Acts of Kindness Read online

  ‘What in Jesus Christ’s name are you doing?’ he said

  ‘I wanted to know how come Lauren had managed to keep hold of her phone.’ She depressed the central button of the phone and it lit up to display the text message:

  Latest package safely collected.

  She showed Oscar.

  ‘Amazon?’ he hazarded.

  ‘Don’t mess around, Oscar! It must be code, and it’s from someone calling themselves Ivy. Clever – ivy can bring down an oak, get it? So, we’ve got a coded message on Lauren’s phone, that she’s somehow kept back from the cupuli. What does that say to you?’

  ‘You think Lauren’s involved in Isadora’s disappearance? Just because of that message?’ Oscar hissed at her, his voice sounding harsh, disembodied above her in the darkness.

  ‘Well it’s weird, isn’t it? You’ve known her longer than me. Could she be involved? How about Ben? Or Catherine? Why don’t you put forward an actual opinion and do something useful instead of snarking from the cheap seats with one-liners all the bloody time?’

  Her hands were clenched, nails digging painfully into her palms, throat hoarse from shouting at 0.5 of a decibel. Oscar didn’t say anything for a few seconds, until she couldn’t take it anymore and swung the phone up towards his face, pressing the button to light it up. He was looking stunned. The light went out and they were left in darkness. She reached out and took his hand.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lash out at you. But I need your help.’

  ‘To do what?’ He didn’t withdraw his hand but neither did he return the pressure.

  ‘First off, to get out of here.’

  They went via their office to get shoes and coats and replace Lauren’s phone. While Oscar kept an eye on Lauren, who shifted position but slept on, Bella inched open her desk drawer, taking care not to dislodge any of the contents. Nestled between a packet of oatcakes and a stapler was her old phone, untouched since she had placed it there on the day she’d passed her probation. Thank goodness she’d never got around to recycling it. Pocketing the mobile, she slid the drawer out a little further to reveal her old charger at the back. Extricating it with care, she nodded to Oscar who left his sentry post, opened the door and led the way down the corridor towards the main entrance.

  When Bella thought they were going to end up in the main entrance hall, Oscar turned along a corridor to the right and through an inconspicuous door in the panelling. A set of steps led down to a concrete-floored corridor lit by strip lights. At the end, he pushed through a door marked ‘Exit’ and they were in an enormous underground car park. Rows of pale blue Jaguars stretched away under the fluorescent lights.

  Oscar walked across to a kiosk near the row of roller garage doors at the end. Inside were some lockers, a table and chairs, and shelves holding bottles of screen wash and oil. Bella spotted a plug point near the floor and plugged her phone in.

  ‘Okay, what’s the plan? How do we get out?’ she asked as he paced up and down.

  He stopped and spun round to look her in the face. ‘My plan was to do as I was told, hope Isadora and Ben get found and that we all go home in time for a slap-up breakfast. But apparently, you’ve got other ideas. So, let’s hear it. What’s so critical that you, Bella Black, have to leave OAK when everyone else is sitting tight? Left your hair straighteners on? Afraid you’ll miss an episode of Love Island?’

  He looked almost comical, messy tufts of hair sticking out in all directions, jogging bottoms tucked into a pair of lace-up boots and an indignant look on his face.

  ‘I know something about what’s happened. At least… I’ve got something that I think will help clear things up. I need to go home and get it.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Bella glanced around. ‘I don’t want to say. Just help me get out, Oscar, please, and I’ll tell you everything.’

  She looked down at her phone. Four per cent charged.

  ‘Are you saying if I help you get out it’ll help Isadora?’

  ‘Isadora, and maybe Teddy Thatcher. And even Ben, I don’t know.’

  Oscar flopped down onto a chair. ‘Fine! I’ll help you if I can. But it’s going to rely on a bit of luck.’

  Her next question died on her lips as they heard the door to the garage open and someone enter. A walkie-talkie crackled.

  They both ducked down below the windows of the kiosk.

  Oscar whispered in her ear, ‘We’re in luck. When you hear the engine, we’re going to run towards the exit.’

