Finding alice, p.1
Finding Alice, page 1
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Synopsis
Have you ever been on holiday and just wanted to stay? How far would you go for this newfound freedom?
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For P.I. Toni Mendez, the honeymoon seems over with her long-time best friend — recently turned girlfriend. Needing time to think, she takes on what looks like a straightforward missing person case in a coveted holiday destination. However, she soon realises this case might not be the stroll on a beach she had hoped for.
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Alice has lived a sheltered, privileged life, controlled and influenced by those around her, until one day, in one of the most beautiful locations in the world, she walks out.
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Cape Town, South Africa — renowned as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, with its white sand beaches, majestic Table Mountain, nearby wine lands, and scenic drives. Behind the shiny tourist veneer, it is a place with a dark underbelly of crime and conflict; a city on the edge, where life is cheap and theft, murder and trafficking are business as usual.
*** Winner of 2018 - NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite - World Literature ***
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*** Winner of 2018 - NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite - LGBTQ+ ***
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“Compelling, intriguing, fascinating and a terrific read!”
“Multi-layered and intelligently plotted...Bravo!”
“An utterly absorbing read.”
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Looking for a gripping, fast-paced, thriller, set in a picturesque tourist haven by day and a dark and gritty underbelly by night — then “Finding ALICE” is for you!
S. M. Skyborne
DUKEBOX.LIFE
Published by DukeBox.life.
http://DukeBox.life.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), locales or events is purely coincidental.
S.M. Skyborne asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Copyright © 2024, S.M. Skyborne
All rights reserved.
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For my friend, Glynis Shiell (1963 — 2018). Thank you for being in my life and know that you will always be in my heart.
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To all my friends and family, make the most of this one wild and precious life!
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
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Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Prologue
Alice sat on a large, rough rock to the side of the beautiful white Camps Bay beach, dangling her feet in the crisp, cold rock pool. Here, emerging like a diamond from a stream, she found a rare moment of clarity.
Her past, a phantasm of places, faces, emotions and events, shimmered on the rippling tide before her.
How much of it was real? She could not tell. That did not matter, for how can we ever really know, when all our existence is filtered through unreliable senses and tainted minds? Or when the past is construed and re-told by people around us working to their own agendas?
Giving in, she allowed herself to let go, to let the tugging currents of her mind pull her in and drag her under.
There are worlds inside,
worlds lost in my mind,
where what I see,
both miracle and tragedy,
is really only part of me.
Here, unfettered by my past
and the shadows I have cast,
I cherish feeling that I‘m free
while knowing that this cannot be.
Part I
South East England, United Kingdom
One
Wednesday - 1 November, UK
7 O’clock sharp, Toni and Lizbeth headed up in the lift of the small business co-op near Old Street in London that housed their respective offices. Their two weeks in the Maldives had been out of this world. So much happened, so much that was new, so much excitement. Toni stuck her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and leaned her tall sporty frame against the lift wall while she quietly admired the slight, beautiful, blonde woman dressed in a tight, navy, pencil skirt suit beside her and her heart swelled. She bit her lower lip. On one level she could not be happier. On another she felt an unfamiliar anxiety lurking. This had nothing to do with the holiday but everything to do with her dawning realisation — she never wanted to lose this beautiful woman from her life.
As Lizbeth glanced in the mirrored panel of the lift wall, she caught Toni’s dark brown eyes staring at her in the reflection. “What?” she asked.
Toni shook her head. “Nothing.” She leant over past Lizbeth and hit the emergency stop button on the control panel. She turned and pulled Lizbeth into an embrace. “I just love you and…” she kissed Lizbeth deeply, “want to say thank you so very much for a super holiday.”
Lizbeth smiled. “No, thank you. It was wonderful. I can’t believe we saw whale sharks. That gave me a whole new perspective on what we think of as life, nature and what it means to be free in that wide ocean.”
They kissed again.
“I don’t want to go back to the real world,” Toni said. “Shall we go missing for at least one more day?”
“Stop it, Toni!” Lizbeth smacked Toni’s arm gently. “You know I’d love that, but you also know I am meeting with Judge Merchant today. I have to be here for that.”
“She’s an ex-fling. Can't you get her to come to your flat another time?”
