by Jessie Keane
‘Scared in the way that he finds her fucking irresistible,’ said Kit.
‘I didn’t say that,’ said Rob.
‘You didn’t have to.’ Kit looked at Bianca. ‘You going to be OK here on your own for an hour or so?’
He worried about her. She’d had some terrible shocks and upsets, and while she seemed to have taken it all with her customary nerve, he wondered what the true impact of it all was going to be. Somewhere out there, maybe she still had real family, people who had been missing her for years. And he suspected that she still felt something for Bella Danieri, who was now mourning her favourite son. Bianca must be in turmoil.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she told him. ‘You two go, I’m going to have a snooze.’
114
When they got out to Ruby’s place, it was to find an excited Daisy waving the Roy Orbison LP around and asking when the twins and Jody could come back, everything was all right now, wasn’t it?
Rob wasn’t sure about that. And he was winded by seeing Daisy again. Every time, the shock of her physical impact on him damned near took his breath away, but still he resisted it. What else could he do? It would be a bloody disaster, he knew it.
Kit was smirking at him. The bastard knew Rob had the hots for his sister. ‘Soon,’ he told Daisy.
‘And we nearly forgot about this,’ she said. ‘Didn’t we?’
‘What, the handwriting?’
‘Of course the handwriting. Kit, you know about this, don’t you?’
Kit nodded. ‘I do.’
They went into the sitting room where Ruby was shuffling through a box of magazines and cards. She looked up, saw Kit and Rob there with Daisy, smiled and stood up.
This time it wasn’t her who opened her arms hopefully. This time was different. Kit came straight over to her and hugged her, hard. It hurt his shoulder a bit, but he didn’t care.
‘You OK?’ he asked, thinking that he could have lost her, never got the chance to make it up. This woman – his mother – had talked him back to life. She had proved her devotion, when he hadn’t even truly been there to see it.
‘Absolutely fine,’ said Ruby, hugging him and trying not to cry. He’d come for her, rescued her. Her son. Her beloved boy.
‘Good. What’s all this then?’ Kit cleared his throat and indicated the box. He saw birthday greetings, Christmas wishes, Valentines . . .
‘We thought maybe Mum night recognize the writing on the LP sleeve,’ said Daisy.
‘I don’t know,’ said Ruby. ‘I don’t think so. I’m going through my old cards to see if I could match it up to anything.’
‘You and Michael did share contacts for quite a while,’ said Kit.
‘Yes, we did.’ Ruby sat down again, picked up a handful of the cards. ‘Stupid to keep them all really. Just clutter. Old things, old memories. Look at this . . .’
She pulled out a dog-eared copy of London Life. The date on its tattered cover was May 1941 and there were three women depicted there, dressed in lingerie and gas masks.
‘They’re Windmill Theatre showgirls,’ she said. ‘The one in the centre’s Vi – my friend who’s now Lady Albermarle. She was so glamorous. She was everything I ever wanted to be.’
Ruby put the magazine aside and thumbed through the cards.
‘I really don’t think I’m going to find anything here,’ she said. She’d been looking for nearly an hour now, comparing the writing on the record sleeve to the jottings in the box. Privately she thought it was a waste of time, but she was doing it to please Daisy, who seemed to be chewing at this thing like a dog with a bone, determined to solve the riddle of Michael’s death.
Ruby was becoming more philosophical now. She didn’t think the mystery would ever be resolved, that they would eventually be forced to let it go, let him rest. It was silly to—
‘Oh,’ she said suddenly.
‘What?’ asked Kit.
Ruby’s eyes were moving between the record sleeve and a Christmas card. There was a fat red robin on the front of it, and Season’s Greetings printed in glittery script.
‘Look,’ she said, and put the card in his hands.
Daisy hurried over with the LP sleeve. They stood there and stared at it. Ruby looked up at Kit, her eyes anxious.
‘You know that my brother Charlie was killed in a hit-and-run not long after he got out of jail? After he’d done time for the mail-van robbery?’
Kit nodded.
‘Thomas Knox told me Michael was behind the hit-and-run. And that would fit. Charlie was trying to intimidate me, and Michael didn’t like it.’
