by Jessie Keane
91
Rob drove Daisy back to Kit’s house and they let themselves in, relieved to find that the lock was intact and inside the place was, apparently, untouched.
‘Well, thank fuck for that,’ said Rob.
Daisy walked over to where Michael’s belongings were still spread out on the side table. Rob joined her. They both stared at the bits and pieces there. The gold Dunhill lighter, the cigarette case, the comb, the Krugerrand set in the ridged heavy gold mount of the ring, three matchbooks, a Rolex, a wad of twenty-pound notes and some change in a plain black wallet.
‘Is this all? I mean, were there any other items that Michael was carrying, that Kit would have kept for himself?’ asked Daisy. Rob shook his head. ‘Kit was so sure that Tito killed Michael,’ she said.
‘Bella Danieri says not. Not Tito, and not Fabio or Vittore either.’
‘Motives, then. What motive would anyone else have for doing that?’
‘Money and honey,’ said Rob.
‘Hm?’
‘Money,’ said Rob. ‘That points straight to Gabriel Ward. He found out he wasn’t getting a bean, and killed his dad in a rage.’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Honey?’
‘That’s possible too.’ Daisy thought of her mother. ‘Rob . . . what do you know about Thomas Knox?’
‘Tom Knox? He’s a hard man, a real face. In charge of a firm. Like Michael was. Like Kit is now.’
‘I think Ruby’s been seeing him. He was outside the church after Simon’s funeral, waiting to speak to her. The way he looks at her . . .’
‘What?’ asked Rob, when she hesitated.
‘Just he seems . . . as if the normal rules don’t apply to him.’
‘Daise – they don’t. I didn’t know Ruby was involved with him.’
‘I’m thinking aloud, that’s all . . . Honey, you said. Michael dies and suddenly there’s Thomas Knox, making moves on Ruby. Knox could have wanted Michael out of the way. To clear the path to her.’
‘Possible.’
Daisy was frowning. ‘Did Michael strike you as secretive?’
‘In what way?’
‘Oh . . . hiding things. You know.’
‘No, I don’t know. What sort of things?’
Daisy looked at Rob. ‘I don’t want this going any further,’ she said. ‘This is just between us.’
‘What is?’
‘Apparently Michael had another woman. A secret woman. Thomas Knox told Ruby about it.’
Rob looked astonished. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Neither did I, but it’s true.’
‘Bullshit. Maybe he cooked up the secret woman to turn Ruby off Michael’s memory?’
‘Maybe.’ Daisy picked up the Krugerrand ring and turned it over in her hand. ‘But I’m looking at this inscription: I’m Still in Love with You. Ruby didn’t give this to him. Michael didn’t wear rings, as a general rule. We don’t think his wife gave it to him . . .’
‘There’s no way of knowing that.’
‘Why would she give him a ring? She knew he wouldn’t wear it. And why was it in his pocket, instead of in a drawer somewhere? Why was he carrying it around with him?’
‘Jesus,’ said Rob. ‘I don’t know.’
Daisy put the ring down. ‘So what else is there?’ she asked.
‘Well . . .’ Rob glanced around the flat. ‘There’s Michael’s record collection, Kit kept that.’
Daisy knew that Kit was into modern stuff with a hard aggressive beat, but Michael’s taste had been for the music of the fifties, the era he’d grown up in – Billy Fury, Bobby Darren, artists like that. The music of a bygone age.
Rob stood up and went over to the stereo, opened a door and lifted out a thick wodge of LPs. He took them over to the sofa.
‘Well, here we are,’ he sighed.
Daisy spread the covers out and took a look. ‘That’s Kit’s,’ said Rob, and tossed Queen’s Sheer Heart Attack to one side. ‘That too,’ he said, shuffling past an old dog-eared copy of Their Satanic Majesties Request by the Stones. ‘These are Michael’s.’ Now they were into Michael’s era: some Tony Bennett and Vic Damone, a little Johnny Rae, a soupçon of the big O.
‘Roy Orbison,’ said Rob, and sighed again, heavily. ‘That’s one of the newer ones for Michael, but he liked the Big O. Always said that man could really sing.’
