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  Pascal’s phone burst into life, but she ignored it. She was thinking hard. As her caller hung up and her ring tone stopped, she turned to Chantelle and said, ‘last question, Chantelle. How do I get into the penthouse. And how do I get into the secret room?’

  ‘Honey, you are stone crazy?’ she said, eyes hot and bright. ‘Breaking and entering? That’s serious, man. Specially a rich folks place. And there is no way in there, seriously. I mean, even in my day, security was tight, but now? Give it up.’

  ‘I’m not aiming to get caught, Chantelle. Look, I’ve got to go now. Will you just think about it. How it might be done?’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ Chantelle said, but there was a mischievous smile on her face, and it looked like she might just be getting hooked into the action.

  ‘And you know what,’ Pascal said, soft and genuine smile on her face, ‘I’ve really enjoyed this evening. It was like being back home for a while. Maybe we could do it again sometime?’

  Chantelle didn’t say anything but again there was that incongruous shy smile on her face.

  ‘So promise you’ll call me, about how I get into the secret room, and don’t wait too long,’ Pascal said, rising to her feet, finishing the dregs of her wine and grabbing her bag. She needed to be at O’Leary’s in around 30 minutes and that would be cutting it fine.

  They hugged, and then Pascal was running for stairs.

  Chapter 19

  Christoff looked bushed. “John Fossey” was proving intensely elusive. I’d given up looking soon after I’d started, but if Christoff was stumped, that was bad. We were back sitting in the huge living room again, and I’d just poured him a large Scotch to match mine. He still had his laptop open and was continuing to fiddle around with it.

  ‘There are plenty of people around the world called John Fossey, apparently,’ he said drolly, ‘but I can’t connect any of them to you or your case. And I have applied filters to my search, and qualified it, till its coming out of my head, but nothing’s coming up.’ His face looked tired; he took a shot of Scotch and looked up as Hannah came out of the bedroom.

  ‘You boys drinking behind my back again?’ she said. ‘Get me one of those will you, Jonas, and make it large one, no ice.’

  She seemed full of beans and had obviously had a good sleep. I got up and mixed her a scotch whilst Christoff explained to her what we had been doing and how we were getting a big fat zero in our search for the mysterious Mr. Fossey. She listened as she took the cut glass tumbler full of scotch off me. She held it up and said, “cheers”, before taking a huge gulp, giving only a slight cough as it hit the back of her throat. I had to say, she was one tough old bird. Then she sat down next to Christoff, peeking at his laptop screen as he continued to fiddle with the keyboard.

  As Christoff explained to her the various searches he had carried out, she slowly moved her head onto the back rest of the settee and closed her eyes. It was difficult to tell whether she was still listening or had gone back to sleep. Then she murmured, eyes still closed, ‘you’ve tried K Corp and its subsidiaries, but have you looked at minority holdings?’

  Christoff and I both stared at her, but she kept her eyes closed, and then she continued, ‘you know, when my husband died, I got so down and low. Sometimes I thought I would just fade away if I didn’t find something to occupy myself with. One of the things I did was to start looking at the shares we owned and I got quite interested in it. You know, looking at a company, analyzing it, working out whether it might make a good investment. I even read books on security analysis by people like Benjamin Graham and I followed Buffet for a while until I saw what his world view was. Then I swiftly fell out of love with him, and stocks and shares generally. Thing is though, during that period I really did learn a lot, and one of the things I learned was always take a look at minority holdings. If you’re thinking of investing in a company or a stock, you need to know what fingers they’ve got in what pies, before you puts your money down.’

  I could hear the light patter of Christoff’s fingers on the keyboard increase as he modified another search. Then he said, ‘Bingo! Way out in Cincinnati, folks, is the head office of a little company that specializes in CCTV and security. It’s called, Protecta. You just gotta love that name,’ he said with a tired laugh. ‘Their head of research is? Yeah, you’ve guessed it. Give the lady a prize - one John Fossey.

