Hidden Heart (Love Is The Law 1)

by Isabella Brooke

  "WHAT?" She whipped back around and took one step backwards, her heart hammering as she stared at him.

  But Turner grinned widely and sat back down in the office chair, leaning back. The desk had been pushed to one side, but he still looked like a boss, or some kind of interviewer. "I said, don't worry. You look like you think I'm going to do terrible things to you."

  "Well - no. Of course you're not." She realised she was holding her bag tightly, so she made a conscious effort to relax her grip. She placed it on the desk and fiddled with the clasp, buying herself some time by digging around for her notebook and pens.

  "So," he said, lifting his arms and placing his hands behind his head, his elbows jutting out in a way best designed to show off his biceps, "What's the story?"

  She pulled up a chair and half-faced him, leaning one arm on the desk. "I was hoping you were going to tell me that."

  "Your brother says you're a journo. And that you write about social issues."

  "I do."

  There was a moment of silence as they looked at one another. Emily clicked her biro a few times, and drew a random line across the top of the notebook.

  How many times have I done an interview? This should be second-nature by now. She'd dealt with people who talked for hours, and people who muttered one-word answers. People who couldn't answer a direct question and people whose vocabulary was limited to about twenty words, half of them obscene. Habit should kick in.

  "So, Turner. I need to get some background information about you." She spoke with more confidence than she felt. Again she faltered and stopped, and drew a spiral on the paper.

  "Go ahead."

  "So, uh." She couldn't look up at him. His direct gaze unsettled her. "Um."

  The silence lengthened. Finally he took pity on her. "Do you want to know about my crimes?"

  Crimes, plural? She nodded. "Yeah. Sorry. I just don't know the politest way to ask… I've never…"

  He snorted with laughter, making her look up. He seemed genuinely amused as he said, "Okay, for one: there is no polite way, and I don't deserve a polite way. And for two, you've never spoken with a convicted criminal? Sure you have. You don't know the history of every person you meet, and I can guarantee you've met more than one person who's served a bit of time."

  "Right. Okay. Sorry. So, yeah, your … crimes?"

  He unfolded his arms and crossed them over his chest. Emily pressed her pen to the notebook, and wrote Turner Black.

  He craned his neck to look. "Turner Black folded his arms defensively and appeared hesitant to speak about his crimes," he told her.

  Emily frowned, and picked up the notebook. "I was just writing your name!"

  "I know, I know. Sorry. Just messing with you. Okay." He took a deep breath and she did wonder if he was stalling for time. She looked intently at his face, searching for signs of embarrassment or reluctance as he began to speak.

  "I was a squaddie. I actually got to the rank of Sergeant in the infantry, and I loved it. At school… well, the Army was so much better. It was where I fitted in, and I did well. So I did thirteen years, and left when I was thirty. I was feeling like an old man, you know! Hell. Thirty years old, and they were calling me Grandad."

  He grinned, his eyes looking over her shoulder as he recalled the good times in his head. Then he focussed back on her again, and his smile died. "But life out of the Army is tough. You go to the Jobcentre, and they ask what skills you have, and you say, Uh, I'm pretty good at killing people, and not too bad at sitting around in shitty places for weeks waiting for something to happen, and I'm fucking fantastic at ironing." He shrugged, and his mouth was set in a thin line.

  Emily thought she could see the killer in him. Her shorthand scribbles faltered as she waited for him to continue.

  "So, that's it, really. I got fed up of having no job and no money. I didn't have anywhere to live, so I moved in with my mum and my sister. She… well, that's irrelevant. They needed someone about the house, put it that way. And an offer came my way and I took it. We did a bank."

  "That's it?"

  "And some other stuff, afterwards, with cars and money and all that, and then I was caught. And I did my time, for that bank job at any rate, and now I'm here. And before you ask, yeah I do regret it."

  Emily tapped her pen on the notepad and looked at Turner with amusement. "Oh, come on. All that waffle about being in the Army and all that, and… you summed up your crimes in about four words. There's no story in that."

  "Tell me what you're writing about and I'll tell you what you need to know."