  A man clumped past the kiosk in heavy boots. From their vantage point, all that was visible was a black jacket and baseball cap, the uniform of a cupule. They heard him speak into the walkie-talkie.

  ‘Yes, sir. Asthma inhaler from the twenty-four-hour pharmacy in Hungerford. Understood. Over and out.’

  They heard the beep-beep of a car unlocking and the clunk of the door as it opened and closed. The engine fired up.

  ‘Now!’ hissed Oscar.

  Bella yanked her phone and charger out of the wall and they ran, half-crouching, out of the kiosk and along the wall, keeping low between the rows of cars. The garage door rolled upwards and the car drove through. They held back for a moment, and then as the door slid down, they pelted it across the concrete floor and through the narrowing gap.

  Outside, Bella grabbed Oscar’s arm and they set off across the grass through the drizzle as if their lives, or someone else’s, depended on it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Catherine loved being in the library. All the annals of OAK rising up around her, uniform and ordered. Everything recorded in straight lines on white pages, stacked in bookshelves which had been purpose-crafted to fit the handbound registers.

  Noise was shut out here. Many a time Catherine had found herself in the library, alone but for the semi-comatose presence of The Librarian in his chair. Once she picked up a book and started reading, she was gone – only returning to the present when The Librarian’s glass slipped out of his hand and hit the thick carpet with a muffled thud or the door opened to admit someone, usually Isadora. Few others came here.

  Today she couldn’t allow herself to slip away between the pages. As each long second passed, so Isadora’s breath might be slipping from her body. Every turn of the page was the rush of blood through the atria of Isadora’s heart; soon to be stilled if she, Catherine, could not save her.

  Her usual haunt was near the entrance to the library, where the oldest volumes of kindnesses were filed. Either there or up on the mezzanine where the Institute’s records were held, the statutes, the constitution, the regulations, the policies – the heart and soul of OAK. It fascinated her, from the first rules set out by Emma Faye, to the more recent decrees laid down in Isadora’s regime.

  But she was nearer The Librarian’s lair now, searching through the most recent pre-digitisation kindness registers. The failure of the systems meant she couldn’t search the latest files, but she could at least look through the last hard copy registers. She didn’t know what she was looking for exactly, but she’d know it when she found it: a clue, something to confirm her suspicion, someone’s name mentioned where it shouldn’t be. Something, anything, pointing to an intention to perpetrate the horrors which had been committed.

  She’d been through five books and was reaching for a sixth, on a high shelf, when she heard a discreet cough behind her. Her hand remained poised, the index finger resting on the top of the book’s spine.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Catherine,’ said Finn.

  ‘News?’ Her voice was calm and steady.

  ‘Nothing. We’ve searched his house, he’s not there. No clues as to where he might be.’

  ‘Ben’s disappeared off the face of the earth?’

  ‘No, of course not. We’ll find him. We’ve got teams out; we’re looking for his car—’

  ‘Not good enough, Arran!’ She pulled the book out with a jerk, knocking its neighbour onto the floor. ‘If we find Ben, we’ll find Isadora, I’m sure of it. Ev
ery second he’s allowed to go free is a second longer that Isadora’s in danger. We’re letting her down, for God’s sake!’

  She looked like she was on the verge of tears, her face flushed and lip trembling. He reached out a hand and gripped her shoulder.

  ‘I want to find him as much as you do. If the observatories weren’t down…’

  ‘OAK existed before technology did. We need to go back to old ways – boots on the ground. Get more of your people out there, Arran. Find him. For Isadora. For OAK.’

  She laid his hand on the book as if he was taking an oath, placed her own hand on top and closed her eyes.

  Together they murmured, ‘A single act of kindness may change a day, a life, the world. Kindness is powerful. OAK is mighty.’

  After their flight across the parkland and final scramble over the boundary wall, they’d had to pause for a few minutes to get their breath back, shoulders rising and dropping as they panted. Bella could taste bitterness in her throat and thought for a moment she was going to throw up.

