The Aura (31 page)

I shook my head. “I can’t imagine it was that. I tried asking Jack, but he wasn’t in any condition to answer questions.”

“So you recognized him as being the man in Gary’s sketch. Then what happened?”

I told them about the man in the black coat getting into the elevator. “Jack called him Ernie,” I said. “He’s a brute. He manhandled me into the car.”

The memory of it made my heart thump around in my chest. I recounted how I’d attacked Ernie and caused the car to crash into the pillar.

“Bloody hell.” Alan had turned pale. “This is Jack, my partner, we’re talking about. It doesn’t seem possible.”

“And you, Mr. Bradley, have no idea what might have happened between him and Miss Williams?” Clarke asked.

“I most certainly do not. And if he dies before he can tell us what was going on, I’m going to kill him myself.”

Alan stood up to pour himself another whisky. He didn’t drink it, just swirled it around in the glass, gazing at the amber liquid as though it might hold the answer to the mystery.

I didn’t want Jack to die of a heart attack. More than anything I wanted him to explain everything, and I wanted him to be punished for killing Rebecca. Deep down, too, I still cared about him, whatever he’d done.

Clarke looked at his watch. “I should get back. I’ve got paperwork to fill out. I’d appreciate it if you could both accompany me to the station so that we can take statements.”

“I don’t have time…” Alan began. I shot him a warning glance. It was time for him to start taking this seriously.

He nodded. “All right.”

Alan drove me back home after we’d been interviewed by a couple of police officers at the station. Wishing Josh were with me, I paced around the empty flat, my head buzzing with questions until I was exhausted. Finally, I found some ibuprofen, took two with a glass of wine, and went to bed. I didn’t wake up until my cellphone rang at seven the next morning. It was Alan.

“Jack’s fine,” he said. “He had a panic attack. Combined with the injury to his head and his arm, he’s feeling crappy, but he’s going to be okay. They’re keeping him in for another twenty-four hours for observation. He was moved from Accident and Emergency to the men’s cardiac ward last night.”

“How come you know all that? I thought they only talked to next of kin or something?”

“Jack and I signed consent forms when we formed the partnership.” Alan’s voice was raspy. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he’d been crying. “Besides, he doesn’t have any kin to speak of, apart from an estranged brother. I’m probably his closest friend.”

That made me sad. I pushed the duvet back, pulled my knees up to my chest.

“I want to see him,” I said. “I have to find out what happened.”

“Take a ticket. Clarke’s on his way in there now, apparently. That’s what the nurse on duty told me. I asked when I could visit and she said late morning, maybe.”

“Okay, I’ll come into work soon. I’ll go see him later.”

“Don’t be daft. Stay home. Rest. Work can wait.”

I never thought I’d hear those words from Alan. I decided he must be in shock. When he rang off, I lay back on the pillows, trying to order my thoughts.

Three hours later, I stood at the door of Jack’s room at St. Thomas’s Hospital. He was sitting up in his bed, with a thick bandage around his head, and his arm in a sling. He managed a weak smile when he saw me. “Come in.”

I pulled a plastic chair to the side of the bed. “Did you talk to Inspector Clarke this morning?”

“No, I pretended to be asleep. He’ll be back soon enough, I’m sure.” He fiddled with a loose thread on the sling. “I’m sorry, Kate. For everything.”

“I don’t understand any of it,” I said. “Why did you kill Rebecca?”

“I didn’t kill her. Not exactly. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“You’re going to have to talk at some point, Jack. The police will be back. And I think you owe me. The least you can do is explain.”

He nodded, grimacing in pain.

“It was all about money,” he said after a long pause. “As is the case with most of the world’s ills. Montgomery is having financial problems. Rebecca Williams was the one who told me about it. She said she had a plan that would make sure we got paid for the work we’d been doing on the new Montgomery construction project. But she wasn’t doing it out of the goodness of her heart.”

I leaned forward to listen. His voice was quiet, not much above a whisper.

“She was expecting a kickback. She’d get us to the top of the list to be paid each month for the duration of the contract, and we’d pay a little extra on the side, directly to her. Five percent. She told me some cockamamy story about how she planned to split up with her boyfriend and needed another source of income to maintain the lifestyle to which she’d become accustomed.

