The Second Woman Read online

  And then there was Jorgos.

  Artemis shuddered. Pulling out a cigarette and lighting it, she stopped and inhaled sharply, perching on the edge of a low wall where the side of the mountain tumbled down to the sea, grateful for a sudden gust of light wind.

  It was early still and the few tourists who might follow the sign guiding them from the street at the top of the village, through Carolina’s grocery store and out towards the makeshift gallery in the back-room where Artemis’ paintings hung against stone walls, would likely still be asleep. She could afford to take a moment. Reaching into her bag, she pressed stop on her Walkman and closed her eyes, breathing in deeply as the ghosts rose up around her.

  There was something soothing about sitting here, letting that night play out on loop in her head. In wakefulness, she could control the way her mind worked through the memory in a way that she couldn’t in sleep, though she never found the answer to the same question that came up again and again. Up here, in the middle of the day, the heat prickling against her skin, Artemis could try to make sense of what had happened – why she had survived while her sister, Helena, who had been sleeping just a few feet away, had not. It was the same question she would sometimes see flash behind her parents’ eyes when they looked at their remaining child. The question that vibrated silently between them when they fought.

  It was a morbid pleasure, returning to this spot, one that offered the same eerie solace now as it had then, when the bullying was at its worst. Back then, Artemis would sneak out through the back door of the school at the end of the day, running all the way up the path to the ruins of her old family home. It was here that she would sit and wait until she knew the boys who would otherwise have taunted her all the way back to the bakery would have grown bored and headed home to their mothers. No one, not even Athena, knew that she came up here, back then or now. There weren’t many things she had to herself on an island as small and as incestuous as this one, but this spot was her own private world.

  Reaching into her bag, she pressed play and turned the volume up to full before pulling out a sketchbook and pencil. As the tip of the lead touched the paper, she felt a hand on her shoulder. The unexpected contact caught her off-guard and she lurched away from it; feeling herself about to fall, her hands gripping the inside of the wall.

  The man touched her shoulder again, this time to steady her. ‘Whoa. Are you OK? I didn’t mean to scare you …’

  He spoke in English.

  ‘I’m fine.’ She shook her head. Something about the look of concentration on his face made her expression soften into a reluctant half-smile. ‘Oh, it’s you.’ She paused. ‘Honestly, I’m fine …’

  ‘Bloody hell, you speak English?’ he said.

  ‘Better than your Greek,’ she replied, rubbing her arm where he had grabbed it.

  ‘Well, it’s all Greek to me.’ He laughed, without blushing, and she remembered the self-belief on this man’s face as he’d asked her about one of her paintings in the gallery, the previous Saturday. He was a few years older than she was, maybe twenty-eight or twenty-nine, and a commanding presence in every respect. Twice he had been into the gallery in the past couple of weeks, poring over the strokes of her brush on the canvas. It wasn’t unusual to see the same faces again and again at the height of summer, given the scale of the island, but something about this particular face had caught her attention.

  ‘I was actually going to ask you directions,’ he ploughed on. ‘I came for a walk and I appear to have got a bit lost.’

  ‘Really? Where are you staying?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not quite sure. That’s the thing about being lost, you see,’ he replied, rubbing his chin. ‘I’ve bought a house here. I say house – it’s more of a shack, really. Just over …’ He looked at her and shrugged, as if where it might be was no longer of relevance. ‘Somewhere over there.’

  She laughed, despite herself. There was something vaguely ridiculous about the prospect of this man ever being lost.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  She paused. ‘Artemis.’

  ‘Artemis.’ He repeated it, enunciating each syllable, and she felt a chill brush over the backs of her knees.

  ‘Clive, Clive Witherall,’ he replied, reaching out a hand and holding her with his eyes until she had to blink.

