Second Shot (33 page)

“Does his boss, this guy Armstrong, blame .. . us?” I wasn’t sure if I’d been about to say “you” or “me”—“us” was a compromise.

“Parker Armstrong knows the risks of the game as well as anyone. If he blamed us he’d hardly be helping Matt with the legal side of things. Besides,” Sean added with another shrug, “it certainly won’t do any harm if we can make some sense of what happened. Help quash the rumors.”

“What rumors — ?” I began, stopping abruptly when Sean came upright fast in his seat, eyes narrowing. “What? What is it?”

“The dark blue Ford Taurus that’s just pulled in at the end of the next row,” he said. “Two guys just got out who don’t look like they’re here just for a bag of cookies.”

I followed his gaze and saw two big men, their bulk accentuated by their heavy winter clothing. The sun was bright today, but the wind was cutting. Both wore hats, pulled down low over their ears, and gloves. Nothing unusual about that. It was the way they did such a studiously casual appraisal of the car park, which had nothing casual about it, on their way into the store. It was the kind of action I’d seen Sean carry out a hundred times. Only I suspect he would have died rather than have been quite so obvious about it.

The men had their backs turned as they walked towards the giant building, but halfway there one of them turned to do another countersur-veillance sweep and I saw his face clearly for the first time.

“That’s one of Vaughan’s men,” I said. “In the green jacket. With the mustache. He’s one of the pair that grabbed me that night and took me for my nice little chat with Felix.”

“I’ll go in and keep an eye on them,” Sean said. He leaned over and unobtrusively slipped the reclaimed Beretta out of the glove compartment, then reached for his jacket from the backseat. “Stay here.”

I hadn’t been contemplating trying to join in on this one, but the fact that he felt he had to order me to sit and stay put like a disobedient puppy put my back up. “Yes,
sirl”
I muttered.

He just paused, halfway through shouldering his way into his jacket. “Charlie, we don’t have time for this. I’m not trying to treat you like a child, but, please, just stay put.”

“OK,” I said, with ill grace.

“Attagirl,” he said. ‘And if you’re very good I’ll buy you a Happy Meal on the way home.”

“Try it,” I said sweetly, “and I’ll throw up in my car seat before we get there.”

He slid the gun into his pocket and gave me a quick bright smile as he climbed easily out of the Explorer, shutting the door behind him and hurrying after the two men. As he went, he pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and stared at it with what appeared to be his full concentration. He was frowning heavily, just some harrassed guy who knew he’d left something off his shopping list and was trying to remember what it was before he got inside. The performance was so convincing that neither of Vaughan’s men made him.

I was suddenly aware of being very alone inside the confines of the vehicle. Reynolds’s face loomed in my mind’s eye and I experienced a momentary wish, entirely selfish, that Sean had left the gun behind. Then it passed. If either of these two was a threat to Ella, then I’d much rather Sean was armed. He would, I knew, use the Beretta without a qualm if he had to, to protect the child. Regardless of the consequences.

It was hard to realize just how much I missed Ella. Her inventive food combinations, her occasionally sage pronouncements, her comical grumpiness first thing in the morning. I missed them all with a sharpness that surprised me.

I remembered Sean’s report on Lucas’s behavior towards his daughter as a baby, the injuries Simone had received before her mother had divorced him and run. He’d been a bully, pure and simple. Would he return to that now?

You didn’t just stop abusing. Lucas might not always have had the opportunity to indulge himself—certainly not since he left the army—but now he had another child to take his temper out on, over time he would surely revert to type. It was human nature.

And it was up to me and Sean to stop him before he hurt her.

The Explorer had started to mist up a little and the cold had a sullen dampness to it. Sean had left the keys in the ignition and I leaned across and flipped the engine on, just to run some heat through the car. The front screen demisted slowly.

It was another twenty minutes before I saw the Lucases emerge. Greg Lucas was carrying three bags of shopping in each hand, and his wife had Ella balanced on her hip.

They were some distance away and I craned forwards, trying to read Ella’s body language. Was there anything about her that seemed scared or anxious? She was wearing a pink jacket with a fake-fur-trimmed hood that was up around her face, and she had one hand to her mouth, probably chewing her hair. I could almost hear Simone’s voice telling her daughter to stop it.