Lizbeth frowned at Toni and was about to launch into the expected tirade about how that was years ago while they were still at university and had nothing to do with them meeting now, when she noticed the naughty twinkle in Toni’s eyes. She pushed Toni on the shoulder in mock agitation.
Toni ducked in an exaggerated manner. “Okay. Okay. I was just teasing.”
“No more teasing,” Lizbeth said, and planted a peck on her cheek. “Besides, poor Lawrence must have drowned under all your paperwork by now.”
Toni rolled her eyes and sighed. “True,” she said, and hit the release button on the control panel. She had quite deliberately blanked out any thoughts about work, trying to enjoy the last few minutes of her first holiday away from the office in nearly two years.
The lift pinged and opened. They both stepped out and headed down the corridor.
Outside Lizbeth’s door, Toni gave her a coy little kiss on the cheek and a wave as she continued on to her own office.
As Toni neared her office, she saw the door was ajar. About to rush in guns blazing, she realised it was just Lawrence, her young colleague and apprentice P.I., who had beaten her in despite the early hour. He stood in the middle of the perfectly tidy room — one she hardly recognised — holding the landline phone to his ear and scribbling in a diary. Except for her laptop and a little silver name plaque perched on the front edge, the rest of the desk was completely clear.
“Oh my God! Lawrence,” she exclaimed involuntarily.
He held up one finger to his lips to show her to keep quiet. “Sure, Sir, I’ll tell her. I know it is urgent and I’m sure she will be more than willing to help you out. You can speak to her yourself at ten this morning. She can be reached on this —” He listened for a few minutes, rolling his eyes back for Toni’s benefit. “Oh, okay Dr McCroy, I’ll let her know.” He scribbled something on a Post-it note. “Ten a.m. sharp. Sure, she’ll ring you.” Lawrence put the phone down.
“This guy is desperate to see you. I’m not sure why. He won’t say, but he’s called over half a dozen times to check if perhaps you’ve come back early from your travels.”
Toni advanced into the room and put her satchel on one of the spare client chairs in front of her desk.
“Wow, Lawrence! What happened here? Have I been burgled?” Toni remarked on the rather bare looking office as she ran her hand through her long dark hair.
He looked around the office with a smile. “Oh, yeah, I hope you don’t mind… I tidied up a bit. You did say to make myself at home and asked me to do my best. So I did. I tried for a good few days to get the hang of your, er… filing system, but I found it a little too… unconventional, so I decided to modernise a bit,” he said, looking pleased with himself.
“Where did it all go?” Toni asked, scanning the room.
“Since we’re now in the twenty-first century, I decided to invest in a photocopier, and I enlisted the mind-blowing tech services of Three.” He held out a hand rapidly. “Don’t worry. I paid for it all out of my wages, not your petty cash, just in case you didn’t agree. I figured either way it was a worthwhile investment to make my life easier.” Lawrence leaned down, clicked on something on the laptop in front of him and swivelled it round so she could see the screen. “Here is a digitised archive of all your paperwork and notes, indexed by manual keywords, generic metadata, and OCR1 identified search terms. Basically, any document you have that has text in it can now be searched for and found within minutes, and it takes up very little space. Oh, and you have access to all your records at anytime from anywhere in the world, since Three also installed your very own secure NAS server.”
Toni’s jaw dropped. Her brain couldn’t quite comprehend what all that meant. “I trust the coffee machine still works the same way?” she asked. “Or do I need a Master’s in IT to make a coffee now, too?”
Lawrence cleared his throat. “Yes, sorry, I probably should’ve let you have a cup of coffee first, before I launched into all of that.”
Toni turned to the perfectly cleared trestle-table on which the tiny coffee machine now looked lost. “Want one?”
“Yes, please,” he said, joining her on the other side of the table. She poured them each a cup and handed him one.
“So?” Lawrence said stirring his coffee.
“So? What?” Toni carefully sipped the hot liquid.
“So? What do you think?” He waved his spoon in the direction of the office space around them.
She glanced around again. Then she slowly began to nod. “I just wish you had told me you were planning this. I could at least have done some of the sorting and tidying before I left.”
“Phew!” Lawrence let out a nervous laugh. “Three and I got stuck in and we managed to clear it all over four nights. Well, she did most of it. You were right. That girl is a machine — she never sleeps.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how she does it. And, the OCR and metadata programme she wrote is a complete work of art.”