  Madeleine

  London, two days before Anna dies

  Madeleine wakes to the sound of the cleaner hoovering in the apartment below. The same time every week, as if anyone is ever around to drop a crumb. As if those bloody Saudis hadn’t simply bought the place as a convenient means to shaft excess cash into the ever-obliging anals of the British banking system, and perhaps while away a weekend or two every year in a city in the throes of a housing crisis. Did she mean annals, Gabriela had attempted to correct her when she complained about her new neighbours, the week they arrived. Did she hell.

  Where is Gabriela, she wonders, inserting a Nespresso capsule into the machine and slamming at the handle with her palm. There is something going on with her, but then when isn’t something going on? Madeleine should call her, but Christ, she’s only just home from Krakow and there is so much to catch up on and she is tired. Of course, she wouldn’t dare utter such words to her friend – tiredness, after all, is Gabriela’s personal domain; woe betide a woman without children who claims exhaustion.

  But the fact is, the past weeks away have been relentless. As always, while she was in Poland, meeting with her international counterparts, she had felt an emboldening, a willingness to focus on perceptions of progress: on the women’s lives being saved, the meting out of justice. But back in London, she finds it harder to be optimistic.

  Sipping at her coffee, she thinks of her office at the National Crime Agency – the lack of resources and the absence of actual investigators – and feels herself physically slump. Not that she can talk. She didn’t join the NCA from its previous incarnation as the Serious Organised Crime Agency, or any other part of the police force, but from – cue all manner of imaginative hand gestures from her colleagues – the Foreign Office. Not that it really matters where they all hail from: they’re in it together now, not so much making shit happen as pushing shit uphill.

  Rolling her shoulders and cracking out her back, Madeleine picks up her phone from the counter along with her cup, scrolling through her emails as she moves back into the bedroom, pulling out an outfit from the rows that line the walk-in wardrobe. Dropping her heels into her handbag, she slips on a pair of trainers and strides out of the house, turning right onto Marylebone Lane, towards Oxford Circus tube.

  It is a few minutes’ walk from Vauxhall station to the NCA: a faceless grey building just metres from MI5 – a markedly different affair from the organisation’s glossy old headquarters on the fringes of St James’s Park. It is hard to know whether they are being closely monitored by their new neighbours, or simply not considered worth the flashy postcode. Either, or perhaps both.

  It could be a worse location, though. The office is situated opposite a wall of bars and gay clubs that have been shamefully sanitised since her days on the scene. Those days feel like a lifetime ago now, but the proximity to these memories serves as a reminder of what is possible, even if the memories have grown woefully faded. More’s the pity. Is there anything sadder than a lapsed tart? The lack of sex certainly isn’t for lack of want, it’s just that there’s no time these days. She will make time, she tells herself as she strides into reception, then shoves the thought to the back of her mind where she intends to pick up on it again later.

  Madeleine has paperwork to catch up on, keeping the international agencies abreast of where they are at since their recent intervention: sixteen girls brought across the border in the back of a van from Vietnam, eight of them dead on arrival. She is pulling a croissant from her bag when Sean from Intelligence pokes his head around the door.

  ‘Can I get your eyes on this?’

  Madeleine looks up, taking a bite before speakin
g. ‘Depends what it is.’

  Sean walks towards her, holding a case file. ‘It’s kind of between us. Official and unofficial. It’s about Vasiliev …’

  Madeleine talks as she chews. ‘Remind me.’

  In the three years since she had joined the agency, gratefully relinquishing her position in the anti-trafficking department at the FCO, Madeleine has only spoken to Sean a handful of times, but from their fleeting communication she has drawn the conclusion that the title Sean from Intelligence is something of an oxymoron.

  ‘Irena Vasiliev. She’s a Russian national. We’ve been investigating her for years on various charges, with a number of international police forces, but with the assistance of Moscow she continues to evade arrest. Her name came up again recently in an investigation we’re working on relating to an international VAT carousel case worth billions. You’re not in on that, are you?’