While Lucas sorted his car keys and put the bags away, Rosalind stood happily holding Ella, rocking with her and talking, their heads very close together. Ella reached out and touched Rosalind’s hair and she smiled. Whatever Lucas’s feelings towards his granddaughter, I saw Rosalind was forming quite a bond. I wondered why that fact hurt me quite so much.

Now, Lucas fumbled a little with the keys and it was Rosalind who put Ella down long enough to open the tailgate of the Range Rover. Ella stood, a couple of paces away, fiddling with the buttons on her coat, in a world of her own while people hurried past to their cars.

I skimmed the sparse crowd for signs of danger but could see nothing immediate. I couldn’t see Vaughan’s men, either—or Sean. Not seeing them and knowing they were there was worse by far. I shifted in my seat, only too frustratingly aware of my physical limitations. They could be planning just about anything and I wouldn’t be able to stop them.

Then the bags were inside the back of the Range Rover and Rosalind was fussing with the order of them, leaving Lucas to turn his full attention to Ella. I tensed as he crouched in front of her. I was watching them through the side window with Ella three-quarters facing me and Lucas almost dead side on. I could see both their faces, blurred slightly by the distance between us. Ella’s showed a trace of wariness and her eyes kept darting over Lucas’s shoulder—then back over her own—as though she was expecting something major to come and take her away. Or she was waiting for someone.

Lucas stroked a gentle hand down her flushed cheek. And it
was
gentle. There was no hidden message in the gesture. It was affection and nothing more.

The driver’s door of the Explorer swung open and my head whipped round so fast I nearly ricked my neck.

“Sean!” I said. “Damn, you put the wind up me.”

“Nice to know you’re getting something out of it,” he said as he climbed in, throwing a small bag of groceries onto the backseat—a decoy to allow him to linger at the checkout. “My God, it’s like an oven in here.”

“Sorry, being so inactive makes me feel the cold like crazy,” I said. “So, what happened in there?”

He shrugged his way out of his coat. “They came. They shopped. They went,” he said. “The two guys we saw didn’t do much beyond hang around trying to attract the attention of security—or that’s what it seemed like, anyway. They followed Lucas around, flexing their muscles, then left at the same time as we did.”

“But they didn’t try anything?”

“No, why?”

“I just thought Ella was looking a bit uneasy, that’s all,” I said, turning back to watch the Range Rover. Lucas had the rear door open now and was strapping Ella into her seat.

Sean looked a little discomfited. ‘Ah, well, she spotted me,” he said.

I said nothing, just turned back and raised my eyebrows. He gave me a wry smile.

“She didn’t say anything, I don’t think, but that doesn’t mean she won’t at some point.”

We were both silent for a moment. The Range Rover’s brake lights flicked on as they climbed in and Lucas started the engine.

“What are we hoping for here, Sean?” I asked. “That we’ll catch them mistreating her? That we’ll stumble across some reason why they shouldn’t be allowed to keep her?”

“I don’t know,” he said quietly, “but at least we’re watching her— watching out for her. And it’s not just the Lucases we have to worry about, is it?”

As he spoke, the blue Ford we’d seen Vaughan’s men arrive in turned up the row where the Range Rover was parked. The Taurus accelerated hard towards them, then braked to an abrupt halt, blocking Lucas in. I tensed in my seat, waiting for the attack.

“Sean!”

He already had the Beretta out of his pocket, but there was no clear shot. And, besides, nobody had emerged from either car. Standoff. The Taurus sat there for half a minute, ticking over, the men inside staring at Lucas, who was staring right back at them through layers of glass and mirrors.

As abruptly as it had arrived, the Taurus pulled away, rearing back on its suspension as the driver planted the pedal, engine and transmission protesting hard enough to turn heads. A warning, then. Nothing more. But a warning about what?

There was a brief pause. Then the Range Rover swung out of its space, lurching a little to show that Lucas had been as unsettled by the whole thing as, no doubt, he was supposed to be.

We followed them out onto the main road, keeping three cars between us. Lucas had been through all the same training Sean had and in some ways it was a surprise he hadn’t spotted us tailing him before, but now he would definitely be on his guard.

