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Stick or Twist

Page 8

by Diane Janes


  He was just lining up the ingredients to make her favourite Bellinis when his mobile rang. He had to retrieve it from the other side of the room and when he reached it, he recognized Chaz’s number on the display. For a moment he was tempted to ignore the call and let the recorded message cut in, but then it occurred to him that Chaz might ring again, while Jude was there. Suppose he switched off his mobile and unplugged the house phone? But then Chaz might realize that he was avoiding him. He might even take it into his head to come to the flat – ‘pay him a visit’ – as Chaz himself was wont to describe it. On balance, perhaps it wasn’t all that likely that Chaz would turn up on his doorstep, but now that the idea had occurred to him, Mark knew that the thought would prey on his mind, a spectre to haunt his evening, completely putting him off his stroke, so he decided that on balance it would be better to answer the phone.

  Chaz had left him to stew for about a week after the Thirsk fiasco, before initiating contact again and instructing him to show up at a South Bank café, where over coffee and pastries (for which Mark had been expected to pay) Chaz had made it very clear that there would be no more commissions involving race meetings, informing Mark that he would have to find some other way of coming up with the money, and suggesting that unless a good proportion of the debt to his ‘friend’ was forthcoming soon, some other ‘friends’ of his friend would soon be ‘paying Mark a visit’.

  Naturally Mark had begged for more time – he was so close now, so very close to getting his hands on a sizeable amount of money, he told Chaz. (He had calculated that even if the tenants could not be evicted from Laurel Cottage and the property put on the market at once, there would be no problem about raising some money against a prime piece of real estate like that, and as well as Laurel Cottage, he knew that there must be plenty of other assets, which might convert even more easily into the ready cash that he needed.)

  Up until that point in the conversation, he had reckoned Chaz to be merely the purveyor of threats, who neither knew nor cared what his plans for raising the necessary monies might entail, but this illusion was rudely shattered when after he had intimated that his finances would be drastically improved in the near future, Chaz had laughingly referred to the ‘Thackeray bint’, saying that under the circumstances, it might be possible to persuade his friend to wait just a little longer, in order to allow Mark a chance to ‘milk the cow’. It had been unnerving to discover that his private intentions were so transparent – even if Chaz’s knowledge of them was the thing which had won him a little more time.

  That meeting had taken place only two days ago and the implications of it were running through Mark’s mind in the seconds before he hit the green button on his phone and greeted Chaz with less than good grace. ‘Hello. What do you want?’

  ‘Someone has gone and told my friend that the girl in your life is the Thackeray bitch.’

  Mark experienced the familiar wave of nausea which now tended to accompany any mention of Chaz’s friend. He decided not to ask who, if not Chaz himself, could possibly have been conversing with Chaz’s friend regarding his private life. ‘What if they have?’

  ‘My friend considers it absolutely laughable that anyone could come up with – still less rely on – such a crazy scheme. He asks me if you can possibly be serious. His reasoning is that someone has already tried to get their hands on Miss Thackeray’s little stock of goodies, which means that she will now be completely wised up to people like you, mon ami. The big man laughed his socks off, when he found out where you think your salvation is coming from. He says you haven’t got an ice cube’s chance in hell of getting your hands on her money – even if she’s letting you put your hands just about everywhere else. Time’s up, I’m afraid. No more extensions.’

  ‘Chaz, look – wait – as it happens, Jude Thackeray is absolutely mad about me.’ He was babbling, he could hear himself babbling. ‘The very worst possible thing I could do right now would be to directly ask her for money, whereas in a couple of weeks’ time—’

  ‘You’ll be in Easy Street,’ Chaz interrupted, sarcastically. ‘Come off it, man. My friend’s right. You’re not going to get a penny out of her. Meantime other people are starting to get interested. Word gets around. Some people want to know why the Big Fellow is letting you off so lightly. Can’t have people speculating that he’s gone soft, or everybody will start to think that they can give him the run around.’

