The Pact

by Roberta Kray

  Quickly she turned and smiled. ‘Yes, thank you.’ Then, immediately wondering if she had actually smiled or had only intended to, she lifted a hand to her face and laughed. ‘Yes, wonderful! This is it. Thank you so much!’

  The laugh sounded false, brittle and cracked, but he smiled back at her. ‘Is good,’ he said. ‘Very glad.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said again. Then, as he showed no immediate signs of leaving, she rummaged in her bag for her purse. ‘Look, you’ve been so kind. Let me give you something … er, for a drink or …’

  He quickly raised his hands. ‘No no,’ he said. ‘Is fine. No problem.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, worried now that she might have offended him. She had other far more serious concerns but somehow it was easier to concentrate on this one.

  Fortunately he was still smiling. ‘I go,’ he said, tapping his watch with a finger. ‘I go or very late for the work.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Yes, you must. Okay.’

  ‘This way,’ he said, pointing along the lane. ‘To the right and then on, on in the straight line – take you to harbour, yes?’

  ‘To the harbour,’ she repeated. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You have good time in Elounda,’ he said. ‘Come back, have drink, yes, before you leave.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ she said.

  He set off down the path, glanced over his shoulder and gave her a cheery wave.

  She waved back.

  Leaning against the gate, Eve watched him walk away. What was that saying about the kindness of strangers? She had an odd lump in her throat as if she was about to cry. But the emotion wasn’t just the result of a generous act. She knew that she had stumbled on something today, a secret that would change everything …

  Andrea Banks.

  What kind of legacy had her father bequeathed her? Most men of limited means were content with a sentimental gesture or two – the gift of a watch perhaps or a signet ring. And what had she got? Her brow crumpled into a frown. A photograph of a missing girl.

  Slowly she turned back towards the villa and gazed in through the gates again. She acknowledged, with a whisper of relief, that there was no immediate danger here. The villa was not just locked up but abandoned; it had that air of utter neglect as if Nature was already reclaiming the land, preparing to swallow it up, to take back what was rightfully hers.

  How long had it been empty?

  But she didn’t need to ask the question. Almost two years. She was sure of it. Ever since … ever since a girl with long fair hair had walked through these gates, had sat smiling in a courtyard, had …

  That vile sick feeling rose up from her stomach again.

  She felt the spasm in her throat, a reflexive gagging action and swallowed hard. No, she wasn’t going to throw up. Grasping the bars she closed her eyes and concentrated, willing the bile to retreat, trying to think of the sea, the cool clear crystal sea, of a long stretch of sand, of Jack, of anything but that girl’s face.

  A few minutes passed before it felt safe enough to loosen her hold. She blinked open her eyes and took a series of long deep breaths.

  ‘You’re all right now,’ she murmured.

  As if to prove the point, she straightened her shoulders, lifted her head and gave the gate a tentative shake. The padlock rattled against its chain. There was a brief flurry from inside, a thin scrabbling sound of insects disturbed, of air momentarily displaced. A bird rose up from the undergrowth, flapped its wings and soared above the roof of the villa.

  She waited.

  Nothing else happened.

  Gradually, the heavy silence settled around her again.

  Eve took a step back. She looked up at the blue shuttered window. It was as blank, as firmly closed, as the first time she’d looked at it but still she continued to stare; she had that odd, disturbing, prickling sensation of being watched. It was a feeling that was rapidly sliding into fear.

  Walk away! a voice inside her warned. And for once she paid attention. Walking, however, seemed too cautious a response. Before she’d even reached the turn in the path she had started to run.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  By the time Eve hit the harbour she was hot and sweating. Panting, she stopped to catch her breath and let the cool sea breeze float over her. She didn’t know what she’d expected. For someone to come chasing after her perhaps? But of course they hadn’t. There was no one at the villa – no one alive at least.

  It was only a ghost that she’d been running from.

