Remember my name, p.3
Remember My Name, page 3
Chapter 5
‘MOTHER, DID YOU hear me? Are you listening?’
Emily-Jane pulled her head out of the walk-in fridge with the door still open and looked over her shoulder at Cressida, the light falling from it creating a halo around her poker-straight blond hair. Her forehead was creased in a frown, her brown eyes narrowed accusingly.
Cressida looked up, her mind momentarily blank.
‘Sorry, love, what did you say?’
Sitting at the kitchen island, a glass of wine in front of her, Cressida been mindlessly scrolling through her phone. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for – some sort of connection with the outside world, a happy bump that would make her smile; something, anything, that would lift her spirits. Whatever it was, the rational part of her knew she wouldn’t find the solutions she needed locked in a small electronic device. But it didn’t stop the dreamer in her hoping. Cressida blinked as Emily-Jane glared at her meaningfully.
‘Em, I’m not a mind-reader, what’s the problem?’
Cressida was sure, whatever the fridge crisis was, it just wasn’t on the same scale as the one she was facing.
‘There’s no sushi.’ Emily-Jane inclined the end of the sentence as if an explanation was needed.
No sushi. The world was ending. Had Emily-Jane just said that? Really?
Cressida screwed up her face, trying to find a reasonable response that didn’t involve swearing or giving Emily-Jane a lecture about food poverty. Instead her mind fought to focus, too many thoughts trying to jostle for position at the same time. When she was seventeen she’d never heard of sushi. If she was hungry between meals it was toast or cereal – or at a push, if they had some ham, a sandwich. Her name betrayed her parents’ aspirations for grandeur, but she’d been brought up a long way from a palatial Georgian seafront five-bed in Dalkey village. Was she doing the best for Emily-Jane? Her mum’s stock response to any question was ‘We can’t afford it’, and she’d never wanted her daughter to have her wings clipped in the same way that she’d felt hers had been – money always placing a limitation on whatever she wanted to do. On everything.
But had that been the right thing to do?
Cressida had made sure not to spoil her. At least she thought she had. Emily-Jane was very grounded, wasn’t she? She didn’t drink, she had lovely friends. Cressida sighed.
‘Add it to the list and I’ll get some next time I’m ordering the shopping. I must have forgotten it.’
‘But I live on sushi—’
Cressida cut her off with a glare. She couldn’t deal with teenage histrionics now. She couldn’t deal with anything, actually. Since she’d met Brioni at lunchtime, she’d been replaying conversations with Laurence in her head, looking for the cracks. All the late nights at the office, all the business trips. All the nights he’d stayed in town saying he had breakfast meetings. Sure that Laurence would never risk the daughter he doted on, his beautiful house, their lifestyle, she’d stupidly believed all his excuses. But he was a born risk-taker. That’s what Ferryman had been all about. It had been a massive risk, but it had paid off.
How was she only realising that now?
She’d turned a blind eye to her niggling suspicions before, but this time was different. Hearing Nina’s name, hearing him speak to her, was like a seismic shift. Cressida felt as if she was poised on the edge of a precipice and what she did next would dictate whether she was able to balance or would plunge her down to a raging torrent below.
‘Are you listening, Mother?’ Emily-Jane closed the fridge door forcibly and flicked her hair over her shoulder. ‘Honestly, you spend more time on your phone than you do talking to me.’
‘I’m sorry, I was thinking.’
‘You’re always thinking. You’re worse than Dad. Not that he’s ever even here.’
‘I’m working, Em, when I’m thinking.’
‘But you’re always working.’
‘And so’s your father – that’s how we can afford to live somewhere nice and have a villa in Italy so close to your Aunt Sinéad, and how we were able to get you a car when you passed your driving test. If we didn’t work, things would be very different.’
Emily scowled. ‘I know, but Dad’s got a team of a thousand people to help and he still works all the time. Apparently.’
Cressida didn’t catch the end of the sentence, her thoughts focused on Emily-Jane’s point. Laurence did have an army of staff, in both companies, the Howard Group and Ferryman.
Emily-Jane didn’t notice her lack of response, continuing, ‘What time will he be home tonight?’
‘Who – your father? I’m not sure. Text him and ask.’
Emily picked up an apple from the fruit bowl and took a bite. She winced.
‘That’s really bitter. Yuck, where did you get these from?’ Without waiting for Cressida to answer, she continued, ‘I need his laptop. I started my Great Gatsby essay on it on Sunday.’
Cressida looked at her despairingly.
‘Didn’t you email it to yourself? Why didn’t you use your own computer?’
‘Because I can’t move my iMac and I wanted to work down here.’
‘But you know you’re not supposed to use his laptop, he’ll go nuts. How did you even get into it?’
‘I used the password. He’s hopeless, it’s the same as the alarm code. Ridiculous.’ She didn’t quite say ‘duh’ but it was written all over her face. ‘It’s better I get the essay done, isn’t it? I keep asking for a laptop—’
‘Em, you’ve got an iMac and an iPad, and the latest phone, how can you possibly need a laptop as well? You should have used mine—’
‘The external keyboard for my iPad isn’t connecting properly and you were at the clinic. Necessity is the mother of invention.’
