Sight Unseen Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Previous titles by Graham Hurley

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Previous titles by Graham Hurley

  The Faraday and Winter series

  TURNSTONE

  THE TAKE

  ANGELS PASSING

  DEADLIGHT

  CUT TO BLACK

  BLOOD AND HONEY

  ONE UNDER

  THE PRICE OF DARKNESS

  NO LOVELIER DEATH

  BEYOND REACH

  BORROWED LIGHT

  HAPPY DAYS

  BACKSTORY

  The Jimmy Suttle series

  WESTERN APPROACHES

  TOUCHING DISTANCE

  SINS OF THE FATHER

  THE ORDER OF THINGS

  The Wars Within series

  FINISTERRE

  AURORE

  ESTOCADA

  The Enora Andressen series

  CURTAIN CALL *

  SIGHT UNSEEN *

  * available from Severn House

  SIGHT UNSEEN

  Graham Hurley

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2019 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  This eBook edition first published in 2019 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2020 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  Copyright © 2019 by Graham Hurley.

  The right of Graham Hurley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8919-5 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-629-6 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0322-9 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  To Isobel and Toddy

  with love

  ONE

  It’s a hot Friday morning in mid-summer, and I’m in a script conference when my mobile goes off. The opening bars of ‘Simply the Best’, a download present from H last Christmas.

  I glance at the number. We happen to have arrived at an awkward impasse and I’m glad of the interruption. The fact that the call has come from Malo widens my smile. We haven’t talked for nearly a week.

  ‘Mum? That you?’

  Something’s badly wrong. Panic is a word I’ve never associated with my son.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s Clem.’

  Clem is family-speak for Clemenza, Malo’s girlfriend.

  ‘She’s OK?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘She’s been kidnapped.’

  ‘Kidnapped?’

  I’ve just spent two and a half hours with a scriptwriter, a very good friend of mine called Pavel, trying to tease dramatic sense into various fictional possibilities which may, one day, make a great movie. Kidnap sounds as fanciful as some of the wilder ideas we’ve been kicking around. Just how do you make room for something like this in the real world?

  ‘When?’ I manage. ‘How?’

  Malo is struggling. I play mum, telling him to take a deep breath, telling him that nothing is ever as bad as it first seems. The facts, please. In broadly the right order.

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘Last night. I was staying at her place.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It was great. Like it always is.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m asking. What happened next?’

  ‘We got up as usual. Clem went to work.’

  Clem is a top-end moto courier and chauffeuse. She rides a scarlet Harley-Davidson with bass notes to kill for and is the ride of choice for a number of faces you’ll recognize from movie posters in any Tube station. She also happens to be the daughter of a very wealthy Colombian business tycoon, a family connection that – just now – is beginning to trouble me. I ask Malo whether they’d been in touch at all since she’d left for work.

  ‘Twice. We were supposed to get together again this afternoon. Womad. Her dad gave us tickets. We were going down there on the Harley.’

  Womad is a yearly celebration of global music, art and dance. I know Clem makes the pilgrimage to deepest Wiltshire every summer because she’s told me so. Since his return from Sweden last year, Malo has also become a disciple, partly because he knows that Clem – who gigs at various London pubs – is desperate to break into the festival circuit, but mainly because he worships her.

  ‘You said kidnapped.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I got a message with a photo. A couple of hours ago.’

  ‘From?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. The phone’s probably a burner. Untraceable.’

  ‘You’ve been to the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they said they’d kill her if I did.’

  ‘And what else did this message say?’

  ‘It said they’ve got Clem. I can have her back for a million. They want it in US dollars. I’ve got until Monday
to find the money.’

  ‘Otherwise?’

  There’s a silence at the other end. Monday is just three days away. Pavel has his laptop on his knees, his eyes closed, his long fingers gliding over the keyboard. His face is deeply tanned, with signs of UV damage below his hairline. When Malo returns to the phone, I can tell my son is close to tears.

  ‘It was the photo,’ he mutters. ‘That’s all I’ve got to go on.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Shit. You don’t want to know. Oh, Jesus Christ. Why her, of all people? Why us?’

  Pavel looks up the moment Malo brings the conversation to an end. He wants to discuss a scene we have in mind involving our movie’s love interest. I tell him it’s not possible. Pavel is blind, just one of the reasons he’s always attuned to the imminence of disaster. His guide dog, a Labrador, dozes at his feet.

