No change.
Amy still auburn.
Kids still kids.
There were similar entries stretching back two months.
Darcy smiled.
Then she spotted a stack of A4 sheets sitting in the printer out-tray. She flicked through the pages: it was a manuscript. She scanned the text on the first page, abruptly stopping at:
Hannah Degen grinned into her phone.
Darcy read it again: Hannah Degen. Really?
She looked up, looked around. No-one leapt from the shadows belly-laughing. She stared at the manuscript for a moment.
She shrugged, clicked on the desk lamp and lifted the pages from the printer. And started again from the beginning …
PRICE TAG (first draft)
CHAPTER 1
‘Happy Birthday.’
It wasn’t her birthday. Her actual birthday was yesterday. Or perhaps the day before. This was the anniversary of the day she’d been rescued.
The traffickers hadn’t survived the assault on the farmhouse where they’d arranged to exchange a newborn for a bag of American dollars. Her rescuers had searched the bodies, but there had been nothing to identify her: no birth certificate; no paperwork at all; no way to locate her family. So her rescuers had given her a name and a day to celebrate and they’d become her family; home was a huge white house overlooking the Macedonian shores of Lake Ohrid.
Hannah Degen grinned into her phone. ‘Thank you Loxley.’
‘You’re most welcome M’lady.’ Kai Degen’s voice carried an obvious smile; this had been their private joke since Hannah had turned eight.
While her uncles had been gathered round a large table—cleaning weapons and munching birthday cake—she’d been curled, cat-like, on a sofa watching a movie about a band of outlaws living in a forest. Half way through, she’d stopped the movie and peered over the back of the sofa. ‘You’re the Merry Men!’
The Merry Men had thrown perplexed looks at each other.
Then Kai Degen had entered the room.
‘And you’re Robin Hood!’ He’d been Loxley ever since.
Four years later, there had been a few moist eyes among the uncles as she’d left for a boarding school in Austria. They hadn’t toughened up much by the time she was seventeen and twirling in her dress for a debutante ball.
‘Twenty-two now,’ Hannah said. ‘No more special birthdays.’
‘There are plenty of special birthdays left.’
‘What? Thirty. Forty!’
‘They’ll seem more special the closer they get.’
‘We’ll see how you feel about that when you hit sixty. How long now?’
Silence.
Hannah laughed. ‘So where is it?’ This was the first birthday not to involve a reunion of uncles, but—as they’d done since she was five—one of them would have sneaked in and hidden their gift for her.
‘Macrae picked it this year.’ Degen paused. ‘That’s your only clue.’
Macrae, hmm …
Hannah walked from her bedroom—they wouldn’t have gone in there—and then wandered around the apartment, stopping in the kitchen. She thought for a moment, then opened a cupboard. And smiled at a box of porridge oats. ‘I’m looking at a man in a kilt.’
‘When you next see Scott, pretend it took you longer than that.’
Hannah giggled.
She opened the box. Inside was a black plastic case. Hannah flipped it open. ‘That is soooo pretty.’
‘It’s a Px4 Storm Subcompact,’ said Degen. ‘Perfect for concealed carry. Ergonomic and ambidextrous design. Nine millimetre. Thirteen in the magazine, one in the chamber. The barrel is stainless steel to help prevent corrosion from sweat.’
‘Tell them all thank you. It may come in handy at lunch.’
PRICE TAG (first draft)
CHAPTER 2
‘Happy Birthday!’ they all singy-cheered. Except Lori. But she was a bitch. She’d been a bitch at boarding school in Austria. She’d been a bitch at university in London. Unfortunately the Venn diagram of social circles Hannah and Lori moved in formed an overlap that ensured Hannah’s continued exposure to Lori’s mean tongue: easily the most toned muscle in her body.
Keeping her Lori-loathing holstered, Hannah air-kissed her way around the friend-filled restaurant, wondering what the term was for a collection of girlfriends: a chatter, a gossip, a hug? Hannah quite liked that: a hug of girlfriends. And then she reached Lori and her little sub-group.
‘Many happy returns,’ smarmed Lori. ‘For you and that dress. You always look divine in it.’
