She tried to call Tina but the only phone boxes she came across did not accept coins and she had no other means to pay. The thought of ducking into a restaurant or shop and begging use of their phone did not appeal. Her face had been too widely shown for that to be a safe option.
For the first time she felt truly isolated. Isolated from people she could trust—people she’d believed she could trust. She knew she couldn’t reach out to her family even if she knew how to get in touch.
Don’t call a number for so long and it fades from the memory.
By the time she had reached the north-eastern edge of the Common itself she’d been almost in pieces, unable to go forwards or back. The realisation that Lytton was not there—might never have been there—was the last punch that knocked the stuffing out of her.
She sat for a long time on the bench furthest from Long Pond, hunched over, staring at the ground in front of her feet. It was covered in fallen horse chestnuts from the trees nearby, cigarette ends and the kind of soft drink ring pulls that were supposedly redesigned to reduce litter.
There were no model boaters on the pond itself, just a resting squadron of Canada geese. The traffic behind her formed a constant drone enlivened only by the regular overhead hum of jets stacking for Heathrow out to the west.
Kelly heard none of it for the insistent voice in her head.
I should have left sooner—if I went there at all.
But she was only too aware that people who are desperate will do desperate things if the price is right. She couldn’t find it in her to hate Elvis for what he’d done but wondered if Tina would ever forgive her for breaking the kid’s bones. Maybe one day she’d find out.
Besides, Harry Grogan had offered ten thousand pounds to anyone who’d give her up. Money like that was life-changing to half the people who lived in Tina’s block. And they were used to keeping an eye out, watching the comings and goings, watching their backs. It was only a matter of time before someone sold her out.
The wind was surprisingly chilly, blowing in all the way across the flat expanse of the Common. Kelly shivered and hunkered down a little further into her hooded sweatshirt, glad of the baseball cap even if it did leave her ears exposed to the cold.
She became aware that the summer, such as it was, had turned definitely into autumn when she hadn’t been looking. There was a smell of dead leaves and wet wool in the air. Before long it would be getting dark.
She needed food and a safe place to hide—or at least somewhere she could slip through the night unnoticed by either Grogan’s touts or the police.
Wearily, Kelly got to her feet. She headed for the Clapham Common Tube station just as the evening commuter rush was beginning to pick up. Most people were fairly unobservant. Better to hide in the crowds and make her pursuers work for their money.
She rode the Northern Line all the way up to King’s Cross tucked in a corner feigning sleep for most of the journey. By the time she emerged from below ground it was dark outside, the notorious surrounding streets garish with shabby lights and crawling traffic. Kelly grabbed a carton of food from a cheap noodle bar whose internal security camera was obviously a fake. She was served by a Korean man whose English was barely adequate to work the till. She hoped she would be one indistinguishable bedraggled white face among many to him. She avoided eye contact anyway, just in case.
The food took away the shakes if not the melancholy. She kept moving, grabbing rest in half-hour snatches in quiet doorways, using her backpack as a makeshift pillow and keeping her arm wrapped firmly through the straps.
Even dressed as she was, Kelly received half a dozen propositions—mostly from nervous middle-aged men in slow-moving cars. She simply shook her head and kept walking. A couple of times, guys who were clearly pimps touting for fresh meat asked if she was OK—did she need food, money, a place to sleep or something to take the edge off? Kelly ignored them too and they didn’t push the issue. They knew enough not to force it when another day or two at the most and she would be seeking them out.
What Kelly did a lot of during that long night was try to get her head together.
By the time the first faint smears of daylight appeared in the eastern sky she had decided on a plan of action.
She was tired of running. Giving up was not an option. If she was going to stay out of prison again she needed to find out why. Why was she worth that kind of money to this Grogan character? What had she done that he might want her to the tune of ten grand?
And the only way Kelly knew to go about that was simply to gather and follow the evidence, the way she’d been trained to do.
71
“Miss Olowayo, is it?”
Even with her eyes closed Tina could guess what she was going to see when she opened them. The owner of that voice, the way the question was phrased, it had cop written all over it.
Wondered when you’d get here . . .
She let her breath out slow and risked it. Sure enough the guy hovering in the hospital room doorway carried himself tough, almost cocky. She didn’t like the shrewd look in his eye though, like he’d heard it all and seen more. If she had to deal with them at all, Tina preferred her cops dumb.
She straightened in the uncomfortable visitor’s chair by the bed not sure if the creak she heard was from the plastic or her bones and jerked her chin towards the newcomer’s jacket.
“Let’s see it then.”
The man sighed as he reached for his warrant card. Tina took it from him and compared the photo to the face, going over it a careful twice. Detective Inspector Vincent O’Neill.
She returned the ID as if losing interest, her eyes sliding back to the still figure under the sheets. They’d partially shaved his head in theatre. Elvis was gonna hate that she thought, more than anything. There was a ventilator tube holding his lips parted, dressings covering one eye and his reset nose. His arm was busted so they’d told her, and most of his ribs like he’d been stomped on.
Tina didn’t know for sure what had gone down. Elvis hadn’t woken up in the ambulance on the short ride to King’s College Hospital which had the nearest A&E Department, nor since he’d come out of surgery. They weren’t saying if they expected him to wake at all.
She thought about a future stretching away where she was alone again. The possibility hurt like a son of a bitch.
All in all, it had been a long night and it was nowhere near over yet.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” O’Neill said, straightforward, without the ‘had it coming to him, sooner or later’ attitude Tina had been half expecting.
She swallowed. “Me too.”
He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and leaned against the door jamb. Tina took in those wide shoulders and wasn’t fooled by the relaxed pose—he was blocking her escape and they both knew it.