Strong Women

by Roberta Kray

  He looked back towards her. ‘Ask away.’

  ‘Why do you choose to work for a man like Delaney?’

  ‘I don’t work for him, I work for myself.’

  Jo frowned. ‘Don’t dodge the issue. You know what I mean. You do stuff for him – he pays you.’

  ‘And what’s wrong with that?’

  ‘He’s a thug, a villain.’

  He shrugged. ‘So what? That’s not his daughter’s fault. Would you prefer it if he employed some low-life, some chancer without my strict moral standards to fetch her back every time she did a flit?’

  ‘No,’ she said indignantly, ‘of course not. But is that all you do for him?’

  ‘Apart from the drug-running,’ he said.

  Jo raised her eyes to the heavens. ‘When people are constantly flippant, it’s usually a sign that they’re trying to cover up some kind of insecurity.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Gabe said. ‘And in my case it’s a chronic case of shyness.’

  She smiled but quickly averted her eyes. She looked around the courtyard. ‘I used to come here with Susan, back in the good old days. We were here last Thursday.’

  ‘Plotting to overthrow a vicious blackmailer.’

  ‘Something like that. She showed me a photo of you.’

  He put his head to one side and lifted his brows. ‘And what did you think?’

  ‘That you were a bastard, a complete and utter loser.’

  Gabe grinned. ‘Wow! You gleaned all that from a photograph?’

  ‘Not all of it. Some of it came from a rather colourful character reference.’

  ‘Yeah, Susan always was my number one fan.’

  Jo leaned forward and placed her elbows squarely on the table. Now was probably a good a time as any to ask. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘So is that why you married her?’

  Chapter Fifty

  If Gabe was taken aback by the question, he didn’t show it. He took another leisurely drink, put the bottle down and nodded. ‘Ah, I take it the snake man has been opening his big mouth again.’

  ‘Perhaps the snake man didn’t know it was supposed to be a secret.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ he said.

  ‘So you just thought you wouldn’t mention it because …?’

  Gabe shrugged those broad shoulders of his. ‘Because it isn’t relevant.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ Jo protested. Although there was no one sitting close by, she instinctively leaned closer and lowered her voice. ‘Of course it’s relevant. It’s affected your judgement, the way you’ve dealt with things.’

  ‘And how do you figure that one out?’

  ‘Because you’ve been as concerned about protecting Susan as getting Silver back. If it hadn’t been for her involvement, you could have tipped off the police right at the beginning, made an anonymous call, let them sort it out. But you didn’t even consider doing that. You thought you knew Susan well enough to be sure that Silver would be safe. And you also thought, and I hate to remind you of this, that she wouldn’t double-cross you if you arranged to meet up for a cosy little chat.’

  ‘So I’m a lousy judge of character,’ he said. ‘So what? You’ve always known we used to be an item. I never tried to hide it.’

  ‘Yes, an item,’ she said, ‘but not husband and wife.’

  As if he found the expression mildly amusing, Gabe’s brows shifted up a fraction. ‘It was a brief six-month marriage, a marriage that was over and done with five years ago. The phrase “unmitigated disaster” springs to mind. She dumped me before I got the opportunity to prove what a wonderful husband I could be. Hardly something to be proud of, is it? Not something to go shouting from the rooftops.’

  But Jo sensed this went beyond mere dignity or hurt pride. ‘So why do I get the feeling that you deliberately misled me, that you didn’t want me to find out how involved you’d actually been with her?’

  ‘Paranoia,’ he quipped.

  Stony-faced, she stared silently back at him. Not for the first time, she wondered why people found it so easy to be evasive with her. She reeled off a list in her head: Peter, Susan, Ruby, Jacob, Deborah – not to mention Gabe Miller himself. Her gullibility, it seemed, knew no bounds. She was the dumb blonde. She was good ol’ Jo, the ingenuous wife, friend, daughter-in-law, who’d believe any old rubbish she was told. Her forehead scrunched into a frown. Well, she wasn’t going to be that person – not any more. She was gradually changing, becoming someone else. She’d begun that change two days ago when she’d found out that even her husband had been incapable of being honest with her. The only problem – and gradually her frown grew deeper – was that she wasn’t sure if the new Jo Strong was a woman she would like.