Toni nodded in appreciation.
“And now as an unexpected bonus, we can both fit into this office at once.”
Toni laughed. “True, it feels positively palatial. I was beginning to dread having to find somewhere bigger. Thanks!”
Lawrence nodded and his pale freckled cheeks flushed slightly.
After a quick catch-up with Lawrence, Toni rang Dr Magnus McCroy at the PhyCorp Institute. He invited her to come and see him at their offices so he could explain the details of a case that he said he was not at liberty to discuss over the phone. It all sounded a bit cloak and dagger, but she decided to take the bait.
Toni handed her ID to the armed uniformed guards. She watched as they cross-referenced her name to a list of expected visitors. Within seconds her ID was handed back and she was waved through the wide gates of the PhyCorp Institute. The property occupied a large estate in the middle of the Berkshire countryside. She steered her old banger along the long drive edged with a row of tall silver-birch trees. After four-hundred yards the driveway opened up to reveal an imposing stucco covered Georgian mansion, with large sash-windows. There were only six cars parked outside, which didn't seem many considering the size of the place.
Toni parked her car and headed to the main entrance.
Inside the lobby, a large, dark, oak reception desk formed the centre piece, behind a conversational arrangement of couches and chairs upholstered in a maroon and gold jacquard fabric which added to the opulent feel of the building. A middle-aged woman with dyed blond hair and nineteen-fifties reading glasses, sat behind the reception desk, staring at something on the computer monitor in front of her.
When Toni approached, the woman’s face lit up as though she had been expecting her.
“Hi, I’m Toni Mendez. I’m here to see Dr McCroy.”
“Of course,” the woman said, still smiling. “Do you have an appointment?”
As if on cue, a tall, beautiful woman of Asian descent, possibly in her mid-forties and immaculately turned out in a turquoise silk dress with matching scarf, entered the lobby through a pair of somehow out-of-place, stainless-steel clad automatic doors with round porthole windows.
“Silvia, it’s fine. I’ve got this,” the woman said to the receptionist.
Toni could detect a slight accent confirming her hunch that this woman was either Indian or Pakistani in origin. The traces of an accent were, however, so faint that Toni guessed she had been educated in the UK, possibly Oxbridge, and probably lived here ever since.
“Toni Mendez, I presume,” the woman said, holding out her hand.
Toni shook hands and nodded.
“I’m Sheena Mukherjee. Dr McCroy and I have been expecting you. Please follow me.”
Toni fell in step behind Ms Mukherjee as she headed back through the out-of-place steel doorway and down a linoleum clad corridor that resembled a hospital — in strong contrast to the luxury of the reception area.
After Lawrence had told Toni about her appointment with Dr McCroy, she’d tried to do some research to prepare for the meeting, but all her searches came back empty, barring a very short industry description involving “mental health” and the physical address and VAT number on the HMRC database. Other than that, PhyCorp Institute seemed to have no digital footprint.
“Right this way, Ms Mendez,” her escort said as she turned into another corridor, at the far end of which, Sheena Mukherjee opened the door to a small consulting room. Toni noticed the name plaque on the door read Dr M. McCroy.
As Toni stepped inside, she was greeted by a tall, well built, clean-shaven man in his late fifties. Unlike many men his age he had a full head of hair and he obviously looked after himself well. Over brown corduroy trousers and a beige shirt and tie, he wore a white lab coat.
“This is Dr McCroy,” Sheena said.
He smiled and shook hands with Toni. “Please take a seat. Thank you for coming out this far to see us today.”
Toni nodded and sat down.
The consulting room was very sparsely decorated with a stainless-steel table and four chairs around it. In the top corner, attached to the ceiling, Toni noticed a camera. Its light was red, so Toni gathered that the meeting was not being recorded at that moment.
Dr McCroy bent down and picked up his briefcase from the floor. It was an old-fashioned leather case with fake buckled straps. “Miss Mendez, we really need your help with this.” He took out a cardboard pocket folder which he placed onto the desk between them.
As Toni stretched towards the folder, he put his finger on top of it and pulled it out of her reach. “This is a very delicate, highly confidential matter and you should only read the file if you are sure you are definitely going to take the case.”
