Stephen Leather - Take Two

Cohen lived alone. He had a housekeeper but she only came in twice a week. It was Friday, which meant the accountant probably wouldn’t be missed until Monday by which time he’d be at the bottom of the North Sea. And even though he would be missed, there were no signs of violence in the house, no clues as to what had happened there.

He took the bags through to the kitchen. There was a small black remote control that Cohen used to open the main gates and Richards picked it up. When he got outside, Halpin closed the Bentley’s boot.

‘All good,’ said Richards. ‘Time to get the hell out of Dodge.’ He climbed into the front passenger seat, but then changed his mind and got out of the car. ‘Tell you what, you take the Bentley, I’ll follow you in Cohen’s Merc. If they find the car here, they’ll wonder where he got to. But if the car’s gone, they’ll think he went off somewhere.’

Halpin got into the Bentley while Richards hurried back to the kitchen to get the keys to the Mercedes. The two men drove down the driveway as the electronic gates slowly opened. As they turned into the road and headed for London, the security light above the garage clicked off and the house disappeared into the darkness.

‘Reg, really, just drop me anywhere here and I’ll catch a cab,’ said Carolyn. They had just crossed the Thames and were in North London, heading for Notting Hill Gate.

‘My wife wouldn’t let me hear the end of it if I didn’t take you home,’ said Reg. ‘Especially if you send me a signed picture like you said.’

‘Cross my heart,’ said Carolyn. ‘Monday morning first thing I’ll put one in the post. For Debs.’

‘It’ll blow her socks off,’ said Reg. He slowed and stopped at a red light. ‘Speaking of which, what’s the story with your shoes?’

Carolyn wrinkled her nose. ‘I broke a heel,’ she said. ‘One shoe’s no good so I chucked them away.’

‘And this was what, after your car died?’

Carolyn had told Reg that her car had died out on the road and the lack of a signal meant she hadn’t been able to call for help. He seemed happy enough with her story. ‘Five minutes after I’d started to walk,’ she said. ‘I have to say Reg, you were an absolute God-send.’

The light changed to green and Reg started driving again. Carolyn didn’t want Reg to know where she lived but she couldn’t think of a way of persuading him to let her out before they reached her home. She had no way of knowing if the bald man with the gun had seen the registration number of the truck or not. ‘Well, I can’t have you walking around London in your bare feet,’ he said. ‘It’s no trouble.’ He nodded at her bag, which she was clutching to her chest. ‘You could try your mobile, get someone out to look at your car.’

‘I’ll do it tomorrow, Reg,’ she said. ‘All I want to do is to get home, take a shower and dive into bed.’

Reg dropped Carolyn outside her house and made her promise for the third time to send a signed photograph for his wife. He wrote his name and address, and his wife’s name, on a petrol receipt and she had it clutched in her hand as she waved goodbye. She hurried into the house, unlocked the front door and tapped the four digit code into the burglar alarm pad. She padded into the kitchen, switched on the kettle and then phoned Terry Carter. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

‘Demolishing a bottle of Baileys and thinking about watching some porn. You?’

‘Can you come around, Terry? Now?’

‘Is something wrong, darling?’

‘Sort of,’ she said. ‘Can you come?’

‘I’m out of the door,’ he said.

Terry lived a few miles away in Kilburn and he usually rode around on his bicycle which meant he could get to her door in ten minutes or so. Carolyn rushed upstairs to her bedroom, threw her clothes onto the bed and had a quick shower, then wrapped herself in a bathrobe she’d liberated from the Ritz Hotel in Paris. She was pouring boiling water into her chrome and glass coffee maker when the doorbell rang. She went to open the front door and as soon as Terry crossed the threshold he gave her big hug and a kiss on both cheeks. ‘So where is it?’ he asked.

‘Where’s what?’

‘Your award, silly.’

Carolyn had forgotten all about it. She gestured at her bag which she’d dumped on the floor by the sofa. ‘It’s in there.’

‘Are you serious?’ Terry hurried over to the bag and pulled out the award. He grinned. ‘You star!’

‘It’s a few quids worth of cheap metal,’ she said.

‘It’s what it represents, and you know it. It shows they love you.’

‘It’s not me they love, it’s my character,’ said Carolyn. She laughed. ‘If you like it so much, you can have it.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ he said, setting it down on the coffee table. ‘It’s yours. You’ve earned it.’ He turned to look at her. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘It’s a long story,’ she said. She took him through to the kitchen and finished making coffee, then flopped down on the battered old leather sofa facing the French windows that overlooked her garden. Terry sat down next to her, holding his coffee mug. He was wearing tight jogging pants and a purple Pineapple Studios sweatshirt. In between sips of coffee, Carolyn told him the whole story. Getting out of the car in the middle of nowhere. The walk to the house. What she’d seen. And how she got back to London. Terry didn’t interrupt, but his mouth opened wider and wider. When she finally finished, he stared at her, his mouth so wide that she could see every one of his perfect, white teeth. ‘Close your mouth darling, you look like a vampire about to take a bite out of my throat.’

‘You’ve called the police, right?’ he said.

She shook her head.

‘Why the hell not?’

‘Because it would cause me problems on so many levels,’ she said. ‘First of all I’d have to explain what I was doing out there that late at night, which means I screw up my relationship with a network producer which will be the kiss of death for my career. He’ll get hauled in for questioning, and that’s going to piss him off. And when the story gets out…’ She shrugged.

‘Why would it get out?’ asked Terry.

‘Come on, you know what the police are like,’ she said. ‘Someone will call one of the tabloids or one of the magazines. Every time a celebrity gets busted for anything the papers are on it like flies on shit. Within hours of talking to the cops I’ll be on the front page of the Sun and the Mirror and probably the Mail. And then, of course, Sky News will be all over it.’

‘But you saw a murder, Carolyn. Someone died.’

‘I saw someone get hit with a crystal dolphin, that’s what I saw. And I saw a lot of blood. But he might not be dead.’

‘Even so…’ He studied her with unblinking brown eyes. ‘You have to go to the police.’

‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘What can I tell them? I saw one man hit another? It was late at night, it was dark, and I’d been drinking.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘I’d had a hell of a lot to drink, actually.’

‘Can you describe the man you saw? The one that did the hitting?’

‘Tall. Dark. Good looking. Nice suit. But that’s it, Terry. I’d probably recognise him if I saw him again but could I describe him?’ She shrugged. ‘Not really.’

‘But if the cops can identify the victim, maybe they’d have an idea who the killer is.’

‘And what if they don’t? And what if they go public? Soap star witness to gory murder. What then? What if the murderer decides to get rid of the only witness to his crime? It’s not as if I’m low profile, is it? I can’t hide, can I?’ She smiled ruefully. ‘What do you think, they’d put me in witness protection?’ She pointed at her face. ‘How many magazine covers have I been on? I can’t go into a department store without half a dozen fans asking me for my autograph.’