The Price of Retribution

by Sara Craven

  ‘I suppose he’s entitled to be paid,’ Tarn said mildly. ‘And to look for another tenant.’

  ‘Oh, poor Evie.’ Mrs Griffiths shook her head, tearfully. ‘She should never have gone to live in that flat. I knew no good would come of it.’

  And this time, Tarn could only agree.

  Evie had said that Caz had arranged for the move, so Tarn expected her cab to drop her at some smart apartment block. Instead she found herself outside a tall house in a busy street filled with identical buildings, many of which had clearly seen better days. She walked over chipped paving stones past a row of over-stuffed wheelie bins, wondering if Aunt Hazel had sent her to the wrong place.

  But one of the keys fitted the front door, and she walked into a narrow hall. There was only one door clearly leading to the ground floor flat, where Mrs Griffiths had said the landlord lived, and most of the remaining space was occupied by a bicycle leaning against one wall, and a narrow side table littered with junk mail pushed against the other.

  If he owns the place why doesn’t he clear it up a little, thought Tarn pressing the bell. She rang twice and waited, but there was no reply, so she mounted the uncarpeted stairs to the next floor and Flat Two.

  She unlocked the door with faint trepidation, wondering what she would find, but the interior turned out to be a distinct improvement. The small square hall was flooded with light from a big window overlooking some overgrown but attractive back gardens.

  The bedroom, she saw, was directly opposite the entrance, its half-open door revealing an unmade bed and the kind of serious clutter a hurricane might leave in its wake.

  Tarn wondered, with a faint shiver, if that was where Evie had been found, and hastily turned her attention to the comfortably sized living area with its galley kitchen, accessed by three shallow steps down from the hall.

  The carpet and furnishings were not new but they looked clean and in reasonable nick. She’d seen very much worse in her travels.

  But this was still far from the kind of love nest that she would ever have envisaged for Caz Brandon. Evie must have been totally blinded by passion not to realise she was being offered a pretty third-rate set-up.

  But she wasn’t here to speculate, she reminded herself, or even to build up her resentment and bitterness towards Caz, although this visit was simply confirming everything she’d thought about him. Her job was to clear out Evie’s stuff.

  There was an inventory pinned to the galley notice board, which demonstrated that Evie had been content to stick with what was provided and make no individual additions to the utensils, or the china, glassware and cutlery either. But then cooking had never been a big thing to Evie.

  Nor had the living space benefited from her attention. Every cushion, picture, and sparse selection of ornaments was also listed.

  So Tarn was forced to face the bedroom, and the cramped en-suite shower room which opened off it.

  It was unlikely Evie would wish any reminders of the room, she thought as she stripped the bed, and bundled the bedding into a plastic sack, before filling a hold-all with Evie’s clothes and shoes. Although, from a psychological point of view, she realised, it might be better to get rid of all of them too, and start again from scratch.

  Emptying the wardrobe didn’t take much doing. For a girl who’d been living the high life with a millionaire boyfriend, Evie didn’t seem to have a lot of clothes, and what there was didn’t rate highly on glamour, thought Tarn, wondering what had happened to the chiffon and lace wedding dress as she emptied the small tallboy.

  The drawer in the bedside cabinet would only open fractionally, and she realised something was stuck there. After a brief struggle and a bruised knuckle or two, she managed to release it and extract the culprit, which turned out to be a square, leather-bound book.

  Of course, she thought. It’s Evie’s diary. I should have known. And she must be missing it. In the past, she probably hasn’t missed a day without writing in it. I wonder if they’d let her have it at The Refuge. It might be therapeutic for her.

  She slipped it into her shoulder bag, then returned to the drawer. Small wonder it had stuck, she thought, discovering an envelope bulging with paperwork which she decided to take with her too, in case there was something incriminating about Caz among its contents. And under the envelope, she found a scrapbook. One glance told her that every single newspaper cutting and photograph that filled its pages featured Caz. And maybe all this material explained why there were no actual framed photographs of him in the flat. Unless, of course, Evie had never been given such a keepsake.