  ‘K Corp currently hold 19% of the shares, worth today around 15 million dollars, so they’re not exactly a big cap stock. I’m guessing K Corp are into them solely for the R & D and technology.’

  Hannah opened her eyes and smiled. We three partially inebriated seekers after truth leaned in and clinked our glasses, each taking a shot, wondering what this latest revelation might mean, for me, but also for Hannah. Two cases running almost parallel, and with perhaps a common theme that was only just starting to make itself known. Time would tell.

  * * * *

  Pascal paid the driver and climbed out the cab. In the lamplight and with a virtually full moon she could see a street of houses with cars parked outside. The neighborhood was in a place called Battery Park City, and coming to it with an English sensibility, she found it kind of difficult to characterize. It looked sort of middle of the road suburban to her.

  She calculated O’Leary’s house was the third one down on the right at number 528; she looked the house over as she approached. It was a two storey grey looking family house with a drive-in garage built into the structure, alongside quite steep steps leading up to the front door. A large tree stood to the right of the property, partly shrouding it from the street, and there was a dim light showing in the large front curtained window next to the front door.

  Pascal slowly climbed up the steps and pressed the white plastic doorbell. She listened as the chimes reverberated around inside the house. A few moments later a young girl opened the door on a chain and peeked out at Pascal. It was unmistakably Cara, O’Leary’s daughter. She looked Pascal up and down carefully, and then said, ‘if you’re Courtney, show me ID.’ The girl seemed kind of spooked but her voice was firm.

  Pascal took out her wallet, slipped out her driving licence, and held it out to the girl who took it and scanned it. ‘Its an English driving licence. Sorry, its all I have on me,’ Pascal said.

  The girl handed it back and pulled the chain off the hook saying, ‘that’s okay, come in, and go through.’ She gestured with her hand, then closed the door behind Pascal, and followed her through into a living room off the hallway. They stood facing each other and Pascal studied the girl. She was wearing woolly white pajamas patterned with brown coloured animals - rabbits, water rats and dormice - which made her look very young, but then the serious expression on her face worked against that. She was probably between eight or nine years old, of average height, but very thin with slightly angular features, long auburn hair with pale white, almost translucent skin and freckles that she had obviously inherited from her father. But her eyes were what drew you to her. They were huge and luminous, and dominated her face.

  The girl seemed skittish and a little nervous. She half smiled and said, ‘my name’s Cara. Daddy told me you were coming and to give you a drink. There’s lots on the table over there,’ she said, pointing to a sideboard weighed down with bottles of spirits. ‘Daddy’s down in the garage doing something. Been there ages. Would you like something? I’ll call him,’ she said moving away towards the door.

  Pascal said, ‘thank you,’ and made for the sideboard where she poured herself a glass of Jameson’s irish whiskey. She could hear the girl calling out, sounding as if she was shouting down some stairs to the garage.

  She came back, a worried frown on her face. ‘I’m sure he’ll come up in a minute,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I’m not allowed down there because its private,’ she said, and then blushed.

  ‘Where’s your mother?’ Pascal asked, to try to break the ice.

  ‘Oh, she’s gone,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘A long time ago. Its just me and daddy now
,’ she said, wistfully.

  As Pascal sipped her whiskey, she checked her watch - gone midnight. This was all wrong. Eight year old girl on her own, still up after midnight, parent nowhere in sight. She put her glass down. ‘Come on, Cara,’ she said. ‘Lets go talk to your dad.’

  It was as if she had been waiting for Pascal to take the lead, too scared to go alone where she was prohibited from going. She smiled, relieved, and those huge eyes lit up. ‘Yeah, lets go and surprise Daddy,’ she said, grabbing Pascal’s hand and leading her to the door.

  She guided Pascal down the hall to a door which she opened. Stairs then led down to what Pascal assumed must be the garage. She moved down the short flight of steps to another doorway which she tapped on. Then she pushed it open, saying, ‘Mr. O’Leary, its Courtney Pascal, for our midnight meet.’ As the door swung open Pascal somehow instinctively intuited what she was going to see, and she was right, but she cursed anyway.

