64
The redhead lay back in the roll-top bath, surrounded by bubbles and drinking pink champagne in the penthouse of a converted printworks with stunning views of the city. She particularly liked the glazed brick walls, expansive windows and industrial architecture, the exposed steel and solid timber beams.
The apartment belonged to a musician who wanted to sell. But she’d talked the estate agent into a short let, pretending it was a ‘try before you buy’ lease when it was nothing of the kind. She needed the property for a day or two until the Cypriot gave her the nod to move. First, however, she had some unfinished business with Chantelle Fox . . .
Fox knew stuff – dangerous stuff that could be useful to the pigs. While the rest of the morons on Ralph Street had been getting pissed, she was not. She claimed to have photographic evidence of the arson and wanted to cut a deal in return for keeping her big mouth shut. The redhead wasn’t having that. She needed to silence the bitch before things got out of hand.
But how? It was risky with cops around and because of that the Cypriot was angry. He didn’t understand why Fox was such a threat – why should he? – so she threw him an explanation to keep him off her back, reminding him that in the early days the girl had been a source of cheap phones. That much was true, but it wasn’t why she had to be dealt with.
‘I didn’t hear you complaining then,’ the redhead said. It suited her to let him believe that Fox could implicate them both in serious fraud. ‘How was I to know she’d turn on me and threaten us?’
She stressed the word ‘us’ so he understood that the threat extended to him also, even though that was not the case. She could hardly tell him the truth – that she’d been seeing other men while he was out of the country, one who was going places and knew how to treat a lady, the other an obsessive tosser who’d fallen for her big style – a polis who thought he was God’s gift to women. Then he really would go off on one.
‘You were a fool to use the girl!’ he yelled.
‘Hindsight is a wonderful thing,’ she bit back. ‘Chill out, why don’t you?’
His eyes grew dark and dangerous. He hated being told to chill and was sweating like a pig. She didn’t need him telling her that they stood to lose everything through her stupidity. She’d been insane to use Chantelle directly in the early days. Hadn’t he told her time and time again to employ a go-between? Always, always cover your tracks when requisitioning hardware. No trace. No way back to us. No wonder he was spoiling for a row.
Any moment now he was likely to snap. Then he’d fly into one of his rages, guaranteed to last several hours – possibly even days. She was bored with his strops. Bored with him. He’d outlived his usefulness and she had plans to deal with that. In the meantime he was the one with all the contacts, so she needed him for just a little longer, until she was free and clear of a difficult situation.
She wished she’d never met him. He was older than her, a small-time crook back then, posing as a businessman. A brief fling on the holiday island of Cyprus had led to something more serious before she’d learned what he really was up to. Instead of putting her off, it had the opposite effect. She’d seized her chance to muscle in as the UK arm of his operation.
It turned out to be a lucrative partnership.
Lifting her right leg out of the water, she watched the suds slide off her foot. Admiring her painted toenails, she thought of those early days. They had cooked up a scam to make easy money – and, boy, did they live up to that. People were so obliging. They were asking to be relieved of their hard-earned, accepting anything they were sent because it happened to look right, believing whatever they were told by the posh bird on the phone.
The redhead grinned.
She was good – really good.
Learning her scripts came as easy to her as learning the two times table. Before long she didn’t need the written version. In fact, she was so good, she began believing she was who she said she was: a property developer, a foreign travel agent, whatever the hell she wanted to be. When not in the UK, she spent her time at his home in Cyprus. There was no extradition to the UK from the island, an obvious attraction should she be forced to flee the country in a hurry.
She’d always been clever at pulling the wool, a faulty gene she’d inherited from her father, a two-timing bastard who’d let her mother down spectacularly. For years he’d lied about working away from home. In reality, he had a whole other life, a second wife too, they later discovered. But lying to her mother was nothing compared to what he had done to her.
The Cypriot reminded her of him and it made her skin crawl.
He was staring at her now.
‘I teach you nothing?’ he yelled. ‘This girl? She sees. She exploits. She makes the most of every opportunity. We have something in common, do we not? Maybe it is her and not you I should’ve chosen to share my bed. Every one of us is greedy, my dear. It is basic human nature to want more than God gave us when we arrived in this world.’
He was right.
The bastard was always right.
Not that the redhead would ever admit it.
‘I’ll take care of it,’ she said.
‘We cannot afford to wait.’ The Cypriot puffed on his cigar. ‘You said yourself, the girl she is smart. Smarter than you, I hope. If that is true then we must assume she also realizes the information she has is too valuable to share. Pay her off. Do it tonight or we’re finished, you and I.’ He chucked a large brown envelope on the tiled floor. ‘Our escape route. Make sure you study it to the letter. No more mistakes.’
The redhead knew what was inside: fresh passports, airline tickets, new names, new identities. She told him she’d sort it, find out what the girl knew and pay her off. Money talks, she told him, a more permanent solution entering her head. No need for cash to change hands. She’d silence Fox for good. It was that or forever face the threat of life imprisonment with a tarrif-date of twenty-five years or more. She’d be drawing her pension before she saw the light of day. And she wasn’t having that.