The Pact

by Roberta Kray

  ‘And you’d never seen her before, you’d never met her?’

  ‘No, I swear. Never. It was the first time, Mr Silk. I’d have remembered.’

  Joe was sure that he would. Evie Weston – for various reasons – wasn’t the kind of woman you’d forget in a hurry. ‘Did you arrange to see her again?’

  Reece shrugged again. ‘Not exactly.’

  Joe took another swig of his drink. Christ, this was like getting blood out of a stone. He was pretty sure now that Reece wasn’t directly involved – he was too shit scared to lie to him, he didn’t have the balls – but it still begged the question of what Evie had been up to that night. Just laying the foundations perhaps, taking it easy, taking it slow, gaining his confidence until … But he still couldn’t work out the motivation. Was use was Jimmy Reece to her?

  ‘Not exactly?’ he repeated.

  ‘He gave me their card. The film geezer, the husband. He said to give him a ring.’

  Joe put out his hand.

  Reece rooted in his pockets for a few seconds then got out his wallet and flicked through the contents. Then he scowled. ‘Ah, God no. I didn’t keep it. I wrote my number on the back and …’ Sensing Joe’s frustration he quickly looked up and apologized. ‘Sorry, I’m really sorry. Only I’m always losing them, you see, so there didn’t seem much point in holding on to it. Yeah, I wrote my number on the back and gave it to her.’

  Joe shook his head again. A soft growl escaped from his throat. It seemed that even the fates were conspiring against him. Would she ring? Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn’t, but he wasn’t going to sit around waiting to find out.

  ‘Sorry,’ Reece murmured.

  ‘Don’t worry, son. Don’t give it a second thought.’ Joe paused, watching him relax a little, before delivering the denouement. ‘Because as it happens, I do know a way that you can make it up to me.’

  Joe waited until the room was empty, until his guest had been escorted from the premises, before he dropped his face down into his hands. By now his headache was starting to hammer. Jimmy Reece might have left but the problem remained and he couldn’t stop going over and over it. He already knew who O’Connell was – Patrick Fielding, a chancer, a hustler who had once been married to Evie. But they’d been divorced for years. So what had brought them back together? Well, the answer to that was clear: Alexander Weston’s enduring legacy.

  He glanced around his office, at the plush furnishings, the excellent view across the Thames, at everything he’d worked so hard to achieve. Then he knocked back the rest of his whisky and slammed the glass down on his desk. What Evie had inherited could destroy him. She was taking him for a fool – and no one did that to Joe Silk. Especially not a fucking woman.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  They were lounging on the sofa, side by side. Eve leaned her head against his shoulder, lifted the glass to her lips and took a few sips of the excellent claret. All the trials of the day had long since slipped into oblivion. Somehow, since arriving back home and inviting Jack Raynor in for a coffee, she had inadvertently managed to rip off all his clothes, enjoy the seductive pleasures of his body and take advantage of his comprehensive knowledge of the finest fast-delivery pizza services in town.

  So much for good intentions. Still, she’d never been renowned for playing it safe.

  The remains of their dinner, a few curling crusts, lay in a cardboard box on the low table in front of them. She reached out a leg to nudge it away but then changed her mind and instead ran her bare foot along the length of his shin. For the sake of propriety he had put on his trousers to answer the door and she, in turn, had appropriated his large cream shirt. It fell in soft milky folds around the top of her thighs.

  ‘So, Inspector Raynor,’ she murmured, ‘would you like to explain how you just happened to have this bottle of wine in your briefcase? You don’t think it was a little – well, presumptuous?’

  ‘Not guilty,’ he insisted. ‘Cross my heart. I was expecting to be drinking it alone. Something to console myself with after you gave me one of those kind but slightly embarrassed looks and said: It’s not you, Jack, it’s me. I think you’re really nice but …’

  She laughed. ‘Did you really think I was going to dump you?’

  ‘You didn’t ring.’

  ‘It was only a day’

  ‘Ah,’ he sighed, ‘but such a long day.’

