For a brief moment, I wondered again whether he’d been lying to me, whether he was about to turn on me for real. But then he opened the door, hauled me through it and marched me up the hallway. Ford opened the door to the dark alley. ‘I’ll leave here in ten minutes. Where’s your hotel? I’ll meet you out the front.’
I gave him directions to the hotel before setting off at a brisk walk. I itched to break into a run and put as much distance between me and that place as possible, but I forced myself to walk slowly.
I fidgeted impatiently out the front of the hotel while I waited for Ford to show, but true to his word, he appeared ten minutes later, his rapid pace the only indication of his anxiety. As we entered the hotel, I paused to look behind me before following him in. For a second I was sure I spotted a man standing in the shadows on the other side of the road. A man with blond hair. I squinted, but he seemed to melt away, and I wondered if he’d even been there. There was no point freaking Ford out even more than he already was by mentioning it.
I rushed Ford up to my room. As soon as I closed the door, he flashed me that same open, friendly smile from the night we’d met in Melbourne. How much had changed for both of us in these few short days.
‘Sorry about before.’ The crease between his brows deepened. ‘I hope I didn’t hurt you.’
It crossed my mind briefly that I could just get the information from Ford. I could find out what’d happened, then turn him over to the police and leave him to fend for himself while I disappeared back to Australia. We already had the photos Nick had taken in Testaccio. I could forget about Adelita and her promises of money, and I could present Katrina with the story she’d been waiting for. I was a journalist. My profession was hardly ethical. And Katrina would eat up whatever I gave her. I could get away with it.
But now Ford sat down on the edge of my bed, his head in his hands. He looked up at me, his hair sticking straight up on both sides, just as it had on the night I’d met him. He should have looked comical, but he just looked like a scared child out of his depth.
I was gripped with a pang of guilt, followed by shame. What kind of person was I? That particular brand of thinking wouldn’t be a surprise coming from Adelita, or Jane. But Ford could wind up dead because he’d put his trust in me. I’d started this, and I was going to see it through to the end.
‘All right, let’s do this.’ I pulled up the chair from the corner of the room and got out my voice recorder.
‘Where do you want me to start?’ he asked.
‘From the beginning. When you first suspected there was something weird going on with Angus.’
‘It all began about a year ago. We were touring Europe and Angus missed a few rehearsals. At first I didn’t think much of it, but after he turned up late to one of our gigs and we had to start playing without him, it was obvious that something else was going on. He’d go from being stressed and on edge to buying us all drinks. It wasn’t him.’
‘How did you find out about the drugs?’
‘The weird behaviour didn’t stop when we got back to Scotland. He spent less and less time rehearsing, and he started making mistakes at gigs. He was constantly flying over to Europe without telling us what he was up to. I confronted him about it, but he just brushed me off.’
‘How did you react?’
‘I threatened to find another bass player to replace him, and that’s when he told me about the drugs. He said that as well known as the band had become at home, we still hadn’t broken into the European market, and we weren’t making anywhere near enough money. He said this was going to make him big bucks, and he asked me if I wanted in.’
‘What did you say?’
He slammed his hand down on the bed. ‘I told him to piss off, that’s what I said. I told him I was a musician, not a criminal, and that I was making quite enough money doing what I loved.’
‘And how does Grady fit into all this?’
He hesitated. ‘Grady lives in London, so we barely saw him except when we needed to discuss anything for the band, like international tours and that kind of thing. I’d always thought he seemed like a dodgy kind of guy, but I just figured that was what the music industry did to you after a while. It was only when we met with him to discuss the Australian tour that I noticed he and Angus were pretty tight. Every spare moment they were whispering together in corners, like they were colluding on something. That’s when I realised Grady was in on it too. I didn’t realise how involved he was until later. He seems to be running things here in Paris.’
Anger burned through me. So Grady was the one responsible for my little detour to Venice.
‘When did Angus actually disappear?’ I asked. ‘The news reports said he wasn’t on your Australian tour, and there were implications that things weren’t going too well in the band. There were quotes from you saying Angus was taking some time off and would be back in the future.’
Ford laughed bitterly. ‘What else could I say? Angus was my oldest friend. At that point I still hoped we could work things out. We all agreed to the Australian tour, and after Grady had gone back to London I told Angus that I didn’t want the band associated with any illegal activity. This tour would be our chance to
