14. Jimmy
Sure enough, as he drove back into London Jimmy’s mind raced, leaping from thought to thought, speculation to suspicion. He tried to slow himself down, concentrating on what he knew.
He knew Glenn was both a liar and a wind-up merchant, always trying to unsettle those around him.
He knew that his brother liked to dodge around the truth, dressing it up and distorting it, and that perhaps this was why his dig at Doug Conner had rung true, tapping into doubts already there – particularly the unease Jimmy felt about this whole off-the-books investigation into the disappearance of Harriet Rayner.
No. No. He didn’t know anything. Doubts weren’t knowing. He was allowing his mind to race again. Hunches weren’t to be trusted, particularly when they’d been planted in your head by an arch manipulator.
Conner had recruited Jimmy. He’d hand-picked him ten years ago, and mentored him before becoming his controller when he started to go out into the field.
He still remembered that first conversation, the one that had changed everything. Until then, Conner had been a blank canvas – and only later did Jimmy realize how carefully cultivated that image was: a man who left little impression, made few waves. It was a skill, and one Jimmy had subsequently worked hard to acquire for himself.
Until then, Conner had simply been the cold, distant father of the woman Jimmy loved. Slightly menacing for that aloofness, but Jimmy had put that down to simple disapproval. Jimmy was a Lazenby, after all: he was familiar with that reaction from people. The difference with Conner was that the disapproval wasn’t cut through with fear.
“So what now?” Conner had said to him, in a pub in north London where he’d tracked him down, a couple of weeks after things with Mel had imploded.
Jimmy didn’t understand. He’d been minding his own business when Conner appeared, and now was starting to see that maybe the man’s aloofness hid a core of steel, something to be wary of. Had he come after him on Mel’s behalf? Finally free to tell Jimmy what he thought of him, and make sure he never went near his daughter again?
“May I?” Conner had indicated a vacant stool next to Jimmy, and sat. Then: “You’ve got something,” he said. “I saw it straight away. You could have been something so much worse than your old man if you’d wanted to.”
What a strange thing to say...
He didn’t want this. Didn’t want to be talking about his family with the father of the girl he’d lost. But something about the look in Doug Conner’s eye had held him.
“Mel tells me you want to be one of the good guys.”
“That what she says?” Yes, he’d said that to her, on more than one occasion. Said he didn’t have to be like the rest of his family. Trying to impress her. Trying to convince himself. Right now, he didn’t know what he wanted any more, only what he’d rejected, and what he’d lost.
“I can help you do that,” said Conner.
“How? What do you mean?”
“I can help you, because I’m one of the good guys, too.”
§
He’d believed him, back then. Something in the way he said it, the unlikeliness of the man’s choice of phrase.
He still did.
Because if you don’t believe you’re one of the good guys, then what’s the point?
He slapped a hand on the steering wheel in frustration, swerving partway into the next lane to a blaring of horns. Drifting back into his own lane again, he ignored another driver who pulled up level, gesturing. If only that guy knew who he was pointing his finger at.
He breathed deep.
He was one of the good guys, even if he had to remind himself every so often.
He pressed the hand-free button on the steering wheel, told the car to make a call to Patil.
“Hey, Mamta,” he said. “Harriet Rayner. Any developments?”
A tap of keys, then: “Not much since we last spoke, sir. No phone activity. Nothing from her on social media, just posts from friends asking where she is. Police investigation is still almost non-existent, although it’s flagged for review this afternoon.”
That seemed pretty standard. Covering themselves in case a disappearance initially treated as non-suspicious needed to be escalated for any reason.
“Anything on Glenn Lazenby or anyone from the funeral?”
A pause, a reminder that this was family. He knew they’d have a roster of anyone interesting who’d shown up at the crematorium.
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” said Patil. “Reports of a fight outside the chapel of rest, but then you’d know about that.”
It hadn’t been a fight. If it had been a fight, Glenn would have known about it.
