by Roberta Kray
Jacob briefly closed his dark, tired eyes. When he opened them again he didn’t meet her gaze. Instead he stared down at the surface of the desk. ‘Leonard was a local boy. Like lots of kids, he got in trouble when he was young. He had a record, including a conviction for theft, but he’d been straight for years. Mitchell found out about it a few months after taking him on. He could have sacked him but he didn’t.’ His eyes flicked up to meet Jo’s again. ‘It would have been better if he had.’
She understood what he was saying. ‘Mitchell used it to his own advantage.’
‘Leonard still had a choice,’ Jacob said, ‘although not much of one. Mitchell Strong was always good at timing and for a long while he didn’t say anything. He took him under his wing, paid him well, took him abroad on buying trips. He waited until Leo was born before applying the thumbscrews. By that point Leonard needed the job too much.’
‘So he did whatever Mitchell asked.’
‘He couldn’t afford to lose his position. If he’d left, it would have been without a reference. And word soon gets around; Mitchell would’ve made sure that no one else in the trade took him on.’
‘Delightful,’ Jo said. ‘Did Constance know?’
Jacob shook his head. ‘She never liked Mitchell, never trusted him but she had no idea what he was forcing Leonard to do.’
‘But you did?’
‘Not the details. I had my suspicions; nobody gets that rich that quick in this business by keeping it strictly legal. I tried to talk to Leonard but …’ His shoulders lifted and fell in a gesture of resignation. ‘He was too afraid of Mitchell. It wasn’t until years later, until Peter came back to England, that I found out what had really been going on. He got the whole story from his father before the two of them parted company.’
‘You stopped working for Mitchell too,’ Jo said.
‘Yes. He was a man who would trample over anything and anyone to get what he wanted but after what happened with Leonard … well, I’d had enough. I didn’t want to be around him any more. I was close to retirement so decided to call it a day.’
‘And then Peter inherited Ruby’s, came home and persuaded you to help get it up and running again.’
‘A labour of love,’ Jacob said quietly. He glanced around the office. ‘They were good times.’
Jo left a respectful pause before continuing. ‘Why did you decide to keep all this from Constance?’
‘You think it would have been a kindness to tell her? That her husband was a criminal, a smuggler of gems, that he was not the person she imagined him to be?’ He gave a weary sigh. ‘You think it would have been a good thing to take away all her good memories and replace them with … with what exactly – the soul-destroying clarity of the truth?’
‘Except the truth might have enabled her to get a decent pension out of Ruby.’
‘Only through blackmail,’ he said. ‘You clearly don’t know Constance very well. She’s a proud woman, decent and hard-working. She would have been ashamed of what her husband had done. If she’d had even an inkling of what he’d been involved in, she wouldn’t have accepted a penny off Peter.’
Jo sat back, taking a minute to absorb it all. She could understand his thinking, his desire to protect Constance, but wasn’t sure if he was telling her everything. Again, she had that feeling – the same feeling she had experienced after talking to Carla – that there was something more. It niggled away at her, refusing to let go.
‘Okay,’ she said eventually, ‘so long as you remember that not all people need protecting. Some of us can’t move on until we know the truth – no matter how difficult it is to face.’
The words hung between them for a moment. Jacob’s eyes met hers but she couldn’t say for certain what she saw in them. It could have been indecision or perhaps it was simply concern. Either way, he did not respond to the challenge.
Chapter Sixty-four
It was a further twenty minutes before the internal phone rang. Jo had been impatiently pacing up and down the room. She snatched up the receiver. ‘Yes?’
‘There’s a Mr Miller here to see you,’ Meg said.
‘Thanks. Send him through, would you.’
Jo stopped her pacing, sat down and stood up again. She waited by the window with her arms crossed. It was another twenty seconds before the knock came on the door. ‘Come in.’
Gabe strolled into the office wearing a pair of faded blue jeans and a navy shirt. ‘Hey, sweetheart, where’s the fire?’
