To Snatch a Thief (20 page)

When she was sure her voice was under control, Skye nodded. ‘Too many of us dying lately, Horse. Three in my own building only a few days ago.’

Cricket supped noisily. ‘The devil came for me once, but he didn’t get me.’

Horse did the circle thing with a finger to one side of his temple and lifted his eyes, then he sighed. ‘’Aint none of us safe, darlin’. Everybody’s scared ‘cos they don’t know where it’ll hit next or what’s causing it. My Lilly says it’s God’s punishment for us sinners. She’d know more ‘bout that than me; always was one for religion; always prayin’ and singin’ those glory songs. Maybe she’s right, but as I see it, rich folks sin just as much as we do, and they ‘aint dropping like flies. All we can do is get on with it, and hope for the best.’

‘Did you know Sydney Moyer – street performer, dancer, worked the pubs like Dad?’

Horse scratched his head. ‘Black brother, gettin’ on a bit?’

‘Yeah, that’s him.’

‘Haven’t seen ‘im in a while.’ Lips pursed, Horse frowned. ‘Few years ago, used to come around, set up outside, but his act was way passed its sell-by. Didn’t make much of a living.’ Staring into space as he concentrated, Horse asked. ‘Didn’t he have a boy? Yeah, there was a boy he used to bring with him. Now
he
could hold a tune.’ His eyes suddenly focussed. ‘Tell you where I saw the ole bugger last…it were down the charity clinic, Ivy Lane.’ Horse scratched his chin. ‘Yeah, that’s where I ran into him. I’d had the runs for a fortnight, and with not having insurance for no proper doctor or hospital, Lilly packs me off to the volunteers. Says I’ll put paying customers off, if I’m dashing to the loo every five minutes. Anyway, being free, it’s always packed down there; everyone coughing, bleeding, kids crying, junkies hanging around…’ He paused, patted Skye’s arm. ‘Well, you know the place, well as I do. Sidney was there, waiting with the rest. Said his knees were paining something awful; been there all day, hoping to get seen. I got in eventually - they never turn anyone away… Don’t know how they stick it; all them sick people, day after day. That doc down there could be treating knobs in Harley Street, but he don’t. Saint that’s what he is, a saint. You ask anybody round here, they’d all say the same. If he’d had all the new fangled stuff they got down there now in your dad’s day, I reckon…’ Shrugging, Horse patted Skye’s arm again. ‘But they didn’t so…’

‘I don’t think anyone could have saved him, Horse. He was just worn out with the struggle of it all. But I’ve been down there. It looks good. Here.’ To hide her swimming eyes, Skye dug into her jeans and offered Horse some dollars for Cricket’s beer. He waved them aside.

‘No. You keep your cash, darlin’. I’ll bung the poor old bugger this one on the house like always.’ An arm the size of a small tree reached for the tankard Cricket was sliding into his pocket. ‘But I’ll have my pot back.’

Warmed, Skye smiled. It was good to be amongst them again. People here might be too poor for medical treatment, but they cared about one another.

A woman’s voice calling from inside had Horse sighing. ‘Time to prepare the lunches, but don’t be a stranger, you hear. You come back and see old Horse soon.’ As he turned to leave, she jumped down, caught his arm.

‘Those cartons over there with the crown logo.’ She pointed to the outer heap of rubbish. ‘Have you always used Royalty Trading?’

Horse scratched his head again. ‘I have for the past few years. Used to buy from Stocklands ‘till a little bird told me about all the fiddles going on at Royalty.’ He elbowed Skye in the ribs and she was sure one cracked. ‘Got a deal going with the freight tram drivers. I slip ‘em a few kegs the brewery don’t need to know about, and a coupla extra boxes get dropped off here.’

‘Do they supply Nutrasoy?’

Horse wiped a drip off the end of his nose with the back of his hand. ‘Among other brands. Why?’

‘Just curious. Saw your cartons and wondered if that’s what you use.’

‘I use whatever gets dropped off.’ Now Horse tapped the side of his nose. ‘Royalty’s got that huge warehouse at the old Palace; difficult to keep track of things when you’re that big. Plenty of scams going on.’

Cricket’s blood/alcohol level had obviously been topped up by the tankard of beer. He mumbled softly to himself as they walked back to his squat. In the circumstances, she figured he wouldn’t think her strange if she appeared to do the same. ‘I take it Horse’s activities won’t find their way onto your report, sir.’ She murmured. ‘That wasn’t part of my plan.’