“No other leads?”
“Nothing I can see, sir. The police have drawn a blank. The mother’s been making a nuisance of herself, which probably hasn’t helped change their minds any.”
The girl had simply vanished.
Even now, though, he reminded himself that one very valid line of investigation was the possibility this had all been blown out of proportion. Mel getting alarmed, pressing her father into over- reacting, Jimmy wading in and stirring things up with the family; each step an escalation when it was still entirely possible Harriet was just sulking at a friend’s place, sleeping off a binge, or simply avoiding an overbearing mother.
He reminded himself again: he should concentrate on knowns, not let his mind race with speculations.
And what he knew was a seventeen-year-old girl had been missing for almost a week and very few people – at least those who could make a difference – appeared to give a shit about it.
Apart from Mel. She cared. She and Penny Rayner were perhaps the only ones who really did.
He told the car to call Mel. Listened to it ring once, twice, four times and then cut to voicemail.
She was blanking him, he knew. He still couldn’t work out whether she was pissed with him for pushing her back onto the sidelines, for sleeping with her, or for the barriers he always put up around himself.
Probably all of that, and more.
What might be in Mel Conner’s head was the kind of puzzle he had long since given up on.
“Hey,” he said. “Just checking in. No news, I’m afraid. We’re still digging. Call me if you hear anything.”
He ended the call, cursing himself. Not ‘if you hear anything’, just call me, was what he’d meant, what he should have said.
He wanted to hear her voice – more than just a recording at the other end of a line.
He shook his head, must look like a madman driving along like that.
How had she done it?
How had she made him feel this way? How had she made him fall in love with her all over again?
He recalled what he’d told her, the words that had just popped into his head. Fall? I have nowhere left to fall. I fell ten years ago and I never climbed out.
Where had that come from?
Fall... falling.
Whatever.
It made no difference.
All he knew was he felt like this right now, and it was messing with his head. Affecting his judgment.
He needed to stop.
Stop falling. Stop having fallen. Whatever it was.
For now, at least.
§
Doug Conner hadn’t expected to see him.
Jimmy could tell by the momentary look of surprise that flashed across his features before the blank mask descended again.
He’d tracked his controller down to a gentlemen’s club in Westminster, across the river from the anonymous buildings where Section Eight had offices, and a short walk from the Houses of Parliament, and Whitehall. A place where senior civil servants, politicians, and other high-ranking officials could take a break from the public eye. A place where connections were made, deals struck, impasses bypassed. A place where ridiculously expensive single malts and clarets oiled the wheels of government.
It was, quite literally, an old boys’ club, where the ruling elite could ensure democracy did whatever they wanted.
Jimmy stood in the doorway of one of the private lounges, casually waiting to catch Conner’s eye. His controller was seated in a small circle of high-backed armchairs, deep in conversation with men Jimmy recognized as a high-profile banker, a government minister and someone so anonymous he could only be a member of the security services. The walls were lined all the way up to the high ceilings with books, and the place smelled of leather, cigar smoke and something just a little musty.
Conner saw him, and his eyes briefly widened, his jaw twitched. He turned back to his companions, said something, and stood, smoothing down his jacket before walking slowly across to join Jimmy.
“How did you get in?” he asked.
“You should know, you trained me.” Jimmy could talk his way into just about anything or anywhere, and out of most things too.
For a moment Conner was going to press, then he gave a slight shake of the head, put a hand to Jimmy’s arm to steer him back out of the room, and said, “I assume it’s important.”
“I don’t like working in the dark,” said Jimmy. “I don’t like surprises. Like going on a job and finding your daughter in the thick of it. I don’t like being forced to mix family and business. This job... it doesn’t add up. There are too many blanks.”
They came to a doorway that opened onto a mezzanine area that looked out over the main entrance lobby.
“That’s how we work, Jimmy,” said Conner, indicating a pair of chairs by the balustrade, a low table between them. “Blanks all around us. We know what we need to know, and all that.”