  She started to walk again, trailing her fingers through her hair, trying to think of what she would tell Jack. Or maybe not so much what – there was no way of evading the truth now – as how. Would she be able to make him understand? She hoped so. What she needed was someone to talk to, someone she could trust, someone who could help her find a way through this nightmare …

  Eve saw him before he saw her. He was sitting at the same table they’d shared breakfast at this morning, a newspaper laid out in front of him, a cold beer beside his elbow. She suddenly wished she’d never made that decision to go walkabout, that she’d never found out what she had, that she’d succumbed instead to more lustful temptations.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, glancing up, his mouth breaking into a smile.

  God, he had such a beautiful smile. ‘Hi.’

  ‘You’ve got a pink nose,’ he said.

  ‘Have I?’ She laughed, moving closer to the table, and then frowned. She stared down at her sore and dusty feet.

  ‘Hey.’

  She had that lump in her throat again.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Eve shook her head. ‘Nothing.’ Nothing? What was she saying? She saw his confused blue eyes looking up at her. ‘I mean, it’s just that I think we need to talk.’ She hesitated. ‘Or … or rather I need to talk. I need to tell you something. But not here. Can we go to the apartment?’

  The walk back had been a short one – but only in distance. In time, it had seemed to go on forever, every slow silent minute stretched and elongated. Even the final climb up the stairs had felt eternal.

  She opened the fridge, got out a couple of beers and flipped off their caps before she sat down at the table. ‘You might need a drink,’ she said.

  ‘What’s going on, Eve?’

  She reached into her bag and took out her cigarettes. She knew he hated the habit but her need for nicotine currently outweighed his disapproval. Her hand was shaking as she drew one from the pack and lit it.

  ‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘well, it’s what they call a long story and if I could just do it in one, you know, without any interruptions, then—’

  ‘You’re starting to worry me,’ he said. And then, realizing that he’d just done exactly what she was asking him not to, he raised an apologetic hand. ‘I’m sorry. Okay. Go on.’

  And so she did. She told him about what had happened since she’d got the news of her father’s death. Glossing over the breakin – he already knew about that – she told him about the man in the alley, about the assault, the threats, the phone calls. She told him about Terry, about her fears for him, about her arrangement with Cavelli and his boxes. She told him about being followed to Blakeney. ‘I think it was him,’ she said. ‘Ivor Patterson.’ She paused.

  Jack’s brows lifted but he didn’t interrupt.

  ‘And he’s dead now.’ She took a drag on the cigarette, pursed her lips and exhaled the smoke in a long thin stream. Frowning, she carried on. She told him about the Rowans, about the rumours. The only thing she didn’t mention was the night in Soho when she’d gone searching for Jimmy Reece – for all Cavelli’s faults, she knew now that he had no part in this. Those particular details were irrelevant. Instead, she told him about Henry’s visit, about the missing phone, about the notes she had found, about where they had led her, about the discovery of the photograph. She told him about her conversation with Sonia, about the trip abroad she had never heard about. ‘I found the address in his book and I wanted to come here. I
wanted to see it again – the villa. I don’t know why, it just seemed important.’

  None of this, she realized, was exactly what he wanted to hear. He was gazing down at the table, his brows knotted, his hands clenched together.

  ‘And was it?’ he said eventually.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Important.’

  Eve stubbed out her cigarette and immediately lit another. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘One of the men in the picture, the man who owns the villa – he’s called Joe Silk.’

  Jack’s head jerked up. ‘Jesus,’ he said.

  ‘I guess you’ve heard of him then.’ She shrugged. ‘Of course you have. He must be pretty well known in certain circles.’

  He dropped his face back into his hands. ‘Jesus,’ he said again.

  ‘Jack, I know this is one hell of a mess and I’m sorry, really sorry. I should have told you before. I wanted to but it was all so messy, so confused. You see that, don’t you?’ She looked at him pleadingly but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘I didn’t have a clue about Andrea Banks then. I didn’t understand about the photo. And now I do, well, it changes everything. That girl’s dead, she must be, and—’

  Are you sure it’s the same girl?’

  Eve got her wallet out of her bag and unfolded the copy of the picture. She passed it over to him. ‘Go out, take a look for yourself if you want. There are posters all over the place.’

