Malice (Rina Walker Book 3)

by Hugh Fraser

  ‘You’ve got to stop putting yourself in so much danger.’

  ‘It shouldn’t be too tricky.’

  ‘You’re hopeless, you are.’

  ‘I’ll be OK.’

  ‘Well, I’m coming with you to make sure.’

  ‘No you’re not.’

  ‘Yes I am. Now drive us home.’

  I start the engine, and do as I’m told.

  28

  By ten o’clock the next morning Lizzie’s gone off to buy us tickets to Valencia from the travel agent on Edgware Road and I’m wrapping my gun in underwear and putting it at the bottom of my suitcase, along with a blade and a wad of cash. Lizzie gets back and announces that we’re leaving at one o’clock, on BEA Flight 619 from London Airport. She gives me my ticket and passport and goes to her flat to pack for the trip. Lizzie’s been to Spain before, on business, and she says July is really hot, so I look through my wardrobe for something lightweight. I pick out a couple of silk dresses, a short cotton skirt and a couple of blouses, then throw my bathing suit in just in case, along with a pair of heels. I decide to travel in jeans and leather jacket and as I’m putting my boots on, Lizzie’s knocking at the door.

  The cab takes us through Knightsbridge to Hammer-smith and along the A4 to the airport. I look at my ticket and tell the driver to take us to Building One. He drops us at the door and we put our cases on a trolley and head for the departures desks. BEA 619 is showing on the big screen as leaving on time and boarding at gate 18. We check in our cases and get our boarding passes from a tasty-looking girl in a tight-fitting uniform, with lustrous dark hair and great make-up.

  ‘Maybe she’d like to come with us?’ says Lizzie, as we walk to the gate.

  ‘I think you might have to keep an eye on her, as well as me, with all those Spanish men.’

  We’re tempted to have a look at the duty free shops but decide to be good and go straight to the gate. We get there with a bit of time to spare, get coffee from the café and wait for the flight to be called. I look at Lizzie sitting opposite me, all fresh and lovely, and I hope I’m not making a big mistake letting her come with me. I tried to argue her out of it when we woke up this morning but she wouldn’t have it.

  The flight’s called and we board the plane. I’ve got a window seat and Lizzie’s next to me. She’s flown quite a lot, visiting her various gentleman friends, and she’s used to it, but I get nervous in an aeroplane, and when the engines rev up and make that big rumbling sound, I start to feel breathless and faint so I squeeze Lizzie’s hand. The plane accelerates up the runway and I feel my stomach rising and my toes tingling, but once we’re off the ground and climbing into the sky, I gradually calm down. I let go of Lizzie’s hand, look out of the window and get a glimpse of England down below, before we fly into a cloud. The hostesses come along the aisle with drinks on a trolley and we buy two large whiskies and sit back and relax.

  I’m just drifting off to sleep, after eating a sandwich and finishing my drink, when I notice a strange smell, as if something’s on fire. I open my eyes and see smoke around me. I start to panic until I realise it’s just the bloke in the seat in front lighting his pipe.

  Lizzie’s deep into her Mademoiselle magazine, so I take Rebecca out of my shoulder bag and read about further humiliation for our girl when she’s taken to visit Maxim’s grandma and the old bird starts wailing that she only wants to see Rebecca and how much she loved her. She’s taken home, feeling upset, and then Maxim arrives, hears that the dashing Jack Favell’s been there, gets grumpy and bans him from the house. The really good bit is when they decide to have a costume ball and Mrs Danvers persuades our girl to have a dress copied from a portrait of a lovely young woman that hangs in the stairwell. The evening of the ball arrives and once it’s in full swing, she plucks up her courage and makes a grand entrance down the stairs, wearing the dress. Silence falls, everyone looks shocked and Maxim goes white with fury and tells her to go upstairs at once and change. She goes to her room in tears and the maid tells her that she’s wearing the same dress as Rebecca wore at the ball a few days before she died. Eventually she goes back down in a simple dress and tries to make polite conversation, but she just feels as if everyone’s talking about her. She goes to bed feeling awful and waits for Maxim to come and comfort her, but he never does.