  "It doesn't work like that."

  Turner tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling for a moment. His adam's apple jutted sharply from his throat. Emily sighed and waited. Sometimes, the most effective interviewing technique was silence - let them talk. Give them a gap that they feel compelled to fill.

  He huffed, and dropped his gaze. "Which magazine or newspaper is this going in? It makes a difference, doesn't it? I can’t imagine The Daily Mail wants the same story as The Independent."

  "Well, uh, I haven't pitched to anyone yet. This is just a preliminary interview so I can get a handle on your story and then I can decide where best to place it."

  "Oh." He frowned. "That's not what your brother said."

  "My brother is an idiot, and doesn't have the first clue how journalism works."

  "You're totally freelance?"

  "Yeah."

  "So ring up your usual editors and chat with them, find a spot. Isn't that how it works?"

  Emily thought about her last editor, and the mess she'd made of the story. Tom Khalil was probably still laughing his ass off. She shook her head. "I need…" For fuck's sake. She needed a break. "I need more details, actually. Look. Okay, I hadn't really thought this through. Matthew rang me up and told me to meet you, and he said you had a great story, so here I am, ready to hear it. Now you say you robbed a bank, and that's it? The great story? I don't need this. I am wasting my time, and I'm wasting your time." She slammed her notepad shut, and a wave of tiredness washed over her. She didn't feel as if she were thinking straight. All she really wanted to do was crawl back into bed.

  Maybe it was time for a change of job.

  "I'm sorry." She stood up and looked at Turner, slowly shaking her head. He blinked at her in surprise.

  "That's it?"

  "Yeah. I am sorry, honestly I am. It's just… I don't know. I don't think I'm going anywhere with this story. Any story."

  "Hey. Are you okay?" He waved his wide hands at her, urging her to sit down again, but she slid the notebook into her bag and clutched it in front of her.

  "Yeah. No, but thanks for asking. You know, I never even intended to be this kind of journalist. And I think it shows."

  "What did you want to be?"

  She laughed hollowly. "oh, Film reviews. Entertainment writing. Television, radio, theatre, arts, galleries, drama. Glamour and glitz and fiction, really."

  "So why aren't you doing that?"

  He looked as if he genuinely wanted to know. Emily looked down at the carpet, suddenly feeling the need to focus on the harsh pink-flecked grey twill. "Opportunities came up that I couldn't say no to."

  "I know that feeling," he said quietly, with an edge to his voice.

  "The bank job?"

  "You could say that."

  She waited, and her patience paid off. He began to elaborate, and as he talked, she sat back down, but kept the notebook in her bag. "I needed money. Not for me, really. For my … family."

  Kids? But she kept quiet.

  "I never intended to commit any crimes. I was so proud of being a soldier. You know, someone who defends their country, their country's laws, defends the weak, does what is right. But an opportunity came up and someone was very persuasive. Thing is, what you gotta understand, once you've stepped down that road, everything changes. Once I was a criminal, I suddenly found that I was going to be a criminal for ever. Look. Look at me. In your eyes, I'm st
ill a crook, aren't I? I've done my jail time but to you, I'm not rehabilitated, I'm not starting over. For you, my crime was yesterday. It's still fresh."

  Emily breathed out slowly. He was right in his assumptions about her, and she didn't like it. Not that she was going to admit it.

  "I have met people who have committed crimes. Of course I have. I just never really thought about it before. I write about social issues, so I have met people on the edge of life, the edge of their communities, doing whatever they needed to do to survive. But you do seem… different," she was forced to admit.

  He grinned, amused. "I know. Because I don't fit the stereotype you were expecting, right? A meat-headed thug who couldn't string a sentence together. I mean, I have had my moments… but I spent a lot of time in the prison library."

  She cocked her head to one side and couldn't stop her eyes darting over his thick arms. He followed her gaze, and said, "Yeah, and the gym."

  "Is prison…" she stopped and swallowed.

  "Don't be polite. Ask away."

  "Sorry."

  "Don't apologise. Go on, ask."

