The Pact

by Roberta Kray

  ‘Thanks. That’s very helpful.’

  ‘Look,’ he said, leaning forward to lift a pack of cigarettes off the table. He placed one in his mouth, lit it, and passed it over to her. ‘It strikes me you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. There’s no point getting stressed. You’ll just drive yourself crazy. If Cavelli wants to find Reece, then he’ll find a way of doing it – with or without your assistance.’

  ‘But if I tell him, I’ll still be partly responsible.’

  ‘For what?’ he said. ‘He’s not that hard to find. We did it in a night, a few hours. It’s not as though he’s on some witness protection programme. And anyway …’ He stopped to light his own cigarette.

  ‘Anyway?’

  Patrick exhaled a long thin stream of smoke. ‘I doubt if his address is what he’s actually after.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ he said, as if she was being ludicrously slow on the uptake. ‘Cavelli didn’t send you to find out where he lives. He could have got that, or paid someone else to get it, from the electoral register. It’s the details he’s after. He wants to know what mental state he’s in, if he’s suffering, if he’s in pain, if he’s paying the price for what he did.’

  Her mouth slowly opened as she stared back at him. Yes, he was right. Why hadn’t she realized that? ‘So what am I going to tell him?’ she murmured.

  ‘Exactly what he wants to hear.’ He took a drag on his cigarette and expelled a couple of perfect smoke rings. ‘That he’s a broken man, destroyed, on the scrap heap. That he’s going nowhere and doing it fast. That he’s filled with remorse over what happened to Nadine. Just lay it on thick and make it sound convincing.’

  ‘And if he already knows otherwise?’

  ‘He doesn’t know anything,’ he said, ‘at least not for certain, or he wouldn’t be asking you to find out.’

  At the mention of her name, Eve found herself wondering if Nadine had left a letter, a few well-chosen words, or if like her father she had just … and then, out of the blue, she suddenly recalled the scrap of paper she had found in his desk. She caught her breath. What if she’d been wrong and it did mean something? Soho – isn’t that what she’d thought when she read it? W1 was how the sequence started. Some numbers in the middle, a few letters at the end. What were they? She racked her brains but nothing fell out. And then, with an inner groan of dismay, she remembered something else – the note was in the pocket of her old faded jeans, the jeans she had already put through the machine, washed and dried and put away. Damn! How could she have been so stupid?

  ‘Evie?’

  She jerked up her head. ‘Sorry. I was … Yeah, you’re right. I’m sure you’re right.’ But she couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d done. The image of her jeans whirling round in a drum of soapy water was already beginning to haunt her. Why in God’s name hadn’t she made a copy?

  ‘Are you okay?’

  She tried to chase it out of her mind. There was nothing she could do until tomorrow and even then … ‘Yeah, I’m just a bit tired.’

  Patrick narrowed his eyes and looked at her. ‘It wasn’t all bad, was it?’

  She frowned back, not understanding.

  ‘I mean us, you and me. We had some good times, didn’t we?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. She stubbed out her cigarette and finished off her brandy. ‘And I’m sure if I made an effort, if I really tried hard enough, I could probably remember some of them.’

  He shook his head, smiling. ‘You always were fucking impossible. Do you—’

  But before he could embark on some drunken trip down memory lane, she quickly got to her feet. ‘Hey, thanks for the coffee and everything but I’m shattered. I’m going to turn in.’

  ‘Are you going to kip down with Sonia?’

  ‘That was the intention.’

  ‘What if she snores?’

  ‘What if she does?’

  He grinned. ‘Well, I wouldn’t want you to lose any beauty sleep. And this is a very comfortable sofa. It might be a squeeze but there’s definitely room for two.’

  She hesitated, looking down at him. And she couldn’t claim she wasn’t tempted – for old times’ sake, for the comfort, for a few glorious hours of forgetfulness. There was no one to betray, no one she’d be cheating on. So why was she suddenly thinking about Jack Raynor, about the way he had kissed her not so many hours ago? It wasn’t as if she was ever going to fall for that love at first sight nonsense again.

