By the Light of a Lie (Thane & Calder Book 1)

by Marjorie Orr

  ‘Nope,’ he answered shortly. ‘We act as if nothing has happened and continue as planned. With luck the tide’ll take him out.’

  Passing a mirror she caught side of her sheet-white face and haunted eyes circled in dark pools of flesh.

  ‘That easy?’

  ‘It’s that simple,’ he said evenly. ‘Just put it to the back of your mind and forget it for now.’

  The towels were thrown into huge laundry baskets, except for the one smeared in Herk’s blood, which he tucked under his arm. He collected his cameras and picked up a mobile phone lying beside them and set the hot tub to empty before they started up the path. Tire was trembling so much he had to grab her elbow to keep her steady. At the top he listened intently and looked around. A hushed calm lay like a blanket over the property.

  Nudging Tire onto a small path that ran through a rockery garden shaded by ornamental trees that blocked the view from the rest of the property, Herk stopped at a huge stone dolmen and whispered: ‘Stay here.’ Within thirty minutes he was back, wearing a baseball hat that covered his wet hair and most of his cuts, and carrying a floppy sunhat that he rammed onto her head, pulling down the brim. ‘Lipstick on,’ he instructed, so she fumbled in her bag and put a fuschia smear round her mouth. He then tucked his arm into hers and they walked to the jeep, parked a hundred yards away.

  There was only one exit road so they could not avoid passing the reception building. ‘Chin up and smile,’ he hissed at her. Luckily, Emilio was standing beside a white Cadillac, with an obsequious smile on his face, as the two oversized occupants in shorts and Hawaiian shirts emerged. Tire managed a friendly wave and a blown kiss, then put her hand over her mouth as they drove round the first bend and out of sight, trying to suppress the urge to throw up.

  How she got through the rest of that day she never knew. Herk insisted they lunch at the café at Nepenthe and act normally. They sat at the far end of a long bench table full of animated, chattering tourists. Tire kept her head firmly turned away, looking out over the oak and cypress-strewn land that fell away to the brilliant blue sea below, stretching miles along the cliffs and coastline into the distance. She barely touched the goat’s cheese salad that appeared in front of her and heaved slightly at the sight of Herk tucking into bacon and scrambled eggs.

  After a second cup of coffee, she was still shaking but managed to fill him in on the conversation with Chip from the night before and the phone call with Wally Strang. Munching his way through a piece of blueberry crumble, he said: ‘So you’re intent on going up to face Stone then? In Wester Ross? I thought you said we’d cut and run after this trip if it got too big to handle.’

  ‘I don’t know, Herk, I don’t know,’ she said irritably, clenching her fist. ‘But he has to be stopped. He just burnt some people to death trying to get Jimmy Black. Anyway, I did promise to go to Glasgow. So let’s go one step at a time.’ Wrapping her arms round her shivering body, she added weakly: ‘I can’t face this party tonight.’

  ‘No choice,’ he answered shortly, pulling across a plate of mixed cheeses and insisting she at least ate some bread.

  A sense of impending doom enveloped her on the short drive back to their residence. Dread of what she’d done and dread of the consequences if the police found out blotted out fear of repercussions from Stone. Herk had sensibly managed to leave no time for her to brood so she showered, dried her hair and threw on her black velvet pants and gold satin top, doubled up her make-up to hide her pallor and went down.

  The party was in full swing under flower-festooned pergolas with lights blazing and a band playing by the pool’s edge. The film’s stars and cast were obvious from their slim profiles and casual, high-fashion outfits, while the crew came in all shapes and sizes in jeans and shirts. A few middle-aged men stood out awkwardly in evening dress, clearly the financiers. It all passed in front of her as one giant blur. Clinging on to Herk’s arm, she nodded to a small table in a corner almost in the shrubbery furthest from the music. To her relief, Chip Nathon was talking animatedly to a middle-aged blonde in a slinky blue dress and she slid further behind the bush, hoping to avoid his notice.

  Two glasses of champagne made her head swim, but helped to take her mind off the afternoon’s horror. Eventually, Chip came across with his companion and sat down. He smiled embarrassedly at Tire, introducing Maggie as a friend from San Francisco who had turned up unexpectedly.

