Aim High (The Eddie Malloy series Book 7)

by Joe McNally

  ‘To see him alive, you mean?’

  ‘To see him at all. But that’s her story. Now, maybe Jonty died by accident in his darkroom, and whoever is behind all these attacks was also associated with him in some way and decided to use him. But if that were the case, he’d have done it much sooner. Jonty died months ago. So, was Nina there when he died? Did Nina have something to do with his death, and she saw the whole JCR thing hitting the headlines and thought that Haydock’s boiler room would make a nice place for a red herring.’

  Mac’s hand was on his chin now. He was nodding, prompting Eddie to go on.

  ‘So we gave her the chance, as she’ll see it, to get herself out of trouble by finding some way to shut Sonny up. Now, my guess is that she’ll try the let’s get back together pitch first. But if it doesn’t work, Nina’s plan B might be leaving JCR with another corpse in Steeplechase Cottage.’

  67

  On the evening before Nina was due to arrive in Liverpool, Eddie drove to Sonny’s caravan. Sitting in the U-shaped lounge, they finalized preparations. Eddie said, ‘CCTV’s been installed all around the cottage, inside and out.’

  ‘Well disguised, I hope?’

  ‘Mac assures me it is. Obviously, the big question is, will she bring someone with her? Or will that someone be arriving at a certain time? And will it be the guy who helped her move Jonty’s body? And, will he be armed?’

  ‘Or will she be armed?’ Sonny said.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’m beyond surprise with her, Eddie. I don’t know.’

  Eddie opened his kitbag and brought out the blue and black ice axe he owned. ‘I couldn’t get you a gun. This is the best I can offer.’

  Sonny’s hands were clasped, his elbows resting on his knees. ‘You seriously think I’d be capable of hitting her with that?’

  ‘It might be a him, Sonny.’

  Sonny raised his eyebrows and slowly reached for the axe. He surprised himself by laughing. ‘Where am I going to keep this, Eddie?’ He tried mimicking Nina, “Is that an ice-axe in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?”‘

  Eddie smiled. ‘I know. It’s hardly portable. I’d a half hour argument with Mac before I could get him to agree to it. I’m dropping it off to him on the way home tonight. He’ll be at the track in the morning, and he’ll place it on top of the wardrobe in the main bedroom.’

  ‘And I’ll just have to hope that’s where we are when the shit hits the fan.’

  Eddie got serious. ‘Look, Sonny. You don’t need to go through with this. I shouldn’t tell you, but Mave’s already regretting agreeing to it. She’d be much happier if we call it off.’

  ‘No, Eddie. Tell her I’ve got no doubts on it. I’m not quite as sure as you are that she’s got anything drastic planned. I think the gig she has in mind is trying to persuade me to get the software access off Mave.’

  ‘That might well be it, but you’re going to say no, aren’t you? The key here is to make her believe she’s in deep shit and you’re not going to pull her out.’

  ‘But she’s so damn sure of herself, she won’t have a plan B. Up until that fallout over the pendant, I’d never given her anything except…obedience. That’s the only word for it. Canine grade obedience. She’ll think this is a no-brainer, believe me.’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’ Eddie noticed Sonny’s two phones on the coffee table. ‘Which is the secure one?’

  Sonny picked up the smaller of them. Eddie said, ‘Stash it where she won’t find it. We won’t call you on it unless it’s life or death.’

  Sonny nodded, looking beyond Eddie now, all the way back to what might have been.

  Sonny waited at Lime Street Station, too nervous to sit. He walked the windy platform, coat collar up, the warm Istanbul air a distant memory.

  He had to keep moving.

  She’d be wearing that tight red dress he loved. She was the only redhead he could recall who wore clothes the colour of her brilliant hair, and she carried it off like a catwalk model. Seduction would be the plan, he was certain. He smiled at the imagined graph of his sex drive over the years…the last five had seen it drop like a ski-ramp. Then came Nina, and Sonny soared once more.