‘You think this matches?’ Kit was peering closely at the two sets of handwriting.
‘It’s close. Don’t you think?’
It was close.
And it fitted, too.
Ruby knew that Betsy had always loved Charlie best; Joe was second choice. And if somehow she had found out that Michael was behind Charlie’s death, couldn’t she have targeted him? Seduced him, perhaps, and lured him to the place where he was killed?
I’m Still in Love with You.
Ruby shuddered. Yes, it could be Betsy. But it could also be Joe. Charlie was his brother, after all. Perhaps Joe and Betsy had colluded over this, arranged Michael’s downfall between them.
‘You’ll just talk to them, won’t you?’ she asked anxiously. ‘He’s . . .’
Dying.
‘. . . He’s very ill.’
Kit and Rob exchanged a look. ‘We’ll go easy,’ said Kit.
After they’d left, Ruby sat there on her own and thought about what an individual thing handwriting was. Graphologists could tell a person’s entire personality, just by the way they slanted letters and added loops. She sorted through a few more cards, thinking that she ought to toss this old stuff out. Look to the future, forget the past. She’d even put Thomas’s card in here, the one he’d sent her after Michael’s death. She thought she’d thrown that away . . .
Suddenly she saw it, and jumped as if someone had shot her. She dropped the box of cards and they fell to the floor. She bent down and with shaking fingers picked up the one that had caught her eye. She stared at it.
Couldn’t believe it.
But there it was.
115
Rob dropped Kit back at his house because Kit was worried about leaving Bianca on her own for too long. Rob thought he was right to worry, she was a highly strung girl and she’d had some very hard knocks.
‘We can take care of this,’ he assured his boss. In the back of his own mind, he still suspected Gabe at work in this, somewhere. ‘Let us go in first, suss out what’s been going on. Maybe Ruby’s mistaken. Maybe the writing’s similar but not quite the same. Who knows?’
Because Kit was concerned about Bianca, he agreed to Rob’s plan. He stood on the kerb for a moment, watching the car pull away, wondering how Rob and Daisy would get on in Chigwell. When he went indoors, he found that Bianca was gone.
‘Joe and Betsy Darke – they’re your uncle and aunt,’ said Rob on the way out to Chigwell.
‘Yes, but I’ve never been acquainted with them.’
‘Your uncle’s not well,’ said Rob.
‘I know.’ Daisy shot a look at him. ‘It seems Ruby and Betsy fell out a long time ago. And Joe took his wife’s side, as you would. So there was an estrangement there, and it’s never been resolved. Not my fault, or Kit’s. Nothing to do with us.’
‘Your aunt Betsy’s a man-eater, Daise. Kit and me, we had a laugh about it after we came out here, but now I’m thinking it’s not very funny. Your uncle knew what a loose tart she was, he saw her swanning half-naked around the house, chatting up the builders, and he resented it, poor old bastard. We guessed she’d be knocking off someone, but Michael? I thought he had better taste.’
Daisy was silent. She had a horrible image in her mind, of Michael in an alleyway, dead, his head shot away. Uncle Joe might be ill, too weak to do the job himself, but he still had plenty of criminal connections. If Betsy had
been having an affair with Michael, then it would have been a simple matter for Joe to hire in help to kill his rival and – bonus – the man who had offed his brother Charlie. Or for Betsy to pull in a few favours and organize it in revenge for Charlie’s death.
‘Well, here we are.’
Rob pulled in beside the gateway of the Chigwell house. It looked quiet in there today, the house sitting serenely in its lush two acres, the gates shut, no builders, nothing. He got out and pressed the intercom. Waited.
He glanced back at Daisy in the car. Shrugged.
He pressed again. He could hear a dog barking in the distance, and wondered if it was Prince. Maybe Betsy was out, maybe she’d left Joe in the conservatory dozing, and the dog on guard. But peering up there, he could see her car was on the drive. You didn’t just ‘pop to the neighbours’ round here. This was a classy enclave, people kept themselves to themselves.