  He stared at it for a long time.

  And that is Joe Silk, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s him all right.’

  ‘With Peter Marshall and Terry. Do you know who the other guy is?’

  He gave a reluctant nod. ‘Yeah, Mr Psychopath himself. The untouchable Keeler Chase.’

  ‘Mr Psychopath?’ she said nervously. She still couldn’t tell from the picture whether it was the same man Marianne had held in such contempt. The man with the dead eyes. The man who had watched them from the archway.

  ‘He’s an evil bastard. Came over from the States years ago.’ He scraped back his chair, jumped up and got another beer out of the fridge. ‘You want one?’

  ‘No. No thanks.’ After all the sun, the alcohol was quickly going to her head. She could feel her thoughts beginning to blur at the edges and pushed the remains of her bottle aside. ‘Evil as in …?’

  As in every definition you want to use. Joe Silk’s right-hand man, the one who sorts out all his little problems for him. The one who makes them disappear.’

  She shivered at the last word. ‘So he could have—’

  ‘Let’s just say he’s more than capable.’

  ‘Christ,’ she said. ‘Look, we’ve got to go home. Today, tonight – we’ll take the first flight we can get. You’ve got to help me sort this out.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘I can’t.’

  She looked at him, bewildered. ‘You’re a cop, Jack. What do you mean, you can’t?’

  ‘Exactly that,’ he said. There was an edge of bitterness to his voice. ‘Seeing as it’s truth day, there are a few things I need to explain myself.’

  Eve felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. Whatever was coming next, she was sure she wasn’t going to like it. ‘Go on,’ she murmured.

  His fingers tightened around the bottle. ‘I know Joe Silk,’ he said. ‘And I don’t just mean in a professional capacity.’ He paused and cleared his throat. ‘It was several years ago. Things weren’t going well with Clare. Our relationship was on the rocks and I was gambling, big time. Or to be more accurate, I was losing big time. I was up to my stupid neck in it. By the time I came to my senses, Clare was gone, the house was gone and I owed Joe Silk over sixty grand.’

  Eve stared at him, her eyes widening.

  ‘Yeah, I really fucked up. Anyway, I moved out of London, I was trying to get myself straight when about six months ago Silk got in touch. Said he had a proposition for me. He said if I could get rid of some evidence – a couple of CCTV tapes – he’d clear the debt, wipe it completely.’ He paused again, his eyes closing briefly. ‘They were the tapes showing Terry at the robbery.’

  She almost jumped out of her chair. ‘What?’

  He nodded.

  As if subject to an information overload, her brain was starting to give off sparks. She was having trouble absorbing it all. ‘I . .. I don’t understand.’

  ‘I didn’t either at the time. I didn’t get why he was going out of his way – and it was a pretty expensive way bearing in mind how much I owed him – to save the skin of some small-time—’ He stopped, remembering that it was her brother he was talking about. ‘Well, someone who wasn’t exactly in his league.’

  What had Sonia said? That her father had been pacing the floor, on the phone, tearing his hair out; scared witless that Terry would be going down for a long stretch. ‘My dad was putting pressure on him.’

  ‘Blackmailing him,’ Jack said. He saw the indignation flash on to her face. ‘Come on, we may as call it by its rightful name – seeing as we’re both being so straight and honest with each other.’ He had that bitterness in his voice again. He lifted the beer to his mouth and took another drink. ‘And now we know how he did it. With a photograph Silk couldn’t afford to have made public. A photograph he probably didn’t even know existed until that moment.’

  A flood of thoughts were washing through her head, about her father, the picture, about how he must have known what had happened to that girl … and how he had done nothing. That’s what she couldn’t grasp. Oh, he’d been a swindler, yes, a fraudster, but he hadn’t a violent bone in his body. So what on earth had possessed him to keep quiet? Had he been threatened, forced into silence? She didn’t have any answers. She couldn’t make any sense of it. Instead she turned her attention back to Jack.

  ‘So you agreed to do it – to lose the evidence.’

