Lawless (27 page)

I bet you do
, she thought as he turned and walked away.

‘Who’s that?’ asked Daisy, coming up to her mother. ‘That man you were talking to?’

‘Thomas Knox,’ said Ruby, still feeling as if her heart was going to seize up. Her hands were trembling. She would hand Gabe Ward’s address to Kit, tell him Knox had found it for her, and that he had the man’s support too. She had achieved a lot.

But . . .

‘He’s rather gorgeous,’ said Daisy consideringly, gazing after him. ‘In a
heavy
sort of way. Don’t you think?’

Ruby didn’t comment. She thought Daisy had summed it up very well. ‘Let’s go home,’ she said, and took Daisy’s arm and steered her to the car, and the safety of Reg.

62

1953

It happened the following morning, and Gabe knew he would never forget it as long as he lived. It was a sunny day, breezy and bright. All wrong for what happened, Gabe always thought afterwards. The couple set out walking, wearing suitable clothes, with a pushchair in which sat the little girl in her pink jacket and white-frilled skirt. They chattered to her constantly, the strong young man and his pretty wife.

They walked, enjoying the morning sunshine, and Tito and Gabe followed quite a distance behind them.

‘I don’t understand this,’ complained Gabe.

Tito was starting to frighten him. He couldn’t figure out where this was going, but his guts were churning and he’d slept badly, scrunched up in the back of the Jeep alongside Tito. Tito slept deeply, snoring like a hog, and Gabe had spent long hours awake, staring into the blackness of the country night, wondering what would happen next. Dreading it, really. He wanted to run home, to get out of this situation any way he could.

‘You’ll grab the woman and the girl,’ said Tito as they walked. ‘I’ll see to him.’

‘Tito . . .’ Gabe panted. He couldn’t catch his breath. Suddenly, he was terrified. He wanted to shout out to the couple walking ahead, tell them to run. But he couldn’t. He was paralysed with fear.

The road was very quiet, there was no noise, nothing except the wind whispering through the long grass on the verges. A hawk soared overhead, calling its weird desolate cry, and Gabe thought how terrifying that sound must be to the small, hunted creatures it stalked. There was no traffic. There was nothing. And now they were drawing closer to the couple and the child in the pushchair. Tito broke into a run, swinging some small thing out of his coat pocket. Gasping, his heart pounding crazily, Gabe followed.

63

After the funeral Kit and Rob went to the office behind Sheila’s restaurant. Kit sat down behind the desk, the same desk where Michael had sat, opening the post and doling out work for the boys with Rob standing patiently at his side. Business as usual.

‘Fats, you get over to Chiswick, chase up that dickhead Robbo, it’s getting close to two thousand with the interest, I want that paid, OK? Either it’s cash now or you take it out of his cheating arse,’ said Kit.

Fats nodded. He was tall and skeleton-thin but strong as a whip. Everyone called him Fats; it was a standing joke. He ate like a horse, never gained a single pound.

‘Who’s on the milk round this week, Rob?’ asked Kit. The milk round was collecting all the protection money that was paid into Kit’s pocket from the shops, arcades, massage parlours, clubs and restaurants on his manor.

‘Paulie,’ said Rob, busy cleaning his fingernails with a flick knife.

‘He’s doing well with that. No problems?’

Rob shook his head. Paulie was built like a brick shit-house, no one ever gave him problems. Or if they did, they soon wished they hadn’t bothered.

‘Kit, the Bartons have asked me if you would show your face down there,’ said Ashok. He was a handsome black-bearded Indian youngster, full of attitude and sharp as a tack. He reminded Kit of himself, at that age. Ashok’s father and grandfather had served in the Indian army, and his own bearing was very upright, almost military.

‘What’s the problem?’ asked Kit. The Barton family had run their restaurant for years, it was a decent establishment, and he was paid to keep trouble from their door.

‘Some rough elements been showing up. Two big lads and their girls, taking the piss, making a nuisance of themselves, saying the food’s shit and trying to get it for free. Fridays, Saturdays, they turn up. The Bartons will stand you a good meal, of course: whatever you want.’

‘Sort out a date, OK?’ Kit looked around at the assembled men. ‘Anything else?’

They all shook their heads.

‘All right,’ said Kit. ‘Off you go then.’