  They set off trudging down the road that ran alongside AC’s wall, hoods up against the rain. A car approached and they hurled themselves into the undergrowth on the verge until it passed. They set off again, picking wet leaves and twigs off their clothes and Oscar spoke up, in tones of impeccable politeness.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what the hell we’re doing, by any chance?’

  Bella nodded then realised he wouldn’t be able to see her in the pre-dawn light, with his hood up. ‘Yes. Believe me, I want to tell you, I’ve been dying to share it with someone. But I’m taking a huge risk. So, before I do, quid pro quo, can you tell me anything you know about who might have taken Isadora?’

  ‘Why would I know anything?’

  ‘I don’t know. But you’ve been here a long time. You know a lot of people at OAK and how they usually behave. You might have seen something suspicious.’

  She heard him let out a long breath. ‘I don’t know anything for sure but there’s been something going on with Ben and Lauren. At first, I thought they were… you know, having it off. I kept catching them looking at each other when they thought I couldn’t see.’

  ‘Looking at each other in what way?’

  ‘I don’t know, like they knew something the rest of us didn’t. There was other stuff too, but in the end, I decided it wasn’t an affair.’

  ‘Why not?’ She hoped her voice sounded as casual as she intended.

  ‘Because,’ he kicked a stone off the path and it bounced into the road, ‘Ben was obviously more interested in you. When I realised it wasn’t an office romance, I was even more intrigued as to what the secret could be. And why was Lauren in on it and not me? I’ve been here a good while, I’m a team player, blah blah blah.’ He paused, seeming to consider a new idea. ‘Maybe I don’t seem like someone you can rely on in a crisis. Too much “snarking from the cheap seats”.’

  She touched his arm and he flinched. ‘I didn’t mean…’

  He sidestepped out of reach and ploughed on. ‘One day I saw Ben go over and say something to Lauren, but I couldn’t hear what. They both left the office, I let them get ahead and then went after them. They got into Ben’s car and set off down the drive. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred that would have been the end of my first foray into detective work, but it so happened I still had my jacket on because I’d been out for lunch, and my car keys were in the pocket. Anyway, to cut a long story short, they went to a little pub in a village twenty minutes away. And in the pub was a field cupule. A guy named—’

  ‘James?’

  He jerked his head round. ‘If you know the story, why are you getting me to tell it?’

  ‘I don’t know it. It was a guess.’

  ‘Well anyway, it seemed odd. I’d seen this James once or twice before at OAK meetings. He’s a proper undercover field cupule so why would he risk being seen out in the real world with AC-ers? Plus, what were Ben and Lauren doing with a guy like that? These field guys don’t mess around, they’re trained to track and shut down any threats to Isadora or OAK. They don’t get talked about much because they don’t fit in with the warm and fuzzy OAK brand Isadora likes to portray, but I’ve heard stories.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing. I saw them through the window but I couldn’t work out a way to hear what they were saying without them spotting me. Ben and Lauren came out of the pub about half an hour later, I followed them and they went straight back to AC. That’s it. Your turn.’

  The rain was easing and Bella pushed back her hood.

  ‘We need to get to my house before anyone finds Maggie and makes her tell them where the evidence she mentioned on the local news is. Because,’ even walking along a deserted road she found herself lowering her voice, ‘it’s on a USB stick in a box of icing sugar in my kitchen cupboard.’

  Oscar stopped dead.

  ‘What? What’s on the USB?’

  ‘I think it’s records of hacking into some of our clients’ bank accounts. With millions of pounds being stolen. I can’t tell from the files who did it, but maybe the police will be able to. Or maybe Maggie knows.’

  ‘And we’re sauntering along by foot? It’s going to take forever!’

  ‘Have you got a better idea in the middle of the night, miles from anywhere?’

  ‘Yes.’ Oscar held out his hand. ‘Give me your phone.’

  They crouched behind a hedge, listening to the approaching rattle and growl of an elderly motor. Oscar cleared his throat.

  ‘I should probably say Mum is…’ he took a breath, frowning. ‘Mum was older when she had me. Late forties.’

  Bella nodded, wondering what was coming. ‘Right?’

