Wicked Ambition (42 page)

‘Just stop, OK? This is taking over our lives.’

‘Shouldn’t it be?’ Lisa pushed. ‘Leon, this is your brother’s murder we’re talking about. Don’t you want to see his assassin get what they deserve?’

‘This might be a two-month project to you,’ he answered, ‘and maybe you can give up your life for that. But I’ve been surviving this for twelve years, and finally I’m starting to think about myself, what I want. How am I meant to move forward with this…
anguish
everywhere I turn? I need to be on it for the Championships—they’re important to me.’

‘Once the killer’s found we can all sleep easy.’

‘Can we? It won’t bring Marlon back. Nothing will.’

‘I know how difficult this has been for you…’

‘No, you don’t. You can’t.
Difficult?
It doesn’t come close. You’ll never understand what we’ve been through and what it’s taken for us to get past it, as a family, as a whole. This is a job to you, but to me it’s everything. It’s my life.’

‘I understand that…’

‘Then cool it.’ Silence. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

‘Leon, wait—’

But he’d already hung up.

The sky was the colour of a bruised peach as the jet soared off the runway. Leon rested his head against the seat, staring out of the window and hoping not to get recognised.

He considered calling Gordon when he arrived in LA, throwing his pre-comp regime out of the window and getting drunk…but he wasn’t in the mood for more drama. It was clear something wasn’t right with his friend. First there had been the anxious phone call asking to meet, and then the morning after Leon had returned from the coast Gordon had shown up at the apartment unannounced. His friend had been twitchy and riled, standing on the porch and shivering through his T-shirt. He’d refused Leon’s offer to come in.

There’s somethin’ I gotta tell you
, Gordon had said.
Somethin’ you gotta know…

Shoot
. Leon had waited.
I’m listening
.

It’s big, man. I don’t know how to say this…

Then Lisa had rung, demanding to meet at the library to run through an archive. Despite Leon’s attempts to draw it from him, Gordon had ducked out. They’d catch up next time.

It occurred to Leon that maybe it was about Lisa. She and Gordon were close—perhaps something had happened between them. He was disappointed by how little he cared.

He closed his eyes, willing himself to sleep.

The problem was, there was nobody he really wanted to talk to…Except her.

It was getting better, possibly, some days easier than others.

Robin Ryder. Rude, opinionated, insolent, outrageous, wonderful Robin Ryder. Leon’s world was based on the notion that the mind could control the body, and power stemmed first from will and belief…So why wouldn’t his heart listen?

The lights in the cabin were extinguished.

Robin and he were nothing to each other now.

Whatever happened, she was on her own.

54

I
n London, PC Joanna Priestly watched as her partner Bob Stanton wobbled back to the parked police vehicle through the driving rain. He carried a supermarket bag weighted down with sandwiches and sausage rolls: sometimes she thought Stanton had got into the job purely for how it allowed him to sit in a Ford panda all day and eat.

Never mind protecting and patrolling the capital’s streets, every day was the same drawn-out exercise in lethargy and inertia: sitting bored with Stanton and abiding through clenched teeth his sexist, supercilious remarks. The force hadn’t turned out to be the high-octane case-crushing roller coaster Jo had imagined it to be when she had first emerged as a bright-eyed novice…far from it. Would her breakout ever arrive?

‘Pissing it down out there,’ huffed Stanton, ducking into the car and shaking himself like a dog. He slammed the door and rummaged in the sodden bag. ‘Crisps?’

‘No, thanks, I’ll pass.’ Jo indicated and pulled out into
the traffic. The capital was slick with April showers, its roads darkly stained.

‘Where are we going?’ complained Stanton through a mouthful of food. A car in front cut her up so she had to brake hard, prompting him to mutter pointedly, ‘Women drivers.’

‘We’ve got a job to do, haven’t we?’ Jo said tightly, ignoring the comment because Stanton wanted a rise; her anger amused him. ‘I don’t want to sit in a car park all day.’

‘Why not?’ He ripped open a crackling bag, filling the car with the tang of salt and vinegar. ‘Easiest ride in the world.’

Jo kept driving, concentrating on the road. In his day Stanton had been one of the best at the station, but after a career of accolades and awards he now saw no further reason to bother. Everyone had said when they were paired how lucky she was—Jo Priestly, quietly brilliant, the young apprentice being groomed by one of the best. She didn’t feel all that lucky today…or any other day, for that matter.

