The Blood Whisperer (21 page)

The adrenaline that had fired her escape from the racecourse had receded leaving her tired, heavy-limbed and aching. Her face felt bruised and tender, already starting to swell around her cheekbone. And her hands shook with reaction like she was suffering a chemical withdrawal. She kept them tightly gripped around the pack on her knee and thought back to events in the tunnel below the stands.

This time he had a weapon and still I attacked him.

Remembering brought on a sense of panic so acute she could hardly breathe.

Wait a minute
—this
time . . .?

The realisation drenched down over her in a slow wash, freezing her skin to shivers. The combination finally slotted into place and the lock inside her mind opened up just like the padlock on the chain around the gates. One moment it was shut fast and she was struggling uselessly and the next it lay exposed in her hands.

The man at the racecourse was the same man at the warehouse on the Isle of Dogs—one of them at least.

She’d known it partly when she saw him walking towards her. The way somebody moved was individual and distinct. Even so that might not have been enough.

But the smell of him . . . that was something else again.

Scent is one of the strongest triggers for memory. Coffee, fresh bread, newly mown grass, lilies. They all produced strong accompanying mental images for Kelly. She sometimes focused on them during the nastier cleanup jobs. It was the only thing that stopped her heaving.

But this was a combination of odours—some kind of sharp citrus aftershave mingled with tobacco and another faint mechanical note that was harder to define. Not unpleasant in itself just . . . associated with violence in her mind.

The violence of Tyrone’s death.

Oh yeah, he was there.

She cursed herself again for not stopping to question him, search him, but at the time her only priority had been getting away from there as fast as she could. It wasn’t just the man who’d come after her she had to worry about.

It was who had sent him and why.

She kept circling back to Veronica Lytton’s death. Was that the start of all this? Or did it start six years ago with another rigged suicide? She couldn’t see what linked the two deaths other than herself. And if someone had indeed set her up the first time around why do it all over again now?

But she couldn’t deny the path of evidence—from the Lytton job via Ray McCarron’s beating through to Tyrone’s death. Ray had warned her not to go turning over rocks and the only person she’d told that she was going to keep looking was Lytton himself, the morning he’d sought her out at the dead junkie’s flat.

Kelly swallowed back tears of self-indulgent sorrow. After today there was no denying it. She refused to believe that she’d been followed out to the racecourse by chance. Lytton’s Aston might be easily recognisable but nobody had any reason to suspect she was with him.

Not unless he told them.

The thought rose bitter and unbidden but there was no way around it—he was the only one who knew where she’d be. And although she didn’t trust Lytton’s partner Warwick as far as she could have thrown him, by the time he and his wife arrived in the restaurant there surely would not have been time for the man in the leather coat to be summoned for an abduction. Maybe that was why he’d bungled it?

She remembered the timid Yana’s warning and wondered if things had gone as badly for her as the Russian woman obviously feared.
If she’s right about them she took a hell of a risk for a stranger,
Kelly thought, humbled.

But still it didn’t make sense that Lytton would have arranged to have her snatched from so public a place. She’d been at his apartment all night. There had been any number of better—more private—opportunities.

Get a grip Kel, you’re just looking for excuses for him,
she told herself.
Face it—you wanted to trust him.

And she
had
wanted to, she realised with a sour taste in the back of her throat.

Badly.

It was not a mistake she intended to make again.

Twelve crow-flown miles northwest of Kelly’s bus route Frank Allardice sat in a rented Vauxhall outside a nursery school on the outskirts of Hampstead Heath.

His quarry had taken some finding. That he was here at all was a testament to palms greased and backs scratched and favours called in. There were still a few aging coppers left whose memories stretched back far enough to when DCI Allardice was a man worth staying on the right side of.

Allardice humphed out a breath. Those days were fast coming to an end he knew. He shifted in the driving seat and flicked the windscreen wipers to clear the beads of water from glass.

Bloody country. Always raining.

He hunched further into his coat, recognising that four years of living in southern Spain had made him soft as far as temperature was concerned. Anything under 20ºC and he was reaching for an extra layer.

It was a good life out there. He’d sworn he was never coming back but sometimes things you’d thought dead and buried turned out not to be.

Best to make sure.

Across the road a gaggle of parents began to gather around the school gates. A few stay-at-home fathers but mostly mothers, they clogged both sides of the road with their four-by-fours and BMWs. The only ones on foot Allardice judged to be nannies or au pairs. It wasn’t just the mode of transport that set them apart—there was a definite distinction in manner and dress.

Allardice saw the girl when she was halfway along the street, approaching from behind him on the opposite side. He recognised her even in the door mirror which he’d tilted out to give him a wider view.

“Well hello there Erin,” he said under his breath.

Watching her walk past him oblivious, Allardice reflected that she hadn’t changed much. Erin never had looked old enough even when she was in her teens and now she was getting on for mid-twenties he would still have carded her before he’d have sold her alcohol in any of his bars.

Well, perhaps not.

She was looking good—hair cut and coloured, skin clear. Although her clothes were not the designer labels sported by some of the other mothers they were clean and reasonably smart.

She’d come a long way from King’s Cross to the verges of respectability.

But not
so
far. As he watched, she gravitated naturally towards the group of nannies rather than the well-to-do mums, exchanged a few smiles and nods but nothing overtly friendly. They were acquaintances by virtue of their kids, he reckoned, rather than friends.

Well that just makes things easier. Nobody’s going to stick their nose in.

He climbed out of the car buttoning up his coat and crossed towards them mindful of those cruising soft-roaders. A couple of the mothers watched him approach with wary eyes no doubt primed to expect child molesters at every turn. He smiled at them. They did not look reassured.

Erin was standing with her back to him watching the doors to the school across the playground, checking her watch. He stopped a few feet behind her, waited until something tipped her off and she turned.

