Our Little Secrets

by Peter Ritchie

  ‘Are you going to stand there giving me your good side or are you going to sit down and buy me a drink?’ She folded the paper and pushed it into the leather bag on top of the briefcase beside her glass.

  Grainger felt that twinge again that he wasn’t quite in control. He eased his concerns by guessing that she was a high-flyer and one of those modern women who thought they were equal to men. Maybe in her world, but no fucking way in his. But that made the game more interesting. The women he’d been with in the previous weeks had simply accepted he was good-looking and groomed to perfection, and therefore not all bad. That was enough for what they wanted. If Grainger was asked or tried to remember, he wouldn’t have been able to recount anything of interest that had been said with any of those women, but this one wasn’t in that bracket, and when she opened her mouth, it was as if every word counted.

  ‘What do I call you when I’ve bought the drink?’ He stuck an arm up to the barman, who knew who he was and ignored the punters who’d been waiting patiently for service. ‘Large G&T.’ She smiled again.

  He ordered the same for himself while a mug waiting for a drink opened his gob to the barman. ‘What the fuck? I’m waitin’ here for fuckin’ ages an’ the wank gets it first!’

  The mug was about three stone overweight and trying to impress the woman from his office he’d been trying to cowp for ages. He’d had a few, delusion had set in and he thought he’d turned into a hard man without any training.

  The barman winked at Grainger before leaning over the bar and speaking quietly to the mug. Even at a distance Hadden watched the poor guy pale and try valiantly to control his shakes. His date saw it too, shared the humiliation and promised herself she’d make a reasonable excuse and get the hell away from him permanently.

  ‘Impressive.’ Hadden’s lips twitched but she really wasn’t that impressed. He could tell – there was no more than mild amusement registering after a little show that would have had most women he knew interested, if not drooling at the display of influence.

  They avoided the incident with the mug, made small talk and Grainger felt a surge of excitement he had been missing for a while. He was back on form and it was as if there was no one else in the bar. The woman was class and he’d been on the money with that assessment; also, she kept a lot back and didn’t do the usual thing of trying to tell her life story in five minutes, as if he was remotely interested. In this case though, he was interested and drawn to her. He usually went straight for the kill but knew this one required some foreplay, plus a bit of respect. When he formed the word respect in his head it startled him for a moment, because a man like Dominic Grainger didn’t really do respect where women were concerned.

  ‘How about a bite to eat somewhere a bit quieter?’ He felt good, elated even, and like an athlete right in the zone, everything he did was bang on. She smiled and seemed amused again when he tried humour and gave him a lot of eye contact, although for a moment it was as if she was examining him and looking straight into the back of his brain. He noticed her hands: almost white, with smooth, unblemished skin that he wanted to feel against his face. It was crazy, and although he was only on his third drink, he felt intoxicated.

  ‘I’m starving, but we go Dutch or no deal. Where do you want to go? Or tell you what – surprise me, Dominic. I’m just off to the girls’ room.’ She squeezed his forearm and it sent a tremor the length of his body.

  When she left him, Grainger was buzzing and did what all modern human beings do and checked his phone. He scanned down the messages that were all crap and then tossed his head back to look in the mirror as if an alarm had just gone off in his head. How the fuck did she know his name was Dominic? He’d given her his middle name, Patrick, during the small talk.

  ‘What the fuck?’ He said it in no more than a whisper as he thought about those subliminal flashes he’d experienced when they were talking. Those moments where it was almost as if she’d approached him and not the other way round. His mind began to spin: he was a criminal and always vulnerable. What passed as normal activities in life for Dominic Grainger could put him in prison for a long time if the law got past his defences. Worse still, there were people close to him who would put him in the ground if they knew what he’d been doing with the profits – and that was just his brothers. That was all before competitors, and a good example was his bastard of a father-in-law, Big Arthur. He’d been in much the same game as the Graingers, although he was almost retired from crime and his legitimate businesses kept his lifestyle and a large home in Spain going strong. Big Arthur kept the peace because of his daughter’s union with a son-in-law he despised, but in his other life, he would have torn Dominic Grainger’s throat out for going near his only girl.

