He reminded him yet again to contact him if he should ever see her again, but Gareth thought that highly unlikely now. But he could not scrub away the thought that she was a petty thief. He could not budge the notion that she just might be the sister he never knew he had. The two thoughts bumped up angrily against each other like stags in rut.
He eventually decided he wanted nothing to do with any reward for the brooch, until very late one evening the phone rang insistently. He tried his best to ignore it, but as it could be business and he was in desperate need of that he gave in.
‘Hello,’ he said. The line remained silent. He could hear, faintly, someone breathing — a light, rapid panting. ‘Hello,’ he said again. ‘Look, if this is some kind of prank…’ Still there was silence but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to hang up. He held the phone close to his mouth and spoke softly: ‘Erica, is that you?’
The line went dead.
He hadn’t thrown away the scrap of paper with the contact details on it. Why, as he’d decided not to claim the reward, he didn’t know. Instead he’d stuffed it into a drawer from where he now retrieved it. He couldn’t be certain, but he knew it had been Erica at the other end of the line. By rights he should have contacted the police immediately. Again, his screaming emotions drowned out whispering logic. He needed to find her. She might be in trouble with the police but he didn’t care. He was desperate. The brooch was the only link to Erica, and David Lambert-Chide was the only link to the brooch. Maybe there was the slightest chance he could join the two up. And he needed to know about the brooch’s disappearance, perhaps even find proof that Erica wasn’t the last in a long line of dirty hands, as Styles had intimated. It was a slim hope, but any hope was welcome.
Gareth sat down at his laptop and carried out a search on Sir David Lambert-Chide. There was a surprising amount of biographical information available, a lot of it authorised.
He was born in London in 1921 to Simon and Elizabeth Lambert-Chide. He’d not only been born with a silver spoon in his mouth; he’d had an entire canteen. The Lambert-Chides were extremely wealthy people even back then, growing rich on the back of a successful chemical and pharmaceutical business.
David was an only son, had the usual privileged education at Oxford, fought as a young pilot in the Second World War with distinction and inherited the family business and estates when his father died of a heart attack in 1949. At the age of 27 he set about adding to their already large business portfolio, expanding rapidly through acquisition, merger and a raft of innovative and lucrative advances in the pharmaceutical side of affairs. They become a leading player in the industry, abandoning the chemical arm by the mid-1970s. The company still operated from its original base on the Golden Mile in Brentford, in a purpose-built building in the Art Deco style, which his father had specially commissioned back in the late 1920’s. The photograph of the Lambert-Chide building showed an impressive edifice to industry and power — a grand Art Deco entrance flanked by huge oblong pillars, a tier of stone steps leading up to immense double doors, and to top it all off a clock tower looked down on everything like a huge one-eyed Cyclops.
The name, following another merger, had since changed to Fraser-Biochem in 1986. The main focus of attention for the company these days was research into the prevention of diseases of old age like Alzheimer’s and dementia, an expanding market the world over with people living longer and diseases associated with old age becoming more prevalent. Though some research was still carried out at the original Brentford building the centre of its massive global operations was based in the United States, where it first set up business in the Research Triangle Park, Durham County in North Carolina in 1963.
Gareth looked at the name and number on the piece of paper. What the hell, he thought. What harm can it do?
23
For him, Cardiff Central station was where it all began. Or ended. It depended upon your point of view. This place, right here, right in front of him, was where his mother had abandoned him. Through that door (OK, so it wasn’t that very door as it had been replaced ages ago) and in those same women’s toilets. 1976.
He’d often pictured it in his head. It was late, the platform thinning somewhat as the last dregs of commuters headed home. A woman clutching a small bundle to her chest, unnoticed, attracting not the slightest attention. But there again why should she? There was nothing unusual about her, a woman carrying a baby. Nothing unusual in the way she nipped into the toilets.
Gareth Davies wondered what her expression had been as she glanced about her to see if anyone were watching. Was it cold and calculating, indicative of a job to be done, to be got out of the way quickly, not even a hint of emotion? Or was it pained, remorseful, tearful? It depended upon which mood seized him, whether he wanted to despise or pity her, or even whether he despised or pitied himself.
He imagined her exiting, the bundle no longer at her chest. He even followed her path from the door, saw her faint shape scurrying down the platform and out of his life forever. She could only have gone that way, he thought, headed for the exit or another platform. She had walked this very platform, passed within inches of where he stood now.
He breathed deep as if to breathe in what remained of her presence, but all he could smell were the acrid fumes from throbbing diesel engines and strong coffee wafting from the cafe further down the platform.
As a consequence he hated this place for all that it represented. He’d been here a few times over the years and the feelings only grew stronger. What he should not have done was come to this platform in the first place. He needn’t have; his train didn’t even depart from here. But it was as if he were drawn against his will. But for what? To suffer abandonment all over again, to heat himself up with something he couldn’t change? Or to try and reach out for someone that was the only true link to who he truly was; to that woman who took with her, when she scurried empty-handed down the platform, his very identity, his sense of belonging; took away the very meaning to his life before it had even begun?
‘You’ll find it’s the door on the left,’ a woman’s voice said at his right shoulder.
It caused him to start. ‘Sorry?’ he said, turning to look at her.
She didn’t meet his eyes, though he could see hers were a vivid shade of green. Her hair was a luxuriant red, shining healthily and long, hanging just above her shoulder blades. She sported a short, heavily worn leather jacket and equally worn slim-legged denim jeans. She had her hands thrust deep in her jacket pockets. Attractive, he thought almost immediately and almost against his will. She was chewing gum like it was going out of fashion.
‘The men’s toilets are the ones on the left.’ She pointed limply, returning the hand to the pocket as if it were a shy creature unwilling to poke its nose out in daylight. ‘You appear confused. It’s the one marked with the little man wearing trousers.’
‘Oh,’ he said, expelling a nervous laugh. ‘No, not confused, thank you.’
‘Unless it really is the one with the little dress on — it’s none of my business to pry.’
Though he smiled at her remark she did not smile in return. Her head was making little darting movements, first looking down the platform to her left and then to her right. She met his gaze only briefly. A minimum of makeup, he thought, if any. Lips pale but full, the only colour on her cheeks brought on by the wind streaking through the station. He wondered whether the striking red of her hair was real or from a bottle. Couldn’t be real, he decided, but it looked good on her.
He stepped aside. ‘I apologise, I’m blocking your way.’
‘Not good to stand outside the women’s toilets and stare. People might get the wrong impression.’ She nodded upwards at a CCTV camera. ‘Careful, may be used in evidence and all that…’
She made him feel curiously embarrassed. ‘Oh no, I wasn’t doing
She looked into his eyes, unblinking. Then gave the tiniest of laughs with a shadow of a smile tagged on. ‘Kidding,’ she said, and the smile faded before it had really got going. Her jaws worked the gum hard. ‘He was found there,’ she said out of the blue.
‘Sorry, who was found?’
