by Tom Bale
Harry tried not to look conspicuous, but felt his purpose must be blatantly obvious: Man visiting prostitute! Man visiting prostitute!
Or maybe he wasn’t. Maybe she’d rumbled him and had no intention of responding—
The phone buzzed. Flat 14.
He practically ran to the main entrance and pressed the button for number 14. The double glass doors clicked and he pushed one open and walked inside. The communal area felt freshly painted, the carpet thick and springy: a new conversion, maybe.
The third floor was whisper-quiet, as if the whole place was empty. Harry couldn’t decide whether that should reassure him or exacerbate his nerves. He imagined unseen eyes tracking him along the corridor. It felt like a terrible error, now, to visit this woman under false pretences. He wasn’t at all sure that his acting skills were up to the task.
He knocked on her door and faced the spyhole, trying to wear a relaxed, guileless expression. The door opened and he was greeted by an attractive woman in her late twenties, wearing a black cocktail dress with just a hint of cleavage on display.
Keri was slim and extremely tall, thanks in part to a pair of six-inch platform heels. Her hair was long and wavy, light brown in colour, and her make-up was subtle and effective. In short, she was a world away from Harry’s preconceptions. Take a couple of inches off the heels and she could be a City lawyer at a high-powered function.
She smiled. ‘Come on in, Harry. How did you hear about me?’
‘Uh, a friend.’
He stepped into a narrow hallway, and was hoping he wouldn’t have to elaborate when he heard a trilling noise. It took a quizzical look from Keri to make him realise it was his own phone.
He fumbled it from his pocket. The number was the one Ruth had used last night.
‘I’m really sorry, I have to take this.’
‘Don’t worry.’ Keri indicated a door behind him. ‘I thought you might want to freshen up.’
Nodding, he entered a small but immaculate bathroom, and shut the door before answering the phone.
‘Ruth?’ he hissed.
‘Yeah, sorry I had to run out—’
‘Where the hell did you go?’
‘I spotted one of their cars and went after them. Then my phone ran out of juice and I’ve only just had a chance to power it up. Let me come and get you now.’
‘I’m not in Crawley. I came to Norfolk.’
‘Why?’ It took her only a second to work it out. ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to see Keri?’
‘What else could I do? Yesterday that was what you wanted.’
‘The plan was to get her address. But I don’t actually need her any more, so don’t bother with a meeting.’
‘Ruth, you owe me an—’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know. I can be there in about an hour. Meet by the statue of Thomas Paine, in King Street.’
She rang off, leaving him angry and bewildered. How was he going to explain this to Keri? It was bad enough that he’d deceived his way into the flat in the first place. Then he thought: Huh.
Why should he listen to Ruth, after the way she’d treated him?
He joined Keri in the living room, where she was sitting on a long L-shaped sofa. The room was tidy but characterless, predominantly beige and sparsely furnished, with no photographs or personal items on view. Keri’s posture seemed quite guarded: legs crossed, her hands clamped at her sides, as if to stop herself from fidgeting.
‘I assume we settle the, er, financial aspect first?’
‘Please,’ she said, a little tightly.
Harry counted out a hundred and fifty pounds, his hands trembling. When he held the money out to her, she sprang up and swiped at him, a weapon suddenly in her right hand. It was a telescopic steel baton, and it struck a glancing blow to his arm. He dropped the money, stumbling back out of range. What a fool: he was being robbed. The oldest trick in the book …
‘You bastard! Ruth Monroe sent you here, didn’t she?’
‘What?’ Now he understood: she must have been listening at the door. ‘No, look. I’m sorry—’
‘Where is she, waiting outside? You know she’s a fucking lunatic, don’t you?’
Her eyes were bright with tears. She maintained an aggressive stance, the baton raised to strike. Harry had no idea how to pacify her, so he took the blunt approach instead.
‘She says you had an affair with her husband. But she’s not waiting outside, and she doesn’t have your address. I promise.’