Jo couldn’t recall the last time she’d been so pleased to see anyone – especially a muscled six feet plus of anyone – but, unwilling to give him the satisfaction, made every effort to disguise it. ‘You took your time,’ she said brusquely.
‘Did no one ever tell you that damsels in distress are so supposed to show a little gratitude when their knights in shining armour show up?’
‘Did no one ever tell you that it’s the twenty-first century?’
It was only as she turned to fully face him that he noticed the cut above her eye. ‘What the—’
‘Don’t even ask,’ she said. ‘It’s fine, I’m fine. It was just an accident.’
‘Okay,’ he said, lifting a cynical eyebrow. ‘So everything’s fine. I guess that’s why you wanted to see me so urgently – to pass on the good news.’
Jo embarked on a glare but quickly abandoned it. The defiance slipped from her eyes and she glanced down at the floor. What was she doing? Her pride was getting in the way of what was really important. She needed this man’s help and she needed it desperately. This was no time to be standing on her dignity. The tightness in her shoulders loosened. She sighed and slumped down into her chair. ‘Look, you’d better grab a seat.’
Sensing the sudden change in mood, Gabe’s face grew serious. Without so much as a minor wisecrack, he pulled out the chair opposite to hers.
She paused, forming the words in her head before speaking them aloud. Her hands did a small dance on the desk. ‘That fire you mentioned – well, it’s at number twelve Barley Road. Susan turned up last night with Silver Delaney in tow.’
Gabe jerked forward and the breath whistled out between his lips. He jumped up and sat down again. ‘You’re kidding me? Shit! Is she all right – the kid, I mean?’
Jo nodded. ‘A bit quiet but I don’t think she’s physically hurt.’
‘So what the hell’s going on?’
‘I wish I knew,’ Jo said. ‘I couldn’t get much out of Susan other than that she’s had a falling out with the guy she’s been working with.’ She proceeded to tell him the tale from the moment of their arrival until her own departure from the flat an hour ago. It wasn’t a long story and took less than five minutes to complete.
Gabe sat frowning as it all tumbled out. He leaned back and scratched at his chin. He hadn’t shaved that morning, probably as a consequence of her early morning call. It was a while before he responded. ‘And she didn’t mention the name of this guy?’
Jo shook her head. ‘Only that it’s someone close to the family.’
‘That might not be true.’ He stared up at the ceiling and thought about it. ‘Then again …’ His dark eyes dropped to meet hers. ‘To be honest, I’m surprised she let you out of her sight. That was a risk.’
‘Not much of one. I was hardly going to go running to the police after what she’d told me. With my name attached to that lease, I’m as much in the frame for this kidnapping as she is. And who else was I going to go blabbing to? So far as Susan’s aware, you’re still locked up and safely out of the way.’
‘Did she say that?’
‘No, she didn’t mention you.’
Gabe’s face, as if it had just been slapped, twisted slightly but abruptly to one side.
Jo wished she hadn’t said it or at least hadn’t said it in quite so brutal a fashion. She had made it sound as if Susan didn’t give a damn about getting him arrested or that he might be looking at a life sentence for murder. In truth she didn’t know whether Susan cared or
not but he clearly did. ‘What I meant,’ she added hurriedly, ‘is that the subject didn’t come up. There was so much else going on; I was all over the place. It was a shock to see her again. I’m only presuming that’s what she—’
‘You don’t have to apologise for her,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t.’
‘Susan gave up on me a long time ago. I don’t suppose my future – or lack of it – would provide her with too many sleepless nights.’
Jo opened her mouth but swiftly closed it again. From the corner of her eye, she could see the carrier bag containing all of Deborah’s letters and the contract to the property on Fairlea Road. She knew, perhaps almost as painfully as him, how it felt to be betrayed.
They were both quiet. He was the first to break the silence. ‘So that cut on your head …?’
‘I’ve already told you.’ Jo’s fingers automatically fluttered up to touch the edges of the wound. ‘It was an accident. I tripped and fell.’
