Angel of Death (32 page)

‘My daughter is breaking off this engagement, she’ll send her ring back to your son. Just make sure you keep our names out of this. I don’t want to see my daughter splashed all over the gutter press, is that understood?’

‘Yes,’ Terry wearily said. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Francis . . .’

Belcannon hung up so violently that Terry’s ears were almost shattered.

Well, he couldn’t blame the man. That poor girl, how she must be suffering; she had loved Sean. Why, why, why, couldn’t Sean have loved her, been faithful to her?

A sob choked in his throat. The engagement was over; there would be no marvellous marriage. Sean had killed that girl for nothing. Had murdered his own child for nothing.

The phone shrilled again. He sat staring at it, not wanting to talk to anyone, but eventually picked it up again.

This time it was Bernie. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days. Where have you been?’

‘Greece.’

‘Ah.’ A significant pause. ‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘Did you deal with your local problem?’

‘Yes.’ Another pointless, stupid death. He regretted Miranda almost as much as he did his dead grandchild. He had liked Miranda; had liked and admired her. She was beautiful and good at her job. She hadn’t deserved what happened to her.

None of this need ever have happened.

‘Well, good,’ Bernie said briskly. ‘Now, my boys tell me we would do well to move into your line of business, they were very impressed by what they saw. We need to have a meeting, soon, to discuss terms.’

Whose terms? Terry thought with dreary resignation. The last thing he wanted was to have a partner forced on him, to lose control of the business he had taken years to build up.

But to fight Bernie would use up energy he needed to fight for Sean.

Well, why should he fight for Sean? His son had cost him his business as well as his grandchild and his peace of mind. He wasn’t worth fighting for.

‘Next Wednesday, two o’clock, here?’ Bernie suggested. ‘Easier for you to come up to Manchester than for all of us to come down to London.’

‘Very well,’ Terry accepted. ‘If I can’t make it for some reason I’ll let you know the day before.’

‘I hope you will make it,’ Bernie said with cool insistence. ‘Be there, Terry.’

Terry replaced the phone, his teeth gritted and his whole face aching with tension.

Miranda knew she must not struggle, if she were to have any chance of survival. As her body sank she tried to stay calm, to think rationally. Her fingers fumbled with the heavy weight on the chain. How was it fastened? If she could only shed it. Fish swam around her in the blue water. Up above light glowed; the distant sun penetrating the waves.

She did not want to die.

The weight had been hooked on to the chain; she dragged at it, fighting to lift it up, and off.

It resisted, then suddenly she felt it coming upwards, managed to force it away and felt it fall. Released, her body bobbed up like a cork, surfaced in the warm Aegean, and she felt the sun shining down into her face. She blinked, trying to look around, searching for a sign of the boat from which she had been flung.

Ah, there it was – heading off into the distance, leaving a shining track behind it, like some great water snail. The sea was calm here, there was little wind, the weather was different to the weather when they left Delephores.

Where was she? How far from land?

Nobody would ever know what had happened to her – except Alex, perhaps. Had he known she would be drowned? Had Terry told him?

Her body was chill, despite the heat of the sun. She wished she could hate Alex, but her Angel of Death had got under her skin, she loved him more than life itself, which was ironic. How else could you love the Angel of Death?

She would have to float. She had learnt to do that when she was taking a rescue badge at school. You had to wear pyjamas, with the jacket sleeves tied to stop you using your hands, and float until your partner rescued you.

She would do that now. Relaxing, she let her body bob up and down on the gentle waves, turning her head from side to side slowly, to look round the horizon. If another boat came along she would be picked up, saved from death. All hope was not over.

But there were no other boats in view. How long could she keep up, stop herself sinking?

Panic rose in her throat; she felt herself grow heavy, dragged down under the glittering, blue, sunlit water. Oh God, Oh God, she thought, prayed, terror streaking through her. Please don’t let me drown.

Nicola walked out of the house while her aunt was having one of her marathon phone calls in the drawing room. Nicola could hear her high, Home Counties voice talking on and on and on, interspersed with shrill laughter.

‘You aren’t serious! She didn’t? Heavens, Daphne, did she really? And what did he . . .? He didn’t?’

