“I don’t know about that sweetheart,” he said at last. “You may not have a dick but you’ve certainly got balls.”
He moved round the armchair and sat down, ignoring the way she darted back as he approached.
“So,” he said, “you think I’ve put a price on your head for interfering in my business in some way, is that it?”
“More or less.”
Again there was no immediate reaction. He took another sip of whisky, swallowed and then let out a low chuckle.
“Care to share the joke?” Kelly asked, aware of a tart edge to her voice.
“The joke?” Grogan said. “The joke is sweetheart that I’m just a simple businessman—have been for years.”
“Businessman. Is that a euphemism?”
He smiled more fully now, the kind of smile she guessed was not supposed to be entirely reassuring. “One-hundred percent legit.”
“Doing what?”
“Corporate takeovers, property development, import/export—import mainly. I source goods overseas, bring them in, sell them on and make a profit. Same as a thousand other entrepreneurs—only probably a damn sight more successful than most of them. Even Customs have given up tearing apart every load looking for contraband.”
Kelly frowned. “So what’s with the Russian thug outside?”
Grogan shrugged, an expansive gesture. “I have a lot of dealings with Russia. It makes sense to employ some locals. They have a lot of fine craftsmen over there in need of international markets and I provide one of those markets—at great financial risk to myself.”
“Yeah and no doubt great financial reward also.”
“Fortune, as they say, favours the brave.” He paused, eyed her and took another sip. “You should know.”
Kelly felt her certainties crumbling and her focus with them. She shook her head. “I don’t get it. Everybody thinks you’re some kind of gangster.”
“My dad was a gangster—ran with the Krays.” Grogan leaned back, almost reflective. “I had a quite a few interesting ‘uncles’ as a kid. But he died an old man in prison and I decided a long time ago I didn’t want to go out the same way.”
“So, miraculously you’ve lived an innocent and blameless life?”
“Like you, you mean?” he shot back. “Everybody thinks you’re a murderess sweetheart—tried and convicted once, time served. And now it looks for all the world like you’ve run true to form and done it again.” He cocked his head regarding her, waved the hand with the glass. “Want to take a quick poll and find out how many members of the Great British public believe you didn’t do it?”
“No,” she said at last, voice stark. “Why are you telling me all this? Won’t it blow your fearsome reputation?”
“Maybe it would.” He chuckled again, a throaty rasp of sound. “But who are you going to tell?”
97
Ray McCarron was struggling one-handed again. This time he was attempting to manoeuvre a metal box-file out from its entangled corner of the spare bedroom upstairs. The room was too small to fit anything other than a child-sized single bed and had long since been consigned to a junk store for things waiting in vain to be taken up to the attic.
Without his wife to nag him to carry out the second part of this task the room had gradually filled so the door would barely open wide enough for him to squeeze through with his cast.
By the time he’d uncovered the box and wrestled it from its dusty hole Ray was exhausted, sweating and light-headed. Then as he backed out carefully—but not carefully enough—he bumped his bad arm against the door handle and the box-file spilled from his suddenly nerveless fingers.
This time Ray did not make the mistake of trying to catch it. He could only watch as the file landed upside down on the tiny landing, bounced once and disappeared round the newel post. The clatter and crash as it hit random treads on the way down the staircase seemed horrendously loud inside the empty house.
“Bugger,” he said, not having the breath for anything more.
As he edged to the top of the stairs he found an avalanche of spilled paper and torn manila folders. His shoulders drooped in defeat. Sorting through it all had been a hard enough prospect before and now it would be ten times harder.
Very slowly and with much wincing he sat down on the top step and reached for the nearest folder. Lifting it caused more of its contents to slither further down the slope but half the pages still remained clinging to the overstressed paperclip inside.
Ray dragged the folder onto his lap. On the front cover was the familiar crest of the Metropolitan Police. Above the crest was a date more than six years ago and in stark underlined block capitals the words:
MURDER OF CALLUM PERRY
“I’m sorry Kelly love,” McCarron murmured. “But better late than never, eh?”
He took a deep breath and opened the file.
98
“If you’re not after me then who is?” Kelly asked. It should have been a demand—she formed the words that way inside her head but by the time they emerged it had fallen more to the level of a plea. “They murdered my friend, almost crippled my boss, put a young lad into a coma.” She looked up more fiercely now. “And they’re using your name to do it.”
“Oh I’ll take care of that, sweetheart don’t you worry,” Grogan said, his voice rich with a grim promise that contradicted his earlier claims. The glass was empty in his hand. He glanced into the bottom, rose out of the trainer’s armchair. “Sure you won’t join me?”
Kelly shook her head.
It wasn’t until he’d refilled his drink that he said, “Tell me what you meant about Veronica Lytton’s ‘so-called’ suicide.”
Kelly didn’t reply immediately, just watched him regain his seat with a wary eye. She remained standing although she had put down the shotgun—it now rested barrels-up against the hinge side of the door frame. The gun was within easy reach but would be hidden from anyone entering the room.
Back when Kelly had been a CSI she’d once found a rifle left in just such a position—after a firearms team had supposedly cleared the building. The memory lingered.
As did the memory of the blood spatter in the bathtub at Matthew Lytton’s luxurious country house. And because she couldn’t think of a good reason to withhold the information she told Harry Grogan what she’d found and the warning that had been impressed on Ray McCarron afterwards.
“An interesting tale,” Grogan said when she’d finished, without giving any indication from his face or voice if he found it fanciful or not. “Funny thing is, Lytton always refused to have anything to do with me while his wife was alive.” He regarded her with solemn humour. “I don’t think she approved of my breeding—unlike that grey colt you were threatening outside.”