The Blood Whisperer

by Zoe Sharp

  “Businessman. Is that a euphemism?”

  He smiled more fully now, the kind of smile she guessed was not supposed to be entirely reassuring. “One-hundred percent legit.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Corporate takeovers, property development, import/export—import mainly. I source goods overseas, bring them in, sell them on and make a profit. Same as a thousand other entrepreneurs—only probably a damn sight more successful than most of them. Even Customs have given up tearing apart every load looking for contraband.”

  Kelly frowned. “So what’s with the Russian thug outside?”

  Grogan shrugged, an expansive gesture. “I have a lot of dealings with Russia. It makes sense to employ some locals. They have a lot of fine craftsmen over there in need of international markets and I provide one of those markets—at great financial risk to myself.”

  “Yeah and no doubt great financial reward also.”

  “Fortune, as they say, favours the brave.” He paused, eyed her and took another sip. “You should know.”

  Kelly felt her certainties crumbling and her focus with them. She shook her head. “I don’t get it. Everybody thinks you’re some kind of gangster.”

  “My dad was a gangster—ran with the Krays.” Grogan leaned back, almost reflective. “I had a quite a few interesting ‘uncles’ as a kid. But he died an old man in prison and I decided a long time ago I didn’t want to go out the same way.”

  “So, miraculously you’ve lived an innocent and blameless life?”

  “Like you, you mean?” he shot back. “Everybody thinks you’re a murderess sweetheart—tried and convicted once, time served. And now it looks for all the world like you’ve run true to form and done it again.” He cocked his head regarding her, waved the hand with the glass. “Want to take a quick poll and find out how many members of the Great British public believe you didn’t do it?”

  “No,” she said at last, voice stark. “Why are you telling me all this? Won’t it blow your fearsome reputation?”

  “Maybe it would.” He chuckled again, a throaty rasp of sound. “But who are you going to tell?”

  97

  Ray McCarron was struggling one-handed again. This time he was attempting to manoeuvre a metal box-file out from its entangled corner of the spare bedroom upstairs. The room was too small to fit anything other than a child-sized single bed and had long since been consigned to a junk store for things waiting in vain to be taken up to the attic.

  Without his wife to nag him to carry out the second part of this task the room had gradually filled so the door would barely open wide enough for him to squeeze through with his cast.

  By the time he’d uncovered the box and wrestled it from its dusty hole Ray was exhausted, sweating and light-headed. Then as he backed out carefully—but not carefully enough—he bumped his bad arm against the door handle and the box-file spilled from his suddenly nerveless fingers.

  This time Ray did not make the mistake of trying to catch it. He could only watch as the file landed upside down on the tiny landing, bounced once and disappeared round the newel post. The clatter and crash as it hit random treads on the way down the staircase seemed horrendously loud inside the empty house.

  “Bugger,” he said, not having the breath for anything more.

  As he edged to the top of the stairs he found an avalanche of spilled paper and torn manila folders. His shoulders drooped in defeat. Sorting through it all had been a hard enough prospect before and now it would be ten times harder.

  Very slowly and with much wincing he sat down on the top step and reached for the nearest folder. Lifting it caused more of its contents to slither further down the slope but half the pages still remained clinging to the over-stressed paperclip inside.

  Ray dragged the folder onto his lap. On the front cover was the familiar crest of the Metropolitan Police. Above the crest was a date more than six years ago and in stark underlined block capitals the words:

  MURDER OF CALLUM PERRY

  “I’m sorry Kelly love,” McCarron murmured. “But better late than never, eh?”

  He took a deep breath and opened the file.

  98

  “If you’re not after me then who is?” Kelly asked. It should have been a demand—she formed the words that way inside her head but by the time they emerged it had fallen more to the level of a plea. “They murdered my friend, almost crippled my boss, put a young lad into a coma.” She looked up more fiercely now. “And they’re using your name to do it.”

  “Oh I’ll take care of that, sweetheart don’t you worry,” Grogan said, his voice rich with a grim promise that contradicted his earlier claims. The glass was empty in his hand. He glanced into the bottom, rose out of the trainer’s armchair. “Sure you won’t join me?”

  Kelly shook her head.

  It wasn’t until he’d refilled his drink that he said, “Tell me what you meant about Veronica Lytton’s ‘so-called’ suicide.”

  Kelly didn’t reply immediately, just watched him regain his seat with a wary eye. She remained standing although she had put down the shotgun—it now rested barrels-up against the hinge side of the door frame. The gun was within easy reach but would be hidden from anyone entering the room.

  Back when Kelly had been a CSI she’d once found a rifle left in just such a position—after a firearms team had supposedly cleared the building. The memory lingered.

  As did the memory of the blood spatter in the bathtub at Matthew Lytton’s luxurious country house. And because she couldn’t think of a good reason to withhold the information she told Harry Grogan what she’d found and the warning that had been impressed on Ray McCarron afterwards.