  ‘So what’s happened?’

  I explain as best I can. Clem. Kidnappers. A photo.

  ‘Have you seen it? This photo?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what’s so horrible about it?’

  Pavel is normally world class at cutting to the chase, but this question sets the bar very high indeed. As the happy recipient of a number of gangster scripts in my time, I can think of countless images that might qualify. Men in balaclavas. Large dogs, always male. A suggestive blade or two. But Malo is close to my heart and I know that all it would take would be the knowledge that Clem was at the mercy of a bunch of strangers. Her face upturned to the camera. Fear in those huge brown eyes. So simple. And so effective.

  ‘I have to phone H,’ I say. ‘He’ll know what to do.’

  Pavel isn’t sure this is a good idea. Unlike the rest of us, he’s never set eyes on Malo’s father, but they’ve been together on a handful of occasions and I’ve become aware that blindness sharpens every other instinct. Pavel’s take on strangers is near faultless. Tiny speech inflections. Body language transmitted through a raspy cough or a shuffle of feet or the impatient clink of coins in a trouser pocket. Even certain brands of aftershave. Minutes after he’d first met H, when we were back in the safety of my battered Peugeot, he’d delivered his verdict.

  ‘Your friend needs to own you,’ he’d said. Pavel uses language with the precision of a poet. ‘Needs’, not ‘wants’. A very shrewd distinction.

  My ‘friend’ answers on the third ring. I’ve ignored Pavel’s advice not to make contact until we’ve settled the debate about going to the police. H, it turns out, has just stepped into Terminal 2 at Heathrow. Malo’s news has taken the wind out of me. I dimly remember talk of a business meeting on movie finance with a venture capitalist in Lyon a couple of weeks back. This is a guy with serious money who happens to have taken a shine to a film of mine that did well on the French arthouse circuit. Lunch on a restaurant terrace overlooking the Rhône. A couple of bottles of Krug and a taxi waiting for the return trip to the airport once a handshake deal is in place. Very H.

  At first he assumes I’m phoning to wish him luck.

  ‘Piece of piss,’ he assures me. ‘You around tonight? We need to get the dosh nailed down. The usual place, yeah? Half seven. They don’t take dogs, so it’s just the two of us. Tell your writer bloke we’ll brief him in the morning. Malo OK?’

  The writer bloke is Pavel. On the phone to H, I break the news about Clem. For once in the often awkward pas de deux that makes do as our relationship, Malo’s father is lost for words.

  ‘Say that again,’ he manages at last.

  I can picture him riding the escalator up to the Departures floor, a small, squat figure with greying curly hair and a hint of a belly beneath the Italian lambskin leather jacket. Since I first stumbled into H’s life, largely by accident, he’s always struck me as someone for whom life holds few surprises. Until now.

  Once again, I spell out what little I know. Malo isn’t the kind of boy to make this stuff up.

  ‘He was around when all this happened? Malo?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He said they sent him a message.’

  ‘They? Who’s fucking “they”?’

  ‘He’s no idea.’

  ‘So how do we know they’re not dicking him around?’

  ‘There was a photo of Clem, too. Small girl. Petite. Very pretty.’

  My attempt at irony is lost on H. He’s met her a number of times and already regards her as part of our putative family.

  ‘Any proof they hadn’t lifted the photo? Was she holding up today’s paper, maybe? Today’s headline? What you see isn’t always what you get. Not these days.’

  I stare at my phone and risk a tiny shake of the head. Fake news, I think. Except that my darling boy isn’t easily fooled.

  ‘I haven’t seen the photo,’ I point out. ‘But if Malo thinks they mean it, that’s good enough for me.’

  ‘You’re telling me he’s seen this coming? Blokes sniffing around? Following her on that bike of hers? Phone calls, maybe?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. It wasn’t that kind of conversation. Boys need their mothers sometimes, even Malo.’

  H grunts. I was right about the escalator. It’s delivered him to the Departures level and now he’s riding back down again.

  ‘You’re at home?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Stay there. I can screw the French guy another day.’

