words Bussola had spieled out about having regrets. ‘Fuck that bitch Felicity for getting me into this.’
Tapperman was vaguely aware of the reasons why Kruger had been watching the mobster. Gravely, he said, ‘If I were you I might be bothered about Felicity’s safety right now. If Mario adds this up and starts asking questions, he’ll get mightily pissed with her answers, I reckon.’
Kruger’s eyelids snapped shut with an involuntary spasm as the implications of Tapperman’s words hit him. He hung his head despondently. ‘You’re right,’ he said quietly.
Although Danny believed she had amassed enough evidence, most of which was hearsay, to recommend that Joe Lilton should be refused a firearms certificate, she did not succeed.
She presented a very detailed report about Lilton’s ongoing violence towards his wife which had been logged over a period of several months. However, the powers-that-be decided it would be too much trouble and cost to refuse the application because if Lilton appealed against the decision he had immediate right of appeal to a Crown Court.
In those days — the early 1980s — the ownership of firearms was not seen as too big a deal. The horror of Hungerford had yet to happen and the tragedy of Dunblane was completely unthinkable. People didn’t do such things, did they?
Therefore Lilton got his certificate, got his guns — a thirty-eight and a forty-five — joined a gun club and to all intents and purposes, became a model gun-owner.
Danny knew that not long after her visit to Lilton’s house in Osbaldeston, he and his wife split up and later divorced. Beyond that she knew nothing more — until now, here in the present, because she had bumped into Joe Lilton again.
Remarried to Ruth — who seemed decent, if highly strung — and stepfather to Claire, runaway and deeply unhappy child.
Nor was Danny happy. There was something at the back of her mind, niggling away. Something from all those years ago… yet she could not pinpoint it.
At least she was up to date with Joe Lilton and feeling smug that the new government had decided to ban private ownership of handguns. In a couple of months’ time, Lilton, along with thousands of others, would be obliged to hand in his weapons to the police.
She stretched her arms and sat back.
It was eight o’clock. Time to go home.
She had spent more or less the whole day at her desk — with the occasional excursion to research Joe Lilton — head down, beavering way, trying to clear her work so there would be no earthly reason for her ever to return to this office once she had been promoted.
She had seen nothing of Jack Sands. He might have been in his office, might not. She did not care. All she wanted to do was forget him and the last couple of days, and get on with her life. Hopefully he had got the message and would leave her alone in future.
When he walked into the office at that very moment, as cocky and cool as she had ever seen him, her heart juddered.
Fortunately a couple of other people were in the office too.
Sands addressed everyone.
‘ Just thought you’d like to be informed — for those who know him, that is — I’ve just received a preliminary message from Control Room.’ Here he looked directly at Danny. ‘And you’ll be very interested in this, Dan: Louis Vernon Trent has escaped from prison and in the process he killed two paramedics and a prison guard, and is suspected of a firebomb attack on another inmate’s cell which killed four people. He could well be making his way back to his home town. Here. Blackpool.’
Danny gasped.
That was all she needed.
To Steve Kruger it seemed almost a lifetime ago since he had been walking across that parking lot, eagerly anticipating the planned barbecue and beer with his son and grandchildren. The barbecue had obviously been cancelled and they had all taken a raincheck. At least, for now, Kruger could achieve one of his ambitions, and that was to get his mouth round the neck of a bottle of Hurricane Reef Lager.
He screeched the Chevy into the driveway of his Bal Harbour villa, gearing himself up to the coolness of the beer working its delicious way down his throat. He tapped in the alarm code and went in through the front door of his home, of which he was extremely proud.
He tossed his jacket and tie onto the staircase, kicked off his shoes, and loosening everything else, made his way directly to the kitchen. He almost fainted with pleasure when he opened the refrigerator door and a burst of frozen air hit him. He stood there a few moments, basking. Then he grabbed a beer. A second later it tumbled down his neck like an ice-cold mountain stream.
Most of the contents went down in that first pull.
‘ Jeez, that’s wonderful.’ He rolled the bottle across his sweaty forehead.
Next he stripped off where he stood.
He made his way through the living room, to the patio door which led out to the pool. He took a few steps across the hot concrete and dived naked into the water, secure in the knowledge the garden was not overlooked.
He did a graceful length underwater, turned whilst submerged and swam back. With bursting lungs he surfaced at the point where he had entered.
He did not expect to see the long black pair of female legs standing on the poolside, slightly astride. The view stopped him dead. He gulped, recognised them from previous discreet observation, and his eyes travelled slowly up them to see that the groin was covered by a pair of very tight shorts.
He looked further up.
There was a gap between the top of the shorts — exposing a lovely flat stomach with a belly button to die for — and a button T-shirt tied with a knot underneath the breasts.
‘ Myrna,’ Kruger said, puzzled. ‘What you doin’ here?’
She shrugged. ‘Couldn’t sleep, I guess. Too much goin’ on in my head. Needed some sort of debrief. Mind if I join you?’
‘ Be my guest.’ He realised she must be able to see that he was completely naked.
Myrna undid the knot in her T-shirt and dragged it over her head. She shimmied out of her shorts, discarding them and her panties to one side. Then, for one beautiful moment, as she raised her hands to a point above her head, Kruger was treated to a sight he had only ever dreamt about. He had to admit, the reality was far better than the imagination. The breasts tauter, the nipples bigger, the tummy flatter and the legs longer.
She dived over him, and entered the pool with hardly a ripple.
Kruger turned, ducked under the surface and pushed himself away from the poolside, wondering what form the debrief would take.
Everything going on in Danny’s life at that moment seemed to be connected with ghosts from her past. People she thought had been laid to rest.
First there was Joe Lilton, from fifteen years ago.
Then Jack Sands, a nightmare from her very recent past.
Now here was Louis Vernon Trent a mere nine years in her past.
Trent had been the first major criminal Danny had ever arrested and put away for a long time. She had locked up plenty of burglars and petty drugs dealers but Trent had been her first biggie. He wasn’t a master criminal in the usual sense of the phrase. He wasn’t driven by greed or the need to show off. He was driven by a perverted and uncontrollable lust. Mainly for young girls and occasionally for boys.
Because of this he was considered a danger to the public.
That was why Trent was a biggie.
His arrest had been Danny’s passport to any specialist department she chose. She plumped for Family Protection because she felt it was the area in which she could do most good.
It had probably been the near-fatal injuries caused by Trent to two young girls in one frenzied attack that had