As usual, Conner was deflecting, repeating what Jimmy had already told him in a way that implied he was actually adding something new to the exchange.
“I need to know,” said Jimmy simply. “And all that.”
Conner nodded. “What do you need to know?”
“Why is this case off the books? Why are we investigating at all? It’s hardly our normal territory.”
“That’s why it’s off the books,” said Conner. “It’s personal. For both of us.”
Personal and messy. Two things Jimmy had successfully avoided for the last ten years.
“How personal?”
Conner paused. He must already have known something was up for Jimmy to track him down here, but now he seemed to sense there was more going on.
“A family friend. Melissa throwing herself into the thick of it. The Lazenby family connection. What more do you want?”
The Lazenby family connection. That’s what had brought Jimmy here.
Look at those around you. Those closest to you. Everyone has their price .
That’s what Glenn had said.
“Glenn thinks he has influence,” he said carefully. “Over you.”
Conner didn’t falter. He gave that familiar little nod again, and said, simply, “Good.”
Jimmy stared. Again, he felt as if he were several steps behind, things slowly slotting into place. Things he should have seen before now.
“Glenn’s one of ours,” said Conner. “Only he doesn’t know it. And if possible, I hope we can keep it that way.”
“Tell me,” said Jimmy. “Now’s one of those times when I need to know.”
Conner sat back in his chair, studying Jimmy carefully over steepled fingers.
Finally, he nodded again, and said, “You were right when you said the Harriet Rayner case isn’t normally the kind of thing that falls into our remit. But Glenn Lazenby is. Or rather, the people he does business with. Arms dealers. International syndicates. Other malicious influences. I’ve been cultivating your brother for some time now. He was useful when he was your father’s righthand man, and promises to be even more useful now he’s taken over. He thinks I give him protection, and he’s right. Where he’s mistaken is that he thinks that protection is bought by regular payments into my retirement fund and not that he has protection simply because he provides access to far bigger fish.”
Jimmy held his controller’s look. Conner’s story was smooth. So smooth it could be well-rehearsed bullshit prepared by a man who’d been in the family’s pocket for years. Or it could be smooth because it was true.
But even if it was true, Jimmy understood that it would only be a skimming of the surface – enough truth to satisfy him. There was always far more going on, and Conner’s reference to the people Glenn worked for and with made it clear the Lazenby empire was only a tiny part of something far bigger.
As if to confirm this, Conner continued: “You’re right not to trust me. I wouldn’t. As you say, I trained you, and I trained you to be smart. What I can tell you is that I’m in a very precarious position. I’m part of the Establishment.”
He paused to wave a hand, indicating the grandeur of the building that housed this exclusive gentlemen’s club.
“Government is corrupt. Business is corrupt. My beloved Establishment is corrupt. But it works, mostly. Money buys influence, buys power. People like you and me just make the best of it. We work on the fringes, in the interstices. We challenge power, where we have to, but the people your brother is involved with are part of those power structures, too – they make sure of that. They have that kind of control. It’s how the world works.
“This is why we have units like Section Eight. We exist outside the normal structures. Our role is to smooth things over, minimize the damage. That sounds abstract, but you know what we do. We stop things before they happen. We intervene where other agencies are held back.”
Jimmy knew. He’d lost count of the number of terror attacks they’d prevented, the number of major crime networks they’d disrupted and turned against each other.
“We save lives, Jimmy. That’s got to be worth it, however we do it.”
Jimmy didn’t like to think how many compromises Conner must have made over the years, how many times he’d turned a blind eye for the greater good, how many painful deals had been struck. How many Glenn’s he’d sucked up to and let loose, as he pursued the bigger picture.
All to save lives.
It was messy, and Jimmy struggled to get his head around the implications of what Conner had told him, but it came down to the same judgment call Jimmy had made for himself: they saved lives. That was what mattered. They had to do some seriously bad things to achieve that sometimes, but the goal, at least, was worthy of something, surely?
