Angel of Death (2 page)

In one of those odd coincidences she had spotted the shoes in a shop right next door and known at once that they would be the perfect match. She had been back at her office more or less on time, after all, and had eaten a yoghurt and a pear at her desk before starting work.

She had got a job with the firm six months after Tom’s death. She suspected – no, she was certain – Terry had offered it to her out of a sense of guilt. Tom had worked for Terry’s firm. They had been on the yacht at Terry’s invitation – he had chartered it as a floating conference centre and brought on board a dozen of his top executives, with their wives and girlfriends, as well as some of his best customers. The others had all been saved when the yacht broke up on rocks. Only Tom had drowned.

She had been ill for months afterwards. When she was sent home she found she had lost her post with a large public relations firm. They were apologetic, but explained that they had not been able to keep her job open for ever, especially as they had no idea how long she would be kept in hospital.

The uneasy expression on their faces had told her they thought she was going to make trouble. That she was possibly a bit nuts. And maybe she had been, at first.

But she was back to normal when she left hospital and, after she had spent a fortnight convalescing with her mother down in Dorset, she was calm and rational. She saw there was no point in arguing or protesting. Her firm did not want her back.

She started applying for jobs at once, without much success at first, until, a few days later, Terry had visited her, heard about her predicament, and asked her to take on his firm’s public relations.

‘We haven’t had a PR department, before, but we’re growing, fast, and I think we probably need one now, to handle advertising and dealings with the media.’

Neither of them mentioned Tom’s death. She had looked into Terry’s warm, brown eyes and decided she liked him. They had first met on the yacht and she barely knew him, but she sensed he was a good man.

Big, muscled, with a pleasantly ugly face which was angular, bony and confident, he had a strength and cheerfulness which was instantly likeable. His very short, brown hair curled all over his head in little curls like the horns of a small goat. His grins and barks of laughter aroused answering smiles from most people he met.

He wore casual, light suits, in shades of blue or cream, with coloured shirts, pink or turquoise, and expensive silk ties. Conventional businessmen in striped grey city suits found his outfits worrying. Could he be serious when he dressed like that?

The success of his company was sufficient answer. Terry Finnigan was an electronic genius and understood both what he sold and how to make money selling it. He had founded his company ten years ago with a small legacy from the sale of his dead father’s house.

Miranda wasn’t sure how he had made a living before that. She had the idea that he hadn’t been well off. Everything in his house was new, oddly impersonal in spite of being bright, modern, and very expensive.

Today, the company was worth millions, and Terry owned a majority of the shares. He also owned a large country house, a number of very expensive cars, and leased an office complex in which he had a flat that he and his son used when they were in London. Divorced, Terry dated quite often, but did not seem interested in marrying again, although he liked women.

His preference seemed to be for tall, curvy, showbiz girls, curiously similar in type to his first wife, Sandra, a nightclub singer. Maybe men always picked the same sort of women?

Sandra was now living in Spain with her second partner, to whom she was not married.

‘A crook,’ Terry always said of Jack Lee. ‘And a cheap crook at that. You could buy him outright for a packet of crisps and a glass of beer. What does she see in him?’

Miranda never attempted to reply, she knew he was talking rhetorically, but she imagined Sandra liked Jack’s party-going attitude to life. He joked, laughed, took nothing seriously, and he had a rough sort of sexuality, an instinctive body language with women.

He was, Miranda had decided long ago, very like Terry except that he didn’t have Terry’s brains or aptitude for business. So perhaps women also chose the same type, too? It wouldn’t be surprising – it was all based on character, wasn’t it? Everyone saw through their own eyes, and chose a partner accordingly.

Jack had money, and spent it with a free hand – but it was never clear how he made it. Maybe Terry was right. Jack might well be a crook. Was that why he lived in a villa somewhere in Spain? Miranda had heard the stories about British criminals migrating to Spain to spend their loot outside the reach of the British police.

She had only met Jack and Sandra a couple of times. They were both deeply tanned, wore a lot of gold, bracelets on wrists, necklaces around throats, rings on fingers. They glittered when they moved, and they hated the cooler temperatures of southern England.

