Her Sister's Secret

by E. V. Seymour

  Out of habit, I carried cash on me for the business – easier to persuade someone to part with an item if you put the readies on the table. With a heavy heart, I took out my purse, counted out five twenties, which Tina spirited away. “So, what do you want to know?”

  “Tell me about your dad.”

  She pulled a face in mystification. “Like what?”

  “Like what he was doing thirty years ago.”

  “S’easy. Ran a painting and decorating business.”

  “Is that all?”

  Tina’s smile was wide enough for me to notice a missing tooth. “Thing about getting into people’s houses, you can see what they’ve got.”

  She didn’t say ‘burglary’ or aiding and abetting others in the act, but it’s what I believed she meant. “He made money on the side, right?”

  “Nicely put.” Tina took another swig.

  “Does your dad talk a lot about the old days?”

  “Talks about nothing else.” Her tone approached something like fond regard. “Got plenty of tales to tell and all. Knew a lot of faces. Decent men with codes of honour.” The way she said it made clear that it was not an opinion up for discussion.

  “Did he know a man called Charlie Binns?”

  Tina’s eyes thinned. “What’s it to you?”

  I interpreted Tina’s response as an affirmative.

  “You know he was murdered?”

  “Poor old Charlie got popped, yeah. Bang out of order.”

  “Any idea why he was shot?”

  She tipped her head back and laughed, giving me a damn fine view of her tonsils. “Doncha read the news? Place has become like the Wild West. Wrong place, wrong time.”

  “That’s not what happened. Someone got to him.”

  “Is that right?” She sniffed, took another healthy slug of Guinness.

  I didn’t dare mention claims that Binns had been a snitch. If I so much as mentioned the word in a place like this, Tina would be first in line to scratch my eyes out. I kept it zipped and reached for my rucksack, slipped out the notebook.

  “What you got there?”

  As tempted as I was to charge her a hundred quid for the answer, I pushed it towards her. She swooped, thumbed through, stopped on the page with the star system. Her face came alive and her eyes darted across the print like a city trader reading the market.

  “Fuck me,” she kept repeating. Eventually, she glanced up. “A right little encyclopaedia of dodgy stuff. You know what this is?”

  I took an educated guess. “Details of a protection racket. I bet money is regularly extorted from the businesses on the list.” Why it was sitting in my dad’s garage I hated to think.

  “Not bad for a posh girl.” She ran a nail-bitten finger down a list of establishments. I craned over to get a better view. “See this, the star rating tells you the amount of money someone is good for.”

  When we were done, she closed it and handed it over. “So, what’s your game?” The hard expression was back.

  “I need to find out who it belongs to.”

  Tina’s face cracked into a wide smile. Reminded me of fork lightning in a dark and threatening sky. “Now that is going to cost you.”

  I met her eye. “You actually know?”

  “I have a pretty good idea.”

  Was a pretty good idea good enough? “But you were only a kid at the time.”

  “Very nice of you to say so. Thirty years ago, I was eighteen. More than old enough to know what was what. I knew the ‘faces’ and all.”

  I wanted to get it over with and get out of there. Before I lost my nerve, I blurted out, “Was Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Napier running a protection racket?”

  A sly smile lifted the corners of Tina’s lips. “Your sister had that same tone of voice, too.” My heart rate accelerated. She drained her glass. “I’ll have the same again. Get us a packet of crisps while you’re at it,” she said with a loose grin. “Cheese and onion.”

  Pissed off, I went to the bar, ordered refills, paid and returned with drinks and Tina’s snack. She took a slurp, offered me a crisp, which I declined, took one, crunched it and rearranged her bony rear on the seat. Probably took no more than forty seconds. Felt like forty years.

  “Another ton for starters, cash.”

  “Sixty,” I said, bullish.

  “Seventy-five. Your sister didn’t have a problem.”

  Obediently, I handed over four twenties. Tina swiped the lot. “I don’t do change, not a bleeding vending machine.”

