The Blood Whisperer

by Zoe Sharp

  “This suit as a backup for a start. Spare cosmetics and hosiery in her desk drawer,” she said instead. “Clearly she wasn’t the kind of woman who’d be happy being seen out with smudged lipstick or laddered tights.”

  Lytton’s mouth twisted. “I’d say you’ve got her taped,” he said. “She never goes . . . never went anywhere without full make-up and her BlackBerry, like a shield and armour. She loved that thing—said the blue matched her eyes. I swear she’d even have it with her in the bath.”

  He stopped suddenly aware of what he’d just said. Kelly stepped easily into the awkward moment.

  “That would be the ultimate definition of multitasking,” she murmured. She lifted the lid of the teapot and gave the contents a swirl. “So where is it?”

  “It’s . . .” His voice trailed off. “You know, I’ve no bloody idea,” he said at last, surprise in his voice. “I’ve already been through her study at home and it wasn’t there or at the apartment. And we didn’t find it in her desk today—not that she would leave it here. I’ve known her turn around practically at the front gates and drive back to town if she’d forgotten it.”

  Kelly said nothing. Her mind had already jumped ahead but she realised that voicing her suspicion—that if the device wasn’t to be found somebody must have taken it—would bring an instant denial. This she had to leave him to work out for himself.

  She turned her head and stared out deliberately over the scope of the racecourse while he wrestled with it. After a few minutes he asked, “How long have you known?”

  She turned back, found him watching her intently, leaning forwards in his chair. She was almost unnerved by the intensity of those dark grey-green eyes.

  “As long as you have, probably,” she said. “She was your wife after all. You’d have known her best.”

  His mouth twisted in a derisive smile that held no amusement. “Knowing Vee wasn’t easy,” he said. “Very little pierced that icy façade. Trust me—I tried. Eventually I had to accept that we had signed a contract not a marriage licence. I gave her wealth and she gave me a certain . . . respectability. Anything more wasn’t on the table.”

  She heard the frustration and the sadness, opened her mouth but before she could speak another voice broke in.

  “Matt! Thought I’d find you up here.”

  Kelly heard the annoyed hiss of Lytton’s escaping breath. She twisted in her chair to see a man weaving towards them between the largely empty tables. Fair-skinned and blond he was shorter and more squat than Lytton but in no way running to fat. He wore an expensive suit with careless elegance, one hand stuffed into the jacket pocket.

  Trailing behind him was a dowdy woman who seemed to walk with her eyes permanently downcast and her shoulders rounded defensively so that she was almost crabbing. She was so plainly dressed it was hard to put an age on her. Kelly guessed forties but she could have been ten years out either way—it was hard to tell. With her face devoid of make-up and her dark hair pulled back severely from her face the woman seemed completely over-matched by her surroundings and company.

  With obvious reluctance Lytton rose and shook the newcomer’s hand. The woman presented her cheek meekly for his kiss. Kelly got the fleeting impression she did so because she knew Lytton expected it but took no pleasure in the greeting herself.

  “Steve Warwick,” the man said turning to Kelly and bending over her exaggeratedly as he took her hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  Kelly pushed her chair back and got to her feet as much to put some distance between them as for politeness. She gave him a purposely limp grip knowing he was the type to take anything else as a challenge.

  “No we haven’t,” she agreed smiling sweetly. “Nice to meet you Steve.”

  Warwick looked her up and down like he was gauging the price and frowned, glancing at Lytton.

  “My business partner,” Lytton said shortly. “And his wife Yana.”

  Kelly disengaged herself and reached round Warwick towards the woman hovering in his shadow. “Hello Yana.”

  “Am pleased meet you,” Yana mumbled her English heavily accented. She barely touched her fingers to Kelly’s before dropping back as if trying very hard not to be noticed.

  “Won’t you join us?” Lytton said with more than a hint of sarcasm as Warwick was already plonking himself down next to Kelly, ignoring his wife. It was left to Lytton to wave Kelly back to her seat and pull out a chair which Yana slunk into.

  “So, who are you?” Warwick asked more baldly, something of his bonhomie disappearing. “Only I couldn’t help noticing Matt had signed you in as his PA and I’m fairly sure I know all our staff pretty well.” His eyes wandered up her lower legs in leisurely inspection. “So what kind of tasks do you personally assist Matt with, hmm?”

  “Kelly is simply a friend,” Lytton said quickly as if he knew how she was likely to react to this kind of innuendo. Kelly briefly considered smacking Warwick’s legs for him like the snotty child he was. She snuck a quick peek at Yana while all this was going on but the woman kept her gaze firmly on the table linen, frowning as if deep in thought.

  “A friend eh?” Warwick said with something close to a leer. “You dark horse you.”

  “Steve—” Lytton began warningly but Kelly interrupted him with a bright smile.