  He looked conspiratorially at Tire, lowered his voice and said: ‘Another development.’ He nodded knowingly at her. ‘There was an accident at Cerigo this afternoon. A worker fell onto the rocks. Concussed, broken leg, maybe spinal injury. They only found him about 3 pm and airlifted him out.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘There’s bad luck hanging over that outfit, I tell you. My Maybelle always said once the ball starts rolling, it doesn’t stop.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ Herk murmured, pouring out more champagne.

  ‘And,’ Chip added, still whispering, ‘I was speaking to Harman again. He said his old man had cut off all contact from his own office. Everyone. Won’t talk. The boy is seriously getting the wind up. This smells like bankruptcy to me. I’ve seen it before and it’s never a pretty sight.’

  The band struck up Chaka Khan’s ‘Ain’t Nobody’ and Maggie tugged at Chip’s sleeve, forcing him to his feet. ‘It’s our number, honey. It’s too sweet of them to play it. C’mon.’ His colour reddened and he avoided Tire’s eye, as he was pulled onto the dance floor to be clasped firmly to the blue dress.

  ‘Thank Christ for that,’ Tire said burying her face in her hands, then sat up with a sniff to finger off any mascara that was running. ‘I didn’t kill him. Jesus, what a relief. But he might talk.’

  ‘Nah. That kind of fall. Head injury. He might never remember. Luckily he’d put his mobile phone on a shelf before he beat me up. I took it and sent a text just after we arrived at Nepenthe, so that puts us in the clear.’ He grinned.

  She resisted an urge to throw her arms round him and slumped back in her chair, trying to ignore the singer’s hopes for eternal love wailing out across the terrace.

  CHAPTER 46

  The dilapidated curtains in the back bedroom let whorls and streaks of grey light penetrate through the decaying fabric. Curled up on his side and covered by a duvet, Jimmy traced the random trails and patterns as they drifted aimlessly across the dusty wall whose paper was torn loose in places. Maybe he should leave Elly, he thought. Go away somewhere on his own where he wouldn’t bring danger to her or anyone around him. The prospect of being separated tore at his heart, but he couldn’t see any other option. Or perhaps take his own life. It was him the man was after, not her. Then she’d be safe. Tears slid down his face.

  Climbing quietly out of bed, he collected his clothes and went into the kitchen to dress without disturbing her. A cup of tea revived his spirits, but the decision was hardening in his mind. He had no idea how or where but it was the only solution. Maybe he could disappear below those floating leaves in the pond, down into the mud. Drinking turpentine would be too messy and take too long.

  Until recently he had rarely reflected on the life he had been forced to lead. Each day had been accepted with unthinking resignation. Taking control of his life, even in the act of ending it, would have required a sense of power he had never possessed. He remembered back to the good moments playing secretly with Lachie, meeting Elly on brief occasions behind the laundry outhouse. The long years of harsh desolation accepted at the time as the norm, perhaps his due, he tried to blank out. Now, just as he and Elly might find happiness and security, it was all being destroyed.

  His anger surged then quailed, like a candle flame guttering in the breeze. It stayed alight long enough for him to make a further resolution. Before he went, he’d finish the painting of the path where his mother had died. That would be his revenge. His voice from beyond the grave, speaking the truth. Even if no one heard or understood, he would have stood up for her. It was the best he could do.

  A n
oisy altercation on the street below did not disturb his concentration as he mixed paint on his palette and started to fill in the blank on the canvas. He knew he would not have time to do it properly since the paint should be left to dry between coats, but he pushed on regardless, adding thick layers of red in a spreading puddle.

  Heavy footsteps were clattering up the tenement stairs as Elly came through, a coat over her nightdress, to bring him another cup of tea. She looked doubtfully at his efforts and then tutted irritably as a fist hammered on the door. A voice shouted: ‘It’s Dorry. Open up.’

  The massive figure, who had brought them fish and chips the night before, lumbered in, his face red and sweating, his denim jacket ripped down one sleeve. He held a mobile phone in one beefy, calloused hand, pressed a button and handed it to Jimmy.

  ‘Wally here,’ the voice bellowed out of the phone, making Jimmy jump. ‘You’re to come with Dorry and stay with Ricky at his house beside me. You’ll be safer there.’ The phone went dead.

