by Kate Johnson
‘Trust me,’ said his grandmother, sweeping towards the kitchen, and Luke winced as he recalled the fate of the chicken. ‘It’s the last place anybody would look.’
‘So now where?’ I said as we boarded the Gatwick Express. I was blinking with fatigue, and what with the jet-lag and all I really didn’t know if I was coming or going.
‘BBC&H would be the logical place,’ Jack said.
‘Yes, but isn’t it a Saturday?’
Both of us paused to work this out. I had to look at the calendar on my phone to make sure.
‘They’re a big firm. They’ll probably have someone in on a Saturday,’ Jack said.
I frowned, not quite so sure. ‘Well, in any case, we can’t go straight to BBC&H looking like this.’ BBC&H’s clients were rich, discreet, élite. Someone like Luke would have fit right in. I wasn’t Their Kind of People. If I was, I’d have stepped off the flight looking like a movie star, instead of a homeless person.
Grudgingly, Jack agreed, and we went to find another faceless little hotel to stay in. The address was different from the last one, but inside it was hard to tell it wasn’t the same place. Same duvet, same pictures, same carpet. I washed my face and flaked out on the bed, ostensibly to read some of the notes I’d printed out at Rachel’s, but really to fall asleep. Man, I was so tired. I don’t think I’ve ever been that tired. I needed to sleep for a week just to catch up on the hours I’d missed in one night.
I woke up in the early afternoon, sunlight coming in through the narrow window, and rolled onto my back to stare at the boring white ceiling. Jack lay asleep beside me, and I propped myself on one side to look at him for a little while.
He was handsome, no doubt about that, with his big dark eyes and cutting bone structure and dark, shaggy hair. Maybe, back when we first met, when I’d been so scared and alone, yeah, I might have fancied him a little bit.
I tried to imagine life with Jack as my boyfriend. Would he come round for dinner at my parents’ house? I couldn’t picture it. Would he look after Tammy when I was away? I didn’t think he really understood the relationship I had with my cat. Would he pick me up from Angel’s when I’d had too much to drink and put me to bed without nagging me about my hangover in the morning? Okay, so Luke had a tendency to do that.
But while Luke was a handsome bastard who was trying not to let anyone know he was a good guy, I suspected Jack was a handsome bastard who had to try hard to be a good guy.
I dragged my eyes away and concentrated on the problem at hand. We had to talk to someone at BBC&H about Sarah Wilde, but if we just walked in like we had last time it’d never work. They’d know us by now. Probably they knew us before – after all, wouldn’t they be interested in the case? Probably it was that snotty receptionist who took the appointment. She called the cops as soon as we went out. Cow.
An idea started to form in my head, and I lay there letting it wobble around on baby steps inside my head for a while before turning my head and catching a whiff of myself.
Eurch. Shower time.
I was beginning to lack toiletries and clean clothes in a major way. I did what I could with what I had on hand, which basically meant sossing my clothes about in the bathtub while I washed my hair and letting them dry over the shower rail. The rest I made up for with an overabundance of eyeliner and the high-heeled boots I’d got at Gatwick.
Then I settled down on the bed, got out my shiny new phone, and got to work.
It took me about twenty minutes to find what I wanted, by which time Jack was opening his eyes. He rolled to face me.
‘Checking your horoscope?’ he yawned.
‘Absolutely. Pisces, today you will overcome great obstacles with an ingenious idea.’
Jack blinked at me.
‘I’ve been working,’ I said.
He looked me over. ‘What kind of work?’ he asked, his eyes lingering on my boots.
I bashed him with my phone. ‘BBC&H has a website,’ I said.
‘That’s nice.’
‘And the website has pictures of all the partners, junior partners and reception staff,’ I said. ‘It’s so regularly updated that there’s even an obit of Sir Theo in there.’
‘Great,’ Jack said. ‘Why the hell are you telling me this?’
‘Because I figured out how to find out about Sarah Wilde,’ I said. ‘She was one of Sir Theodore’s clients, right, but one of the trainees was on the case, too. She’s a junior partner now. A Maura Lanley. I figure if we catch up with her we can try and get her to talk.’
