by Roberta Kray
‘But she’s going to freak out, as soon as she hears she’s going to—’
Joe shook his head. ‘It won’t come to that. We’ll have dealt with her by then.’ He paused. ‘You’ll have dealt with her by then.’
Chase’s sullen mouth curled into a smile. The fine art of persuasion, the painful separation of fact from fiction, was where his true talent lay. He could make anyone talk – and quickly. But he’d take it slow with Evie. She was worth the effort, worth the wait. Her confessions shouldn’t be rushed. ‘She’s mine?’
‘Sure.’ Joe nodded. ‘She’s yours – when the time comes.’ It was a shame – she’d been a sweet kid – but what could he do? The ties had been severed. And she was the one who’d cut them. There was no room for sentiment; it was fucking sentiment that had created this bloody mess in the first place. He should have sorted it there and then but he’d known Alex Weston for over thirty years. Shit, he’d liked the guy, had even trusted him. Except, of course, when it came to poker. No one could trust Weston in the presence of a pack of cards.
After it had happened, they had got together and talked. Christ, how they’d talked. But a pact had eventually been made, hands had been shaken, the deal had been sealed. Not the best of deals, he had to admit, but a reasonable compromise. With everyone having so much to lose, it had felt safe enough.
Until Weston had broken his word.
Joe took another sip of whiskey. He could just about find it in his heart to understand why he’d done what he’d done. A father had obligations. He had feelings, loyalties. If he’d been in his shoes, he might have done the same. But it didn’t change anything. From the moment Alex Weston had chosen to hold them all to ransom he’d sealed his own death warrant. And he’d known it. That was why he had jumped before he was pushed.
If Evie had been sensible, if she’d stuck to his side of the bargain, they might have worked this out in a civilized fashion.
But that was never going to happen now.
Isaac glanced at the photograph in Cavelli’s hand. Every time he took that picture out and stared at it, his head got screwed. Women. Fuck. All they ever caused was grief. And that Nadine with her big brown eyes was the worst. Okay, don’t speak ill of the dead and all that, but if it hadn’t been for her inability to keep her legs closed, the poor sod wouldn’t even be in here.
He didn’t let his gaze linger. Cavelli was touchy about the bitch; one wrong look and he was liable to go into one. Thin-skinned, that’s what he was, about her at least. Still defending her honour after everything she’d done, still shifting the blame as if the tart had been dragged kicking and screaming into some other bastard’s bed. No good. That’s what she’d been. He was well rid.
But Isaac had the sense to keep his mouth shut. When Cavelli was in one of his brooding moods, it was best to leave well alone. And he would have walked straight out again, without a word, if Cavelli hadn’t spoken first.
‘You heard anything?’
Isaac stopped by the door. ‘What, man?’
About Weston.’
He shrugged. There was another scumbag loser Cavelli was intent on defending. Would he never learn? ‘I heard you went to see Bryant.’
‘You got a problem with that?’
There you go, touchy as fuck. Just itching for a row. Well, he’d fallen into that trap too many times before, and learned his lesson good and proper. He wasn’t going there again. ‘No problem, man. Why should there be?’
‘You tell me.’
Now wasn’t the moment to mention that Bryant never did nothing for nothing. Or that he was as sly as Eden’s fucking snake. No point stating the obvious. Along the line, next week, next month, there’d be a price to pay. ‘I’m cool,’ he said.
But Cavelli wasn’t going to let it go. His voice was softly vicious. ‘Because you can always get a shift if you don’t like it, fuck off to another wing, find someone else to aggravate – that’s if there’s any mug left willing to tolerate your filthy habits.’
Isaac lifted his skinny shoulders again. When you were as small as he was, you couldn’t afford to be confrontational. Bodies his size didn’t bounce too well and bones broke easy. You had to find other ways of dealing with tricky situations, smart ways that didn’t involve your head being painfully disconnected from your spinal cord. Not that he was too worried on that score. He knew this wasn’t personal. Cavelli was only venting his frustration. He leaned against the door and groaned. ‘Shit, man, you know there ain’t no one else could put up with me.’
