She didn’t want to compare the two of them: there was no comparison. But the mood was broken, however sensual and emotive it had been, or might have been leading up to. And Alex didn’t want to examine that too closely either.
‘I was making coffee,’ she said, her voice cracking now. ‘I know you’ll never say no to that. Then you can tell me what you’re doing here on this awful night.’
Thoughtfully, Nick watched her go into the tiny kitchen, wondering if she had any idea how bloody seductive she looked with that ghastly white dressing-gown curving around her buttocks and revealing their delicious shape, the cord holding in her waist so tightly, as if to ward off all-comers. Including him. Especially him, he thought ruefully.
He held himself in check. He had things to say, and it had already confused the issue in his mind by finding her tearful and vulnerable for once. So much the woman he knew she was, underneath all the slickness of her job.
She brought back two mugs of coffee, and sat on the sofa with her legs tucked beneath her, bare toes sticking out beneath the voluminous dressing-gown. As innocent as a child, and as bloody seductive as a Mata Hari, Nick thought again.
The lack of make-up did nothing to detract from the classic shape of her face, and it only made those gorgeous green eyes more luminously beautiful; if anything... he was in danger of turning into a ruddy poet if he wasn’t careful, which was not the way for a hard-nosed copper to be.
‘So?’ Alex encouraged. ‘What is it that I might find so interesting to know?’
By now, she had got herself together. He had mentioned the factory friend, who was obviously Norman Price. He didn’t know she had any real connection with him, but the fact that his name had even cropped up between them was something he wouldn’t let go. She gazed at him with a vacant look, although all her senses were alert, warning her not to give anything away that she didn’t want to.
‘It’s our charmer, the factory king.’
‘So you said. What about him?’ she said.
‘He’s in hospital.’
Alex paused with her coffee mug halfway to her lips, praying that the shock of Nick’s statement wouldn’t make her spill even more on the already stained dressing-gown she hadn’t had time to sponge properly.
‘Oh? What happened? Heart attack or something?’ she said, trying not to sound too keen to know.
Nick laughed. ‘Nothing so ordinary, my clever little sleuth, and that wide-eyed innocent look won’t work with me. I know you’re interested, and damned interested, if my guess is right.’
She put her mug down on a side table. ‘All right, so tell me why he’s in hospital — if you must. Honestly, Nick, you can be so infuriating.’
‘He was mugged late on Friday night near his factory. Presumably he was working very late, and they jumped him. He was shoved into some bushes and wasn’t discovered until an old chap walking his dog found him next morning. Or rather the dog did. The old boy thought it was just a bundle of rags from the state that Price was in. Shook him up pretty badly.’
Alex was too stunned to interrupt. This was not good news at all. Apart from her instant sympathy for anyone who got mugged — and she had seen enough of those poor devils — she wondered just how much her obligation to Norman Price’s need for privacy went now.
And with the thought came another one: if Jeremy Laver was involved in Caroline’s disappearance on account of her inheritance, had he organized this mugging too? Was there more behind that bland, if haunted, exterior than she believed? She seriously thought him too wimpish to do anything violent himself — but he could always delegate...
‘I wonder—’ she said involuntarily, and Nick noticed the flickering of her eyes at once.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’
For an instant she had been in danger of blurting out the second thing on her mind: whoever the muggers were — and for whatever reason they had duffed up Norman Price — they might also have been the ones who ransacked the cottage. And Alex had been down there at the time. She might have suffered the same fate as Price... and who would have found her?
‘Well? Do we put our cards on the table now, Alex?’
Suddenly chilled and knowing that her eyes had glazed, she flinched as his voice softened. It was a well-known technique to catch the other person off guard, but she didn’t want to recognize his methods right now. It was one thing for her to question her own need for client-confidentiality; it was something else when DI Frobisher questioned her with all the subtlety of an alligator.
