by Susan Lewis
‘I want you to leave here and start a new life,’ he went on. ‘I want you to do it now, today.’
‘You don’t mean that,’ she said.
‘I’ve never been more serious about anything. It’s over between us – it has to be. I have nothing left to give you that you need. I’m no good for you now. It’s time for you to move on.’
Despite the horror of his words, their unthinkable meaning, her mind was suddenly blocked by Ava and the auction that was happening tomorrow. For one wild moment she almost threw it at him, wanting him to know that she already had a life and didn’t need to be told by him to get one! But love and fear quickly overwhelmed the urge. She didn’t want to hurt him. She didn’t want to lose him either.
‘You think I’d do that?’ she said. ‘Just walk out on you now?’
‘You have to,’ he responded. ‘I want you to.’
Her face showed the strain of the hurt. ‘You want me to?’ she repeated. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means what I said, that I want you to walk out of here now and start a life of your own. One that doesn’t include me.’
‘Why would I do that?’ she cried. ‘Why would I even want to? You’re my husband, I love you. No matter what you did –’
His eyes turned stony.
‘That doesn’t mean I think you did it,’ she cried hastily. ‘I’m just saying, even if you had, it wouldn’t change the way I feel about you.’
He was about to speak again when a small, scruffy woman in a skimpy Lycra top and torn jeans sauntered past them, saying to Beth, ‘Why don’t you get down on your knees and suck him off, bitch – give us something worth watching.’
Heat rose to Beth’s cheeks.
‘Unzip it, and I’ll give him one,’ another woman offered, and the room dissolved into laughter.
Beth’s face was scarlet as she waited for Colin to open his eyes.
‘I don’t want you to come here again,’ he said roughly.
‘Because you think I can’t handle that? Colin –’
‘It would just be better if you stay away now, for your own good. I can’t bear to see you having to endure this place. You mustn’t ever come here again.’
‘Then why did you tell me to come today?’
‘Because you deserved to hear what happened from me.’
‘I deserved to hear from you the day it happened,’ she spat. ‘And I deserve a full picture.’
They glared at each other, anger and pain loading the air, years of knowing each other linking them like chains. For a long time neither of them spoke, then suddenly a guard announced that visiting time was over.
Beth watched, dumbfounded, as Colin, her husband, the stranger, got to his feet. It didn’t seem possible that someone could make him walk away from her, or that he had no choice but to go. Their lives were being torn apart and neither of them had the power to stop it. She wondered if she’d be allowed to embrace him, but when she tried to get up her legs were too weak to support her.
He was looking down at her. The guard was moving up behind him, watching.
‘Colin, we can’t leave it like this …’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, touching her face. ‘I never wanted to hurt you, but it’s all I ever seem to do. Get a divorce –’
‘No! Colin, wait …’
‘Get it for your own sake.’
‘I don’t want a divorce.’
He was already turning away. At last she was on her feet. ‘Colin!’ she cried, lunging after him.
‘Time to go,’ the guard said, stepping between them.
‘But I have to –’
‘Next visit,’ he barked.
She tried to move past him. Colin was still walking away. She called him again, but he didn’t turn round. Several voices echoed hers, mimicking her distress. An ugly, scarred man blew her a kiss and rubbed his groin. Another wolf-whistled, then gave her the fist. Others were telling her graphically what they wanted to do to her. The women were laughing. The guards were shouting.
Ten minutes later she was lying on the floor of Bruce’s car as he drove them away from the prison. This time the humiliation and anger were escaping her as she gazed at the threads of black carpet and thought of the fine stubble on Colin’s neck. His parting words were still in her ears, but she wasn’t fighting them now. She was simply numbed by them, exhausted from the emotional battle, lying still and limp, listening to the burr of the engine, the occasional swish of a passing car.
