And when the worst of it was over, her skin warm against him, his shirt wet from her tears, he kissed her on the neck and she twisted up her face and kissed him close alongside his mouth where her fingers had caught years before. “Lynn.” He said her name and she kissed him again, lips moving over his, the first touch of her tongue. “Lynn.” She wriggled her mouth away and he said, “I’m getting a cramp in my leg, I’ve got to move.” And then she laughed and so did he, and they were sprawled, half on the chair, half on the floor, the cat clambering between them.
“My wine,” she said, still laughing, though there were tears smudging the corners of her eyes. “I don’t think I can reach it from here.”
Resnick could, just, and he leaned across and handed it to her and they both drank, from the same glass, until it was empty. Then Lynn looked at him squarely and said, “I should go” and he said, “You don’t have to, you know,” and she said, “1 know. Thank you. But I think I will,” and she started to disentangle her legs from his until they were standing face to face, the dark around them, not quite touching.
At the door, he checked she was okay to drive and she assured him she’d be fine. He asked when was the funeral and she told him three days’ time. He almost said, did she want him to come, but held his tongue.
“Thanks.” She had the car keys in her hand.
“What for?”
She smiled. “Supper. The bath.”
“Take care.”
“You, too.”
He stood there watching as the tail-lights of her car faded around the curve in the road, and longer than that, trying to recapture the feeling of her mouth on his, Dizzy watching him reproachfully from his perch on the stone wall beside the path.
Forty-one
Cassady had cleared out his safety deposit box at the bank, transferred five thousand from his personal account into the one he shared with his wife and withdrawn the rest. Walking back to where he’d parked the car, he punched a number on his mobile phone. “Jacky. Yes, it’s me. On the way now. Right. Yes, love you too.”
She arrived in Cinderhill first, fair putting the wind up Preston. Jacky breezing in with her own key, hold-all slung over one shoulder. “Hi, you must be Michael. I’m Jack. Jacky.” Smiling as she held out her hand.
More than a touch of the tar brush about her, Preston thought, skin a sort of Milk Tray color, though she sounded north of the border. A looker, though-tight jeans tucked down into her boots, white top that could have been put on with paint.
“That the wife?” he asked, when Cassady arrived twenty minutes later.
“Don’t,” Cassady said, “be so fucking stupid!”
Jacky kissed Cassady on the mouth and lightly cupped his crotch.
“It’s like Dodge City out there all of a sudden,” Cassady announced. “Not that it’ll do us any harm. But we’ll make our move tonight, Michael, I’m thinking. Not tomorrow.”
“Why the rush?” Preston asked.
“My inside man. A mite nervous all of a sudden, too many of his colleagues buzzing round, asking questions.” He looked at Preston. “That’ll not affect your plans? For after, like?”
Preston shook his head: now everything was so close, the sooner the better.
Planer owned a pied-à-terre in west London and a villa in the Algarve; where he lived was a listed building in Southwell, the house set back from the road, a brick archway with an electronically operated wrought-iron gate barring access from the street.
It was a fine night, clear yet mild. Even this short distance from the city it was possible to see more stars in the sky. They would need, Cassady had said, no driver tonight, no extra risk. This not being a case of in and out, piston sharp. Preston was pleased with that. Pleased to be sitting there in the passenger seat of the BMW, the short barrel of the Uzi hard against his knee. Two thousand it had cost, Liam had been sure to tell him. Two grand and worth every penny.
“How much longer?” Preston asked.
Cassady looked at his watch, the details illuminated green in the dark of the car. “Two thirty,” he said. “We go in at two thirty.” He angled his wrist round toward Preston. “Four minutes from now.”
“What’s so special about two thirty?”
Cassady shrugged and smiled. “Sometimes he watches the late-night movie before turning in.”
Finney had drawn for him the layout of the house. Shown him where to find the control box for the alarm, the whereabouts of the safe-not the obvious one in the second bedroom, the decoy with fifty quid inside and a copy of his will-no, the real McCoy. Of course, all this had cost him, the combination to the safe most of all, and Cassady had been glad to pay. Expenses to be recovered from Preston’s end when it was done.
What had cost him more, though of a different kind, had been the code controlling both the gate and the front door. Planer’s housekeeper, her son had a virulent crack habit in need of constant fueling. Pulling on his gloves, Cassady had a nasty thought the combination of numbers and letters he’d committed to memory might have been changed. The sort of precaution someone as security conscious as Planer might easily have taken. “Okay,” he said, the minute hand flicking round to signal the half-hour. “Michael, let’s go.”
Getting out of the car, Cassady had a sudden vision of jacky, waiting for him back at the house in Cinderhill, upstairs in the bedroom probably, sheet pulled up to her chin, eating cereal and watching one of her favorite videos, Something Wild, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Married To The Mob. Jacky, who would be Michelle Pfeiffer if she could.
The buttons on the gate control were small and shiny, chrome against matte black. A second, maybe two, in which the muscles of his stomach knotted tight, then Cassady heard the click of the mechanism and when he pushed against the curve of iron, the gate swung back.
He’d left the shotgun locked in the back of the car, no need. A canvas bag, loose over one shoulder. Michael had the Uzi, for God’s sake, armament aplenty.
The same combination, in reverse, let them through the front door. The box controlling the alarm system was in the closet to the left of the paneled wall. Cassady knew that the first-floor landing, the windows, the door to Planer’s bedroom and study were all alarmed. The last switch to the right. Cassady levered it carefully upward and the system went dead.
When he eased back the closet door, it squeaked and Preston, advancing down the hall, brushed against a low oak table as he turned, scraping the legs along the floor.
Both men froze.
Small sounds only, no more.
Nothing moved.
The housekeeper went home every evening between nine and nine-thirty; the gardener and odd-job man who slept in the basement was away visiting family in Glasgow. Planer’s daughter was in her first year at Swansea, reading philosophy; his two sons were boarders at Oakham School. His recently ex-wife was in Santa Cruz de la Palma, living off the proceeds of the divorce. The blackjack dealer with whom he was having an affair had left at a quarter to one.
Planer aside, they had the place to themselves.
Cassady drew level with Preston and flicked on the pencil torch. The study was down three steps and to the left. The brass handle stuck and then turned.
Books were shelved floor to picture rail along two sides; an old-fashioned roll-top desk, big enough to hide a man inside, took up most of the third wall. There was another desk toward the center of the room. Two broad armchairs upholstered with studded leather, one with a green-shaded reading lamp close behind it, a Dick Francis on the table nearby, an empty whisky glass.
“Now,” Cassady said quietly, “just give us a hand.”
Working from either end, they maneuvered the rolltop far enough away from the wall to give them access to the safe. This was the series of numbers he’d not been able to commit to memory; the Gold Standard business card he’d written it on was in his back pocket.