Prime Deception (30 page)

‘I hired a shooter to follow her home. Faye kindly held her back at work for me without asking questions. I was hoping to make it appear like she had been mugged. But when you left the house so suddenly, I realised they must have missed and that you were running to little bitch’s aid like some lovestruck teenager. One call and some of my contacts kindly bustled her into a van for me and bought her here. Did you like the text I sent you?’

Charles grimaced as he recalled the message and how he had thought it uncharacteristic of Laurie. He should have immediately sensed that something was wrong.

‘Don’t hurt her,’ Charles pleaded. ‘Her family have already lost one daughter; don’t make them suffer the loss of another.’

‘Fuck her family!’ Elaine screamed passionately, her voice cracking from the pain contained within it. ‘At least they’ve had children. They’ve watched them grow, nurtured them. Any pain they suffer now will be consoled by the love they once knew. How can you pity them but not me?’

‘Because we didn’t need children,’ Charles explained, still searching the surrounding area with his eyes for something he could use to distract Elaine long enough for him to overpower her and get the gun. ‘We were …’

‘Happy?’ Elaine finished for the sentence for him and then laughed. ‘We were many things Charles but we were never happy and I accepted that. I supported you and, in return, you gave me security. What we had, it wasn’t conventional but it worked. We can get it all back, our life. This whole episode needs only to be a bump in the road. With her gone, we can concentrate on us.’

Elaine now placed the gun at the back of Laurie’s head, pushing the barrel through her blonde mane until it connected with her scalp. Charles looked at her frightened eyes and felt disgustingly helpless.

‘Even now you gaze at her like a lovesick puppy!’ Elaine declared venomously. ‘As long as she lives, so does the love you had for her sister.’

‘Don’t!’ Charles cried as the sound of a gunshot splintered the air of the kitchen.

Laurie felt the warm blood splash against her and grimaced. Charles watched in horror as Elaine fell back against the floor with a sickening thud. The point where a bullet had connected with her upper chest collapsed in to a dark red cavern, oozing crimson liquid out on to the terracotta tiles. Elaine’s body trembled from the shock, her legs giving out a few meagre twitches. Charles felt compelled to go to her but he could not move for fear that the unknown assailant might deliver a second deadly shot, but this time for him.

He looked on helplessly as Elaine shook a bit more before becoming deathly still. It took a second for his instincts to kick in and then he was over by Laurie, ripping the tape from over her mouth and releasing her limbs from their constraints.

When the tape came off her mouth Laurie gasped and greedily drank in the air around her. She looked up uncertainly, and Charles readied himself for what she was about to say but her gaze drifted past him to the doorway to the kitchen.

‘Artie,’ she whispered. Charles turned to find a tall young man with a slender frame on the periphery of the kitchen area, a shotgun now hanging down by his side, the ramifications of what he had just done beginning to twist his youthful features.

‘Artie,’ Laurie said again as she tentatively rose to her feet and tried to run over to the young man. She pressed her aching body against Arthur’s and realised that he smelt of home.

Arthur held the girl he loved tightly and planted a gentle kiss upon her head.

‘I came to see you, and when you weren’t at your apartment late at night I got worried and headed over to your offices. That’s when I saw you get dragged into a white van and I knew something must be wrong. I just assumed that you would come here.’

‘How did you know where I lived?’ Charles asked accusingly, standing back awkwardly from the young couple, feeling alienated in his own home.

‘I followed you,’ Arthur answered simply.

‘That’s impossible!’

‘Telling a cab driver to follow another car isn’t so hard. I’ve been tracking you since Downing Street. You really should learn to be more discreet.’ Arthur shrugged modestly and then tightened his embrace of Laurie.

‘You saved me,’ Laurie whispered in to his chest.

‘That’s my job.’

Charles skulked away, remorseful that it was not his arms in which Laurie was now seeking comfort. He wandered over to Elaine and knelt down beside her. Her eyes were wide and lifeless with fear and so he carefully closed her eyelids, sealing her forever more in darkness. His first thought was how angry Elaine would have been about the state of her kitchen and Charles realised in that moment just how much he would miss her wife. He looked over at Arthur, the shotgun now on the floor beside him, no longer needed. Charles knew he was not blameless in all of this; he may as well have pulled the trigger himself. But Laurie was safe. That was the main thing.

The Deputy Prime Minister noticed how Laurie pulled away from the man in whose arms she stood and smiled up warmly at him. Charles recognised the expression well for it was the same one Lorna kept reserved for him. A familiar ache tugged on his heart as he thought on how he would never get to hold Lorna again, but the pain had dulled from its original intensity.

Laurie at last pulled herself away from Arthur and came over to Charles.

‘Your wife,’ she said softly, not daring to glance down at the fresh corpse on the floor. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s alright,’ Charles replied and he knew that it really was. ‘She would have killed you had … Artie not shown up.’

‘Arthur is my boyfriend from home,’ Laurie explained and behind her Arthur beamed at the introduction, relieved to have finally been reinstated as her romantic interest.

