The Edge

by Jessie Keane

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Daisy, hollow-eyed and pale as she stared at her twin’s face. She still looked at him like she hated his guts. ‘Rob had a key to that same lock-up?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Kit sat down.

  If this was a shock to Daisy, then damned sure it had been a shock to him, too. Rob had always personally done the milk run around there, collecting the money on the arcade that included Clive Lewis’s studio. No real reason for it; that was simply the way it had always been. Rob had dished out the jobs but he’d always kept that one for himself. No one had any reason to question it. And now, for the first time, Kit was wondering why. And wondering why was making him feel uneasy.

  He’d known Rob, right to the bone.

  He had.

  Or had he just thought so?

  Kit thought of the three shots fired at the church. Now he reckoned that for sure one of them had Clive Lewis’s name on it. And Rob had a key to the lock-up, so it was quite possible that Rob had been targeted too. Drugs and guns went together like love and marriage. Two shots had found their marks, one hadn’t. The third bullet buried in the church door had to have been meant for Kit himself, surely? Yet here he was, still standing. For now.

  ‘What are you saying, Kit?’ asked Ruby.

  ‘I can’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it. But it could be that Rob was doing a little something on the side,’ said Kit. ‘Did I say “a little” something? I meant a bloody big something. Shipping coke around the country. There was a stack of money in that lock-up, and Mrs Lewis was stuffing laundry bags with it and taking it home. Probably thought that, with Clive Lewis and Rob out of the way, she could fill her boots.’

  ‘What, Rob? Involved in drugs? I don’t believe that,’ said Ruby, shaken. She was thinking of how sorry she’d felt for Mrs Lewis, that she’d been determined the firm would see the woman right – when all the time the woman had been sitting on a goldmine.

  Kit hadn’t believed it either; but there was proof. His best mate had been running a drugs operation in secret. Kit hadn’t had a clue. What else did he keep from me? Kit wondered.

  ‘This could mean . . .’ Ruby started, then she stopped.

  ‘Yeah?’ asked Kit.

  ‘If Rob was involved in drugs, that’s a rough business. And Clive Lewis, too. It could mean that the shootings . . . well, we thought all the bullets were for you, didn’t we? But that could be wrong. We thought the gunman had missed his target, but maybe he didn’t. Maybe Clive Lewis and Rob were the real targets. And he got them.’

  ‘You didn’t know anything about this, Daise?’ asked Kit.

  It was churning over and over in his mind. Three bullets. A marksman of sniper standards. Three shots. He remembered Rob saying We got to have a talk. A serious talk. But Rob hadn’t lived long enough to tell Kit anything; he’d taken it to the grave with him.

  Daisy looked startled. ‘No! Of course not.’

  ‘He was your fiancé,’ Kit pointed out.

  ‘I didn’t know. All right?’

  ‘Fine.’

  There was silence. Then Ruby said: ‘The funeral arrangements. We . . . I have to sort them today.’

  Daisy’s gaze dropped to the sapphire engagement ring and the plain gold band of the wedding ring on her finger. ‘He was my husband.’

  ‘Yeah, he was.’ Ruby’s expression was dubious. ‘But, do you think you’re up to this, Daisy? I’ll come with you, of course, help you sort everything out, but if you think it’s too much . . .’

  ‘You can come with me,’ said Daisy. ‘But this is my responsibility. I’m going to do it.’

  67

  It was a dismal way to spend a rainy Friday afternoon. Selecting a coffin. Oak, teak, whatever. What type of handles? Then a lining. Cotton or silk, and what colour. Telling the undertaker with his air of polite businesslike sympathy about the clothes Rob would be buried in. Would there be flowers, or not? Yes, there would. Anyone who wanted to send flowers – the funeral date was set for next Tuesday – could do that. Then on to the florist, with an unspeaking and watchful Daniel at the wheel of the BMW, to get wreaths made up.

  Throughout all this, Ruby could see her daughter getting weaker and weaker as the reality of it pulverized her all over again. Rob was dead and gone. Daisy was beginning to accept it now. And after the revelations about the lock-up, Ruby could also see that she was feeling just a little less inclined to blame Kit for the whole sorry mess this had turned out to be.