  ‘Thanks. It’s a very generous offer but …’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Keeler Chase pulled up the lapels of his coat, cocked his head to one side, and listened. All he could hear was the patter of rain on the water and some thin drifting music. He was waiting for the sound of footsteps.

  There was light from the windows of the pub behind him but it slid only as far as the upper slope of green lawn, fading well before it reached the bank. Here the darkness was profound. Even the river was invisible, its presence marked only by a rippling reflection when the clouds briefly parted to reveal the glory of a full silver moon. When this occurred he stepped softly back into the shadow of the willows.

  It was already after ten but his face showed no signs of impatience. His victim was late but there was no hurry. He would arrive soon enough and the wait was part of the pleasure. It was during these quiet moments that he had time to savour the anticipation. He dragged the soles of his shoes experimentally along the ground; the grass beneath his feet was sodden. It was the kind of place, he considered, where people might slip, where accidents could easily happen.

  Chase had been involved with accidents from as early as he could recall. His childhood toys had lost their arms and legs, his friends had crushed their tiny fingers, and the pet dog, a docile brown Labrador, had mysteriously drowned in the garden pond. And then, on his twelfth birthday – a day fraught with disappointment at not receiving the sleek ivory-handled fishing knife he had begged for – even his parents had succumbed. He shuddered to think of it, of the flames leaping, of his mother screaming, ‘Keeler! Keeler!’ How could he ever forget those cries? They would never cease to haunt him; it wasn’t as if his heart was made of stone. If the smoke hadn’t got to her, if her protests hadn’t been silenced by that choking grey fog, he might finally have capitulated and unlocked the door.

  Lucky. That was how his own escape from the raging blaze was described by the neighbours, the cops, the social workers, who in a collective swarm of sympathy had appeared out of nowhere and settled all around him. He hadn’t been so sure. With over twenty dollars of birthday money burnt to a crisp, there hadn’t seemed much cause for celebration. Still, if the experience hadn’t entirely curbed his impetuosity it had at least taught him the importance of some basic forward planning.

  Chase raised his eyes to the sky and sniffed the damp night air. No, he couldn’t grumble. On the whole he had been lucky. Perhaps his greatest good fortune, other than to have found his way across the Atlantic and into the employ of an ambitious up-and-coming thief called Joe Silk, was to have the kind of face people never remembered. It had served him well through the years. Other vainer men might have been dissatisfied, even dismayed, by such a bland inheritance but for him it was a gift beyond gold. How often had he been picked out in an identity parade? He didn’t need to think about it. His lips curled into a smile. Never! Even his body was nondescript, of average height and build. He had no distinguishing features. He was so ordinary, so mundanely grey, that he rarely received as much as a second glance. In broad daylight he could walk down a busy street and openly stab a man to death without anyone being able to accurately describe him thirty seconds later.

  He was still pondering on this remarkable, surely God-given attribute, when he heard the clumsy stumbling of someone descending the slope, shortly followed by a thick spew of curses. His nose wrinkled in disgust. He could smell the stink from fifty yards away. As the clouds shifted to reveal an outline, he watched the big man stagger d
own, his belly so full of beer that if he’d even wanted to stop the weight of his gut would have continued to propel him forward.

  Peter Marshall might have been less willing to agree to the meet if his judgement hadn’t been impaired by eight pints of bitter and an almost empty wallet. As it was, the call had come at a propitious moment. Joe Silk might mean trouble but he also meant money. Had he been even slightly more sober he might have questioned the smartness of agreeing to meet in a place so dark he could barely see his feet but he wasn’t; he was drunk, very drunk, and the opportunity of making a few quid was beyond irresistible.

  He came face to face with Chase as he drew to an unsteady halt. Although logical thinking was a distant memory he wasn’t entirely beyond caution. He looked around. ‘Where’s the boss?’

  ‘He couldn’t make it.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  Chase looked at him, his smile innocuous. ‘He sends his apologies. A prior engagement. He asked me to come instead. He’s got another job for you.’