  ‘I’m not leaving my painting,’ Jimmy said fiercely, tears in his eyes.

  ‘It’s horrible,’ Elly responded with equal force.

  ‘Get your coat.’ Dorry’s roar was accompanied by a ferocious glare. ‘We’ll sort all that out later.’

  Despite both their protestations, Jimmy stubbornly insisted on bringing the painting with him, holding the wet side away from him, with a plastic bag in the other hand, containing brushes, palette, paint tubes and turpentine. He told Elly to sit in the front passenger seat of the muddy pick-up truck that Dorry pointed to, looking around suspiciously as he did so. Jimmy sat in the back, holding the canvas upright. The smell of oil paint caused Dorry to curse under his breath and open all the windows on the twenty-minute drive out to Milngavie.

  The barrier and interior gate swung open to a bleep command. They climbed out and Dorry pointed to the far side of Ricky’s house, while he spoke in a low growl into his mobile. They walked hesitantly round the stone terrace, past the luminous blue pots to the open kitchen windows. Wally nodded curtly as he passed them. Inside, Ricky was sitting with his heavily bandaged ankle tucked under his seat. He managed a strained, though cheerful, smile and waved at them to sit down. Elly looked at him expectantly, but he shrugged silently and splayed his hands in an apologetic gesture.

  A waft of cigar smoke preceded Wally’s return. All three stared at him apprehensively. He sniffed, put a polished, tan brogue on the strut of a stool and looked down the table across to the far window. ‘Right. Here’s where we’re at. Another two bojos tried to get you this morning.’

  Elly gave a low shriek while Jimmy blanched and opened his mouth to speak.

  ‘Later,’ Wally admonished him with a sharp look. ‘Dorry’s boys got them. One’s foreign, the others a local low-life. Which is good.’ He drew heavily on his cigar. ‘Because the Glasgow lad’ll crack sooner, since he knows my reputation.’ He smiled thinly. ‘In addition, there’s a writer who seems to know about your man.’ He nodded to Jimmy. ‘And she’s coming day after tomorrow.’

  The words came out of Jimmy propelled by a rising desperation: ‘I need to go away. Disappear. Elly can stay here.’

  ‘No,’ cried Elly and Wally in unison.

  The clack-clack of Wally’s lighter on the polished table echoed round the stainless steel kitchen units. ‘Trouble was, I couldn’t persuade the police to write you off as dead in that fire. Joe tried, but the fire service wouldn’t play ball. And the polis had your new address, so someone must have blabbed. Anyways, all to the good since we got the bastards. Once they talk we’ll know more.’

  Jimmy half-stood up and looked at him with mute anguish, which earned him a hostile glare, so he sat down again.

  ‘Remember, son, it isn’t just you that needs avenging. I have my nephew to think about. This woman that’s coming sounds as if she knows a fair amount, even though she was dancing around on the phone.’

  He issued more instructions about staying put, announced both houses were on lockdown and that Dorry was in charge and left. Jimmy laid his head on his arms on the table and wept.

  CHAPTER 47

  A brilliant azure sky bathed the trip from Big Sur to San Francisco next morning. Ten hours later, heavy grey cloud greeted the plane’s arrival in London. Tire’s body was exhausted, her nerves jangled, but her internal motor had kicked in. Her ability to switch onto adrenaline when all else failed would keep her running. Herk’s silence was ominous, but she ignored it as they grabbed a taxi for a dash back to the Soho apartment to collect warm, waterproof clothes and back to the airport again.

  Glasgow was drenched in a steady downpour when they touched down late in the afternoon. She glanced at Herk as they climbed into the small Ford saloon he’d suggested hiring. His blank expression suggested a soldierly obedience. The car indicated an urban-only trip.

  Finally, she said: ‘Wester Ross?’

  ‘Fly to Inverness, pick up a Range Rover,’ he replied curtly, then tapped a finger on the wheel. ‘That’s supposing you won’t be argued out of it.’ He didn’t sound hopeful.

  Having phoned Wally Strang to get the address, they set off along the motorway, through the Clyde Tunnel and onto the maze of traffic lights at Anniesland Cross. Crossing a canal, they surged away from red sandstone tenements into suburban Glasgow, with prim bungalows one side of the dual carriageway and rolling green fields on the other. The sedate grey mansions of Bearsden gave way to open countryside skirting round the secluded backwaters of Milngavie.

