The Silver Mark

by Sarah Painter

  ‘Time to go,’ the guard said, finally out of patience.

  Chapter Five

  Back at the flat, Lydia took a bottle of beer from the fridge and spent a satisfying minute rolling the cold glass around her face and neck. It was past six and the heat was still thick across the city. Lydia had windows open but there was zero air movement. She considered stripping off all her clothes, but the thought that Jason might appear at any moment was inhibiting.

  Her phone rang, and she saw Paul Fox’s number. Paul Fox had phoned Lydia a couple of times over the last few weeks and she hadn’t picked up. He had sent over a thick A4 envelope via courier, too. Lydia hadn’t opened it, hadn’t even touched it, in fact, and had just told the courier to take it straight back. She hadn’t told Charlie about Paul’s involvement with her cousin, Maddie. She figured that Maddie turning out to be psychotic, and Charlie’s own culpability in the whole affair, made the Fox family’s role pale into comparison. Besides, the last thing anybody needed was tensions to rise between the Families. The Foxes had always been the trickiest. Not to mention the most unpredictable. She hesitated, looking at her phone screen and wondering whether it would be better to just speak to him. ‘What?’

  ‘Hello, Little Bird.’

  The instant he spoke, Lydia felt the Fox tang. It vibrated through her body and set her fight or flight instincts on high alert. ‘Don’t call me that,’ Lydia said, immediately regretting it. Now he would never stop. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Just checking how you are settling in. Wondering if you’re ready to take on a new client, yet?’

  ‘I’m fully-booked.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Paul said. ‘Flying around all over the place for Uncle Charlie, I bet.’

  Lydia produced a coin from the air and then held onto it, tightly. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘You should be friendlier to me.’ Paul’s voice was no longer gentle, there was a thin meanness coming through.

  ‘Is that a fact?’

  ‘You remember what a good friend I can be, Little Bird.’

  ‘I remember lots of things,’ Lydia said. ‘How is dear Tristin? Is he speaking to you again?’ Tristin Fox, head of the Fox Family and probably the only person to strike fear into Paul Fox’s heart.

  ‘What?’

  ‘After you hooked up with Maddie Crow and she went rogue and then dear old Tristin had to smooth things over with the cops. I bet that went down well.’

  ‘You are way off,’ Paul said, after a pause, but Lydia could feel a reduction in his energy.

  ‘Why do you want me to work for you so badly?’ Lydia said. ‘You know I don’t want to help you, you know I don’t trust you, so what is this about? If you’re just trying to irritate me then, congratulations, job done, but surely you’ve better things to do. Unless,’ Lydia paused theatrically, ‘you don’t have anything better going on? Unless bothering me is your new hobby because you truly don’t have anything more interesting in your life. I do hope not, that sounds terribly sad.’

  ‘You shouldn’t speak to me like that,’ Paul said, his voice tight. ‘Things have changed.’

  ‘So you keep saying,’ Lydia said. ‘But it all feels like business as usual around here.’

  ‘Like you would know. You are the precious little princess, kept away from all the dirty work.’

  He was echoing Maddie’s words and she wondered just how much she had spoken to Paul in the time they were together. Hell Hawk, they could still be together. Maddie had done a disappearing act again, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t hiding out with Paul. Just that the Crow Family weren’t looking for her this time. For all Lydia knew, Madeleine could be standing right next to Paul, now, listening to her every word. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck.

  ‘Next time I send you a parcel, you’d do well to open it.’

  ‘I’m busy,’ Lydia said. ‘Fully-booked. No room at the inn. No space in my diary.’

  ‘You’ll change your mind.’

  ‘I won’t, Lydia said. ‘So stop trying.’

  Paul cut the call suddenly and without saying goodbye. Lydia looked at her screen for a moment and wondered whether she had won that round or not.

  Jason shimmered in the doorway looking anxious. ‘Who was that?’

  ‘Paul Fox,’ Lydia said. ‘Fishing for information or just trying to annoy me. Not sure which.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound good,’ Jason was shaking a little and, now that Lydia was looking properly she could see he looked properly upset.

