly while it still makes some sense, no, not sense, but while I can still remember what happened, and in the right order. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense at all a
nd I think I’m mad, I think I’m completely mad like everybody says and that everything I think is real isn’t, and somewhere, in some other reality, my life, my real life, is going terribly wrong. I don’t know what’s real any more, or what’s true. I can’t trust myself.

  So yesterday I packed my bag, went to St Pancras and caught the Eurostar. There was a piano at the station, just put there for anyone to play, and this Chinese girl, I think she was a tourist, sat down and played some amazing piece of music. People were just stopping and watching, and pretty soon there was a huge crowd, transfixed by this little girl’s playing. Did that happen? I’m sure it happened, really happened. It seemed real. And the check-in, putting my bag though the X-ray machine and walking through the metal detector. Then sitting in my seat, a window seat, watching the countryside blur by, and then into the tunnel and my ears popping from, I don’t know what, change of pressure? And then coming out the other side, into France, which at first didn’t seem different except the roofs of the houses aren’t the same, and then coming into Paris where the architecture’s so different, tall, thin houses, slate roofs, so ornate, and the sides facing the tracks covered in graffiti, all in French. I didn’t imagine that either. How could I imagine something so detailed, when I’d never even been to Paris before?

  Josh told me where to meet him. He said he’d reserved a table at one o’clock. It was in a brasserie opposite the Gare du Nord, called Terminus. It was this amazing place, just like it would have been back in the thirties, brass and chandeliers and deco detailing, just spellbinding. Beautiful, so beautiful, and the people who were eating, so stylish. It was just perfect. The maître d’ took my luggage and showed me to my seat. Next to me a waitress was setting fire to a pancake, flambé, I think that’s what it’s called. I guess they’d call it a crêpe too, not a pancake. Anyway, she set it on fire and then served it to the table behind me, and I sat there looking around me and all the stuff from the last few months seemed so very, very far away, and so unreal. I could breathe. I remember thinking, I can breathe. Like the air was lighter that side of the Channel.

  I’d arrived at about ten to one, so I wasn’t surprised that Josh wasn’t there. I had that first-date nervous feeling, but good, more like anticipation, a lovely warm feeling. And I waited, and looked around at the beautiful people, and then it was one o’clock. Then it was ten past. Then it was twenty past, and I tried Josh’s number but there was no reply. Then it was half past one and the maître d’ kept looking at me and I tried not to meet his eye, and then I started to cry because of course Josh wasn’t coming. I tried not to let anyone see that I was crying but the maître d’ came over and asked me if I had any news, and I said no, I didn’t know anything, and he was very kind and said that perhaps I would like to order anyway? But I didn’t, and I said I was sorry, and he told me it was okay, that there was nothing to worry about. And I couldn’t stop crying and he brought me my luggage and I didn’t know what to do, where to go. It started to rain and I was in Paris and I could have done anything, but I just walked back to the Gare du Nord and waited for a train, because I couldn’t think of anything else. I kept trying Josh, but there was no answer, and everything had felt so fine but now it just felt bad again, bad and wrong. I remember that. I remember sitting in the Gare du Nord, looking at the departure board, and everything feeling bad and wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

  So I found a train and I went through passport control and when I was through I put my bag into the X-ray machine and walked through the metal-detector arch, just like when I’d come. And then I walked to Departures but a man stopped me and asked me to follow him, and he opened a door in the wall and inside was another man and a metal table. They were wearing blue shirts with insignia on them but they weren’t police. They were both English and they asked me to put my bag on the table and to step away and put my back against the wall. They unzipped my case and on top was a metal box, like a tin, that I’d never seen before. They opened it and pulled out a parcel wrapped in clear plastic and asked me what it was and I told them that I’d never seen it before, that it hadn’t been in my case when I left London and that somebody must have put it there, they must have, must have must have must have. And they looked at me like everybody else does, like Sam does when I tell him I didn’t make any noise, like the police do when I tell them I didn’t take the knife, like Larry at work does when I tell him I’ve done nothing wrong. They looked at me like I was mad, and now I think they must be right. Because it was in my case and they told me it was drugs and I don’t know how it got there, I don’t. And they questioned me and took my saliva and escorted me to the train, and one of them sat with me, and when I got to London more people were waiting for me on the platform and they told me I’ll go to prison, I’m going to go to prison for a long time.

  And now I’m at home and I don’t know what to do. I think I’m mad and I have nowhere to live and no job and nobody who loves me. And Josh, Josh has gone. Josh has disappeared, like he never existed. I thought I loved him. I thought he loved me. Maybe he just decided I was mad, too. I don’t know. God, I just don’t know.

