by Zoe Sharp
‘Who – Simone?’ I said roughly. ‘Isn’t it a bit late for that?’
He shook his head. ‘Ella,’ he said. ‘With Simone gone, Harrington’s just acquired his youngest client.’ He let that one penetrate for a moment, then added, more briskly, ‘Plus, Parker Armstrong’s prepared to chip in to find out what really happened to Jakes. Right now the explanation the police have given us is just too convenient.’ He moved back a little further, giving me space. ‘Where did Simone get her hands on the gun, for a start?’
‘Out of Lucas’s storeroom, probably,’ I said. ‘The lock was off and the door was open when I got down there.’
‘Why, though? Why would he give her a gun? Had Simone ever expressed an interest?’
‘No,’ I said, swallowing, trying to focus on being matter-of-fact. ‘If anything she was very anti about them. Definitely didn’t like them around Ella.’
‘Right, so how did she end up with one? And if she was so anti that she’d never fired one before, how did she manage to shoot you so accurately – twice, in the dark?’
‘She could have been aiming for Lucas and missed, but I can’t believe she would have risked hitting Ella,’ I said. I shook my head. ‘I didn’t see her coming at me. Didn’t hear her, either, for that matter, until afterwards. Maybe she wasn’t aiming for me at all. Maybe she just let off a couple of wild shots and I got in the way. She could have been aiming for anything.’
Another brief freeze-frame of memory flipped out in front of me. The way Simone had appeared over the edge of that ditch with the gun held rigidly out in front of her. And I remembered, too, the anger in her eyes, anger that I could have sworn had turned to shock when she’d seen me lying there…
‘So you think it might have been unintentional?’ Sean asked, as though he’d read my mind.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. I scrubbed at my eyes with my left hand, forgetting that although they’d unplugged my IV line, they’d left in the butterfly. I nearly took my eye out in the process.
‘You’re using it more,’ Sean said.
I looked down and found I’d been absently smoothing down the tape holding the butterfly in place into a vein in the back of my left hand, using the fingers of my right. For a moment I just stared at them. The nerves were still fizzing and every hair on my forearm felt wired to the mains, but at least the arm seemed prepared to be part of my body again, however distant, rather than some disengaged piece of meat.
‘You can get past this, Charlie,’ he said with quiet vehemence, and I knew he wasn’t just talking physically. ‘It will get better.’
‘Yeah, well, it better had,’ I said, dragging up a smile from somewhere. ‘The loafing in this place isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.’
He might have said more, but we both heard the footsteps in the corridor outside my room, and when a tall thin figure in a sombre three-piece pinstripe suit appeared in the doorway, he didn’t take me by surprise.
‘Miss Fox,’ Rupert Harrington greeted me gravely. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘On the mend, sir,’ I said, forcing a determined brightness into my voice that hadn’t been there only a few seconds before.
Simone’s banker eyed me doubtfully for a moment but didn’t call me on it.
‘Ah, good,’ he said at last, nodding. ‘That’s good.’
He still hadn’t advanced from the doorway and seemed almost hesitant about doing so. I was almost on the point of telling him that gunshot injuries were not generally contagious, when he spoke again.
‘Look, I have somebody with me whom I’d rather like you to have a chat with, but I’m not sure how you’re going to react to him and—’
‘Mr Harrington,’ I said, stopping him dead, ‘I’m hardly in any state to bite, am I? Not at the moment. Bring him in, whoever he is.’ Some kind of detective, perhaps – taking over looking after Ella’s welfare? I ignored the spike of jealousy. After all, I didn’t make such a hot job of it myself, did I?
Harrington stepped sideways slightly and made ushering motions to someone standing further out in the corridor, out of my sight. There was a pause before a bearded young man shuffled into view, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched as though he would rather have been anywhere but here. Well, that made two of us.
‘Er, hello…again,’ he said.
Simone’s ex-boyfriend – Ella’s father – Matt.
Possibly the last person I would have expected to see in the company of the immaculate banker. Matt was, after all, the very reason that Harrington had originally hired us.