  “An interesting tale,” Grogan said when she’d finished, without giving any indication from his face or voice if he found it fanciful or not. “Funny thing is, Lytton always refused to have anything to do with me while his wife was alive.” He regarded her with solemn humour. “I don’t think she approved of my breeding—unlike that grey colt you were threatening outside.”

  “I probably wouldn’t have gone through with it,” Kelly returned, matching his tone. “Probably.”

  He rolled his eyes and went on calmly, “But now Lady Muck is out of the way suddenly I find myself able to do business with Lytton and his partner—what might prove highly profitable business for all of us at that.”

  Kelly frowned, remembering the vehemence in Lytton’s tone when he’d talked about Grogan. Was he really a better liar than she’d given him credit for or had she just wanted to trust him to the point it had coloured her judgement completely?

  “I don’t believe he’d kill his wife just for that.” But the strange twinge of guilt she’d seen in Lytton—the day she and Tyrone had gone to clean the place—remained obstinately in the back of her mind. And there was no doubt he hadn’t seemed devastated to find himself suddenly a widower.

  “Maybe not, sweetheart but his greedy partner just might—and he’s the one who’s been making all the running.”

  “Steve Warwick?”

  Grogan must have been watching her face as she said the name. Amusement plucked at his mouth. “Make a pass at you did he?”

  “I didn’t give him the chance,” Kelly said, acidic. “But his wife was with him. Maybe that cramped his style a little.”

  Grogan chuckled again. “Doesn’t normally stop him. Not from what I hear.”

  Her tartness only increased. “Well I gather she’s not in a position to say much considering he practically picked her from a catalogue.”

  The chuckle became an outright laugh. “That what he told you?”

  Kelly didn’t get the joke. “No—she did.”

  That seemed to sober him. “Did she now,” he murmured. He seemed distracted for a moment then fixed her with a focused eye. “If I tell you I’ll look into this, sweetheart will you let me do that without going on the rampage—at least until after my horse has run his big race this weekend?”

  Kelly hesitated a moment a
nd almost regretfully shook her head. “I could be dead or arrested by then.”

  He gave a long sigh. “Let me reach out to a few people—people who owe me favours,” he said. “You got a cell number I can reach you on?”

  “Yes—if you give it back to me.”

  He humphed out a breath and put the drink down on the arm of the chair long enough to delve in a pocket for the phone she’d taken from McCarron’s house as well as the Vauxhall’s keys. He shook his head a little as he did so, as if he couldn’t believe he was going to all this trouble over her. Kelly had a hard time believing it herself.

  There was an awkward pause. Then the silence between them was broken by the sound of a car engine revving hard as it approached along the driveway.

  Kelly glanced out of the French door in time to see a Mercedes braking hard at the entrance to the yard. She glimpsed the driver and her heart leapt into her throat and lodged there.

  “Ah about time. That’ll be Dmitry,” Grogan said with satisfaction. “He’ll take care of you.”

  99

  Dmitry barged through the farmhouse kitchen and into the small sitting room, fast and aggressive. The trainer warned him the girl had the shotgun on his boss but threats were not the same as actions.

  He knew from his own painful experience that she was not to be underestimated. Maybe if Kelly Jacks had shot her last victim he would have used more caution but she hadn’t. Besides, if there was a certain amount of . . . collateral damage during the struggle, Dmitry reckoned he could probably live with that.

  Better than facing the awkward questions that would undoubtedly arise if she and Grogan had a chance to talk.

  So he hit the door with his shoulder and kept on coming, aiming to knock aside anyone standing within the arc of its swing or startle her into immobility for those vital few seconds.

  Harry Grogan sat alone in the trainer’s old armchair, a glass of whisky in his right hand. Despite the violence of Dmitry’s arrival he seemed unsurprised by it, lifting the glass without a tremble.

  “She’s gone,” he said not even turning his head.

  Dmitry straightened out of his pounce, saw at once that the French windows were standing open.

  “I will go after her,” he said striding forwards.

  “No you won’t,” Grogan said. “She’s no problem to us—for the moment. We got other things to deal with that are . . . more pressing.”

  Dmitry paused as much at the tone as the words. He scanned around carefully and noted the position of the shotgun only a metre or so away behind the door. He stepped back almost casually to lean against the wall where the gun was within easy reach.

  “What is it?” he asked roughly.

  Grogan finished savouring his sip and relaxed his arm again. Only then did he look at Dmitry for the first time since he’d entered the room.

  “Somebody has been taking my name in vain, Dmitry,” he said. “You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?”

  Dmitry kept his face still even as his mind began to race. What had Kelly Jacks told Grogan? What did she know for certain and what might she have guessed?

  “Who?” He tried not to hold his breath.