Cavelli’s face stayed hard for a few more seconds before his bitter mouth slowly cracked into a smile. ‘Yeah. That’s fucking true.’
With a jerk and a rumble the train pulled out and Eve settled back in her seat. In another two hours they’d be in London. In another three she’d be seeing Patrick again. She wished he could have just given her the information she wanted instead of insisting on a meet. She wasn’t in the mood for playing happy reunions.
Perhaps she should have driven down. The decision to take the train had been a last-minute one and she was starting to question it. Since when had anyone made a quick getaway on the British rail system? She stared at the glass in the window, frowning at her own reflection. Relying on public transport was a big mistake. But then again, since when had anyone been able to find a parking space near Soho? At least this way she didn’t have to worry about meters or wheel clamps.
Beside her, Sonia rustled through a glossy magazine and sipped at the coffee she had bought in the station. Eve had passed on the caffeine; she still had a faint headache from the night before. She had drunk too much. Not enough to make a fool of herself but enough to let her guard down. That was the thing about Jack Raynor: he had the ability to slip effortlessly through your best defences. One minute you were casually chatting and the next you were giving him half your life story.
The bistro where they’d met had been off the Prince of Wales Road, not one she’d ever visited before but she had found it easily enough. It was one of those dim shadowy places where the modern thrills of electricity were sacrificed to the more dubious charms of ‘atmosphere’. Still, there were advantages to candlelight. Hopefully, it had disguised the suspicion in her eyes.
But what about his eyes, too sweetly blue for any man. What had she seen in them? No, she didn’t want to think about that.
It had taken a while to bring the conversation round to DS Shepherd and his visit to London. She could hardly launch straight into it. But once they’d polished off the first few glasses of wine, she had delicately broached the subject.
And he had brushed it aside as swiftly as if it were a minor misunderstanding. ‘Hey, you’re not still worried about that, are you? I told you it was nothing.’
‘As I recall, you told me you’d look into it.’
‘There’s nothing to look into.’
She smiled. ‘Any particular sort of nothing?’
Then, when he saw that she wasn’t going to let it drop, he put his elbows on the table and grinned at her. He hesitated for a second. ‘Well, okay, I probably shouldn’t be telling you this but if it helps put your mind at rest He paused again. ‘You’re not the type of girl who shoots the messenger are you?’
Now that was hardly the kind of question to put even the most virtuous of minds at rest. Everyone has a few guilty secrets and hers stirred miserably in her guts while she gazed at him, still smiling. ‘That depends on the messenger – and how slow he is in passing on the news.’
Raynor laughed, raising both his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Okay, okay.’ But he still kept her on tenterhooks while he picked up his glass and took another sip of wine.
She waited, holding her breath.
When he spoke again, she could sense his reluctance. ‘It was nothing. It was only down to a phone call. I’m sorry, Eve, but we had to follow it up. There was an anonymous call suggesting that there may have been … and I’m quoting here, a misappropriation of funds from your ex-employers’ bank account
.’
‘What!’ she exclaimed. It came out louder than she intended and a few curious faces turned to stare from the adjacent tables. She leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘What?’
He shook his head, his hand reaching out to fold around her wrist. ‘Hey, I know it’s not true.’
She quickly pulled away. ‘Are you talking about Richard Baxter?’ Why was she even asking? Of course it was him. Who else could it be? Henry was wrong. There was no limit to his son’s capacity for vengeance. ‘It was him, wasn’t it?’
‘It was anonymous,’ he repeated.