“So what’s with Glenn?” Jimmy said now. “He thinks he owns you, which is fine – you say you’re aware of that, and encourage it. But... he seems to have a thing about you.”
“What kind of thing?”
“Twice now, he’s tried to turn me against you,” said Jimmy. “He tried to convince me you’d sent that heavy after Mel to scare her away. I didn’t believe him, of course, but–”
“Seeds of doubt.”
“Seeds of doubt. And then today he tells me he’s got you in his pocket. Which, of course, he thinks he has.”
“He hasn’t.”
“I know.” He didn’t, but Conner’s version of things was far more credible than Glenn’s sly little digs and suggestions. The odds, at least, suggested to Jimmy that Conner was telling more of the truth than Glenn.
“Well,” Jimmy went on. “Maybe we can use that. You seem to matter to him. Maybe you’re his vulnerability, in some way?” He didn’t know quite what he was getting at, but whatever Glenn was up to, he suspected Conner might be a route in.
Then he stopped, saw the smile on Conner’s face, a slight shake of the head. Felt several steps behind yet again.
“Oh no,” Conner said. “No. That’s not it at all. Don’t you see? It’s you, Jimmy. You’re Glenn’s vulnerability. You always have been.”
He stared, tried to work out where Conner was heading, what he had missed. He didn’t swallow it. He wasn’t Glenn’s weak spot – his older brother had his measure. He always had. If Jimmy was being honest with himself, that’s one reason why he would never have been able to stay: Glenn was the one person who could get under his skin.
Until Mel had come along, of course, and she’d got under his skin in a very different way.
“You’re the kid brother,” said Conner. “The golden boy. In your father’s eyes, Glenn was the one who set the benchmarks but you were the one who surpassed them. Classic sibling rivalry. Youngest child is forgiven everything, and acknowledged for all the triumphs, while the oldest child just soldiers on. And yes, I’m an older child.”
Jimmy was surprised at the slight chink in Conner’s armor, a glimpse of something personal.
Conner went on: “Glenn’s always been in your shadow, and all he’s wanted is your respect, your acknowledgment.”
“Is that how you were?” asked Jimmy. He was trying to deflect, he knew. Not wanting to acknowledge there may be some truth in the profile Conner was giving.
“And then there was Melissa.”
He didn’t want to go here. Not with Conner. Not with all the shit that had been stirred in his head regarding Melissa Conner. Not now, not ever.
“There was rivalry, wasn’t there? You and Glenn.”
Over Mel, yes. Rivalry that had slipped into jokey, heavy-handed flirting and innuendo on Glenn’s part when he knew he’d lost that one. A teasing that Mel played along with, without ever understanding the bitter undertow of Glenn’s jibes.
Even now, Glenn did it. That proprietorial arm trailed along the back of the seats in Ryders, almost, but not quite, draped across her shoulders, and making damned sure Jimmy could see. The looks that said She’s come to me, bro’.
“He lost that one, didn’t he?” said Conner. “Lost it to you.” Almost as if he was talking about anything but his own daughter.
“Not only that, though,” Conner continued. “He didn’t just lose the girl to you, he lost you to her, didn’t he? She drew you away, from him, from the family. She made you see alternatives.”
She had. She still did. If Glenn had been the first person who could really get under Jimmy’s skin, Mel had been the last, would always be the last.
Sure, Glenn had lost the girl. Maybe lost the attention of the kid brother. But then that kid brother had blown it, hadn’t he?
“It didn’t exactly last, did it?” said Jimmy. “He didn’t have to nurse his wounds for long before I fucked it all up.”
Conner was shaking his head, making it clear that Jimmy still didn’t get it. “Oh, but he did,” he said. “Of course he did. Once he’d lost you, he never got you back, did he? After he lost you to Melissa, he lost you to me. I recruited you. I offered you an alternative path. I took you in. He hates us. The Conners. Think of it as a good old-fashioned family feud. First Melissa, then me. We’re the ones who tore his family apart. And right now, he’s lost his father, too.”