He kept his hands up, palms out, until Keri relaxed slightly. She lowered the baton, then kicked off her shoes, instantly becoming six inches shorter, as well as more human, somehow.
‘What else did she tell you?’
‘That her husband had been a police officer. He was investigating a man called Nathan Laird, and because of that he was murdered.’ He faltered, only now thinking of Ruth’s attempt to dissuade him from seeing Keri. ‘Or is any of that not true?’
‘Greg was killed. Nobody knows for sure who did it.’
‘But Laird might have been responsible?’
‘Maybe. I prefer not to dwell on it, thanks.’
Harry scrutinised her carefully. ‘Okay … so what am I missing?’
With a scornful sigh, Keri dropped back on to the sofa. ‘There’s a lot she hasn’t told you.’
‘Really?’
‘For one thing, at the time of his death Greg wasn’t her husband. They’d split up years before.’ A lot of emotion in her voice now: bitterness and grief. ‘And I doubt if Ruth happened to mention why they split, did she? Or what she was doing while Greg was risking his life on her behalf?’
‘No. She didn’t.’ He waited.
And waited.
‘Please, Keri. What?’
‘She was in prison.’
Forty-Six
Evie, for once, might have slept the morning away. She looked sublimely relaxed, motionless but for her bottom lip, which trembled with each exhalation.
She’d had about twenty-five minutes when there was a tap on the door. Alice opened it to find Renshaw, looking like the Michelin man in a quilted jacket over a thick sweater.
‘Oh!’ Alice exclaimed. ‘I’m not ready.’
‘Leave the baby if you must, or bring her in the papoose. Either way …’ He tapped his watch. This was the short-tempered, impatient Renshaw back again.
So what had caused the change of mood? Alice pondered that question while she carefully dressed Evie in her pramsuit and placed her in the carrier. Evie grumbled and squealed, but didn’t quite wake up. Suspecting that a bowel movement was due, Alice picked up a nappy and a pack of wipes, and put them in a nappy sack.
She followed Renshaw downstairs, wishing they were leaving for good. She’d toyed with the idea of asking Michael to take her and Evie to Gloucester station, but was deterred by the thought of what it might signify if he refused.
There was no sign of Nerys and Michael, although she could hear someone moving in the kitchen. The Range Rover was still on the drive. Spotting a couple of winter coats on a stand by the door, Alice decided to borrow a Barbour waxed jacket, large enough to give Evie some extra protection from the elements, and with a pocket for the nappy and wipes.
She was glad of the coat as soon as they stepped outside. The sky was filling with high cloud and the wind had a moist, raw feel to it, blowing in gusts from the west.
Without saying a word, Renshaw tramped into the lane, then turned on to a footpath leading across the fields that she’d seen from the nursery window. Alice followed, abruptly deciding that she’d had enough of his moods.
‘I should have heard from Harry by now. There’s no way he wouldn’t be trying to get in touch with me.’
‘I told you—’ he began, but she spoke over him.
‘To my mind it means one of two things. Either you’re lying to me and not passing on his messages, or, for some reason, he isn’t able to communicate.’ She paused to let this sink in, and saw him nodding gravely.
> ‘The woman he was with,’ he muttered. ‘Perhaps she was not to be trusted.’
‘In that case, he’s in danger. You have to let me call the police.’
‘Impossible. No police.’
‘How did I know you were going to say that?’ She laughed, coldly. Renshaw strode on, skirting a puddle with a thin crust of ice on the surface. He was breathing hard, staring at the ground as if he wanted to forget she existed.
‘Why are you so anxious this morning?’ she asked him. ‘Were you aware that the landline doesn’t work?’
At this, he jerked upright. ‘No. But it does not surprise me.’
‘I assumed you were scared of the gang finding you here. But that look you gave me at breakfast … it’s Nerys you’re worried about, isn’t it?’
Again, Renshaw said nothing, but he wore a sombre expression.
‘I don’t get it,’ Alice said. ‘If Nerys was up to something, why let us come out like this?’
