walk past the old house, just to check if anyone connected with her old life and the family Mars’ are there, and finds it shut up, unoccupied…’
‘…or even with another family renting, if he was away so long.’
‘That would have been even more reassuring. So she risks it after fourteen-odd years, moves back to the heart of town, to where she feels she belongs.’
Cori was doubtful, ‘Even after the damage she believed the Hills Estates had done to the place?’
‘Well, the way she’d later help Charlie would suggest she eventually found her way to get over that. Just think of it — if this is how it happened: she settles back into town confident her ghosts are not awaiting her; only for the son she assumed long gone moving back five years later to live mere minutes away, so close but never meeting for, what, nineteen years? Until the day he…’
‘Until the day we think he…’ corrected Cori.
‘Until the day we think he came to kill her.’
‘But boss, is it conceivable that they didn’t know each other were there?’
‘Absolutely. I’ve childhood friends I know still live in the area who I haven’t seen for decades.’
‘But that still doesn’t tell us how he found out, and why this week.’
Yet the question hung unanswered as another came to join them,
‘Grey.’
‘Glass. All well at the Mars house?’
‘My men have buzzed the place twice: quite a nice place, actually; lived in but empty at present.’
‘But keeping our distance?’
‘For now. Anyway, the Super’s called us all up when you arrived.’
The four trooped up the stairs at to the office, knocking the closed door.
They found Superintendent Rose with another man sat around his side of the desk, smartly dressed and clearly a career bureaucrat.
‘Good, you’re all here,’ began Rose. ‘Now, this is Robert Grange of the UK Border Agency, Midlands and East Region.’ — Cue handshakes and introductions all ‘round. — ‘Now, before we get onto anything else happening today I need to tell you about what Robert and I have been talking about, as he’s come a way to speak to us today, and he needs to get back for his daughters birthday party. So, brevity please.’
Their boss continued, ‘Now, the first search our officers downstairs carried out on Lidia Mars revealed that there was no one of that exact name on the Electoral Register for the address on Mansard Lane that she apparently shares with Patrick Mars, she appearing there instead as Ludmila Mars. So, on a hunch I contacted Immigration, and they were good enough to send Robert here.’
‘Thank you,’ the man took over the monologue. ‘Yes, well thankfully her arrival in the UK was pretty-well all above board, so there’s rather a lot I can tell you. Ludmila Sergeyevna Grechko came into Heathrow from Moscow via a connecting flight from Amsterdam four years ago on a tourist’s visa. Very naughty, especially if she’d already planned to wed here; which given that she and Patrick Mars married at Haringey Registry Office a week later, we suspect she did.’
‘Was this through an agency?’ asked Grey. ‘Russian brides?’
‘Why, do you want their number?’ chuckled Glass; himself married to a woman they saw once a year at the Christmas party, and with whom he had an en ever-increasing and indeterminate number of children. But Glass had misjudged his audience, and so a joke that might have gone down rather better amongst his more familiar milieu of Constables bored in the back of a riot van, here was received with only the most politest of embarrassed smiles from the women and a stern glare from his superior. Robert Grange, perhaps accepting this as common police behaviour, continued unfazed,
‘The suspicion that the match was brokered through a website is noted on the file. This is not illegal if both parties are happy with it; and we have no reason to think that Ludmila wasn’t very glad to get to Britain. It can be risky though for both sides, as you’ve no idea what the other person will really be like. It can also be a great sacrifice for her and very expensive for him. It also opens the man up to fraud, of course — Mars may have had his hands burnt a couple of times already before finding Ludmila through a reliable agency.’
‘Yet you say this one was all above board?’
‘Those engaging in such marriages undergo thorough checks for a number of months afterward, to make sure it is a real marriage and that the couple are living together as husband and wife, not marrying just to earn the recent emigre firstly what’s termed “leave to remain” and, eventually, full British citizenship — In these cases,’ he digressed, ‘then it’s the emigre who pays the existing resident, of course, not the other way around. Then there are also cases where women coming here ostensibly to start a married life disappear as soon as they think they can safely do so after the marriage, thus retaining what they earned of the money the man paid to bring them here, and, so they believe, having the legal right to stay. Though without yet earning “leave to remain” that may not be the case.’
‘But nothing dodgy in this case?’
‘Not at all.’ Grange went through his notes spread out on Rose’s desk beside his leather satchel, ‘Checks were made at Mansard Lane three months after the couple were married; that revealed that Lidia had already adopted an anglicised version of her name, socially if not legally, and seemed a natural in the role of wife and homemaker for Patrick. The fact that they are still together now suggests our agents’ assessment at the time was correct.’
But something in this man’s smooth talking of Ludmila’s new life narked Cori,
‘And Mr Grange, you consider this new life of hers a success, Ludmila leaving behind her family and her home and all she knew to instead assimilate the role of English housewife?’
‘We make no judgement on the choices people make, only that they act within the law.’
‘But such an arrangement militates against feminism.’ Cori shocked herself, not having even thought this way for years.
Robert Grange remained unruffled, ‘Mrs Mars is a free woman who has made choices…’
‘What, you think she has displayed any freedom here? You can say that, you who represent a government with an equal rights agenda?’
‘Watch out, men — Cornelia’s on a charge.’
‘Oh, shut up Glass.’ This was the Superintendent, though Cori might have said it herself a split-second later. Grey simply sat back, not believing what he was hearing, but always loving a veil drawn back on other’s lives.
Rose attempted conciliation, ‘You know how these things work, Cori: the men who find these agencies think British women are too outspoken, too free; while the agencies peddle the myth that these are simple farm girls they’re offering who’d make good traditional wives.
‘Now, maybe I’m not the best one to talk. You may know that Mrs Rose is Spanish, and who after we met in London never made any secret of her desire to stay at home after we married and dedicate herself to the family…’
Glad of the distraction, Grey only wished he hadn’t the case to occupy him and so could get home and get all this down in the diary. The conversation however soon refocused,
‘Anyway, this is precisely the kind of debate I wanted to avoid us getting into. Mr Grange has even more for us; if you’ll be so kind.’
‘Of course. Well, yes, you are lucky that the couple married over three years ago; as this has allowed Lidia… Ludmila the three years as spouse of a British citizen that she needed to apply for naturalisation as a British citizen herself; and hence gain voting rights, and so place herself on the Electoral Register, where you found her real name. However, as the Superintendent hinted, during our discussions we discovered another fact that could be of use to you:
‘The file we have on our system for Ludmila Sergeyevna Grechko links to that of another recent entrant to the country, an Eleonora Aleksandrovna Grechko.’
‘A relative? Sister, mother?’ Grey was having quite enough of family trees by now.
‘Not a sister, as she has a different patronymic: Eleonora’s father was Aleksandr, not Sergey.’
‘So Eleonora is Ludmila’s mother?’
‘More likely. But that’s just it: the case is being dealt with in Whitehall right now, this week in fact.’
‘So that’s where she’s been in London today…’ realised Sarah as she wrote all this down.
‘…while Mars let us form the opinion she was out shopping on Oxford Street,’ concluded Grey with a certain
