Death Trap (7 page)

Feeling grounded and in control again Rio carried on. ‘We still need to interview Nicola Bell more fully. At present her family lawyer is insisting that she be interviewed when he’s present. Why he’s insisting on this only he knows.’

‘Who’s the lawyer?’ Detective Richmond asked.

‘Stephen Foster.’

Rio was not surprised at the wave of unrest and disgust that filled the room. Foster was well known as not being a bosom pal of the Met’s.

‘But she was going to tell me something,’ Rio continued. She pulled out her notepad and flipped it open. ‘What she said was, “one of them couldn’t” and then Foster arrived stopping all communication with our witness. What was it that one of the two members of the gang she saw couldn’t do? So speaking to Nikki is our number one priority. In the meantime we have to go with what we’ve got. We’ve got a long list of suspects so far. Known names in the south-east blagging world—’

‘You’re missing the obvious,’ Strong ground out.

Rio and everyone else looked over at him. She’d been so caught up in unpicking the Intel that she hadn’t noticed that he was now standing.

Rio was fed up with this six-foot milestone around her neck. ‘There’s nothing obvious or simple about this case.’

Strong walked with a long, easy stride to join Rio at the front. ‘Simple, no. Obvious, yes.’

Rio folded her arms across her chest, her mouth tightening. ‘OK, Einstein, tell the rest of us – who’ve probably got fifty years of collective policing experience – what we’ve been missing.’

Strong faced the others. ‘Robberies like this were common back in the nineties, just like bank and post office jobs. But that’s all a thing of the past. And you know why?’ His gaze spanned around. ‘This type of crime is high risk, low profit. Who wants to get caught on a security camera and banged up for fifteen years? So why would this gang do such a high risk crime?’

There was an edge-of-your-seat quality to the way Strong spoke that had even Rio hanging on his every word.

‘This gang, or someone in this gang – I suspect their leader – are only going to take this chance because they need cash quickly. So what do they do? Revert to what they know: going on the rob. Once they reach their jackpot the Greenbelt Gang will cease to exist.’

‘But why do they need the money?’ Rio asked, taking Strong seriously for the first time since she’d started the briefing.

‘To invest in another crime. A crime where high rollers are only allowed to play. Something that’s low risk, big profit.’

‘What?’ a member of the team asked. Their voice was filled with ‘tell me now, tell me now’ expectation. A few minutes ago this would have annoyed Rio, but now she grudgingly admitted to feeling the same.

Strong took in each face again, then stopped on Rio’s: ‘A big time drug deal.’

eight

‘You know that I’m right,’ Strong insisted as he stood in front of Rio in the corridor outside the operations room. He held a cup of coffee in his hand.

Rio didn’t know if he was right, didn’t know if he was wrong; what she did know was that she needed time to sort through his theory in her mind. This investigation was on a tight time frame and if she used valuable resources and took it down a blind alley there was going to be only one head on the chopping block – hers. And no way was her career going down the Suwannee because keystone cop here thought he had a light-bulb moment.

Rio gave him a hard look. ‘You keep forgetting who’s giving the orders here.’

Strong took a step closer to her, invading her space. ‘You look like a woman who’s about to get a load off of her chest.’

Rio expected his eyes to drift insolently to her breasts, but he kept his gaze fixed to hers.

‘I don’t want you on my team.’

‘Pity you can’t get someone to cuff me and haul me away, isn’t it.’

‘Since you’re one of Newman’s old kissing buddies I want you to ask him – ever so sweetly – to reassign you.’

Strong leaned into her, his heated breath brushing her cheek. ‘And miss the way the invincible,
black
Detective Inspector Rio Wray swings a case? I don’t think so.’

‘You got a problem with the shade of my skin?’

‘Got a problem with someone using it to rise in the ranks.’

This man was stepping way, way out of line. Rio pushed her face closer to his. ‘People like you—’

‘Should be hung, drawn and quartered? Made to stand naked on Oxford Street until their balls freeze off?’

Hot colour sizzled through Rio’s cheeks. ‘Watch your mouth.’