‘Seen the devil,’ Cricket suddenly said out loud. ‘The pods’ll take me away, so they will.’

‘Not yet, Cricket.’ He stumbled, grabbed her arm more tightly and wheezed into her face. ‘
Jesus!
’ She gagged, recovered then slapped a hand over her mouth and nostrils.

‘I tell ya I seen ‘im, but he didn’t see me. I kept me ‘ead down, so he didn’t see me.’ ‘Seriously bad case of stink-breath, here,’ she muttered through her fingers.

‘Took little Billy Timmins instead of me. Should have been me… Should have been me, but I hid from ‘im and he took the boy instead.’ Watery eyes wheeling, Cricket’s head swung from side to side as though searching for an imaginary monster. ‘But he’ll be back…He’ll be back to claim wot’s his.’

He became more and more jumpy the nearer they got to his squat, so to try to distract him, Skye asked, ‘So what did he look like, the devil?’

Cricket’s face crumpled. ‘Dark ‘e was, tall and dark, with cold, cold eyes that’d pierce straight through yer. But I kept me ‘ead down as he passed me squat, and I saw ‘is shoes… Fancy they were. You could buy a whole brewery with the devil’s fine leather shoes.’

‘Why’s he called Cricket?’ Hunter was trying to catch her eye but every time she looked at him her stomach turned to jelly.

‘Because he loves football.’

‘Ah. It’s sad when they get to the stage of hallucinating.’

She said nothing.

‘I could tell how much it upset you. Your heart rate went off the Richter scale.’

‘I expect it did.’ Skye was attempting to keep her voice normal, but her throat was so tight even if she hadn’t slipped Cricket the sandwiches, she doubted she’d have been able to swallow them.

Hunter flipped the Dart to auto-pilot, then turned to face her. ‘What’s wrong?’

How to begin? How could she tell him the ridiculous thing she was thinking? It was insane, but the more she’d tried to put it out of her mind the worse it’d got. Cricket’s words had haunted her all morning. She stared out of the side window watching the snarled sky traffic. Without turning, she didn’t trust the accusation on her face not to give her away, she rolled a shoulder. ‘Got to me a bit, going back there, that’s all.’

‘Skye.’ Her arm jerked at his touch, but she wasn’t sure it was only from fear. ‘You did a good job today. Every place you visited; every shopper you chatted to; those grieving relatives you spoke to…’ He squeezed her hand when she didn’t respond. ‘Every tiny bit of information helps build the whole picture. You did well.’

‘They didn’t all use the same suppliers,’ she muttered. ‘So we’re no further on.’

‘You might like to know that when we looked into Stocklands, we found they are a subsidiary of Royalty Trading although they trade under the different name. Palace warehouse has things pretty much sewn up. I’m meeting one of their board members this afternoon. They’ve agreed to an inspection without the need of a warrant.’

Yeah, a favour from your girlfriend, she thought. Her heart thumped in response. And her reaction to that was another confusing issue.

Too pre-occupied to listen properly, she faced him. ‘Can I ask you something? Something personal?’

‘Depends on what it is and how personal.’

For a moment, she chewed her lip, then sucked in a breath. ‘Why hadn’t you been home the night before I found Shiralee?’ It came out in a rush, and she felt herself cringing.

He looked surprised, as though he’d expected something else, then a shadow crept into his eyes. Turning away he took back manual control. ‘For your information, the night the Abbot’s died, I was up all night consoling a friend. Corporal Blake died on my watch. I have to live with that, but she left two small children and a devastated partner whose struggling to cope. He needed a shoulder, I lent him mine. As the crow flies I wasn’t far. Like the Dart, Skye, my car has flight function.’ His voice took on a hard edge. ‘Where did you think I’d been?’

‘Oh!’ The relief washed through her like a flood. She should have realised there’d be a simple explanation. ‘Nowhere. I just thought… but only for a minute… I actually thought…’ Shaking her head at her own stupidity, she let out an audible sigh as the knots in her stomach unwound. Of course there was more than one pair of solar shoes in London. She’d let her idiotic imagination run riot.

‘You thought what?’

‘Nothing, forget I even spoke.’

His mouth turned up in a faint smile. ‘Happy to.’

Skye didn’t go down to the canteen on their return. Instead she sat at her workstation, head down but watching Hunter from under lowered lids. She could see him in his office, pacing back and forth as he spoke into his communicator. He’d tied his hair back from a face that blazed with temper. She pitied whoever it was on the other end of the line.

