Some coppers would probably be happy to have one of their many and varied problems off their hands, but something told me that wouldn’t be the case with Durham. No, I had him down as the sort of bloke who liked to have things properly tidied up and who most definitely didn’t like leaving someone in Alex’s position out and about all alone with the bad guys hot on her trail.
As I washed my hands, I looked down at the spread of items on the narrow ledge in front of the mirror. Two toothbrushes and half-a-dozen little bottles and jars of women’s things; make-up, nail varnish and whatnot. That had to have been fast work. She couldn’t have been there all that long and already Longmeadow had been out to pick up a decent bit of bathroom stuff for her. I guessed he’d also bought her some new clothes, because everything she’d been carrying when she left the Churchill had no doubt been left in the back of the cop car. I hoped he’d got the sizing right. Women are fussy about that sort of thing. I know that from unhappy experience. You won’t catch me ever again buying a bird a dress for her birthday. Last time I did that it, I bought a frock two sizes too big and that went down like a lead balloon.
I walked back into the bedroom to find Alex dressed in a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt. She was putting a brush through her hair, while Longmeadow was packing stuff into a suitcase. I stopped at the window and looked out into a blue sky with barely a cloud in sight.
“Well, at least you’ll be setting off in decent weather. With any luck it’ll be like this in Cornwall and you can enjoy yourself on one of their sandy beaches.”
“I thought we were better off keeping a low profile,” teased Alex.
“Oh, yeah. Forgot about that.”
I looked one last time around the room and took a couple of steps towards the door, then stopped. Ah, the world can be a funny old place sometimes. One minute you think you’ve got everything under control. It all makes sense and you feel as if you know what you’re doing and where you’re going. Then, wham, right out of the blue, everything changes, just like that, no warning, nothing. You’re forced to reappraise things and, if you’re unlucky enough, to accept an unpleasant truth or two.
A smile as big as the Blackwall Tunnel grew on my handsome face as I turned towards Alex, whose eyes were partially hidden as she brushed at her hair. She stopped, flicked the strand to one side and lowered the brush to her lap.
“Something wrong, David?”
“I don’t know,” I said, a sparkle in my eyes. “You tell me.”
“Tell you what? I don’t understand.”
“You need a pair of airline tickets to get you to Bude, do you?”
Chapter Fifteen
Poor old Longmeadow. The nervous twat gave the game away before Alex had chance to open her mouth. A pair of shoes he was about to put into his suitcase slipped out of his hands and clattered to the floor.
“Shit,” was all he could say.
I looked at him. He looked at Alex, his face white as a sheet. Lovely.
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Alex, trying for all the world to sound as if she really meant it. But not only didn’t she sound genuine, I caught the tail end of a shake of the head she had aimed at Longmeadow.
“The pair of airline tickets sticking out from under that magazine on the bedside table,” I replied, jabbing a finger in their direction. “Have I got to go over there and pick them up, so I can waggle them under your nose?”
Give the woman her due, she didn’t so much as flinch, though I got the impression it took some effort. Her face lost all its natural soft lines, which were replaced with an expression that looked like it had been cast from concrete; rigid and stern. I waited. She gave it some more thought. After a bit, she looked again at Longmeadow, gave a shrug of the shoulders and opened her eyes wide, before turning back to yours truly. I could hardly wait to hear what she had to say for herself.
“OK. You’re right, of course, we don’t need to fly to Bude. I’m not even sure where their nearest airport is.”
“Me neither,” I chipped in.
“I really did think about travelling down to the West Country. It seemed like it would be far enough away for Tony not to be able to reach me. But the more I went over it in my head, the less certain I was. He can be a very determined man, as well as a ruthless one. So, Andrew and I discussed some other options, ones that would take us further away, where Tony really would have to work very hard to find us. We settled on Dublin. We’ll be catching a flight from Gatwick later today. We’ve already booked a room at a hotel there.”
Dublin made some sense and, most likely, if it had been just me and her in the room, Alex might have persuaded me that was the real plan, but she had a problem, a big one. The whole while she’d been setting out her new story, I’d been keeping half an eye on Longmeadow, watching his reflection in the big mirror on the wall above the bed. He looked uncomfortable, shifty even. I wouldn’t have trusted him to tell me the time of day. Little sweat patches had appeared in the armpits of his shirt and there was a glisten to the skin on his face that hadn’t been there when he’d opened the door to me.
Although I couldn’t be sure, I think his nervous behaviour quickly started to undermine Alex’s composure because her fidgety little movements were out of keeping with the sure-footed woman I’d spent the last few days with. Something still wasn’t right and I was beginning to think someone was still playing me for an idiot. That was bad enough itself, especially after all the trouble I’d been to for the woman, but even more than that, I had a burning need by now to know just what the hell she was really up to and why.
“Groves would certainly have a harder time finding you in Dublin, but I can’t see it being hard enough; not for someone as desperate as he seems to have become. You can’t think you’re going to be able to hide out there for long?”
“Long enough,” answered Alex. “All I need is enough time for the police to stop being stupid and give me the protection I need, then I’ll go back to London, if that’s what they still want me to do. I doubt it will take much longer now.”
