Strong Women

by Roberta Kray

  ‘Forget it. You were upset and rightly so. But are you absolutely sure about this? I mean, do you have any actual evidence?’

  Jo glanced towards the carrier bag leaning up against the washing machine. ‘Tell me what you know about the two of them first.’

  Carla puffed out her cheeks while she thought about it. ‘It’s not much.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Just tell me anything, anything you know.’

  ‘Okay.’ Carla took a sip of wine, put the glass down and dropped her chin on to her hands. ‘I think they met about fifteen years ago, when Peter was in his mid-twenties. I’m not sure where or how but they were still together when I started going out with Tony a couple of years later. I met her a few times but only in passing. Peter, as you know, wasn’t the most sociable man in the world. They were together for a while and then … well, he was always travelling, always on the go. I think Deborah wanted him to settle down, to make some kind of commitment, but he wasn’t prepared to do that. Eventually they split up, she met someone else, got married and …’

  ‘And now they’re living happily ever after,’ Jo said.

  Carla looked at her. ‘Perhaps they are. She’s got a couple of kids, hasn’t she?’

  That’s never stopped Tony, Jo almost said, but quickly bit her lip. ‘She still came back to work for Peter.’

  ‘So they worked together. So what? That’s business. It doesn’t mean she was cheating on her husband.’

  ‘She used to work at Asprey’s. How much do you think she earned there? It must have been a damn sight more than Peter could have afforded to pay her.’

  ‘That still doesn’t mean there was anything going on.’

  Jo knocked back her glass of wine. She picked up the bottle and poured herself another. She wasn’t sure how many drinks it would take for her to stop feeling so lost and angry but it was certainly more than one. Standing up, she walked over to the carrier bag, snatched out the brown envelope, took out the lease and laid it down in front of Carla. ‘Look at this.’

  Carla stared down at the tenancy agreement. She was quiet as she read it through. ‘Fairlea Avenue. Wasn’t that where—’

  ‘Where Peter was run over? Yes. And this proves that he was secretly renting out another flat. And why would he do that unless he was seeing someone else?’

  ‘There could be all kinds of reasons. Peter was always a bit of a loner. Some men need to have their space. Perhaps he was just—’

  ‘What, so desperate to get away from me that he needed a bolthole half a mile down the road? It was only a month, a month after we’d got married.’ Saying it out loud seemed to bring the full force of the betrayal home to her. Jo gulped down a sob. ‘How could he do that? Why?’

  ‘You can’t go jumping to conclusions. What if he … I don’t know … perhaps he …’

  ‘Exactly!’ Jo said. ‘There’s no other explanation than the stark horrible truth and the sooner I come to terms with it, the better.’

  Carla shook her head. ‘But he loved you, Jo, I know he did. Being with you, it changed him. I hadn’t seen him so happy in years. And he wasn’t like Tony; he didn’t play around. He was a one-woman man. It wasn’t in his nature.’

  Jo snorted. ‘Maybe they were more alike than you think – Peter just hid it better.’

  ‘I can’t believe that.’

  Jumping to her feet, Jo said: ‘This is no good. I have to go and see Deborah, ask her straight out.’

  ‘No,’ Carla insisted, grabbing her wrist. ‘You’re not going anywhere. For one, you’ve been drinking and for two you can’t go around making wild accusations. For God’s sake, think about it. Even if you’re right, she’s going to have no choice but to deny it if you confront her in front of her husband. What are you going to achieve? It’s not as though you have any real evidence.’

  ‘I’ll have that when I see the look in her eyes.’

  ‘And what about her husband, not to mention her kids? What do you think this will do to them?’

  ‘Why should I care?’

  Carla’s fingers tightened round her wrist. ‘Because none of this is their fault, even if it’s true. Can you imagine how they’ll feel if you turn up on the doorstep, ranting and raving and shouting the odds? I’ve never thought of you as the type of person to deliberately hurt someone else.’

