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  Laura was confused. These were strange words for the devil to speak.

  ‘You still have so much to learn.’ He grinned again. ‘So very much.’

  At one point, on the motorway, Oscar, who had fallen asleep as they left London and entered Essex, had woken up and cried out, rubbing his head against Laura’s chest, searching futilely for her nipple. He cried out and Laura shushed him, wished she had something for him to drink.

  ‘He’s hungry,’ she said.

  The devil laughed. ‘There’s milk at the house. We’ll be there soon. In the meantime, keep him quiet.’ He looked at her in the mirror again, then at Alina.

  ‘I only need one of you. You would do well to remember that. I only need one of you to start again.’

  Beside her, Alina began to cry. Laura was startled. Alina? Crying?

  She reached out instinctively to comfort the dead woman and was shocked to find her hand making contact with warm flesh.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  We got back into Edward’s car and sat in silence for a moment. I felt curiously calm. Many times in my working life I have encountered a nasty problem—a piece of code, an element of design or user-friendliness—and worried myself into a frenzy of stress, only for a tranquil sensation to come over me. There is always a solution that can be found through logic and clear thought.

  The police didn’t know Laura. I did. Surely this placed me in a better position than them to find her and Oscar. I was also the only person, apart from Edward, who knew the whole story. I explained this to Edward.

  He raised both eyebrows. ‘Except we don’t know the whole story, do we? Who is the old man?’

  ‘I don’t know. Let me think.’ I tapped my forehead, speaking aloud to aid my thought process. ‘We thought Ion and Camelia had taken Laura and the baby so they could blackmail us into telling them what we’d done with the drugs. But we now know that isn’t the case.’ A pause. ‘Ion said he didn’t know where Alina is. Maybe he was telling the truth.’

  Edward hung his head from what I assumed to be exhaustion. I didn’t feel tired at all. My body hummed with adrenalin. I hadn’t felt like this for a long time. Since emerging from the forest that night three months ago, I had been confused, anxious, unable to think straight. A week ago, faced by this situation, my impulse would have been to hit the bottle, hide away and hope for the best. But I felt absolute certainty: this fucked-up situation, this mess, this horror story, had started with me, with a single unwitting mistake I’d made back then, choosing not to buy the more expensive sleeper tickets. That decision had set everything else in motion. Now I had a chance to redeem myself.

  Something had been germinating at the back of my mind since Edward had discovered Alina was alive and in London. I had never considered the possibility that the man from the house would try to find Laura or me. But now that I knew that Ion had followed and found us, it made me think. Had someone else followed us too? Or maybe . . . Alina was here. She had seemingly escaped. And—my mind whirred through the problem—her abductor had followed her. Killing Constantin en route? The timing of the man’s disappearance was too perfect for me to believe anything else. I had believed from the very beginning that Constantin was corrupt, that he already knew about the house, which was why we’d fled Breva. Constantin had gone missing at the same time all the weird stuff had started to happen here. But what had occurred over in Romania? Did Constantin try to save Alina? Had Alina killed the policeman? Whatever the answer, the fact that Constantin had vanished just before Alina appeared in London made me think it couldn’t be a coincidence.

  And when she escaped, the man holding her prisoner had come after her. And today, everything was coming to a head. He had killed Camelia, left Ion for dead, then grabbed Laura and, I presumed, Alina, taking Oscar too.

  Edward started to ask me something but I held up my hand. I needed to think.

  There was one problem with this theory: the man we’d seen in the house had not been old, according to Ion’s description. He’d been in his thirties. But perhaps he had an accomplice. Someone who already lived here? Or someone he had sent over?

  ‘Call your police contact in Romania,’ I said. ‘I think I know why the house is empty now.’

  I explained my theory.

  ‘I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Do it, Edward.’ He looked surprised by my new assertiveness. ‘We need to know who lived in that house.’

