“I’m good at my job, Stella. I can’t go on apologizing for it.”
“But things will be different, when you’re promoted-”
“No, they won’t. I’ll only have more responsibility, and you wouldn’t like it any better.” He smiled at her, trying to ease the sting. “Besides, there must be dozens of blokes with trust funds dying to take you away for a country weekend.”
Her pale blue eyes grew hard. “Meaning you don’t care?”
“No, of course I care. I only meant-”
“You’ve found some bloody policewoman to shag, haven’t you, Dougie?” she spat at him, crossing her arms tightly beneath her small breasts.
“No, I – I only want what’s best for both of us,” he protested, cursing the flush he felt staining his cheeks. “Stella, listen-”
“You always were a lousy liar, Doug, and too innocent to walk God’s earth. What do you think I’ve been doing all those weekends you couldn’t be bothered to join me?” She saw his shock and smiled. “What did you expect, Sleeping Beauty?” Turning away from him, she began retying the folded quilt. “Now, just bugger off, will you, and don’t keep your prison wardress waiting.” The raffia snapped in her fingers.
The address in Ealing wasn’t on the golf course, but near enough that Cullen thought Nigel Trevelyan might have felt justified in fudging his geography a bit. The house was detached, built of rose-colored brick with white trim, set back on a tree-lined road.
As he pulled up across the street, Cullen saw yellowed newspapers piled in the shadow of the porch, and a collection of advertising circulars decorating the doorknob. He swore aloud. No wonder the people hadn’t answered their bloody telephone.
Now he really was buggered. He’d used up his last lead, and a good part of a morning that could have been spent pursuing something more productive. The day, which had begun with such promise, had darkened, and a splatter of raindrops rattled across the windscreen on a gust of wind.
Well, he could at least talk to the neighbors, find out if he had the right Trevelyans. He sighed and reached for the door handle, then sat back, resting his hands on the steering wheel, as he replayed Stella’s parting words once again. Stung pride and guilt and relief jumbled all together in his mind, and he couldn’t begin to sort them out. There would be time for that, he knew, and time for regret, as well, but now he had a job to get on with.
Checking for oncoming traffic before reaching again for the door handle, he glanced in the side mirror and froze. A girl was walking up the street towards the house and his car. Young, brunette, she trudged head down, hands laden with two plastic carrier bags. He caught only a glimpse of her face as she shrugged her hair back with an irritated twitch of her shoulder, but he would have known it anywhere. He had seen it, over and over, on a loop of security cam videotape.
Chloe Yarwood looked younger than she had in the film, and thinner. Her skirt was too short, and made her white legs look oddly vulnerable, rather than sexy. As she passed the car, he reached for the cold coffee in his console and glanced away from her as he sipped. That was the one good thing about his old Astra – the car that had so humiliated Stella – it attracted no notice at all.
Once Chloe had passed him, he watched her again, openly. She turned into the drive of the house and walked, not towards the front door, but towards the back of the property, and he saw what he hadn’t noticed before – there was an outbuilding at the end of the drive, set back behind the house. When she reached it, she transferred both bags to one hand, unlocked the door, and slipped inside.
Cullen jumped out of the car and followed. He didn’t want to give her time to get comfortable. There were no cars in the drive and he hoped he’d caught her alone. It was only as he knocked on the door that he remembered Nigel Trevelyan didn’t have a driving license, but then it was too late for caution.
There was no answer, and not a peep of sound from within. The quiet seemed suddenly to hold a palpable sense of fear, and he knew she was listening just the other side of the door.
“Chloe Yarwood? I’m Detective Sergeant Cullen, from Scotland Yard. I’d like a word with you.” He waited, then knocked again. “Come on, Chloe. I know you’re in there. If you don’t open up I’ll have to call for a patrol car. I’m not going away.”
Another long minute passed. “Chloe!” He’d raised his hand again when the door swung open. Chloe Yarwood stared out at him. She looked ill, and terrified, and relieved.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I thought you were them.”
The story came out in bits and starts, between small hiccupping sobs. Cullen sat beside her on an old sofa covered with a woolen horse rug. The place had obviously been converted from a garage at some point in its history. The floor was still concrete, covered only with a couple of dirty rugs, and the interior walls were unfinished. There was a small cooker and fridge to one side, and a curtain that he assumed hid the bathroom facilities. The room’s only ambience came from the half-dozen Harley-Davidson posters tacked to the bare board walls. It was cold, even now, on a fairly mild day, and Cullen thought the place must be unbearable in winter.
“Where’s your friend Nigel?” he asked, wanting to settle that little matter straightaway.
Chloe seemed to take it for granted that he knew who Nigel was. “Gone to France. His family’s there for the month. They have a farm in Normandy.”
“And he didn’t take you with him?”
“He didn’t want any trouble. I can’t blame him. It wasn’t Nigel’s fault – none of it was. He said I could stay here, as long as I wanted.”
“That was good of him,” said Cullen, and Chloe nodded, seemingly unaware of the sarcasm.
Now that he knew he didn’t have to worry about Nigel Trevelyan popping in unannounced with a shotgun or a blunt instrument, he relaxed a little and studied her more closely. It was hard to see a trace of the smiling girl in the photo Kincaid had found at Tia’s flat. “Why don’t you start from the beginning, Chloe, and tell me why you went to your father’s warehouse on Thursday night.”
“You know about that, too? How did you-”
“Security cam in the building across the street. It caught you and Nigel going in.”
“Oh.” She didn’t ask who had identified her from the photo, and he didn’t volunteer the information.
“Come on,” he encouraged. “What were you doing in the place?”
“There were these blokes, see.” She pulled at the hem of her skirt, which had ridden up even farther when she sat down. “I’d been to this club, in the West End. My mum gave me a little money, when I moved out from Dad’s, but then Tia didn’t charge me rent…”
“And?”
She hesitated, picking at a spot on her cheek, then locked her fingers in her lap and said with a sigh, “There were cards. I won a bit at first. But then I lost. They let me keep playing, these blokes, saying I’d be sure to make it back. And it was fun. It was like, every time, anything was possible. But I kept losing.”
So it was not Michael Yarwood who had been gambling, but Chloe. It all began to make sense. Doug didn’t bother to tell her that the mark always lost, and that the only reason they’d let her ride so long was that they’d seen the potential for making a bigger profit.
“And then” – she gave another little hiccup- “then one night they turned me away from the table. They – they told me how much I’d lost.” She paled even at the memory of it. “They said I had to give them the money. When I said I didn’t have it, they said I’d have to get it or – or they’d hurt me.”
“They wanted you to ask your dad?”
Nodding, she tugged harder at the skirt. “But I couldn’t. He’d kill me. I mean, it was one thing to make him mad over things like moving out or not finishing my school course, but this – something like this could ruin his career.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t. They gave me a few days, and I thought if I just didn’t go back to the club…”