Play With Fire

by Solomon Carter

  “He’s hurt, but he’ll live,” said Dan. “But the girl… There’s hardly a pulse to be found.”

  On the telephone, Mark asked for the ambulance service and gave out the address.

  Eva walked over to Dan and leaned against his chest. He wrapped her in his arms and kissed her on the forehead.

  “Eva, if you want out, we’ll get out of this business, I swear. We’ll quit tomorrow. We’ll get out for good.”

  “Dan,” said Eva. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” She patted him on the chest before gently drawing away.

  “No it’s not, okay! You should have told me, Eva! You put yourself at risk!”

  “I’m sorry, Dan,” said Eva. “She got into my head. I lost my way.”

  Dan opened his mouth to protest but decided to let it go. Not the time, not the place. Eva walked across the kitchen and wrapped Joanne in her arms, resting the girl’s head on her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry you have to go through this, Joanne.”

  “Have I… did I… kill her?? I didn’t mean to kill anyone.”

  “I know you didn’t. You’re not that kind. And no matter what, you never will be. I want you to know here and now, that whatever happens next… it’s not your fault.”

  As Eva spoke there were tears in her eyes. In more than one sense, she was also talking to herself. When the ambulance call was done, Eva relinquished Joanne to Mark, and she watched them hold one another, then went to Dan and slid an arm around his back. Dan gave her a sideward glance.

  “I nearly lost you,” he said.

  “Sorry. That’s never gonna happen,” said Eva.

  “Then do me a favour will you,” said Dan.

  “What?” said Eva, her eyes wide and solemn as she looked up at him.

  “From now on, just let me pick your friends.” Dan smiled.

  Eva leaned up and their lips met in a kiss. Even in the worst of times, they still had each other.

  Twenty-seven

  Dan peered into the window of the house beside Mr Ronson’s. The curtains which had always been drawn were gone. Inside, the front room had been stripped bare, empty but for a bookshelf and a chair tilted against the wall. Gone were the sofas and all the ornaments. But Dan still wasn’t satisfied. He walked around the side of the house to the fence he’d climbed before. He pulled himself up, pressing his waist against the top, leaving his legs dangling against the lower slats while he peered into the kitchen window. It was empty. The cupboard doors had been left wide open, the fridge too. The Bleaches and their motley crew had taken everything they could. Dan was about to drop back down to the grass verge, when he heard a window open behind him, and a gruff voice barked at him.

  “Oi,” said the voice. Dan slid back down and looked to his right. There, leaning from the window of the house adjoining the end of the fence was a man with slicked back steely-grey hair. His wife, no more than a pale shadow, lingered in the room behind him.

  “If you’re with that lot of fruitcakes, sorry to break it to you, but they’re gone.”

  Dan nodded and walked to the window. The man closed the window a little and Dan stopped halfway.

  “It’s okay. I’m not with them,” he said.

  The old man nodded but didn’t look completely satisfied.

  “It’s you. You used my house to climb their fence.”

  “Sorry. I had no choice.”

  The man nodded and moved on. “I never liked them. Too noisy, always had too many people round the place. They never went to sleep.”

  “When did they leave?”

  “Late last night. Took them hours it did, too. First there was a string of taxis, then some idiot in a van turned up. I told them to keep it down and the scumbag with the bad hair told me to eff off. I said I’d be round in the morning, but then I saw they were gone. That’s the only good news I’ve had about that lot ever since they moved in.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Any idea if they’re coming back?”

  Dan considered the question.

  “No. I doubt it. But if they ever do – here – give me a call.” He produced a tatty business card from his jacket pocket and handed it over. The man frowned at it like his eyes were bad.

  “A private investigator, eh? Who hired you then?”

  “Mr Ronson, your neighbour. He liked them even less than you did.”

  “Ronson, eh? The man strikes me as a bit of an oddball.”

  Dan smiled. “He’s not odd. He’s just lonely. And he’s the reason you haven’t got those jerks for neighbours anymore. You know, you could do worse than invite him in for a cuppa sometime. I really think he could do with the company.”

