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  And then, God. His daughter. He let out a sound, involuntary, a small cry, a whimper. The tragedy of his daughter’s disappearance washed sickly through his mind, flooded his body with a dreadful rush. His daughter. Sophie. Who had been evicted from her flat, fired from her job. He thought back to his conversation with Jessica, what she had told him about Sophie. He closed his eyes again. There was nothing waiting for him in the waking world that he wanted to face. Nothing he felt equal to.

  But with his eyes closed, he imagined himself back on the bench in St James’s Park, next to Jessica as she told him about Sophie, about her descent from investigative journalist to persona non grata, and from there to obsessed stalker. Sending emails to this guy, Charlie Jackson, threatening him, insulting him. Telling him she’d tell the world. How, next day, he had the word Paedophile painted on his front door. How it had escalated, even though she’d denied it. Denied everything. But the day the police had caught her at his house with a knife, well. Jessica had laughed, softly, sadly. Not much she could do to deny that. Although Sophie had tried to, tried to tell anyone who’d listen that it wasn’t her, had nothing to do with her.

  ‘But she was there?’

  ‘She was there. And they found a knife.’ Jessica had turned to Fortune, put a hand on his arm. ‘Listen, I liked Sophie. I liked her a lot, and respected her more. But …’ She paused, sighed. ‘She wasn’t right. She was … troubled. Out of control.’

  Psycho Bitch, Fortune had thought. Oh Sophie. My Sophie.

  His mobile rang and brought him back to his hotel room, where light from the day outside was finding a way through the heavy curtains. He raised himself onto an elbow and reached for his phone on the bedside table.

  ‘Hello? Yes?’

  ‘Fortune.’ It was Owen. It was all Fortune could do not to hang up, call back later and blame it on bad reception.

  ‘Owen. How are you?’

  ‘I’m not too fucking good, is how I am. No, not fucking good at all.’

  ‘Right.’ Fortune couldn’t think of much else to add, so he kept quiet.

  ‘That money? The ninety million? We haven’t fucking found it.’

  ‘No,’ said Fortune. ‘I spoke to Alex. He told me.’

  ‘Yeah? He tell you that not only have we not found the missing ninety million, we’ve also just lost, Fortune, are you fucking listening, we’ve just lost another seventy million.’

  ‘Oh Jesus.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve already asked him for help. Nothing fucking doing. So my question is, when are you going to get your arse back to Dubai and sort this shit out?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Fortune said.

  ‘Sorry? Tell me you didn’t just say “I don’t know”.’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘No,’ said Owen, ‘it’s perfectly fucking simple. You get yourself on a plane today, or you’re finished.’

  ‘My daughter’s missing. She’s still missing.’

  ‘This I know,’ said Owen. ‘This I’m aware of. But I need you here. Now.’

  ‘I’ll try my best. See what I can do.’

  ‘You’ll do more than your best,’ said Owen. He paused. Fortune imagined him behind his desk, the absurd skyline of Dubai behind him, ostentatious and shameless. ‘I’ll give you two days. Two days to sort yourself out. If you’re not back, you’re over. Done. Are we clear?’

  ‘We’re clear,’ said Fortune.

  ‘Fucking hundred and sixty million, gone. You’re going to need to tell me how this happened.’

  ‘I’ll do everything I can,’ Fortune said again. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Two days,’ said Owen. ‘I’ll see you.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Fortune hung up, collapsed his elbow, sank onto his back on the bed. He looked at the ceiling and swore quietly to himself for what felt like a long time.

  *

  In his prime, Fortune had been able to hit a golf ball over two hundred yards, turn par fours into birdies – or at least he would have been able to except that his short game was a joke. He’d get on the green in one, take five putts to hole the bloody ball, which became so embarrassing he stopped playing, even though one thing Dubai wasn’t short of was golf courses.