Sean moved round the bed so he was between me and the doorway, and for some reason the action irritated me.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ I said. ‘What are you expecting him to do?’
Sean’s answering glance was hooded, but he didn’t stand down.
Harrington stood looking awkward. ‘As I said, I realise this may seem somewhat irregular—’
‘You could say that,’ Sean murmured, not taking his eyes off Matt.
‘—but I’d appreciate it if you would hear what this young man has to say before you make any judgements,’ the banker finished with a little more snap to his tone.
‘I’m sorry. I know this isn’t a good time,’ Matt said, eyes flitting nervously from one of us to the other. He looked older, his gaunt face haggard, and a suspicion of red around his eyes and nose. Whatever his problems with Simone, I recalled belatedly, they’d lived together for five years and shared a daughter. The violent abruptness of Simone’s death was always going to hit him hard.
The thought that he’d come to hear the grim details first-hand brought on an icy tightness in my chest.
‘Come on in, Matt,’ I said, giving him a weary smile. ‘And I’m the one who’s sorry – for everything. I was supposed to be keeping her safe.’
I saw his shoulders drop a fraction. ‘But, according to the police, she’s the one who shot you,’ he said, and his tone revealed bewilderment as much as bitterness. ‘What happened?’
‘I wish I knew,’ I said.
Matt nodded as though that was the answer he’d been expecting. He’d developed a sudden interest in the toes of his old basketball boots, unable to meet anyone’s eyes.
‘So,’ Sean said. ‘What is it you have to say to us?’
Matt swallowed. He had a prominent Adam’s apple and it bobbed nervously in and out of the vee presented by the open collar of his shirt.
‘Look, I know you don’t have any reason to trust me – or to think I’m telling the truth for that matter,’ he said. ‘But whatever you may have thought of me, I genuinely loved Simone. We had our troubles, yeah. She was insanely jealous—’ He broke off, realising that any mention of insanity in the woman who’d been shot dead by the police was probably unfortunate.
‘And I love my daughter,’ he muttered, earnest now, his voice low and shaking with sincerity. ‘You people just have no clue how much I love my daughter.’
I said nothing. Matt was wrong. I had a very good idea of what he felt for Ella, even though I was no blood relation to her. Unless you counted the stuff I’d spilt trying to keep her from harm.
Matt had paused, trying to collect his thoughts, find the right place to start his story. Eventually, he said, almost tiredly, ‘A couple of years ago, when Simone’s mum was very ill, we came over to Chicago to see her. She’d been too ill to travel for a while and she’d never seen Ella and we thought it was probably her last chance,’ he went on. He smiled a little sadly. ‘Pam was a nice lady. I liked her, you know? She was obviously in a lot of pain but she never made a big thing out of it, and she was just so happy to finally get to see Ella.’
Matt wore a Russian wedding ring on the thumb of his right hand, three intertwining bands of gold. He played with them absently, rolling the narrow bands over and over one another, up and down his thumb. A habit, something to occupy his hands.
‘Anyway, we ended up talking quite a bit, her and me, because even then Simone was starting to talk a
bout finding her father, and while we were over here she was quizzing Pam about him a lot. I suppose she realised how serious things were with her mum’s health and if she didn’t ask her questions now, she’d never get the chance. But her mum wouldn’t talk about him.’
‘Nothing?’ I asked.
Matt shook his head. ‘Not to Simone – she just stalled her. Then she took me on one side one day when Simone had taken Ella out, and she told me that Greg Lucas was a right miserable bastard who made her life hell and she hoped to God that Simone never got to meet him again. She made me promise,’ he went on with a shaky smile, ‘to do whatever I could to stop her tracking him down.’
He cast a reproachful glance at Harrington, who had taken a seat by the window and was picking imaginary lint from the knee of his wool trousers, pretending not to hear.
‘She must have told you more than that,’ I said, remembering the air of sheer desperation when I’d tackled him in the restaurant.