“A week later, she called me. Told me to bring three thousand in cash to her flat. When I got there, she gave me a Montgomery Group check for the first payment against our contract.”

“No!” I gasped. “Rebecca wouldn’t do that.”

Or would she? Rebecca had been willing to let Peter Montgomery pay for her luxury flat, had acquiesced to a relationship that would hurt his wife and his children. She’d lied to me, and others, about his name. Those weren’t crimes, like accepting bribes, but it was an indication that she’d been willing to bend the rules to suit herself.

Jack eyed me wearily. “You’re smart, but naive, Kate. Although, to an extent, you’re right. A couple of weeks later, I went to see her again, with more cash in return for another check, or so I thought. When I got to her apartment, she said she was having second thoughts about taking the money and that she couldn’t guarantee that we’d get paid another penny.”

“So you killed her because she changed her mind?”

“No. She insisted that she couldn’t go through with it, that she was sorry she’d ever mentioned it. She said she was planning to change jobs and move out of that apartment, and that she didn’t care about the money any more.

“We argued. I said I’d go to Peter Montgomery and tell him everything. I wanted her to stay in her job long enough to get some payments made to us, but she was so stubborn.”

“Jesus, Jack. What were you thinking?”

He pressed his fingers to his brow.

“Do you want me to get a nurse?” I asked.

“I’m fine. Let me finish. I want you to know I didn’t mean to kill her. I was upset, desperate really, and I grabbed her wrists to make her listen to me while I described what the impact would be on my company if we didn’t get the money. She took a step back. The table was right behind her and she fell on to it. It shattered and…”

Tears welled in his eyes. “It was just bad luck. A piece of glass must have cut a major artery. I’ve never seen so much blood. I should have called for an ambulance, but I was in shock. I just stood there. She moaned and tried to lift herself up from the floor, tried to grab the sofa cushion, but she had no strength left to do it. I watched her die. It was terrible. I knew that if I called for help, I’d be accused of killing her, and the whole sordid story of debt and bribes would come out. I couldn’t risk that. So I did what I could to make it look like an accident, planted the wineglass and bottle, and went through the living room, the kitchen, the hall, the front door, wiping every surface so my fingerprints wouldn’t show up.”

“And Ernie?” I prompted.

“He’s my nephew. Yes,” he said, seeing the look on my face. “My brother didn’t do as well for himself as I did, and makes his living as a fence for stolen goods. He thinks I don’t know, but I do of course. Mostly, I keep my distance from him, but I knew Ernie could do what I needed.”

“Why did you kill Nick? And why did you try to kill me?”

“Nick?”

“Rebecca’s neighbor. He lives – lived – in the apartment downstairs from her.”

Jack waved his good hand as though pushing something to the side.

“That was an error on Ernie’s part. I knew that one of the neighbors had seen me on the stairs a couple of times. After the… accidental death, I was worried he might describe me to the police so I sent Ernie after him. I just told him to get rid of the man from downstairs. But he got the wrong one. How was I supposed to know that there were two men living in that apartment? Ernie’s not so bright.

“As for you, Kate, I hadn’t realized that you were friends with Rebecca until Alan mentioned it. I realized you could be a threat, that maybe Rebecca had told you about the arrangement and the bribes. Then, when you talked about looking at the ID sketch, I thought it was likely that you’d recognize me. I didn’t want to hurt you, but the risk was too great.”

“So you sent Ernie after me.”

Jack closed his eyes. Already pale, his cheeks blanched a shade lighter. He looked like a cadaver. The thought of death made me shiver. I could be dead now, if things had gone Jack’s way. Briefly, I wondered how Ernie was doing. I decided I really didn’t care.

“Ah, you’re awake, Mr. Cohen. May we come in?” Clarke stood at the door, with another man at his shoulder. I stood up, feeling my legs shake underneath me. Clarke would undoubtedly hear everything I’d just heard. Jack would go to prison.

A week later, I sat on a bench in Hyde Park not far from Clarke’s office. I hadn’t seen Clarke since the day he arrested Jack, but he called me occasionally with updates, and I’d spent some time at the police station going over my statement. Funny how a place I’d never previously visited or even thought about was starting to feel like home.

