by Roberta Kray
Through her marriage to Reggie Kray, Roberta Kray has a unique and authentic insight into London's East End. Born in Southport, Roberta met Reggie in early 1996 and they married the following year; they were together until Reggie's death in 2000. Roberta is the author of many previous bestsellers including Broken Home, Strong Women, Bad Girl and Streetwise.
Also by Roberta Kray
The Debt
The Pact
The Lost
Strong Women
The Villain’s Daughter
Broken Home
Nothing But Trouble
Bad Girl
Streetwise
Non-fiction
Reg Kray: A Man Apart
The Honeytrap: Part 4
Roberta Kray
Copyright
First published as an ebook in 2015 by Sphere
ISBN 978-0-7515-6111-1
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © Roberta Kray 2015
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Sphere
Little, Brown Book Group
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.littlebrown.co.uk
www.hachette.co.uk
Contents
About the Author
Also by Roberta Kray
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
20
If there was one thing Harry Lind didn’t need at the end of a long hard day it was to be standing in his living room staring down the barrel of a gun. His gaze flicked between the small black revolver and the pale strained face of Ellen Shaw. Her eyes were wide, strange, flashing with brightness. He breathed in deeply, trying to slow the hammering of his heart. His words, even as they came out of his mouth, sounded ridiculous.
‘What are you doing?’
Ellen inclined her head, an odd twisted smile appearing on her lips. Her hand shook a little as she continued to point the gun at him. ‘You’re always asking questions. Why is that? Why can’t you just let things be?’
‘Sorry,’ he said gently. ‘Too many years as a cop. It’s a hard habit to break.’
‘Questions,’ she muttered, frowning. ‘I’m sick of them. Sometimes there aren’t any answers.’
Harry forced a smile, knowing that he had to find a way of connecting with her. It was as though between climbing the stairs and entering the flat she had become a completely different person. ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘You could be right.’
‘He was always asking questions.’
‘That can’t have been easy.’ Harry had no idea who she was referring to. Could she mean Adam, or Danny Street? Maybe it was someone else entirely. He kept his gaze fixed on her while he made a few rapid mental calculations. There was no point in even attempting to grab the gun – she was too far away and there was every chance, in her current state, that she’d go ahead and squeeze the trigger. No, he’d have to try and talk her round. ‘Some people don’t know when to leave well alone.’
‘I told him. I told him to give it a rest, but he wouldn’t. And then …’ Ellen sighed. Her eyes darted to the left and right before focusing back on Harry. ‘You don’t understand. You might think you do, but you don’t.’
Harry stayed very still. ‘I can try. But maybe you should put down the gun first. Those things have a nasty habit of going off.’
Ellen ignored the suggestion. ‘He’s gone now,’ she said. ‘He’s not ever coming back. That’s just the way it is.’
‘I get it,’ Harry said, even though he didn’t. ‘Just put the gun down, yeah?’
‘And now you’ve started following me around. I don’t understand why you’re doing that.’
Harry slowly shook his head, taking care not to move any other part of his body. ‘I’ve not been following you. I didn’t know you were going to be at the Lumière. It was just chance. I was there on a job; I was working.’
‘Right. But then you showed up at the flat. Perhaps you were working there too?’
‘I can explain that. Someone from the office, someone who lives near you, saw you going into your house on Saturday night.’ It wasn’t exactly the truth, but he didn’t want to feed her paranoia. Revealing that Jess had followed her to Stoke Newington wouldn’t do much for her trust issues. ‘They gave me a call, told me where you lived.’
‘So you’ve been talking about me?’
‘I just mentioned that I’d seen you, that’s all. They knew I was worried and got in touch.’
‘Nice of them.’
‘There was nothing sinister about it. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.’
‘And then?’
‘And then what?’
Ellen glared at him. ‘And then you thought it was all right to come round, to hassle me, to start with all the questions again. You have to leave me alone. I don’t want to see you or hear from you or … or anything.’
‘I get it,’ Harry said again. ‘I do. It’s crystal clear. And if that’s what you want, that’s fine. I’ll stay away. I promise. But why don’t you sit down? We may as well have that coffee before you go.’
What Harry did next was risky. He turned round and walked slowly back into the kitchen without looking over his shoulder. With every step he expected to hear a shot, a sudden explosive rifting of the air. He held his breath through one second, two seconds, three, until he was standing by the counter. It was only then that he finally breathed again.
From this position, he could no longer see her. He placed his palms on the cool surface of the worktop. Would she follow him? He waited. He listened. But nothing happened. What next? Just stay calm, he told himself. If she was going to shoot him, she’d have done it by now. He wasn’t sure if this was true, but chose in that moment to believe it.
