Lawless (28 page)

Ruby stood up. She hated the fact that, despite all her best intentions, she could feel a hard pulse beating deep in the pit of her belly. He had aroused her, talking this way. ‘Have you quite finished?’ she asked.

‘No. I haven’t. You know what I’d like?’

‘No. I don’t.’

‘I’d like to see you naked in my bed.’

Ruby gulped, tried to compose herself. She felt flushed suddenly, unstable. Today had been horrible, stressful; she told herself that she was just feeling the after-effects of that, and too much wine.

When she could trust herself to speak she said: ‘If I “needed” a lover, Mr Knox – it wouldn’t be you.’ She snatched up her bag and went to the door.

‘So . . .’ his words drifted after her . . .’ You
don’t
want me keeping an eye out for Kit then?’

Ruby stopped. Looked back at him. ‘You bastard.’

‘Been called worse,’ he shrugged.

65

1953

‘Here, little bambina, look at this. Chocolate,’ said Tito, dandling the three-year-old Agneta on his knee as Gabe drove.

Gabe didn’t know how he was driving. He didn’t know how he was managing to keep sane. What he had just seen . . .

No. He couldn’t think about it. He couldn’t.

And the little girl had been there, she’d seen it all. Gabe glanced at the girl. She wasn’t crying any more. She seemed very calm – almost dazed, he thought – and her huge turquoise eyes were gazing up at Tito’s smiling face. Her hands reached for the chocolate he was offering.

Jesus, look at that, thought Gabe, wondering if he was going to throw up again. He didn’t think there was anything left in his stomach to bring up. Then he saw the small smear of blood on Agneta’s jacket and felt his guts heave afresh. He stopped the Jeep, pulled in quickly to the side of the road, jumped out and vomited one more time.

Ah Jesus.

Ah God, he couldn’t think about it, he couldn’t . . .

His stomach heaved and he retched.

‘Gabe’s not well,’ Tito was telling the little girl. ‘Poor Gabe, hm? Is that nice, that chocolate?’

Gasping, wiping at his mouth, shivering with the aftermath of the shock he’d suffered, the awful things that Tito had made him do, Gabe fell back into the driver’s seat and looked again at the little girl Tito had snatched.

She’d sat there in silence in the pushchair while they’d done it, got the spades from the Jeep . . . but no. He couldn’t think about it. All he could think was that Dad had been right; Tito really
was
a monster.

She was eating the chocolate and smiling up at Tito’s face. Numb, Gabe thought of that thing he’d heard about baby birds . . . that imprinting thing. The first thing they saw, they attached to, they loved. He looked at the child’s face, at the adoring way she was staring up at Tito.

Jesus, was he going to be sick again? Was he going to pass out?

He was shuddering, revolted. His eyes kept darting back, looking at that small bloodstain on the girl’s pink jacket . . .

‘Come on, bambina, eat up,’ said Tito at the smiling child as Gabe drove south, towards London, towards home and sanity.

Ah God just get me there. Please get me there, thought Gabe.

66

‘Holy
shit
,’ said Rob, as Kit drove the Bentley up to the front entrance of Brayfield House next day.

Kit could understand Rob’s astonishment; he remembered the effect the place had had on him, back in the day when he first met Daisy. Built of glowing rose-red brick with cream stone quoins at the corners, the Elizabethan manor was a pink jewel in the morning light, set amidst an expanse of lush green watercress beds and rolling sheep-dotted fields. It had two outer gables and a smaller central one, and a stunningly beautiful clock tower stood off to one side. And this humble abode had been home to the Bray family for four generations.

Kit steered the big car around the turning circle, at the centre of which was a huge circular stone and bronze non-working fountain, covered in algae and verdigris, depicting Neptune arising with rippling muscles and a fish’s tail from a sea of starfish and leaping dolphins.

‘So Daisy grew up here?’ asked Rob as Kit turned off the engine.

‘Yep,’ said Kit.

‘Oh
shit.
’ Rob was transfixed.

