by Zoe Sharp
“Sit back and shut up if you want that eye looking at,” I said.
The cut was small and just above his eyebrow where it would tend to bleed a lot and look worse than it was. I managed to clean it up for long enough to get the Steri-strips to stick and hold the sliced edges of skin together.
He sat without complaint while I worked on him, not taking those startling blue eyes off me. It was like being watched by a Siamese cat.
“There you go,” I said at last. “Try and let the air get to it tonight, but I’d put some sticking plaster over it before you try and get your lid on tomorrow morning.”
He delicately traced the repair with his fingers and nodded his thanks.
The kettle boiled. Sean poured water into both mugs and handed one to me and the other to Daz. I perched on the corner of the bed while Sean took the chair opposite Daz and sat leaning forwards with his forearms resting on his knees and his hands relaxed between them. There was a scrape across the middle two knuckles on one hand, I saw. Other than that he bore no signs of having been in a fight.
“What’s going on, Daz?” he asked gently then. “People are getting hurt. One of you’s been killed. Is it worth it – whatever it is?”
It was neatly timed. Daz was physically at a low ebb, felt isolated from his friends, and we’d just patched him up and been nice to him. Classic interrogation techniques.
He shrugged, still pigheaded despite everything that had happened.
I sighed. “Look Daz, you’re in the shit and we can protect you. It’s what we do,” I said, trying to be persuasive rather than exasperated. “But we can’t do it if you won’t tell us what we’re trying to protect you from.”
“Who says we need protection?”
I stood up, frustrated into action, but with three people in it the bedroom was too cramped to pace. “I’m only here because I made a promise to a friend,” I said, turning back to him. “And Sean’s only here because I am. But you need us, whether you like it or not. Tonight should have proved that. For God’s sake – what do we have to do to get you to trust us?”
“We do trust you,” Daz said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
“Ha!” I said, scathing. “Where’s ‘here’, Daz? Because from where we’re standing the only place we are is in the dark.”
He let his breath out in a huff and sat up. “OK,” he said, sounding weary, like we’d finally battered him down into submission. “We’re here because we’ve made a deal to buy something over here and bring it back to the UK.”
I was aware of a sickly taste in the back of my mind. “What kind of a deal?” I demanded, unable to keep the disgust out of my voice. “Drugs?”
“Fuck, no,” Daz said quickly. “We may be many things, Charlie, but there’s no way we’d have anything to do with shit like that and that’s the truth.”
“So what kind of shit are you into?”
Daz shrugged. “Diamonds,” he said.
“Diamonds?” I repeated blankly, glancing at Sean. I checked Daz’s face carefully for any sign of guile but it was clear and open. I sat down on the corner of the bed again. “Why the hell have you made a deal to buy diamonds?”
“For my work,” he said, sounding almost surprised that I should have to ask. “A lot of the stuff I do is ceramics and glassware from local artisans, but I deal with jewellery makers all the time. Didn’t you know?”
I shook my head slowly. Diamonds. After all our fears and speculation, it was almost an anticlimax. When Sean had said Daz ran a craft centre I’d expected something a little more homespun. It never occurred to me that he might be dealing with precious gems. From the look on his face, Sean hadn’t made that connection, either.
“So, did you provide Tess with the stones she’s wearing?” Sean asked. “The ones she’s trying very hard to pretend are not real?”
The surprise showed on Daz’s face. “You spotted that one, then?” he said, rueful. “No, that was Slick.”
“Convenient to pass that one over to someone who can’t refute it, isn’t it?”
He flushed. “That’s not what I’m doing,” he said quickly. He sighed heavily, took a drink of his coffee. “Look, in the last year I started to buy in some secondhand jewellery and I was getting in loose diamonds to replace lost stones. I was using Tess to do a bit of that repair work for me.”
“Why Tess?”
“We were at art college together,” he said. “She dropped out to have the kid, Ashley, and we lost touch for a while. Then one day she came into the shop with this boyfriend of hers, Slick. We chatted, you know how it is, old times. She’d been keeping her hand in, making her own stuff, and she was interested in doing more, so I got her doing some work for me.”
“And what about the diamonds she was wearing?” I asked. I took a sip of my coffee but the little pockets of UHT milk the hotel supplied had done little to cool it down.
“The first time she came in I’d noticed the rings she had on, of course,” Daz said. “She showed them to me as examples of her work and, well, you couldn’t miss rocks like those, could you? So I asked about them. She told me Slick had a contact who could get stones and was I interested?”
“And it didn’t occur to you that there might be something ever so slightly underhand about all this?” Sean said, keeping his voice mild.
“Of course,” Daz said. “But I asked around in the trade – discreetly – and no flags came up that they were stolen, so I bought them. They were a mixed bag of cut stones – circular and pear-shaped brilliants, mostly. The biggest was about point-eight of a carat. I used it to replace a poor quality solitaire emerald in a ring I’d bought in cheap because it was damaged. I sold it on for less than it was really worth, but I still made a fat profit. The customer got a decent stone at a bargain price and everybody went home happy.”
