The place had been comprehensively turned over.
‘Jesus,’ said Daisy, standing thunderstruck in the open doorway. ‘Do you think they’ve taken anything?’
Rob stood in the centre of the lounge, looking around him in wonder.
‘How the fuck would I know?
Look
at this shit.’
Daisy moved inside, feeling a bit bolder now she knew some lunatic wasn’t lurking in a corner somewhere. She looked around, at the sofas, the cushions, the . . .
‘Why slash the sofas open?’ she asked him.
‘Hm? Oh. They did the mattress too.’
‘Yes, but why?’
‘I dunno, Daise,’ said Rob irritably. ‘It’s been a bloody long week. And now this . . .’
‘They must have been looking for something,’ said Daisy.
‘What?’
‘Don’t you think so? I wonder what’s missing.’
‘Daise – I
don’t know.
I never did a fucking inventory of the place.’
Daisy surveyed the wreckage. ‘What were they looking for?’ she wondered aloud.
‘Fuck knows. Maybe nothing. Maybe they just smashed up the place for the hell of it.’
Rob was tired, and he was thinking that possibly they’d done a stupid thing, taking Bianca. Vittore had been beyond fury when he’d phoned him and let him know the score. His best friend was laid up in a hospital bed hovering somewhere between life and death. He’d had
enough.
He walked to the door.
‘Where are you going?’ said Daisy.
‘Home,’ he said. ‘I need to sleep.’
‘No, I want to look in the office downstairs.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s—’
‘What?’
‘Daise, enough.’
‘No! The office.’
‘God, you’re a stroppy cow, has anyone ever told you that?’ said Rob, thinking that he’d have to get the locks repaired and the boys in, tidy the damned place up; it was just one bloody thing after another lately.
He followed Daisy downstairs and into the restaurant where the staff were getting ready for the evening’s trade. Daisy and Rob wove their way through the bar, through the restaurant, and over to the office.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ said Rob.
Daisy peered past his shoulder. The door was slightly ajar. And the lock looked . . .
‘It’s been broken into,’ she said.
‘Oh, first prize! Give the lady a coconut,’ said Rob, and pushed the door open. He flicked on the light. ‘Damn, will you look at this? How the hell did this happen and no one see or hear?’
Daisy came in behind Rob and eased the door closed behind them. All the filing cabinets had been emptied and overturned. There were papers all over the place, the desk had been flipped onto its back, Michael’s chair –
Kit’s
chair – had been thrown aside, the seat slashed open, the stuffing pulled out.
Rob went over to the desk.
Daisy stared all around her.
‘Somebody’s
definitely
looking for something,’ she said.
‘Yeah, but what?’
‘I wonder if they found it?’
‘Daise . . .’
‘Maybe they didn’t.’
‘Hm.’
‘Maybe you and Kit have already taken it away. Perhaps what someone wants is the stuff that Michael was carrying around with him.’
On the way out, they stopped at the bar and questioned Terry, the head barman.
‘You seen anyone hanging about the office?’ asked Rob.
‘No, why?’
‘It’s been broken into. Turned upside-down. The flat upstairs, too.’
‘Get out of it! Really? Well, I was on last night and I didn’t notice anything. Mind you, that lock’s a pissy little thing, one good shove and it’d give. Keely!’ He called over to a brunette who was busy polishing glasses. ‘You see anyone hanging around the office yesterday or today? Someone’s been in there.’
Keely shook her head: no.
‘Bridge was on too,’ said Terry. ‘Bridge!’ he called, and a blonde girl appeared from the back, eyebrows raised in enquiry. ‘Bridge, you see anyone around the office last night or today? They’re saying someone’s been in there, and the flat upstairs.’
‘No, I haven’t. Sorry.’ Bridget turned away, then she stopped and looked back at them. ‘Wait on, I saw a bloke with a beard loitering near the side entrance yesterday evening. But he was that skinny, I wouldn’t have thought he could break the lock. Didn’t look like he had an ounce of strength in him.’
At that moment, Ashok appeared in the restaurant doorway. He saw Rob and came straight over.
‘We had some trouble at the hospital,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to risk telling you over the phone, so I’ve been driving all over—’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Another one tried to get to Kit.’
‘What’s this?’ asked Daisy.
‘It sorted?’ asked Rob.
Ashok grinned. ‘Bloke had a nasty accident, decided to end it all.’
