Jessie Keane: Lawless

‘Look,’ she said, and put the card in his hands.

Daisy hurried over with the LP sleeve. They stood there and stared at it. Ruby looked up at Kit, her eyes anxious.

‘You know that my brother Charlie was killed in a hit-and-run not long after he got out of jail? After he’d done time for the mail-van robbery?’

Kit nodded.

‘Thomas Knox told me Michael was behind the hit-and-run. And that would fit. Charlie was trying to intimidate me, and Michael didn’t like it.’

‘You think this matches?’ Kit was peering closely at the two sets of handwriting.

‘It’s close. Don’t you think?’

It was close.

And it fitted, too.

Ruby knew that Betsy had always loved Charlie best; Joe was second choice. And if somehow she had found out that Michael was behind Charlie’s death, couldn’t she have targeted him? Seduced him, perhaps, and lured him to the place where he was killed?

I’m Still in Love with You.

Ruby shuddered. Yes, it could be Betsy. But it could also be Joe. Charlie was his brother, after all. Perhaps Joe and Betsy had colluded over this, arranged Michael’s downfall between them.

‘You’ll just talk to them, won’t you?’ she asked anxiously. ‘He’s…’

Dying.

‘… He’s very ill.’

Kit and Rob exchanged a look. ‘We’ll go easy,’ said Kit.

After they’d left, Ruby sat there on her own and thought about what an individual thing handwriting was. Graphologists could tell a person’s entire personality, just by the way they slanted letters and added loops. She sorted through a few more cards, thinking that she ought to toss this old stuff out. Look to the future, forget the past. She’d even put Thomas’s card in here, the one he’d sent her after Michael’s death. She thought she’d thrown that away…

Suddenly she saw it, and jumped as if someone had shot her. She dropped the box of cards and they fell to the floor. She bent down and with shaking fingers picked up the one that had caught her eye. She stared at it.

Couldn’t believe it.

But there it was.

Rob dropped Kit back at his house because Kit was worried about leaving Bianca on her own for too long. Rob thought he was right to worry, she was a highly strung girl and she’d had some very hard knocks.

‘We can take care of this,’ he assured his boss. In the back of his own mind, he still suspected Gabe at work in this, somewhere. ‘Let us go in first, suss out what’s been going on. Maybe Ruby’s mistaken. Maybe the writing’s similar but not quite the same. Who knows?’

Because Kit was concerned about Bianca, he agreed to Rob’s plan. He stood on the kerb for a moment, watching the car pull away, wondering how Rob and Daisy would get on in Chigwell. When he went indoors, he found that Bianca was gone.

‘Joe and Betsy Darke – they’re your uncle and aunt,’ said Rob on the way out to Chigwell.

‘Yes, but I’ve never been acquainted with them.’

‘Your uncle’s not well,’ said Rob.

‘I know.’ Daisy shot a look at him. ‘It seems Ruby and Betsy fell out a long time ago. And Joe took his wife’s side, as you would. So there was an estrangement there, and it’s never been resolved. Not my fault, or Kit’s. Nothing to do with us.’

‘Your aunt Betsy’s a man-eater, Daise. Kit and me, we had a laugh about it after we came out here, but now I’m thinking it’s not very funny. Your uncle knew what a loose tart she was, he saw her swanning half-naked around the house, chatting up the builders, and he resented it, poor old bastard. We guessed she’d be knocking off someone, but Michael? I thought he had better taste.’

Daisy was silent. She had a horrible image in her mind, of Michael in an alleyway, dead, his head shot away. Uncle Joe might be ill, too weak to do the job himself, but he still had plenty of criminal connections. If Betsy had been having an affair with Michael, then it would have been a simple matter for Joe to hire in help to kill his rival and – bonus – the man who had offed his brother Charlie. Or for Betsy to pull in a few favours and organize it in revenge for Charlie’s death.

‘Well, here we are.’

Rob pulled in beside the gateway of the Chigwell house. It looked quiet in there today, the house sitting serenely in its lush two acres, the gates shut, no builders, nothing. He got out and pressed the intercom. Waited.

He glanced back at Daisy in the car. Shrugged.

He pressed again. He could hear a dog barking in the distance, and wondered if it was Prince. Maybe Betsy was out, maybe she’d left Joe in the conservatory dozing, and the dog on guard. But peering up there, he could see her car was on the drive. You didn’t just ‘pop to the neighbours’ round here. This was a classy enclave, people kept themselves to themselves.

Rob moved away from the intercom and started walking along beside the five-foot wall that skirted the property. He heard Daisy get out of the car behind him, and slam the door.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

‘You think Joe’s told Betsy he rubbed Michael out? Poor git’s on his way to the pearly gates, confession’s good for the soul. Maybe she’s realized we’ve finally made the connection with the pair of them, or suspects we have, and is keeping a low profile?’ he wondered aloud.

‘We need to be careful here,’ said Daisy.

‘Meaning?’

‘This could be either one of them. Joe or Betsy. If she was pursuing Michael, giving him gifts like the LP-’

‘And the ring.’

‘And that, yes. Maybe Michael was on his way to meet her when he died. Maybe that call from Joe was some sort of confrontation. Or a trap.’

‘Well, we’ll soon find out.’

Rob was approaching an accessible section of the wall. He glanced left and right, saw all was quiet, and heaved himself up and over.

‘This is crazy,’ said Daisy as they walked across the closely cut lawn to the house.

She’d scrambled over the wall after Rob, despite his moaning that she ought to keep the fuck out of this, wait in the car .

So here they were, approaching the house, and the barking was getting louder.

‘What if the police are watching the place? What if the alarm’s on?’ she asked him, panting as she tried to keep up with the length of his stride.

‘Easy. These people are your relatives. You were concerned when they didn’t answer the intercom, you decided to come in. And the alarm? I checked it all out last time I was here. You only got to say what a nice place this is to Betsy and she gives you all the details. They don’t bother setting the alarm, and it’s a piss-poor single system anyway.’

‘What?’ asked Daisy.

‘Christ, Daise, there are some big gaps in your education. It means you only have to cut the phone lines to the house and it’s out of action. Plus, there are no movement sensors, either inside the house or out here.’

‘You’re so clever,’ mocked Daisy.

‘You get clever in this game, Daise, or you get dead.’

‘That’s a very big dog barking in there,’ said Daisy.

‘I know, I’ve seen it.’

They were at the front door now. Rob rang the doorbell. He leaned on the button for about a minute. Stood back. There was no answer. No movement. Only Prince, barking frantically.

‘Let’s go round the back,’ he said, and Daisy trailed after him. They stood on the patio and looked in the kitchen window. Prince lunged up at the window, barking, snarling, smearing the glass with hot breath and saliva.

‘Kitchen door’s shut,’ said Rob, peering in past the maddened animal. ‘He’s trapped in the kitchen, can’t get out. That’s good. Looks like all the refitting’s been done, so the builders won’t be in today.’