“What happens when the customer goes for an insurance valuation at some later date,” Sean said, “and discovers just how much of a bargain he’s got?”
“What’s he going to do – come back and complain?” Daz jeered. “Human nature, mate. He just thinks he’s got a wonderful deal and he keeps his mouth shut. I’ve never had one back.”
Sean was silent for a moment, digesting that one, then he said, “And what was different about this time? This deal?”
Daz took another swig of coffee and spent a few moments turning the cup in his hands, to the point where I thought we’d lost him.
“The scale of it,” he said at last and his shoulders relaxed a little, as though he was relieved to finally get it out in the open. He looked up. “Slick kept coming back with more gemstones and I kept buying them until, a month ago, he told me about this contact he had in Dublin who had a job lot to get rid of. Only Slick didn’t have the cash to buy them up front. Shit, the kind of money he was talking about, neither did I. It’s not exactly the sort of thing you can go to the bank about, is it?”
“So you went to your friends,” Sean said quietly.
Daz rubbed a hand across his face, forgetting about the eyebrow, and winced. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I remortgaged my flat and scraped together as much as I could, and Slick managed to put some up, and then I got William and Paxo involved, and Jamie wanted in as well. They all put in an equal share.”
“Ten grand a hit,” I said. “They must really trust you.”
His eyes flicked to mine, then slid away, guilty. “Yeah, they did.”
“So how much have you put up, altogether?”
“Eighty grand,” Daz said.
I tried to keep my face as blank as Sean’s but I couldn’t prevent a small twitch. Eighty grand. People had killed for less. A lot less.
“For diamonds worth how much?” Sean asked.
“When I’m done with them – about a quarter of a mil,” Daz said, and there was a hint of a thrill in his voice. “Imagine it! All we had to do was meet with the contact in Dublin and carry the stones back to the UK. No taxes to pay, no import duties. I promised the boys I’d double their
money and it would be a blast.”
“And then Slick died,” I said deliberately, watching the excitement fade, wanting to remind him this wasn’t all fun and games.
“We still don’t know it wasn’t an accident,” he said quickly.
“Not at the time, maybe, but what about afterwards? What about when that van chased me after Slick’s wake? When possibly the same van wiped out Sam Pickering? Did it not occur to you then to call the whole thing off?”
“Of course it did,” he muttered. “But it was too late then. Part of the money had been paid and none of us could afford to lose it – least of all me. Besides, Tess still had the contact in Dublin and she was up for it.”
“Hmm,” I said, thinking of her drunken candour. “She wanted you to get the diamonds but she wasn’t keen on actually coming with you, was she? It was her pal Gleet who was pushing for that.”
“Well, if she wanted the rewards she was going to have to take the risks as well,” Daz said. “As for Gleet – he lent Slick part of his stake money. That’s his angle. And he modified the bike for him.”
“Modified?”
“Yeah, he grafted in a false silencer can onto the exhaust to carry the stones.”
“Ah,” I said, “so that’s why Gleet nicked the wreckage of Slick’s bike back after the crash – he couldn’t afford to have the police taking it apart.”
“How did you—?” Daz began, then seemed to give up trying to figure it out. “Yeah,” he said then. “He did.”
“But you haven’t added on anything to your Aprilia,” I said. “How are you going to carry them?”
He grinned. “Well I’m not planning on swallowing them, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “No – waterproof bag dropped into the tank.”
“Hmm, they’ll never think of looking there,” Sean murmured and, louder: “So, when do you meet this contact? And where?”
Daz hesitated again, tried to cover it by finishing the last of his coffee and putting the mug down on the window ledge. “We’re going to do the deal on Sunday,” he said. “We’ll meet up with him sometime after the track day.”
“Track day?” I repeated.
“Yeah, it’s a free-for-all at Mondello Park circuit – the one just outside Dublin,” Daz said. He paused, taking in our blank faces, and grinned suddenly. “Did nobody tell you about that? Shit – I hope you both brought your driving licences then, or they won’t let you out on the track and you’ll be missing a treat. They only resurfaced it last winter.”
He got to his feet but only made it a couple of strides towards the door before Sean stopped him.
“One last thing, Daz,” he said. “Who’s been tailing us since we got here?”
Daz frowned. “We haven’t seen that Vauxhall since this morning,” he said. “I thought they’d given up.”
“What about the guy on the Suzuki?”
“What Suzuki?” His surprise seemed genuine enough.
“With Lucky Strike paintwork. It was on the ferry yesterday, came past us on the road up to the Giant’s Causeway this morning, and was in the car park at Bushmills.”