  They called in on what had once been Darkes’ flagship department store in Oxford Street. It was strange, coming back here; it reminded her of another life, the life she had led before Kit and Daisy had come back, miraculously, to her. All she had focused on in those days was her precious business, because what else did she have? Fuck all. Now the store had been renamed Silver City, and was under new ownership. They headed straight for womenswear. It was the last bit they had to get through. Picking out a black suit for Daisy with big shoulder pads and a tight kick-pleated skirt, plus a matching hat with a small veil. Mourning clothes that she would wear to her husband’s funeral and then throw away. Or burn. Certainly, she could never bear to wear them again.

  While Daisy sat silent on the way home, Ruby thought about the lock-up. Her feeling was that Rob had never squared how he felt about the difference in his and Daisy’s backgrounds. Deep down, she was sure that he’d felt he wasn’t good enough for Daisy. Case in point – he’d dumped her five years back, broken the whole thing off. Eventually they’d got back together, but had Rob ever lost that niggling sense of his own inferiority? Ruby didn’t think so.

  What she now thought was that the drugs money could have been Rob making up for what he saw as his own shortcomings. Daisy had been raised on stacks of old money by the landed gentry; and Rob? A council estate, his dad Harry a postman. His mother Eunice a cleaner. It was a big difference, and one that Ruby always thought Rob struggled with. Maybe that was it: the cash from the drugs could have made him feel better. Could have made him feel, Ruby thought, like he had something more concrete to offer Daisy in terms of lifestyle.

  Christ, maybe trying to impress Daisy actually killed him?

  Ruby knew she could never share these thoughts with Daisy. They would finish her.

  No, she was going to have to keep them to herself.

  68

  Ruby got the call from Thomas late Saturday evening, just as she walked through her front door. She was worn out after a long night at the club, thinking that Jenny Rose was never going to be a good enough replacement for her sister Crystal. She’d slipped in the champagne glass tonight, and it had been touch and go whether she was going to fall out of the damned thing altogether. Aggie was shorter. Maybe she would make a better fit. Ruby decided she’d think about it Monday. For now, all she wanted to do was sleep. But it didn’t look as if she was going to be able to, not tonight.

  ‘Hold on,’ she said, and replaced the phone on the hall table.

  Leon had driven her through the few loitering press people at the gates, then to the club and back, while Daniel had remained at the house guarding Daisy. Leon went straight on over to his flat over the garage block, and Ruby was putting the phone down as Daniel came out from the kitchen.

  ‘All OK?’ she asked him.

  ‘She’s been up in her room all evening,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks, Daniel. Goodnight, now.’

  He went back into the kitchen and let himself out the back door. Ruby closed and locked it after him. Then she went back to the phone. ‘Thomas?’

  ‘We’ve got him,’ he said. ‘Your black friend with the dreads and the gold teeth. You sure you don’t want Kit in on this?’

  ‘I’m sure. You’ve got the stuff?’

  ‘Yeah. Remember – it’s risky.’

  ‘I’ve told you, I don’t care.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up in ten,’ he said, and put the phone down.

  The warehouse was down near the Albert Docks, empty and disused and echoing. In one far c
orner of the dilapidated old building stood a cluster of men beside an old workbench. As Thomas and Ruby walked in, they straightened. One of them held lengths of rope. A black man was sitting on a chair. His lip was bleeding. His shoulders were slumped.

  Thomas and Ruby walked over and stood in front of the man.

  ‘You got no proof I did a damned thing,’ he said.

  ‘You and some others turned over that supermarket warehouse,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Nah. Not me.’

  ‘Your friend? The little blond with the bad teeth? It didn’t go good for him. My son got hold of him.’

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yeah, but you do. And so we’ve got a few questions for you, and you are going to answer them.’

  Ruby nodded to Thomas. Thomas made a gesture and the boys closed in. They lifted the man off the chair and took him, struggling, over to the workbench. He started yelling as they held him down so that the one with the rope could tie him. They trussed him up, and within minutes he was secure. Then they all looked at her.