  But even with her, it lost its power much more quickly than in his younger days. He could not physically recall that feeling now, that hour-by-hour subconscious sexual foraging…at work, in the street, on holiday, watching TV…The mental memory was there, as though he’d maybe read about these feelings. The physical recall had returned briefly with Nina, then faded once more.

  But it wasn’t the sex he grieved for, and it wasn’t his youth. It was the loss of another love. The first had happened in his late teens, then, despite the years of searching, nothing more till Nina. And that was his life… topped and tailed by heartbreak.

  There was no red dress. She was in black. Without makeup, her face was bare and white and stark. Her hair could not be dimmed, but Sonny was shocked when he saw her.

  She raised her head for a kiss, offering her cheek, and gripping his arm with her black-gloved hand. ‘Are you all right?’ Sonny asked.

  She nodded, looking down. He gently touched her chin, lifting her head to look in her eyes. She’d been crying. ‘Has something happened?’ Sonny asked.

  ‘Just…everything came home to me. I’ve thought of nothing except how I’ve hurt you. And I was so full of dreams after we talked. I booked the cottage and planned my outfits and thought about a whole weekend together with no pressure, no searching and waiting and worrying. Just you and me. But my mind kept bringing back that horrible fight we had, and the hateful things I said, and…and I just knew it was hopeless.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Nina. I’m sorry for my part in it, and-’

  She put her fingers to his lips. ‘It was my fault. Nobody else’s. Mine. I tried to find a way of shaking off the responsibility for it, then I realized that’s all I’ve done all my life. Seek excuses. Shift blame,’ she looked up at him. ‘No more. No more.’

  She asked if they could go straight to the cottage. ‘I couldn’t’ face being in a restaurant full of happy people.’

  Downlighting on the white outside walls gave Steeplechase Cottage a mystical look in the hard air frost. It was softly lit inside too. Warm and luxuriously decorated.

  In an ice bucket on the glass coffee table stood two bottles of champagne. Soft classical music played through invisible speakers. Nina had volunteered to sleep in the smaller room, but Sonny said he’d feel better if she took the four-poster.

  She came out of her room as she’d gone in. Sonny had expected, at least, some makeup, some sign of a plan. She’d caught him out at the station, but this all had to be one of her games, surely?

  She sat, then reached slowly to touch the cork of the champagne bottle.

  ‘Want me to open it for you?’

  She smiled sadly. ‘I suppose they drink at wakes, don’t they?’

  He smiled. ‘They do.’

  ‘What about you? Will you have a glass for old time’s sake?’

  Was this the first step in the seduction? She knew how rarely Sonny drank. His diabetes had ensured he’d never developed a taste for alcohol.

  ‘I’ll risk one.’

  She leaned forward, touching his arm, looking concerned. ‘You sure? You’ve brought your meds haven’t you?’

  ‘I’ve been managing this all my life. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘But have you brought enough medication?’

  ‘Nina, I’ll be fine, I promise.’

  ‘No. Leave it. I won’t bother.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. I’ll get the glasses.’

  ‘Get your meds first. I want to make sure you’ve got enough.’

  He was walking away. She called after him, ‘Sonny! Get the meds!’

  Sonny brought the glasses and his diabetes medication, which he shook out onto the table. ‘Happy now?’

  ‘Just a glass then, okay?’

  But Nina took over the pouring and one glass
led to one more, then a third and by the time she emptied the second bottle, her shoes were off and she was stretched on the couch, and they’d talked and laughed and cried.

  Nina noticed Sonny checking his watch. ‘What’s up? Your coach going to turn back into a pumpkin at midnight?’

  ‘Nearly there,’ Sonny said quietly, and on the stroke of midnight, he drew a jewellery box from his pocket and gave it to her. The pendant was inside.

  She stared at it. ‘I got it repaired. The clasp had broken,’ Sonny said, quietly.

  Slowly she raised her head, ‘Could you get us repaired?’

  Sonny looked down, joining his hands, elbows on knees.

  ‘We broke, too, didn’t we? Didn’t we, Sonny?’

  ‘I suppose we did, Nina. I suppose we did.’

  ‘Call me darling…’

  He looked at her.

