The Blood Whisperer (4 page)

“I’m assured they’re very discreet.” Lytton said now, nodding to the cleaners’ van.

“Hmm, were you assured they were very industrious too?” Warwick asked still looking downwards. “If so, I might ask for a discount if I were you.”

“There’s some kind of procedural hold-up apparently.”

“Oh?” That got his partner’s attention. “Problem?”

Lytton shook his head. “As far as I’m aware it’s just a delay.”
It better had be.

“Matt, delays mean questions. The wrong
kind
of questions,” Warwick said with anxiety bleeding through his voice. “We need for this to be put to bed and fast. And if those comedians out there can’t do it—”

The strident buzz of his cellphone cut Warwick off in mid-sentence. He fumbled in an inside pocket, eyes still fixed on Lytton’s and flipped the phone open without checking the incoming number.

“Warwick.”

Lytton saw the way his head ducked sharply and didn’t need telling who was on the other end of the line.

“Darling,” Warwick ground out, the tone as much threat as endearment, “I’ve told you not to bother me while I’m working.”

He whirled away, began to pace. Lytton tuned it out. He’d heard Warwick and his second wife having too many domestics to willingly eavesdrop on another. He turned back to the window and stared down into the courtyard again.

This time the van’s front seats were empty and he saw the two cleaners, re-suited, collecting gear from the back. Whoever it was from, that phone call was good news as far as he was concerned.

Unconsciously his shoulders came down a fraction.

The worst, he thought, might soon be over.

“I’ll be home when I damned well please!” Steve Warwick snapped into his cellphone and stabbed a thumb onto the End Call button with triumphant savagery.

“Why did you marry that poor girl if you despise her so much?” Lytton asked over his shoulder, not moving away from that damned window like he was glued to the view.

“Who says I despise Yana?” Warwick said easily, tucking the phone away again. He flung himself down into one of the deep-buttoned burgundy leather Chesterfields, draping an arm along the back.

“Be careful with her, Steve,” Lytton warned. “You can’t afford to pay off another one.”

“Yana and I understand each other perfectly. The advantages of marrying a poor girl from the Eastern Bloc.” He gave a wolfish grin. “She was brought up in a culture that accepts a man has his appetites and believes it’s a wife’s duty to cater to her husband’s every whim. And I mean
every whim.
”

Lytton didn’t smile in return. “She’s not living in the nineteenth century—she’s here and now,” he said. “In a culture where they have anonymous helplines for abused spouses and muckraking tabloid journalists. So, be careful.”

Prig,
Warwick thought, even as he flashed his teeth.
You and that cold-hearted bitch you married deserved each other.
“You gave Veronica too much free rein my friend,” he said lazily instead.
And look where
that
ended.

“I hardly think you’re in any position to lecture me on how I treated my wife,” Lytton said, glacial. He turned fully into the room so the light was behind him and Warwick couldn’t see his face for shadow. Without expression, his partner’s voice seemed cooler. “Tell me, does Yana know about your mistress—the one you’re planning to visit on your way back to town?”

How the
hell
do you know that?

But despite his momentary surprise Warwick laughed, automatically smoothing down his green silk tie. “
Mistress
is such an old-fashioned word don’t you think?” he asked reflectively, crossing his legs and letting his foot swing. “And you’d be surprised. Yana knows everything I get up to without me having to tell her. You may not think it to look at her but she’s a very broad-minded girl.”

Lytton continued to stare at him for a moment without comment then turned back to the window. “Just don’t let it interfere with the job.”

“It won’t,” he assured.

And by the time it does, my friend you won’t be in a position to do a damn thing about it.

“You really should get someone in to handle the books for you Ray. Then you wouldn’t have to work late.”

Ray McCarron’s head jerked up from the quarterly accounts to see Kelly Jacks standing in the office doorway with her hands in her pockets.

She was in her civvies—old cargo trousers and a skinny T-shirt that showed a sliver of taut belly between the two. McCarron tried to avoid a wince. His daughter Allison was less than half Kelly’s age and he wouldn’t want her going out at night dressed like that.