  Jo slowly sank back down. For a moment she just hadn’t cared, hadn’t given a damn and that frightened her. ‘I only …’

  ‘I know,’ Carla said, slowly releasing her hold. ‘And I know what it means to feel like you do, to want to lash out. I’ve been there often enough. All that I’m asking is that you take some time to think about it, to not do anything too rash. You don’t have any proof. You don’t even know that he was still seeing Deborah.’

  ‘I think he was.’

  ‘You can’t be sure.’

  ‘Yes, I can,’ Jo said, placing a hand against her stomach. She gave Carla a thin faint smile. ‘Call it gut instinct, call it whatever you like, but I am sure. I always knew that something wasn’t quite right between us. There was always this … this kind of distance. I used to think it was to do with the family, with the problems he had with Ruby and Mitchell. One minute we’d be really close and the next, it was like he deliberately brought the shutters down. I tried to pretend that it was nothing to do with me but I was only kidding myself. I should have listened to that little nagging voice but I didn’t.’

  ‘You were in love,’ Carla said softly. ‘No one ever listens to that voice when they’re in love.’

  Jo looked at her. In the past, she had only paid lip-service to Carla’s suffering, to the pain she had endured through Tony’s endless lies and infidelities. Now she was beginning to understand just how agonising that pain could feel. Anger bubbled up in her again. ‘Maybe that bitch ran him over!’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  Jo swiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand. The tears were running down her face again. ‘Because he was a two-timing, double-crossing, lousy piece of shit?’

  Carla leaned forward and folded her into her arms. ‘Well, if that’s the truth, sweetheart, then the two of them had a lot in common.’

  Jo tried to answer but she couldn’t. She couldn’t speak. She bent her face into Carla’s shoulder and wept.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  The clock said nine-twenty-five. Jo wondered where the time had gone. Her eyes felt red and sore. It was a while since she had stopped crying but there was still a lump in her throat. ‘It’s getting late. Won’t Tony be worried?’

  ‘That would be a first,’ Carla said. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to leave you on your own.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. I’m not going to do anything stupid – well, nothing more stupid than opening another bottle of wine and spending the rest of the night feeling thoroughly sorry for myself. And look, you haven’t even told me why you came round.’

  ‘Oh, it’ll keep,’ Carla said, flapping a hand.

  ‘Come on, it must have been important to drag you out on a night like this.’ As if to prove her point, a flash of lightning lit up the sky. It was followed by a loud clap of thunder and the rain thrashing even harder against the windows. ‘I presume it’s to do with Ruby, with the row we had this morning.’

  Carla nodded. ‘Yeah, I had a talk with Tony and …’ She hesitated, screwing up her face as if reluctant to go on. ‘You know, we really don’t need to do this now. Why don’t I give you a call over the weekend and—’

  ‘No,’ Jo insisted. ‘Please. Whatever it is, it can’t be any worse than what I’ve already learned tonight.’ But she saw Carla’s eyes nervously flick to one side and a shiver of apprehension ran through her. ‘Can it?’ she said. ‘Is it to do with Leonard Kearns, with how he died?’ Abruptly, all her earlier fears rose to the surface. Before Carla had a chance to reply, she said: ‘It is, isn’t it? Oh God, was he … was he murdered?’

  ‘What?’ Carla said, jumping back in surprise. ‘Jesus! What? No, of course not. Wha
tever gave you that idea?’ As she recovered herself, she lifted her fingers to her lips and laughed. ‘Blimey, I know Mitchell was a bastard but I think even he drew the line at killing his own employees.’

  As soon as she’d said it, Jo had realised how ridiculous it sounded. It had been one of those festering suspicions that had lost its power the second it was expressed. ‘I didn’t mean Mitchell,’ she said, although that wasn’t entirely true. ‘It was just that Ruby’s reaction, as soon as I mentioned Kearns, was so extreme that I wondered what she was trying to hide.’

  Carla was still grinning. ‘And so you presumed the poor guy must have been bumped off?’