She looked me straight in the eye, no doubt keen to convince me she was telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. But she overdid it, trying too hard. I honestly couldn’t think of any reason she would have for lying to me again. What kind of a threat was I to her? Why not just come right out with it and tell me what she was really up to? But one thing I was certain of, the more she tried mucking me around, the more I wanted to know the truth.
“Scoular know about this, does he?”
“Not yet. I’ll call him once we’re in Dublin.”
I glanced once more at the mirror above the bed. Longmeadow was playing with his fingers, his eyes fixed on Alex. It seemed to me there was only one thing to do next, so I did it.
“Don’t suppose you’d mind showing me those tickets, just so I can make sure you’re not spinning me a yarn,” I smiled.
Her eyes flared, only for a second, but it was enough. I didn’t need to see the tickets to confirm what I already suspected.
“Don’t you trust me, David?” She smiled. “After all we’ve been through together these past few days.” She tried a little, innocent laugh, but when I didn’t respond, she changed tack. “You know, I’m really disappointed in you. Of all the people I’ve met here in Brighton, the only two who have shown me any kind of respect and understanding have been you and Andrew. Now you accuse me of lying to you. It makes me think you’re not really any different to all the others.”
She stood up, pushed the magazine to one side, then picked up the tickets. I expected her to simply walk around the end of the bed and hand them to me, but something seemed to catch her eye and she stopped, bent down and picked up her handbag.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting to see my passport, too, to make sure I’m not travelling on a fake one.” Ouch, there was a sharp edge to her words now.
The sound of voices filtered through from the corridor outside the room. A bloke and a woman se
emed to be making their way to a room nearby. We didn’t say another word or move a muscle until we heard the click of a door closing.
“If you insist,” I told Alex as she reached into her bag.
She walked up to me, an outstretched hand offering the offending tickets, which I took without saying a word. I looked down at the first one and started reading, but had hardly got as far as noting the flight was from Heathrow, not Gatwick, when I was rudely interrupted.
“If you don’t mind, David, I think I’ll have those back. Now.”
I didn’t need to look up to know I was in trouble. There was enough venom in that voice to bring down an elephant, let alone a wimpy private investigator like my good self. I looked up. Alex was standing there, her head tilted and her eyes now evil slits, boring right into me. That much I could have shrugged off, but what I couldn’t was the revolver she held in her right hand. It was pointing at me in a way I would describe as properly menacing.
“You’ve got to be bloody kidding me,” I blurted out. “What the fuck is that for?”
“No, David, I’m deadly serious. Now hand those tickets to Andrew.”
I’d be telling a big, fat lie if I didn’t own up to being more than a tad surprised to find Alex pointing a gun at me. It changed things and in more ways than one. For starters, it meant she was in charge of things and, however much I might not want to let her clear off without telling me what the hell she was really up to, there was bugger all I could do about it. I’m not Superman; bullets don’t bounce off me.
But it also turned on its head my views on Alex Rudd. OK, I’d already sussed she was no helpless little thing who couldn’t be trusted to eat her breakfast cereal on her own, in case she hurt herself with the butter knife. But we’d all of a sudden moved on a whole lot further from that. There aren’t many women I’ve known who totter around town with a gun in their handbag, even those with a very nasty temper. What was more, from the way she was holding the thing, I’d say she wasn’t exactly new to the experience. I had to assume her ex-boyfriend had shown her how to use a firearm.
“Come on,” she snapped.
“Hold your horses,” I replied, reaching towards Longmeadow with the tickets. “I hadn’t made up my mind whether to call your bluff or not.”
Longmeadow grabbed the tickets so urgently he nearly ripped them as he did so.
“Careful there, lover boy. You’ll upset her ladyship if you tear those in two.”
“What are we going to do with him?” Longmeadow asked Alex, as he picked up his jacket from the bed and stuffed the tickets in a pocket.
“I suppose he could have an accident with a heavy ashtray. I’m sure I could say it was self-defence.”
I could tell you she smiled when she said that, but that would give you the wrong idea. The look on her face was more one of satisfaction, her idea of being clever. I didn’t respond; there didn’t seem any reason to.
Alex took a couple of steps to one side, all the time keeping the gun trained on me, not that I had any ideas about lunging for it if she let the thing wobble off-line. Whatever she was really up to, it wasn’t worth me putting my life at risk. I wondered how far away Groves’s heavies were from finding her latest hiding place. I didn’t really fancying being caught in the middle of a gun battle if they showed up before Alex and her new boyfriend had cleared off.
“Hands on your head,” she ordered. “Then sit down on that chair.”
I did as I was told and parked my backside on the nearest chair, wondering what they were going to use to tie me up, since that seemed their most likely next move. Seeing how they hadn’t been expecting to see me, I couldn’t imagine they had a handy few yards of rope stashed in their luggage, in which case they might have to resort to shoelaces and I was pretty confident that wouldn’t hold me for long.
“Andrew, the tape in my bag,” prompted Alex.
Longmeadow opened a second suitcase, that was sitting on a wooden frame against the wall. After a little rummaging, he whipped out a reel of gaffer tape.