Mind you, Allison didn’t have the same kind of self-possession. There was something about Kelly that made trouble step off the kerb and go round her.

“Had a bookkeeper once. Made the mistake of marrying her. When it came to the divorce she knew what I was worth better than I did,” McCarron said sourly. “Of course, it
would
help if I could read anything off the petty cash chits you lot put in.” He sifted through another sheaf of paperwork. “It’s like working with a bunch of retarded doctors trying to decipher this scrawl. I swear Les writes in Mandarin Chinese half the time.”

“Yeah well,” she mocked, “they weren’t still teaching copperplate when we were at school.”

“More’s the pity.” He leaned back in his chair, letting it rock, and regarded her over the top of his reading glasses as she headed across to the small window. There was a tension in her he saw, a restlessness he recognised of old. “Lytton job put to bed is it?” he asked, his voice casual.

She swung away from the window as if changing her mind at the last moment, hesitated then gave a shrug. “It’s done if that’s what you mean. Whether it should have been or not is another story,” she said. “I tried to call your cellphone when I was on the way back. Leave it in your car again?”

“Aye, probably,” he admitted cheerfully. “It’s the only way to get a bit of peace.” He paused. “But it went all right in the end?”

She fidgeted with the papers on the corner of his desk, her concentration apparently consumed with aligning the edges. “All he has to do now is replace a few busted tiles and no-one will ever know.”

McCarron sighed at the bitterness in her tone. “Look Kel, I had a gander at the pictures you sent over and I made some calls,” he said gently. “Several in fact. And I was told in no uncertain terms that I’m not on the job anymore and to wind me neck in.”

Her lips twisted into a brief smile at that. She looked about to speak but stayed silent, pacing around the room. On the far wall was a line of framed photographs. She began straightening them even though McCarron kept them spirit-levelled anyway.

One showed his younger slimmer self, spit-polished in full dress uniform, frozen in the act of shaking hands with some long-retired long-forgotten chief constable who was presenting him with some equally long-forgotten award. Kelly’s eye seemed drawn there longest.

“I looked out the details again,” McCarron said. He twisted to face his computer and peered at the screen. “Veronica Lytton. Suicide. Found fully clothed in the bath with one of her husband’s guns—an RPA Interceptor if you’re interested—alongside her. Fatal gunshot to the head. No other visible trauma. No note, but her fingerprints on the weapon and discharge residue on her hands and clothing. Alone in the house with no sign of forced entry. Husband out of the country. Scene officially released this morning.” He sat up and removed his glasses flinging them onto the desktop. “Far as the police are concerned it’s an open-and-shut case. With the emphasis on
shut.
”

“Doesn’t make it right though,” Kelly said.

McCarron sighed again, pulled open his desk drawer and brought out a bottle of vodka—the good stuff. There was a jam jar on the desk holding a letter opener and a collection of pens. He tipped out the contents, gave the jar a cursory wipe and poured slugs into that and his empty coffee mug.

“Aye well sometimes this job stinks Kelly love,” he said handing over the jar. “In more ways than the obvious.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” she murmured. They touched rims and sipped in companionable silence.

The office was small, tucked away on the upper floor above the garaging for the vans. No way could he afford to leave them parked on the street overnight. He’d tried it briefly when the business was starting out. The signwriting proved an irresistible attraction for every local toerag with a ghoulish sense of curiosity. After the fifth smashed side-window in so many weeks he’d bitten the bullet and rented somewhere secure.

The loft space above the garaging had seemed an extravagance at the time but as the company had taken off he’d gradually expanded into it. A bit of studding and a dash of plaster and it was now a neat layout of storerooms and offices. He kept a posh executive lair of his own right next door to this one. It was spotless and Spartan with a stainless steel desk that resembled a mortuary table—possibly because that’s what it had once been.

That office presented the kind of clean, uncluttered, efficient workspace that clients expected and admired but McCarron found it impossible to get anything done there. So he hid himself away in this untidy little bolt-hole and only nipped through the connecting door when clients had been buzzed in and were on their way up.