The boys departed. Rob shut the door after them, then took a seat across the desk from Kit, continuing with his manicure while Kit perused the post. There was the usual wad of bills, plus a large packet from the accountant’s office, all the year’s paperwork bundled up and returned. He tipped the stuff out on the desk and then had a sudden thought.

‘Hey,’ he said to Rob.

‘Hm?’ Rob paused, looked up from his nails.

‘Phone bills, right? People Michael phoned on or near the date of his death. Might help us.’

Rob narrowed his eyes. ‘You got ’em there?’

‘I got
everything
here.’ Everything legit, anyway. He sifted through the papers and there they were, quarterly bills for the office phone, all crossed through with Michael’s looping hand,
Paid
and the cheque number and the date. The flat phone bills were here, too: but no calls had been made from that phone, except to Ruby’s number.

Kit stuffed the rest of the papers back into the bag and pored over the phone bills. Each call was itemized. He studied the dates. Michael had been killed in November last year. There was a list of numbers here, and the length of each call, and the charge made for it. He found the fortnight before the date of Michael’s death, started looking through the numbers he’d dialled from this office.

‘Take a look at these. You know any of them?’

Rob came round the desk and looked at the numbers. ‘That’s Joe Darke’s, right there. He called Michael, that’s what he said, and Michael phoned him back. There it is.’

Kit nodded. ‘That’s Ruby’s work line. And her home line too.’

‘That’s Fats’s place.’

‘That’s the line out to the flat over the garage at Ruby’s house?’

‘That’s the one.’ Rob knew the number well; for some time, he’d stayed in the flat Reg was currently occupying.

‘That’s the meat market, we deal with them all the time.’

‘And the brewery.’

‘And Billingsgate, for the fish.’

‘That one?’ Kit pointed.

‘Dunno. Maybe it’s in Michael’s book.’

Kit pulled the address book out of the drawer. ‘Leave me with this, I’ll have a look through,’ he said, and Rob left the room.

Kit searched the address book from front to back. Lots of phone numbers in there; but not this one. Probably it didn’t matter, just some random thing. He picked up the phone and dialled a different number.

‘Miss Darke’s office,’ said Joan, Ruby’s PA.

‘Joan, it’s Kit, can I have a word with Ruby?’

‘Hi, Kit, putting you through.’

There was a pause, then Ruby picked up, sounding anxious. ‘Kit? Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine. I have a phone number here, one that Michael called the day before his death. I was wondering if you knew whose it is.’

‘Oh. Let me get a pen.’ She was shuffling papers. ‘Go on then.’

Kit gave her the number. Ruby was silent.

‘You know it?’ he asked.

‘No. I don’t. Look, let me check it out, I’ll call you right back.’

‘I’m at the office behind Sheila’s,’ he said and put the phone down. It might be nothing, nothing at all, but he wanted everything accounted for. He wanted to know what had been going on with Michael in the days before he died. And then, maybe, it would all start to make some sort of sense.

Minutes passed. The phone rang, and he snatched it up on the first ring.

‘Ruby?’

‘Yes, it’s me. No, I don’t have that number. But I forgot to tell you: I’ve got an address for Gabe Ward.’

Kit sat back in his chair. ‘How the hell did you manage that?’

‘Through an associate of Michael’s – Thomas Knox.’

‘I know him.’

‘We’ve kept in touch.’

Kit was surprised. He thought Ruby was straight, right down the line. Granted, she’d got involved with Michael, but he didn’t think for one minute that she bought into the life he’d been involved in. She’d loved the man, that much was obvious; but she’d chosen to ignore what he truly was.

‘Give me the address then,’ he said, and wrote it down as she reeled it off.

‘Kit, take care,’ she said.

He put the phone down.

Thought for a moment.

Then he dialled the mystery number and found himself talking to Lady Vanessa Bray, the widow of his own late father, Cornelius.

64

Ruby had been surprised by Thomas Knox’s house. She had pictured him in smoky pool halls, dingy little offices, back alleys. She pictured him roughing people up, doing under-the-table deals. She hadn’t pictured him living in a stately Georgian place in Hampstead, with comfortable, tasteful interior décor and a housekeeper who took care of the cooking, and took care of it very well, too.

They’d eaten dinner. A very nice dinner: tender lamb and croquette potatoes and fresh beans, followed by lemon tart, all washed down with a good red wine.

He was, clearly, a man of surprises.

But the entire time she was eating, Ruby was thinking about what Vi had once laughingly told her about men, when she was still young and naïve.

