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  ‘But they’re not.’

  Sam sighed. ‘Look, Sophie. You’ve been a good tenant. You pay on time. But I can’t have the council getting involved.’

  ‘The council?’

  ‘Environmental Health. They tell me there’s been a complaint made. They’ve had a letter.’

  ‘Saying what?’

  ‘Saying that, over the last couple of months, at least three times a week, they’ve been kept awake by music, sounds of partying.’

  ‘Who says? Who’s been saying this?’

  ‘It’s anonymous. Says they’re frightened of what might happen if you know who they are.’

  ‘Frightened? Sam, come on, please, this is crazy. Who’d be frightened of me?’

  ‘Maybe not you. The letter says, I’ve got a copy, it says that there are drugs, strange men coming in and out. That’s what’s got them frightened.’

  Drugs? Frightened neighbours? I mean, this was beyond belief. ‘Sam, listen to me. Please, listen. Whoever’s saying this, it’s not true. Understand? It’s a lie.’

  ‘They included a recording,’ said Sam. ‘Time-stamped, date-stamped. The council says they can’t ignore it, that if there’s one more complaint then they’ll have to get involved. And that, Sophie, isn’t going to look good for me.’

  Oh, my poor heart bled. But at the same time, Sam said he had a recording. Where had it come from? Who had made it, and sent it? This was getting very weird.

  ‘Sam, again, it’s not true. It’s not possible. Seriously, you’ve got to listen to me. Somebody’s doing this to me.’

  ‘Who?’

  I thought of the story I’m working on, of Mr Almost-A-List Celebrity and his underage activities. It couldn’t be him, could it? He didn’t even know that I was after him. ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘One more complaint,’ Sam said ‘One more, and I’ll have to serve you notice.’

  ‘Sam …’

  ‘Look, I’ve got to go. Help me out on this one, yes?’

  He hung up, leaving me looking at the walls of my flat and wondering what the hell was going on. Like I said, it was all going freaky-deaky, but not in a good way at all.

  So I wrote to Josh and told him what was happening. And as usual, Josh made it all feel, if not okay, then a whole lot better. I can’t wait for him to come back from New York. Having him here, actually physically here, will make this go away, I’m sure of it. I just need an ally, someone to be there for me. I can’t face talking to Mum and telling her what’s going on. Even if she believed me, which I doubt, what is she going to do? She’ll tell me that’s what happens, and that I should never have moved to London, and remind me that she told me it was full of weirdos, so what did I expect? No, I can’t talk to Mum.

  Here’s what Josh said. If somebody’s messing with you, I’ll come and mess with them. Trust me. You don’t need to be worrying about this. I’ve got your back.

  And with those few words, I suddenly felt stronger. His filming wraps in a few weeks, so I haven’t got long to wait. And in the meantime, there’s always work, the life of a celebrity journalist being full of surprises. Yesterday, for example, Jessica came over to my desk and told me about this story she’s writing. She had a grin on her face like she just couldn’t keep it in and just had to tell somebody. It turns out that a footballer who plays for Arsenal, let’s call him Jerome, threw a party at his house a couple of nights ago.

  ‘The French guy?’

  ‘Right,’ said Jessica. ‘He comes from Marseilles. Two of his brothers are in prison. And he’s making … well, guess. Guess how much he’s making? A week.’

  ‘A hundred thousand?’

  ‘A hundred and fifty thousand pounds. A week. So anyway, he lives up in Harrow, on this road that’s just full of mansions, one after the other. And he throws this party and he’s got an entourage, they’re all French, all basically criminals from what I can learn, and there are girls and drinking and, naturally, he’s got a pole in his living room so the girls can dance.’

  ‘Class.’

  ‘You can’t buy it, right? So anyway, somebody has this idea to play, get this …’ Jessica stopped to collect herself. ‘Tug of war. They had this idea to play tug of war, only with cars. Car tug of war.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what that is.’