‘They can’t wait to get back to Spain,’ Terry commented, last time they were in London and called at the firm. ‘Thank God. The less I see of them the better. If she wasn’t Sean’s mother I’d never let her through the door.’

Sean, though, seemed very fond of his mother. His taste in girls reflected this – he clearly liked the showy blondes his father did. Yet the girl he planned to marry was very different.

Nicola was nineteen, tiny, fragile, sweet; with sleek black hair which framed a heart-shaped face dominated by big, wide, innocent, blue eyes. She was the only child of a wealthy merchant banker, Francis Belcannon, whose bank had been very involved with Terry’s company from the beginning.

Wearing an elegant blue and white organza outfit which made her look like a Barbie doll, she met Miranda at the front door of Terry’s country house, Blue Gables. Behind her the rooms swirled with people in beautiful clothes, talking, laughing, drinking champagne.

‘Thank you so much for coming,’ Nicola said with such warmth that Miranda almost believed she meant it, except that they had only met a handful of times and Nicola probably hadn’t even known she was invited.

She handed over the silver-wrapped box of wine glasses she had bought and Nicola eagerly unwrapped it, held one of the glasses up to the light to watch it sparkle.

‘Oh, they’re gorgeous, so classy – thank you so much, I love them. Sean will adore them too.’

She looked round and waved a hand at one of Sean’s friends, a great hulk of a boy with cropped gingery fair hair and features set in concrete.

‘Georgie, will you get Miranda a drink and take care of her for me?’

‘Sure,’ George Stow growled. He might look like a stone wall but Miranda saw from his glance at Nicola that he worshipped the girl. She was so very much his opposite – tiny, where he was huge, gentle where he was tough, articulate where George was barely able to utter a word.

Miranda hoped Sean loved the girl that way, but she wouldn’t bet on it. She had a sinking feeling that Terry had put the idea of marrying Nicola into his son’s head because it would be so very convenient for the business. Nicola was going to inherit a great deal of money one day, and meanwhile her father was vital to the firm’s finances. Medieval as it might be, the idea of the marriage made a lot of sense – but would Sean make Nicola a good husband?

George steered her through the throng, produced a glass of champagne for her and hovered.

‘You work for Terry, don’t you? Are you his secretary?’

‘No, I run the PR department. Nicola looks happy, doesn’t she?’

George shot her a glower. ‘Sean had better make her happy or I’ll smash his face in.’

Startled but liking his honesty, Miranda smiled at him. ‘I know what you mean. Hurting her would be like running over a kitten, wouldn’t it?’

George made a growling noise in his throat. ‘She’s too good for Sean, that’s for sure.’ He was clearly besotted by the girl and very jealous of Sean – did Sean realise it?

A moment later, Miranda saw the angel of death on the other side of the room and stopped in her tracks, taking a sharp, indrawn, painful breath.

It couldn’t be! She closed her eyes, took another deep breath, and opened them again.

She wasn’t imagining it. It was him. He was wearing black again, but with a difference. Today he was wearing an immaculate black jersey wool suit, with a crisp white shirt, a dark blue silk tie. She saw other women in the room watching him with eager, covetous eyes. Couldn’t they see that brooding air of threat about him?

‘Something wrong?’ George asked.

She swallowed, managed to wave a hand. ‘Who is that? The guy talking to the woman in a pink hat.’

George looked, frowned. ‘Never seen him before in my life. He must be a friend of Terry Finnigan or maybe Nicola’s father. Or do you think he’s a gatecrasher? Shall I go and ask to see his invitation?’

‘No, leave it. I think he’s probably a friend of Terry’s.’ He had been on the yacht after all – and Terry must have invited him. She knew he was not one of the company excecutives, she hadn’t seen him at work, either before or since the yacht foundered.

She had been introduced to him briefly, during the cruise, but couldn’t remember his name. That was weird, wasn’t it? He had haunted her dreams ever since, yet she didn’t even know his name.

Terry pushed his way through the crowds of guests, bringing another glass of champagne for her. He was wearing a rainbow: sunshine yellow shirt, blue jacket, hot pink and green tie, blue trousers.

