by Cathy Cole
“We’ve wrecked this place, we’re going to be in so much trouble…” Lila gabbled. “We have to get out of here!”
Voices now, the crackle of a walkie-talkie. It was all over. Eve stayed where she was, her eyes tightly closed, crushing the laptop against her chest.
“Eve!” Lila was close to tears, pulling on Eve’s arm. “Please… We can’t be found in here.”
“Officer! Thank goodness I’ve found you, please come quickly!”
Eve recognized the voice at once. She’d have known that voice anywhere.
The police officer sounded alert. “What’s the problem, miss?”
“My car, it’s been stolen. I saw them driving away, if you’re quick you’ll catch them… I knew I shouldn’t have left the key inside…”
“Oh my gosh, perfect timing,” said Lila, peering over the window sill. “Some girl is reporting her car has been stolen. She’s getting into the car with the police officer, giving him some kind of directions…”
“It’s Becca,” Eve whispered.
“You know her?” said Lila. Her face cleared. “It’s the girl from the cottage, isn’t it? I recognize her now.”
Eve got to her feet. “She knew we’d be here. She was watching across the street just before we went up the cut-through. She’s causing a diversion so we can get out. She’s … she’s…” She’s the most incredible girl in the world. How had she never realized how amazing Becca really was?
There was the sound of slamming car doors, the squeal of tyres on gravel. The blue lights whirled and flashed across the study walls, then disappeared.
Eve slid the laptop inside her jacket, locked up the safe and closed the globe again. She straightened the shelves as best she could. She would deal with the laptop when they had left the house.
“We’re done,” she said, giving the room one last glance. “And it’s time we left.”
NINETEEN
“I’ve never been so scared in my life,” Lila giggled. Her eyes were bright from their adventure. “When that police car came…”
Eve shuddered. “Don’t talk about it, OK? We got out in one piece. Let’s just be grateful for that.”
“Your friend was amazing,” said Lila as they hurried down the little lanes that would take them to the Heartbeat Café. “She was so cool. How did she know we’d be there?”
Eve’s heart ached. She hoped she would see Becca again soon, to thank her if nothing else. “She must have overheard us talking about it at the cottage.”
“Wow,” said Lila, shaking her head in admiration. “There’s no way I’d be so calm in that situation. She’s a pretty cool girl. How do you know her anyway?”
“She’s an old family friend.” Eve felt almost disloyal to hear herself dismissing Becca that way. She was so much more than that.
Lila looked hopefully at Eve. “On that subject, are we friends again now?”
Eve had missed Lila. Could they really be friends again, after everything that had happened? Lila had helped her. She’d shown her loyalty. Passed the test. What more did Eve want?
Her father betrayed yours, she reminded herself. Nothing can change that.
Then she remembered something Lila had said to her in the hotel room. Do you know everything your dad does? Eve didn’t. That was half the trouble.
“Maybe,” she said.
Lila flung her arms round Eve. “Thank you!”
“No need to strangle me,” Eve remarked. “Come on, we’re here.”
They were at the Heartbeat back gate. Music could be heard playing inside, with the shouts and cheerful conversation of a normal Saturday night. Eve knew everyone would be there: Polly, Rhi, Ollie, Max, Josh, the whole gang. The laptop felt heavy and conspicuous, tucked inside her jacket.
“Are you coming in then?” Lila asked, one hand on the gate.
“I want to check the laptop first.” Eve looked at the rickety old fire escape that led up the side of the Heartbeat. “Shall we go up to the roof garden?”
“These steps freak me out,” Lila confessed as they inched their way up the building, past the gaps in the railings and the rustier-looking treads. “I came up here the first time I came to the Heartbeat, do you remember?”
Eve’s mind was too full of the laptop and its contents to answer. The moment they reached the roof garden with its shady arbours, benches and colourful plant pots, she pulled the laptop from her jacket and opened it up.
“That’s a lot of files,” Lila commented, peering at the desktop screen over Eve’s shoulder. “Do you know what’s in them?”
“Something to prove my father’s innocence,” Eve said.
Even to her own ears, the words sounded flat and unconvincing. She closed her eyes for a moment, too tired to fight the doubts that had been surging through her ever since she had first laid eyes on the laptop, crouched inside the globe like a flat black spider.
“I’m sorry for dragging you into this,” she said, opening her eyes again. “I … it was stupid of me, getting you involved like that. If we had been caught, I would have dragged you down in the muck with me. You don’t deserve that. This isn’t your mess.”
“Your father shouldn’t have asked you to fetch that laptop for him,” Lila said. “He asked you to break the law. He’s in the wrong here, Eve. Not you.”
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” Eve murmured, almost to herself. “I thought I was helping Daddy. But you know what’s been bothering me the whole time?”
“What?”
“If this laptop proves Daddy’s innocence, why does he want me to destroy it? Why doesn’t he want me to give it to his lawyer?”
She looked beseechingly at Lila, willing her to know the answer, but Lila shook her head. She didn’t know. Nor did Eve.
