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‘Ninety million?’

  ‘Yeah. Approximately.’

  ‘And it just disappeared?’

  ‘We’re on it,’ Alex said again, and Fortune could sense the fear and desperation in his voice. Calm down, Fortune told himself. You’re the boss. Set an example.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay, let’s not panic. Who’s working on it?’

  ‘Everyone. Nobody’s gone home.’

  ‘Good. Who knows?’

  ‘The team. We had to tell Owen.’

  Owen, Fortune’s superior. His only superior. Fortune was technically responsible for the operations of one of Dubai’s biggest private banks, and Owen was the CEO. This wasn’t good.

  ‘Shareholders?’

  ‘They don’t know. Too early.’

  ‘You need to tell customer relations. Tell them what’s going on. Come up with a story.’

  ‘What kind of story?’

  ‘Technical glitch, nothing to worry about. Anything, just keep it vague. I don’t want this getting out.’

  ‘On it,’ said Alex.

  ‘Have you got an ETA on fixing this?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Tried calling Sadler?’ said Fortune.

  ‘Yeah. He said he could come in …’ Alex paused.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He said he wanted a thousand dollars a day.’

  ‘That sounds like Sadler.’ Fortune sighed. ‘Okay, doesn’t matter. We need him. Get him in, just make sure he puts in the hours. And keep me posted.’

  ‘Owen’s going crazy. He wants you here.’

  ‘Does he know my daughter’s missing?’ He did know that. Of course he did. He just didn’t believe it took precedence over missing M-O-N-E-Y, which, as far as Fortune could tell, was all that Owen cared about. Alex didn’t answer. Fortune felt for him. But he needed to be here.

  ‘Alex, don’t make me get on a plane. Please? Do not make me get on a plane.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Do everything you can.’

  ‘I already am, Fortune.’

  ‘Good. Okay. Keep in touch.’

  Fortune hung up, lay back on his bed and looked at the ceiling. Ninety million dollars? That kind of money didn’t just disappear. It was probably a technical thing, a line of code, a command wrongly inputted. It would work itself out eventually. This thought lasted a fraction of a second before the magnitude of the sum hit him again. Maybe he should be there. It was his job, his responsibility. And he took work seriously, took the responsibility seriously. That was the reason he’d missed the holidays with Sophie, the weekends away, the events at school, the bedtime reading. At least that was what he had always told himself. Not that he simply wasn’t cut out for family life, didn’t understand it, wasn’t interested, couldn’t engage. No. Never that.

  His daughter had been renting a flat in Hackney, a one-bed-room apartment above a coffee shop run by young men with long beards and tattoos. They looked like pirates who’d just come ashore and developed an immediate interest in roasting and grinding. Fortune did not really know why he was going there. He didn’t have a key. There would be nobody home. But still he could not help imagining his daughter opening the door to his knock, a smile, an explanation of where she had been, and why.

  Of course there was no answer when he knocked on the door. He knocked again, waited, then pushed open the door of the coffee shop, into a smell of roasting beans, music. There were young people sitting at a long table, working on laptops. He walked to the counter, long and high and topped with zinc, pastries arranged below behind glass. They were big and untidily made, artisan, looked good.

  ‘What can I get you?’ asked a young man, ear lobes stretched by circular implants.

  ‘Do you know who lives upstairs?’ Fortune asked.

  ‘Nah,’ said the man. ‘Why?’

  ‘My daughter lived there,’ Fortune said, corrected himself. ‘Lives there.’

  The man frowned. ‘So why’re you asking me?’

  ‘Have you seen her?’ said Fortune. ‘Tall, black hair. Pretty.’

  The man wiped at the high zinc counter with a cloth as he thought. ‘Might have.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Not for a while.’

  ‘How long?’

  The man shook his head. ‘I don’t know, man. Weeks? She the one who disappeared, right? Had the police in here.’

  ‘Did they speak to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ the man said, impatiently, as if to a child. ‘What I said, isn’t it? You want a coffee?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s good. Got a new blend in from Bolivia.’

  Fortune shook his head. ‘Thanks for your time.’

