“I looked out the details again,” McCarron said. He twisted to face his computer and peered at the screen. “Veronica Lytton. Suicide. Found fully clothed in the bath with one of her husband’s guns—an RPA Interceptor if you’re interested—alongside her. Fatal gunshot to the head. No other visible trauma. No note, but her fingerprints on the weapon and discharge residue on her hands and clothing. Alone in the house with no sign of forced entry. Husband out of the country. Scene officially released this morning.” He sat up and removed his glasses flinging them onto the desktop. “Far as the police are concerned it’s an open-and-shut case. With the emphasis on shut.”

“Doesn’t make it right though,” Kelly said.

McCarron sighed again, pulled open his desk drawer and brought out a bottle of vodka—the good stuff. There was a jam jar on the desk holding a letter opener and a collection of pens. He tipped out the contents, gave the jar a cursory wipe and poured slugs into that and his empty coffee mug.

“Aye well sometimes this job stinks Kelly love,” he said handing over the jar. “In more ways than the obvious.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” she murmured. They touched rims and sipped in companionable silence.

The office was small, tucked away on the upper floor above the garaging for the vans. No way could he afford to leave them parked on the street overnight. He’d tried it briefly when the business was starting out. The signwriting proved an irresistible attraction for every local toerag with a ghoulish sense of curiosity. After the fifth smashed side-window in so many weeks he’d bitten the bullet and rented somewhere secure.

The loft space above the garaging had seemed an extravagance at the time but as the company had taken off he’d gradually expanded into it. A bit of studding and a dash of plaster and it was now a neat layout of storerooms and offices. He kept a posh executive lair of his own right next door to this one. It was spotless and Spartan with a stainless steel desk that resembled a mortuary table—possibly because that’s what it had once been.

That office presented the kind of clean, uncluttered, efficient workspace that clients expected and admired but McCarron found it impossible to get anything done there. So he hid himself away in this untidy little bolt-hole and only nipped through the connecting door when clients had been buzzed in and were on their way up.

He felt more at home this side of the door. The office was cramped and messy but it was reasonably clean. There was even a scuffed sofa that he’d frequently kipped down on when the working day stretched into the working night, when the business was on the way up and his marriage was on the way down like the two facts were on opposite ends of a seesaw.

Kelly sank onto the sofa now, leaned her head back and shut her eyes. She cradled her vodka almost untouched in her lap having taken no more than a taste. And that, McCarron knew was just to be sociable. These days Kelly was careful to the point of paranoia about what she allowed into her system.

Can’t blame her for that I suppose.

He’d never known her go out simply for her own enjoyment, to let her hair down. In fact she didn’t seem to have any friends outside work—something that had cost her dear in the past, he knew.

Sitting there as close to relaxed as she ever got, McCarron thought she seemed young and frail—both of which he knew were just an illusion. But she also looked tired, he realised. The kind of tired that comes from stress as much as physical labour.

Allison had recently had her nose pierced just the same as Kelly and he resisted the urge to ask what happened when she got a cold.

After a few moments he set down his mug, cocked his head on one side and said, “Want to tell me about it?”

Kelly didn’t open her eyes. “Old ghosts,” she said simply.

“Should’ve thought about that,” he said, gruff. “Sorry Kel. Never crossed my mind … ” He shrugged. “Sorry. Saw the upmarket postcode and wanted my best team on it that’s all.”

“Flatterer.” She lifted her head, shook it like a dog out of water. “Don’t worry about it Ray. Not your problem.” But the smile she’d intended to be reassuring came out wan instead. “I just walked in there and knew the scene had been staged—and you know as well as I do that it bloody was—and it . . . brought it all back.”

McCarron tensed. “All of it?”

“Well.” She lifted a shoulder, gently swirled the colourless liquid round the inside of the jar without meeting his eyes. “As much of it as I ever remember.”

“I’m sorry love but it’ll do you no good trying to force it.” Even as he spoke he was aware of the hollow emptiness of words. “It’s a done deal. You’ve just got to move on with your life.”

For a moment he thought she was going to say more—maybe even confide in him. Instead she glanced up, eyes glinting.

“Yes Mum,” she said and stuck her tongue out.

McCarron didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. “Well, at least you haven’t had that pierced yet, I’m glad to see.”

6

“Tell me!” the voice commanded. “Tell me everything!”

As the lash sizzled across his exposed flesh Steve Warwick flinched in pain. He’d sworn that this time he’d take the beating without a sound, like a man, but a traitorous groan forced out past his whitened lips.

His hands were tied over his head to one of the low-slung roof beams. He twisted against the restraint cursing silently but there was no give in the mounting. And although the material itself was soft enough not to mark him it had so far resisted all his frantic efforts to tear himself free.

Blindfolded as well as bound, he strained for every reassuring noise above the hammering of his heart. His tormentor circled with slow footsteps, a deliberate measured pace on the bare wooden floor and he cringed deep inside waiting for the next blow. A hot flood of humiliation had started low in his belly and was creeping outwards. Standing at full stretch like this, naked and vulnerable, he was completely at their mercy.

“I don’t know anything,” he pleaded breathless. “How many more times—”

“Liar!” The woman’s voice cracked out synchronised with the whip and he jerked again. She struck harder this time and his groan mutated into a shocked howl, outrage and pain in equal measure.

The woman laughed. A throaty, husky purr of sound. “You are being very bad boy,” she admonished, her voice tinted with the seductive Russian accent of her birthplace. “You are—how you say?—holding out on me because you know I shall punish you, yes?”

“No! I—”

The whip landed again curling dangerously around his thigh and eliciting a strangled yelp this time. “For God’s sake be careful Myshka!” Warwick snapped. “I’ve a squash tournament this weekend. Not where it will show!”