Daisy was looking at the cover. ‘The title on the cover: I’m Still in Love with You,’ she said. ‘That’s odd, isn’t it? The same as the ring.’
Now she was pulling out the white inner sleeve. ‘Oh, look at this!’ she said, and her voice was full of excitement. ‘Look, Rob.’
Rob looked. There was handwriting in the bottom right-hand corner. It read: I’m still in love with you. ‘What about the writing?’
‘I don’t recognize it,’ said Daisy, squinting hard at it. ‘This album was released last year, but that’s the same inscription as the one on the ring.’
‘So if this is from that same person, the same woman, that’s not his wife Sheila’s handwriting. It can’t be.’
‘Maybe it’s Ruby . . . ? I don’t think so, though. Oh . . .’
Rob looked at her. ‘Oh what?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said vacantly.
‘Do you know the writing? Daise?’
‘No, but I just thought of something.’
‘Well, go on then.’
‘It’s too stupid.’
‘I said go on.’
‘Michael phoning Vanessa to see how she was . . .’
Rob stared at Daisy’s face. ‘Oh, come on. You’re kidding! Michael and her ladyship? Don’t make me laugh.’
‘She’s a lonely rich widow,’ said Daisy.
‘Daise – the woman’s as dried-up as a nun’s twat,’ said Rob.
‘Rob!’
‘Come on. It’s the truth.’
Daisy was flushed with sudden temper. ‘It might be, but I don’t want to hear it! She was all I knew as a child, and she loved me. She did her best for me. So don’t talk about her like that, OK?’
Rob shrugged. ‘OK,’ he said.
Daisy heaved a sigh. Michael and Vanessa as lovers? Vanessa buying Michael rings and LPs, little love tokens? Surely not . . .
‘No, Vanessa hates popular music. She’s into Dvořák and Holst, a little Wagner,’ said Daisy.
They both fell silent, staring at the sleeve of the LP.
‘But someone wrote that,’ said Rob. ‘Looks like the same person who had the ring inscribed, too.’
‘Yes,’ said Daisy. ‘I don’t think it’s Ruby’s writing, though. And I don’t think it’s Vanessa’s hand either. Too loopy.’
‘Well, whose is it?’
‘Don’t know . . . But, Rob . . .’
‘Hm?’
‘I’ve had a thought about Bridge’s skinny bloke with the beard.’
92
Bianca was being kept in comfort but she was still in a state of misery. She was lying on a bed in a strange house, thinking of Kit gravely ill in hospital. Her big fear was that her brothers would get to him, finish him off. She knew it wasn’t beyond them to do that.
She hated him, but she loved him too. She was so torn over Kit Miller that she thought she might go mad.
He probably killed Tito.
Yes, that was true. But . . . she loved him.
He lied to you.
Also true. No denying it.
Are you mad?
Yes. Maybe she was.
There was a knock on the door. She heard the key turn in the lock and one of the men entered, the slim, cold-eyed one, bringing her dinner on a tray. She was a prisoner here, confined. Oh, she had a comfy bedroom, a television, a radio, her own bathroom to use. But she was a prisoner nonetheless. Which was really no more than she deserved, after the awful thing she’d done.
What if he dies? she wondered.
If he did . . . then she might as well be dead, too.
If he di
dn’t, if he lived, then he could grass her up to the police, and it would all be over for her. Maybe these people – his people – would simply hand her over to the law, let them deal with her. Or maybe they would deal with her themselves.
Unsmiling, not speaking, the man put the tray down on a low table. She saw the food there. Fish and chips. The thought of eating anything made her guts heave.
She didn’t thank the man.
She turned her back on him, faced the wall. Presently she heard him leave the room, heard the key turn in the lock once more.
93
Kit was out of intensive and into high care within a week.
‘He’s a strong one,’ said Corinne to Ruby.
‘Yes, he is,’ said Ruby. She was so relieved that Kit was getting better, and she stayed with him as much as she could. Fully conscious now, growing stronger day by day, he moved his hand away when she tried to hold it.
‘You don’t have to stay here,’ he said at one point.
‘I want to,’ said Ruby.
‘Was that your voice I heard when I was out of it?’ he asked.
