“I’m pretty sure you know why, Kate.” She sat down and took a sip of her drink, hoping that Kate would sit next to her. She felt like dancing in her seat when she did. “I think you’re flirting with me.”
“Me?” Kate tried to look innocent, but her eyes gave her away.
“Yes, you.”
“Do you want me to stop flirting?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether you stop flirting and run away again, or you stop flirting and kiss me.”
“What if I want to keep flirting?”
“Then keep flirting. It means you aren’t running away.”
The green of Kate’s eyes was darker in the dim light, the colour of dark oak leaves at dusk. Her pupils were huge, and Gina knew she wanted to kiss her just as much as Gina wanted her to. She wanted to thread her fingers through those copper strands and cling to her while her mouth and tongue explored Kate’s. She wanted to feel her whole body pressing closer to hers, to feel the warmth of her through her clothes, then feel her skin with her fingertips. She wanted to start at the top of her head and work her way down. Slowly.
Kate cleared her throat and looked away. “Sorry,” she whispered under her breath.
“Don’t,” Gina’s voice cracked as she spoke, “don’t go.”
Kate shook her head. “I’m not. I don’t want to.”
“But?”
“I’m not very good at any of this.”
“You seem to be doing just fine to me.”
Kate wrinkled her nose so Gina decided to try a different approach. “What aren’t you good at?”
“Relationships.”
“Why do you say that?”
Kate sipped her drink and leaned forward, bracing her elbows on her knees. “I wasn’t kidding earlier when I told you both that there’s no one in my life. Literally, there’s no one.” She put her mug on the coffee table. “My mum died just after I was born. Gran said she held me and passed away. Dad never forgave me for that, but he made sure Gran and I had everything we needed. He worked on the oil rigs. Moved us to wherever was closest to the rig he was working on, so we moved around quite a lot. Lots of little seaside towns and villages. We were just outside of Boston, towards Skegness, when he was offered a job on a rig in Scotland. Last-minute thing, so he went up and started before we found somewhere else to live. We were three weeks from moving to Aberdeen when it happened. July 1988.”
“Oil rigs? Do you mean the Piper Alpha disaster?”
Kate nodded. “One hundred and sixty-seven men lost their lives that night. My dad was one of them.” She clenched her hands between her knees. “It’s an awful thing to say, but I really don’t remember him. I see the pictures in the albums that Gran took, and those are the only images I have in my head of him. I remember the pictures of my dad, but not my dad. Do you know what I mean?”
“How old were you when he died?
“Is that a crafty way of asking how old I am?”
Gina nodded. “Maybe. But you couldn’t have been very old.”
“I was eight then, thirty-five now.” She sniggered. “In case you were wondering.”
“It wouldn’t matter to me if you were fifty-five. But then you were a child and I’m guessing he was away a lot, right?”
“Yeah, he was. But still, a kid should remember her parents. All I remember is my gran.”
“She was your mum and dad.”
Kate sat back again. “She was.”
“When did she pass?”
“When I was seventeen. Cancer. She was a stoic old woman and by the time she admitted there was something wrong, it was too late. Riddled with it. They gave her six weeks. She lasted eighteen months.”
“Wow.”
“Like I said, stubborn.”
“It’s genetic.”
“Hey, I’ve been very well behaved with you.”
“I’m sure.” She reached out, unable to resist touching her anymore. She placed a hand gently on her arm and rubbed her thumb softly back and forth. Kate stared, seemingly mesmerised by her fingers and where they touched her skin. Gina had been right, soft and velvety. So, so soft. “Did she really run off with your best friend?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“She was an idiot.”
Kate shook her head and turned her arm over giving Gina easier access to the sensitive skin of her forearm and wrist. “Nah. We weren’t right for each other. Don’t get me wrong, at the time I thought we were perfect together. We worked together, liked all the same stuff. It was good. We differed on one really big detail, though.”
“What was that?”
