‘I’ll be fine,’ she told him. ‘You two go, I’m going to have a snooze.’
114
When they got out to Ruby’s place, it was to find an excited Daisy waving the Roy Orbison LP around and asking when the twins and Jody could come back, everything was all right now, wasn’t it?
Rob wasn’t sure about that. And he was winded by seeing Daisy again. Every time, the shock of her physical impact on him damned near took his breath away, but still he resisted it. What else could he do? It would be a bloody disaster, he knew it.
Kit was smirking at him. The bastard knew Rob had the hots for his sister. ‘Soon,’ he told Daisy.
‘And we nearly forgot about this,’ she said. ‘Didn’t we?’
‘What, the handwriting?’
‘Of course the handwriting. Kit, you know about this, don’t you?’
Kit nodded. ‘I do.’
They went into the sitting room where Ruby was shuffling through a box of magazines and cards. She looked up, saw Kit and Rob there with Daisy, smiled and stood up.
This time it wasn’t her who opened her arms hopefully. This time was different. Kit came straight over to her and hugged her, hard. It hurt his shoulder a bit, but he didn’t care.
‘You OK?’ he asked, thinking that he could have lost her, never got the chance to make it up. This woman – his mother – had talked him back to life. She had proved her devotion, when he hadn’t even truly been there to see it.
‘Absolutely fine,’ said Ruby, hugging him and trying not to cry. He’d come for her, rescued her. Her son. Her beloved boy.
‘Good. What’s all this then?’ Kit cleared his throat and indicated the box. He saw birthday greetings, Christmas wishes, Valentines…
‘We thought maybe Mum night recognize the writing on the LP sleeve,’ said Daisy.
‘I don’t know,’ said Ruby. ‘I don’t think so. I’m going through my old cards to see if I could match it up to anything.’
‘You and Michael did share contacts for quite a while,’ said Kit.
‘Yes, we did.’ Ruby sat down again, picked up a handful of the cards. ‘Stupid to keep them all really. Just clutter. Old things, old memories. Look at this…’
She pulled out a dog-eared copy of London Life. The date on its tattered cover was May 1941 and there were three women depicted there, dressed in lingerie and gas masks.
‘They’re Windmill Theatre showgirls,’ she said. ‘The one in the centre’s Vi – my friend who’s now Lady Albermarle. She was so glamorous. She was everything I ever wanted to be.’
Ruby put the magazine aside and thumbed through the cards.
‘I really don’t think I’m going to find anything here,’ she said. She’d been looking for nearly an hour now, comparing the writing on the record sleeve to the jottings in the box. Privately she thought it was a waste of time, but she was doing it to please Daisy, who seemed to be chewing at this thing like a dog with a bone, determined to solve the riddle of Michael’s death.
Ruby was becoming more philosophical now. She didn’t think the mystery would ever be resolved, that they would eventually be forced to let it go, let him rest. It was silly to-
‘Oh,’ she said suddenly.
‘What?’ asked Kit.
Ruby’s eyes were moving between the record sleeve and a Christmas card. There was a fat red robin on the front of it, and Season’s Greetings printed in glittery script.
‘Look,’ she said, and put the card in his hands.
Daisy hurried over with the LP sleeve. They stood there and stared at it. Ruby looked up at Kit, her eyes anxious.
‘You know that my brother Charlie was killed in a hit-and-run not long after he got out of jail? After he’d done time for the mail-van robbery?’
Kit nodded.
‘Thomas Knox told me Michael was behind the hit-and-run. And that would fit. Charlie was trying to intimidate me, and Michael didn’t like it.’
‘You think this matches?’ Kit was peering closely at the two sets of handwriting.
‘It’s close. Don’t you think?’
It was close.
And it fitted, too.
Ruby knew that Betsy had always loved Charlie best; Joe was second choice. And if somehow she had found out that Michael was behind Charlie’s death, couldn’t she have targeted him? Seduced him, perhaps, and lured him to the place where he was killed?
I’m Still in Love with You.
Ruby shuddered. Yes, it could be Betsy. But it could also be Joe. Charlie was his brother, after all. Perhaps Joe and Betsy had colluded over this, arranged Michael’s downfall between them.
‘You’ll just talk to them, won’t you?’ she asked anxiously. ‘He’s…’
Dying.
‘… He’s very ill.’
Kit and Rob exchanged a look. ‘We’ll go easy,’ said Kit.
After they’d left, Ruby sat there on her own and thought about what an individual thing handwriting was. Graphologists could tell a person’s entire personality, just by the way they slanted letters and added loops. She sorted through a few more cards, thinking that she ought to toss this old stuff out. Look to the future, forget the past. She’d even put Thomas’s card in here, the one he’d sent her after Michael’s death. She thought she’d thrown that away…
Suddenly she saw it, and jumped as if someone had shot her. She dropped the box of cards and they fell to the floor. She bent down and with shaking fingers picked up the one that had caught her eye. She stared at it.
Couldn’t believe it.
But there it was.
115
Rob dropped Kit back at his house because Kit was worried about leaving Bianca on her own for too long. Rob thought he was right to worry, she was a highly strung girl and she’d had some very hard knocks.
‘We can take care of this,’ he assured his boss. In the back of his own mind, he still suspected Gabe at work in this, somewhere. ‘Let us go in first, suss out what’s been going on. Maybe Ruby’s mistaken. Maybe the writing’s similar but not quite the same. Who knows?’
Because Kit was concerned about Bianca, he agreed to Rob’s plan. He stood on the kerb for a moment, watching the car pull away, wondering how Rob and Daisy would get on in Chigwell. When he went indoors, he found that Bianca was gone.
‘Joe and Betsy Darke – they’re your uncle and aunt,’ said Rob on the way out to Chigwell.
‘Yes, but I’ve never been acquainted with them.’
‘Your uncle’s not well,’ said Rob.
‘I know.’ Daisy shot a look at him. ‘It seems Ruby and Betsy fell out a long time ago. And Joe took his wife’s side, as you would. So there was an estrangement there, and it’s never been resolved. Not my fault, or Kit’s. Nothing to do with us.’
‘Your aunt Betsy’s a man-eater, Daise. Kit and me, we had a laugh about it after we came out here, but now I’m thinking it’s not very funny. Your uncle knew what a loose tart she was, he saw her swanning half-naked around the house, chatting up the builders, and he resented it, poor old bastard. We guessed she’d be knocking off someone, but Michael? I thought he had better taste.’
Daisy was silent. She had a horrible image in her mind, of Michael in an alleyway, dead, his head shot away. Uncle Joe might be ill, too weak to do the job himself, but he still had plenty of criminal connections. If Betsy had been having an affair with Michael, then it would have been a simple matter for Joe to hire in help to kill his rival and – bonus – the man who had offed his brother Charlie. Or for Betsy to pull in a few favours and organize it in revenge for Charlie’s death.