Jimmy recalled the look on Glenn’s face at the crematorium this morning. The gesture at the empty space at the front. The impasse, until Jimmy had inwardly shrugged and moved forward to take up his slot on the family pew.
Come back, bro’.
“So what is this?” asked Jimmy. “You think he’s going to go after you somehow? Now my father’s gone, you think he’s somehow going rogue? Were you just using this case to get me back in there, close to my brother?”
Was that what he’d been missing? That the investigation itself didn’t matter, was simply a vehicle to maneuver Jimmy back into the thick of the family’s activities?
“Glenn’s flexing his muscles. Getting into new things. Getting carried away. He’s becoming an unknown quantity.”
Jimmy nodded. He understood how uncomfortable that would make Conner feel, someone he’d been able to control slipping out of his grasp...
“I’m in a difficult position,” said Conner, with almost the air of confession. “I’ve been protecting Glenn, yes, because we had bigger fish to fry. But if he goes rogue now he’s been liberated by the loss of his father, that could come back and bite me. Bite us, the Section. And my hands are tied: those shady influences in the corridors of power. Other on-going investigations with other agencies, other interests to protect. It’s a messy, messy web of ties, which is why I’ve tried to keep things contained. But I had to do something...”
“There’s more, though, isn’t there?” Jimmy said.
Conner looked away, as if noticing their grand surroundings for the first time.
“Penny Rayner came to me,” he said. “And then Melissa did, too, almost as if they’d coordinated it between them. I dug a little, didn’t think anything of it. And then your brother’s name came up. There had already been warning signs about Glenn getting reckless, dangerous, since taking control of the family’s activities. Revenge. Old debts being repaid, if you know what I mean.”
Jimmy could believe it. Glenn never forgot a thing.
“I reached out to him. Warned him the authorities were taking an interest. He took that as me giving him protection, looking out for him. He loved the idea he had me in his pocket. But then when Harriet went missing, her last trace being when she climbed into Glenn’s car...”
A look away again. Jimmy had never seen his superior so visibly rattled.
“Glenn was making it personal. Getting to me through Harriet.”
Jimmy started to see it. The relationship between Harriet and Mel – Mel had said the two of them were like sisters. Glenn would like that. Getting at both Doug Conner and Mel through someone close.
But... was Conner really saying Glenn had abducted the girl?
Jimmy still wasn’t sure his brother would do anything like that.
“I tried to steer the police investigation,” said Conner. “But like I say, Glenn and the people he’s involved with have protection, either other investigations that don’t want to be rocked, or good old-fashioned corruption in high places. The police only gave Harriet’s disappearance lip service. And the Section doesn’t take on this kind of thing...”
“But there’s always a way.”
Conner nodded. “It’s personal.”
Jimmy saw it, finally. “It’s not just Mel he’s getting at you through, is it?” he said.
Conner looked down. “My daughter,” he said. “Harriet Rayner is my daughter.”
The sibling thing. The older child who set the benchmarks, the youngest always surpassing them. The golden child.
“I always steered Melissa to look out for Harriet, you know? To help her. That’s what you do, isn’t it, if you’re a decent human being? You steer others to help those you can’t help yourself. I do. That’s why I’m relying on you, Jimmy. Don’t let me down.”
§
He’d rarely been at such a loss on a case. A missing girl, but no trail after her phone went dead. Glenn’s involvement, and Douglas Conner’s conviction that Glenn was pursuing some kind of vendetta against him, and that he would do so through Harriet.
They had nothing.
He considered calling Mel, trying to pick her brains about her friend’s character, see if that might suggest anything they’d missed. But he’d virtually ordered Mel to step away – because of the potential danger to her, and because Jimmy didn’t like the idea of a clumsy amateur being involved.