“Fidelity. She seemed to think that sex outside the relationship was okay. As long as it was just sex. No feelings, so not a threat.”
“And she could do that?”
“Apparently.”
“But you couldn’t?”
“No. Not that I even knew it was what she wanted while we were together. She just did it. Whatever Melissa wanted, Melissa took. Or let it take her.” She shrugged. “Whatever.”
“Wow.” Gina used only her fingertips to run along Kate’s skin. Slowly memorising each little bump, every tiny hair. The little white scar about halfway down caught her attention and she wondered what had caused it. Her veins stood out at her wrist, pale blue beneath milky white skin. The corded tendons down to her hand and the crease line at the junction of wrist and hand were all fascinating to her. She couldn’t ever remember feeling so enthralled by such a simple touch before. The more she learned, the more she wanted to learn.
“Yeah.”
“So how did the whole running off with your best friend thing happen?”
“From what I gathered at the time—and I might add that an argument is not generally the best time to gain reliable intel—they had the same outlook on dating. This was news to me from both of them, and they informed me that they were in love and going to make it work.”
“Sounds like you’re well clear of them.”
“I think so too.” She chuckled. “Now I do.”
“Are they still together?”
Kate shook her head. “They didn’t last three weeks according to reliable sources. Unreliable ones said two. Scuttlebutt in the force is second to none.”
“When was this?”
“Three years ago.”
“No one since?”
Kate shrugged. “Not really.”
“Like I believe that.”
“It’s true. Anyway, enough about my sad and lonely life. Tell me about you.”
“Not much to tell. As you know I got pregnant at seventeen, by an idiot, and I’m a closeted village lesbian. There really isn’t anything to tell.” She stroked over the pulse point and watched, rapt, as all the hairs on Kate’s arm stood up and goosebumps rose along her flesh.
“Surely there must be something. At least one skeleton in that closet with you.”
Gina laughed. “Okay, I’ve been out with a few women, but nothing exactly developed into a relationship.”
“Why not?”
“You’ve met Sammy, right?”
“So?”
“As soon as Sammy knows something, the rest of the world does too. If I brought someone home to meet her, I knew I had to be ready for everyone to know.”
“I think you’re doing a disservice to Sammy there. And yourself. Sammy was keeping secrets for Connie, she was keeping the secret of what happened on Thursday, and if you told her how important it was to you, I’m certain she would have kept a secret for you too. But I don’t understand why it would have to be a secret. Connie and Leah were lesbians and even though I’ve heard plenty of bad stuff about people hating Connie, only one person seems to have had a problem with her because she was a lesbian. What makes you different?”
“Nothing. I know all of that, but I still hadn’t met anyone I was ready to upset the applecart over.”
“You speak in a lot of clichés. You know that, don’t you?”
“
Yes. Doesn’t make it any less true, though.”
“So just to be clear here, when you say you went out with a few women but they weren’t relationships…?”
“So curious, DS Brannon.”
“A hazard of the job, I’m afraid.”
Gina laughed. “I guess I’m a try-before-you-buy-kind of girl.”
Kate’s eyes widened. “Are we talking one-night stands? Little flings?”
“Definitely not. I’m not into one-night stands. A long weekend’s more my kind of thing.”
“I see.”
“Do you?” Gina ran her finger down the inside of Kate’s arm, again leaving another series of goosebumps in her wake.
“Definitely.”
“Are you going to kiss me?”
Kate swallowed and shook her head.
Gina stopped. “Really?”
“Really.”
“But—”
“I like you.”
“I like you too.”
“I like you more than just a long weekend.” She wrapped her fingers around Gina’s and gently squeezed. “And I want someone who doesn’t need a test drive to know that I’m right for her.” Kate stood up, gathered their mugs, and ran a finger down Gina’s cheek. “Good night, Gina. Sleep well.”
