make my pile while I can. And don’t be kidding yourself, Joshu. This isn’t the wedding I was dreaming of. A little bit of romance would have been nice. But I gotta take my chances when they come up. If we can really make ourselves some serious cash here, we should do it. It’s not going to change anything between us.’
‘And you can have a pre-nup drawn up, if you’re worried about losing out should things not go the way you hope,’ George chimed in. ‘Really, Joshu, there’s no downside to this.’
‘Not for you, maybe. But my family’s never going to speak to me again.’
‘You hate your family,’ Scarlett said. She leaned into him and rubbed the tip of her nose against his. ‘And who else would have you, anyway?’
‘I could have my pick,’ he said. But his heart wasn’t in it. He grabbed her buttocks and hauled her close. ‘Aw, fuck it, why not? OK, George, we’ll do it. Sort out all the arrangements, but you better make sure we got an A-list guest list and all the expenses covered. I don’t want to be shelling out for no wedding.’
George beamed. ‘I knew you’d see sense.’
I tried not to gag. ‘There’s just one thing,’ I said. They all looked at me expectantly. ‘You need to come up with a romantic proposal story for the media. Because it’s supposed to be the groom who makes the proposal, not your agent.’
For the first time, they were all lost for words.
Trust is the keystone of being an effective ghost. You’ve got a very small window of opportunity to build a bridge. I’ve heard some ghosts say it doesn’t matter whether the clients like you, it’s whether they think you can deliver. But I don’t agree. I think you need to make them think you’re friends.
I take pride in my work. I want to write the best book possible. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked with individuals I didn’t gel with and I knocked myself out to keep that lack of rapport from the readers. But if you want them to open up, to share the things they’ve never spoken of before, to admit you to the story behind the story, you need trust.
Damage takes people different ways. Sometimes it leaves them frantic to believe in someone. Anyone, really. Even someone who’s paid to smile and tell them they’re extraordinary. Others swing to the opposite pole. It’s as if their receptors have been permanently degraded so they can’t let themselves rely on another. I thought at first Scarlett was one of those. That no matter how hard I tried to build a connection with her, it wouldn’t ever be more than superficial. It was a frustrating thought, because those glimpses behind the mask had intrigued me personally as well as professionally.
But I was wrong about Scarlett. By the end of our nine days together, it felt like we’d taken the first steps towards an unlikely friendship. I’d started in my usual position of being prepared to put aside what I thought of her in the interests of making a book. By the end, I found that I actually liked her. That liking didn’t alter the facts of Scarlett – she was ignorant, she was brash, she was adrift from any kind of roots. But honestly, what else could she have been, given the hand she’d been dealt?
The thing about Scarlett was that she was a lot smarter than she let on when the cameras were on her. She knew the unpalatable facts about herself and in private, when nobody was looking, she was trying to change that. I caught her watching a history channel on the TV one morning when I arrived earlier than expected. Once when she was out of the room, I flicked on her iPad and found she was reading a book about Michelle and Barack Obama. One evening when there had been a mix-up over car bookings, I drove her up to Stansted airport and when I went to change the station from Radio 4, she told me to leave it on, casual as you like. It wasn’t exactly
I admired her for that. I also respected the way she hadn’t been destroyed by her background. It seemed that everyone she’d grown up around was addicted or behind bars. Or both. Drink, drugs and violence were the chains that shackled her family and her neighbours. Somehow, Scarlett had found the bloody-minded strength to choose a different path. Even Joshu wasn’t quite the skank he appeared to be – I had a shrewd feeling the nice middle-class upbringing would surface when he’d finished playing with the bad boys. I’m pretty good at walking in other people’s shoes, but I could not imagine what it had taken for Scarlett to reach escape velocity from the grinding awfulness of her life in Leeds.
Scarlett had made a difference in her own life. It was up to me to help her show the world – and the kid this book was for – just how much steel there was beneath the brass.
9
Vivian McKuras looked unimpressed with Stephanie’s description of Scarlett Higgins. But before she could pass judgement, her phone beeped. ‘I’ll be back,’ she said, heading for the door without a backward glance.
‘Abbott,’ she said once she was clear of the interview room. ‘Thanks for touching base.’
She’d kept her message to her two colleagues as low key as she could. They were both technically senior to her, but she was determined not to back down from the lead role in this investigation. The ambitious part of her had almost hoped neither would get back to her, but the decent humane part knew she’d need help with the nuts and bolts. Of the two agents stationed at the international terminal, Don Abbott had been the one she’d hoped would respond to her message about the abducted child. He was smart and keen, but most of all, he treated Vivian exactly the same as his male colleagues. ‘What do you need?’ he asked. ‘You got the Amber Alert up and running, I see. You got any leads that need chasing down?’
‘It’s not straightforward.’ It wasn’t easy for her to admit that, but at least Abbott wouldn’t use it against her in front of colleagues later. ‘They’re British. I’ve been interviewing the woman who was with the kid – she’s in the process of adopting him. And so far, she’s not given me anything you could call a motive.’
Abbott made a growling noise in his throat. ‘Pain in the ass. Your note says the kid’s birth mother was a reality TV star. What about good old-fashioned kidnap for ransom?’
‘It could be, but that’s a waiting game and we’ve heard nothing so far.’
‘Sounds like you need to get back in the interview room. See if you can get something more solid from this woman. In the meantime, do you want me to check out the CCTV footage? See if I can maybe pinpoint them leaving the terminal?’
‘That would be great. The control room are pulling it together for us, but I’d be a lot happier to have your eyes across it than theirs. The other thing I haven’t had a chance to check out – this guy must have followed them airside somehow. The easiest way is for him to have had a boarding pass for a flight going out of here sometime today. But obviously, he didn’t get on a plane. So some airline has a no-show that must be our guy.’
‘I get you. Someone who checked in and cleared security but didn’t show up at the gate. There’s always a few of those every day. Leave it with me, Vivian. I’ll see what I can chase up.’
‘Thanks, Don.’
‘No problem. When it’s a kid at stake, we all gotta run the extra mile.’
She remembered he had a child of his own. A daughter, a couple of years older than Jimmy Higgins. She imagined that made the abduction of a child the most powerful spur to action. ‘Whatever it takes,’ she said. ‘Let’s meet later and see what we got.’
‘Sure. Call me when you’re done with the interview.’
God knew when that would be, she thought. Stephanie Harker’s story was complicated, and the woman seemed determined to share every detail. Probably talking about her history with the kid made her feel like she was doing something useful towards his rescue. Vivian couldn’t blame her for that, but the fact remained that she had a job to do where time generally played a significant role. As soon as her butt hit the seat again, she was back in interrogative mode. ‘So what about Scarlett’s family?’
‘Hang on a minute,’ Stephanie protested. ‘What’s happening? That call? Was it about Jimmy? Have you any news?’ Her anxiety surfaced again, breaking through the careful containment she’d been building.
Vivian stifled an impatient sigh. ‘No news. I was just briefing a colleague who’s following another line of inquiry.’
‘What line of inquiry? Has anyone come forward? Have they seen Jimmy?’ Stephanie’s eyes sparkled with