Ruby was startled by the question. So he had heard her. ‘I expect it was. I stayed here, I talked to you. The nurses said it would help.’
It had helped. Even though he might deny it to anyone who asked, Kit knew that Ruby’s voice had comforted him in the bleak blackness of unconsciousness, had wormed its way through, like a single bright thread tethering him to the earth. But was she telling the truth? Would she really have taken the time, the trouble?
He looked at her. His mother. She looked shitty, not her usual elegant self; she looked like she’d been through the mill.
‘You been to see Uncle Joe yet?’ asked Kit, thinking of that dark place with its screaming winds, that tunnel he had glimpsed but not gone through. Pretty soon, he knew that Uncle Joe was going to make that same trip, and he wouldn’t be coming back.
‘No.’ Ruby looked awkward. ‘We fell out some years ago. Or at least, me and Betsy did. So Joe took her side – of course he did – and the whole thing got sort of lost and forgotten. We exchange cards at Christmas. And I keep them all, every one, which I suppose is stupid. That’s about as far as it goes these days.’
‘Fuck Betsy,’ said Kit. ‘Go and see him. Say goodbye, if nothing else.’
Rob and Daisy came in, all smiles because they could tell he was on the mend.
‘Hiya, mate,’ said Rob.
‘Kit! You’re looking better,’ said Daisy, planting a kiss on her brother’s cheek.
‘I’m feeling it,’ said Kit. ‘Why don’t you and Ruby slip outside while I have a chat to Rob.’
‘Oh God. Man talk. Come on, Mum,’ sighed Daisy.
‘So how the fuck are you?’ Rob asked Kit.
‘Pretty much OK,’ said Kit. They were still dosing him with morphine for residual pain, but the wound was healing and he could feel himself getting stronger, day by day.
‘I understand you’ve been lumbered with Daisy,’ said Kit.
‘She’s a good kid. And bright.’ Rob went on to tell Kit about Bianca trying to bust her way into the ward, and Daisy’s plan of holding her for insurance purposes. About the ‘suicide’, and about the other one who’d come in, claiming to be a relative. ‘The Bill spoken to you yet?’
‘Yeah, they have. And I didn’t see anything, can’t remember anything – you get the picture.’ Kit was frowning. ‘I don’t want Bianca touched, you understand?’
‘She won’t be.’
‘Make sure of it.’
‘I will.’
‘You looking after Daise?’
‘Goes without saying. Listen, have you got somewhere in the office at the restaurant or in Michael’s flat where you’d hide something worth a bob or two, something someone might want to find and take back?’
Kit looked at Rob. ‘What you telling me?’
‘Michael’s flat was turned over. And the office behind the restaurant. It’s OK, I’ve had it all tidied up. But somebody was searching for something. Maybe they found it, who knows? Would you have left anything about the place that was, I dunno, sensitive?’
‘Nothing that I know of,’ said Kit.
‘Well, where would you hide something like that?’ asked Rob. He’d spent days puzzling over this and had been back to the flat for a second look, but had drawn a blank. He’d been even more stumped when Daisy told him her theory about the identity of the bearded man seen loitering outside Sheila’s. ‘Where would Michael have put something like that?’
‘There’s a cubbyhole under the carpet beneath the desk,’ said Kit, lowering his voice. ‘A couple of the floorboards are loose, and Michael used to tuck anything really valuable in the back there. I don’t use it. You could try that. Why? What are you thinking you’ll find?’
Rob shrugged. ‘Haven’t got a fucking clue. But I’ll take a look.’
Kit wondered what he would do without Rob. Good, solid, dependable Rob – you could always rely on him to pick up any slack. He hated being laid up like this. It sounded as though all sorts of shit was happening and here he was, unable to do a thing about it.
‘You got Bianca safe?’ he asked.
‘Course.’
‘Rob, I want her kept that way. No funny business.’
‘After what she did to you?’
‘She could have killed me. She didn’t.’
‘She gave it a bloody good go.’
‘She pulled to the left. Missed the heart.’
‘Didn’t know you had one.’
‘Then she was looking down at me, the gun pointing straight at my head. She could have pulled the trigger and finished me – she didn’t.’