  Bathed in the glow of a powerful arc light, O’Leary was hanging by a short rope from a beam running across the ceiling. Eyes bulging, and tongue lolling out of his mouth, he had obviously been there a while; couple of hours, Pascal guessed. Then she remembered the girl and quickly turned, starting to move to block the door, but it was too late.

  Cara stood transfixed in the doorway, staring, face calm, almost serene. Pascal rushed at her, throwing her arms up and out to try and block the image, then around her in a kind of embrace as she bundled her out of the garage. Then she led the silent girl back up the steps to the living room, and sat her down on the couch.

  She needed to calm the girl down, try and relax her, then go look at the body before the cops got there. Cara looked like she was going into mild shock, big eyes staring but unseeing. Pascal left her there and went to look around the house. In a medicine cabinet in the bathroom she found some sleeping tablets. She checked the instructions and took them downstairs, got a glass of water and went back in the living room. Cara looked at the pill, then mechanically placed it on her tongue and swallowed it with the water.

  Pascal noticed a large teddy bear lying on one of the chairs. She retrieved it and handed it to Cara who immediately hugged it close to her chest. Pascal said, ‘lie down with teddy for a sleep, and I’ll come back in a minute.’

  The girl nodded mechanically and lay down, eyelids already starting to droop. Pascal leant down and kissed her on the forehead, and as she drew back she was sure she saw the shadow of a ghostly smile slip across the girls face.

  Pascal shook her head to clear it and then she was moving again, down the stairs into the garage. She dug her cell phone out and pressed speed dial as she began a minute examination of the crime scene.

  ‘Daly?’ she said gruffly, when he picked up.

  ‘Jesus, Pascal, don’t you limey’s ever sleep?’

  ‘You’re prize witness, O’Leary, is dead. Looks like suicide, but then so did John Palmer. I’m at the house now. Interested?’

  Daly was silent, digesting it. ‘How’d he go?’ he asked.

  ‘Hanged. Not so easy to fake unless you’re a pro, but O’Leary did have a good reason to kill himself. I’ll enlighten you if you want to shift your ass down here. And it might go better if you do the 911 call? Oh, and I’ve got a very distraught, but currently sleeping, eight year old child here who is going to need looking after,’ Pascal said.

  ‘I’m on it,’ Daly replied. ‘And Pascal?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Don’t foul up the crime scene, if it is a crime scene.’

  She gave him the address and hung up. She knew she wouldn’t have much time, so she got down on her hands and knees and began to crawl around the hanging body, looking for anything that might throw some light on what had happened. At the same time she was careful not to disturb anything. After a couple of minutes of finding nothing she sat back on her haunches to draw breath.

  The garage was mostly empty, apart from an old desktop computer in the corner on a table. It was covered in dust and there was no mains plug so it probably hadn’t been used this century. Also along one wall was a work bench with drawers and above it lines of hanging tools. Try as she might, she couldn’t see O’Leary as some kind of DIY freak. And why had Cara said the garage was his private place that he spent a lot of time in, a place she was prohibited from entering? It look like a glorified tool shed to Pascal. Maybe he had moved stuff out and cleaned up before dropping the noose around his neck. Why the fuck didn’t she try and question Cara before giving her the sleeping tablet? Too late now.

  She got up and finally approached the hanging body and started to go through the pockets. The body was garbed in the same smart casual sports jacket, open neck shirt and slacks he had worn earlier in the day. She thought back carefully, going over the conversation, digging out the important bits. He’d said, “I’ll give you what you want”, and then later, “I need to get something for you from home - proof”. But there was nothing in his pockets.

