‘Deal. We’ll both keep her safe. The only other people who will know where she is are DSI Newman and Jack Strong—’
‘Jack ‘‘boys only’’ Strong?’ Calum looked incredulous. ‘You are kidding.’
‘Wish I was. It’s a long story I’ll tell you when we take Nikki to a place she’ll be safe.’
‘Which is where?’
‘Somewhere even you don’t know about.’
11:30 p.m.
Nikki’s place of safety turned out to be a house in one of London’s most expensive districts: Notting Hill, West London. It wasn’t one of those plush, grand old houses that the area was well known for, but a three-bed mews house tucked around the corner from the All Saints Road.
‘You going to tell me where this is?’ Calum asked. Nikki was sandwiched between him and Rio outside. The girl held a black, lime-green handled holdall that she’d packed when she’d taken off to her boyfriend’s.
As Rio opened up she answered, ‘My mum’s home. Now mine and my brother’s since she passed away three months ago.’
Calum whistled. ‘If I knew that you were sitting on a pile of cash I might’ve . . .’
His words dribbled away at the hard stare she threw him. Although the place had been empty since her mum’s death Rio came over once a week to keep it dust free. People kept telling her to sort through her mother’s things as quickly as possible after the funeral, but she hadn’t had the heart to do it, so the home Ruthie Wray had loved so much remained untouched.
Rio popped the small hallway light on. She soaked up the emotional warmth of the house, as she always did. The red-leaf wallpaper resembled tacky wrapping paper and the green flowered carpet was an interior designer’s nightmare, but to Rio they were filled with memories of happy times.
As Nikki let out a long yawn Rio told her, ‘You can have my old bedroom—’
‘This I have to see,’ Calum interrupted.
‘No, this is a girl thing,’ Rio quickly got in. ‘Wait in the kitchen. You’ll find the coffee in the cupboard near the cooker. I take mine—’
‘No milk.’
Rio stared after Calum as he made his way to the kitchen in that precise, even step movement he’d developed from whatever damage had been done to his right leg. He’d remembered about her being lactose intolerant, which meant – she realised with an involuntary thrill – that he hadn’t been able to push her completely from his mind in the last three years.
She reached the bedroom with Nikki. She hadn’t wanted Calum to see the room because it was too personal: this was the small space where she’d grown up, crafted herself into the woman she was today. Who knew what Calum would figure out about her if he popped his head round the door? The room wasn’t too big, wasn’t too small, just the perfect size for a girl learning how to spread her wings.
Rio shook off the comforting nostalgia as she turned back to Nikki. ‘I’ll get you a towel, show you how the shower works and then it’s beddy-bye time for you my girl.’ Rio paused, looking deeply into the girl’s eyes. ‘I’m really so very sorry about your mum and dad.’
Nikki’s teeth played nervously against her bottom lip. Then she swiftly moved her gaze from Rio to the mahogany chest of drawers near the single bed. The teen didn’t speak. Sorrow was such a killer of an emotion. Abruptly Nikki started to move towards the chest of drawers, then picked up the solitary item that rested on top of it.
Shit. She’d meant to stash that away.
‘Is that you with your mum?’ Nikki asked as she held out the small picture frame.
Rio moved slowly forwards. When she was close enough she peered at the photo the frame held.
Mum. Her: twelve years old. And . . .
She didn’t even want to look at the other person; that meant becoming intimately involved in a past she’d long let go.
‘Yeah. That was taken in the sitting room a couple of days after I turned twelve.’
‘Did your dad take the picture? Is that why he’s not in the photo?’
Rio pulled the photo gently from the girl’s hand. ‘Nope. He wasn’t the stay-at-home type of dad. He was long gone by the time that snap was taken.’
‘And the little boy in the picture?’
Rio refused to look at the photo. Instead she opened the top drawer of the chest of drawers. ‘That’s my younger brother.’
‘What’s his name?’
Rio placed the photo very gently on the bottom of the lavender scented drawer.
Rio didn’t feel like lying this time. ‘Frederick.’
