The Villain’s Daughter (47 page)

Guy leaned down and kissed her forehead. ‘It looks that way. I’m sorry.’

‘But if he hasn’t come back, why was I being threatened?’

‘Maybe someone started a rumour. Maybe it was the Weasel who set the ball rolling. He needed a few quid, knew Terry was coming out of jail soon, and decided to stir up a hornet’s nest. If he claimed he’d seen Sean—’

‘So Jenks must have known that my dad . . .’ She paused, the word sounding suddenly weird on her lips. ‘He must have known that he’d been involved in Liam’s murder.’

‘Well, he worked for Terry for long enough. I doubt if there was much he didn’t know . . . except for who your real father was, of course. That was one little secret that Terry managed to keep well hidden.’

Iris frowned. ‘But that still doesn’t explain why the Streets were threatening me. Why did Danny come to Tobias Grand & Sons? Why did they hire some thug to follow me around? Why would Terry let them do that? Why would he allow them to scare me half to death?’

Guy gave a sigh, his lips briefly touching her forehead again. ‘If I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt, I guess it’s just about possible that he wasn’t aware of what was going on. He was still inside when all this started, wasn’t he? The last time he saw the boys, before being released, was probably at my mother’s funeral. Jenks turning up with some news about their brother’s killer isn’t the type of thing they’d have wanted to discuss over the phone so maybe Chris and Danny went ahead on their own. Terry might have only found out about it when he got home.’

‘And if you’re not giving him the benefit of the doubt?’

Guy gave a light shrug. ‘He gets his scumbag sons to do his dirty work, to put the fear of God in you, and then he tells them to back off. The great long lost father comes riding to the rescue. It would be one way to get you on side, wouldn’t it?’

‘Jesus,’ Iris said, a hand rising to her mouth. She felt the revulsion rise in her again. How could she be that man’s child? ‘I don’t even understand why he
wants
me to know I’m his daughter. What’s the point after all these years? Why couldn’t he just leave me alone?’

‘Because you’re his, Iris. You’re a piece of property, a possession, something that
belongs
to him. It’s nothing to do with love. That man wouldn’t recognise love if it kicked him in the balls. I guess while my mother was alive, he didn’t have much choice in the matter, but now . . .’

‘Do you think she knew about the affair, about me?’

Guy gave another shrug. ‘There wasn’t much she didn’t know when it came to that bastard.’

‘So why did she stay with him?’

His voice, when he answered, was filled with bitterness. ‘Why do you think? Christ, she was willing to give up her own son if it meant she could live in comfort for the rest of her life. You think she’d have left him, sacrificed her entire future, just because Terry couldn’t keep it in his pants?’ He stopped and mumbled ‘Sorry’ into the crown of her head. ‘I shouldn’t be talking like this. I just wish I’d known, that she’d told me, and I could have saved you all this grief.’

Iris lifted her face to look at him. Her mouth was trembling. ‘Nothing could have made this any easier. No matter how I heard it, or who I heard it from.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I guess not. But at least you could have been prepared.’

Another thought rose quickly to the surface. ‘God, they don’t know who I am, do they? Chris and Danny, I mean. They don’t know I’m their half-sister.’ They would be as happy, she was sure, to hear the news as she had been.

‘If they don’t, they soon will. It’s not as though he can keep it from them now.’

Iris groaned into his shoulder. If only she could make it all go away. ‘How could she?’ Iris whispered. ‘She’s my mother and I thought I knew her but . . . God, ten years of skulking around behind my dad’s back.’ And Sean O’Donnell
had
been her father in every real sense. He’d been the one to read her bedtime stories, to hold her hand as they crossed the road, to comfort her when she fell over. She thought of how he must have felt when he’d found out. No wonder he’d gone out and bought himself a gun. She could sympathise with the desire to shoot Terry Street straight through the bloody heart. ‘He should have taken me with him when he left. I wish he had.’

‘I’m glad he didn’t,’ Guy said. He lifted her face again and his eyes sought out hers. ‘We can get through this. I promise.’

Iris began to cry, great heaving sobs as if all her emotions had suddenly been unleashed. She gripped the back of his shirt with her hands. ‘I’m scared,’ she wailed through her tears. ‘I don’t know who I am any more. I don’t know what Terry wants. I don’t know—’

Guy wrapped her tightly in his arms. ‘I won’t let him anywhere near you. I promise. I’ll take care of you, Iris. I swear I’ll never let anything bad happen to you ever again.’