  The old man nodded like he was thinking it over.

  “I’ll have a word with him. Thank him for getting rid of them, and all that,” said the old man. He waved Dan’s business card. “And I’ll call you if I see anything.”

  Dan nodded and the man withdrew back inside his house and closed the window. The gossip of Carberry Close had finally reached its high water mark. Soon, the gossip would come to an end. Dan walked away back toward Eva’s little red car. He’d forgotten about the Crossfire for a moment. Dan shook his head.

  “You changed your car,” said a small voice at his side.

  Dan looked around and found the girl, Kitty Mellot, standing beside her scooter. She had stopped a good way back. The girl looked neither friendly nor unfriendly, he knew she was just being careful. And Dan decided that was a massive improvement.

  “You’d notice something like that?”

  The girl nodded. “I notice a lot of things. You had a blue car. The kind where the roof comes down. Now you’ve got a little red car. It doesn’t really suit you.”

  “No,” said Dan. “It doesn’t.”

  The girl looked at him a moment. “You scared them away, didn’t you?”

  She looked at The Bleaches’ house.

  “They were bad people, Kitty.”

  “Maybe. But they were always nice to me. They told me girls my age made videos like that. Videos to help people relax. Sounds like brushing hair, whispering and finger tapping and all kinds of things.”

  “Yeah. And that’s probably true. But I don’t think that’s all they were doing.”

  “I don’t know, do I? Because of you, I’ll never know.”

  “That’s true,” said Dan.

  “And it’s his fault too, isn’t it?” she said, nodding at Ronson’s house.

  “No, Kitty. Trust me on this. It’s all my fault. But one day, when you’re older, you might look back on this and realise why all this happened.”

  “I don’t know why you’d say that,” she said.

  “One day you will. You’ll see.”

  “Where is Mr Ronson?” said the girl.

  “Still at hospital. They hurt him, remember? That’s why he’s there. I’m going to see him now, actually.”

  The girl blinked, nodded and turned her scooter away.

  “Tell him to get well soon. From me. Kitty Mellot at number fifty-three.”

  “I’ll do that, Kitty. That’ll mean a lot to him.”

  The girl turned away and scooted back towards her house. Dan smiled and got into Eva’s Alfa and drove away. There was no way to be certain about anything in this life, but Dan felt content about Carberry Close. He was almost certain he wouldn’t need to come back.

  He went to see Ronson and gave the little man his message. Ronson seemed more than pleased to hear that his dreadful neighbours had fled in the middle of the night. But when Dan gave him the get well message from the Mellot girl, the man’s smile damn near split his face in half. It was always impossible to be sure, because there was a degree of good and evil in everyone. But Dan was sure there was no real malice in him, no danger. Plenty of awkwardness, oddness even, but no darkness. He hoped the neighbours would take him under their wing. But just in case they didn’t, Dan made a mental note to call the guy once in a while just to check he was okay. Because Eva was still top on th
e list of his priorities the visit didn’t last long. Dan shook Ronson’s hand and promised to be in touch, and with that, he was gone.

  ***

  Dan heard the chatter in the office even before he turned the corner and looked through the front window. And when he looked, he got a surprise. Eva, Mark and Joanne were in the middle of the office. Eva looked bright, sitting on the edge of her desk with folded arms, listening as Mark and Joanne regaled her with some tale or other. She smiled when she saw him. Dan smiled back, but with a questioning look. He was intrigued. He walked in and the doorbell gave its usual shrill ring. Mark and Joanne looked round, saw him and fell silent.

  “Would you like me to leave?” he said.

  Mark grinned. Joanne smiled. Dan noticed Joanne looked the coyest out of all of them.

  “No. You can listen,” said Mark.

  “Gee, thanks,” said Dan.

  “Joanne’s got some news,” said Eva.

  “Uh oh? Or should I say congratulations?” said Dan.

  “Hey! It’s nothing like that,” she said, making to slap the air near Dan’s face.

  “Then you have my congratulations again,” said Dan. He handed Eva the Alfa keys and she dropped them into her handbag on the desk.

