by Adam Carter
Shenna shook her head and walked off, allowing me to talk to Watts alone.
“I don’t see how you put up with that woman,” Watts said.
“She has her moments.”
“None of them pretty.”
I didn’t like the way he spoke about Shenna, but then I didn’t like Watts much anyway. At first I’d felt sorry for him because of his gambling addiction, but the more I learned about him the more I decided I didn’t like him. I decided to ask him a very strange question, considering I was the detective.
“Who do you think stole your diamond?” I asked.
“Me? You’re asking me?” He frowned. “Who do you think stole it?”
I set myself down on a crate opposite him and got comfortable. “Harkett had the motive, but not the skill. Also, he lost his desire since he took six months to calm down. Shoreham had the opportunity but not the skill. He was a puppet, but not a very good one. Payne had neither the opportunity nor the skill; but she did have the motive. Shenna had the skill but not the motivation. She makes her own opportunities.”
“Why are you recapping for me?”
“Just laying things out as they are. Oh, and everyone but Shenna’s already confessed to having an intention to steal the diamond, but they all claim they didn’t do it.”
Watts sputtered at that news. I’d thought he might.
“You forgot me,” he said when he could find his voice.
“You?”
“You think I’m a suspect. So what do I have going for me? I don’t have the motive, skill or opportunity.”
“I’m not sure I’d go that far.”
He did not seem pleased by my answer. “Go on.”
“Motive? You have no money. If you wanted to sell the diamond, you couldn’t break your contract with the museum, so stealing it would have been your best option.”
“And I have the contacts to sell stolen goods?”
“You know where to buy and sell diamonds, yes.”
“The Teardrop is distinctive. Even though I was the owner, news of its theft would have made my buyer turn me in.”
That was an annoying truth, yes. “Opportunity, then,” I said. “You own the diamond, so there’s not much of a problem of you being left alone with it.”
“And skill? I suppose I have the knowhow to have stolen the thing as well?”
He was sweating because of his fear over being asphyxiated and I had to admit the air was beginning to grow very thin by that point. But he wasn’t just afraid of dying and I remembered something Shenna had said to me earlier.
“Tell me about your relationship with Shenna Tarin,” I said.
“Relationship with her? I didn’t have one.”
“But you wanted one.”
“She’s told you I asked her out for a drink once, yes? So what? I was drunk at the time.”
“I gather you were drunk a lot of the time.”
“I used to have a problem with alcohol. Now I don’t.”
“What attracted you to Shenna?”
“I wasn’t attracted to her. I told you, I was drunk. I would have asked out your grandmother if she was there at the time.”
“Yet you were watching her.”
He opened his mouth, closed it again.
“Shenna says you were watching her,” I repeated. “A lot. She said she couldn’t get her work done sometimes without you looking over her shoulder.”
“She’s a woman. They exaggerate.”
“You weren’t watching her, were you? You were watching what she did, how she did it. You were picking up tips and filing them away.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I held up three fingers and pushed them down one by one. “Motive, opportunity, skill. You’re the only suspect who had all three.”
“Skill?” He laughed. “Watching someone work years ago is hardly any reason to accuse me of being able to cut out a diamond from underneath. No, for something like that you’d be best looking at your girlfriend Tarin.”
“I didn’t mention it was cut out from underneath.”
“Then someone mentioned it to me,” he said angrily. “Tarin did. She’s behind all this.”
“No, Watts, I happen to think you’re behind all of this. You stole your own diamond, didn’t you? You sold it to pay off your gambling debts. I was right about you all along.”
“I haven’t sold anything. I told you already, who would buy it?”
“I don’t know that part.”
“Then you don’t know anything. Now stop asking me questions or if we get out of this I might have to go down to your station and tell them all about the cut Sally J takes from our poker games. That’s illegal, Blake. That would look very bad for you.”
Something hit me in that moment and I could not believe I had been so stupid. “That’s it,” I said. “I know where I recognised you from. Last night I said I knew your face. I know where I saw you.”
“You haven’t seen me before, don’t be daft.”
“You were at Sally J’s a week before. I was there for a game and you came to see her. You didn’t play, but you talked to her about something.”
“That’s not a crime, is it?”
“No, but you …” I closed my eyes. “The lamp. The lamp at Sally J’s. The one that sparkled like a rainbow. That was the Teardrop inside, wasn’t it?”
“Of course not.”
“But I don’t get it. You sold it to …? No, you didn’t sell it to Sally J, did you?”
“No,” Shenna said from behind Watts. I had not even seen her approach. She was eyeing him through narrowed slits and for all the world looked as though she wanted to tear off his head. “Sorry, I’ve been eavesdropping.”
Watts looked about him. The others had gathered as well, looking upon him with faces varied from confusion to pity to outright anger. “It was my diamond,” he said. “I could do with it what I wanted.”