It took Vita a while to find her husband. Rick was slumped in a corner of the Dog & Duck, looking somewhat the worse for wear. She sat down beside him and he immediately started to talk about Michael. His eyes were tired and bloodshot, his face slightly sweaty, and there was a damp stain on the front of his white shirt where someone had spilt half a glass of red wine as they pushed past. He’d been drinking heavily all afternoon and had now fallen into that rather rambling state of mind where one road led on to another but no destination ever seemed to be reached.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen Iris?’ Vita said, interrupting his monologue.

‘Iris?’ he repeated. For a second he appeared confused as if the name didn’t mean anything to him, but then sighed into his pint and said, ‘She thinks Michael was murdered, doesn’t she?’

‘Don’t worry, she’s not pinning it on you. Not yet at least.’

‘She thinks the Streets did it.’

Vita stared at him. ‘Who told you that?’

His heavy shoulders lifted in a shrug. ‘Bound to, isn’t she.’ He lifted the glass to his mouth, took a drink and placed it back on the table. ‘Perhaps she’s right. I wouldn’t put anything past Danny Street. That bastard would have done it with a smile on his face.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Vita said. ‘I thought you didn’t believe in all that stuff about her dad coming back. Michael certainly didn’t.’ She paused. ‘Unless he told you something he didn’t tell me.’

‘It might not have been to do with that.’

‘What are you talking about?’

Rick seemed about to tell her, but then clearly changed his mind. ‘Nothing,’ he murmured. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It obviously does matter or you wouldn’t have mentioned it.’

He peered at the wall for a few seconds, at a spot just above her head and then slowly lowered his gaze. Suddenly, his whole body stiffened and his eyes widened in alarm. ‘Shit, Vita. What if I’m next? What if Danny Street’s coming for me too?’

Thinking all this was down to some drunken leap of the imagination, she started to laugh. ‘Don’t be crazy. Why on earth would he—’

‘Michael just wanted a bit of cash,’ Rick said quickly. He leaned forward, the words tumbling out of him. ‘An emergency fund. You know, in case he had to scarper. With Terry coming out of jail and . . . he couldn’t be sure, you see . . . it was different when Lizzie was alive, but when she was killed, it changed everything. All deals were off. You know what I mean?’

Now Vita was starting to get worried. Her stomach twisted a little.

‘Michael said he’d give me half if I helped him. I needed the cash. With Candice wanting this ski trip, with all the bills and everything . . . well, it’s not right that you have to pay out all the time.’

‘Helped you with what? Jesus, what are you saying?’

Rick looked quickly around, checking that no one was within earshot. ‘It’s to do with Toby Grand,’ he said. ‘Gerald Grand’s son.’

‘What about him?’ Vita had never been introduced but knew him by sight. In fact, she was sure he’d been here earlier. He was a young blond guy who Iris had occasionally talked about - a guy, if she remembered rightly, who had a pretty high opinion of himself.

Rick took a deep breath. Then he took another drink. ‘Shit,’ he said again.

‘Tell me. Tell me what’s going on.’

He stared at her for a while, his fear of Danny Street clearly vying with the consequences of confession. ‘It was at Lizzie’s do,’ he finally said, ‘at the Hope & Anchor. Toby was high as a kite, completely off his head. He got talking to Michael after Iris had left, started dropping hints about Danny Street and his
unusual
interests.’

Vita frowned. ‘What kind of interests?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

Vita was starting to lose patience. ‘For God’s sake, just spit it out. I’m a lawyer for Christ’s sake. You think I haven’t heard it all before?’

‘Okay, okay. He had a fascination with bodies, women’s bodies, and I don’t mean the living breathing kind.’

Despite her earlier protestations, Vita started. She jumped back in surprise. She hadn’t been expecting anything quite as gross as that. ‘What?’

‘Yeah,’ Rick said. ‘He’s a fucking nutter.’ He stopped briefly, ran his tongue across his lips and then continued. ‘Anyway, Michael kept on at him - at Toby I mean - trying to wheedle out whatever information he could. He said he didn’t believe him, that he was making it all up. Which, of course, made Toby even the more determined to prove it. He ended up by telling Michael that Danny Street had offered him five grand if he’d let him . . .’