  The man shrugged, went back to cleaning his gleaming counter. Fortune stood for a moment, lost, with no plan, nowhere to go, nothing to do, nobody to talk to. It was beginning to rain outside, a nasty, spiteful squall making people run, coats pulled over their heads. A man hurried past the window of the coffee shop and stopped at Sophie’s door. Fortune watched him. The man took out a key and let himself in. Into his daughter’s flat.

  Fortune knocked again at her door, fading black paint and lines of bare wood showing through where the paint had cracked under the rain and sun. He waited, then heard feet on stairs, and the door opened. The man he had seen – young, short dyed black hair; were there any middle-aged people in this part of town? – said, ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Who are you?’ said Fortune.

  ‘Tom,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘My daughter lives here,’ said Fortune.

  The man looked confused. ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘No, she does,’ said Fortune. ‘This is her flat.’

  The man, Tom, looked at him. ‘The girl who disappeared?’

  ‘Yes. My daughter.’

  ‘God.’ The man scratched his hair, still wet from the rain. He sighed. ‘You want to come in?’

  Fortune followed him up a dark staircase, putting a hand on the wall to guide him.

  ‘Watch yourself,’ the man said. ‘The letting agent’s supposed to be fixing the light.’ He opened a door at the top of the stairs into a bright living room with exposed brick on the walls and badly varnished floorboards. Fortune looked around, looked at the sofa, imagined his daughter sitting on it, her long legs folded underneath her, writing on a laptop. Peaceful.

  The man turned to him. He was short and had a friendly face, open. ‘She doesn’t live here any more. Your daughter.’

  Fortune frowned. ‘She did.’

  ‘Yeah. Listen …’

  ‘Fortune.’

  ‘Fortune. I don’t know the details. All I know is there was some problem, problems …’ He rubbed at his hair again, uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know.’

  Fortune looked around again, confused, at the magazines on the low table, the books on the shelves. ‘So all this … this isn’t hers?’

  ‘No. That’s what I’m saying. It’s mine.’

  ‘When did you move in?’

  ‘Couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘Then … where are my daughter’s things?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘How do you mean, you don’t know?’

  ‘I don’t know. The place was empty when I moved in. She wasn’t here.’

  Fortune stood silently for a moment, at a loss for what to say, what to think. ‘Then where did she live?’

  Tom looked uncomfortable, not equal to dealing with a bereaved father’s bewilderment. ‘I … I don’t know.’

  ‘She—’ began Fortune, but stopped at the sound of the front door opening and feet on the stairs. A woman came into the room, thin blonde hair. She smiled uncertainly at the scene, the uncomfortable silence. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Harriet, this is … this is Fortune. He’s the father of the woman who disappeared, who lived here.’

  Her smile flickered but she put out a hand. ‘I’m sorry, it must be terrible for you.’

  Fortune felt too disorientated to reply, standing here in what he
had thought was his daughter’s flat, talking to a young couple who knew nothing of her. He started coughing and bent over, put an arm out into the air in front of him, found nothing to hold onto.

  ‘You okay?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Need to sit down.’

  ‘Please,’ said Harriet, pointing to the sofa. ‘You want something to drink?’

  Fortune sat, elbows on knees, and shook his head at the floor. ‘No.’

  The two young people stood over him and watched him, no idea what to do with this strange man who was sitting in their home.

  ‘Who can I speak to?’ said Fortune.

  ‘About …?’ said Tom.

  ‘My daughter. What happened … what happened to her things.’

  ‘The letting agent,’ said Harriet. ‘But I warn you, he’s a twat.’

  ‘I’ve got his card,’ said Tom. ‘Hold on.’

  He poked through drawers. Fortune felt weight on the sofa as Harriet sat down next to him. ‘You haven’t heard anything? News? About your daughter?’

  Fortune shook his head, still looking at the floorboards. ‘No.’

  ‘Any leads, any …’ She stopped, unsure what to say. ‘Anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Here,’ said Tom. Fortune looked up. He was holding a card and he handed it to Fortune, who reached up to take it. ‘Like Harriet said, he’s a bit of a—’

  ‘He’s a dick,’ said Harriet. ‘Wanted three months’ deposit. Like, whatever, what, he wanted us to rob a bank? Still haven’t got Wi-Fi, either. And the heating’s knackered.’

