Lawless (38 page)

‘Well, go on then.’

‘It’s too stupid.’

‘I said go on.’

‘Michael phoning Vanessa to see how she was . . .’

Rob stared at Daisy’s face. ‘Oh, come on. You’re kidding! Michael and her ladyship? Don’t make me laugh.’

‘She’s a lonely rich widow,’ said Daisy.

‘Daise – the woman’s as dried-up as a nun’s twat,’ said Rob.

‘Rob!’

‘Come on. It’s the truth.’

Daisy was flushed with sudden temper. ‘It might be, but I don’t want to hear it! She was all I knew as a child, and she loved me. She did her best for me. So don’t talk about her like that, OK?’

Rob shrugged. ‘OK,’ he said.

Daisy heaved a sigh. Michael and Vanessa as lovers? Vanessa buying Michael rings and LPs, little love tokens? Surely not . . .

‘No, Vanessa hates popular music. She’s into Dvořák and Holst, a little Wagner,’ said Daisy.

They both fell silent, staring at the sleeve of the LP.

‘But someone wrote that,’ said Rob. ‘Looks like the same person who had the ring inscribed, too.’

‘Yes,’ said Daisy. ‘I don’t think it’s Ruby’s writing, though. And I don’t think it’s Vanessa’s hand either. Too loopy.’

‘Well, whose is it?’

‘Don’t know . . . But, Rob . . .’

‘Hm?’

‘I’ve had a thought about Bridge’s skinny bloke with the beard.’

92

Bianca was being kept in comfort but she was still in a state of misery. She was lying on a bed in a strange house, thinking of Kit gravely ill in hospital. Her big fear was that her brothers would get to him, finish him off. She knew it wasn’t beyond them to do that.

She hated him, but she loved him too. She was so torn over Kit Miller that she thought she might go mad.

He probably killed Tito.

Yes, that was true. But . . . she loved him.

He lied to you.

Also true. No denying it.

Are you mad?

Yes. Maybe she was.

There was a knock on the door. She heard the key turn in the lock and one of the men entered, the slim, cold-eyed one, bringing her dinner on a tray. She was a prisoner here, confined. Oh, she had a comfy bedroom, a television, a radio, her own bathroom to use. But she was a prisoner nonetheless. Which was really no more than she deserved, after the awful thing she’d done.

What if he dies?
she wondered.

If he did . . . then she might as well be dead, too.

If he didn’t, if he lived, then he could grass her up to the police, and it would all be over for her. Maybe these people – his people – would simply hand her over to the law, let them deal with her. Or maybe they would deal with her themselves.

Unsmiling, not speaking, the man put the tray down on a low table. She saw the food there. Fish and chips. The thought of eating anything made her guts heave.

She didn’t thank the man.

She turned her back on him, faced the wall. Presently she heard him leave the room, heard the key turn in the lock once more.

93

Kit was out of intensive and into high care within a week.

‘He’s a strong one,’ said Corinne to Ruby.

‘Yes, he is,’ said Ruby. She was so relieved that Kit was getting better, and she stayed with him as much as she could. Fully conscious now, growing stronger day by day, he moved his hand away when she tried to hold it.

‘You don’t have to stay here,’ he said at one point.

‘I want to,’ said Ruby.

‘Was that your voice I heard when I was out of it?’ he asked.

Ruby was startled by the question. So he had heard her. ‘I expect it was. I stayed here, I talked to you. The nurses said it would help.’

It had helped. Even though he might deny it to anyone who asked, Kit knew that Ruby’s voice had comforted him in the bleak blackness of unconsciousness, had wormed its way through, like a single bright thread tethering him to the earth. But was she telling the truth? Would she really have taken the time, the trouble?

He looked at her. His mother. She looked shitty, not her usual elegant self; she looked like she’d been through the mill.

‘You been to see Uncle Joe yet?’ asked Kit, thinking of that dark place with its screaming winds, that tunnel he had glimpsed but not gone through. Pretty soon, he knew that Uncle Joe was going to make that same trip, and he wouldn’t be coming back.

‘No.’ Ruby looked awkward. ‘We fell out some years ago. Or at least, me and Betsy did. So Joe took her side – of course he did – and the whole thing got sort of lost and forgotten. We exchange cards at Christmas. And I keep them all, every one, which I suppose is stupid. That’s about as far as it goes these days.’

‘Fuck Betsy,’ said Kit. ‘Go and see him. Say goodbye, if nothing else.’

