by Karen Guyler
Charles was nodding. “That makes sense. It’ll be good for you, Eva, to take a rest. You’ve been working too hard.”
“A rest? Now? Right when we’re facing a crisis?”
“You’re not the only person who can deal with it. Your number two seems capable.” Stuart waved his hand at the corridor beyond Eva’s office.
“He is, but. . .” Dario hadn’t used his inheritance from his father’s far too premature death to set Every Drop up, its mission wasn’t in even his heart as deeply as it was in hers. “When Every Drop needs me the most?” The hurt in her voice cut through the anger in the room. “I can’t just walk away.”
“You recognised the statutes we’re invoking?”
What difference did that make? Kicking her out was kicking her out.
“It’s the ones you insisted on, Eva, to keep Every Drop beyond reproach.”
How could he use that against her? She’d had them written into the regulations to stop others from jeopardising Every Drop, she never would.
“Without you involved in the new campaign, there won’t be any need to dredge up videos from last night. Look at it as a holiday. If I were you, I’d want to be out before everyone arrives, it’ll make things more pleasant. I’ll stay here to brief them.”
It might be more pleasant for him, but she didn’t work that way. “I’ll tell them myself.”
“It’s not a choice, Eva. You are to leave now. As per the terms of the clause activated by that letter,” he nodded at the crumpled mess in her hand, “you’re trespassing. We’ll call the police in five minutes.”
The police, again, for the third time in two days, wouldn’t that be awkward?
He produced another envelope from the inside of his suit jacket. “If you don’t leave of your own volition, I have the power to supersede that letter with this one. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what’s—”
“You can’t take Every Drop away from me.”
“You know very well no one is above the Board, you set it up that way as a safeguard. This means you are to do nothing related to or for Every Drop until such time as the Board reappoints you.
“But the crisis—”
“Will be handled.”
Her father’s face smiled out at her from his photo. Tread softly, she could almost hear him saying it. Would you though, Daddy, for something that meant everything to you?
Her gaze traced every two-dimensional contour on his face as her child’s fingertips had his skin, the lines that gathered at the edges of his smiling eyes, the strength and surety of him. All gone to dust now.
“What’s it to be?” Stuart persisted.
Eva closed her eyes.
Tread softly? Like hell.
18
“You ain’t gonna get no answer, even knocking so the dead can hear ya.” The old man peered out of the front door next to the one Luke was banging on. “S’not funny though, is it, seeing as ‘ow he’s an actual goner. No family, who’s gonna do the necessary for ‘im?”
The neighbour didn’t know about the brother? Interesting.
“Do you have a key?” Luke asked. “I’m from the funeral home, I need to get something suitable to bury Mr Banks in.”
“You’re a bit pronto, ain’t ya? They only took ‘im yesterday.”
“I was in the neighbourhood, it’ll save us time later.”
The man shook his head, his jowls wobbling. “Nah, didn’t trust no one, that one. Quiet like, anti-social. Not like the old days, used to be everyone looked out for everyone ‘ere.”
He gestured at the Victorian terraced houses on both sides of the road, busy with parked cars even in the middle of the day, then dipped his head.
“Gawd rest his soul. Found him halfway out the ‘ouse I did, lying right there, nose on the path. Already too late, but I called the old bill anyway, no point tying up an ambulance. Not ‘ow you expect your day to go, is it?”
For the average person, maybe not, but for the man ordering a hit on the President of the United States, maybe certainly.
“Anyway,” the neighbour went on, “he used to ‘ave one out the back, a key. All secretive, like, but he never fort we was watching. You want to jump me fence?”
A glance at the front of Banks’ house, no flashing light on the alarm box - dummy or just not activated? Luke would soon find out.
He followed the old man into his narrow hallway, through a lounge where the sun was trying to get through the French doors. Down two steps to a clapped-out kitchen that smelt of smoked fish, where he struggled with the shoot bolt at the top of the back door. “Me daughter’s put it on again. What’s the point in that, I can’t reach it no more.”
