A Twist of Fate Read online

  ‘I know. And I’m sorry I hurt him, Shelley,’ Thea said, forcing herself to keep her voice level, ‘but that’s just the way that it was.’ Thea wanted this interrogation over with. Tom – what a mess, what a terrible bloody mess, she’d made of it all. ‘I’m sorry, but it was never meant to be.’

  Shelley slowly shook her head. ‘I remember you two together, right from the start. I remember the look in your eyes whenever you saw him. And you’re telling me you never really cared?’

  ‘It’s the truth,’ Thea said, starting to lose her cool now, feeling sweat break out across her brow. ‘And anyway,’ she said, defensively, ‘Bridget wasn’t exactly thrilled about it. It was probably best it ended.’

  Shelley sighed heavily. ‘Bridget was jealous because she loved you too.’

  Bridget’s behaviour had been so hurtful at the time that Thea couldn’t help pulling a face, but Shelley’s gaze was earnest and honest.

  ‘She’s come out, you know. She’s living with her partner in London.’

  Thea felt her cheeks reddening. She had never guessed Bridget had felt that way about her, but now it all started to make sense . . .

  But she had no time to ponder on the magnitude of her own insensitivity, for Shelley was still talking.

  ‘Obviously Duke and I are happy that she’s happy, but I feel sad that grandchildren are not on the agenda.’

  ‘You mean Tom . . . ’ Thea blurted, before she could help herself. Then she stopped. It was none of her business.

  ‘No,’ Shelley said resolutely. ‘Tom is still single. He’s here in Manhattan. A partner in his law firm already. He’s very focused. Driven.’ She reached into her handbag and pulled out a business card, then handed it to Thea. ‘You should look him up,’ she said. ‘Tell him what you told me . . . if you really mean it. I don’t know about you, but I think some closure would be very good for Tom. Young people like you two deserve to move on and to love again.’ Shelley stared deep into Thea’s eyes. ‘Secrets are never the answer, you know. Your mother taught me that.’

  Thea couldn’t meet her eye as they walked together to her front door. She kissed Shelley on the cheek.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ Thea said, reminding Shelley of her promise to help find her lost sister.

  Shelley nodded, then looked pointedly at the card in Thea’s hand. And Thea realized then that, without saying it, Shelley had made it clear that contacting Tom was a condition of her offer.

  After an awkward goodbye Thea stood with her back to the closed front door and stared at the business card, thinking of everything Shelley had told her. About Bridget and Tom.

  Tom. Wonderful, kind, gorgeous Tom.

  So he’d qualified as a lawyer on her advice, she thought, memories of those blissful days in Oxford washing over her, when they’d both been so young and full of ambition.

  Had he really never got over her, either? Was he – as Shelley had implied – just as much of a lonely workaholic as she was?

  And he was here in Manhattan. Just a few blocks away.

  Closure. Shelley had made it sound so simple. But maybe now she was an adult, she could make that bit of her life right. Especially if Tom was still suffering. Because of her.

  Of course she wouldn’t tell him the truth. She could never do that. But Shelley was right. He deserved to love again.

  Her heart was pounding as Thea picked up the phone in her hall and dialled the number on the card, before she gave herself time to think.

  ‘Could I make an appointment to see Tom Lawson?’ she asked the secretary who answered.

  ‘May I ask what it’s regarding?’

  ‘It’s a professional matter. About one of his cases,’ Thea lied. She wasn’t sure what she could possibly achieve by such a meeting. She only knew that it felt miraculous to take a step like this into the unknown.

  ‘Well – er, let’s see.’ Thea could hear the secretary turning over a page of a diary. ‘He does have a cancellation. He could see you tomorrow morning at ten. Would that be convenient?’

  ‘Yes, sure,’ Thea said, trying to imagine what it would be like to walk into his office. To see his face . . .

  ‘May I have your name?’

  ‘Thea Maddox.’

