by Roberta Kray
A smile crept on to Sharon’s lips. She lowered her voice and asked, ‘Where’s your mother?’
‘Out.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Listen,’ he said, cupping a hand to his ear. ‘Can you hear anything?’
‘No.’
‘So she’s definitely out.’
Sharon grinned. ‘Well, this is what I’m thinking: that Nathan Stone, he’s got a few bob, ain’t he?’
‘What of it?’
‘So he owes you. Well, he owes Kelly and it’s the same thing. Family’s family. You can’t let people take the piss. You play this right and you could earn yourself a few quid. We could all earn a few quid.’
‘And how’s that going to happen?’
‘She’s Stone’s tart, ain’t she?’
‘What of it?’
‘So he’s not going to want to see her get hurt.’
Wayne thought about this for a while, the effort creating furrows on his forehead. ‘But if the two of them are at it, he’ll be watching out for her.’
‘Yeah, well, he can’t watch her twenty-four hours a day.’
Wayne gave a nod. ‘Pym reckons she was staying at a guesthouse near Kellston station. Oaklands, it’s called. She might book in there again if she does come down. We could always —’
‘I’ll tell you how we’re going to do it, hon.’ Sharon leaned across the table, her eyes bright and greedy. ‘Listen to me. I’ve got it all worked out.’
25
Gerald Frayne shook the snow from his shoes and brushed the rain from the shoulders of his heavy overcoat before stepping inside the pub. A blast of noise hit him as he opened the door, a mixture of conversation, laughter and music from the jukebox; the White Swan was popular with the locals and this evening it was doing a brisk trade.
He made his way to the bar and while he was waiting to be served took the opportunity to look around. The usual faces were in evidence, including a few minor villains chatting in the corner. It was the kind of pub where the women dressed to impress – there were lots of miniskirts, plunging necklines, big hair and shiny costume jewellery on view – and the men, more casually attired in shellsuits or jeans and T-shirt, quite blatantly eyed them up.
It was a habit of Gerald’s to have a drink in the Swan from time to time. This wasn’t because he was particularly fond of the place – he wasn’t – but it was where the gossip did the rounds and he liked to keep his ear to the ground. It was surprising how much you could learn in the twenty minutes it took to drink a pint.
‘Evening,’ the barman said. ‘Nice to see you again. The usual?’
‘Thank you.’
‘Still raining is it?’
‘A little.’
While the Guinness was settling, a middle-aged man sidled over from the other side of the bar. He drew close to Gerald, lifted his pale blue eyes, smiled and gave an almost obsequious nod.
‘Ah, Inspector Frayne. Fancy seeing you here. Great minds think alike.’
Gerald didn’t much care for Peter Royston. Some reporters he could get along with, the ones that played fair and didn’t twist the truth, but this man was a scandalmonger; he liked to dig the dirt and didn’t give a damn about the consequences. Despite his antipathy, Gerald smiled back. It didn’t do to let your personal feelings get in the way of the job and Royston often had useful snippets of information. ‘Nasty evening,’ he said. ‘It’s good to get into the warm.’
Royston sipped on his drink, watching Gerald with a sly expression on his face. ‘I hear you’ve been busy.’
Gerald lifted his eyebrows, already suspecting where this was going. ‘We’re always busy. No rest for the wicked.’
‘You’re investigating the Eddie Wise murder, aren’t you?’
Gerald had long since ceased to be amazed at how quickly news travelled in a small town like Haverlea. ‘I wouldn’t go that far. We’re just helping with a few enquiries.’
‘And is there likely to be an arrest soon?’
‘I really couldn’t say.’
Royston put his glass down on the counter. He cleared his throat and ran his tongue over his plump fleshy lips. ‘I saw her this afternoon over at the Hunters’.’
‘And who was that?’ replied Gerald, feigning ignorance.
‘Sadie Wise, of course. She was at Emily Hunter’s birthday bash. I’m surprised you weren’t there.’
Gerald gave a shrug. ‘Too busy, I’m afraid.’ He had received an invitation but had graciously declined, claiming – untruthfully, as it happened – that pressure of work meant he was unable to attend. The Hunters were one of the more influential families in Haverlea and he’d suspected that either Frank or Emily would try to bend his ear about the innocence of their future daughter-in-law. Although he would have been interested in seeing Sadie Wise again, he had decided, on balance, that he was better off keeping his distance. It could be awkward, after accepting the Hunter’s hospitality, if he later had to arrest the girl.
‘It’s an interesting case.’
Gerald, although he was of the same opinion, gave a light shrug. He was always cautious around Royston. Any comment he made could be taken and twisted and splashed across the front page of the next edition of the local rag.