Despite the softening of his voice, she knew that ruthless, unwavering look he was giving her. He was gut-sure she knew something about the man who was mugged, and he wanted in on it. She thought swiftly.
‘Look, I really don’t know anything about the guy. I saw him at a club where he was making an idiot of himself over some girl. My friend mentioned his name and said a middle-aged businessman should have had more sense.’
‘You’re a lousy liar. And if the friend in question is the jerk who was with you at Jeremy Laver’s concert the other week, what would he know about businessmen and their habits?’
‘He knows about Norman Price. He delivers stuff to his factory sometimes.’
Too late, she knew she had said too much. Now he’d know there was a connection between herself and Gary and Price, however tenuous.
‘Did you know Jeremy Laver once gave Norman Price’s name as a reference?’ Nick went on lazily.
‘No. Why should I?’ Damn his ferrety nose, she thought furiously, while trying to sound completely uninterested.
‘And that Price is seriously in debt to several casino owners and other creditors?’
‘You have been a busy boy, haven’t you? Look, I really am very tired, Nick, and I honestly don’t see what all this has to do with me.’
She faked a successful yawn and looked at him pointedly.
‘I’m going to drop in at the hospital to see if our man has come round and is able to talk, and I wondered if you’d care to come along,’ he went on.
‘No, I would not!’ she said, and he pounced at once.
‘Why not? Afraid he wouldn’t be too pleased for the police to be seen in your company?’
Alex closed her eyes. He was a good guesser, she’d give him that. At that moment it was very tempting to tell him everything. Almost too tempting to resist...
But this was still her case and, as yet, it seemed that Nick didn’t have a clue about Norman Price’s missing daughter. The only thing he’d be interested in was finding the people who had mugged Price. It didn’t take a genius to know that it was probably some heavies from the casinos or Price’s other creditors. It was hardly Jeremy Laver’s style.
‘I just want to go to bed, Nick. I’m sorry Mr Price has been mugged, and I hope it’s not too serious, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with me.’
He got the message at last. She was never averse to his company when they weren’t on opposite sides, and she liked him enormously, but there was just too much at stake now for her to be comfortable with him.
She wouldn’t have dared go to visit Norman Price in hospital anyway, not with the police hovering over him to get a description of the muggers as soon as possible. But once she was alone she looked up the number of the hospital that was nearest to the factory, assuming it would be the one where he’d been taken. She dialled the number and struck lucky.
‘Are you a close relative?’ the she-dragon at the other end replied when she finally got through to the ward where Norman Price was detained.
‘No. Just a friend,’ she lied. ‘Though I’m calling on behalf of a — a relative — his daughter.’
‘Oh, then I suppose it’s all right. Mr Price is very poorly. His injuries weren’t life-threatening, but he’s badly bruised and is still sedated. If you’d like to speak to the constable on duty—’
Alex put down the phone quickly. That was the last thing she wanted. She shouldn’t have mentioned the d
aughter, either. The nurse would undoubtedly report to the constable sitting beside Norman’s bedside and since Nick was about to call at the hospital, he’d have a pretty good idea who had called in so soon after he had left Alex’s flat. And so far she didn’t think he knew about any daughter, missing or otherwise.
Right at that moment she dearly wished she had the nerve to shove her passport into her bag, drive down to Gatwick and take a plane to anywhere. Just out of here.
And now she was getting desolate again, knowing she was doing everything wrong. Giving herself away at every turn, and finding Nick Frobisher much too clever for her. Even Jeremy Laver may have seen through her by now. Gary was as shallow as they come, and only wanted her for her body... right now she could wish the entire male population at the bottom of a deep dark pit.
She fumbled in her large tote bag for some tissues to mop up her streaming eyes, and encountered the large plastic wrapper she’d found at the cottage, the one at the back of Caroline’s underwear drawer. Tired as she was, she knew she wasn’t going to sleep yet. She opened the wrapper instead.