  Marshall thought about it for the entire two seconds that it took to get the question out. ‘How much?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. He’ll make it worth your while.’ Chase went to the edge of the bank. ‘There’s a boat moored along the way. To the left.’ He gestured him forward. ‘There. Can you see it?’

  Marshall had no reason, other than the meagre brains he was born with, to ignore the invitation. He took a few steps, leaned out over the deep water, screwed up his eyes and peered through the darkness.

  Chase found a sigh escaping from his lips. It was all so easy, too easy. And where was the thrill in that? Stupidity might be useful but it was also to be pitied. Not pitied enough, however, for him to have any second thoughts about what he was going to do next.

  Marshall was a far bigger man but with his massive gut he was already ill balanced. All it took was one hard push to the base of his spine to send him hurtling into the river. The subsequent splash, in direct proportion to the amount of blubber that had just been deposited, sounded grotesquely loud in the stillness of the night.

  Chase glanced towards the pub but there was no sign of anyone having heard. He turned his attention back to the drowning creature. Apart from one stifled cry as he had hit the icy water, no further utterance had come from him. The shock, or perhaps simply the energetic battle to prevent his body sinking, had rendered his vocal cords silent.

  For this Chase was grateful. It offended his sensibilities when people made such a song and dance about it all. What was the point – the screaming, the pleading, the pathetic crying – when they knew that what was coming was inevitable? It was better, surely, to accept one’s fate with dignity.

  He watched intently as his victim thrashed around. For a fully clothed drunk Marshall wasn’t doing so badly. And as he clawed frantically at the edges of the bank, his flabby white hands grasping for a hold that might yet save his life, Chase allowed him a tiny glimmer of hope before placing his foot firmly on his shoulder and pushing him back down.

  For all his confidence in the blandness of his features what Keeler Chase didn’t realize was that his eyes, normally a pale washed-out shade of blue, became extraordinary when he was roused. Then they flashed with a colour and intensity that might almost be called passion. The reason he didn’t know was that no one had ever told him and the reason they had never told him was that, by the time they had acknowledged that intense, almost climactic brilliance, they were usually more preoccupied with the essential business of staying alive.

  Marshall came up twice more before the fight eventually went out of him. He sank beneath the surface leaving only a feeble trail of bubbles.

  Chase stood and waited for a moment. Then, when he was sure the job was done, he turned on his heel and walked smartly up the slope.

  Chapter Eighteen

  DS Eddie Shepherd stamped his feet and blew warm breath into his hands. It was Monday morning, barely daylight, and the air was chill as winter. Still, he wasn’t half as cold as the corpse that was lying on the ground behind him.

  He turned to take another look, peering between the bustling white figures of the SOCO team. The victim was on his side, curled around a heap of stinking bin bags. At first glance it was possible to imagine that he was merely asleep or, at the very worst, collapsed in a state of drunkenness; it was only on a closer examination that you noticed the thick coagulation of blood at the base of his neck. He had a faint look of surprise on his face, as if in the second just before he died he had realized that …

  Eddie reached for his fags but reluctantly returned them to his pocket as the silver Peugeot drew up at the kerb.

  ‘What have we got?’ Raynor asked, striding over to join him.

  ‘Male, mid-forties.’ He gestured over his shoulder. ‘Been dead a few hours, four or five. Hit from behind with some kind of cosh – more than once. They’re getting ready to move him now.’

  Raynor took a long hard look at the body. And then, as if the sight of a man with his skull caved in offended his aesthetic sensibilities, he sniffed and wrinkled his nose. ‘A mugging?’

  ‘Could be.’ He shrugged. ‘No house or car keys and his wallet’s missing but we found his driving licence. Ivor Patterson. And this.’ He handed over a business card. On it, Patterson’s name was printed in large type and underneath, in smaller letters, Clark & Able, Private Investigators.

  ‘Get it checked out.’