  "Okay. Sor - I mean, okay. Is prison different if you're… ah, a thinking sort of person?"

  His eyebrows raised in brief surprise and he smiled, his eyes twinkling. "I thought you were going to ask me about being raped in the showers. Heh, right. Everyone ends up a thinking sort of person to some extent, when you're banged up all day and all night."

  "I thought they couldn't do that."

  "No, not really. You're supposed to have a certain number of hours in work or education. Oh, purposeful activity they call it. But it doesn't always work. I know what you're asking, though. Prison changes a man but it can only bring out what was already inside. Some guys do think a lot. I wasn't the only one. You'd be amazed, some of the conversations you get with the other guys. The lifers, the long-termers, they are the interesting ones."

  "Murderers."

  Turner barked out a laugh, shocking Emily with his casual amusement. "You and I, we're closer to them than to any other criminal."

  She felt a sneer twist her face. "I don't think so," she said, disgusted. "How?"

  "You could kill, I could kill. Under certain circumstances, you could easily find yourself done for manslaughter."

  She felt a little sick, and angry at his insinuations, but his fiery eyes kept her seated and listening as he explained, waving his hands about to act out his words.

  "Imagine you're out and someone's there beating a child and you have an iron bar in your hand and you smack them on the back of the neck to make them stop… and they hit the deck, and bam! You're the criminal now. We all have our triggers. We could all kill. Those are the interesting men. The low-life habitual criminals, the ones who rob old grannies and treat prison like a three-times-a-year holiday camp, fuck them. I have nothing in common with them, and nor do you. But the lifers are the ones with the stories, and they have had a lot of time to think."

  "Maybe I should be interviewing them."

  "You should." Turner sat forward, passion on his face. "I've met guys who've ended up serving ten, twenty years just for one random mistake as a young man. Their whole life is now fucked. They get to open prison, try to rehabilitate, but how can they? The world has changed. When these fellas were sent down, there were no mobile phones. No internet. Life was different. I've seen big hard men go off on a town visit and come back shaking - everything seems too fast for them, too loud, too scary. You have no idea. I have no idea. God, Emily, those are the men to talk to."

  "Except I can't. They're in prison."

  "And they get to a point they don't want to leave."

  Turner had shuffled to the edge of his seat, but as his energy subsided he sat back, and Emily pursed her lips, thinking hard.

  "Okay," she said at last. "Yes. Perhaps we could work on a story together. Maybe… I don't know, I need to go away and think this through, but there's more than a personal-profile interview here. We could collaborate on an expose about sentencing, opportunities, about … everything."

  "Collaborate?" A slow smile spread over his face and he looked almost boyish. "So there's money in it for me. Nice one. I like that. How much?"

  Bugger. He seemed to have disregarded her caution and just assumed it was all set to go.

  Perhaps there was something in it. Emily found that her heart was racing as his passion for his topic had infected her, and she was raring to get started - on something. Quite what her focus was, she didn't know, but his energy was compelling. "Well, like I said, I don't have an actual commission yet…"

  "But you will. That's what you do, isn't it?"

  Trying to explain the precarious freelance life was always hard. Her parents still hadn't got their heads around it, and Turner looked to be no different. "I will, yes…"

  "Are you sure?"

  Nope. She should make it really plain that it was a long shot. "Yes, of course. But I can't promise any money until I have a definite yes from somewhere."

  "Halves."

  "Um…"

  He shrugged. "Those are my terms."

  It didn't work like this. It wasn't supposed to. She needed the money and if she did get a commission, she needed all the money.

  But it looked like he needed the cash, too.

  "Okay."

  "Sweet."

  They stared at each other for a moment in silence. The money issue had thrown Emily slightly, and she fiddled with her bag again, before standing up and extending her hand. "Thank you very much for your time, Turner. I think we'll work well together. I'm looking forward to it."

  He stood too, towering over her. He was relaxed but it was still unnerving to remember he was recently out of prison, and capable of anything. "So what's next?"

