The Lost Princess Read online

  Layla had been a fixture on the social scene since she had reappeared after several years at college. Before then, she had been little more than Igor Balcom’s daughter, a privately educated teenager of peripheral interest. She had kept her head down in those days, out of the news, at school and then at university, where she had gone to learn about the family business. We were told that it was to prove to the world that she could run Balcom when the time came. That she wasn’t just an entitled bitch inheriting daddy’s wealth.

  Little was known about that part of her life, and believe me, we had searched. I thought that she had probably used an alias and gone to some obscure university, taking her last chance for normality while she could. I wondered if her present disappearance, if that was what it was, had something to do with that part of her life. Gaynor was right in one respect though; she loved publicity, it was unlike her to have vanished so completely.

  I looked at the feed again, she hadn’t been active while the show was on, there was nothing about her being somewhere else. At least nobody else had publicly questioned her no-show. With my contacts, it gave me a head start. As I placed the first call, I imagined that this job would be over by teatime. Remembering what Brian had said, I decided it would be best not to ask straight out where she was. It meant that a call to Balcom’s press office was out of the question, they would only know what they were allowed to know. I was starting my investigation much closer to her.

  The call was answered. “Hi Miles,” said Sooz Minta, one of Layla’s gang, the daughter of a rival businessman and probably her closest friend. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” She had an old-fashioned way of talking, but I liked it and her. She was older than Layla and well out of my league but we shared a sense of humour and a love of sailing.

  “Sooz, how are you? I missed the Prestige awards today, what colour was Layla’s hair?”

  There was silence; I was just about to ask if she was OK when she answered in a whisper. “She wasn’t there, Miles, she’s alright, just things to do; please don’t ask me what.”

  Just as I expected, it was a case of getting away for a few days, either to get rid of a boyfriend or to cement a new one in place before he had to face the rigours of being part of her scene. There was no story here. I was about to ask who the lucky man was when she dropped the bomb.

  “Don’t call me again,” she whispered, then she hung up.

  Gaynor came back as I was wondering what was going on. “Well? Found her yet?” she asked.

  “I think you could be right,” I answered and told her about the call, mentioning no names.

  “That’s just one, maybe they’ve fallen out,” she snapped. “Try someone else, you’re supposed to be an investigative journalist.”

  From the gleam in her eye, I could tell that she was feeling smug, she had discovered a story. She said it just loud enough for people to hear, they smirked at my getting told off by the boss. “Yes, boss,” I said as she stalked away, slamming her office door behind her. I would make sure to exact my revenge later this evening.

  But the more people I tried, the stranger things got. Nobody was letting on, if they knew anything then they weren’t saying. It was unusual, I had a good relationship with them all, they trusted me to be fair. Normally someone would tell me what she was up to, but everyone I spoke to said that they hadn’t seen her and that I wasn’t to call them again. It was almost as if Sooz or Layla or someone else had rung around and warned everyone about talking to me. A few of them were unavailable, blocking my calls. That only deepened my suspicion that something serious was going on.

  If her friends wouldn’t help, that only closed off one avenue. The only good thing was, if they wouldn’t talk to me, then they almost certainly wouldn’t tell anyone else.

  I knew a few places she could be, things she did that I knew about via her friends; yoga classes and a private gym. I tried them all, none of them would admit to seeing her either.

  This was turning into a real mystery, you didn’t just lose the most recognisable woman on the planet. If you really wanted to be left alone, you made up some story and made sure that everyone knew it. The last thing to do was stir up more suspicion by telling journalists that nothing was happening and to stop calling.

  I had a thought, maybe the attitude didn’t matter because she wasn’t on the planet. I could try and see if she had gone off-world. I had a contact at border control, I could ask them to check all the departure points. Or, I could check it myself, with the access we had to the web it was easy and less official. Again, I found nothing. It didn’t mean she hadn’t gone, there was always a Balcom corporate flight, but she hadn’t used a commercial route. Checking the traffic control website told me that, apart from short test flights, no Balcom craft had taken off and not returned for two weeks.

