by Roberta Kray
‘Just bad timing?’ she suggested. ‘They might have thought they’d already been delivered.’
‘So what could be inside?’ he murmured, as much to himself as to her. ‘What could be so important that—’
‘I’m not opening them,’ she insisted. ‘I can’t. He could ring up tomorrow and ask for them back. He could send someone round, someone who’ll know if they’ve been tampered with. I can’t take that chance.’
But Henry was still pulling on a vital loose thread. ‘Maybe this has nothing to do with the boxes. Maybe they’re only an excuse, a red herring, something to distract you from what he really wants to protect.’
Eve shook her head. ‘You’re losing me.’
‘Well, how could Cavelli take that risk? I mean, that you wouldn’t open them, especially if you came under pressure. It’s a natural reaction, isn’t it? The first thing you’d do. And if there is anything illegal, anything valuable inside, how could he trust you not to pass it over to the police – or to anyone else?’
She stared up at him, wide-eyed. For a while she didn’t answer.
He waited.
‘Because,’ she said eventually.
Her reply was simple but telling. She didn’t need to explain, to go into detail. He immediately knew what she meant: she’d do anything for Terry, anything to protect him … even if that meant keeping sealed boxes sealed, blatantly breaking the law, and making undesirable deals with the devil.
Just like her father, she had no rules.
Henry frowned. No, that wasn’t fair or true. She did have rules, just a kind he’d never come across before. She lived by a different set of regulations, a set of laws that bore no relation to his.
Eve’s face, bleakly serious, gradually softened. Her mouth broke into a grin. ‘So you’re saying we should think outside the box?’
She was the only woman he knew who after being assaulted, threatened, followed by some stranger, and reduced to a limp by her former stepmother, could still come up with a comment like that. But for all her bravado he knew that she was scared. All the smiles in the world couldn’t hide that.
‘Perhaps.’
‘Tell me more,’ she demanded.
‘I could be way off the mark.’
‘Tell me!’
Henry shrugged. ‘I was just wondering if … if it was possible that someone, Paula, Barry, anyone who was around that morning, might have taken the opportunity to hide something else here. You were still clearing up. You might not …’
‘Have noticed?’
‘Is that possible?’
She opened her lips as if to say no but then clearly had second thoughts. ‘I don’t know. I made them both drinks. I was in the kitchen for a while.’
‘But you can see from there. Did you look back?’
She screwed up her eyes as she tried to recall. ‘No, it couldn’t have been Paula. She followed me. She was standing talking by the kitchen door.’
‘She wasn’t ever out of your sight?’
‘Not really. For a few seconds maybe but that was all. But as for Barry, well, I went to make a brew and left him measuring up the door. He’d have had a few minutes.’
‘And he’s a more likely candidate than Paula,’ Henry mused. ‘I mean, originally you were supposed to be going to London, not her coming here. Do you know anything about the man?’
Eve sighed. ‘Only that Martin Cavelli sent him, so I doubt if he spends too much time in church.’ She took the ice pack off her foot and stood up. She looked around. ‘You think he might have hidden something in here?’
Henry’s gaze followed hers. There weren’t any obvious places. This space was almost as small and as stark as the bedroom. There was the desk, the bookshelves, the rest of the cheap shabby furniture. Nowhere that instantly drew his attention. But then they wouldn’t be looking for anywhere like that. It would help if they knew exactly what ‘it’ was.
His confidence was beginning to ebb. ‘I could be wrong.’
But that didn’t stop Eve from embarking on an examination of the room. She slowly limped the length and breadth, running her hands over and under all the surfaces. After a moment, Henry joined her. Together they investigated every nook and cranny. And that didn’t take a lifetime. It was hardly a room with much potential.
Eve looked up at the shelves. ‘There’s nothing there. I’d have noticed. I put all the books back with Sonia.’ She opened and closed the drawers of the desk.
‘Leave it,’ Henry muttered, admitting defeat. ‘It was a mad idea.’
