I wanted to intervene and question what all this meant but I bit my tongue and allowed Jack to continue.
‘This made it hard. Technically there was nothing else I could do. Luckily for you though, I found the number for Stevie Cram. Remember him?’
‘No,’ I replied truthfully.
‘Well, he was my superior at Warwick for a while. We got on great and I covered for him several times. Anyway, he got transferred to London and has been doing pretty well down here, so I gave him a call.’
‘Why?’ I couldn’t help myself asking, even though I was sure Jack was going to tell me if I hadn’t interrupted him.
‘Because, London has all the money. Everything is worse here right? Crimes are much bigger in the big cities and the resources the force have here are much larger to combat that. Also if Emma was born here they are more likely to have something on her, right?’
I nodded silently, feeling slightly embarrassed for not working that out myself.
‘You’re right. Sorry mate, carry on.’
‘So I asked Stevie to do everything he can to find any kind of lead. And guess what? He found nothing. Literally nothing.’ He let the thought hang for a second, as if trying to get across just how serious this was.
‘At first he just came back and apologised, saying he couldn’t find anything. But after some gentle persuasion he agreed to try again. Said he knew somebody and he would follow a hunch.’
‘So then what?’
‘Well nothing for a while. I didn’t hear back from him for about twenty-four hours. Then he phoned. And it all fell into place.’
‘He found something?’
‘Yes. I felt like kicking myself when he told me. I had tried every possible spelling of Emma and Sharpe and Jordan and anything else I could think of. But think about it. She faked her job, she faked the wedding, God knows what else right? So why would Emma Jordan be her really name?’
The thought hit me like a bucket of ice. I knew she had lied, but somewhere deep down, I hoped she could explain it. I thought deep down I knew her, but it was looking like I didn’t even know her name.
‘You see, if you change your name you do if for a reason. Normally to cover up something illegal. It’s not as easy as you think. Faking documents is expensive, detailed work. Not something you just do on a whim. This was planned and arranged.’
Jack stopped for a second. He could see how painful it was for me to hear all of this and seeing his friend upset was weakening his police force resolve. He waited for my eyes to meet his and gave a tentative look, as if asking if I was alright. I nodded, faked a small smile and asked him to carry on.
‘We’d been searching for Ems like a civilian, not a criminal. But if she had changed her name there was a good chance she had done something wrong. So Stevie had opened up the search to include criminal activities with somebody possibly under the identity of ‘Emma Jordan.’ And nothing...
‘Nothing? I thought you said you found something?’ I spluttered.
‘Wait, let me finish. So Stevie phoned me back the second time and still hadn’t found anything. We agreed, with regret, to give up. She was a ghost and according to our files, never existed. Then a couple of hours later he phones back. Says he has just received a call from an agent in Barcelona. This is where it gets interesting...’
‘Go on then, what?’
‘So, this agent phones up Steve and demands to know why he has been searching the name ‘Emma Jordan’ through the files. Stevie is trapped and doesn’t really know how much he can tell the agent so he passes my number on to him. Then he called me to give me the heads up. About five minutes after that I get a call from a detective in Barcelona asking me the same question. Apparently they have been looking for someone who has been known to go under the pseudonym of Emma Jordan and get alerts if her name appears on the system. I asked them what their suspect looked like and guess what they said?’
‘Blond hair, blue eyes, unbelievably beautiful?’ I guessed.
‘You got it. I made up some nonsense about looking for a different one but managed to convince the agent to send over everything he has on his suspect. It took a lot of doing but he seemed desperate to catch her and was willing to do anything that might turn up leads. I promised to let him know if I heard anything and hung up.’
‘Thanks mate,’ I said weakly. I’m not really sure why I said thanks. To be honest, I still hadn’t processed any of the information. So, that was that. Emma (or whoever she was) was a criminal. I guess I knew that before - it was the only logical conclusion - but I still couldn’t believe it. But that wasn’t why I had thanked him. I think the truth behind it was that I was scared for her. I heard a detective wanted to catch her and instead of being glad, I was worried. I wanted to help her, if you can believe it. And Jack had, at least for the moment, covered the fact she was in London. I was sure it was illegal and could get Jack in a lot of trouble. I wanted him to know how much it meant to me.