The pieces were finally falling together: Daisy with her cut-glass accent and her impeccable manners, this place . . . He thanked God that he’d had the sense to pull back from her because,
look
at this. She’d grown up taking this for granted. What could he ever offer a girl like her? He’d been raised on a council estate, part of a big boisterous and not entirely honest family; it had taken him years of hard graft to work his way up to his present position: her mother’s minder – a fucking bodyguard and a head breaker. He was
so far
beneath her on the social scale, he was the bottom dregs of society while she was plainly an out-and-out nob.

No, he’d pulled out of all that in the nick of time. What could it ever have brought either of them but trouble?

Kit wasn’t noticing the house. Impressive as Brayfield was, his mind was on Michael, and what he could have been doing, phoning Vanessa Bray the day before his death.

When he’d called the number yesterday and she’d picked up, he’d been both surprised and bewildered. Michael and Vanessa surely had nothing in common, nothing to talk about. And when he’d questioned Vanessa about the call, she’d been evasive. His request to come and see her, talk about it, had been firmly rebuffed. But he’d persisted, and finally she’d agreed.

‘I can’t spare you much time,’ she’d said, her accent reminding him of Daisy. The elite tones of the Home Counties, frosty from Vanessa, full of warmth from Daisy.

‘That’s all right,’ he said.

‘Ten o’clock tomorrow morning then.’

‘I’ll be there.’

She put the phone down.

Now here they were. They left the car and went up the front steps and pulled the bell. Way back in the house, the thing chimed and echoed.

Must be big as a fucking football pitch in there
, thought Rob.

He half-expected some tailcoated flunkey to come to the door, saying,
I’ll see if the mistress is at home to visitors.
Or,
The tradesman’s entrance is at the back of the house.

But no. There was a pause, and then Lady Bray herself opened the door. Small, weak-looking, with long greyhound features. Her hair was blonde, fading to grey, her deep-lidded eyes were a milky blue, and her lips were thin. She wore no make-up, and was dressed in old jeans and a workman’s shirt and black socks, no shoes. There was a hole in one, and her big toe was poking through, Kit noticed.

‘Oh! It’s you. Well . . . do come in,’ she said, seeming flustered that Kit had kept the appointment.

Kit and Rob followed Vanessa down a cavernous hallway and into a room that seemed to burst with vivid sunlight. All done out in faded golds and duck-egg blue, it had big French doors that led out to a terrace and beyond that to a huge garden. The doors were wide open to admit the first faint suggestions of the coming summer. Bees hummed near the doors, and fresh country air wafted in.

‘Do sit down,’ said Vanessa, and Kit and Rob sat like a pair of bookends on one threadbare and no doubt horrifically expensive tapestry-covered sofa. Vanessa sat opposite, on a small Victorian nursing chair covered in thinning cream velvet. ‘Well now,’ she began briskly, ‘as I told you on the phone, I know very little about any of this.’

Kit leaned forward, clasping his hands loosely between his knees, mirroring her posture.

‘I have no idea why Michael phoned you, Lady Bray,’ he said. ‘It might help if you can tell us anything about the conversation you had with him.’

‘Help what?’ she asked. ‘The man is dead.’

Kit drew a breath. ‘Michael was
murdered
, Lady Bray. And we’re trying to find out more about the events surrounding his murder.’

‘Surely that’s a matter for the authorities, for the police?’ she said.

She was stonewalling him. Kit could feel it. Could feel his irritation rising in response, too.

‘The police don’t seem too interested,’ said Rob.

Vanessa turned her head and stared at Rob as if surprised to see him there. ‘And why is that?’ she asked.

‘Michael . . . had a reputation,’ said Kit.

‘Cornelius always said he was a crook. But then Cornelius liked crooks. He was fascinated by them.’

Rob shot a look at Kit. Coming from Cornelius Bray, who’d strong-armed and shagged his way through the establishment to get himself a seat in the Lords, that was pretty damned rich.

‘And when crooks get themselves killed, I don’t suppose anyone is too surprised,’ said Vanessa.

‘Even crooks have people who care for them,’ said Kit.

‘And did you?’

‘What?’

‘Did you “care” for Michael Ward?’

‘Yes, I did. He was like a father to me. A
real
one.’

‘Then I am sincerely sorry for your loss,’ said Vanessa.

‘Can you tell me what you spoke about?’