  ‘No. Yes. I mean, I didn’t know what to think. I just felt there was something peculiar about it all. There’s this man who dies in Burma and Ruby throws a fit the second his name is mentioned. What’s with that? If everything is above board, why is she freaking out? It just did my head in. I guess with all this stuff about Peter, I’ve not been thinking straight.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ Carla said sympathetically, ‘and, if it helps, you weren’t completely wrong: Ruby was trying to cover up. Not anything as dramatic as a murder, I’m afraid, but there is something that she’s desperate to hide. It took me hours to squeeze it out of Tony.’

  Jo waited expectantly.

  Carla pulled another of her faces. ‘If he knew I was telling you this, he wouldn’t be too happy.’ She stared down at the table before slowly lifting her gaze again. ‘Look, I can’t make you swear to keep quiet, that wouldn’t be fair before you’ve heard what I’ve got to say, but will you at least promise that you won’t do anything before talking it through with me first?’

  ‘Now I’m starting to get worried again,’ Jo said.

  ‘Just promise.’

  ‘Okay, I promise.’

  Carla put her hands on the table and took an audible breath. ‘You never met Mitchell, did you? You were lucky. He was only interested in two things – one of them, the most important, was money and the other was … well, you wouldn’t have wanted to get on the wrong side of his roaming hands. If Ruby wasn’t such a cow, I might almost feel sorry for her.’ She briefly raised her eyes to the ceiling before continuing. ‘Anyway, to get back to the business side of things, he was always after the best deal, the cheapest deal. He travelled all over the world but Burma was where he went for his rubies. There were government auctions twice a year and he always bought from them but he used to buy from other sources too. There was a huge black market behind the scenes and Mitchell had his contacts.’

  ‘So he was buying gems illegally,’ Jo said.

  ‘Got it in one,’ Carla said, ‘and then smuggling them back into Britain. He’d pay the duty on the cheaper legal stones and make a killing on the rest. He had plenty of customers who weren’t too fussed about the paperwork. Burmese rubies, especially those at the top end of the scale, are always in demand.’

  ‘And so Leonard Kearns was …?’

  ‘Yeah, up to his ears in it, which is why Ruby threw a wobbler when you mentioned his name. It’s not how the poor guy died that she’s stressing about, it’s the prospect of Customs and Excise finding out what Mitchell was up to. She thinks you’re threatening to grass her up to the taxman and once that ball starts rolling there won’t be any stopping it.’

  ‘My God,’ Jo murmured as a smile crept on to her lips. A small shiver of satisfaction ran through her. Shadenfreude – wasn’t that what they called it? Taking pleasure in other people’s misfortune. She recognised that it wasn’t a nice response but in the case of Ruby Strong it was hard to resist; that woman deserved some kind of payback for all the misery she had inflicted over the years. Not that she was actually planning on picking up the phone and dropping her in it – she would never go that far – but there wasn’t any harm in making her sweat. ‘So I guess she’s getting pretty worried?’

  Carla, however, didn’t seem quite so happy at the prospect. Her hands twisted anxiously on the table. ‘If this comes out, it could ruin her,’ she said.

  And Jo instantly knew what she meant: that it could ruin Tony too. One little whisper of Mitchell’s dodgy dealings and the whole business would start to crumble. ‘So why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘Because I know what you’re like,’ Carla sighed. ‘The more you get stonewalled, the more suspicious you’re going to get. I’m just the same. And if you dig deep enough, ask enough questions, you’ll eventually discover some of the truth. I thought it was better that you heard the whole story from me.’

  Jo had an uncomfortable thought. ‘It’s not still going on, is it?’

  ‘Of course not! All that ended years ago. Can you really imagine Tony as an international gem smuggler? He may be a lying, deceitful sod but he’d never have the nerve to do anything like that.’

  ‘But Mitchell did.’

  Carla nodded. ‘It was how he made his money, how he moved into the big time. How else could he have dragged himself out of the gutters of Kellston and into a fancy shop in Hatton Garden? At the beginning he had nothing to lose and later … well, I guess the cash, the profit, was just too much to resist. Tony swears that he and Peter had no idea what he was up to and I think, for once, he’s being straight with me. Neither of them had a clue until that trip to Burma twelve years ago.’