  She stood up. ‘Hey, it’s all right.’

  ‘He’s bad news,’ Jason said.

  ‘I know,’ Lydia held her hands up, uncertain whether to try to pat Jason or not. She was surprised to find that she wanted to put her arms around him. ‘It’s okay, though. He’s just trying to annoy me. He must be bored.’

  ‘What if it’s more than that?’

  ‘I whisked Maddie out from under his nose, he’s just trying to assert dominance or show me that he’s not beaten or something equally macho and inane. I’m not playing his little power games so it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ Jason said, still vibrating gently.

  ‘Look,’ Lydia rummaged in her desk drawer. ‘I bought a new pack of Sharpies. Different colours. Why don’t you do your maths thing. You’ll feel better.’

  ‘I’m not a child,’ Jason said. ‘Technically, I’m older than you.’ But he took the pack of markers and disappeared into his bedroom.

  * * *

  The warning buzzer sounded and Lydia took a slug from her beer before going to open the door. She was just in time to see Fleet round the corner of the landing.

  He stopped when he saw her lounging in the entrance. ‘You expecting someone?’

  Lydia raised her bottle in salute. ‘Just you.’

  Fleet walked along the landing, his bulk filling the space. He had come straight from work and was carrying a leather bag and his suit jacket, but had loosened his tie and rolled up his shirt sleeves. ‘Spooky.’

  ‘That’s me,’ Lydia said, she stepped back to let him into the flat. ‘Beer?’

  ‘Please,’ Fleet threw his jacket and bag onto the client’s chair, and sat on the sofa Lydia had pushed against one wall.

  Lydia passed him a bottle and their fingers brushed. Suddenly, the tiredness of the day evaporated and she felt her senses kick up. She watched as he tipped his head back and took a long drink, his throat moving as he swallowed, then headed back into the kitchen to get some nuts. Okay, it was time to move away from Fleet before she jumped him.

  ‘Good day?’ Fleet called as she dumped salted cashews into a washed-out takeaway tray.

  ‘Frustrating,’ Lydia said, presenting him with the snacks.

  Fleet put the tray on the floor. ‘Tell me about it.’

  Lydia bent down to scoop some cashews and then joined Fleet on the sofa, making sure not to touch him as she sat. ‘You first. Catch any bad guys today?’

  Fleet leaned back. ‘Picked up a couple of kids for street art.’

  ‘Street art?’

  ‘Well, they said it was art. Couple of spray-painted cocks and a carefully-worded stanza on the human condition. And who the hell knows anymore?’

  ‘Stanza?’ Lydia regarded him over the rim of her beer bottle. ‘You talk fancy for a copper.’

  Fleet looked mock affronted. ‘I’m educated.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Lydia said, cheerfully enough.

  ‘Your turn,’ Fleet pointed with the neck of his bottle. ‘Tell me all about your frustrating day. And give me your foot.’

  ‘Why?’ Lydia instinctively drew her legs up, curling her feet underneath her body.

  Fleet looked amused. ‘So I can rub it. Ease your aching muscles.’

  ‘My feet are fine,’ Lydia said.

  ‘I have skills in other areas,’ Fleet said, his voice low and teasing.

  ‘Stop that,’ Lydia said. ‘We’re just friends.’

  ‘I’m just being frie
ndly.’

  Lydia gave him a severe look. ‘I am downgrading you from friend to source.’

  ‘Source?’

  ‘Of information,’ Lydia said. ‘So if you want to sit on my sofa and drink my beer, you’d better give me some.’ She hesitated, feeling the blush ignite her face. ‘Information. You’d better give me some information.’

  Fleet looked like he was trying not to laugh.

  ‘Have you made friends with the investigative team, yet? The MIT on the Sharp case?’

  ‘Why are you so interested in Sharp?’

  ‘A man has been murdered.’ Lydia was going for the moral high ground, but Fleet didn’t look impressed.

  ‘Plenty of those,’ Fleet gestured with his beer bottle. ‘Why are you so fixated on this one?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lydia said. ‘I think the method just feels like a big ‘fuck you’ to the whole city. It was designed to be seen, to cause fear or send a message, and I don’t like it. It’s disrespectful.’ Lydia was surprised at her own words. She sounded like Uncle Charlie.