Rob and Daisy came in, all smiles because they could tell he was on the mend.

‘Hiya, mate,’ said Rob.

‘Kit! You’re looking better,’ said Daisy, planting a kiss on her brother’s cheek.

‘I’m feeling it,’ said Kit. ‘Why don’t you and Ruby slip outside while I have a chat to Rob.’

‘Oh God. Man talk. Come on, Mum,’ sighed Daisy.

‘So how the fuck are you?’ Rob asked Kit.

‘Pretty much OK,’ said Kit. They were still dosing him with morphine for residual pain, but the wound was healing and he could feel himself getting stronger, day by day.

‘I understand you’ve been lumbered with Daisy,’ said Kit.

‘She’s a good kid. And bright.’ Rob went on to tell Kit about Bianca trying to bust her way into the ward, and Daisy’s plan of holding her for insurance purposes. About the ‘suicide’, and about the other one who’d come in, claiming to be a relative. ‘The Bill spoken to you yet?’

‘Yeah, they have. And I didn’t see anything, can’t remember anything – you get the picture.’ Kit was frowning. ‘I don’t want Bianca touched, you understand?’

‘She won’t be.’

‘Make sure of it.’

‘I will.’

‘You looking after Daise?’

‘Goes without saying. Listen, have you got somewhere in the office at the restaurant or in Michael’s flat where you’d hide something worth a bob or two, something someone might want to find and take back?’

Kit looked at Rob. ‘What you telling me?’

‘Michael’s flat was turned over. And the office behind the restaurant. It’s OK, I’ve had it all tidied up. But somebody was searching for something. Maybe they found it, who knows? Would you have left anything about the place that was, I dunno,
sensitive
?’

‘Nothing that I know of,’ said Kit.

‘Well, where would you hide something like that?’ asked Rob. He’d spent days puzzling over this and had been back to the flat for a second look, but had drawn a blank. He’d been even more stumped when Daisy told him her theory about the identity of the bearded man seen loitering outside Sheila’s. ‘Where would Michael have put something like that?’

‘There’s a cubbyhole under the carpet beneath the desk,’ said Kit, lowering his voice. ‘A couple of the floorboards are loose, and Michael used to tuck anything really valuable in the back there. I don’t use it. You could try that. Why? What are you thinking you’ll find?’

Rob shrugged. ‘Haven’t got a fucking clue. But I’ll take a look.’

Kit wondered what he would do without Rob. Good, solid, dependable Rob – you could always rely on him to pick up any slack. He hated being laid up like this. It sounded as though all sorts of shit was happening and here he was, unable to do a thing about it.

‘You got Bianca safe?’ he asked.

‘Course.’

‘Rob, I want her kept that way. No funny business.’

‘After what she did to you?’

‘She could have killed me. She didn’t.’

‘She gave it a bloody good go.’

‘She pulled to the left. Missed the heart.’

‘Didn’t know you
had
one.’

‘Then she was looking down at me, the gun pointing straight at my head. She could have pulled the trigger and finished me – she didn’t.’

‘Must be love,’ scoffed Rob. ‘Mate, she damned near killed you and here you are saying what a peach she is and not to harm a hair on her head. You mad?’

‘You wouldn’t know, you berk. You never been in love in your life. Oh, and incidentally . . .’

‘Yeah, what?’

‘I want to see her.’

‘Fuck’s sake!’

‘There’s something I wanted to talk to you about,’ said Daisy when she and Ruby had bought their coffees and seated themselves at a table in the canteen.

‘Oh? You want sugar in yours? No? OK. Go ahead.’

‘Thomas Knox.’

‘What about him?’ Ruby sipped her drink.

‘Are you . . . very involved with him?’

Up to the hilt
, thought Ruby. Her mind kept running through everything Thomas had told her. That shocking thing about Bianca Danieri. And about Michael, and his son Gabe.

Aloud, she said: ‘A bit. Why?’

‘Rob and I were discussing who would have had a motive to kill Michael.’

‘And . . . ?’

‘I think that Thomas might have had a motive.’

‘What?’ Ruby was staring at Daisy’s face.

‘I know you won’t want to hear this,’ said Daisy.

‘Hear what?’

Daisy took a breath. ‘Mum, he’s been pursuing you. He’s made no secret of the fact that he wants to get close to you, am I right?’

Ruby flushed lightly, thinking of Thomas at the hotel, then swimming in his pool, and afterwards in his bed. She wasn’t about to share any of that with Daisy.