  ‘Nobody does,’ Jessica said. ‘But they will tomorrow, when this story comes out. So Jerome’s got a … hang on …’ She looked down at her notepad. ‘A Ferrari 350 and an Aston Martin Vantage. Don’t ask me what they are, all I know is they’re cars, and they’re expensive. Anyway, they find some rope, and they attach these cars together, back to back, and Jerome gets in one of them, and a friend gets in the other, and it’s like, three, two, one, go!’

  ‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘This doesn’t end well.’

  ‘At all,’ said Jessica. ‘They’re footballers, not sailors, so not one of them has the first idea how to actually tie a knot. So here’s the scene. It’s dark, three in the morning. They’re on the drive of his mansion, two cretins in supercars and a whole crowd of drunk Frenchmen and half-naked women, and there’s wheel-spinning and tyre smoke and noise and then—’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ I asked.

  ‘Someone filmed it on their mobile.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Very. So, want to guess what happens?’

  ‘The rope comes undone.’

  ‘And the cars, in gear and revving at nine thousand rpm or something, shoot off in opposite directions. One buries itself in a grass bank. Write-off. The other ends up in the swimming pool.’

  ‘This actually happened?’ I said.

  ‘This happened. Lifestyles of the rich and stupid, right?’

  ‘It’s what pays our rent.’

  And there it is, just like I was saying. I’m kind of like Erin Brockovich, only instead of exposing corporate irresponsibility, I expose the questionable antics of household names. But again, like I said, it pays the rent. Until I get evicted, that is.

  Anyway, it’s not all bad. Because this story, this mega story I want to break? I’ve got a plan, and it’s a brilliant one, even if I do say so myself.

  eight

  FORTUNE HAD SPENT A LIFETIME TRAVELLING AND HE COULD still remember the time when security had been a breeze; pre-9/11 days when everybody, from check-in through to boarding, had smiled. Enjoy your trip. Have a great flight. Just head on through, sir. Now, he waited next to the X-ray conveyor while an Arab man in front of him emptied his pockets, removed his belt and walked back through the detector arch again in his socks. He didn’t look happy. The guy holding the portable metal detector didn’t look happy. The lady stacking the plastic trays, she didn’t look happy. Fortune considered smiling at her, but figured it might end in him being strip-searched by a grim-faced customs officer. And why were you smiling, sir? Nobody smiles. Not these days, sir. Not any more.

  He’d been called by Owen that morning. Owen the CEO; privately educated, well-connected, master-of-the-universe Owen. He was known, in the bank, as Fucking Owen, for fairly obvious reasons.

  ‘Fortune? Where are you?’

  ‘I’m still in London.’

  ‘Fucking missing in action. You know what’s going on back here?’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘You heard.’ Owen stopped. Fortune could hear him breathing. ‘So why, Fortune, didn’t you get on the next fucking plane back?’

  ‘Because my daughter’s still missing.’

  ‘I heard. I’m sorry.’ He left the briefest of pauses, to convey some kind of understanding, a modicum of sympathy. ‘But I need you here, in Dubai, not in fucking London.’

  ‘I—’ Fortune started.

  ‘We’ve got close to ninety mill missing. Gone. Disappeared into thin fucking internet ether or whatever the fuck you call it. Vanished.’

  Fortune closed his eyes, listening to Owen’s voice. The voice of a superior officer, ordering him over the top. Nothing to negotiate. I own you.
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br />   ‘I’m looking for my daughter,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Owen. ‘The police are looking for your daughter. And they’ll keep looking, even when you’re not there.’

  Fortune thought of the police, the one officer assigned to his daughter’s case. He didn’t say anything.

  ‘So. You’re on your way,’ said Owen. It wasn’t a question.

  Fortune squeezed his eyes closed and looked across the room at his suitcase. He still hadn’t unpacked. He hadn’t been there long enough. ‘I’ll get on a plane.’

  ‘Good man.’

  ‘I’ll see you. Give me twelve hours.’

  Fortune didn’t wait for a reply, just hit the screen to hang up. He put his phone down and rubbed his eyes again. The same story, he thought, always the same story. Work comes first.

