Page 37

Chapter 37

?Joe

Joe is coming around and he feels awful.

He’s propped up in some kind of office chair and when he finally focuses, he sees that he’s in the gatehouse that was locked when he arrived earlier and vaulted the gate. He checks his watch, frowns, then checks it again. He’s lost over four hours.

A sound behind him makes him quickly swivel in his seat, to take in the black-uniformed security guard filling him a plastic cup full of water from the chilled watercooler.

Joe flinches as the man, substantially bigger than him and armed, approaches. The man gives him a tight smile and hands him the plastic cup.

Joe takes it carefully and nods thanks before greedily gulping it down. His head is hot and buzzing. Joe’s eyes fall on the defense baton attached to the man’s utility belt and makes a fair assumption that this is the cause of his throbbing skull.

Joe tries to talk but his voice catches. He clears it and tries again. “Any particular reason you thought it was necessary to knock me out?” he asks the guard.

The guard gives him a hard look and gestures for Joe to hand him the cup for a refill. Joe obliges.

“I’ve called down my boss,” the guard tells him. “She’ll be here soon. You can talk to her.”

Joe frowns, then makes to rise. “The woman from before? I don’t think I’ll be hanging around for that. I think maybe I’ll just give the cops a call and see what the hell they make of the random woman I met up at the house. She’s not the owner. I know that much,” Joe says, up now and heading to the door.

The security guard blocks his way, handing him his refilled water. “I’d sit down if I were you.”

Joe gives a shaky laugh. “Oh, okay, I hadn’t realized it was legal for private security firms to hold civilians against their will.”

“Sit down, friend,” the security guard tells him with a kind of warmth; the threat of Joe is clearly not a genuine concern to him. “I’m holding you here until the cops arrive. You were trespassing on private property talking about a person no one here has ever heard of. I’m not letting you go until I know someone’s aware of you.”

Joe’s frown deepens. “What the hell are you talking about. Nina told me to come here. Nina lives here, her father died, she inherited the house. She asked me to come up here because she was getting weird notes and she was scared something was going to happen to her—”

Joe breaks off as the woman from earlier appears at the gatehouse window. He watches her type a code into the door and enter.

“Okay, try to relax and take a seat for me, okay?” the security guard asks Joe calmly, gesturing back to the seat. “Let’s not do anything we’ll regret here, okay?”

Joe considers the guard’s words and the fact that police will be arriving soon and that he does in fact have priors on his record for minor trespassing offenses. This more than anything gets him.

“Fuck. Okay, okay, I’m sitting.”

Lucinda gives the security guard a look, a nod, and then a “No, no. Please carry on,” before she perches on the edge of a desk behind him and watches.

“Tell us about this woman,” the guard says encouragingly, drawing Joe out.

Joe takes a deep breath and tells them everything.

Once Joe has finished the security guard blows out a hard breath and looks at the woman behind him. She nods him on and after a beat he says: “Okay, well, sir, it seems unlikely that you met Nina Hepworth today or that she called you from the house as Ms. Hepworth is an elderly woman in her eighties who lives in London and rents out this property to my boss here, whom you were just accosting up at the house. As you’ve just told us there appear to have been some previous mix-ups in your office over various Nina Hepworths already, is it possible that you have been the victim of a scam perhaps, sir?”

Joe stares at the man. “No.”

“Really, you’re sure of that? You’re sure nothing was taken from your office today?”

Joe racks his brains. “She only took copies of the plans.”

The guard shares a look with the woman, who remains impassive though Joe notices her fiddle nervously with the black band around her wrist.

“You say you let the woman today take copies? And the real Nina Hepworth had you sign an NDA to prevent you doing just that? Did you get a copy of this woman’s ID at least?”

Joe tries to recall. Then remembers that Nina had held her passport out but did not hand it over. His father only briefly glanced at it.

“Oh fuck,” Joe says simply. “Fucking fuck fuck. Son of a bitch.” For the first time in a long time Joe remembers how terrible he is with women. Just like his dad, he’s too trusting. And he fell for the whole damsel-in-distress gambit again.

The guard pulls a tight grimace. “There it is. Okay, so I think we know what’s happened here.” The guard looks at his watch then back to the woman; she looks at him quickly.

“I think, if it’s okay with you, Lucinda, we can let him go, right? I’ll explain the situation to the cops when they get here. If you want to leave your address, we can pass it on to them. Obviously, we’ll need to look into this incident a bit further if a random woman now has plans of the house but I’m not going to hold you here against your will, if you want to go?”

The guard pushes a pad and pen across to Joe. He scratches out his address. As the guard takes the pad back Joe looks up at the woman behind him, who is staring at Joe. She has a hand held tight over her watch as she holds his gaze and very slowly shakes her head.

The guard is not looking. She does it again.

Joe gives her an inquiring look; is she trying to tell him something? She points at the guard’s back and shakes her head then swallows hard.

Suddenly Joe understands. He’s walked straight into something very weird. Nina is real, she’s in danger, and so too, in some way, is this woman.

Lucinda nods now, seeing understanding quickly dawn on Joe’s features.

And in much the same way that Joe has walked into countless bad relationships he, without a further interrogating thought, grabs the guard’s weapon from his belt and turns it on him.