Rob moved away from the intercom and started walking along beside the five-foot wall that skirted the property. He heard Daisy get out of the car behind him, and slam the door.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘You think Joe’s told Betsy he rubbed Michael out? Poor git’s on his way to the pearly gates, confession’s good for the soul. Maybe she’s realized we’ve finally made the connection with the pair of them, or suspects we have, and is keeping a low profile?’ he wondered aloud.
‘We need to be careful here,’ said Daisy.
‘Meaning?’
‘This could be either one of them. Joe or Betsy. If she was pursuing Michael, giving him gifts like the LP—’
‘And the ring.’
‘And that, yes. Maybe Michael was on his way to meet her when he died. Maybe that call from Joe was some sort of confrontation. Or a trap.’
‘Well, we’ll soon find out.’
Rob was approaching an accessible section of the wall. He glanced left and right, saw all was quiet, and heaved himself up and over.
116
‘This is crazy,’ said Daisy as they walked across the closely cut lawn to the house.
She’d scrambled over the wall after Rob, despite his moaning that she ought to keep the fuck out of this, wait in the car.
So here they were, approaching the house, and the barking was getting louder.
‘What if the police are watching the place? What if the alarm’s on?’ she asked him, panting as she tried to keep up with the length of his stride.
‘Easy. These people are your relatives. You were concerned when they didn’t answer the intercom, you decided to come in. And the alarm? I checked it all out last time I was here. You only got to say what a nice place this is to Betsy and she gives you all the details. They don’t bother setting the alarm, and it’s a piss-poor single system anyway.’
‘What?’ asked Daisy.
‘Christ, Daise, there are some big gaps in your education. It means you only have to cut the phone lines to the house and it’s out of action. Plus, there are no movement sensors, either inside the house or out here.’
‘You’re so clever,’ mocked Daisy.
‘You get clever in this game, Daise, or you get dead.’
‘That’s a very big dog barking in there,’ said Daisy.
‘I know, I’ve seen it.’
They were at the front door now. Rob rang the doorbell. He leaned on the button for about a minute. Stood back. There was no answer. No movement. Only Prince, barking frantically.
‘Let’s go round the back,’ he said, and Daisy trailed after him. They stood on the patio and looked in the kitchen window. Prince lunged up at the window, barking, snarling, smearing the glass with hot breath and saliva.
‘Kitchen door’s shut,’ said Rob, peering in past the maddened animal. ‘He’s trapped in the kitchen, can’t get out. That’s good. Looks like all the refitting’s been done, so the builders won’t be in today.’
‘Please tell me you’re not going to break in,’ said Daisy.
Rob looked over his shoulder at the big wooden bulk of the outside pool house. If he ever made a fortune like Joe so clearly had, he promised himself he would have the pool inside the house, not outside, save all that shivering your bare-naked arse off running between the house and the pool.
‘Let’s look in there first,’ he said, and set off.
Daisy followed Rob through the double doors at the end of the pool house. It was humid in here, super-heated, all the windows that looked out onto the gardens were densely misted. Instantly she felt sweat break out on her skin. There were a couple of blue-padded sun beds at the far end of the pool, and they could hear the pump working next door. The water shimmered pale blue, lit by underwater lamps, throwing hypnotic dancing shapes up onto the wooden beams over their heads.
‘What the f . . .’ Rob said, his voice echoing as he moved ahead of her.
Daisy looked at what had caught Rob’s attention. There was a wizened old man sitting on the edge of the pool. He was wearing a navy-blue dressing gown and she could see striped pyjamas underneath, buttoned up to the neck. His scrawny legs were dangling in the water, so that the bottoms of his pyjamas and the trailing hem of the dressing gown were floating, sodden. His bony feet were bare.
He looked up as the two of them entered the pool house.
‘Mr Darke? Joe . . . ?’ said Rob.
Joe gave a ghastly death’s-head smile. His skin was paperwhite, pulled tight over the skull beneath. Only his brown eyes had any life left in them.
‘You. I know you,’ he said weakly, wheezing the words out, then giving a long, gurgling cough.
Rob moved closer. ‘Yeah, I came out here before to see you. I was with Kit. Your nephew.’
‘That’s right.’ Joe nodded, his head waggling around on his thin neck.
