The Edge

by Jessie Keane

  She looked pale, blank-eyed.

  He straightened in surprise and put the paper aside.

  ‘I’m going out,’ said Daisy.

  ‘What?’ Daniel stood up. ‘Where?’

  ‘Out,’ said Daisy, crossing the hall with a determined stride.

  Daniel shook his head. ‘No. Hold on. Where are you going?’ He was thinking the hospital, the morgue. He didn’t want to go back there but maybe she did. And if she did, he would have to go too.

  ‘Not your business,’ she said, opening the front door. The rain lashed in.

  Daniel snatched his jacket from the back of the chair and put it on. He grabbed Daisy’s arm.

  ‘It is my business,’ he said. ‘Kit said to keep an eye on you. You can’t go out alone. Tell me where you’re going, and I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Get off me!’ Daisy shook her arm free. Her eyes flared with temper. ‘Leave me alone. I am going out, that’s all you need to know.’

  Christ! thought Daniel. Kit would have his guts if he let her wander off unattended, the state she was in. He thought of the jackals of the press, down by the gates. They’d mob her. And drive? The way she looked, she’d speed herself straight into the nearest brick wall. He went to the hall table, snatched up the pen there. Flicked a glance back at Daisy, but all he saw – to his alarm – was an empty doorway. The wind was gusting through, a few of last year’s fallen leaves swirling inside the hall.

  Daisy was out of sight. Gone.

  ‘Shit!’ he said loudly.

  He quickly scrawled Gone with Daisy on the notepad and sprinted after her.

  38

  DI Romilly Kane was down the nick in the major crimes unit. After the case conference, she’d pulled the file on Kit Miller, and found it pretty bulky. Then she’d padded through to her desk with a muddy cup of the vending machine slop that passed for coffee and settled herself down to read through it. It didn’t make very edifying reading, either. Dragged up in a variety of children’s homes then let loose on the streets, ‘security’ was always the cover for Miller in adulthood.

  He ran ‘security’ on club doors, provided ‘security’ for celebs or visiting diplomats. No mention of the protection rackets, of course. No one who paid protection to these people ever spoke about it. Of course not. Accidents could happen if they did. Maybe their shop would burn down. Or their kneecaps could suddenly get busted. Who knew? It was a dangerous world.

  Further back in the file, she read about a murder enquiry where Miller had been questioned but released without charge. A man had got a thin dagger plunged into his heart. Tito Danieri was the man’s name.

  Now there was a guy with a thick file too. Tito’s family had been immigrants from Naples, who’d made their home in Clerkenwell – known as ‘Little Italy’ because there were so many Italians settled there. Tito was a nastier type of thug altogether than Miller, but there was a connection. A falling-out over a woman, and the death of one of the major faces who ran the streets – Michael Ward, who Kit Miller used to work for.

  Tito and his dad, Astorre, had been notorious for strong-arming the owners of clubs around Soho until they caved in and passed the businesses over to the Danieri clan. No concrete proof of that, of course. Tito had also been charged with running a raft of underage prostitutes smuggled in from the continent, girls he got hooked on heavy drugs so that they never strayed for fear of missing their next fix. Again – not proven. Charged but later released due to lack of evidence. No girls willing to testify.

  Charged and released.

  Maybe Kit Miller had plunged that dagger into Tito Danieri’s heart. After all, there’d been a big upset among the London gangs before that – Michael Ward, who’d been romantically linked to Miller’s mother Ruby Darke, had been shot, and Tito had been in the frame for it. Kit Miller had been Ward’s right-hand man. And there had definitely been a fight over a woman. So . . . maybe.

  And maybe – if he’d done it – Miller had done them all one huge fucking favour, got that scum Tito off the streets once and for all.

  DI Kane picked up a black-and-white photo of Miller.

  Romilly had thought it when she’d met up with him and she thought it again now: handsome bastard. It was the first time she’d ever actually been startled by how good-looking a man was. She’d heard of a poll where people voted for the appearance they thought most attractive, and the top result was those who were a mix of black and white. Kit Miller fitted the bill perfectly. He was stunning, with a brutal, brooding physicality about him. And oh how he knew it. Loved his fucking self, didn’t he.

