With No One As Witness (55 page)

He gave her a sardonic look. “Sandwich deliveries, you mean? It’s a living. Well”—with a smile then—“it’s nearly a living. I could do with something a bit better, frankly.”

Ulrike took this as a hint. He was angling for permanent employment at Colossus. For paid employment. She couldn’t blame him for that.

Robbie seemed to read her mind. He paused in the act of pouring flour from a bag into a large plastic bowl. “I can be a real team player, Ulrike,” he said. “If you’d give me half a chance.”

“Yes. I know that’s what you want. It’s under consideration. When we open the branch across the river, you’re tops on the list to do assessment.”

“You’re not having me on, are you?”

“Why would I?”

He set the bag of flour on the work top. “Look, I’m not stupid. I know what’s going on round here. The cops talked to me.”

“They talked to everyone.”

“Yeah, okay. But they’ve talked to my neighbours as well. I’ve lived there forever, so the neighbours told me when the cops came round. I expect they’re one step away from surveillance.”

“Surveillance?” Ulrike tried to make it sound casual. “On you? Surely not. Where do you go that they’d want to watch you?”

“Exactly nowhere. Oh, there’s a hotel nearby, and they’ve got a bar. It’s where I go when I need a break from my dad. You’d think it was a crime or something.”

“Parents,” she said. “Sometimes you need to get away from them, eh?”

He frowned. He stopped what he was doing. He was silent for a moment before he said, “‘Get away’? What’s this really about?”

“Nothing. It’s just that Mum and I row, so I guess I thought…well, the same-sex thing, I suppose. Two adults of the same sex, in the same house? You start to get on each other’s nerves.”

“As long as we just watch the telly, Dad and I are fine,” he informed her.

“Oh. Lucky you. Do that a lot? Watch telly, that is.”

“Yeah. The reality shows. We’re hooked on those. The other night, in fact, we—”

“Which night was this?” She saw she’d asked the question too quickly. His face took on a sudden sharpness she’d not seen before. He fetched eggs from the fridge, counting them out carefully, as if intent upon displaying his diligence. She waited to see if he would answer.

“The night before that boy was found in the woods,” he finally said. He was terribly polite about it. “We watched the show with the yacht. Sail Away. Do you know it? It’s on cable. We bet each other about who was going to get voted off. Have you got cable, Ulrike?”

She had to grudgingly admire the way he had put away affront in order to cooperate. She owed him something. She said, “Sorry, Rob.”

He took a moment before he shrugged, relenting. “It’s all right, I guess. But I did wonder why you stopped to chat.”

“You are on the list for a paying job.”

“Whatever,” he said. “I’d better finish up here.”

She let him go back to what he’d been doing. She felt ill at ease but concluded that people’s feelings couldn’t be allowed to matter, even her own. Later, when things were back to normal, she’d make more complete amends. Now, there were far more pressing concerns.

So she decided to abjure the circuitous approach. She found Neil Greenham and went directly for the jugular.

He was alone in the computer room, working on one of the kids’ Web pages. Typical of the Colossus client, the page was black and featured Gothic graphics.

She said, “Neil, what were you doing on the eighth?”

He made a note on the yellow pad next to the mouse. She saw a muscle work in his fleshy jaw. He said, “Let me see, Ulrike. You must want to know was I murdering some poor kid in the woods.”

She didn’t say anything. Let him think what he would.

“Have you checked with the others?” he asked her. “Or am I the only favoured one?”

“Can you just answer the question, Neil?”

“Can, of course. But will is another matter.”

“Neil, this is nothing personal,” she told him. “I’ve already spoken to Robbie Kilfoyle. I’m intending to speak to Jack as well.”

“What about Griff? Or doesn’t he come onto your radar screen for murder? Now that you’re playing at copper’s nark, I’d think you’d want to start practising objectivity.”

She felt herself colour. Humiliation, not anger. Oh, she’d thought they’d been so circumspect. No one can know, she’d told Griff. But in the end it hadn’t mattered. When one allowed the besotted to overcome the cautious, a billboard wasn’t exactly necessary. She said, “Do you plan to answer my question?”

“Sure,” he said, “when I’m asked by the cops. And I expect I will be. You’ll make certain of that, won’t you?”

