‘You’re a liar!’ yelled Ruby after him.
He opened the front door, went outside and slammed it shut behind him. Presently Ruby heard his car start up, heard the motor being driven fast into the distance. She threw her bag onto the sofa in impotent rage. He was lying. There was no woman. Michael wouldn’t do that to her. She knew it.
She had to believe that.
She had to.
97
It was getting late, the punters in Sheila’s restaurant were thinning out, those remaining were drowsing and talking softly over coffee and brandies at the candlelit tables while a gifted young man sat in the corner, playing Spanish guitar.
Rob and Daisy headed straight through to the office, pushing the door closed behind them. The boys had been in, cleaned up the worst of the mess. Rob tucked a chair under the still-shattered lock to keep it that way. While Daisy watched, he went over to the desk, moved the chair aside, got down on his knees and lifted the rug to expose the floorboards.
He prised at a loose edge, and up it came: a foot-long insert in the boards. With that one out of the way, he pulled up another, then another. Now he was looking down into a little cubbyhole, which appeared to be empty.
He kept stuff tucked back there, out of the way, Kit had told Rob earlier.
Rob leaned down further. He stuck in his hand up to the elbow, and groped around.
‘Anything?’ asked Daisy, almost twitching with impatience.
Nothing.
A hard pang of disappointment hit Rob. He’d been so sure that whatever the intruder had been looking for, it would be found here, in Michael’s favourite hiding place.
‘Fuck,’ he muttered.
He took off his jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves and got down further, pressing his whole body and his face into the floor. He inserted his arm again, right the way in, as far as it could go.
Nothing, nothing, fucking nothing.
His hand scrabbled around in there, he was blind, he didn’t have a torch with him and anyway he could feel sod-all in there and this was a total waste of…
He stiffened. ‘Something here,’ he said to Daisy.
His fingers had brushed what felt like cardboard. He tried to grab it, failed. Pushed his face hard against the floor, gave himself a millimetre or two more to play with. Groped back in there, caught the edge of the thing: it was flat and again it slipped away. Grunting with effort, he grabbed the edge once more, and aha! He had it. This time, he kept a tight grip on the cardboard, eased it towards him, pulled it out, rolled over on the floor and took a look at what he’d found.
It was a stiff envelope, about fourteen inches by eleven, the sort pro photographers use to mail prints to clients. It was stuck down with brown tape. Rob sat up, slid his thumbnail under the tape, prised it free. Daisy got down on her knees and peered at it in excitement.
‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Hurry up! Open it.’
Rob tipped it up. A small stack of ten-by-eight glossy black-and-white photographs fell out, into his hands. He put the envelope aside and they looked at what he’d netted.
Presently, he let out a low whistle.
Big surprise.
‘Oh, good Lord,’ said Daisy, mistress of understatement.
Next day Rob picked up a few toiletries and items of clothing from Kit’s place, put them in a plastic carrier bag and went to the hospital. Kit was lying there, eyes closed. His skin had lost its deathly pallor. His left arm was tucked up in a sling, taking the weight off while it healed.
‘Hey, Kit?’ said Rob, sitting down at his bedside.
Kit’s eyes opened.
‘Hi,’ he said.
Rob had been thinking it over. In ICU, the situation had been secure and he could keep a lid on things. In a private room, security became more difficult. Out on the streets that Kit ran, they had their own tame private doctors, even a fucking surgeon on the payroll, no questions asked.
‘How you feeling?’ asked Rob.
‘OK.’
Kit felt about a million times better, now that he’d seen Bianca and reassured himself that she was all right. The filth had – of course – been in, asking him more questions. Who shot him? Did he see anyone? He hadn’t, he said. Sorry, officer. They told him about a bloke who’d fallen or jumped to his death from a window just down the hall, Italian guy, no one seemed to know who he was or what he was doing in the hospital – had Kit heard anything about that? Kit said he hadn’t. And the police had gone away again.
‘You feel well enough to get the fuck out of here?’ asked Rob.
Kit looked at his mate. ‘They trying?’
‘Twice.’
‘The jumper?’
‘Cops told you?’
‘They did. Hey, Rob…’
‘Hm?’
‘I kept hearing a voice when I was out of it. Ruby said it was her.’
‘Yeah, that’s right.’ Rob looked at his mate. ‘She stayed here with you the whole time. We couldn’t drag her away – and God knows we tried.’
Kit returned Rob’s gaze. The Ice Queen of Retail, cold as fuck and putting business before her kids, had been here, talking to him, the entire time?
‘She wouldn’t leave you. All she did was stay by your bed, talking to you.’
Kit looked at him dubiously.
‘It’s true,’ Rob assured him. Then his face darkened as he moved on to the subject that had been bothering him: ‘Look, we’ve got Bianca stashed away. But these Danieri boys… I dunno. They’re crazy. They might try again, whether we’ve got her for insurance or not. I don’t want to take the chance…’
‘So I guess we go,’ said Kit.
Rob held up the carrier bag. ‘Got your clothes in here.’
‘OK, let’s do it.’
98
Daisy slept late next morning. Ruby had departed for the store now that Kit was in the clear, and would then go on to the hospital to see him, but here she was, still in bed. Disconsolately she slipped on her robe and wandered up to the nursery. There was only silence; a few abandoned toys, the empty cots. She went downstairs and firmly resisted the impulse to phone Jody. Kit was right. The line might be tapped, and she could betray their whereabouts without meaning to.
She showered, dressed and then phoned Rob’s flat number.
There was no answer.
Well, he was probably doing something for Kit. She knew better than to speculate as to what exactly that might entail. One thing she couldn’t put to the back of her mind was the envelope Rob had discovered last night, and the shocking images they contained.
Neither could she shove away from her brain the fact that her brother seemed besotted by a madwoman who had damned near killed him. She had no idea where they were going to go from here with Bianca. She had no idea what mad scheme Kit was going to cook up next, and she dreaded going back to the hospital to hear about it.
She phoned the restaurant; was Rob there?
‘Haven’t seen him since yesterday,’ said the bar manager.
She phoned Ruby’s office.
‘Rob? No, I haven’t seen him since last night. Check with Reg.’
Daisy then phoned Reg’s flat, all the while the tension and anxiety building in her until she felt just about ready to blow.
Reg picked up on the first ring. ‘Yes?’
‘Reg? It’s Daisy. Do you know where Rob is today?’
‘No idea,’ said Reg. ‘Have you tried…’
And so it went on. Daisy phoned pool halls, bars, restaurants, and no one had seen Rob.
Finally she gave up, put the phone down and wondered what the hell to do now.
What she was afraid of… no, she couldn’t bear to even think it, it was too awful.
But try as she might she couldn’t shake off the fear that Rob had decided to act alone on the contents of the brown cardboard envelope he’d unearthed last night.
If the man who had been searching for those photos was the same person who killed Michael Ward in that alley, then Rob could be walking into a very dangerous situation. The searcher would know Rob had seen the prints, would know the game was up, and he might decide that Rob needed getting out of the way, too.