“So what do we know about all this business with Jacks?” Quinlan asked settling back into his chair behind the desk. “Was she having a tumble with the lad Douet d’you think? Was it friction over the job—lover’s tiff gone bad?”
“He was practically half her age,” O’Neill pointed out.
Quinlan grinned from behind his cup. “Since when did that ever stop anything?”
O’Neill shrugged and took a sip himself. The coffee was thick as treacle but twice as bitter. He only just held back a cough.
“That’s true enough sir. And Jacks is not looking bad for someone who’s done time, I’ll say that for her,” he allowed, adding lightly, “Maybe claiming innocence kept her youthful.”
Quinlan’s face was brooding. “You’re not going to drag up the Perry case again are you? That kind of thing never reflects well on the force.”
“No sir.”
“Is that ‘no sir’ it doesn’t or ‘no sir’ you’re not?”
“Either—or both.” O’Neil sighed and rubbed a hand around the back of his aching neck. “Still, it’s weird that she went so far as to leave a bag of blood at the scene for us to test.”
Quinlan cradled his cup in his lap and rocked the chair a little, lips pursed.
“Bit on the macabre side,” he agreed. “Do we even know for sure it’s her blood?”
“Not yet sir.” O’Neill forced a smile. “We are always having it drummed into us about the cost of lab work.”
Quinlan’s answering grin was brief. “Don’t get cute with me, sonny,” he warned. “OK. Let’s get it tested—‘get the cat a budgie and hang the expense,’ as my old gran used to say. See if we can match it to Jacks before we go any further.”
“What about the tox screen?”
“Hmm. The obvious stuff to start with. After all it’s pretty bloody clear she was there and it’s not as if this is the first time she’s gone off the rails.” He put his empty coffee cup down onto the desktop. “We tried like hell to prove she didn’t do it last time. I know—I was there. But that didn’t work out well for any of us in the ‘mud sticks’ department. And this time around there’s racial implications to add to the mix as well. We all need to keep our wits about us this time around—including young Dempsey.”
“Yes sir.”
Sensing dismissal O’Neill put down his coffee cup and rose.
Quinlan nodded. “All right Vince. Keep me up to speed on this one. The press are already having a field day but I’ll keep them off your back as much as I can. The longer it goes on the more they’re going to parade out Jacks’s record and wave it in our faces. Let’s try to put a lid on this thing before that happens and we all end up in the brown sticky stuff, eh?”
“Yes sir,” he repeated.
Somehow, O’Neill reflected as he jogged down the stairs, it made it worse that the chief super hadn’t chewed him out over letting Jacks slip through their fingers. He hadn’t needed to—O’Neill felt bad enough about that without any help from on high and the headache tightening its grip around the base of his skull was proof of that. There was a packet of cigarettes already gripped in his hand like a weapon as he headed for the fire exit prepared to bite the head off anyone foolish enough to get in the way of a nicotine fix.
“Boss?”
O’Neill spun at the call, scowling furiously. From the panicked look on DC Dempsey’s face he knew the young detective had just been handed the short straw.
“What?”
“Erm, there’s just been a phone call for you—”
“Unless it’s someone with the precise current GPS coordinates for Kelly Jacks it can wait,” O’Neill ground out already moving again.
“Erm, not really, boss.”
O’Neill stopped, turned with slow precision and glared at his junior officer. “Oh for God’s sake Dempsey, spit it out.”
Dempsey swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously above the knot of his tie. A weedy lad who looked younger than his years, the last remnants of his teenage acne warring with clusters of freckles. “Erm it’s someone called Allardice. Claims he knows you,” Dempsey said still hesitant. “And he claims he knows Kelly Jacks too.”
O’Neill felt some of the anger uncoil itself from his neck and shoulders, the black buzzing cloud lift a little from his vision. Regretfully he put the cigarettes back in his pocket.
Maybe—just maybe—he’d finally caught a break.
“Well, he should know Jacks,” he said as he strode back along the corridor. “Allardice was the one who arrested her last time.”
42
“Will I pass?”
Matthew Lytton glanced up from his laptop and found his fingers faltering on the keys of his laptop. Kelly Jacks stood in the doorway to the private washroom that came adjoined to all the office suites at the racecourse, one hand on the frame. At his attention she let go and walked sedately into the office itself.
“Wow,” he said with quiet awe, pushing back from the desk a little to take in all of her. “Quite a transformation.”
And it was. Gone was the loose confident stride, the wild black hair, the stud through her nose. In its place was the sway of heels, a sleeked down style and understated makeup.
The dress was lavender with a short matching jacket. And while the particular shade had complemented Veronica’s cool English rose looks, it looked stunning against Kelly’s darker colouring. She’d damped down her hair and used a couple of grips to tame it into place.
Earlier that day he’d been fascinated to watch Kelly calmly scale a wall onto a low roof and from there onto an extension, moving up and on without fear or hesitation as she headed for the aerial access to her flat.
When she slid back into the Aston afterwards hardly out of breath he’d mentally pigeonholed her into a category that put her way outside his scope of experience. No man likes to think he’s with a woman who can manage perfectly well—if not better—without him.
And yet when he’d persuaded her to come to the racecourse, to take her onto Veronica’s turf, he’d known he’d have to disguise her in some way. Perhaps he’d just been experimenting to see if it could be done.
He reflected now the answer to that one was a resounding yes. The two women couldn’t have been more different in colouring, height or style but the dress was an acceptable length and fit and the two of them took the same size in shoes.
Now she regarded him with a wary frown as he rose and came forward.
“Are you sure this doesn’t feel creepy?” she asked. “Dressing me up in her things?”