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CHAPTER 3
HMP Belmarsh, Thamesmead, Southeast London, 27 April

‘I’ve already told you at least five times, I don’t know where she is.’ Gordon Bloom’s perfectly enunciated speech sounded thick and sluggish with boredom. He rolled his functioning eye whilst the prosthetic remained unmoving in its socket. Straightening the sleeves on his crisp shirt, as though he were holding court from behind his desk in the City instead of from the other side of a scuffed table inside one of Belmarsh Prison’s interview rooms. ‘I’ve never met the woman in my life. I know nothing about your mother or an eyeball or your father or any of the slanderous nonsense I was convicted for.’

Studiously ignoring the photograph of Letitia that George had pushed in front of him – all sequins and cleavage, with a black marabou feather boa wrapped around her fat neck at Aunty Sharon’s fortieth – he examined his diamond-studded cufflinks instead. These were the adornments of criminal royalty, appropriately worn by a minor royal. The fact that they hadn’t been stolen by one of the other inmates told George exactly how ‘The Duke’ was regarded on the inside.

‘Anyway, I thought you were interviewing me as an academic study subject,’ he said. ‘Not grilling me yet again about your fucking mother, you tedious bitch.’ He prodded at the image disdainfully. ‘Why on earth would I have the first idea of the whereabouts of some low-life old has-been from the ghetto? I’m an innocent man!’

Sitting back in his chair, he flashed George with a disingenuous smile. She could see where the dental cement that plugged the hole in his incisor, once occupied by a diamond stud, had yellowed with neglect and too many cups of low-grade black tea.

‘They don’t let the hygienist in, I see,’ she said, leaning forward in her chair; pointing to his tooth; wanting him to see that she remained unruffled by his insult.

Bloom closed his mouth abruptly. Folded his arms. ‘I’m not saying another word to you. Uppity cunts like you, little Miss McKenzie, think a scroll of paper containing a qualification from a good university puts you on a par with the likes of me.’ He leaned forwards, scowling. The cosmetic enhancements and adjustments to his face, which had allowed him to remain unrecognisable for so long, covering up some of the damage George had inflicted on him with her well-placed punch from a makeshift knuckle-duster, were now beginning to show signs of deterioration. His prosthetic eye was sinister and staring. ‘Well, it doesn’t. And you aren’t.’ He turned his attention defiantly to her ample bosom, though her simple black polo neck was anything but revealing. ‘Your kind are only fit for one thing.’

Suppressing the urge to reach over and hit the arrogant, entitled prick yet again, George wrote the notes, ‘Poor self-esteem. Possible sexual dysfunction.’ on her pad, legible enough for her interviewee to read. She savoured the rancorous grimace on his face as he read it upside down.

Gordon Bloom turned around to the prison officer who stood sentry in the corner of the interview room. A mountain of a man, wearing a utility belt full of riot control knick-knacks that could stop even The Duke in his tracks.

‘Get her out of here!’ he yelled.

The prison officer looked quizzically at George, as though she had spoken and not his charge. ‘You finished already, Dr McKenzie?’ His voice was friendly. Polite.

‘No, Stan. I’ve still got a few questions, if you don’t mind,’ George said. She sat tall in her seat. Took out her new tortoiseshell glasses. Watched Bloom’s irritation out of the corner of her eye as she carefully, methodically, slowly polished the lenses with their special cloth and some lens cleaner. Perched them on the end of her nose. Folded the cloth neatly into perfect squares and placed it inside her case, which she snapped shut, making Bloom flinch. ‘Relax, bae. I is being well gentle with you, innit?’ Watched as her Southeast London street-speak visibly rankled with the toff. She shook out her curls dramatically with work-worn hands that were devoid of any adornment.

‘This is ridiculous.’ Bloom slapped the table top like a defiant toddler. ‘I don’t want to be here. My solicitor says I shouldn’t speak to you. We’re going to appeal, you know? And I’m going to get this absurd verdict overturned and reclaim my impeccable reputation as a pillar of the City of London’s business community.’

George could see from the glint in his good eye that he believed his own hype. She fanned her hand dismissively in front of her face. ‘Spare me the bravado, Lord Bloom. You wanted to be in my next book. You fancied the infamy. I could smell it on you – that desperation to fill the public with horrified awe. It’s everything you ever wanted, isn’t it? It’s all men like you ever want.’ She peered at him over the top of her glasses like an indulgent, knowing schoolmarm. Winked.

Bloom stood abruptly. Thumped his fists onto the table, making his cufflinks clink. ‘If that’s true, how come I kept my identity secret for decades, you presumptuous, ignorant whore? I’m not the attention-seeker you think I am, Miss McKenzie.’

‘Sit down, Lord Bloom,’ Stan the prison officer said, assuming the wide-legged stance of a man who was alert and ready for confrontation.

Feeling this was a wasted visit, revealing absolutely nothing new of any note, George capped her pen. The only thing she had managed to achieve during the last two sessions had been to antagonise the man who was almost certainly behind the disappearance of her mother and those infernal fucking emails. Beneath the table, she balled her fists. George, the woman, wanted to deck the mealy-mouthed upper-crust bastard. George, the professional, had learned to bite her tongue. How she needed a smoke.

‘Come on. Play the game. It’s Doctor McKenzie,’ she said. ‘And I think being in prison after being Mr Billionaire Hotshot at the top of the transnational trafficking heap has changed you. You’ve got to get the kicks where you can find them, now. What the hell do you have left apart from kudos among the inmates, who just want you to suck their cocks? The odd bit of media interest. Or me.’ She closed her eyes emphatically. Arranged her full lips into a perfect pout.

