“That’s Brian Stubbs,” O’Neill said. “He’s Harry Grogan’s resident vet.”
She gave the picture more attention, thought she saw a haunted desperation captured in the man’s tired eyes. When she went to slide the picture into her backpack O’Neill calmly took it back. Being caught with it she realised would lead to all sorts of awkward questions for both of them.
“Even if I found him I don’t have any right to question him and he certainly doesn’t have to give me any answers.”
O’Neill slipped the picture away and buttoned his jacket. “You’re a resourceful girl Kelly. I’m sure you’ll work something out.”
Girl, she thought. I’m older than you are sonny.
“I was a crime-scene tech not an investigator.”
“You trying to persuade me to nick you after all?” He cocked his head on one side, stared down at her. “I’ve read your file Kelly, you were an excellent investigator.”
“Nevertheless I don’t think I can do this on my own.” She wasn’t sure as she said it if she was asking for his help personally or simply permission to involve someone else.
His expression flickered. “That’s your decision,” he said. “Just bear in mind—if you were set up last time—that takes a coordinated effort rather than a series of blunders by people who had access to all the evidence. Not just whoever was in charge of the case but whoever took care of the crime scene.” He paused meaningfully. “Be careful who you trust Kelly.”
Kelly got to her feet, the dizziness in her mind very little to do with lack of food or sleep and threw him a troubled glance.
“Does that include you?”
77
O’Neill stood under the café awning and watched the slight figure hurrying away towards the Tube station at Lambeth North. He thought of the cellphone in the inside pocket of his jacket. If he made the call now he could have her picked up before she went underground.
He let her go.
After all, he’d told Kelly that her flat was a safe haven. Bearing in mind that she seemed able to get in and out of the place without being seen from the street, the chances were she’d take the risk and go back. If it came to it he could always reacquire her there even if it meant laying in wait inside.
But that was a last resort.
O’Neill sighed. He’d taken the risk and planted the seeds. All he could do now was hope something fruitful grew from them.
He turned away, flicked open his phone and hit speed dial. “Dempsey?” he said when the call was answered. “How’s it coming with the tail on Frank Allardice?”
“Fine boss,” Dempsey said. “A couple of our guys picked him up outside his hotel this morning and they’ve been on him ever since.”
“Well remind them not to get too close. Allardice might be an old bastard but that doesn’t mean he’s not still a canny old bastard.”
78
For the last ten minutes Ray McCarron had been fumbling with a jar of instant coffee, trying in vain to get it open one-handed. Finally he wedged the body of the jar into a kitchen drawer and leaned his hip against the drawer front while he twisted off the lid with a grunt of triumph.
The effort left him breathless, perspiration sheening his forehead. He sank gratefully onto a stool, chin on his chest, not moving until the boiling kettle caught his attention. He watched it bubbling furiously for a second or two. It seemed more intent on steaming the blown-vinyl paper from the ceiling than clicking itself off.
McCarron eyed the appliance malevolently. “Don’t you start,” he growled. It was only when he got laboriously to his feet that the kettle took the hint and subsided.
He had discharged himself from hospital that morning, unwilling to put up with the disturbed nights and being treated like a half-witted geriatric for any longer. Just because a man was over sixty didn’t mean he’d entirely lost his marbles.
Not that McCarron wasn’t grateful—for the most part. The surgeons had done a remarkable job piecing his elbow back together which was the worst of his injuries. It was now encased in a glass-fibre cast that was supposed to be lighter and less cumbersome than the old plaster of Paris, even if it didn’t feel that way.
He’d managed to satisfy them that his skull was solid enough to withstand a few knocks without going Humpty Dumpty on them. Although they’d initially suspected internal bleeding, a few nights’ observation had proved this fear unfounded. And if his ribs hurt like the devil, it was bearable if he didn’t laugh, cough or breathe too deeply.
He was, he told them, a tough bastard who didn’t break easily and he had proved this by managing to walk out to a waiting taxi more or less unaided. Then he shook with delayed reaction most of the way home.
Once back in the empty house in Hillingdon he half-regretted his bravado. Sure they’d packed him off with enough painkillers to dose an army but McCarron had never liked taking anything stronger than aspirin.
And besides, all the pill bottles had childproof tops that were more or less impossible to remove with only one working hand.
He shuffled over to the kettle, discovering when he got there that the sugar bowl was empty. He leaned against the counter and closed the eye that wasn’t still half-closed from the beating. And he wondered at how such a mundane task—one that he’d normally accomplish while reading a report and with a phone clamped to one ear—could possibly have become so damn difficult.
The loud knock at the front door made him jump which was not a good idea for a number of reasons. The stabbing pain in his ribs knocked the breath out of him again and as he swung around the cast caught against the open jar of coffee. It skittered across the worktop and went smashing down onto the kitchen tiles scattering brown ant-like granules along with splinters of broken glass across the entire floor.
McCarron tried instinctively to save it falling. A mistake. By the time the haze of pain had lifted enough for him to see clearly, Kelly Jacks was standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Kel for God’s sake!” he mumbled through stiff lips. “What are you doing here?”
“I heard the crash,” she said. “Don’t move until I’ve cleared up this glass. You should have slippers.”
McCarron looked down at his rumpled socks. “I do,” he said, rueful. “Couldn’t get the bloody things on.”
But he kept still until she’d found a dustpan and brush from the cupboard under the stairs and swept him a clear path back to the stool. He went meekly, too shocked to put up a fight.
“What are you doing here?” McCarron repeated, watching her start methodically cleaning up the floor a square at a time the way he’d trained her to do. He didn’t ask how she’d got past the front door which he knew he’d locked behind him. “Not just here in my kitchen but here at all?”