‘Thanks,’ I breathed again. ‘Seriously, you went out of your way so much for me. I really appreciate it. And now I’ve got you involved in God knows what and it’s all for no good and...
‘Stop,’ Jack commanded. ‘I love you mate, you know that. You’ve been like a brother to me since forever. You know that. I’ve got your back. If you’re involved in something, I want to be, OK? And don’t worry about me, I can look after myself. And we will sort it all out, I promise.’
I believed him. I smiled at him in stunned awe and thanked him again. We sat there in silence for a second, trying to understand our own thoughts. Eventually I spoke.
‘OK, go on then. What has she done?’ It hit me that I knew she was a criminal but had no idea what crimes she had done. I knew it had to be pretty bad to just disappear like she did, but what was it? God, what if it was murder? No it couldn’t be, could it?
‘It’s a lot mate. I’ll let you read for yourself.’ He opened his shoulder bag, pulled out a thick folder and slid it across the table at me. ‘Take your time. I’ll go and check on Rach.’
‘What about the note? The bullet?’
‘We’ll work it out. Read through it mate and then we’ll talk.’
Jack stood up, downed the rest of his drink and slipped off quietly to see his wife.
So here it was. Since Emma left I had juggled thousands of questions without answering them. All I had to do was turn the page and read. But I couldn’t. The second I turned that page over I knew I was going to find out the truth and lose my last desperate shreds of hope that this was all a mistake. Reading her file would be the end of us, would kill any feelings I had for her. My fingers drummed nervously on the top of the file as I summoned up all my courage. This was it.
‘Goodbye Ems,’ I whispered.
I opened the file.
Chapter Nine
‘I guess the truth often hurts more than lies.’
The file was devoid of any structure or order. It had clearly been cobbled together by different agents trying to find anything on her.
The first things I noticed were the photos hooked to the corners of the file with paperclips. There were six different photographs of different size and quality hanging there. They all showed my Emma, most of them when she was considerably younger. The first one I focused on showed her when she was no more than eighteen years old. She was slight and had long curls of dark brown hair covering her face. She was dressed completely in black and looked fantastic. I picked up another to compare it with.
The second photo was harder to make out. It was black and white and looked as if it was taken on a telescopic lens. It was certainly taken from a good distance. Ems was barely in this image and at first I couldn’t see her. There was a crowd of people and if you looked hard enough you could just make out Emma edging out of the left-hand side of the photo. I examined the image. She looked blonde, although this was harder to tell in black and white. Between the blurs of life passing by it looked as if she was carrying something but it was impossible t
o be sure.
The contrast between the two was extraordinary. I had no proof but I felt pretty confident that both were taken in completely different countries. The first looked dusty and dry, perhaps somewhere like Mexico. The second looked busy and thriving but it was definitely not England. Maybe Milan or Paris. At that moment, I wished I knew more about geography and the world around me. It was all guesswork and I could be getting it completely wrong.
The contrast wasn’t just in the environment either. It was with Emma herself. There can’t have been more than a year between the two images but it appeared more like a lifetime. Everything was different. The clothes she wore, the hairstyles and colour, the way she stood out in one and blended away in the other. She was a chameleon.
I scanned through the remaining photographs with the same level of amazement. Each was a new country; each must have been a different life for her. My head rushed as I tried to get it around the information. I gave up. You know the feeling when you find out something about your partner you never knew before? Maybe you find out they had more sexual experiences then you thought or they did something bad (like supporting Gordon Brown)? As hard as you try you always look at them in a different way. Imagine how I was feeling right then. I was looking at someone I had never met before. She was a complete stranger.
