29
8.40 a.m.
FAMIE AND SOPHIE walked back to their room. The buildings alternated between suburbia and industrial trading estate. The roads were busy and the pedestrians hurried. No one looked at anyone else.
‘Kind of easy to feel anonymous here,’ said Sophie. ‘I like it.’
‘Welcome to Southgate,’ said Famie.
They walked a couple of blocks. The morning heat was already beginning to sting. Famie could feel her shirt clinging to her back. She peeled it loose.
‘I was thinking,’ said Sophie. ‘Don’t you think we should go to the police? They don’t need to know about the laptop but at some stage we need to talk to them.’
‘Have they spoken to you at all?’ asked Famie. ‘I’ve told them about my note leaver, of course. It’s filed with the extraterrestrials, I believe.’
‘Well, at least show them the phone number and the Telegraph then,’ said Sophie.
‘OK, that Hunter woman gave me her card. We can set up a meeting. But it’s Amal they’ll want to talk about. How many times did you meet him again?’
‘Five, I think. I’ve counted them. Fairly certain it’s five.’
‘Tell me about them. Tell me about him.’
Sophie hooked an arm in Famie’s. A row of canopied shops provided some brief shade.
‘He’s intense,’ she began. ‘Seth was so easy to talk to but Amal was cagey. Twitchy. Always suspicious. Guarded, I’d say, like he was considering every word before he said it.’
‘Was that just with you or was he like that with Seth?’
‘He was like that all the time. There was never any brotherly chat, no in-jokes, no family chat. Seth always seemed … on edge around him. And now I think about it, my arrival was usually the cue for Amal’s departure.’
‘And when he’d left, did Seth talk about him? How did he seem?’
‘He never mentioned him. Changed the subject if I asked.’
‘What a family,’ said Famie. ‘Did you speak at the funeral?’
‘No. I had some words ready, but …’ She broke off.
‘But you never needed them,’ suggested Famie.
Sophie nodded.
‘And I assume he didn’t know you were pregnant.’
‘Correct. But I hadn’t seen him for ages.’
Famie frowned. ‘How long were you and Seth together?’
‘Since January,’ said Sophie. ‘And all the times I saw Amal were in February and March. Nothing since.’
They walked a block in silence.
‘The police will want to know if he mentioned Islamic Jihad or religion or any of that,’ Famie said.
Sophie shook her head. ‘Never.’
‘They’ll also ask if Seth ever asked you for money.’
Sophie turned her head, eyebrows raised. ‘Yes! Did he do that with you too?’
Famie nodded. ‘Yup.’
‘I could never understand it,’ said Sophie. ‘He was twelve years older than me, earning much more than me and always on the scrounge. What was that about?’
‘God knows,’ said Famie. ‘But on the list of things I’d like to ask him about, it’s pretty low.’
‘And top of the list?’ asked Sophie.
‘How did you become such a bastard prick womanizer, I think.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Sophie.
They waited at a crossroads.
‘So is that a yes to the police meet?’
Famie pulled DC Hunter’s card from her jeans. ‘Sure. I’ll call from our penthouse suite. But first I’d like to rope in Sam and Tommi. You OK with that? We don’t need to tell them about the … about your condition.’
The lights changed, they crossed.
Sophie pushed her sunglasses to her forehead. She squinted at Famie. ‘Yes please, leave my “condition” out of it. And the laptop? Do we tell them about the photos?’
‘We tell them about them, yes. We don’t need to show them. Their imagination can fill the gaps.’
Famie did most of the talking. Sam and Tommi’s imaginations filled in the gaps. The women sat on Famie’s bed, the men on Sophie’s. The room’s one window had been opened as far as the six-inch catch allowed. The air was stale, the temperature high.
‘Is that the laptop?’ Tommi was pointing at Sophie’s drawstring bag. A black plastic corner protruded from the top of it.
Sophie nodded.
Sam’s mouth gaped open. ‘So … Seth and Mary? Really?’ he said.
There was a silence before Famie said, ‘I know. I’m thinking about her funeral too.’
‘But it’s like he was trying to humiliate all of us,’ said Sam, ‘like he was working his way through the team.’
‘Oh thanks,’ muttered Sophie.
‘Choose your words, Sam, for Christ’s sake,’ said Famie.
‘Sorry, Sophie, wasn’t thinking.’ Sam looked mortified.
Sophie acknowledged the apology.
‘And you haven’t deleted anything,’ said Tommi.
‘Not yet,’ said Sophie.
‘And there’s no reference to Amal.’
‘No.’
‘You still need to tell the police.’
‘We know,’ said Sophie and Famie together. ‘Tell us something we don’t,’ Famie added.
Sam fidgeted, then said, ‘OK. Well. Look, tell me if I’m out of order here, but is it time to ask whether everything we knew, or thought we knew, about Seth is wrong? That the peace-loving, campaigning journalist thing was a front. That he was involved with EIJ like his brother. That he siphoned money from everywhere to fund them. And that the Egyptian government hated him, not because of his human rights work but because they knew what he was really up to.’ He looked around the room. ‘Just a thought,’ he added.
‘And then the Egyptians killed him?’ asked Tommi, unconvinced. ‘Along with his team? Doesn’t make sense.’
Sam held up his hands. ‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘You’re right. I’m just saying that it’s obvious we really didn’t know Seth at all. And that all our assumptions might be wrong.’
Famie’s head was reeling. ‘Agree with that last sentence, Sam. But I’m struggling with the rest.’ She massaged her temples. Might it be possible that she had been totally played? That when Seth had been attending protest meetings and rallies, he was actually working as some kind of spy? That the articles and blogs had been a front? She realized quite how unquestioning she had been. Seth had set out his narrative, told his story and told it well. She had lapped it up. Accepted it. Endorsed it. Even revelled in it. Christ, what an unholy mess this all was. Quite how much more of a shit was it possible to be?
Tommi pushed his glasses back up his nose, checked his watch. ‘OK, we can do this then.’ He took his phone from his pocket. ‘I took a call from Dave Coolidge in the New York bureau over the weekend. He wanted to catch up on how everyone was. How the investigation was going.’
Famie leant into Sophie. ‘He was based here a few years back. Good guy. Politics was his thing. American, British, European, wherever. He could probably tell you who the Belgian Foreign Minister is if you asked.’