  Gabe must have realised that she wasn’t going to back down. Eventually, after thirty seconds or so, he lifted his hands in a gesture of submission. ‘Okay, so maybe I did brush over a few minor details.’

  ‘Care to elaborate?’

  ‘What you have to understand is that the situation with Silver is more complicated than you think. I wasn’t deliberately keeping you in the dark, but for your own sake I—’

  ‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ Jo swiftly interrupted. ‘Don’t even think about giving me any of those glib lines about how ignorance is bliss or you did it for my own good or you were just trying to protect me.’

  ‘Even if they are true?’

  Jo shook her head impatiently. ‘It doesn’t matter if they’re true or not. That’s not what this is about. We’re past that now; I’ve had enough of secrets and lies. You told me that you didn’t know why Susan had taken Silver – well, apart from the money – but that’s not the case, is it?’

  Gabe looked at her and quickly glanced away. He stared up at the sky, then down at the ground. He picked up his empty bottle and stared at that. ‘Let me get a couple more beers,’ he said softly, ‘and then I’ll explain.’

  She watched him stroll through the courtyard towards the bar. He had a confident way of walking, almost a swagger but not quite that arrogant. Of the five other tables that were occupied, four of them included females and every woman (with varying degrees of subtlety) turned their heads to look at him. Why? Jo found herself frowning again. What was it about Gabe Miller that always made women look twice? He wasn’t ugly but he wasn’t God’s gift either. She looked down at the table and sighed. Who was she kidding? She had followed his progress with the same look in her eyes as the rest of them.

  It was six long minutes before he reappeared. Jo had been tapping her feet and checking her watch. She had been worried that he might not come back, imagining him walking straight through the pub and out on to the High Street. She wouldn’t have been surprised. She wouldn’t even have blamed him. There were some stories, she suspected, that were just too difficult to tell.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, sliding his long legs over the bench and putting the beers down on the table. ‘Are you ready for this?’

  ‘As I’ll ever be.’

  ‘Good. Then let me take you back five years to when I was a younger, braver man and the world was full of possibilities. It’s nine o’clock at night and I’m in Honey’s, one of Delaney’s very fine establishments. I’ve just finished a job for him and I’m at the bar, having a drink when—’

  ‘What kind of a job?’ she said.

  He expelled a short exasperated breath. ‘I thought you wanted to know about Susan.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Carry on.’

  ‘So there I am, winding down after a long, hard day, minding my own business, when she walks up to the bar. And she’s not the kind of woman any man is likely to ignore, at least not any man with blood still running through his veins. She orders a gin and tonic and we get chatting. It all seems to be going well but then she starts asking me how well I know Vic Delaney, how long I’ve been coming to the club, if I know of any staff who may have been around ten years ago. She says she’s looking for information about a girl who used to work there.’

  Gabe took a drink and
gave a rueful smile. ‘Now, I’m just a bloke and I’m easily flattered but by this point even my sad male brain is beginning to clock that it’s not my incredible muscles or easy charm she’s interested in. She’s talking to me because she reckons I’m old enough to have been frequenting the place a decade ago. This, as you can imagine, is something of a blow but as I don’t keep my entire ego in my pants, I do my best to get over it.

  ‘I enquire about the girl, what her name was, etcetera, but just as she’s about to answer, one of the barmen saunters over and leans against the counter. He’s close enough to overhear and Susan suddenly goes all coy on me, says it doesn’t really matter, that she was only asking on the off-chance. However, as it clearly does matter, that kicks my old curiosity gene into gear and I’m well and truly hooked. I tell her that I’m hungry, that I’m going to get something to eat. I ask her if she’d like to join me.’

  As if trying to recall every detail, Gabe half closed his eyes. His face took on a concentrated look. He absently picked up his beer but then, as if surprised to find the bottle in his hand, carefully put it back down again. He gazed at the table. ‘There was a small Italian restaurant down the road. That’s where I took her and that’s where she told me about Linda.’

