by Karen Guyler
Except it didn’t.
She pushed harder. Something was behind it. Oh, come on, she didn’t have time for this.
“Is everything okay?” Eva jumped at the unexpected.
Not a passing neighbour standing at the bottom of her short garden path, but Luke Fox, just a few steps away from her.
12
“Did you follow me?” Eva’s question was stupid, Luke Fox clearly had. “Why are you here?”
She looked up and down the street, as quiet as it usually was at this time. Would Hugo next door hear through his closed front door if she screamed?
“I just wanted to check that you’re okay.”
“You don’t know me, why the interest in my well-being?”
Luke had his mobile out. “Look, can I show you?”
He held his phone up for her to see, open on the contact for Addison Clarke, mobile, a number that Addison kept very private. After all the times she’d spoken to him, she didn’t have it.
He pressed dial.
“Addison, Luke Fox. Can you say a quick hello to Eva Janssen, convince her of my bona fides? . . .of course, here,” Luke held it out to her.
“Hello?”
“Eva, I’m sorry we couldn’t be there this evening but I hope Luke is doing a good job as our proxy.” Addison’s voice filled her ear, no sound of stress, coercion, the usual confidence, at ease with himself, the world all his. She was reading too much into this.
Sometimes a delivery driver was just a delivery driver, sometimes a good Samaritan was just that.
Luke shivered beside her.
“He’s going above and beyond the call of duty.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
“Sorry to have disturbed you.”
“Not at all, it’s always sensible to check the unexpected. Good luck with the fundraising.”
Eva handed Luke his phone. “Thanks, sorry.” I thought you might be a killer.
“Let me help.” Luke pushed on her front door so she could squeeze inside to pick up the coat stand that must have fallen over in her rush out that morning.
But then she saw the open drawers of the hallway cupboard, spare batteries, blank birthday cards, the washing machine manual, gift bags and two screwdrivers strewn over the floor. What were they doing there? She looked into the lounge. Why were the sofa cushions, covers stripped off, thrown around like six-year-old Lily was building a den? Eva’s feet crunched on something, shards of broken glass, a smashed photo frame.
Poking out from beneath the rumpled rug was her memory box. She snatched it up, holding it against her front, the wood cold on her bare skin, gripping it so it dug into her.
They’d been here. In her house. They’d come for her, the people who’d failed to kill her with the poisoned cake. Eva’s thoughts rammed into each other, crashing, colliding with the violence from which she’d apparently escaped again by pure luck.
But she didn’t have nine lives. She didn’t know how to outrun professional—what were they? A hitman? Assassin? Sitting behind a desk in the Security Services had equipped her with precisely nothing—
Luke’s questioning touch on her arm grounded her. “Wait here.” he whispered.
She snatched up the fireside poker.
“You’re going to skewer the intruder?”
“If I have to.”
“You’re injured, he could blow you over. Let me.” He took the poker and she listened to him moving around the house, the creak just down from the top stair, the floorboards that no number of handymen had been able to fix on the landing. The opening, closing of bedroom doors.
The landline handset wasn’t in its cradle, but Eva found it on the carpet. She listened for no ring tone, but her movie expectations weren’t reality.
“Is the intruder still there?” The 999 operator asked.
The stairs signalled Luke was coming back down, less stealthily than on his way up.
“The police need to know if anyone’s still here.”
He shook his head. She relayed his no.
“No one’s hurt?” The operator asked.
“The house was empty.” But what if Eva had given in to Lily’s demands that she and Anya could spend the night there, that they didn’t need to have a babysitter? Eva dropped onto the sofa base.
“We’ll get CSI out, but they won’t be there until tomorrow at the earliest. Is the house secure?”
“Yes.”
“Is there somewhere else you can stay tonight?”
“Yes, thank you.” Eva’s lie sounded definite enough. The curse of her and Charles being only children, the excuse of being too driven in their careers for time to socialise, two lonely lives entwined.