  As the private investigator called the number I watched the squat, though it was difficult to see much thanks to the crowd of rubberneckers outside. Another ambulance had arrived and I watched them carry out Camelia’s body. An image flashed in my head: Camelia on top of me on my sofa, blood streaking her half-naked body, the top of her skull caved in. I shuddered and closed my eyes, forcing the image away.

  I listened as Edward spoke to the English-speaking police officer in Breva, impatient to know what was being said at the other end of the line. Edward made a note on a piece of paper, said, ‘OK,’ a few times, then ended the call.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘He wanted to know why we are asking so I told him your idea, that this abductor and murderer—who the police over there don’t even believe exists—had come to London.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said that they’d managed to find out who owns the house. Or rather, who owned it.’ He held up the sheet of paper on which he’d jotted the name. Nicolae Gabor.

  ‘You said owned? He’s dead?’

  ‘Disappeared, presumed dead. Apparently, he was a policeman during the years of Communist rule. My new friend in Breva said Gabor had something of a reputation . . . When I asked him for more details he told me to look him up on Google. But they are going on the assumption that Gabor owned the house but never lived there, and when he disappeared it was just left to rot. An abandoned house in the forest.’

  I had already taken out my phone and typed Nicolae Gabor into Google. I quickly found his name on a page called ‘Villains of Communist Romania’. The page, which contained a long list of ‘crimes against the people,’ was in Romanian so I pasted the web address into Google Translate.

  ‘According to this he was a member of the Securitate, the secret police.’ I read aloud, amending the slightly garbled translation as I went along. ‘Like many of his comrades, Gabor was vicious and corrupt, using his high rank and the . . . terror he induced in ordinary people to amass a personal fortune. Following the Revolution, a number of women came forward to claim that Gabor had raped and abused them, that he ordered his underlings to use the fear of rape as a tool to intimidate whole families.’

  ‘A real charmer,’ Edward deadpanned.

  I carried on reading aloud. ‘After abortion was made illegal after 1966, many of the children fathered by Gabor and his squad of rapists were sent to the country’s terrible orphanages where they suffered appalling cruelty.’

  There was a link to a page about Romanian orphanages during the Communist era. I had read about these places before, just a paragraph in my Eastern Europe guidebook. I had tried to read the section aloud to Laura—the terrible facts about children tied to the bars of their cots, the systematic abuse and neglect—but after a few lines she had tears rolling down her cheeks, and I had to stop reading. It was too awful to think about.

  But it echoed what we had seen in that house, with a sickening twist. This time the mothers were chained up, emaciated, the babies relatively healthy and well-looked-after. The baby we had seen, anyway. We had no idea what had happened to the others, like the poor soul in that tiny coffin.

  ‘After the Revolution, Gabor disappeared. He is assumed to have been murdered by one of his former victims seeking revenge. But no body was ever found.’

  I lifted my eyes from the screen. ‘But he didn’t die. He moved to that house and carried on raping women, getting them pregnant.’

  ‘Except h
e’s not the man you saw there, is he? He’s too old.’

  According to the web page, Gabor would be seventy now. I shook my head. ‘The man we saw must have been an accomplice.’

  ‘Is there a photo of Gabor?’ Edward asked.

  There was no photo on the page I’d been looking at, so I went back to Google and submitted the search again. There was nothing immediately obvious.

  ‘I’m going to head over to see Sophie, check how she is,’ Edward said. ‘I’ll drop you at home on the way.’

  ‘But I don’t want to go home. I need to be out here—looking.’

  He ignored me and started the engine. ‘There’s nothing more we can do at the moment, Daniel. We need to leave it to the police.’

  ‘No. I want to go to the hospital, to talk to Ion. I need to know more about this old man. He asked Ion if he remembered him. Maybe I can jog his memory with this information about Gabor. Maybe Ion knows where to find him.’

  ‘But there’s no way the police will let you see him. We don’t even know if he’s still alive.’

  ‘I don’t care. I’m still paying you, aren’t I?’