He swallowed again and nodded.
‘She had this boyfriend – John,’ he said.
‘Who did?’ Sean asked. ‘Simone?’
‘No – Pam,’ Matt said, frowning at the interruption to his train of thought. ‘She said she met John a while before she and Greg split, and eventually John was the one who gave her the courage to leave her husband. She got a divorce and they moved away, made a fresh start, but Greg kept tracking them down, threatening them, hounding them. They were constantly on the move. Then, when they’d been living in one place for about six months, she came home one day and found John had just disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’
Matt nodded. ‘She said she’d only been out for a couple of hours – left him looking after Simone. When she came back the place had been broken up a bit – couple of things smashed like there’d been a fight. Simone was all alone in the house, hiding under her bed, crying her eyes out, and John had vanished.’
His eyes flicked between Sean and me, as if checking to see how the story had been received. Harrington’s face was shuttered. This was clearly not the first time he’d heard it. I shifted a little, carefully, in the bed.
‘Were the police involved?’ I asked.
‘She told me they weren’t very interested,’ he said. ‘He was an adult whose girlfriend’s ex was cutting up rough. They thought he’d just done a runner and she reckons they didn’t put much effort into finding him.’
‘And what about Lucas?’
‘Pam said that was the weird thing. Having been practically stalking her, he never bothered her again. When she made some enquiries of her own, she was told he’d left the army a month or so before John went missing. And he left the country the day afterwards.’ He paused, face sombre. ‘Pam swore John wouldn’t have just upped and left her and Simone. She was absolutely convinced Greg Lucas had murdered him.’
A brief silence fell into the void created by Matt’s words. All I could think of was that Ella had been left in the care of such a man. And that I hadn’t taken him down when I’d had the chance. The memory of Lucas using her as a shield, hiding behind her body, came roaring through my mind like a monster, licking at the back of my eyeballs with the flames of its tongue.
‘Surely you must have told Simone what her mother said?’ Sean demanded. ‘If not at the time, then later?’
Matt’s head sagged. ‘Pam made me promise I wouldn’t ever say anything,’ he said. He must have been aware how lame that sounded because his head swung up again, stared pleadingly between us, as though begging for understanding. ‘I gave her my word that I wouldn’t tell. And then, when I did finally break my promise, it was too late,’ he added dully. ‘Simone and I had already split by then.’ His eyes skated over Harrington and the accusation sharpened the glance into barbs. ‘People had been telling her I was just after her money. She didn’t believe me.’
Harrington cleared his throat. ‘This information only came to our attention since Miss Kerse’s tragic and untimely demise,’ he said with a little sideways glance at Matt. ‘Naturally, we are concerned for Ella’s welfare.’
And suddenly the reason the banker was here, with Matt, became clear. If Lucas wasn’t fit to have charge of Simone’s millions, Harrington had allied himself with the next in line to the throne.
‘Naturally,’ Sean said, and the cynical note in his voice told me he’d drawn the same inference.
Harrington coloured slightly and ploughed on. ‘Part of the reason I’m here,’ he said, ‘is that I’ve spoken with my board and we feel we’d like to retain your services.’
I gave a short laugh. ‘What as?’
Everyone frowned at me, briefly united in their disapproval.
‘When we flew into Boston yesterday I drove straight up to see Greg and Rosalind Lucas,’ Matt said flatly. ‘They refused to let me in.’ He went back to his miserable study of the floor. ‘I just wanted to know my little girl was all right and they wouldn’t even let me see her.’
‘On what grounds?’ I asked. ‘You’re her father – you should have automatic rights over her.’
‘They said Simone had told them I was a junkie,’ he said, and now the bitterness was loud and clear. ‘They said they didn’t want someone like me to have any contact with their granddaughter, and that the courts over here would back them up.’
I raised an eyebrow at Sean, who shrugged. ‘If that’s the case, then they’re probably right,’ he said calmly. ‘They’d have to present some pretty compelling evidence, though.’
