Close My Eyes (21 page)

I turn back, my heart sinking. All this way and I’ve learned nothing. What did I expect? That Rodriguez was going to crumble and admit he faked my daughter’s death? That he let Art
sell her on somewhere?

I push my chair back and stand up as the woman from behind the bar appears with a pot of steaming chilli and a basket of bread on a tray.

She sets the tray down in front of Lorcan.

‘I see you found Martin,’ she says pleasantly. ‘Martin, are you eating?’

‘No, thank you.’ Rodriguez rises. His face is impassive. The woman wanders back to the bar. Rodriguez gathers his coat. ‘I’m afraid I’ve just remembered I’m .
. . I have to be somewhere.’

‘Did anyone ever offer you money to lie to me about my baby?’ The words shoot out of my mouth like bullets.

For a split second Rodriguez’s eyes fill with panic. ‘Money?
Lie
to you? No,’ he says. ‘No, of course not. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Excuse me, I really do have to go.’

He heads to the door. He’s walking fast, but the man in the pork-pie hat has blocked his way, his face wreathed in a cheerful, drunken smile.

‘Did you see how shaken he was?’ I whisper.

Lorcan nods. He glances down at his bowl of chilli, picks up a hunk of bread and tears off a strip. ‘And now look,’ he whispers back. ‘He can’t wait to get out of here.
Although . . .’ He pauses. ‘You did virtually accuse him of lying to you, so . . .’

I bite my lip. Rodriguez is, indeed, shuffling from foot to foot at the door, but the pork-pie-hat man is still standing in his way, urging him to stay.

‘We have to do something,’ I hiss.

Lorcan raises his eyebrows, a strip of chilli-smothered bread halfway to his mouth. ‘Like what?’

‘Follow him.’ My heart beats fast. ‘Rodriguez knows something. You saw his face.’

As I finish speaking, Rodriguez walks out of the pub at last.

I stand up.

Lorcan stares at me. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes.’

The shock on Lorcan’s face gives way to grim determination. ‘Okay.’ He stands up.

I grab my coat and head for the door. It’s dark outside; the cold air slices at my cheeks. It must have dropped five degrees since we came into the pub.

Rodriguez is clearly visible, pacing briskly up the hill away from us, shoulders hunched against the cold. I glance around. Where is Lorcan? I hesitate, buttoning my coat up to the neck. He
still hasn’t emerged from the pub. Rodriguez is halfway up the hill. What on earth is Lorcan doing? Gritting my teeth, I set off. I can’t risk losing Rodriguez. A moment later he
vanishes over the brow of the hill. I speed up. Footsteps sound behind me.

‘Gen?’ Lorcan calls softly.

I glance over my shoulder as he runs up. A smear of chilli to the left of his mouth glistens in the light of the street lamp.

‘Where were you?’ I whisper.

‘Paying for the chilli,’ he pants, wiping his mouth. ‘Where’s Rodriguez?’

I point over the hill. We’re still not close enough to the top to see over to the other side. Rodriguez might have taken a turning by now. My heart lurches into my mouth and I break into a
run.

A few strides and Rodriguez comes into view again. He’s still on the same road, halfway down the hill now.

‘Where d’you think he’s going?’ Lorcan asks.

‘I don’t know.’ My breath mists into the air.

‘What’s the plan when we get there?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Excellent.’ Lorcan offers up a mirthless chuckle.

Rodriguez turns down a side street. I speed up, determined not to lose him. As Lorcan and I reach the corner ourselves he is disappearing into a driveway.

‘Come on.’ I hurry across the road, Lorcan at my side.

Two huge, ugly stone lions stand on either side of an imposing gate. Rodriguez has already disappeared inside a large, two-storey detached house. Privet hedges criss-cross a front lawn. Beyond
these a sleek BMW is parked on a gravel drive. I get a sense of highly manicured flower beds, dark curtains hanging at the windows. The house is ornate, expensive . . .

I look back at the lion statues. ‘This is his home,’ I say.

‘Now what?’ Lorcan stares at me.

I hesitate. Ringing Rodriguez’s doorbell is clearly not an option. The pub landlady implied that he lived alone, but suppose there’s someone else in the house? What will trying to
talk to him again achieve anyway? And yet, if I don’t challenge him, then he’ll be free to get rid of anything that links him to Beth.

‘Let’s just wait a minute,’ I say. A light comes on in an upstairs room to the left of the house.

