41
‘Where the fuck did you get to?’ demanded Rob, hurrying across the minute Kit showed up at Sheila’s restaurant, said hi to the head barman and ordered a pineapple Britvic.
It wasn’t the welcome Kit had been expecting. He blinked in surprise. Rob looked agitated, and that was a surprise too. Rob was solid, usually. The barman set down the juice in front of Kit.
‘There you go, boss,’ he said.
‘Get you something?’ Kit asked Rob, watching him curiously.
Rob shook his head and the barman moved off to polish glasses.
‘I told you,’ said Kit. ‘I’ve been down on the coast, taking the air.’
‘For a couple of days, wasn’t that the deal? Not a fucking week.’
‘Things came up.’ He thought of Bianca. ‘Important things.’ He wasn’t ready to tell Rob about her, not yet. Rob had a stick up his arse, best let him get that out of the way first. ‘You get the car fixed up?’
‘What?’ Rob stared at him.
‘What’s wrong with you? The cunting car. I asked you to fix it.’
‘Right, yeah, that.’ Rob swiped a hand through his hair as if the car was the last thing on his mind. ‘Yeah, it’s done. It’s over at the yard, locked up tight. Didn’t want to risk parking it out on the street again and having to do the same damned job a second time.’
‘Good.’ Kit sipped his juice, still staring at Rob. ‘Anything else I should know about? You tapped up our boys in the Bill, got some stuff about Michael?’
‘Yeah, I did that. I’ll talk that through with you later, OK?’
‘Sure.’
Kit glanced around the restaurant. It was packed: Saturday night. The tills were ringing. All was right with the world. Except he wasn’t where he wanted to be. Soonest, he was going to get Bianca up here with him. She could get a manager in at Dante’s, and then they could be together properly. He was completely smitten. He was half-smiling, wanting to ask Rob, You ever been in love, mate? But he didn’t want to make himself look like a soft-centred cunt. He had his image to protect.
‘So, everything else running smooth?’ he asked.
And then Rob told him about Simon, and how Daisy had been approached on the road, scared half out of her wits.
Kit’s smile died on his face. He grew very still.
‘You got Reg out at the Marlow house, right?’ he said at last.
‘Reg and two more of the boys. Taking no chances. Daise and Ruby have been climbing the walls.’
‘Let’s get over there then,’ sighed Kit.
‘My God, where have you been?’ asked Daisy frantically when Reg ushered Kit into the sitting room. She and Ruby had been sitting huddled by the fire. They were wearing black, both of them. Ruby, it suited. Daisy, without her usual sunny array of bright colours, looked dreadful.
Kit was beginning to feel bad. There he’d been, having a sexual marathon with Bianca, happy as a pig in shit, and all this had been kicking off.
‘I’m home now,’ he said, and Daisy rushed forward and hugged him, hard.
Kit pushed her back a step. Her eyes were brimming with tears.
‘You OK, Daise? They didn’t touch you?’ he asked, thinking that if any of the Danieri bastards had laid a hand on his sister then they’d be sorry.
Daisy shook her head. ‘No, I’m fine. I was so scared, that’s all. The instant I got back here, I called Rob, told him what happened, and he came straight over. Kit,’ Daisy’s voice trembled, ‘we’ve had to send Jody and the twins away. Rob said it would be safest. I didn’t want to do it. I can’t believe it’s even necessary. But-’
‘Rob’s right,’ said Kit.
‘They’re stashed in one of our safe houses,’ said Rob.
Daisy didn’t know what was happening to her normally secure, orderly world. Suddenly it seemed to have tilted, spilling her over into chaos. A new year and a new job in Mum’s store, she’d thought: well, she’d blown that. Then Simon, dying. Hideous, the shock of it. And almost worse, horrifically painful, she was being parted from her babies. She felt like she was going mad. She literally hurt when she thought about them. She was coming to realize what it truly meant, to be Kit Miller’s kin.
‘Could I at least phone through, check they’re OK?’ she pleaded.
Kit shook his head. ‘Better not, Daise. It’s too bloody easy to put a tap on a line, and who’s to say there isn’t one on this house phone? Safest to keep your distance. For you, and for them.’
He glanced at Rob, who gave him a bleak look in return. ‘Poor Daisy was fucking traumatized,’ he said. ‘They must have been watching her all along. Maybe Ruby too, and this house. And who’s to say they’ll stop at scaring them, next time?’
Only then did Kit look beyond Daisy to where Ruby sat. His mother. Michael Ward had loved her, and he remembered the letter Michael had left for him, to be opened in the event of his death: Don’t be an arsehole. Give your mother a chance.
‘You all right?’ he asked her roughly. To his annoyance, he found that he actually cared. He didn’t want her frightened, or hurt.
Ruby nodded. She was made of tough stuff, he knew that. Well, she must be hard as fucking nails – after all, she’d abandoned him, her own kid, when he was even younger than Daisy’s twins.
‘It was suicide, right? Rob filled me in,’ said Kit, going over to his mother and sitting down beside her. He didn’t reach out, touch her hand, kiss her or anything.
‘What we’re thinking now is it wasn’t suicide at all,’ said Ruby, her face taut with suppressed anger. ‘It could just as easily have happened when the twins and Jody were at the house with him. Do you think the Danieris would care?’
‘You haven’t told anyone about this…?’
‘No. We were waiting for you to come back. We’ve been going out of our minds here, and Rob didn’t have a number to reach you on…’
‘I know.’ He felt like shit about that. There he’d been, happily getting his end away, and Daise and Rob and Ruby had been suffering a shedload of grief.
‘They did it,’ said Daisy, pacing around, her colour high with agitation. ‘Kit, they killed him.’
‘They said that?’ asked Kit. ‘They rigged it to look like suicide?’
‘They made it obvious. And the implication was that they could just as easily kill me, too. I thought they were going to. I really did. God, Kit, it’s been absolute murder. I’m a wreck, I haven’t slept,’ sobbed Daisy. ‘He was the boys’ father.’
Kit was struggling to take all this in. That his brother-in-law had got himself wasted was a big shock. Granted, Simon Collins was a prick, but the poor bastard hadn’t deserved to die. And Daisy… the thought of the Danieri boys cornering her, throwing such a scare into her made him livid.
‘Maybe it’s time I had a chat with Vittore,’ he said.
Ruby’s eyes opened wide at that. ‘No! Kit, don’t go near him. Promise me you won’t. This is exactly what Bella was afraid of, that things would escalate. If you go and see him, it can only make matters worse.’
Kit didn’t agree, but he didn’t say so. Daisy could have been badly hurt. And her kids could have been killed, and their nanny, along with their father. All because of him. Tension gripped him as he thought of what could have happened, while he was elsewhere having a bloody good time.
‘Look,’ he said finally. ‘What we’re going to do is this: Reg and the boys will stay here with you, OK?’
‘Won’t Rob stay too?’ asked Ruby.