  He bent to nuzzle the crown of her head. As his mouth touched the sore point on her scalp, the place where her hair had almost been yanked from its roots, she flinched and pulled away.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  She pulled a face. ‘It’s okay. I had to dry it in a hurry this morning. I must have had the heat turned too high.’

  Then as she tentatively reached up to feel the damage for herself, he noticed the scratches on her left hand. He took hold of her fingers. ‘Christ, what happened? You look like you’ve been fighting with a cat.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘You want to tell me about it?’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell, honestly.’

  He stared down at the three red stripes while he anxiously stroked her fingers. ‘What’s wrong, Eve? What’s going on?’ There was a hurt edge to his tone. ‘First the stuff on the door and now … I’m not that hard to talk to, am I?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course not.’ The problem was the very opposite; he was way too easy to talk to. As if she’d known him for a lifetime, she was in constant danger of telling him everything, of blurting out the truth before she had time to consider the consequences. She wondered if it was because he reminded her of Patrick – except they weren’t really similar at all. Okay, physically they bore some resemblance, that whole fair-haired, blue-eyed thing, but that was only superficial. Their characters were completely different.

  ‘No,’ she said again. ‘And this has nothing to do with what happened to the door. It was just an accident. I was careless. I wasn’t looking where I was going and caught it on some nails that were sticking out and …’

  But he wasn’t convinced. ‘Where?’

  She inwardly groaned. That was the trouble with lies – they often led you into deeper water. But the truth hadn’t even been an option. It would have led to other questions and these in turn would have inevitably led to Cavelli. And there was also the fact that she wasn’t exactly proud of having rolled around the prison car park like a demented banshee.

  ‘What does it matter?’ She lifted her eyes and grinned. ‘Or do you want to go and question them?’

  ‘I might,’ he said. ‘It sounds like a clear case of GBH to me.’

  She made a clicking noise with her tongue. ‘Ah, so that’s what this is all about. You’re just after another arrest. Do you cops ever think of anything else?’

  ‘Never. Our quest in life is to protect the innocent and punish the guilty’

  ‘So we can all sleep safely in our beds at night.’

  ‘That’s why I’m here,’ he said, leaning over to kiss her. ‘As the cliché goes, it’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it.’

  She relaxed into his arms, relieved that the crisis appeared to have passed. And for the next few minutes, their mouths otherwise preoccupied, she had no need of any further lies. There was no need for any talk at all. Sinking against his naked chest, she breathed in the smell of him, his male musky scent and the faint aroma of his aftershave. She touched his bare skin. She ran a finger along the line of hair that swept briefly left and right, following the contours of his muscles, before it dropped south and disappeared beneath his belt. There was something erotic about that barrier. As his hands slid around her breasts, she felt the desire rise in her again, a heat that travelled the length of her body, growing and intensifying, settling like a fire between her thighs. She moved even closer. But as her own hand continued in its journey, as it brushed against his groin, he suddenly drew back.

  ‘Eve, can I ask you something?’

  She looked up at him.

  ‘Is
it because I’m a cop?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is that why you feel you can’t talk to me?’

  She frowned. God, and they said it was women who always wanted to analyse everything! Here he was, being presented with yet another opportunity to taste the glorious delights of her body and all he wanted to do was talk. ‘You mean, as opposed to the fact that you might simply have a vile personality?’

  He laughed. ‘That apart.’ Then he glanced down at the floor and looked up again. ‘Sorry, but I’m worried. And I’m worried because I care about you. Is that such a bad thing?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘So why do I get the feeling that you’re holding out on me?’

  Confronted with the truth, she instantly fell back on flippancy. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps you have a naturally suspicious mind.’

  He shook his head. ‘Are you ever serious about anything?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘So is this always going to be between us, the fact that I’m a copper and you’re …’

  ‘The daughter of a conman?’