  First, you had to find the vein. Aware of the circle of men standing around watching her in the damp chill of the disused warehouse, Ruby Darke took the syringe that Thomas handed to her and found the spot. Some of the men were smiling, expecting her to bottle this. Thomas Knox, standing across the bench from her, was looking at her expectantly.

  Ruby took a breath and pressed the needle home, hard.

  ‘Christ alive!’ said the man tied to the workbench, his back arching, bucking against the ropes that held him. ‘Easy there!’

  This old place with its crumbling concrete pillars and floors, soaked from years of rain leaking through the roof, soiled from generations of roosting pigeons, was out of the way and nearly derelict.

  Which was pretty damned convenient.

  Ruby looked down at the tied man without compassion, and emptied the syringe into his vein.

  ‘Easy?’ she said flatly. ‘You don’t get easy when you’ve stepped on our toes. Robbed us blind. Taken the piss.’

  She drew back from the bound man and looked across at Thomas. ‘How long does it take to work?’ she asked him.

  ‘Not long,’ said Thomas.

  They’d talked about it all before. Thomas had said he would administer the drug, but Ruby had rejected that idea. Thomas was in the frame, and so part of the object of this exercise was to ascertain whether he was being upfront about his non-involvement in all that had gone down, or not.

  ‘What the fuck is that stuff?’ asked the man on the bench. He was sweating, although it was cold inside the warehouse.

  ‘It’s called sodium thiopental,’ said Ruby. ‘It’s a truth drug. And that’s what we want out of you. The truth. What-ever you know, you’re going to tell us.’

  ‘Fuck off!’

  ‘You know, this isn’t going to end well for you, my friend,’ said Ruby. ‘It’s risky, injecting people, they can even die if there’s an air bubble in the syringe. And who knows? I’ve never done this before.’

  ‘Shit . . .’ The man was straining at the ropes without success. His eyes were going out of focus, like he was drunk. His words were starting to slur.

  ‘It’s dangerous stuff,’ Ruby told him. ‘It’s a barbiturate. Marilyn Monroe died from a barbiturate overdose – and you know what? I think we’ll give you some more, speed matters up a bit.’ Thomas refilled the syringe, handed it back to Ruby.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ the man on the table shouted, his eyes wide open and crazed with terror as they stared up at her.

  ‘I’m someone you should never have crossed,’ said Ruby.

  She plunged the needle in again, injected the stuff into the man’s vein.

  He yelled, calling them all bastards and motherfuckers, jerking and struggling against his bonds.

  Soon, he would start to talk. And then she would begin to know what the fuck had been going on. She looked across at Thomas again. Her lover. Her married lover, now. Could she trust him? What if this ‘truth drug’ was something deadlier, something that would wipe the man on the bench out and stop him talking altogether?

  Well, if that happened, she would know that Thomas was involved.

  And what if the truth drug actually worked, and the man said that Thomas was behind all this?

  She looked across at her lover: handsome, robust, with his straight blond hair and his icy blue eyes.

  Thomas Knox. Local face. Big-noise gangster.

  Well, if that happened, the game was up.

  Thomas would kill her – before she could tell Kit all about it.

  69

  When Monday dawned bright and clear, Daisy opened her eyes and stared blearily at the ceiling. Then it hit her all over again. Rob was dead. And tomorrow . . . oh fuck, tomorrow they were going to bury him. How the hell was she going to face that? Seeing him lowered into the ground?

  I can’t do it, she thought.

  She thought of her babies, her twins, down in Hampshire with Vanessa. She’d phoned them yesterday, spoken to them, but she felt . . . distant. Detached. It was frightening. Vanessa had told her that it would all be OK. The children were young, resilient. They would forget Uncle Rob.

  ‘And you’ll find someone,’ Vanessa had said. ‘Someone new. Heartbreak doesn’t last forever. Life goes on.’

  Daisy crawled from the bed, staggered into the shower, washed herself. Combed out her hair, pulled on an old sky-blue, flower-sprigged tea dress. Without so much as a glance in the mirror – who cared what she looked like – she went down to the empty kitchen, made coffee, poured herself a cup and went out the back door, stepping out onto the terrace into a bright, beautiful morning.