“Would you like me to?” Luke gestured at it and waited for the man’s nod.
“You wanna cuppa, got to be a rotten job, what you do, ain’t it?”
“It’s a hell of a way to make a living. Thanks for your help.”
“Don’t mention it, mate. Go down the garden, fence is easiest there.”
Past the six-foot panels, round the skeleton of a tall fruit tree the man had probably planted in his youth, the fence thinned to greyed out spindles, weathered almost to driftwood, strung together on wire. Using the concrete support of the proper panel and a foot against the tree trunk, Luke got over it easily. Not as obvious as under a plant pot, Banks had taped his key to the side of the concrete step beneath the French doors.
The silence and stillness of an empty house greeted Luke. Through the kitchen, dining room, front room, up the stairs, Banks had been show-house neat and minimalist. Until Luke reached the master bedroom doorway. A chair, on which Banks had placed trousers and a shirt, lay on its back, the snake of a pink tie coiled beside it. The duvet looked as though someone had tried to throw it on the bed from the other end of the landing. A crack splintered one of the mirrored wardrobe doors, fragments of a smashed up mobile had been ground into the red carpet.
Banks hadn’t died a natural death, Luke would bet money on it.
Had the killer left anything behind? Fast but methodically, Luke rifled through the things Antonio Castillo—Tony Banks as he’d been known in London—had thought worth keeping. Nothing in his master bedroom, or the bare two others to offer a clue why he wanted President Jed Carson killed. Nothing to suggest he could get anywhere close to the figure Luke had given him to carry out the job. Mortgaging this house ten times over wouldn’t be enough. Even less to suggest who had killed him.
“What’s your story, Tony?” Luke asked the silence. “You couldn’t do this on your own, so who’s paying the rest of the fee?”
From Luke’s visit to Banks’ brother state-side, he knew he couldn’t stump up more than a few hundred dollars. Different names, different continents, he probably didn’t know about Banks’ demise. Luke would have to call him. The brother, digging out the number he’d been paid to call if anyone came looking for Banks, had retrieved it from inside a boot at the bottom of a pile of well-worn footwear. Was that a family thing?
Luke looked in the cupboard under the stairs, accessed from Banks’ kitchen. At the back he found a pair of wellington boots, cracked mud smeared on them. He tipped them upside down, knocked them on the floor. An old-fashioned mousetrap fell out of one, snapping its jaws together as it hit the lino.
“What’re you hiding?”
Grabbing a wooden spoon from the cutlery drawer, Luke poked around inside the boot. No other nasty surprises. He risked his hand once he’d checked with his phone torch that the only thing he could see looked innocuous enough. Fingertips tentatively probing, he retrieved the something wedged in the toe.
A crinkled covered little black book.
What would this tell him its owner now couldn’t? Banks hadn’t been sociable, only a handful of names in it. He flicked the pages backwards. Under ‘W’ Rory and a handful of American phone numbers, in Washington DC if he’d remembered the area code right. Under ‘S’ Nancy, ‘O’ Aleksandr, under ‘L’ Duncan, ‘M’ Hunter. Hunter Malone,
had to be. And then under ‘B’ more paydirt - Ted and Charles. Charles Buchanan? If Luke had learned anything, doing what he did, it was that coincidences were rare.
He pocketed it and, for the sake of the neighbour, took one of Banks’ suits as he let himself out of the front door, pulling it closed behind him. For the sake of his mission, he took the back door key. Always good to be prepared.
One more step to confirm what he suspected.
19
Eva and Charles blew into the Tate Modern along with a sudden squall of sleet. She hadn’t expected today to take her there.
A succession of similar paintings greeted them featuring a purple square in different positions which interrupted parallel lines of arrows marching from top to bottom. Every arrow that touched a square stole away a drop of purple that slid down the shaft until it dripped into a jagged pool at the bottom. She felt exactly like the squares.