She slammed the drawer shut.
Fifteen minutes later, Nikki was tucked up in bed and Rio was sitting at the small table in the kitchen facing her one-time good friend and fleeting lover, a mug of milk-free coffee between her palms. Her bag lay carelessly thrown on the floor by her leg.
‘How many people know about this place?’ Calum asked. His green gaze appeared sleepy, his skin more pale than usual, as if he were in pain.
Rio rubbed the pads of her thumb along the smooth hardness of the mug. ‘Just the people who I told you officially need to know, that I mentioned earlier, and a handful of my relatives. Most of my people live in Sheffield, so there won’t be any surprise calls.’ She hesitated a few seconds before speaking again because she knew what she was about to say wouldn’t go down well. ‘I’m going to need someone here all of the time—’
Calum’s eyes widened as he shook his head. ‘Nooo waaay. Babysitting is defo not part of the services I provide. Assign Jack Strong to hand-holding patrol.’
Rio had thought of that; it was the perfect way to keep him out of her hair. But it was a no-can-do situation because Strong was helping her work the drug angle.
‘You’re the one who said we should team up, remember,’ Rio pushed. ‘Plus if I ask another officer to do it, it’s one more person in the chain who knows where Nikki is. The only person I can trust is someone who’s more hardcore, more ruthless than a hitman.’
‘Is that how you see me?’ His question was husky. Unexpected.
Rio fought for words, surprised that she might have hurt his feelings. ‘Not on a personal level, but professionally you’re known as one of the best freelance consultants around. You set up your stall and reputation in a pretty quick timeframe, which couldn’t have been easy with your accident – whatever that was.’ She couldn’t help chucking the last tartly in.
And she couldn’t help what came out next.
‘Why wouldn’t you let me see you?’ Rio moved her hands away from the warmth of the cup and lay them flat against the coolness of the table.
Calum sighed. ‘Don’t do this, Rio—’
‘Do what? Ask the question I have every right to ask after three years.’ Her vocal chords ceased up in her throat. Why is this still so effing painful? ‘I tried to see you three times. Three times. Every time I was turned away. Told, only relatives allowed.’ A sharp look passed between them. ‘I came one more time and was told that you weren’t there anymore. I tried your place.’ She shrugged. ‘Where did you go? On holiday? Another woman? Turn your back on me—’
Calum swore. ‘It wasn’t like that—’
‘That letter you sent says it was.’
He leaned across the table. ‘You want the truth?’ Suddenly he shoved away from the table and staggered to his feet. He pulled a cutting breath in, filled with pain.
Seeing his pain Rio too stood, filled with remorse. ‘OK, that was out of order. Wrong time, wrong place.’ She took a step closer to him. ‘Do you need some painkillers?’
He just looked at her, then started laughing. It was the first time she’d heard him laugh all day and she wished it wasn’t. This wasn’t the laugh she remembered. The one that turned cheekiness and an outrageous joy for life into memorable sounds. No, this laugh hacked up the type of noise it was best not to remember.
‘I told you to leave this alone,’ he said simply.
Rio swallowed. ‘Forget about me, but you can’t leave that girl sleeping dow
n the hallway alone. When I think of how close Nikki came to meeting her death tonight . . . You’re the only one who can protect her when I’m not here.’ Rio moved quickly back, bent down and started rummaging madly in her bag. She straightened as she pulled out Nikki’s adoption papers, and handed them over.
She gave Calum time to absorb what he was reading before saying, ‘The Bells gave this girl a great start in life and I’m going to make it my business to make sure she keeps living the good life they had mapped out for her.’ Rio stepped back from him. ‘You’ll be helping Foster out by keeping his client safe.’
‘Still as bossy and bullish as ever, Ray Gun.’
Usually she hated his use of that name but his teasing was a welcome intrusion.
‘OK. I’ll do it,’ he finally agreed. ‘I’ll be back here at nineish in the morning.’
He left and it was a good few minutes that Rio remained alone in the kitchen. Then she spoke to the dark emptiness Calum had left behind him.
