Revenge of the Tide (24 page)

‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

‘He’s back,’ Lucy said.

‘Who’s back?’

The door to the manager’s office opened then and to my horror Ian Dunkerley came out. He’d lost weight, but his smug expression hadn’t changed. He fixed me with a defiant stare that looked as though it had required some effort to produce.

‘Genevieve,’ he said. ‘When you have a moment…?’

I stared at him, mouth open, while he collected papers from the printer and went back into his office, leaving the door ajar.

Oh, God. Not him, not him again.

‘Don’t keep him waiting, whatever you do,’ Gavin said helpfully. ‘He’s not in the best of moods.’

I didn’t even put down my bag, or take off my coat. I went into Dunkerley’s office and stood in the doorway.

He was behind the desk, tapping away at his keyboard as if he’d never been away. ‘Shut the door,’ he said.

‘I’d rather leave it open, if it’s all the same to you.’

‘You’re half an hour late,’ he said. ‘Why’s that?’

I didn’t reply. It felt as though the world was caving in around me.

He stood up, straightened his trousers, and came around the desk towards me. I took a step back, away from him, at the same moment wondering why I was afraid of him. If anything, he should be afraid of me.

‘You thought I was gone for good, huh?’ he said, so quietly I could barely hear. He was close enough for me to feel the warmth from him, smell his powerful aftershave.

‘I hoped you were,’ I said.

‘Well, unlike you, I am a professional. I take my career very seriously. And I should point out that I have been working with the police to prosecute your –
friends
– for their assault on me. And the police have been very interested in you, too.’

I bit my lip. He had to be lying. Whatever else he was, Dunkerley wasn’t stupid – there was no way he’d report the incident to the police, not after the warning he’d had.

‘Now, I’m prepared to put all this behind me. I suggest you do the same.’ He turned and went back to his desk.

I felt sick to my stomach as I left the room, closing the door behind me. Gavin and Lucy had gone out somewhere, and the main office was empty. I sat down at my desk and logged on to the network, my head in my hands as I waited for the emails to load. I looked at the list of unread emails in the inbox: four or five from customers, relating to contracts I was working on. And then twelve emails from Ian Dunkerley, one after the other, starting at 07:24 this morning. The subjects of the emails included ‘New working practice’; three called, simply, ‘Meeting’; one at 09:01 entitled ‘Timekeeping’; and finally, as I watched, a thirteenth: ‘Office dress code’.

I closed the email window without reading any of them and opened a new Word document.

Ten minutes later Gavin and Lucy returned with their cardboard lattes from the coffee shop on the ground floor, laughing about something and chatting without a care in the world.

‘Everything okay?’ Lucy asked, seeing my face.

‘Not really,’ I said, retrieving the single sheet from the printer.

‘What’s up?’

I couldn’t even bring myself to answer her. I folded the letter, not bothering to put it in an envelope, and took it with me along with my bag and my coat to the CEO’s office on the next floor. There was a meeting going on.

‘Will it take long?’ I asked.

Linda, the PA, looked at me blankly. ‘Could be ages,’ she said. ‘Anything I can do?’

‘I’ll wait, if that’s okay,’ I said. I couldn’t face going back downstairs; the thought of having to see Dunkerley again, or even explaining any of this to Lucy and Gavin, was almost too much.

I watched the clock above Linda’s head creep slowly round. Was I really going to do this? Surely this wasn’t me – I’d never given up on anything in my whole life. Was I going to let that horrible man get the better of me? I should be fighting this. And yet, the thought of having to carry on…

Ten minutes.

The lift doors opened and Lucy emerged. I thought to myself,
You took the lift?
She looked at me and handed over some reports to Linda.

I don’t know if it was Lucy’s presence that made me move, or simply that I couldn’t stand being here for a minute longer. I got up and went to the office door, opened it wide. Simon Lewis, the CEO, was sitting at his conference table with three other people, one of whom was a client I’d worked with on a major project last year. The conversation stopped abruptly and they all turned to look at me. I strode over to them and put the folded letter on the table in front of Simon.