“Your addiction,” I said. “You were feeding your addiction, Watts. You stole your own diamond so you could exchange it with Sally J to act as your buy-in fee.”
“Hold on,” Payne said. “This has all been about poker?”
“No,” Shenna said. “This has all been about Ralph Watts being a despicable human being. And now we’re all going to die for it.”
“Is this true?” Harkett asked Watts. “Did you steal it?”
“No, I … I can’t steal what’s already mine.”
“But you did take it?” Shoreham asked.
“I … Stop asking me all these questions.”
“We’re all dead anyway,” Shenna said. “For once in your life, tell the truth, Watts. At the end of your life at least pretend you can be a decent human being.”
With so many accusatory gazes upon him, Watts lowered his head. “All right, I stole it. You happy now?”
“Ecstatic,” I said. Rising from my crate, I approached the vault door and tapped out shave and a haircut. We all waited for two snips. Instead the great door groaned, the metal bolts fell into place and it began to swing slowly open.
Fresh air blasted into the vault, along with a worried-looking Detective Jane Holbrook.
“Got it,” I said, giving her a thumbs-up.
“Who was it?” she asked, looking me over with obvious concern to her eyes.
“Watts.”
“Figures.”
“It’s your arrest, Holbrook,” I said, stepping aside. “Not bad, considering my last acting performance was as a shepherd in my school nativity. The rest of you; sorry about that. But hey, from theft to arrest in under twenty-four hours? That’s not bad.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I hadn’t been certain she was going to show but, as I sat there in the pub nursing my second pint, Shenna Tarin walked through the door. She went to the bar and bought two orange juices. I didn’t have to ask her why. Addiction had ruined Watts and this was her somewhat less-than-subtle comment that she thought I drank too much.
“Thanks f
or meeting me,” I said.
“I wanted to talk about what I said back in the vault the other day.”
“About how our time together was special but we could never go back to it?”
“That was what I said, yes.” She sipped her drink. “First tell me what happened with everyone else.”
That had been an interesting experience. “Shoreham just wanted to bury his head and forget it ever happened. I get the impression he was terrified his old man would find out and put him away or something. Harkett just sort of gracefully sidled off. I hear he didn’t go back to work: told them where to stick it. And Payne … well, she was angry, full of abuse, but can’t make a complaint when she admitted to me she’d planned to steal the thing herself. When I pointed out she was having an even better revenge against her ex than she ever dreamed, we parted company on good terms.” I took a sip of my own juice.
“And Watts?”
“Called foul play on everything, but that’s Holbrook’s problem. With any luck, the judge he’ll be put up against will be Anderson and Watts will be taken out of all our hair.”
“And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“You continuing business as usual, Matthew?”
“Sure. But there’s always something new with business as usual.”
She smiled across the table at me. “So I’m learning.”
It was a promising comment.
“You know the funny thing about all this?” she asked. “You spent the whole day searching for the diamond, and do you know who had it?”
“Sally J. She may have to give it back, actually, but that’s nothing to do with me.”
“No.”
“No what?”
“No, that’s not who I meant.”
I was confused. “Who has it then?”
“You do. Watts used the diamond to buy into the game. Who won the game?”
“I did.”
“So whatever money he got for it, minus Sally J’s fee, went in your pocket. You were chasing around after that thing and it was in your pocket the whole time.”
I’d not looked at it that way before and frowned. “I hope I don’t have to give the money back then.”
“Depends whether Watts makes the connection. He’s far from stupid.”
They were certainly thoughts for another time, for I had not asked her to meet me so we could discuss the diamond. “Shen, I don’t want to talk about all the others. To be honest, I don’t care about them. The best part of all this was seeing you, and I don’t want that to end. I know you think I’m predictable and boring, but what can I do to show you I can still surprise you from time to time?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Matt. Maybe lock me in a vault, deprive me of air, then reveal it was all part of your diabolical scheme to always get your man?”
“I …”
Her face broke into a huge smile. “Not every question needs an answer, Matthew.” It faded somewhat as she continued. “I don’t regret what I told you. I don’t regret anything I said back there. But you’re sneaky, and I like that. So maybe you’re not as predictable as I thought. Maybe there’s still some of the old Detective Blake that put me away all that time ago.”
“Oh, I have years ahead of me for putting away sexy cat burglars, Shen. But I only ever target the pretty ones.”
“Well then. We’ll just have to see what happens, won’t we?”
I tried not to let my hopes rise, but her demeanour was being extremely positive. “You mean we can go back to the way things were, Shen?”
“No. I mean we can do what we discussed. We can start over. A fresh beginning where we relearn one another. Where we put behind us who we used to be and discover who we are today.” She extended her hand. “My name’s Shenna Tarin. Pleased to meet you.”
As I took her hand, I was grinning like a shark at a seal buffet. “Matthew Blake. Likewise.”