Hannah sweetened her smile. ‘So glad you could make it,’ she saccharined. ‘Your outfit is adorable.’ It wasn’t. But that wasn’t the designer’s fault. He hadn’t had Lori’s tad-too-short legs in mind when he’d been experimenting with dropped waistlines.
‘I saw this yesterday and just had to have it.’ Lori sighed. ‘I wish I could be more like you, but eco-couture just doesn’t fit my mien.’
Hannah’s sham congeniality evaporated with her smile.
Then a familiar voice said, ‘How are you spelling that?’ It was Eilidh Macrae.
She grabbed Hannah’s arm. ‘Let’s get you parked in the place of honour, then we can all sit down.’ Eilidh aimed a pointed glance at Lori’s feet. ‘There are some preposterously high heels in this room, and we wouldn’t want someone falling on either of their faces.’
As Eilidh guided Hannah towards a multi-coloured halo of balloons tethered to a high-backed chair, she whispered, ‘That was close, I’ve never seen you reach Def Con One that quickly. I was worried we’d have to bury the whole Bitches’ Coven.’
Hannah half-laughed. ‘Lunch isn’t over yet. We could still need body-bags.’
For Lori’s posse, the lunch was an exercise in calorie offsetting: no starters meant a sliver of birthday cake later, and a green salad balanced wine intake. Hannah and Eilidh had different ideas: they shared a fideuà (like paella, but with noodles instead of rice) followed by a variation on a bread and butter pudding (artistically towered slabs of stodge dripping in melted chocolate).
‘Caaarb-tastic!’ yummed Eilidh when she caught greener-than-their-leafy-plates glances from the Bitches’ Coven.
Hannah smirked; the extra personal training sessions they’d both booked were worth that alone.
It was an afternoon of gossip and giggles, and the good-natured chick-chat babbled on into the evening and then, despite a few absconding lightweights, extended into a night of hip-wiggling, hands-in-the-air funky-stuff strutting, the flirt-factor of which intensified when a dribble of professional soccer players (celebrating something significant in the really-good-at-ball-kicking department) peacocked onto the dance floor.
Hannah scanned the other tables on the VIP balcony, and tried not to sneer at the offspring of the great and the good. Her gaze slid from oligarch-sprog to aristo-brat to banker-spawn. The pretentious and the ponderous.
Meanwhile, the tanned and the toned gyrated below. Hannah spotted Eilidh’s long blonde hair, glossily rippling as she shook her head at one of the sports-squillionaires. The smarmy buffoon grabbed Eilidh’s hand as she turned away. The grip fell away after Eilidh snapped a dick-shrivelling glare over her shoulder.
Hannah grinned as her friend weaved through the sozzled clubbers towards their table. As Eilidh dropped onto the seat opposite, Hannah said, ‘Not joining the WAGs just yet then.’
Eilidh rolled her eyes. ‘I hope his passes are better on the pitch.’
‘Actually I think he’s a goalkeeper ... which will come in handy when his balls drop back down.’
Eilidh smirked and checked her watch. ‘Time to go,’ she said.
PRICE TAG (first draft)
CHAPTER 3
‘Sooooo prrr’teeeee,’ Hannah sing-songed, pointing straight up at the massive chandelier. ‘It’s like when the mothership turned upside-down.’ She giggled. ‘Monsieur Concierge, bring us mashed potato. We must build a mountain.’
Ei
lidh glanced at the blue-coated hotel doorman and mouthed sorry. She took hold of Hannah’s right arm and helped the doorman haul Hannah off the plush rug in the centre of the lobby.
Somehow, the doorman’s top hat was still on Hannah’s head.
Eilidh eased the hat off and flattened the dark tousle it left behind. Handing the hat to its owner, Eilidh offered an apologetic shrug. ‘It’s her birthday.’
The doorman gave her a practised smile and guided them to the lifts.
‘We’ll be fine from here,’ Eilidh said, propping Hannah against the back wall.