  “You were saying,” I said, grimly gritting my teeth.

  “’No need to get bolshie. Course the notebook wasn’t his. Your old man’s a legend in these parts. Absolute gent. Kind as the day’s long. My dad said he was the most genuine community-minded copper he knew. Met him once. I’d be in my twenties.”

  After the build-up, it wasn’t what I expected. Thank you, thank you, God.

  “Your sister reacted like that, proper brightened up, she did.” Tina posted another crisp into her mouth. Crunch. Crunch. Tongue darted out and licked her fingers. Tina was on a roll. “Back in the day, kids could play in the street, walk down the road without having a knife in their gut or bullet in their backs. Never had no trouble when Mr Napier was on the beat.”

  Glad to hear although I wasn’t sure I bought Tina’s ‘we never had it so good’ routine. “How did my dad pull it off?”

  “How do you think? He worked with us, not against us, not like some of the hard-arsed bastards in the filth back then.”

  I thought about what that could mean. Had Cecil Vernon given my dad tip offs? Had Vernon been taking money and playing both sides? Tina interrupted my thoughts. “Your dad was one of the good guys.”

  “Good guys,” I repeated, my relief obvious.

  “One of us.”

  “So, who’s the owner of the notebook?”

  “Like I said, it will cost.”

  “I don’t have any more cash on me.”

  Tina shrugged. “Cashpoint’s outside.”

  “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” It felt like a mugging.

  “Fucking joking. This bloke ruled the fucking roost. Got arms like tentacles.”

  Arms long enough to reach Charlie Binns, long enough to reach Bowen and Scarlet? Is that what she means? Fear echoed through me. “All right. How much?”

  “A grand.”

  I took a sharp intake of breath. What she was demanding was huge with no guarantee that she would tell me the truth and not spin me a load of lies. But I’d come this far and, whether I liked it or not, the book was the only solid, tangible piece of evidence I had. I needed to find out who it belonged to. With a premier account for the business, I’d have to take it out of the shop’s account. I stood up, stepped outside, found the hole in the wall, pushed in my black debit card, extracted the loot and headed back.

  “Here,” I said.

  “Tidy,” she said, pushing it into her bag.

  I waited, perched on the edge of my seat. Tough as titanium, Tina looked at me straight. No loose grin. No smart remarks. A gleam of anxiety in her eyes.

  “Detective Inspector Clive Mallis,” she said.

  Chapter 54

  “That’s not possible. Mallis worked for the police in Wiltshire as a D.C.I.”

  “Not thirty years ago, he didn’t.”

  And this was Dad’s friend. Or was he? I was too stunned to think about it with any degree of clarity. Friend or colleague, neither sounded right.

  “You okay?” Tina said.

  No, I wasn’t. “Did my sister mention Mallis?”

  “No.”

  “Binns?”

  “Might have done. Don’t remember,” she said, with a furtive glance.

  I took a sip of orange juice. Once an informer, always an informer so chances were Binns supplied info to Mallis when he worked at the MET all those years ago. The fact Mallis’s name never crossed my sister’s lips suggested that she hadn’t found out about our dad’s
association with him.

  If Tina is telling the truth.

  I thought about my last conversation with Heather. Richard Bowen’s best man had been a serving police officer in the MET. If Richard had somehow elicited information about Binns’s informer status, he might have made a connection between Binns and Mallis. Although how it was relevant and how all the interconnecting pieces locked with Scarlet, I wasn’t certain.

  “Anyway,” Tina said, “you got what you come for.” Pleased with her morning’s work, she turned towards a man at the bar, her signal that I’d had my money’s worth and our conversation was over.

  I slung my rucksack on. Before I left, I handed Tina a business card I used for the shop. “When your dad gets back, ask him to give me a call.”

  “As long as there’s some cash in it, my old man won’t give a flying fuck.”

