‘Tell DI Mantle to call me afterwards.’
‘I will. But you’ve got to hear something first. We have a big development! So, anyhow, Lorraine blags fifteen hundred dollars from the officer at Pier 92. They were doling the dough out to anyone who’d lost someone and was suffering financial hardship.’
‘Fair enough at that time. She’d been left up shit creek financially, right?’
‘Yes. Then a couple of weeks after they get back to the UK, her sister said Lorraine got a phone call – a fire-damaged wallet containing Ronnie Wilson’s driving licence and a mobile phone identified as belonging to him were handed in by rescue workers digging in the rubble at Ground Zero. Photographs of them and the contents of the wallet were sent over to her so she could formally identify them.’
‘Which she was able to do?’
‘Yep. Now, the cash she got – the big payments of the life insurance, then the compensation – here’s the thing. Her sister was astonished when we told her. Like more than astonished, like blown-fucking-away astonished.’
‘Acting?’
‘Not in my view, nor Bella’s. She swung between astonishment and anger. I mean, she blew her rag at one point, saying she’d cleaned out her own savings to help Lorraine – and that was long after, according to the bank records, Lorraine had had the first lump of moolah in.’
‘So no honour among sisters then?’
‘Seems like it was one-way between these two. But I’ve got the best to come for you. You’re going to love this.’
There was another tannoy announcement. Grace yelled for Branson to wait until it had stopped.
‘The lab’s come back this afternoon with a familial DNA match on the foetus Lorraine Wilson was carrying. I think we’ve got the father!’
‘Who?’ Grace asked excitedly.
‘Well, if we are right, it is none other than Ronnie Wilson.’
Grace was silent for a moment, adrenaline surging. Thrilled that his hunch seemed to have been right. ‘How good a match?’
‘Well, this particular
‘Where did Ronnie’s DNA come from?’
‘From a hairbrush his widow took the NYPD when she went to New York. That profile was passed back to the British police, as routine, and entered on the National Database.’
‘Which means,’ Grace said, ‘that either our friend Mr Wilson had left behind some frozen sperm which his wife, who wasn’t quite so dead as she appeared, had implanted. Or…’
‘Me, I favour the
‘Certainly looks favourite from where I’m standing,’ Grace replied.
‘And you’re standing a lot closer than me, old-timer. With your shoes on or off.’
90
Abby heard a phone ringing somewhere, close and insistent. Then she realized, with a start, that it was her own. She sat up, confused, trying to work out where she was. The phone continued to ring.
There was chill air on her face, but she was perspiring heavily. She was in darkness, just shadows all around her in a ghostly orange haze. A spring creaked beneath her as she moved. She was sitting on a sofa in her mother’s flat, she realized. Christ, how long had she been asleep?
She looked around, fearful that Ricky had come back and was in here. She could see the glow of the phone’s display and reached for it. The coils of fear rising in her stomach worsened when she saw the words:
She brought the phone to her ear. ‘Yes?’
‘Had a good think about it, have you?’ Ricky said.
Panic raced through her brain. Where the hell was he? She had to get away from here quickly. She was a sitting duck in this place. Did he know where she was at this moment? Was he outside somewhere?
She waited a moment before replying, trying to collect her thoughts. She decided to keep the lights off, not wanting to show him she was here, in case he was out in the street watching. There was enough glow penetrating the net curtains, from the street light outside the window, to see all she needed in here at the moment.
‘How is my mother?’ she demanded, and heard the tremble in her voice.
‘She’s fine.’
‘She’s got no resistance. If you let her get cold, she could get pneumonia-’
Interrupting, Ricky replied, ‘Like I told you, she’s snug as a bug in a rug.’
Abby did not like the way he said those words. ‘I want to speak to her.’
‘Of course you do. And I want what you’ve stolen from me. So it’s very simple. You bring it back, or you tell me where it is, and your mum can go home with you.’
‘How do I know I can trust you?’
‘That’s rich, coming from you!’ he sneered. ‘I don’t think you know the meaning of that word.’
‘Look, what happened happened,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you back what I’ve got left.’
The pitch of his voice changed to alarm. ‘What do you mean
‘You can’t have it. I can only give you what I’ve got.’
‘That’s why it wasn’t in the safe-deposit box, right? You spent it?’
‘Not all of it,’ she gambled.
‘You callous bitch. You’d let me kill your mother, wouldn’t you? You’d let me kill her rather than give it back to me! That’s how much money means to you.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re quite right, Ricky. I would.’
Then she hung up on him.
91
Abby ran across the dark room, stumbling over a leather pouffe, and groped her way into the bathroom. She found the sink and threw up into it, her stomach jangling, her nerves shot to pieces.
She rinsed the vomit away, washed her mouth and switched on the light, breathing deeply. Please don’t let me have another panic attack. She stood clutching the sides of the sink, her eyes watering, terrified that Ricky was going to smash his way in here at any moment.
She had to get away from here, and she had to remember why she was doing this. Quality of life for her mother. That’s what it was all about. Without the money, her mother’s last years were going to be unimaginably grim. She had to keep hold of that.
And to think about what lay beyond for her: Dave waiting for the text to say they were good to go.
She was just one transaction away from giving her mother a future worth living. One plane ride away from the life she had always promised herself.
Ricky was nasty. A sadist. A bully. But a killer? She didn’t think so.
She knew she had to stand up to him, show strength back. That was the only language a bully understood. And he wasn’t a stupid man. He wanted everything back. There was no value to him in harming an elderly, sick lady.
Please God.
Abby went back to the sitting room waiting for him to ring. Ready to kill the call when he did. Then, heart in her mouth, terrified she was making a big mistake, she crept out of the apartment into the even darker corridor and up the fire exit stairs to the first floor.
A few minutes later, from the phone in Doris’s flat, she was dialling a different number. The call was answered by a well-spoken male voice.
‘Is it possible to speak to Hugo Hegarty?’ she asked.
‘Indeed, you are speaking to him.’
‘I apologize for calling you in the evening, Mr Hegarty,’ Abby said. ‘I have a collection of stamps that I want to sell.’
‘Yes?’ He drew the word out so it sounded deeply pensive. ‘What can you tell me about them?’
She itemized each stamp, describing it in detail. She was so familiar with them, they had become as clear as a photograph in her memory. He interrupted her a couple of times, asking for specific information.
When she had finished, Hugo Hegarty fell strangely silent.
92