  I logged back into the flash feed, the social network loved by us and just about everyone else on Centra. Searching for Layla Balcom. I got the historic list of her status updates and all the comments and shares that went with them. Narrowing it down to the time since I had seen her arrive, there were only a few pictures, most of it was text over old photos, with captions like ‘washing my hair tonight’, or ‘a quiet day playing tennis at the club’. There was even one of her sitting at a desk, ‘working for my living’, it said, with a smiley, winking icon.

  It was all so bland, compared to her usual output. I could see why Gaynor had suggested that it was strange. I had been wrapped up with the crime story after I had seen her at the port, so I hadn’t really noticed her absence. Her feed might have been updated as usual but there was nothing substantial, it could have been scheduled months ago, or the work of a paid assistant.

  I looked back at the pictures and video of her arriving at the port. She strode through the crowd, the purple hair drawing my eyes.

  Then I looked down and saw it. I felt my stomach lurch. Surely, I couldn’t have been the only person to notice that there was a faint outline of a tattoo on her ankle, barely showing through badly applied make-up, flashing in and out of view behind people’s legs and luggage.

  Layla Balcom had no tattoos. I had seen enough pictures of her modelling shoes to know that, this wasn’t a new one either. I zoomed the picture, it was a dolphin, the edges were soft and blurred, suggesting that it had been done a long time ago. Whoever had arrived at the port, in such a blaze of publicity, it wasn’t Layla. And that raised the question, why? Dolphins were a part of the past, an extinct species from Terra, loved by eco-freaks as an example of how mankind had fouled up.

  I had to tell Gaynor, I looked over to her office, empty. It was early evening, she must have gone home already. I didn’t want to trust the information to anyone else, there wasn’t much more I could do today. At least no one else appeared to have spotted it, they had all been distracted by the hair. Which had probably been the idea? I shut everything down and went home myself.

  Chapter Three

  Gaynor was in my apartment, her hair had reverted to a shade of golden brown, it might even have been its natural colour, I couldn’t remember. She was cooking some sort of vegetable dish, it smelt amazing as I came up behind her and put my arms around her waist.

  She turned her head and kissed me. “Hi you, I wondered how long you’d be.”

  “There wasn’t much more I could do today,” I answered. “Plus I was in shock after such a severe telling off from my harsh, uncaring boss.”

  She grinned. “Just keeping up appearances,” she said.

  “If only they knew,” I muttered, “how I would be getting my own back later.” I let my hands wander, so did she.

  She suddenly shoved me away. “Let me cook, if this ends up burnt, you’ll be sleeping on the sofa. What did you find?”

  It didn’t feel like the right time to remind her that this was my apartment. “Nothing, that’s what’s so weird. When you look at the feed properly, it’s not her usual stuff. All Layla’s contacts are either avoiding me or telling me not to call. At least Sooz said tha
t she was OK.”

  “I knew it,” she said, stabbing at the innocent vegetables with a spatula. “She’s up to something.”

  I had to agree. “I thought I’d find her straight away, now I’m confused. There’s nothing about her flying out either. I spotted something interesting though, I’ll tell you about it while we eat.”

  “Tell me now,” she demanded, waving the spatula in my face.

  “No, I’m having a shower.” It wouldn’t hurt to make her wait, she wasn’t my boss out of the office. I still owed her for the rebuke.

  When I came back, she had served the food onto plates and carried them to the table. There was a white wine as well. My apartment was on the fiftieth floor and picture windows gave us a view of the city, the huge rock formation it nested under and, from where I was sitting, the Balcom Tower. It was one of the more stunning vistas on Centra, at least according to the letting agent. After six years, I hardly noticed it. There were a few hot-air balloons drifting through the sky, the low sun reflecting off of them.

