The Villain’s Daughter (35 page)

They stopped outside Connolly’s and peered in through the window. The café was busy, packed with Christmas shoppers, but they could see one empty table. They went inside and Guy took off his thick dark overcoat, carefully hanging it over the back of his chair. Underneath he was wearing black jeans and a pale blue sweater. Iris gazed at him. The sweater complemented the intense blueness of his eyes and she wondered if that was why he’d chosen it. And why not? She wasn’t without vanity herself. He caught her looking and grinned. Iris quickly sat down, picked up the menu and pretended to examine it.

‘Are you hungry?’ he said.

Iris shook her head. ‘Not really.’ Disappointment had blunted her appetite. She thought of all the blank stares she’d experienced over the past few hours, all the undisguised suspicion and downright hostility. Not that she was surprised by any of it. Had some stranger turned up on her own doorstep asking questions, she would have been less than welcoming too.

‘Don’t let it get you down,’ he said. ‘For all we know, we might have already hit the jackpot.’

She frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘If your father is hiding out in one of the houses we’ve been to, he’s hardly likely to show himself, is he?’ Guy put his elbows on the table, steepled his fingers and lowered his chin on to their tips. ‘And this man Fin isn’t going to come clean about his identity either, at least not if he’s been asked to keep shtum.’

Iris thought back to all the places they had visited, trying to remember if anyone had given even the tiniest indication that they knew what she was talking about. No one came to mind. What would she have done if her dad
had
suddenly appeared? The idea simultaneously alarmed and excited her.

‘The point is,’ Guy continued, ‘that we just don’t know. People in the East End are used to keeping quiet, to being less than trusting of strangers. There’s a chance we’ve already stumbled on the right address but just don’t realise it. If we have - and if your father
is
there - then by now he’s going to know that you’re searching for him.’

Iris gave a sigh. ‘I’m not even sure I’m doing the right thing, I mean trying to flush him out like this. What if we lead the Streets straight to him?’

‘We haven’t been followed, I’m pretty certain of that. And what other choice is there? If we wait until Terry gets out of the nick, it’s going to be too late. This way we force your father’s hand. He’s going to be worried about exactly the same thing - that the Streets
are
watching - and if he wants to keep his hiding place secret, he’s going to have to find some way of contacting you, of warning you to stay away.’

Iris nodded. She and Guy had done a lot of talking over the past few days. It seemed more than likely that her dad had come back in response to Lizzie’s death. ‘So you really think he’s planning on confronting Terry?’

‘Perhaps he feels it’s the only way of keeping you safe. Terry’s an old-fashioned kind of villain, an-eye-for-an-eye and all that. He’s dealt with Tyler, but there were two men at his house the night that Liam was killed. He isn’t ever going to let that go. And if he can’t find your father, then . . .’

Iris understood without him spelling it out. Terry had lost a son, and she was Sean O’Donnell’s daughter. There was more than one way of getting revenge. She shuddered at the thought of it.

‘Hey,’ Guy said, seeing her expression. ‘I don’t think you’re in any real danger. And especially not at the moment. But the threat of it, of what Terry
might
do when he gets out, could well be enough to push your dad into showing himself. That’s probably why Terry’s had the boys hassling you, threatening you just enough to prove they mean business.’

Iris dropped her face into her hands. ‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘I should never have come back. If I wasn’t here then Terry couldn’t—’

‘None of this is your fault, Iris. Don’t start thinking that way. We need to concentrate, stay focused. We have to try and find your dad before he does something stupid.’

Iris couldn’t help speculating on what that something stupid was likely to be. ‘But he must know that Terry’s going to kill him if he ever shows his face. So what
can
he do?’ She already suspected what the answer was likely to be. Her breath caught in her throat as she said, ‘You reckon he’s going to try and kill Terry, don’t you?’

‘Do you think your father’s capable of that?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘If you’d asked me two weeks ago I’d have said no, but now I’m not so sure. I don’t have a clue as to who he actually is any more.’

‘Well, he must have some finer feelings or he wouldn’t have bothered coming back. It’s you he’s trying to protect. ‘

‘Or he just feels guilty,’ she said sceptically. ‘Does that count as a finer feeling?’

