Lethal Profit Read online

  Coffee. She needed coffee.

  Eva was eternally grateful for the fact that Paris was a city of pavement cafés and bars serving a universally high standard of coffee. She sat in the corner of a small establishment near her hotel, hunched over an English newspaper she’d bought on the way. In front of her, a black coffee, a glass of water, an untouched croissant and a small red plastic bowl containing a printed receipt. She added another sachet of sugar to the thick, dark liquid, stirred it slowly with a spoon and then placed the spoon carefully on the side of the saucer. She turned the page of the paper and took a slow sip of the strong coffee.

  In front of her, the world’s current affairs were laid out like a depressing comic. Pictures of politicians showing off their veneers, footballers in thousands of pounds worth of designer clothes cheating on their wives, and financiers striking deals that would benefit only the 1 per cent. This was the first recession she had really experienced and she had never imagined how much it would change the country she had lived in all her life. In the past few months the news had seemed even more unbelievable – banks manipulating exchange rates for their own profits, political figures making decisions against public interests motivated by big business and the destruction of seemingly permanent institutions like the National Health Service. It shocked and surprised her that – on the whole – whilst all this damage was being done to their society most Britons did nothing. But then neither did she. At the tender age of twenty-eight she had become utterly apathetic; too concerned with her own survival to put time and effort into holding anyone else to account. Jackson had left her money – an unexpectedly large amount of money – and that gave her the luxury of inaction. Without that her life right now would be very difficult.

  Eva finished her coffee and signalled to the waiter for another. She took an unenthusiastic bite of her croissant. Jackson. All her thoughts came back to Jackson. Even now there was another memory, waiting at the edge of her consciousness to be let in. This was one of the fights they’d had as teenagers, often about politics – she blinkeredly left-wing and he already a staunch capitalist. Their father, a journalist for a big daily, had encouraged them to debate and question from an early age, to speak out when they felt they saw injustice. Of course, that had massively backfired on him when his affair had been uncovered. She had no doubt he had wished then that he had raised his kids to be seen and not heard.

  Jackson, especially, had been unable even to look his father in the eye when that happened. At eighteen he still looked up to Paul Scott with childishly adoring eyes, but his father’s affair with Irene Hunt – cheating on their mother after twenty years of marriage – enraged Jackson. When he crashed his car several weeks later he simply walked away, leaving the family to believe he had died. In recent months Eva had realised that she never really grieved for Jackson in the ten years that followed. Not like she was now. Perhaps somewhere deep down she had known he wasn’t actually dead. She checked the display on her phone and saw she had been sitting there for half an hour. Throwing a note and a few coins into the red plastic bowl, she zipped up her leather jacket, jammed a Russian hat down over her ears and headed for the door.

  The train to the suburb where Shaun Thompson lived took less than half an hour, but getting off at the station was like stepping into another world. Whilst Eva was used to the dirty, occasionally mean streets of London, by comparison Shaun lived in a very rough suburb. The area was populated with low, square blocks of flats up to four storeys high, either dirtily whitewashed or preserved in their original grey concrete. Other than the flats and the graffiti that decorated them, the area didn’t seem to have much else to offer. Gangs of kids of all origins hung around, hands in pockets, kicking balls at passers-by or listening to music pumping out from the tinny speakers on their phones.

  Eva felt the heaviness of being a fish out of water. She wondered why Shaun, as a foreigner, and therefore presumably a natural outsider, had made his home somewhere like this. She pulled the post-it note she had written his address on out of her bag and looked at it again: 134 Rue des Villiers. According to the very old map she had managed to acquire from her hotel – the only one they had that went out as far as this suburb – the flat was on the same road as the station.

  When she reached it, she found that Shaun’s block of flats was one of the nicest on the street, although that wasn’t saying much. Running to four storeys, the whitewash had retained a little of its gleam and someone had planted flowerbeds either side of the path leading from the road to the front door. There was a small, white-haired man standing outside with a brush, repeatedly sweeping the same spot of concrete.

  ‘Hello.’ Eva smiled directly at him, choosing to speak English to try and discover straight away whether she could avoid having a whole conversation in painful broken French. The man continued to sweep his spot and totally ignored her.

  ‘Hello?’

  As she leaned in a little closer, Eva noticed he was singing to himself and smelled quite badly of urine.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, don’t mind my father.’

  She jumped as a younger woman appeared from the ground floor flat and placed her hands around the old man’s shoulders. He stopped rocking and looked at her.

  ‘Can I help at all?

  ‘You speak English,’ Eva smiled, unable to contain her relief.

  ‘Yes, I learned from my father, he used to be very good at it.’ She stopped and gazed at the vacant old man.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Eva awkwardly.

  ‘It will happen to us all someday!’ the woman said cheerfully and rearranged her long, dark hair into a tortoiseshell comb that sat just above her left ear. ‘Did you want something?’

  ‘Yes, I’m looking for someone called Shaun Thompson. Apparently he lives here.’

  ‘Shawan…?’ The woman frowned.