  He stared at her. ‘I didn’t mean that.’ He quickly reached out and took hold of her hand again. ‘Just that you were close to your father and … well, I don’t suppose the local constabulary were ever on his Christmas card list.’

  Eve curled her feet beneath her and pulled down his shirt to modestly cover her knees. The moment of passion, failing to fully ignite, had now cooled and passed them by. Still, she shouldn’t complain; most men didn’t know the meaning of conversation. ‘Does it bother you, who he was?’

  ‘Why should it?’

  She shrugged again. ‘I don’t know – like father, like daughter?’

  ‘I’ve never thought that, not for a minute.’

  ‘But what if it was true,’ she said. ‘What if I am the same?’

  He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer. As if she was still joking with him, he laughed. ‘I trust you.’

  Did he? She wasn’t really sure. Maybe he just liked flirting with danger. But then maybe she did too. Perhaps that was the attraction between them – the thrill of the forbidden.

  ‘What was it like?’ he continued. ‘I mean growing up with a father who …’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry. Do you mind me asking? I don’t mean it to sound like I’m interrogating you.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ But she made a mental note to be careful, to not let her tongue run away with her. It was warm in the room and nestled in the crook of his arm she felt deceptively safe and secure. ‘To be honest, I don’t suppose it was that different to anyone else’s childhood. He always kept that side of things away from me.’

  It amazed her how easily she could lie, the words sliding from her lips as smooth as honey. But she could hardly tell him the truth – about how, when times were rough, when money was tight, they’d roam the West End together, him in a perfectly tailored suit, her in some pretty party dress, carefully picking out their marks. They’d cruise around the theatres and the fancy hotels. Her father could spot a man with money from a hundred paces. He’d provide the spiel – the story of having mislaid his wallet or having had it stolen and just needing enough money to get his young daughter home – while she stood beside him, the epitome of wide-eyed innocence. He would always thank them politely. He would always, meticulously, take down their names and addresses. It wasn’t big money but it paid the rent.

  She understood now how much it must have galled him. He must have seen it as a waste of his skills, as only a few theatrical steps up from begging. But he had done it for her, to keep her safe, to keep her fed and clothed, until the next big opportunity came along. And after a few weeks, when they might have run the risk of becoming too familiar, they had always taken off for a while and disappeared to pastures new. ‘We moved around a bit,’ she said, ‘but then plenty of other kids do the same.’

  ‘Didn’t you want to settle down, have a regular home somewhere?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ she agreed. ‘But then you don’t really miss what you’ve never had.’

  ‘How did you feel, finding out what he did for a living?’

  She raised her face to look at him. ‘Are you sure you’re not crossexamining me?’

  He grinned. ‘Sorry. I’m just curious. I can’t imagine what it was like to live that way. I had what you might call a conventional upbringing. Very dull, very ordinary.’ He wound a lock of her long red hair around his fingers. ‘So what about your mother – what happened to her?’

  It was a long time since Eve had thought about her. ‘She was called Helen. She went AWOL before I was two. Not, apparently, the type who was into playing happy families; she couldn’t bear to be tied down. I can’t even remember her.’

  ‘And you haven’t been tempted to try and track her down?’

  She shook her head. ‘Why should I? She wasn’t interested then so I don’t see why she should be now. It’s all old history, water under the bridge etc. There’s no point in raking it up.’

  ‘Still, it must have been tough, and for your dad too bringing you up on his own.’

  ‘He usually found someone to help him out. My father was a very charming man. Never short of company.’

  ‘And you didn’t mind – about his company?’

  ‘God, no. Most of them spoiled me rotten. I’m surprised I’ve got any teeth left with the amount of sweets they used to bribe me with. And I never felt they were a threat – they came and went at regular intervals. Some of them I liked more than others but I never had time to get particularly attached.’ She sighed into the warm curve of his shoulder. ‘But then, unfortunately, he met Lesley.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said.