The radio crackled. Stanton snatched up the call. ‘Yeah?’

She fought to listen through the incessant sound of munching. They had a report from a concerned pensioner up in a block in Edmonton who hadn’t seen her neighbour in months.

‘Guess we’d better check it out,’ mused Stanton reluctantly. ‘Probably another batty old bag who can’t remember when she last fed her cats.’

Jo changed gear and joined the dual carriageway. She didn’t want to agree, and always tried to stay fresh whenever a new challenge was presented, but going on previous experience it was likely to end in a few jotted notes and a
cup of milky tea drunk out of an Arsenal mug. If the lady offered biscuits Stanton would be made for the afternoon.

The block itself was a foreboding lump flanked by the grumble and whine of traffic. St George flags were pinned across balconies and windows like plasters over cuts, and dogs barked on stairwells that smelled sourly of urine. Jo led the way.

‘Oh, thank God you came,’ the woman wheezed gummily as she opened the door and invited them in. ‘I wasn’t sure whether to ring: when you get to my age you never know what you’re dreaming up!’

‘Hmm.’ Stanton was already waiting on his cup of tea.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

Jo said, ‘No, thank you, if we could just—’ at the same time as Stanton accepted.

‘And if you’ve got any biscuits…?’ he hollered after her as she Zimmer-framed into the galley kitchen.

‘Can we just get this over with?’ Jo snapped.

‘You females are so uptight,’ he retorted, collapsing fatly into a cushioned armchair. ‘What’s wrong with a little liquid to oil the pipes?’

With the tea served and Stanton greedily sugaring his, Jo withdrew her pad.

‘It’s down the way,’ the woman warbled, perching nervously on the edge of her chair and extending a gnarled finger to indicate the direction. She had a crocheted shawl wrapped round her shoulders. ‘Let me see…flat 39B, it is. Hilda. Hilda Sewell. Now, I’ve only met her once before and that’s why I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, she likes to stay indoors, you understand, but I haven’t seen the daughter either…’

Jo glanced up. ‘The daughter?’

‘That’s right. Always struck me as rather strange, she did. But, like they say, each to their own…’

‘How old is she?’

Stanton shot her a look as if to say,
What has that got to do with anything?

‘Mind if I help myself?’ he cut in, plunging a knife into the Battenberg cake.

The woman was thrown. ‘Yes, dear, of course.’

Jo gritted her teeth. ‘You were saying…?’

‘Oh, her age, I’m not sure, now you ask. Twenty,’ she hazarded, ‘or thereabouts?’

Jo tapped the end of the pen. ‘And you haven’t seen the daughter at all?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know her name?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t…’ the woman said nervously. ‘If I saw Hilda barely at all, I saw her daughter even less. They’ve lived here a long time, and as you can imagine I rarely leave the place myself.’ She looked confused. ‘I was sure I’d know if they’d moved on. More tea?’

Stanton grunted and held his cup out. He snatched a couple more Custard Creams.

‘We’re going to need to take a look,’ said Jo kindly. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, Mrs Fletcher, but you did the right thing calling us.’ She slipped the pad into her back pocket. Something about the situation—the tinkle of a teaspoon against Stanton’s porcelain china, the muffled groan of the road behind Mrs Fletcher’s double glazing, the faint discourse of a Radio 4 programme filtering through from the kitchen—sent a chill down her spine.

Stanton was disinclined to leave the warmth of the armchair and it was only a glance at the clock—they would be knocking off shift in an hour—that prompted him to join her.

‘Should I come along?’ asked Mrs Fletcher, hovering at the door way.

‘No, thank you.’ Jo smiled. ‘We’ll let you know what we find. In the meantime, try to relax and put this from your mind. No point in worrying. Rest assured we receive plenty of calls like this one and they rarely amount to anything sinister.’

‘I’m not in trouble, am I?’

‘Of course not.’

‘That’s a relief.’ The old woman put a hand to her chest. ‘I don’t want any badness.’

‘I’m sure it’s innocent enough.’

‘I’m sure it’s innocent enough?’
Stanton challenged as they made their way along the concrete platform to flat 39B. An argument was exploding several doors down, a shower of expletives straining through. ‘What is this,
Midsomer Murders
? This place is about as likely to carry foul play as bloody Strangeways.’