‘I’m sorry about what happened, about all of it. About Lorna.’ Charles felt pitiful to have only words to console Laurie. ‘You have every reason to hate me.’

‘I could never hate you.’ Laurie moved forward and hugged Charles, resting her head upon his chest. He looked down and drank in her scent. Even through the blood and sweat he could smell the sweet floral notes which he had associated with Lorna.

‘My sister loved you very much,’ she said solemnly, looking up at Charles. ‘You should know that.’

‘Thank you, that means a lot.’

Charles held Laurie and for a moment he let himself pretend that it was Lorna, that they were locked in their final embrace. He tried to burn the sensation onto his brain so that he could revisit it until the end of his days. This was the goodbye he had for so long yearned for.

‘I’ll never forget what you’ve done.’ Tears glistened on Laurie’s bloodied cheeks as she spoke.

‘You gave me the truth about Lorna. Now I know that she didn’t commit suicide, I can let her rest in peace.’

‘Yes, perhaps we will both be able to let her go now.’

‘Laurie,’ Arthur called from behind them. ‘We need to go.’

The petite blonde glanced up at the Deputy Prime Minister and smiled sadly.

‘Parting is such sweet sorrow,’ she quoted, to which Charles nodded knowingly. ‘What will you tell the police?’

Charles glanced at Elaine, silent and at peace. ‘I’ll think of something,’ he assured the couple. ‘Now go home and live your life with twice the tenacity of before, because now you are living for Lorna also.’

‘I’ll never forget you.’

‘Nor I you.’

Arthur came and took Laurie’s hand and guided her out of the kitchen and out of Charles’ life.

***

‘This is Tracy Hancock reporting for BBC news,’ the young brunette reporter addressed the camera, trying to conceal her excitement about the huge story which had unfolded over the last hour, which the station had decided she could lead on. She was about to deliver the report which would make her entire career and her heart raced with anticipation.

Only forty minutes earlier, she had been awoken by a frantic phone call instructing her to assemble a crew and immediately head over to the Deputy Prime Minister’s house on the outskirts of London. Bemused, she had complied with the orders, wondering what had transpired during the night to warrant her leaving the comfort of her bed at three in the morning.

‘I’m reporting live from outside Charles Lloyd’s home,’ she informed the viewers. Around her a media circus had already set up as various new stations clamoured to deliver what would be the news story of the decade. Amongst the cameras, local police and specialist officers weaved their way in and out of the house with severe looks of concern plastered across their faces.

‘Earlier this morning, an unknown intruder broke in to the Deputy Prime Minister’s home and shot and killed his wife, Elaine Lloyd, in cold blood. Police are already on the scene as a country wakes up and tries to make sense of such a wicked, merciless act.’

There was a sudden surge of activity as Charles left the house, flanked by policeman. He kept his eyes to the ground as he was ushered to the waiting Bentley. He was whiter than the cliffs of Dover, clearly shaken by the sudden tragedy which had befallen him.

‘Known for her ample charity work, Elaine was a much-loved public figure, who will be sadly missed,’ Tracy continued. She imaged people at home waking up and switching on their television sets to receive her dramatic news. The image of the heartbroken Deputy Prime Minister would soon go global and within less than an hour, the entire world would know of what had transpired.

Charles watched his home grow smaller in the rear view mirror of the car, relieved to be leaving the sudden influx of journalists who were constantly growing in numbers. Elaine would be remembered as a martyr which was exactly what she would have wanted.

Epilogue

Sat cross-legged on her bed with the sun from her window bathing her in warmth, Laurie hurriedly flicked through the paper to the relevant page.

‘Woah, go steady, you’ll rip it!’ Arthur teased from the other side of the bed, where he lay reading a book.

‘Shhh,’ Laurie said as she became locked in concentration, scanning the page of text.

‘Here it is!’ she suddenly proclaimed gleefully, as though she had just uncovered valuable buried treasure.

‘Let’s see.’ Arthur crawled over to his beloved girlfriend and wrapped a protective arm around her, a habit he had developed ever since the shooting which had now been just over a month ago.

They both peered over the paper and read the tiny article which was locked away in the bottom left corner, seemingly insignificant to the untrained eye. The author was none other than John Quinn.

Over a year ago this paper reported that Lorna Thomas, 22 of Kent had committed suicide when her car collided with a tree. However, new information has recently been passed on to us which states that, on further examination, it appears that the vehicle Miss Thomas was driving was faulty and the cause of her death. We apologise for our original report and any hurt it may have caused.

Laurie read the words again and again, her mouth curling up into a smile. A solitary tear of joy dropped onto the paper above the section she was reading and blurred the text.

‘Let’s go show your mum and dad,’ Arthur suggested brightly.

‘Yeah, good idea,’ Laurie agreed as she followed him out her bedroom, no longer feeling quite so alone.

CARINA™

ISBN: 978 1 472 09472 8

Prime Deception

Copyright © 2014 Carys Jones

Published in Great Britain (2014)

by Carina, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

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