‘So why did you bother to follow it up? You must get hundreds of crank calls. What made this one so special? All you had to do was ring Baxter & Baxter and check, you didn’t need to actually go there.’ Even as the words spilled out, she wondered if she was sounding too frantic, too defensive, as if she was protesting too much. Like someone who was guilty. Except for once in her life she wasn’t. Maybe that was the problem. She was used to declaring her innocence – lying was easy – but telling the truth was a new and faintly disturbing experience. And then another thought occurred to her. ‘Why were you dealing with it anyway? What had it got to do with you? Surely it was down to the London cops?’
As the questions slipped relentlessly from her mouth, Raynor folded his arms and gazed down at the table.
Warning bells were starting to go off in her head. ‘There was more to it, wasn’t there? There must have been.’
He glanced up again. In a gesture that could have sprung from either irritation or embarrassment, he raked his fingers through his hair. The candlelight flickering on his face made it hard to read his expression. For a moment, undecided, he sat in silence and then, as if she had finally worn him down, he expelled a small defeated sigh. ‘Okay, there was something else. I don’t suppose it matters now. At the time of the call, there were still a lot of goods missing from the Broadlands robbery and, with your connection to Terry, it was suggested that you might be able to …’
‘What – help with your inquiries?’ Eve gave a snort. She could hardly believe it! Richard had really excelled himself. If it wasn’t so tragic, it might almost be funny. ‘Are you kidding? Is that what he told you? God, I hadn’t even seen Terry for six months.’
‘It wasn’t taken that seriously, I promise, but we have to follow up on every lead we get. We have to go through the motions. As it happens, we’ve recovered most of the haul now.’
‘Good,’ she said. But after an initial burst of relief-it could have been worse – Eve suddenly grew serious again. A malignant voice was whispering in her ear. Joe wants it back. He wants it fucking back. ‘It was jewellery, wasn’t it?’
‘Gold and silver mainly, and a load of designer watches.’
‘Pretty valuable then?’
‘Valuable enough to shoot a security guard. He was lucky, if you can call it that. At least he can still walk.’
Eve felt a clenching inside her, a cold fist squeezing her heart. She had been aware of the shooting but it was the first time she had thought of it in direct relation to Terry. If Cavelli was telling the truth, if he had been on the job, then … Christ, what had happened to her kid brother? Handling stolen property was one thing, armed robbery quite another. She scowled into her glass. How the hell, why the hell, had he linked up with the Rowans? And that in turn begged a further question – was it possible that all this Joe business was connected? It might account for all the recent madness. If Terry had been more deeply involved, he could (theoretically) have passed something on before he’d been arrested, something Joe wanted, something precious, something worth the effort of prolonged intimidation. But what?
‘Are you all right?’ Jack asked.
There was only one way to find out the answers she needed. She had to squeeze out more information. Glancing up, she quickly laughed. ‘Sure. I’m fine. I was just savouring the sensation of being under police suspicion. If some of the goods are missing, couldn’t I still be in the frame?’ She widened her cool grey eyes and looked at him.
He smiled back, showing two rows of perfect white teeth. ‘Sorry to disappoint but you’re completely in the clear. We think the missing goods were sold on quickly and they were only the cheaper items, the stuff that was easy to shift.’
Well, that was that theory down the drain. She couldn’t say she was sorry. If Terry had been responsible for all her grief, she wasn’t quite sure how she’d have dealt with it. Although it didn’t entirely rule out the Joe connection. Perhaps he was one of those gangster parasites, a few hundred rungs up the ladder, a user muscling in on someone else’s act – a cheap percentage-taker on a promise. If he hadn’t known that the majority of the goods had already been recovered, he could have been searching for a lead to their whereabouts. And his burglar might have been hoping to find a clue in the flat. That would even explain the theft of the phone. If they thought it was hers, then … Well, it was all vaguely plausible but it didn’t quite ring true. There was something more scarily personal about what had been happening recently.
Picking up the bottle of wine, Jack refilled her glass. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I hope you’re not too mad at me. I should have explained earlier but, to be honest, I was hoping I wouldn’t need to. The investigation’s over and done with and—’
She shrugged. ‘There’s no need to apologize. You were only doing your job, right?’