  She reached up and studied the knotted rope, then his neck, then she felt around his scalp for any bumps or bruises, but there was nothing. She went over to the work bench and crouched down, studying all the surfaces, then went through the drawers - nothing. Now in the distance she could hear the sirens. She went over to the main garage door and pressed the button to the side, and it slowly slid up and over into the roof. She moved to the front of the house and then to the side, and looked through into the open back garden, and there over in the corner, completely hidden from the road, was a sawn off water butt with traces of smoke gently rising from it. She raced over and looked in at the embers and flickering flames. There was no way of telling what had been burned in there; it just looked like a pile of blackened smoking sludge.

  She walked slowly out to the front as the first police car arrived, and then she saw Daly in a big smart looking black Lincoln drawing up and then climbing out onto the street. Then it hit her, the pent-up fatigue; she’d been out on her feet for hours, running on adrenaline, and now she was starting to pay the price. She felt shattered, as if she couldn’t take another step. She wanted to curl up and go to sleep, but then Daly was approaching, grim smile on his face and she knew the evening wasn’t over yet.

  Chapter 20

  Southern District Court

  Day 7

  I looked around the Southern District court. Today thankfully I was just an observer, a baby-sitter, and not a participant. I’d said I would accompany Hannah to court so Christoff could take the day off and see if he could run-down anything on John Fossey. I had wanted to speak to Pascal about what I could do to help during the break in my murder trial, but I couldn’t get hold of her; her bed hadn’t been slept in and she wasn’t answering my calls, so now I was slumming it in the civil court.

  I looked up and nodded as Morganna took her seat next to me, and then Hannah was making herself comfortable in the witness box. I glanced over at Browder, alone at the Defendant’s table. He had studiously ignored me when I had earlier offered a curt ‘good morning’. He looked bored, which wasn’t exactly comforting in terms of how Morganna’s trial strategy might be panning out. But Morganna looked great; there were no more nerves, and she looked smart and ready to roll. She stood and reminded Hannah where she had got to in her testimony and invited her to continue. I ran my eye down the jury box; they almost looked like young children waiting impatiently for the next chapter in a favourite fairytale.

  Hannah coughed and then began to speak, her voice calm and measured, and as she spoke the jury seemed to lean forward in their chairs, but maybe that was just my mind playing tricks - hell, what did I know?

  ‘Yes. I was talking about the months after my sister was born,’ Hannah said. ‘This was when we first started hearing stories about Jewish families being asked to go and work in the east, and that the Germans were asking for quotas or lists of names of people who would go.

  ‘But over the months as these transports of Jews to the east increased, rumours began to come back as to what was happening to
these people. There were wild stories of shootings and so people began to go into hiding to avoid being taken in the quota’s for the transports, so the Germans and Dutch auxiliary police began to engage in mass forcible round-ups.

  ‘Then in August 1942 it happened. We received a deportation notice. I remember it quite clearly. We had all sat around the table and I read the document through aloud. It listed all of us, from Grandpa Isaac, all the way down to baby Helena. We were directed to assemble at the Dutch Theatre, within 24 hours with our possessions, ready for transport to the east.’

  Hannah stopped there and looked at the jury. ‘You really can’t imagine how frightened we were. My mother did her best to be upbeat, to try and keep our spirits up, but I heard her crying at night and it broke my heart. But then Grandpa I think it was, practical as ever, said it was simple, we must go into hiding.

  ‘Mother didn’t think it was feasible for a family of five, and she didn’t believe anyone would help us, but then Grandpa suggested we approach Mrs. Van Der Valk, the mother of the boy whose life I had saved, and the person who had given me the Golden pendant and brooch.

  ‘It was gone 7 pm that evening when we finally decided to ask Mrs. Van Der Valk, and since we were due to assemble first thing next morning, I had to go out and see her that night. And of course there was a curfew in place for all Jews which you could be shot for breaching. So I remember that night very well, and also because it was the night that I ripped the hated yellow star we were all forced to wear, off my jacket and threw it away. Then I was gone into the night. I knew all the back ways and badly lit streets, and I knew the Germans could never touch me,’ Hannah said, and for the first time there was the hint of a steely smile and her eyes were alive, almost like she was enjoying this part of her testimony.