‘Must be love,’ scoffed Rob. ‘Mate, she damned near killed you and here you are saying what a peach she is and not to harm a hair on her head. You mad?’
‘You wouldn’t know, you berk. You never been in love in your life. Oh, and incidentally . . .’
‘Yeah, what?’
‘I want to see her.’
‘Fuck’s sake!’
‘There’s something I wanted to talk to you about,’ said Daisy when she and Ruby had bought their coffees and seated themselves at a table in the canteen.
‘Oh? You want sugar in yours? No? OK. Go ahead.’
‘Thomas Knox.’
‘What about him?’ Ruby sipped her drink.
‘Are you . . . very involved with him?’
Up to the hilt, thought Ruby. Her mind kept running through everything Thomas had told her. That shocking thing about Bianca Danieri. And about Michael, and his son Gabe.
Aloud, she said: ‘A bit. Why?’
‘Rob and I were discussing who would have had a motive to kill Michael.’
‘And . . . ?’
‘I think that Thomas might have had a motive.’
‘What?’ Ruby was staring at Daisy’s face.
‘I know you won’t want to hear this,’ said Daisy.
‘Hear what?’
Daisy took a breath. ‘Mum, he’s been pursuing you. He’s made no secret of the fact that he wants to get close to you, am I right?’
Ruby flushed lightly, thinking of Thomas at the hotel, then swimming in his pool, and afterwards in his bed. She wasn’t about to share any of that with Daisy.
‘So?’ she asked.
‘Mum . . .’ Daisy was being as delicate as she could. ‘There was an obstacle to Thomas Knox’s pursuit of you, wasn’t there? You told me he’d been watching you for years – coveting you, was the phrase you used – and there was only one thing in his way. That thing was Michael, Mum. It was Michael.’
Ruby was silent, staring at her daughter’s face. ‘What are you saying?’
‘Thomas Knox had a motive. He wanted to get to you. And he couldn’t, not with Michael alive.’
‘Jesus, what . . . I mean, really . . .’
‘Think about it,’ said Daisy.
Ruby fell silent again. At last she said: ‘This is ridiculous.’
&
nbsp; ‘Mum . . .’
‘No! Seriously, Daisy, this is mad. Thomas and Michael knew each other from school, they grew up together . . .’
‘And there you were, in mourning for Michael. And suddenly here’s Thomas, ready with the tea and sympathy.’
Ruby was shaking her head. Thomas? She was in his thrall, she knew it. Her affair with him had been amazingly – shamefully – hot, lustful. Nothing like the relationship she’d had with Michael. And now Daisy was asking her to believe that the man she was involved with had killed Michael, simply to get her?
No. It couldn’t be.
Could it?
Oh God in heaven. Perhaps it could be true. And worse – she had been so dazed with passion, so completely under his spell, that she hadn’t even given such a foul possibility a thought until this moment.
Daisy was watching her mother’s face closely. She hated having to do this. But if Knox had removed Michael because he was a barrier to Ruby, then Ruby needed to know, she had to be made aware. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
Ruby shook her head again, covered her mouth with her hand; suddenly her eyes were full of tears and she was blinking them back. She picked up the cup, drank, put it down again with a shaking hand.
‘It’s not your fault,’ she said.
‘I’m really sorry,’ said Daisy. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.
94
‘He wants to see her,’ said Rob when Daisy and Ruby joined him later.
Ruby looked aghast. She’d had enough shocks recently. First Daisy’s thunderbolt about Thomas Knox, now this. ‘What, this Bianca woman? Are you serious? She tried to kill him!’
‘I’ll bring her in tomorrow evening,’ said Rob. ‘Maybe it’s best you stay away.’
Ruby stared at him. This was crazy.
‘I don’t want her anywhere near him,’ she said forcefully.
‘It’s what he wants, Ruby.’
Daisy gave Ruby’s arm a squeeze. ‘We have to respect his wishes,’ she said.
‘But he must be bloody insane! She could try it again, finish him off this time. I can’t agree to this,’ said Ruby, tight-lipped.
‘You don’t have to. Kit wants it, and what Kit wants, he gets,’ said Rob more firmly.