“This isn’t about me,” she told him. “It isn’t about anyone. It’s about—”

“Colossus,” he finished for her. “Right, Ulrike. It’s always about Colossus, isn’t it? Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve work to do. But if you want a shortcut, phone my mum. She’ll alibi me. ’F course I’m her darling blue-eyed boy, so I may have told her to lie when someone comes snooping round to ask questions. But that’s the chance you’ll be taking with all of us, anyway. Have a nice day.”

He went back to the computer. His ruddy face was ruddier. She could see a pulse pounding in his temple. Outraged innocence under scrutiny? she wondered. Or something else? Fine, Neil. Have it your way.

Jack Veness was easier. He said, “Miller and Grindstone. Shit, Ulrike, it’s where I always am. Why the hell are you doing this, anyway? Don’t we have enough aggro around here?”

They did. She was making things worse, but that couldn’t be helped. She had to have something to give to the cops. Even if it meant checking every alibi herself: Robbie’s dad, Neil’s mum, the publican at the Miller and Grindstone…She was willing to do it. She was able, as well. And she wasn’t afraid. She’d do it because there was so much at stake—

“Ulrike? What happened? I thought I said five minutes.”

Griff had come out to reception. He looked confused, as well he might, since any other time he’d told her when to show up in his orbit, she’d been there like a dependable satellite.

“I need a word,” she said. “Have you got the time?”

“Sure. The kids’re editing the trust circle. What’s going on?”

Jack spoke up. “Ulrike’s taking up where the cops left off.”

Ulrike said, “That’ll do, Jack,” and to Griff, “Come with me.”

She led the way to her office and shut the door. Neither the oblique approach nor the direct approach had succeeded without offence being taken, so she reckoned it didn’t matter which way she went with Griff. She opened her mouth to speak, but he began first.

He said, running a hand back through that hair of his, “I’m glad you asked to talk, Rike. I’ve wanted to talk.”

She said, “What?,” before she thought it through. Rike. He’d murmured that in her ear. A groan with orgasm: Rike, Rike.

“I’ve missed you. I don’t like the way things seem to have ended between us. I don’t like that things seem to have ended. What you said about me…that I’ve been a good fuck. That went to the bone. I never thought of myself like that with you. It wasn’t about fucking, Rike.”

“Really? What was it about, then?”

He’d been standing by the door, she in front of the desk. He moved, but not to her. Rather he went to the bookshelves and seemed to peruse them. He finally picked up the photo of Nelson Mandela standing between Ulrike—much younger and so much more innocent of life—and her dad.

He said, “This. This kid in the picture and everything she believed back then and still believes now. The passion of her. The life inside her. Connecting to both because I want them both myself: passion and life. That’s what it was about.” He replaced the picture and looked at her. “It’s still there in you. That’s what’s so mesmerising. Was from the beginning, still is now.”

He drove his hands into the back pockets of his blue jeans. They were tight, as always, moulding the front of him. She could see the mound where his penis lay. She averted her eyes.

“Things are insane at home,” he went on. “I haven’t been myself, and I’m sorry. Arabella’s hormones up and down, the baby’s colic. The silk-screen business isn’t doing well just now. There’s been too much on my mind. I started to think of you as one more thing I had to contend with, and I didn’t treat you well.”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“But it didn’t mean—I didn’t mean—that I didn’t want you. Just then, the complication…”

“Life doesn’t have to be complicated,” she told him. “You’ve made it that way.”

“Rike, I can’t leave her. Not yet. Not with a new baby. If I did that, I wouldn’t be good for you or anyone. You’ve got to see that.”

“No one asked you to leave her.”

“We were heading for that, and you know it.”

She was silent. She knew that she needed to get them back on the track of why she’d wanted to speak to him in the first place, but his dark eyes diverted her and as they did so, they also dragged her back into the past. The feel of him near her. The heat of his body. That heady moment when he entered her. More than flesh to flesh, it was soul to soul.

She resisted the pull of memory and said, “Yes. Well. Maybe we were.”

“You know we were. You could see what I felt. What I feel…”

He approached. She could feel the pulse light and rapid in her throat. Heat built within her and descended to her genitals. She felt the maddening moistening in spite of herself.

She said, “That was animal stuff. Only a fool would mistake it for the real thing.”