  He’d let his defences down and he felt heat spread through his body, sweat popping through his skin in reaction to a mixture of stress and fear. Who the fuck was this woman? he thought, shaking his head and trying to pull himself together. Maybe she was just someone who’d fancied him and seen him round the bars on some other night when he had someone else to fill his attention. She could have just asked the guy serving. That must be it, he thought and chewed his lip, trying to regain a sense of proportion. He stuck his hand up in the air and called the barman, who came right over. Grainger was a heavy tipper and someone who mattered, and the barman would have given his eye teeth to work for him.

  ‘The female I’m with. You know her?’ He slipped a twenty over the bar and the barman saw a thin sheen of sweat glisten on his face. He decided that Grainger must be in heat.

  ‘New one on me, Mr Grainger. Been in the last couple of nights on her own and doesn’t say much. Nice – very nice – but a bit serious.’

  Grainger nodded and saw her walking slowly back towards the bar. There was just a hint of swing in her hips and, despite his anxiety, he really had a thing for her look. He remembered who he was, emptied his glass in one and signalled for refills. He took a couple of deep breaths and felt the booze steady him up. If it was some kind of fucking honey trap then he’d be ready if someone was going to take a shot. He moved his left hand round to the back of his jacket and pressed his hand against the hard length of the blade sheathed inside his belt.

  Hadden saw the tiny lines of tension round his mouth and eyes, but she’d been expecting that. Dropping his name had been no accident. She’d trained in martial arts since her teens and knew that balance was everything in a tussle. You had to keep your opponent off balance wherever you could – and Grainger was off balance by a mile. She’d make her play and then it would all be down to how he reacted, but for a man with such a reputation she saw what she so often saw in the so-called stronger sex: weakness covered up by layers of bravado and a willingness to hurt others. Time and time again she was surprised by the frailty of men, and she was equipped to exploit those failings wherever she needed to.

  12

  Janet Hadden had been born into a family who’d farmed the beautiful border land round Melrose for generations, and in many ways her childhood had been idyllic, with almost no dramas or tragedies to mar her early years. Her parents were model citizens and her mother could have been used for advertising baking products. They loved their three sons and Janet, who was the youngest by quite a few years. Once the surprise of a late pregnancy had worn off, for the parents and the shocked existing children, the new arrival was a happy addition. Her brothers were typical Borders boys who wanted to follow their father onto the farm and, like him, worshipped the game of rugby. In almost every way they were a very happy and absolutely normal family. Why Hadden had turned out the way she did was down to the gods or something in her ancestral genes.

  Life on an affluent farm should have been the ideal platform for any child, but even as an infant Hadden was different. Extremely bright to the point of being annoying, she devoured books and learning, but despite being part of a healthy, happy, noisy family household, she was a solitary child, and it was as if the word dour had been created just for her. She shunned other c
hildren in favour of her books and her thoughts, which she just wouldn’t share with her family, despite their best efforts. Her parents worried, but Janet never caused any problems apart from failing to return the love and affection they tried to offer her every day. The brothers were sanguine about their little sister’s eccentricities and like all young men tended to see what they thought was the funny side of it.

  She eventually took to sport like an addict and excelled at everything she did. However, it was on the sports field that another side of her personality showed its face. She was competitive, but even the description ‘fiercely competitive’ didn’t cover it, and it was after the second incident on the hockey pitch when an opponent was badly hurt that alarm bells began to ring. A call from the head teacher and a tense meeting made Hadden’s parents realise that their daughter was never going to be someone who loved easily or would be loved by others. They had to live with the veiled comments of friends and acquaintances, whose common agreement was that Janet Hadden was a ‘strange yin’. It certainly bothered her parents, but for the girl herself it mattered not, and she moved on, almost relentless in her studies and love of sport. She did the sensible thing and ditched the hockey stick for martial arts, where her passion for sticking it hard to opponents could be put to best use.