  As we were arguing, I continued to flick through results pages on the search engine. Another result caught my eye. In pictures: The men of the Securitate. I clicked on the link and waited for the page to load, then scrolled down. There were numerous photos of men wearing secret police uniforms, frowning at the camera. Halfway down the page was a shot of Nicolae Gabor taken in the late eighties, shortly before the Velvet Revolution. He was quite handsome, with a strong jawline. He glared at the camera, clearly unhappy to have his photo taken.

  As he stared out of the photo, I stared back. It felt like he was looking right at me. Into me. And as I stared at the photo, I recognised him. I’d seen him before.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  We pulled into the hospital car park twenty minutes later. I asked Edward to let me lead and he nodded his agreement. At the back of my mind I knew I was heading for an adrenalin crash, that soon my body would notice that I hadn’t eaten anything all day. But for now I was riding that chemical wave.

  I wasn’t entirely sure how we were going to locate Ion but as we entered the lobby I spotted the female police officer who’d been at the squat. I followed her at a discreet distance as she walked towards the lift, Edward a few steps behind me. The lift arrived and as she got in I hurried closer, saw her press the button for the fourth floor.

  The stairwell was located beside the lifts, so I ran up the stairs to the fourth floor without waiting for the private investigator. I didn’t feel at all out of breath when I reached the top, just in time to see the policewoman press another button just down the hall and wait to be buzzed in through a set of double doors.

  I followed, pressing the red button and waiting to be admitted. An Asian nurse let me through but then stepped in front of me.

  ‘Visiting hours finished an hour ago,’ she said.

  ‘I’m police,’ I replied, using my authoritative voice. There is no great trick to getting people to believe a lie. You simply have to sound convincing. In this case, it also helps if you act like you are going to be aggressive towards anyone who gets in your way. ‘I’m here to see Ion . . .’ I trailed off, realising that I still didn’t know his second name. ‘The stabbing victim. It’s urgent.’

  ‘Oh, yes . . .’ She hesitated. Shit. She was about to ask to see my badge. So much for fooling her with my authoritative air. But then another nurse appeared and called her, used the word urgent, and the Asian nurse hurried after her.

  ‘Nurse, which bed?’ I called.

  ‘Forty,’ she replied as she vanished around the corner.

  Edward’s face appeared at the door and I buzzed him through. ‘Bed forty,’ I said. ‘If anyone asks, we’re police.’

  ‘What? Oh, I see.’

  We walked through the ward, searching for bed forty. It wasn’t hard to spot. The ward was divided into several distinct areas. Bed twelve was in the furthest of these, easily identifiable because of the policewoman sitting on a chair beside it, flicking through a magazine. Ion appeared to be asleep, or unconscious. He was hooked up to a drip, along with a machine that monitored his heartbeat. I guessed he’d lost a lot of blood.

  ‘We need to distract her,’ I said.

  Edward chewed his lip. ‘All right. Wait here. You’ll only have five minutes, OK?’

  I backed away, hiding behind a large laundry bin on wheels, aware of a couple of other patients watching me suspiciously, while Edward hurried up to the policewoman and began to wave his arms about. He gestured frantically for her to follow him. She hesitated, looked at Ion, then made her mind up and followed Edward towards the exit of the ward. As soon as they’d gone past me I approached the bed. I wanted to pull the curtain around for privacy but feared this would attract attention, plus I wouldn’t be able to see anyone coming.

  Ion’s torso was wrapped in bandages and his breathing was ragged, his face pale and sweaty. There was a vicious purple bruise around one eye and more bandages on his head. Looking down at him I experienced a surge of hatred. But I was glad he was still alive. There had been so much death, so much blood. Ion, by some miracle, had survived. And now he had a chance to make amends.

  I put my hand on his shoulder—it was cold and damp—and shook him. He stirred, wincing as he came out of sleep. But he didn’t open his eyes. I tried again and, leaning close to his ear, whispered his name. I was aware of time ticking away. Either the policewoman or a nurse or doctor could appear at any moment.