  He’d called Marsh, but once again the policeman hadn’t been available and Fortune had left a message, wondered what he could do to stop himself from losing his mind, stuck in London with nothing to do, nobody to visit. He’d asked the hotel if there was a driving range nearby and they’d called him a taxi, and now here he was, launching golf balls into the cold empty air. He was the only person at the range, a raised platform overlooking a field with lines painted across it to give the golfers some idea of how far they were hitting. He should be stroking the ball, knew that distance was all in the timing, not the power. But he wasn’t here for finesse; he was here to hit something as hard as he could, take all his frustrations and regrets out on innocent golf balls. Thwack. The ball flew through the air, made over a hundred yards. Barely. He was breathless after ten minutes and thought he was going to vomit. He had to stop as a coughing jag took hold of him. Cancer, he decided, didn’t do much to improve your game.

  He stopped coughing, reached down for a ball and placed it on the tee. He took a couple of practice swings, but before he could commit, his mobile rang.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mr Fortune? It’s Marsh.’

  ‘Oh, Marsh, right. Good. Need to speak to you. See you.’

  ‘Are you okay? You sound out of breath.’

  ‘Yeah, fine. Listen, I need to see you. There’s something we have to talk about.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’d be better face to face.’

  ‘I’m very busy, Mr Fortune.’

  ‘It’s about my daughter.’

  ‘Yes, I imagine it would be.’

  ‘Have you heard of somebody called Charlie Jackson?’ Marsh didn’t answer and Fortune stood, holding his phone, looking over the driving range, his balls lying in the short grass.

  ‘You know about that?’ said Marsh eventually.

  ‘You knew too?’

  ‘Of course. We did investigate your daughter.’

  ‘So, have you questioned him? He’s got a motive, right? Might have meant her harm.’

  Marsh sighed. ‘All right. You’d better come in. I’ll be here till six.’

  He hung up and Fortune put his phone away, picked up his club and took a few more swings. He felt a tightness across his chest on the back lift, like it was strapped up, constricting. He dropped the club, kicked the ball off its tee and fought back a cough. His golf days, he figured, were behind him.

  They were back in the same room, though Marsh looked tired, looked like hell; looked like Fortune felt. His suit was creased and his skin was grey under the strip lighting, and there was a smell coming off him, coffee and sweat and staleness. He was drinking a coffee, a coffee that he looked like he needed, as though without it he’d fall asleep where he was sitting.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Fortune.

  Marsh nodded without much conviction. ‘There’s been a murder. First couple of days, they’re the worst. Can’t stop, can’t sleep, just got to hammer it.’ He drank coffee. ‘Takes it out of you.’

  Fortune smiled. ‘I thought banks worked you hard.’

  Marsh didn’t smile back. ‘So. You want to talk about Charlie Jackson.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do. I heard about what happened. With my daughter. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Marsh shrugged. ‘Didn’t think it was relevant. Didn’t think you needed to know. Would want to know.’ He lifted his coffee cup again, then put it back down. Empty. ‘Trying to protect you. I’ve got a daughter myself.’

  ‘Do you see much of her?’

  ‘Not as much as I should.’

  Join the club, thought Fortune. ‘My problem is, I heard that this Charlie Jackson, whatever he said, actually did sleep with that girl. The underage kid.’

  Marsh nodded. ‘You’re probably
right. He’s a piece of crap. I spoke to him, interviewed him. Bastard smiled at me the whole time.’

  ‘So …’

  ‘So what would you have me do? I was investigating your daughter’s disappearance, not whether Charlie Jackson had got it on with a fourteen-year-old.’

  ‘Fifteen.’

  ‘Whatever. I can’t investigate everything, and anyway, his lawyer would have slaughtered me.’

  ‘So you just let him go?’

  ‘I had no reason to hold him.’ Marsh sighed. ‘I checked him out, asked him for his movements. Didn’t find anything.’

  ‘How hard did you look?’

  ‘Hard enough.’

  ‘She was being harassed. My daughter. Someone online. A troll.’

  Marsh rubbed at the corner of an eye. ‘The shoes.’

  ‘He knew what colour they were.’

  ‘He took a guess. Some kid somewhere, alone in a bedroom. Reads her blog, takes a guess.’ Marsh shrugged. ‘The IP address, we traced it. Can’t be specific, only get a general location, but it was nowhere near Jackson’s home. We did investigate.’

