Second Shot: A Charlie Fox Thriller

by Zoe Sharp

  When I was spent he sat there for a time, eyes fixed on a point on the bed frame, frowning.

  “Tell me again what Simone said, when you walked in on her at the house,” he said.

  “She said that he’d killed him and she’d seen him do it. That she’d loved him. Then she called him a fucking bastard and that’s when Lucas did a runner.”

  “So, she-”

  “What do you think you’re doing?” My father’s voice, from the doorway, was cold even for him. Damn, I really must get them to shift some of this bloody equipment so people cant creep up on me like this.

  Sean got to his feet automatically. “We were talking,” he said, in that blankly respectful voice he’d always used to disguise his intense dislike.

  My father moved round to the side of the bed where I could see him, eyes sweeping over my face. He clearly didn’t care for what he saw there.

  “She needs rest and no emotional upset,” he said tightly.

  “Shame you didn’t always feel that way,” Sean murmured.

  My father’s face paled beneath his tan. They faced off, almost toe-to-toe. Sean was taller and wider and exuded the kind of menace that made people leave seats vacant next to him in crowded bars. But my father had been at the top of a tough profession for more than thirty years and along the way he’d acquired the ruthless superiority of a despot. Until someone threw the first punch, I would have said they were fairly evenly matched.

  “Say, is this a private party, or can anybody join in?”

  The new voice from behind me had what was by now a familiar New England twang to it, and the heavy cynicism that could only have belonged to a cop.

  “The more the merrier,” I said wearily, closing my eyes. “Did you bring a bottle?”

  There was a grunt of laughter. “Round here, ma’am, the bottles seem to be mostly full of the kind of liquids you wouldn’t want to drink.”

  “Charlotte, you’re not up to this,” my father said. I opened my eyes and found him watching me intently.

  “Probably not,” I said, mustering a shallow smile, “but I’ve got to talk to the police sometime.”

  He hesitated. “Just see that they don’t overtire you.”

  “If they do that, I’ll just fall asleep on them,” I said. ‘And I don’t think they’re allowed to beat up witnesses anymore.”

  “They won’t bully her,” Sean said, and the cold certainty in his tone earned him a sharp glance.

  After a moment my father nodded slowly, as if reluctant to find himself in any kind of agreement with Sean. “No,” he said with the wisp of a smile, “I daresay they won’t.” And with that he turned and left. He didn’t even make it seem like a retreat—just that he simply had somewhere more important to be.

  The cop who’d been doing the talking came round where I could see him. He was middle-aged and heavyset like he spent time in the gym rather than like he’d gone to fat. At home I would have put him down as a rugby player, right down to the broken nose. Over here I assumed he played American football in some kind of offensive position. With him was a small, wiry, dark-haired woman with a face that didn’t look as though it laughed easily. Partners, I assumed. Detectives, too, if their lack of uniforms was anything to go by.

  They both dragged up chairs to the bedside and went through the rigmarole of introducing themselves and showing me their badges. The man’s name was Bartholemew. The woman’s was Young.

  “We’d really like to speak to you alone, Miss Fox,” Young said pointedly, taking the lead so we didn’t mistake her for Bartholemew’s junior.

  My eyes slid over Sean. “If he leaves,” I said, “so do you.”

  Sean showed them his teeth and they both took on a pained look, like they’d been told if they really didn’t want the Rottweiler sleeping on the furniture, they’d have to physically remove it themselves.

  “Er, we understand that you were acting as Miss Kerse’s bodyguard, is that correct?” Young asked, and something about the unbridled skepticism in her voice made me regret the decision to talk to them right from the start.

  “Yes,” I said.

  She raised a single eyebrow, mocking, and let her eyes travel over me, lingering over the tubes and lines I was hooked up to.

  “Been doing the job long?”

  “Long enough.” It was Sean who answered for me, staring out the two detectives. They’d been doing their own jobs for a while and they must have interviewed their share of murderers and gangsters, but neither of them liked being the subject of Sean’s dead-eyed stare.

  “We assume, from the fact that you got it in the back, that you didn’t see who shot you?” Bartholemew took up the baton.

