Each Day I Wake: A gripping psychological thriller: US Edition (9 page)

It was a mug’s game. That was Mike Quinn’s take on his father’s so-called empire.

Why try to take on the law when there are so many rackets that are legal? Cast iron legal.

OK. He owed the old man. It was his father’s idea that his deserving son should have a better start in life. Times had been tough back then and there was no one on Brick Lane who was unaware of what Charlie Quinn had been through to raise his children and give them that better start in life. But the loan sharking, deal making and small time roughing up of late payers and loan defaulters was so much a thing of the past. Charlie Quinn had called it right in directing his son to a career in the City and opening what doors he could open for him there. What Charlie had not foreseen was the scope for money making opportunity that Mike Quinn had found there.

The players were better educated. They wore smarter clothes and lived in bigger and better houses. They thought a lot of themselves. But at heart the game was no different to that played by Quinn’s father in the East End. Though the rules these money men played by were tilted in the one way direction of the making of profits, there were times when something more than verbal persuasion was required to make a deal go through or to insist that a promise made was kept. That was where Mike Quinn and his men came in.

It was no good doubting that this had brought success. Quinn controlled a property portfolio the likes of which his father could only have dreamed. He vacationed on his own yacht. His children, who knew nothing of how he maintained his wealth, attended top fee paying schools. And his wife, Elena, was one of the most admired beauties in London, snatched away from a successful modeling career to be with him.

No, Charlie had never come close to having any of this.

Quinn paused in his reflections. It was dangerous to spend too much time congratulating himself. He knew that. But what was the harm? It was all true.

Still, he knew he had to get down to the business in hand.

He pulled out his phone and called his driver. “Malcolm. It’s time we kept our appointment with Albert Emery.”

She would never have thought she’d come to hate him this much but, every time Stella DaSilva thought about last night, the loathing she had for Ty Montague grew stronger.

It wasn’t just that he’d passed over her for that younger, prettier thing that had been trying to get into his bed for weeks now; it was the way he’d humiliated her that hurt so much. If he’d wanted to dump her after all these years, why choose a place as public as the New Era club in the Shard, of all places, to do it. And why make such a show of leaving her there waiting for him to return from some supposed urgent business call before coming back into the room with that shallow Patsy McNair on his arm and walking straight past her? Making everyone look at Stella as she stormed out.

She might have seen it coming. She’d become too sure of her position, too convinced that she could see off the younger, shinier, oh-so-much-more wantable girls who appeared on the scene.

She’d tried to phone Ty more than once but had not got through. Now at last he’d picked up.

“Not your usual style, Ty.”

He was playing it down. “As in?”

“Dumping me in public like that.”

“You know we always said
no ties
.”

“And I’ve played by your rules.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Why humiliate me with Patsy McNair? What were you trying to say?”

When he paused for too long, she knew there was more to come. “OK, Stella, I was going to find a better time and place to say this, but here it is. I’m separating from Nancy. The children are old enough to understand. I proposed to Patsy last night. We’re going to marry as soon as my divorce comes through.”

“How long have you been seeing her?”

“Six months, if you really want to know.”

“So, she’s really got to you.”

“She has class, Stella. You’ll never know what that means.”

Stella bit her lip. She was not going to break down. “I can’t say I won’t miss you.”

He chuckled. “It’s been good fun. Let’s leave it at that. You’d have been nothing without me.”

She detested him all the more for his fake attempt at good humor. She determined then that he would pay. “And you’ve gone up in the world since I first met you.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you’ve made money, Ty. Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten how many times you’ve used me to sweeten the deals that have made you rich.”

“Is that some kind of threat?”

“Just a little advice. Dumping me without taking care of me would be a mistake.”

“You have the Agency.”

“You know I’m not going to last long at that. I want more. I want a share of what we’ve built together.”