‘She’s a pretty girl,’ the reporter continued, undeterred by the lack of feedback. ‘A bit jumpy, though. She looked positively horrified when she saw me talking to her friend. I wonder why that was?’
Gerald lifted his pint of Guinness, took a long draught and put the glass back on the bar. ‘Everyone is horrified when they find you talking to their friends, Peter. It’s a natural reaction.’
Royston sniggered. ‘Now that’s not a nice thing to say, Inspector. It’s lucky I’m not the sensitive sort.’
‘No one could accuse you of that.’
‘Odd thought though, a slip of a girl plunging a knife into the chest of her husband. Still, appearances can be deceptive. You wouldn’t think she was capable but —’
‘Good do, was it?’ Gerald asked. ‘Many people there?’
‘Not bad. Not bad at all.’ Royston, who was used to people trying to deflect him, carried on regardless. ‘Still, a woman scorned and all that. I hear he walked out on her a few years back. Must have been tough to take. Is it true that he stole from her too?’
‘I couldn’t possibly comment.’
‘Of course Emily Wise made a point of showing her support, but then she would, wouldn’t she?’ Royston paused for a few seconds before adding, ‘You had any of the nationals sniffing round, the Sun or the Mirror?’
‘Not yet.’
‘That’s something, I suppose. If you do make an arrest —’
‘We’ll be sure to let you know.’
Royston rubbed his hands together in gleeful anticipation of what might be to come. ‘I’d appreciate it. You don’t often get a decent story round here. It’d be good to have a head start on the London boys.’
Gerald gave a thin smile. ‘Of course. I understand.’
‘Well, I’ll leave you to enjoy your pint in peace.’
As he watched Royston lumber away, Gerald’s smile quickly vanished. The man reminded him of one of those cane toads, large and ugly and toxic to anything that got too close. Still, at least he hadn’t got wind of the news that had come through from McCloud this morning. Gerald frowned as he thought about it. There had been an anonymous phone call to Cowan Road police station insisting that Sadie was involved with a man called Nathan Stone, a villain who worked for the Kellston gangster Terry Street. But was it the truth or was someone just trying to stir up trouble?
‘She was seen with him, apparently, down the dogs last Saturday night.’
‘Any way of verifying that?’ Gerald had asked. ‘She certainly didn’t mention it to me.’
‘We’re working on it.’
They’d had a brief discussion as to whether Gerald should confront her, but decided it was smarter to hang fire.
‘She’s not going to admit it, is sh
e?’ McCloud had said. ‘And at the moment this is only hearsay. We haven’t got any proof.’
‘And as soon as she realises we’re on to her, she’ll be careful to stay away from him.’
‘Exactly,’ McCloud had said. ‘Let’s back off for a while, make her feel safe and see what happens next.’
Gerald swallowed the last of his pint. Was Sadie Wise in a relationship with Stone or had she just employed him to get rid of her husband? Whichever way you viewed them, things weren’t looking good for her. No, they weren’t looking good at all.
26
Sadie, turning her head to peer through the darkness at the green luminous dial of the alarm clock, saw that it was four o’clock. Her stomach sank. This was the loneliest time of the night, she thought, when dawn still felt like an eternity away. She longed for the daylight but dreaded it too. When morning came she would have to go to the police. She should have gone last night after the party. She should have gone as soon as she got home and pulled out the drawer in the bedside table and found…
A cold wave of fear swept over her as she remembered opening the plastic bag and seeing the gun that Mona had left for her. Small and black and deadly. The girl must have slipped into the bedroom while she was here. How had she done it? Asked to use the bathroom, perhaps, and taken a detour on the way back. Joel wouldn’t have suspected anything. He was the trusting kind.
She could hear Joel’s steady breathing as he slept beside her, oblivious to the panic that was streaming through her body. As soon as she had found the gun she should have told him about it. She should have told him everything, but she hadn’t. Instead she had taken the bag and hidden it beneath a pile of jumpers on the shelf in the top of the wardrobe. It had been an instinctive reaction and a foolish one.
She had a sudden urge to shake him awake, to beg for his help, to spill all the secrets that were crowding in on her. ‘I’m screwed,’ she wanted to say. ‘I’m scared. I’m terrified. I’m in a hole and I don’t know how to get out of it.’
Her hand reached for his shoulder, but she quickly withdrew it. To tell him now would be to disturb the last restful sleep he might get in a while. There was no rush. She should allow him some peace before burdening him with it all. It was the very least she could do.