  ‘When Peter had the big bust-up with his father,’ Jo said.

  Carla nodded again. ‘That was the last time they ever spoke to each other. When Leonard Kearns got sick and died, Mitchell went into panic. He had some top-grade gems in his possession but no mule to carry them home. That was when it all came out about the dealing, the smuggling, the way he’d actually built up his oh-so-respectable business. But it was his attitude towards Leonard that really shocked Peter. Mitchell didn’t give a damn about the poor sod; all he was concerned about was his rubies. Peter had always looked up to him, admired him, but he finally saw his father for what he really was.’

  ‘And Tony?’ Jo said. ‘How did he feel about all this?’

  ‘He wasn’t overjoyed but he never had quite the same moral standards as Peter. He didn’t have his intelligence either. Cutting the family ties and going it alone was never an option for him.’

  ‘Moral standards?’ Jo said, her hand instinctively closing around the contract again.

  She gave a thin brittle laugh. Somehow, those two words and Peter didn’t seem to sit that comfortably together any more.

  Carla leaned forward and gently eased the lease from between her fingers. She folded it in two and put it to one side. ‘I don’t know what this means – perhaps neither of us ever will – but I do know that he loved you. I don’t have any doubts about that. So please don’t write him off, Jo. Don’t dismiss everything the two of you had just because of a few stupid sheets of paper.’ She slowly rose to her feet. ‘You’ve got a lot to think about. I’d better leave you to it.’

  Jo stood up too. She had already made one decision. ‘You don’t have to worry. I won’t say anything about what you’ve told me tonight.’

  Carla’s eyes widened with relief. ‘Do you really mean that?’

  ‘I only wanted to understand what happened out there and now I do. It’s finished, done with. None of it was your fault and I don’t see why you or the kids should suffer for what Mitchell did in the past. So you can tell the old witch that her secret is safe; no one is going to be stirring it up or calling the taxman.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Carla said, hugging her close. She stood back and grinned. ‘Although, if you don’t mind, I might not tell her the good news straight away.’

  The two of them, understanding each other, exchanged a small complicit nod. If Ruby was forced to endure a few sleepless nights, it was nothing more than she deserved.

  It was another hour before Jo picked up her glass of wine and wandered through to the living room. She stared at the wall, at the picture of Rangoon. Now she’d had some time to think about it, she wondered if Carla had told her the whole truth. There was still some
thing missing from the story, she thought, a piece that still needed slotting into place. But did it really matter? She wasn’t sure if she cared any more.

  Her anger had long since subsided, replaced by a dull, painful ache. It was as if her very heart had contracted, shrivelling into something small and insignificant. She walked over to the photograph of Peter, ran a finger over the contours of his face and gently placed the back of her hand against his cheek. She still wanted to believe that some part of their love had been real and true but that hope was fading by the minute.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  It was seven long days since Susan had been outside. Feeling hemmed in and restless, she roamed aimlessly around, going up and down the narrow flight of stairs, wandering through the rooms in search of distraction. Not that there was anything left to discover; she knew every nook and cranny of the bland terraced house, every crack in the plaster, every chip in the yellowing paintwork, but still she persisted, her bare feet padding softly over the worn beige carpet.

  In the front bedroom she paused to look out of the window, to gaze along the dark and empty street. It was from here that she had seen Gabe dragged out of the pub. Quickly, she turned away, not wanting to think about it. He would be all right, she told herself; Gabe Miller was one of life’s survivors.

  The only furniture in the room was a double bed, a flimsy white wardrobe and a matching set of drawers. The mattress on the bed was bare. Since arriving, Susan hadn’t slept in either of the bedrooms, choosing instead to spend her nights on the narrow uncomfortable sofa downstairs. From there, if she kept the kitchen door to the basement open, she could hear if Silver cried out. It had been a constant dread that something might happen, that she might accidentally choke or get herself entangled in the chain. The girl was stupid enough to do either of these things and a lot more besides.