That mobile brow of his shot up again.
‘No!’ she exclaimed sharply. She knew what he was thinking and instantly railed against it. ‘You’re wrong. She didn’t touch me. You think I couldn’t defend myself against the likes of Susan Clark?’
‘Well, you are kind of—’
‘What?’ she snapped. ‘Puny, weak, pathetic?’
Gabe grinned. ‘What I was actually going to say was – kind of jumpy.’
Jo realised that she had overreacted yet again. For the first time since he had turned up at the office, she managed a smile. ‘Well, you’d be bloody jumpy if you had Vic Delaney’s daughter hidden in your flat.’
Although their smiles soon faded, the exchange seemed to break the tension between them. ‘So,’ he said, ‘do you have any idea what she’s planning on doing next?’
Jo shook her head. Pulling out the top drawer, she removed a set of keys and slid them across the desk. ‘I was hoping you might like to ask her.’
Chapter Sixty-five
The palm-fringed terrace was more suited to a Mediterranean villa than a mock-Tudor house in Essex. With his left hand, Marty slapped away the long wet fronds that brushed against his arms and face while with his right he flipped shut the phone and put it in his pocket. Devlin’s call had come a week too late. The blonde piece wasn’t of interest to him any more. He already knew where Miller was.
Marty sat down by the pool and stretched out his legs. Under the protection of a large striped umbrella, he watched the rain pock the surface of the turquoise water. He had heard on the grapevine that Miller had been picked up by the filth over Ritchie Naylor’s murder. The news had surprised him. The guy was supposed to be a pro; he should have had it on his toes the minute he knew about the killing, the minute he realised he’d been stitched up. Instead the idiot had managed to get himself arrested.
But Marty wasn’t worried. On the contrary, he was pretty sure Miller would keep quiet about the kidnapping of Silver Delaney. He didn’t have anything to gain by shouting his mouth off and in fact had a lot to lose. For one thing the kid could end up dead – he wouldn’t want that on his conscience – and for another, he could end up being implicated himself. No, at the moment he’d be concentrating on more pressing matters, like how to explain away the presence in his flat of a young man with his head caved in.
The corners of Marty’s lips twitched into a smile. He wouldn’t mention the arrest to Vic. With Miller out of the picture, he might just start wondering who had been responsible for Thursday’s little drama. The aftershocks of that particular incident were still reverberating through the household. On their return from the factory, Vic had taken to his bed for twelve hours, then hit the bottle, raved, cried, shouted some more and taken to his bed again. So far as Marty was aware, he was still there now, safely tucked up with his drunken nightmares.
A soft flip-flop sound alerted him to Nina’s approach. He looked over his shoulder to see her coming towards him, carrying a tray. Despite having never taken a minute’s exercise in her life – apart from sexual activities – she was dressed in a pair of white jazz pants and a skinny white cutoff Nike vest. Her flat, tanned midriff sported a diamond piercing, the rock almost as large as the one she had on her finger.
She dumped the tray on the table and sat down. ‘You gonna tell me then?’
Marty assumed his innocent expression. ‘Tell you what?’
‘You know what.’ As she lit a cigarette, her sly cat’s eyes narrowed into two thin slits. ‘You’ve been avoiding me. What’s going on? What happened on Thursday night?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Nina sneered, exhaling a long thin stream of smoke. ‘So why’s Vic been acting like he’s seen a bloody ghost?’
‘Because he’s worried,’ Marty said. ‘We turned up with the ransom and they didn’t show with Silver. I don’t know what you’re complaining about. You should be pleased.’
‘Pleased?’ she retorted, glancing down at her arms. There were fresh dark bruises there, evidence of Vic’s latest outburst of rage and frustration. ‘And how exactly do you work that one out?’
‘Because there’s half a million quid still sitting in the safe, half a million quid he hasn’t spent yet.’
‘Yet,’ she repeated sulkily. ‘He’s still going to pay up, isn’t he?’