When she looked up, her study subject’s back was turned. Heading towards the door now with the prison officer at his side. She could see his upper body shaking in temper. Still the gentleman on the surface in his Jermyn Street City-wear, but the bloodthirsty criminal lurked just beneath the surface, she knew. Glancing over his shoulder, he shook his head damningly.

‘I hope your old sow of a mother is dead,’ he said. ‘I hope she’s mouldering at the bottom of a canal in Amsterdam, like I’m slowly decomposing in this dump when I should be a free man or, at least, enjoying an easy ride in an open prison in the Netherlands. All thanks to that bastard, Van den Bergen. Tell him to eat shit and die when you next see him, won’t you, dear?’

‘See you next week, Gordy, baby!’ George retorted merrily in reply. ‘Fuck you, wanker,’ she said under her breath, once she was alone.

On the outside, she pulled her e-cigarette out of her bag with a shaking hand. Dragged heavily on it. Sighed heavily and thumbed a text to Aunty Sharon.

Still no breakthrough re. Letitia. Do you want me to pick anything up on the way home?

The walk to the bus stop was bleak, as usual. Wind gusted across the giant Belmarsh complex, with its uniform beige brick buildings. George mused that they resembled oversized cheap motels or a 1980s commercial trading estate or perhaps a crap school – the kind where they’d invested money in a new building and nothing else, meaning it was permanently on special measures. The double-height fencing reminded her what sort of study subjects she worked with. Terrorists, murderers, violent people traffickers. Gordon Bloom. He was pretty much as bad as any other psychotic inmate the notorious Belmarsh had entertained. The only difference was, he was white, well educated and well heeled.

To her left, the modern buildings of the Woolwich Crown Court loomed, conjuring memories of a teenaged Ella, testifying against her former consorts in a closed court. George shuddered at the unwelcome flashbacks from her other life, now long gone: having to wear the ill-fitting track suits of the Victorian women’s prison up north, where Letitia had left her to rot on remand; huddled in her pissy cell, fearing what the future might hold for a grass; a teenaged girl, bravely taking the punches from the other banged-up women, as they vented their frustrations on one another at a justice system that so often failed them.

As she crossed the road and ventured along a cycle path into a copse of budding trees, bus-stop-bound, she wondered why on earth she was bothering to hunt down her mother at all. Maybe the old cow had just gone AWOL of her own accord. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time.

‘A year,’ George whispered to the wilds of Woolwich that shot by, as the bus bounced her towards the DLR station. ‘In fact, one year, one month and three days since you vanished. Where the hell are you, Letitia?’ Absently taking in the rise of flashy new developments close to the riverside on her right, heralding the march of the middle class on what was traditionally an area of Southeast London on the bones of its semi-maritime arse. The low-rent, low-rise shops to her left, offering fried chicken and cheap mobile phones to the poultry- and telecoms-addicted locals. She considered the eyeball – an eyeball she had presumed to be Letitia’s – which had been carefully gift-wrapped inside a fancy box, sitting on the table in Amsterdam’s Vinkeles restaurant. ‘The Israelites’ emanating from Letitia’s vibrating phone also contained within that box of delights. Now, whenever George heard Desmond Dekker, anguish tied her innards into knots.

Taking out her own phone, George thumbed out a text to Marie in Dutch. Imagined Van den Bergen’s IT expert, sitting in her own cabbagey fug in the spacious IT suite that Van den Bergen had persuaded his new boss to give over to her internet research activities. Everybody had had quite enough of sharing Marie’s eau-de-armpits.

Any news on eyeball-gate? Did some more googling today but still nothing on my dad.

Trudging up the road to her aunty’s place, George agonised yet again over the origins of this waking nightmare: the original out-of-the-blue email from her father, inviting her to lunch at Vinkeles, apparently as a reconciliatory gesture. His name had been used as a lure to get her to that restaurant, she felt certain.

Michael Carlos Izquierdo Moreno.

Four words that conjured in her mind’s eye vivid memories of a childhood fraught with parental drama. A handsome, clever Spanish man she could now barely remember. Daddy’s hairy, olive-skinned arms, swinging her high onto his shoulders. The smell of toasted tobacco and aftershave coming from his black hair and tanned neck. She had clung onto his head for dear life, thinking him so impossibly tall, though next to Van den Bergen he would in all likelihood have seemed diminutive. Speaking the Catalan Spanish to her of his native Tarragona.

Swallowing down a lump in her throat, she felt suddenly alone and vulnerable on that shabby street in Catford. Hastening past the grey-and-cream Victorian terraces towards the warmth and welcoming smells of Aunty Sharon’s, paranoia started to set in. The place started to feel like an artfully constructed movie set, concealing something far more sinister behind the brick façades than the mundane workings of people’s family lives. Uniform rows of houses closing in on her; stretching her route to safety indefinitely. Paranoia had been a familiar visitor in the course of the last year. She was sick of feeling that she was being watched by somebody, perhaps hiding behind some wheelie bins or overgrown hedging.

Glancing around, George sought out that long-haired old biker once again. A craggy face, partially hidden behind mirror shades, that had cropped up in her peripheral vision once too often when she had been food-shopping in Amsterdam or walking from Van den Bergen’s apartment to the tram stop. Hadn’t she seen him over here in the UK, too? Skulking on a platform in Lewisham when she had been waiting to catch the DLR. The sense that she was being followed now was overwhelming.

She stopped abruptly. Took her handbag-sized deodorant from her coat pocket, poised to spray any lurkers in the eyes. Gasping for air.

‘Come out, you bastard!’ she yelled.