  “So what’s the thing you’ve found?” Gaynor asked, as soon as my mouth was filled. “It’d better be good, everyone at the other mags will soon be on the hunt.”

  I chewed and swallowed. Then I told her about the tattoo, it stopped her eating for a moment.

  “So, what do you think?” I asked when she hadn’t replied. “At first I thought it was her hiding while she went off with a new boyfriend, but this seems excessive, she’s never employed someone to pretend to be her before.”

  “As far as we know,” she said. “If Layla has employed a lookalike, and not a very good one, she’s got something going on alright, more than just boyfriend trouble. There must have been a rush to get someone to stand in for her, she wouldn’t slip up like that otherwise.”

  “Do you think that’s why everyone that knows her has gone silent, without a convincing story?”

  “She’s asked them to cover for her,” she suggested. “Her friends are a loyal bunch. What do you think Igor knows about it?”

  That was the big question; there was no way of getting an answer from her father that wouldn’t involve problems. “We can scarcely ask him, can we?”

  “I think,” she said, “that we need to be really careful here. We may have stumbled on something big. At the moment, we might be the only ones who have any idea that she’s missing. Igor might know, or he might not.”

  “Either way,” I agreed, “it’s probably best if we don’t tell Igor what we know about the tattoo. If we know and he doesn’t.”

  “He’ll be annoyed,” she said.

  “Exactly, and if he knows and wants it kept secret?”

  “Same thing. It might even be something to do with him,” she said. I didn’t think much about her comment then, much later it would return to haunt me.

  We talked about it some more, but it came back to the same thing. It was clear that Layla wanted to be left alone for some reason. That made it important, at least as far as she was concerned. And she had got all of her friends onside, even if they were only raising suspicions.

  “Do we have the right to spoil it for her by interfering?” I asked.

  “Don’t you mean duty?” Gaynor replied.

  “No, she might be a celebrity but she’s still entitled to a bit of privacy.”

  Gaynor gave me a sideways look. “Whose side are you on?”

  It was probably not a good idea to say that my sympathies were with Layla, not my employer.

  Chapter Four

  Next morning when I woke up, Gaynor was already gone; that was usual, she would be in the office before me, reinforcing the impression that we were no more than colleagues. She would tell me off for being late, or something trivial, people would laugh at my humiliation and wonder how I put up with it. Last night was a good enough reason, I smiled at the memory.

  On the way to the office, I checked the feed. According to the latest updates, Layla was planning on a quiet day with friends. The picture was one that I recognised, from months ago. Her left foot was visible, no tattoo.

  My messages were next, there had been a couple from people I had tried to contact the day before, they repeated what Sooz had said, Layla was OK, leave it. One said that another reporter had been asking her where Layla was.

  Another reporter meant one of our rival magazines. They might all be onto it now. As soon as I was at my desk, I made a couple of carefully worded calls to some of my competitors, to make sure that they hadn’t scooped us. So as not to give too much away, I just made out that I’d missed the fashion show and hadn’t seen Brian. They said the same, she hadn’t shown, they were all careful in their answers; if they were searching for her too, they weren’t letting on. And the feed was quiet.

  I had a gut feeling that the race for information was on. Whether I liked it or not, people would soon notice what I had seen. First, it would be the presence of so many bland updates, so different from her usual feed. It wouldn’t be long until someone else spotted the tattoo.

  I was stumped, where could I look next? Then it happened, there was an anonymous message posted, from a news agency on the other side of the planet. “Where is Layla Balcom?” it screamed. “Why isn’t she posting any new stuff?”

  In the predictable way of the feed, everyone piled in and added their own bits of non-information, sightings and rumours to the mix. Suddenly, it was the hottest topic on the web.

  Gaynor wasn’t in her office, I asked around. “She got a call and ran out, just before you arrived,” one of the other reporters told me. She must have found something out, been given a lead that couldn’t wait.

  “I’ve found Layla,” shouted Haz, one of the juniors. “She’s over at Du’Prees trying on clothes.”

