‘I have no idea who they are.’ Jen is completely confused. In a few weeks’ time, Kelly tells Todd he can no longer see Clio, can no longer associate with any of them. And yet – look. Items passed under streetlights; trades willingly arranged on burner phones.
Kelly has some association with Joseph. Clio and Todd got together and complicated it. And Kelly … Kelly thought it would fizzle out, that he could cover it up for long enough, and, when it became apparent that he couldn’t, he told Todd to end it. And why.
That why is the missing piece. And Jen is fairly sure that, today, Todd doesn’t know why. Only Kelly does.
Todd holds his hands up. ‘I don’t know any more than that.’
‘Is Joseph trouble?’ Jen asks curiously while her mind performs a firework display of questions.
‘He might be a wheeler-dealer. I don’t know. He’s a bit of a wide boy.’
‘How so?’
Todd turns his mouth down. ‘I don’t know. He doesn’t work, but he has money. I really don’t know.’
‘Does Clio know more?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll ask Dad.’
Jen grabs a jacket and shoves her feet into trainers, heads out into the mild, soupy night, summer’s last exhale. She’s glad to do this away from Todd. He already knows too much, clearly.
She hurries along the street to the takeaway, feeling guilty about grilling Todd, feeling guilty in case he’s worrying, feeling complicit in her hurt in some way. He’s just a fucking kid. Of course he’d lie in order to keep his glamorous girlfriend.
Jen’s footsteps ring out as she half walks, half runs along the streets. The air is close, the sunset monochrome, rendered grey by cloud cover. The odd September leaf has fallen in the street. Brown, three-cloved, like a child’s depiction. More and more and more will gather and fall, and she won’t see any of them.
Jen rounds the corner of the street that the takeaway is on and stops when she sees Kelly. He’s got his back to her, is leaning on a street sign. His legs are crossed in front of him. He’s on the phone. The burner phone she discovered in Todd’s room in October. She registers now that that was after their row, so … why did the phone end up in Todd’s room? Does Todd take it from Kelly?
‘I’ve done it,’ he says. ‘So you’re going to have to be in play, too.’
Jen waits there, saying nothing. She walks a few silent paces back, hidden behind a corner, still able to hear.
‘I’ll bring it to you. It’s a spare key, it’s on Mandolin Avenue, not far. I need to go now. Need to put in an appearance at home.’
That second sentence kills Jen more than the first.
She gapes, there, her hands flat against a wall while her entire world seems to spin off around her. She’s about to charge at him, to ambush him, to yell, when he says, ‘Thanks. Thanks, Nic.’
While Jen’s lying husband emerges holding the takeaway, she collects herself. She needs to think. She wants to be sure she gains as much information as possible, rather than confronting him.
His footsteps slow when he sees her.
‘Hey?’ His smile is easy, but wary. He’s no fool. He knows she knows something.
‘What’s going on?’
He immediately understands Jen, and he knows what a warning those questions are. ‘That phone call? Nic? No …’ he says, an educated guess. ‘You don’t think …’
‘Show me your pockets.’
He looks once down the road, back at the Indian takeaway. Then at his feet. A bite of his lip, then he sets the takeaway down on the ground and does what she has asked. She walks towards him.
Two phones and the brown package containing the key tumble out into Jen’s hands.
She says nothing, merely waiting for an explanation.
‘I – this is my client’s phone, Nicola. And her car.’
‘Stop lying!’ Jen shouts. Her words echo around the street, bouncing back distorted. Kelly’s face slackens in shock. ‘You’re lying to me,’ she says with a sob that she can’t contain. For all her intentions, it has descended into the domestic she wanted to avoid. She can’t help being emotional with him.
He runs a hand through his hair then turns on the spot. He’s angry.
‘Burner phones and illegal transactions, Kelly.’
He doesn’t say anything, just bites his lip and looks at her.
‘All right – yeah. The package. It isn’t for a client’s car.’
‘Whose is it then?’
He goes silent again. Kelly often allows pauses to expand, choosing to say nothing where other people would speak. Somebody else always talks first. But, this time, Jen waits too, just looking at him across the quiet, dark street.
His eyes run across her face. He’s trying to figure out what she knows. He’s trying to work out how to play his hand. ‘The car is stolen, but it isn’t – what you think,’ he eventually says.
‘What is it then?’
‘I can’t say that.’
‘Why?’
He stops speaking again, staring down at his feet, evidently thinking.
‘What? Tell me or – we’re in trouble, Kelly.’ She holds a hand up. ‘I am not joking.’
‘I know perfectly well that you’re not joking,’ he says tightly. ‘And neither am I.’
‘Tell me what the fuck is going on, or I go.’
‘I …’ He paces again, another useless circle that seems to serve only to burn off steam. ‘Jen – I …’ His cheeks have gone red. She’s getting to him, she can tell. Her husband may be calm, but even he has a limit. Just look what he did in the police station on the night that started everything.
‘Just tell me who the key goes to. Just tell me who the guy was that you met just now.’
‘It’s … I’d tell you if I could.’
‘You don’t want to tell me what you’re mixed up in. Isn’t it as simple as that? You’re giving me a fucking no-comment interview, Kell.’
‘It isn’t even half as simple as that.’
‘I can’t just stand by and have illegal shit happen outside the house.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘Missing babies. Stolen cars.’
‘Missing babies?’ he says. His eyes flash, then meet hers, his expression changing from irritation to panic.
‘The missing baby.’
He pauses, breathing hard, then looks at her. ‘If I say something – will you trust me on it?’
Jen spreads her arms wide, right there in the street. ‘Of course.’
Kelly comes over, grasping her shoulders urgently. ‘Do not look into that baby.’
Nothing could have shocked Jen more than this sentence. ‘What?’
‘Whatever you’ve found. Stop.’
‘Who’s Joseph Jones?’
‘Do not look into Joseph Jones either,’ he says, his tone as vicious and as sharp as a snake’s.
They stand there in silence for a few seconds, Jen still in his arms.
‘Kelly – I … you’re asking me to –’
‘Just – stop. Whatever it is you’re doing. Stop.’
Jen hates this tone of his. It provokes an ancient emotion in her. Her body wants to run, she wants to escape: fear.
‘Why?’ she says, barely a whisper.
Kelly’s fuse finally reaches its end. ‘You’re in danger, Jen,’ he says. She steps back from him in shock. Her shoulders are covered in goosebumps. She begins to shiver, feeling so alone. Who can she trust?
Kelly looks at her. Behind the sorrow, she is sure she can make out an emotion on his features that she hasn’t ever seen before on him, that she can’t read.
She tells him not to come home with her if he won’t tell her anything else, and he doesn’t. He leaves. She doesn’t know where he goes, almost doesn’t care. The takeaway bag sits there, its brown sides buffeting slightly in the wind. She picks it up and takes it home, for Todd. For once, she has no appetite.
Ryan
Ryan is loitering before the emergency briefing led by the sergeant, Joanne Zamo.
Leo, Jamie and Ryan are standing along the back wall of the briefing room. ‘One for you,’ Jamie says, right before Zamo starts speaking. ‘OCG is Organized-Crime Group.’
‘Thanks,’ Ryan says. ‘I knew that.’
‘All right,’ Zamo says. She’s in a trouser suit, flat black shoes, holding a coffee in her hand. Her weight is on one leg, and she’s clearly thinking, staring at the floor but probably at nothing, her brow lowered. ‘Surveillance are feeding some stuff through to us now. Everybody ready?’