If he asked her for help now, he’d be admitting defeat, admitting he’d been wrong...
He was honest enough with himself to recognize stubborn pride when he encountered it, but that didn’t make him any less proudly stubborn.
Maybe if she ever answered his messages, he’d find a tangential way to raise the subject. Maybe they could meet for a drink, even though he’d vowed to step back until this mess was sorted out.
He’d parked in the street, and now he paused before the converted garage Penny Rayner called home.
He couldn’t quite work Harriet’s mother out. At least a part of it was something familiar from other times he’d had to deal with addicts, that easy facility they tended to have for concealment and deflection. A sharpness that underlay everything else. Penny Rayner came across as absent- minded, confused, and yet he knew she had always kept tabs on her daughter, always knew what Harriet was up to in her life.
Penny Rayner may have lost many of her faculties, but she was not stupid.
“Mrs Rayner.”
She smiled, and he wasn’t sure if she remembered who he was, then she focused, and said, “Mr Lazenby. You have news?”
He shook his head, and her entire frame visibly slumped.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just called in case you’d heard anything?”
A slight shake of the head. “She never calls,” she said.
He knew that, but he was sure Penny would know if her daughter had reappeared.
“I’ve been asking around,” he said. “I spoke to Douglas Conner. He’s very concerned for... your daughter.”
Had that been why he’d come here? To dig? To test for reactions?
If so, then he should have known it would get him nowhere.
Now, Penny Rayner smiled fondly, and said, “Doug? Oh yes. Such a nice man. A good friend to Geoffrey, before...”
Either she was so accustomed to covering up her past relationship with Doug Conner that it had become automatic, or she didn’t even remember the relationship at all. Now, Jimmy recalled something Mel had said about how Penny’s memory was so ruined by her addictions she had almost no recollection of her past life.
Had he hoped she would slip? That she would inadvertently confirm Conner’s account? He wasn’t entirely sure what that would have achieved, other than to shore up his trust in the man who had steered his life for the past ten years.
It was stupid, though. Penny Rayner was no kind of witness to anything, even her own past.
But then she fixed Jimmy with a look again, and said, “His daughter is such a lovely thing, isn’t she? Melissa. Do you know her?”
He turned away. He didn’t know what the correct answer to that would be. Yes, he knew Mel, but what, exactly, was their relationship?
“She said she’d keep me informed, though,” said Penny. “But... well, nothing. She doesn’t answer my calls. So unlike her. I asked her to try to find where Harriet is, but maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Do you think she’s angry with me for being so presumptuous? I know I can be a nuisance, but she’s always answered my calls before.”
There’s a thing that happens. A pivotal moment where things step up a gear. Until now, Jimmy might have felt as if he was treading water, but all of a sudden...
“When did you last speak to her?” He kept his voice calm, casual. Was careful not to let his body language shift. Careful not to step forward, grip the woman by the arms and shake an answer out of her.
He smiled, waited while Penny tipped her head to one side, thinking.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry, I... You know how it can be.”
“You called her yesterday,” Jimmy said patiently. “In the morning. She asked how you were. You asked if she had any news. You apologized for calling her.” He remembered it clearly. Breakfast in that greasy diner, the stilted conversation with Mel after they’d spent the night together. Mel’s phone going, and then sitting there, listening to one end of a conversation.
Penny didn’t ask how he knew, just smiled and said, “Yes, yes, I did, didn’t I? She said it was fine for me to call. Which is why I worry so, now... now that she doesn’t answer.”
“Have you spoken to her since then?”
“No. As I say, she’s not answering. I think I frustrate her, sometimes. Do you think that’s likely?”
He started to back away. Turned, and strode up the driveway, calling back to Harriet’s mother that everything was fine, he was just in a hurry. He didn’t want to alarm her, but then if he did, she’d probably have forgotten it soon anyway.
Mel hadn’t answered any of his messages. He’d put that down to frustration on her part, the voicemail equivalent of a frosty silence.