He was close enough that she caught the scent of him. No lotion, was this. No cologne or after-shaving splash. It was just his scent, the combination of hair, skin, and sex.

He reached out and touched her: his fingers on her temple, describing a quarter circle to her ear. He touched the lobe. One finger traced the path of her jaw. Then he dropped his hand.

“We’re still okay, aren’t we?” he said. “At the heart of it?”

She said, “Griff, listen,” but she could hear the lack of conviction in her tone. He would hear it as well. He would know what it meant. Because it did mean…Oh the closeness of him, the scent and the strength. Holding her down, his two hands imprisoning hers on the mattress, and his kiss, his kiss. Her hips in the rhythmical, rotating dance and then tilting tilting because nothing mattered then or even later but wanting, having, and satiation.

She knew that he felt it as well. She knew that if she dropped her gaze—which she would not do—she would see the evidence behind the tight denim.

Griff said roughly, “Listen to what, Rike? My heart? Yours? What they’re telling us? I want you back. It’s crazy. Stupid. I can’t offer you one bloody thing just now except the fact that I want you. I don’t know what tomorrow might bring. We could both be dead. I just want you now.”

When he kissed her, then, she did not move away from his embrace. His mouth found hers and then his tongue coaxed her own mouth to open. She moved back against the desk, and he moved with her so that she felt the hard, hot demand of him pressing against her.

“Let me back, Rike,” he murmured.

She slipped her arms round his neck and kissed him hungrily. There was danger everywhere, but she didn’t care. For beyond the danger—above it and hindering its ability to harm her—there was this. Her hands in his hair, feeling the rough silk of it between her fingers. His mouth on her neck as his hands sought her breasts. The pressure of him grinding against her and the desire to have him, combining with the absolute indifference to discovery.

They would be quick, she told herself. But they could not part until…

Zips, knickers, and the gasp of pleasure on both their parts as he slid her up on the desk and entered. Her mouth on his, her arms clinging, his arms holding her hips in position, and the brutal thrust of him that could never be hard or brutal enough. And then she felt the blessed contraction and its release and a moment later his own groan of pleasure. And they were clasped together as they were meant to be, safe and secure, in less than sixty seconds.

They parted slowly. She saw he was flushed. She knew she was too. He was breathing rapidly, and he looked stunned.

“I didn’t mean that to happen,” he said.

“I didn’t either.”

“It’s what we are together.”

“It is. I know.”

“I can’t let it end. I tried. But it doesn’t work because I see you and—”

“I know,” she said. “I feel it too.”

She pulled her clothes back on. She could feel him leaking out of her already, and she knew the smell of their sex was all over her. She was meant to care about that, but she didn’t.

He felt the same. He had to because he pulled her back to him and kissed her.

Then, “I’m going to find a way.”

She kissed him. The rest of Colossus didn’t exist, out there beyond her office door.

He finally tore his mouth from hers with a laugh. He held her to him, pressed her head against his shoulder. He said, “You’ll be there for me, won’t you? You’ll always be there, won’t you, Rike?”

She raised her head. She said, “It seems I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m glad. We’re together now. Always.”

“Yes.”

He caressed her cheek. He returned her head to his shoulder and held her. “Will you say that, then?”

“Hmmm.”

“Rike? Will you…?”

She raised her head. “What?”

“That we’re together. We want each other, we know it isn’t right, but we can’t stop ourselves. So when we have the chance, nothing else matters. The time, the day, whatever. We do what we have to do.”

She saw his earnest eyes—how closely they watched her—and she felt a coolness come into the air. “What’re you talking about?”

Griff gave a lover’s chuckle, tender and indulgent. She pulled away. He said, “What’s wrong?”

She said, “Where were you? Tell me where you were.”

“Me? When?”

“You know when, Griffin. Because that’s what this”—she gestured at the two of them, the office, the interlude they’d just created—“is all about. You. My God. It’s always about you. Having me so besotted that I’ll say anything. The cops come calling and the last person I want them looking at closely is the man I’m fucking on the side.”

He produced an expression of incredulity, but she was not taken in. Nor was she moved by the wounded innocence that replaced it. Wherever he’d been on the eighth, he needed an alibi for it. And he’d blithely assumed that she would provide it, secure in the knowledge that they were the star-crossed lovers that fate—or whatever it was—had intended them to be.