Charles nodded his satisfaction at his idea. “We should be safe here for a while. I need the gents, why don’t you go order something. You have cash?” Charles fumbled a couple of notes into her hand.
“What do you want?”
“I’ll decide in a moment.”
Eva limped through the busy café on the ground floor, ignoring the self-service bar with treats to tempt. She didn’t want anything other than a rewind to when she’d sat down opposite Eric, but that wasn’t on offer beside the crème patisserie strawberry tarts and roast vegetable rye bread sandwiches. A waft of coffee wormed its way into her, the welcome leached out of it. If she stayed there, she’d be sick. She turned around too quickly, twinging her knee, limping back to the toilets where she’d left Charles.
Stuart had told her to treat this like a holiday. Fine, she would. She’d take a long bath, watch a mindless movie, fall asleep in her bed, she could even try to pretend that sounded perfect.
Charles was taking a while. She wandered to the entrance doors, looking out at the tourists rushing away from and towards the dry and warmth of the art gallery. Was that? Eva stared harder. No mistaking it, a sober navy blue wool coat amongst the brightly coloured snow and cold-repelling down and ski jackets of the tourists. Charles walking away from the Tate.
Out into the freezing world, she limped after him. He’d reached the footbridge, heading away from her.
“Charles, wait.” Eva dodged round a group of tourists arranging themselves for a photo. “Charles!”
Why was he leaving?
He walked too fast for her limp, widening the gap between them so he was partway along the Millennium Bridge before she got onto it. He flicked a glance behind him, sped up again. Had he seen one of the people he’d been so worried about last night?
She scanned the not dangerous families and the non-threatening tourists lining the edges of the bridge, taking selfies and group shots of the view up and down the Thames. Could she discount the business men? The lone woman on her phone?
There were too many solo figures between Eva and Charles. Which one had spooked him? Was it whoever had tried to poison her? She felt a rush of warmth towards him walking away, bowed bare head, shrugged into his coat, poor protection against the day, leading someone away from her. But this was her fight.
Her limping-running made her remarkable, exactly as she wanted. Look at me, not him.
Only half a dozen between her and Charles now, five as a man in a long camel coat overtook him. A woman in jeans and a too recognisable fur-trimmed parka, probably not her. Nor the one wearing such bright white trainers they begged to be looked at as welcome relief from the greyness of the sky and the water, the steel and concrete of the bridge.
There, Eva had him, the one Charles was drawing away from her. Dark trousers, forgettable black coat, so non-descript any of the field agents she’d worked with would have picked him up immediately, without the proof of him slowing his pace to keep the same distance between him and Charles.
It’s me you want, leave my husband alone.
St Pauls Cathedral loomed large in front of her, a sanctuary for many in its long history but a trap for them today. Charles was off the bridge, striding up the road away from it.
Eva dashed towards the man as they followed her husband in convoy. “Stop. . .thief, hey. . .that man, there. . .you. . .stop him.” He ignored her as much as the other pedestrians did.
She pushed herself harder to catch up. She wouldn’t let him hurt Charles. As they got off the bridge, she grabbed for his coat but he arched out of her grip, shoved her sideways and she crashed down onto another cold wet pavement.
Eva got to her feet, testing her leg, holding her knee. Nothing broken, her panicked explanation as she’d tumbled to the ground. Not even the ‘it might give way’ the Accident and Emergency nurse had warned her about. She was mostly obeying his ‘don’t stress it’ instruction. It was okay.
Charles. Out of her sight now, no warning could reach him.
It took too long for a black cab to stop, too many traffic lights on red while she got him to crawl the area in an expanding circle searching for Charles or his pursuer. No sign of him meant nothing awful, he could have found his own cab, got on the tube, taken a bus.
Fingertips pressed against the window, she scanned the streets a second time. No sign of anything terrible having happened, no blue lights, or sirens, no running away of people to suggest a stabbing. She’d cling to that for now.
