Joker in the Pack (Blackwood UK #1)

Chapter 35

CHAPTER 35

THE SIRENS DREW closer, and before long, firemen were running everywhere. Hoses criss-crossed the ground like sleeping snakes, all over the garden, to the hydrant on the road, and even into the swimming pool next-door-but-one. And I was right—Lilac Cottage couldn’t be saved.

“This is going to be damage control, I’m afraid,” one of the firemen told Nye. “At least you got out safely.”

“That’s all that matters.”

Easy for him to say. He hadn’t been left homeless.

The police arrived soon after, followed by a couple of ambulances, and Nye insisted I get checked out even though he refused to be poked and prodded himself.

“I’m fine, Liv. I only dropped one floor out of a building. It happens.”

How he could be so blasé about it? Me, I couldn’t stop trembling.

While I sat in the back of the ambulance, Nye headed to the side of the garden where his group of black-clad ninjas had congregated. Every couple of minutes, another shadow appeared and joined them. As soon as the paramedics let me go, I hurried towards them, their silhouettes lit up by the dying flames.

“Looks like things have escalated,” Max said in the understatement of the decade.

“He might not have been trying to kill Olivia before, but he definitely is now,” said another.

“The fucker won’t get away with it.” Nye’s voice came out of the darkness, and I stumbled towards it on shaky legs.

“The problem is that whatever he wanted to keep hidden’s gone up in flames,” Max said.

I made it to Nye and gripped his hand before collapsing onto the remains of Aunt Ellie’s old sofa next to him, bodily fluids be damned. Trivialities didn’t matter so much anymore, not when my home had just become its own funeral pyre.

Nye bent to give me a soft kiss and tuck a jacket around my shoulders. “You’re okay. That’s all that matters.”

“We could have died.”

“But we didn’t.” He straightened again. “How the hell did anybody get close enough to do this?”

A man from the outside security detail shifted from foot to foot. “We saw movement at the end of the drive, and he must have snuck behind us when we went to investigate.”

Nye muttered a string of curses. “Where are Hazell and Hannigan?”

“Hannigan’s in town, waiting at the taxi rank. Still checking on Hazell.”

So, it wasn’t Warren. That cheered me up a little bit.

Nye, not so much. “If this was Larry, the next time he gets close to a fire, he’ll be warming himself in front of Satan.”

“The surveillance team followed him back to the shelter and parked up outside. He didn’t come out the front, but he’s not in his bed either.”

Nye gave the corner of the sofa a vicious kick with one of his steel-toed boots, and the judder ran through me.

“Find the bastard. I don’t care how many men it takes. If the guys upstairs have a problem with it, tell them to call me.”

Nye’s stress transferred to me, and I began chewing a nail. Dammit—I’d been so good about that for the last few weeks. I forced myself to grip the edge of the cushion instead, but my fingers couldn’t keep still, and before I knew it, I’d pulled out a pile of stuffing. It floated around my feet in the breeze like a pile of fluffy snow. I should have stopped, but the motion was soothing, like popping bubble wrap or the rocking of a patient with no hope of escape from the asylum.

I went back for another handful, only this time my fingers hit…

Hang on. What was that?

I gripped the damp edge and pulled. A padded envelope popped out, the ends sealed with sticky tape.

“Nye! Look at this!” I leapt up, waving my prize in his face. “It was in the sofa cushion.”

Eight faces stared down at me, the whites of their eyeballs reflecting the dying embers of the fire.

Then Nye started laughing. “Fuck me, it was out here all along.”

“Can we open it? I want to know what it says.”

He gently uncurled my fingers and took my treasure, holding it by the corner. “Not here. It’s already soggy. We need to take this into the lab.”

“Your car’s not looking too healthy,” Max said. “Some of the roof tiles popped off in the heat and landed on it.”

“Can you give us a lift into London?”

“No problem.”

Max had parked his SUV by the road, and as we walked past the remains of Nye’s BMW, I realised what a close call we’d had. Most of the panels were dented, and fragments of the smashed windscreen twinkled orange in the light.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “This all happened because of me.”

“The car doesn’t matter. It’s insured. Was the cottage?”

I sent a silent thank you to my ex-landlord, who’d told me only idiots didn’t have building insurance. “Yes. I bought a policy as soon as I moved here.”

“Smart cookie.”

Insurance was only part of the problem, though. Where was I going to live in the meantime? Maddie’s sofa, most likely. She wouldn’t mind, but the thought of sleeping there for the months it would take to rebuild the cottage filled me with misery. I wished I could take the insurance money and run, but when I’d skimmed the small print, I was pretty sure it precluded that option.

With the envelope safely stowed in the centre console, Max reversed into the lane, and we sped out of the village. Nye held me as tightly as the seat belt would allow.

“I want you close, babe. What could have happened back there…” He shook his head. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

The feeling was mutual. I snuggled against his chest until we pulled into the now-familiar parking garage of the Blackwood building.

“Test-tube’s waiting upstairs,” Max said. “He came in specially.”

“Test-tube?” I asked.

“Tudor Testino, our head of forensics. But everyone calls him Test-tube.”

“That’s some name.”

“His father’s Italian, and his mother’s Welsh. His father wanted to call him Angelino, so he reckons he got off lightly.”

I put Test-tube in his early fifties, with neat grey hair and a ready smile. He took the envelope from Nye and hurried off with it, followed by three other men in lab coats. Nye took my hand, and we trailed along behind.

“We’ll try the scanner first,” Test-tube said. “It won’t cause any more damage.”