Bruce was speaking to her, telling her she could get up, but she couldn’t think about what he was saying, couldn’t make herself move. All she knew was the helplessness and confusion of having no control over events now. The power of whether or not she saw him again lay wholly with him, and she was terrified that he’d meant what he said. He didn’t want her there again. She didn’t understand it. Why was he withdrawing into that terrible place and shutting her out? Surely to God he wanted to get out, so why wasn’t he fighting? Because of Marcus Gatling? Would he actually give up on their marriage, and his freedom, because of what that one man might do? But what could Gatling do? What the hell was going on between them that Colin would actually give up his life for, rather than tell? But it wouldn’t just be Gatling, would it? It would be Gatling’s wife, Leonora. Leonora, the statuesque, cut-glass beauty whose charm and ambitions curled like tendrils round her goals, choking the very life from whomever she used before slithering lethally on.
Elliot Russell was sitting with his feet up on his desk, hands locked behind his head, laughing as three members of his élite team spun a raucous tale from a story they’d been investigating on a rail scam that was going to make prior outrage over derailments and timetables look like a little boy’s five-minute paddy. The other four members of the team, all journalists too, were out either following up leads Elliot had given them, or chasing contacts and stories of their own.
The spacious, river-view offices on Westferry Road, just a couple of streets from the Canary Wharf tower in Docklands, were on the third floor of a new, sand-brick block, facing west into the dazzling afternoon sun. Behind Elliot, Murray Cox, his personal assistant and general manager, was lowering the blinds, while talking rapidly into the phone. Murray was almost never off the phone, generally fielding calls for Elliot, taking in information, or setting up various meetings and assignations his boss needed to attend. He was the lynchpin of Elliot’s organization, so was treated with utmost respect by everyone from editors, to high-ranking police officers, to government officials, to gangland hoi polloi who occasionally forgot themselves and threatened to incapacitate his kneecaps or blow out his brains if he didn’t put them on to Elliot now! Murray was rarely impressed. Working for Elliot gave him a standing and a security he’d never in a million years have achieved running the desk at a daily tabloid, from whence Elliot had plucked him, so there weren’t many situations that could unnerve Murray Cox now.
Ending one call and immediately picking up another, he turned to his computer screen and accessed their twenty-four-hour Internet connection. Behind him Elliot was listening attentively now, as Gail, Jed and Jerome got down to the more serious elements of their findings. Murray already had three editors on ice for the story, but Elliot would conduct the negotiations that decided who got it in much the same way as he conducted everything around here – with a will of iron, and a manner of somewhat deceptive laissez-faire.
Right now Elliot’s sloping black eyebrows were connected in a frown as he listened to Gail’s suggestions on how they should angle the story. Beneath them his sharp grey eyes were narrowed in concentration, while his thin mouth pursed at the corners. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a shock of rough dark hair and a good physique, but his oddly chiselled cheekbones and crooked nose left him, in the classic sense at least, far short of handsome. However, his smile was a winner, as was his creditable lack of arrogance considering the kind of success he was enjoying in such a notoriously cutthroat business. That wasn’t to say he couldn’t b
e ruthless, difficult, demanding, and even downright aggressive when the mood took him, and everyone who worked for him knew, one mistake was OK, two you were out.
‘So how’re you going to back this up?’ he said to Jerome, who’d just presented Railtrack’s latest list of woes that were still, they thought, under wraps.
‘We’re working on the source to come up with more names,’ Jerome answered, his taut, bearded face showing signs of exhaustion. ‘We were out there at Didcot, Bracknell and Dorking last night. It seems to be happening the way he’s telling it. Or not happening, as the case may be, so we’ve got our own eyewitness accounts.’
Elliot was pensive. ‘I’ll put you in touch with someone at Thameslink,’ he said. ‘He might be able to fill in some blanks. When do we need to move on this?’
‘Soon,’ Gail answered, using her copious red hair to fan the back of her neck. ‘Two days tops.’
Elliot was about to respond when Jed, who’d been rocking back and forth on two legs of his chair, suddenly vanished over the back of it.
Murray’s voice cut into the laughter. ‘Elliot. Priority One, line three,’ he shouted.
Elliot’s eyebrows went up, as swinging his feet to the floor he reached for the phone. ‘Elliot Russell,’ he said into the receiver.
