Mitcheson’s hands pressed against her bare back where the sun-dress was cut low, and she felt his fingers spread wide across her skin. One hand slid lower, caressing the swell of her buttocks, while his other hand moved up to her ribcage, sliding up and round with a whisper against the fabric of the dress until he was gently cupping her breast. She felt herself respond to his touch.
Then, as the last vestiges of her resistance began to slip away, her mind flashed back to the image of the man in the trees, and the dog, followed by the snapping of branches. In that instant, the moment was gone, the passion and hunger draining away to be replaced by the shocking reminder of what this man was involved in. She pulled away, her hands flat against his chest. “No!” she said sharply, pushing his arms down. “John, no.”
He looked surprised as she stepped away, his hands reaching for her. For a second he seemed about to protest, then his eyes cleared.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, his words slurred with passion. “I thought you- ” He shrugged helplessly.
“Me, too,” Riley muttered, and walked past him to the door. She felt guilty for having succumbed briefly to the temptation, but oddly, felt even worse for pulling back. “But this is impossible.”
“Only if you let it.” His voice was bleak.
“It’s just… all those deaths.” Then she remembered Benson’s sudden disappearance that morning. “Did your men take Benson away and kill him, too?”
Mitcheson looked blank. “Benson? I don’t know any Benson.” He shook his head. “If it’s any consolation,” he continued, “none of the ones who’ve died were nice people.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “But doesn’t it bother you that so casually getting rid of people who are in the way has an inevitable outcome?”
His eyes flickered for a moment. “What’s that?”
“That it might not be long before someone decides it’s your turn… or mine.”
Frank Palmer stood in the gloom of a laundry room at the end of the corridor and watched as Riley stepped outside and closed the door of room 1221 behind her. He breathed with relief as she walked away and disappeared down the stairs. She seemed to have come to no harm, although she appeared flushed. Maybe Mitcheson had tried something on and she’d had to knee-drop him on to the carpet. The thought brought a smile to his face. Serves the bastard right for sending those two goons to smash up my computer…
He heard the clank of a cleaning trolley and decided it was time to go before a maid found him in here and screamed the place down. If Riley knew he’d been watching here watching over her instead of at the villa, she’d throw seven kinds of a fit. He stepped out of the laundry room and walked along the corridor towards the emergency stairs at the far end. As he did so, the door to room 1221 opened and Mitcheson emerged. Palmer instantly fought down a wild instinct to turn back, and hoped the ex-soldier still didn’t know what he looked like.
Their eyes met briefly and Palmer felt himself being scanned and noted. But if Mitcheson saw anything in his face he didn’t show it. Palmer heard the lift button being thumbed impatiently behind him and grinned to himself. Definitely a case of a knee-drop. That must have put a serious kink in his plans.
He passed through the emergency door and ran down the bare concrete stairs to the ground floor, where he emerged through a single door into the reception area. If he drove like a maniac, he might just get to the villa before Riley. If not, he was going to have some explaining to do. As he stepped into the hothouse atmosphere of the street, he saw the Mercedes pull away from the kerb and accelerate through the traffic. Mitcheson. He tugged his car keys from his pocket and ran for his car, pointing the nose towards an alternative route which might bring him ahead of Mitcheson if he was lucky. If it brought him ahead of Riley, too, it would be a miracle, but he firmly believed that good things happened to nice people.
As he reached the suburbs close to the coast road, dog-legging through an area of small, low commercial units and houses, Palmer saw a flashing blue light ahead. His bowels constricted as he remembered Riley’s arrest, and he slowed down, looking for a side turning. But he was now locked in traffic and already saw a policeman striding along the line of cars, waving them to move on.
As he neared the police car, Palmer saw it was parked alongside a large builder’s skip between two small warehouses. A crowd had gathered and were being pushed back by a uniformed motorcycle cop who was trying to pull a strip of bright tape across the gap between the buildings to form a barrier.
Another police car arrived and bullied its way across the road, forcing Palmer to slow even further. As he inched past the scene, he looked down and saw what had drawn the crowd. A body lay behind the skip, the legs twisted awkwardly in an ungainly pose. But what caught his eye specifically was that the crumpled trousers covering the legs ended in a familiar pair of scuffed brown shoes with frayed, red laces.
Chapter 32
Riley was angry with herself as she left Malaga behind and headed out north onto the coast road. She was trying to blot out what had happened in the room at the Hotel Palacio. Well, nearly happened. She was even angrier with Mitcheson. With herself for losing control and with him for being the person he was and doing the job he claimed not to be able to walk away from.
Now she needed to absorb herself in the assignment, partly as a salve against her damaged feelings, but partly, she realised, to bring it to an end. Quite how she was going to do that, she didn’t know. Maybe she would have to hand what she had to the local police, although if they were so easily swayed by the Grossmans, it might be tougher than it looked to get them on-side. There was, of course, the local anti-drugs squad — UDYCOS, as Benson had called them — but she knew even less about them or how to contact them. There was also the question of proof. All she had so far was a vague collection of allegations, which wouldn’t fly far. She needed more facts.
She turned onto the road that led past the villa and coasted to a stop just past the bend, near where the dog had attacked the gunman. She frowned. There was no sign of Palmer’s car.
She pulled a pair of Chinos and a T-shirt from a bag behind the seat and quickly squirmed out of her dress. If a local farmer happened to come by now, she reflected, he was going to get one hell of an eyeful. On the other hand, if it were a policeman, she’d end up back in a cell — and this time Palmer wouldn’t get her out again so easily.
She locked the car and slipped over the wall into the trees, creeping forward until she had a clear view of the rear of the villa. A cloth-covered table bore the remains of a buffet, and she recognised all but two of the people clustered around the patio. The two men Palmer had described as the baseball fans stood at either corner of the house, while a third patrolled the paved area between the house and the pool. He was shorter than his companions, with a neat, compact build, and looked very fit. Riley couldn’t see any guns, but she had no doubt they were there.
Another man sat in the shade with his back to the villa, and she thought she recognised him as one of the two men she had seen walking along the road near here yesterday, only minutes before his companion had appeared among the trees.
She concentrated on the two other people seated at a table with a large parasol fluttering above their heads. One was Lottie Grossman, while the other was a slim, swarthy man in a cream suit and gold-framed sunglasses. He didn’t appear to be saying much. He looked more at ease in this setting than the others, and Riley wondered if he was one of the late Jerry Bignell’s Moroccan contacts.