‘How?’
‘Well, we could buy her dinner,’ I suggested. ‘Or I could introduce her to my associate, Mr SIG-Sauer.’
‘Either way is good.’ Jack yawned. ‘What’s the time?’
‘A little after five.’
‘Bloody hell!’ He leapt to his feet. ‘I’m gonna take a shower.’ He went into the bathroom, kicking the door shut as he pulled off his shirt.
Five seconds later he pushed the door back open. ‘Did I forget and book the laundry room?’
‘Can you think of a better way to get clean clothes?’
‘Buy new ones.’
‘On whose account?’
‘Well, maybe Maura Lanley’s, if any of her stuff fits you.’ He winked, and closed the door again.
It’s a sign of my mental state that my overriding objection to that idea wasn’t the morality of it, but the fact that barely anyone else’s clothes fit you when you’re five foot ten and have the bustline of a Barbie doll.
‘Just put anything on,’ I said irritably to Jack when he emerged from the shower, ‘we have to go.’
He pulled on jeans and a sweater and we left, phones on silent and gun at the ready.
‘So how exactly are we going to do this? Do you think she’ll be at the office?’
‘Doubtful, at this time of night on a Saturday. I looked for an address for her – there’s one in Grays.’ Jack frowned. ‘Thurrock. About half-an-hour by train.’
Jack was silent a bit, then he said, ‘What if she has a flatmate?’
‘Then we shoot her,’ I said. ‘I’m joking. I don’t know. We … We get her to come outside. Or something. I don’t know yet.’
‘I can see you put a lot of thought into this,’ Jack said.
‘Do you have a better idea?’
He said nothing, and I made a face at him.
Despite it being the weekend, the train was as busy as a weekday rush-hour. We transferred at West Ham and I found myself pressed up against Jack in the crush inside the carriage. He didn’t seem to mind a bit, but it bothered the hell out of me.
Maybe I could go see Luke again …
No. If I went back now I’d never leave.
No one came round to check our tickets, which was just as well because they’d run out when we left the District Line. Not that I cared. If they wanted to fine me then they could go ahead and try. As far as I knew, Alice M. Robinson had been dead thirty years.
I was nearly dozing off by the time the train pulled up in Grays, and Jack had to nudge me into wakefulness. Outside, the air was cool and I could smell the sea. Took me a while to remember where we were, on the banks of the Thames Estuary.
We followed the road out of town to a new development of yuppie flats with a buzzer system that threw me until I saw the tradesmen’s buzzer, which seemed to me a shocking waste of a security system. We went up to the second floor and knocked on her door. Panic suddenly seized me that I’d looked up the wrong Maura Lanley – how many could there be?
‘What if this isn’t the right one?’ I asked.
‘One hell of a time to have second thoughts,’ Jack said. ‘Get your notebook out and try to look friendly.’
I was more than happy to oblige. Having got this far, I was terrified. I was Thelma and Louise both rolled in together. Only without Brad Pitt. It was not okay, it was definitely not okay.
Maura, for it was indeed she, answered the door, and from the slightly crumpled-looking suit sh
e wore I’d guess she had in fact been at the office. Boy, sucks to be her. Around her neck was a lanyard holding a work ID for BBC&H. In the harsh light from the bulb over our heads, she looked pale and pasty. But then, I bet I did, too.
‘Hello,’ Jack smiled at her. ‘Are you the householder?’
She shook her head at us. ‘Are you Jehovah’s Witnesses?’
‘No, no, nothing like that.’
‘I’m not buying anything.’
‘We’re not selling. This is just a quick door-to-door survey of houses in the area. It’ll only take a few seconds.’
She looked us over warily, then gave a brief nod. ‘I’m cooking something,’ she said, ‘so it’ll have to be quick.’
‘It will be,’ Jack said. ‘Are you the householder?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you live alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you alone now?’
Panic flared in her eyes, but it was too late. I pulled the SIG from my bag and levelled it at her. ‘We’re not going to hurt you,’ I said, ‘we just need to ask you a few things.’