  DS Harman came and slumped into a chair. He placed a folder on Kane’s desk. She closed the Miller file and gave him a questioning look.

  ‘Misper unit had this come through,’ he said.

  Romilly eyed her DS without expression. She didn’t like him, but so what? There were plenty of her colleagues that she didn’t like. Particularly the big-mouthed, preening arseholes – a description that applied to quite a few of the male detectives at the nick. But you didn’t have to be best buds with someone to work effectively with them. One of the other DIs on the major crimes team, Karen Sharp – and she did like her – had warned her, ‘Watch your back with that one.’ She reckoned DS Harman was two-faced and possibly on the take. Romilly herself had long since come to the same conclusion. So far, she hadn’t done anything about it. Maybe soon, she would.

  Romilly picked up the file and flicked it open. ‘Can’t Sharp take it?’

  ‘Thought you’d want to.’

  Crystal Rose, burlesque performer, Romilly read.

  Then she saw it and let out a humph of surprise. ‘She works at Kit Miller’s mother’s club.’

  ‘That’s why I thought you’d want it. She works at Ruby’s. Or she did. Hasn’t been seen in just under a fortnight.’

  ‘What, and they’ve only reported it now?’

  ‘Nervous about getting us involved maybe, ma’am. Just passing it along, like they asked.’

  Romilly closed the file and glanced up at the board at the side of the office with its scribbled notes and gruesome pictures of a big man with treacle-blond hair lying dead from a gunshot wound to the chest. A small frizzy-haired guy – the photographer – face-down on the gravel, blood on his back, also dead. She and the team had a double-murder investigation on here, a major warehouse robbery too. A missing girl would take them off track. But . . . it was interesting that the girl worked at Ruby Darke’s club. The wedding. The robbery. A missing dancer. And all three events tying in to Miller and his family.

  ‘Did we get the prints off the films – the one that was still in the broken camera and the other ones in the photographer’s jacket pockets?’

  ‘Just come in.’

  ‘Bring them through. Who reported the girl missing? Was it Ruby Darke?’

  ‘Nope. One of Crystal Rose’s sisters. Jennifer.’

  ‘Maybe Crystal’s done a moonlight flit before. Perhaps she’ll turn up.’

  ‘The sister says she went off with a man that evening.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Girls these days, eh?’

  Romilly eyed him steadily. ‘CCTV in the club?’

  ‘Sure there is.’

  ‘Get on that, will you?’ Romilly paused. ‘How about all the witness statements at the church? The guests?’

  Harman gave a snort. ‘No one saw anything. No one heard anything either. They’re all deaf, dumb and blind.’

  ‘Be interesting to have another word with Ruby Darke. Why’s she got a different name to her son?’

  ‘It’s in the file. She had illegitimate twins, Kit and a sister. The sister was white. Kit drew the short straw, he was dark-skinned and nobody wanted him. Different times back then, see? So he was pushed into orphanages, and he was named there too. Kit Miller. And he’s kept the name.’

  He’d had a rough upbringing. So did millions of other people; they didn’t turn to a life of crime.

  ‘What about Miller’s father
? He didn’t want to know him either?’ she asked.

  Harman blew out his cheeks. ‘Dear old dad was aristocracy. Cornelius Bray. Lord Bray. Ruby Darke’s a looker, and he fancied a bit. Didn’t like the idea of having a half-caste child like Kit though, so he just raised the daughter, Daisy.’

  ‘Cornelius Bray? Didn’t he die, some accident?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Harman stood up. ‘I’ll bring in the prints.’

  39

  ‘Give me those, right now,’ shouted Daisy.

  Daniel had come haring out of the house at a run, seen her about to get into her Mini out on the gravel drive at the front of the house, rushed over and – in the nick of time – snatched the keys off her.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No way.’

  ‘I said give them to me,’ roared Daisy.

  ‘Don’t be a bloody lunatic. You can’t drive, you’re tranked up to the eyeballs. I’ll drive, just tell me where you want to go.’

  ‘Give me those fucking keys.’

  He shook his head.

