Bex Wynter Box Set 2
Page 35
Remy kept her eyes downcast.
“He was a good kid.”
“Was?” Bex repeated sharply. “Why are you using past tense? Do you know something about what’s just happened?”
Remy’s eyes met hers and Bex noted again their calculating depths.
“You’re telling me that something’s happened to Griffin? Has he been attacked again?”
“Sergeant, I’m asking you again, why did you use the past tense when referring to Griffin?”
“I used the past tense because I knew Griffin when he was a kid. But I haven’t seen him in nearly eight years, so I don’t know if he’s still a good kid.”
“You should have come forward with that information straight away!” Bex snapped.
Remy leaned forward and rested her forearms on Bex’s desk. Her eyes glowed so intensely they looked like twin jewels.
“Quinn said putting the Loughboroughs under surveillance wasn’t an option because they’re too savvy to let anyone get close enough. What would you say if I told you I knew a way to bug the Loughboroughs to find out what’s really going on inside the family? What if I told you I could make it happen?”
“Wait! What are you saying? That you know the Loughboroughs? That they’re going to let you waltz into their house to set up surveillance?” Bex choked out the words.
“First, will you tell me what’s happened to Griffin?”
Bex’s mind sped along in fast-forward mode attempting to process everything Remy had said and calculate her next move.
“I’m not going to put myself on the line to get close to the Loughboroughs unless they’ve hurt Griffin,” Remy insisted.
Bex made a decision. “This is confidential, on a strictly need to know basis. Griffin’s missing from witness protection. It looks like a kidnapping, but we don’t know whether he’s alive or not.”
“Then use me. I’m pretty sure I know a way to get close to the Loughborough defenses to plant a bug. It might provide a clue as to where Griffin is right now and if we’re really lucky maybe even who’s behind the prison shooting.”
“You must be aware that if you know the Loughboroughs it will put your police career in jeopardy if you have connections with known criminals! Just knowing Griffin is a conflict of interest for you in this case,” Bex cautioned her.
She watched Remy closely, noting how she schooled her expression to careful wariness.
“Ma’am, can I speak to you, woman to woman?”
Bex stiffened, not least of all because she felt she was too young to be called “ma’am”.
“What do you mean? If you’re asking me to cover for any illegal actions you may have—”
“Of course not! Let me just explain how I know Griffin. We lived close by the Loughboroughs and my mother knew his mother. Because of that, I would babysit Griffin and Drake sometimes when I was a teenager.”
“I’m sorry, Remy, but you must know that what you’ve just told me constitutes consorting with known criminals. You should have revealed your connections to the Loughboroughs at the time you applied to the London Met.”
“Wait! Just consider. It was my mother who had a relationship with Penny Loughborough, not me. My mother is dead and Penny Loughborough has disappeared and is presumed dead. So I no longer have a connection with either of them. As for Drake and Griffin, Griffin was no more than ten when I last saw him, so no one can possibly claim my connection with him was criminal. Finally, take all of this into consideration with what I’m offering the police—a chance to plant a listening device within the Loughborough family. That’s something that could make the difference between saving Griffin or letting him die.”
Bex sat still, giving herself time to absorb Remy’s explanation and think through the ramifications if she went along with her suggestions.
Bex had to face Titus with a strategy to extricate the police from this morning’s media storm. If she had to go to a press conference and admit they had lost Griffin, that storm was going to morph into a hurricane. Had Remy provided enough leeway between herself and the Loughboroughs to remain on the right side of the law? Possibly her claim, on a technicality, that she had no connection to the criminal element within the Loughboroughs would be acceptable. Her offer to plant a bug within their confines was definitely tempting.
“Do you already have a plan to get inside the Loughboroughs’ defenses?”
“It’s safest for me to keep the details to myself. As a superintendent you can approve the surveillance operation, can’t you?”
From her induction training course Bex was aware that Britain had some of the most extensive surveillance laws in the world so she didn’t foresee a problem since she wasn’t requesting to invade an innocent family’s privacy.
“Are you really prepared to do this, Remy? The Loughboroughs are a dangerous proposition. You could be making yourself a target.”
When Bex looked into Remy’s eyes they were cool and unyielding.
“I know the danger, but I’m ready and I want to do this to help Griffin. Because you’re right, no one asks to be born into that kind of family. Even though it’s been eight years since I lived in their neighborhood, I’m the best chance we have to get under their guard because they’re not likely to suspect me. My ploy is our best chance to get the goods on the Loughboroughs.”
Bex chewed on her lip. What Remy said made sense, but she was loath to put the younger woman in the way of danger even if it gave them a chance to save Griffin’s life.
Her phone buzzed on her desk, squirming like a bug in its dying throes. It was Beeston.
“I have to take this,” she said, turning away to answer the phone.
“Preston says Griffin saw his father on last night’s news and this morning’s scoop by Trending News about him being in the witness protection program. Preston’s sure the news added to Griffin’s agitation. Griffin told him several times, ‘I’m a sitting duck, I’m a sitting duck.’ He was convinced he was a real target.”
“Thanks, Beeston.”