‘So?’ she asked.

‘Mum . . .’ Daisy was being as delicate as she could. ‘There was an obstacle to Thomas Knox’s pursuit of you, wasn’t there? You told me he’d been watching you for years –
coveting
you, was the phrase you used – and there was only one thing in his way. That thing was Michael, Mum. It was Michael.’

Ruby was silent, staring at her daughter’s face. ‘What are you saying?’

‘Thomas Knox had a motive. He wanted to get to you. And he couldn’t, not with Michael alive.’

‘Jesus, what . . . I mean, really . . .’

‘Think about it,’ said Daisy.

Ruby fell silent again. At last she said: ‘This is ridiculous.’

‘Mum . . .’

‘No! Seriously, Daisy, this is mad. Thomas and Michael knew each other from school, they grew up together . . .’

‘And there you were, in mourning for Michael. And suddenly here’s Thomas, ready with the tea and sympathy.’

Ruby was shaking her head.
Thomas?
She was in his thrall, she knew it. Her affair with him had been amazingly – shamefully – hot, lustful. Nothing like the relationship she’d had with Michael. And now Daisy was asking her to believe that the man she was involved with had
killed
Michael, simply to get her?

No. It couldn’t be.

Could it?

Oh God in heaven. Perhaps it
could
be true. And worse – she had been so dazed with passion, so completely under his spell, that she hadn’t even given such a foul possibility a thought until this moment.

Daisy was watching her mother’s face closely. She hated having to do this. But if Knox had removed Michael because he was a barrier to Ruby, then Ruby needed to know, she had to be made aware. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

Ruby shook her head again, covered her mouth with her hand; suddenly her eyes were full of tears and she was blinking them back. She picked up the cup, drank, put it down again with a shaking hand.

‘It’s not your fault,’ she said.

‘I’m really sorry,’ said Daisy. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

94

‘He wants to see her,’ said Rob when Daisy and Ruby joined him later.

Ruby looked aghast. She’d had enough shocks recently. First Daisy’s thunderbolt about Thomas Knox, now this. ‘What, this Bianca woman? Are you serious? She tried to kill him!’

‘I’ll bring her in tomorrow evening,’ said Rob. ‘Maybe it’s best you stay away.’

Ruby stared at him. This was crazy.

‘I don’t want her anywhere near him,’ she said forcefully.

‘It’s what he wants, Ruby.’

Daisy gave Ruby’s arm a squeeze. ‘We have to respect his wishes,’ she said.

‘But he must be bloody insane! She could try it again, finish him off this time. I can’t agree to this,’ said Ruby, tight-lipped.

‘You don’t have to. Kit wants it, and what Kit wants, he gets,’ said Rob more firmly.

Ruby opened her mouth to speak, then shut it like a clamp when she saw the determination on Rob’s face. She turned on her heel and stormed off.

‘You know what?’ Fats was holding court in the office with two other members of the Miller crew. ‘That arsehole had so much blubber that he must have bounced three feet off the fucking ground when he hit.’

Everyone laughed; they stopped when Rob came in.

‘What’s this?’ he asked.

‘That Eyetie trying to sneak in on the boss at the hospital. Big boy. I always say a boy like that’s easy to take down. His weight’ll defeat him. Got him in the back of the knee and—’

‘Fats,’ said Rob. ‘Shut the fuck up. You think it’s funny – one of the Danieri crew throwing himself out of a hospital window when Kit’s in a room a few doors down? You reckon the Old Bill’s laughing? Do you have any idea the trouble I’ll have to go to, to see that it’s buried?’

Fats shrugged uneasily. He’d done his job, hadn’t he? Stopped that wop bastard dead.

‘Soon as Kit came round the police were in there, questioning him about the shooting. He handled it; we were home clear. All that could change if they find out the guy who took a high-dive from the window had a helping hand. You think Kit needs any more crap, you dumb fuck?’

The boys were silent. Rob turned away from them in disgust.

‘I’m not happy with any of this,’ he said, and stalked out of the room.

‘No shit,’ muttered Fats.

Next evening, Rob took a pale, silent Bianca to the hospital. Throughout her enforced stay at the Lambeth safe house, she had been biddable, subdued, and her demeanour didn’t change even when they entered the maze of corridors and wound their way to the private room Kit now occupied.

Ashok was on guard.

‘All OK?’ Rob asked him.

‘Fine,’ he said, glaring at Bianca.