The duty nurse at the hospital was efficient. She didn’t like the phone being slammed down on her. You got some strange customers in accident and emergency these days, and muggers frequently checked on the state of their victims. It wasn’t unknown for them to turn up at the hospital on the pretext of being concerned friends, in order to finish off the job. And she didn’t like messiness either.
Just to be on the safe side, the nurse dialled 1471 to get the number of the caller, then reported it to the duty constable. When the DI arrived, he passed on the message, and Nick stared at the number, recognizing it at once.
‘Well, well,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘So our Alex isn’t as innocent of information as she liked to pretend. And what’s all this about a daughter?’
‘Could be just the woman’s way of getting information out of the nurse, sir,’ the constable offered. ‘They never give anything away unless they think you’re a close relative.’
‘True, Constable. So you’d have expected the caller to simply say she was the daughter, wouldn’t you?’
He gave a self-satisfied smile. He was sure now that Alex was on to something. He didn’t know what, but somehow this Norman Price, perhaps Jeremy Laver, and perhaps an unknown daughter were all involved.
He consulted the nurse. ‘Has the patient talked yet?’
She looked at him with dislike. He was good-looking if you liked the husky type, but she didn’t care for his brusque, arrogant attitude in her domain. In fact, having to deal with policemen was the part of her job she liked the least. She hadn’t come into nursing to be interrogated.
‘Well?’ Nick said impatiently. ‘Come on, woman, I’ve got my job to do.’
‘And I’ve got mine, and Mr Price is still sedated. He’s rambling a little, but when he comes round properly, you can see him— Here, where do you think you’re going?’
Nick pushed open the door of the ward and strode over to Price’s bed. The guy looked pretty much of a mess. Cuts and bruises were swelling and distorting his face. Being hooked up to various tubes and monitors didn’t help his ugly features much either.
But a half-conscious guy who was rambling could often give more relevant information than one who was fully alert and watching what he was saying.
Nick tried the shock approach, knowing that the nurse would be organizing reinforcements by now to order him away, so he had to be quick. He leaned close to Price’s face.
‘Your daughter’s worried about you, Norman,’ he said quietly. He saw the man stir restlessly, but there was no verbal reaction. He tried again.
‘She sends her love—’
The response was a guttural choking sound. It could almost have been a cynical laugh, though the guy was in no fit state for laughing. He reminded Nick of a gargoyle right now, like something out of Ghostbusters, he thought uncharitably. Then came a gasping thread of sound, so low that Nick wasn’t even sure he’d heard right.
‘Has she... found... her?’
Before he could say any more, the duty nurse swished into the ward with the second wave of defence. A buxom sister pushed Nick out of the way and leaned over the patient while the orderlies stood guard. Then she turned around, backing up to the bed as if to protect Price from the enemy.
‘This man needs complete rest, Detective Inspector,’ she snapped. ‘You know the rules, and when he is capable of talking coherently, you’ll be informed.’
‘Thank you, Sister,’ Nick said, apparently contrite. ‘My apologies for intruding, of course.’
He went out of the ward and spoke rapidly to the constable, instructing him to let him know the instant Price recovered full consciousness and to note down everything he said in his ramblings, no matter how insignificant it seemed. He was also careful to let the nurse know that she was not to mention any daughter or enquirer, to her patient.
Not that he thought the constable would get anything more useful out of him than Nick had already got, but he didn’t want Price alerted that his incoherent ramblings had told Nick some-thing more than he already knew.
Once out of the hospital he sat in his car and mulled over the possibilities. His first reaction to the mugging had been that Price’s creditors had beaten him up as a warning to pay up, or else.
But now there was a different and more serious scenario. The guy had a kid who was missing — a girl. The kid could just have gone off by herself, of course. It happened, and Price wasn’t a choice piece of work to have for a father.