Daz’s face cleared and he shrugged. “No idea, mate. You worry too much,” he said. “Look, I’ll see the pair of you in the morning, yeah? Just do me a favour and don’t tell the others what I’ve told you.” He gave a rueful smile. “Old Paxo’s sulking enough with me as it is.”
It was only after he’d closed the door behind him that I stood and turned to Sean. “Why is he lying about knowing who’s on that Suzuki?”
“Who knows?” Sean said, getting to his feet himself. He collected the empty coffee mugs and put them back on the tray with the kettle. “I reckon he’s probably given us most of the full story there, but he’s still holding back.”
“Are you going to call Madeleine and see what she can dig out on any hooky diamonds?”
“Mm,” he said, distracted, moving across to flick on the bedside lamp and slip the chain onto the door. “I’ll do it first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow?” I glanced at the bedside clock in surprise. “It’s not that late. Why not do it now?”
“Why?” Sean echoed softly, closing in on me with such plain intent that my mouth dried even as a sliding heat drenched slowly through my belly. “Because I’ve been alone in a room with you, Charlie – and a bed – for seconds now and yet, strangely enough, we both seem to still be dressed.”
He backed me up until I bumped against the wall by the door with a breathless laugh. Suddenly his hands had infiltrated my shirt without me ever knowing how he’d undone the buttons. “That’s why,” he murmured against my tipped-back throat.
“Really?” I managed, my voice a gasp as my eyes went blind. “You must be losing your touch . . . Oh, maybe not . . .”
Twenty-three
The next day, Saturday, we rode down to Dublin. We left Portaferry just after breakfast, took the five-minute ferry trip across the Narrows to Strangford, then climbed through the spectacular Mourne Mountains to cross the border at Newry.
I’d been expecting more of a checkpoint but instead all I saw were the signposts suddenly swapping into kilometres, an extraordinary number of adverts for fireworks, and billboards proclaiming the innocence of the Colombian Three.
The main N1 road to Dublin was not dual carriageway for the most part, but it was wide enough for easy overtaking and, I was surprised to discover, most of the slower moving traffic obligingly put two wheels onto the generous hard shoulder to let you zip past with minimal exposure. Only the tourists seemed to stay out and hog the white line.
We made good time over the ninety miles or so, stopping only once just outside Balbriggan for fuel and a break in a little roadside café. We dragged two tables together and all sat, apparently a united group, but I could feel the divisions snake and rip between us. The tension was so manifest it practically needed its own chair. Nearly all the boys bore the marks of last night’s scuffle and Paxo was still limping slightly.
Sean went to the counter for the pair of us and came back with two bottles of mineral water so cold the outside of the glass ran with condensation. As he put mine down in front of me he reached out and casually brushed a strand of hair back from my face.
I froze at the simple intimacy of the gesture, without immediately knowing why. Then it hit me. In all the time Sean and I had been together before, we’d had to hide that fact from the outside world. In the army, regulations had forbidden him from fraternising with his trainees – certainly on the kind of level we’d risked.
And afterwards, in Germany and in America, we’d been doing our best to pretend that all we had between us was a working relationship. This openness was a new and vaguely disturbing development and, I realised as I gave him a belated smile, it was going to take some getting used to.
Paxo was still barely speaking to Daz. As soon as he’d finished his drink he muttered about going outside for a fag, colouring furiously as his unintentional double entendre sank in.
Daz sighed and would have followed him, but William put a hand on his arm.
“I’d leave him be, if I were you,” William said, his voice bland. “His preconceptions of you have taken a bit of a battering of late, but he’ll come round.”
Tess made a noise under her breath and pushed her own chair back, following Paxo outside. A moment later Jamie rose with a smile and went after her. Through the café window we could see Tess cadging a cigarette from Paxo as the three of them lurked together in the car park.
“Are they plotting my downfall, do you think?” Daz murmured.
“Well, somebody is,” I said. “We still need to find out who set Davey and his gang onto us in Portaferry. And we need to find out before you make this pickup on Sunday.”
William’s eyebrows climbed over the rim of his mug of tea. “You let them in on it, then?” he said evenly to Daz.
“I didn’t really think I could keep them out of the loop any longer, mate,” Daz said, sneaking a sly sideways glan
ce at Sean as he spoke. “Without them we would have been in real trouble last night.” He rubbed ruefully at the plaster on his eyebrow.
William considered that one in silence for a moment, then nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. He eyed me assessingly. “You cut in on the cash, too?”
“Not interested,” Sean said briskly, speaking for both of us. He flashed a quick smile. “Although if it will make you feel better about it, I’ll invoice you for our professional services when we get back.”
William smiled in response. “Hey, who says I was feeling bad about it?”
We were back on the road ten minutes later. William must have passed on the news about Sean and me as we were getting suited up again in the car park. I didn’t hear how William put it but Paxo suddenly muttered a short sharp curse and threw down his gloves in disgust.