  Whatever, this will not be going with me, she told herself grimly, adding the scrapbook to the bin bag.

  Then, as she felt further towards the back of the drawer, she encountered something else—a small square jeweller’s box covered in black velvet.

  She opened it and gasped aloud at the blaze of the stones that glittered like ice-blue fire in Evie’s engagement ring.

  My God, she muttered under her breath. No wonder she believed every rotten lie he told her. Each of them must have cost an entire carat. But why on earth did he bother? Unless it had always been intended as a kiss-off payment, she thought, wincing.

  She closed the box with a snap, and dropped that into her shoulder bag too.

  The shower room was easily cleared, all the half-used toiletries swept into the bin bag along with the remains of the packs of painkillers, indigestion tablets and Evie’s contraceptive pills, which were all that the small medicine cabinet over the washbasin contained.

  No sign of the sleeping tablets Evie had used for her overdose.

  She fastened the tie handles on the plastic sack and carried it back into the bedroom, where she stopped, gasping.

  A man was standing in the doorway, thin and barely above medium height with very pale blond hair and light blue eyes, dressed in a grey suit with a faint silky sheen that whispered expensive.

  He said softly, ‘Exactly who are you? And what are you doing here?’

  This, thought Tarn, recovering her breath, must be the troublesome landlord.

  She said crisply, ‘Quite obviously I’m removing Miss Griffiths’ possessions as requested. But perhaps it’s a trick question.’ She paused. ‘And I have your money.’

  The fair brows lifted. ‘Do you indeed? Well, that is good news.’ He glanced around. ‘Do I take it that Evie will not be returning?’

  Tarn stared at him. ‘But you know that already. You told her mother you wanted to re-let the place.’

  ‘Ah.’ The thin mouth stretched into a smile. ‘I think there’s a slight misunderstanding here. My name is Roy Clayton and I actually live upstairs, another of Bernie the Bloodsucker’s hapless tenants. I heard someone moving around down here, came to investigate and found the door unlocked.’

  ‘But you didn’t ring the bell,’ said Tarn.

  ‘Er—no. Evie and I weren’t on such formal terms.’ He paused. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Her sister.’

  ‘What a charming surprise. I didn’t know she had one.’ His smile widened a little. ‘Such a dreadful thing to have happened. You must all be devastated. I was the one who found her, you know, and called the ambulance.’

  ‘No,’ Tarn said. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘So is she fully on the road to recovery? And can she have visitors, wherever she happens to be?’

  ‘She’s making satisfactory progress,’ Tarn returned. ‘But she’s not up to seeing people yet.’

  ‘What a pity.’ He glanced round the room again, his gaze lingering on the suitcase and the empty bedside cabinet, while Tarn took a quick look at her shoulder bag beside the chest of drawers, checking that it hadn’t been disturbed because Evie’s ring was in there.

  He added, ‘Bernie should have told me that she wasn’t coming back. I could have saved you a journey and a job, and cleared the place for you.’

  ‘That’s kind of you,’ Tarn said untruthfully. ‘But it’s probably a task better suited to her
family.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right.’ The curiously pale eyes rested on her. ‘You mentioned something about money?’

  She looked back at him, bewilderment mixing with her unease. ‘Yes—but I thought you were the landlord wanting his rent.’

  ‘Oh, dear, another disappointment,’ he said lightly.

  ‘You mean Evie owed you too?’ She drew a dismayed breath, bracing herself. ‘If you’ll tell me what it was for and how much, perhaps something could be arranged.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly put you to so much trouble,’ he said. ‘And it’s really quite a trivial matter. Besides, I’m sure Evie and I will be running into each other again. One of these days. When she’s better.’

  He paused again. ‘Now I’ll leave you to your toil. Do tell Evie next time you see her that I was asking about her. You won’t forget, will you?’ Another swift smile, and he was gone.

  Tarn stayed where she was, uncomfortably aware that her breathing had quickened, and the plastic sack in her hand seemed suddenly to be weighing a ton.