“Can I take a contact number for you?” The operator asked. Not now her mobile was in pieces. She gave Charles’ even though he still didn’t have it switched on. “Here’s your crime reference number,” Eva mimed writing at Luke and he tapped it into his phone as she repeated it.
The dressing on her forehead, brighter than her hair, was reflected to her from the black mirror of the TV screen. Still there, the TV, the Sky box, the silver and black gizmos Charles had installed that made the tech work together. All untouched, centred on their black glass shelves. The mantelpiece was curiously normal, mementos and photos in their places.
Amidst the chaos, she replaced the handset where it belonged. “The police are sending CSI over tomorrow. They actually call them that, the forensic people. I’ll just get changed, I need to get back.”
Rising slowly up the stairs the temperature dropped. The loft hatch was open, the coldness in the roof space sucking the warmth out of the upstairs. They’d even gone up there?
A jigsaw had rained its 2,000 pieces everywhere in its tumble to the landing. Eva moved the box to one side and pushed the hatch closed with the walking stick they used to pull down the loft ladder, discarded by the burglars.
The lamp on its timer switch in their bedroom lay on its side, illuminating the carpet. Her bedside table was away from the wall, one drawer lying on the floor, the other left open, a firework of notes, photos, bookmarks, a now unfolded silk pillowcase exploded over the floor. Coloured piles of clothes pooled in front of the open doors of the wardrobes, her shoes flung out of the boxes in which she kept them. The doors on Charles’ side were closed.
Eva laid her memory box on their bed. The lid was askew, off kilter, a bit like her. One of the small brass hinges pushed against her when she opened it, creaking alarmingly as though she was trying to force it open by crowbar. Inside, the jumble of things her father had brought back from his assignments, because he’d known his Evie would love them. Her fingertip inventory checked the precious mementoes off: sand from the Sahara, a piece of a dry stone wall which had taken bullets for him in Iraq, an exotic pressed flower from the Philippines, a worry doll from Guatemala. She paused on the bright pink and orange bracelet he’d brought her back from somewhere she didn’t remember made by a little girl just like you, he’d said, selling them to get pennies to go to school. Eva had tried to copy it but the knots in the turquoise ones she’d made, one for him, one for her, were clumpy and uneven. She picked both bracelets out from her treasures and slipped them onto her wrist.
None of this made sense. If the people who’d killed Eric were after her, why show her they’d been there? Because they could. A chill that had nothing to do with the air temperature shuddered through her. They were toying with her. We can get you anywhere.
Dropping the useless blue dress in a shimmer of dying gorgeousness onto the carpet, she changed into her other option, a purple halter neck which could just about pass as a ballgown. Shaking loose her shoulder-length hair, she pulled her falling down style out, no time to repair it.
The landline rang making her jump. She charged into the tiny boxroom they used as a study and grabbed up the upstairs handset from where it lay on the desk, knocked out of its cradle.
“Charles?”
“Stuart Worthington, why aren’
t you here?”
Caught by her phone, she couldn’t lie. “My house has been burgled. I’m on my way back. Is there a problem?”
“It’s your job to be here.”
“I’m fully aware.”
“I’ve got a big donor who wants to meet with you. You’ll need to charm the literal pants off him for making him wait.”
“Have a drink—”
“We’ve all had enough champagne.”
“So give him a cocktail menu, all the shots, the best whisky, dance on the bar, whatever it takes. I’ll be twenty minutes.”
“I think I prefer you in that.” Luke looked at her hands, carrying only his jacket and her clutch. “No overnight bag? I’m guessing CSI would rather you didn’t stay here. I can get you a room at the hotel.”
She didn’t doubt that he could, even if they were allegedly full. But the decidedly un-CEO-like wage she took from Every Drop wouldn’t stretch to their nightly rate. Most months the Travelodge was out of their reach. And she had to get back to redeem herself in Stuart’s eyes. No time to pack anything, she’d figure it out after the ball. She shook her head and picked up a photo frame lying face down on the tiled hallway floor.