‘The only thing I’m watching is my last case on the job. You going to begrudge an old timer that?’

‘You start slinging arrows in the wrong direction and you’ll find out what and how I begrudge.’

‘I can’t wait.’ Now his blue gaze fell to her chest, making her breasts feel like tits instead. ‘Sweet . . . heart.’

Rio thrust her face so close to his that they were nose-to-nose, eye-to-eye, bathing the other with ragged, hot anger.

‘DI,’ a voice called, reminding Rio where she was.

She pulled away from Strong and hitched her elbow deliberately up at the same time, catching the bottom of the cup he held. Coffee shot in the air, then sloshed down on his shirt.

‘Oops,’ was all she said too sweetly, as she fought to control the temper she knew could go into orbit if the wrong buttons were pushed. And this man had a way of poking her that was going to tip her over the edge.

Rio flicked her fingers once through her hair as she turned to find one of the female members of her team.

‘We’ve located the Bells’ daughter. Her name isn’t actually Leah . . .well it is, but spelt Lia. It’s short for Ophelia—’

Rio swore. ‘Not the same Ophelia Bell—’

‘Who’s known to millions as Lady Clarissa Wilcott.’

nine

12:55 p.m.

‘Freddy, I love you, not him. It was a mistake.’

‘I don’t believe you.’ Freddy’s voice was savage as he advanced on the woman crying in front of him. ‘Finding this out as I’m just leaving to join the troops at The Front is destroying me. When I was in the hospital, after being gassed, all I could do was think about you. And to find out you’ve betrayed me . . .’

Abruptly, the woman fell on her knees in front of him, a lock of her hair bouncing free of the heavy black updo pinned to the back of her head. Her beautiful face looked up at him as she pleaded, ‘No one knows, I swear it.’ She tugged on the end of his military jacket as she sobbed, then looked back down at the Oriental rug she knelt on. ‘Please, Freddy, I beg you. I beg you.’

Silence. Then Freddy’s hand touched the top of her hair. Smoothed his palm against the silky strands as he arched his head back and briefly closed his eyes. Then he snapped his green eyes open.

‘Come, my love,’ he said softly. He moved his hand from her hair and held it out to her. ‘I forgive you.’

The woman eagerly took his outstretched hand and rushed to her feet. Immediately she wrapped her arms around his neck in a tight embrace.

‘Do you really forgive me?’ Her strained voice was muffled against his skin.

His arms moved from his side. Kept going up as he replied, ‘Yes. I forgive you. But if I find out you’ve been seeing him while I’m away fighting, you know what honour demands I do when I get back.’

She jerked her face from the comfort of his throat to gaze up at him.

‘I’ll have to kill you.’

A voice yelled, ‘And . . . Cut.’

Rio and Strong stood on the edge of the indoor scene being filmed on the set of the TV drama
The Wilcotts
. The period drama, a saga about the ups and downs of an aristocratic family during the First World War, had first appeared in the daytime television schedule, but a growing audience had catapulted it to the nine o’clock primetime Sunday slot. The tabloids were full of whether stuffy James Wilcott, the Earl of Marchfield, would fall in love with Sally Grayson, plucky American divorcee cum Suffragette? What was young, gambling-addicted Lord Arthur going to do about getting the upstairs maid pregnant? Would Freddy Wilcott discover that his wife had been two-timing him with a fake Italian Count? Well, Rio now knew the answer to the last. Not that she watched the show – people prancing around in period costumes, like pantomime season was back in town, just wasn’t her style. She was glad she wasn’t a fan of the show because being on the set, with the cameras, the bright-loud lighting, the crew looking on, paraded something that was touted as spectacular, entertaining and art as just another ordinary job. Mind you, there was nothing ordinary about having a well-known TV face attached to the Greenbelt case. That was only going to ignite a fierce, new heat to the investigation; heat Rio could do without.

‘I should be out there pulling in Intel on the drugs angle,’ Strong whispered.