  “OK let’s get this out in the open,” she said. “I am not shagging your business partner and have no desire to do so—certainly not within days of his wife dying. Nor, if you’ll forgive me for being blunt, do I find you remotely attractive either. And no I’m not a lesbian, since that’s bound to be your next question.” She caught the eye of a lurking waiter. “Now that’s out of the way shall I order more tea?”

  Warwick opened and closed his mouth a couple of times then said faintly, “Erm coffee for me.”

  Lytton quietly saluted her with his glass. Yana continued to stare mutely at the tablecloth.

  Kelly ordered from the waiter. Silence formed around his departure and she cursed inwardly. Such an outburst was not going to help her stay below the radar but she’d lost patience with oafs like Steve Warwick a long time ago and learned that life was too short to suffer them when she no longer had to.

  She grabbed the handles of her bag, sitting next to her chair, and got to her feet.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Lytton, “but I think I need to get back. Thank you for showing me round the place. And for lunch.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said rising. “I’ll drop you wherever you need to go.”

  “Thank you.” She smiled at Yana, receiving no response, and gave Warwick a cool stare. “Goodbye. Meeting you has been . . . interesting.”

  “Likewise,” Warwick drawled recovering something of his poise.

  She nodded to Lytton and hefted the bag. “I’ll just get changed. I’ll meet you in the car park.”

  45

  Lytton watched her walk away from the table fascinated by the way the heels emphasised the definition in her calves. All that climbing certainly had an effect.

  Warwick leaned in towards him. “For God’s sake Matt are you out of your tiny mind?” he demanded in a savage whisper. “I know who she is. I recognise her from the other day at the house never mind the news reports. What the hell are you doing bringing her here of all places?”

  Lytton eyed the other man’s anxiety without concern. How did he explain? It was probably best not to try.

  “She was determined to investigate,” he said instead, keeping his voice even, dispassionate. “And in that case it seemed preferable by far to have her on the inside.”

  “One phone call and she’d be on the inside all right,” Warwick muttered, “of Wormwood bloody Scrubs.”

  Lytton linked his hands on the tabletop, put his head on one side. “Isn’t that a male prison?”

  Warwick made an irritated gesture as if flipping away an annoying insect. “You know damn well what I mean,” he complained.

  “Of course—but this way she’s keeping me infor
med every step she takes.”

  “I don’t like it. It’s a risk.”

  “Risk of what exactly, Steve?” Lytton asked, his voice dangerously soft. “There isn’t anything you want to tell me is there?”

  46

  In the Ladies’ room, Kelly changed back into her own clothes with a feeling that was half regret and half relief.

  She slid the grips out of her hair, ran her fingers through it vigorously to return it to its usual more comfortable casual style. But as she fastened the belt of her cargoes she glanced at the lavender dress hanging on the back of the cubicle door.

  “Nice try,” she murmured to herself, “but it’s just not me anymore.”

  She folded the dress as carefully as she could into the backpack aware that it was probably going to need dry cleaning just to get rid of the creases.

  She wasn’t expecting company so it was a surprise to find Steve Warwick’s wife Yana waiting anxiously by the doorway when she stepped out of the cubicle.

  “Hello,” Kelly said cautiously. A frightened mouse the woman might be but she could still recognise Kelly from the news reports.

  Yana ducked her head by way of greeting and hurried over with wide pleading eyes.

  “You need go,” she said urgently, fingers grasping Kelly’s arm. Her nails were short and discoloured. “Please hurry.”

  “Yana, I . . . Why?” Kelly asked flatly.

  The other woman looked about to burst into tears. “My husband is bad man,” she said as if the information was being tortured out of her. She glanced nervously over her shoulder. “He do things that are . . . illegal. I do not know what to do.”

  “I’m very sorry but—trust me—I’m the last person you should be asking for help right now.”

  “Help?” Yana said, her face blank. “No, no! You no understand. I try help you.”

  “What?”

  Yana shook her head as though frustrated by her own lack of vocabulary, accent thickening. “He deal with peoples from my home country. How you say? Bad men.”

  “Gangsters,” Kelly supplied, her mouth going suddenly dry.

  “Da! Gangsters,” Yana said. “That how I came here—as payment. You understand?”

  Bastards. “Oh I understand.”

  Yana nodded, eyes still flitting to the doorway as if expecting her husband to burst in at any moment and drag her out by the hair. “He and Mr Lytton they talk about you just now. Mr Lytton he say he ‘want you where he can keep eye on you’, yes?”

  “Did he now . . .” Kelly’s voice was cold but she felt something shrivel into a hard tight knot in the centre of her chest.

  “I work sometimes for poor Mrs Lytton. I know she hear something bad—something that make her very unhappy—about her husband.”

  “What was it?”