‘Genevieve? What’s going on?’ he said, and despite my dramatic and unannounced visit his voice was so kind I almost regretted it, almost took the letter back and apologised for the intrusion.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to go.’

I shut the door behind me and walked straight past Lucy, who was standing by Linda’s desk with her mouth open. I took the stairs – not the lift – and by the time I got to the ground floor I was almost running. I went out of the building through Reception and, despite my heart thudding with the enormity of it all, the relief that I was never going to go back there was sudden, and immense.

The cab took me straight home. I had a hot bath and, after lying awake for a while thinking about everything that had happened in the last two days, I finally managed to sleep. When I woke up in the afternoon, I put on a skirt and sandals with a denim jacket and headed out with my sunglasses to catch the bus to Victoria Station.

It was busy, packed with commuters making their way home. I took the escalators to Victoria Place, and then up again to the part of the mall where various food and drink outlets circled a central, open-plan eating area.

I looked around but there was no sign of Arnold, or anyone else I recognised. Not sitting anywhere obvious, anyway. I bought a coffee from the burger place and sat down on a hard plastic seat bolted on to the table, where I could see the escalators and anyone coming up them. I was still early.

A few seconds later, someone tapped me on the shoulder and I looked around, startled.

To my surprise and relief, it was Dylan. I barely recognised him; he was wearing jeans and boots, a shirt unbuttoned with a dark grey T-shirt underneath. I’d never seen him in anything other than a suit.

‘Come with me,’ he said.

I took my coffee and my bag and followed him around the other side of the complex to a few tables and chairs that were tucked away behind a coffee kiosk.

‘This is a nice surprise,’ I said, sliding down into a seat opposite him.

He nodded. ‘Yeah. Never seen you in daylight before.’

‘And?’

‘You could do with getting out in the sun.’

‘Cheers. And you look like you could do with laying off the vodka for a while.’

It was true, he looked rough, his skin lined and his eyes red and tired. He hadn’t shaved and there was a rasp of stubble over his face as well as over his head, showing the shape of where his hairline would have been, if he’d ever let it grow.

‘What can I say? It was a late night.’

I couldn’t get over how different he looked, how – normal. He was like any other bloke out having a coffee on a Monday afternoon.

‘How do you feel?’ he asked.

‘I’ve felt better,’ I answered. ‘I’ve had such a crappy few days.’ There were no bruises visible from where Arnold had grabbed me, even though the skin around my mouth felt tender. My arms were sore too, where he’d held me down, but nothing you could see.

‘How’s the boat-buying going?’

‘I went to look at some last week,’ I said, ‘thank you for asking.’

‘So you’ve got enough money, then?’

‘No. I’ve got just about enough to buy the boat, but not enough to renovate it properly and take time off, which is all part of it. I can’t do one without the other. So I need to do a bit more saving. I’ll have to ask Norland if he’ll increase my hours. Or maybe Fitz will ask me to do another one of his parties.’

He was watching me steadily, evaluating.

‘What?’ I said at last, feeling worried about the intense expression on his face.

‘I could help you,’ he said, his voice low.

‘Help me with what?’

‘Help you with the money side of it.’

I ran through the possibilities. Whatever we were doing here, it wasn’t something he wanted to discuss in front of Fitz. Which meant he was taking a huge risk.

‘What do you mean?’

‘How much would you need to be able to leave London by, say, the end of this month?’

Two weeks away. In other words, how much money did I need now?

‘At least fifty grand,’ I said, after a moment, feeling my cheeks flush.

‘I can do that,’ he said, without hesitation.

I wondered what I’d got myself into. If it hadn’t been for Dunkerley, I would have probably said no. ‘So…?’

‘I need you to look after something for me.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a parcel. Not very big. I need someone to hide it for a couple of months. Maybe not even that long. You’re the best person I know.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Just hide it and don’t let anyone get it. That’s it.’

‘And for that I get fifty grand? Like, to keep?’

‘Yours to keep.’

‘What’s the catch?’

‘The catch is, it’s not something you want to be caught in possession of. And after you leave, you won’t be able to come back. You’ll have to walk away from the club for good. You get me?’