The rest of the file was made up of printed sheets of facts. According to the first sheet nobody knew her real name. There was simply a blank space where the answer should be. There was a space below that accommodated her ‘known aliases.’ This line was over-flowing with details. Some had question marks over them written in biro, clearly added on later. The list read:
Known Aliases: Harriet Rae, Helen May-Cooper, Rachel Harper (?), Lucy Stevenson, Maria Gomez (?) Megan Tollera (? Spelling) Charlotte Brown, Emma Jordan.
It was at this moment when I realised how insignificant I was in her life. According to these police files she had at least eight identities and Emma Jordan was just one of them. The girl I had met, fallen in love with, got ‘married’ to and wanted to start a family with was just one fragment of a world for this person. Why would she do it? I spent years with her every single day. I wondered if there was a husband or boyfriend in each of her other worlds, all wondering where she was and who she really was. I forced myself to carry on.
The next information I turned to was ‘criminal convictions.’ It read:
Criminal Convictions: None
The column left for ‘suspected offenses was not so empty however. There was a list that stretched over several pages. It went from art theft to confidence tricks and pretty much everything in between. The list was so conclusive. If we were to believe what the file was saying she had attempted to steal most things of value between here and northern Africa.
I allowed myself to look at the positives for a second. Firstly, she hadn’t killed anyone. It didn’t look like she had tried to hurt anyone in her life. So that was nice; I hadn’t been living with a murderous psychopath. There was something else. All of her crimes were sophisticated somehow. She wasn’t robbing stereos out of cars or conning old ladies out of their pensions. She was thinking. Yes, she was stealing and breaking the law and would probably end up in jail for the rest of her life but it wasn’t desperate. She stole because she could, not because she needed to. It was an intellectual pursuit and, looking down her list of ‘achievements’, she was amazing at it.
I was completely torn, lost for words and impossibly confused. So that was the truth. Emma was a thief and a conman (or is the term conwoman?). I had been so angry at her for so long and, if I was honest, I wanted her to be pure evil. Having hoped her to be a murderer so I could let go of her forever, finding out the truth had seemed easier to take. I hated myself for it, but I was almost impressed by what she had done. However there were still all the lies she had told me. She had conned me from day one, but there was a bit of the Emma I knew in this file. The woman I loved was intelligent, fun and carefree. What if she was the girl I knew and loved... just with a different ‘job’?
And now the biggest question of them all:
If she was this criminal with a dark past, was anything we ever shared real?
She had taken nothing from me and spent years of her life with me. Maybe she fell in love but was too deep into her world and didn’t want to lose me. Maybe.
As I flipped over the page, there were more details about her work. I leafed through some of her higher profile cases, most of which took place in Europe. A personal favourite of mine was her bold attempt to recreate Victor Lustig’s masterpiece, ‘selling the Eiffel Tower’.
The details were sketchy but piecing together several different police files I just about gathered that she managed to find a buyer, take a deposit and arrange a meeting for a full payment before being foiled and getting away clean. She always got away clean.
I was shocked at how much she had fitted in so far. She was still in her mid-twenties. Wasn’t she? Oh God, what if she was older? I doubted it, looking at her photos and dropped the thought quickly. There were jobs done in Barcelona, Milan, Burkina Faso, Berlin, Northern Brittany and ...Mallorca. We had met in Mallorca. Five years before. I turned back to the page with all the dates and figures and checked when they thought she had been in Mallorca. Five years ago. I swallowed with yet more amazement. She had been working a con when we met.
*****
Lying on a beach in Mallorca, I was asking myself why anybody drinks alcohol. My liver had either died or was on its last legs. Rolling over to avoid burning was definitely too much effort. I had resigned myself to being red on the front half and pasty ‘British White’ on the back. Despite the hangover, I was happy. This was the first holiday I had taken with the lads and we were certainly making up for lost time. I don’t remember the night before but, according to Jack, it had been a good one. During the day, the island was peaceful. It was beautiful and relaxing, as close to paradise as I had seen. But at night, if you knew the right places to go, it was mental (in a good way). I was woken from ‘hung-over’ stupor by a swift jab in the sides. I groaned, looking up to see who owned the guilty hand. It belonged to Eric, a friend of mine. I say a ‘friend’ but really he was a friend of Tim’s, who was a friend of Jack’s, and I accepted him to the group without ever warming to him socially. For some reason he clung to me and took my distain as sarcastic banter. It wasn’t.
