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5
Rodrigo was furious. He said, carefully, “How, precisely, did you manage to lose her?”
“She was followed from the moment she exited the plane,” replied the British voice on the phone. “She entered the public facilities, and never came out.”
“Did you send someone in to look for her?”
“After some length of time, yes.”
“Exactly what length of time?”
“Perhaps twenty minutes passed before my men became alarmed, sir. Then I had to wait until a female could be brought to the location to enter the facilities and search.”
Rodrigo closed his eyes as he tried to rein in his temper. Bumblers! The men following Denise must have become distracted and not noticed her leaving the facilities. There were no other exits, no windows or trash chutes or anything else. She could only have left the same way she entered, yet these idiots had somehow completely overlooked her.
The matter wasn’t terribly important, but inefficiency annoyed him. Until he got the answers he wanted about Denise’s background, he wanted to know exactly where she was and what she was doing. In fact, he’d expected to have those answers the day before, but the bureaucracy was being as inefficient as usual.
“One thing is puzzling, sir.”
“And that is?”
“When my men lost her, I immediately checked with Customs, but we have no record of her.”
Rodrigo sat upright, a sudden frown drawing his brows together. “What does that mean?”
“It means she disappeared. When I checked the passenger list of the inbound flight, there was no Denise Morel listed. She did get off the plane, but then she somehow disappeared. The only plausible explanation is that she got on another plane, but I have no record of her doing that.”
Alarm bells rang in Rodrigo’s head so loudly they were almost deafening. He went cold, frozen by the sudden horrible suspicion. “Check the records again, Mr. Murray. She must have done.”
“I have already double-checked, sir. There is no record of her entering or leaving London. I was very thorough with my search.”
“Thank you,” Rodrigo said, and hung up the phone. He was so enraged he was dizzy from the force of his emotions. The bitch had played him for a fool!
Just to make certain, he called his contact in the Ministry. “I need that information immediately,” he barked, not identifying either himself or the information in question. He didn’t need to.
“Yes, of course, but there is a problem.”
“You can’t find where this particular Denise Morel exists?” Rodrigo asked sarcastically.
“How did you know? I’m certain I can—”
“Don’t trouble yourself. You won’t find her.” His suspicions confirmed, Rodrigo hung up again and sat behind the desk trying to contain the sulfuric rage that blasted through him. He had to think clearly, and at the moment that was beyond him.
She was the poisoner. How clever of her, to also poison herself, but with such a small dose that she would be sick for a time but would survive. Or perhaps she hadn’t intended to sip the wine at all, but his father had insisted and she accidentally took a larger swallow than she’d intended. That part didn’t matter; what mattered was that, ultimately, she had succeeded in killing his father.
He couldn’t believe how she had fooled him, fooled them all. Her paperwork had been perfect, as far as it went. Now that it was too late, he saw with perfect clarity how it had worked. Salvatore had been lulled into carelessness by her apparent indifference to his advances, and Rodrigo, too, had allowed himself to relax after Salvatore’s first few meetings with her were so ordinary. If she had appeared eager for his father’s company, he would have been much more vigorous in demanding answers, but she had played them all perfectly.
She was obviously a professional, no doubt paid by one of his rivals. As a professional, she had other identities to use when she disappeared afterward, or perhaps she simply used her own real name, since Denise Morel was an alias. She had definitely been on that plane to London—his men had seen her there—therefore, one of the passengers listed was her. He simply had to discover which one, and follow the path from there. The task before him now—or rather, before his people who would be doing the actual work—was daunting, but he had a starting point. He would have them investigate every person on that plane, and he would find her.
No matter how long it took, he would find her. And then he would make her suffer far more than his poor father had suffered. Before he finished with her, she would not only tell him everything she knew about who had hired her, she would also die cursing her own mother for giving birth to her. This he swore on the memory of his father.
Lucas Swain moved silently about the flat that Liliane Mansfield, aka Denise Morel, had abandoned.
Oh, her clothes were still here, or most of them, anyway. Food still in the cupboard, a bowl and spoon in the sink. It looked as if she’d gone to work, or was just out shopping, but he knew better. He knew a professional job when he saw one. There wasn’t a fingerprint in the place, not even on the spoon left in the sink. The wipe-down was perfect.
Judging from the file he’d read on her, the clothes she’d left behind weren’t her type, anyway. The clothes belonged to Denise Morel, and now that Denise had served her purpose, Lily had shed her like a snake shedding its skin. Salvatore Nervi was dead; there was no reason for Denise to exist any longer.
What puzzled him was why she’d hung around for so long. Nervi had evidently been dead for a week or longer, but the landlord reported Mlle. Morel had taken a taxi this very morning. No, he did not know to where, but she was carrying a small bag. A weekend trip, perhaps.
