Dispossession (41 page)

o0o

The item about Suzie’s brother was the last
on the file. Put it all together, it seemed little enough to have cost Vernon
Deverill so much money. A slim collection of hints and implications, and none
of them backed up with any semblance of proof. Not so much use after all, not
at all what I’d been hoping for. Without the disciplines of the office, where
paperwork was essential, I must have been falling back on old habits from
school and college: starting a project with brilliant intentions but very
quickly losing track, starting to keep information in my so-trustworthy head to
save the effort of typing it all up, knowing my ever-dependable memory would
never let me down...

o0o

“Come upstairs?” Suzie said. “Please?”

“Two minutes, love.”

Two minutes was all it took to leave another copy of the
SUSI file on the computer’s hard disk, hidden behind another name and another
password, and then to delete all the other software I’d installed. Call me
paranoid, but if they came back one more time I wanted as much protection as I
could manage, for what little information that file held. Could be that it
would fall to someone else to follow it up, in the long run. I pictured myself
whispering instructions on my death-bed, where to find the first clues that
would lead to a trail of murder and corruption, starring myself as only the
latest corpse...

What the hell, I’d seldom had the chance to be paranoid
before; now here it was, and I intended to enjoy it.

o0o

Not much fun to be had up in the flat, in the mess with
Suzie. We phoned for the locksmith and while we were waiting, as we trudged
around making vague efforts to sort the mess, she looked up from where she was
trying to sponge blood off the carpet and said, “What’s it all
about
, then, Jonty? Have you figured it out yet?”

Not
did the computer tell you
,
please note. I loved that girl, just then.

“I guess,” I said. “Sort of. Mrs Tuck runs SUSI, and she’s
using it as cover for a whole series of scams. I came across one of them by
chance, because it involved a client of mine; and I think either your brother
spotted another when he was in the church one day, or they were just afraid
that he might. The kind of club he was planning, he’d be open all hours; and
the way that place overlooked their compound, anything they were doing there,
they were going to be seriously restricted.”

She went very still for a minute. Then, “You mean that’s why
he died? They killed him just because he might see something, sometime in the
future?”

“Or because they’d have to stop doing some things, just in
case he did. I’m only guessing,” I added, trying to temporise; but I’d always
hated dishonesty, and I couldn’t keep it up now. “I think that’s it, though.
That or something like it. I think that’s the sort of people they are. They
tried to buy the place out from under him, but when that didn’t work they just
wiped him out.”

Her head was bowed so that I couldn’t see her face, but her
voice was thick and almost unrecognisable as she said, “They could, they could
just have shot him or something. Couldn’t they? They didn’t need to, to do what
they did.”

No, they didn’t need to do that. And I was only guessing
again as I said, “I think that was for misdirection, love. Being so extreme, it
couldn’t possibly have been anything to do with a business deal going bad, now
could it? It had the police looking for Triads, remember.”

She seemed to nod, a little. Then she scrubbed a little, and
I didn’t say a word about how scrubbing that hard would only work the stain
further into the carpet, not lift it out at all; and then she said, “What about
Nolan, then? And your mum?”

“I don’t know.” Still didn’t know, despite the hints I’d
thrown myself. Talking through what I did know, though, “Nolan computerised all
Deverill’s businesses. That’s on the file. Which presumably means that he
computerised Scimitar, before Deverill gave it to Mrs Tuck in the divorce.”

“Did he?” Suzie hadn’t read back that far in the file; hadn’t
read anything, most likely, except the bit where her brother’s name had caught
her eye.

“Yeah, he did. So, Nolan knew SUSI’s computer system; and
Mum said he hated to let things go. And he’d be dying to know how well Mrs Tuck
was actually doing with the company, or maybe how she was managing to do so
well with something that had been pretty minor when they let it go. She’d have
changed all the passwords first thing if she had any sense, but I bet he still
had a way in. He built the system, after all; and computer nerds are like that,
they leave themselves secret ways in and out as a matter of course, almost.
Just to prove to themselves how clever they are.”

