disruption. Then she rented a villa on the coast. Big place, luxurious, expensive. Partying all day and all night, from what our friends heard.’
‘Go on.’
‘And then she just vanished. We had a drunken message on our phone late one night, a week ago. Saying she was flying back to Britain and would be here the next morning. That was it. We’re still waiting. Nobody seems to know where she went. We’ve tried all the numbers we could think of. She’s no longer at the villa. Nor in any hotel. The Corfu airport people said she didn’t get on the plane. She just seemed to vanish.’ He looked earnestly at Ben. ‘So, what do you make of it?’
Ben thought for a moment. ‘Let’s go through it. You say the money issue is perplexing you. Fine. But you also told me she has plenty of boyfriends. How do you know she hasn’t hooked up with a rich one? The evidence is simply that she hasn’t left Corfu. She’s a fine-looking girl. There are lots of wealthy young guys out there enjoying the good life. She could be sitting on the deck of a yacht somewhere right now, as far away from harm as anyone could ever be.’
‘That’s true,’ Bradbury agreed.
‘Then there are credit cards. You spend a couple of hundred on your Barclaycard, the next thing you get a letter offering you a loan, and they up your credit limit another couple of grand to boot. That could easily explain where she got a pile of cash from.’
‘That makes sense too,’ Bradbury admitted.
‘So what makes you think anything’s wrong?’
‘It’s hard to explain,’ Bradbury said. ‘It’s just a feeling. It’s not just our protectiveness. This time is different.’ He leaned forwards in his chair and looked Ben in the eye. ‘We would be so grateful to you, Ben. All we ask is that you travel there and find her. Make sure she’s all right. That she’s not involved in drugs, or some awful thing like pornography …’ There was a tortured edge in his voice.
‘Come on,’ Ben said. ‘Why would she be?’
Bradbury stared at him. His hand was gripping the table edge. ‘Will you help us? We trust you.’
Ben was silent.
‘We’re desperate, Ben. It’s not that we want you to persuade her to come back here, or anything like that. Just find her, make sure she’s safe and well. And ask her to please, please get in touch with us. Tell her we’re sorry for all the quarrels and anything we might have said. And that we love her.’
Ben didn’t reply.
‘We’ve thought of flying out there ourselves and looking for her,’ Bradbury said. ‘But even if we did find her, she’d never want to talk to us. She’d only go into one of her moods – start accusing us of parental interference or something, and run a mile. I know what she’s like, and it would only make things worse.’ Bradbury grimaced. ‘We need an outsider, someone who’s a friend of the family but more objective. Someone who can approach her, who would know how to handle this.’
Ben drained his glass and put it down on the table. ‘I’m sorry for what’s happened to your family, Tom. Truly, I am.’
Bradbury bit his lip.
‘But I can’t help you,’ Ben said.
‘Naturally, you’d be paid,’ Bradbury said, looking agitated. ‘I should have mentioned that. We have savings. I can pay ten thousand. That should cover all the expenses with plenty left over. I can do an internet bank transfer. The funds would be in your account instantly. I’m just sorry I can’t pay more.’
Ben smiled. ‘It’s not the money. I’d do it for nothing. But I’m retired. That’s why I’m here. I’m finished with all that. Trying hard to put that life behind me.’
‘But this would be different,’ Bradbury said. ‘This is nothing compared to the things you’ve been involved in. Please. I’m begging you.’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t.’ Ben paused. ‘But let me tell you what I will do. If you want someone you can trust to go out there and find Zoë, there is a guy I would recommend …’
When he left the Bradburys’ place Ben walked straight back to his flat. He picked up the phone and punched a number into the keypad. Charlie answered.
‘That thing you were asking me about,’ Ben said. ‘Would you still be interested, if I told you an opportunity had come up?’
Charlie didn’t need time to decide. ‘I’d be interested.’
‘Good. Now listen.’ Ben told him in careful detail what Bradbury was offering.
‘That would take care of the mortgage for a year,’ Charlie said. ‘But I already know what Rhonda will say.’
‘All you have to do is find Zoë. You don’t have to try to bring her back. She shouldn’t be too hard to track down, by the sound of it. Just follow the party music and the trail of empty bottles. All her parents want to know is that she’s safe. The most you’d need to do is persuade her to make contact with them.’
‘It sounds easy.’
‘That’s because it is easy,’ Ben said. ‘It’s low season there at the moment, so you won’t even make much of a hole in the ten grand. You can tell Rhonda that all you’re doing is delivering a message – surely that won’t be a problem for her? This is the Greek Islands, not Afghanistan. And you’ll be there and back inside five days, maximum.’
‘I’m interested,’ Charlie said again.
‘I need to call the Bradburys right now and tell them yes or no. It’s your decision.’
‘Count me in,’ Charlie said.
At that moment, one and a half thousand miles away on the tiny Greek island of Paxos, Zoë Bradbury was being roughly shoved and prodded down the beach, back towards the jetty where she’d tried to escape four days before.
It was the first daylight she’d seen since then. For four days she’d been tied down to the bed, only allowed free when she screamed to be allowed to use the toilet. For four days, they’d been questioning her around the clock.
The whole time, she was racking her brains to remember. Who was she? Sometimes there was just nothing there, nothing but a big empty blank. But then, every so often, it felt like something was stirring in her mind, as though the drifting fragments of memory wanted to gel together and fall into focus. Faces, voices, places. They hovered tantalisingly in her head. But just when they seemed so close and she tried to reach out to them, they would suddenly dissolve back into the mist.
She stared for hours at the tiny scar on her finger. A childhood injury, maybe. But how had she got it? She had no idea. A thousand other questions crowded and jostled in her mind. Where was she from? Who were her family and friends? What was her life like?
And then there was the most horrifying question of all. What did these people want with her?
As
