She couldn’t believe she’d trusted him. After what happened yesterday—and what she’d found out last night—that wasn’t a mistake she’d be making again.

The thin white boy Elvis drifted through on his way to the kitchen giving a duck of his head in greeting. She heard him shuffling about in there while the shower ran in another room. Somewhere nearby a baby cried continuously and a man banged on a distant wall and yelled for quiet with no sense of irony.

Elvis reappeared holding an opened can of Coke and a crumpled roll-up cigarette that Kelly suspected did not contain purely tobacco. He plonked himself on the sofa and fired up his Nintendo, earbuds in place. Whether that was to keep the noise in or the neighbours out she wasn’t sure. By the time Tina returned, washed and changed, he was engrossed.

She cuffed him around the head lightly, with affection. Elvis swayed from the blow not missing a beat of his game.

“Hangs on my every word,” Tina muttered. “So what you found out?”

That I’ve been a bloody fool.

Kelly sighed. “That too much staring at a small screen really does make your eyes go square,” she said. “Apart from that . . . More than I wanted to, probably.”

Tina put a hand on her shoulder gave it a squeeze and said nothing. Kelly found her silence more encouraging than straightforward encouragement would have been. She took a breath.

“Harry Grogan seems to have done a really good job of sailing close to the wind,” she began. “I can find lots of ‘rumoured to be’ and ‘probably’ and innuendo but he’s never been convicted of anything—never even been arrested for that matter.”

“So he’s clever,” Tina said. “Got to be, to get where he’s at.”

“There are stories about him having links to drugs, arms, prostitution, trafficking—you name it,” Kelly said, suddenly bringing to mind Yana’s stumbling explanation of how she’d come to the UK. A payment. To whom? And for what?

“He’s got a lot of property round here,” Tina said. “And he uses Russians as muscle—like we don’t have enough home-grown thugs of our own.”

Kelly tried to raise a smile. “They come over here, taking our jobs . . .”

Tina grinned back. “You got that right.”

But even as Kelly made the crack something rustled at the back of her mind. Russians. The accent of the man who’d attacked her—first at the warehouse and then at the racecourse—could it have been Russian? Kelly shook her head, realising just how stiff her neck had become.

“On the surface he’s supposed to be a legitimate property developer,” she said. Just like Matthew Lytton. “Owns a couple of racehorses, contributes to charities, hobnobs with the great and the good.”

“If he’s so squeaky why’s he put a price on your head?”

Kelly hesitated. “As a favour most likely.”

“A favour?” Tina’s voice was sceptical. “You know for who?”

“Unfortunately, I can make a good guess,” she said. She leaned forwards, woke up the snoozing laptop and nudged it round to face her friend, clicking on an image she’d minimised at the bottom of the screen.

The picture showed two men standing next to a sweat-lathered thoroughbred, obviously still blown from a hard-fought race. The men looked justifiably pleased—according to the caption they were part of a syndicate which owned the winner of some prestigious horse race.

“The fat bald guy, he’s Grogan, right?” Tina said. “Who’s the other one?”

“That,” Kelly said, her voice remarkably level, “is Matthew Lytton.” She’d already told Tina all about Veronica Lytton’s supposed suicide, Ray’s beating, the warning and what had come after. They’d talked well into the night before Kelly had begun her searches.

Now she pointed to the screen. “This proves Matthew and Grogan are in it—whatever it is—together.”

“All that proves is they each own a leg of some fast donkey.” Tina sat back frowning. “Ten large is some favour, girl.”

That rocked Kelly. “Ten thousand? My God . . . are you sure?”

Tina jerked her head towards the sofa. “I sent Elvis out last night, see what noise he could pick up on the street. That’s what he say.”

Somehow Kelly didn’t see the sullen youth as a good intelligence-gatherer but she was prepared to reserve judgement—out loud at least. As if reading her doubts Tina grinned at her again. “Hey don’t you go underestimating my Elvis. He don’t say much but he knows how to listen.” Her face sobered slowly. “And ten grand is a lot of dough.”

“Dead or alive?” Kelly asked, only half joking.

“Makes no difference.” Tina shrugged. “Round here they’d sell their granny for less.”

59

Bumping along a rutted track in the back seat of a Range Rover Vogue, Steve Warwick couldn’t help the feeling he was taking his last ride to nowhere.

Of course, he’d gone along willingly—to a point. Harry Grogan had asked for this meeting in as much as a man like Grogan ever simply asked for anything. In truth Grogan had told Warwick when and where he’d be picked up without giving him the opportunity to refuse. So Warwick had allowed himself to be whisked away out of London like a lamb to the proverbial slaughter.

He sat back and watched the scenery which had turned progressively greener since they’d left the M4 motorway and struck out across the Downs. He tried to keep his face relaxed, almost a little bored, and hoped the trickle of nervous sweat along his temple wasn’t obvious to the two men in the front seats.

The driver didn’t worry him so much. He was big, yes, and from here Warwick had a good view of a squat, domed head that widened from ears down to collar into a bull neck like a mastiff. But he had the look of a slow bone-cracker and Warwick had been fast enough on the rugger field to know he could probably outpace him if he had to.

It was the passenger who set his nerve ends tingling with apprehension. The passenger was younger, apparently more languid, with rather girlie hair and designer stubble of a kind Warwick had always despised. But the eyes . . .

There was nothing behind the man’s eyes.

Warwick gripped the centre armrest as the big car lurched through another pothole, as much for comfort as to steady himself. And he wished not for the first time that he’d had the chance for a quick snort before this summons arrived. Something to bolster his confidence. Just a little.

The silent driver had turned off the road about a quarter of a mile back and since then they’d been crawling up this winding track to God-knows-where. It looked for all the world like they were taking him to his unmarked grave.