She held my hand just a little too long for simple friendship. “I think I’m going to enjoy getting to know you, Matthew Blake. I think I’m going to enjoy it just as much as last time.”
CHASING THE SHADOW MAN
CHAPTER ONE
Money had always been tight, but when he was laid off Mark Langley had known he was going to lose the house. It had taken him two weeks just to tell his wife that he had lost his job, and she had been as supportive as a paper girder during a fire. But he did not have to listen to her shouting at him to know he was letting down his children and that he needed to find another job as quickly as possible.
Six months on and he had found nothing. His money was gone and he couldn’t slam the door in the face of the debt-collectors too many more times. Langley was desperate, lost and willing to do just about anything.
That was when Rob Stringer had approached him at the pub. He had known Stringer for several years, for they both played in the same darts team. Stringer had taken him to one side and asked him whether he wanted to help in some great venture which would get them both a shedload of money. Langley had not been naïve enough to think it was legit, but at that point he did not much care. If he had to put on a balaclava and knock over a bank, he would certainly have done so.
The girl whimpered and Langley suffered a pang of guilt, although knew he could not afford to feel such things. He could not feel anything: not until they were out of here anyway. Not until they had the money. It was all Langley could focus on, for dreaming of all that wealth was the only thing which could draw his mind away from his current situation. The situation he knew he would never have agreed to, but which he knew he would never have turned down.
“Stop that,” Stringer said, coming back to join them. The three of them were holed up inside a jewellery shop, biding their time. It was late evening and they had been there for several hours now. The dark street outside was awash with red and blue lights, the crowds of people being kept back by a police cordon. Stringer had just been shouting through the door, making demands, and Langley was grateful to have been left in the back of the shop with the girl. He had never been good at public speaking and knew he would have just caved in moments.
“What’s going on out there?” Langley asked.
“A lot of blustering, but they’re not coming in here. They think we’re armed.”
“Why do they think we’re armed?”
“Because I told them we were armed. Stop asking stupid questions. How’s the girl?”
Langley tried not to glance across to her, and when he did he felt bad again. “Scared.”
“Good. If we don’t get what we want we may have to dangle her outside or something.”
Langley did not reply. They had struck the jewellers right before closing time. There were only two people in there: a sales assistant and a girl of around twelve buying some earrings for her mother’s birthday. There must have been a silent alarm or something because the police had been all over the place before they had even filled half their bags. That had been when Stringer had decided they needed a hostage and had kicked out the sales assistant so they didn’t have two people to keep an eye on.
It left them with a terrified child. Thankfully she had not screamed or wailed, but that was only because she seemed too frightened to do much more than tremble.
Langley looked at her then, for the first time really looked at her. She was short and skinny, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Her hair was formed of blonde curls, some of which were stuck to her forehead with sweat. Her eyes were downcast, and he knew she was afraid to even glance at the two of them. Langley felt sick even looking at her, for he had two daughters of his own and could only imagine what kind of monster could put them through such an ordeal.
“You all right?” he asked her. Stringer had moved back towards the front of the shop. The police had given him a radio and he was talking to them while leaning casually against the glass, knowing they wouldn’t dare shoot him for fear of Langley doing something terrible to the hostage in retaliation. Suddenly Langley realised there may well have
been armed police outside.
The girl glanced up to him and he offered a smile, although it was tight and far from reassuring.
“Pretty scary, huh?” Langley said, sitting opposite her. They were behind the counter, where Stringer had told them to be, but it did nothing to blot out the lights flashing against the wall. He noticed the girl had again not replied and said, “My name’s Mark.”
She glanced up at him again, but said nothing.
“It didn’t mean to go down this way,” Langley continued. “We were supposed to be in and out in fifteen minutes.” He paused. “Sorry.”
She looked up again, and this time her gaze lingered. “I thought I was lucky,” she said tremulously, “getting in just before closing time.”
“What’s your name?”
“Sam.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you, Sam. No one’s going to hurt you. I promise.”
“Then let me go.”
She spoke with courage, although he could see the terror in her eyes. A part of him wanted to take her by the hand and lead her outside, but he knew what would happen then. He would be arrested and his own girls would be evicted. Nothing would happen to Sam, he would keep that promise, but he would not sacrifice his own girls for her.
“Stupid cops,” Stringer said, peering over the counter and making Langley jump. “They’re not playing the game, Mark. Seem to think we’re not serious or something.”
“Rob, we can’t get out of this,” Langley said, speaking slowly and carefully, not even knowing what he was suggesting.
“Of course we can get out. Here, give me the girl.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because I want them to see we shouldn’t be messed with here.”
Langley stared in horror as Stringer pulled something from behind him. Tucked into his belt, Stringer had kept a revolver.
“You’re armed?” Langley asked, his stomach sinking. This was armed robbery now, and he had watched enough TV to know that carried a deeper sentence than anything they had done thus far.