  “I’m leaving Tobias Falk,” she said.

  “Hang on,” said Dan. “Haven’t you only just landed that gig?”

  Joanne tilted her head left then right. “Hmmm, yeah. But on balance, I think it’s better that I quit now. It was only a trial anyway.”

  Dan looked at Eva and they exchanged a glance which said they thought it was a lot more than a work trial. It was a trial in several respects.

  “That’s a shame,” said Dan, his tone not agreeing with his words. Joanne frowned.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because that means we won’t get as many strange new referrals as we did the last couple of weeks.”

  Joanne snickered. “Yeah… Mark told me you worked that one out.”

  “That was where the Poulter lead came from the whole time, am I right? It came from Falk?”

  Joanne shook her head. “No, Dan. I tried to tell you before, but you were all too busy to listen. Toby passed me that lead, but it didn’t come from him. It was passed to him by someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “Alice Perry,” said Joanne.

  Dan frowned and looked at Eva.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” said Dan.

  Eva shook her head. “Nothing ever does when she’s involved.”

  Mark looked at Dan. “It pays to be careful with her.”

  Dan nodded. “These days I’m always guarded with her. But like her or loathe her—”

  “I know which I’d choose,” said Joanne.

  “…Like her or loathe her,” said Dan. “She’s a player in this town.”

  “And she a risk. The Poulter lead was put out there by Alex Galvan, remember.”

  Dan nodded. “Yeah. I bet Perry was just another link in the chain. Galvan could have used Perry without her knowing. I’ll suss it out, see what she knows. Now, let me get it straight in my head. You quit two jobs this week.”

  Joanne flicked up her eyebrows and took a breath. “It certainly seems that way.”

  “And that’s not the only thing that’s changed,” said Mark.

  “This one’s not too hard. You’re back together,” said Dan.

  “No – wait for it,” said Eva.

  “Joanne’s moved in with me.”

  “What?!” said Dan. “And what’s your mum say about that?!”

  “Do you want the uncensored version?” said Joanne.

  “Just the bottom line. The suspense is killing me.”

  “She said it would be okay. But only for a short time,” said Mark. “Which I’m tending to read as indefinitely.”

  Dan looked at Eva. “I can’t keep up with these two. They’re making me feel old.”

  “That makes two of us,” said Eva.

  “Go and fetch the OAPs some coffee, will you” said Dan.

  Mark and Joanne drifted towards the kitchen.

  “Does that mean she’s back with us?” said Dan, keeping his voice down.

  He moved close to Eva, seeing the light in her eyes, wondering how she could be so bright after the hell of the day before. Pure, sheer relief, maybe. He guessed he’d find out sooner or later.

  “I don’t think we can expect her to come back. We never paid her in the first place.”

  “But she’s got nothing now. No job at all. And she’s hardly likely to get a reference from the council.”

  “I said we’d cover any references,” said Eva.

  “Even so…” said Dan. “Did you speak to Rawlins?”

  “Yeah. She made a few calls for me,” said Eva.

  “And?”

  “Lauren Jaeger survived. She’s in intensive care. Boothroyd won’t be getting out anytime soon. His gun has been connected to a South London gangster hit from 2017 and a shooting in Wycombe last year.”

  “But what about the others…?”

  Eva nodded and sighed. “Suzie Appleby has been moved to Guy’s. She’s alive, but the blood loss was critical. They’ve stabilised her. Rawlins seems to think she’ll pull through.”

  “Blane?”

  “Southend hospital. Concussion, a cracked skull, but no sign of brain damage yet.”

  “What about him and Boothroyd? That’s attempted murder, Eva. He could have killed you too.”

  “But I’m the only one who can offer reliable testimony linking Blane to Boothroyd. Unless Boothroyd says so himself, but then if he does that, he admits to being a hitman. I can’t see it happening. On account of everything Blane’s been through, I’m tempted to let the man have a second chance.”

  “You’re way too forgiving, Eva.”