  As a teenager, she’d had an athlete’s figure, broad shoulders and an almost boyish face, which despite being superficially attractive rarely displayed warmth. She never spent any time on make-up and her auburn hair was always cut short and flattened into her head. Her clothes were simple but suited her shape and, on the rare occasions she managed a smile, she could swing a few heads her way. Boys meant almost nothing to her, but she learned that women had power over the hormones raging through their young veins and it was just something else she needed to learn. She made sure she learned it well, discarding those young men along the way as if they were the detritus left over from an education she didn’t necessarily want but saw as necessary for her future development.

  After gaining a first-class degree in English from Edinburgh University, Hadden announced to her parents that she wouldn’t be living at home again and had applied to join the police. Lothian and Borders accepted her and she excelled throughout her probation, leaving the competition in her wake. She wanted to get into criminal investigation as soon as she could in order to fulfil her early ambition of specialising in covert work. What she wanted she had to get, and her early days were all success until her lack of skill as a team player was identified. Since this wasn’t a new problem, she adapted, pretending that she actually liked people; hence her habit of turning up at the odd piss-up to make sure she was seen as one of the boys.

  ‘Adapt and survive’ could have been her motto, as it was her answer to everything, whether it was when boredom started to plague her or when her career stalled; in every case she would decide to steer a fresh course, which increasingly included breaking the rules to give her the thrills that were missing from her life. Martial arts had kept her satisfied for a long time, and she could inflict some pain, but that sedative for her urges eventually wore off and she ached for stimulus in her life. Other people reacted to births, deaths and marriages with emotions she could only watch and struggle to understand. Normal life or great events just left her cold, and she struggled to understand what it was that touched most of the human race. Though not all of them, because people like her were sprinkled among society like aliens in the midst of everyday life.

  13

  ‘You look tense, Dominic. Let’s forget the middle name, eh?’

  She pulled the stool away from the bar and sat down with just the hint of a smile. His face was tight and he was still struggling to make sense of it. No one took the piss out of Dominic Grainger, and he wasn’t used to someone toying with him, which was exactly what this woman was doing. She was not only calm, he could see she was enjoying every minute, which meant she was either a complete bampot or someone with a plan – and she was way ahead of him if that was the case.

  ‘What’s the fucking game here?’ He was angry but for some reason still attracted to her, and he didn’t want to make the wrong move. He couldn’t just walk away because this wasn’t two hairy detectives arriving at his door with a warrant; there was a game in play, and he needed to know what it was before he acted.

  What was clear was that someone had been studying him, and he didn’t like it. He wouldn’t have hesitated to act and hurt whoever needed to be damaged if there was a good business case, but it was way too early for that. In addition, he was a careful man and had only one conviction for assault, which was way back in his teens. More than willing to dish out violence when it was necessary, he nevertheless always ensured that it was away from the light, where there were no witnesses apart from his own people and the victim. Grainger had ordered the killing of a couple of unmourned people in the past, but they’d deserved it, so he’d never lost a minute’s sleep over the act. His brothers were harder still and had done a fair bit of time, but he was always careful about staying in the shadows and most detectives would have struggled to recognise him by sight, although his name was well known in the city and beyond.

  The barman placed the drinks in front of them, saw Grainger’s face and decided that it wasn’t time for a laugh and a joke.

  ‘My name’s Janet Hadden – DI Janet Hadden – and I’ve been interested in you for quite a while, Dominic.’ She bared her teeth in a false smile and tipped back a mouthful of her cold G&T. She was in no rush and waited for his response.

  Grainger’s face darkened and he looked round the bar to see if there were any other law in the place. He knew a few off-duty detectives trawled it on a Friday night looking for something to take their minds off the crimes they dealt with every day. There was no one who looked like the force, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  She saw what he was doing and why. ‘If this was official would I be sitting here on my own?’ she asked. ‘I’d have brought some heavies with me, lifted you and had a long chat back at the ranch about money laundering.’