  Oh, pull yourself together, she told herself sharply. He’s just a concerned guy from upstairs. You’re letting this whole Caz Brandon thing knock you sideways, make you imagine every man you come across is a potential threat.

  On the other hand, as she went downstairs, she found the genuine article waiting for her, bald and tattooed in a football shirt and denim cut-offs.

  ‘Bernie Smith.’ He gave her a hard look. ‘You’re not the woman I talked to.’

  ‘No, that was Miss Griffiths’ mother.’

  He grunted. ‘Got the rent?’

  Tarn handed over the envelope and watched him count it.

  ‘Seems to be all there,’ he said. ‘Lucky I don’t charge for having the place cleaned. And the inconvenience—paramedics and police swarming all over. Gives a place a bad name.’

  ‘Difficult to see how,’ Tarn said, giving the hallway a disparaging look before dropping the keys into his hand.

  ‘No need to be so high and mighty,’ he called after her, as she left. ‘And I’ll be checking that inventory, no danger.’

  But I shall not, Tarn thought, as she hailed a cab, be mentioning any of this to Aunt Hazel.

  ‘Are you sure you won’t come to Molly’s birthday bash tonight?’ asked Della. ‘She said you’d be more than welcome.’

  Tarn shook her head. ‘I’m going to have a long bath, wash my hair, and go through the stuff in the envelope yet again, in case I’m still missing something.’

  ‘Like a proposal of marriage from Caz Brandon in writing?’ Della wrinkled her nose. ‘You can’t sue for breach of promise any longer.’

  Tarn sighed. ‘I wasn’t thinking of that. I’m just trying to make sense of it all. To correlate the weird flat with that amazing ring, the chainstore clothing with the millionaire lifestyle.’

  ‘A noble ambition,’ said Della. ‘And I’m sure Evie would do just as much for you.’

  Tarn bit her lip. ‘But you must admit it’s strange.’

  ‘Strange is not the word. And at the risk of turning into Cassandra whose warnings were also ignored, I say again that you should drop the entire mess, and get back to your own life.’ She gave Tarn a minatory glance. ‘A decision that Mr Brandon may also have made.’

  ‘Apparently he was bankrolling her,’ Tarn said unhappily. ‘There were some nasty letters from the bank and a credit card company in the envelope, but a week later she’s writing in her diary that she no longer has any money worries, “thanks to C.”’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Della. ‘He must have realised she was a total flake, especially where money was concerned, and that he’d be lucky if she didn’t bankrupt him.’

  ‘But he was going to marry her,’ Tarn argued. ‘Why didn’t he sit down and talk to her if there was a problem? Try to work things out?’

  Della shrugged. ‘Maybe he did, and found it was stony ground.’

  ‘There’s also a load of stuff about the MacNaughton Company,’ Tarn said, producing a sheaf of papers. ‘Whoever they are.’

  ‘Now there I can help,’ said Della. ‘They’re a cleaning firm, incredibly high-powered, lethally expensive, and very discreet, exclusively employed by the mega-rich and famous. They appear like good elves, perform their wonders and vanish.’ She frowned. ‘But from what you’ve said, Evie’s flat wouldn’t be their usual stamping ground, even if she could afford them.’

  ‘I gather from her diary that Caz Brandon fixed her up with them too,’ Tarn said wearily. ‘Though there wasn’t much sign that professional cleaners had ever been there.’

  Della was silent for a moment. ‘The guy upstairs—was he attractive?’

  ‘He gave me the creeps.’

  ‘But you, honey, are not Evie. Could she have been two-timing her fiancé with the neighbourhood watch, do you suppose?’

  ‘Never in this world,’ Tarn said with emphasis. ‘No-one who was seeing Caz Brandon would give Roy Clayton a second glance.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ Della said affably. ‘How very interesting that you should think so.’

  She picked up her bag and walked to the door. ‘If you get tired of your mysteries, Sherlock, we’ll all be at the Sunset Bar,’ she threw over her shoulder as she left.