He disturbed her on so many levels.

She dropped her eyes as Hunter finished his call and briefly glanced over. When she looked again, he was studying the map, one hand holding his weight as he leaned against the wall.

Skye pressed the heel of a hand against her forehead. She had more urgent worries to think about and she was letting Hunter distract her. Know thine enemy. She’d heard that expression somewhere. Okay, putting things in some sort of order. At the moment she knew squat about the person threatening her, but they seemed to know a lot about her movements. What had started out as warnings had turned into this sinister game – one she was losing. So who knew she visited Royalty? she wondered - any number of people. Willow’s boss, Vincent, knew she was asking questions. Skye added him to her mental list. Who knew she talked to Robyn? Again, it was a public place. But they’d known where Lexie went to school, and that they’d be in the park – easy enough if she was being watched… or tracked.

The thought floated, unbidden, into her head. Shit.

She rubbed the back of her neck. The beginnings of a migraine hovered behind her eyes. Why would he bother, she asked herself? Hunter could bury any information he might not want brought to light on a case without resorting to violence. And, if she went down that path, the question was, why would he need to? What would he be hiding? She’d met a few bent cops, but instinct told her Hunter wasn’t one of them. He was crabby and domineering and bad tempered at times, but there was another side to him too. And then, she thought, letting her mind wander, there had been a couple of occasions when she’d watched his eyes soften, seen the ice melt away. She closed her eyes and for a moment, just one moment, imagined what could have happened on the night of her birthday when she’d been ready to let down her guard.

Success was in sight, he could almost taste it: the culmination of nine years of waiting. It would be the end of his career, of course, in this country at least, but the comfortable property he’d purchased abroad would be a fresh new beginning. He’d let himself be distracted by playing with the girl – a mistake he intended to rectify. He’d dispose of her quickly, and soon.

.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It was the violent crash more than the stream of swearing that had soldiers spiralling from their desks and dashing into the corridor. Skye followed the screams and hurled insults, running down a short flight of stairs two at a time. At the bottom she saw a couple of young privates trying to hang on to two women in a hair-tearing fight outside one of the holding rooms. Between them lay the shattered remains of a water cooler that had obviously been knocked over in the scuffle.

Neither was giving an inch. One, a red-headed female sporting a burgeoning black eye and whopping tattooed boobs spilling out of her skin-tight plum-coloured top, had a handful of the other woman’s lime green hair in one fist, while fending off a fresh-faced private with the other.

‘Madam, please. If you could just…’

‘Whore, bitch!’ Green woman screamed as tattoo woman twisted the hair but managed to land a hefty kick with a booted foot on her rival’s ankle. ‘Too ugly to get your own man, so you sniff around mine.’

‘Twenty says the leprechaun takes the red-head.’ Standing just in front of Skye, Sergeant Newman, his hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels.

‘No chance; she’s a fly-weight. You’re on.’ A long, lean sergeant with sandy crew-cut, who worked in another section on Skye’s floor, spat on his hand and offered it to Newman. ‘Another ten says she’ll land one on that rookie before she’s done.’

Newman pulled on an earlobe. ‘Got to hand it to him, the boy’s keen.’

Enjoying the fight as much as the others, Skye watched tattoo woman, who was taller and several pounds heavier, swing green woman round by her hair, despite the approach of rushing uniforms. ‘He didn’t need much encouragement,’ she sneered. ‘Seeing as he wasn’t getting much at ‘ome.’

‘Liar!’ Even she was spiralled into the wall and slid boneless to the ground green woman upped a middle finger. Now that, in Skye’s book, took style.

‘Ladies, if you’ll just calm down…’

Teetering on impossible, knife-edge heels, the red-head aimed a kick, connecting with the private’s privates. He went down in a chorus of male groans. The woman took off at the run. Impressive in those heels, Skye thought, but stupid. She screamed as she hit a wall of guards, and was finally cuffed, though still steamed. ‘I’ll ‘ave you all for assault, you bastards.’

‘What the…?’ Hunter pushed past. ‘How many of you morons does it take to put two women in holding? You and you.’ He jerked his chin to the broken glass and water slopped over the floor. ‘Get this mess cleaned up.’ His attention shifted to the woman moaning against the skirting. ‘Somebody take her to the ME, get her checked out, then put her in an interview room. Crouching, he put a hand on the private’s shoulder. ‘How you doing there, son?’