‘Yes, of course,’ said Harlan, catching his breath and swiping a hand over his eyes. ‘Sorry,’ he said, and coughed. ‘This has been so upsetting for us, as you can imagine.’

‘Indeed,’ said the older one.

‘For my sister and myself,’ elaborated Harlan.

‘Is she at home today? Could we speak to her?’ asked the older one.

Right now Harlan didn’t have a clue where Milly was. He’d heard word she was hanging around the clubs and – silly cow – getting into the drugs scene. You never touched the product. That was for mugs. Still – so long as she was out of his way, everything was fine.

‘No, I think she’s in town. She’s taken it very hard, all this. We have properties there, but I’ve no idea which one she’s staying at. My father was rich, you know.’

‘And now his wealth has passed to you and your sister.’

‘Yeah.’ Well – to him, anyway. Charlie had trusted him implicitly and had left the whole shebang to him. Milly had her thirty-grand allowance per annum, paid straight into her personal account. Small change, compared to what he’d got. ‘But we’d happily give it all back if only we could have our parents returned to us.’

‘Imports, wasn’t it?’ asked the younger one. ‘Furnishings and such?’

‘That’s right.’

The younger AAI man snapped closed his briefcase. ‘As we say, this is a police matter now.’

‘Let’s hope they catch whoever did it,’ said Harlan.

‘Yes,’ said the older man, eyeing him beadily. ‘Let’s hope.’

141

The pills had been OK, but crack was better. Milly loved nothing better than getting spaced out, properly spaced out, on crack. When she inhaled from the pipe she was blissed out, removed from the world.

She was sucking on the pipe like an infant on its mother’s tit, she was happy.

She was lying on her bed in one of Charlie’s – no, Harlan’s – London houses and feeling soooo mellow. And then, crashing noises. She didn’t know how it happened but suddenly there were people all around her, scary-looking people, maybe she was having a bad trip? She’d heard that could happen. These were all big men, hard-looking men, and then someone was shoving through them, coming to the bed, and . . .

‘Shit . . .’ she murmured, thinking that this was indeed a bad trip, a terrible one, because she imagined she saw Belle standing right there by the bed looking down at her, but not beautiful Belle, not her friend who she’d missed these past few weeks, and fretted over when she wasn’t off her face, wondering where the hell Belle could have got to. This Belle’s face was scarred all down the left side, like something out of a bloody nightmare, so she had to be imagining this, it wasn’t real.

Milly screwed her eyes tight shut. She didn’t like this. Not at all.