I wrapped my hands around my styrofoam cup of coffee, trying to get warm. The sleet that had been falling on London for the past few days had stopped, but there was no doubt that winter had arrived. Autumn had fled, chased away by ice and frost, and even an unseasonably early snowfall. For an hour or two, the city had glistened under a coat of sparkling whiteness, but it wasn’t long before the pristine snow had turned to grey slush that clogged the gutters and dripped from rooftops.

I looked up to see Clarke striding towards me. He was wearing a dark blue coat and a green scarf that matched his eyes. He sat on the bench next to me.

“Thanks for meeting me,” he said. “Are you feeling okay?”

When I nodded, he said, “I wanted to thank you in person for your quick thinking. We’ve filed charges against Jack and Ernie.”

“Jack seemed happy enough to confess everything,” I said, thinking back to the evening in the garage. It felt surreal now, but it had really happened. Yellow Do Not Cross tape was tacked up across Jack’s office door. The police had taken away several files of paperwork and cancelled checks. Apart from that, though, life at the office had fallen back into its usual routine. We had dumped the Montgomery project and were suing Peter Montgomery for payment of the debt he owed the company. Alan was working hard to juggle expenses and bring in new projects. A few days earlier, Josh and I had celebrated Josh’s major promotion. Alan made it clear that Josh was being groomed to become a partner in the firm.

The last time I’d chatted with Inspector Clarke, he had told me that everyone has secrets, but I knew that Josh didn’t. There was nothing counterfeit about him. Unburdened by artifice, he told the truth, acted without deceit, and was honest with his emotions. And, strangely, Alan too was an open book, for all his bluster and arrogance. He said what he thought, however brutal, and cared deeply about his company. With Alan and Josh at the helm, it would be in good hands.

“I have a question,” Clarke said.

I tensed, knowing what was coming.

“Jack said you told him he had an aura and was going to die, that evening in the elevator,” he said. “Where did that all come from? What’s an aura?”

I’d thought about this for days. Whether to tell Clarke about my ability to see auras. I’d talked to Olivia about it and her advice was to come clean.

“It will explain some things to him,” she’d said. “He’ll realize how wrong he was to treat you as a suspect. Besides, you’ll probably never see him again, so no harm can come of it.”

I found it depressing to think I wouldn’t see him again; I hoped we could be friends. So, despite my reservations, I did my best to explain, and told him about Francesca, little Sophie and my nephew.

“I wanted to protect Rebecca,” I finished. “But I failed. Same with Nick.”

He leaned back on the bench with an expression of utter confusion on his face, and I knew I shouldn’t have said anything.

“Kate, I don’t pretend to understand. Auras that predict death?”

He sounded like Leo, but Leo had come to accept the reality of the auras, even though he didn’t understand them. I sensed, though, that Clarke never would. There was already a distance between us, an intergalactic space that couldn’t be crossed.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I know it’s hard to believe. I just wanted you to know.”

He nodded. “I’m glad you told me. It explains my gut feeling that you were hiding something; it made no sense that you were involved. I knew that, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was that felt off.”

“I’m glad to have enlightened you.”

He acknowledged the sarcasm with a quick grin, but then looked serious again.

“One thing I have to ask,” he said. “Your statements are factual, aren’t they? I mean based on what really happened?”

“Yes. Absolutely. Everything in the statements is true.”

“And you won’t mention these auras in your testimony as a witness on the stand.”

It was an instruction more than a question.

“No, I won’t.” I knew that would be enough to get the cases thrown out. “I’m not stupid. I want to see those men punished.”

He smiled and, to my surprise, leaned forward and took my hand in his for a moment. “Thank you.”

Letting go of my hand, he leaned back, legs stretched out in front of him. He had an uncanny ability to look comfortable wherever he was, however unlikely the setting.

“I’m very sorry about Rebecca,” he said at last. “I mean, all that stuff about her taking bribes. It must have been hard to find out about that.”

I nodded. “It was. Looking back on it, so much of what she told me was a lie, or a pretense at least. I think that secrets had become the norm for her. Montgomery’s wife couldn’t find out about them and no one at work could know. The apartment that she couldn’t afford, the promotions she got that were probably unmerited. She probably couldn’t distinguish between truth and lies, appearances and reality any more. She thought that money would save her, offer her a different life from the one her parents lead.