“Fine looking family.” Luke looked over her shoulder at the smiling Lily, Charles and her.
Eva touched Lily’s face. “Thank God she wasn’t here.”
“Good thing none of you were, put the photo back where you found it for CSI.”
Eva put the photo back on the floor. “Thanks so much for your help, you’re an excellent knight in shining armour.”
“In Alexander McQueen, at least,” he smiled.
In the car on the way back to the hotel, Luke asked the question she didn’t want to answer. “Your husband didn’t attend tonight?”
Excuses poured out, well-rehearsed, the variations different each time she used them. “He’s a kind of academic, they don’t work on the same timetable as the rest of the world, he’s at a crucial stage in some research.” Probably.
“What’s his field?”
“Chemical engineering, but it’s no good asking me anything else about it because it’s beyond me.”
“You’re a very understanding wife.”
“Our careers are important to us, we support each other.”
“Find me in the bar after your meeting,” Luke held the ballroom door open for her. “You can buy me a drink.”
She tried to join in with his easy smile. Saved by a hotel member of staff, “Ms Janssen, you have a phone call.”
Eva picked up the phone to which the young woman steered her.
“This is Eva Janssen.”
“It’s me.”
“You’re okay, where are you? I’ve been calling all day.”
“I need you to come home.”
Eva closed her eyes. “I’ve seen it, dealt with it. The ball’s not over yet. I’ll be back about two.”
“Come home now.” Charles’ voice was tight. “If you come back then, I’ll be gone.”
Nothing he was saying made any sense. “What’re—”
“Come home now otherwise you won’t see me again.”
13
The barman served a scotch for Luke and a double gin and tonic with two slices of lime for Eva while Luke watched her standing at the end of the bar. Her fingers rested on the phone handset as if she expected it might jump up and hit her if she didn’t hold it down.
A man tall enough to hide the fact that he was obese, said something that flustered her. Eva limped to the exit, but he followed, Luke a few seconds behind. He heard their voices, the low tightness of an argument in a public place before he caught sight of them on the switchback of the grand staircase.
“You know me better than that.” Eva limped down the next flight of stairs, gripping the marble banister.
Luke stayed beyond their eyeline on the first floor landing.
“I’m not in the habit of having people walk away from me.”
“I’m not walking away from you, Stuart. I’m walking into an emergency. If you can’t secure their donation, Dario’s as good as me.”
“The donor wants you. I have to insist.”
Luke heard Eva’s awkward stepping down pause, the man’s shoes clipped to a stop.
“You know what Every Drop means to me so I don’t need to tell you I wouldn’t be doing this unless it was life or death.” She sounded lost, wounded.
“If you’re walking away from your responsibilities here I can’t be responsible for what happens.” The man snapped at her, ignorant or uncaring of the breaking in her voice.
“Seems we all have to do what we have to do.” Eva reached the bottom step before the man’s shoes rapped his annoyance back up the stairs, past Luke as he went after Eva.
Outside the hotel entrance, she shivered, rubbing a hand over her non-bruised arm. He imagined he could smell her perfume from where his jacket had laid on her skin. A black cab drew up and Eva got into it.
Luke showed the concierge the ID that always shattered the data protection defence and he told him where she was going. Curious.
The drinks he’d abandoned waited for him. From his trouser pocket he took a tiny vial and, subtle beyond notice, he passed it over the gin. He sipped at the scotch. Very good. Thanks, Addison, for your charge account.
He picked up both glasses and wove his way into the main function room where the diamond encrusted audience was still congratulating itself on such generosity. Passionate about her cause, Eva’s speech hit all the right notes. He’d have donated himself, if he were who he was playing.
Easy to spot, her bright red, too short, too tight, too low, just out of place, dress a beacon. Luke held the gin glass out to Annabel Grayson. “You strike me like you might be an,” anything in a glass, “gin and tonic girl, am I right?” He smiled his best at her.