‘Maybe you shouldn’t be so hard on him. Whatever he did, he lost his family through it. That’s a big price for any man to pay.’

Iris knew he was right. It was unfair to pass judgement on someone she hadn’t even seen for nineteen years. She was grateful to Guy for defending him, an action she didn’t seem capable of at the moment. Maybe she was just too scared to admit to herself how much she wanted to see her father - and how afraid she was of losing him again.

The waitress arrived at their table with her notepad. She was a skinny middle-aged woman with the weary, fretful appearance of someone who’d been on their feet since the crack of dawn.

‘Yeah?’ she said. ‘What’s it to be?’

‘A latte,’ Guy said. ‘And a couple of toasted sandwiches. Cheese is fine.’ He looked over at Iris. ‘You can manage a sandwich, can’t you?’

Iris glanced at her watch. It would be another few hours before she got anything substantial to eat, so she nodded. Then, as the waitress hovered impatiently, she tried to decide what to drink. She considered a hot chocolate, but decided she was more in need of energy than comfort. ‘And a large cappuccino, thanks.’

Iris waited until the woman had left and then turned her face back towards Guy. ‘I wish I knew how your mother had managed to persuade Terry to leave us alone all those years ago. Did she ever say anything to you?’

Guy shook his head. ‘You’ll have to talk to Michael about that.’

‘Believe me, I’ve tried. He isn’t shifting from his original story. He just keeps on insisting that because he was at the Hope that night, Lizzie was able to provide him with an alibi. But that doesn’t explain why Terry didn’t have a go at Mum - or me, come to that. I doubt if Terry Street’s got too many scruples about terrifying children.’

Guy, unable to refute the suggestion, gave a light shrug of his shoulders. ‘So what does your mother say?’

‘I haven’t asked her.’

He looked surprised. ‘Why ever not?’

‘Don’t get me wrong, she’s great, she really is, but this would only freak her out. It took me over an hour to persuade her that I wasn’t going to fall apart after splitting up with Luke. If I told her what I was doing now, she’d be on the next train down. She’s convinced that Dad’s dead, has been for years, and thinks I should accept it too. She doesn’t even know that Michael’s told me about what he did that night.’

‘Isn’t he going to tell her?’

‘Are you kidding?’ she said. Her mouth broke into a grin. ‘No sane man would willingly bring down the wrath of Kathleen O’Donnell on his head.’

‘Is she that scary?’

Iris gave a soft laugh. ‘Not unless she’s roused, but this would certainly rouse her. She’ll be mad as hell if she thinks he’s been giving away the family secrets. Anyway, I’ve made a deal with Michael - I’ll keep quiet about it if he does. She’s not likely to ring him again in a hurry; she only called him last week because she got worried about all the questions I was asking. At that point he hadn’t told me anything so he didn’t need to lie about it.’

‘But at some point you’re going to have to—’

‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,’ Iris said quickly. She couldn’t afford to have her mother on her back right now. And she couldn’t face that difficult conversation they would need to have either - about why she’d been lied to, about why she’d never been told the full story of her father’s disappearance. She knew what her mother would claim - that it had been done to protect her - but the whole deceit still rankled. Iris had grown up wondering if it was her fault that he’d left. If only she’d been told just a little of the truth . . .

She was about to try to explain this to Guy when the waitress came back with their order. The woman plonked the tray gracelessly in the middle of the table, dumped the bill in a saucer and left without a word.

Guy grinned. ‘Well, you can’t fault the quality of the service.’

Iris picked up her cappuccino, took a sip and smiled. ‘They’re renowned for it. You could learn a lot about customer service from the staff in here.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

Iris, after the interruption, decided it was time to stop talking about herself. It was all she ever seemed to do these days. Despite all the hours they’d spent together, she still knew very little about Guy Wilder; he was extremely good at deflecting questions about his own life and feelings.

‘So what about
your
dad?’ she said. ‘Do you ever see him?’

Guy bit into his toasted sandwich, chewed it for a while and swallowed. ‘No,’ he said shortly.

Iris tore off a corner of her own sandwich and waited.