First they feed you, then they fuck you.

Which was true enough, Ruby had long since discovered. Now she found herself remembering Knox’s words to her at Simon’s funeral:
We’ll discuss how grateful you are.

She didn’t doubt that he was going to exact some return for his trouble, and she wondered how she felt about that. The truth was – and she wasn’t proud of this – he intrigued her. Not too many months since Michael’s death, and here she was being wined and dined by another man. She didn’t like the thought of it. But . . . he was hellishly attractive.
Too
attractive. Those cold, cold blue eyes . . . she sensed that if she stared into them too long, she’d drown in them. Completely lose it. She was a full-grown woman, she was Ruby Darke the Ice Queen of Retail, she wasn’t used to feeling this way, and it annoyed her.

Now they were sitting on a big buff-coloured sofa, the lights were dimmed, there was music playing. ‘The Look of Love’, Dusty Springfield. A classic. Yet the ambient lighting, the soft suggestive music, only added to her annoyance. She was annoyed at herself, at the way he was making her feel.

It’s called desire,
whispered a treacherous voice in her head.
You remember that, don’t you?

‘You know what I think?’ she said.

‘No,’ said Thomas Knox, loosening his tie, leaning back, staring at her. ‘What do you think?’

She was no fool, and it was time he was made aware of that fact. ‘I think you already had Gabe’s address,’ she said. ‘That was much too fast.’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe I did.’

‘
Did
you?’

A hint of a smile. ‘That would be telling, wouldn’t it?’

‘For God’s sake,’ said Ruby, shaking her head.

‘What?’

‘You’re so . . . so . . .’

‘So what?’

‘Mysterious.’

He raised his eyebrows at her, took a sip of wine.

‘There’s nothing mysterious about me, Ruby. I fulfilled my part of the deal, that’s all. And I think it’s past time you fulfilled yours.’

Ruby’s eyes narrowed. ‘You had that address already. I know it.’

‘You don’t know. You’re guessing.’

‘And you’re not telling.’

No. I’m not.’ He drained his glass, put it aside. ‘I did what I said I would do. I got you the address. Now it’s your turn.’

Ruby stared at him. ‘So what do you want from me?’ she asked.

‘Oh, come on. We
both
know the answer to that one.’

‘Thomas . . .’

‘That’s nice.’

‘What?’

‘That’s the first time you’ve said my name.’

‘Hm. Well – Thomas – I have Gabe’s address now. And I’ve passed it on to Kit. I’ve got what I wanted.’

‘Not all of it, though.’

‘Go on.’

‘You also want me to give Kit my backing. Which I am fully prepared to do, of course. For a price.’

‘Go on then. Name it.’

Dusty had given way to something else. Sounded like Henry Mancini, a sultry tinkling on the piano, a suggestion of a muted horn. Music intended for seduction.

Those hard blue eyes drilled into hers.

‘Oh, I dunno. We’ll start with the top, shall we? See how we go from there.’

Ruby stared at him. ‘What?’ She hadn’t a clue what he meant.

‘The top you’re wearing.’ Again that smile, there and then quickly gone. ‘Take it off.’

‘I’m not a whore, Mr Knox,’ said Ruby coldly. ‘If you want one, I suggest you look elsewhere.’

‘So we’re back to “Mr Knox” again,’ he noted. ‘You weren’t so coy in the war though, were you? Posing nude at the Windmill. Bedding that lecherous bastard Cornelius Bray. Having his illegitimate twins, I believe, who were liquorice allsorts, one half-black – Kit – and the other white – Daisy.’

Ruby’s mouth opened in shock.

‘Bray only wanted to own up to the white kid though, didn’t he,’ Thomas went on. ‘So him and his childless missus Vanessa brought up Daisy, and poor old dark-skinned Kit was stuffed out of sight – by Charlie your brother, I believe – in a kids’ home. Took you a long, long time to find Kit, didn’t it? And he still hasn’t forgiven you for letting him be taken.’

‘Shut up,’ said Ruby.

‘Then Michael Ward helped you find your boy and you became his lover. You’re not exactly a nervous virgin, are you? You’re a woman of the world. Tough in business, I’ve been told. You must be, to have done so well with it. And you have this cool air about you. I like that, it’s sort of challenging. Yet there’s this hot sensuality in your eyes, and in the way you move. A woman like you, Ruby, needs a lover.’