Nothing more to do there, she directed the cabbie to Lily’s school.
The world was calm, quiet, everything as it should be on a weekday there. Buzzed through the main door to reception, none of Eva’s lies why she had to collect Lily right then would work.
Because none were needed.
“I’m sorry?” Eva’s mind couldn’t process what the receptionist was telling her.
The receptionist sighed, said it louder. “Lily Janssen has already been picked up.”
20
Luke knocked on the door of the morgue and went in.
A woman in her late twenties with bright auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail was leaning close over a body on her post-mortem table. The unfortunate person was missing both legs below the knees.
Luke walked around the other side of the table and waved in front of her. Last time he’d interrupted her with a tap on the shoulder, her punch had only just missed him. He was a quick learner. And he tried not to hit friends.
Georgia tapped one of her AirPods, then took it out. “Here about this one?”
“No, but I could give you a clue what killed him.”
She waved a gloved hand over the missing limbs. “You think that? Ha, you’d be totally wrong. How many times? Supposition is not our friend.”
“Looking for Tony Banks, he here?”
“Yeah, but not urgent, query heart attack.”
“Can I look at him?”
“Knock yourself out.” She waved in the general direction of the bank of doors behind which the dead waited to spill the secrets of what put them there. Replacing her AirPod, she peered into the cadaver’s mouth.
The card in the metal frame on the front of lucky door number five had Tony Banks written in Georgia’s swirling writing. She would have needed two if he’d been using his actual name when he died, she’d have embellished all those looping letters in Antonio Castillo. What had prompted his name change was one question on Luke’s growing list.
Even being the older brother didn’t explain how Tony Banks had aged so much quicker than his sibling. The younger Castillo’s head of slick black hair had faded on Tony to a thin comb-over that probably had fooled nobody. Luke thumbed the light on his phone and used a magnifier to inspect Tony Banks far closer than either of them would have been comfortable with if he were still breathing.
Nothing around, no swelling inside his mouth. Nothing in the nail bed, nor between each of his fingers. Luke moved to his feet. Nothing there either. He looked more closely at Banks’ chest, at a mole, larger than the two beside it, almost joined by the tiniest of discolorations. He zoome
d in. The killer trying to be clever, but in the struggle, the injection had gone just wide enough that it had left the tiniest trace.
Luke repeated the ritual to get Georgia’s attention. She took her AirPod out as if she were a mother dealing with a demanding toddler. “You’re interrupting my flow.”
“You should push Banks up your list. Here,” he showed her the photo he’d taken of the injection site. “He struggled, might have some post mortem bruising developing. Can you let me know what the tox screen shows?”
“Could have been an empty syringe, using an air bubble to kill him. I’m about done here so I’ll get on it next.” She looked around the room. “You seen him in here? My assistant? Sneaky bugger keeps disappearing. What’s your interest in Mr Banks, then?” She shook her head, “I know, you can’t tell me. I’ll shout you if I find anything.”
“Thanks, I owe you.”
“You do, it’s about time I cashed in these favours. You can take me to dinner somewhere very posh.”
“Just name your time and place, I’ll be there.”
“Except this week?”
Luke laughed. She knew him well. “Except this week, I’m on assignment. When it’s over, I’m all yours.”
“That’s what you always say.”
“We’ll do it, bring your girlfriend.”
“Hoping to convert us?” Georgia was nothing if not direct.
“Looking forward to more of your stories about this place, you should write a book.”
She burst out laughing. “Yours would be better.” She waved her AirPod at him. “It’s a non-date.”
Luke checked his watch on his way out of the morgue, sidestepping to give a mum space to manoeuvre her baby’s pushchair between him and the crowd of a group. Breakfast time in the brother’s state, but he probably wasn’t an early riser. Luke would let him sleep longer before delivering his news.
A quick cab ride and outside a glass office block, his next call was answered straight away, as it always was. “Josiah Johnson.”