  ‘I’m not giving anybody the run around, I promise you – and who else knows that I owe him money anyway? I haven’t breathed a word. Chaz, you have to listen to me—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, give me another week or three and everything will be fine,’ Chaz mimicked a whiney, unconvincing tone. ‘What makes you think that it will be any easier to get anything out of Little Miss Moneybags in two weeks’ time?’

  ‘Because in two weeks’ time we’ll be engaged, or even married.’

  Chaz responded with such a huge guffaw of laughter that Mark had to shift the phone away from his ear. ‘Got the church booked and the cake ordered, have you? You’re a fucking fantasist.’

  ‘Just give me two weeks.’

  ‘Time’s up. We’ll be in touch again shortly.’

  ‘No – wait, Chaz, surely you can give me another few days? Just another couple of days …’

  Chaz cut off the call without making any reply.

  Mark replaced the phone in its former position, then stood in the kitchen, leaning both hands on the cool, granite worktops and breathing hard, as if he was recovering from running a marathon. Chaz had not made any specific threats as to what was going to happen next, and at least that was something. Or maybe not. Maybe Chaz considered that the final warning had been issued, time was up and that was the end of it. He might at this very moment be on his phone to someone else, arranging for a couple of heavies to ‘pay him a call’, with the intention of extracting either money, or revenge.

  Chaz had been introduced as a friend of a friend. A mate of a bloke who had been at school with one of the guys who formed part of Matty Blakemore’s set. He hadn’t initially come across to Mark as the sort of chap who knew the kind of men who were liable to burst in through your front door, taking maybe as little as five or ten minutes (if you were lucky) to render you in need of the ambulance service. Yet even without seeing any actual evidence of it, Mark did not doubt for a moment that Chaz had exactly those kinds of contacts and was exactly that kind of man.

  The cold of the worktops failed to stem the clamminess of his palms. He wanted to move across to a chair, but his legs refused to obey him and his guts had begun to dissolve in such a way that he felt incapable of doing anything other than sinking to the kitchen floor and sobbing – an instinct to which he must not succumb, with Jude expected any minute.

  When the doorbell startled him a moment later, his first instinct was to somehow barricade himself into the kitchen, before dialling 999. Then he remembered that it would be Jude. Deep breaths. Think and act calmly. Smile. Could he find an excuse to change his shirt, which he suddenly realized was sticking to his back?

  The bell rang again. ‘Coming,’ he shouted, his voice sounding unnaturally high.

  Calm down. Walk normally. Open the door with a flourish, big smile, huge hug, welcoming kiss. ‘My darling, how lovely you look.’ Kiss her again. Time is running out. Have to make this work tonight. Got to make it work.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘I haven’t given up, you know.’

  The words startled Peter, coming at him unexpectedly, breathed low, close to his ear, as Hannah passed behind him on her way to fetch the coffees, when they took their first break of the afternoon, after resuming work on the Thackeray case.

  She didn’t wait for a response, just glided out of the room, shutting the door behind her; leaving him to stare at the familiar quartet of greenish-grey dots on the dark blue paintwork, caused when someone had removed a notice stuck on with Blu-tack, goodness knows how long before.

  To his relief she had not bothered
to look back and check on his reaction, because he felt the colour rise in his cheeks, though he told himself that his first instinct was not to be embarrassed, but appalled. What had gone wrong here? How had a normal, professional relationship shifted so radically in the space of twenty-four hours? They had spent the whole of the previous day working together, without him picking up so much as a hint that McMahon was remotely interested in him. Since then he had run their interactions through his mind several times, without being able to identify any warning signals from her at all. He had not picked up a single vibe, until the moment when having lured him out on a fool’s errand, she had propositioned him.

  He had continued to ponder the situation while he waited to give his evidence at Crown Court that morning, wondering what, if any, reference would be made to the episode when they next saw one another on his return to headquarters, but that afternoon he and McMahon had resumed work together as if nothing had happened. She had behaved perfectly properly, for at least an hour, giving no sign that she even remembered what had happened – or for the most part had not happened – in the lay-by the evening before, though he had felt acutely aware of it, as embarrassed as a guilty school boy, caught out in a crush on his teacher. Which was ridiculous, he thought, as he hadn’t been the instigator. Was she aware of his discomfiture? Was that why she had all but whispered in his ear, on leaving the room?