  TWO

  Home is a top-floor flat in a thirties block in Holland Park. The shared spaces – inside and out – are immaculate and recently the management company that looks after the place has taken to putting fresh flowers on every landing and even in the lift. Pavel, who comes here more often than I suspect H would like, says the smell reminds him of one of those boutique hotels favoured by the wealthier production companies. Last night, for the first time, he and the dog stayed over.

  Until last year, to my shame, I’d never heard of Pavel Sieger. Then I won the female lead in a radio play for the Beeb, Going Solo, authored by Pavel. In some respects it was a comfortably old-fashioned piece, the story of a woman married to a pilot on the Isle of Wight. Together, they build a business around an old manor house and a fully restored P-51 Mustang until the husband is mysteriously killed. To stay both sane and solvent, the woman – me – must learn to fly this World War Two beast of a fighter while trying to understand the real circumstances of her husband’s death.

  At first glance the script was nicely constructed with tonally perfect dialogue, especially for the female lead. This isn’t as easy a trick to master as you might imagine, and it wasn’t until after the play was transmitted, to modest critical acclaim, that I had the chance to meet the author. By then I was having to deal with three courses of chemo to attack the return of an aggressive brain tumour that had nearly killed me. Hairless, horribly prone to bruising, and intermittently distraught, I’d accepted the offer of lunch from Pavel with some reluctance.

  On the phone, by way of an excuse, I’d mentioned the chemo and told him the nausea had killed my appetite. In response he’d offered his sympathies and told me to expect a tallish guy with a white stick, a lovely dog and a bit of a limp. If I preferred to meet somewhere else I only had to say. Alternatively, I might not want to share lunch with him at all. Shamed, I’d said yes to his original invitation and later that week we found ourselves in a Thai restaurant in Notting Hill Gate.

  On reflection, much later, I realized that Pavel had never really explained why he’d asked me to lunch in the first place, but at the time it never really seemed to matter. We actresses spend our entire professional lives pretending to be somebody else and I knew from the moment I’d settled at the table that Pavel perfectly understood this strange multiplicity of selves.

  One of the consequences of cheating the Grim Reaper is the discovery that time is a precious commodity. Faced with a middle-aged blind man whose writing I deeply respected, I saw no point in dodging the obvious question. Had he been sightless from birth? Or had something happened more recently?

  The frankness of my curiosity seemed to pleas
e him. It had happened a couple of years back, he told me, thanks to a condition called GCA. This little acronym (giant cell arteritis) had run amok in the family. His dad was blind, and so was an uncle and a niece. Through his twenties and most of his thirties Pavel thought he’d got away with it, but then came the headaches and a pain in his jaw when he tried to eat. Thirty minutes on Google told him the rest of the story.

  ‘So how long did you have? Before the lights went out?’

  ‘No one would tell me. Sometimes it can happen overnight. Other times the world just gets dimmer and dimmer. Disease is the house guest you’d never wish on anyone. One moment it’s kicking over the furniture. The next it’s made its excuses and left. At that point you think you’re home free, but that’s not true either.’

  Home free. I remember nodding. The Reaper, I’d thought. And the dreaded knock on the door. By then, we were both tucking into bowls of pad Thai noodles. Pavel sat bolt upright at the table, the way you sometimes see concert pianists at the keyboard. His eyes were closed behind tinted glasses and I watched, fascinated, as he brought the bowl to his mouth and his chopsticks pursued tiny particles of shrimp and chicken nesting beneath the noodles. Over a pair of black jeans he wore a newly pressed shirt of startling whiteness, yet not one fleck of sauce made it out of the bowl.

  That lunch was doubly remarkable. When I enquired about the limp, Pavel told me he’d been born with a club foot.

  ‘It’s a birth defect,’ he explained. ‘One foot has a mind of its own. It’s turned inward. It won’t move. Your chances of getting it are a thousand to one. Once I knew those odds I treated it like a lottery win. Club foot. Lucky old me.’

  There wasn’t an ounce of self-pity in his voice as he told me this. On the contrary, he seemed pleased – even proud – that he’d dreamed up this little wheeze to cope with his rebel genes. We split a bottle of decent Chablis between us, the Blind Man and the Chemo Queen, and for the first time in weeks I began to feel like a human being. Pavel, it turned out, wasn’t his real name at all.

  ‘I was born Paul Stukeley. Pavel is the Slavic cognate of Paul. Under the circumstances, a new name was the least I owed myself.’