  Fortune shook his head in a way that let Marsh know that he didn’t believe him, didn’t have any faith in his word. Marsh frowned, sighed, irritated.

  ‘Christ’s sake. All right. You want to know the problem? The problem was, nobody believed your daughter. She wasn’t believable. She had issues, problems, she was out of control. I can’t imagine I’m the only one to tell you.’

  Marsh had him there, Fortune thought. He said, lamely, ‘It doesn’t sound like her.’

  ‘No? Read this.’

  He laid a piece of A4 paper in front of Fortune. On it incidents were listed. Noise complaint. Officer sent to investigate. Reports of dealing from property. Officer sent to investigate. Noise complaint. Noise complaint. Complaint of harassment. Malicious email sent. Reports of dealing from property. Antisocial behaviour. Online abuse. Noise complaint. Physical harassment. The dates weren’t far apart. She’d been visited by the police weekly, more.

  ‘She was troubled. Incoherent, a lot of the time. I think she had mental health issues. I know there was talk of referring her, even sectioning her.’

  ‘No,’ said Fortune. ‘She had a job. She was successful.’

  Marsh took a tape from his pocket and put it into the machine between them on the desk. ‘Listen to this. Maybe this’ll convince you.’

  He pressed play, sat back and looked at the ceiling. He didn’t seem happy about what he was doing. Fortune watched the machine.

  Why won’t you listen to me?

  Miss Fortune …

  You, you, why won’t you? Why won’t you? Why why why why?

  Please, Miss—

  I can’t I can’t I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

  At first Fortune didn’t recognize his daughter’s voice. Hysteria had made it ragged at the edges, a tearing shriek that sounded more like an animal in pain before he realized that it was saying words, was trying to communicate. He listened with horror, felt his scalp tighten and tingle.

  Miss Fortune, you need to calm down …

  Won’t listen won’t listen won’t listen. There. Is. Somebody. Doing. This to me.

  You were carrying a knife.

  It’s not my knife. It’s not my knife.

  It had your fingerprints on it.

  Why won’t you believe me?

  I want to, I do, but Miss Fortune—

  Sophie let out a howl, a bereft, pained sound like a mother who had been told her child was dead. It was awful, heart-breaking, the sound of a woman in utter desperation. He’d been in Dubai. When this was happening, he’d been in Dubai, working for a bank.

  Marsh pressed stop and the awful noise cut out, replaced by silence. Fortune’s breathing was fast and laboured.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Marsh said. Fortune didn’t reply, couldn’t reply. Couldn’t think of anything to say, didn’t trust himself to speak. ‘Your daughter was due in court,’ Marsh said. ‘Jackson had taken out a restraining order on her. She was due in court the day before she disappeared.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

  ‘I understand,’ Fortune said. ‘I see.’ He stood up, and Marsh stood as well, crossed to the door and opened it. Fortune walked through, told Marsh that he could find his own way out, didn’t look at him as he said the words. As if he was ashamed of his own daughter’s hysteria, her carrying-on.

  Marsh watched Fortune walk slowly away and hoped that, one day, Fortune would accept that his troubled and out-of-control daughter was dead. That she was dead, that she had probably brought it on herself, and that she was never coming back.

  nineteen

  THERE WAS NO WAY OF KNOWING HOW LONG HIS DAUGHTER’S things had been there, she told him. She said that it was an old hut, probably for fishermen, when the river had been public land and full of trout. In fact it was incredible that anybody at all had found it, but then kids get everywhere, don’t they? And, actually, even more incredible that they hadn’t just made off with the computer, since it looked like it was worth a fair bit and in good condition. Turns out you can still trust people, that people are still honest, even kids.