  Was it a joke? A wind-up? Maybe the whole team were in on it – though somehow he did not think so. It was sexual harassment. Not that he would ever report her. He liked McMahon and anyway he’d be laughed to kingdom come if it ever came out. (Which of course it would – there were no secrets in CID.) Maybe if he ignored it – just made it politely clear that he wasn’t interested? (It would have been so easy to be interested – that kiss in the car park was enough to get anyone warmed up). She might be winding him up. She had never come across as the scary, bunny boiler type. If he didn’t rise to the bait (hmm, maybe not the best of expressions in the circumstances) perhaps she would lose interest.

  Of course, he could always ask to be transferred. He could tell the boss that he and McMahon were not getting along. That might lead to awkward questions, and besides which, he didn’t want to move. If anyone ought to move, it was her, damn it, because she was the one who had made the pitch, and thereby made things awkward.

  Of course, if he was going to resign from the force anyway … Ginny’s email still sat unanswered in his inbox. She had told him to take his time to think about it and he was thinking about it. It wasn’t as if he had responsibilities or ties. A policeman’s lot, as Gilbert and Sullivan had memorably pointed out, was not a happy one – and they had written that years before all the cutbacks and efficiency drives and the management initiatives which, far from resolving anything, just set up arguments about whose responsibility it was to do which bits of the job. Endless protocols and new initiatives; ‘Policing by tick-box,’ as Lingo had disparagingly referred to it. All the older hands claimed that they would not want to join up today – but maybe everyone approaching the end of their career, in whatever walk of life, said that things were not what they used to be. The job still had a lot to offer. No two days ever the same – it wasn’t a case of running through the same repertoire, time after time. Job security against complete uncertainty. Music versus the Thackeray case. Not just the Thackeray case. There were lots of cases: always had been, always would be, though the Thackeray case featured high in his imaginary list of priorities. The key to unlocking that case lay somewhere in the evidence; he felt it and he suspected that Lingo felt it too. Why else spare two officers for a week-long mini-review? There was a previously unexplored clue somewhere in those files and he badly wanted to find it.

  If he was absolutely honest with himself, when it came to Jude Thackeray, it wasn’t just the good copper’s desire to bring the crime home to the culprit. Yes, of course he shared the team’s collective frustration at being beaten by this nasty little bastard, whoever he was, but there was also Jude Thackeray herself. He was forced to admit to himself that McMahon had been right when she had asserted that he found Jude Thackeray attractive.

  Jude Thackeray was not only pretty, but had a quality about her which appealed to all his protective instincts. Sitting by, while she had relived her ordeal at the hands of a man she had initially trusted, he’d had to make a conscious effort to remain objective and uninvolved. At times, he had lived it with her, almost had to fight the urge to enfold her in his arms and comfort her. These were thoughts which he could never afford to share. Maintain a professional distance – that was the mantra. Unprofessional or not, he knew that he had come dangerously close to falling for Jude Thackeray.

  He was still picturing her, bravely attempting to answer their questions, when Hannah breezed back into the room, a paper cup of coffee in each hand. ‘Right then,’ she said, ‘let’s get back down to business, shall we?’

  SEVENTEEN

  As Mark passed the oval mirror in his hall, he caught himself grinning. ‘Victory in sight,’ as Errol Flynn might have said in one of those classic black and white adventure movies, which he had watched again and again as a boy. (When a secondary image of Michael Caine and Steve Martin in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels popped into his head, he banished it at once.)

  In the end it had been surprisingly easy. When he had eventually popped the question (as his late grandmother would so quaintly have put it), Jude had collapsed into his arms, seeming to laugh and cry at the same time, and when he had prompted, ‘You haven’t answered my question, yet,’ she had gasped out, ‘Yes, oh yes, of course yes.’ It was pretty much as emphatic as you could get.