“Uh-huh?” She glanced up at me, and I blushed. Stupidly.
Passwords were very different, passwords were necessary protection and nothing
more...

“So say Nolan takes a sly butcher’s at SUSI’s accounts,” I
went on quickly, still thinking on my feet, extemporising but liking the sound
of it, “and he finds, what, that they’re making a lot more money than they
should be?”

“Well, so what if they are?” Suzie challenged. “This man
works for
Deverill
, for God’s sake! He’d be
pleased and proud, wouldn’t he? That she’d learned her lessons so well?”

“Yeah, logically he would. And he’s in no position to
blackmail her...” Shit, and it had felt so right. Still did, though, it just
needed to go one level deeper. “Okay, it’s not the money. It’s the way they’re
making the money, the things they’re doing to get it. Deverill’s bent as a
corkscrew, and he’s a hard man running a bastard organisation; but there are
things he wouldn’t do, maybe. He wouldn’t murder, to make a deal work.” Maybe.

“What about... oh. No,” and she shook her head, and I could
read her mind exactly.
What about that girl?
she’d been going to say; and
No, you’re right, he
didn’t have her killed, did he? That was your friend Luke did that.

“He was going to let her go,” I said softly, to let her know
how closely we were tracking, and also that I hadn’t forgotten. I wasn’t
running away from Luke, only putting him aside to be confronted later. “And he
wouldn’t have killed your brother; he’d have bought him off, or moved his own
business if necessary. And he wouldn’t have killed some kid at random just to
get my client out, either.”

“Sorry?”

I explained; she whistled softly. “Jesus. They do go for it,
don’t they? Tell you what, if I was Nolan and I did know something they didn’t
want me to know, I think maybe I’d be quite glad to be in jail in Spain. At
least it’s safe.”

“Yeah. I’m quite glad my mother’s heading that way. I don’t
suppose they’ll put her in jail when she arrives—more’s the pity, it’d do her
no end of good—but at least she’s out of the way for a while.”

“They think she’s still here,” Suzie said. “Those men who
beat Lee up, they were looking for her.”

“Her, and my computer.” And they wanted my mother for what
Nolan might or might not have told her, though according to her and my own
notes, he hadn’t told her a thing about SUSI; and Mrs Tuck had seen my computer
this morning and sent her men to collect it and my mother both, to find out how
much we’d figured out or dug up between us. If they cracked the password and
read the file, then the answer to that was probably too much. If they didn’t,
if they couldn’t find out what I knew—well, I was pretty sure they’d murdered
Jacky just in case, at a time when in fact he knew nothing at all...

Suzie was getting slowly to her feet, leaving bowl and cloth
and bloodstain just where they were. Her eyes were fixed on mine, and again our
minds were tracking each other’s uncomfortably closely.

“Me working for Deverill protects us,” I said slowly. “That’s
probably the only thing that does. If I get rubbed out now, he’ll want to know
why; and what I found out, a real PI could find out too. Enough of it, anyway.
Enough to point the finger at her.” So could my mother, of course. Which was
why I’d told her so little, except
get out now.

“Maybe. But if we died in a car smash, say, and it all
looked dead accidental, she could work on him, couldn’t she? Tell him you’d
just been ripping him off, you didn’t really know a thing, there wasn’t really
a story at all. Or she could plant stuff, make it look like you were chasing a
whole different story. She could do what she likes right now, he wouldn’t know
any better.”

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” just like my mother and
never mind the locksmith or the flat or anything. Right now it was saving her
life that counted, hers and my own and nothing more than that.

o0o

It felt a lot safer, simply to be in the car and moving. Me,
I would have been content with that; but Suzie not, she had to go on asking
questions.

“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know. Nowhere.”

“Unh?”

“Nowhere she’ll think to look for us. Not your parents’
house, not any of your friends or mine. She’s probably got a list, all the
places we like to hang around in.”

“Can’t we go to the takeaway? Dad’ll be there, and he could
use a hand, with Mum at the hospital.”

“No, be real. That’s about the fourth place they’ll look.”

“Dad’s dead mean with a cleaver,” she said, almost
hopefully. “And we owe them one, for Lee.”