  He fell silent for a while.

  ‘Linda?’ Jo eventually repeated, as much to fill the silence as anything else.

  Gabe’s gaze slowly came back up to her. ‘Her sister, Linda Clark. She used to work at Honey’s. It was the last place she was seen before she disappeared. She’d been gone ten years by then; it’s closer to fifteen now.’

  Jo felt a cool chill run the length of her spine. ‘When you say disappeared,’ she ventured, although she suspected she already knew the answer.

  He took a short breath. ‘They never found a body. She was last seen about ten-thirty, eleven o’clock, but no one saw her leave the club. No one saw her talking to anyone in particular either. She was just there, and then …’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘What made it worse, if that’s possible, was that the cops weren’t entirely convinced that there had been any foul play. Linda was an attractive but troubled twenty-one-year-old who came from a shitty background – poverty, violence, drugs, an alcohol-dependent mother, an absent father. She’d had a couple of run-ins with the Law before, a caution for possession of cannabis, a suspended sentence for shoplifting. She’d even gone missing several times when she was a teenager. They thought she could’ve just taken off again.’

  ‘But Susan didn’t?’

  He nodded. ‘There were eight years between them but they were close. Linda was probably more of a mother to her than Pat ever was; she made sure Susan went to school, was decently clothed, got at least one square meal a day and that she wasn’t in the firing-line when Mummy’s latest boyfriend decided that the only way to prove his masculinity was to give the nearest female a good thrashing.’

  Jo flinched, uneasily aware of how little she had known about the woman who’d befriended her. The anger and resentment she had been feeling towards Susan for the past week began to leak away. She thought about her own lonely but comparatively safe childhood. With a spasm of guilt, she thought about how often she had sat in this very same courtyard and talked about herself, about her own loss, and never taken a minute to consider that she might not be alone in the pain she felt. She had been completely oblivious to Susan’s private nightmare.

  ‘And before you ask,’ he continued, mistaking her silence for some form of scepticism, ‘it did cross my mind that she could be wrong. I wasn’t so distracted by her big brown eyes that I didn’t consider any other possibilities.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking that.’ Jo wanted to explain but now wasn’t the right time. ‘Go on,’ she said.

  Gabe gave her a long hard look but finally nodded again. ‘Linda didn’t take any of her clothes or the small pieces of jewellery she’d worked so hard to buy. She didn’t take the two hundred quid she had stashed away in her bottom drawer. But most of all, she didn’t say goodbye. That was why Susan was so sure. If Linda had been planning to leave, she wouldn’t have done it lightly. There would have been—’ He hesitated, squinting up at the bright blue sky, searching for the right words. ‘I don’t know, some hint, a clue that even if it hadn’t been obvious at the time would have been clear later. But there wasn’t. I mean, if that’s what you’re planning to do, if you know you’re not coming back, you don’t just walk away with a breezy wave of a hand, do you? Not if you’re saying goodbye to someone you love.’

  ‘No,’ Jo said, ‘you couldn’t. Not if you were that close.’

  Gabe looked at her almost gratefully. ‘Yeah, that’s what I figured. Susan was sure she was going to meet someone that night, that it wasn’t just work she was getting all dressed up for. Linda was excited, pleased about something – or, more likely, someone.’

  Jo felt the first stirrings of understanding; the pieces were beginning to slot into place. ‘So Susan thinks the mystery man was Vic Delaney, that he was responsible for—’

  ‘No, that’s the weird thing. She didn’t. Not then. It hadn’t even crossed her mind. She was just hoping that he might be able to help, give her some information. It was his club, after all. She only wanted to talk to him, to see if he could remember anything about that night. The problem with guys like Delaney is that they don’t care for answering questions, even when they are completely innocent. I could tell she was heading for trouble and so I advised her against it.’

  ‘I bet that went down well.’

  He pulled a face. ‘Like a lead balloon. She never liked being told what to do. But I could see how easily she’d get his back up. She was too closely involved, too emotional, so I offered to go instead. There was more chance of my finding out something useful. I wasn’t exactly mates with Delaney but he had no reason to distrust me.’

