What did shock me was that in the next moment, my work phone rang, showing no ID.
“Hello?” I asked tentatively.
“Hello, son. I noticed your signal came on. How’s it going?”
Oh… so he had technology, then? Maybe he needed it in his line of work, or maybe he had connections…?
“Not well I’m afraid.”
“What do you know so far?”
“I don’t know if it’s safe to tell you over the phone.”
“It’s as safe as speaking in person. People will bug human beings some day, let alone cafés, restaurants and phones.”
“I guess.”
“You know I’m right.”
“Well, I found out my personal chef was in on it. She wanted money. I was doing an exchange with her in Zurich when I decided not to give her all of it. She’ll soon realise.”
“So she had an accomplice,” he guessed, “and that’s why, you didn’t give it all up?”
“They wanted a million. A cool half each, right? She gave me a key for a car which was supposed to contain my stuff but I knew she wouldn’t just leave it in the open, you know? It didn’t seem right. None of it did. And I was right. Afterward, I found the vehicle and it was empty.”
“Maybe she and her sidekick made a deal. One of them got the money, and the other got all your contacts.”
“I just don’t understand why someone is going to all this trouble.”
“Seems to have all kicked off since your romance with the Irish girl broke.”
I squirmed, but he was right – I’d taken my eye off the ball.
“We sort of split up,” I confessed, pausing to consider the reality of being apart from Ciara. It would mean not seeing her smile on a daily basis, never being on the end of her sharp tongue, never hearing her moan underneath my caress…
I knew I couldn’t live without her. Yet I couldn’t conceive of giving this up, either.
“She wants me to give it all up. Says I’m living in cloud cuckoo land.”
“Well, aren’t you?”
“Ha!” I laughed, letting it ring down the line. “Listen, the jobs I’ve taken in the past… some of the work I did really helped people, like really helped them.”
“Yeah, and you’ve lived like a ghost. Reclusive owner of a retail giant by day, shady fixer by night. This is no life for you, son. Don’t end up like me.”
“We make our own destiny, remember? I never wanted a normal life. That’s not me–”
“Can’t change who you are,” he echoed.
“Right.”
“So, what else do you know?”
“One of the girls who’d been a lover of Shay’s told me that Shay was honest and open about her feelings. Apparently she said nobody would ever match me in her affections, and yet recently she’d been fucking Teddy, who’s married.”
“She probably told Teddy the same things, making stuff up as she went along.”
“I doubt he believed she was over me.”
“He’d know… and he’d hate it.”
“Yep.”
“So, did you find any evidence that she did it? Daltrey… I mean,” he said slowly, laying importance on the name of his long-dead son.
“The lover, Georgiana said Shay had confessed to doing a terrible thing in the past that she couldn’t ever make reparation for. Shay told her that there’d been a decision to make and something unforgivable had happened in order to keep Pernox afloat.”
“She was obsessed, clearly.”
“I know… but she was ill, too. I see that now when I never did before. I thought somehow she got over me, but then I found these notebooks and she had tons of them, even ones for future use, and she’d written in them over and over the words he’ll come back to me, he always does.”
“So… maybe when Ciara finally became a significant threat, she couldn’t handle it…”
“I just don’t get this,” I moaned, rubbing my tired eyes, the bench beneath my ass starting to dig in uncomfortably because I’d been sat there so long, “for ten years, nothing, and now all this drama. All this hate directed at me, after so many years of doing this under the radar. What I also don’t get is that Teddy and Shay were more than close by all accounts. She was using him as a confidante, I think. Letting him spend time in her office. Allowing him to get comfy, leaving his fags and stuff there.”
“Weird, if you ask me. Especially as she wanted you, not him.”
“Yeah, she never wanted him! Not as far as I know.”
“Well whoever’s doing this undoubtedly wants to destroy you. Maybe Shay wanted you to split up with Ciara and she knew that the decimation of your team would test you both. She knew you’d never rest until the culprit was caught. It was virtual suicide what she did. How could she imagine possibly getting away with murder on such an epic scale? She took one look at the goddess Ciara and saw her hopes of getting you back smash against the rocky cliff she’d been teetering on all these years.”
“I agree it sounds like her, vindictive to the last.”
“What about the chef? Do you reckon Shay and her colluded? How long had the chef been working for you?”
“Three years.”
“It can’t be coincidence that the chef only made her move recently. Shay must’ve initiated her pawn, otherwise why didn’t the chef make her move ages ago? If she was under your roof, she had access all that time and yet she waited until now. No, Shay was the one moving the pieces around the board. The chef was just her inside woman.”
“I wish… god…” I paused, feeling sick, “…I wish I could go back and warn my younger self. I wish I’d seen it… I wish I hadn’t let her in my life. She was absolute poison.”
“She was… killing my boy.”
“Even so, Teddy must be so angry. She’s dead… the woman he loved is dead.”
“He didn’t love her, she was just an infatuation. Nobody could save her. Someone got to her a long time ago, we both know it. Someone came into her life and shaped her, long before you or Barlow came along. Someone busted up her heart and it never healed, which is why she targeted the indifferent best friend of the guy who really liked her. She was fucked up, son. End of.”