‘Hey, don’t say that. At least you’ve had an idea. It’s more than I have.’ Then she delved into one of the drawers again. ‘Although, what I do have is something that could be useful for you.’ She began to root through the contents. ‘I’m sure …’
‘What is it?’
Frowning, she pulled out the drawer and emptied a heap of magazines and papers on to the top of the desk. She scattered them. ‘It’s gone. His phone – it’s missing. It was here.’
‘Was it there after the breakin?’
‘I don’t know. I … no, I don’t remember seeing it. But it was such a shock. I wasn’t thinking straight.’ She tried to recall. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘So your burglar didn’t go away empty-handed after all.’
‘Apparently not.’ She looked down, her fingers continuing to flick aimlessly, pointlessly, through the papers. There was a tremor in her voice. ‘I bought him that phone, Henry. A few years ago. I bought it for his birthday.’ She paused, tears springing to her eyes. ‘You could have used it. I wouldn’t have minded you using it.’
He touched her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry.’
As if to free herself from the burden of his sympathy, Eve quickly shrugged him off. ‘I’m okay.’ She walked across the room and sat down, leaning forward to put her chin in her hands. For the next few minutes she stared silently down at the floor.
Henry let her be. He sensed her grief and understood it. She had barely had time to take breath, to even begin to come to terms with the death of her father, before being thrown headlong into this new unholy mess.
When she spoke again her voice, although not completely steady, was more angry than regretful. ‘So perhaps it didn’t have anything to do with Cavelli. Perhaps it was coincidence. Just some low-life who broke in looking for cash, for something to sell. Do you think?’
Henry didn’t. There was more to this, far more. It didn’t go anywhere towards explaining all the later events. There had to be a connection. But now wasn’t the time to go into it. He decided to keep this particular theory to himself. As his recent brainwave had so disastrously proved, he was hardly Sherlock Holmes. ‘Yes, it’s possible.’
Eve overturned a cushion and slid her fingers down the side of the sofa. She came up with a handful of dust and a one pound coin. She smiled. ‘Looks like dinner’s on me. Come on, I’ve had enough of this place. I need some air. Let’s go and get something to eat.’
‘What about …?’ He glanced at her foot.
‘Oh, it’s fine. I can make it down the street.’ Then, as if to make amends for earlier, to apologize for recoiling from his touch, she stood up and gently slipped her arm through his. ‘That’s if you don’t mind helping me along a little.’
Which was how Charlie May snapped the picture of them, leaning in close, as intimate as lovers, as they left the building.
Chapter Ten
Joe Silk wasn’t happy. Three hours it had taken them to get here, to get to this muddy field of shit in the middle of nowhere. He had a charity gala to attend. It had cost him four hundred quid for a pair of tickets and at this rate he wouldn’t make it back before the after-dinner speeches.
‘He’s here,’ the driver said.
Silk adjusted the mirror. The filthy bastard was waiting, leaning up against a fence. ‘Tell him to get in the car. And tell him to wipe his fucking feet first.’
Chase got out and beckoned him over. After some futile scraping, the back d
oor opened and he crawled in. The smell was immediate, sour and disgusting, stale beer and fags combined with the unmistakable stench of fear.
Joe wound down the window. ‘This had better be good.’
‘I told you,’ he muttered. ‘I’d not have rung you else, would I? She’s on to us. Got a bloody private dick on my tail. They know I was at the flat. They can prove it.’ He rummaged in his pockets and came up with a grubby brown envelope. He opened it and passed forward three clear photographs. ‘Copies, they’re only copies. He’s got the real ones. Wants two grand for them.’
Joe took the pictures with the tips of his white-gloved hands and stared down at the images: one print of his stinking passenger entering the flats, two of him leaving, all with an accurate recording of the date and time. He wondered which son-of-a-bitch had invented the camera. He’d like to meet him. He’d like to tear his fucking throat out.