  ‘He should know what happened,’ said Tom. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Fortune pushed himself upright. ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ said Harriet. ‘I hope things work out.’

  She moved closer to Tom. They seemed a good couple, kind and connected and generous. Fortune nodded, turned, then turned back and said, ‘Thank you,’ before walking back down the dark stairs.

  six

  IF THE OFFICES OF ALPHA PRIME LETTINGS REPRESENTED THE kinds of properties they rented out, Fortune thought, then his daughter had got lucky. A young woman in glasses and with dark hair pulled tightly back looked up, then down again. She ignored him for some moments before looking back up and asking, ‘Help you?’

  ‘I’m looking for Sam.’

  ‘He’s doing a viewing.’

  ‘When will he be back?’

  She frowned as if the stupidity of the question was offensive, as if nobody had a right to ask such a thing. ‘Could be any time.’

  ‘Today?’

  She shrugged. ‘Yeah. Sometime.’

  Fortune looked at the card in his hand, back at her. ‘I’ll call him.’ He dialled the number, listened to it ring. The woman behind the desk watched him, tapping a pen on the desk. The phone rang through to voicemail and Fortune hung up before leaving a message.

  ‘Never answers,’ said the woman. ‘Drives me mental.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to help, after all. I’m the father of Sophie Fortune.’

  ‘Oh.’ She didn’t say anything else, didn’t want to look at him.

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘No, but …’

  ‘But?’

  ‘She …’ the woman started but then looked past Fortune with a relieved look. The door opened and Fortune turned to see a man, maybe thirty, with short blond hair, wearing a well-fitted suit. ‘Here he is.’

  Fortune stood up. ‘Sam?’

  ‘Yep.’ He smiled. ‘What can I do you for?’

  ‘I’m Sophie Fortune’s father.’

  The smile disappeared. Sam searched for something to say, came up short, managed, eventually, ‘Okay.’

  ‘I went to her flat.’

  Sam nodded. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Someone else lives there.’

  ‘New tenants. That’s right.’

  ‘You know she’s missing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’ Fortune took a step closer to him. ‘You’re going to need to do better than that.’

  Sam rubbed his face. ‘Look … come and sit down.’ He put out a hand, showing Fortune where to go, one of the desks at the back, then passed him and sat down behind the desk. Fortune stood for a moment and tried to summon his hardest managerial don’t-mess-with-me stare. Sam certainly looked nervous. Fortune sat down across from him.

  ‘All right. So tell me. What’s been going on?’

  ‘We, uh … We had some problems with your daughter.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Fortune. ‘What kind of problems?’

  ‘Kind of, uh …’ Sam rearranged some papers on his desk as he thought. ‘Pretty serious problems.’ He looked up, met Fortune’s eye with difficulty.

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Like,’ Sam repeated, buying himself time. He wanted to be anywhere but here, having this conversation, Fortune could tell. He was acting like a doctor delivering bad news, explaining that it was a matter of weeks, not months. ‘Like, antisocial behaviour. We had complaints.’

  ‘What kind of complaints?’ said Fortune.

  ‘Well, kind of, loud music. Parties. Drug use.’

  ‘Drug use?’

  ‘Yeah, all kinds of drugs …’ He stopped. ‘Look, I’m sorry, okay?’

  Fortune thought of Sophie. She had always been difficult, but he had never thought of her as bad. Complicated, difficult, challenging. Often infuriating. But not bad, never bad.

  ‘We gave her warnings, but she … she was unreasonable about it. Wouldn’t listen, denied everything. I was getting phone calls, twenty, thirty a day. Letters. All complaining. Recordings of the noise, time-stamped. Three in the morning, four.’ He stopped, realized he was laying it on too thick, that he was talking to a man whose daughter had disappeared without trace.

  ‘That doesn’t sound like her,’ said Fortune. Sam didn’t respond. He was only thirty. What did he know about problems with children?

