“Ha ha. No, I mean it.”
His hands, massaging her scalp, slowed. Despite his efforts to keep it dry, the bandage on his arm was soaked and had turned pale pink. He could see tiny strands of red diffusing through the water.
“Adelaide, what are you doing with me? Honestly?”
She had her eyes closed, so as not to get soap in them.
“You can’t ask me that.”
“I just did.”
“Well, I can’t answer. I told you I wouldn’t lie, didn’t I?”
Vikram rinsed the soap from her hair, watching the water turn opaque.
“What are you doing with me?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “But you know what, Adie? You could do so many things, if you wanted to. Not what your family wants. Not like Linus, or Dmitri. But things that make a real difference. Think about that, will you?”
Hours later when it was still dark he woke and Adelaide was sitting upright, her body pale in the twisted sheets, her eyes wide and staring.
“Adie, what is it?”
“I had a nightmare.”
He put a hand gently on her shoulder. Her skin was covered with sweat.
“Tell me.”
“There was this giant thing-crawling, crawling everywhere, up the towers and over the bridges, and I knew wherever I ran, however fast, it would find me. It had these twitching-feelers, and its wings made a noise-an awful scraping noise. It plucked people out of the towers and grabbed them in its mouth and then it flew them out past the ring-net and into the sea and it-drowned them.”
He squeezed her shoulder.
“It’s just a dream. It’s over now.”
“A dream?” Her voice was uncertain, barely audible.
“Monsters in the night, Adie.”
He pulled her against him and they lay down, his body curled around hers. Her back was cool and damp. For minutes, hours, he held her like that while she trembled, unprotesting, and he wondered what it was that could make her so afraid when he’d never known her to be scared of anything.
31 ADELAIDE
As Lao sat down next to her on the bench, five or six butterflies rose in a small explosion of colour. Lao ignored them. He went through the usual routine of taking out his Surfboard. She knew that he was scanning the paths from behind his dark glasses, listening carefully for sounds of eavesdroppers.
“Lovely afternoon,” he said pleasantly.
“You said you had information. Did you check Radir’s client list?”
“I do, and I did. I managed to track down the woman who worked for your brother. Not either of the two that you employed, but another. I was right. She is an airlift.”
“She worked for him? Was she one of Radir’s patients?”
“She wasn’t on his list, unless she used a pseudonym. Lots of them do. However there is a connection. At one stage she worked as a cleaner for the reef farm, which is, as you know, adjacent to Radir’s offices. I would venture to hypothesise that this is how they met.”
Adelaide felt a spark of triumph.
“I want to meet her.”
“You can’t. She was very reluctant to talk, very scared. She spoke to me only on the condition that this was the last contact she had with any of the Rechnovs. I gave her my word.”
“You had no right to do that,” she said furiously.
Lao removed his glasses, polished them, put them back on.
“I have recovered all the relevant information, Miss Mystik. This woman ran errands for your brother, odd things which sound, to be frank, the product of insanity. There was one particular incident, however, that I believe is of import. Axel came across some documents. Paper documents, I should add. He had them with him when she arrived one day at the penthouse-this was some months ago. Usually, she said, Axel was exceptionally secretive, and would have hidden the documents from her sight. But he was excited. Elated, she said. He told her straight away that he had found something for the horses.”
A Red Pierrot landed on Adelaide’s hand. She stared at its spots.
“That could have been anything.”
“So one might think.” Lao cleared his throat; a small, anticipatory noise. “But the woman had a glimpse of the papers before he put them into an envelope. She said they looked official. There was an unusual motif in the top right corner-an insect-and each paper was stamped with the same legend: Operation Whitefly. Does that mean anything to you?”
In the warm, sticky heat, Adelaide felt suddenly clammy. She shook her head, intensely grateful for her own dark glasses. Not by a flicker in her face could she let Lao see her recognition.
“Axel told her he had been instructed to take the papers to the Silk Vault, for safekeeping.”
“He means that the horses told him.”
“Either way, we must assume that he took them there.”
Lao looked at her expectantly. She realized that an answer was necessary.
“Well? What do we do now?”
“I cannot make enquiries about a vault in Axel Rechnov’s name-or under an alias, for that matter-without raising Hanif’s awareness. This line of investigation, should you choose to pursue it, will take time. We will have to bribe someone on the inside of the vault. I will have to identify a suitable candidate, which will involve background research-among other things.”
“And? If it does exist?”
“I will not be able to access it. I imagine, however, that you might.”
She looked at him quickly. “Because there’s always a secondary holder.”
Lao flicked a Monarch from his knee. “That is correct. Presumably it will be yourself. I suspect, Ms Mystik, that whatever lies within that vault may offer us valuable clues as to why Axel disappeared-or why, we have to consider, he was removed.”
“But the woman said he was acting for the horses. Axel probably had no idea what he had found. Anyway, ‘Operation Whitefly’-it could be anything-or nothing at all.”
“Precisely. Whether Axel realized or not, finding those documents could have placed him in danger.” For the first time, Lao looked at her straight on. “Do you want to proceed?”
Adelaide met the blank discs of Lao’s shades. She could not decide if there was a note of glee in his voice-the delight of discovery. Whitefly thudded in her head like a hammer.
Think, Adelaide.
If there was a vault, and if there was anything inside, Lao would expect to be party to it. And if what Axel had found had anything to do with what her grandfather had been talking about-she was potentially in a very dangerous position herself.
She could leave the vault be. That would be the safest option. She could pull Lao off the case altogether. But could she guarantee that his suspicions had not been raised? That he might not try to find the vault on his own?
“Find out if the vault exists. Do what you have to do. Let me know as soon as you have news.”
“It will cost, of course. My fee and the insider’s. You will trust me to negotiate the price?”
“Of course. Money is no object. I want you to do something else as well.”
“Which is?”