  *

  He watched the runway reel past him as the plane readied for take-off. There was the howl of the engines as they loaded up thrust and the feeling of compression into his seat as the plane built up speed, the lift as the front wheel left the ground, the queasy sensation of weightlessness as they hung in the air before the steep ascent. He wondered how many flights he’d taken. He couldn’t imagine. Say twice a month, for twenty years? Five hundred flights? It was a lot of air miles.

  ‘Tea? Coffee?’ a flight attendant asked him, once the seat-belt signs had pinged off. Fortune shook his head. She passed, and a young man handed him a tray.

  ‘Breakfast.’

  ‘Thanks, but no,’ said Fortune. ‘I’m going to sleep. If you see me asleep, please don’t offer me anything. Tea, coffee, food, nothing. My seat belt’s on. My seat’s upright. All right?’

  ‘Okay,’ the man said. ‘You’re sure …?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Fortune. He had the same conversation every flight. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Eyes closed, he thought back on yesterday, thought about his daughter’s possessions. There had been nothing he had recognized, nothing that stirred anything in him. Clothes, heels. Some books, photos of Jean, of Sophie and Jean, of Sophie with girlfriends, on holiday. Plates, cutlery, posters. A folder full of payslips, her tenancy agreement and employment contract. She owned almost as little as Fortune did. Looking through the boxes in the damp garage, he’d felt a sense of desolation at her disappearance. She still had it all to do, still had it all to learn and experience and enjoy. Where was she?

  He had also wondered at what was missing. There had been no phone, no computer. Who didn’t have a computer? Sophie was always writing, had a blog, updated every week. Where was it? He’d called the letting agent, Sam.

  ‘I can’t find a computer.’

  ‘Everything in the flat, it’s all there.’

  ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘Maybe she took it with her,’ Sam said.

  ‘Took it where?’ said Fortune, but he hadn’t waited for a reply, didn’t want to hear Sam’s opinion on what his daughter might have done, where she might have gone. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘If it was in the flat, it’ll be in the boxes.’

  No phone, no computer. Nothing personal: no diary, no letters. But then, who wrote on paper any more? He’d put a call through to Marsh, but the policeman hadn’t been available, so he’d left a message for him to call back. He wasn’t holding his breath. Maybe it was a good sign, that her computer was missing. She wouldn’t have taken it with her if she was going to kill herself. Why would she? It didn’t make sense. But then maybe she’d had it in her bag and met somebody, got in their car … Fortune tried to stop thinking, stop speculating, stop obsessively examining the little information he had. His daughter had disappeared. Nobody knew anything. And the missing computer meant nothing. Stop, he told himself. Stop thinking about it. Stop now.

  But as the plane took him further and further away from London, he remembered the last time he had felt like this. When Sophie had been, what, six, seven, they had gone to London together, just the two of them. Jean had been ill. That was it. She’d been in hospital, having her appendix taken out. It was Sophie’s birthday and they’d booked tickets for some play, a musical. Roald Dahl? He didn’t remember. He remembered her small hand in his as they walked down the platform from the train, her talking, excited, looking all around her at the people and the vaulted roof of the train station and the size and scale of the city. Her small hand, soft and warm. Sitting in his plane seat, he felt his heart swell at the thought of that small, warm, trusting hand.

  They had walked down to the Tube, had needed the Circle Line. The platform had been busy, a crush of people. A train had arrived but it wasn’t their train, it had the wrong destination. She had been standing in front of him, protected by his body. The doors had opened, people had got out, pushed past them. He’d looked down and she wasn’t there, he couldn’t see her. He’d looked behind him, and she wasn’t there either; he couldn’t see her anywhere in the crush of people. Then, as the doors to the train closed, he saw her through the glass, her eyes wide and scared. Her hand had pressed at the glass, but they were separated, her on the train, him on the platform. The train had started to move and he’d tried to match it, pushing past people, Sophie watching him in mute panic. Making his way down the platform, all the time shouting, ‘Next station, next station! Get out at the next station!’ But there had been too many people and the train had picked up speed and his daughter had been sucked away from him into a dark tunnel. Gone so fast, gone in seconds.