  ‘Had the council around, told us if we didn’t do something, they would. That kind of thing can cause problems for …’ Sam waved a hand at the office. ‘Businesses like ours.’

  ‘So …’

  ‘So, uh, we.’ He paused, took a breath, drew in some courage. ‘We evicted her.’

  Fortune blinked. ‘You what?’

  ‘Served an eviction notice. Gave her a date.’ He picked up a sheet of paper, put it down again without looking at it. ‘It’s not like she gave us a choice. Dealers going in and out, parties, police showing up … It was out of control.’

  ‘When?’ said Fortune. ‘When did you evict her?’

  ‘Three weeks ago, something like that.’

  ‘She’s been missing for five.’

  Sam nodded. ‘I know how it must look.’

  ‘She disappears, and you turn up and …’ Fortune stopped. ‘Where are her things?’

  ‘We had to take them.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘At our storage place.’

  Fortune shook his head, tried to control his voice, to keep the emotion out. ‘She was only twenty-seven.’

  Sam lifted his hands. ‘I’m sorry. But, Mr Fortune, she … she was …’ He couldn’t say it, didn’t have the courage, gave up.

  ‘I want my daughter’s possessions.’

  Sam nodded quickly. ‘I’ll have them sent. Least I can do.’ Like he was doing Fortune a service, like he wasn’t the man who had thrown his daughter out on the street. Or would have done if she hadn’t vanished beforehand. ‘What’s your address?’

  ‘Sorry?’ said Fortune.

  ‘Your address. Where do you live?’

  Fortune thought about it, but could not come up with an answer. Where did he live? Nowhere. Like his daughter.

  ‘Just tell me where you’ve put her things.’

  *

  They were in a damp lock-up garage a couple of streets away. Fortune didn’t speak to Sam, smoked a cigarette silently as Sam led the way through the rain, fine now, fine and persistent. He unlocked a padlock and pushed
the door up and over. Inside on the concrete floor were cardboard boxes, sagging from where moisture had weakened them.

  Fortune looked at the collection of boxes and could not remember ever having seen a sadder sight. ‘This is all hers?’

  ‘Not all of it. The ones marked …’ He stopped.

  ‘Marked?’

  ‘PB.’

  Fortune frowned. ‘Why PB?’

  Sam looked uncomfortable, wouldn’t meet Fortune’s gaze. ‘Don’t know, have to ask the people who cleared out her flat.’

  But Fortune had managed teams for too long not to know when people were lying to him. He knew what dishonesty looked like, what it sounded like.

  ‘Come on. PB. What does it stand for?’

  ‘Mr Fortune …’

  ‘What does it stand for?’

  ‘Listen, it wasn’t me, right? Just the lads, a bit of banter. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m waiting,’ said Fortune.

  Sam sighed, a desperate sound. ‘Psycho Bitch, all right? That’s what it stands for. Look, I’ll leave you to it. Lock up after you’re done, drop the key round.’

  Sam waited for an answer but Fortune said nothing, and he walked away, leaving Fortune surrounded by his daughter’s possessions, wondering what had become of her, what the world had done to her.

  seven

  EVERYTHING’S BECOMING A BIT STRANGE, A BIT FREAKY-deaky, and not in a good way. Not in a happy, hippy, to-hell-with-it party way. More in a what-the-actual-hell-is-going-on? way. To tell the truth, it’s all got me rattled. And I never thought I was one to rattle easily.

  Sam, my neglectful letting agent, has been back in touch. He gave me a call yesterday and I picked up thinking, stupidly, that he was going to tell me when the light and heating were going to be fixed. But no. Far from it.

  ‘Sophie?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Sophie, I’ve had more complaints.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘More noise.’

  I didn’t answer for a while, trying to think back over the last few days. Had there been any noise? People around? Spontaneous partying? No, because, let’s be honest, I’m not exactly Ms Popularity.

  ‘There hasn’t been any,’ I told him. ‘No noise at all.’

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘This has got to stop.’

  ‘What has?’

  ‘The music. Parties. You, telling me they’re not happening.’