  Fleet was no longer lounging. He sat forward. ‘I do agree, I’m just not sure I want to tank my career over it.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Lydia said, trying not to feel too disappointed.

  ‘There are very strict rules about taking actions within the Met. We have a database where every single move is documented and there are all kinds of procedures and rules in place to ensure things like chain of evidence are maintained.’

  ‘I know,’ Lydia said. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Having said that,’ Fleet continued. ‘Coppers are still coppers. We talk to each other. And it turned out that I do know someone on the MIT for Sharp. Ian Weatherby. Good guy. We trained together.’

  Lydia sat forward, mirroring Fleet’s position. ‘Please tell me you’ve recently reconnected.’

  ‘Funnily enough, we have.’ Fleet became serious. ‘He’s actually been having a rough time of it recently. Trouble at home.’

  Lydia dug her finger nails into her palm to curb her impatience.

  ‘But we got around to the case and the main line of enquiry is looking for companies who may have lost out on the stock exchange or during sales deals when he valued them.’

  ‘That’s his job? Valuing entire companies?’

  ‘Right,’ Fleet said. ‘As far as I can understand, anyway, which isn’t very far. He provides the analysis on which the final valuation is based, I think. The guy’s job description would make an excellent alternative to sleeping tablets.’

  ‘It’s deliberately obtuse,’ Lydia said with the instinctive dislike of cloak and dagger. Yes, her Family were known for it, but obfuscation was entirely appropriate when you belonged to an ancient, magical family with age-old feuds and had survived a couple of witch hunts… Less so when you were a corporate behemoth with enough financial and political power to change the wider society. Or she was just being a hypocrite.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit unlikely that a company would take out a professional hit on some worker bee in another large corporation?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Fleet said. ‘But like you said, it seemed like a message. Maybe it wasn’t so much Sharp himself as what he represents. Maybe he was just the most convenient option, the notepaper that came to hand when they went to scrawl a letter... Know what I mean?’

  Lydia nodded. It was a horrible thought. A person considered as disposable. A means to an end.

  ‘He lived alone and background checks haven’t exactly turned up a thriving social life. It seems the guy worked and slept and that was pretty much it.’

  Lydia wanted to talk to Fleet about the knight figurine. She valued his opinion and, though she felt pathetic for admitting it, she wanted the connection that would come from talking. Fleet must have seen the conflict written across her face.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘What makes you think I did something?’

  Fleet reached out a hand, cupped Lydia’s cheek. ‘We’ve been through this before. I’m on your side.’

  ‘You’re also a cop.’

  ‘You contravened any laws recently?’ He smiled fondly. ‘Big ones, I mean.’

  Lydia let herself lean into Fleet’s hand, just for a moment. ‘There was something weird at Sharp’s flat. Something out of place.’

  Fleet moved his hand and Lydia’s face felt cold. ‘You broke into his flat?’

  ‘Definitely not,’ Lydia said, robustly.

  ‘Then how?’

  She spoke over him. ‘But I saw this. I’ve been chasing it up.’ She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and thumbed the screen, bringing up the images. ‘Look. It’s expensive.’

  ‘He wasn’t short of a bob or two,’ Fleet said, studying the pictures. He looked up. ‘You saw his flat, so you know that. Which we still need to discuss. If you didn’t break and enter-’

  ‘But it didn’t fit,’ Lydia persisted. ‘With his other stuff. With his life.’

  ‘If someone killed him over this,’ Fleet handed the phone back. ‘Why didn’t they nick it?’

  Lydia slumped back. ‘I don’t know. It’s weird, though. Right?’

  ‘I suppose,’ Fleet said. ‘People are weird, though. You can never tell what people will be into in their spare time.’

  ‘True,’ Lydia thought about Mrs Lee and her clandestine manicure visits and the many other odd little habits she had observed over the last couple of years of investigating.