89
When he took the call at the club, Vittore couldn’t believe it. This was not a day for good news. ‘Pizza-face’ Donato had fallen to his death from a hospital window and then Miller’s right-hand man had the brass neck to tell him that he should call his dogs off, because they had Bianca.
A bluff?
He phoned Dante’s in Southampton and asked Cora, was Bianca there?
She wasn’t. Days ago, she’d said she was going up to London, and no one at the club had seen or heard from her since.
First, he had to tell Mama. She wailed and screamed like a madwoman.
‘What will they do to her?’ she sobbed. ‘My baby!’
‘They’ll do nothing, Mama,’ said Vittore. ‘She has to be kept safe, or else what do they have left?’
But Bella went on with her hysterical breast-beating.
Fabio came into the kitchen, alerted by all the noise. ‘What’s going on?’
Vittore filled him in.
‘We can’t allow this,’ said Fabio, clenching his fists.
‘It’s done,’ said Vittore, watching his younger brother with cynical eyes. Like
he
cared about Bianca. Not that Vittore did either, not really, only insofar as her behaviour reflected upon him and the Danieri name. She was becoming a liability. He couldn’t have her telling the world she was in love with that bastard Kit Miller. He couldn’t have Miller scoring points over them. No way. And it wasn’t as if Bianca was truly blood, he reminded himself.
‘What do you mean? We stand by? Do nothing?’
‘Yeah, we do nothing. For the time being. What else can we do? Now shut up and get out of my way.’
Fabio glared at his older brother. Who was he, telling
him
what to do? He had his own business now, he didn’t have to answer to Vittore any more. He had even tupped the mama’s boy’s wife
.
And still Vittore thought he could tell him what to do?
Fuck him.
But then he remembered that bricked-up cellar door, and Maria, gone God knew where, and that smell
.
And suddenly the fear was back, crawling up his spine as he looked at Vittore.
He’s going to get me
, thought Fabio.
And then he had another thought.
Unless I get him first.
90
Someone was calling his name, right by his ear
.
The voice was so close that it startled him. All the sounds before had been distant, ethereal, ghost-echoes of his own thoughts. But this was a definite, firm,
Kit.
It was grey, light-grey now, and he could hear things beeping, monitors or something, and it was like being talked up from hypnosis or some such bollocks; he was coming up and he would wake when someone went
click
with their fingers.
Three . . .
Coming awake, coming back to the land of the living . . .
Two . . .
. . . stretching, feeling that he’d had enough of that other world with its blackness and its chilling winds . . .
One.
His eyes flickered open. Owwww. Bright in here. Lights all over the place, and someone leaning over him, a blonde pigtail tickling his collarbone, his heartbeat accelerating, what the fuck . . . ? A kind face, young, pretty and that blonde was straight out of a bottle . . .
‘Kit?’ she said, and smiled and put a soft warm hand to his face. ‘Hello, Kit. You’re fine, you’re in hospital. Just rest there for now, everything’s going to be OK.’
What happened?
he wanted to say, but even as his brain formed the words, it came back to him. Dinner with Bianca. Outside in the rain. The gun in her hand. The terrible ripping pain in his chest, and then nothing.
The nurse’s face withdrew and he saw Ruby sitting there. She was holding his hand and she was crying and laughing at the same time.
‘You’re back,’ she was saying. ‘Thank God, you’re back.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, but he made no sound. He felt so tired, like he’d run a mile.
The nurse’s face floated into view. ‘Rest now. You’re doing so well,’ she said.
He was exhausted. His eyes drooped, and closed again. No wasteland this time, though. This time there was only the warm familiar darkness of sleep.
91
Rob drove Daisy back to Kit’s house and they let themselves in, relieved to find that the lock was intact and inside the place was, apparently, untouched.
‘Well, thank fuck for that,’ said Rob.
Daisy walked over to where Michael’s belongings were still spread out on the side table. Rob joined her. They both stared at the bits and pieces there. The gold Dunhill lighter, the cigarette case, the comb, the Krugerrand set in the ridged heavy gold mount of the ring, three matchbooks, a Rolex, a wad of twenty-pound notes and some change in a plain black wallet.
‘Is this all? I mean, were there any other items that Michael was carrying, that Kit would have kept for himself?’ asked Daisy. Rob shook his head. ‘Kit was so sure that Tito killed Michael,’ she said.