But supposing she’d been snatched? Maybe the kidnappers had no idea that Daddy had money troubles of his own. Maybe all they saw was a guy who owned a factory and could pay a hefty ransom to get his kid back. Unfortunately, as she hadn’t actually been reported missing, there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it. He knew that too.
***
Once Alex had opened the plastic wrapper, she spread out the various items inside. She stared for some minutes at the newsprint, all her tiredness gone, the adrenalin pumping around in her veins again with a sense of triumph.
She knew Caroline had to have kept some record of where she sent her crosswords. There was no earthly reason for her not to do so, however humble the newspaper or magazine she contributed to. But these few issues of what was essentially a newsletter weren’t bad in terms of quality of paper and print. The content was interesting and worthy, and the crossword in each issue may or may not have been Caroline’s work. Or maybe seeing this freebie was where she got the idea from.
It didn’t exactly look like something that was run on a shoe-string. But the nature of it was something Alex might have thought of long ago. Right from the start. It was so true what Nick Frobisher always said. The more obvious the way ahead, the more obscure it became. You simply overlooked it.
But now she had something to work on. Somewhere to look. Providing she could find the place where the newsletter was produced. As she searched through the pages, she became more and more incredulous. It was a conspiracy. It was as if they didn’t want to be found either. There was no editorial address or phone number on the heading. No e-mail hieroglyphics. All there was was a post office box number.
Alex had the craziest vision then of how communication might operate between herself and the editor. She would contact their box number, and give her own. Word would go back and forth robotically between the boxes... it wasn’t exactly cyberspace stuff, but it was weird, all the same. And time-wasting. Far too time-wasting, she thought more soberly.
She couldn’t waste that much time. She must give her own credentials and ask them to contact her as soon as possible. Too much cloak-and-dagger stuff would be totally undesirable. She needed to speed things things up, and to look for Caroline more urgently.
Her birthday was looming, and the longer she was missing, the more at risk her inheritance became. Alex saw no reason why she should be deprived of that as well as her liberty.
That was the important
thing. Far more important than the thought of the retainer Alex may or may not get from Norman Price, she thought now. His mugging had shaken her up as much as seeing Jeremy at the cottage. Whatever was going on, she was getting really concerned for Caroline’s safety now. And at last she had something to pursue.
But as if to thwart her. the adrenalin rush was draining away, and a sense of exhaustion was fast catching up with her again. It had been one hell of a day, and since she couldn’t get a letter away until the morning, she might just as well try and get some sleep for what was left of the night — though she was almost surprised to find it was barely midnight.
But she would feel more alert in the morning, and more than ready to get to work. As Scarlett had said, with such amazingly non-tongue-in-cheek perception... tomorrow was another day.
Chapter 9
Nick Frobisher was not a happy man. Norman Price was recovering remarkably quickly, and bleating about getting out of hospital PDQ. And from the patient’s belligerent attitude, Nick guessed that the nurses caring for him fervently agreed with the sentiment.
Despite all his questioning, Nick was getting nothing at all out of Norman Price. Either the man genuinely didn’t know who had mugged him, or he was determined not to say. No matter how hard Nick tried, he kept getting the same old story.
‘I’ve told you a hundred times. It was late at night and it was dark. God knows where the security man was. Sleeping it off somewhere, I dare say. That’s what these buggers usually do. Anyway, I was about to get into my car when somebody jumped me from behind—’
‘One man? Two?’ Frobisher persisted.
‘It could have been a dozen for all I know. When you’re being bashed over the head and seeing stars you don’t stop to count how many thugs are involved,’ Price snarled. ‘Anyway, I’ve already told you I’m not pressing charges. Waste of time. It happens all the time to management who stay on at their premises too late. Sitting targets, see?’
He paused for breath. His ribs were still sore where they’d kicked him, but he wasn’t giving this bloody copper the satisfaction of letting on that he knew very well who the assailants were. The gambling estabishments he frequented had their own ways of dealing with welshers.
Thicker Than Water (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 1) Page 15