She giggled. “Am I so easy to read?” Enough compensatory champagnes had passed between the incident downstairs that she didn’t appear to recognise him.
“It’s quite some night, isn’t it? Cheers.” He touched his glass to the base of hers and they drank. “That’s Jonathan Trainer?” He nodded in Trainer’s direction where he was holding court with a wife resplendent in a silvery dress that caught the light when she moved. “Is it true he’s the richest person here?”
“I wouldn’t know.” She took a step away from him.
“You’re not going to drink with me?”
“You’re too James Bond for me.”
Luke burst out laughing. “How can anyone be too James Bond? You don’t like bad boys?”
“I’m engaged.”
Not for much longer after her performance earlier, but her bare finger explained it.
“Does that mean you can’t share a drink, chat with someone new? I flew in from Monte Carlo this morning.” Annabel looked him up and down. More so when he carried on spouting his bullshit. “Reckon I’d give Trainer a run for that title.”
He smiled and wet his lips with the whisky, watching her mirror him with a gulp of the gin. So predictable, so boring. Her reaction to him was nothing to do with the drug in her drink, everything to do with pound signs.
He leant closer. “What do people do around here for fun?”
“That depends what kind of fun you have in mind.” She took a baby step sideways. It was working.
“Let’s take a seat.” Luke took her elbow and steered her to one of the empty tables at the back of the room.
When she dropped onto the chair, her gin slopped over her braceleted wrist. “Oops.” She giggled like a schoolgirl on her first glass of wine, ran her tongue over the cheap jewellery, watching his reaction. It wasn’t the hardest smile he’d ever had to hold.
“Is that from your fiancé, it looks like it could be from the Royal collection?”
“You know him?”
“We go back a long way. So what’s the deal with you and Jonathan Trainer earlier?”
Her baby doll face crumpled into a frown, the drug told him w
hat she wouldn’t have said otherwise. “I didn’t use anyone for anything, we’re all adults here.”
Whichever way she had to justify it, she must be on the way out to risk it all so publicly.
He went with his hunch. “Who told you to compromise Eva Janssen?”
“Whadyoumean?”
Luke leant forward, his forearms on his knees, making her duck to hear him, enhancing the drug’s effects, making her feel off balance, unsettled.
“The media threats, even though you wouldn’t want your fiancé to see that you’d been getting jiggy with anyone else. You have way more to lose than Trainer does, it’s just money to him. You’re risking your marriage?”
“It’s not,” she covered her bare ring finger on her left hand with her thumb. “What happened with her. . .” She half-shrugged, a brief touch on her stomach telegraphed her plan. You sad sod, Trainer. This evening would cost him a lot more than whatever donation he’d made. How would Mrs Trainer take that? Not delighted for there to suddenly be an heir to the fortune, with nothing to do with her.
“Was your first plan to set Eva Janssen up better than what happened? I bet it was, wasn’t it?” She matched his nodding. “Your partner will be pleased though, right?” He followed her gaze, a glance, involuntary under the drug’s influence. Which of the group of people standing by the stage was it?
“He will.” Annabel slurred.
Ignoring the two women in the group, Luke took out his phone. “Let’s have a photo.” Annabel preened at the camera, well-practised, but she wasn’t in any of the shots he took.
“So I’m staying here.” Trying to walk her fingertips up Luke’s thigh, Annabel had to grab his leg to stop herself falling off the chair. “You wanna join me?”
He helped her get vertical and steered her towards the lift. “Which floor?”
“Six, as in 69.” She tried to press herself against him, but he sidestepped her. The doors opened and Luke helped her in, propped her against the side. “Don’t be a spoilsport.”
Luke pressed six, “I don’t do money traps.”
The reception area was busy, late check-ins, people leaving the ball, assistants steering, cajoling. He chose one of the large leather chairs facing the entrance, and, back to the wall, checked no one was paying him any attention before he logged on to the encrypted server.