‘What do you want Eric?’
‘Babes, three o’clock!’ He shouted.
‘Really, are we still saying babes?’ I replied, slowly.
‘You’re gonna want to see this mate,’ chipped in Jack, who was already staring.
I almost didn’t bother. The lads didn’t have the best taste in woman and would get with anything that moved. Also, as much as I like girls, the way I felt right then, I didn’t want to breathe deeply let alone chat up girls. I wasn’t exactly an expert.
‘Literally the hottest girl I have ever seen,’ called out Tim, who was now joining in.
Finally I gave in and looked up. I felt like I had just been shot or struck by lightning. There were plenty of attractive women in bikinis, slipping in and out of the sea but I could see who we were all looking at. Making her way out of the sea was the most gorgeous girl I had ever seen. She was perfect. Her long blonde hair was swept over her back and allowed us to see her beautifully structured face. I allowed my eyes to follow the curves of her body downwards and had to force myself to keep breathing. She was stunning, in every sense of the word.
Nobody spoke. For minutes, I’m not sure that anybody blinked. We watched as she ran her fingers through her hair and began walking slowly off down the beach. I looked over at my friends to check I hadn’t just dreamed that and was relieved to see them all equally struggling to put their tongues back in their mouths.
She had reached the end of the beach and was almost going to disappear out of view. I don’t know if epiphany is the right word but I had a sudden realisation that I had to speak to her right now or regret
it the rest of my life. I didn’t think. I stood up and began running, attempting to catch up with her. I ignored the fact I had no shirt on or the loud shouting of questions from my mates and pushed on. She was only a few steps away from the shops and if she entered the busy town it would be difficult to find her. I had no idea what I was going to say, and had a worrying suspicion I was going to freeze and start mumbling or worse... dribbling.
She disappeared around a corner for a second and I increased my speed so I didn’t lose her. I followed round the building and, to my delight, could still see her clearly. She had entered the busy shopping district in just her bikini which helped me find her, partly because she was dressed differently, and partly because every man on the street turned to look at her. Wow, she really was beautiful. I slowed my pace a little and began to panic about talking to her. She didn’t look Spanish, but there was a chance she was foreign and we wouldn’t even have a language in common. Even if she could physically understand me the chances of her finding me attractive and charming seemed unlikely at best. Having run a long way (and in a hung-over state to be fair) I did have concerns that I would look more like a rapist than a suitor, so I took some deep breaths and tried to calm my breathing. Don’t over-think it. Just stay calm. You can do this. To my amazement I didn’t chicken out and I was ready. I was actually ready.
I wanted to catch her as if by accident. I had stayed far enough back that she could never have known I was there and I wanted to talk to her before she realised I was essentially stalking her. She slipped around a corner and I gathered my courage. This was it. I followed round moments after she had gone and... she was gone.
It was impossible. I had followed her into a small street which had some shops on it but they were either closed for the siestas or too far away to have dipped into in time. I calculated I must have gone round the corner no more than three seconds after her and, in that time, she couldn’t have done anything. The road was long and narrow with no streets coming off it. There was nowhere to go. Even if she had known someone was there she couldn’t have run out of sight that quickly. I walked up and down the street and called in all the shops. I ran back up the road I had just come down looking left and right. This couldn’t be happening. Out of nowhere she had disappeared into thin air. Had she even been real? I knew she had been there, but how could I have lost her? I hung around the streets for almost fifteen minutes desperately hoping she would reappear. She was gone and, like it or not, I had to accept it. I vowed there and then if I ever saw her again I would never let her go. I would find her and ask her out. Two days later, I did.