He flicked the kettle on again, waited for the water to boil and made the coffee. When he eventually went back into the living room, Ellen was on the sofa. Her head was tilted back and her eyes were closed. The gun was on the coffee table. She didn’t move as he put the mugs down, taking care not to make a sound. Then, with the greatest of care, he reached for the gun, picked it up and slipped it into his jacket pocket. Where had she got the damn thing? Not from Danny Street, that was for sure. But there were plenty of other lowlifes in the area.
Harry stood and watched her for a while. There was something surreal about the fact that only minutes ago she’d been pointing the revolver at his chest. What was going on in her head? Grief did strange things to people, but most of them didn’t resort to waving guns about. She was in the middle of some kind of breakdown, perhaps.
He leaned in and studied her more closely. There was nothing to indicate that she’d taken anything dangerous, an overdose or the like. Her chest was rising and falling with the steady even breaths of someone who had simply fallen into a deep and exhausted sleep. He got a blanket from the bedroom and laid it over her. She stirred but didn’t open her eyes.
Harry heard the faint sound of
the buzzer go for the office downstairs. He hurried into the hall and picked up his own intercom.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s Jess.’
He pressed the button to let her in before returning to the living room and scribbling a quick note: Back in half an hour. Please wait for me. He placed it on the coffee table, hoping that Ellen wouldn’t wake up before he returned.
By the time he got downstairs, Jess was already outside the office. She had that fervent impatient expression that she always wore when she had the bit between her teeth. Before he’d even had time to say hello she was off.
‘So what do you think? This is looking really bad, Harry. If Brett’s telling the truth and Sylvie did leave with Keynes, then where the hell is she? And what happened to the car he was driving? He went back to Hampstead in a cab; I saw him with my own eyes.’ She barely drew breath before continuing. ‘We’re going to report her as missing, right? I mean properly this time. We can’t mess about. Have you talked to Valerie?’
‘Give me a chance. I’ve only just got back.’ Harry unlocked the door and put on the lights. ‘But I have been in touch with Mac. Once he gets here, we can go down to the station, file a proper report and get the ball rolling.’
‘And when’s that going to be?’
‘Soon. He’s on his way.’
Jess paced to the window and back, her arms folded across her chest. ‘I should have talked to Guy Wilder earlier. Damn it! Do you think the police will pull in Keynes tonight?’
‘They might.’
‘They have to! This is serious. He could have done anything to her.’
Harry, who still had half his mind on Ellen, sat down at Lorna’s desk. He leaned back in the chair and rubbed his chin. ‘I still don’t see why she left with him. I mean I understand how she’d have wanted to avoid Brett, but that’s a completely different thing to doing a disappearing act with the target.’
‘He must have forced her.’
‘Not according to Brett.’
‘Well, he’s not exactly a reliable witness. Maybe he just saw what he wanted to see. Anyway, the police need to check out those flats. She could be there! What if she is?’
Harry shifted forward again and booted up Lorna’s computer. ‘We can check out the electoral register, see if we can get some names. What’s the place called again?’
‘Queen Elizabeth Court.’ Jess came over and stood by his shoulder. ‘Keynes went into one of the upper flats, three or four, I couldn’t tell which.’
‘He could have been going to see friends or a relative. Or maybe something to do with work.’
‘Or not.’
‘Or not,’ Harry echoed softly as he tapped on the keys. After a few minutes he came up with the results. ‘Michael and Joyce Barber in flat three. They’re both in their fifties.’
‘What about four?’
‘Nothing. There’s no one registered to that address.’
Jess peered at the screen. ‘What do you reckon?’
‘Some people don’t vote.’ He gave a shrug. ‘And if I was going to abduct someone I wouldn’t want to have to drag them up a flight of stairs. Keynes must have access to lots of empty properties; why would he choose a block of flats where other people could easily see him coming and going?’
‘I don’t know. Because sometimes people don’t notice what’s under their noses?’ Jess sighed and moved away. She walked over to the coffee machine and stared at it. She looked at the clock and then glanced at her watch as if to verify that a mere two seconds had passed. ‘I wish Mac would hurry up. What’s taking him so long?’
Harry was listening out for sounds from upstairs. What if Ellen just up and left and he could never find her again? She was ill, not thinking straight. Anything could happen to her. He should go over and open the office door – that way he’d hear if she was leaving – but then he’d need to explain to Jess why he was doing it, and he didn’t want to have that conversation right now.
‘Harry?’
‘Huh?’
‘I was asking when Mac was going to get here.’
‘Any minute,’ he said.
‘Have you told him everything? About the car and Brett and Sylvie leaving with Keynes?’
Harry gave a nod. ‘Yeah, he’s got the whole story.’ He could see that for Jess it was all clear; she’d put the pieces of the jigsaw together and created a picture that made perfect sense. He envied her that clarity of thought, her single-minded determination, but wasn’t entirely convinced that she had got it right. For him there were still too many loose ends, too many questions without any answers.
