“Interpol? You mean Alain Drake?” I thought of the man I’d met in Italy. Sharp eyes and softly spoken. He was trouble.
Jenny nodded. “Drake’s received intelligence that The Chameleon is retiring after this UK visit. He’s spent decades trying to find him, and he wants to bring him to justice before the trail goes cold.”
We had to escape both the assassin who was trying to get to us, and the Interpol agent who was trying to catch the assassin. It was going to be the biggest challenge we’d ever faced—and I had a husband in therapy and a baby that wouldn’t sleep.
Was it too early to start drinking? Champagne breakfasts were socially acceptable but belonged at five-star hotels with the thrill of being away. Not for drowning out sorrows with a bowl of Shreddies at a kitchen table in Berkshire.
“The postcard implies The Chameleon is here for us.” Fox was gripping his coffee mug so hard his knuckles were white.
I nodded. “We need to find him before he gets to us.” I could feel it bubbling up within me: this desperate need to find this man or woman. If there was ever someone I’d break our “no women” rule for, it’d be this bitch.
“I’ve got one lead. Balgray Hall.” Jenny looked between our blank faces. “It’s a National Trust house in Oxfordshire.”
Fox frowned. “The Chameleon has an interest in English heritage?”
“My contact at Interpol said they had been monitoring online chatter and had found two mentions to it in association with The Chameleon before they were quickly deleted.”
I tried to process this. We finally had a lead. And it made no sense.
“No police force here has any interest in Balgray,” Jenny said. “I’ll do more digging when I get into the office.”
Fox huffed. “We can’t just sit here waiting for news, we need to—”
Jenny stood up. “You know what families like to do for fun on Saturdays? They go and look around National Trust houses. Expand young minds. Appreciate the architecture. Enjoy the landscaped gardens and fresh air. Try and find out what interest a master criminal might have in such a place.”
Fox and I looked at each other. I nodded.
He drained his mug of coffee. “Let’s get the kids and pack up the van.”
Last year, my Range Rover had been written off for the greater good—that is, disposing of Jenny’s ex, Bill Grundy’s body. I had presumed I’d just go down to the dealership and choose a brand sparkling new one, but Fox had insisted we use this opportunity to rethink our choices. He’d found a Volvo minivan with an impeccable safety record and declared it the perfect family car, considering we would often be transporting two children, a dog, a pram, and the occasional body. The boot space of a family van was very much underrated.
For Fox, it was the missing piece of the perfect-suburban-life jigsaw. For me, it was the final nail in the old-life coffin.
—
An hour and a half later, we arrived at Balgray Hall.
Reggie was asleep in his car seat, while Bibi was plugged into Fox’s old iPad and her eighteenth episode ofBluey.I turned to Fox. Bibi had headphones on, but I still spoke softly.
“Are we making a mistake? What if he’s here and he spots us?”
The car park was busy. Fox pulled into one of the last remaining slots.
“He clearly doesn’t want us dead right now.” Fox turned off the engine. “If he did, he wouldn’t have announced his arrival with a postcard. He’d have killed us in our sleep.”
I nodded. That made sense. “Good pep talk. Thanks.”
We made slow progress from the car park to the entrance, with Bibi walking at a snail’s pace and repeatedly changing her mind over which stick she wanted to pick up. The overenthusiastic lady at the counter asked if we wanted a National Trust membership. My response of “God, no,” made her face fall, and Fox elbowed me. According to her advice, we should start with a walk around the grounds before we headed into the turreted Jacobean hall.
“I don’t get why somewhere like this would catch the attention of The Chameleon.” Fox looked at the crowd of people exclaiming over an ancient oak tree. “Jenny said the family who own it have no criminal ties. Boring broke aristocrats.”
“Is it bad that I don’t give a shit about trees?” I watched as several fawning people took photos of the oak. I fingered the small device in my pocket.
We walked slowly, painfully slowly, toward the Estate Office, which, we’d learned from the leaflet handed over with our tickets, was part of the Stable Block. I handed Fox the assortment of sticks I’d been instructed by Bibi to look after. “Give me five minutes.”
I sidestepped the “Private” notice hanging in front of a small courtyard and walked alongside the wall. The office had a large window. I peered inside. It was empty. The benefit of getting here at lunchtime. I opened the door and stepped in. A large whiteboard hung at the back of the room, covered with scrawled writing describing where they were with a fundraising target. It wasn’t going well—which would explain the threadbare carpet. There were three desks, all with computers that looked at least ten years old. They should prove no problem for Jenny’s hacking skills. At the back of the room was another door next to a huge printer.
I had never worked in an office. I looked around, trying to imagine coming in here every day, sitting at a well-worn office chair, the place silent except for the batting of keyboards. I shuddered.