  Madeleine shakes her head. ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘OK, well these so-called carousels are incredibly lucrative and notoriously hard to arrest on. Fraudsters claim the reimbursement of VAT from the tax office, for tax they never paid in the first place. Legally, VAT is only supposed to be paid by the final buyer of a product, but in cases like this, by trading goods between EU member states several times and exploiting the fact that no VAT is due on cross-border trades owing to different member states having different VAT rates, criminal organisations can play the system.’

  Madeleine looks at him with an expression of feigned disbelief. ‘What, our system? But surely not, it’s so robust!’

  Sean rolls his eyes. ‘So, in this case money is being made from selling mobile phones, video consoles and – strange as it sounds – certificates for carbon dioxide emissions … And there are British companies involved too. The way they make money is this: for example, a man in Germany buys, say, a mobile phone in France at zero per cent VAT. He can then sell it on to another trader in Germany with a nineteen per cent surcharge. Now officially, he is obliged to pass that money on to the tax office, but instead, he keeps the money. And by the time the tax office in any given country has noticed, the trader – read: thieving bastard – has disappeared.’

  Madeleine nods. ‘Got it.’

  ‘Which is why he is called a missing trader, and this type of crime is also known as “Missing Trade Intra-Community” or MTIC – you know how we love an acronym.’

  Madeleine winks at him. ‘Don’t I just.’ She looks at her watch. ‘I don’t mean to be rude but—’

  ‘This Irena Vasiliev,’ Sean ploughs on. ‘At the time we started looking into her, she was running eleven businesses, mostly registered in other people’s names. The money she made, which amounts to billions, comes, in part, from the tax she stole by moving the merchandise in circles across borders. Without paying VAT, she tricked the authorities into paying herself and her partners money they were never owed. Crimes of this sort are estimated by the EU Commission to create an annual tax loss of around fifty billion euros. Now these deals involve highly sophisticated lawyers and bankers in order to help engineer the trades. In this case, a London-based lawyer – one James McCann – registered to an office on Queen Square …

  ‘Anyway, they’re litigious bastards and we have to be careful how we come at this, but, while the MTIC case is moving painfully slowly, thanks to a number of factors – not least trying to tee up with our international counterparts – another investigation is looking more hopeful.’

  ‘Remind me how I fit into this?’ Madeleine asks, taking another bite.

  ‘The problem is – and it’s this I wanted to consult you on – when we were looking into Vasiliev on these other charges, another name came up … Vasiliev’s man in the UK is a guy called Ivan Popov. Heard of him? No reason why you should have. He’s a slick one. Rich as Croesus. Has a big house on the river over in Richmond, runs a couple of above-board companies here in London – but his main source of income is as Irena Vasiliev’s front man. What I haven’t yet mentioned is that among her many sidelines, Vasiliev is also into human trafficking. And as part of that revenue stream, her man Popov is the one supplying student visas to traffickers, facilitating their movement between countries.’

  ‘OK, so human trafficking is very much my department’s remit,’ Madeleine says.

  ‘Exactly,’ Sean nods tentatively. ‘And that’s the official reason I came to you …’

  Madeleine stops chewing. ‘And the unofficial reason?’

  Sean pauses. ‘There are corruption charges we’re working on, too; they should be easier to make stick … Popov’s housemaid is working for us; she’s been tapping his phone lines and has uncovered all sorts of conversations involving bribes to government officials abroad, in return for accepting their business relating to their seemingly more legitimate energy companies … But something else has come up. Popov has a girlfriend; they have a baby together … The woman, she’s ex-FCO.’

  Madeleine’s eyes light up. ‘You’re fucking kidding me.’

  ‘I’m fucking not.’

  ‘Well, that was worth waiting for. Is she in on it?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I just spotted her name. Wanted to bring it to you in case you had ever worked together in your time on the dark side …’

  Madeleine rolls her eyes. ‘It’s no darker at the FCO than it is here, let me tell you. Just with budget for slightly better lighting … Is that her?’