  Daisy punched him in the face. Daniel turned away at the last minute and her fist hit his left cheekbone instead of his nose and teeth. All the same, it sodding well hurt.

  ‘You mad cow,’ he said, grabbing her arm and hauling her round the front of the car, rain-soaked and struggling. He opened the passenger side and literally threw his boss’s sister into the passenger seat, locking it after her. Then he went round to the driver’s side and got in.

  They both sat there, breathing hard.

  ‘You finished?’ he asked, sticking the key in the ignition.

  Daisy threw another punch. It clunked against the side of his head and made his ears ring.

  ‘Oh for fuck’s—’ said Daniel, holding up one arm to fend her off.

  Daisy hit him again, ducking under his defensive arm to land a punch on his abdomen.

  ‘How the fuck did Rob ever put up with you?’ he burst out. ‘You crazy bitch, will you stop doing that?’

  Daisy stopped. More because she was winded, Daniel guessed, than because he’d asked her to. He lowered his arm cautiously.

  ‘Right,’ he said, feeling his heart still thudding fast in his chest, wishing Leon had caught this gig and not him. ‘So. Tell me where you want to go.’

  ‘I don’t know where I want to go. Out. Away. Anywhere.’

  ‘Daisy . . .’ Daniel started.

  ‘I want to score.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Some crack. Something. Anything.’

  Christ, he so wished this was Leon’s job. Or Fats’s. Or anyone’s. He stared at her. She meant it. She was off her head with grief over Rob, and she wanted drugs to blank it out.

  ‘Daisy, fuck’s sake . . .’

  ‘Yes, Daniel,’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  Her blue eyes glared into his. ‘I’ll tell Kit you came on to me,’ she said flatly. ‘Days after your brother’s death, you came on to me, forced me to have sex with you.’

  ‘You what? What the hell are you saying?’

  ‘Who d’you think he’d believe? You – or me, his sister?’

  They sat, eyes locked, for long moments. Finally Daniel looked away and started the engine, clipped on his seat belt, his face grim. No matter how he looked at it, his arse was in a sling. If Kit found out he was enabling Daisy in taking drugs, he would be fried; and if Daisy told Kit those lies about him, and if Kit believed them – and he might; after all, Kit didn’t know Daniel that well, not yet – then he’d be finished too.

  ‘So you want to get high? Really?’ he asked her.

  Daisy didn’t speak. She just nodded, staring out through the windscreen at the pummelling rain. ‘You done this before?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘All right. I know a place where we can score. But you’re going to do this under my terms. OK? Not yours.’

  He started the engine, and drove.

  40

  ‘I heard what happened to Rob,’ said Thomas Knox, coming into Ruby’s office at the club that evening.

  He closed the door, took a seat. Looked at Ruby, who was watching him in silence. Could she trust him? Thomas was dodgy as fuck but, until now, he had always been on her family’s side. Was that still the case, though? He could be looking to turn them over. He could even have got together with one of the other mobs and decided to double the strength, maximize the clout. Who knew? There could be more trouble on the way, while he sat there all smiles and sympathy.

  ‘Rob Hinton was the soundest man I knew,’ he said.

  ‘He was.’

  ‘Kit must be sick to his stomach over this.’

  ‘Yes. He is.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Thomas sat and stared at her when she said nothing.

  ‘Your wife,’ said Ruby.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She’s been in touch. That night you came in the club with her, she warned me off in the bogs. And she’s been on the phone to me, too.’ Ruby stared at him.

  ‘Saying what?’ he asked.

  ‘To leave you alone.’

  ‘Chloe’s off her nut. Thinks she sees affairs where there are none.’

  ‘What did she think of the club? Did she like it?’

  ‘She liked it. That girl in the champagne glass? Very clever.’

  ‘Yeah, that girl who, incidentally, has gone missing,’ sighed Ruby.

  Thomas gave her a questioning look.

  ‘Crystal Rose,’ she explained. ‘The girl in the glass.’

  ‘What, got fed up with the job?’ He eyed her with those cool blue eyes, very steadily.

  ‘Don’t know. Her sisters usually keep in touch with her every day, and they haven’t been able to speak to her. She’s not answering her phone. She hasn’t been back to her flat. It seems odd.’