  ‘Thompson.’

  The woman thought for a second. ‘You know, I know everyone in this block – there are only sixteen flats – and there is no one by that name.’

  ‘I was given this as his address.’ Eva handed over the post-it note.

  ‘Well, this is the same address. Are you sure they have the right person?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. He’s English?’

  ‘But, of course, that’s Shoon!’

  Eva stared at the woman nonplussed, wondering if she was as mad as her father.

  ‘Yes, he’s the only English person for miles around. Yes, Shoon,’ she said again, saying the name so that it sounded nothing like Eva’s pronunciation – the English pronunciation.

  ‘He lives at number nine – third floor, second door on the right. You’ll have to take the stairs, I’m afraid, as the lift is broken.’ She smiled apologetically and put her hands back on the old man’s shoulders, gently drawing him back to the flat. ‘Nice to meet you.’

  ‘Thanks very much.’

  Eva followed the couple in through the front door and then started up the first set of concrete stairs that, like all stairwells, seemed to smell of smoke and urine. When she reached the third floor, she followed the woman’s instructions and went to Shaun’s door. His name was scrawled neatly in a small plastic box on the right but there didn’t appear to be a bell. She took her hat off and shoved it into her bag, knocked quickly at the scuffed surface of the wooden door and waited. No answer. She waited a couple of minutes and then knocked again but there was still no response. Glancing around to make sure no one was looking she pressed her left ear up against the door to try and detect signs of movement. The door creaked open. Eva stepped back. She looked around again to see if any of the other residents in the housing block had noticed her, but there didn’t seem to be anyone around. Gently, she pushed the door so that it was fully open and took several steps inside.

  ‘Hello?… er… Shaun?’

  No answer.

  Eva walked further into the flat then paused and looked back at the open doorway. Still no sound came from the hallway. If anyone had noticed, they were keeping themselv
es to themselves. She took a deep breath. Was she really going to do this? She wanted to find Shaun himself, not go searching through his flat. And why was his front door open? Realising she was probably wasting her time, she turned back towards the door, about to leave. Suddenly she stopped.

  In the corner of the door leading through to what looked like the living room was a bare foot, sole up. The foot was completely still. Eva stepped closer, her heart almost stopping as she held her breath, knowing there was only going to be one outcome to this regrettable burst of curiosity.

  She walked quickly into the living room, came to a sudden halt and rocked backwards on her heels, a scream stuck somewhere in the back of her throat. Oh my god.

  A man – presumably Shaun – stared back at her from the floor, eyes wide and bulging. His mouth was open and gaping and his body was lying twisted at an unnatural angle, his lower half facing down and his upper torso twisted so that from the waist up he was lying on his side, almost on his back. A wave of nausea overwhelmed Eva and she turned out of the living room door and retched. When she managed to compose herself she looked again at the corpse; his eyes were wide open, desperate, almost surprised, his naked body so white against the faux wood flooring. She took several steps towards him, slowly bent down and felt for a pulse, just in case. Nothing. She stepped back again. She had never seen a corpse before; the complete stillness was unnerving. There were red marks around Shaun’s wrists but other than that she couldn’t see anything on the flaxen white skin that could explain his sudden demise. There was no blood, no knife wound, no ligature marks around the neck. She took a tentative step forward and leaned in closer, fighting her imagination that was convinced he would rear up and suddenly grab at her like a character from a cheap horror film.

  Then she noticed an angry red dot on the back of his right thigh. It was tiny and wouldn’t have attracted her attention except that it was so red and his body so white. She bent down and looked at the mark, aware of her breath coming in short, measured bursts. It was a small red welt, like a small version of the mark she’d been left with after a Hepatitis B injection before a holiday several years ago. It was the mark left by a needle. I have to get out of here, she thought suddenly as a flight reflex kicked in. She started towards the door but something held her back. Shouldn‘t she look around? If someone had come here based on the same information she had, then maybe she was on to something. Shaun’s death could be completely unrelated but maybe it wasn’t; maybe there was something here that might give her some clue about what had happened to Jackson.

  Very slowly, her heart hammering, Eva walked back to the front door of the flat and pushed it closed. She returned to the living room, trying to ignore the growing sense of unease creeping up her spine. The living room was tiny, dark and a total mess but empty of hidden attackers. Although all the curtains were drawn, all the windows in the flat were open, which was probably why the smell of the corpse had not reached her at the door or drawn the attention of the neighbours. In the middle of the room was a tiny TV perched on a stack of books, an old battered orange armchair and a low metal coffee table littered with cigarette butts.

  There was no obvious place to look for anything – no letters, no bag, no wallet, no mobile phone, nothing – even if she had known what she was looking for. She noticed a lone birthday card embossed with ‘Happy Birthday Son’ perched on top of a grubby mantelpiece. She quickly looked away. Another family would have to go through what hers had. Eva tried to focus. If she were Shaun, where would she keep her important documents? She looked around again. It didn’t look like Shaun had any important documents, there didn’t seem to be anything of value in the whole flat.