Gina sat until all she could hear from upstairs was Sammy’s snores. Her skin still tingled from where Kate had held her hand. Her breathing and heartbeat had finally slowed back to normal, but she could still feel the heat from that last look. The one that had scorched her flesh and melted her insides. The one that had spoken of a passion she’d never felt but had read about in every love story she’d ever read. A passion she longed to feel.
Why is it every time I open my mouth to speak to her I manage to say the wrong thing?
CHAPTER 28
“I have a plan,” Stella shouted. “I got one.”
“Enlighten us, Master,” Tom said.
“Funny. For that, you’re on stake-out duty.”
“Fuck.”
Stella grinned smugly at him. “That’ll teach you.”
“So, the plan?” Kate asked.
“Right.” Stella laid out a length of printer paper. The old-fashioned kind that ran off in long uninterrupted lengths of white and peppermint green stripes and with perforations down each side to keep it running through the cogs. “I’ve been looking over the data that Matt Green provided us with and corroborating that against Connie Wells’ diary list. There are fluctuations in delivery drops on all but one day. Every single Thursday, there is a drop to the Sutton Bridge location. Matt Green runs it and if it’s an evening run, he takes the kid with him. Supposedly he takes her for a Maccie’s at the next roundabout along the A17.”
“Bastard,” Kate said.
“I know. I really want a Maccie’s now too,” Tom said.
“I meant taking his kid along on a drug drop.”
“Oh, yeah. That too. Bastard.”
“So the plan,” Stella said, “is to stake out the lay-by this Thursday. All day, as Green doesn’t get to know the drop-off time until the morning. That’s why he was in a hurry on the twenty-ninth. He didn’t find out until his phone woke him up.”
“Why didn’t he take her for breakfast? Why leave her on the marsh?”
“After the night before with Connie confronting the Robbins’, he didn’t want to take the chance of having her in the car if he got picked up.”
“So instead he left—never mind. So we stake out this lay-by. Green’s in custody. He won’t be doing the Thursday run.”
“If he can’t make it, the Robbins’ will make someone else do it. Probably Leah, Matt said. So we’ll have one team following her and one team at the lay-by, just in case it isn’t Leah. If it is, great, we’ll pick her up and bring her in for questioning. Lay-by team needs to get pictures of the pickup driver and, if possible, to follow and see what we can get on that.”
“Okay.”
“If we can get one of the Robbins’ supplying Leah with the drugs that get picked up, we’ll have enough for a warrant for the boat, the office, the shack at the harbour, and the houses. We need the logs to get locations of the storage pots. Then Timmons can send in divers to recover.”
“And we’ll have the Robbins’ for the drugs, as well as murder,” Kate said.
“Belt and braces,” Stella said.
“So which one of them did it?”
Stella shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter who pulled the trigger, does it? They both did it, or should I say all three of them did it.”
“Three?” Jimmy asked.
“Dad drove the boat. He had to be the one holding it steady so one of his kids could pull the trigger. That makes three of them going down for either murder or conspiracy to commit murder, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Yeah, but who did it?”
“Adam,” said Collier.
“Yeah, my money’s on him too,” Tom said.
Stella nodded. “You heard what Green said about his time in the army. I bet he was a sniper. Bet he’s killed loads of people before this. What do you say, Kate?”
“I’ll bet a tenner it’s Ally.”
“Why?”
“I’ve never liked to follow the crowd.”
“And?” Jimmy prompted.
“I don’t know. Just something about her. Too competitive, I think, to let her brother take care of a problem for her if she could do it.”
“That’s it? Sibling rivalry?”
“Gut feeling.”
“All right people, pay up.” Jimmy held out his hand with a coffee mug in it. Kate didn’t want to guess if it was clean or not. At least it was dry and the winner wasn’t going to have to towel off soggy tenners in a couple of days.
“So, Thursday’s planned. It’s Tuesday today. What’s the plan between then and now, Stella?” Kate asked, leaning her chair back on two legs and hooking her foot around the desk leg to stabilise herself.
