“On the mend, sir,” I said, forcing a determined brightness into my voice that hadn’t been there only a few seconds before.
Simone’s banker eyed me doubtfully for a moment but didn’t call me on it.
“Ah, good,” he said at last, nodding. “That’s good.”
He still hadn’t advanced from the doorway and seemed almost hesitant about doing so. I was almost on the point of telling him that gunshot injuries were not generally contagious, when he spoke again.
“Look, I have somebody with me whom I’d rather like you to have a chat with, but I’m not sure how you’re going to react to him and-”
“Mr. Harrington,” I said, stopping him dead, “I’m hardly in any state to bite, am I? Not at the moment. Bring him in, whoever he is.” Some kind of detective, perhaps-taking over looking after Ella’s welfare? I ignored the spike of jealousy. After all, I didn’t make such a hot job of it myself, did I?
Harrington stepped sideways slightly and made ushering motions to someone standing farther out in the corridor, out of my sight. There was a pause before a bearded young man shuffled into view, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched as though he would rather have been anywhere but here. Well, that made two of us.
“Er, hello … again,” he said.
Simone’s ex-boyfriend-Ella’s father-Matt.
Possibly the last person I would have expected to see in the company of the immaculate banker. Matt was, after all, the very reason that Harrington had originally hired us.
Sean moved round the bed so he was between me and the doorway, and for some reason the action irritated me.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said. “What are you expecting him to do?”
Sean’s answering glance was hooded, but he didn’t stand down.
Harrington stood looking awkward. “As I said, I realize this may seem somewhat irregular- “
“You could say that,” Sean murmured, not taking his eyes off Matt.
“-but I’d appreciate it if you would hear what this young man has to say before you make any judgments,” the banker finished with a little more snap to his tone.
“I’m sorry. I know this isn’t a good time,” Matt said, eyes flitting nervously from one of us to the other. He looked older, his gaunt face haggard, and a suspicion of red around his eyes and nose. Whatever his problems with Simone, I recalled belatedly, they’d lived together for five years and shared a daughter. The violent abruptness of Simone’s death was always going to hit him hard.
The thought that he’d come to hear the grim details firsthand brought on an icy tightness in my chest.
“Come on in, Matt,” I said, giving him a weary smile. “And I’m the one who’s sorry-for everything. I was supposed to be keeping her safe.”
I saw his shoulders drop a fraction. “But, according to the police, she’s the one who shot you“‘ he said, and his tone revealed bewilderment as much as bitterness. “What happened?”
“I wish I knew,” I said.
Matt nodded as though that was the answer he’d been expecting. He’d developed a sudden interest in the toes of his old basketball boots, unable to meet anyone’s eyes.
“So,” Sean said. “What is it you have to say to us?”
Matt swallowed. He had a prominent Adam’s apple and it bobbed nervously in and out of the vee presented by the open collar of his shirt.
“Look, I know you don’t have any reason to trust me-or to think I’m telling the truth for that matter,” he said. “But whatever you may have thought of me, I genuinely loved Simone. We had our troubles, yeah. She was insanely jealous — ” He broke off, realizing that any mention of insanity in the woman who’d been shot dead by the police was probably unfortunate.
“And I love my daughter,” he muttered, earnest now, his voice low and shaking with sincerity “You people just have no clue how much I love my daughter.”
I said nothing. Matt was wrong. I had a very good idea of what he felt for Ella, even though I was no blood relation to her. Unless you counted the stuff I’d spilt trying to keep her from harm.
Matt had paused, trying to collect his thoughts, find the right place to start his story. Eventually, he said, almost tiredly, “A couple of years ago, when Simone’s mum was very ill, we came over to Chicago to see her. She’d been too ill to travel for a while and she’d never seen Ella and we thought it was probably her last chance,” he went on. He smiled a little sadly. “Pam was a nice lady. I liked her, you know? She was obviously in a lot of pain but she never made a big thing out of it, and she was just so happy to finally get to see Ella.”
Matt wore a Russian wedding ring on the thumb of his right hand, three intertwining bands of gold. He played with them absently, rolling the narrow bands over and over one another, up and down his thumb. A habit, something to occupy his hands.
“Anyway, we ended up talking quite a bit, her and me, because even then Simone was starting to talk about finding her father, and while we were over here she was quizzing Pam about him a lot. I suppose she realized how serious things were with her mum’s health and if she didn’t ask her questions now, she’d never get the chance. But her mum wouldn’t talk about him.”
“Nothing?” I asked.
Matt shook his head. “Not to Simone-she just stalled her. Then she took me on one side one day when Simone had taken Ella out, and she told me that Greg Lucas was a right miserable bastard who made her life hell and she hoped to God that Simone never got to meet him again. She made me promise,” he went on with a shaky smile, “to do whatever I could to stop her tracking him down.”
He cast a reproachful glance at Harrington, who had taken a seat by the window and was picking imaginary lint from the knee of his wool trousers, pretending not to hear.
“She must have told you more than that,” I said, remembering the air of sheer desperation when I’d tackled him in the restaurant.
He swallowed again and nodded.
“She had this boyfriend-John,” he said.
“Who did?” Sean asked. “Simone?”
“No-Pam,” Matt said, frowning at the interruption to his train of thought. “She said she met John a while before she and Greg split, and eventually John was the one who gave her the courage to leave her husband. She got a divorce and they moved away, made a fresh start, but Greg kept tracking them down, threatening them, hounding them. They were constantly on the move. Then, when they’d been living in one place for about six months, she came home one day and found John had just disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
Matt nodded. “She said she’d only been out for a couple of hours — left him looking after Simone. When she came back the place had been broken up a bit-couple of things smashed like there’d been a fight. Simone was all alone in the house, hiding under her bed, crying her eyes out, and John had vanished.”
His eyes flicked between Sean and me, as if checking to see how the story had been received. Harrington’s face was shuttered. This was clearly not the first time he’d heard it. I shifted a little, carefully, in the bed.
“Were the police involved?” I asked.
“She told me they weren’t very interested,” he said. “He was an adult whose girlfriend’s ex was cutting up rough. They thought he’d just done a runner and she reckons they didn’t put much effort into finding him.”
“And what about Lucas?”
“Pam said that was the weird thing. Having been practically stalking her, he never bothered her again. When she made some inquiries of her own, she was told he’d left the army a month or so before John went missing. And he left the country the day afterwards.” He paused, face somber. “Pam swore John wouldn’t have just upped and left her and Simone. She was absolutely convinced Greg Lucas had murdered him.”