  It seemed so wrong that the sun was shining when Rob was dead. She sat down in one of Ruby’s old Lloyd Loom chairs, feeling warmth on her face, sipping coffee, barely even tasting it. She switched on the old battery radio on the table, heard the opening bars of Sad Café’s ‘Every Day Hurts’. And it did. Every single awful day. She switched the radio off. She was dreading the future, trying to hold on but failing.

  Tomorrow we bury Rob.

  It destroyed her to think of it.

  So why go on? Why bother?

  Daisy put her cup down and stood up, stepping off the terrace onto the well-manicured grass. She had on flat sandals, and the dew brushed coldly at her toes as she walked on down the garden toward the swimming pool. The cover was off, which was silly, it should have been put back on last night to keep the heat in. But this was a chaotic house now. Things could be forgotten. And anyway, what did it matter?

  It didn’t.

  Nothing mattered, not any more.

  70

  Daniel pulled the curtains back in his bedroom over the garage, thinking that Leon had been the lucky one – as always – and got the best of this hastily thought-out arrangement. Leon’s apartment was at the front of the building, overlooking the front lawns and the drive, but this one was at the back, beside the main gardens. First this had been Rob’s place. And then, Rob and Daisy’s. So now Daniel was sleeping in the bed the two of them had shared. Christ, some of her clothes were still hanging in the wardrobe. Rob’s too. At some point, someone was going to have to clear them out, but for sure he wasn’t going to raise the subject. It was too bloody painful. He hated being here, living here, but all he could do right now was suck it up.

  Gazing out, he saw that there was somebody moving about down in the garden. Was it one of those fucking reporters sniffing around after a scoop? He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, yawning. Bastards. Fucking leeches, trying to drag stories out of people when all they wanted was to be left alone.

  Suddenly his attention sharpened.

  It wasn’t a reporter; it was Daisy.

  She was wearing a light-blue dress and she was walking slowly, almost dreamily, down toward the pool, which was uncovered and steaming in the cool morning air. The soft morning sun was catching her hair, which flowed down her back in a gold curtain. Daniel hel
d his breath. At the pool’s edge, she stopped walking, grasped the hem of the dress, lifted it . . . What the fuck?

  . . . and pulled it up, over her head.

  She’s so beautiful.

  He knew he shouldn’t look, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He stared at the round, pearly buttocks, the long legs, the slender waist. She turned to toss the dress aside and he got a front-row view of her taut belly and her golden bush.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ he murmured, mesmerized. His eyes went to her breasts. They were fuller and heavier than he’d ever imagined, and he had been imagining them. They swayed as she moved. The nipples were cinnamon-coloured and they were puckered from the cold morning air. He’d imagined everything: touching those fabulous tits of hers, and kissing her, and pushing her down onto a bed, and – yes – fucking her. With her husband – his brother – not yet even in the ground.

  What was wrong with him?

  Now she had turned away, and was slipping off her sandals. She was stepping down into the pool, very slowly. The water was up to her thighs, covering her hips, her waist, her tits. Her hair floated out, billowing, as the water came up to her neck and she . . .

  He felt a jolt of alarm.

  She wasn’t swimming.

  She just kept moving, deeper and deeper into the pool.

  ‘Daisy?’ he said aloud, although she couldn’t hear him.

  Her head was going under.

  Now it was submerged.

  A shiver of pure fear shot straight through him like lightning, accelerating his heartbeat in a hot rush of blood.

  Christ! She wasn’t going for a swim.

  She was going to kill herself.

  71

  Kit got a call very early Monday morning. Three-quarters of an hour later, he was down the cop shop sitting across the desk from DI Romilly Kane. No Harman today.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you,’ she started in, shuffling papers.

  ‘About what?’ Kit watched her hands moving. Long-fingered hands like a piano player’s. Then she looked up and her dark-brown eyes skewered him. They radiated intelligence, those eyes. You could see her brain processing data like a computer whenever they looked your way with that unblinking stare. Yes, she was a good-looking woman; but she was also bloody dangerous.