by Roberta Kray
‘Will it keep?’
Lesley sighed. It was one of those sorrowful hard-done-by exhalations that she had honed to perfection through the years. ‘I suppose it’ll have to.’
‘Okay, I’ll call when I get back.’
No sooner had she put the phone down than she had second thoughts. What if it was important, something to do with Joe Silk or the Rowans or … Perhaps she shouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss her. Her face scrunched into worry. But surely if it was anything urgent she’d have been more insistent. And she’d have sounded more concerned. No, Lesley was just after some sucker to dump her troubles on, anyone who was prepared to listen, to offer a sympathetic ear. Although if she imagined she’d ever get that from Eve she must have been drinking those cocktails since dawn.
Resisting the temptation to ring her back, she took another brief look through the window – damn it, he was still there – and headed for the bedroom. The case was open on the bed and she began checking through the contents, mentally ticking off the list in her head: two bikinis, shorts, T-shirts, a pair of light cotton trousers, three strappy dresses (did she really need three?), flip-flops, bras, pants, deodorant, toothbrush, shampoo, soap, sun cream, make-up. Should she take a cardigan? She couldn’t decide. Her mind wasn’t really on the job. Only a minor part was focused on the packing, a slightly larger part on Lesley’s phone call, but most remained concentrated on the threat that lay outside.
How was she going to get out of here?
She was on her way back from the bathroom, a pair of towels draped over her arm, when the idea came to her. Of course! Why not? It was workable, wasn’t it? She ran it a couple more times round her head, searching for flaws, as she dropped the towels carelessly on top of the T-shirts, squashed them down, and pulled the zipper round the case.
Taking it through to the living room, she placed it by the door. Then she flicked through the directory, found the number she wanted, and rang the local police station.
Eve was good at pretending; she’d had a lifetime of practice. When the call was answered she raised her voice an octave or two, her voice faltering between fear and disgust.
‘There’s a kerb crawler,’ she said. ‘He’s been around all day and now he’s parked up in Herbert Street, outside the café. Well, I’m saying that, but God knows what he is. Some kind of pervert. Are you going to do anything about it? I’m sure it might not be a priority to you but some of us have daughters and …’
A calm-sounding man had asked for her name.
‘What’s my name got to do with it?’ she said indignantly. ‘You need to get someone round here. You need to get someone round now.’
She hung up before he got the chance to ask any more awkward questions. Could they trace the call? Her father had a withheld number, ex-directory, but they could probably bypass that. But so what if they did? By the time they’d traced it, if they even bothered, she’d be well gone.
While she was waiting she checked her bag to make sure she had her passport. Then she pulled on her cream jacket and went to stand by the window. She stared down at the man. He was smoking now, one skinny hand flicking the ash on to the street. His bony knuckles were stained with inky blue tattoos.
She stood impatiently shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
It was fifteen minutes before the patrol car arrived, cruising slowly into the street. From the shelter of the curtains, she watched, chewing on her lip. What if she’d been wrong? He might have a perfectly reasonable excuse for being here. He could be a cabbie, perhaps, waiting for a call, or just some bloke escaping from a row with his girlfriend. It was only her instincts told her otherwise.
One of the cops, a ruddy-faced thickset officer, got out and strolled across to the Vauxhall. He leaned over to talk to the driver. She didn’t need to hear what was being said to understand the gist. The driver, clearly untrained in the skills of diplomacy, waved his arms around and embarked on an argument he was never going to win. When the questions continued, his thin mouth twisted into anger, spewing forth what could only be a stream of curses.
Not the smartest response in the world. And the cop, who didn’t care too much for the attitude, was going to make him pay. He examined his driving licence, did a check on the registration, and then carefully circled the car meticulously searching for other ways to make his life a misery. These he appeared to find in abundance.