‘It’s no trouble miss—’
‘Honestly, we’re good.’ Eilidh pressed the button for Hannah’s floor, smiling sweetly until the hotel lobby shrunk to a sliver of light between the doors.
Third floor, ping, sliding doors.
Hannah decided on a one-woman conga to her room. Except it wasn’t her door she stopped at.
Eilidh took the key-card from Hannah, opened the correct door and stood aside as Hannah shuffled three steps and kicked to a beat that existed only in her head.
The door closed.
Hannah spun round and took a graceful bow.
Eilidh applauded. ‘You should have seen the looks of horror behind the reception desk.’
Hannah began stripping out of her white linen dress. Eilidh opened the wardrobe and reached in. The outfit she pulled out was identical to one she was wearing: a tunic with grey/orange/green/black stripes of various widths and black leggings.
As Hannah changed into the Eilidh-outfit, Eilidh kicked off her (moderately high) heels, slipped the multi-coloured bracelets off her right wrist and left them and the shoes on the bed for Hannah.
‘You can call the taxi now,’ Hannah said.
Geoff Traynor liked the nightshift. Fewer guests to smile at, more time to think about his novel. It would be a bestseller, he knew it. Everyone he told about it agreed. Over the last ten years he’d lost count of the rich and the famous he’d opened doors for. But he remembered all the juiciest stories. He never missed a thing.
‘Sorry about the hat.’
Peripheral vision picked out the striped outfit of the drunk guest’s blonde friend, and Geoff stepped forward to open the door of the waiting black cab.
As the blonde bent to climb in she waved a hand back at the hotel, and over the rattle of multi-coloured bangles, Geoff heard the blonde say, ‘She’s asleep, won’t be any more bother. Have a good night.’
‘Good night to you miss.’
As the back cab drove off, Geoff wondered if the drunk brunette’s line about the mashed potatoes was worth appropriating for his novel.
The black cab pulled up outside Eilidh’s Wimbledon flat, and Hannah handed the driver a tip he’d remember.
She opened the front door of the building ... and pulled it shut again as the cab drew away.
The moderately high heels click-clacked as Hannah made her way round the corner. With the blonde wig dropped into a wheelie bin en route, Hannah was fluffing her dark locks as she reached the waiting mini-cab.
‘Had a good night luv?’
‘Yes thanks.’ Hannah sat back, and closed her eyes.
With conversation clearly not on the cards, the driver opted for the late night drivel-fest on a talk radio station.
... whats theys got to do is learn proper English before theys gets on the plane. No good them getting teached after theys got here ...
... oh my god, if I have to hear about nineteen-bloody-sixty-six one more time ...
... little smack never did my kids any harm ...
Hannah reckoned the mini-cab reached Sevenoaks minutes before her synapses were ready to shut down in protest.
‘Here we are luv.’
After handing over the hefty fare, Hannah made her way to the street where Eilidh had parked a hire car two days earlier. Hannah checked the boot. Inside was a telescopic ladder plus a plain black holdall which contained everything else Hannah would need for the rest of the night, including clothing and footwear appropriate for the plans she had following her short drive to Tonbridge.
PRICE TAG (first draft)
CHAPTER 4
As with most dealerships selling the same brand of sports car, the building had a Bilbao-Guggenheim wanna-be look about it. The ground floor was mostly glass—to show off the sleek German vehicles—while the upper floor offices were hidden behind shiny metal panels.
At the rear, Hannah extended the telescopic ladder and climbed to the window of the staff washroom. The window appeared to be locked, but a screw at the bottom of the uPVC frame prevented it from clicking into the locked position. The screw was courtesy of Eilidh, who, three days ago, (with a small hand drill in her handbag) had charmed her way into the upstairs toilet after test driving a couple of the more expensive models on display downstairs. Her flirting had also given Eilidh the opportunity to place a tiny wireless camera where it could relay images of the alarm keypad.
Hannah eased open the washroom door just enough for her to snake out, crawling slowly beneath the height covered by the mezzanine floor’s motion detectors. Eilidh had assured Hannah that the way the sensors had been set up, she would have thirty to fifty centimetres of blind spot to crawl along. Hannah pressed herself as close to the grey carpet as she could, and restricted herself to tortoise pace.