  “And Lauren thought that was my weakness. But I’m hoping that forgiveness is what keeps me strong. She said we were the same, Dan. I never ever want that to be true.”

  “It’s not,” said Dan. “It never was. And after what she did to Appleby and Blane – with her history… Lauren Jaeger will be lucky not to end up at Broadmoor.”

  “Probably,” said Eva. “And I hope they throw away the key.”

  Joanne walked out of the kitchen holding two mugs of coffee.

  “Lauren survived, then?” said Joanne.

  Eva looked at her. “Yes, Jo. Yes, she did. You must be relieved.”

  Joanne pursed her lips. She blinked over wet, glossy eyes and nodded at Eva. Eva took her coffee and put an arm around Joanne’s shoulder.

  “See. There’s no blood on your hands at all.”

  Dan changed the subject. He took his coffee, sipped it and raised the cup.

  “You always did make a decent cup of coffee.”

  “Maybe I should apply to work at Starbucks,” said Joanne.

  Dan gave Eva a sideward glance. She caught his look but not the meaning.

  “I don’t think this office can afford to miss out on a high class barista like you.”

  Mark snorted at the quip.

  “How exactly are you going to earn a living from now on?” said Dan.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Mark.

  “Yes,” said Joanne. She leaned her back against Mark. “Even if it’s poverty and beans on toast for now, we’ll be okay. At least we’re back together. Poverty and beans sounds almost romantic.”

  “I think we can do better than beans,” said Dan.

  Eva raised an eyebrow.

  “How’s that?” said Joanne.

  “We want you to come and work here,” said Dan. He looked at Eva and waited a second until she gave a final nod and smile.

  “But… you can’t afford it,” said Joanne.

  “Hey. I can’t promise you’ll get rich, but we’ll pay.”

  “Wait. You’re actually giving me a real life job? Here? Now?”

  “You belong here, Joanne. You both do. You’re already part of the team.”


  “But what about money…?”

  “That’s for us to work out,” said Eva. “But don’t worry. We always do.”

  Joanne looked about ready to burst. “I can’t believe it!” she said and slipped her arms around Mark. Me neither, thought Eva. Behind her smile, Eva thought of another wage to pay. But the truth was Eva didn’t mind in the least. Joanne’s employment had been a long time coming.

  Mark and Joanne took off early, and the look in their eyes said they intended to celebrate. The only call that came in after that was from the garage. The mechanic gave them a long list of essential repair costs which made the idea of employing Joanne seem like pure folly, but Eva and Dan agreed it didn’t matter. Somehow, they’d find the money for all of it. Then, following Mark and Joanne’s example they retired upstairs to relax. For a long time Lauren Jaeger had been a wedge between them. But at last, the wedge was gone.

  Eva knew she was done with Lauren Jaeger for life. There was no more regret. Lauren had burned it all away. There was no more fear, because Lauren would never manipulate her again. And there was only a little guilt left, because the guilt of the dead would never leave her. But at least, with Joanne on board, things were going to change.

  Lying quietly beside Dan, Eva began to make plans. A thoughtful Mona Lisa smile came upon her face. She imagined a future for the agency without her. An agency made up of Dan, Joanne and Mark, with Eva freed up to follow something else, far less dangerous, yet equally challenging. Marriage? No she didn’t think that would suit Dan very well. But old Mrs Gernahue’s suggestion had still set her thoughts spinning. For the first time, Eva imagined herself with a child. Dan’s child. She thought of playgroups, mother meet-ups at coffee shops, nattering with a screaming child on her knee, but without cringing. She imagined the apartment with children’s toys on the floor, and of Dan struggling to balance being a ‘man’s man’ while pushing a buggy and spooning goop into their baby’s mouth. It was a struggle to see it. It didn’t seem to suit either of them. And yet, Eva saw it was possible. A way to bring sanity… to anchor them together, to bring hope, to build a future. As the thought settled, Eva rolled onto her elbow and ran a hand over Dan’s chest, and across the scar on his stomach. He looked into her shining eyes and saw that same mysterious brightness was back. The brightness he’d seen in the office when he first arrived back home.