He pulled a face, his mouth turning down at the corners. ‘Oh, don’t say that. Please. You make me sound like one of those self-justifying members of the Gestapo.’
Eve tried to see beyond his smiling blue eyes. Was he genuine? She thought she was a reasonable judge of human character – she’d been raised in the art of deception – but she had got it wrong before. There was a certain type of man who always managed to sneak beneath her radar. She had the divorce papers to prove it.
‘I don’t think that,’ she said. ‘Although if you’d like to salve your conscience, there is one last thing you could explain. Why didn’t you just come and talk to me? I don’t understand why you were creeping around behind my back.’
‘We weren’t creeping around,’ he insisted, looking genuinely offended. ‘We didn’t know you were in Norwich then. We didn’t know where you were. You left London and disappeared without a trace.’
She could see how that might seem a touch suspicious. ‘I just needed to get away.’
There was a short silence.
‘No hard feelings?’ he asked.
‘Why should there be?’
He leaned forward, his hand roaming dangerously close to hers again. ‘And no immediate plans to shoot the messenger?’
She smiled. ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. It’s not you who’s in the firing line.’
The Shepherd business had created a temporary awkwardness but it had passed. By the time they were on to the second bottle of wine they had put it behind them. She couldn’t recall exactly what they’d been eating, something Mexican and spicy. All washed down with too much wine.
And it hadn’t been long before a few life experiences had started to trickle out. She had told him about Patrick, about their short and stormy marriage. Was there such a thing as love at first sight? She’d been certain of it when she first met Patrick Fielding. There had been a spark, an instant understanding between them. But no, it hadn’t been real; true love was something different, something lasting, an emotion that grew and deepened. What they had shared was more of a passion, one of those sudden bursts of flame, a brief conflagration that roared and scorched before quickly burning itself out.
Her father had liked him. Patrick was just the kind of son he longed to have had, witty and charming, always good company. (She omitted to mention the other attributes they had in common, like their limitless ability to mislead and cheat and con. Some things were better left unsaid.) Poor Terry, with his lack of concentration and careless ways, had been a constant disappointment.
She had wondered, as she sat in front of him, if Raynor ha
d any idea of her past. He could hardly believe she was whiter than white with a parent like Alexander Weston. And of course she wasn’t. From early childhood, she’d been inculcated with the ‘knowledge’ that the gullible rich were there to be exploited. Not stolen from – her father abhorred that word – but simply persuaded, through greed or guilt or fear of the consequences, to part with a small proportion of their income. And through the years she had done her fair share of persuasion. She’d been good at it. She’d inherited his natural talent.
Done. She thought about that past tense. Did it mean she was finished with that way of life, that she’d moved on, changed? She’d certainly been clean for the past seven months. But that was more down to circumstances than to anything more profound. There had hardly been a revelation on the road to Damascus. Maybe it was just a case of growing older, of growing weary of it all …
Before she might let slip something that she shouldn’t, Eve had smartly turned the subject around. ‘Enough about me.’
Jack Raynor, it transpired, was divorced too. His exwife, Clare, was a barrister working out of Lincoln’s Inn. They’d met at university and been married for over ten years before she dumped him for another man. No kids, no other complications. He claimed that was why he had left London three years ago, to make a fresh start, to make a new life somewhere else. Whether it was the truth or not …
Well, what was the truth? Especially when the wine was flowing freely. Bitterness had a nasty habit of rising to the surface in the presence of alcohol but he showed no signs of it. The conversation moved on to lighter themes and she found herself laughing, enjoying herself, for the first time since her father had died. They talked and talked. And then, as the evening wore on, as the alcohol hit a different spot, she began to feel guilty. And then she felt guilty about feeling guilty. Her father had always lived in the present, never in the past. He wouldn’t have wanted her to wallow in grief. But then he’d hardly have been overjoyed at the sight of her consorting with a seductive, blond-haired, blue-eyed cop, either.