Guy let out a sigh. ‘You want the truth?’ he said. He paused for a second. ‘I don’t know who he is and I don’t give a damn. His name’s not even on my birth certificate. From what I can gather, I’m the result of a five-minute fumble in the backseat of a car. She was only a kid. What kind of a man sleeps with a fourteen-year-old?’

Iris lifted the piece of sandwich to her mouth, and then abruptly put it back down on to her plate again. She had just had an uncomfortable thought. ‘What if it wasn’t a man?’ she said. She remembered the way Michael had talked about Lizzie, his obvious affection for her. Perhaps this connection she felt to Guy had its roots in something closer to home. ‘I mean, what if it was a boy, someone the same age as herself?’

Guy looked at her for a moment before he started to laugh. ‘No way,’ he said. ‘Don’t even go there. Your uncle isn’t my father, I can assure you of that.’

‘But how can you be sure? They were friends, they used to hang out together.’

‘Mates, yeah,’ he said, ‘but nothing more. For one, Michael was too young to drive and for two, my mother - even at that tender age - wouldn’t have dreamed of sleeping with someone who wasn’t useful to her.’ He picked up his coffee and gazed at her over the rim of the mug. ‘We’re not cousins, Iris. The man who fathered me was just some lowlife who flashed a few quid, had his wicked way and buggered off.’

Iris felt a wave of relief wash over her. Had there been a blood tie, it would have changed the way she felt about him. Although even if they were cousins it wouldn’t have been illegal for them to . . . She stopped the thought in its tracks, feeling her cheeks begin to burn. What was she doing? It was only days since she had split up from Luke and with everything else that was going on, now was hardly the time to be considering another relationship.

‘Let’s just concentrate on finding
your
father,’ Guy said.

‘And when we do?’ She paused. ‘Well,
if
we do.’

‘Then we can all work together to try and sort this out.’

Iris suddenly became aware of a quartet of pretty girls, young women really - they must have been in their early twenties - sitting nearby. Their eyes were all fixed on Guy and he was clearly the topic of their conversation. A ripple of giggles emanated from the table.

‘I think you have a fan club,’ she said.

Guy glanced sideways and then back at Iris. ‘What makes you so sure it’s me they’re interested in? Perhaps they’re in the Sappho club. They could be admiring your stunning red hair.’

Iris smiled. ‘Oh, spare me the false modesty.’

He grinned back, leaned forward and took her hand. ‘Then perhaps you should pretend to be my girlfriend in case they try to rob me of my innocence.’

‘Well, should that unfortunate situation arise, I’m sure you’ll find a way to cope,’ she said, although she didn’t immediately move her hand away.

Alice Avery had a smile on her face as she walked along the supermarket aisle. Pausing by the men’s toiletries, she scrutinised the vast display of shampoo, shaving foam and razors. She picked up jars and bottles and put them down again. It pleased her to be choosing things for Toby, to be making the kind of purchases that other women took for granted.

Alice had never lived with a man before. Not that they were, strictly speaking, living together, but Toby had been in her flat for the last three days and was likely to be staying for most of the following week. His bruises were starting to fade but were still too obvious for him to return to the family home and the scrutiny of Gerald Grand. Secretly, she hoped that he would never go back, and to this end - having heard that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach - she was feeding him three large meals a day.

Unsure of what he used in the bathroom, Alice went for the more expensive products rather than the supermarket own-brands. She had a moment’s hesitation. Perhaps, after lending Toby all her savings, she should be taking more care over how much she was spending. But she quickly pushed the thought aside. She was working, wasn’t she? She could afford a few luxuries. As Alice dropped the items into the trolley, she felt a thrill sweep through her body. How odd, she thought, that something as mundane as shopping could make her heart beat so fast.

At the chill section, Alice studied what was on offer, her eyes sweeping over the meat, fish and poultry. She was a good cook, had even gone on a few courses in the past, but the opportunities to show off her expertise had all but disappeared in recent years. Her mother didn’t care for what she referred to as ‘that fancy stuff’ and making complicated meals for one never seemed worth the effort. Still, perhaps she shouldn’t be too experimental. Toby’s tastes seemed to run more towards burgers and Chinese takeaways than anything more exotic. Eventually, she plumped for two large steaks and a corn-fed chicken. She would grill the steaks tonight and make a roast dinner tomorrow.