  By the time Fortune had finished reading the document he had found buried on his daughter’s computer’s desktop, he knew, knew with a certainty he’d never had before concerning her, that she hadn’t been mad. That she hadn’t been mad at all, which was almost miraculous, given what had happened to her, what had been done to her. She hadn’t taken those drugs, they’d been planted on her. Somebody had done it, maybe at the restaurant. Somebody who’d known where she’d be, and when. It was beyond obvious. Now, he thought, now we’re getting somewhere.

  He was in his hotel room, the remains of an unsatisfactory coq au vin on the desk-stroke-table, a half-empty bottle of Bordeaux on the bedside table next to him. He reached for his phone, found Jessica’s number. He didn’t have anyone else to call. She was the only person he knew who’d known his daughter in London, who might have some idea of what to do. There were nine days left. Nine days until the date of the stolen money. Nine days to save his daughter.

  He listened to it ring, wondered whether Jessica was out again at some media event, putting up with some other wannabe starlet’s disgraceful behaviour.

  ‘Yes? Hello?’

  ‘Jessica? It’s Fortune, I’m sorry to bother you.’

  ‘Fortune?’ She sounded suspicious, and Fortune had the shameful thought that she might think he was hitting on her.

  ‘I need your help,’ he said.

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Just, it’ll only take a minute. I was just wondering, her boyfriend. Josh.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Do you know his surname?’

  ‘No. Didn’t even know his name until you told me. Sorry.’

  ‘Are you sure? Please, think. Are you sure she didn’t mention it?’

  ‘Fortune, we weren’t that close. I don’t know.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Fortune. ‘Never mind.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. There was silence on her end. Maybe she wasn’t out. Maybe she was at home, looking at the remains of her own unsatisfactory dinner. Probably not. She wasn’t like him.

  ‘Did she say anything at all?’ he asked. ‘Anything about him? Where he worked, where they met, anything like that?’

  ‘No,’ said Jessica. ‘Sorry. I think they met online. I think. He must have a profile, they must have been connected. Have you looked?’

  ‘No,’ said Fortune. ‘But I will. Okay. Thanks.’

  ‘No problem.’ She paused. ‘Hey. Did you go and see Jackson?’

  ‘Yes.’ He paused, added, ‘I think I upset him.’

  Jessica laughed, a low chuckle. ‘Did you now? Well, I imagine he deserved it.’

  ‘Oh, he deserved it. I don’t quite know what for, but he deserved it.’

  Jessica laughed again. ‘Look after yourself,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Fortune. ‘Thanks.’

  He hung up and went to the desk, where his daughter
’s computer was open. Social networks, why hadn’t he thought of it? He wasn’t on any of those, never had been. Who was he going to share the minutiae of his life with? He opened up a browser window and headed to Facebook. Sophie’s name was in the top corner, still logged in. It was so easy to access her life, everything she did, everyone she knew. You idiot, he thought. Why didn’t you do this before?

  From what colleagues had told him, Fortune imagined that social media was created so that people with frivolous and inconsequential lives had a platform to air them, because, understandably, traditional media didn’t care what you’d just eaten for dinner or if your rabbit had had a leg amputated; nor was it in a hurry to publish it. Looking at the posts on his daughter’s page, he thought they were probably right. Photos of nights out, links to articles about weight loss and celebrity scuttlebutt, invitations to parties and openings, videos of animals doing apparently cute things. He scrolled down through them impatiently until he realized he wasn’t going to find anything of interest there. Instead he moved to the top of the page, found Friends, opened it up. There were a lot of them, all young, all pictured, it seemed, in nightclubs with their mouths wide open, grinning, laughing, having fun. Fun. That was something he hadn’t contributed to Sophie’s life. What a waste, what a terrible, miserable, inexcusable waste.

  He stopped at a shot of a man, the Statue of Liberty behind him. Josh MacDonald. Born 23 May 1987. Went to school in Bournemouth. University of London, UCL. Works as a DOP – Fortune had to check that one: director of photography. There were photos of him on set, behind a camera, on a beach, in a club, a bar, arms around friends, smiling, raising a drink. He had long blond hair and was good-looking. Josh MacDonald. This was the man his daughter believed she loved? Well. He felt a ludicrous jealousy, some atavistic stirring, that she should have been besotted with a man so unlike him, with qualities so different. No, not different: better. Outgoing, creative, adventurous, generous, gregarious. Everything Fortune wasn’t. He sighed as he gazed at the shots of his daughter’s lover. What had gone wrong?