“Tidying up all this bloody paperwork. We’re still waiting on the gun registrations for the Robbins’. We need to see whether or not those geniuses over in tech managed to get anything off that memory card in the camera or not, and I could use some help going through this data to track missing cargo containers.”
“Right, so I’ll go see the geniuses,” Kate said, then quickly righted her chair and grabbed her coat.
“I’ve got a mate over in the gun reg thingy place,” Tom said.
“Not even close to being good enough, Tom,” Stella shouted at their backs as they escaped out the door. “And you two don’t even think of making shit up. Sit down and grab some paper.” The door closed on the desperate groans of two junior officers being forced into a day of hell. Paperwork.
* * *
Tom picked Kate up from home that morning. As much as she wanted Gina and Sammy to stay put, she didn’t want to leave them stranded if they really did need to get out, so she’d left the rental in the car park.
“I really need to sort out a new car,” she said and sat back to enjoy the scenery on the way to Kings Lynn. The scenery she got was grey clouds, trees, and cars with their headlights on in the middle of the friggin’ day. What was that all about?
“So, Miss Temple and Pippi Longstocking stayed with you last night.”
“Huh?”
“Gina and the brat.”
“What about them?”
“They stayed with you?”
“Yes, and?”
“Well, you know?”
“I know what?”
“You and Gina, you know?”
“Tom, have you lost the ability to form coherent questions in the last two minutes?”
“No.”
“Then spit out whatever it is you’re trying to ask. I’m not a bloody mind reader.”
“Well, she’s…you know. And I have a mate who works in your old nick and he said you were, you know. So, I…oh forget it.”
“Good, God, man, what are you? Twelve?”
“Yeah, eleven a
nd a half, actually.”
She glanced down at his feet. Yeah, that looked about right. “Yes, I am, you know. How do you know Gina is?”
“We went to school together. I was a couple of years ahead, mind, but she was always cool. Till that fucker got his hands on her.”
“So how did you know? About Gina?”
“Oh, well, I supposed I didn’t when we were kids. I don’t think she did either, really. Hence that prick and Sammy. But I think everyone around her probably knew before she did. She never hung around with lads. Well, not in the way girls do who are interested in them. You know what I mean, right?”
Kate nodded. She did. There was a flirtatiousness and a sense of experimentation that seemed to surround them. Something she’d never felt until she went to college and discovered a gay bar and the world just opened up before her very eyes.
“Well, I like to consider myself a man of the world and, well, she went out with a copper in Lynn once. Didn’t last very long from what I hear, but this woman said she was a real heartbreaker.”
“Gina?”
“Yeah, seems she’s a fan of my dad’s motto for laying tiles.”
“You’re losing me, Tom.”
“Lay ’em once, lay ’em well, and never return to the scene of the crime.”
She stared at him a moment. “For a semi-intelligent guy, Tom, you really do come out with some shit.”
“I’m just telling you what Carly told me.”
See, force scuttlebutt—an intelligence, or rather semi-intelligence, network like no other. “And what does that have to do with me?”
“Well, is she walking away from another crime scene, my friend?” He chuckled at his own joke.
“I’m glad you find yourself amusing, pal, because I don’t.”
“Aw, c’mon. You got to admit that was a little bit funny.”
“No, it really wasn’t.”
“The way you’re dancing around answering makes me think you and li’l Shirley did the nasty.”
“Li’l Shirley?”
“Yeah, you know? Shirley Temple.”
“Tom, mate, these are getting worse.”
He shrugged.
“And, no. There was nothing nasty going on at my house last night. Except maybe Sammy’s snoring. The kid’s like a bloody train. Kept me awake until three.” She refused to acknowledge that it was actually the remembered touch of Gina’s fingers on her arm and the burn it had caused inside her that had really kept her awake.
Collide-O-Scope (Norfolk Coast Investigation Stories Book 1) Page 24