  ‘Obviously. I’d like to claim I had a long hard battle with my conscience but it isn’t true. I saw a way of getting out from under and I grabbed it with both hands. And if that meant one unimportant little scrote – no offence – was going to walk then I wasn’t going to lose too much sleep over it.’

  But there was a hint of bravado now, as if he was trying to persuade himself as much as her. And she knew that Jack Raynor had sacrificed some essential part of himself on the day that he’d agreed to Joe Silk’s deal – call it pride, integrity, whatever – and that it was something that was lost forever. Perhaps she should thank him for getting Terry off the hook but she knew that would only be rubbing salt in the wound.

  ‘And did he stick to his side of the bargain?’ she asked softly.

  ‘More or less.’

  And now, ludicrously late, she was struck by a thought so obvious that her knees, had she been standing, would have given way. She could feel the blood draining from her face. How it had taken her so long to see it she couldn’t comprehend, too much else on her mind perhaps, but suddenly the truth was brightly illuminated. She’d been wined and dined and thoroughly seduced by a man in Joe Silk’s pocket!

  ‘Oh God,’ she moaned.

  ‘Eve?’

  She shook her head. Jesus, what a fool she’d been. She’d walked straight into a honeytrap! Her, Eve Weston! And despite the fear, a part of her (granted a slightly hysterical part) felt a desperate urge to laugh. How often had she used her own womanly wiles to get what she wanted? This was karma perhaps, cosmic payback, some kind of divine retribution.

  ‘You set this all up, didn’t you? You and me, this whole—’

  ‘No!’ he said, moving swiftly to put his hand over hers.

  ‘Don’t!’ She snatched her hand away. ‘Don’t insult me, Jack. What are you saying – that this, us, is just a coincidence?’ She was experiencing an odd internal tumbling sensation, like she was slowly falling. ‘He knows, doesn’t he? Your mate Joe Silk. He set this up. You’re only here because—’

  ‘Shit no!’ He got to his feet, raking his fingers through his hair. ‘I swear. I swear to God. It’s not like that.’ He pace
d over to the window, glared out for a second or two and then turned around to face her again. ‘He doesn’t know we’re here. He doesn’t know anything about us.’

  He came and sat down beside her again, leaning forward across the table. ‘I know what it looks like,’ he said. ‘And I know you’ve got every reason to doubt me but I swear, on my life, I’m not lying to you. I wouldn’t. Eve, please.’

  She stared back at him, deep into those pleading blue eyes. Almost instantly she had to shift her gaze. There was a fine film of sweat on his forehead, a thousand tiny beads. Did she believe him? She wasn’t sure. He was certainly vehement enough but then so many easy lies had passed between them …

  ‘Just hear me out,’ he begged. ‘Ten minutes, that’s all I’m asking.’

  She shrugged. It was easier than speaking.

  Like a guilty man temporarily reprieved, he exhaled a small sigh of relief. ‘Okay, you’re right, of course it’s not just a coincidence.’ Then he saw her expression and quickly added, ‘But it’s not a set-up either. After I … after I did what Silk wanted, I thought it was over, the slate wiped clean, but then shortly after your father died he got in touch with me again. He said he needed some information on you. I told him we’d made a deal, that I’d kept to my side and that was it, finished, end of, but he wasn’t having any of it. He said it wasn’t finished until he said so. He said there were still some loose ends.’

  She glanced at him. ‘And I was one of them?’

  ‘He said you were as much my problem as his, that you might cause trouble, might start digging up things that were better left buried and—’ He stopped abruptly, as if an alternative interpretation of those words was just dawning on him. ‘Oh Christ, I didn’t know anything about this other stuff, Eve. About the girl, the photo. I promise you.’

  Eve nodded. That, at least, was probably true.

  ‘Anyway, he gave me the details of the place where you’d been working, Baxter & Baxter, and asked me to try and find out anything I could. I gave them a ring. I was just going through the motions, you know, doing what he asked. I didn’t really expect to come up with anything but then I got through to Richard.’