Ava McCarthy - The Courier

She edged towards her car, raking over the highlights of her morning so far. A safe that she’d broken into illegally. A client who’d disappeared. A duffel bag full of stolen diamonds. Not to mention a dead body. The list wasn’t encouraging.

The siren grew louder and she fumbled for her keys. Did she really want to stick around for the police? The last time she’d got close to an investigation, she’d ended up a suspect. Still was, for all she knew. That wouldn’t help her credibility this time round.

With trembling fingers, she opened the boot of her car and dumped her case inside. She thought of the man in the baseball cap who didn’t leave witnesses, and her throat closed over. She knew she should talk to the police, but for the second time that day, a voice in her head screamed ‘ run ’.

The siren grew more strident. It wasn’t too late. After all, no one knew who she was. The killer didn’t know her name, and the police didn’t need to know it either.

Harry gasped. Her business card. It was still on the desk inside. She spun round and scrambled back up the steps, taking them two at a time. The siren was close now, in the same street. She raced back into the house and made straight for the office. Averting her eyes from Garvin’s body, she scoured the surface of the desk. She hauled out drawers, checked on the floor.

Tyres squealed outside, car doors slammed. A cold shiver rippled down Harry’s spine.

Her business card was gone.

‘Beth Oliver died four months ago.’

Harry turned away from the window and gaped at the plain-clothes detective by the door. ‘What?’

‘That’s right.’ He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, arms folded across his chest. ‘So now as well as all the other holes in your story, you’re saying you were hired by a dead lady.’

Harry squinted at him, as if sharpening her focus could change what he said. He was lean and wiry, his sandy hair cut short like a schoolboy’s. His name was Hunter, and he’d been questioning her in Beth’s kitchen for two hours.

She thought of Beth: the battered face, the passport, the bank statement. She shook her head, but her insides were sinking.

‘She was here, I talked to her.’

Hunter shrugged. ‘I don’t know who you talked to, but it wasn’t Beth Oliver. She died in a car accident last July.’

Harry groaned, and sank into a kitchen chair. She’d known something was off from the start. Why the hell hadn’t she just walked away?

She shook her head. She knew why. That damn vault. Even as a kid she’d been the same, hacking into computers just to prove she could. By the time she was eleven she could crack open almost anything, and mostly it just brought her trouble. Maybe at the age of twenty-nine it was time to consider grown-up things like consequences.

She looked up at Hunter and had a hard time meeting his eyes. ‘Seems like I misread my client.’

‘If there ever was a client.’

‘Look—’

‘The woman next door saw you charge out of the house, ready to take off.’

Harry glared at him. ‘I told you, I wasn’t taking off. I was looking for Beth.’

‘So why’d you go back into the house?’

She hesitated. She could hardly tell him she’d been looking for her business card, trying to cover her tracks. ‘I don’t know. To stay with the body, call the police. I don’t really remember.’

‘But you didn’t call us, the woman next door did.’ Hunter pushed himself away from the door and sauntered towards her, his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his chinos. ‘Imagine that. You’re standing here with a dead body and you don’t call the police.’

Harry met his gaze and tried not to blink. ‘I must have heard the sirens. Why would I call you if you were right outside?’

He stared at her for a long moment, and she made herself stare back. Faint cracks fanned out around his tired hazel eyes, but otherwise his skin was smooth. She guessed he was probably somewhere in his thirties.

‘So tell me more about this man with the gun,’ he said eventually.

‘I’ve told you all I can remember. He was wearing a baseball cap, and a light blue jacket and jeans, I think.’

‘Height?’

‘Five feet ten or eleven, maybe.’

‘Face? Age?’

Harry shrugged. ‘He was tanned, quite lined. Compact build. In his fifties, I’d say.’

‘Anything else?’

‘I only saw him for a minute through a narrow slit. Ask the woman next door. If she saw me, she might have seen him.’

‘We already did. She didn’t see anyone. No man in a baseball cap. No Beth-lookalike.’ He stepped closer towards her. ‘Just you, dumping a case into your car.’

‘That was the laptop, I told you. Here.’ She stood up, fished in her bag and held out her car keys. ‘Red Mini parked outside. Take the laptop, I don’t want it.’

Beth probably hadn’t wanted it either. She’d only been interested in the diamonds.

Hunter took the keys and tossed them to a uniformed officer, who caught them and left the room. Then Hunter turned back to Harry, moving in closer. He smelled of coffee and herbal deodorant.

‘Harry Martinez.’ He peered at her face. ‘Any reason I should know that name?’

Her stomach dipped. She shook her head and aimed for a casual shrug. After all, what could she say? That her father was Salvador Martinez, the high-profile banker who’d gone to prison for insider trading? That the fraud squad had been watching her now for six months, convinced she’d helped him stash some of his money?

Hunter’s eyes never left her face. ‘What’s Harry short for? Harriet?’

‘Henrietta.’ Her father had been the one to start calling her Harry. Harry the Burglar, to be precise, but now was not the time to share that particular detail.

Hunter’s eyes dropped to the business card she’d given him. ‘Blackjack Security. You own this company?’

Harry nodded. ‘I started it up a few months ago.’

‘What kind of work do you do?’

She shrugged. ‘It varies. Penetration tests to check system security, computer intrusion investigations, computer forensics for litigation.’

Hunter was nodding slowly. ‘You make a habit of breaking into people’s safes?’

Harry felt her cheeks burn. ‘Not without the owner’s permission. Look, you don’t really think I killed Garvin Oliver, do you?’

Hunter cocked his head, like a terrier processing signals. Then he waggled his hand, showing how much her credibility hung in the balance. Before she could press him further, the uniformed officer returned to the room and handed back her keys. Hunter threw him an inquiring look, and the officer nodded. Harry looked from one to the other, wondering what damning evidence they’d turned up against her in her own car.

Hunter’s phone rang. He checked the caller ID, and his mouth tensed. She could see him debating whether to take the call, then he answered it in terse tones. While he listened tight-lipped to the voice on the other end, Harry thought of her missing business card.

She longed to believe that Beth had taken it, but she knew the chances were slim. More likely the man in the baseball cap had seen it and slipped it into his pocket. The notion made Harry’s brain jangle. The killer already knew her face; now he knew where to find her, too.

‘She what?’

Harry snapped her eyes back to Hunter. He was glaring at her, deep lines carving up his forehead. Her heartbeat geared up a notch. He listened some more to the voice on the phone. Then he ended the call, his eyes still drilling through hers.

‘That was Detective Inspector Lynne,’ he said. ‘Ring a bell?’

Harry’s fingers tightened around her keys. For an instant, she was back in the Bahamas, a suitcase full of banknotes by her side; and waiting for her in Dublin was a detective with watchful grey eyes. She swallowed.