‘When’s it due in?’
Emily-Jane pouted, caught out.
‘Tomorrow.’
‘You’ll have to text him to email it to you. Urgently. Honestly, Em. And you know he’ll go mad when he finds out you were fiddling with it. I hope you didn’t go into any of his files.’
Emily’s response was accompanied by the withering ‘as if’ look she’d perfected in the past year.
‘If you’d actually been at home at the weekend like everyone else’s mother, I wouldn’t have had to use it, would I?’
With that, she headed out of the kitchen door, pulling it decisively behind her.
Cressida ran her hand over her face. Was it her fault? She did spend a lot of time working from home, checking her email, keeping everything moving. But she loved her job. Was that wrong? She enjoyed working, enjoyed feeling needed, that she could make a difference.
Was that what the whole problem was here? That it was her, Cressida Maria Howard, that was the issue? Emily-Jane was independent now, she didn’t need her mum as much as she had done when she was little. Had she become redundant in Laurence’s life, too? The house was finished, the company was booming. Had she brought this on – this affair? Was she not attentive enough, or interesting enough? Perhaps it was her fault. Had she spent too much time building the clinic, getting the house right, looking after Emily-Jane, and neglected her relationship with Laurence? Was that why he was with this Nina woman?
Cressida drew in a slow breath, trying to calm her mind. The shock was making her irrational. Being busy was part of her psyche. It gave her something to talk about, to focus on; it was part of her. She ran her hand into her hair. If she was honest with herself, the thing that was really worrying her here was what Brioni might find out. Did she really want to know? They said knowledge was power, but it was also pain; was she ready for that? Ever since she’d heard Nina’s voice there had been a dull ache inside her chest, a deep sadness.
And fear.
But she knew that she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t act now, knew she would never be able to look at Laurence properly again, or listen to the lies that came out of his mouth without hearing their voices in her head. And she couldn’t live like that.
It was time.
Things were going to change.
Chapter 6
LOOKING OUT OF the window that ran the length of the living room to the windswept grasses undulating in the stiff onshore breeze, Brioni picked up her tea. She was sitting at the sun-bleached table that someone had pushed up against the window in about 1975. Even after the renovations it had returned to its familiar spot, sitting like an old friend waiting for plates to arrive laden with food and to leave scraped clean. It had never moved. Her dad used to come here to read the papers, spreading them out across the entire table as he sipped his coffee, trying to banish the reek of alcohol long enough for him to get down to the pub to start all over again.
But now it was her space.
Sitting here with her laptop in front of her, Brioni could see the beach sweeping away into the distance below, the waves rolling up the shore. The sky was glistening today, a rich blue that was mirrored in the water that swirled around the driftwood and piles of seaweed thrown up by Monday night’s storm.
Taking a sip from her mug, Brioni switched her attention to the job in hand. After talking to Cressida yesterday she’d come back to base and worked out a plan, spending the evening researching the key players in Ferryman, creating files with photographs of the directors and senior staff members. She had yet to find anyone called Nina, but perhaps it was short for something else, or she wasn’t on the payroll as permanent staff. Brioni was pretty sure that once she got into Laurence’s laptop, she’d be able to find out who she was.
Looking at the screen again and opening her email, Brioni scanned the incoming messages and a gentle smile grew on her face. Laurence had already opened the email containing the link that she’d sent earlier this morning before her swim. It really shouldn’t be this easy, but then this was what she did. She was paid a lot of money to find the weaknesses in systems and infiltrate them. Not normally with this particular worm, though. This was a piece of code that she’d been working on in her spare time since she’d left college. Getting it right had taken hours and endless patience. This would be its first outing into cyberspace, an excellent opportunity to test its strengths and weaknesses.
Brioni was a perfect example of a Scorpio, resourceful, and passionate, but she was also extremely stubborn and she didn’t believe anything until she had all the facts. Right now she didn’t have any of the information she needed, but she was about to get it.
Brioni could feel her heart rate rising as she opened another window and activated the camera on the computer she’d infiltrated. She just hoped Laurence hadn’t decided to open this particular email on someone else’s computer – on Cressida’s laptop, or his daughter’s. Getting him to click a supposedly innocuous link a second time would be something of a miracle.
After chatting to Cressida, Brioni had decided on a message from a specialist car dealer, inviting Laurence to a private viewing of a range of one-of-a-kind dream machines. The accompanying photograph had several stunning models demonstrating how the doors opened, with the implication that they would be there on the night. As an afterthought she’d added that it was a men only event. The ‘I’m interested’ link went to a 404 page on a website she’d mocked up. The moment he clicked through to it, her worm began its journey.
And it seemed to be working well.
The lid of his laptop was open, giving her a good view of the rear of what she guessed was his office – he’d obviously left it on his desk. Cressida had checked his diary and he had a regular Wednesday morning meeting with the heads of his Dublin hotels and a lunch afterwards, so the timing was perfect. There was no one sitting in the high-backed leather desk chair that was turned slightly away from the desk, as if someone had got out of it in a hurry. Behind it she could see a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking Grand Canal Dock, the distinctive red poles that formed the crazy giant sculpture outside the theatre blurred, but clear enough to recognise through the glass. There wasn’t much else to see in the office, but more importantly, if the laptop had been left on the desk, there was no one to see what might be happening on the screen.