  “No, I didn’t,” I said.

  “But you have an idea, right?”

  I took a breath in, too deep, and had to wait a moment for the stabbing in my chest to subside. “I don’t know,” I said, stubborn. ‘As you so gallantly pointed out, I was shot in the back. I didn’t see who pulled the trigger.”

  Bartholemew sighed, a noisy careless gush of breath that made me instantly jealous. “We have a preliminary ballistics match between the bullet removed from you and the gun found with Miss Simone Kerse,” he said flatly He let that one settle on me for a while. “I don’t suppose you’d like to hazard a guess as to why Miss Kerse would take it into her head to shoot her own bodyguard, now would you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I paused. “Is there any possible doubt that she actually fired the shots?”

  “Well, her prints were on the weapon and she tested positive for gunshot residue. That’s normally good enough for the jury,” Bartholemew said, laconic. “We would sure like to have some idea of a motive, though.”

  “You and me both,” I said. But in my head I saw a slow-motion replay of the moments before I was hit. I saw once again Lucas’s head square in my sights. Saw the way I’d let the gun rise, taken my finger off the trigger. Even in the moonlit darkness, it must have been clear that I wasn’t about to take the shot.

  Was that why Simone had done it? I remembered the sheer fury in her voice down in the basement, when she’d called Lucas a bastard, when she’d said she’d loved and trusted him and sounded so desperately betrayed. I didn’t believe those first two shots she’d fired had been meant to hit me—or anyone else, for that matter. But out in the woods, well, that was a different story, despite Ella’s close proximity.

  And who had Simone seen Lucas kill? Jakes? Was he the subject of her anger? Why—when she’d known Jakes for less than a day?

  “We understand from Mrs. Rosalind Lucas that Simone arrived at the house with her daughter, Ella, and her other bodyguard, Mr. Jakes, in a state of some agitation. Can you shed any light on why that might be?”

  “No,” I said. “I had a message on my mobile phone from Jakes. It should be about somewhere, if you want to check it. He said something along the lines that Simone had had a call from her father and wanted to go over to his place and that she was getting angry about having to wait. By the time I arrived there I found Jakes dead at the bottom of the stairs and Simone in the basement threatening Lucas and his wife with a gun.”

  “But you don’t know why?”

  “Not beyond what I’ve already told you, no,” I said dully My voice was starting to rasp in my throat now and I desperately wanted something to drink. Not just the ice cubes and minute sips of liquid the nurses seemed determined to tease me with, but a long endless glass of iced water. The urge for fluids I could actually swallow was fast becoming a fantasy.

  Young frowned and studied the notebook that lay open on her lap. “We understand that Miss Kerse had spent some considerable time and money tracing her father. Can you suggest any reason why she might suddenly turn against him like this?”

  “Maybe,” I said. I glanced at Sean, as if for reassurance. We hadn’t had time to discuss any theories and I was loath to voice them now, untried, but I didn’t see much of a choice. “The reason we moved out of the Lucases’ house was
because there was a break-in the night before.”

  Young leafed through the pages of the notebook and glanced at her partner, making a brief I-have-no-record-of-that kind of gesture with her right hand. He responded with a slight dismissive roll of his eyes that instantly put my back up.

  “It wasn’t reported,” I said. “But you must have noticed that there was a brand-new window at the top of the stairs?”

  Young checked her notebook again. “I don’t recall there being any damage to the property apart from a couple of fresh bullet holes in the basement,” she said carefully. “And Mr. and Mrs. Lucas didn’t mention anything about a break-in.”

  “Simone didn’t want anything getting into the papers. She’d had a rough time with the tabloids before she left home.”

  “Wait a minute,” Bartholemew said, sitting more upright in his chair. ‘Are you telling us you failed to report a serious crime because Miss Kerse didn’t want it getting into the newspapers?”

  His voice had started to harden and Sean sliced across him instantly. “Simone had just come into money,” he said. “Charlie felt the break-in was possibly a kidnap attempt on the child. Any kind of publicity would have only increased the danger to Ella.”

  “Money?” Bartholemew said. “What kind of money?”

