Trust (12 page)

Basic stuff, which was how he knew that at least the basics of her story checked out. And also enough that he now knew that if she’d left the house for good, as the note clearly indicated she had, then she’d be heading back to the Mini when she’d finished her business with Detective Inspector Reuben Glover.

“Hey there.”

I had to concentrate on every muscle in my body to stop myself from going to Dean when I spotted him.

He stood there, in a gap between two rows of terraced houses, an alleyway that must lead around to the back gardens. That dark blue suit, the slim tie, white shirt; the way it all hung so well off that lean, strong body.

More than anything, the smile. The way it wasn’t just a smile that pulled at his mouth, but spread across his face, lit up his eyes.

Whereas DI Glover’s smile earlier had clearly been fake, Dean’s smile was the real thing.

“Hey,” I said. “I didn’t...” I stopped.

“Just slipping quietly away?”

I was. I had been. Originally. But not now. I shook my head. “Just stuff in the car, you know.”

He nodded.

“I didn’t know where you’d gone,” I told him. “You didn’t say anything.”

“I went to see Lee,” he said. “Had to make sure he was okay after last night. Doctor Malik’s got him at a clinic by the park in Bethnal Green. He’s been keeping an eye on the kid.”

I felt bad then. When he’d slipped away that morning I’d assumed he was getting away from the aftermath of a one-night stand, giving me the opportunity to leave without any fuss. I hadn’t given a thought to Lee...

Now, Dean put a hand to his own bruised face and grinned. “Got the doc to check me over, too. I’ll live.”

“That’s a bonus.”

“Coffee?”

§

It was still mid-morning and the Old Duchess was locked up, but Dean let us in and immediately went round the bar to the coffee machine.

While the machine hissed and spluttered away, Dean peered up at me and said, “So. You going to tell me some more about yourself? Like where you’ve been all my life?”

It was a deliberately cheesy line, chosen to cut through some of the awkwardness that had descended upon us. That morning-after thing, I supposed.

“Not a lot to tell,” I said, and something dark flashed in his eyes. For a moment it felt like when I’d first come here: the suspicion, the way he hadn’t seemed to believe my story. I realized my answer must have sounded evasive.

Feeling the need to convince him, I plunged in. “Private school for a time – my parents had the money. Got kicked out for supplying booze to the girls. Other than that, it was just a normal suburban upbringing, I guess. Seaside holidays. Visits down here when I was younger. The usual ups and downs. Until...”

I needed to ask him about my parents. I needed to ask him about the crash.

“Your folks?” he said. “You told me you went off the rails after that. So how did you get from there to here?”

I thought back.

“Funny how it goes,” I told him. He brought the coffees round the bar and we went to a table at the back. “How one simple choice leads to everything else.”

“Like what?”

“I walked out on my grandparents. The day of the funeral. They hadn’t gone to the service because Gran wasn’t well. We thought she was just distressed and anxious about it all, but looking back I think that was the first onset of the dementia. I think that’s what made her confused about it all. She was so angry and frustrated, but we put that down to grief. Anyway... after the funeral I went to see them. Told them all about it. I thought that might give them some kind of closure, but it was like twisting the knife in my own belly to have to do that. Does that make sense?”

I sipped at my coffee, then went on: “After I’d told them, I just made my excuses and walked out. I walked out on everything: my friends, what was left of my family... I was part-way through my second year at university, but I never went back. Next contact I had with any of my family was over a year later when Granddad bailed me out after I’d been arrested.”

Dean was shaking his head. “Bailed you out? So what did you do? Where had you been?”

I looked away. “I made mistakes,” I said, eventually. “Hooked up with an old friend who’d never really been a friend. Spent a lot of time down here, actually. Other side of the river.”

“Foreign country,” said Dean, smiling again, breaking through a little of the tension.

“I got messed up. All I wanted was to get away from... everything. I did that all right. Ended up in a bad relationship. Learned how to fight back. Got picked up by the police at an illegal party, and they found some substances in my bag. Nothing much. Nothing Granddad couldn’t talk me out of. Bad times.”