Sitting forward on the edge of her chair, her mouth drying, Brioni waited a few minutes just to be sure that there was no one in the room. She turned the volume up to its maximum, but she couldn’t hear anyone. She strained to listen, focusing completely on the screen in front of her, trying to block out the sounds of the house, of the sea.
Someone could come in at any minute and see the cursor dancing around the screen as if it was possessed. Laurence might not be very careful with his password, but Brioni was quite sure he’d recognise the signs that his laptop had been hacked if he could see her moving things around.
Cressida had drawn her a map of the office and emailed her some photos they’d taken when Ferryman had first moved into the building. His room was on the top floor overlooking the canal basin. Brioni glanced over at the drawing. His expansive desk was at right angles to the door; in front of it were twin leather sofas and a glass coffee table. To his right as he sat at the desk was the door to the en suite shower room. (Why did he need a shower room in his office? Brioni hadn’t wanted to ask.) To the left of the desk, tucked away in the corner, was an exercise bike. His secretary had a connecting office immediately outside Laurence’s own, so she could screen any visitors before they entered.
Very cosy. But that meant that his secretary, who looked like a tiny, motherly woman in her late fifties in the photos Brioni had found, could come in at any moment and put something down on his desk.
Brioni just hoped she’d be able to hear the door opening.
Suddenly aware that her heartbeat was echoing in her ears, Brioni bit her lip and moved her mouse so that her movement was mirrored on his screen. Everything worked. She had full control.
Email first.
Opening the folder, Brioni scanned the messages on the screen.
There was nothing from anyone called Nina.
She needed more time to go through the emails individually. Once Laurence’s laptop was switched on, she could access it, but this would be a whole lot easier if Cressida could ensure Laurence was distracted.
Brioni moved the cursor to the email search bar and typed in ‘Nina’. An email address immediately popped up with a Ferryman address belonging to a Nina Rodríguez. Nina was quite an unusual name; with the balance of probability, this one had to be a strong contender for the woman Cressida had heard Laurence talking to. Brioni copied the address and, flicking to an open window on her own laptop, pasted it on to a sticky note. She hit enter and a string of emails to Nina appeared.
How much time did she have? Brioni needed to maintain access for as long as possible so she could get a clear idea of Laurence’s day, his interactions, to make sure there wasn’t anything else going on that might impact Cressida’s case.
At the top of the page was an unopened email. She couldn’t afford to look at that until he had. Her fingers flying over the keyboard, she opened the first email that Laurence had already opened. It was innocuous enough, not addressed personally, though, as if they were familiar with each other. Brioni rolled her eyes at the thought.
I have all the info you asked for. N x
Did employees usually sign off like that? Brioni didn’t, but then she wasn’t your average employee and her CEO sat on an exercise ball when he wasn’t at his standing desk.
Brioni glanced at the time and date of the email. It had been sent on Monday, at lunchtime. He’d replied:
Perfect. Talking to the client this evening if you can stay late, we can catch up afterwards.
Catch up? Brioni would bet they were catching up.
It sounded as if ‘info’ was the last thing they would be sharing.
Perhaps this was the rendezvous Cressida had overheard in Laurence’s office? Brioni opened his Google location history, checking back to Monday evening. In a few more clicks she could see he had been in his office until 9 p.m., when he’d gone next door to the 1796 hotel, taking one of his devices with him – his phone, most likely. Cressida had said he preferred to use that when he was out rather than bring the laptop with him – he tended to only bring that home at weekends. So that part had been true. Full marks.
Conscious that she had limited time, Brioni looked at the clock on the screen. There was a good chance he’d be coming back from his meeting soon, before he went out to lunch, and she wanted to check a few more things.
Then she could start finding out who this Nina was.
Chapter 7
‘SORRY I’M LATE, usual nonsense. Have you ordered?’
Kate Spicer looked up from her phone as Laurence finally appeared at the table she’d booked for them at their favourite restaurant. It was French, with lots of dark wood and low lighting. Cleverly built high partitions between the tables encased each one in a booth of sorts. It was very discreet. But then, the French were experts at discretion.
‘Don’t worry. I told you twelve, but I’ve only just got here.’
Slipping into his seat, one hand on his navy silk tie to stop it falling forwards onto the dark green and gold placemat positioned perfectly on a starched white linen tablecloth, Laurence frowned, his face half amused.
‘It’s 12.30, were you expecting me to wait for you?’
Kate looked at him reproachfully. ‘You’re consistently half an hour late for everything, Laurence, you have been your whole life. I booked the table for 12.30 so you’re right on time. And we’ll be out of here before it gets too busy.’
He scowled at her playfully and straightened the heavy silver cutlery before putting his phone face down on the tablecloth.
‘You know me too well.’
Kate smirked at him and reached out to squeeze his hand.
‘I’ve got a client coming in at two for a facial, so I need to be out of here by 1.30.’