We shelter behind the gates watching Rodriguez cross the room. He’s looking at something in his hand. I strain my eyes, but it’s impossible to see what he’s holding. He bends
over for a second then straightens up. A moment later he has crossed the room again and the light is switched off.

I pass through the gates, Lorcan right behind me. My heart is pounding in my chest. I still have no idea what I’m going to do. The front door of the house opens. Lorcan grabs my arm and we
duck behind the privet hedge that intersects the front lawn as Rodriguez emerges from the house.

He crunches across the gravel to his car. A phone is clamped to his ear, his voice carrying easily across the still, cold, night air.

‘Yes, she found me here, that’s what I am telling you. She’s with someone.’

I freeze, Lorcan’s hand still on my arm.

‘It’s not her husband. I don’t think he knows she is here.’ Rodriguez is hissing into his phone now. ‘But she knows about the money.’

My legs threaten to buckle under me.

Rodriguez opens the car door and gets inside.

‘No, it’s safe, I just locked it away, so . . .’ The rest of Rodriguez’s sentence is lost as he slams shut the car door. I huddle behind the hedge as the engine starts
and the car roars out of the gravel drive.

I straighten up and Lorcan lets go of my arm.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he says, peering down the road after Rodriguez’s car.

I’m in shock, trying to process what I heard. It’s too big to take in.
She knows about the money
.

Does this mean Rodriguez did steal Beth away?

Does this mean Lucy O’Donnell was right and my baby
is
alive?

‘
Gen
?’ Lorcan frowns, as if he’s already said my name and I haven’t heard him.

‘Oh, God, Lorcan . . .’

‘Rodriguez was talking about money.’ His frown deepens. ‘Just like you asked him about in the pub. Money to keep quiet, that’s what you said to him, wasn’t
it?’

I nod. I can see from the look of shock on Lorcan’s face that this is the last thing he expected. Despite his calm and encouraging words of support, I realize, with a jolt, that he has
only been humouring me.

Until now.

‘I don’t understand,’ Lorcan goes on. ‘Who would pay him to keep quiet about a baby not being dead?’

I stand in the freezing air, letting it all sink in. ‘I don’t know . . .’ I say. It’s hard to say the words out loud. But all the evidence seems to point in this
direction. ‘Oh, Lorcan, I think it’s possible Art paid him . . .’

‘
What
?’

I tell him that Lucy O’Donnell claimed Art was part of the plan to steal Beth and about the £50,000 MDO money I found in an account marked ‘Personal’. The words tumble
out of me like I’m vomiting them up.
This can’t be true. Please, surely, this can’t be true.
‘Art denies it all, but he couldn’t explain what the fifty grand
was for. He said it was just a business thing, but it’s the only big amount that went out of an account that didn’t use one of the normal Loxley Benson trading names, and the money was
paid out
just after
Beth.’

‘Okay, but . . . but . . .’ Lorcan frowns. ‘It just doesn’t make sense. The fifty thousand . . . surely that’s nowhere near enough to make a private doctor tell
such a massive lie.’

‘I wondered about that myself.’ I hesitate. ‘But suppose it was just the first of several payments . . . suppose there were other lump sums paid through other accounts . . . or
even cash . . . that could add up to hundreds of thousands of—’

‘Did Art have that kind of money back then?’

‘Not personally. And someone would notice if he was taking money out of investment accounts, wouldn’t they?’

‘That depends. He was . . .
is
the MD,’ Lorcan says. ‘At least we know Rodriguez wasn’t talking
to
Art just now. He said quite clearly:
“She’s with someone. Not her husband.” That means there has to be someone else involved.’

He’s right. ‘But who?’

I follow Lorcan’s gaze as he turns to look at Rodriguez’s house. Ground floor. First floor. A small light above the front door gives off a dim glow, casting shadows across the brick
wall of the house. There are no lights on anywhere else.

‘Looks pretty deserted,’ Lorcan says.

I nod, suddenly feeling desolate as the adrenalin that’s been coursing through me for the past half-hour drains away. I’m certain now that Rodriguez lied about Beth . . . that he
knows what really happened to her. And yet I have nothing concrete to go on . . . nothing more than suspicions to take to the police . . . nothing to counteract the huge and overwhelming evidence
that Beth was stillborn.

Lorcan moves closer to the house, then points to a window at the far end of the ground floor. It’s shrouded in darkness but, even so, I can just make out that the bottom sash isn’t
entirely closed.