‘So what do they prove? That you went round to see the missus, that she wasn’t there, that you waited around for a while and came back out again.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s circumstantial, nothing more.’
‘Enough for the pigs to give me a pull.’
‘So what? You stick to your story, they can’t prove otherwise.’
He shifted in his seat and started to rock, his palms rubbing anxiously along his thighs. ‘They won’t believe it, they won’t. They’ll have me back inside, they’ll—’
Joe turned and silenced him with a look. He might have known Peter Marshall would screw up. And now he was sliding into panic. He was a liability. They should have got rid of him right at the start.
‘Okay,’ he said calmly. ‘Tell this bloke – what’s his name?’
‘Patterson, Ivor Patterson.’
‘Okay. Tell him you need a week to get the cash together.’
Marshall’s round sweaty face relaxed. His mouth broke into a grin of relief. ‘So you’re going to pay him off?’
‘A week,’ he repeated. ‘You make the arrangements. We’ll be in touch.’ He paused. ‘Now get the fuck out of my car before I have to get it fumigated.’
He didn’t need asking twice. Scrambling clumsily back into the mud, he started to walk away.
Joe stretched his arm out of the window. ‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’
Marshall looked furtively over his shoulder and pretended not to understand. But only for a second. There were some people you could take liberties with; Joe Silk wasn’t one of them. He dug deep into his pockets again and produced the slim silver phone. He scurried back and placed it in his hand. ‘It’s been wiped. I was going to get rid of it.’
‘I’ll save you the trouble.’
‘I was just—’
But the window was already rising, ascending with the kind of smooth easy closure that only money could buy. He didn’t hang around. Lowering his head, he walked as quickly as he could towards the light and safety of the road.
The two men watched him retreat.
‘You really going to pay?’ Chase asked.
‘You ever know a time when they didn’t come back for more?’
‘No.’
‘Well then.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll sort it.’
‘Both of them. Patterson and Marshall.’ He lit a cigarette, exhaling the smoke softly into the dusk. ‘And no more mistakes. We need to bury this once and for all.’
‘And what about her?’
Joe peered through the windscreen. Evie. Little Evie. It had been a long time. Over twenty years. She couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven when he last saw her, still in those early stages of adolescence, all long gangly legs and awkward smiles. Little Evie with her flaming red hair. He could still see her standing by the pool, wide eyes raised to the sky, the perfect picture of innocence.
He should have realized. He should have seen what was coming. Any daughter of Alexander Weston was born to make trouble.
Fucking secrets. You could ignore them, drown them, bury them as deep as a coffin – but they always found a way to rise back to the surface.
He shook his head. ‘We’ll deal with her later.’
Chapter Eleven
As she drove, Eve gave more attention to the rearview mirror than to the road ahead. Was she being tailed again? She glared at every car behind her, scrutinizing the drivers, wondering if this might be the one. It didn’t have to be a man. They might have switched over to a woman. In fact there was a woman behind her right now, a tweedy innocuous fifty-something female – just the type she might not suspect.
She indicated and pulled into a lay-by.
The car swept on past.
Eve sat back and stared after the disappearing vehicle. She leaned over the wheel and sighed. What was she doing? This was the third time she’d stopped. If she went on like this she wouldn’t get to Hillgrove before visiting was over. She took a moment to catch her breath before carefully pulling back out.
She tried to concentrate but her head was full of shadows. All her old fears were returning. From Sunday until Tuesday, she had sat tight, holed up inside the flat. Better safe than sorry. She winced as the phrase came into her head. She was supposed to be a fiery redhead. Since when had she become such a pale imitation?
She snarled. Since a man had pushed his groin into her back and placed his filthy hand over her mouth. But she mustn’t think about that. After today, after she’d talked to Cavelli, it could all be sorted.