She opened a file and stared at the spreadsheets it contained. Columns of dizzying figures, money coming in and going out. A second file revealed Swiss bank statements, cash regularly passing from one account to another. Every file she opened revealed more statements, more spreadsheets, rows of figures as money slid from side to side, never settling in one place for long. Credit card statements, loan agreements, mortgages.
“If I’m reading this right,” Eve said when she could trust her voice, “Daddy was keeping track of what he’d borrowed and where he’d borrowed it from. That’s good, right? That means he was planning to pay it back when he could. It could still be a set-up like Daddy told me.” She scrolled on, clicking feverishly. “I just need to find the file that proves that he was going to pay his investors back…”
“Eve,” said Lila.
“There will be a file,” Eve repeated. “It will prove Daddy’s innocent, it will…”
“It won’t,” Lila said gently. “Sometimes things are exactly the way they look.”
Eve slammed the laptop shut and shoved it away from her. She covered her face with her hands. In a strange way, it was a relief to know that everything the newspapers had been saying was true. It had been so hard, clinging on to the hope that it was all a mistake. The pale-faced man in the public gallery at her father’s bail hearing swam back into her mind. He’s done it before! Twenty-seven thousand pounds of my money…
She felt an arm come around her shoulders.
“Eve, I’m really sorry,” said Lila. “But we have to give this laptop to the police before this gets any worse.”
Eve nodded. She felt dry-eyed, as if she had no more tears left inside her. “Of course,” she said in a steady voice. “Of course we do. I’ll do it now. Tonight.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Eve picked up the laptop and got to her feet. “No, Lila. I have to do this by myself.”
“Are you sure?”
Eve wondered if Lila trusted her. Maybe she thought Eve was going to destroy the laptop without anyone seeing. “He’s my father,” she said.
“But—”
Eve already had her foot on the rusting iron fire escape. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine,” she said. “Thanks. For everything.”
Eve’s mind was in turmoil, but she kept her eyes on the fire escape steps and didn’t allow her thoughts to distract her. The moment her feet were safely on the ground, she couldn’t hold back her worries any longer.
Could she really do this? Turn in the laptop and get her own father a jail sentence? What kind of daughter would do that? Wouldn’t it be better to head for the beach instead of the police station, smash the hard drive with a rock and hurl the laptop’s remains far out to sea?
It was right to the police station, and left to the beach. Eve hesitated, clinging to the laptop, trying to find the answer to her dilemma.
She turned left.
TWENTY
It was close to nine o’clock as Eve mounted the steps to the police station. People were still out and about, talking and laughing in Saturday night groups. With the smell of the sea and the warm night air, the distant clinking of sails in the harbour and the festive lights swinging from the buildings in the High Street, Eve could almost believe that she was on holiday somewhere in Europe without a care in the world. But those days were long gone. Her legs were tired, her clothes felt dirty, her heart was in her throat. She had to tell her father what she’d done. She had no idea how she was going to get in to see him at this time of night. She was just grateful that he hadn’t been moved to the proper prison yet. But Lila’s father was guaranteed to have instructed the desk officers not to let her anywhere near her father’s cell, ever again. How would she get past the desk sergeant this time?
Only one way to find out, she told herself.
It was busy inside the station. Two lads with bleeding knuckles were sitting slumped on a bench; a confused-looking old man was wandering around looking at noticeboards; groups of police officers were moving in and out of the main entrance with crackling walkie-talkies. Saturday night was a busy time for a police station, Eve realized. Maybe this would be easier than she had feared.
She stood in line at the desk, looking at the ground, wondering over and over how she was going to do this.
“My John’s in one of your cells, I need to see him,” said a blonde lady in a wedding dress at the front of the queue.
“I’m sorry, madam, but there’s no visitors at this time of night.”
The blonde lady’s voice rose. “We only got married today. This is supposed to be my wedding night. It’s not my fault John got in a fight, is it? I only want to see him for a moment.”
The desk sergeant patiently repeated the rule. “No visitors, madam. I’m sorry. Next!”
Eve felt sorry for the blond lady. It wasn’t uncommon in Heartside Bay on Saturday nights to see women in wedding dresses, but she wondered how many of them ended up in the police station. It was a dreadful way to spend your wedding night.
She‘d rarely thought about the feelings of other people before her father’s arrest. Now even the smallest things caught her attention and made her feel sad. If this was growing up, she wasn’t sure she liked it.
There were two people in front of her now, the first a shambling man who sounded like he was drunk. Eve could feel her courage failing with every moment she spent in the queue. This was hopeless. If they didn’t let a woman see her husband on their wedding night, why would they let a daughter see her fraudster of a father?
There was a flurry by the main doors.
“Wasting police time is a serious offence, miss. How do you expect me to believe you if you can’t even give me the number plate?”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
Eve spun round in shock. A police officer was marching Becca through the reception area, straight towards the main desk. As if drawn by the force of Eve’s gaze, Becca turned and looked at her. She grinned in surprise. Eve felt her heart flip-flop in her chest. She shuffled sideways, trying to get close enough for an unobserved conversation.