The others were silent. Priority Ones didn’t happen very often. Elliot’s eyes moved across their faces as he listened to the voice at the other end. Only he and Murray would know the identity of the person he was speaking to, though neither would ever speak his name.
The call was over in less than a minute. Elliot had scribbled two numbers on to the notepad in front of him. Ripping the page free he said to Murray, ‘When was Sam last in here?’
‘First thing this morning,’ Murray answered.
Elliot looked round the large, airy room with all its hi-tech wizardry and low-tech necessities. With so many gizmos and gadgets out there these days, the electronic bugging of an office or a phone line was about as difficult to set up as the nightly news on a VCR. As a result he’d taken to having this place, along with his home and car, swept on a regular basis, for the rivalry, not to mention money, involved in news exclusives had turned more than one of his freelance colleagues into a budding James Bond.
‘OK,’ he said, satisfied that no one but those present could hear. ‘We’ve got an in with Sophie Long’s family, and a lead to someone by the name of Heather Dance.’
‘And Heather Dance is …?’ Gail prompted.
‘Another mistress.’
They all groaned. There’d been enough mistresses in the Ashby affair to swell ten men’s egos, and none of them had had anything interesting to say yet.
Elliot waited for them to remember that this had come from a Priority One source. That alone made it different. He then toyed with the idea of telling them why it was different, but took a quick decision not to. He’d keep it to himself while he puzzled out the reason he’d been given this information now. In fact, had it come from one of a dozen other sources he might not be so suspicious, but coming from this one it was hard to be anything but.
Telling them to go on with the rail story for now, he turned to Murray and spoke with him quietly, finding out how much the source had told him. It turned out Murray knew as much as he did, which was good. ‘OK, get me a printout of the profile on Gatling, Mr and Mrs,’ he said.
‘Done,’ Murray responded, already tapping in the relevant keys.
‘Better still, transfer it to my palm-pilot.’
‘Rerouting,’ Murray confirmed, hitting more keys.
‘It’s going to take a few days to get this in the works,’ Elliot continued. ‘See if you can get anywhere with Ashby’s lawyers. Keep trying for the man himself, or his wife. In this instance, we’d probably rather have his wife.’
Murray was typing up his orders.
After a moment Elliot said, ‘Did you get any comeback from Laurie Forbes on the prison visit?’
‘Negative,’ Murray responded.
Elliot was pensive. ‘Who covered it for us?’ he asked.
‘Liam. It’s in today’s Guardian. We’ve also had pick-ups from France, Germany and Australia.’
Elliot nodded, then turned back to his desk. ‘Did Laurie Forbes get a by-line in her paper for the story?’ he asked.
Murray’s face was impassive. ‘Yes,’ he answered.
‘So she was there. OK, put a call in to her tonight,’ he continued. ‘I’m going to the New Forest first thing, give her my mobile number and tell her to call.’
Still Murray’s expression showed no sign of receiving anything other than run-of-the-mill instructions.
‘What do you want to do about Sophie Long’s family?’
‘Leave it with me.’ Elliot got to his feet, threw his jacket over one shoulder and pocketed his mobile and palm-pilot. ‘I’m going to see a man about a dog,’ he said. ‘You know where to get hold of me.’
Only after the door had closed behind him did Murray allow an eyebrow to drift. Never, after all that had happened, had he imagined his boss having anything to do with the Forbes family again, but Elliot was nothing if not an enigma.
And that wasn’t all that had Murray’s curiosity piqued on this benignly sunny afternoon in June, while birds were singing in the trees outside and boats were gliding up and down the river. It was the information they’d just received from Priority One, not so much because of what it was, but because it had come at all. Obviously it was going to serve someone’s purpose somewhere, and the mystery of who, and how, had to be perplexing Elliot every bit as much as it was Murray. However, that was nothing to what it was going to do to poor Beth Ashby, if what they’d just heard was true, and since Murray had no reason to believe it wasn’t, he could only feel for the woman when she opened the morning paper a couple of days from now.
Chapter 8
‘OK, ARE YOU ready?’ Robin Lindsay cried, making ready to open the champagne.
