“Oh, Jaff, no, not now, Jaff. Not again. We just-”
But before Tracy could say another word, Jaff had pulled her toward him and clamped his lips firmly on hers. She offered only token resistance. He was a good kisser; she had to admit that. And the rest of their lovemaking was pretty spectacular, too.
When they had finished, Jaff seemed to drift off to sleep again, and Tracy found herself returning to her growing concerns. This was the start of their second day in her father’s house, and she was beginning to feel a little uneasy about being there. She was hoping that Jaff would get bored with being in the country and decide they should leave for London soon. He had already made a number of long phone calls and seemed to sound pleased with the way things were going down there. Whatever those “things” were.
It had been okay at first, just a bit of harmless fun and a chance to vent her spleen against her absentee father, but now every moment longer they stayed, the more uncomfortable she began to feel. What had yesterday seemed like a mildly exciting lark was now turning out to be something more serious, and Tracy wasn’t sure if she could get out of it. Jaff needed her to get rid of any unwelcome callers, for one thing, though he said she wasn’t a prisoner. She could just walk away, she supposed, and leave Jaff to his fate, but for some reason she didn’t want to do that. It wasn’t only the thought of leaving him in her father’s house alone, she really wanted to be with him, wanted the adventure, so see it through, whatever it was. She did care about him. She just hated being kept in the dark. She wanted a bigger part in his plans. And she felt cut off from the world without her mobile. It scared her.
The cottage was also a total mess already, with empty wine bottles all over the place, stains on the carpets and furniture, and those CDs and DVDs scattered all over the entertainment room floor. Tracy wasn’t by nature a vandal, or even a messy person, and this chaos disturbed her. She had tried to clean up a bit last night, but had been too stoned to make much of a dent.
She was probably a fugitive, too, now. Or at least people might start to think so. Rose, for example. The police knew all about Erin and the gun, certainly, though there had been nothing on the news yet to indicate that they had found out it belonged to Jaff, or that they were even aware of his existence. But Tracy knew from her dad’s work that they often kept things back from the public. It doesn’t always do to put your sirens on at full volume when you want to sneak up on someone and catch them unawares.
They could be closing the net at this very moment, Tracy thought; the cottage might already be surrounded. Then she admonished herself for being paranoid. Most likely, Erin had gone into one of her long silences, and the police couldn’t be too hard on her because they’d just killed her father, which had been on the news late yesterday.
That had knocked Tracy for a six. Mr. Doyle was a nice man, she remembered. He always gave her and Erin money for ice cream when they were kids playing in the street and the Mr. Whippy van came around. He’d taken them both to the Easter Fair in Helmthorpe once, Tracy remembered, when her dad had to work, as usual, and Mr. Doyle had let Tracy and Erin go on rides like the waltzers, the dodgems and the speedway. Her dad would never have let her go on them at her age then, just the boring swings or the merry-go-round with all the little kids.
Jaff stirred, threw the sheets back and got out of bed. It was almost midday, but then it had been another late night of wine, joints and movies. And sex. “I’m hungry,” he announced. “Why don’t you go down and make us some breakfast while I have a shower?”
“What did your last servant die of?” Tracy muttered as she dragged herself out of bed.
“What?” said Jaff. “What was that you said?”
“Nothing,” Tracy replied.
“Yes, it was.” Jaff held her chin. “You made some remark about servants. You think I should be a servant or something? Is that what you mean? Because my mother’s from Bangladesh? Because of the color of my skin?”
Tracy shook herself free. “Jaff, that wasn’t what I meant at all, and you know it wasn’t! It’s just a saying we have here when people ask you to do things they could easily do for themselves. For crying out loud, get a grip.”
“I know what fucking sayings you have here,” said Jaff, pointing his thumb at his own chest. “Where the fuck do you think I come from? Straight off the boat? I fucking grew up here.”
“All right, Jaff! I didn’t mean-”
“People never do. They just assume. All my life people have assumed things about me.” He pointed at her. “Don’t assume.”
Tracy held her hands up in mock surrender. “Yes, sir,” she said. “Sorr-ee.”
“And don’t take the piss.” Jaff glared at her. Tracy could hardly believe at that moment that she had once thought his eyes gentle and beautiful. They were cold and hard now, his mouth sulky. “You’d better mean it, Francesca,” he said at last, his voice a little softer but still not without a trace of menace. “I hate people who make assumptions about me. You don’t know what I am. Who I am. You know nothing about me.”
“Fine,” said Tracy, beginning to wish she’d never brought Jaff to her father’s house, wishing she’d never met him, never fancied him, never kissed him on the dance floor, never made love with him all night. She felt like crying. “I’ll just go and make some breakfast, shall I? Bacon and eggs do you okay?”
Jaff smiled. “Fantastic. And a big pot of coffee, too, babe. Good and strong. I’m off for that shower.” Then he simply turned and walked away whistling as if nothing had just happened between them.
Tracy stood there slowly shaking her head. She would have liked to have used the bathroom to clean herself up a bit first, but it was a small cottage, and there was only one. Instead she went downstairs and washed her hands and face in the kitchen sink. She realized she was still trembling a little. Jaff could be cruel without knowing it.
Tracy could hear the shower running upstairs as she gathered together the food for breakfast. A fry-up was the easiest option, she thought, if not healthiest, so she dug out a couple of frying pans and put them on the rings, adding liberal dollops of cooking oil. Cooking wasn’t exactly one of Tracy’s fortes, but she did know how to fry eggs and bacon, and you needed plenty of hot oil to splash over the eggs to get the tops done properly. First she put the coffee on, then she got the bacon crackling and turned her attention to the eggs. But before she put them in the pan, she fed two slices of toast into the toaster, then glanced toward the breakfast nook.
Tracy bit her lower lip as she thought about what to do. Jaff’s hold-all was on the bench behind the breakfast table. If she wanted her mobile back, which she did, now was probably the best chance she was going to get. He probably wouldn’t even notice it was missing. The bacon was spitting and sizzling and the coffee pot making its usual gurgling sounds as it turned water into black gold. Tracy hoisted the hold-all onto the table and unzipped it.
What she saw inside took her breath away, but not so much that she didn’t first reach in and rescue her mobile, slipping it into a zipped pocket of her new shoulderbag. Then she went back to make sure that her eyes weren’t deceiving her. But no. There it all was, laid out for her to see. Wad after wad of twenty- and ten-pound notes, fastened with rubber bands. And mixed in with them, several brick-sized packages of white powder wrapped in plastic. She counted four altogether. Cocaine, Tracy thought. Or heroin. Four kilos, probably. She delved deeper, thrusting her hand between the wads of cash until, underneath everything, it touched something cool, hard and metallic.
It was only when she had her hand around the handle of the gun, still deep inside the hold-all, that she noticed Jaff leaning against the doorjamb, a white towel wrapped around his waist and a sheet of paper in his hand, head cocked to one side, watching her, a curious smile on his lips, but not in his eyes, she noticed, not by a long chalk. Christ, she thought, I should have trusted my instincts and run while I had the chance.