Vita shook her head. She felt sick inside. ‘You’re kidding?’

Rick dropped his head into his hands. ‘I wish I was.’ He grabbed for his glass again and sank most of what remained of the pint. ‘Michael decided it might be worth following Toby around, just to see if he might actually . . . and found out rather more than he expected. That he was seeing that woman for example - you know, the one who does all the embalming.’

Vita’s head was starting to spin. ‘Alice Avery?’ she said.

‘Yeah. Not Toby’s type at all. And then Michael saw the three of them coming out of Tobias Grand & Sons late at night. And I mean late. After midnight. There was no good reason for them to be there. He put two and two together and figured that Toby might just have made all Danny Street’s dreams come true.’

‘No,’ Vita said. Her chest felt tight. ‘He couldn’t have. He
wouldn’t
.’

Rick, as if unwilling to meet her eyes, glanced up at that spot on the wall again. ‘Michael figured we could use it, you know, to put a bit of pressure on.’

As the penny gradually dropped, Vita stared at him, aghast. ‘You were blackmailing Danny Street?’

‘No,’ he hissed, ‘of course not. And keep your voice down.’ He looked around again. ‘It was Toby we went for. You think I’m bloody stupid?’

‘You want an honest answer to that?’ Vita wasn’t just feeling scared now, she was feeling angry too. And something else was welling up inside her: a deep and ugly disappointment. Five minutes ago she’d had a husband who . . . well, she couldn’t have said that she trusted him absolutely, but she wouldn’t have believed him capable of anything as morally corrupt as blackmail.

‘Okay, so it wasn’t the smartest move in the world,’ Rick said bitterly. ‘And I know it was wrong. But that kid gets paid for doing fuck all. He struts around like he owns the place - which he will one day, without ever having lifted a finger. And I get paid a pittance for whatever scraps of work they decide to throw my way.’

‘And that’s a good enough reason to blackmail him?’

Rick pulled a face. ‘It wasn’t as if he was going to miss a couple of grand. We didn’t really have anything on him, except for his rather dodgy relationship with Alice. And we figured that had to be connected to this business with Danny Street. I mean, why else would he be screwing her?’

‘Perhaps he likes older women.’

‘Yeah, right. She’s hardly Joan Collins, is she?’

‘No,’ Vita said, ‘she’s about twenty years younger. And perhaps she has other qualities like honesty and kindness.’ Vita couldn’t keep the contempt from her voice. ‘So you asked him for money in exchange for keeping your mouth shut.’

Rick was either too drunk or too self-absorbed to realise how disgusted she was. ‘It had to be me who approached him. Michael didn’t want Toby to know he was involved. He was worried about Iris, about the kid making things difficult for her at work.’

Very considerate, Vita thought to herself.

‘I told Toby I knew what he’d been doing, that I’d seen the two of them coming out of Tobias Grand & Sons in the early hours. I said I’d tell his old man everything unless he paid up. He laughed it off at first, said I was talking crap until I mentioned about how I’d seen Alice Avery too - and how they seemed to have got pretty cosy recently - and that perhaps, if pushed, she might be more forthcoming than he was. He started to panic then, said it wasn’t what I thought, that they’d actually been buying some coke off Danny. However, as he didn’t want his father to know about it, he was willing to pay just this once.’

Vita put her head in her hands. She thought about how she’d defended him against Iris’s accusations. When she glanced up again, she wasn’t sure who she was looking at. Where had her husband gone? Where was the funny, charming man she’d been sharing her life with for the past four years?

‘You knew what he’d been doing and yet you still . . .’

‘I’m not proud of it, love,’ Rick said. ‘And as it happened, Toby didn’t come up with the two grand anyway. I met him outside Belles. He only gave me twelve hundred, swore that was all he could lay his hands on. I gave half of it to Michael and the rest was . . . shit, you know what happened to the rest. It was lifted by some little toerag.’

Vita sighed as she remembered Duggie handing over Rick’s wallet in her office. She’d had all sorts of ideas about where the cash might have come from, but never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined the truth. ‘And you didn’t think, not even for a minute, that Danny Street was going to get the hump over this?’