  With everything I’d previously believed now in doubt, I checked out Clive Mallis on my laptop during the two-and-a-half-hour journey home. After a scroll through antique emporiums in Gloucestershire, it was a simple enough exercise to unearth the shop belonging to Mallis, ‘specialist in vintage firearms,’ mostly imported from the USA. I carried a stock of weapons at ‘Flotsam,’ but nothing on the same scale. It surprised me because the market was niche; my best customer a guy who made fantastic sculptures that incorporated decommissioned weapons. He once told me that a decommissioned Colt Frontiersman could be reactivated in a little over two hours. I thought about the manner of Charlie Binns’s death and swallowed hard.

  I read on and discovered that Mallis’s home address was situated in the newly gentrified Gloucester docks. He had a two-bedroom penthouse apartment, with two balconies from which he’d have a decent view of the boats, and secure allocated parking. I roughly valued it at around £250k; business premises around £400k and the stock anything up to three quarters of a million. Not bad for an ex-copper. And now I knew how.

  I looked out of the window, watched fields speeding by. One of us. How had Scarlet interpreted Tina’s sentiment? Were her questions more direct than mine? Were Cecil Vernon’s answers more illuminating? I found it difficult to keep my wilder suspicions at arm’s length.

  Sunday evening passed with the grinding gait of a motorway traffic jam. Each time I looked at my watch, it seemed stubbornly stuck at the same point. I expected something to happen. Nothing did. Every part of me was primed for the unpredictable, the unforeseen and dangerous. Rocco hung around the fringes of my mind like a dirty cobweb. Only Scarlet eclipsed him. I saw her in the sun in the evening. I saw her in the moon at night.

  Too wired to sleep, I seriously contemplated taking Lenny’s advice. What the hell? One little pill was not going to turn me into an addict. If it helped me rest, I’d see things more clearly and feel less jumpy. I showered, dosed myself up and went to bed with a warm drink. I’d already laid out my clothes ready for the funeral the next day.

  Heavy and airless, the night clung like a shroud. I made a conscious effort to relax. Let my limbs go slow. Let the drugs do their work. Finally, sleep overtook me. In a void of nothingness, I didn’t dream.

  On stirring, I’d expected to drift back up slowly through several layers of consciousness. I thought I’d wake feeling great for at least ten seconds before reality kicked in. I did none of those things. I awoke with a bump.

  Panic scissored through me. My eyes narrowed against the darkness. I glanced at the bedroom window. I’d left it open to grab some air. My brain sluggishly made deductions. Someone was in the room. I heard before I saw.

  “Molly, don’t be afraid.”

  Bright terror screeched through me and I leapt out of bed. “Get out.” I did not scream. I snarled.

  “You’re angry.”

  “Of course, I’m angry. You betrayed me. You used me.” Now my night vision kicked in, I could see Rocco sitting over by the wardrobe. Nothing threatening about him apart from the small fact he’d broken into my house. Again.

  “I never used you. What I felt and feel is real.”

  “Don’t insult my intelligence.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “What would you know about that?”

  “Okay, in the beginning, I had an agenda.”

  “You dumped a dead animal in my carport. You stuck a knife in my own kitchen table.”

  “No Molly, that’s not true.” He looked shaken.

  “You stalked and seduced me.”

  “I know how it seems, but I need you to understand.”

  “I understand plenty. I was a means to an end in your doomed and deluded quest to find out what happened to your half-sister. Now get out before I call the police.”

  Rocco gave a dry laugh. “Didn’t you do that already? The police came to my gym, Molly. I was marched out in front of my friends and work colleagues. I’ll probably lose my job.”

  “Not my problem.”

  “They threatened to do me for harassment.”

  “Well, what would you call it?”

  “Pursuing the truth.”

  At least we shared something in common, although my truth was connected to Scarlet, not Rocco’s half-sister, Drea. I didn’t tell him this. “Who cautioned you?” I wanted to be certain.

  “Two detectives, Stanton and Childe. They cut up pretty rough.”