  ‘Ah indeed. The one who didn’t get away. Five foot three of pure blonde ambition. She was years younger than him but that didn’t bother her. They met during one of his more lucrative periods and she decided she was definitely on to a good thing. An accidental pregnancy quickly followed and the rest, as they say, is history.’ She lifted her head and frowned. ‘God, am I sounding horribly bitter and twisted?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but carry on.’

  She settled back against him. ‘That’s about it really. Terry was born, the marriage stumbled on for about five years, she took him for everything she could and then dumped him for a richer man.’

  ‘Did she break his heart?’

  She laughed. ‘No, only his wallet.’ But then she wondered if that was true. Perhaps he had truly loved her because he had never been quite the same after. Somehow all his energy and spirit had drained away. There were no more smart ideas, no brilliant cons. He had started to gamble more and to lose more and had finally ended up in this tiny flat in the back streets of Norwich.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘So tell me about your family?’

  ‘There’s not much to tell. I’ve got a couple of sisters, one living in Sydney, the other still in Surrey. My dad’s a banker – you know, the high-flying City type – and my mum’s a housewife who lunches. They have a nice big house in the green belt, three cars, a conservatory, and a golden retriever.’

  ‘Mr Posh,’ she quipped.

  ‘That’s me. He wanted me to go into banking too but, Christ, just the very idea bored me to distraction.’

  ‘No, I can’t see it somehow. You don’t strike me as a behind-a-desk kind of guy.’

  He shifted slightly, his leg pressing against hers. ‘Oh yeah? And what kind of guy do you see me as?’

  It might just be her imagination but the temperature seemed to have risen a few degrees. In an exploratory foray, she slid her palm across his chest. ‘Oh, more the action type, the sort who likes to get involved, to get things done. But most of all – without a shadow of a doubt – a man who loves to be in charge.’

  He leaned over, his breath hot against her ear. ‘I hope you’re not calling me a control freak, Ms Weston.’

  She kissed the side of his throat. ‘No, just a professional. A m
an who takes pride in what he does best. Talking of which, haven’t you got some poor unsuspecting victim you should be fixing with an icy stare right now? I wouldn’t like to think that I’m distracting you from your work.’

  ‘Hey, it’s touching that you’re so concerned.’ His fingers roamed along the nape of her neck and down the first few inches of her spine. ‘But the one great advantage of being an inspector is that you can occasionally delegate and leave the dirty work to your sergeant.’

  ‘And I’m sure he’s very good at it too,’ she purred. ‘Once he makes it up the stairs.’ Her hand found its way on to his thigh again. She ran her fingers slowly, exploratively, from the curve of his knee towards his groin.

  ‘Mm,’ he murmured. ‘Shepherd’s not exactly in the best of condition.’

  ‘He certainly didn’t look too good yesterday.’

  It was an innocuous comment but, as if he’d been slapped, Jack suddenly recoiled. He jerked his leg away and stared at her. ‘He was here yesterday?’

  The mood was instantly broken again. Eve tried not to groan. It seemed, after a promising start, that she was doomed to an evening of perpetual frustration. It never happened like this in romantic novels: by now his hungry lips should have been searching out hers, her breasts crushed against the hardness of his chest, her body ravished. But for the second time in an hour, her desires had been well and truly thwarted.

  ‘Don’t you two ever talk to each other?’ she said.

  ‘What did he want?’

  She wished she’d never mentioned it. ‘I don’t know. He didn’t say. He came to see Sonia but she’s still staying at her daughter’s. I presumed it was to do with what happened to Peter.’

  ‘Jesus, that man can’t leave anything alone.’

  She looked at him, confused. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘So why are you getting so stressed about it?’

  ‘I’m not,’ he insisted. ‘It’s just that I was out of the office yesterday and didn’t get a chance to talk to him.’ He picked up his glass and took a few sips of wine. ‘Look, I probably shouldn’t be saying this, and I’m counting on you not to repeat it, but he can be a bit … less than sensitive at times. And he’s had a few run-ins with Peter Marshall in the past. Sudden deaths are always a shock and I know she was separated from him but I was worried that he might have …’