further down and found a list of partners: other financial firms in Canary Wharf that the company worked alongside.
I dialled the number for the company and waited for it to connect.
‘Michaelhouse Credit.’
‘Oh, hi. My name’s Alex Murphy and I’m calling from Credit Suisse. I just had a meeting with one of your team but she didn’t leave her name or contact details with me.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, sir,’ the woman said. ‘Shall I put you through to the –’
‘She had blonde hair and was wearing a red skirt.’
‘Oh, that’s Ursula.’
‘Ursula.
‘Ursula Gray.’
22
Ursula Gray emerged from the elevator into the cool, air-conditioned lobby at 40 Bank Street just after 5.15. I was right across the foyer from her, leaning against the glass front. Three or four men followed her out and they were all looking at her. It wasn’t hard to see why. Not only was she beautiful, but she was immaculately dressed. Her blonde hair hung loose at her shoulders now, not in a ponytail like earlier. As soon as she was out of the lift, she took her phone from her handbag and started checking it.
‘Ursula?’
When she heard her name, she glanced towards me, automatically closing in on herself. It was a natural defensive movement. She didn’t think she knew me, and – even though the foyer of the building was thick with other office workers – she couldn’t be sure what I wanted. I held up a hand to tell her everything was fine and, as I took another step towards her, there was a flicker of recognition in her eyes. We’d never met but Esther would have given her my name and it didn’t take much work in Google to find details of my previous cases and pictures of how I looked.
‘I’m David Raker.’
She chose not to reply initially, but then she seemed to change her mind, as if her silence was some sort of indication of guilt. ‘Do I know you?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You do.’
‘I’m pretty sure I don–’
‘You were with Esther Wilson in the park today.’
A momentary pause. Nothing in her face. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘I know who you are, Ursula. You know who I am. I don’t care what you’ve done, all I care about is Sam Wren.’
No response.
‘I’m trying to find out where he went.’
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
I didn’t bother replying to that: she saw the answer in my face. ‘Why don’t you let me buy you a drink?’
We found a bar on South Colonnade. On the walk over, Ursula didn’t say much. Maybe she was working out a plan. That was the downside with cold-calling people who had something to hide: they automatically felt the need to suppress and create because they hadn’t prepared and were scared about saying the wrong thing.
I ordered a beer and she asked for a glass of wine.
‘Julia Wren has asked me to find out what happened to Sam.’
She brushed some hair away from her eyes but didn’t say anything.
‘I think you can help me.’
‘How?’
I took a copy of Sam’s phone records out of my pocket and unfolded it in front of her. ‘This shows that you two called each other 97 times between 7 January and 2 September last year, and you sent each other 186 texts.’
A flutter of panic for the first time. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You know what I’m talking about,’ I said, and turned the phone records around so she could see her number, his number, the minutes they’d spent talking and the texts they’d sent. ‘I don’t care what it was that you and Sam were doing. I don’t. Really. But I’ve been paid to find out what happened to him – and that’s what I’m going to do.’
The bar was crowded now, music and laughter and mobile phone conversations in the background – but all I got from Ursula Gray was silence.
‘Ursula?’
She shook her head. ‘I … I don’t know where to …’
‘Were you sleeping with Sam?’
She reached out for her wine glass and slid it towards her. No indication that she was or wasn’t. No indication she’d even heard the question. But then she shivered – as if a long-dead memory had crawled its way out of the ground – and looked up. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly, taking a sip from her glass, her eyes fixed on a space off to my left. ‘I wanted to be with him.’
‘Did he want to be with you?’
‘At the time I thought he did. But at the end …’ She smiled momentarily, but it wasn’t a smile with any warmth and, for the first time, her defences were down.
‘You started seeing him in January last year?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did it begin?’
‘Michaelhouse were doing some work with I2, and he was seconded across to my office. He trained me, I trained him, we sat next to one another and forged a good friendship. There was flirting too, I guess.’ Another smile, this time more genuine. ‘A
‘Did you sleep together that night?’
She glanced at me, a mixture of embarrassment and incredulity. And then reality seemed to kick in and she realized that their secret wasn’t a secret any more.
‘No, we didn’t sleep together that night.’
‘So, what happened?’
‘We just kissed.’
‘You already knew Esther?’
She nodded. ‘I’ve known her for years. She’s one of my best friends. We went to university together, did the same course, lived in the same house.’
‘Did she know about you and Sam?’
‘No. Not during the time it was going on.’ She looked down into her wine glass. ‘I told her after Sam went missing, though. I hated not being able to tell anyone. Bottling it up only made it worse. So I told her, but made her promise to keep it to herself.’
Which was why she’d lied to me: to protect her friend.
I backtracked. ‘How did Sam react the day after you kissed?’
‘He was cold as ice,’ she said distantly, replaying the morning after in her head. ‘He didn’t talk to me for a couple of weeks. That really hurt. But then, slowly, he started to come back round, and one day at lunch we got chatting about what had happened.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said he liked it.’
‘That was when the affair began?’
‘Yes.’ She traced a finger through the condensation on the side of her wine glass. ‘That was when it began.
