“No,” she said, sitting up. “You don’t. Promise me: if they bring you in again you tell them you’re not speaking until I get there. Alright?”

“Sure,” he said. “Alright.”

“What did he want?”

Milton related what Trip had told him.

“Alright, then. This is what we’re going to do. I’m taking tomorrow morning off. I’ll drive you so you can get your car fixed and then you can go and see him.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“You don’t listen much, do you, John? This isn’t a democracy. That’s what we’re doing. It’s not open to debate.”

22

Eva drove Milton to the garage to pick up a new set of glow plugs and then to the meeting hall. She waited while he changed the plugs and until the engine was running again.

He went over to the Porsche. They hadn’t said much during the ride across town to his car and he felt a little uncomfortable. He had never been the best when it came to talking about his feelings. He had never been able to afford the luxury before, and it didn’t come naturally to him.

“Thanks for the ride,” he said.

“Charming!”

He laughed, blushing. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant,” she said, the light dancing in her eyes. “I’m joking.”

The words clattered into each other. “Oh — never mind.”

“You’re a funny guy, John,” she said. “Relax, alright? I had a nice night.”

“Nice?”

“Alright — better than nice. It was so nice that I’d like to do it again. You up for that?”

“Sure.”

“Be at the next meeting. My place for dinner afterwards. Now — come here.”

He leant down and rather awkwardly kissed her through the window.

“What’s up?”

“I was wondering,” he said. “Could you do me a favour?”

“Sure.”

He told her about Doctor Andrew Brady and his potential involvement on the night that Madison went missing. He explained that he had worked at St Francis, like she did, and asked if she could find out anything about him.

“You want me to pull someone’s personnel file?” she asked with mock outrage. “Someone’s confidential personnel file?”

“Could you?”

“Sure,” she said. “Can you make it worth my while?”

“I can try.”

“Give me a couple of days,” she said.

“See you,” he said.

“You will.”

* * *

Trip was waiting outside Dottie’s, pacing nervously, catching frequent glances at his watch. He was wearing a woollen beanie and he reached his fingers beneath it, scratching his scalp anxiously. His face cleared a little when he saw Milton.

“Sorry I’m late. Traffic. Is he here?”

“Think so. The guy at the back — at the counter.”

“Alright. That’s good.”

“How we gonna play this?”

“I want you to introduce yourself and then tell him who I am, but it might turn out best if I do the talking after that, okay? We’ll play it by ear and see how we get on.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Just talk. Get his story.”

“And then the police?”

“Let’s see what he’s got to say first — then we decide what we do next.”

The café was reasonably large, with exposed beams running the length of the ceiling with a flat glass roof above. The brickwork was exposed along one side, there was a busy service area with a countertop around it and the guests were seated at freestanding tables. Blackboards advertised breakfast and a selection of flavoured coffees. A counter held home-made cakes under clear plastic covers and quartered wooden shelving bore crockery and condiments. A single candelabra-style light fitting hung down from the ceiling and there were black and white pictures of old Hollywood starlets on the walls. The room was full. Milton assessed the man at the counter automatically: the clothes were expensive, the empty mug suggested that he was nervous, the Ray-Bans he still hadn’t removed confirming it. He was sitting so that he could see the entrance, his head tilting left and right as he made constant wary assessments of the people around him. Milton paused so that Trip could advance a step ahead of him and then followed the boy across the room.

“Aaron?” Trip asked.

“Yeah, man. Trip, right?”

“Yes.”

He looked up, frowned, stabbed a finger at Milton. “He with you?”

“Yes.”

“So who is he?”

“It’s alright. He’s a friend.”

“Ain’t my friend, bro. I said just you. Just you and me.”

“He was driving Madison the night she went missing.”

That softened him a little. “That right?”

“That’s right,” Milton said.

“I don’t like surprises, alright? You should’ve said. But okay, I guess.”

“Shall we get a table?”

A booth had emptied out. Aaron and Trip went first; Milton bought coffees and followed them.

“Thanks,” Aaron said as Milton put the drinks on the table. “What’s your name, man?”

“I’m Smith.”

“You a driver, then?”

“That’s right.”

“Freelance or agency?”

“Mostly freelance, bit of agency.”

“Police been speaking to you?”

“All afternoon yesterday.”

The hardness in his face broke apart. “I’m sorry about you being involved in all this shit. It’s my fault. It should’ve been me that night, right? — I mean, I’d been driving her for ages. The one night I didn’t turn up, that one night, and… I can’t help thinking if it had’ve been me, she’d still be here, you know?”

There was an unsaid accusation in that, too: if it were me, and not you, she would still be here. Milton let it pass. “You were good friends?”

“Yeah,” he said with an awkward cough. “She’s a good person. Out of all the girls I’ve driven, she’s the only one I could say I ever really had any kind of fun with.” He looked at Trip, and, realising the implication of what he had just said, added, unpersuasively, “As a friend, you know — a good friend.”

Milton found himself wondering if that disclaimer was insincere, the way his eyes flicked away from Trip as he delivered it, and he wondered whether Aaron and Madison had been sleeping together. The boy was certainly all broken up about what had happened. Milton wondered whether Trip had started to arrive at the same conclusion? If he had, he was doing a good job of hiding it.

“What do the police think has happened to her?”

“They’ve got no idea,” Trip said. “It took them finding the bodies on the headland for them to start taking it seriously. Up until then she was just a missing person, some girl who decided she didn’t want to come home, nothing worth getting excited about.”

“Jesus.”

“Why didn’t you call before?” Milton asked him. “She’s been gone three months.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I felt awkward about it, I guess, you being her boyfriend and all.”

“Why would that matter?” Trip said tersely.

“No, of course, it wouldn’t—”

Milton nudged Trip beneath the table with his knee. “You said you could tell us who Madison was working for.”

“Yeah,” he said vaguely. “Same agency I work for, right?”

“Has it got a name?”

“Fallen Angelz. It’s this Italian guy, Salvatore something, don’t know his second name. I was out of work, got fired from the bar I was working at, I had a friend of a friend who was driving for them, I had no idea what it was all about until he explained it to me. I had no job, no money, not even a car, but I had a clean licence and I thought it sounded like an easy way to make a bit of cash, maybe meet some people, a bit of fun, you know? Turns out I was right about that.”

“How did it work?”

“Straightforward. The girls get a booking, some john all on his own or a frat party or something bigger, some rich dude from out of town wants company all night, willing to pay for the convenience of having a girl come to his hotel room. Celebrities, lawyers, doctors — you would not believe some of the guys I drove girls to see. Each girl gets assigned a driver. If it’s me, the dispatcher in the office calls me up on my cell and tells me where I have to go to pick her up. They gave me a sweet whip: a tricked-out Lexus, all the extras. So I head over there, drive her out to wherever the party’s at, then hang around until the gig’s finished and drive her back home again or to the next job, whatever’s happening. It’s a piece of cake: the more girls I drive, the more money I make. I get a slice of their takings. The agency gives all the drivers and girls a chart — kinda like a tip calculator — with the different hourly pay rates, everything broken down into separate shares for the agency, the driver, the girl. The drivers always get the least, about a quarter, max, but when you’ve got a girl charging a grand for an hour and she’s out there for two, maybe three, hours, well, man, you can imagine, you can see how it can be a pretty lucrative gig, right? I was getting more money in a night than I could earn in a two weeks serving stiffs in a bar.”