‘Ready,’ Ava laughed, holding the pen over the last page of her new contract and looking into the camera Robin’s assistant, Caroline, was holding.
‘Stacey, move in a bit,’ Caroline instructed.
Stacey Greene, Ava’s new editor, stepped in closer to Ava, putting a proprietorial hand on her shoulder. Her shiny grey bob framed a jovial face with small brown eyes, apple cheeks and a permanently smiling mouth. Beside Ava’s glamorous figure-skimming white dress, with its wide shoulder straps, low, but discreetly cut bodice and scalloped knee-length hemline, her own ankle-length wrap-over appeared quite lamentably drab. But she certainly wasn’t there to upstage her new author, nor could she even if she tried. No one had told her quite how lovely Beth Ashby – or Ava Montgomery – was in the flesh, certainly none of the newspaper shots had suggested it, and it was unusual for Robin Lindsay, who had an eye for the ladies, to hold back on such detail.
‘OK, Robin, make with the cork,’ Caroline instructed, after clicking a few shots of the preparation. ‘Stay with the contract and pen, Ava.’
The cork popped, everyone cheered, and Robin quickly filled the four flutes on his desk. After handing one each to Ava and Stacey, he picked up his own and went to stand between them. ‘So here we go! The big signing!’ he declared. ‘Put the ink on the page, Ava.’
Ava touched the gold pen to the signature line. It was a Mont Blanc that Georgie had given her as a surprise that morning. Amazing, she was thinking to herself, as Caroline started clicking away. She was actually signing a contract with a major publishing house that wasn’t only going to provide publication for her novel, but was going to turn her financial difficulties into financial dreamland.
‘Great!’ Caroline declared. ‘The moment’s suitably captured on film.’
‘Then let’s drink a toast to our new rising star,’ Stacey suggested, beaming a smile up into Ava’s face.
‘To Ava and Carlotta’s Symphony,’ Robin said, holding his glass high.
‘To Ava and Carlotta’s Symphony,’ Stacey echoed.
Ava’s smile was quietly dazzling. Her dark eyes were suffused with laughter, and her lightly tanned olive skin glowed. How wonderful and easy it was to be this other person when there was no one around who knew her. ‘Thank you,’ she responded, in Ava’s lush, guttural tones. ‘All of you, thank you.’
‘The rest of the team is eager to meet you,’ Stacey pronounced happily. ‘Most of them have already read the book; the others will have finished by the time you come into the office. It’s causing quite a stir. As I told you when we spoke on the phone, I was especially impressed with the way you’ve turned life itself into the villain of the piece, rather than death. Quite extraordinary. Mesmerizing. Well done, you,’ and she clinked Ava’s glass again.
‘Thank you.’ Ava smiled graciously. Then after sipping her champagne she said, ‘The rest of the team, who are they exactly?’
‘Sales, publicity, marketing. The top –’
‘Publicity?’ Ava looked at Robin. ‘Didn’t you tell –’
‘It’s OK,’ Robin assured her. ‘Stacey’s not talking about personal publicity.’
‘Oh, no, no, no,’ Stacey laughed. ‘We quite understand your reasons for shunning the limelight, though it has to be said, the sales –’
‘I know what it would do to sales if people knew who I really was,’ Ava cut in, ‘but if the book’s as good as you say …’
‘Oh, it is! It is!’ Stacey cried. ‘I was simply saying –’
‘Does anyone at your office know who I am yet?’ Ava interrupted again.
‘Only those who have to,’ Stacey promised, ‘and I personally can vouch for their discretion. Of course, they’ll be disappointed that you don’t want to promote the book yourself …’
‘We agreed, no publicity,’ Ava stated, her smile turning chill. ‘I don’t want people, reporters, taking this book apart in an effort to find allusions or some kind of synchronicity with my husband’s crime. It’s not about him. It’s not about me either, but they’ll manage to turn it into something that is, and their analysis isn’t likely to be favourable – it could even be damaging. So no, I won’t promote it myself just to be gawped at, or pitied or vilified because I’m the wife of a celebrated killer, and that’s what will happen, whether any of us wants it or not.’