The band of red mist rose to the ceiling, hung for a beat, then began its smooth descent. It stopped a few centimetres above her head and paused for another heart-thud before returning to the ceiling. Of course it wasn’t mist; it was dust picked out by the sweeping red light of the sensor. The swirling red band dropped again and seemed to stop a little closer to her head. But this time its upward sweep left a finger-thick layer of denser mist clinging to the walls.
How could that be? A different light source?
The red band paused above her head again. No doubt about it, it was lower that time. She stared at the mist hugging the walls; it wasn’t red, it had the same pale biscuit colour as the walls. The band of red dipped even closer on its next drop, and this time she realised what the beige mist was: evaporating paint. The red light had begun to boil the walls.
Eilidh gasped and sat up. The room swirled, then steadied into focus. She flopped back onto the bed. Bloody nightmare.
Eilidh still felt drunk, but then she had spent more than half a day booze-blocking for Hannah. She’d lost count of the number of birthday beverages she’d quaffed to ensure Hannah had a clear head. Eilidh reached over and grabbed one of the bottles of water by the bed. Every gulp brought an increasing appreciation of forward planning.
Their plan-hatching had begun shortly after Hannah had discovered her (soon-to-be-ex) boyfriend was a colossal tool. For Eilidh, the clues had been in plain sight, not the least of which was the registration on Todd’s sleek German sports car: TOD D5. And she hated his fucking gameshow-host smile.
Eilidh checked all three alarms on her phone were set before turning on her side and, clutching the phone to her chest as though it were a tiny plastic teddy bear, closed her eyes and hoped for sweeter dreams.
When the alarm keypad winked from red to green, Hannah allowed herself a huge stretch. Then she marched back upstairs to the office where the dealership’s server was kept. Picking the lock took about thirty seconds—she was a little rusty—and soon after that, Hannah removed the server’s quick-swap drive that stored the images from the security cameras.
Returning to the showroom, Hannah placed the server drive on the roof of a sleek German sports car identical to Todd’s. After another thirty seconds of wrench-and-pick work, the main doors to the forecourt were open. Hannah replaced the lock-picking tools in the pouch strapped to her wrist and pulled out the electronic key Eilidh had palmed after her test drive; the key Eilidh had handed over to the salesman had been one of the spares for Todd’s car.
Sixty seconds later, the twin of Todd’s sports car purred through the showroom doors and onto the forecourt, then turned towards Guildford. H
annah’s route (via Edenbridge, Horley and Dorking) would take two hours. Tonbridge to Guildford could be done in half that time, but that would mean taking the M25, and Hannah wanted to avoid the motorway’s cameras.
PRICE TAG (first draft)
CHAPTER 5
Todd had stared at the thin scar running the length of his car. For a moment he’d seemed close to tears. Then he’d exploded. ‘Motherfucking lowlife scum-fuck!’
Hannah had been sympathetic. She’d once had a Joseph Ribkoff classic ruined by a glass of below average merlot. It wasn’t quite the same as having a car keyed—spilling wine was careless not malicious—but Hannah had an appreciation of Todd’s loss.
Thirty minutes later Todd had broken the news that he’d be away on business on her birthday. ‘It’s a really important trip.’
Hannah had been understanding.
The day after Todd had left on business, Hannah had gone to Todd’s house to collect a dress she’d left there; Eilidh had wanted to borrow it.
Shortly after she’d arrived, a white van pulled into the drive. A black and blood-red logo splashed up from the front wheel rims brashly declared this vehicle transported The Scratch-Attacker, who turned out to be a softly spoken, pot-bellied man in his late-fifties called Derek.
Derek explained he was there to repair the damage done by that key-wielding psychopath. Derek felt Todd’s pain.
Derek was also an obliging soul. ‘The lady who booked me asked me to leave this under the driver’s seat,’ he’d said, holding up a light blue envelope. ‘Should I leave it there, or do you want to put it in the house for the gentleman? I only ask because I wasn’t expecting anyone to be in.’
Interquels Page 7