facilities. The room’s only ambience came from the half-dozen Harley-Davidson posters tacked to the bare board walls. It was cold, even now, on a fairly mild day, and Cullen thought the place must be unbearable in winter.
“Where’s your friend Nigel?” he asked, wanting to settle that little matter straightaway.
Chloe seemed to take it for granted that he knew who Nigel was. “Gone to France. His family’s there for the month. They have a farm in Normandy.”
“And he didn’t take you with him?”
“He didn’t want any trouble. I can’t blame him. It wasn’t Nigel’s fault – none of it was. He said I could stay here, as long as I wanted.”
“That was good of him,” said Cullen, and Chloe nodded, seemingly unaware of the sarcasm.
Now that he knew he didn’t have to worry about Nigel Trevelyan popping in unannounced with a shotgun or a blunt instrument, he relaxed a little and studied her more closely. It was hard to see a trace of the smiling girl in the photo Kincaid had found at Tia’s flat. “Why don’t you start from the beginning, Chloe, and tell me why you went to your father’s warehouse on Thursday night.”
“You know about that, too? How did you-”
“Security cam in the building across the street. It caught you and Nigel going in.”
“Oh.” She didn’t ask who had identified her from the photo, and he didn’t volunteer the information.
“Come on,” he encouraged. “What were you doing in the place?”
“There were these blokes, see.” She pulled at the hem of her skirt, which had ridden up even farther when she sat down. “I’d been to this club, in the West End. My mum gave me a little money, when I moved out from Dad’s, but then Tia didn’t charge me rent…”
“And?”
She hesitated, picking at a spot on her cheek, then locked her fingers in her lap and said with a sigh, “There were cards. I won a bit at first. But then I lost. They let me keep playing, these blokes, saying I’d be sure to make it back. And it was fun. It was like, every time, anything was possible. But I kept losing.”
So it was not Michael Yarwood who had been gambling, but Chloe. It all began to make sense. Doug didn’t bother to tell her that the mark always lost, and that the only reason they’d let her ride so long was that they’d seen the potential for making a bigger profit.
“And then” – she gave another little hiccup- “then one night they turned me away from the table. They – they told me how much I’d lost.” She paled even at the memory of it. “They said I had to give them the money. When I said I didn’t have it, they said I’d have to get it or – or they’d hurt me.”
“They wanted you to ask your dad?”
Nodding, she tugged harder at the skirt. “But I couldn’t. He’d kill me. I mean, it was one thing to make him mad over things like moving out or not finishing my school course, but this – something like this could ruin his career.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t. They gave me a few days, and I thought if I just didn’t go back to the club…”
Cullen groaned inwardly. And to think Stella had called
“First at Tia’s. Then they came to Nigel’s friend’s flat, where he’d been staying. I don’t know how they knew…”
If the police had an information network half as good as the London gangsters’, thought Cullen, they’d solve every case on the books. Chloe Yarwood had been a perfect pigeon, had possibly even been marked before she ever set foot in the club. Had the gallant Nigel been in on it? he wondered.
“So I thought… maybe I could stay at the warehouse at night, and just hang out somewhere in the daytime, you know, where no one knew me, until…” Her expression was bleak. She’d have realized by that time that they weren’t going to forget about her, but she’d been cornered.
“You had a key to the warehouse?” Doug prompted her, gently.
“I’d made it for a lark. I’d told Nigel that Daddy was going to give me the top-floor flat, when it was finished, and I’d wanted to show it to him. I got him to go with me that night. He was going to leave for France, after the blokes came round his flat, and I didn’t want…”
“You didn’t want to be alone.”
“No.” She glanced up at Cullen, then back at her hands. “We went in, and I showed him round a bit. I had a torch. We went upstairs… and after a while, we heard voices. I thought – I thought it was those guys, looking for me, but then we heard a woman. It was a woman and a man, and they were arguing. There was something – I don’t know.” Her shoulders jerked. “I got really scared. We got our – Nige and I got put together again, you know? And then we ran down the stairs, as quietly as we could, and out the back door.
“Nige left. He went – I don’t know, to another friend’s, I think. He – he didn’t want to take me with him. But I was afraid to go back to Tia’s, and I kept thinking about the woman I’d heard. She’d sounded frightened. I walked for an hour or two, and then I went back.
“But the warehouse was on fire. It was… terrible. The heat and the smoke, and the shouting. I thought maybe
“Chloe…” Doug tried to sort out the relevant bits of her story. “Could you or Nigel have started the fire? Did either of you smoke, or light a match, while you were there?”
“No.” She looked horrified. “We don’t smoke, and I told you, I had a torch. Why would I light a match?”
He thought about the CCTV film and what it had not shown. “Chloe, did you unlock the back door before you and Nigel went upstairs?”
“Well, yeah. I was showing him my private entrance, like, and we looked up at the balconies. Then we went up. I never thought of anyone coming in-”
“When you and Nigel ran out, did you see anything? Did you see the man and the woman?”
She shook her head.
“Did you recognize the voices?”
“No.” She frowned and chewed on a fingernail. “No, but I heard her say something like ‘How could you, of all people, when you knew what would happen?’ It didn’t make any sense.”
“And him? Did you hear what he said?”
“No. It was just that one bit, as we went out the door.”
“Do you know what time it was, when you left the warehouse that first time?”
“We can’t have been there more than half an hour,” she said slowly. “Half-past ten, maybe.”
“Good girl.” He patted her shoulder. “One more thing, and then we’ll get you out of here. Did you ever know a woman named Laura Novak?”
“No. Who is she?”
“Right.” Doug stood up, avoiding the question. It would be some time before they released Laura Novak’s name. “Get your things together, luv. You’ll need to come into the station with me, to make a statement, but first we’re going to your dad’s office.”
“My dad?” Her voice rose in a squeak. “But I don’t want him to-”
“Chloe, your dad’s been desperate with worry,” he said, adding with certainty, “The blokes from the club went to him, probably when they didn’t get anything out of you on the first try. Your dad thought the fire was a warning to him that they’d kill you if he didn’t find the money. And then, for a while, after he saw the videotape, he thought the body was yours.”
At daybreak, Harriet got up and crossed the room to the chest by the window. Trying to ignore the growing pain in her arm, she ate the last of the apricots and picked at the dried crust of oatmeal in the bowl. Then she tilted the water glass above her mouth, licking at the last drops. That made her dizzy, and she crawled unsteadily back to bed.
She waited, then, for the sound of footsteps and the creaking of the door, at first with dread and then, as her hunger and thirst grew worse, with dread and longing, but no one came.
After a while, even that ceased to matter so much. Her arm was swollen and hot to the touch, and she shivered and sweated in turn.
She thought she heard the patter of rain against the window, but the sound faded away as she drifted in and