  An hour later, Tarn was wishing she’d taken up the offer. Wrapped in a towelling robe, her hair curling damply on her shoulders, she was ensconced in a corner of the sofa, re-reading Evie’s diary and getting more depressed by the minute.

  The contrast between the almost hysterical happiness at the beginning of her relationship with Caz and the agonised descent into despair when it ended was almost too painful to contemplate.

  ‘What can I do? I can’t go on?’ were words repeated over and over again. But Tarn had an odd sense from the later entries that Evie was not just wretched, but frightened too, because ‘What will happen to me? Where will I go?’ also cropped up with alarming frequency.

  What did he do to her? she thought.

  She reached for the beaker of coffee she’d made earlier, realising with a grimace that it was now cold. She closed the diary, put it on the floor with the envelope, and rose to go to the kitchen.

  She was waiting for the kettle to boil when the door bell sounded.

  Della must have forgotten her key again, she thought, although it seemed rather early for the birthday celebrations to have ended.

  A teasing remark already forming in her mind, she walked to the front door and threw it open.

  And stood, as if turned to stone, as she stared at her caller.

  ‘Good evening,’ said Caz Brandon, and he smiled at her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SILENCE stretched between them, threatening to become endless as shock held her motionless. Speechless. Yet she had to do something…

  ‘You.’ Her mouth was dry. She hardly recognised her own voice. ‘What are you doing here?’

  His shrug was rueful. ‘I’d hoped to take you to dinner, but my flight was delayed, so my guess is you’ve already eaten.’

  He paused, the cool hazel gaze sweeping over her. His expression did not change, but Tarn’s instincts told her that he knew perfectly well that she was naked under the towelling robe. She had to resist an impulse to tighten her sash, and draw the lapels more closely to her throat.

  He added, ‘I seem to have called at an inopportune moment, so maybe a drink is out of the question too?’

  She made no immediate response and his brows rose with faint mockery. ‘Another loaded silence,’ he remarked. ‘I suppose I shall have to become accustomed to that.’

  She went on staring at him. ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘Quite easily. Your contact details including your address are all logged at the office—as you must know.’

  Of course she did, but she was playing for time, trying to pull her scattered wits together.

  She said slowly, ‘I’m not exactly geared up for going out. And we don’t keep much in the way of alcohol.’

&
nbsp; ‘I’d settle for coffee,’ he suggested. ‘I might even drink it here at the door, if you insist.’ He went on softly, ‘Although I promise I don’t pounce, or, at least, not without a serious invitation.’

  Her smile was brief and unwilling. ‘I think it would probably be better if you came in.’

  He followed her into the flat. ‘You looked as if you’d seen a ghost,’ he commented. ‘Surely you were expecting me to make contact?’

  ‘Not really.’ She hunched a shoulder. ‘Men often say things that they don’t mean, or that appear less enticing the next day.’

  ‘Then you must have been unlucky in your men friends.’

  As she walked ahead of him into the sitting room, the first thing she saw was Evie’s diary lying on the carpet by the sofa.

  Oh, God, she thought. Having been involved so closely with her, he’ll recognise that as soon as he sees it.

  She said with a kind of insane brightness, ‘It’s so untidy in here. I must apologise.’

  She moved quickly, gathering it up under the cover of the envelope that lay beside it, and pushing them both on to a shelf in the bookcase.

  Caz was glancing round. ‘This is a pleasant room.’

  Better than the place you found for Evie…

  Aloud she said, ‘Thank you. Won’t you sit down?’

  ‘I have been sitting,’ he said. ‘On a plane, and then in the car that picked me up at the airport. May I help with the coffee instead?’

  She hesitated, then led the way to the kitchen. It was a comfortable size, but tonight it felt cramped, as if by the simple action of turning from the sink to the worktop and from the worktop to a cupboard, she would brush against him.

  She was almost surprised to discover she’d managed to assemble the coffee beans, the grinder and the percolator without any physical contact with him whatsoever.

  Yet it was the mental awareness of him that she found so disturbing. The consciousness that he was leaning against the doorframe silently observing her flustered preparations.