‘Rob . . .’ Daisy was looking at the pool.
Rob hunkered down beside Joe. He indicated Daisy. ‘This is Daisy. Kit’s sister. Your niece.’
Joe’s eyes went to Daisy. She didn’t even glance at him. Her eyes were wide open with shock.
‘Rob . . .’ she said, more urgently. She kicked off her shoes.
Rob turned his head, looked at what Daisy was staring at, down in the depths. Jesus, wasn’t that . . . ?
‘Fuck,’ he muttered.
‘Don’t!’ said Joe as Daisy threw off her cardigan. She froze there, arrested by the sharpness of his tone.
‘But that’s . . . she’s . . .’ Daisy blurted out in panic, staring fixedly down at the woman lying at the bottom of the pool.
‘That’s Betsy.’ Joe gave a breathy, rasping laugh that was almost a sob. ‘And the cow’s dead.’
117
Daisy stood transfixed. Down there in the blue-shimmering pool, Betsy’s streaked blonde hair was billowing softly around her head. Her eyes were half-open, glaring as she lay in a death lock with the red oxygen cylinder, its tubing coiled tight around her throat. Her skin was suffused with angry purple blotches where the tube had cut into her windpipe. Betsy was wearing a spangled pink bikini and a matching coverall. Even in death, she was flashily attired, with her pearly-pink-painted toes and fingernails, and masses of silver jewellery.
Starting to shake, Daisy turned shocked eyes upon her uncle.
He gazed right back at her. ‘She was a fuckin’ tart,’ he said weakly, struggling to draw in breath and get the words out. ‘No bloody good. I wanted to do that for years, put an end to her fuckin’ rubbish. So when she came out here yesterday for her swim I . . .’ he paused, coughed, then hitched in a struggling breath, ‘. . . I followed. Carried the fuckin’ bottle with me, sodding thing weighs a ton. She laughed when she saw me come in with it. Asked me what the hell I thought I was . . . was doing. She soon found out though.’
Neither Daisy nor Rob said a word.
‘I been sitting here ever since. Didn’t have the bloody strength left to move.’ Joe coughed again; it was a horrible, guttural sound.
Rob looked at Daisy. She had one hand clamped over her mouth and she was tremblin
g. She wasn’t used to this sort of shit. He thought of the writing on the card – Betsy’s writing – matching the writing on the LP sleeve. Or did it? Was Ruby certain about that?
Not that it mattered a toss now. If Betsy had bedded Michael – among he guessed maybe a thousand others – then she’d paid the price as far as Joe was concerned. And if Joe had ordered Michael’s execution, well, the man was finished himself now. He was this close to death, any fool could see that.
‘I been sitting here, looking at her down there in the water. I loved her, you know. She didn’t love me though. For her, it was . . . always Charlie.’ Joe hitched in a long, painful breath and looked at Rob. ‘So here’s what I want you to do. I want you both to go, and what I’m going to do is this: I’m going to lean forward a bit, I think I can do that, and get into the water. I’m weak as gnat’s piss, but I can manage that, I reckon. Finish this whole fuckin’ thing off. OK?’
Rob stared at the man and thought of the police, cells, prison hospitals. This was Kit and Daisy’s uncle. Slowly, he nodded.
‘We can’t!’ said Daisy to Rob, understanding that Joe was talking about drowning himself. He’d never have the strength to get out of the water, once he got in there.
Rob looked steadily at Joe. Then he turned away, looked at Daisy.
‘Put your shoes on, Daise,’ he said, and walked over to where she stood.
‘We can’t,’ she said again, almost pleadingly.
Rob took her arm. ‘We can,’ he said gently. ‘It’s the kindest thing, Daise. You know it is. Come on. Let’s go.’
118
They went back to Rob’s flat out near Holborn. Rob was worried about Daisy; she was shivering hard, her teeth chattering. She said nothing all the way there. Once inside his flat, he pushed a brandy into her hand.
‘Come on, drink it up.’
He downed one himself, too. It hadn’t been the best of days.
Daisy threw back the brandy with a shudder.
‘God, that was awful,’ she moaned.