I paused, drank the last of my coffee while I considered his offer. He watched me without blinking. He wasn’t nervous at all, which made me wonder what was at stake here.

‘Where are you going to keep your boat, anyway?’

I shrugged. ‘Depends where it is when I buy it, I guess. The boats I saw on Thursday were in Kent. There was one I liked.’

He nodded, ‘Kent. That’d be alright.’

‘Does that make a difference?’

‘Far enough away for it to be safe, near enough for me to come and collect it from you.’

‘When will you collect it?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll give you a phone. When I’m ready to come and get it, I’ll ring you to arrange a meeting. Is it a yes, then?’

It had been a yes from the moment he’d agreed to fifty grand.

‘I guess it is, Dylan.’

He smiled his best Dylan smile and offered me his huge meaty hand to shake. ‘Deal.’

I felt a curious sense of release, as though I’d been holding on to a thread somewhere that had finally snapped. I could go. I could afford to buy a boat, and I had enough money to take a year off, maybe even more than a year.

I
was back to planning my fantasy bathroom on the table in the dinette when I heard steps on the pontoon followed by steps on the deck and a woman’s voice that called out, ‘Genevieve Shipley? Hello? Can you come up, please?’

I went up to the wheelhouse.

On my deck were two people, a man and a woman, both of them wearing suits. The woman showed me her card. ‘I am DS Beverley Davies; this is my colleague DC Jamie Newman. I wonder if you have a few moments to talk to us.’ She spoke fast, as if she was in a tearing hurry and had no time for dissent or explanation.

I felt afraid, as though I had been caught in the act of doing something I shouldn’t.

‘What’s it about?’

‘It would be good if you could come with us, Genevieve. We need to have a talk.’

‘What – now?’

‘Yes, right now.’

‘Where did you say you were from?’

‘We’re from the Metropolitan Police Serious Crime Directorate.’

‘But – Jim Carling –’

‘DC Carling knows we are here. He told us where to find you. He did say you wouldn’t mind helping us out with a few questions, Genevieve. It won’t take long.’

I guessed she was trying her hardest to be encouraging, but all I could think of was how I could persuade her to fuck off and leave me alone.

It wouldn’t work, though. Maybe if I went along with her and answered her stupid questions they would go away and not come back.

‘I’ll just get my shoes,’ I said.

‘Mind if I come with you?’ Jamie Newman asked me. ‘I’d like to see your boat.’

‘Sure,’ I said, and went down the steps into the cabin, leaving the door open for him to follow me.

He stood there watching me while I pulled on my boots and did up the laces. He wasn’t interested in the boat at all, for other than a cursory glance around the cabin he hadn’t taken his eyes off me.

They knew about the package, I thought. Or at least, they knew I had something on here to hide. Carling had told them. Newman was here to make sure I didn’t move or destroy whatever it was.

I gave him a tight smile, grabbed my keys and the two mobile phones from the dinette table and went back up to the wheelhouse.

‘Two phones?’ he asked, while I locked the door.

‘One of them’s got a crap signal on the boat; the other one’s got a crap signal everywhere else,’ I said, as if that explained everything.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked from the back seat of their Volvo. I’d never been inside a police car before, marked or unmarked.

‘Medway police station,’ Newman said. ‘They’ve kindly offered to let us use one of their interview rooms. Saves us a trip back to town with you.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t we just have had a chat on the boat?’

They didn’t answer. I wondered if they’d got other people on there now, searching it.

I watched the streets of Rochester as they passed, thinking of the boat and the package and what it could possibly be. Something I didn’t want to be caught in possession of, he’d said. Which meant drugs, several kilos of them, hidden on my boat and waiting to be found.

The following weekend at the Barclay was my last.

It wasn’t even a proper weekend, just the Saturday night, and even that was cut dramatically short.

All week I’d been working up to going back there, telling myself that Arnold wouldn’t be there, that I’d be careful about private dances from now on, I’d check that someone was in the
CCTV
room when I was dancing, I’d ask who it was who had booked me – all of that crap. In reality I was going to hand in my notice. I was working up to that, too.