He felt more at home this side of the door. The office was cramped and messy but it was reasonably clean. There was even a scuffed sofa that he’d frequently kipped down on when the working day stretched into the working night, when the business was on the way up and his marriage was on the way down like the two facts were on opposite ends of a seesaw.

Kelly sank onto the sofa now, leaned her head back and shut her eyes. She cradled her vodka almost untouched in her lap having taken no more than a taste. And that, McCarron knew was just to be sociable. These days Kelly was careful to the point of paranoia about what she allowed into her system.

Can’t blame her for that I suppose.

He’d never known her go out simply for her own enjoyment, to let her hair down. In fact she didn’t seem to have any friends outside work—something that had cost her dear in the past, he knew.

Sitting there as close to relaxed as she ever got, McCarron thought she seemed young and frail—both of which he knew were just an illusion. But she also looked tired, he realised. The kind of tired that comes from stress as much as physical labour.

Allison had recently had her nose pierced just the same as Kelly and he resisted the urge to ask what happened when she got a cold.

After a few moments he set down his mug, cocked his head on one side and said, “Want to tell me about it?”

Kelly didn’t open her eyes. “Old ghosts,” she said simply.

“Should’ve thought about that,” he said, gruff. “Sorry Kel. Never crossed my mind … ” He shrugged. “Sorry. Saw the upmarket postcode and wanted my best team on it that’s all.”

“Flatterer.” She lifted her head, shook it like a dog out of water. “Don’t worry about it Ray. Not your problem.” But the smile she’d intended to be reassuring came out wan instead. “I just walked in there and
knew
the scene had been staged—and you know as well as I do that it bloody was—and it . . . brought it all back.”

McCarron tensed. “All of it?”

“Well.” She lifted a shoulder, gently swirled the colourless liquid round the inside of the jar without meeting his eyes. “As much of it as I ever remember.”

“I’m sorry love but it’ll do you no good trying to force it.” Even as he spoke he was aware of the hollow emptiness of words. “It’s a done deal. You’ve just got to move on with your life.”

For a moment he thought she was going to say more—maybe even confide in him. Instead she glanced up, eyes glinting.

“Yes Mum,” she said and stuck her tongue out.

McCarron didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. “Well, at least you haven’t had
that
pierced yet, I’m glad to see.”

“Tell me!” the voice commanded. “Tell me everything!”

As the lash sizzled across his exposed flesh Steve Warwick flinched in pain. He’d sworn that this time he’d take the beating without a sound, like a man, but a traitorous groan forced out past his whitened lips.

His hands were tied over his head to one of the low-slung roof beams. He twisted against the restraint cursing silently but there was no give in the mounting. And although the material itself was soft enough not to mark him it had so far resisted all his frantic efforts to tear himself free.

Blindfolded as well as bound, he strained for every reassuring noise above the hammering of his heart. His tormentor circled with slow footsteps, a deliberate measured pace on the bare wooden floor and he cringed deep inside waiting for the next blow. A hot flood of humiliation had started low in his belly and was creeping outwards. Standing at full stretch like this, naked and vulnerable, he was completely at their mercy.

“I don’t
know
anything,” he pleaded breathless. “How many more times—”

“Liar!” The woman’s voice cracked out synchronised with the whip and he jerked again. She struck harder this time and his groan mutated into a shocked howl, outrage and pain in equal measure.

The woman laughed. A throaty, husky purr of sound. “You are being
very
bad boy,” she admonished, her voice tinted with the seductive Russian accent of her birthplace. “You are—how you say?—holding out on me because you know I shall punish you, yes?”

“No! I—”

The whip landed again curling dangerously around his thigh and eliciting a strangled yelp this time. “For God’s sake be careful Myshka!” Warwick snapped. “I’ve a squash tournament this weekend. Not where it will show!”

“Do not presume. To tell. Me. What. To. Do!” The woman punctuated each shouted word with further brutal strokes while he yelled and gasped and shuddered in exquisite agony until his legs buckled and he dangled sweat-soaked from the beam, chest heaving, utterly unable to speak.