‘Do door-to-door surveys usually include guns?’ Maura asked weakly.
‘This one does. Let us in and close the door and don’t touch anything.’
‘But I really do have something cooking –’
I rolled my eyes and handed the gun to Jack. He looked more confident with it anyway. ‘I’ll go and switch it off,’ I said, and went into the little kitchen while Jack followed Maura slowly into the living room. There was pasta bubbling on the stove and I took it off the heat, switched the power off, and got a bottle of Coke and some glasses out of the cupboard.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ I said, ‘but I’m so damn thirsty.’
I poured out a drink for each of us, with Jack looking on, incredulous, then I looked around for something to immobilise Maura with.
‘Sit down.’ Jack motioned her to a wire-framed chair and she sat, looking terrified. ‘The flex,’ he added to me, and I saw an extension cable winding across the floor to a computer stand. I unplugged the lot and tied her wrists to one side of the chair, remembering when Jack had tied me up so many weeks ago in France. And now we were doing the same to someone else. Isn’t co-operation a lovely thing?
‘What do you want?’ Maura asked nervously. ‘I don’t have any money in the house.’
‘Damn.’ I clicked my fingers. ‘And being on the run is so expensive. Could you please tell me your PIN number? If you’re lying I may have to kill you.’
She gave me the four-digit code and I wrote it down on my hand. Then I got her wallet and put it in my bag. Then I sat down beside Jack on the sofa and smiled at her.
‘We’re not going to hurt you. Really. I’m sorry we even have to have the gun, but you wouldn’t take us seriously otherwise. We just want to ask you a few questions.’
‘About what?’
‘Sarah Wilde.’
She looked blank. ‘I don’t know any Sarah Wilde,’ she whispered.
‘Think. You worked on a case with her and Sir Theodore Chesshyre –’
Her eyes widened. ‘You’re the one who killed him!’
‘I did not! I didn’t bloody kill him. I’m so sick of people saying I killed him. I did not kill anybody,’ I ranted.
‘Well, not this year,’ Jack added, and Maura sniffed back some tears.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘we just need to know some stuff about Sarah Wilde because we think she might lead us to the real killer. You worked on a case with her and Sir Theodore about ten years ago, when you were a trainee. Do you remember?’
Maura looked like she was trying very hard to do so. ‘I – there was some woman who used a fake name,’ she said. ‘It might have been that …’
‘Yes,’ I pounced. ‘It’s a fake name. What was her real name?’
‘I wasn’t allowed to know. Sir Theodore knew it …’
‘But now he’s dead. What was the case?’
‘She’d been injured and she wanted the costs of her surgery repaid.’
My mind whirled. ‘Repaid by who?’
‘I don’t know. She got someone to loan her the money. Then she couldn’t pay it back. I think. I can’t remember. I just sort of worked on a few files for Sir Theo. I didn’t have a lot of access.’ Maura trembled.
‘Okay,’ I said to her. ‘It’s all right. We’re not going to shoot you.’ I looked at Jack. ‘I do not like this.’
‘I don’t either,’ Maura whispered, and I smiled.
‘Look, I’m really sorry. I – we – don’t want to frighten you. We just need to know. Can you remember who paid for the surgery?’
She shook her head. ‘I know it was in America.’
‘America’s a big place,’ Jack sighed.
‘The surgeon had a double-barrelled name,’ Maura volunteered. ‘David-John or something.’
I frowned. ‘Was that his first name, or his surname?’
‘His surname. I think. He had, like, three first names all in a row. Michael David-John, or Paul David-John. Something like that. I can’t remember. I’m sorry.’
I nodded automatically. ‘Do you know where in America?’
‘No.’ There were tears falling down her face now.
‘A surgeon called Something David-John in America,’ I said. ‘Not a lot to go on.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Maura sobbed, ‘I just can’t remember …’
‘Do you know what kind of injury it was?’
She shook her head. ‘Something to do with her back …? I don’t know. It was all fixed, whatever it was.’
‘The surgery was successful?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did she look like?’ Jack asked.