  The plane lands, I close the book and we go down the steps under the blazing sun, walk across the hot tarmac to the airport building and wait in a queue. There’s a bloke in a shirt and tie sitting at a desk checking passports. Two men in dark green uniforms, wearing strange three-cornered hats made of black leather, that look like they’re on sideways, are standing behind him and looking passengers up and down. Now and again one of the military types steps forward and takes a passport from the man at the desk, studies it for a bit, while the owner starts looking worried, then he hands it back to be stamped and waves the person through.

  ‘Guardia Civil,’ whispers Lizzie.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Police. You don’t mess with them.’

  When we get to the desk, my passport gets the extra inspection, as does my cleavage, before we’re allowed through. We collect our suitcases and go past Customs to the main hall, where I find a newsagent’s and buy a map. We head for a bank, I take the money out of my suitcase, hand over two hundred quid and get thirty thousand Spanish pesetas, which seems like a pretty good deal. There’s a car hire desk at the far end of the hall. The girl speaks English and she tells us that they only hire out one car, a Seat 1400, which costs a thousand pesetas for a week. I show her my driving licence and passport, give her the money, scribble an illegible signature on the form and she gives me the key. I ask her how long it will take to drive to Denia and she tells me it should be about two hours.

  We go to the car park and find the car, which is a solid looking four-seater that shouldn’t be too conspicuous. I open the map and find Valencia Airport and then Denia and the route along the coast road looks fairly simple. My plan is to find a place for us to stay by the sea, not far from Denia, so that I can leave Lizzie well away from the action, while I do the business. A place called Oliva looks likely and I pass the map to Lizzie, show her where it is and start the car.

  The sun is low in the sky by the time we get to Oliva. It’s an old town with a beautiful church and a convent, where Lizzie says she’ll put me if I don’t behave myself. Near to the beach we find a small hotel tucked away among some palm trees. I park the car in front and we take our cases out of the boot and walk under a tiled archway towards the white stone house, where an old lady in a faded blue overall is sweeping the steps. She smiles at us, greets us in Spanish and goes ahead of us to a reception desk in the hallway. With a combination of mime and Lizzie’s few words of Spanish, we manage to book ourselves a double room, with a view of the sea. The lady takes us up to the room, which looks comfortable enough. It has twin beds, which is a slight disappointment, but Lizzie and I have long learnt just to push them together at bedtime, rather than risk outrage by asking for a double.

  Once we’ve unpacked, we walk into Oliva and find a quiet bar. We have a few drinks and eat lovely snacky things, called tapas, from behind the bar. It’s mostly seafood and olives and such, and I’m really enjoying it, until Lizzie tells me I’m eating an octopus. I take a moment to adjust to the idea and then go on wolfing it down. When we’re done, we take a walk through the town and enjoy the warm breeze and the nice atmosphere, with music playing, people sitting outside their front doors and kids playing in the street.

  We get back to the hotel, go up to our room and Lizzie says we should go for a swim before breakfast. The other times she’s been here on business, she was only in Madrid and she’s never been on the beach. I’d planned to get moving early, to find where the Teales’ place is, but I reckon there’s no harm in a swim before I start. We both squeeze into one of the beds, put our arms round each other and after a bit of a cuddle, we’re asleep.

  • • •

  The heat is al
ready building when I wake and see Lizzie over by the window, putting on her bikini. She pulls me out of bed and throws my costume at me. ‘Come on sleepy head, let’s go.’

  I get into my rather boring costume, wishing I had a bikini like Lizzie, and we put on dressing gowns and go downstairs. The old lady is sweeping the steps again and she greets us as we pass her and cross the road towards the beach. There are only a few early swimmers about but I expect it will fill up later. We go along a wooden walkway onto the sands and Lizzie drops her towel and her dressing gown and runs towards the waves. I follow her and we dash into the water and strike out for the horizon. The sea is really warm and we swim out a good way and then back to the shallows where we splash about, ducking each other and wrestling like a couple of little kids. Suddenly we’re hungry and we decide to go back and get breakfast.