Half an hour later she was driving up the long winding path to the Visitors’ Centre. She booked in and went to buy a coffee. Despite the slowness of her journey, there was still another ten minutes to wait before visits began. Time to get her thoughts in order. She had to be prepared. Calm and collected was the way ahead: no rows, no arguments. She had to make sure that their deal wasn’t jeopardized. She took her drink to an empty table and sat down. She’d barely taken a sip when she was interrupted by a sharp female voice.
‘You ignoring me then or what?’
Amber was standing beside her with her hand on her hip. She was dressed in her usual minimalist fashion, a tiny skirt, crop top, her skinny legs clad in fishnets.
‘Sorry,’ Eve said. ‘I didn’t realize …’
Amber laughed, taking the seat beside her. ‘You looked miles away, that’s why. In a right old daze. I haven’t seen you for a while. Thought you and your bloke might have had a row or something.’
‘He’s not …’ Eve began, but couldn’t really be bothered to explain. It would only lead to more questions and she could do without those at the moment. ‘No, I’ve just been coming on different days.’ She paused. And how’s …?’ Suddenly her mind went blank. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember his name.
‘Dan,’ Amber reminded her. ‘Just the same old, same old. He never changes. Still complaining – can’t stand the screws, can’t stand the cons, can’t stand bloody anything! I’ve told him, you think it’s hard in here, try surviving out in the real world on your own. Rent, bills, food. There’s no end to it.’ She raised her baby blue eyes to the ceiling. ‘They don’t have a clue, do they?’
Eve gave a vague murmur of acknowledgement. ‘I guess they get a bit preoccupied with their own situation. A bit, you know, selfish.’
Amber, apparently unimpressed by this remarkable insight into the psyche of the male prisoner, smartly changed the subject. ‘What have you been up to then?’
‘Oh, this and that. Work mostly.’ The truth was so bizarre, so extraordinary, that even if she’d chosen to tell it – and of course she wasn’t going to – it wouldn’t have been believed. ‘I’ve just been doing some temping,’ she added, giving a touch of veracity to her story. ‘Office stuff. Pretty dull but it doesn’t pay too badly. What about you?’
Fortunately Amber’s recitation of her trials and tribulations, consisting mainly of her mother’s disapproval of her choice in boyfriends, filled the rest of the time until visits were called.
They collected their numbers and traipsed along the familiar path to the main
building.
‘You look nice,’ Amber said.
Eve glanced down at what she was wearing. ‘Thanks.’ She would have worn a skirt but they never worked with flatties and no one, not even Cavelli, was going to force her bruised toes into a pair of high heels today. But, preferring to keep on his right side, she had made the effort: a clingy black jersey top that flattered her curves and a pair of silky hip-hugging trousers. As her father had always said, there was nothing wrong with using the cards you’d been dealt.
‘I wish I was tall,’ Amber sighed. ‘I mean, it makes you look kind of classy, like a model.’
Eve smiled. ‘Does it?’ There was nothing like a compliment to rev your confidence back into gear. And she currently needed all the confidence she could get. She lifted her shoulders and strode on a few paces before remembering that one compliment deserved another. ‘But men prefer smaller girls,’ she said. ‘They always have. More petite girls like you. It makes them feel protective.’
Amber beamed. ‘Do you think?’
‘Of course.’
‘Still,’ she said, as if offering the greatest of consolations, ‘you must feel small beside your bloke.’
Eve’s stomach took a dive.
They went through the usual routine, in and out of the holding area, across the courtyard and up the stairs. She had just got used to feeling calm when she came here and now her nerves were fizzing again, a thousand Catherine wheels revolving in her guts. Her bloke, as Amber had so inaccurately described him, would be waiting for her.
What if it all went horribly wrong?
No, it wouldn’t. It couldn’t.
But her optimism wasn’t boosted as she cleared the search procedure and walked into the room. She saw his eyes, those menacing slate-blue eyes, rise darkly to meet her own. He looked about as happy as a man on the way to the gallows.
Forcing a smile, she made her way over and sat down beside him. ‘How are you?’