Finally, I met his look, but I couldn’t work it out. Whether he was still disbelieving, or if he was mocking my superficial scrapes with a world he must see every day; or whether he genuinely felt bad for me.

I
wanted
him to judge me, I realized. Wanted to be mocked. I still felt as if I deserved it. But I needed to get over all that. Get over myself.

“I screwed up,” I said. “Bad relationships. Believing in the wrong people. That’s one thing I’ve learned. I don’t trust men – sorry, but I don’t. I can’t. I find it hard...”

He laughed, then. “We’re not all bastards, you know!”

I just looked at him.

It was one of those moments when I had to remind myself what kind of man Dean Bailey was. A crimelord who could sit there and innocently protest that he was one of the good guys... He really was a throwback to another age.

I smiled, and saw a response in his eyes. He got it.

“Last night,” I said. We’d been skirting around the subject since waking up, but I’m not a person to leave things unspoken for long. “That was a bit of a surprise.”

He held my look. “You’re full of surprises, darling,” he said. “I’m learning that much.”

I smiled again. “It was a nice surprise,” I said.

“Just ‘nice’? Didn’t it renew your faith in men, even a little?”

I raised an eyebrow. Let him fish for compliments if he liked.

I mustn’t let myself get sidetracked, I reminded myself. Instantly, my mood shifted, as I recalled my thoughts as I’d walked here from Bethnal Green.

“Our families,” I said. “They were close, weren’t they?”

Dean nodded. I could tell from his expression he was wondering where this was going.

“Why did my parents move away? Were they...
part
of all this?” I remembered what DI Glover had said earlier: that anyone who grew up in this community couldn’t help but be a part of it all, to some extent or another.

Dean simply nodded. No hesitation. Nothing to hide.

“You remember coming here when you were a kid,” he said. “You know what it was like. We were close. I remember your grandparents. I even remember your parents.”

This was the first time he’d admitted that he accepted who I was.

“When you say our families were close, do you mean just close as in neighbors, or something more?”

“Must have been about fifteen years ago,” said Dean. “My old man got mixed up in a spot of bother. The Russians were throwing their weight around and he had to do something, didn’t he, or they’d have walked all over him. That’s when it all blew up. My old man was nicked and banged up, the police clamped down. Your family weren’t the only ones who didn’t like the pressure. Some buckled and gave evidence. Others, like your folks, stood strong, but they didn’t want it any more, and they moved away.”

There was another thing the DI had said that morning: it always follows you. “They might have moved away,” I said, “but did they leave it all behind?”

He looked closely at me, as if reassessing me.

“How d’you mean?” A simple question, but now he seemed cautious.

“They had money. I just... I don’t know if they severed all ties to the old life, you know? If they made their money from the old life, then... I don’t know. Did they have enemies? Could all that have caught up with them?”

“You’re talking like it wasn’t an accident.”

I was.

I hadn’t even got that far in my head until I spoke it out loud.

“It just... seemed so unlikely,” I tried to explain. “Out of nowhere. A stolen car, speeding, forcing them off the road, into a wall. The stolen car found a few hours later, completely burned out. No-one ever traced or prosecuted. It didn’t add up at the time, but no-one had any reason to think it might have been deliberate. But then, at the time, I had no idea about their past.”

“You think it was some kind of hit?”

Those words, spoken out loud, seemed so wrong, and yet...

“Maybe. I don’t know what to think any more.”

Dean was shaking his head again. Now he reached across the table and put a hand on one of mine. That was the first time he’d touched me since he’d kissed me goodbye that morning.

“Nah,” he said. “It doesn’t fit. If it was an old-school hit – a gang thing – it’d have been obvious. They’d have been shot in the face or something. That kind of thing makes a point, and it stops them having a big open-casket funeral where they can be celebrated.”

He was trying to be reassuring, I realized, but it wasn’t working. “I think the crash managed that, well enough,” I said.