  In many ways, he could scarcely believe it himself. Chaz’s friend was right, inasmuch that it had been a risky scheme, unlikely to succeed: so crazy that he would never have dreamed of attempting anything like it, if he had not been so desperate. Well, ‘Who dares, wins,’ as that eighties film would have it. He hadn’t been able to disguise the triumph in his voice when telephoning Chaz the next morning to inform him that Jude Thackeray had not only accepted his proposal, but had even agreed to his suggestion that they get a special licence and do the deed quickly, before the papers got hold of the story. She had been so totally on-board about this, that he had scarcely needed to remind her that delay increased the chances of word getting out and of course all the papers would want to report that ‘tragic kidnap victim Jude’ or however they chose to describe her, ‘finds happiness with new man’.

  For some unknown reason, Chaz hadn’t taken the news of the engagement particularly well. If anything, Mark thought that he had sounded downright disappointed, almost as if he would have preferred the idea of letting loose a couple of heavies, instead of being able to convey to his friend the information that repayment in full was now assured. After hearing Mark out, Chaz had offered no congratulations or comments, beyond saying that he would have to take the information back to ‘the big man’ and would ‘be in touch’, a phrase which he invariably managed to invest with a distinct level of menace.

  In spite of Chaz’s chilly reception to the news, Mark’s success with Jude had imbued him with a newfound confidence and he refused to be rattled. He knew that he wasn’t out of the woods yet, but her surprising willingness to marry him immediately had filled him with a sense that he had triumphed against all the odds. It was the equivalent of ignoring all the pundits, putting your house on a thousand to one long shot, then seeing it romp home, twenty lengths ahead of the field. Chaz’s attitude was bizarre, because surely his boss would prefer to receive his money in full? What was the point of dishing out some sort of violent reprisal for non-payment? That wasn’t going to restore any cash to his bank account.

  Aside from Chaz, the only other fly in the ointment was Jude’s brother. The brother had already been making awkward enquiries and news of an engagement would probably send him into overdrive. Whereas at one time, Mark had believed it was possible to keep his financial situation under wraps, some of the things whi
ch Chaz had said suggested otherwise. Who knew what people were saying behind his back and how easily that sort of gossip might reach Rob Thackeray’s ears? With this in mind, he had proposed that their engagement remain a closely guarded secret, and in the initial euphoria, Jude had been completely in agreement. As well as having the advantage of avoiding the media’s gaze, she had described the secrecy as ‘romantic’. (Mark, while relieved, could not help thinking her something of a rarity, since so far as he could gauge from the experiences of friends and relations, most women’s idea of ‘romantic’ in the context of a wedding seemed to involve a country church, a pantechnicon load of flowers, big frocks, bigger bills and a marquee full of friends and relatives, all quaffing gallons of free drink.) However, in the cold light of morning, it had soon become clear that while she was quite happy to keep their nuptial arrangements a secret from family (both her parents were dead anyway) and friends – she wanted to make an exception when it came to her brother.

  ‘We’re so close,’ she had said. ‘I can’t not tell Rob. He would be devastated. I know how upset I would feel, if he went off and got married and only told me about it afterwards.’

  Mark had tried her with: ‘I won’t be telling my brothers until afterwards,’ but it did no good, because as she rightly pointed out, he wasn’t exactly close to them.

  ‘It’s different with Rob and me,’ she said. ‘With both our parents gone, we’ve always looked out for each other.’

  It ran through Mark’s mind when she said this, that Rob hadn’t been looking out for her very well when some sadistic imbecile had kept her tied up for several days and tortured her into revealing her pin numbers and the combination to the safe where she kept her jewellery, but he didn’t say so. Instead he decided that he would have to swallow her determination to share their ‘romantic’ intentions with her brother, because a) everything else had gone so jolly well and b) let’s face it, he couldn’t really stop her.

 

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