  Yana shook her head. “I don’t know. She not tell me. But after two days she dead. And now I scared.” She was twisting her hands together until the knuckles showed white. “My husband he send text to someone—I think about you. You need go now! Before he hurt you too . . .”

  47

  In the car park of the racecourse Dmitry shoved his cellphone back into his pocket and climbed out of the Mercedes. Above him towered the modern grandstand, like a giant vee balanced on its side.

  He moved without haste across the open tarmac towards the bulk of the stands. As he went he patted the pockets of the leather coat. In one side he had several industrial tie-wraps suitable for immobilising the average adult female without possibility of escape. In the other was the extendible baton he’d used to such effect on Ray McCarron.

  Dmitry wasn’t happy having the baton concealed there—it pulled the coat out of line. But he wasn’t expecting to carry it for long.

  48

  Kelly took the emergency exit stairs three at a time jumping the last batch to each half landing and using the walls as a springboard. If she’d still been in heels she would have broken both her ankles before the end of the first flight.

  It had taken too much time to reassure Yana. The woman had suffered minor hysterics as it sank in what her husband and Lytton might do if they worked out she had tipped off Kelly.

  “Tell Matt I was planning to duck out on him all along,” Kelly said ignoring the voice in her head that craved Lytton’s approval for her actions in some small way. She closed her mind to it, hardened her voice. “Tell him I was taking him for a ride.” Her mouth twisted. “Well you just can’t trust an ex-con, can you?”

  Yana gazed at her with slightly uncomprehending eyes but nodded mutely. Kelly knew the other woman would pass on the message—if only to save her own skin.

  “You should get out too Yana,” she said fiercely. “Get out while you still can.”

  “I . . . cannot.” Yana shook her head vigorously, gave a wan smile. “And he not force himself on me so much now—he take his pleasure . . . elsewhere.”

  That last had Kelly wanting to stay and punch Steve Warwick’s lights out for him but what good would that do other than provide a sense of righteous satisfaction? Kelly gave Yana’s arm a last heartfelt squeeze, and ran.

  She shouldered into the straps of the backpack as she went, hardly able to see for the sudden blurring of her vision.

  Uppermost was anger, she realised. Anger at herself that she’d slid into trust so easily. She’d thought after David that trusting a man—being attracted to him—would not happen without a long association. And yet she’d found herself going to Lytton within days of their first meeting. She remembered curling into the side of him on the sofa at his apartment and cursed herself for a weak-minded fool.

  She kept heading down, eventually finding an open door that led out onto a walkway at the base of the huge covered stands. In front of her was a set of railings that looked down onto the paddock area. Doors at each end of the walkway were marked EXIT. Kelly hesitated a moment then went left.

  As she stepped out she glanced upwards. Somewhere above her Lytton and Warwick were still sitting at the table in the members’ bar, hopefully oblivious to her premature departure.

  She felt guilty ducking out and leaving him with the bill until she realised she didn’t have a hope of paying it anyway.

  Kelly paused, looked around. She swore under her breath that she hadn’t taken enough note of the way in to have an exit strategy planned. How many times had she listened to other inmates explaining their capture because of just such a mistake. Sitting there listening to their stories it had seemed so elementary. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  But Lytton had lulled her into a false sense of security. Stupid, stupid, stupid! It echoed in her head to the beat of her own footsteps. Just because he’s charming and attractive, it doesn’t mean he’s not a monster under the skin.

  She should have learned that from being inside, if nothing else.

  The sign above the double doors lied. When Kelly reached them they were firmly locked, providing no way out. She turned, began to head for the other end.

  If they were locked too she was going to have to go back inside, try and find another way that didn’t involve going out past the security man on the desk. She broke into a jog. This was all taking far too long.

  As if providing an answer to her prayers the far doors opened and a man came through. Kelly dropped back to a fast walk not wanting to give him cause for a second glance.

  He was young, bearded, wearing a black leather coat that bulked out his shoulders. His hair was long enough to wave slightly as he moved.

  As he moved . . .

  Something stabbed into Kelly’s subconscious with enough of a jolt to make her gasp. A memory that was somehow deeper than a memory. More an inbuilt sense of fear, a primeval instinct.

  Predator.

  Her body language must have given her away. At the very moment the word formed in her mind she saw the change in him. He abandoned all pretence of being just another visitor there by chance and became the hunter, arrowing in on her.

  He was already closer than she was to t
he door she’d last come through and she knew the one behind her was locked. It only took a fraction of a second to realise she had only one option left.

  Kelly put both hands on top of the railing and launched herself over into the space below.

  49

  Dmitry darted forwards and made a grab for the woman’s hooded sweatshirt as she jumped. His fingers just brushed the small backpack she carried then she was plunging downwards away from him.

  Holy Mary, she has a death wish!

  The irony of that thought did not immediately occur to him as he hit the railings leaning out to watch her descent. It was at least five metres to the ground and he expected the worst.