“No. Car crash is too messy – too imprecise. Pros make sure.” Then he seemed to realize what he was saying, and stopped, hands held up. “Sorry. Not exactly the sensitive type, me. But this life isn’t pretty. What I mean is... You go with the simplest explanation, don’t you? Stupid kid out of his depth in a flashy stolen car, out of control, driving too fast and jumps a red. It’s bad luck, but not a conspiracy.”

His hand was still on mine, and he gave a brief squeeze now.

“Sorry,” he said again. “It’s not easy, is it?”

I let him comfort me. He could deny being sensitive all he liked, but I’d seen that side of him plenty enough over the past couple of days.

It wasn’t until much later that I started to have more doubts. Like how had Dean Bailey known the car that had killed my parents was a ‘flashy’ one? It could have been an old banger, for all he knew – joyriders didn’t always steal flash cars.

And how had he known the stolen car had been speeding through a red light at the time of the crash?

Dean Bailey played his cards close to his chest. He’d gain nothing by confronting her with the fact he’d seen her with Reuben. She was hardly going to admit she’d gone straight to see the DI this morning.

Perhaps, but that’s exactly what she did next.

“I saw that policeman this morning,” she said. “Your friend. Reuben Glover – is that his name?”

Dean kept a poker face. “Yeah?” he said. “That’s nice.”

What was she playing at now?

“He wanted to know who I am. What our...
relationship
is.”

“What did you tell him?”

She did that thing with the raised eyebrow again: quizzical and challenging and, even to Dean Bailey, more than a little intimidating. “About our relationship? I told him about as much as I knew, which isn’t very much at all.”

Dean laughed, then reached for his cup and drained the last of his coffee. Deflecting, he knew, but what did she want? Was she hoping he’d say it was just a one-night stand, that she was the latest in a long, long line? Was she hoping he’d say it was something more than that? Did she think he had the faintest fucking
clue?

“So Reuben,” he said, instead. “What was he digging about for, then?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t really work it out. At first it was...” She visibly shuddered. “It was scary. He was waiting outside the house. Made me go with him in his car – him and another man. Another policeman, although he could have been anybody, as far as I was concerned. I didn’t have much say in the matter.”

Dean couldn’t help but react, but he clamped down on it, didn’t want to give anything away. If what she said was true, then what was Reuben playing at? It seemed the Bailey Boys were getting squeezed from every side right now.

“So what did they do?”

“I don’t know
what
they were going to do, but everything changed when he worked out who I am.”

“Yeah? Who
are
you?”

She gave him a hard look. Hurt. “You don’t trust me, do you?”

He shrugged. “I don’t trust anybody.”

She looked away. Looked close to tears, all of a sudden. He hadn’t expected that. Felt guilty for causing it, guilty for even considering the possibility she might be faking that response.

He’d moved his hand away to take his coffee cup, but now he reached for her again. Said, “Sorry, darling, but I just
can’t
. Trust people.”

She cracked a brief smile now. “That’s one empty life then, isn’t it?”

He looked away. She really didn’t understand what it was like to be him, one of the Bailey Boys, part of the Bailey family, the tradition, the legacy.

If nothing else, it was about survival.

“Sucks to be me, yeah,” he said, trying to lighten things a little again.

Her hand in his was tiny, slender.

Damn, but she did strange things to him! Provoked feelings that were unfamiliar. Screwed with his head.

He drew his hand away again, and asked, “What did Reuben want?”

“He wanted to know what you’re up to. He told me he thinks you’re looking for trouble, trying to stir things up with the Russians. He said you’re a wildcard. Warned me against you.”

“He did, did he? Must say I’m flattered.”

“What
are
you up to? Is this what you’re always like, or are you plotting something special?”

Immediately, he was on the defensive again. Wary.

“Don’t know what you mean, darling,” he said. He flashed her the smile, the one that always worked. All it took was a little sincerity, and if you could fake that...

Was Reuben onto him? Had he picked up on something? Could that explain why he was digging like this, all of a sudden? Either sending Jess in as some kind of spy, or simply leaning on her crudely in the hope she would leak anything she had inadvertently picked up.

He looked at her. Those pale blue eyes were mesmerizing. What
was
their relationship? Reuben had asked that, and by repeating it she’d asked, too.