  He had waited two minutes for the next train. He had thought about the people in the carriage with his tiny daughter, the kind of people they might be, the motives they might have, the desires. He had imagined the city sprawling out around him, bigger and bigger, rings of magnitude, the number of people, buildings, locked rooms, hiding places where a six-year-old girl could disappear into and be lost forever. He stood on the platform and closed his eyes and waited for the next train, as he imagined his tiny daughter pulled screaming and helpless into the heart of a city that could swallow her up and never let her go.

  The next train had arrived and he had stepped into the carriage, waited for the doors to close. Into the tunnel, the rattle and jostling of the carriage on the rails, the announcement of the next station. Get out at the next station. Please, please, Sophie, please get out at the next station. Back into the light and the slowing of the train, and as it had come to a halt, he had seen his daughter standing on the platform. Calm. So calm and so still. And the doors had opened and he had picked her up and held her tight, her smooth, soft cheek against his, and he had stroked her hair, stroked it and stroked it and rubbed his cheek against hers.

  And then later, walking in silence through the streets of London, Sophie had stopped and looked up at Fortune and said, simply, ‘I knew you would come and find me.’

  He had never told his wife what had happened. He had not thought of it in years. But now, hanging in the air, thinking of the daughter he thought he had lost that day, he felt a strange wave of culpability, a sudden panicked guilt. He had not lost her that day. But in the years that followed, he had not only lost her, he had let it happen.

  An image appeared in his mind, of his daughter standing in a small boat. He was on the shore. It was dark and the water was black and she was drifting away, slowly. She watched him as she drifted further and further into the darkness, into an unknown that Fortune could not imagine. And before she was even out of sight, he had turned away, turned his back on her. He thought of her small hand in his, and closed his eyes.

  Fortune’s mobile rang as he walked away from the luggage carousel, towing his suitcase down a glass-walled corridor that no amount of air-conditioning could keep cool. He could see the buildings of downtown Dubai in the distance, skyscrapers shrouded in smog, distorted by heat shimmer and obscured by dozens of cranes, all trying to keep up with the city’s relentless expansion.

  He stopped, put his phone to his ear. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mr Fortune? It’s Marsh.’

  ‘Hi.’ Fort
une held his breath, felt his heart quicken, readied himself for news.

  ‘You left a message,’ said Marsh. ‘Calling you back.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Fortune. No news. No end to the waiting. Sophie still missing. ‘Yes. I wanted to ask you—’

  ‘Where are you?’ said Marsh.

  ‘Getting off the plane,’ said Fortune. ‘In Dubai.’

  ‘Right,’ said Marsh. ‘Good.’ Fortune could hear the relief in the policeman’s voice. ‘Best place for you. There’s nothing you can do here.’

  ‘I wanted to ask you something,’ said Fortune.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘My daughter, Sophie, her computer. I didn’t find it. Among her possessions. Or her phone.’

  ‘No?’ said Marsh. He did not sound too interested, or too surprised, by this revelation.

  ‘You don’t find that strange?’

  ‘Not really. Maybe she had it with her when …’ Marsh, adept at not finishing difficult sentences. When she disappeared. When she took her own life.

  ‘If she was going to, if she decided to end her life,’ said Fortune, ‘why do you think she’d take her computer with her? Seems strange.’

  Marsh sighed. ‘Mr Fortune, by definition, she would not have been in her right mind in such a situation. Who knows what she was thinking?’

  Fortune did not answer. People walked around him like he was an inconveniently placed rock, obstructing the flow of a river.

  ‘Mr Fortune. If we find a computer, or a phone, or…’ Again he stopped. A body. That’s what he wants to say, thought Fortune. ‘If we find anything,’ Marsh continued, ‘we’ll let you know. Immediately.’

  Fortune put his phone back in his pocket. He was alone in the corridor, left behind by his fellow passengers. He started walking again, wondering if there’d be any taxis left by the time he cleared immigration.

  nine

  High Times and Miss Fortune: What Not to Say on a First Date

  Now, I’m no traditionalist. BUT. If you’re going to take somebody out on a date, first impressions kind of count. It’s like you’re on probation, at least up to the second course. So, best to be on your best behaviour.