Jess paced impatiently from one side of reception to the other. ‘If I hadn’t been reading
that bloody brochure, I might have noticed Keynes following Sylvie to the loos.’
‘You weren’t to know.’
‘I wasn’t paying attention. I should have kept an eye on him.’
‘Retrospect is a wonderful thing. Stop beating yourself up about it. There’s nothing you could have done.’
It was another fifteen minutes before Mac finally arrived, by which time Jess had almost worn out the carpet. The three of them gathered around Lorna’s desk and quickly went through the details again. They decided that there wasn’t any point in all of them going to the police and that Mac would head off to Cowan Road station while Harry and Jess went to Swiss Cottage to watch the flat until the police showed up.
‘Shall we take your car or mine?’ Jess asked after Mac had left.
‘You go on ahead. There’s something I’ve got to do first. It won’t take long. I’ll catch up with you.’
Jess frowned. ‘Are you kidding me? What’s more important than this?’
‘Twenty minutes,’ he said. And then before she could start debating the matter, he stood up, strode out of the office and took the stairs two at a time to the second-floor landing. Even as he opened the door to the flat, he sensed the void inside. His heart sank as he walked into the living room and saw the empty sofa. The discarded blanket lay in a heap on the floor.
‘Ellen?’
Nothing.
He made a fast tour of the bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen even though he knew she wasn’t there. It was only when he returned to the living room that he noticed the open drawers of the bureau. Ellen had been searching for something and he knew exactly what it was. His hand automatically reached for his pocket and the revolver. Well, that was one consolation; she might have run out on him but at least she was no longer armed.
Harry stood for a while in the middle of the room, frustration rolling through him. Then he went into the kitchen, took out the gun and carefully opened the cylinder. It was loaded with three bullets and he emptied them out on to the counter. He sniffed at the barrel but there was no discernible smell. There were no obvious traces of residue either. Not that either of these things proved anything. The revolver might have been used days ago and could have been cleaned since.
Harry found a pair of gloves, put them on and wiped the revolver clean of prints. Then he wrapped it in a freezer bag along with the bullets and dropped the bag into a supermarket carrier. There was an amnesty bin outside Cowan Road station. He’d drive down, meet Mac and drop the gun off at the same time. That way there would be no awkward questions about how the weapon had come into his possession.
He went downstairs and locked up the office before hurrying down towards the front door. He pulled it open and stepped out into the damp air. It was then that he saw the two cops getting out of the squad car. He recognised them straightaway: the officers who had taken him in over the killing of Caroline Westwood. Now they were back and it was too late for him to try and avoid them.
Harry felt a tightening in his chest, a rush of panic. He was standing on the street with a gun in a bag. How the hell was he going to explain that? As the two men walked towards him, he felt the adrenalin kick in and had a sudden urge to make a run for it.
21
It hadn’t taken DI Valerie Middleton
long to get the measure of Joshua Keynes; he was an arrogant, patronising man who believed he was above the law and that ‘helping the police with their enquiries’ was an affront to his dignity and a threat to his reputation. His attitude towards women was dubious too. She had noted the disapproving expression on his face when she’d announced that she’d be interviewing him.
Keynes, who had acquired the services of an expensive West End brief, folded his arms across his chest and scowled at her. ‘This is ridiculous,’ he hissed for the third time. ‘I’ll be making a complaint. You can be sure of it.’
Valerie gave him a thin smile. ‘Let’s return to Saturday night. We’ve established that you were at Wilder’s wine bar from about seven-thirty. At what time were you approached by Sylvie Durand?’
‘Who?’
‘Sylvie Durand.’
Keynes shook his head. ‘I’ve never heard of her.’
‘Let me try and refresh your memory: slim, blonde, French. Does that ring any bells?’
‘Oh, her. Well, if it’s the same girl, that wasn’t the name she was using. She told me she was called Christelle.’
Valerie, who had been asked by Mac not to reveal the honeytrap unless she had to, slipped a photograph across the table. ‘Is this her?’
Keynes gave a nod.
‘If you could say it out loud for the tape,’ Valerie prompted.
‘Yes, that’s her.’
‘Thank you. And you fell into conversation at about what time?’
Keynes heaved out a sigh. ‘How would I know? Eight, quarter-past maybe? I’m not sure. I don’t remember.’
Valerie took the photograph back and gazed at it before glancing up at Keynes. ‘She’s a very attractive woman, don’t you think?’
The solicitor, who was called Grant Matthews and was dressed in a suit that probably cost more than Valerie earned in a month, immediately jumped in. ‘There’s no need to answer that, Joshua.’ He frowned at her. ‘Where exactly is this leading, Inspector?’
‘It was simply an observation.’