  The secretary obviously knew who she was. ‘Oh . . . oh, Miss Maddox,’ she simpered, keen to do her job well. ‘Well, I’m not sure if you’ve been here before, but Mr Lawson’s office is on the thirty-first floor of the South Tower. So we’ll see you tomorrow, that’s the eleventh of September at ten a.m.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ Thea said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  September 2001

  Romy squeezed her eyes shut, jolting as the smashing continued below them. She tried her wrists again, but they were bound tight behind the chair, as they had been for the last hour. She felt the cut along her cheekbone congealing with blood. But she couldn’t be a coward. She wouldn’t shut her eyes, block this out. Not when it was her fault. Her heart hammered in her chest as her eyes snapped open and locked with Alfonso’s.

  He was sitting red-faced and trembling in a chair facing Romy, with a gun being pressed to the back of his head by a tall, thin boy with a shaven head and eyes wide with amphetamines, who couldn’t have been more than fifteen. The same kid – Claudia’s accomplice – who’d beaten Romy and tied her up too. Was he the old friend Claudia had referred to? Surely not. He was too young to be from her orphanage days.

  Alfonso’s eyes blazed with fury as the smashing continued below them in the cellar. Row after row of the wines his father had collected over the years being systematically smashed with a baseball bat. His gaze didn’t waver from hers, but she could tell he was feeling each blow, as if the bat were hitting him personally.

  I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, she thought, beaming her heartbreak at him. And her terror.

  In her peripheral vision she saw Max’s body on the floor, fists tight like a felled boxer, as if even in death he was attempting to fight on. An obscene comma of blood had pooled beside his head on the white kitchen tiles.

  On the other side of the kitchen Claudia stood, picking her nails with a kitchen knife. Beside her, crumpled in a heap by the white cooker doors, was Nico. There was blood on his face, but his chest was heaving, so he was still breathing, but his eyes were closed. Next to him was a bloodied poker, taken from the fireplace, with which he must have been beaten.

  How many more of Claudia’s accomplices were there in the house? More than three, Romy worked out. They’d been ransacking all the paintings, ripping them down from the walls, for the last hour or more. With nobody to raise the alarm, they were leaving no corner of Alfonso’s family home unharmed.

  Now she flinched as footsteps came towards the kitchen. Claudia stood to attention. She didn’t look at Romy.

  A dark, bulky figure stepped through the doorway into the light. He had a pistol in his hand. But it wasn’t the weapon Romy’s eyes now locked onto in terror. It was the man’s face. Those eyes she knew so well – eyes she’d never been able to forget; eyes she’d somehow always known she’d see again one day. The eyes she’d been dreading that Claudia had meant when she’d said there was an old friend to see her.

  The years slithered from her as she stared up at Ulrich Hubner. Suddenly Romy was a child again, back in the orphanage – a nothing, a nobody, and his to command.

  ‘Hello again,’ he snarled at her.

  He nodded to the boy, who walked over and clipped the plastic ties binding Romy’s wrists with some pliers. The blood rushed into her hands as Ulrich came over to her and pushed her off the chair. ‘Now get on your knees, bitch,’ Ulrich said, gripping Romy by the neck and forcing her down.

  She strained to look up. She saw the boy with the pistol run his tongue across his lips, staring down at Romy. Excitement danced in his eyes. ‘Tell her to strip,’ he said, in German. ‘Make her take off her clothes. Whore,’ he added with a grin, in Italian, walking back and pressing the pistol even harder against Alfonso’s head.


  ‘I’ll kill you,’ Alfonso said.

  The boy cracked him hard across the top of the head with the butt of the pistol. Alfonso’s head slumped sideways and Romy screamed. For a sickening moment she thought he was dead. But then he slowly lifted his head once more, squeezing his eyes shut and gritting his teeth in pain. A trickle of blood ran down his forehead and splashed from his chin onto his bare chest.

  An explosion of pain. Ulrich gripped Romy’s hair and twisted her head round so that she was looking at him. ‘First I want to know which of the paintings they keep here are real. All of them? Or only some?’

  ‘Leave her alone,’ Alfonso pleaded.

  A dull thud. Alfonso groaned in pain.

  ‘I said fucking shut up,’ the boy screamed. ‘You think I won’t kill you? I will. I can’t wait to kill you all.’

  ‘Calm down,’ another voice snapped. ‘You’ll get your turn.’