Renshaw indicated the ploughed field to their right, a meadow to their left; a lonely copse of tall thin trees up ahead. ‘To reassure us, perhaps? There is nowhere we can go from here.’
‘All right, but …’ Alice bit her lip for a second. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but after what happened yesterday, aren’t we both likely to be prone to paranoia?’
‘Possibly. But my instincts say otherwise.’ He hesitated, struggling to put his thoughts into words. Evie started squirming in her carrier, screwing up her face. Right on cue, Alice thought.
Renshaw said, ‘If I had come to Nerys alone, I believe she would have helped me, and asked for nothing in return. But the presence of her son …’ He narrowed his eyes, not maliciously; almost with regret. ‘Your presence, too. It changes things.’
‘I don’t understand. In what way?’
But Renshaw only shook his head. ‘No. Forget I said this.’
By kneeling on a chest of drawers in one of the spare bedrooms, Michael was able to follow their progress along the track. He thought their body language might tell him something, but there wasn’t much to discern from this pair of roly-polys: Renshaw waddling along in his padded winter coat, Alice bulked out by the presence of the baby carrier.
The door creaked. Michael didn’t look round until his mother chuckled.
‘Very dignified.’
‘I want to see where they go. She’s taken your coat, cheeky bitch.’ No comment from Nerys, so he said, ‘What did you find?’
‘Nothing. Clothes, most of them in a horrendous state. No paperwork. And no money.’
‘So he’s hidden it somewhere?’
‘Or he’s got it on him.’
The coat. With a groan, Michael gently butted his forehead against the glass. Renshaw and Alice were almost lost from sight now, heading for the wood that marked the boundary between two farms.
‘What if they’re doing a runner?’ he said.
‘Calm down. He’s got no reason to leave the car behind. If he’s kept the money with him it’s only ’cause he knows we’ll search his room.’
‘So why go out in the first place?’
‘Could be a test, to see how we react. And that’s not a problem, really. Anything to keep them relaxed.’
Probably right, Michael thought. He could no longer see them so he climbed down, bruising his knee in the process.
‘Did you find the number for this Vickers, or whatever his name is?’
‘Vickery. I have a number, but I’m not calling till I’ve worked out how to play it. Ideally I need a bit more out of Edward first. If we just knew the nature of the leverage that he’s got over Laird.’
‘But if you push him, surely he’ll guess what we’re up to?’
‘The bigger problem is handling Vickery and Laird.’ She sighed. ‘We’re tapdancing on a tightrope. The last thing we want is to make an enemy out of Laird, and yet we’ve got to know something about Edward’s little scheme, because that’s where his value lies.’
Michael spotted a glint in her eye. ‘I take it you’re hatching a brilliant plan?’
‘Not really. But when they come back, it’d be a lot better if you weren’t here – at least, not officially.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You make him nervous. Like I said last night, he’s more, what is it … pliable if he thinks I’m on my own.’ She saw he was wounded by this, and pouted back at him. ‘Don’t worry, there’ll still be a chance for you to have your little pleasure, I dare say.’
Now he had to fake incomprehension. ‘What are you implying?’
‘I’m not stupid. I’ve seen the way you look at her.’ She was grinning – fortunately – as if her disapproval was based only on the fact that he’d made it so obvious.
‘Why? How do I look at her?’
‘Like a wolf, Michael. A ravenous wolf.’
Forty-Seven
Harry was stunned, and didn’t mind Keri knowing it. Ruth had been in prison …
After being granted permission to sit at the far end of the sofa, he said, ‘Ruth just tried to persuade me not to talk to you. Now I can see why.’
Once he was seated, the tension in the room eased a little. Keri gathered up the fallen money, shuffled the notes into a neat bundle and handed them back to him. Then she sat down, carefully placing the baton within easy reach.
‘Who are you, anyway? You’re not police. And not her toyboy, surely?’ This last was said with a caustic smile.
He proceeded to explain what had happened to his family over the past three days. The mention of Renshaw’s name brought a little gasp of recognition, but she gestured for him to carry on. He rushed through his story, concluding with Ruth’s sudden disappearance last night.