  “Several million,” Sean said shortly, severely playing it down and still provoking a jerked reaction from the cop. “According to her banker, Simone made a will just before she left England. If anything happened to her, then everything went to Ella,” he went on. His eyes flicked to me. “I spoke to Harrington yesterday about it. There are plenty of strings attached, but if they become her legal guardians, the money will probably end up under the control of Ella’s grandparents.”

  I knew Lucas was aware of Simone’s money—had been practically from the start. But if his motive in contacting her had been financial gain, why did he come to the hotel that day and almost beg me to take her back to England? Why did he refuse Simone’s offer? Unless he knew things were about to turn nasty. …

  I remembered Vaughan’s words in the restaurant, just before I left. He’d asked if Simone had found out the truth about Greg Lucas. What truth? What had he done?

  “We caught one of the guys who broke in, but he got away from Lucas,” I said, trying to drag myself back on track. “Maybe if Simone found out— I’ve no idea how— that Lucas was in any way responsible, she would have flipped. What happened to Jakes, by the way?” I asked. My mind was starting to disconnect now, and coherent speech was becoming noticeably more difficult. I had to fight to stay with Bartholemew’s answer.

  “His neck was broken.”

  “Lucas is supposed to be ex-SAS,” I managed. My eyes had drifted shut without my realizing it and I forced them open. The effort made my vision quiver. “One of the first things they teach you is how to break someone’s neck. Practically the first lesson, huh, Sean?”

  The two cops exchanged a look I didn’t catch the meaning of. “The pathologist seems of the opinion that his injuries were consistent with a fall,” Young said at last, carefully.

  “O-K,” I said slowly, slurring badly now, “but what if Lucas wasn’t her father? His partner knows something—Felix Vaughan. Have you spoken to him? Only-”

  Young cut me short. “Mr. Vaughan was polite but unhelpful,” she said, and I remembered Vaughan laughing when I’d asked him the same question about Lucas.

  It wasn’t that simple, Vaughan had said. Why?

  “If Lucas wasn’t her father, that would be a pretty good reason for a massive falling-out between them. Simone was already pretty convinced, but they were supposed to have had a DNA test to settle it,” I mumbled. “If she found out he wasn’t who he said he was, she might well have reacted badly. I’ve never been entirely happy that he — “

  “The tests came back,” Bartholemew cut in. “They were positive— and our own lab has run their own independently, just to be sure.” He paused, looking almost disappointed that I’d come up with such feeble reasons for Simone to turn psycho. “As close as the science can call it, Greg Lucas was definitely Simone’s father.”

  Fifteen

  I dreamed of Ella. It was Simone who’d died, but it was her daughter who haunted my sleep. Constantly. A jumbled-up barrage of splintered reflections, always anchored in that frozen forest. So cold it woke me shivering, my fingers numb with the psychosomatic effect.

  Sometimes it was Simone who was holding the child. Or Matt, dressed as I remembered him from that first day at the restaurant, with that damned stuffed rabbit he’d been clutching sitting on his shoulder, egging him on. Or Rosalind, her face and clothing dusted with flour. Or sometimes it was Lucas again, and the dream was more vivid for the ghosted image of reality overlaid on top of it.

  It never made a difference to the outcome. Sometimes I took the shot and watched in slow motion as the mist beaded outwards from the exit wound in the skull, Ella’s screams reverberating inside my own head.

  And sometimes I stayed my hand but the mist splayed out anyway. I saw the body tumble, but I could never reach them before they both fell. Didn’t know for certain who’d been hit. I kept trying to turn and look behind me, to see who had fired the shot when I knew it wasn’t me, but the shooter always moved too fast for me to focus on them, slipping away like a shadow into the trees.

  This time, it was Felix Vaughan who held Ella in my dream. He smiled as he slid his thumb under the skin of her soft belly and peeled it up and away from her body as easy as a boiled shrimp.

  I woke with a gasp to find Frances Neagley sitting in the chair Sean had occupied beside my bed. It was two days since the visit from the two cops. Two long frustrating days and nights, punctuated by periods of fearful sleep. I’d got to know the patterns in the ceiling pretty well by then.