Marty shrugged. ‘What choice does he have?’
‘For fuck’s sake, it’s all a con. Why can’t he see that? The little cow is just taking him for a ride.’
‘I doubt it,’ Marty said. ‘Her boyfriend’s dead, remember? I don’t think she’s capable of running this show on her own.’
Nina gave him a long, cool stare. She sucked on her cigarette and exhaled into the damp morning air. ‘Whatever.’
Marty leaned forward, took the lid off the pot and peered inside. In the periphery of his vision he could see the skinny foreign maid scuttling around the conservatory. Had she made the brew? If she had, she’d probably spat in it. The first thing he’d do when he was in control of this house was to send the bitch packing.
‘You gonna pour it then or just stare at it?’ Nina said.
And the second thing he’d do was get rid of the leech. Vic Delaney didn’t need a wife and especially one who was such a drain on his resources. But of course Vic would see that himself once he got beyond the shock of Silver’s brutal death. He’d remember how unsupportive she’d been, how unwilling to part with the cash – and if he didn’t, Marty would be sure to remind him.
He poured the tea and passed her the first cup just in case there had been anything undesirable floating on the surface. ‘We need to keep Vic off the booze. He got another message yesterday. The exchange is supposed to take place tonight. He’s going to have to drive so he’d better be sober.’
‘And what if no one turns up again?’
‘I reckon they will. It’s her birthday after all. They must have chosen the date deliberately. Thursday was just a warning, a shot across the bows to remind him of who’s really in charge.’
Nina shifted forward and gave him another interrogative glare. ‘What kind of shot across the bows?’
There she went again, Marty thought, desperately trying to dig the dirt. Well, he wasn’t going to enlighten her and he doubted if Vic intended to either. Nina had one of the biggest gobs in existence and the last thing Delaney needed was for her to go spreading the news of that fiasco. Being taken for a gut-spewing fool wouldn’t do much for his reputation. That she’d managed to keep quiet about the kidnapping of Silver was a bloody miracle … although maybe not. He checked out the bruises on her arm. Vic, in his inimitable style, had probably made his feelings clear on that score.
‘All I meant,’ Marty said, ‘was that it was pretty cruel to raise his hopes like that.’
‘No, there’s more,’ she insisted. Knowledge was power and she resented being out of the loop. ‘What’s the big secret, Marty? What is it you’re not telling me?’
‘There’s no big secret.’
&nb
sp; ‘Like fuck,’ she muttered, rolling her eyes towards the heavens. When she lowered them again they were filled with hostility and suspicion. ‘And here was me thinking I could trust you.’
Aware that now was not the time to have Nina in the mood from hell – he needed her on side for the rest of the day – Marty raised his hands, palms out. ‘Okay, okay.’ He glanced over his shoulder as if to check that no one was within earshot, then leaned towards her and lowered his voice. ‘Look babe, Vic would kill me if he thought I’d—’
‘It’s not as though I’m going to tell him.’
Marty pulled a face before pretending to give in. His breath of sham submission rolled gently into a sigh. ‘To be honest, it was kind of embarrassing. Vic just lost the plot, got a bit upset, but then, shit, who wouldn’t? This is a kid we’re talking about, his only kid.’
A small gleaming light came into her eyes. ‘What do you mean by upset?’
Marty looked back over his shoulder again. By a stroke of good fortune, the foreign bitch had come out on the terrace. He tilted his head in her direction. ‘Let’s drop it for now, yeah? I’ll fill you in on the details later.’
‘She won’t understand. The silly cow doesn’t speak more than ten words of English.’
‘Ten words too many,’ Marty said.
He sat back and relaxed. At five o’clock the first text would arrive from Susan, ordering Delaney to be at the club by eight. At ten he would receive the next one, providing instructions of where to drop off the ransom. It was all cool. They were heading towards countdown. There were only twelve more hours to go – twelve long, frustrating but purely delicious hours. It was all in the waiting, in the sweet and glorious expectation.
Chapter Sixty-six