‘She wants to meet me later today, but first I need to know why she was in prison.’
‘I can only tell you what I managed to pry out of Greg. She beat someone up, left them in a coma. As for who, or why, he couldn’t say any more than that.’
‘Couldn’t – or wouldn’t?’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘What does it matter?’
‘Just wondering if … well, if Greg had a reason to portray her in a bad light.’
‘Playing the old sympathy routine to get me into bed?’ Her eyes flashed mischievously. ‘You’re forgetting how I pay my bills. Greg didn’t have to tell me a thing. If you’re asking whether he had his own secrets, yeah, I’m sure he did. But I can’t blame him for being reluctant to discuss his ex-wife. Her ending up in jail wasn’t exactly easy for him.’
‘I bet it wasn’t. Did they have kids?’
‘No. They’d tried for years. I suspect Greg wanted them a lot more than Ruth did.’
‘Right.’ Harry had to clear his throat before his next question. ‘So, um, when you slept with him, was it a, uh, professional transaction?’
‘Did I fuck him for money? Actually, at first I did. I found out later that paying for it made him feel less guilty.’
‘Why? Hadn’t he split from Ruth by then?’
She snorted. ‘It wasn’t that. He was guilty about trying to use me to get to Laird.’
Harry rested his head back while he tried to assimilate all this new information. Keri regarded him solemnly.
‘She’s bad news, Harry. I don’t just mean the prison thing. It’s the pressure she put on Greg, even after they split up. Nathan Laird was her obsession, and being behind bars didn’t reduce that one bit. She made sure it became Greg’s obsession, too.’
‘But why? What is it about Laird … ?’
‘Some sort of grudge, going back years, that’s all I know.’
‘Didn’t you ask Greg?’
‘Of course. He said it wouldn’t be fair to tell me. Whether he meant fair to me, or fair to Ruth …’ She threw out her hands, at a loss to explain. ‘Ever since she was released, at the end of last year, she’s been trying to track me down. She won’t take no for an answer.’
‘But why? I mean, why does she keep pursuing you – assuming it’s not bitte
rness over you and Greg?’
‘She’s convinced that I’m holding back on her.’
‘But if you knew anything significant, surely you’d have already told Greg?’
‘Well, I was far from happy that he’d deceived me. But yeah, he was a good guy, and I would’ve helped him if I could. The fact is, I couldn’t: simple as that. He accepted it right away, but Ruth … I don’t understand why, but she won’t leave me alone.’ Her voice choked and she sniffed, laced her fingers together and twisted them back and forth. ‘Times like this I really wish I still smoked.’
She offered Harry a drink, and when he asked for water she fetched a glass for herself as well. As Keri returned to the sofa, he realised he was averting his gaze every time she crossed or uncrossed her legs.
He asked: ‘The stuff she told me about Laird, is that all true?’
‘Pretty much. He has a whole range of business interests, some less legal than others.’
‘Including the escorting?’
‘Yeah, but even that’s conducted at a pretty exclusive level, so it isn’t likely to bother the authorities.’ She sat forward. ‘I can’t tell you about Laird’s early years, but if he was still involved in drugs, robberies – heavy-duty stuff – I think there would be far more official interest in him. More than just poor old Greg, snooping around to keep his ex-wife off his back.’
‘So what kind of information was Greg looking for? Did he want Laird’s address? His financial records? What?’
‘All of that. Where he lived, whether he was in contact with any of his family. Who he trusted. I think Ruth wanted anything she could get.’
Harry’s next question was about Renshaw. He was shocked to learn that the man was genuinely a doctor.
‘The girls operate mostly on their own, or maybe in pairs,’ Keri explained. ‘They work out of rented apartments in practically every big town in East Anglia, as well as further afield, in London, Manchester, Birmingham. Renshaw’s job was to take care of their medical needs – contraception, regular testing for STIs, that sort of thing. I knew of one or two who had drug problems when they started, and Renshaw helped them get clean.’
