“Good idea.” I stood there, trying to think how Toni must be feeling. What she could have overheard, because it must be that? We’d just got everything sorted when I left her. Something — or I — had hurt her terribly, and she had nowhere to go. “Are we checking her old haunts?”
“Of course. There’s a team there already, one sitting in the diner. It’s a shitty place.”
“Mmm.” I didn’t think she’d go back there, but she might just be feeling lonely enough to.
Lawrence appeared in the doorway. “Call for you, sir.” He jerked his head.
I stared over. It couldn’t be her, or he’d be smiling.
I followed him to my office. “Who is it?”
“It’s Lord Sandiford, sir.”
I stared at him. “For God’s sake!” I didn’t have time for this. I seized the handset.
“Father.”
“Oh thank goodness, Son.” He sounded quite distressed. “I’ve just had the police come round. They’re here now.”
“The police?” I felt stunned. How could they know about Toni? “What …”
I saw Lawrence signal to me. He was asking permission to listen in. I nodded.
I took a deep breath. “Okay, Father. Tell me what all this is about.”
“The police are here, Son. They’re asking about Edward.” My heart sank. Somehow I thought there’d been news about Toni, how I didn’t know. “What about Edward?” My voice was almost as cold as my mind.
“Look, I’ll hand you over to the Inspector.” Father couldn’t get off the phone fast enough. He sounded pretty frail, and I cursed Edward in my mind. What the hell had he been arrested for this time?
“Mr. Sandiford, sir?”
“Yes, Inspector. What’s he done now?”
“Oh, it’s not that this time, sir. We’re a bit concerned for him. The last time he was seen he was in the company of a number of his friends. We know they all travelled over to Turkey, and that they all booked on a plane from Macedonia to the Philippines. But your brother wasn’t with them then. Or, we think maybe it was your brother on a fake passport. Anyway, it was officially a different man that checked in. And your brother’s passport was recovered being used by an illegal Turkish immigrant trying to come into Britain.” He paused, and I tried to think straight. Toni. Toni and my worry for her was more important than this.
“So, who got off the plane in the Philippines then?” I couldn’t make sense of it.
“I’m sorry, sir. That was the plane that went down over the Indian Ocean, sir. Two weeks ago. Maybe you heard about it?”
There was a long silence. I stared over at Lawrence. His face was tight, and his pen was stilled, hovering over his notes.
“Sir?” The Inspector’s voice over the line was hesitant. “Do you think that there might be a possibility that your brother might have left that group before they got on that plane?”
I rubbed my face. I could do without this. “I suppose he paid for the tickets with his credit card?”
“Well, the group appear to have been given the tickets as a gift. In London. But they missed the connecting flight in Turkey and transferred them to seats on a plane from Macedonia. Your brother’s card paid for the hire car to Macedonia.” I heard him draw a deep breath. “I’m sorry to say that the card’s been used a lot since then. In Turkey, mostly for drugs.”
“Damnation!” I looked over. “Lawrence, get that card blocked now. I’m damned if I’m going to fund more drug barons than Edward did. Get the local police onto it the next time they try to use it.”
I returned to the call. “Inspector, do you think my brother got on that plane, or do you think he’s in trouble in Turkey?”
There was quite a long pause. When he spoke, he was very careful. “We have to consider all options, sir. But my personal view is that his friends would want to keep him with them if they were going to spend time in the Philippines.”
My heart was heavy. “I think I agree with you. But I’ll get some investigations under way from the UK and they can help you in Turkey, too.”
“Yes, sir.” The Inspector and I had a lot of experience together, sorting out Edward and his personal disasters. He knew that whatever private investigator I put in would work with him, and not undermine him. But I had the resources that they didn’t.
“I’ll hand you back to Lord Sandiford now, sir.”
“Wait.”
“Sir?”
“I’ll speak to Father now, but when you leave, I’m asking if you can inform Lady Mason over at Brandwell that we’ve had some difficult news and could she arrange for Father to have some visitors?”