The local head of police, a man on Archie’s payroll, came over the next morning.
‘My condolences on your loss, Mrs Willson. It’s clear you acted in self-defence. I will make every arrangement necessary for you.’
‘Thank you, we appreciate your kindness,’ Ruby murmured, holding Cathy close to her.
Ruby went into her bedroom, and sitting at her mirror, she saw a woman, still beautiful, still alluring, yet marred by grief. Her eyes had black shadows and her mouth was a thin line. She hooked a pearl necklace around her neck. It had been a present from Archie, and at the time she’d joked that they were for widows. Well, she’d been right. Standing in front of her, reflected back, was a widow, a woman who’d lost the love of her life, a woman now seeking answers.
Lloyd thinks there was someone behind it. He doesn’t believe it was two chancers, it was too well-timed, maybe well-funded, she thought to herself. She had to admit, there were many unanswered questions. Where did they get the money to pay off the guards? She’d called a couple of their guards. They said Archie had given them the evening off. But why would Archie do that after the Albanian set-up? He’d never have left them exposed like that, surely?
She couldn’t discuss it with Cathy. Her daughter was distraught, clinging to her mum, crying all day and all night.
Would she ever get over this? Would either of them?
Ruby watched as Belle stepped out of the rental car, squinting at the sunshine. Cathy broke away from Ruby who was standing by the villa doorway and ran to her aunt. Ruby had asked Cathy if she wanted to go somewhere else even for just a few weeks while the horror was still fresh, but Cathy, strangely, had insisted they stay.
‘I want to be where Dad was. I want to stay in our home,’ she’d said, and Ruby, who was unable to deny her anything, had reluctantly agreed.
‘There, there Cathy, it’s all going to be OK. I’m so sorry. Come here, darling girl,’ Belle said embracing her.
‘Come on inside, I don’t like hangin’ about out ’ere, we don’t know if we’re safe.’ Ruby shivered despite the late-summer sunshine.
Inside, Cathy, Bobby and Belle headed to the lounge to sit together, while Lloyd, who’d arrived with Alfie an hour earlier, appeared in the doorway.
‘Come inside, Ruby, we need to talk,’ he said. He looked like he wasn’t sleeping either, though he was composed if pale. Ruby saw his strength, the strength of a man who ran a drug cartel, a man who, faced with his own son’s death, could look at the next move forward.
‘Alfie and I ’ave been talkin’ it through. The robbery don’t make sense. We think there’s more to it than that.’
Ruby smiled a thin, sad smile, though her eyes glittered. ‘I agree, though we can’t prove anythin’. I tell you, if someone was behind this, if someone plotted to kill my Archie, and us, then they’d better run because I’ll be after them.’
She looked away as though her thoughts overwhelmed her. She could hear Cathy crying and the soothing low voices of Bobby and Belle. She felt grateful her daughter was finding some comfort, as there was none for her.
Alfie, who was standing with them in the office that Ruby had once shared with her husband, wiped tears away from his face, which was grey with shock and sleeplessness. He drew heavily on a cigarette, and exhaled, running his hands through his hair. His eyes were almost demented. If this was a stitch-up. If Alfie – or Lloyd – found those responsible, she didn’t hold much for their chances. They’d be tortured and slaughtered like meat in an abattoir, and neither of them would blink at it. She felt their need for vengeance – it matched her own.
‘If, and I do say if, there is more to this, then we’ll hunt them down and destroy whoever is behind this. Don’t worry, Lloyd, Archie’s death hasn’t made me soft.’ Ruby’s eyes were hard as she looked back at her father-in-law.
‘Let’s get the funeral done and out of the way, but behind the scenes, we’ll start makin’ discreet enquiries among our criminal networks, only trusted allies, but we’ll make a start,’ Lloyd said. ‘Ruby, you need to act the part of grieving widow, victim of a robbery gone wrong. Can you do that?’
‘Oh, I can do that,’ said Ruby bleakly.
Alfie stepped forward and wrapped Ruby in his arms, trying to offer her some level of comfort.
She stayed in his embrace for just a moment, before she disentangled herself and walked out of the room. She just needed to be alone for a moment.
She tried not to picture Archie’s handsome face, the way he smiled at her, that heady mixture of love and lust, which she’d returned in full. Yet each night, when she shut her eyes, there he was, her golden husband, the man of her life. She feared those visions, but she yearned for them too, wanting to remember every inch of him, dreading the day he started to fade away from her mind because that would be losing him all over again.
Once the formalities were over, Archie’s body was released for burial, the official explanation being that his killers were dead by Ruby’s hands in self-defence. The funeral preparations were then underway. An English-speaking funeral director was appointed by Ruby and the event was planned for two days’ time. Lloyd and Alfie rang round their contacts and soon, crooks were flying in from all over the globe in support of the Willson family.
Ruby handled everything on auto-pilot. On the morning of the funeral, she dressed slowly in a black Christian Dior dress and heels. She had chosen a black pillbox hat with a veil that draped down, covering