It was a while before the guy was finally allowed to leave. Eve watched the car, straining her neck to see whether it turned left or right, but it continued straight on towards the main road. She wondered what he’d do next. Pull in somewhere and return later? Well, he certainly wouldn’t be back within the next ten minutes or so. The patrol car would probably do a circuit and then return to take a look.
Eve smiled. ‘Thanks, boys,’ she murmured. It seemed she was getting along a whole lot better with cops these days.
She hung on until they had moved off too and then picked up her luggage, locked the door behind her and headed down the stairs. On the first landing, suddenly remembering something she had meant to do, she put down the case and retraced her steps. Searching in her bag for a pen and scrap of paper, she hastily scribbled a note to Sonia explaining that she had gone to stay with friends for a week and pushed it under her door.
On the ground floor there was a small heap of letters lying in her box. Eve had forgotten all about the post yesterday. She was going to ignore it – it was bound to be bills – but then noticed Cavelli’s spidery writing on the one on top. Oh God, another visiting order! Well, whatever gruesome experience he had planned for her next would have to wait. She shoved it, along with the rest of the unwanted mail, into the messy depths of her bag.
On the doorstep she paused, quickly scanning the street. There was no sign of the Vauxhall. Lugging the case in her right hand she dashed across to her car, flung open the door and leapt inside.
By the time they reached the airport, Eve had developed a faintly hyper air. She had spent most of the journey glancing surreptitiously at the traffic behind, peering in the wing mirror and trying to figure out if they had a tail or not. It was possible, even probable, that Vauxhall man wasn’t working alone. What if someone else had taken his place?
‘Slow down,’ she had said, when the same car had been behind them for a while. ‘We’re not in any rush. There’s no point getting there too early.’
Jack had turned to grin at her. ‘What’s wrong,’ he’d asked. ‘My driving isn’t that bad, is it?’
And she had inwardly sighed, only a murmur of breath escaping from her lips, as the car had accelerated, overtaken and disappeared into the distance. Not that one at least. For a moment she could relax again. ‘Who said anything about your driving?’
‘You just asked me to slow down.’
‘That wasn’t a criticism, Inspector. I was merely checking your responses.’
‘And were they satisfactory?’ He paused, grinning again. ‘And are you going to call me Inspector for the next seven days?’
‘I’ll let you know,’ she said. ‘On both counts.’
Now, as they sat in a café sipping frothy cappuccinos and waiting for their flight to be called, she fought against the urge to look over her shoulder. If they’d been followed, so be it. There was nothing more she could do about it. Jack, blissfully unaware of her troubles, kept glancing at the departures board. His blue eyes were shining, his mouth constantly breaking into a smile. Even his knees were dancing a jig beneath the table. Ever since they’d arrived, he’d been acting like a kid about to go on his first holiday abroad. Like a kid, she thought again, staring at him, and although she’d intended the observation to be cynical it somehow transformed into a warmer kind of feeling. There was something infectious about his enthusiasm. She found herself laughing instead.
‘Haven’t you ever been away before?’
‘I love airports,’ he said. ‘Don’t you? They’re like a beginning, a starting point, everything fresh and new. All thos
e places you could go to, all those possibilities.’
She tried not to think too hard about the possibilities that might be lurking in Crete. ‘I guess that’s one way of looking at it.’
He must have sensed her caution because a small frown appeared on his forehead. He kept his voice light and joky though. ‘Are you okay? No last-minute regrets about your choice of travelling companion?’
‘You bet,’ she teased, transforming her real doubts into mock ones. ‘Fact is, blondie, I’m still trying to figure out how to get rid of you. I was kind of hoping I might lose you in the crowd.’ She felt a pang of guilt as his eyes brightened again. Perhaps it was time to confess, to tell him her real reason for wanting to visit Elounda. It was bound to come out sooner or later.
‘Jack …’ she began tentatively.
But he was already rooting through a carrier bag, pulling out the shades he had bought in the airport shop. He slid them on to his face. ‘What do you think – pretty cool, huh?’