‘What?’ I say, though I know already what he’s thinking.

‘No one’s here.’ Lorcan’s voice drops to a whisper. ‘We could sneak inside . . . go up to that room . . . find whatever Rodriguez said he locked away . .
.’

‘We can’t.’ Even as I say the words I know they’re not true. I breathe out a mist of cloudy air then shiver as a gust of icy wind whips around my face.

‘We can.’ Lorcan’s voice is low. Intense. ‘If we’re careful he won’t ever know we’ve been here.’

‘This is insane.’

‘Yes.’ Lorcan looks at me. He’s waiting for me to decide.

The heavy, depressed feeling of the past minute lifts. Adrenalin courses through me again. Can I do this? It’s a chance to find out what Rodriguez was doing in that room upstairs . . .
what he was referring to when he said ‘It’s safe’. On the other hand, it’s a terrifying risk . . . it’s breaking the law . . . it’s . . .

A new determination grips me. I
have
to find out what I can.

‘Would this be burglary or house-breaking?’ I set off towards the house.

Lorcan says nothing. Just follows me to the window. Our feet grind noisily in the gravel. We reach the glass pane and Lorcan grips the wooden base. I watch his strong fingers press against the
sill. Force it upwards. It moves a fraction then jams hard.

Lorcan steps back with a sigh. ‘Locked,’ he says.

‘That’s it, then.’ But even as I’m saying the words I know I can’t stop now. A cold fury fills me and I look around for something solid and heavy, something that
will break glass.

‘Gen?’ Lorcan asks. ‘What are you doing?’

My eyes light on a group of three plant pots standing against the far wall of the house. I walk over. I have every right to break into this man’s home. He lied to me. I pick up the
smallest of the pots and return to Lorcan. I hand him the pot and point to the window. Lorcan blinks rapidly. For the first time since I’ve met him he’s lost his laidback air.

‘If we do this,’ Lorcan says, ‘Rodriguez’ll know we’ve been here.’

‘He’s knows we’re on to him anyway.’ The logic of this sinks into my brain. I am fiercely rational. Aware, with one part of my brain, that what I’m about to do is
lunacy, and yet coldly sure that if I want to know what happened to my daughter this is my only option. ‘If we don’t act now, if we just walk away, then Rodriguez will be able to move
whatever he’s hiding here – or destroy it. I can’t risk losing this chance to find out.’

Lorcan blows out his breath. ‘Right.’ A second later he slams the pot against the glass. The sound shatters the silence. Glass shards smash to the ground – such a pretty sound
for such a violent act.

I stand, stock still, waiting for a response. Nothing comes. No lights. No voices. I glance around. The house is well-secluded from its nearest neighbour. There are no signs that anyone has
heard us.

Lorcan has taken off his jacket and wrapped it around his arm. He reaches through the broken pane of glass, punching out a large shard that pokes out from the side. With a swift click he undoes
the window lock. A moment later he lifts the sash window.

‘I’ll go through here.’ Lorcan has already hoisted one knee up onto the sill. ‘Let you in the front door.’

I nod. ‘Go.’

Lorcan disappears into the gloom of the room. I can’t see any furniture clearly, just a few dark shapes along the far wall that could be armchairs or cupboards or even a low bookcase.

A minute later the front door opens. I scurry across the gravel and join Lorcan inside. Lorcan flicks a switch beside me, and the room floods with light. We’re in an entry hall –
very middle England, with textured wallpaper leading down to a smooth, cream dado rail, cream carpet and elegant, over-ornate, antique wooden furniture. Several oil paintings in muted tones hang on
the wall.

‘God, this stuff must be worth a fortune,’ Lorcan says, looking around. ‘It’s like a set for Antiques Roadshow in here. Whatever else he is, your man is definitely
loaded.’

I think back to Rodriguez’s professional manner on the day that I met him. He was kind and charming and totally reassuring. Fury wells up inside me. My charismatic doctor was a conman and
I fell for his act. Completely.

A polished wooden table stands to the left of the door below a gilt-framed mirror. I catch sight of myself as I pass and barely recognize the intense eyes and pale face of my reflection.

Lorcan is just behind me. The features of his face are composed and relaxed but in the silence of the house I can hear the anxiety in his rushed, shallow breathing. I turn to him, overwhelmed
that he is here, risking everything.

‘Thank you so much,’ I say. ‘I couldn’t have done any of this without you.’