3

LISSA

LISSA Meredith had beautiful red hair and a smile of the kind that, a few hundred years ago, would have set armies marching and empires tumbling. It wasn’t so much that she was a beauty, but that she seemed aflame with vitality. It glowed in the rich tints of her hair and the light in her honey-brown eyes and the rippling quicksilver of her movements. She wore a plain greeny-grey linen suit, with dark green piping, and a white blouse with a bow of the same piping at the neck. “Hi, Tony,” she said, and smiled at Roger. He had to remind himself that a child had been kidnapped and the case needed all his attention.

“Hi. Lissa, this is Superintendent Roger West of Scotland Yard. He’s going out with you to Shawn’s place. You’re to wait for him at the Hyde Park Gate in Bayswater Road. Do you know it?”

“Who doesn’t?” she asked. “How soon?”

“As soon as you can get there.”

“Not quite so soon as that,” Roger said. “I’d like to know more about the affair before we leave. The address of the house, what you found there, everything that isn’t on the Secret List.”

“I could tell you on the way,” Lissa said.

“You can fill in the details on the way.”

Lissa glanced at Marino, obviously for approval, and he waved her to a chair. She didn’t take it, but leaned against his desk, ankles crossed, nylon-sheathed legs slim, exciting.

“I want to find Ricky as soon as we can,” she said. “I want to find him before Belle comes round, because any danger to him will drive her mad. She’s crazy about that boy. So is David, but David’s tougher. A broken Belle might break David, and we can’t risk that. You just have to find the child, Superintendent.” Her voice had the warmth of fire. Roger wasn’t particularly familiar with American accents, but he placed this as faintly Southern. “The house is thirty-one Wavertree Road, Ealing, one of a thousand houses that all look the same. I left there last evening at twenty after five, and everything was normal. Ricky walked to the end of the street with me. I arrived there this morning at ten minutes after eight, and the first thing that seemed wrong was the silence. Belle often sleeps late but David is usually up early, and so is Ricky. I went upstairs, and found David and Belle so deep asleep that they wouldn’t wake up.”