“Suppose they come with guns?”

She grunted. “Well, where, then?”

“Just drive.” I almost said
go
around the ring road
, and stopped myself just in time. They’d taken her
brother around the ring road.

With no place particular to head for, she started coming up
with questions again instead. “How come you didn’t tell Deverill about her?”

I don’t know, I wasn’t there.
In a manner of speaking, at any rate. I could guess, though. Why not? Looked
like guessing was all I’d ever do, about that missing time.

“She’s his ex-wife,” I said, “and his best friend too, as
far as I can see. He trusts people exactly as far as he can buy them, and not a
fraction further; but he trusts her. And what, I’m supposed to go waltzing in
to this scary guy who doesn’t trust me an inch, and tell him that I can’t prove
a damn thing, I can’t even offer him a convincing argument, but I know anyway
that it’s somehow because of her that his man Nolan is languishing in jail in
Spain? I don’t think so.”

“Well, if you put it like that...”

“No other way to put it. That’s our ammunition, and it’s so
damp it’s
oozing
. I guess I was playing for
time, trying to find some proof that I could show him; and meanwhile pretending
that I really didn’t know anything. So long as that was what was coming back to
her, I’d be safe, I suppose. She wouldn’t want to bump me off without due
cause, in case he got suspicious.”

“Unh. Tell you what I hate most about all this?”

“What’s that?”

“That you never told me what was going on. You were playing
for your bloody life, and you never said a word.”

Ah. I had a theory about that; but, “If I had done, that
would’ve put you in danger too.”

“Bullshit, Jonty. I was in danger anyway, just from being
your wife. They wouldn’t stop to find out what you’d told me and what you hadn’t.
Why bother? Two people die as cheaply as one.”

“Okay, so maybe I was just a secretive bastard. How would I
know? I don’t remember.”

She gave me a suspicious sideways glance, as if our thoughts
were tracking one more time and she didn’t like the direction one bit; but she
let it go.

We were down by the river now, pubs and offices and new
developments on the left, bollards and chains and water on the right. As safe
as anywhere, I supposed. As deadly as anywhere. Suzie twitched the wheel,
bumped us up onto broad flagstones and killed the engine.

“What?”

“I don’t like driving in circles.”

She got out, slammed the door, walked over to stand barely
this side of the bollards and chains, her toes almost overhanging the edge. Too
close; I followed her hastily, stood behind and put both my arms around her.

She twisted her head around and up, scowling. “What?”

“You be careful. If you fell...”

“Jonty, I’m not going to fall. Besides, so what if I did? I
can swim.”

“Not in there. That stuff’ll poison you before you drown.
And anyone can fall, if they stand too close to a drop.”
Look at Luke.
“I mean, one touch of vertigo, and
you’re gone...”

“I don’t
get
vertigo.”

“Why take chances?”

“Jesus...”

She turned, inside the circle of my arms; looped her own
around my neck; pulled my head down and kissed me.

“Is this what it’s going to be like?” she demanded. “You
being fussy and over-protective, all our goddamn
lives
?”

I nodded. “Next car I buy’s another Volvo.”

“Over my dead body.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” this warm and supple body,
these too-fragile bones broken beyond repair. That was me all over, all
through: frantic to see them safe, all the people I loved.

“You’re not closeting me,” she said. I thought perhaps she
meant ‘cosseting’, but I didn’t like to say. Besides, she was kissing me at the
time, and I couldn’t have got my lips around it.

Then, taking my hand and tugging me for a walk along the
quayside, “I still don’t see how you got to Nolan. Or how you got Deverill to
cough up all that money, or why you’d want him to, come to that.”

Me neither. “Because I had to look corrupt, I told him. But
I must’ve known that would get straight back to Mrs Tuck. I wasn’t fooling her,
so—”

“Yes, you were,” Suzie said suddenly. “That’s exactly what
you were doing. If she knows that you’re setting yourself up to look like a
corrupt lawyer so that some Mr X will bite when you make your move, whatever
that is, then she knows you’re off on some totally false trail and not at all
after her. Doesn’t she?”