‘You’re looking for revenge,’ said Vanessa.

‘I want to find out who killed him.’

‘And then what?’

‘I don’t know.’

Vanessa was silent, staring at Kit’s face. ‘You look very like your mother,’ she said. ‘You have that same
physical
look about you.’

She sneered the words. But Kit reminded himself that this was the woman whose husband had betrayed her, fathering both him and Daisy on the beauteous Ruby Darke. Of course that must have hurt weak, barren,
useless
Vanessa. Of course she must be bitter.

‘What did you talk about that day?’ he asked. ‘Please tell me.’

‘He phoned to see how I was,’ said Vanessa. ‘I was quite impressed by that, actually. That he made the effort to enquire.’

‘Because you’d lost your husband not too long before?’

‘Because of that, yes. It was considerate of him, I thought.’

‘And that’s all?’ asked Rob.

Vanessa turned her hands up. ‘What other reason could there possibly be?’

‘They’re gone then,’ said Ivan, Vanessa’s gardener, coming to the French doors ten minutes later.

Vanessa smiled at him – small, whip-thin, red-bearded Ivan. He’d been with her for years and she was very fond of him. Fonder, truth be told, than she had ever been of big handsome blond Cornelius, her husband.

‘Yes – they’re gone.’

‘And they believed what you said?’

‘They seemed to.’

‘Good.’ He paused. ‘So . . . do you think they’ll come back?’

‘No. Why should they?’

67

1953

Tito dropped Gabe off at his parents’ house, where he still lived.

‘You keep this quiet, yes?’ said Tito, giving him one last icy glinting glance. ‘This is never mentioned,
capisce
?’

Gabriel nodded. He went indoors, into his father’s house, and his mother Sheila was out somewhere, he didn’t know where but he was glad because he knew she would see something was wrong the instant she laid eyes on him.

The first thing he did was take a bath. Try to wash the whole horrible episode off. He scrubbed at his skin with a nail brush until it was a vivid, angry pink, scrubbing harder and harder, more and more desperately, but it was no good, still he could see it, could see Tito doing it, and the little girl at first silent – and wasn’t there a word for that, wasn’t it
catatonic
?
–
and then smiling up at him so trustingly. Finally he sat there in the bath and just cried. He’d always thought of himself as tough, a bit of a handful, but Christ he was nothing compared to Tito. Tito was a fucking psycho.

Bella would never forget the day when Tito put the little girl in her arms. She was sitting at the kitchen table and he walked in carrying the child, the most beautiful child she had ever seen. Silver-white hair and huge turquoise eyes. Dressed in a little white frilly skirt, sandals and a pink jacket.

Seven-year-old Fabio, leaning against the table, stared curiously at the little girl.

‘Fabby!’ said Bella sharply. ‘Go out and play now. Go on!’

Sulkily, Fabio did as he was told. The little girl let out a cry, held up her hands to Tito.

‘No, bambina, this is your mama, your new mama,’ he said, and she looked at Bella. Bella stared back at her, a tremulous smile on her face.

‘She’s so beautiful,’ said Bella in wonder. ‘Where did you . . . ?’ Then Bella stopped herself. She had instigated this; she had wanted a daughter, and now she had one. A shiver of guilt, of apprehension, shuddered through her, but she squashed it. She was not about to question the good luck that had brought her such fortune.

‘What are you going to call her?’ asked Tito.

Bella looked at the girl, who was clutching with tiny perfect hands into the front of Bella’s dress. ‘She’s so white. Pale, and all this white hair. So pretty. I’ll call her the white one. I’ll call her Bianca.’

Now Bella’s eyes moved on. She was frowning at the small bloodstain on the pink jacket. She looked up at Tito.

‘Ask no questions, Mama,’ he said sternly. ‘When you’ve got her some new clothes you burn that, all right? And you’ll have to tell Fabby and Vittore that the adoption came through at last.’

‘And other people? The neighbours? Our friends?’

Tito shrugged. ‘Tell them the same. If anyone pries, I’ll sort it. Not that they will.’

Bella nodded dazedly. No one questioned the Danieri family over their way of life or what happened in their household. You didn’t ever look too closely at what they did. It would be dangerous.