I looked up. “She’s in trouble.”
Bill grunted. “How’d you work that one out from a conversation about baking?”
I turned to eye him coldly. “Because there’s no way my mother would be making tarts a week before they were needed. She’s a perfectionist, and they’d be stale.”
Bill’s grunt became a snort. He rammed his chair back and got to his feet as if he could no longer bring himself to sit through such crap. I let him take half a dozen paces.
“Quite apart from the fact that my father has never sent me his love in twenty-seven years, she called me Charlie,” I said quietly. “She never does—absolutely hates it. They both do. I was always Charlotte at home, right up until I joined the army. She told me once that nothing reminds her of me as a soldier quite like hearing that name.”
“So you think she might be trying to make some reference to your military career? Then the comment about not seeing enough of you,” Parker said. He never took notes and his recall was practically recording quality. “You think it might indicate she needs that kind of help?”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “But the real clincher was the fact she mentioned the Hetheringtons,” I said. Bill had stopped and turned back almost in spite of himself. “No way are the Hetheringtons going for dinner at my mother’s tomorrow night.”
“Right,” Bill said. “Another cryptic clue?”
“Well, they certainly wouldn’t be able to eat much,” I said coldly. “Seeing as they’ve both been dead for five years.” I looked from Bill to Parker to Sean. “They lived not far from my parents for years. Nice people. They were shot and killed by intruders who broke into the villa where they were staying on holiday in Turkey.”
“So that wasn’t the radio in the background,” Parker said grimly.
I shook my head. “She never has the radio on when she’s cooking—too distracting,” I said. “There are people in the house with her, right now. And I can only imagine what they’ve threatened to do to her, but it’s made my father prepared to ruin himself to prevent it.”
CHAPTER 7
“On behalf of your Delta crew we’d like to be the first to welcome you to Manchester and hope you have a safe and pleasant journey to your final destination today. Local time is eight-thirty.”
The flight across the Atlantic had been uneventful. We’d left JFK at 8:30 in the evening, New York time, and landed apparently twelve hours later, after a seven-hour flight. I still had trouble sometimes getting my head round the mechanics of international time zones.
We’d had enough of a tailwind to arrive early and been forced to stack, the pilot spending twenty minutes or so giving us hard-banked alternate views of Cheshire countryside and the sprawling conurbation that makes up the Greater Manchester area. The fields below were muddy, and the houses seemed very small and very close together. None of them had a swimming pool in the back garden. I missed America already.
Bill Rendelson had taken care of our travel arrangements. He claimed he’d only been able to get us into Economy at such short notice, but when we boarded half the seats in Business Elite seemed to be empty and they wouldn’t let us move forwards, despite our frequent-flyer status. As we trudged along the jet bridge into the terminal building, I felt gritty of eye and knotted of neck.
We trailed blearily through Immigration, collected our bags off the carousel and wheeled them out down the “Nothing to Declare” channel at Customs. It was a short walk across the Arrivals hall and then we were assaulted by the smell of diesel and cigarette smoke and the thin damp chill of a rapidly approaching British winter.
Sean had relinquished all day-to-day control of his own close-protection agency, based just outside London, in order to join Parker Armstrong’s outfit, but he’d called in favors. Madeleine Rimmington had first become a partner and was now the boss, so I was surprised to find she was the one waiting for us at the curbside, looking as polished and poised as ever. The contrast with my own rumpled appearance was as stark and irritating as ever, too.
“I didn’t expect the executive treatment,” I said once we’d thrown our bags into the rear of one of the company Mitsubishi Shogun 4 × 4s and climbed in.
“You think I’d pass up the opportunity to see you both?” she said, smiling over her shoulder as she pulled out into traffic. She was wearing her long dark hair in a chic French pleat and had a thrown-together casual elegance that I reckoned probably took her several hours every morning to achieve. But it could just have been me acting bitchy. For some reason, I’d never quite liked Madeleine as much as she’d seemed to like me. “You’re looking well, anyway—nights spent in police custody notwithstanding.”
“Bad news travels fast,” Sean said. He was in the front seat, so I couldn’t see his face, but his voice was dry.
Madeleine grinned at him as she shot out onto a roundabout, cutting up a Skoda minicab with cheerful disregard. She had clearly taken advantage of her new position to book herself on all the latest defensive and offensive driving courses.
“Well, come on, Sean,” she said as she sliced through the thickening morning traffic. “You get caught, with a principal, in a police raid on a house of negotiable affection, and you don’t expect word to get round? It’s the most exciting piece of industry gossip I’ve heard in ages.”
“Some people need to get out more,” Sean muttered. “And it wasn’t a client.” He glanced back at me. “It was Charlie’s father.”
“Oh my goodness,” Madeleine said faintly, and laughed. “Oh, I’m sorry, Charlie, but I would never have thought he was the type to—”
“He isn’t,” I said shortly. “Where are we going, by the way?”
“I came up last night and stayed at the Radisson,” she said, controlling her amusement to become brisk and businesslike again. “I got a room upgrade, so I don’t have to check out until three. I thought you’d probably like to head back there and grab a shower and change before you get started.”
“Ah, Madeleine, you are an absolute wonder,” Sean said, with enough lazy affection to send my hackles rising unnoticed in the backseat.
She flushed, pleased. “The restaurant’s not bad, either.”
Considering Madeleine’s long-term boyfriend was now a top chef in London, that was high praise.
“We don’t have time to eat,” I said, abrupt. The shower I could do with. Going into a situation tired was always bad practice, so anything we could do to freshen up was an operational necessity. I knew we should refuel, too, but the way my stomach was clenched tight, I didn’t think I’d keep anything down. Eating could be done later, once the job was done.
We walked confidently through the hotel lobby without our presence being questioned, and took the lift to the ninth floor. Sean was enough of a gentleman to offer me first use of the shower and I stayed under it for as long as I dared, hands braced against the tiles, letting the stinging spray pound my neck and shoulders.
There had been a time, not so long ago, when I hadn’t been able to stand having hot water played directly on the bullet wound in my back. Not having to think about being careful when I showered was still enough of a treat to be savored.
When I eventually emerged, scrubbed pink and dressed in a clean polo-neck sweater and jeans, it was to find Sean and Madeleine sitting at the low table by the window, heads bent close together as they pored over a pile of paperwork that no doubt related to the agency. Both glanced up at my reappearance and I could have sworn a flicker of annoyance passed across Madeleine’s face at the interruption, but I recognized my bias against her.