Huskily, tearing her gaze away from the angel of death, she managed to smile. ‘You look . . . dazzling!’

He grinned. ‘You mean I have vulgar tastes in clothes! I know. But I love bright colours, they cheer me up when I’m feeling down.’

He threw a glance over her. ‘You don’t look bad yourself. A bit subdued, all that mauve and white, but it suits you. My old Gran used to wear mauve all the time – it was what widows wore fifty years ago. Black at first, then mauve after six months.’

Their eyes met and he groaned.

‘Hush my mouth! Sorry, Miranda. I spoke without thinking. I’d forgotten Tom.’

‘That’s OK,’ she managed to get out, thinking, how could he forget Tom? But three years is a long time and people do forget. She wished she could, but Tom still showed up in her dreams, especially when she was very tired or under a strain.

‘You look lovely,’ Terry said in a sweetly obvious attempt to change the subject and cheer her up. ‘What are you doing this Sunday?’

‘Nothing much.’ Was he going to ask her out? Now and then she picked up the impression that Terry fancied her and might be going to ask her for a date, but so far it hadn’t happened, and she was not certain whether or not she would welcome his approach if it came.

She liked Terry, but she did not want to get involved with anyone. She was sure she would know if she were ready for a new relationship. So far she wasn’t.

He gave her a coaxing smile. ‘I’d like you to work on projected publicity for the new printer. I don’t want anyone to have an idea what we’re doing, yet, which means you can’t do this during the week with people walking in and out of the office all day. Could you do it on Sunday afternoon?’

‘OK,’ she said, laughing at herself silently. So much for her daydreaming. It had been work on Terry’s mind, after all, not romance. She should have known it would be. Terry was a workaholic.

The day to day workload for her job was not exactly heavy. She had to arrange advertising and publicity, of course, but Terry kept a very small budget for either of those. Advertising was largely in trade magazines, and bought in blocks for so many weeks or months, and publicity came up only from time to time, usually when they introduced a new product.

She had to have a certain technical literacy in order to work out copy for advertising, although Terry usually gave her a sketch of what he wanted her to write, puffing new features of a machine. She would have to know all about the new printer when she dealt with the marketing campaign later that year, so it made sense for her to familiarise herself with the details now.

Somebody loomed up beside them and her nerves leapt.

‘Hello, Terry.’

‘Alex! Great to see you, thanks for coming.’ Terry beamed from ear to ear. He either liked this man a lot or the man was rich and important. Or both.

Seeing the other man staring at her, Terry introduced them. ‘Alex, this is the head of our Public Relations department, Miranda Grey. Miranda, this is Alex.’

‘Alexandros Manoussi,’ the other man expanded, proffering his hand. ‘But we’ve met before, haven’t we?’

So that was his name. It sounded like the hiss of a snake. Sibilant, yet frighteningly sexy. She was sure she had never heard it before. She hesitated to take his hand, to touch him; long enough for Terry to notice.

‘Alex is one of our best customers,’ he told her pointedly, frowning. ‘We make all the navigational computers Alex puts into his yachts.’

‘Of course,’ she said, realising she had dealt with queries about such instruments, which were being put into boats in countries other than Greece, including Britain.

She had no choice; she had to put out her hand, let it be taken into the cool, supple fingers. A shiver went down her spine at the touch of his skin.

‘I’m a boatbuilder,’ he explained and the sound of his voice was bitterly familiar. She had never forgotten it; had heard it in her dreams for years.

‘Alex makes his boats over in Greece, at Piraeus,’ Terry told her. ‘I’ve been there to see how he works, and discuss with his designers what they need the computers to do for them.’

She was looking into Alex Manoussi’s dark eyes. ‘You built the yacht?’ Had he built the yacht they had been sailing on when it was wrecked and Tom drowned. There had been an inquest some months later but she had not been present, she had been too ill.

Only afterwards did she hear that the firm from whom Terry had chartered the yacht had been accused of negligence. That must have been Alex Manoussi’s firm.

What had happened after the inquest? She had never been told. This man must be rich and powerful. Had he had to face consequences? Or had his employees been blamed?