  "I need to find a commission. And I've got to do some research, so I can find a good angle, and that's where you come in. If you know anyone else I can interview that would be great. I'll need your inside contacts, and your insights. I'll dig around, and if you can dig around, great. I'll get in touch as soon as I have something more concrete."

  "When will that be?"

  She bit back her sigh and tried not to let her frustration sound in her voice. "Please. I don't know."

  He, too, was holding some feeling back - frustration? She couldn't tell. He thinned his lips briefly, and then nodded curtly. "Okay. Okay, cool. Speak to you soon."

  "Yeah. Okay."

  Leave! She made an effort and tore herself away from him, turning away and stalking out of the room. She was buzzing with the excitement of a potential story, and pushed aside the nagging fears that always accompanied this stage. Embryonic ideas, so potent - but so full of the chance to fail.

  Again.

  Chapter Two

  "Don't look like that. It's a sink full of unwashed pots. Get over it."

  Turner raised his hands in a placatory gesture but he couldn't help wrinkling his nose at his sister's defensive words. Elaine folded her arms and glared right back at him. The small kitchen was at the back of the terraced house, and it was shabby.

  "Do you want me to come and redecorate?"

  Elaine shrugged and her hoop earrings clattered. She'd had more put in while he'd been away. He was surprised her lobes weren't sagging. "No, not really," she told him dismissively. "I'd have to tidy up first, and right now, I don't need the hassle."

  "I'd help."

  "Nah, you're all right. With two kids, what's the point of making a place look nice?" Elaine ran a perfectly manicured hand through her blonde extensions. She had a curling tattoo on her hand, which she'd also acquired during his prison stay. He thought it looked as tacky as hell but he kept his mouth shut.

  He dropped his voice, glancing to the door that led to the long, crowded living room. They could hear the television - some screaming harpy on a daytime talk show - but he still didn't want to risk being overheard. "How is mum?"

  "Not too bad. The treatments still wipe her out but not as much, actually. She's doing better."r />
  "Good. Look, I was wondering, do you need me to move back in?"

  Elaine snorted an inelegant laugh and leaned back against the chipped counter-top. She was dressed in the tightest faded denim shorts her slim body could fit into. Her fake orange tan showed stark against the cheap white cropped vest. "Oh maaaan. You drove us bonkers while you were here. Seriously. I know you mean well and all that, but fuck. No. Thanks. I've got two boys to look after. I don't need three, you know?"

  "Charming. Thanks a bunch."

  "You're welcome."

  They shared a grin for a moment, but Turner wasn't quite satisfied. "Look, the boys are five, and … look. About money. Are you getting anything from that turd of an ex?"

  Elaine's smile died instantly and her face looked much older when she frowned. "Do you want to start me smoking again? Four days I've not had a ciggie now."

  "That bad?"

  "What?"

  "Mentioning that arsehole."

  She pushed upright away from the counter-top and half-turned away. "Whatever. No, I'm not getting anything. He says he doesn't have any money. I'd go through the courts but I can't be… can't be arsed, to be honest. He's a liar."

  "So what the hell are you living on?"

  "Benefits. Mum helps."

  Turner felt a wave of sick anger in his stomach. There was a cancer inside his family; in his mother's lungs. And a cancer eating from the outside - Riggers. Fucking odious septic little Andy Rigby. He was responsible for far more than the fathering of Elaine's two kids.

  "The only thing stopping me putting a bullet in that twat's head is the thought of your lads growing up fatherless. Not that he is any kind of fucking father."

  "Turner-"

  "No, it's okay. Don't worry. I'm not going to-"

  He stopped as the door opened and his frail mother peeked in. He cursed as he realised his voice had got louder. Had she heard any of it? He shot a warning glance towards Elaine, who had half-heartedly picked up a sponge and was moving dirt around the counters.

  "Turner! What you doing sneaking in the back door? You should have come on through. Elaine, you got that kettle on yet? I'm dry as a camel's bum. Parched, I am. Look at you." Mrs Black advanced on Turner and enfolded him in a warm hug. He could rest his chin on her head but he would have still quailed to find himself on her wrong side.