‘It looks like our lady boss likes to live on the edge,’ said Charlie. ‘Or maybe she just likes to open a file to see how clever she is. Personally I think she’s being bloody stupid, but there you go.’
‘So do we print this out?’
‘I’ll e-mail it to my hotmail account. And don’t worry, she won’t even know I was here.’
Charlie opened the e-mail, sent the file, then deleted any traces of her intervention, her fingers working so fast Helen couldn’t keep up.
‘Let’s see who talks to your aunt,’ she said, and opened the most recent e-mails, skim-read them until she stopped at a subject heading entitled Final Stage. ‘This was three days ago.’ Charlie read out pertinent bits. ‘“delivery of the statues … Warehouse 14, off Nine Elms Lane … time 2.00 a.m., date 27 July.” That’s in two hours’ time. Is this warehouse one of ours?’
‘Don’t think so.’
‘We need to go there.’
‘How do we get in? I don’t have any more keys.’
‘We’ll figure it out when we get there. I’ll just forward this to myself, then we can go.’ Charlie’s fingers flew across the keyboard, and when she’d sent the e-mail, she took a picture of the screen with her phone, as well as of the computer with recognisable items in the background. ‘There,’ she said, ‘now it’ll be obvious where and when we read this e-mail.’
Grinning to herself, Helen went back to the papers in the drawers. She sensed Charlie was getting nervous. She was anxious to get out of here too, but still hoped to find something to point the finger at Moody. Nothing stood out, nothing that she’d understand at any rate, although an officer in the Fraud Squad might.
At the bottom two empty foolscap folders had been jammed in sideways, stopping whatever was underneath them from accidentally spilling out. Helen removed the folders as carefully as she could without ripping them, then lifted up a flat, biscuit-coloured item.
She turned it over, then sat back on her haunches in shock. Her heart beat loudly against her chest, and her head echoed with a cry she hadn’t uttered. She was holding something she thought she’d never see again.
Her mother’s elephant bag.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
There was no doubt, it was Mimi’s old shopping bag. Hugging the rough canvas to her chest, she allowed it to invoke memories of her mother, the house they lived in, the life they had with all its ordinariness. Memories so strong she was transported back to the car, to that moment of childish anxiety where she’d fretted over the medicine and not wanting to disturb her mother about the lady in the other car.
With her adult’s hindsight, those worries seemed so pointless now. How she’d give anything to have that moment back no matter how imperfect it was, knowing that if she’d only spoken out, she might have changed the course of her entire life and never been any the wiser.
Instead it had ploughed on relentlessly to this painful point where she could do nothing but hug her dead mother’s bag and mourn her loss.
Unable to stop herself, a strangled sound escaped her throat.
‘What is it?’ said Charlie.
Helen didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. The words stuck in her throat as it constricted until she could hardly breathe. Waves of nausea rolled over her, smoke clouded her vision. A star exploded behind her eyes.
‘Oh, shit, not here!’ Charlie tried to shake her back into consciousness. ‘Come on, for God’s sake!’
Her panicked voice was the only fixed point in this black hole. Helen tried to hang on to that, concentrated on Charlie’s voice, on Charlie’s hands on her shoulders.
‘I’ve got to get you out of here!’
Through her numbness Helen sensed Charlie lifting her off the floor, placing her in a chair, heard crashing and banging although it didn’t really register.
Slowly the sensation returned to her fingers, then her arms, torso, neck. Her joints were leaden, and she felt bone weary. The world began to make sense again. She saw that Charlie had switched off the computer, everything was what it had been like before, pristine and impersonal, except the bottom drawer which was still open. The only real difference was the jute bag in her arms.
She took a deep breath and exhaled raggedly.
‘You scared the hell out of me,’ said Charlie.
Helen opened her mouth to apologise but nothing came out.
‘Is it always like this?’
She nodded.
‘I’m sorry.’ Charlie put her hand on her shoulder. ‘I think we’d better get out of here. We got what we came for. What’s this bag?’
‘It was my mother’s.’