Lucy could feel her mouth tighten. If he was looking for sympathy, it was in the wrong place.
‘Your mum… Jesus.’ He was shaking his head as though baffled. ‘It was as if I’d turned into the devil incarnate. She didn’t understand my life was you. You were my world. I wanted to keep you safe. Protect you. It was all I ever wanted, to be with my beautiful girls, but she wouldn’t listen to reason.’
A rash of sparking red and black flashed across her vision. ‘I wonder why?’ Sarcasm dripped.
He surveyed her for a long time. Cautious, watchful. He reminded her of a defendant who was weighing up what to say next to make them appear in the best light. Finally, he gave a bitter half-smile. Looked away.
‘Why didn’t you go to Australia?’
‘I never was going. It was your mum’s idea to lie. She wanted you to think I was on the other side of the world.’
‘What?’ Lucy was shocked. ‘I don’t understand. Why would she do that?’
‘It wasn’t anything to do with you.’ His voice was gentle. ‘Your mum simply didn’t want us to have any contact. I had to fight tooth and nail to email you after I’d gone, but then, seventy-one days later, she shut even that contact down. She blocked me from your contacts list. Blocked my emails. When I tried sending you something by post she returned it, unopened. I kept trying, you know, for ages. It was horrible having presents I’d taken such care over returned without acknowledgement and, rightly or wrongly, I finally gave up.’
Lucy knew her face had gone rigid. Had her mother really done that? If so, why had she let Lucy believe it was her father’s fault he’d stopped emailing her? The red and black rash expanded in her mind to form long pulsing rivers.
‘You didn’t know.’ He said it as a statement.
‘Of course I didn’t bloody know!’ she said hotly. ‘The last message I got, you said you were going abroad on business and that I shouldn’t worry. That was it!’
‘You blamed me. You thought I’d abandoned you.’
‘Got it in one, mastermind.’
He suddenly looked tired. ‘She did a good job, didn’t she, keeping us apart.’
Lucy didn’t want to diss her mum. Not after she’d brought her up on her own. He was either lying – which he was extremely good at – or there was something more. Her mum couldn’t be that vengeful, could she?
‘How did you find me?’ He put his head on one side, appearing genuinely interested.
‘Jaya. She had your number.’
Something in him stilled. ‘Jaya, as in Ricky Shaw’s mum?’
‘Yes.’
‘And she had it because…’
‘She got it off Reg.’
He blinked, making her think he was surprised. ‘As in Mad Reg, at the pub?’
‘Yup.’
A small silence fell.
‘I heard about Ricky,’ he said.
‘He was charged last night.’
‘Was he?’ Interest sparked.
‘I’m one of the investigating officers.’
This time, he was definitely surprised. His mouth actually opened and shut. ‘You’re kidding me.’
‘No. Ricky asked for my help. Actually, that’s not true. It was Jaya who asked me.’ Since he appeared to have fallen speechless, she added, ‘And in return for my help, she said she’d put me in touch with you.’
He continued staring at her. ‘Bloody hell. You’re saying if Ricky hadn’t been arrested for that woman’s murder, then you and I wouldn’t be here?’
‘I guess so.’
‘If I was religious,’ he mused, ‘I’d say that the Lord works in mysterious ways.’
‘Amen to that,’ Lucy agreed.
28
The road to Rabat ran through a vista of dry-baked, dusty countryside before it reached the coast. A wind was blowing hard off the Atlantic when Dan stepped outside Mohammed’s car, and the air smelled salty. Above the sound of traffic, he could hear the shriek of seagulls.
He’d spent the journey filling Mohammed in on why he was in Morocco, and when he’d finished answering his questions, he mulled over Lucy’s emails, putting together what they’d both learned. He’d told her that Kaitlyn had gone to the Moroccan police and spoken to a policeman called Mehdi after meeting a man called Commandant Jamal Azoulay. Mehdi had told her to take her report to the Commissariat, to Hafid Khatabi. Mehdi was then threatened to keep him quiet about what he’d learned, and when he went to meet Dan – who’d turned up asking the same questions as Kaitlyn – an assassin was sent to murder him.
In turn, Lucy told him about a possible link between Morocco and Indonesia and forwarded him copies of shipping documents for what had transpired to be fake bomb detectors. Dan was puzzled. Did this have anything to do with flight EG220? Or was it something else? He couldn’t imagine Morocco being taken in by such a scam.
Mehdi hadn’t been so certain. ‘Everyone has their price,’ he’d said. His skin was pale, his eyes sunken and drawn with pain but Dan couldn’t remember when he’d last been so pleased to see someone. Apparently, the knife had missed Mehdi’s heart and it was only thanks to Mohammed’s quick thinking, putting pressure on the wound and getting him to hospital quickly, that he survived.
‘Mohammed’s wife… works at the hospital,’ Mehdi told Dan, his words coming in painful gasps. ‘It’s private, but even so… we were scared that another assassin might come… and finish the job.’
Which was why Mohammed and his wife smuggled Mehdi out of hospital, putting out the rumour that he’d died.
‘However, Jibran Bouzid will soon find out I’m not dead, and then–’
Dan blinked. ‘Who?’
Mehdi’s mouth tightened. ‘He is the Minister of Defence. After I sent Kaitlyn to see the Commissaire, Hafid Khatabi, he sent his men to me and my colleague. Told us to forget we had seen her.’
A coldness crept into Dan’s stomach. The head of the armed forces as well as the Gendarmerie had warned Mehdi off. He couldn’t imagine a more formidable enemy. Did Bouzid have something to do