  “Come on then, Haz,” I said, looking around for Brian. “Follow me.” I couldn’t see him, there was no time to look. “And bring a camera.”

  We raced over, Du’Prees were a big fashion house, only a few blocks from our building. Layla had recently been unveiled as the face of their new collections. As I ran I remembered that they hadn’t been at the awards. They ignored Prestige, had their own event. Perhaps that was the reason for it all, a conflict of interest. When we arrived, there was a crowd, held back by security.

  “Has she come out?” I asked a few of the onlookers. They all said that they hadn’t seen her, they had seen the comment on the feed, saying she was here. They had just come over in case they caught a glimpse. I could hear people debating what colour her hair would be today.

  I managed to get to the front of the crowd and showed my press card to the security guard on the door. He allowed me in, followed by Haz. The floor manager on women’s fashions told us that we’d missed her by a few minutes. “We let her out the back, away from the crowd,” he explained.

  “Was it definitely her?” I asked. He gave me a look; as if to say, ‘and how would you know?’

  “Of course it was,” he said indignantly. “Du’Prees would not employ a fake to advertise their collections. I’d know her anywhere. A shame about her laryngitis but other than that, it was her. You have my word.”

  “Did any of your staff take pictures?” I asked. I was hoping to get some of her left foot.

  “I would hope not,” he said. “We have standards.” ‘Not like your sort,’ was the implication.

  “Not even for promotion, company use?” asked Haz, good lad, he was thinking on his feet.

  “You’ll have to request them from our publicity department,” he said. That could take days, time which I suspected we didn’t have.

  “The magazine will pay for any pictures of Layla Balcom that we use,” I said, loudly enough for the staff to hear. “Send them to Miles Goram at Getaway.” Within seconds, my phone bleeped as the pictures started to arrive on my private feed. We left the manager looking annoyed at the disloyalty of his staff, the crowd outside had moved on to the next attraction.

  Back at the office, I looked through the pictures. It was the same girl as I had
seen at the port, I was sure about that. There were lots of shots of her modelling the clothes, all short skirts and beachwear for Du’Prees’ new summer collection. A lot of them looked like they had been taken covertly; a few were anonymous and unsuitable for family viewing, but I got lucky after I’d seen about thirty. Someone had sent me the wrong picture. Her face wasn’t visible, it was taken in haste and only showed the lower half of her, the shorts and the legs. At the extreme edge of the shot was her foot, the tattoo was just visible. Laryngitis nothing. Du’Prees had been conned.

  I was wondering how I could track down the lookalike when I got a call from the big boss, Hendrix himself. And if Hendrix said, ‘come up and see me’, you went. I left the newsroom and headed up to the top floor.

  “Now then, Miles,” he said, as I walked through his door, without giving me time to say anything. “You’re a friend of Layla Balcom, aren’t you?” His voice deep and measured, suiting his large frame and piercing eyes. He made no move to get up from his position behind his desk.

  “No, boss, I just report on her, I’ve never met her.” He ignored the distinction as I shut the door and walked to his desk. There was no chair for me, that was a message, I wasn’t popular.

  “Whatever, Igor likes you, he’s told me that, several times before.” His gaze intensified, I stood, feeling like a naughty schoolboy. “He’s just been on the phone, he’s a bit worried to hear that people think she’s gone missing.” He made the point of reminding me that he had Igor’s ear and the power that went with it. He was eating lunch as he spoke, some sort of prawns and salad. I’d have to grab a sandwich later.

  I was determined not to be defensive, “He’s her father; he should know where she is. If she wants some alone time, who are we to deny it?”

  He nodded, took a mouthful of his lunch, chewed while the seconds dragged out. “She’s a big girl and he doesn’t, but the rumours are upsetting him, he was expecting her to be at the show yesterday. He had to send Donna at short notice. I gather she was not amused. You know that they’re getting married soon?”