  She’d thrown the dice with that comment because she had no hard evidence of his activities, nothing she could use. Even though the accountant had backed it up, that was another unauthorised visit.

  She pointed to his drink. ‘Go on, before it gets too warm.’

  He lifted the glass and looked round the bar again as his mind went into overdrive trying to make sense of what might be happening. Maybe she wasn’t a cop and this was all a set-up. There didn’t seem to be anyone who was obvious muscle in the bar, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a van outside ready to drive him to his final resting place.

  Hadden saw him struggling with the situation.

  ‘I’m on my own,’ she told him. ‘This is all off the record, and all I want is to talk to you and see if we can work out some business that benefits both of us.’ She held his forearm for a moment, as if she was reassuring a frightened child.

  His mouth was a tight, straight line and he barely held his temper in check. ‘How the fuck do I know you’re the law? This is definitely not the way it works.’

  She took out her warrant card and flipped it open on her lap to avoid any of the punters or the barman seeing it. ‘Tell you what, let’s grab that table over in the corner there and we can talk. They say the safest place to negotiate is a crowded bar with plenty noise and drink going down. We could have gone to the flat you rent down in St Vincent Place, but I’m not sure we trust each other yet. Maybe later.’

  She watched his face tighten again as he wondered how anyone but the women he picked up and used knew about the flat. For a moment, he pictured her in the flat with his hands round her throat as he squeezed the life out of her.

  She picked up her drink and headed for the free table just vacated by a couple who’d decided to go their separate ways. She knew he’d follow her and, at least for the moment, she had his full and undivided attention. Grainger scanned the bar again and although he couldn’t see an
yone backing up Hadden, his instincts were all on high alert. He knew it was just the stress of the unknown and he was looking for something or someone who probably wasn’t there. It was one of the constant problems for any criminal regardless of their position at the top of the tree or in the gutter – a dull ache in the back of your mind that it could all go south in a heartbeat; that feeling that the law were listening, on their way to get you or just building a case.

  There were four chairs round the table, but he went for the one opposite Hadden.

  ‘Okay, you seem to know why we’re both here so talk. I’m all ears.’

  He’d regained some composure. If it was just an approach for money by a greedy detective then fair enough – he might be able to do the business with her as well. If it was some kind of set-up by other criminals then he was safe enough in a boozer with a couple of hundred punters looking on. What threw him was that it was a female making this play, as he thought corruption was the domain of the male detectives; a bent sow would be something new.

  ‘It’s simple really: we’ve enough information or evidence, if you like, to draw your guts out through your nostrils.’ That wasn’t strictly true, but she knew that Grainger couldn’t know one way or the other. The tactic worked a lot of the time and was always worth a throw.

  ‘You’ve been laundering an awful lot of money, though I suppose it comes with the job. Now I know a smart lawyer can make a fight of it, but the thing is this: skimming off the top is really going to piss off those cuddly little brothers of yours.’ She waited and let her words sink in while she sipped her drink.

  Grainger sat back as if he’d been punched in the chest. He was the top man, the captain of his own ship, but his brothers Sean and Paul were street fighters and their Irish blood showed when it came to a bit of action. They just loved a tussle. Hadden wasn’t just pulling ideas out of the sky. He’d been ripping the arse out of the profits, and his brothers would kick off if they knew. He’d been sweating blood for long enough, worrying constantly about a problem that had almost run out of control. Grainger was a gambler, and trying to win it back day after day had made it almost unsustainable. On top of that, his expensive tastes, showing off to the women he met, cost him an arm and a leg, plus other vital bits of his carcass for that matter. He rented the flat in St Vincent Place that he really didn’t need and definitely couldn’t afford just to feed his ego, and the money and resultant debts had become a mind-fuck drug that had formed a big black hole, sucking him into its core.