She didn’t have the heart to break his mood. ‘Yeah, pretty damn cool.’
They had made love as soon as they arrived, tumbling between the crisp white sheets, their bodies still dusty from the long coach ride. There had been an almost aching intensity about it, as if they had just been reunited after a long time apart, as if the journeys they had made to reach here had been quite separate.
She wasn’t sure how long they had been asleep. From where she was lying she could see the window and a square of pale blue cloudless sky. Gently she disentangled her limbs from his, sat up and then bent again to kiss the smooth curve of his shoulder. He murmured, his lips parting for a second, but he didn’t wake.
Eve slid carefully from the bed and pulled on his shirt. She walked around the room, her bare feet slapping softly against the tiles. It was nothing fancy, just a studio with a tiny kitchenette and bathroom, but it was clean and tidy. A small heap of tea and coffee sachets had been left in a bowl on the counter. There was even a pint of milk in the fridge.
While the kettle was boiling, she opened the slatted doors and stepped out on to the balcony. Instantly the warm air enveloped her and she stretched out her arms towards the sun. The room was on the upper floor of a wide white two-storey block and although there was no sea view – she had hardly expected it for the price – the balcony overlooked a pleasant semicircle of lawn bordered by a thick hedge of brightly flowering shrubs. Beyond it, hidden from sight, was the road that led into the centre of the village. She could hear the occasional car putter by and to her more immediate left and right the clatter of cups and plates, of footsteps and muffled voices.
Dreamily, she rubbed her eyes and yawned. The scent of Jack floated up from the collar of his shirt or perhaps it wasn’t from his shirt at all. Perhaps his male, musky smell had sunk into the very pores of her skin. She should take a shower and get dressed, make coffee, get her clothes unpacked, start searching for the Villa Marianne …
But what was the hurry?
Whatever was out there could wait a few more hours.
She remembered gazing out of the window as the plane began its descent towards Iraklion, the sky a deep blue-grey, the runway sprinkled with tiny lights. It was as if the world had been turned upside down and all the stars deposited on the ground.
Chapter Thirty-One
Eddie Shepherd squeezed the car into a space twenty feet away from the offices of Clark & Able. He blew his nose hard and then leaned across the passenger seat, wound down the window and dropped the damp tissue into the gutter. A middleaged woman, all twin set and pearls, pursed her lips and glared at him but Eddie glared right back and she passed on by without a word.
While he fumbled in his pockets for a cigarette, he kept his eyes firmly fixed on the building. Sandwiched between a building society and a firm of solicitors, the entrance to the first-floor office was through a freshly painted bottle-green door. It bore only a small silver plaque with the name of the company but not the nature of its business. Very nice. Very discreet. No need for the clients to go shouting their private affairs to the world.
He shouldn’t really be here. Jack Raynor would blow a gasket but as he’d cleared off for the week (some kind of family emergency or so he claimed) what he didn’t know couldn’t bother him. And Eddie was sorely in need of another chat with Paul Clark. He didn’t like being lied to. He didn’t like it one little bit. It wasn’t as if he was driven by any burning desire for the truth – those youthful ideals, had he ever possessed them, had receded as rapidly as his hairline – but more by a matter of principle. No one, and especially not some smarmy, over-dressed git like Clark, was going to make a fool of him.
There had been no progress on the Ivor Patterson case. MIT, he suspected, were already letting it slip down their list of priorities. With no witnesses to say otherwise, it looked like a straightforward mugging that had gone badly wrong. Eddie wasn’t so sure. It would have taken one cool customer to go through the pockets of a corpse, remove his wallet and keys and then locate and calmly drive away his car. If it hadn’t been for that, he might, just might have accepted it as the work of one of the city’s addled crack addicts desperate for a fix.
He had been to Patterson’s flat on the morning of his death. There was no sign of forced entry but then his attacker already had a convenient set of keys; he could have walked in bold as brass, searched the place from top to bottom, taken anything or nothing, and they wouldn’t be any the wiser.