“What are you doing here, Becca?” she asked in a low voice when she judged she was close enough.
“Causing trouble,” Becca whispered back. “I’ve led this officer a right dance halfway down the coast. I think he’s annoyed with me now. What about you?”
Eve had so much she wanted to say. “Thanks for earlier,” she said. “I didn’t want to get you into trouble.”
“Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself. Are you trying to see your dad?”
Eve nodded. “But I think it’s going to be impossible,” she said unhappily.
“Never say never,” said Becca, and winked. She raised her voice. “I want a lawyer,” she said loudly.
Everyone in the reception area looked at her.
“I have a right to a lawyer,” Becca said even more loudly. “Someone get me a lawyer.”
“Let’s just get the paperwork done first, shall we miss?” said the police officer at the desk. “If you just come with me…”
To everyone’s surprise – not least, Eve’s – Becca lay down on the floor with her arms folded. “I’m not moving until you get me a lawyer,” she shouted.
The drunk in front of Eve suddenly decided to lie down too. “Wanna lawyer same as her,” he mumbled from the floor.
Officers appeared from the offices around the reception area to restore order, trying to pull Becca and the drunk back on their feet. The lads with the bleeding knuckles perked up at the wrestling match suddenly taking place in front of their bench and started cheering. No one was standing by the corridor that Eve knew led to the cells.
She ran as fast as she dared, past doors whose inhabitants were hammering at their doors and yelling, “We want a lawyer too! Where’s our lawyer!” “I want my wife!” yelled another. Eve guessed it was the wedding-dress lady’s husband. She sped on to the end of the corridor, grabbed the flap on the front of her father’s cell door and flipped it open.
Her father looked more bearded and more crumpled than before. “Eve?” he said in bewilderment. The noise back in reception was growing louder. “What’s going on?”
“I found the laptop.”
He was on his feet in an instant, standing as close to the open flap in his door as he could. “Good girl! And you destroyed it like I asked?”
Eve shook her head.
He looked aghast. “You … you didn’t destroy it? Then … where is it?”
“I put it somewhere safe.” This was the hardest part of all. Eve made herself hold his gaze. “I know what’s on it. I looked at the files. You have to hand it in, Daddy.”
He looked almost pathetic. “I can’t do that,” he said, almost crying. “You have to destroy it.”
Eve had stood on the pier for more than an hour that evening, thinking about what she was going to do. She knew this was the only way. “You should never have asked me to fetch it for you,” she said, keeping her voice steely. “And you certainly shouldn’t have asked me to get rid of it. Do you know what would have happened if I’d been caught?”
His eyes were full of tears. “I … Yes. You’re right, Evie. I should never have—”
“You risked my future,” Eve interrupted. The sudden surge of anger caught her by surprise. “Not yours. Mine. How could you do that to me? I thought you loved me. You’re so selfish. I don’t know how I never realized that before.”
Her father was shrinking in front of her eyes. “Evie, I’m sorry. I do love you. You’re right, of course you are. Not to mention braver than me.”
“That wouldn’t be difficult,” Eve said coolly. “You’ve ruined your business and your family. You nearly ruined your own daughter’s future. You know what? Sorry isn’t enough.”
He burst into tears and sat down again on the bench inside his cell with his head in his hands. Eve watched him as if she were standing somewhere far away, looking at some
one she’d never seen before.
“You must do what you think best,” he sobbed in a broken voice. “Give the laptop to Munroe, my lawyer. I’ll do a deal. If we play this right, I could be out in a year. I’ve spoken to your mother, she’ll be back soon. I’ve set you all up in a nice flat in town. You’ll have your life back someday soon, Evie. I promise you. I promise you that.”
“I don’t like your promises,” said Eve. “They don’t mean a thing.”
She headed back towards the reception area. She couldn’t find it in her heart to forgive him for what he’d done to her. To all of them. Maybe she never would.
TWENTY-ONE
She felt a hand grip her arm as she emerged from the corridor into the reception.
“What do you think you’re doing, miss?” said the police officer in horror. “No one’s allowed back there!”
“I was seeing my father,” Eve said calmly. “I’ve finished now. I’d like to leave.”
She let the officer hustle her towards the station doors, digging her heels in only long enough to look for Becca in the milling crowd around the reception desk. There was no sign of her, or the drunk man. Maybe they’d both been put into cells like her father’s. The thought of Becca in one of those poky brick rooms with their tiny barred windows and hard benches upset Eve far more than the thought of her father doing the same. She’d come a long way in a week.
The numbness that had settled in her heart showed no signs of easing as she walked down the police station steps and stood for a moment in the street, breathing in the salty air. She wanted to go back, check on Becca, but her police escort was having none of it.
“Don’t let me see you in here again,” he threatened, letting go of her arm. “I’ll be watching, miss. Make no mistake about that.”
“Yes officer,” said Eve. “I’m sorry for causing you so much trouble. Goodnight.”
She zipped up her jacket and headed for the beach without looking back.