  Claudia sounded totally in control as she moved to stand beside Ulrich, draping one arm across his broad shoulders. Gone was the helpless waif who’d stumbled gratefully into Romy’s arms earlier that evening. This Claudia had the cockiness of a street-corner whore with her pimp by her side. She had nothing but triumph and contempt in her eyes.

  ‘How could you?’ Romy said, her voice paper-thin, a whisper. Even now she could see the scars at Claudia’s throat. ‘After what he did . . .’

  ‘After what he did?’ Claudia’s voice rose in indignation. ‘You were the one who left me there to die.’

  ‘No, I . . .’ But Romy’s words dried up. Because it was true, wasn’t it? She had given up on Claudia. She might have killed one dog, but she hadn’t stayed to fight off the other, or Ulrich. She’d left Claudia there. She’d left her all alone.

  But she’d thought Claudia had wanted her to go. That her last words had been a selfless act. That she’d wanted Romy to go . . . to run.

  How wrong she’d been.

  ‘After the orphanage burnt down,’ Claudia said, ‘he took some of us with him. He gave us work. He took care of me, Romy. All that I am, I owe to him.’

  Romy could imagine right away what kind of work that must have been. Ulrich was at least five stone heavier than when she’d last seen him. Most of his hair was gone, with what little remained now being back from his smooth, wide brow. There was a dead man on the floor. Another dying man in the corner. And yet Ulrich’s eyes betrayed no emotion at all. He was a monster. But Claudia – she could no longer see that.

  ‘The paintings,’ Ulrich reminded her.

  They’d come here to steal her new family’s paintings. And then to watch that boy rape and kill her. To have their revenge. Of that Romy had no doubt.

  Then, through her fury, another memory of Ulrich rose up in her mind. Of the bumbling guard she’d once run circles around. And a memory of herself as well: of the little girl who’d refused ever to give in to her fear, no matter how cruel he’d been.

  She made her decision then. She was not going to give them the pleasure of watching her beg for her life. If she was to die here tonight, she would die well. She would make her husband proud. And she would not betray the Scolaris – the people who had taken her in. Who had loved her like one of their own.

  Ulrich tightened his grip on her scalp once more, taking a pistol from his jacket pocket. He leant down towards her and opened his mouth to speak.

  ‘Go fuck yourself,’ she told him, spitting in his face as hard as she could.

  He roared in shock and anger, then smashed her violently across the face with the back of his hand. She toppled sideways, cracking her head on the tiles. He grabbed her hair again and hauled her upwards. Her vision swam. The room tilted sideways. Bile rose up fast inside her throat.

  Then two things happened at once.

  Alfonso reared up without warning, catching completely by surprise the boy standing behind him and smashing the top of his head into the boy’s jaw, sending him sprawling backwards. How he’d undone the tie around his wrist Romy had no idea, but suddenly he was free.

  At the same time Nico staggered to his feet with a roar. He hurled the poker, spinning it end over end across the room. Romy knew in an instant that in the past hour they’d somehow communicated in secret and had planned this coordinated attack.

  Ulrich saw too late the poker coming in his direction. Its handle smacked into the side of his skull as he attempted to duck out of its way. His grip on Romy slackened. She tore herself free, ramming her elbow hard into his gut. Claudia made a grab for her, but Romy shoved her violently aside as Ulrich’s pistol fell from his fist and skittered across the floor.

  A blur of motion: Nico threw his bloodied body at Ulrich. Both men fell into a twisted heap of struggling limbs. Romy spun, disoriented, searching for Claudia. Instead her eyes fixed on Alfonso. He had hold of the boy now. She watched Alfonso hit him once, then again. The boy sank to the floor, no longer struggling. No longer moving at all.

  Claudia . . .

  Romy turned to see Nico and Ulrich back on their feet, still fighting, Ulrich with his fists now tight around Nico’s bulging neck. Claudia was on her hands and knees, reaching for the pistol, which had slid under the kitchen table. Romy saw a pair of nail clippers beneath Alfonso’s chair. He must have got them out of his jeans pocket and used them to cut the plastic ties.