  ‘Taken off somewhere with a fella?’ he suggested.

  ‘Out of character. One night, usually. No more. Anyway.’ She threw him a thoughtful look. ‘I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt on the warehouse job. I’m holding Kit back on this, you realize. He’s not in a good mood. Right now, he’d like your balls on a spit.’

  ‘He’s too smart to start a full-out war over something like this,’ said Thomas.

  ‘I don’t think he’d much care. But I do. I don’t want him winding up dead.’

  ‘So . . .?’

  ‘Tell me again. Swear to me that you are in no way involved.’

  ‘I told you. I’m not. And I can prove it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I can help you find those two men who everyone got a look at on the day. Skinny little runt with blond hair, gold jewellery and bad teeth. Big black guy with gold fillings and dreads. Saw ’em clear as day on the CCTV.’

  ‘All right,’ said Ruby, thinking that, although all this was making her feel stressed out like an overstrung bow, he was still gorgeous, and she could easily get back into something with him if she wasn’t very careful.

  Nah, I’m over all that, she told herself.

  But she wondered if she truly was.

  41

  Peachy phoned the office at the back of Sheila’s restaurant a couple of days after Kit had paid his shed a visit.

  ‘Mr Miller,’ he greeted Kit.

  ‘You got anything, Peach?’

  ‘Yeah. Don’t know if it helps too much though. As I told you, it’s definitely a 7.62mm. I’ve looked at it all ways, but there’s no distinguishing marks. None. I don’t know if it helps, but it’s a bore that’s used in most gun clubs for target shooting. Might be a place to start.’

  ‘Right.’ Kit looked at Fats, who was sitting by the desk counting twenty-pound notes from the morning’s milk run. ‘I’ll send Fats over to pick the casing up. Thanks, Peach. It’s appreciated.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Kit put the phone down.

  ‘What?’ asked Fats, pausing in his counting.

  ‘Pick up that spent shell from Peachy for me, and bung him a ton, OK? Then sort out a list of all the
gun clubs in the London area,’ said Kit.

  ‘I’m on it,’ said Fats, passing the wad of twenties over to Kit before making for the door.

  42

  DI Romilly Kane was sitting in Jenny and Aggie Rose’s chaotic little flat in Bermondsey, a weak cup of grey tea in front of her on the coffee table. Beside her was DS Bev Appleton. The two Rosettes were on the sofa opposite, staring at Romilly as if she had all the answers. She wished she did.

  ‘Most missing people come back after a day or two,’ said Romilly.

  They nodded; said nothing.

  ‘As this isn’t the case with your sister, what we are proposing is that we will search her home address first,’ said Romilly, thinking of the weird places they’d found ‘missing’ persons in the past – in cupboards under the stairs, skulking in loft spaces, hiding from angry creditors, pestering ex-lovers or dodging bailiffs. Some of them were just sick of the world and sunk deep in depression.

  ‘We’ll take some photographs of her flat’s interior,’ she went on. They’d be looking for signs of a struggle, of blood, anything that might indicate that Crystal had been harmed or was being held against her will. ‘Then we’ll want to talk to any other relatives of Crystal’s . . .’ Romilly paused. ‘Is that her real name? Crystal?’

  ‘Beatrice,’ said Aggie. ‘Beatrice Fuller. Fuller’s our family name.’

  Romilly and Bev both made a note of that. ‘Middle names?’ The sisters shook their heads.

  ‘The other relatives,’ Romilly continued. ‘Mother, father . . .’

  ‘Mum’s dead. Dad lives abroad. Spain. Almeria.’

  ‘Fine. Grandparents?’

  ‘All dead. Sorry.’

  ‘OK. Uncles, brothers, cousins, boyfriends, anybody you can think of. Please put together a list with all their contact details, and we’ll take it from there.’

  They nodded.

  ‘The man she was last seen with in the club, was that a steady boyfriend?’

  ‘No. Someone new,’ said Jenny.

  ‘We’ve been in touch with the club owner and we’re going to see her now. There’ll be CCTV from inside the club, we might be able to get a better idea of this man’s identity.’