‘Oh.’ Maura closed her eyes. ‘Well, I only met her the once, and she had big sunglasses and a hat on, so …’
‘Was she short or tall? White, black? Green?’ Jack asked tersely.
‘White. And sort of, well, average in height, I guess. She was walking with a stick, but I suppose that was because she was still recovering.’
‘Was she English, or American?’
‘English. Sort of a, well, accentless, I suppose. Home Counties or something. Not anything you’d notice. Um,’ Maura looked like she was desperately trying to think of something else to tell us before we got bored and shot her. But there was nothing else to come. We couldn’t think of much else to ask her. She didn’t know anyone else who’d worked on the case with Sir Theodore, and with it being so long ago, she couldn’t remember any more useful details.
She was useless.
‘So, good pick,’ Jack said, standing up, still holding the gun.
‘What? I didn’t see you doing any better.’
‘Yeah, and now she’s seen us …’
‘I won’t tell anyone,’ Maura trembled.
‘No,’ Jack said, and flashed her a Johnny Depp smile. ‘Of course you won’t.’ And he smacked her smartly on the back of the head with the butt of my SIG. She slumped forwards in her chair, Jack stepped back and handed me the gun.
‘Was that necessary?’
‘We need to be well away by the time she wakes up.’
He started towards the door.
‘What, you’re going to just leave her there?’
Jack stared at me. ‘We tied her up and threatened her with a gun,’ he said. ‘Plus, I really don’t think one more charge is going to make all that much difference.’
‘Meaning, even if we do get off for murder, we’ll both still go to jail?’
We stared at each other.
It was never-ending. I’d never be clear. I’d go to jail. Whatever I did, I was screwed. Oh God, oh God.
Oh, God.
Why did he have to say that?
Bastard.
I started untying Maura’s knots and dragged her through into her bedroom. I laid her on the bed and pulled the covers over her, telling myself that maybe she might wake up and think it was a dream. Or even if she wasn’t fooled, sh
e might let us off for being nice.
Jack was standing sullenly by the door. He didn’t offer to help. We walked in silence back through Grays to the station, got on the next train back to London and went to bed. In the morning we might have to talk to each other, but for now, silence was the only way of co-existing.
Chapter Thirteen
‘Holder of full UK driving licence for all categories of vehicles,’ Luke said, digging the spade into the pile, ‘including HGV and motorcycles.’ He gripped the shaft of the spade’s handle with his left hand and lifted it carefully.
‘Experienced parachutist,’ he turned, ‘diver,’ he walked to the wheelbarrow, ‘and skier.’
With a splat, the manure hit the barrow.
‘Holder of the Queen’s Medal for Shooting Excellence,’ Luke said, going back into the stable. Awkwardly, using the wrong hand, he dug the spade in again.
‘Holder of Commercial Pilot Licence,’ carefully lift the spade, ‘with over fifteen-hundred hours’ flying time.’ Turn. ‘Specialises in fighter jets,’ walk out into the sunlight, ‘especially Tornado,’ splat, ‘and helicopters,’ he rested the spade on the ground and leaned on it, ‘especially Chinook.’
He stared at the far row of stable doors. ‘Fluent speaker of four modern languages and two ancient. Eton prefect. Bloodline going back to William the Conqueror. And here I am, shovelling shit with one hand.’
It was probably his grandmother’s idea of a joke. Offer him a place to stay, install him not in one of the terrifyingly grand rooms in her terrifyingly grand house, but in the shabby Head Lad’s flat, and get him to shovel manure out of the stables while the horses were being exercised.
It wasn’t as if he couldn’t ride a damn horse. He’d learned to do that almost before he learned to walk. He’d be more than useful in the saddle.
‘I’m quite sure someone who wears a sling shouldn’t be riding a horse,’ she’d said calmly when he tracked her down in one of her many, many reception rooms.
‘But shovelling manure is okay?’
‘Beggars can’t be choosers, Luke,’ she said, and sailed out.
He got out his phone and checked for messages. It was beginning to be a compulsion. ‘Definition of madness,’ he muttered. ‘Repeating the same thing and expecting a different outcome. Also,’ he put the phone away, ‘talking to yourself.’