He was trying to hide it but it was clear there was real outrage in his voice. “Don’t get above yourself, Stella. Don’t get ideas beyond your station. You’ve built nothing. You’ve been a pretty plaything to adorn the real business that I’ve been creating. You’re nothing more, nothing more than that.”

“You might say I’m nothing but that’s not the point. I
know
, Ty. I know enough to sink your precious business.”

“So, this
is
a threat. You know how unwise that is, Stella.”

“Then take care of me. Offer me enough to secure my future or pay the price.”

The phone went dead. Ty Montague had closed the line.

She began to tremble. She knew she’d gone too far but he deserved nothing less. He owed her a future.

Stella opened her tablet and entered the security code to call up her online journal. It was all here. All the secrets she’d picked up in the pillow talk of the last years. Enough to sink Ty Montague ten times over.

She trembled again. It was more than a tremble. It was the full on shakes.

Cold turkey.

The thing she’d kept from Montague, his crowd and the rest of the world all these years.

The reason why she would not be able to survive without some serious compensation from Montague.

The darkest side of her life.

Waiting for her man to deliver the next fix.

There was no way that the meeting with Mike Quinn could be sidestepped. If he didn’t agree, Quinn would come to find him anyway.

Albert Emery straightened his necktie and brushed down the front of his business suit with the palms of his hands. It was important to show all the authority he could muster when facing a man like Quinn.

Yet it wouldn’t be like this if Ty Montague had kept his part of the agreement. If Emery was to use his accountancy and auditing skills to benefit OAM, Montague would ensure that Emery was invisible. That was the arrangement. No one would need to know that Emery was the brains behind the auditing of the OAM accounts. The proxy accountants would do as he said but be unaware of his identity. Without that level of assurance, Emery would never have been drawn into working with a man like Montague.

He wished with all his might now that he hadn’t.

Sure, he’d done well enough out of it. The house in Esher was all paid for and worth upwards of five million. His children were prospering at their fee-paying schools. Emery’s wife was a magistrate, for goodness sake. They had the country cottage that they used as a weekend retreat. They gave substantial support to a half dozen charities. They were pillars of society. There were even soundings that Emery could receive honors, if not at this New Year then the next. Yet all this did was make the prospect of a fall from grace all the more unbearable.

It had come as a shock when Tunny had contacted him and told him he knew that Emery was cooking the books at OAM.

His first thought had been to fight back the best way he knew. Tunny claimed he was working for Medway, a private investigations firm, protecting the interests of a group of investors who’d sunk their money in OAM. Yet when Emery used his contacts to check into the company, he found that no one named Geoff Tunny worked there.

So, what or who was Tunny? An undercover cop? A villain bent on blackmail? An undercover journalist? Emery didn’t know and none of his enquiries made him any the wiser.

When Emery tried to tough it out, to call Tunny’s bluff, what came back was even more worrying. Chapter and verse accounts of the detailed mechanisms Emery was employing to inflate the OAM balance sheet. Details that only an insider would know about. How Emery was using a Special Purpose Vehicle to conceal transactions and corporate dealing. Nothing schematic, nothing that smacked of guesswork. Real details of how the SPV was working. It hadn’t stopped there. Tunny had a working knowledge of how Emery was helping OAM avoid losses being reported by concealing payments made during acquisitions as the company continued its expansion. And this was not to mention the hints that he knew about the misrepresented cash flows and the outright tax evasion.

Emery had expected support when he took his concerns to Ty Montague. Instead he’d been regarded as a weak link, as someone who might break under pressure.

Montague should have known that Emery had too much to lose, that going to the police, making a clean breast of it, was not an option for him.

Montague had told him not to worry and that Mike Quinn was here to take care of such threats. Emery was not reassured. Knowing Montague and his ways, it was probable that Quinn was as much of a threat as Tunny.

Emery heard a vehicle crunching its way up the long gravel drive of his Esher home. Emery’s wife was at a charity dinner that evening and the children were asleep upstairs. It was now too late to think that it was a mistake to have agreed to meet here.