‘Thank you.’
twenty-two
The Hit: Day Two
8:36 a.m.
‘Meat is murder.’
Rio gritted her teeth at Nikki’s words the next morning. The teen was staring down at the bacon breakfast Rio had got up early to specially make for her. The girl had woken up like she’d had a night sleeping with a nest of bees and sporting a pair of gloves her mother would never approve of – fishnet, fingerless, except for the garter-like pink lace around the middle finger. That’s if her mum wasn’t dead, Rio quickly reminded herself.
Why is it so cold?
Why don’t you have Netflix or Amazon Instant?
Why can’t I have Hamlet and my mobile?
Moody, rude and downright disrespectful – that’s why Rio had never thought about having kids; she didn’t fancy spending the rest of her life answering the monotonous question ‘Why?’ But she had to give this girl some significant slack; four people in her family, including her parents, had been murdered yesterday.
‘I bet you didn’t check to see if it has peanuts in it?’ Nikki carried on.
‘Are peanuts murder as well?’ A silly image of a row of peanuts facing a firing squad invaded her mind.
Nikki’s eyes snapped. ‘I’ve got an allergy to them. If I eat even a trace I’ll end up in the hospital.’
‘I need to tell the medical staff about my daughter’s nut allergy.’
Rio heard Patsy Bell’s voice in the hospital. She should have remembered.
Nikki flicked the two rashers of bacon onto the table. Stared back at Rio with ‘I dare ya’ eyes.
Rio didn’t rise to the challenge. Instead she leaned over to grab the bacon when her phone rang. She twisted away and moved to the counter near the window and grabbed the phone up.
As she passed Nikki she said firmly, ‘You’re in my house now, my rules, so eat the rest of your breakfast.’
In the hallway she answered the call. ‘DI Wray.’
‘Sounds like you didn’t get much sleep last night.’
Hearing the brittle tone of Assistant Commissioner Tripple Rio squared her shoulders. ‘Good morning, ma’am. I was just about to ring you so that you could come and see Nicola Bell.’
‘I don’t think that there’s much need for that. Not now that you’ve found her.’
Stunned Rio couldn’t speak. Then the words were tumbling from her tongue. ‘Ma’am . . . um . . .’ Shit, where were the words when she needed them?
‘You looked too surprised when Detective Strong said that you had the girl safely hidden. I trusted you to get her back, but just to keep you on your toes I told you I needed to see her this morning. And of course the first place a good officer starts when looking for someone is tracking their mobile phone. When one of my contacts at the Information Bureau, who was also my PA many years ago, had alerted me that you had a good trace on her I relaxed.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ was all Rio could say.
‘But I’m warning you, Wray, don’t let it happen again.’
‘No, ma’am. I’m following up a significant lead this morning.’
‘Good. I’ll leave you with a warning about something else.’ Rio waited. ‘I know that you want to rise up in the ranks, probably aiming to be the first black, female Commissioner. Then you’ve got to learn that when you’re stretching the truth, keep the emotion well hidden on your face.’
Rio stood there for a full minute after the call had ended, slightly shaken, but also pleased that the lie was in the open now. The Met’s mission to be seen as honest and transparent was one she took to heart.
When Rio got back to the kitchen, she sighed with relief when she saw that the girl had finished all of the food on her plate, the bacon still abandoned on the table.
‘Mr Burns will be here soon to look after you—’
Nikki’s lip curled ‘I don’t need looking after. I’m not some baby; I can take care of myself.’
Rio played it like she hadn’t heard her. ‘Go get yourself washed up.’
‘I’ll shout when I need you to put my nappy on,’ the girl muttered smartly as she left the room.
Rio leaned against one of the walls. God, what have I done to deserve this teen hell? The doorbell went. Trying to shrug off a feeling of total harassment, Rio walked out to the hall and towards the door. Standing on the doorstep, with a heavy looking black holdall bag in his hand, was Calum. He appeared fresher this morning, his hair gelled neatly back and his skin more evenly toned.