  ‘She…’ Again, he seemed to be having some kind of internal struggle, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. Eventually, he said, ‘She’s great. You’ll see, anyway. She’s great.’

  Right, thought Bella. Nothing weird there then. ‘She must be, to come and pick you up at the drop of a hat like this. Your dad’s – not around anymore?’

  ‘Never was. I’m a bastard, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that. At the very worst you’re a bit of a bellend.’

  The noise of the engine was nearly level with them now and Oscar popped his head over the hedge, then sprang upright, waving. The car lurched to a halt.

  Bella stood up and saw an old green and white Citroen 2CV. The driver’s door opened and out stepped an old lady of perhaps eighty. She arranged one satin-gloved hand elegantly against the door frame and placed her feet, clad in kitten-heel mules, in what Bella believed to be ballet position three. She wore a red dressing gown trimmed with feathers at the neck. Her silver hair was teased into a stiff bouffant style which would have been the height of fashion sometime around 1963. That such an elderly lady could have such lustrous eyelashes appeared unlikely, leading Bella to the conclusion that they were false. The overall impression was of a grande-dame of the West End taking a break in her dressing-room at the interval. Bella was surprised to find she wasn’t clutching a bouquet of white roses.

  They hurried around from behind the hedge.

  ‘I hope I didn’t keep you both?’ Drawn-on eyebrows rose even higher than their initial vertiginous position, a gracious smile on her lips as she glanced at Oscar and then let her eyes rest on Bella’s face. ‘I had to throw on my robe, but I hurried, I assure you, I hurried.’

  Oscar bent down to kiss her powdery cheek, towering over her. Even Bella felt like a giant as she leaned across and shook her hand.

  ‘Bella, this is my mum, Gladys,’ Oscar said.

  Gladys clasped Bella’s hand in hers. ‘Such beautiful hands! Are you a pianist, my dear?’

  Bella felt strangely guilty as she confessed that no, she wasn’t a pianist.

  ‘A painter, then?’

  Not a painter either, Bella confessed. Before any more of her shortcomings could be revealed – neither a potter, saxophonist, brain-surgeon or harpist, but merely someone wi
th quite long fingers – Oscar stepped in.

  ‘Listen, Mum, we need to get to Bella’s house as soon as possible. We’d better get going.’

  Gladys released Bella’s hand and instead cupped Oscar’s cheek for a moment. ‘Say no more, my darling. We shall fly like the wind. My timing has always been impeccable. My West End reviews always said that. “Miss Rose. Expression – exquisite. Timing – impeccable”.’

  They piled in and having narrowly avoided a ditch, Gladys manoeuvred the car around and they were on their way. Bella gave directions then sat back onto the hard vinyl-covered seat. Oscar twisted round in the front.

  ‘Okay. So, you’ve got evidence of criminal activity hidden in your cake decorating cupboard, is there anything else I should know?’

  Bella threw a meaningful glance at Gladys. ‘That was a secret, Oscar!’

  ‘Imagine I’m not here, my dears!’ trilled Gladys over her shoulder. ‘I shan’t listen. I’ll entertain myself with a few old favourites.’ She began humming, ‘Hey, Big Spender’.

  Under cover of the musical accompaniment, Bella told Oscar what she knew of Lauren and Ben’s connection to James – her neighbours’ drinks party and the guilty looks in the back room of The Royal Oak.

  ‘And then, there was what happened on Le Chêne,’ she said, lowering her voice.

  ‘I don’t pop my cork for every man I see!’ warbled Gladys, before relapsing back into humming.

  ‘I was on my way back to the compound from the jungle.’ Bella continued, ‘I stumbled across Teddy Thatcher in one of the huts – he was passed out on the floor, blood everywhere. It was horrible. I must have fainted and when I woke up Ben was there and Teddy was gone. Ben swore he didn’t know where Teddy was, but since we’ve been back in the UK, he’s told me that Teddy’s alive. Last night I tracked Ben to some farm buildings, he said he’d led me there on purpose because he knew I was following him. But now after what Finn said about him, I don’t know if that’s true or if Ben’s hiding something – or someone – there.’