They moved outside with their hot chocolate. It was loud out there with the rumble of the railway line crossing a low bridge behind them, the constant traffic drone and the intermittent buzz of an air-wrench at the tyre place next door. To complete the set, a police helicopter hovered high overhead.
The songs of the city, Kelly thought wryly. I’ll miss them.
“You’ve led us quite a dance,” O’Neill said then. His voice was cool enough that she could glean nothing from it.
She held out both hands, wrists handcuffs’ width apart. “So what’s stopping you?” she prodded. She gestured towards her hot chocolate, the café in general. “Has the Met introduced a felon service-charter I don’t know about?”
“Let’s talk,” he said, needlessly stirring his drink. But he didn’t seem in any hurry to start a conversation.
Eventually Kelly sighed. “So how did you know where to find me?” she asked, then hesitated. “Someone from the lab?”
“No—your former colleagues were very tight-lipped,” he said. “Although having Matthew Lytton pay for the tests gave them a plausible deniability if they’d needed it. Nice touch.”
He’d done his research before he’d laid in wait for her. Somehow the thought made her feel better—that she hadn’t been caught on an off chance.
“Not intentional,” she said with a faint smile. “I simply didn’t have the money.”
He nodded, accepting the candour. “Your friend Tina, on the other hand, is pretty upset about her toy boy.”
Kelly thought again of the slim blade, saw it slicing the air as Elvis slashed at her. “I’m upset about it too, but the little sod pulled a knife on me. He had it coming.”
“Really?”
Kelly heard the dry doubt in his voice and realised she was going to have a hard time proving any of it. Even if she could retrace her steps and find the alleyway in Camberwell, the chances of the knife still being lodged in the drain were minuscule. And all practical forensic trace would be long washed away.
“I don’t think he’ll be pulling a knife on anyone for a while,” O’Neill went on. “But overreacting the way you did is hardly going to help your case.”
“Overreacting?” She heard the acidic note and throttled it back. “Is that what he told you?”
“Broken nose, cheekbone, right arm, four fingers, most of his ribs, punctured lung, severe concussion and a dislocated thumb. With your previous, Kelly, they could easily bump it up from GBH to attempted murder.”
Even though she noted his use of they instead of we Kelly felt her heart step up. “Wait a minute,” she snapped. “Broken ribs? What the hell are you talking about?”
The café door opened and the girl from behind the counter brought out their toasties, molten cheese and ham in a deceptively harmless-looking package. O’Neill waited until she’d gone back inside.
“I’m talking about the fact that having inflicted a catalogue of injuries you’re not going to be able to claim self-defence here. Not by anyone’s standards.”
“I didn’t . . .”
Kelly’s voice trailed away as her brain caught up. She tightened her focus on him, said dully, “It’s hardly worth wasting my breath to say I didn’t do it, is it?”
O’Neill tried an experimental bite of his food that was hopelessly premature. Kelly watched the steam escape. He grimaced and put the toastie aside to cool.
“I’m all ears.”
Kelly took a deep breath, tried to let it out slow and steady. “OK, I did break his nose,” she admitted. “Probably the wrist too. Like I said—he tried to stop me leaving the flat, pulled a knife on me. I did what I had to, to take it away from him, and then I left.”
“And he didn’t try to stop you again?”
“He wasn’t saying much at that point.”
“So the intercranial bleed is on you as well is it?”
Kelly flushed. “I checked his airways and put him into the recovery position with some support under his head,” she said, defensive. “Then I left, OK?”
He nodded slowly. Kelly couldn’t tell if he believed her or was just playing along, trying to give her enough rope for a noose.
“So who finished the job for you?”
Kelly’s recall presented her with a snapshot of Ray McCarron, lying weak and suddenly old in his hospital bed. She pushed for objectivity, risked a bite of her own toasted sandwich while she tried to obtain it.
McCarron’s assault had been cold, calculated, professional. This was amateur to the point of childishness. Did that mean two separate hands were at work? Or the same with differing motives. The first beating had clearly been a warning. The second, by the sound of it, a punishment.
She looked up, found O’Neill watching her closely.
“Why don’t you ask Elvis who did it?” she countered.
“If he ever comes round maybe I will.”
Kelly fell silent again, eyes on the traffic. An amphibious yellow duck-tour bus came past on its way to the river, filled with goggling tourists in wet-weather gear.
“It seems somebody’s put a price on my head—a kind of bounty,” she said without any colour in her voice. “Elvis was trying to collect on it.”
“From who?”
She shrugged, unwilling to lay out all her cards. O’Neill leaned forwards.
“I can make this official if you like, Kelly and maybe—just maybe—you’ll see daylight again before you’re a very old lady.” He waited a beat. “But somehow I doubt it.”
“So why the cosy little chat? What’s there to talk about?” she demanded, provoked beyond sense, hearing the anguish break through when she’d been so desperate to hide it. “If you think I’m so obviously guilty what the hell are we doing here?”
75
O’Neill didn’t answer immediately partly because he wasn’t sure why he was doing things this way.
Maybe because there isn’t another way to do them.
“Just tell me who you think offered the reward, Kelly,” he said in that quiet almost kind voice he utilised to convince the most hardened criminal they’d feel so much better if only they confessed.
“A man called Grogan,” she said baldly as if expecting him to know the name.
He did, but that didn’t mean it was the one he’d been expecting. “Harry Grogan?”
“That was my information, yes,” she admitted stiffly. “From what I’ve been able to find out his veneer of respectability is so thin you could practically read newsprint through it.”