  As we walk up the beach, I see a black and white car near the hotel and two Guardia Civil standing on the walkway looking at us. When we get to our towels they come towards us. One of them takes a pair of handcuffs off his belt and slaps them on Lizzie’s wrists, while the other one picks up her dressing gown and puts it round her shoulders. The one who cuffed her is barking Spanish at her and pointing at the hotel. Lizzie says something to him and they march her off along the walkway. I grab the towels and follow.

  When we get to the hotel, the cop who cuffed her goes with her up to the room and I go after them. He takes the cuffs off her, leans on the wall and watches while she takes off her bikini and gets dressed. If he didn’t have a gun on his belt I’d take him now, but I’ve no tools and his mate’s waiting downstairs, so I sit quietly. He’s still talking to her in Spanish when Lizzie looks at me and says she’s being arrested for wearing a bikini. I tell her she must be joking but she says it’s true. As soon as he’s cuffed her again and taken her downstairs, I jump into my clothes, peel a bunch of pesetas off the wad, grab my passport from my suitcase, pick up the car key and get down just as the Guardia Civil car is pulling away.

  The old lady is behind the desk, looking well flustered. I ask her where the Guardia Civil station is and she looks blank and then opens a door behind her and calls out a name. A boy of about eighteen wearing a white apron comes in and when I ask him the same thing, he tells me it’s in Denia, near the port and names a street. I ask him how I can find it and he takes a map off the shelf behind him, opens it and shows me where it is and which way I’ll come into Denia from the coast road. I thank him, put a five hundred peseta note on the desk and run to the car.

  The road hugs the coast all the way to Denia and I’m careful not to drive too fast in case I get stopped. I get to the town in about twenty minutes and follow the map. I’m a few streets away from the police station and hoping it’s the right one, when the traffic in front of me slows down to a crawl, I hear a brass band playing and a crowd of people are moving along the pavement on either side of me. The car in front stops and I look up ahead and see a carnival float with people in sailors’ costumes and a man in a black sombrero and a white death mask playing the guitar. I smack my hands on the wheel in frustration, I want to jump out of the car and run the rest of the way but it would be stupid to lose the motor so I take a few deep breaths, grip the wheel and wait.

  While I’m quietly fuming at this bit of bad timing, I happen to look round at the people on the pavement and get a shock when I spot a face I haven’t seen in a long time. It’s a young villain from the street I grew up in, called Sammy Neal, who I did a few blags with years ago, when he was going out with my best mate Clare. When he sees me looking at him, he disappears into the crowd and I know why. Sammy and Clare offered me up for murder, when the filth had them bang to rights on a big jewellery smash and grab that we’d done. We were only kids then and it’s water under the bridge to me now, although I can see why he’d be scared of running into me. While I’m wondering what he can be doing in Denia, the traffic starts moving and we gather a bit of speed.

  I leave the car outside the police station and walk in the main door. A cop sitting at a desk looks up and I ask him if he speaks English. He shakes his head and picks up the phone. He says something that includes a word that sounds like English, points to a bench and I sit down. A few minutes later a man in plain clothes appears.

  ‘What can I help you for?’ he says.

  ‘My friend has just been arrested and I want to see her.’

  ‘She is English?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Elizabeth Jenson.’

  ‘Come,’ he says, and I follow him along a corridor and down some stairs. He takes me into an office where one of the cops who came to the beach is sitting at a desk writing. The plain clothes man says something to him, including Lizzie’s name, and he looks up and recognises me. He sits back in his chair, folds his arms and looks steadily at me. I take the roll of pesetas out of my pocket and flick through a few notes. He looks at the money and smiles, nodding his head. I drop the money on the desk and he picks it up and counts it. When he’s done, he shakes his head and holds his hand out for more. I reach into my back pocket and give him the pesetas I knew I’d need if this was going to work. He does a quick count of the extra money and passes it to the plain clothes man, who pockets it and goes out of the door. I know I stand a chance of being whisked off to a cell at any moment and I’m tensed up and ready to hurt anyone if they try. Minutes later the plain clothes walks back in with Lizzie. I take her hand and lead her out of the door and up the stairs, before anyone changes their mind, or arrests me for wearing jeans. The plain clothes man follows us and opens the main door.