  ‘One last time…’

  He sighed and laid his head back as though talking to the sky, ‘How did we get to here? How did it come to this?’

  Clutching the box, she swung her feet onto the floor and leant toward him. ‘Maybe we can get it back, Sonny! It doesn’t have to be lost! If I can only find Keki, I can give the rest of my life to you.’

  ‘Keki. Keki. Keki. God help the poor boy, Nina, but if he’s not been found by now…I mean, at some point you’re going to need to face the prospect that he’ll never be found.’

  ‘I’m his mother. His mother. How can I accept he’s lost forever? How can I? If we can pay enough people to-’

  ‘Nina! How many people? How many searchers, so far? How much money burned through?’

  ‘Money’s nothing, Sonny. It’s nothing to me. It’s a tool to help find my boy. That’s all. And how can I stop? The next person I can pay might find him the day after. If Mave had only held on a while longer. If that last bet had only come up.’

  ‘Nina-’

  She jerked forward, eyes wide. ‘See! You see now why I was reduced to bloody burglary out of desperation? Common sense told me the programme would be protected, that I wouldn’t be able to use it, but desperation always overrules common sense. Can you understand that?’

  ‘I can understand it, but it doesn’t overrule other people’s common sense. You can’t expect them to keep on and on and on.’

  She got to her knees on the floor in front of him. ‘Sonny. Look at me. I’m begging you. I’m begging you to ask Mave to give us the password or the key or whatever it is we need. She doesn’t have to do anything more after that. She can go on travelling. We can do it all. I can. I can!’

  Sonny covered his face with his hands.

  ‘Sonny…I am begging you.’

  He sighed and drew his fingers back through his white hair. ‘It’s over, Nina. All I’m going to tell Mave when I see her is the truth. I owe her that. It’s the least I owe her. She’s not mean. She won’t want revenge. She won’t report you to the police. I’ll ask her not to do that…but she needs to know the truth.’

  Nina slumped forward, till her elbows rested on the rug and her head went down, splashing her hair across its whiteness.

  Sonny rose. ‘I’m going to bed. I’ll take you to the station in the morning.’

  Two hundred yards to the rear of the cottage, on the old grand-prix track that runs inside The Grand National course, a white minibus was parked. It was the Aintree courtesy vehicle for transporting those who arrived on the helipad.

  Inside the bus were Eddie and Mac.

  Mac said, ‘I do wish I’d brought that second hot water bottle.’

  ‘I wish I’d brought a first hot water bottle.’

  ‘How much longer, do you think?’

  ‘Who knows, Mac?’

  ‘We could be here all bloody night. In January! Can’t these people commit their crimes in summer, for God’s sake?’

  Eddie smiled. ‘Like the Flat season? You get Flat season criminals. Nina’s a jumps fan, by the look of things.’

  ‘Well, if she was stuck out here with the bloody icicles, she’d soon change her allegiance.’

  ‘At least you still have a good head of hair, Mac. It could be worse. Most body heat escapes through the head, you know.’

  ‘That’s a bloody fallacy, too! Well, it’s not a fallacy, but it’s silly. Of course heat escapes through the head, but not because it’s at the top of your body, it’s because it’s the only part that isn’t bloody clothed! Doesn’t that tell-’

  ‘Mac!’ Eddie raised a hand.

  They stared through the frost-rimmed porthole in the window that Eddie had spent so much time wiping.

  Nina was leaving.

  Sonny sat up in bed, in the dark, listening to the key turning in the back door. A minute before, he’d lain still while Nina had taken his phone from his jacket and all his medication from the dresser.

  68

  McCarthy and Tim Arango were the only ones in the offices of The Jockey Club in Newmarket that Sunday afternoon.

  ‘A woman?’ Arango said.

  ‘Nina Raine. Early thirties. Been involved in attempted blackmail, burglary, and, possibly, the killing of Jonty Saroyan.’

  ‘Have you evidence of that?’

  ‘Only circumstantial. Saroyan became a liability, as did Sonny Beltrami, the man involved at Aintree yesterday.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She effectively left Sonny for dead. She took away the medication he needed for his diabetes and locked him in a building when nobody knew he was there. If he’d taken a hypoglycaemic attack, after drinking alcohol, it could have resulted in ketoacidosis, which is often fatal.’