“Hello Erin,” he said again. “Long time since I’ve bumped into you . . . out on the street as it were.”

He watched the colour drop out of her face. The breeze sent her hair across her cheek and she pushed it back behind her ear distractedly, eyes never leaving his face.

“Mr Allardice,” she whispered. “What . . . what are you doing here?”

Allardice spread his hands. “Oh Erin, is that any way to greet an old friend?” he asked stepping in close. “Can’t I just look you up for old time’s sake? How’s . . . tricks?”

If anything she grew paler still at the deliberate choice of words, glancing sideways to see who was close enough to overhear. But as if sensing the atmosphere the women nearest had sidled away.

So much for feminine solidarity.

Erin caught at his sleeve, tugging at him, her face twisting with desperation. “Please,” she said low and urgent. “I’m out of all that now. I’m clean. I have a life. A proper job—”

“Receptionist at a fancy hairdressers,” Allardice supplied. “Do they know you used to—?”

“Please!” she said again through her teeth, eyes beginning to redden. “Look I did what you wanted didn’t I? I kept my mouth shut. What more do you want from me?”

Behind them the school doors opened and children flooded out like an emptying fish tank, all squeals and laughter. The mothers broke ranks and moved to greet them. Only Erin and Allardice remained stationary.

After a couple of beats Allardice gently removed her hand from his arm. “Just a reminder Erin,” he said. “That I know where to find you. That you still have a lot to lose.
More
these days I would have said, wouldn’t you?”

A tousle-haired little girl came running across the playground, her stride faltering as she picked up on the tension between her mother and the stranger standing alongside.

With a fearful glance, Erin wheeled away from him and bent to welcome her with arms open. The child ran into the embrace and allowed herself to be swept up, cuddled.

Erin turned back with the little girl on her hip, their heads close together. She seemed to regain a little of her courage now she had hold of her daughter. Maybe she was just putting on a brave face in front of the kid.

“I haven’t forgotten,” Erin swore. “And I won’t!”

“Good girl. Let’s keep it that way eh?”

As he spoke Allardice reached out and trailed the edge of one finger down the little girl’s cheek. Erin flinched but the child just regarded him mutely, eyes grave and huge in a chubby face. He tried a smile. It did not meet with a response.

“Cute kid,” he said stuffing his hands into his coat pockets. He began to turn away, paused. “She looks just like her father.”

“IDIOT!”

Myshka’s voice rose to a shriek as it lashed across the room, followed half a second later by a vase of roses. The vase hit the far wall at shoulder height and shattered into a splash of fragments, scattering a burst of broken petals like drops of blood.

Dmitry winced. She’d always had a temper and lately it seemed to have worsened.

“Myshka—”

“How could you let a
girl
—a
nobody
—get the better of you?” she demanded, whirling on him with both fists clenched and shaking above her head. “How could you let her get away?”

Dmitry got to his feet painfully. It was evening and he’d come back to Harry Grogan’s apartment knowing a showdown with Myshka was on the cards. He was in no mood to fight. His back was already turning purple from where that bitch had put the boot in and he’d been passing blood all afternoon.

Next time . . .

“I was there only to look again at the territory—to watch,” he said doggedly, trying to keep his voice soothing, reasonable. “And it was too public. Not a good place to take her—”

“It was an opportunity,” Myshka cut in sharply. “A
wasted
opportunity.”

Dmitry felt his own anger begin to rise but he wisely tamped it down. No point in both of them losing it and wrecking the place.

Besides she was right, damn her.

“It was and maybe I made an error of judgement,” he agreed simply. “I’m sorry.”

The admission and apology seemed to take her by surprise. She stood for a few moments biting her lip, a war of emotions raging in her face, behind her eyes. Then she let out a long breath, her shoulders slumping. She crossed to him, cupped his face with both palms.

“A great general is a man who adapts to circumstance, yes?” she murmured, smoothing her thumbs over his cheekbones. Her talon-like false nails seemed to come perilously close to his eyes. He forced himself not to flinch at the prospect of being blinded on an impulse. “And we cannot afford mistakes—not when we are so close.”

“I know,” he said gently. “But this girl is no general—do not forget that. She is, as you say, a nobody. A cleaner who got nosy. She is on the run. The police are after her.” He paused. “Why not let them catch her?”

“Maybe—afterwards,” Myshka said, pursing her lips. “Until then it would be better if we have . . . control over her, yes?”

“I have put the word out,” Dmitry said. “She cannot hide forever.” He peeled one hand away, pressed his lips into her palm and curled her fingers around the kiss. “The police already believe her guilty. The longer she evades them the more guilty she becomes. After all she has done this before has she not?”

Myshka smiled, faintly at first then wider. “You are right, of course.” She sighed, eyeing the broken vase, the strewn stems and dripping carpet with regret. “Nothing can stop us now.”

And if Dmitry heard the faintest trace of doubt in her voice he kept that to himself too.

By the time Kelly reached the tower block in Brixton the rain was coming on hard.

The only good thing about that was it kept people’s heads down and gave her the excuse to do the same. She had the baseball cap tucked well forwards over her face and was confident she was reasonably safe from discovery.

Besides, nobody willingly went to the cops round here.

Kelly had grown up in an area like this, in yet another overcrowded social housing project that hadn’t quite worked. Even so, community spirit had still played a part in those days—the drug-related crime hadn’t quite become all-pervading. She hadn’t been home in a long time. Not for several years before her downfall and certainly not since her release. Her brothers and sister had made it clear there was nothing for her there.

Few people were out on the street in this neighbourhood and those that were gave her a wide berth anyway. She felt like a stranger but somehow one who had never quite lost the look of belonging. Not only that but Kelly realised she was probably putting out fury in waves that were palpable.