  ‘I’m on to it, guv.’ Eddie could have added that he’d already been there for twenty minutes, freezing his bollocks off, while the inspector was having a shit and a shave and making sure his hair looked pretty – but he wisely kept his mouth shut.

  Louise had already opened the thick brown envelope by the time she realized it was for Richard. She raised her eyes to the ceiling. Beautiful as the new office help was – a visual masterpiece with immaculate curves – she still hadn’t quite grasped the simple difference between the two Baxters. She’d been delivering the wrong post for over a week.

  Louise was about to shove the contents – the results of yet another surveillance job – back inside the envelope when a name on the cover letter caught her eye: Eve Weston. Frowning, she stared at it. Why was her predecessor being investigated? Even as she asked herself the question, she had a sneaking suspicion that she knew the answer: Richard was taking matters into his own hands.

  Out of curiosity she read quickly through the report. Well, he seemed to have wasted his money. If he’d been hoping for some dirt there wasn’t anything here. Eve’s life currently appeared to consist of supermarket shopping, prison visiting, and the occasional meal out – hardly the pastimes of an evil seductress. She grinned, imagining his disappointment. At the back lay a sheaf of photographs: several snaps of Eve entering and leaving the building alone, one of her with a stunning brunette, a woman who looked Mediterranean in appearance, one of a small fair girl in a miniskirt and fishnets, a couple of shots of a tall good-looking blond guy – she lingered over these for a moment, appreciating the finer points of his keenly chiselled features – and then finally … Louise almost dropped the picture in surprise. It was Henry! There was no mistaking him. There, clear as daylight, was a picture of Henry and Eve, arm in arm, coming out of the door to the flats. She was gazing up at him and … Oh God! How could he have been so stupid, so careless!

  She laid it face down on the desk while she scanned through the report again. There was no mention of Henry’s name, only of an unknown male who was on the premises for a period of about four hours. So he hadn’t stayed overnight – that was something – but there was plenty that two willing partners could get up to in four long hours on a Saturday afternoon. And she wouldn’t like to be in Henry’s shoes if his wife ever found out about it.

  She could destroy the picture but what if Richard noticed it was missing? Clark & Able were bound to have copies. No, if she was going to get rid of the photographic evidence she had to obliterate the written evidence too. Could she Tippex it out and take a cop
y? It wasn’t ideal, it would leave a small gap, but with luck that might just pass for a typing error. She’d have to take the chance. If Richard was expecting the report, he might realize it was missing, and send the lovely Denise tottering downstairs to retrieve it.

  Folding the photograph in two, she slipped it into her bag. And then quickly went to work with the Tippex …

  Paul Clark, still dripping from the shower, took the call at eight forty-five from his secretary. She sounded flustered. The police were waiting in the office, he had to come in straight away – Ivor Patterson was dead.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Killed,’ she murmured dramatically down the line.

  ‘W-what? Shit, when?’ He stuttered out the questions. ‘How?’

  But all she could tell him was that he’d been found in the Prince of Wales Road earlier that morning. ‘They had to close off the entire street.’ Her voice was filled more with awe than sorrow as though the extraordinary manner of his death, and its traffic-stopping consequences, had bestowed an element of glamour and respect he had never warranted in life.

  Paul took a deep breath. Despite the gruesome news, he had the presence of mind to think about the repercussions; the last thing he needed was his files being ransacked by the local constabulary. It would hardly do a lot for client confidentiality or the reputation of the business. ‘Okay, God, look, that’s terrible, awful. I’ll be right there. Twenty minutes max. Make them coffee, Jane, and … and I’d rather you didn’t say anything about … well, anything relating to our cases. You know what I mean. These things can be sensitive. It’s better if I talk to them myself. I’ll fill them in on anything they need to know when I get there.’

  He put the phone down and took a moment to pull himself together. His hands were shaking. He couldn’t claim he was filled with an overwhelming sense of grief; he had never especially liked the man – or trusted him – but sudden death was always shocking. It also had a nasty habit of reminding you of your own mortality. One minute you were there and the next …