“You’re kidding me,” I said, shaking my head. “You don’t just carry a gun around, you’ve got a reel of gaffer tape as well. You must have been in the girl guides to be that well prepared.”
I looked at Alex, but she didn’t bother replying. Longmeadow shuffled across the room and took up station behind me, then pulled my hands down so he could tape my wrists to the rear legs of the chair. My shins got the same treatment, taped to the front legs. He didn’t skimp on the tape, either; by the time he’d finished, there wasn’t much of it left.
“I do wish you hadn’t been so keen to help,” said Alex, once Longmeadow had finished. “You’ve done more than I could have hoped for and I don’t really want to do you any harm, but I’m afraid I can’t allow you to interfere in our plans any more than you’ve already done. We’re so close to the end now.”
“Yeah, I have to admit, you’ve got me there. Just what the bloody hell are you up to? Call me cynical, but I’m guessing you’re doing a bit more than simply running away from a boyfriend with a nasty attitude.”
This time she did give me a smile; a big, broad one that lit up her face. It was good to know I still had the old charm. Not that it looked like doing me a lot of good on this occasion.
“I don’t suppose it will hurt to tell you the truth seeing as you’ve been so helpful. I really do appreciate that, you know.”
“Glad to hear it. We always aim to please our punters.”
“Andrew and I are taking a flight to Mexico, where we aim to live in luxury for the rest of our days. All paid for by darling Tony.”
I looked puzzled, because I was.
“Of course, he doesn’t know that, yet,” continued Alex. “But he will do, eventually; once someone has noticed his bank account is missing two-and-a-half million pounds.”
She looked pleased with herself. I supposed she’d been itching to tell someone about her cunning scheme to grab her ex-lover’s dosh and there I was, all tied up and unable to move, her perfect captive audience. Mind you, I must admit I was curious to know how she’d pulled that one off. Happily, she didn’t leave me in suspenders for long.
“You see, Andrew here is, or perhaps that should be was, Tony’s chief accountant. He’s looked after that little shit’s money for the past eight years and he knows better than Tony himself what money he has and where it’s kept. You wouldn’t believe the number of bank accounts Tony has and how many of them are in Switzerland or quiet little places in the Caribbean. He probably doesn’t know about some of them himself. He especially doesn’t know about the ones Andrew opened so he could syphon off some of Tony’s money, a little at a time, until it amounted to a wonderfully huge sum. So simple and yet so effective.” She sounded delighted with herself.
Longmeadow had taken up station next to Alex and she ran her fingers through his hair. It was a little thing to do, but there was something odd about the gesture. It left me with the impression her latest boyfriend was nothing more than some sort of pet; one she tolerated rather than had a deep emotional attachment to.
“Darling Andrew here is far too clever for an idiot like Tony. Of course, I didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances, which is why I decided to shop Tony to the police. I’ve left them enough breadcrumbs to follow to find all the evidence they need to put the bastard behind bars for a very long time.”
She kissed Longmeadow on the cheek. Her little puppy positively glowed, then decided it was his turn to show how bloody clever they’d been.
“Not only that, but I left such a long and complex paper trail behind me when I moved the money out of his accounts that, even when they do realise something is wrong, it will take them months to work their way through it all. By then, it will be too late, because we will have moved the money again to places they can’t see it.”
“See,” she said to me. “So very clever. Sometimes brains really can win out over brawn.”
“I take it you two aren’t just friends, then?” Well,
I thought, we might as well clear up all the loose ends while we were about it.
“Andrew and I have been seeing each other for nearly a year, haven’t we, darling?”
Lover boy grinned, like a kid who’d been offered his favourite sweet, and nodded his little head. Pathetic. For a moment it made me feel sorry for the idiot.
“I can’t pretend it’s always been easy keeping things hidden from Tony,” continued my hostess with the mostess. “And sometimes I was worried he’d become suspicious. Those weren’t easy moments to live through, but we managed to hold our nerve, didn’t we darling? Kept things from him long enough.”
“We did,” answered Longmeadow, not looking quite as cocksure as his girlfriend.
I looked again at Longmeadow, more carefully than I’d done before. Odd thing was, he didn’t seem Alex’s type to me. Mind you, it was obvious by then I didn’t know the woman as well as I’d thought I did. And that hadn’t been much to start with, so perhaps I wasn’t in any position to go second-guessing what sort of bloke appealed to her. One thing I was certain of, she’d have no trouble keeping him under her thumb. In fact, I would have immediately checked the top of his head for thumb prints, except I was, of course, taped to a chair.
“And you really think Groves isn’t going to go looking for you when he works out what’s happened? Even if you’re on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and he’s doing time, he’s not going to give up easily.”
“Two-and-a-half million pounds buys a lot in a place like Mexico, David. I don’t think we’ll have very much trouble building a new life, with different names and new looks. I’ve always rather liked the idea of being a red head. And we’ll have more than enough money to pay for a little protection, if I feel we need it. So, even if Tony does come looking for us, his chances of getting us and his money back will be all but non-existent.”
As Good as Dead Page 18