‘Bella Danieri says not. Not Tito, and not Fabio or Vittore either.’
‘Motives, then. What motive would anyone else have for doing that?’
‘Money and honey,’ said Rob.
‘Hm?’
‘Money,’ said Rob. ‘That points straight to Gabriel Ward. He found out he wasn’t getting a bean, and killed his dad in a rage.’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Honey?’
‘That’s possible too.’ Daisy thought of her mother. ‘Rob . . . what do you know about Thomas Knox?’
‘Tom Knox? He’s a hard man, a real face. In charge of a firm. Like Michael was. Like Kit is now.’
‘I think Ruby’s been seeing him. He was outside the church after Simon’s funeral, waiting to speak to her. The way he looks at her . . .’
‘What?’ asked Rob, when she hesitated.
‘Just he seems . . . as if the normal rules don’t apply to him.’
‘Daise – they don’t. I didn’t know Ruby was involved with him.’
‘I’m thinking aloud, that’s all . . . Honey, you said. Michael dies and suddenly there’s Thomas Knox, making moves on Ruby. Knox could have wanted Michael out of the way. To clear the path to her.’
‘Possible.’
Daisy was frowning. ‘Did Michael strike you as secretive?’
‘In what way?’
‘Oh . . . hiding things. You know.’
‘No, I don’t know. What sort of things?’
Daisy looked at Rob. ‘I don’t want this going any further,’ she said. ‘This is just between us.’
‘What is?’
‘Apparently Michael had another woman. A
secret
woman. Thomas Knox told Ruby about it.’
Rob looked astonished. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Neither did I, but it’s true.’
‘Bullshit. Maybe he cooked up the secret woman to turn Ruby off Michael’s memory?’
‘Maybe.’ Daisy picked up the Krugerrand ring and turned it over in her hand. ‘But I’m looking at this inscription:
I’m Still in Love with You
. Ruby didn’t give this to him. Michael didn’t wear rings, as a general rule. We don’t think his wife gave it to him . . .’
‘There’s no way of knowing that.’
‘Why would she give him a ring? She knew he wouldn’t wear it. And why was it in his pocket, instead of in a drawer somewhere? Why was he carrying it around with him?’
‘Jesus,’ said Rob. ‘I don’t know.’
Daisy put the ring down. ‘So what else is there?’ she asked.
‘Well . . .’ Rob glanced around the flat. ‘There’s Michael’s record collection, Kit kept that.’
Daisy knew that Kit was into modern stuff with a hard aggressive beat, but Michael’s taste had been for the music of the fifties, the era he’d grown up in – Billy Fury, Bobby Darren, artists like that. The music of a bygone age.
Rob stood up and went over to the stereo, opened a door and lifted out a thick wodge of LPs. He took them over to the sofa.
‘Well, here we are,’ he sighed.
Daisy spread the covers out and took a look. ‘That’s Kit’s,’ said Rob, and tossed Queen’s
Sheer Heart Attack
to one side. ‘That too,’ he said, shuffling past an old dog-eared copy of
Their Satanic Majesties Request
by the Stones. ‘These are Michael’s.’ Now they were into Michael’s era: some Tony Bennett and Vic Damone, a little Johnny Rae, a soupçon of the big O.
‘Roy Orbison,’ said Rob, and sighed again, heavily. ‘That’s one of the newer ones for Michael, but he liked the Big O. Always said that man could really sing.’
Daisy was looking at the cover. ‘The title on the cover:
I’m Still in Love with You
,’ she said. ‘That’s odd, isn’t it? The same as the ring.’
Now she was pulling out the white inner sleeve. ‘Oh, look at this!’ she said, and her voice was full of excitement. ‘Look, Rob.’
Rob looked. There was handwriting in the bottom right-hand corner. It read:
I’m still in love with you.
‘What about the writing?’
‘I don’t recognize it,’ said Daisy, squinting hard at it. ‘This album was released last year, but that’s the same inscription as the one on the ring.’
‘So if this is from that same person, the same woman, that’s not his wife Sheila’s handwriting. It can’t be.’
‘Maybe it’s Ruby . . . ? I don’t think so, though. Oh . . .’
Rob looked at her. ‘Oh what?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said vacantly.
‘Do you know the writing? Daise?’
‘No, but I just thought of something.’