Bex hung up the phone, her mind ticking over possibilities. Was there another explanation for Griffin’s disappearance? Had seeing the news this morning spooked him into taking action for himself? The timing of the abduction happening while Essan was out of the room was too coincidental, especially as it was based on Griffin spilling boiling water over the doctor.
What if that ploy hadn’t been accidental? What if Griffin, desperate and convinced his father would do whatever it took to kill him, had staged his own kidnapping? He could have smashed the desk, quickly jammed a chair under the bathroom door handle, shouted loudly enough to make Essan think he was being assaulted, and then bolted from the room. Slipping away from the motel room would have taken a few split seconds and would have been easy enough for Preston to miss had his attention been trained on one of the maids.
She turned her appraisal back to Remy.
“Tell me something, since you’re the only one who knows Griffin at all. If he was running scared, where do you think he’d go to feel safe?”
Remy stared past Bex’s shoulder, a look of intense concentration on her face.
“When I babysat the boys, it was easy to see that Drake was headed for trouble. He took after his dad. Griffin, on the other hand, was always dreamy. He’d sit staring out the window or play with his paints or draw pictures. The two brothers are totally opposite. Drake would bait Griffin by telling on him to their father and Jack Loughborough’s temper is legendary. Mum said he’d take it out on Penny for standing up for Griffin.
“Before she died, my mum told me that Penny made plans to leave the Loughboroughs to head to Canada. She wanted to take Griffin with her. I don’t know if she told Griffin. It would’ve been difficult for a child to keep a secret like that, especially from a father he was scared to death of. But if she did tell him, maybe he’d keep that destination in mind? Maybe going to Canada would seem like a safe possibility, far enough away that the Loughboroughs would no longer harm him.”
“Any idea what name he’d call himself if he wanted to change identity?”
Remy’s face paled and she was so still she could have been made of wax. Bex felt like she’d hit a nerve, but she didn’t know why.
“If Griffin’s decided to bolt, it’s important that the police track him down before the Loughboroughs do. Now that they know he’s alive they’ll leave no stone unturned to get to him. Can you think of anything that might be helpful?” Bex pressed.
“The only thing I can think of is that sometimes Griffin would pretend to be the long lost grandson of the painter Matisse. He used to tell me that one day his real family would claim him. Griffin was fascinated by artists and he knew all sorts of facts and information about them, but definitely Matisse was his favorite at that time.”
Bex quickly typed the name into her computer search engine. Henri Emile Benoit Matisse. It was a place to start. She would get Quinn and the team searching for bank accounts and flights to Canada under these possible aliases, while they put Remy’s plan into operation.
Chapter 30
Kilburn, Friday, April 5
The dry cleaners store sat in a suburban neighborhood that bordered on seedy, in a street featuring adult stores selling sex paraphernalia, dingy bars full of unemployed drunks and liquor stores selling cheap wine by the cask. A scrappy sign above the entrance read “Xtreme Clean” but the r hung on by a single screw, bumping against its fellow letter.
The air was clear, but the street was not; cars crammed along the curb and drunken bums lurched and lingered outside the bottle shops. Remy ignored her fellow pedestrians, focusing on her target: the dry cleaners.
She wore plain, no brand jeans, ripped a little at the knees; sturdy military style boots; and a dark, plain hoodie sans motif. As an extra precaution, under the hoodie she wore a long-haired wig of dark brown that left only a narrow rectangle of face viewable and even that she had subtly adjusted with the use of cheek pads. Over her unusual colored eyes she wore contacts that turned them a more conventional blue.
She knew the dry cleaners had cameras trained on all its customers and she wanted to take as few risks as possible about being identified later on. She had no illusions that the tapes were kept by the Loughboroughs for their own nefarious purposes.
When she opened the door a buzzer beeped, alerting staff in the back that someone had entered the store. Keeping her head lowered, she moved towards the counter, placing the hanger she carried on top. A young man shuffled forward, gum snapping between his lips.
“Cheers!” he greeted her.
He flipped the fabric. Remy had ripped the tags from the supermarket garment, but it still had its creases and new store look. A baffled frown creased his forehead.
“This the item you want cleaned?”
“Yes. Is Jerimiah in?”
His expression hardened and he shot her a wary glance, but messages were exchanged countless times a day over this counter.
“Nope. Do you still want this dry cleaned?”
“I’ll take the double-the-cost-one-hour-express option. I’ll be back at 2:00 p.m.,” she answered. “Tell Jerimiah if he wants to see Remy he’ll be here then. Alone.”
She hadn’t expected Jerimiah Hudson, Jack Loughborough’s right hand man, to be in the store. No doubt he was a busy man because of his importance in the Loughborough hierarchy. He didn’t spend his days running the laundry business that laundered reams of dirty money. But she hoped the mention of her name would pique his interest enough for him to meet her.
“You the fuzz?”
“I’m not a peach, snowball.”
She didn’t recognize the store clerk, but then she hadn’t been near the dry cleaners for more than eight years. He could’ve been brand new to the business or he could be an old hand. The fact that he asked about her police connections made her believe he’d been with the family concern for some time. It got to a point that you could smell the police. She had learned that trick and she was fighting hard to not give out any police tells.