  ‘Ion,’ I whispered again, and he opened one eye. It took him a moment to focus. I guessed he would have been given heavy painkillers but they couldn’t completely eradicate the soreness from the beating he’d received.

  ‘I’m lucky,’ he said. I had to lean closer to hear him. ‘I have a hard head.’ He laughed, which brought on another coughing fit. He screwed up his face in agony. ‘My ribs.’

  ‘I need you to concentrate,’ I said. ‘Laura and a baby, a completely innocent baby, are missing. I need you to answer some questions.’

  He looked at me through half-closed eyes, a small smile on his lips. Perhaps the painkillers made him feel high. Or maybe he found this whole situation amusing.

  ‘The old man who attacked you—was this him?’

  I held up my phone to show him the photo of Nicolae Gabor.

  Ion nodded almost imperceptibly. So that confirmed it. Gabor was here. Everything was connected to what we’d seen in that house.

  ‘Was he part of your gang? Were you working for him?’

  He laughed, making a hissing noise, pain shooting across his face. ‘The old man? I never saw him before.’

  ‘Don’t lie, Ion.’

  He frowned with confusion.

  ‘He was there, on the train. He was the old guy that Alina helped with his luggage.’

  ‘Helped with his . . .’ Realisation dawned on Ion’s face. ‘Oh my God. I didn’t recognise him. I didn’t remember.’

  I believed him. Unless Ion was lying about the old man asking if Ion remembered him, it had to be the truth. My mind raced, trying to make sense of it all. Gabor had been on the train. We had been kicked off close to his house. That couldn’t be a coincidence. He must have arranged it in some way.

  I would work it out later. Right now, there were things I needed confirmed. ‘What happened on the train, Ion? You planted drugs in my and Laura’s backpacks?’

  Pain flickered across his face. ‘You found it? The cocaine?’

  I ignored this. ‘And then you sent Camelia to try to find out what happened to the cocaine?’

  ‘Yes. You know—’ He coughed. ‘It would have been a lot easier if we’d done what Camelia wanted to do after we checked your bank account. There were no big deposits, so we were sure you either still had the coke or the cash from selling it. Camelia was all fo
r us crashing into your place then and there—tie you up, stick a knife in your face, force you to tell us where the coke was, what you’d done with it.’ He shook his head. ‘But I’m not a violent man, Daniel.’ He tapped the side of his head, and winced. ‘I use my wits, not my fists.’

  ‘We never had the cocaine, Ion. I didn’t even know for certain that I was right until you just confirmed it. We left our backpacks in Romania—with the cocaine still inside, I assume—at the police station. With a cop called Constantin.’

  Ion’s eyes widened. ‘That bastard.’

  I heard a noise at the other end of the ward. A middle-aged man calling for a nurse. I didn’t have long. I needed to get to the point.

  ‘Ion—do you know where they are?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Laura and the baby. And Alina.’

  Confusion flickered on his face again.

  ‘Did Gabor say anything about them?’

  ‘No.’ He coughed. ‘He was too busy beating me with an iron bar to stop for a chat.’

  ‘He didn’t say anything about taking Laura and Alina?’

  ‘Why do you keep talking about Alina?’

  ‘Because . . . What do you mean, why do I keep asking?’

  ‘I haven’t seen Alina since that night.’ He rolled his head and stared at me, his eyes opening a fraction more.

  My mouth gaped open. ‘You didn’t know she was here?’ If he hadn’t seen her since the train, he wouldn’t know what had happened to her. And right now, I didn’t have time to tell him.

  ‘What happened after you were thrown off the train?’ he asked. ‘You came home, but where did Alina go?’

  I didn’t reply. I was too busy thinking. I still didn’t know who had taken Laura and Oscar. A sickening thought hit me. What if Alina had taken them? Alina, seeking revenge because Laura and I had left her in that house? Or maybe Alina knew Gabor was after them, and they were hiding. But why take the baby?

  Edward and the policewoman were still absent, but a nurse had come into view. She was standing with her back to me, but could turn round at any moment. If she saw me, she would throw me out.