Rio ignored him as she watched Ophelia Bell, aka Lady Clarissa Wilcott, getting to her feet as the crew started chatting about what a great scene it was.

‘Ophelia,’ the young lad who had accompanied them to the set, called out. ‘You’ve got visitors.’

Even from a distance Rio could see that Ophelia Bell was willowy and tall with one of those classic photogenic faces that took a stunning shot every time. The actress unbuttoned the top of her heavy, violet dress as she moved towards them. When she reached them Rio changed her assessment of her from willowy to painfully thin. The cheekbones stood out on her face like blades trying to burst out of skin and her collarbones caught the eye much more than the elegance of her neck. This was a woman in serious need of being force fed a week’s worth of homemade cooking.

‘You do know that this is a closed set,’ Ophelia announced in what many would have named a cut-glass voice, but to Rio’s ears was slightly pompous and a touch nose-in-the-air cold. ‘The show’s secrets and all that,’ she finished.

Rio pulled out her warrant card. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Rio Wray and this is my colleague Detective Jack Strong—’

The actress rolled her grey eyes. ‘If this is about Connie, I don’t know where he is. Nor do I want to know.’

‘Is Connie your brother Cornelius?’ Rio asked.

Ophelia’s bony fingers opened a few more buttons on the front of her dress as she muttered, ‘The rebel with too many causes; yep, that’s my brother Cornelius.’

‘Can we talk to you somewhere more private?’ Strong spoke this time.

Ophelia swept the pads of her long fingers from the top of her throat to the base. ‘Let’s go to my dressing room.’

They left behind the set as they walked towards a large corridor in a grand Essex manor house called Whitlow Park. The show had moved to a non-studio based location once its ratings shot up. It was a house perfectly trapped in another era – wooden panels and elaborate staircases, rose cornice ceilings, showy framed paintings and floors that gleamed except where large rugs lay. Ophelia talked all the way to the dressing room.

‘We just found out that the production company and broadcaster have done a top grade deal with the Americans to take it stateside. That’s going to open up all kinds of opportunities for me. My agent said that it’s only a matter of time before some big L.A. studios are knocking on my door with movie offers.’

Neither Rio nor Strong responded as she used the energy from her flagrant excitement to swing a door forwards near the stairs. The corridor that faced them was darker and narrower than the part of the house they’d just left behind. Finally Ophelia Bell opened the door of a small, sparsely furnished room.

‘This was once the chambermaid’s room. Gave the producer a mini thrill to pop Lady Clarissa in here.’ She squinted at Strong noticing the stains on his shirt. ‘Looks like you could use the help of our costume or props department.’

His blue eyes twinkled at her. ‘Just a misunderstanding with my coffee, and some brown sugar.’

The scar on Rio’s left wrist twitched, but she kept her irritation under control reminding herself what she was here to do.

Ophelia pulled off her wig to reveal paprika red hair cut into a short style; strands fell in diagonal lines across her forehead and straight lines on the sides. It made her look younger, but laid the bone structure of her face even more bare.

‘So, what has good ole Connie been up to this time, detectives?’ Ophelia threw the wig on to a small dressing table.

‘You might want to sit down,’ Rio offered as she pointed to the single chair in the room.

‘I’ve had enough drama for one day so just tell me.’

‘It’s your parents—’

‘Mum and Dad?’

‘They were found dead this morning at their home. They were murdered.’

Ophelia’s face turned scarlet as the skin below the sharpness of her cheekbones sank. She shook her head. ‘No . . .
Not Mum and Dad . . .’

She took a step towards Rio, but her leg shook so much she wobbled as her foot reconnected to the floor. Strong moved quickly towards her, his arms outstretched to catch her weight. Ophelia thrust her palm up at him, making him freeze and creating an invisible protective wall around herself. Rio and Strong remained where they were, giving this woman the time she needed to absorb news that no person expects to hear about their parents. Finally Ophelia moved, legs still shaking, towards the chair, her breathing an audible, erratic rhythm in the room. Instead of sitting down, her fine fingers gripped the back of the chair to steady herself.