  ‘Thank God you found me,’ says Lizzie, as soon as we’re in the street.

  ‘I just went for the nearest nick and got lucky.’

  ‘Was it money?’

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘About a hundred quid.’

  ‘They work cheap then.’

  ‘Just as well. Did they give you any trouble in the cell?’

  ‘Not really.’

  I know Lizzie can look after herself and I don’t ask for details. I’m just glad she doesn’t seem to have suffered. We get in the car and risk a quick cuddle.

  ‘My saviour,’ she whispers in my ear, before giving me a quick kiss.

  ‘Breakfast?’ I say.

  ‘Lovely.’

  I drive back the way I came and we can hear the carnival music wafting over from the direction of the sea. We find a little café on the edge of town, and I’m glad to discover that croissants have made their way across the Pyrenees. After we’ve stuffed ourselves and drunk several cups of coffee, we find a clothes shop, buy Lizzie a modest one-piece bathing suit and head back to the hotel.

  29

  I leave Lizzie on the beach, go back to the hotel, pick up my gun and blade, slip them into my belt and put on a long blouse to hide them. I look at the address Ray gave me and with the help of the lad from the kitchen I find the road where the Teale house is on the map. It’s a couple of miles inland from Denia and the simplest way to get there is to drive into town and out again. The Seat bowls along the coast road and I open all the windows and enjoy the warm air on my skin and the view of the glistening blue sea.

  When I get to Denia, the fiesta, as the boy at the hotel called it, is going strong and I can hear some really wild drumming that gets me tapping on the steering wheel as I drive near the sea front. I follow the map out of town and across rolling country, until I get to an area of white houses with swimming pools, on the slopes of a hill near a village called Pedreguer. The Teales’ house is set apart from the others, with an eight foot wall round it and a solid wooden gate. I drive on up the winding road and stop on a bend, where I can look down on the house. It’s a fair size, probably two or three bedrooms, with a terrace and a kidney-shaped swimming pool, with a small building beside it. There’s no sign of anyone about and no cars. I reckon there’s nothing I can do until dark, so I drive back to Denia and onto the coast road to Oliva and t
hat golden beach.

  There are a few cars parked outside the hotel when I get there and I’m wondering if more guests have arrived. I park the car and head for the beach to find Lizzie. There are plenty of people in the sea and lying on loungers, but I can’t see her among them. I walk a good way along the beach, in case she’s found a better spot, but there’s still no sign of her. I walk back beside the lapping waves, trying not to panic, but she’s not in the water. I take one more good look round the beach then run towards the hotel.

  When I get to the road, the door of a parked car opens in front of me and Jack Teale gets out, holding a gun by his side. I throw myself at him, knock him on his back, rip the gun out of his hand and swipe the butt across his jaw.

  ‘Where the fuck is she?’

  As I pull back to hit him again, a hand’s clamped across my mouth, the gun’s whipped away, an arm goes round my waist and I’m picked up and thrown head first into the back of the car. As I struggle to turn round, Danny Teale gets in, settles his great bulk on my legs, pulls my gun and blade out of my belt and throws them on the front seat. He slams the door shut and holds a gun inches from my face.

  ‘You all right J?’ he calls.

  There’s a mumbling from outside the car and then Jack appears and gets into the driver’s seat.

  ‘Fucking bitch,’ he says, with a hand on his jaw.

  ‘Go, for Christ’s sake!’ says Danny.

  Jack starts the car, puts his foot down and slews it round the corner and onto the main road. When we’re up to speed and cruising towards Denia, Danny lifts his weight off my legs and I’m able to sit up. He keeps the gun on me and I see that a couple of his fingers are still taped up near the knuckles.

  ‘Where is she?’ I say.

  ‘You’ll see,’ says Danny, showing a shiny new set of pearlers as he speaks.

  As we drive on, I keep watching him, waiting for a chance to get the gun off him if he looks away, but he’s got it two-handed and never takes his eyes off me.