  The private investigator had clearly been flicking through the pages of Sports Illustrated magazine when my gasp had alerted her. There was a can of Tab in her right hand. I vaguely remembered seeing Tab in the UK, years ago, but the clear stuff, whereas this looked more like regular cola. I locked onto it with envious eyes.

  “Sorry,” she said, catching the line of my stare and putting the can down by her chair, out of sight. “Last time I was in the hospital, having my appendix out, it drove me crazy that they wouldn’t let me drink anything for a couple of days.”

  “I think I’m starting to obsess about it,” I admitted. “Still, they gave me some real food for breakfast—if you count jelly.”

  “Jelly?” Neagley said blankly. “What—on toast?”

  I dimly recalled that “jelly” had a different meaning in America. “Ah, I meant Jell-O.”

  Her careful gaze told me she probably knew I hadn’t been dreaming about kittens tied up with string or whatever the hell else Julie Andrews had been singing about in that old film but, by some tacit agreement, she didn’t bring it up. And neither did I.

  Instead, she smiled ruefully. “So … would it be stupid to ask how you’re doing?”

  “Better than I was yesterday. Not as good as last week,” I said, easing my position slightly. “At least they took the chest drain out yesterday, which means my lung’s on the mend. If sheer boredom doesn’t get me first, it looks like I’ll survive.”

  Her smile grew serious. “You were lucky,” she said, and her face clouded. “I was sorry to hear about Jakes. He was a nice guy Friendly, but didn’t try anything, you know?”

  I didn’t answer, mainly because I realized that I didn’t know. I’d hardly had time for much of a conversation with Jakes before he died. I’d no idea if he was married or single, even—couldn’t remember if he’d worn a ring. I remembered him the last time I’d seen him alive, reading that stupid story to Ella, and before I knew it the tears had rushed up out of nowhere, prickling behind my eyes, leaking across my face.

  ‘Aw, I’m sorry, Charlie,” Neagley said, sounding mortified. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I managed, shaky. “I think w
hile the surgeons were messing around in there they must have wired me up wrong. I can’t seem to stop damn well crying at every available opportunity.”

  She handed me a couple of tissues from the box next to the bed. The nursing staff were obviously well prepared for the outpourings — emotional and otherwise —of their patients.

  I mopped my face and after a minute or so I had myself more or less back under control. I tried a smile that seemed to alarm Neagley more than reassure her. She sat uncomfortably on the edge of her seat, like she expected to have to leave in a hurry at any moment.

  “I suppose,” I said, trying to be brisk and businesslike, “with Simone gone you’re off the case.”

  “Not exactly,” she said and paused, as though uncertain how much to tell me, brushing at some imaginary lint on her black trousers. “Mr. Meyer’s asked me to stay on it,” she said at last. “There are a lot of things about this case he’s not happy with—not least you getting shot. And besides, if Lucas is somehow mixed up in this, well, he might just have had something to do with my partner’s accident after all.” She looked up, her mouth thinning. “I want answers and so does your boss. Determined kind of a guy” There was respect in her voice.

  “Yes, he is that.” I closed my eyes for a moment, surprised but grateful. After the two cops had gone I’d thought Sean was going to tell me that was an end to it, to let it go. Simone was dead. Her prints were on the gun that had shot me. Lucas was proven as Ella’s grandfather and had claimed his right to the child. My job was over.

  Dismally, deficiently, definitely over.

  Or—as it now seemed—not quite.

  I opened my eyes again to find Neagley watching me, speculative, and I had the feeling that she was drawing her own conclusions about my relationship with Sean. I wondered if I should let that bother me and decided I had other things to worry about.

  “So, have you made any progress?”

  “I’ve been doing some digging on the guy you saw at the Aquarium,” she said, reaching down by her chair and hauling a large brown leather shoulder bag onto her lap, pulling out a slim gray file. She opened it but hardly needed to refer to the pages of notes inside. “From the description you gave me, and a couple of other things, I think we might have one or two promising candidates. The guy you mentioned didn’t seem like an amateur.”