‘So how’s our girl today?’ he asked as he moved slowly inside.
‘Driving me nuts.’ More nuts! Gee-sus.
Calum lifted the corner of his mouth with pity. ‘Any girl who names her iPad after a dead Danish prince is not going to be easy.’
‘What?’
‘Hamlet. Must be something going on in the Bell family about that play.’ Seeing the look of confusion on her face he added, ‘Ophelia. She’s Hamlet’s crush.’ He stumbled slightly as he moved.
‘Are you getting whatever is going on with your leg seen to?’ For the first time Rio felt comfortable enough with him to ask. She didn’t like seeing her own one-time crush in pain.
But he made no reply, moving towards the cute-sized sitting room. Rio mentally shrugged; if he didn’t want to talk about it that was his business. By the time she got to the room he was already unzipping his bag and pulling out a laptop.
‘I’ll need to be working while I’m here.’ He didn’t look around at her, instead drew out a plug and lead.
‘If there are any problems you call me straight away. Oh yeah, Nikki’s allergic to peanuts, so watch what she eats.’
He looked up at her. ‘Sure thing, Ray Gun.’
‘And get her to draw a picture of what she saw the gunmen wearing over their faces. I asked her to do it for me, but she wasn’t playing ball. Maybe you’ll have more luck.’
After Rio gave him a detailed description of the killers’ disguise her mobile went off again. Jack Strong.
‘We’ve located Cornelius Bell. A place called The Rebels’ Collective . . .’ Rio listened and took the details.
Before she left she spoke to Calum one more time. ‘You text me on the hour, every hour, to let me know that Nikki is safe.’
twenty-three
9:40 a.m.
‘Wait here,’ Rio told Jack Strong as he started to exit her BMW parked on the road facing The Rebels’ Collective.
‘We work the same way the animals were herded onto Noah’s Ark, lass,’ he answered. ‘In twos.’
‘Not this time. It’s better if I tell him about his family on my own.’
Strong leaned back in the passenger seat. ‘You’re the boss.’
A few seconds later Rio stared up at the building that housed The Rebels’ Collective, one of the many abandoned and forgotten pubs that were littered all over London. Three-storeys high, it stood on the intersection of two streets, as if it had once been the cornerstone of the community. The ground-floor windows and door were lost
behind graffiti and poster-splattered wooden boards and corrugated sheets. But upstairs, different coloured bed sheets doubled-up as curtains, giving the upper building a rainbow flag feel. The only grandness it might have once held was in its faded pub sign: The Lady’s Love.
Rio moved to stand in front of the large corrugated sheet that blocked the main door. No knocker or bell in sight, so she pounded her fist against it three times. She heard a noise shifting somewhere close behind the door, but no one spoke, no one opened up. So Rio slammed her fist twice more.
‘What do you want?’ Male voice. Irritated with strains of weariness.
‘I need to speak to Cornelius.’
‘What for?’ The voice was stronger this time as if it was directly behind the door.
‘I’m a police officer. I need to talk to him about a serious matter.’
Silence. Then, ‘He isn’t here.’
Now it was Rio’s turn to become very irritated. ‘If you don’t open up I’ll be back and this time I won’t be on my own, the drugs squad will be right beside me.’
More silence. Then a loud thud, a click, a scraping noise as the corrugated sheet was shoved forwards. A man appeared – strapping build; mid-twenties; white; dark hair, that was a number one cut all over. His nose was pierced and he displayed a multitude of badges on the top half of the T-shirt he wore. Rio couldn’t read any of the taglines of the badges from where she stood, but taking in the way the man glared at her, she guessed they said stuff like ‘Death to the Pigs’. Only when Rio caught the fluffy, pink slippers at the end of combat trousers and the way the T-shirt slightly pushed out at the chest did she realise that she was dealing with a woman.
‘I need to speak to Cornelius urgently, so I’d rather check out for myself that he’s not around.’
The woman didn’t move; instead her expression became more defiant. ‘You’re betraying your race by becoming a puppet of the institutional racist cop system.’
Death Trap Page 13