“What are we going to do about this, Sean?” I demanded. “We can’t follow them around forever. What good are we doing?”

“Parker’s legal man is making progress,” Sean said. “He seems to think Matt’s claim for Ella is stronger, bearing in mind she’s lived with him all her life. He thinks Matt would get custody if it came to a fight.”

“Which Matt can’t afford to fund,” I put in. “Is Harrington prepared to back him?”

Sean shrugged, braking for traffic lights. “Well, we’ll just—,” he began, then broke off as his mobile phone started to ring. He checked the incoming number and handed the phone to me. “It’s Neagley,” he said.

I answered the phone. “Sean’s driving,” I told the private eye. “What’s up?”

“I think you’d better get back here,” she said, and there was something in her voice that hooked me. Was that excitement? “Matt’s found something and it could be important.”

“Like what?”

“We don’t think Greg Lucas was Simone’s father.”

I frowned. Whatever I’d been expecting—or hoping for—that wasn’t it. “But the DNA tests were a match,” I said, nonplussed. ‘And the police double-checked.”

“Yeah, but… it’s complicated. We’ll explain when you get here.” And she rang off.

W
hen we got back Matt had the apartment door open before the Explorer had even stopped rolling. He was almost hopping from one foot to the other like a little kid with a secret that’s bursting to be let out. For the first time he allowed his impatience to show at my slow progress across the icy ground from car to doorway. Until Sean glared at him. Then he slunk indoors and waited for us to come to him at our own pace.

“OK, Matt,” Sean said when I was back on the sofa. “Let’s hear it.”

Matt shuffled the papers spread out over the replacement coffee table in front of him. There was an uncertainty to his fingers as they leafed through, as though if he handled the information badly it might evaporate right in front of his very eyes.

“First of all, I need to know how good is your researcher—Madeleine, isn’t it?”

“The best,” Sean said without hesitation, and the bluntness of his tone would have flattened someone less buoyed up.

“So you’re absolutely sure the dates she’s given you about Lucas’s army career stack up?” Matt said, wilting a little but still dogged in his persistence.

“Yes.”

Matt swallowed. “OK, then,” he said, picking up one particular sheet. “Simone’s birthday was the sixteenth of September.” His voice gave a tiny waver as he said her name, pricking my sympathy. He had not had time to grieve for Simone, I realized. And probably wouldn’t until their daughter’s fate was settled. I hoped that then he would just have one loss to mourn, not two.

Neagley came to sit down, bringing fresh coffee for Sean and me. As she passed Matt she put her free hand on his shoulder, giving it a slight squeeze of support. He threw her a wan smile.

“Er, yeah, anyway, according to the reports you have, Lucas was at the height of his bad-boy phase in the eighteen months before she was born. It was around that time that he chucked two trainees out of a helicopter and one of them broke his shoulder.”

“Collarbone,” Sean said absently, sipping his coffee. “And we know all this. How does it relate to him not being Simone’s father?”

“Well, just stick with me on this. At the end of the previous November he got into an argument in a pub in Hereford and ended up making one bloke eat the cue ball off the pool table.”

“Eat it?” I queried.

“Yeah, he forced it into the bloke’s mouth and apparently they had to surgically dislocate his jaw to get it out again. Caused a real ruckus at the time. It seems that the bloke he injured had connections—his uncle was the local chief constable or something. The end result was that top brass came down hard on Lucas. They didn’t just kick him out of the SAS — they stuck him in clink for it.”

Sean had gone very still, like a dog on the scent of prey. “Go on,” he said.

“Sergeant Greg Lucas was a guest of Her Majesty in the glasshouse in Colchester for a couple of months over Christmas and the New Year while they sorted out what they were going to do with him.” He singled out a sheet of paper and handed it across. “From the third of December until halfway through February, actually.”

Sean took the sheet and stared at it. “The dates don’t line up,” he said slowly.

Matt nodded, eyes suddenly very bright like someone in the grip of religious fervor. “I’ve seen Simone’s birth certificate. She was just short of nine pounds in weight when she was born. And bang on time—not premature, not overdue. There’s no way on this earth that Lucas could have been her father.”

“But he is,” I said blankly, looking up. “The DNA test proved it.”