  Then she heard an electronic beep. Muffled at first, but when she heard it again she realised it was coming from the orange armchair. She ran over and threw off the cushion and there, underneath, was a mobile phone, singing out at regular intervals to indicate its battery was low. That would do. She grabbed the phone, stuffed it in her bag and turned back towards the door. As she was walking out of the living room, she heard footsteps coming up the stairs towards the flat and she stopped and stood still. A woman’s voice was speaking in French she could just about understand, telling someone ‘she went in there.’

  Eva scanned the room and noticed a fire escape ladder through one of the open windows on the other side of the fluttering curtains. She ran over and threw herself out, clinging to the rusted railings, wincing in pain as small slices of paint cut up underneath her nails. She forced herself down the ladder as fast as she could go and jumped the last two rungs, accidentally ripping a small part off the inside of her coat as she became airborne. She grabbed the material off the ladder and picked up a small black button that had fallen at the same time, determined to leave no trace. Eva glanced up to see if anyone was looking out of the window at her but she hadn’t been spotted.

  Suddenly there was a terrified scream from the flat upstairs. Obviously whoever was up there had discovered Shaun’s body.

  Eva got as far as the bottom of the fire escape before she had to check her pace. Outside Shaun’s apartment block at the front, two police cars idled at the kerb. From her position behind a large bin, Eva could see two policemen, one in each of the cars, which presumably left a maximum of two other policemen inside. She tried to calm her frantic heartbeat. Think. Had the woman downstairs called the police? They had arrived very quickly if she had. But why would she do that? Eva’s skin chilled. There was no reason for the woman downstairs to have called the police so someone else must have done it – someone who knew exactly where Eva was. From what she had heard from inside the flat – ‘she’s in there’ – the police seemed to have been looking specifically for her, which should have been impossible as no one knew she was here. But it looked like someone did know.

  Eva tried to remember whether she had touched anything in the flat. While it was unlikely that the rough material of the orange armchair would provide a good surface for fingerprints, the door she had pushed open certainly would. Was she being set up? She felt the heaviness of Shaun’s phone in her bag and realised it would not look good if she was caught sneaking out of the flat of a dead man with his phone, no matter how innocent she might be. She needed to get out of there. Suddenly there was movement out front and both policemen in both cars got out and walked towards the front door of the flats. At the same time Eva noticed a figure appear at the top of the fire escape she had jumped down. She had to move. Now.

  As soon as the two policemen at the front disappeared through the door Eva left the protection of the bins. Veering left out of the flats she crossed the road that led back to the station and, unable to walk in front of the flats and risk being seen, went deeper into the housing development opposite to try and find her way around. Here, the flats were in a far worse state than Shaun’s. At every step Eva took she could feel her presence attracting attention. She walked quickly past a stairwell occupied by six young men, all wearing loose, dark clothing and staring at her with a mix of suspicion and anticipation. She quickened her pace. By the time she was at the edge of the estate she thought she could feel a presence behind her. Unable to turn around, Eva pressed forward and tried to ignore the scenarios playing out in her head. Instinctively, she veered right again and hoped she was walking back towards the station.

  Almost as soon as she rounded the corner, Eva felt an urgency push all her senses into overdrive. She turned slightly, reacting to movement to the left of her field of vision and thought she saw one of the men from the stairwell running towards her, steel glinting in his hand in the weak wintery sunshine. A knife. Immediately she took off in the opposite direction, pumping her hands to force her body forward, despite the cold grip of panic that had taken hold of her throat and lungs. She rounded another corner in the maze of narrow passageways that ran between the mid-height tower blocks of the housing complex and skidded, almost colliding with an old woman in a printed scarf who shouted something unintelligible at her, but she had no time
for apologies. Running down an uneven path, Eva was aware that at every step she could stumble or trip, giving her pursuer the opportunity to close the tiny gap between them. She considered stopping and challenging whoever was behind her but instinctively she felt that would not end well. Keep going. Ducking under a line of fresh washing Eva ran on, risked a quick glance behind her and then hearing footsteps just behind the wall of laundry, pushed her body to move faster, get further away.

  Suddenly, around another corner a wall rose up in front of her. The way ahead was blocked.

  Stopping momentarily, Eva made a quick calculation, ran to the wall, pulled herself up onto a plastic bin and then tried to pull her body up onto the top of the wall. Her flailing feet kicked the bin over and it spilled its stinking contents all over the floor. She fought desperately to pull herself up to the peak of the wall but her arms were too weak and the rough surface was already stripping the skin from her fingers. Eva tried one more time to heave herself up over the wall but it was too high and, horrified, she realised she was slipping. As she lost her grip she landed in the rubbish, slipped backwards, struggled to find her footing and then turned herself around so that she was facing whoever was following her. For what seemed like minutes, the path behind her remained empty. Then very slowly, a small group of men, those she had seen at the stairwell, rounded the end of the narrow passageway. When they were just paces away they stopped and looked at her; they must have been all of fifteen but they were working hard at being menacing.