  Romy lurched towards the gun. Reaching, stretching, but there was no way she could reach Claudia before she got it. As Claudia snatched up the weapon, twisted and stood, Alfonso reached Romy as she stood up from beneath the table. He threw himself between her and Claudia, as Claudia shakily aimed the pistol at Romy and screamed out the word ‘Die!’

  A gunshot. A grunt of pain.

  But Alfonso didn’t move. It was Ulrich who’d been shot. In the shoulder. He roared in pain and swore at Claudia, as another gunshot rang out from her shaking gun.

  This time Nico’s body bucked. He lurched sideways, grasping at his chest. A flower of blood bloomed across the back of his white shirt. He crashed into Ulrich, taking him down towards the cooker. Then Claudia turned to Romy.

  She was going to kill them all. One by one. Claudia was crazy.

  ‘No!’ Romy roared, tipping up the heavy table with all her might, sending it crashing into Claudia and jamming her against the wall. Then she was running, being dragged by Alfonso, past Max’s body and the wheezing, rising form of the boy, who was trying to get to his feet.

  Romy and Alfonso’s footsteps rang out in the service corridor as they raced for its end. Romy heard the jangle of snatched keys as they hurtled past a coat-rack. Alfonso tore the back door open. They burst out into the cold night air, nearly running straight into a black BMW, which had not been parked there before.

  Beyond the gnarled silhouette of the ancient olive tree at the centre of the turning circle – a tree that Alfonso had told Romy had been there since Roman times – a classic white Mercedes convertible was parked. They reached it in less than ten strides.

  He jerked open the door and pushed Romy inside. She scrabbled across the driver’s seat and onto the passenger side. Across the courtyard, the back door of the villa swung violently open, casting a searchlight of bright light across the dark night.

  Alfonso was already starting the engine.

  ‘Keep down,’ he barked at Romy, as she heard the first shot ring out.

  It missed. With a screech of tyres, Alfonso pulled away. The engine screamed as he shifted up through the gears. Romy looked behind them. A set of headlights burst into life. Those of the black BMW.

  A hundred yards up ahead were the villa’s arched iron gates, the only way in or out. Past them, Romy knew, was safety. A city. Millions of other people – of witnesses. Get there, and surely Ulrich and the others would not dare to pursue them.

  Fifty yards. Behind her Romy saw the BMW closing, Ulrich driving one-handed, Claudia next to him, leaning out of the window with the gun.

  Alfonso stabbed a small black plastic box at the air before him. It was the remote for
opening the gates. He repeatedly punched at its button, but the gates did not move.

  ‘Put your belt on,’ Alfonso yelled, struggling to do the same with his own.

  He was planning on ramming through the gates. She braced herself for the impact.

  Twenty yards.

  Ten.

  Just before the Mercedes smashed into the gates at sixty miles an hour Romy thought she heard a siren.

  Then she heard and felt nothing. Her world turned black.

  Her world turned dead.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  September 2004

  Thea had heard that the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center was the largest military hospital outside America, but it wasn’t until she made her way from the car park to the pristine white reception block that she realized the sheer size of the place.

  After her visit to South Africa in 2000 Thea had kept in touch with Johnny, and six months ago he’d written to her to say that he’d heard that Michael had been wounded in Afghanistan and had been sent back here to Landstuhl in Germany.

  When she’d made enquiries, she’d found out that Michael had been caught up in a car bomb, which had killed scores of soldiers and civilians, and, even though he was relatively unscathed physically, he was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. She’d been advised not to visit for several months, and had chosen instead to write and send flowers on several occasions, although she hadn’t ever received an acknowledgement that he’d got them.

  But she hadn’t minded. After 9/11 and that horrible day that had changed the world forever, Thea knew all about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. She knew Michael might still be experiencing any number of horrendous symptoms – from flashbacks to insomnia to uncontrolled rage.

  She’d experienced it mildly herself for a year after the Twin Towers came down. She’d needed tranquillizers to help her sleep. She couldn’t help but focus on how close she’d come to tragedy, having almost made it to her appointment with Tom Lawson when the first aeroplane struck the tower. She’d seen the television pictures afterwards, but up close it hadn’t been so clear. She only remembered the panic and the smoke and the dust.