  She told him that Sophie’s clothes had been neatly folded, placed carefully on top of the computer, which was on a table in the fisherman’s shack. That was why, she told him, the computer was still undamaged. Fortune imagined the shack, rotten boards and an asphalt roof, weeds and grass growing around it, through it. He imagined the river, brown and swollen with the recent rains, running fast, eddies on the surface and currents below, deep and indifferent. Imagined his daughter’s body tumbling and scraping over rocks beneath the river’s surface, catching on the branches of willows that touched the water. Her hair fanned, waving in the current, her eyes open, unseeing.

  They knew it was his daughter, she told him, because there was a credit card in her name in her wallet, a driving licence. She told him that when they opened the computer, her name was on the welcome screen, above the rectangular box for the password. She said that, even though they had not recovered a body, they had no doubt about what had happened. His daughter had taken her own life. She had taken off her clothes and folded them carefully, which was common, surprisingly common in the case of suicides. Nobody really knew why. Guilt maybe, not wanting to leave a mess behind them. The folded clothes were a kind of subconscious expression of that. Maybe.

  Fortune listened to the voice on the phone without speaking. The woman sounded kind, although he suspected that she was talking more than she normally would, was talking too much because of nerves. Did he really need to know why his daughter had folded her clothes?

  Anyway, she told him, Sophie’s effects had been sent to the police station, and if he wanted them, all he had to do was ask at the desk, with two forms of identification, one of which had to be photographic. Was that okay? She said that Marsh had said it would be easier for him than his wife. That he was nearer. Fortune told her that yes, that was okay and yes, he wanted his daughter’s effects. She told him that she was very sorry to have called with such bad news and that, if he needed to speak to somebody, she had a number for a counsellor who was very good and specialized in this kind of thing. By this kind of thing, Fortune imagined, she meant something less specific than drowned daughters, but he told her no anyway, that he didn’t need to speak to anybody. He thanked her and she told him that she was sorry again and hung up, leaving Fortune alone in his hotel room, more alone than he had ever felt before.

  At the police station, Fortune had to wait while a woman argued with the uniform behind the desk about a seagull she had found. She had it in a cardboard box. She was telling the policeman that it had a broken wing and that it would die if it didn’t receive treatment, while he was patiently explaining to her that this wasn’t a veterinary surgery and that there was nothing he could do, that injured seagulls weren’t a police matter. The seagull sat quietly in its box as this was going on, regarding its surroundings stiffly through its
yellow eye. Eventually she agreed to leave, holding her box in front of her with as much offended dignity as she could muster.

  ‘Help you?’

  ‘My name’s Fortune. You have the belongings of my daughter, Sophie Fortune.’

  The policeman nodded. ‘She lost them?’

  ‘She …’ Fortune stopped, couldn’t bring himself to say the words. She killed herself. ‘She died.’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry. Right. Wait here, please.’ He left, leaving Fortune alone in the station’s quiet waiting room. There were seats lining two walls, facing each other, and posters above them warning people about car theft and child abuse and the dangers of living without smoke alarms.

  ‘Mr Fortune?’

  Fortune turned. The policeman was holding a box, another box, this one taped closed. He placed it on the counter gently, almost reverentially. Fortune was grateful for this gesture, even if his daughter’s final possessions had only been taped up in a brown cardboard box.

  ‘I’ll need to see some identification. Sorry.’

  Fortune showed the policeman his passport, put it back in his pocket and picked up the box. It wasn’t heavy.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘Not a problem,’ the policeman said. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

  Fortune nodded and walked out of the station carrying his daughter’s things. He walked down the steps, put the box down on a bench, took out his mobile and called his wife. She would have been told, he guessed, but he had to call. He listened to the phone ring, dreading the conversation and feeling relief when it went through to voicemail. He didn’t leave a message. What could he say? Instead, he lit a cigarette. As the smoke hit his lungs, he coughed, coughed and coughed and coughed, couldn’t stop.

  ‘Christ. That doesn’t sound good.’

  Fortune turned to see Marsh, who had followed him down the steps. ‘No,’ he managed.

  ‘My father died of lung cancer,’ Marsh said. ‘That what you’ve got?’

  Fortune nodded, trying to swallow a cough, keep it behind his teeth. It turned into an undignified splutter. ‘Apparently.’