  Grogan gave him a long cold stare. “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” he said at last. “Any ideas?”

  Dmitry frowned. He knew he should come up with a convincing scapegoat but could not bring himself to do so. Myshka, he knew, would berate him for not being ruthless enough. For not standing on the heads of others to reach the top of the pile. He shook his head.

  Grogan nodded as if that was the answer he’d expected. He levered himself out of the armchair, leaving the whisky glass balanced on the racing papers alongside and headed for the door. As he passed Dmitry, he clapped a hand on the younger man’s shoulder.

  “I had to give old Viktor a little tap on the head—he seemed just a bit too keen to shut young Kelly up before she’d had a chance to talk to me,” he said, nothing in his face or voice to betray his emotions on the subject. “Sort him out would you? There’s a good lad.”

  He didn’t wait for Dmitry’s agreement. But when he reached the door he stopped, turned back. “And where the hell has Stubbsy got to?”

  100

  Brian Stubbs sat in a police cell and alternately cursed and sweated.

  “Harry’s going to kill me,” he muttered under his breath.

  It was not the kind of thing Stubbs would normally ever say out loud—not if there was the remotest chance of being overheard anyway. In the past Harry Grogan had been fairly forgiving of his vet’s little foibles but this time he might just draw the line.

  Oh Grogan had bailed him out of trouble before, saved his licence a time or two by parachuting in some high-priced silk to argue in his favour.

  Without self-flattery, Stubbs knew this was solely because he was a bloody good horse doctor.

  The best veterinary surgeons in the country tended to naturally gravitate towards the racing centres of Newmarket or the rolling Downs out past the Chiltern Hills west of London. That’s where the real money was to be made.

  Brian Stubbs had once counted among the best of them.

  But his father had been a drinker. His mother too, now that he thought back. All too soon the odd glass of wine with dinner had become a bottle for breakfast.

  And now it had landed him in the biggest mess of his life. He wasn’t just looking at a temporary ban this time. He was looking at prison.

  Sitting on the edge of the thin bed Stubbs rocked forwards and buried his unshaven face in his hands. It didn’t help.

  He could still see the old woman on the bonnet, the way her shock had turned into one giant flinch, eyes screwed tight shut, just before she hit the windscreen. It seemed to be permanently imprinted, hard-wired into his brain even with his own eyes closed.

  Of course he’d called for an ambulance immediately. And inevitably the police had turned up along with them. They’d been admiring at first, the way he’d calmly taken care of the compound fracture of the old lady’s leg, stemmed the bleeding from a nasty scalp wound.

  That admiration hadn’t survived the mandatory breathalyser test.

  Trouble was Stubbs never felt drunk. OK, his hands might not be as rock steady as they’d once been but that was simply down to advancing middle age. And if his memory wasn’t quite as sharp in the afternoons, or certain words escaped his tongue, that was because he put in long hours. Dedication, nothing more.

  But for some reason his client list had been shrinking over the past few years. There’d been a run of bad luck of course—everyone lost animals occasionally. Couldn’t be avoided.

  Looking after Harry Grogan’s horses were now his main—make that only—source of income. So when Grogan’s trainer called in a state, claiming his mollycoddled prize colt was acting up after an intruder had got into his stable, Stubbs knew he couldn’t make excuses not to turn out. Not this close to the big race.

  Now, sitting in the cell of the police station where they’d taken him after his arrest at the scene of the accident, he wished he’d thought of something.

  “What the hell am I going to do?” The words echoed off the painted walls and bare floor, coming back to mock him. He was not a brave man, he recognised in a sudden epiphany of self-awareness. He would not do well in prison.

  But what have I got to bargain with?

  The answer came at him so fast it left him breathless. He lurched to his feet, started to thump on the cell door with a clenched fist.

  “Hey I want to talk to someone,” he shouted. “I want to make a deal!”

  101

  “I don’t get what the deal is,” DC Dempsey said. He was trying to shovel sweet and sour king prawn out of the foil container and into his mouth without dripping most of it down his tie in the process. “Why did we take the watch off Jacks’s place? I mean, she must have gone back there to pick up her Mini or how did it end up parked outside McCarron’s place? Shouldn’t we put someone on the place again just
in case?”

  O’Neill dug into his own pork foo yung like a man a long way from yesterday’s supper. Which he realised was the last time he’d eaten properly. “We haven’t got the budget for a round-the-clock on the off chance—unless you’re volunteering?” he said. He couldn’t resist adding, “And she was pretty good at slipping past you last time anyway.”

  Dempsey pinked a bit round the ears at that and doggedly applied himself to his food while the blush subsided.

  They were alone amid a sea of empty desks with a late ordered-in Chinese that would have incurred Chief Superintendent Quinlan’s disapproval if he’d still been in the office at that hour. O’Neill reckoned they were fairly safe from discovery.