  ‘Speaking of which…’ He let the sentence trail away, while maintaining eye contact. His pupils were dilated and Lydia could read his meaning clearly. They were both consenting adults. They were both off the clock. She swallowed hard. ‘Don’t look at me like that.’

  The corners of his mouth lifted. ‘Why not?’

  ‘You know why. We’re just friends, now. Colleagues.’

  ‘Friendly colleagues.’

  ‘Emphasis on the colleagues,’ Lydia said.

  ‘If you insist,’ Fleet said. He saluted her with his beer bottle. ‘Shame, though.’

  Lydia pushed down the flare of attraction which was threatening to ignite into a forest fire, burning down all of her good intentions, her self-restraint. She drank her beer, instead, and turned her thoughts to the dead analyst, swinging from Blackfriars Bridge with bricks in his pockets.

  Chapter Six

  Lydia was out on the roof terrace. The low railing was digging into her stomach and she could feel her centre of gravity shift as she tipped forward. Something was pushing from behind and she was going to fall and there was nothing she could do to stop herself. She tried to move her arms, to grasp the railing, but they were glued to her sides. She was as thoroughly paralysed as if she was bound head to foot in rope. Still, she strained against the invisible bonds. She tried to turn her head to see who was pushing her, to reason with them. Was it the man? The hit man sent by Ivan. Professional gaze, dead inside. But that had been a mistake. That had been a hit meant for her cousin Madeleine. She was dreaming. Lydia suddenly knew she was dreaming. It was probably just a delayed reaction from that awful day. Her first day back in London when a man with a gun had tried to make her take a swan dive off the roof. She willed herself to wake up.

  ‘No chance,’ Maddie’s voice was in her ear. Clear as if she was really standing there and not a figment of Lydia’s subconscious. ‘You are stuck here, now.’

  ‘I don’t want to fall,’ Lydia said.

  ‘Nobody wants to fall,’ Maddie said. ‘But it’s the landing you really ought to worry about.’

  Lydia felt the brush of feathers against her cheek and then the horizon tipped and she was levered over the railing. She was falling, air rushing, stomach swooping.

  The grey concrete was getting closer and bigger, fast. Too fast. Impossibly, Maddie’s voice was still in her ear, as if she was falling with her. ‘Come on, Lydia. You know how to fly.’

  * * *

  Lydia woke up. She was sweaty and her heart was galloping and, for a moment, she lay with a hand on her fore
head and thought about crying. The feeling passed and logic swam back into the foreground. Paul Fox had phoned her and made her think about Maddie. That was why she had dreamed about her. Carefully ignoring the flare of danger she had sensed at the gym and the possible mis-firing of her Crow intuition, Lydia filed the dream under ‘weird one-off’ and got out of bed. She took a long shower, rinsing away the dregs of the dream, and dressed for work. Black vest top, black skinny jeans, hair tied back. The clothes which meant action, business, and strength.

  In the small kitchen, Lydia found a fresh mug of coffee ready-made on the side. She couldn’t see Jason but she said ‘thank you’ out loud, anyway. A waft of cool air and the scent of citrus smoke heralded his appearance and, when she turned around, he was in the doorway. ‘I left you alone last night,’ he said.

  ‘Right,’ Lydia said, saluting him with her mug. ‘Thanks?’

  ‘In case you wanted some privacy with your visitor.’

  ‘Ah. Very thoughtful,’ Lydia said. She was about to ask him, politely, whether he had had a good evening, when she noticed his expression. It was intense. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Are you with him, now? DCI Fleet.’

  ‘No,’ Lydia said. ‘We’re just friendly colleagues. It’s too complicated otherwise.’

  Jason nodded. ‘Good excuse.’

  ‘It’s not an excuse,’ Lydia said, ‘it’s good sense. You know there are things about me, about my family, he can’t know. And he’s my police source. That’s a professional relationship and I shouldn’t cloud it with the messy stuff.’

  Jason’s mouth turned up at the corners. He pushed the sleeves of his grey suit jacket a little further up his arms and affected to lean against the wall. He didn’t quite manage it – there was a narrow gap of air between his shoulder and the solid surface, but Lydia was impressed, again, by how fully alive he appeared these days.