  ‘That was very … chivalrous of you.’ Jo had uttered the words without thinking and instantly regretted them. She felt a faint blush of shame blossom on her cheeks. Now was hardly the time for cheap innuendo or unnecessary point-scoring.

  But Gabe didn’t seem too bothered. The hint of a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. ‘I hope you’re not suggesting that I was driven by anything but the purest of motives.’

  She smiled, relieved that he hadn’t taken offence. ‘God forbid.’

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘I went to the club a couple of nights later. By then I’d got a cover story worked out. I had a few beers and “accidentally” bumped into Delaney at the bar. I asked him if he knew there’d been a reporter on the snoop, some bloke asking questions about a girl who’d gone missing ten years ago. I watched him pretty carefully. He didn’t look too pleased but he wasn’t overly jumpy either. I got the impression he was more pissed off than anxious, more concerned about his punters being hassled or the club ending up with a heap of bad publicity.’

  ‘Although psychopaths can be good at that,’ Jo said. ‘Isn’t that their skill – not showing any emotion?’

  ‘Except I wouldn’t classify Delaney as a psychopath, at least not in your typical textbook sense. A sadist perhaps; he’s a bully, a violent bully, but he doesn’t try to hide it. And he doesn’t possess any natural charm. What you see is what you get. It isn’t nice but it’s all right there on the surface.’ He gave a slight shake of his head. ‘No, even when I mentioned Linda’s name he didn’t react. In fact, I’m not sure he even remembered it. And he certainly didn’t look like a man whose past might be unexpectedly catching up with him.’

  ‘So hardly a number one suspect, then?’

  ‘No, not even on the list. And it didn’t strike me that he was covering up for anyone either. I slipped in a few more questions, trying to keep it casual, but then he claimed that he hadn’t even been at the club when Linda went missing.’

  ‘Convenient,’ Jo said.

  ‘Or simply true. It would account for why he was so vague about the whole incident. I dropped the subject then; I didn’t want to look too interest
ed. Later that night, I met up with Susan. She was disappointed but she seemed resigned; finding out anything after all that time had always been a long shot. She thanked me for trying, I said I’d keep my ears open and we left it at that.’

  Jo waited for him to go on. When he didn’t, she said softly, ‘Well, not quite. There was the little matter of a wedding ceremony.’

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Gabe smiled, but when he spoke again there was a hint of bitterness in his voice. ‘Oh yeah, how could I forget? The fairytale romance that was Gabe and Susan Miller, the marriage made in heaven.’ But as if he instantly regretted the cynicism, he bowed his head. ‘It wasn’t her fault. Perhaps it wasn’t anyone’s fault but she was twenty-two and I was forty – which makes me the one who should’ve known better.’

  ‘Peter was older than me,’ Jo said. ‘It doesn’t mean that it couldn’t … wouldn’t work out.’ She had started off the response in good faith but then wondered if it was actually a valid argument. Bearing in mind what she had learned about her husband over the past few days, it seemed increasingly unlikely.

  If Gabe noticed her hesitation, he didn’t comment on it. She wasn’t even sure if he had heard. Having turned over his hands, he was busy examining his palms, scrutinising the lines with an odd bemused expression. After a while he glanced up again. ‘Because of what happened to Linda, it was as though she was determined to live every day as if it was her last. She was smart, funny, impulsive … and bloody beautiful of course. There were never two days the same when she was around. She had this way of …’ He stopped suddenly as if his mouth had inadvertently run away with him. ‘You’ve met her. I don’t need to explain. I’m sure you understand what I saw in her but what she saw in me?’ He gave a light shrug of his shoulders. ‘I’ve really no idea.’

  Jo instinctively sensed that he wasn’t being falsely modest or fishing for compliments. A week ago she couldn’t have found anything good to say about him but her opinion, as she had got to know him better, had been gradually improving. ‘Maybe someone who was prepared to take her seriously, to listen to her? Maybe someone who could protect her from all the things she was afraid of.’