  The file is upside down as he hands it over. As Madeleine turns it towards herself, she feels her stomach drop.

  For a moment, she says nothing as she stares at the photo, processing what is unfolding in front of her. It is as if the rest of the world has dissolved, her attention entirely fixed on the image of the woman walking along Richmond High Street, her hands wrapped around the handles of a pram: even beneath the sunglasses, she is instantly recognisable, the same mass of hair falling in front of her face.

  And then Sean’s voice breaks the silence. ‘So, do you know her, this Gabriela Shaw?’

  Madeleine pauses, wishing to slow down time, to give herself adequate space to think this through. But when she looks up again, a moment later, Sean is staring at her. The only answer she can give is the truth.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, taking a seat. ‘I know her.’

  Artemis

  Greece, the Eighties

  Clive’s place stood a few metres from the road. She eyed him with a narrow gaze as they approached the spot where the path thinned, growing knotted with trees.

  ‘I lied,’ he said brazenly. ‘I wasn’t lost. I saw you sitting there on the wall and I decided to speak to you … You come up here a lot.’

  ‘You’ve been watching me?’ Something about this quiet invasion of her privacy both thrilled and unnerved her.

  He didn’t answer and she inhaled the smell of burnt pine, enjoying the muted sounds of the island, little clouds of dust rising at their feet as they padded along the dirt track, which gave way to olive groves and a small house.

  ‘It’s where we lived. Our house was back there,’ Artemis said, by way of explanation for why she had been sitting on the wall. Clive stopped.

  ‘Really? Before the earthquake, I take it?’

  She took the hairband from her ponytail and shook out her hair, looking away from him. Why had she brought it up?

  ‘Don’t worry, I was only five. I don’t remember it, not really,’ she replied, obscuring her face with dark brown curls. ‘It’s a nice spot for painting, it’s peaceful … At least it was, until you came along and tried to push me off the edge of a cliff.’

  ‘Yes. Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘But you didn’t fall, so that’s the main thing.’

  She smiled, a fluttering in her chest as her hand brushed accidentally against his. ‘That’s OK,’ she replied, emboldened by his attentions. ‘As long as you don’t try it again.’

  Clive’s cottage stood over two floors on the edge of the mountain, with painted blue shutters and a small Juliet balcony overlooking untended olive gr
oves rolling down towards the edge of the mountain, and the sea beyond.

  It was impossible to fathom how this tiny house had survived the earthquake when every other building around it had been blown apart, and something about its survival gave it an otherworldly quality, as if it existed in isolation, untouched by the vulnerabilities of the rest of the world.

  Artemis felt her head lower, almost reverentially, as Clive led her into the cool shade of the dark stone kitchen, which had just enough space for a cooker and a couple of shelves along the far wall, a small dining table to the right of the door. It smelt of wood and citronella, and against the left wall was a recently erected staircase leading up to the mezzanine level. As she looked up at the stairs, Artemis felt a sudden chill.

  ‘The stairs and the upper floor were the only things that were damaged, amazingly,’ Clive said, following Artemis’ gaze around the house.

  She wrapped her arms against her chest for warmth. ‘Did you rebuild it yourself?’

  Clive nodded proudly. ‘Want to have a look?’ Noting her expression, he added, ‘Don’t worry, I have insurance, in case you fear the robustness of my treads …’

  ‘I trust you,’ Artemis replied, placing a tentative foot on the first step. In that moment, she had no reason not to.

  There were two rooms upstairs. The second was empty, the first sparsely furnished with a neatly made bed, a copy of a book entitled In Search of Excellence placed on the pillow.

  She felt him moving close behind her, the hairs on her arms lifting in the relative cool of the house.

  ‘What are you reading?’ she said.

  Clive grimaced. ‘Ah yes, that. Not very alluring, I’m afraid. It’s a business book, by a couple of Americans. It’s … well, it’s all very American. But what can I say? I’ve just started my own company and I’m looking to expand so I need all the advice I can get.’