And that’s exactly what Penny had thought, too: that Mel wasn’t answering because Mel was pissed with her.
He climbed into his car and pulled away, told his hands-free phone to call Mel.
Voicemail.
“Call me, Mel,” he said. “I need to know you’re okay, so just... call me?”
He jumped a red light, to a blast of car horns. He didn’t care. It was a Section car, and if any penalty notices came through they’d be canceled automatically. If the police stopped him for reckless driving, he had a number they would call and he’d be on his way again within minutes.
Then he forced himself to slow down, reassess.
This whole thing was off the books. Yes, Conner had assured him he had the usual protections, but was that really true? His controller was playing hard and fast with the rules.
He couldn’t trust anything, and right now the last thing he wanted was to be caught up in the complications of trying to extract himself from the clutches of the traffic police.
He opened his mouth to put in a call to Mamta Patil, then stopped himself. The conversation with Conner had unsettled him. His controller’s paranoia about the corruption of those around and above him.
Until now, Jimmy hadn’t acknowledged quite how much he relied on the familiar infrastructure and back-up of the Section, but now... for now at least, he was on his own.
“Call Mel Conner.” One ring, two, three... voicemail, again.
He hit the red button on his steering wheel column. End call.
Call me, Mel Conner. Just call me.
§
Early evening, and he was banging at the door of the house where Mel had been staying. An Airbnb thing, a room in a stranger’s house. It was cheap and easy, he knew, but he could never do that. Jimmy needed anonymity, wherever he stayed.
He remembered the owner, Singh. The look on his face when he took in the blood on Jimmy’s clothes that morning, when Jimmy had stripped down to the waist, laying his gun and shoulder holster on the kitchen table.
He still had the guy’s t-shirt.
He didn’t know what Singh did, whether he would even be in at this time.
The door opened, and the guy did a double take, clearly debating the merits of simply shutting the door again. Then he probably remembered the gun, and hesitated.
“Mr Singh,” said Jimmy. “I’m sorry to disturb you. My friend’s staying with you again, isn’t she? I’m looking for her. I just wondered...”
He paused. Singh clearly wanted to say something, but was holding back.
“Please,” said Jimmy. “What’s happened?”
“Your friend has paid for two nights,” said Singh. “So tell me, what do I do with her things if she doesn’t come back then, too? I have other bookings.”
“What do you mean, ‘too’? When did you last see her?” It had only been a guess that Mel had come back and stayed here again, but it had been all he had. Singh’s confirmation chilled him to the bone.
“I’m calling the police,” said Singh, holding his hands up, and shaking his head. “I’ve had enough of all this.”
“Please do,” said Jimmy, keeping his voice calm and steady. “But tell me first. Everything.”
He didn’t need to threaten, didn’t need to do anything to remind Singh about the holster under his jacket. Sometimes tone of voice is enough.
“Thursday,” said the man. “She took the room for two nights. Went out that afternoon, came back and got all dressed up, and then went out once more. She didn’t come back after that. I assumed she’d just returned late, after I’d gone to bed. Then this morning when there was no sign of her still, I just assumed... well, all dressed up like that.”
“You assumed she got lucky?”
A brief nod, clearly wary of Jimmy’s reaction.
“Do you have any idea where she was going?”
Singh shrugged. “A man, I assumed. She seemed... nervous. Taking a lot of trouble, you know?”
“Thank you,” said Jimmy, backing away. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“What about her things?”
“She’ll be back,” said Jimmy, wishing he believed his own words. “She’ll take care of them.”
Turning away, he started to walk fast.
The look in her eye when he’d told her to back off and leave all this to him. Frustration, he’d thought – at having to accept her own powerlessness.
He should have recognized it.
Not frustration, but determination.
She hadn’t backed off at all.
She’d just waited until he’d gone and then carried on, regardless.
He should have known she would never back down.
She would never let go, or at least, not while she had a breath left in her body.