“Just pass the message on so Jerimiah doesn’t get pissed off at you for missing this opportunity.”
She turned, keeping her head low, and exited the building.
She had an hour to kill and spent it scoping out the surrounding streets, letting past memories claim her for awhile before putting them to bed.
At precisely two minutes to two she returned. The same young man was behind the counter. He recognized her immediately, but she waited while he dealt with a customer. A stack of clean, pressed shirts stood on the counter while the two of them haggled over the cost and the fact that a stain hadn’t completely disappeared.
“It’s blood. No guarantees on blood stains.” The clerk pointed at the sign behind him. “Read the fine print.”
Grumbling the customer handed over some bills and Remy shuffled aside for him to pass through the door, the plastic wrapped garments tucked under his arm.
The clerk made eye contact with her and motioned for her to follow him through to the back of the store. Remy stayed put and shook her head.
“Tell Jerimiah I’ll see him out here.”
The young man’s face looked strained. “He said to bring you through.”
“I’ll bet he did.”
There was no knowing how many of Hudson’s goons would be waiting in the backroom, but she had no doubt the security camera had picked up her entrance and was transmitting her image for Hudson to check over. She wasn’t going to make it easy for him to recognize her by flashing her face at the camera.
“Just pass the message along. I’ll give him two minutes before I walk back out the door.”
The young clerk slipped behind the curtain and, after a couple of minutes, Jerimiah Hudson appeared. Remy felt her stomach tense and a lump rose in her throat as she recognized him. The flat top was gray rather than brown, his belly pushed a little more against his shirt buttons and she counted a few more wrinkles, but essentially he hadn’t changed much in the past eight years. Certainly the cheerless expression in his pale blue eyes hadn’t altered.
“Is it really you, Remy?”
His eyes continued to peer suspiciously at her and she understood his hesitation. Apart from the trouble she had taken to camouflage her face, the last memories he had of her were as a gawky teenager, all slender limbs and coltish clumsiness. She faced him now as a confident, mature woman, forged through her own particular fires of hell.
“Yes, it’s really me, Dad,” she answered.
Chapter 31
Kilburn, Friday, April 5
Remy could see the questions crowding Hudson’s face, but she didn’t wait for a response. Keeping her distance, she backed towards the exit.
“If you want to talk, let’s go for a walk.”
Remy opened the door, steeling herself not to glance back to see if he was following her. When she heard the prolonged beep of the door buzzer she allowed herself a satisfied smile. He caught up to her, one heavy hand landing on her shoulder.
“What’s this all about? I haven’t seen or heard from you in nigh on eight years and you suddenly turn up unannounced. I’m gobsmacked, Remy. I never thought I’d see you again.”
She walked on without answering, but was brought up short by the sight of a run down café.
A memory flashed through her of having breakfast here one Sunday morning with both her parents. She must have been around ten. Hudson had given her fifty pounds and told her to run to the newsagent and buy as many lottery ticke
ts as she could with the note. When she returned he let her keep a ticket, carefully herding the rest into his pocket.
After that she did it regularly for him. By twelve she learned it was just another way of laundering dirty money. The Loughboroughs would spend two hundred grand on lotteries every week and maybe win fifty or eighty thousand pounds clean money that the police couldn’t touch.
A quick glance around was enough to convince her the café wasn’t the type of place to invest in security cameras.
“Let’s have coffee,” she said.
With only five tables inside, the café was more geared to a grab-and-go clientele, but they took over a table near the front, both of them vying for seats with a view of the front and back exits. The sun cut warmly through the grimy, fly speckled front window.
Remy ordered an espresso in a take-out paper cup that she could dispose of later. Hudson ordered tea, which came in a thick china mug with a teabag dangling over the lip. He let it steep until it was a rich mahogany.
“Will you take off that bloody hoodie so I can get a clear look at your face?”
After a second’s hesitation, she let the material slip, making sure the dark wig fell closely around her face.
“I’ve missed you, my lovely,” he said.
“You know why I left.”
The words brought her mother’s presence to the fore. The last time she had seen Annette alive was when she watched from the landing as her father had bludgeoned her to a bloody pulp with a crowbar. The night Remy fled her home.
Her fingers flexed around the cheap plastic cup. Defiantly she held Hudson’s gaze, before he flicked it away, scanning the room in a reflexive move to weed out potential risks. In his line of work it didn’t pay to be sloppy and miss someone who had him in their crosshairs.
“I know you blamed me for your mother’s death. But you’re wrong. I didn’t kill her. She and Penny ran away together, Remy. I loved Annette and I loved you.”
His voice brimmed with remorse, making it sound so sincere and heartfelt she almost believed him. Except she knew better. Somehow Jack had stumbled over Penny’s plan to leave Jack and the role her mother had played in her escape. If she had escaped and not just “disappeared” like Annette. That much information she had gleaned from her parents’ argument that had woken her late that night. One day she would know all the details. But she doubted it would be today.