“But she could be–” I couldn’t say it, but I thought it. Sometimes Shay had been so disarming, with her smoking hot confidence and her mysterious ways. She could be affectionate and she was so submissive, she’d do anything I told her to. I loved that about her, but our dynamic had also turned out to be a smouldering gun waiting to happen – because I’d always known her darkness was unreachable. She’d kept it buried deep beneath the barricades she’d built up and I couldn’t reach it. I’d tried to get beneath her but never could. She’d taken the pain I’d delivered and absorbed it as if it made her stronger, and stronger, and I couldn’t break the armour she wore. I couldn’t make a dent in her. She’d been dented in the past, it was clear, and nothing I could say or do would change that. She’d survived whatever she’d survived and the woman left behind after whatever it was she’d been through was impenetrable. No doubt it’s what she’d had to become to survive. “Sometimes she could be so nice, that for a moment, you forgot she was a lying, manipulative bitch. Sometimes, she seemed sweet.”
“Let me tell you something, son. The best women are the ones who bark at you like rottweilers until you show them how much you love them.”
“Like my Ciara.”
“Yes.”
“I’m gonna fly back and visit Teddy at his chambers. See what he knows. He can’t turn me away in public, can he?”
“Make sure you carry. Like you say, if he’s grieving, he could be pushed to do anything.”
“Sure. Thanks for the chat.”
“Something told me you were out there suffering. If life has taught me anything, there’s only so much suffering we can take. One day you wake up and realise it’s not what he would’ve wanted.”
“It sounds like… I don’t know… like you’ve done a lot of thinking lately.
”
“Yep. Sold the adult nappy changing facility. I’m now on my way to South America. Just gonna try and find some peace now. You know? Hook up with a much younger woman, maybe marry her… maybe buy her some diamonds or some shit. Oh… and smoke a lot more pot.”
“I should say good luck, but neither of us have ever believed in luck.”
“No. We make our own way.”
Those were his last words before he abruptly hung up, trying not to get mushy on me.
He was a bastard but he was still my dad.
“For god sake,” I muttered to myself, wiping at my eyes.
Putting my other phone to my ear, I called my pilot.
“I’m ready to head back when you are.”
“Great,” said the pilot, “we can fly in around an hour.”
“If I pay you in cash, can you make some calls and make sure nobody knows I’m flying back today?”
“How much cash?”
“As much as you want?”
“Five.”
“No problem.”
“It’s done. Still perfecting the art of surprise, are we?”
“You could say that.”
“Well, I’m ready when you are.”
“I’ll head back right away. Looks like rain soon.”
“Oh, and if you could pick up some chocolates and macaroons from Sprungli, my wife will thank me tonight.”
“You really drive a hard bargain.”
“She won’t know what’s hit her.”
“Uh, whatever,” I said laughing, and hung up.
Walking to the cake shop, I had a shop assistant fill a paper bag full of boxes of chocolates and macaroons. I stood looking around, thinking back to times I’d stood in similar shops in Paris. Ciara always stood by my side, almost giddy off the smell of chocolate, her fingers clutching the sleeve of my suit jacket until I bought her more than she could consume in a week. The thing I loved most about her was her love and lust for life. It hurt to think of never sharing that sort of happiness again. Just watching her eyes light up as we paid the cashier for a bag of chocolates – that made me happier than I ever thought I could be. My life with her had all been a wonderful waking dream I never wanted to wake up from.
Leaving Sprungli, sure my cologne had now taken on the scent of chocolate, I jumped in a cab and headed back to the airport, the USB ready to use when I got home.
Before takeoff I sent Sexton a message:
Call as soon as you get away.
He didn’t reply but I was sure he would be freed fairly soon. Sexton would be used as bait to lure me once the enemy realised they didn’t have all my money. The other half of the £1million they wanted was literally all the petty cash I had left for the moment. My income from fixing temporarily stunted, I was going broke. All my other money was tied up in property and assets and as soon as I started selling any of those, people would start asking uncomfortable questions I could do without. My black card was maxed out and I’d had to call in a personal loan from a friend just to get the plane to Zurich and back.
I’d have to really thank Sexton one day, for being the one man in the world I could truly trust… because right then, him and Ciara were the only two people I felt I could rely on.
***
IT was not colder in London when we touched down but it was raining cats and dogs and felt a crueller climate than that of Zurich. I closed my jacket collars tight shut as rain poured over me in lashes, but with cold slivers of water sneaking through my hair, my shirt collar underneath got soaked within a few strides of racing to where I saw Sexton, waiting by a black Range Rover. I hadn’t even told him this was where I would fly into. Which meant someone was following me very closely.
“What the hell is this?”
His expression was blank and he looked too petrified to fake anything. “You need to get in.”
He opened the door to the backseat and I checked inside for traps before feeling satisfied it was safe to seat myself.