He ran the envelope through a machine similar to those in airports, and a dark shadow showed up in one corner.

“That’s a key!” I said, leaning forward for a closer look. “But what to? I didn’t find anything that was locked.”

Test-tube donned a fresh pair of latex gloves and carefully sliced open one end. “I’m hoping the letter with it will tell us.”

The bubble-wrap lining had kept the paper reasonably dry, and when Test-tube gently removed the sheet and unfolded it, the flowing script was still legible.

Thank goodness.

Once an assistant had taken photographs with a fancy camera, we all gathered around to read.

Mam,

If you’re reading this letter, it means I’ve gone to prison. I didn’t give it to you before the trial because I knew you’d worry. Tempting fate, you’d say.

I’m sorry I messed up. I shouldn’t have walloped Henry, but if you asked whether I’d do it again, the answer would have to be yes. The bastard deserved it. Anyway, I’ll be away for a bit, so I made sure you’d be set up financially before I went.

A couple of months ago, I did a job, and I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see. That night you gave me the alibi for, remember? A man did something he shouldn’t have, and I found him disposing of the evidence.

I thought about going to the police, but they haven’t been too kind to me lately. Me and Graham hadn’t seen eye to eye since he clipped me around the ear in Mr. Bright’s garden. How old was I then? Nine? Ten? The old git’s never got any friendlier.

So, I gave the man a choice.

I sent him an anonymous letter, telling him what I’d seen and how I’d kept a key piece of evidence, one that could send him to jail in a heartbeat. Either he paid two grand a month, or I’d go to the police with the details.

He chose the first option. I knew he would.

The payments have been coming in steady for a few months now, into an account on your favourite poker site. Easy to clean. The username is “WilyFox” and the password is Grandma’s middle name.

Mam, as long as the money keeps rolling in, take it and keep your mouth shut. We’ll be set up for life, as long as he doesn’t find out who’s behind this.

I’ve written out a statement of what I saw that night and left it with the evidence in a safe deposit box in Metro Bank. The branch opposite the supermarket. Box twenty-two, your lucky number.

If the payments stop, send the contents to the police. He deserves it.

Ronnie.

So near, yet so far. At least we knew what we were looking for and where it was, but we couldn’t get at it until Monday morning.

“Do you think it was Larry who Ronnie saw?” I asked Nye.

“Maybe. He’s been acting like a pervert since his teenage years, and when Ronnie got banged up he’d have been, what, thirty-five? His behaviour would have been well-established by that point.”

“Perhaps Ronnie caught him hiding in someone’s house? Like that time he got caught in the girl’s bathroom?”

“Whatever he did, it won’t be long before we find out. We’ll be first in line when the bank opens.”

“But it’s Sunday tomorrow. That means we’ve got a whole day to wait.”

Nye made a face. “Yeah, and it’d be difficult to get the bank to open up early without a warrant.”

“Could you get one?”

“At the speed the cops move? Sure, for about next Thursday. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you well away from Upper Foxford until Monday.” A mischievous smile replaced his black look. “I’m sure we can find something to keep ourselves occupied.”

Wonderful, but where? I’d been left homeless and everything else-less. I didn’t even have a change of clothes to replace my torn outfit.

“Can we stay here tonight? You said you slept overnight once.”

“My office has glass walls. Unless that sort of thing floats your boat, you might find my apartment more comfortable.”

With the focus on Lilac Cottage, I’d never stopped to think about Nye’s home, but no, I didn’t want to put on a show.

“Do you live near here?”

“Not too far. We can borrow a pool car for this evening.”

I had an awful thought. “What about the keys to your flat? Did you have them with you when we jumped out the window?”

He just looked at me.

Oh. Right. “You don’t need a key, do you?”

“I’ll get the door open for tonight. One of my colleagues lives in the same building, and I can pick up the spare from him tomorrow.”

Soon we were driving through the streets of London, deserted save for the occasional black cab.

“Where are we going?”

Nye glanced across, a little sheepish. “Chelsea.”

Chelsea? I figured his job at Blackwood paid well, but I couldn’t picture him living in millionaire’s row.

But he did, in a huge apartment building right next to the Thames. I bet the views must be spectacular from the roof terrace I spied in the early morning light. Who on earth could afford to live on that floor?

Nye, it turned out.

He led me into the lift in the underground car park, and I watched the numbers on the panel count up until they reached twenty-five.

“The penthouse? You live in the penthouse?”

He shrugged. “I like to watch the boats on the river.”

It only took him a minute to let us inside, and he punched a code into a scary-looking alarm panel then clicked on the lights.

“Well, this is me. Make yourself at home.”

Wow. I followed him into the lounge, tastefully furnished in creams and greys. A fluffy sheepskin rug lay in front of a designer fireplace in brushed steel, and the coffee table looked too expensive to risk putting a drink on. But there was something missing.

“Where’s the sofa? You weren’t redecorating at all, were you?”

“I just wanted you to have something nice to sit on. Please don’t be mad.”

How could I be mad? That was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for me. I flung my arms around him.

“You’re the most amazing man I’ve ever met, Nye Holmes.”

He gripped my bottom and hoisted me up so I could wrap my legs around his waist. “How tired are you?” he asked.

“Not so tired that I don’t want to rip your clothes off you and kiss every inch of your naked body.”

He looked shocked. I felt shocked.

“Sorry, I don’t know what came over me.” I tried to backpedal in a hurry. “Stress, I think. It must have been stress.”

His answer was to carry me through to the master bedroom and lay me on his luxurious quilt.

“I’ll have to get you stressed more often. Rip away.”