They came to a stop by a plain door bearing the rusted number.

‘Here we are.’ Jo knocked.

‘To hell with that,’ Stanton snorted. ‘I’ve got a pint with the lads to make.’ He battered the door with his fist. ‘Police! Anyone home?’

No answer.

‘We’ll come back tomorrow,’ Stanton said.

‘Bullshit!’ Jo was outraged. ‘I’m getting a warrant.’

‘You can’t.’

‘Then I’m taking the door off, if I have to. That old lady’s not going to be able to sleep tonight unless we get answers.’

Stanton waved his arm. ‘Aw, she’ll be fine once she’s tucked up in bed with a Nesquik and
Poirot
. Let’s move.’

Jo shoved the door with her shoulder. Stanton laughed meanly at the futility of her effort until to both their surprise the door gave, caught on a weak lock.

Immediately the smell assaulted them. Jo gagged, clamping a hand over her nose and mouth. Stanton muttered, ‘Christ alive, what the…?’

The smell was worse inside. Jo had never experienced anything like it. It was metallic and foul and acrid, bitter with rot. The flat was dark and unbearably still, like a tomb.

‘There she is,’ Jo rasped.

Not that Hilda Sewell was at all recognisable: a skeletal figure, upright, her mouth open, the skin decaying and sallow, the scalp mottled and visible through patches of bald.

‘Where’s the daughter?’ Jo asked.

Stanton turned. ‘Hey?’

‘The daughter.’ Finally, she was on to something. ‘We need to find her.’

55

F
or Ivy Sewell, the best thing about working at the Palisades Grand was that she got to play out a version of the big night nearly every day of the week. As LA’s primary arena, the Palisades attracted crowds in their tens of thousands, herded like sheep, as unthinking and unseeing as those beasts as they were steered in nervous little groups towards the food counters and through the turnstiles. Yet seeing them as animals took away some of the magic: any fool could work an abattoir and Ivy was no butcher. It took something else, something different…something
special
to kill a human, let alone dozens. Execution on an unprecedented scale had to be planned and plotted to a margin of zero error.

Watching the masses thread through every night cemented her timetable: the hour the doors opened, the crush that descended ten minutes before the support, the security networks that kept the whole thing carelessly, stupidly rolling
according to the rules and regulations, where Ivy needed to be and with whom…

She had already isolated her entrance point. Three guys alternated on that spot, checking the punters’ tickets and searching their bags full of gum and cameras and the occasional confiscated vodka disguised in a water bottle. Any one of them could be working that night and it was essential she made allies of them all.

Nicki Soba was on rota this evening. Small and Asian with quick, flinty eyes, he believed he was above the menial tasks of a doorman. She stepped closer to Nicki as she spoke, flashing her smile and hanging on to every dismal word he said.

‘I can’t wait till the season’s over,’ Nicki grumbled, picking his teeth.

Oh, it will be. Over for you, over for them all…

‘Standing here every day like a fucking ape,’ he complained, ushering another party through with a grimace. ‘Anyone could do this job.’

‘But I’ve seen how they respect you,’ Ivy flattered. ‘They listen to you.’

‘Ain’t got a lot of choice, have they?’ Nicki straightened, unable to help being at least slightly bolstered by the compliment. ‘It’s my rules or they’re out of here.’

‘That’s so powerful,’ she encouraged, thinking a man like Nicki Soba would never understand how it felt to be truly, absolutely powerful: to have a crusade.

He would find out soon enough.

‘Guess.’ He shrugged, tilting his chin. ‘One day it’ll be me on the big stage.’ His words surfaced like relics, overshadowed by years of defeat—instead of the confidence
Nicki had once imbued they flopped wearily out of his mouth, the routine claim bored by its own monotony, and which on good days still had the ability to make him feel inspired but on bad ones shot down the remaining scrap that clung to hope.

Ivy had done her research. ‘It should be,’ she agreed. ‘I don’t know how half these acts have made it. Nine times out of ten they’re talentless. There’s no justice in the world.’

‘No kidding.’

‘Take the Platinum Awards,’ she said, ‘what a farce. All those egos in one room, and the only difference between them and us is that they got the break. Not that they’d ever admit it. Makes you wonder what the world would be like if they all got wiped out.’