He showed Quinn into the kitchen. The driver remained outside in the car. “You’ve had a good journey out here, Mike?”

Quinn ignored the question. “We need to get down business.”

“Can I get you a drink?”

“I’m not here to socialize, Albert.”

Emery tried to move onto the front foot. “OK. You’ve been told about Geoff Tunny?”

“You don’t think you’re exaggerating the threat.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“To cover for the fact that your white liberal conscience has started to bother you and you’re looking for a way out. You tell me?”

“He knows too much. Knows it all. How we operate. How could he have discovered all that?”

“You tell me, Albert.”

Emery could feel his body starting to shake. It was fear, real fear of what Quinn was about to do next. He tried to keep his voice even, as unflustered as possible. “You know Ty would be nothing without me.” He paused to wake his laptop from sleep. “We need to know who he’s working for. I took a photo of Tunny last time we met.”

He turned the screen round so that Quinn could see.

“He doesn’t know you did this?”

“I snapped his reflection in a mirror. He couldn’t see I was using my phone.”

Quinn studied the image on the screen. “Determined. Looks like he can handle himself. No one I’ve seen before. But I can tell a copper when I see one. He’s either been a copper or he still is one.”

“Someone must have told him. Someone close to us. We need to find them.”

“That’s what I’m paid for. You can leave that to me.”

Emery could feel the tension rising. “So what happens next?”

Quinn towered over him as he stood to leave. “Say nothing. Not to anyone. Understand?” He paused to emphasize the threat. “And leave me to deal with Mr. Tunny.”

Brogan could see that his sister had been crying.

So different from the last time they’d met, as if the world had fallen in on her.

“What’s happened, sis?”

Stella’s eyes did not move. “I don’t know why I agreed we should meet again. I don’t need your sympathy, if that’s what this is.”

They were seated in large upholstered seats in the basement of the coffee place on Great Russell Street, opposite the British Museum. Brogan had planned it as a relaxing afternoon, time set aside to get to know more about his sister after all the years apart. Yet now there was nothing else to consider but the reason for her distress.

“It’s a man, isn’t it?”

She raised her head to look at him. “Isn’t it always?”

“You can tell me. I’m here to help.”

“It’s nothing to do with you, Marshall.”

“So, try me.”

“You’re forgetting our agreement.”

Brogan took a deep breath to try to control his annoyance. “It’s Montague, isn’t it?”

Her eyes flared. “So, what if it is? The agreement was we kept out of each other’s affairs. Right?”

“If he’s been harming you in any way.”

“You’ll do what? He has protection. Surely you’re not naive enough to be unaware of that?”

“So it
is
Montague?”

She looked away. “Don’t worry. I have my own way of dealing with him.”

“Like?”

“Like you don’t need to know. Just to say that, somewhere safe, I have enough on him to see him put away.”

Brogan thought back to the days together in Nottingham before they were parted, the diary that his sister always kept, and knew what she meant.

“You still keep a diary?”

“It’s all there, every last twist and turn.”

He held her hand. “So, why the tears, sis?”

“Ty Montague is not the only bad thing in my life right now.”

“So, let me help with that.”

She shook her head. “No, Marshall. You will
not
interfere. You
will
stay out of my life.
Understand
? That’s the agreement and I expect you to keep to it. Or we’ll never meet again.”

He swallowed hard. “OK, sis. You know it’s breaking my heart to see you like this. But you’re giving me no choice.”

They crossed the road to the British Museum. They were running an exhibition on the Vikings; a huge reconstruction of a long boat at the center of it all.

As they joined the crowds struggling to get a clear view of the displays – the families with young children, the pensioner couples, the newly marrieds – Brogan felt the relief that came with the pretense that they were nothing more than brother and sister visitors on a day out together. As he looked into the glass display case that featured a near complete iron Viking helmet, he could see Della looking in through the glass from the other side of the exhibit. He tried to dismiss the sudden thought that this was the last time he’d see her.

It was a thought that would not go away.