Nina looks at the new open doorway and the corridor beyond. At least now she has an idea of what might actually be going on here, she figures. And they’re wrong, of course, because Joe knows she’s here, and Oksana.
And perhaps Oksana is a lost cause, but Joe will come, Joe will come soon, if he isn’t already here.
CHAPTER 36
LUCINDA
L ucinda watches Nina through the glass of the mirror. She thinks of the day she went to visit Nina’s father. He had known, she was certain of it. He must have. He was brilliant. And yet…
Lucinda recalls it now. How she sat in her town car on John Hepworth’s street in Highgate and watched Nina breezily leave the house, a tote bag of books and papers over her shoulder. She’d watched her slip into her own beat-up Ford Fiesta and drive off. Back to the university where she was scheduled to lecture twice that afternoon.
Lucinda had all the information at her fingertips.
In her hand she carried a copy of John Hepworth’s lesser-known and only work of fiction, Vauxhall Bridge in the Rain, a postwar Graham Greene–style doomed-romance novella. A work his publisher had clearly felt obligated to print given his otherwise brilliant nonfiction output.
It wasn’t that it was bad, Lucinda reasoned—having read all 156 pages of it that morning after the courier had dropped it off—it was that it was too studied. There was no heart in it, as if the author had been too shy of showing any.
Lucinda grasped the book tight, told the driver to give her an hour, perhaps two, and slipped from the car, her well-chosen floral dress clinging to her, a cardigan covering her still-cable-tie-damaged wrists, makeup over her bruised temple.
Lucinda looked soft and kind as she headed toward the front door of John Stanley Hepworth, she looked friendly and easy to talk to and not dissimilar to his long-dead wife. Lucinda was good at this, which was why they paid her so incredibly well.
She knocked on the glossy red front door, catching sight of her medical alert band and hastily covering it. It was good to feel safe after what had happened, though Lucinda knew why she had really been chosen for her job —why she was the finder, why they actually paid her so much: because she had no one either. If she failed, there would be no loose ends. And she too was a very impressive young woman—she could very easily end up in that house.
Lucinda pushed the thought away as the door briskly opened in front of her and a spritely, kind-eyed old man gave her a surprised smile.
“Ah, I thought you might be my daughter—forgetting something. But clearly not,” he said, taking her in, his surprise morphing into a mild confusion. “Now, do I know you? Are you a student? Have I done something awful that demands reprisal?” He chuckled.
His laugh caught her off guard. “No, God no,” she said, smiling, a feeling like dread seeping into her bones at how personable this man was— at how lovely his daughter must be—but she pushed the thought away.
“No, sorry. My name is Lucinda and I heard that you lived on this street and I’m being incredibly cheeky but I was wondering if you could sign my book? I’m a big fan. I would love it if you could.”
John’s eyebrows rose. He was an intelligent man, Lucinda knew that, that was sort of the point in all this, and he wasn’t buying this for a second. And yet he considered the outstretched book for a moment before fully pulling open the door.
“Well now, I was about to make a fresh pot of tea. How does that sound to you, Lucinda? Do you have time to come in for tea?”
Lucinda felt a smile spread across her face. She knew who he was. He had designed the house. The original rooms. And she had reconfigured them. They were a good match—his ailing health only just allowing her to even enter the same arena.
She could tell he didn’t buy it for a second but he was interested. And that was enough to get her in the house—which was more than she had bargained for.
The keys jangled in the front door as he closed it behind her and gestured for her to head into the kitchen.
It was warm and cozy and had the feel of a Cotswold cottage but in the heart of London. Books covered most surfaces. A battered armchair sat beside the Aga, and the scent of hot buttered toast seemed to pervade the house.
“Toasted crumpet? Biscuits?” he asked, gesturing for her to take a seat.
“Biscuits would be lovely,” she answered as she perched on a straight-backed kitchen chair and watched him make the tea.
As the kettle simmered and popped, she asked, “So the daughter you mentioned. What does she do? Is she an academic too?”
John swiveled to take Lucinda in, still trying to make sense of the odd proposition that she was: a young woman not quite telling the truth in his kitchen. But he was willing to find out the old-fashioned way.
“She is, but far more competent than I. You see, that’s the problem with trying a bit of everything—you never get the whole way through anything. She gets to the bottom of things, though. The dregs.” As the kettle roared to boiling John asked Lucinda what she did. She found, had always found, that sticking as close to the truth as possible was the safest option.
“I’m a headhunter. For private investment clients,” she told him.
He nodded, and several cogs clicked into place in his mind.
“And how are the super-rich these days?” he asked with a sly smile.