He frowned as he thought about the crummy basement rental in Chesterfield Close. It had been a pit, not fit for a dog to live in, but it was impossible to tell if the overlying mess had been made by an intruder or by Patterson himself. Old newspapers and magazines, butt ends, empty beer cans, used plates, mugs and socks had littered the floor. There were three overflowing ashtrays, two on the table and one still perched precariously on the arm of a battered old sofa. Even Eddie, who was not the most fastidious of men, had turned up his nose at the stink. The three small rooms Patterson had inhabited all contained that sour breath smell mingled with stale tobacco, sweat, rising damp and a few other odours that he preferred not to dwell on.
There had been no sign of a laptop or a camera or any of the usual paraphernalia that a private investigator might use. They had either been in his car, and gone up with the blaze on Mousehold Heath, or had been removed from the flat. There were a few old files and folders, the case notes inside parched and yellowy, but nothing of any interest. Well, apart from one thing: his bank statements. It had been clear from these, from the angry red print denoting the unacceptable level of his overdraft, that Patterson was already struggling to stay within the slim means of his salary – but this, in turn, didn’t quite tally with the heap of glossy travel brochures strewn across the coffee table. The idle daydreams of a hopeful man or a sign that he was shortly expecting his luck to change? Eddie suspected the latter. And as the kind of cash injection that a trip to Florida required would hardly be found in his monthly pay packet – whatever profits Paul Clark made obviously didn’t filter down into the pockets of his employees – it must have been expected from another source.
Talking of which, one of those employees was emerging from the door right now. Eddie watched as Charlie May stepped out on to the pavement. He was a slight, agile-looking man, in his late forties with a pointy foxlike face. A brush of thick tawny hair swept back from his forehead exposing a pair of dark gleaming eyes. To the outsider, Charlie always gave the misleading impression of a brisk, alert and reliable efficiency. In truth he was the laziest sod God had ever placed on earth. If there was a way to cut corners Charlie May would find it, and usually with his feet up on a couch somewhere. But for all that he wasn’t stupid. He had a quick brain, a good intelligence, and Eddie had often thought that if he put half as much effort into doing work as he spent in avoiding it he’d probably be running Scotland Yard by now. As it was, he’d been kicked out of the Force before he’d even finished his first year on the beat.
He was halfway ou
t of the car, hoping to grab a word with him, when an irate Paul Clark suddenly appeared on the threshold. His face was black as thunder. Eddie quickly withdrew, or at least as quickly as his bulk allowed, and after an uncomfortable collision with the steering wheel eventually manoeuvred back down into the seat. By the time he’d got his legs and arms into the positions they were intended to be he could see that a definite altercation was taking place outside the office. It wasn’t so much a shouting match – Clark couldn’t afford to be that indiscreet and Charlie would never make the effort – as an angry one-sided but softly spoken tirade. Paul Clark, his hands gesticulating, his mouth twisted, was virtually spitting in his face. Charlie, however, was doing what he always did when he was up to his neck in shit: he was nodding, shuffling, and trying his best to look contrite.
Clark turned his back and stomped back inside. Charlie glanced at the departing figure and then stared up at the sky, rolled his shoulders and smiled. He was still grinning as he strolled towards the car.
This time, instead of getting out, Eddie opened the window and leaned across the passenger seat. ‘Hey,’ he said.
Charlie leaned down to look at him. His lips parted, exposing his chipped creamy-coloured teeth. ‘Eddie Shepherd. Nice to see you again.’
‘Got time for a chat?’
Charlie thought about it for a moment. Then, scrunching his brows together, he glanced down at his watch. ‘To be honest, I was thinking of grabbing some lunch.’
‘It’s ten past eleven,’ Eddie said.
‘What can I say? I missed breakfast. I’m hungry. You know what it’s like when you’re working nights. You never get time to catch up with your meals.’