  The GPS led them through a series of turnings till they reached a gated cul-de-sac with Hunter Close inscribed on a flashy blue and gilt board. The rectangular barrier slid back as they drew up and Herk pointed to a camera flashing red at them. The high, grilled gates, with arrowhead spikes, of the first of two entrances inside, glided open. A gravel drive led up to a large house barely visible behind high shrubbery and trees.

  ‘The front entrance seems well enough protected,’ said Herk, looking at the high, stone, perimeter wall topped with rolls of barbed wire.

  Tire surveyed the large whitewashed villa, which had a top-heavy, cluttered feel, with windows bulging out from the first floor and a witches’ cone tower planted incongruously off-centre on the roof. The window frames were painted in the same brilliant hard blue as two giant pots, either side of the steps, and the walls adjoining the front door. Several sculptures were dotted around the grass; stone abstracts and a bent metal frame painted in shrieking red and yellow. A Mediterranean folly, she thought, shivering in the damp Scottish air.

  A swarthy young man with improbably blonde hair and an apron over his purple trousers and shirt, reeking of cologne, stood in the doorway. Herk blanched slightly when the lavender fragrance enveloped him and walked behind Tire into the marble-floored hall.

  The sitting room was vast and high-ceilinged, with several seating areas decked out in sharp reds and blues. Ricky Marinello was leaning against the wall of the far window corner, which was decked out with ultra-modern, pristine white wing chairs sitting on a scarlet geometric rug, its swirls repeating up the wall in two giant motifs.

  The heavy glass top of the coffee table in the centre was perched precariously on what looked like a giant strand of tagliatelle shaped out of beige metal. Waving them to sit down, he hobbled painfully to the nearest seat and sank down with a sigh. He leant over to find a bottle of wine in a cooling bucket on the floor.

  ‘Only white wine in here, I’m afraid,’ he remarked with forced cheerfulness, pouring into two empty glasses and topping up his own. ‘Just impossible to get red wine or beer out of that fabric if it’s spilt.’

  ‘I’d believe that,’ Herk remarked sagely, trying to keep his elbows away from the chair arms.

  The atmosphere was tense and expectant. Ricky bit his lip and fiddled with his wine glass, clearly waiting. Exhaustion and jet lag flowed over Tire, making her suppress an urge to yawn.

  A clatter at the door brought Herk to his feet and a skitter of claws on the pol
ished parquet provoked a squeal from Ricky. ‘Not in here, Wally, I beg you. Butch, get away from that chair now!’

  His voice crescendoed as a large Rottweiler skidded and splayed across the polished surface, landing beside Tire and rubbing his head enthusiastically into her arm. Unable to stop herself she giggled, running her free hand through his fur and then buried her face down his back.

  ‘We’ll have our drinks in the conservatory. These seats are not fit to sit in.’ The burly figure clad in a loud, beige check suit gave a cursory look at Tire, a more hostile one at Herk and marched off to a door at the far end with the dog click-clacking obediently after him.

  ‘He does this deliberately, damn him,’ Ricky hissed. ‘Just so he can smoke his bloody cigars.’

  The Victorian-style sun room at the back of the house had iron struts between the glass panes and scrolled in half-circles above the double doors to the garden. Wally sank into the largest black rattan armchair, having first tossed four cushions onto the floor and pointed to his side, where the dog immediately sank down and put his enormous head between his paws.

  ‘I’ll have a glass of red, Ricky.’ He lit a cigar, inhaling in short puffs till he was satisfied it was alight. His beady eyes flickered between Tire and Herk: hard, appraising. He’s exerting control, she thought, getting everyone off balance. She waited, risking a glance at Herk, who was looking absent-mindedly out of the window.

  ‘Right,’ he said harshly. ‘I want to know what you know.’

  Over the next five minutes, Tire filled him in with the background details about the Stones, the deaths that might be connected with them and the disappearance of Louis, Harman’s stepbrother. She skipped the illegal drugs and Wrighton, and mentioned their own near miss in Spain and the cryptic message on the mobile about LN and Jimmy Black.