As we set off from the tarmac, I asked, “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know. I’ll be sent instructions in a minute.” He pointed at the device in his ear, a curly wire running to something tucked under his collar. Seemed intelligence-grade.
He told me in a warning voice, “I’m sorry, Sinclair but if I don’t get the USB from you, they’ll kill us both.”
In the rear-view mirror, I caught a flash of his eyes. Stony. They were stony. Lacking expression. Lacking anything.
“Can they hear us?” I asked.
He nodded slowly. The earpiece was relaying, both back and forth.
My heart – in the face of this – also turned to stone.
“You know who my enemy is? You’ve seen them.”
“No,” he tried to convince me, “no, I–”
“Sexton,” I growled loudly, reinforcing my disbelief.
“I promise, I don’t know,” he tried to persuade me again, but he did know. I knew it like I knew him.
I looked out of the window as we hit a dual carriageway but I had no idea where we were headed.
“I won’t give them the money, unless face to face. If they bloody want it, then they can pay for it with their identity at least.”
“This car’s been tampered with. It’s set to explode if you don’t give me the real USB. I saw the explosives. They’re real. You have to do this. It’s the only way this will all end.”
“Where… how?” I glared.
“I don’t know. I just know there’s no escaping this unless you pay up. It’s all you need to do.”
“Where are they?” I demanded.
“Don’t know,” he gulped.
Sexton never gulped, which meant he was lying.
Sexton never broke out in a sweat, which he was doing now.
Whoever he was trying to protect me from, this was serious.
Sexton was like me – cool under fire – unless it had become personal.
“Why has this happened? At least tell me what you know about the bastard!”
Sexton shook his head slightly, warning me he couldn’t say much. “Ciara came along and changed you, made you happy. That’s all. There’s always some whack-job waiting in the wings, ready to take everything you own while your back’s turned.”
I still didn’t understand why Sexton was so ready to give up like this.
Finally, we drove through an East End housing estate which looked set for demolition so I deduced he was taking me someplace where, if the car were to explode, it would do so without damaging anyone else.
“How do I know you’re not in on this? How do I know you’re not him, Sexton?”
He looked over his shoulder as we pulled to a stop and muttered, “Because you know. You know I would never do this.”
“What about the woman you were seeing in Paris? How do I know that wasn’t Ayda? She was in on this, you know?”
“Yes I know,” he mumbled, “she laughed at me as he battered me, see?”
Sexton pulled back his shirt, showing me the bruises all over his chest and shoulders.
“Please just give them the money, it’s all they want. Then they’ll go.”
I remained staunch. “No can do.”
Nervous, he tried to tell me small details. “I asked them… and they said… they watched you with Ciara. They saw you spending more time away at weekends… and they made the most of the gaps in your absence to watch your staff more closely. Monitoring them, Ayda and her guy knew when they would be most vulnerable.”
“Who actually put bullets in my staff?”
“I don’t know. I think from the way they talked, it was a hit. Your people never would have seen it coming.”
“So Daltrey was a hit… and my staff? This is all the same person doing this to me! Tell me who the fuck it is, Sexton. Tell me before we both die, because I sure as shit ain’t giving you any USB today. Not now, not ever. The very least you can do before we both die is tell me the truth.”
“I can’t.”
“Is it Teddy? I can’t think who else this could be! There’s nobody else who knew I was the fixer. My parents wouldn’t do this to me, you wouldn’t and Ciara neither… so who? WHO? If Shay is dead… how can she be still doing this?”
He shook his head. I don’t know.
I blew out a harried breath. “Why did the security footage show a figure resembling Shay killing my people?”
“I don’t know.”
We sat in the car on a grass verge in the middle of the barren housing estate, a collection of mouldy old blocks of flats rigged for demolition. There were warning signs everywhere, letting people know it would happen next week. Not a soul existed here.
“Whose car is this?” I begged.
“Theirs.”
“Tell me a surname.”
“I can’t,” he protested.
“You can.”
“I can’t. I won’t. But I know something…”
“Tell me.”
“I was stuffed in the boot while he was trying to follow Ciara out of the city. She got away. She knew she was being followed and dumped her vehicle. She could be anywhere now.”
Thank god she is a clever girl.
“Then I don’t care what happens to me, as long as she’s safe, I’ll never give that prick any money and all my other stuff is tied up in assets. You hear that? You can fuck right off you thieving bastard, whoever you are!”
A thudding noise ricocheted throughout the car, leaving me wondering what the hell had happened.
There it was again, a split second later.
As soon as I looked up, I saw puncture wounds in the sunroof above and then, I realised why Sexton remained as still as a statue.
Two shots to the head.
Same style of killing.
Looking up, the sunroof looked fragile enough to be broken, so I punched my forearm through it and pushed my head out.
For a split second, I saw a flash of light on the roof of a nearby tower block.
Bingo.
No time to think.
I launched myself from the car, leaving the door hanging off one hinge. As I ran, I felt a familiar surge of adrenalin I’d missed. Since my business was stolen from under me a month ago, the most action I’d had recently involved sneaking into places to steal documents.
The Fix (Nightlong Series Book 2) Page 20