‘Of course it’s not the bloody case,’ Matt said, his voice rising. ‘So what if I’ve done the occasional bit of weed on a weekend? Who hasn’t? But the way they were saying it, I’d be shooting up in alleyways and dragging Ella into crack dens.’ He broke off, took a breath, glanced at Harrington. ‘They seem pretty well-off people, and I know you told me the DNA test came back a match – so it looks like he really is Ella’s granddad. I don’t stand a chance of getting her back, do I?’
‘Not when there’s so much at stake,’ the banker said. He coughed, as if forcing himself to regurgitate what he considered to be confidential information. ‘Whoever has charge of Ella also has, at today’s exchange rate, around twenty-five million dollars to play with.’
Matt eyed him glumly. ‘Looks like I’ve got a fight on my hands, then.’
‘Not quite, old chap,’ Harrington said, and I thought I caught just the faintest glimmer of a smile slide across his thin lips. ‘I’d say we’ve got a fight on our hands, hm?’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ten days after I was shot, I signed the necessary papers and discharged myself from hospital, much to the disgust of most of the staff there, although my departure fell just short of being totally Against Medical Advice.
My father definitely disapproved of my actions – but what else is new? In fact, my decision caused what I suspected was another flaming row between him and Sean, but neither would admit as much and – this time at least – they conducted it well out of my earshot.
By the time I made my escape I’d more or less mastered the art of staggering along on one crutch, although stairs were something to be avoided at all costs. I was beginning to be able to bear a little weight through my left leg, but walking unaided still seemed a distant dream rather than a reality. I remembered once having been able to run with a kind of wonder.
They’d unplugged me from all the machinery and declared the danger of infection in my wounds was probably past. I’d regained partial strength in my right hand and could just about raise it to my mouth, but not if it was attempting to lift a cup of coffee that was more than half-full. I couldn’t dress myself without help, could barely cut my own food up, and doing anything at all for more than about five minutes at a time brought on pain in the bottom of my right lung like a hot blade, and exhaustion so extreme it made my hands shake.
They gave me pills for every occasion, announced they couldn’t be held responsible if I keeled over, and provided an orderly and a wheelchair to take me down
to the Ford Explorer Sean had waiting. I would have loved to have scorned their transport and gone on my own two feet, but the truth was I just didn’t feel up to it. I thanked everyone who’d helped get me this far, trying to gloss over their hurt responses, like leaving before I was ready was a personal insult.
Some of the staff came down to see me off – or maybe they were just waiting to see me collapse before I made it that far. To my surprise, the surgeon with the perfect smile who’d operated on me was one of those who stood in the pale sunshine by the Discharges exit and watched me struggle the short distance between wheelchair and passenger seat. He shook my hand, frowning at the limp grip that was all I could manage to offer.
‘Well, good luck, Charlie,’ he said in that grave tone they must teach them in surgical college. ‘If all my patients had your determination, their recovery rates would be even higher than they already are. Just remember that your body needs rest. You need to be gentle on yourself sometimes, you know.’
‘Yeah,’ I said with a touch of bitterness that surprised me as I settled back gingerly into my seat while Sean strapped me in. ‘Tell that to Simone.’
I sensed Sean’s sharp glance, but I was watching the doctor’s face. He nodded, a little sadly, and stepped back.
My father hadn’t joined the little farewell party. He’d said his piece earlier that morning and announced he would be spending the next few days visiting one of his old colleagues who was now based in New England. ‘Just in case you have need of me,’ he’d added cryptically.
Now, Sean slammed the door and moved round to the driver’s seat. I gave the staff a final wave and a smile and then the engine was fired up and we were rolling the short distance towards the exit.
I let my breath out slowly and leant back against the headrest, shutting my eyes.
‘You can drop the act now, Charlie,’ Sean said quietly.
I opened my eyes again, reluctantly, and turned my head towards him. He was in his shirtsleeves, despite the freezing temperatures and the snow outside, and his eyes were hidden behind dark glasses. I wished they weren’t. It made him even harder than usual to read.