As she lay there, Sadie wondered how she’d managed to get through Emily’s party. She had smiled and nodded and drunk too much. Perhaps if she’d stayed sober, she’d have had more sense when it came to the gun. The police would want to know why she hadn’t contacted them immediately. Jesus, the police would want to know all kinds of things and for most of them she didn’t have any adequate answers.
The very worst thing she could have done was to take Mona to the party. How would she explain that? You didn’t socialise with someone you believed to be a killer; you didn’t take them with you to celebrate your future mother-in-law’s birthday. No, she was going to look guilty as sin. By midday she’d be locked up in a cell and they’d be throwing away the key.
Sadie’s chest tightened with fear. She felt as though she had stumbled into a Kafkaesque nightmare, a sinister menacing maze from which there was no escape. Whichever path she took would be the wrong one. If she came clean and Mona was arrested, the cops would hear a completely different story from the girl, a tale of collaboration and evil intent. And she’d follow through too. Sadie had no doubt about it. Mona would be prepared to stand in the dock and swear that the two of them had planned the murders together.
‘So what can I do?’ she mouthed silently into the darkness. ‘What the hell can I do?’
Sadie reached out her hand again and touched the reassuring warmth of Joel’s back. He stirred slightly in his sleep but didn’t wake up. Usually he was the one person who always made her feel safe, but now he was powerless to help. She had lied to him, withdrawing into a shell of secrecy. She had passed over each and every opportunity to tell him the truth and now it was too late.
At six o’clock Sadie climbed carefully out of bed, picked up her clothes and tiptoed into the living room. It was still dark and misty outside but the light from the streetlamps cast a glow over the furniture. She went to the bathroom, took a quick shower and got dressed. Today she was supposed to be returning to work after a week off but if she went to the police she was unlikely to make it.
Back in the living room Sadie wrapped her arms around her chest and rocked gently back and forth. It occurred to her suddenly that there was an alternative to spilling her guts. It wasn’t a good alternative and it certainly wasn’t a moral one, but the option was still open to her: she could, if she chose, do absolutely nothing.
She frowned, aware that taking this route would be both cowardly and unprincipled. It would mean Mona getting away with murder, and Eddie’s death going unpunished. Could she live with that? She didn’t know. She lifted a hand to her mouth and chewed on a fingernail. To do nothing had its own risks. She would, in effect, be covering up a crime and should the truth come out at any point she would probably go to jail as an accessory.
She wondered how Mona would react when she simply refused to go through with the killing. Not well, she was sure of it. But then what could the girl do without implicating herself? She could hardly go to the cops to complain about Sadie not sticking to her side of the bargain.
Sadie sat down at the table, switched on the lamp, grabbed her bag and found the papers Mona had given her. She smoothed them out and gazed at them. The address was written across the top of a plan of the garden: 12 Constance Avenue, Hampstead. A black arrow pointed to a gate where she could gain access. From the gate, a route had been mapped out to a summer house, and from there another path to the back of the house where a window had a large asterisk beside it.
She shuddered at the map and pushed it aside. There was also a two-page letter, written in a childlike scrawl. Rapidly, she scanned through the words, repulsed by Mona’s coldness when it came to the despatch of her own father. She wondered what he’d done to make Mona loathe him so much.
The plan was ridiculous, a fantasy full of holes. There was no way of knowing that her father would even be in the study on the night that was chosen. Or that he wouldn’t see or hear an intruder crossing the lawn. How had Mona thought, even for a moment, that this could possibly work? But the answer to that was plain as day: because she was crazy, because her mind was sick and twisted.
Sadie took a few deep breaths, knowing one thing at least – she had no intention of going anywhere near Hampstead. She screwed up the letter and the map and shoved them back in her bag. She didn’t dare put them in the bin in case Joel found them. She thought about burning them in the sink but was worried about a lingering smell. What she didn’t need at the moment was any awkward questions.
As all this went through her head, Sadie realised that she’d finally come to a decision. She was going to call Mona’s bluff, lie low and hope it would all go away. Leaning forward, she covered her face with her hands feeling the shame roll through her. She knew who’d killed Eddie and was going to let them get away with it. But what else could she do? She didn’t trust the police when it came to rooting out the truth and she didn’t want to spend the next twenty years of her life in jail.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘Sorry, Eddie.’
A short while later Sadie crept back into the bedroom and retrieved the Beretta from the wardrobe, unsure as to what she was going to do with it. Throw it in the sea? But that was risky. What if the tide brought it straight back in again? But she couldn’t bear to keep it any longer than she had to. Perhaps she could dump it in a bin in town. But that was chancy too. She had no idea of where Mona had got the gun or whether it could be traced back to her.