  “I know, Rocco. I know about the investigation, about everything.”

  “And Mallis?” He was back with the intense look again.

  The corrupt copper, the extortionist and my father’s friend. That was the inescapable bit that rattled and twisted inside.

  “Look, I’m sorry about your sister,” I said.

  “Drea. Her name’s Drea.”

  I repeated it slavishly. “But you have to get real. Her death has nothing to do with my family other than the fact my dad didn’t take her disappearance seriously, for which he is sorry. It cost him his job, too.” And his mental health.

  “I should have guessed you’d stick together.” He didn’t say it spitefully. He was resigned and disappointed, as if he’d always known it would be this way.

  “What did you expect? That I’d accept the crazy words of someone I met five minutes ago, someone who deceived me, against the people I’ve known and loved for a lifetime?” My voice wavered. I felt sad and sorry and miserable, and, damn it, uncertain.

  “Please sit down, Molly. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “More than you already have?”

  His expression was beseeching. Rocco knew he’d crossed the line and that nothing he could say would make things better between us.

  “It’s Scarlet’s funeral tomorrow, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I should leave you to sleep.” He leant forward, making to go.

  “Wait,” I said. “Your mum. She died. That’s real, right?”

  “Drea’s death broke her heart and that’s the truth.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. What could I say that hadn’t already been said?

  “Funny, but if I close my eyes, I can still hear her voice,” Rocco said. “She’s like the angel on my shoulder.”

  If I shut mine, would I hear Scarlet’s voice too? “It’s pretend though, isn’t it?” It came out rough and unsympathetic.

  “Probably, although nice to imagine. Someone told me it’s not uncommon for white feathers to appear following the death of someone we love. Supposed to signify that angels are near.”

  “Well, I haven’t seen any.” Sceptical, my voice was flat.

  An awkward silence cast a net over the room. I sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed.

  “Has it occurred to you that we both want the same thing?” he said. “We both want answers to why our sisters died.”

  That much, I guessed, was true. “What was she like?”

  His eyes warmed with nostalgia. “Mad, a little bad, and a free spirit. Her problem was that she thought everyone was lovely.”

  “She trusted too much?”

  “It’s what got her k
illed.”

  I thought about that. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Fire away.”

  “Why now? Why not sooner? It’s been ten years since she died.”

  Rocco flicked a smile. “But only months since Gran passed on. It was something she said when she was ill.” He hesitated, reluctant to share and stood up. “I’ve cleared out of the house and the flat. If you need me, you know where to find me.”

  “I don’t need you.”

  He seemed to falter, hurt in his eyes. “I’ll be at our special place if you do.” I looked dead ahead. I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t care enough to find out. “Could I leave through the front?” He angled his head towards the open window. “It’s a long drop down there.”

  “I’ll see you out,” I said stiffly, getting up. This really was goodbye.

  I followed him downstairs. Sliding back the chain, I opened the door. Dawn was breaking, stippling the sky with red and gold. I pulled my robe tight around me. “Why did you really come?”

  “To talk, to tell you that, if I had to do it all again, in different circumstances, I’d still choose you.” The sincerity in his voice was unmistakable. He looked at me with a steady gaze, no tricks, no dissembling, like he’d caught me one-handed as I dangled over the side of a huge drop. It was probably the single moment of truth between us and an unwritten part of me wanted him still.

  Serious and anxious, he paused on the threshold. One last thought, one last declaration.

  “Be careful, Molly.”

  “Careful?” Fear tiptoed down my spine.

  “It’s not a threat,” he said with a quick smile. “There’s a killer out there. Somewhere.” Then he turned and vanished into the early morning light.

  Chapter 55

  I looked in the mirror and felt older than my years. It was plain in my eyes. Loss and fear did that to people. If I could be anywhere else without disrespecting my sister, I would have been. I felt no sense of goodbye or celebration of her life. Mum and Dad might have closure. I did not.