  ‘But our staff at Aintree knew that she had booked the cottage, is that not correct? She’s hardly going to kill someone in the place she’s reserved in her own name.’

  ‘She could have told any story…that she booked it on behalf of someone else. That she’d thought better of it and told Sonny she wasn’t coming.’

  ‘I thought you said everything was on CCTV?’

  ‘It is. But she wasn’t to know that.’

  Arango frowned. ‘You think we have enough to give her name to the police?’

  ‘I think we should at least discuss it formally.’

  ‘I’m not sure it’s a decision I’d be comfortable making. Are you happy for me at this point to get the major’s view?’

  ‘Of course.’

  That evening, after the call from Arango, McCarthy rang Eddie. ‘Guess what, the major prefers to keep it in-house for now.’

  ‘There’s a surprise. What does in-house mean exactly?’

  ‘Apparently, the major knows some reliable private agencies who are extremely discreet, and might be able to find Miss Raine in the hope she can help.’

  ‘Discreet private agencies? I’ll bet. The Ivory Agency, no doubt, will be first on the list.’

  ‘Well, that’s the way you saw it panning out, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is, Mac, but now we’re winging it. Nina Raine’s winging it too. So far, she’s been dealing with amateurs. If Ivory finds her…’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t be too concerned for her welfare. Mister Ivory seems a pragmatist. If all she’s been involved in on the JCR side is with Saroyan’s body, then he’ll let her go, I should think.’

  ‘And if not?’

  ‘Mmm. We shall just have to wait and see.’

  ‘Waiting’s the hard part.’

  69

  Nina Raine was waiting too. She’d flown from Liverpool to London in the early hours of Sunday morning then onwards to Turkey. Four days later, she sat by the pool at her villa in Yalikavak, on the Aegean coast, wondering what had happened to Sonny.

  She’d been scanning the news channels and the online versions of the Liverpool newspapers. Was it possible he hadn’t been found yet? Had he got out? She doubted he had or he would have come raging in pursuit.

  Maybe the JCR people were keeping it quiet? Nobody from the booking office at Aintree had tried contacting her.

  She’d much rather know one way or the other. If
the authorities, were onto her, so be it. At least she could make plans. Morocco was a short flight away. She hadn’t yet used the tiny apartment she’d bought there, in Agadir. Maybe it was time she moved in for a while. It had been a ‘distress purchase’. Nina had hoped she’d never need to take refuge in it, in Morocco, a country with no extradition treaty with the United Kingdom.

  Nina went inside to pack. When she came back out, Jordan Ivory was sitting by the pool.

  She stopped, and pushed her sunglasses onto her head and frowned. There was no point in folding right away. There was just a chance that this might have nothing to do with Sonny.

  ‘Who are you?’ Nina asked.

  Ivory removed his sunglasses and slotted them into the top pocket of his linen suit. He smiled, ‘I am the ghost of Christmas past, Miss Raine.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘Come and sit down. I am not a policeman. I’m not here because you tried to kill Sonny Beltrami. I’m here because it seemed much more civilized than having you dragged kicking and screaming back to London. Sometimes the mountain must come to Mohammed.’

  Nina set the wheeled luggage on its end and put her hands on her hips. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  Ivory got up from the low chair in one long easy movement. She was surprised how tall he was. He strolled toward her, smiling, and she sensed the threat rather than saw anything in his face, for his smile didn’t change as he grabbed her hair at the nape of her neck and wound it around his fist and dragged her toward the pool and threw her in.

  She surfaced blinking and drew a deep breath as Ivory bent at the waist from the poolside. His smile had faded. ‘Nina. Don’t be tiresome. Don’t be time-wasting. Don’t cause trouble. The three Ts. Remember them. Commit to them. You will reap the benefits, as will I. The most important thing to bear in mind in the coming days is that time, to me, is extremely precious. Once spent, it cannot be got back. Our lives are limited, constrained by time. Understand?’