She had left Nicola in the conservatory, doing a watercolour of some flowers Aunt Eloise had arranged for her.

‘When you’ve finished that you can go upstairs and start packing. I know we aren’t going to New York until the day after tomorrow, but you’ll need time to pack, you’re going to have to be selective. There’s this tiresome weight problem, you can only take one suitcase, so choose carefully, and remember, we’ll be able to buy anything you need in New York and we’ll be coming back by sea so there won’t be a weight problem coming back.’ She had given one of those unreal, insincere smiles Nicola hated so much. ‘Now, just concentrate on your painting, sweetie. I’ll look in on you later.’

Aunt Eloise was her mother’s sister and looked like her. Nicola had never liked her much, which didn’t matter as Eloise lived in Manhattan and rarely came to London, but her father had invited her over to, in his words, ‘be company’ for Nicola at this time. What he really meant was be a jailer, watch Nicola like a hawk, keep her away from Sean.

She had not seen Sean since he was arrested. Her father had almost had a fit when she said she wanted to visit him.

‘In a prison? My daughter, walking into a prison to see a murderer? Certainly not. The idea is ludicrous. Now, never suggest it again. Eloise, can’t you think of something? Keep her occupied?’

‘New York,’ Eloise had said. ‘Why don’t I take her back to the States with me? Show her a good time, find her other young men to stop her thinking about . . . about that one?’

‘Excellent,’ Francis Belcannon had said in relief. ‘Absolutely. Take her at once.’

But Aunt Eloise had wanted to do some shopping in London, meet with old friends she rarely saw, take in the latest exhibitions and visit the best boutiques. She had not been in a hurry to go back to New York just yet. Francis Belcannon had paid her fare and was putting her up; she was having a free holiday and hadn’t got bored with London yet, although she would. Eloise de Haviland always got bored with everything. She was a great traveller; drifting from Peking to Moscow, from Cairo to Istanbul, buying and chattering, floating like a gilded dragonfly over the surfaces of life everywhere. Even her native New York was largely foreign to her. She never visited some parts of it. Manhattan and Long Island, they were her chosen spots. Everywhere else was uncertain; dirty or dangerous, or full of disturbing people, people without money or influence, who might want something from her, might attack her or steal from her.

She had a beautiful, exquisite, apartment looking over the park, with the sort of security she could trust. Shops delivered. She had carefully checked staff. She never had to do anything for herself.

She had friends, the right sort of friends. She no longer had a husband; he had thoughfully died, leaving her enormous sums of money. She had squads of hopeful men friends, none of whom would ever get to first base because she had no intention whatever of marrying again. A husband merely cramped your style, although a girl like Nicola must marry young, get it over with, get a good divorce and then really start to live with lots of money and lots of freedom to do as you please, get what you want, never have to compromise or do anything for anyone else.

That much Nicola had learnt over the last few days, listening to Aunt Eloise talking in her brittle, lively way.

The life she was being urged into was not what Nicola had dreamt of; she did not want to turn into Aunt Eloise, to be enamelled and self-obsessed, drifting over life endlessly without ever experiencing any depths or experiencing anything fully.

‘Certainly not, you cannot go and this . . . this what-ever.’

‘Sean.’

‘Don’t even say his name. Don’t think it. Forget you ever heard of him.’

‘I love him.’

Aunt Eloise had opened her mascara-ringed eyes, her dark red mouth a circle of distaste. ‘After what he’s done? Sweetie, where’s your self-respect? He was cheating on you with some shop girl and got her pregnant, then killed her. He’s a bastard. You can’t still love him.’

Nicola did, though. Oh, she had been shocked and horrified by what she had been reading in the papers. Their home had been surrounded by press, cameras flashing, men jostling on the London pavement, ringing the door bell, banging on the door. Every time it opened to let Papa in and out, to admit visitors, or permit them to leave, the men outside had surged forward, tried to force their way inside. They had shouted Nicola’s name but had caught no glimpse of her because she was upstairs in her bedroom, weeping on her bed, or spending hours in the bath, where at least she could avoid Papa’s preaching and later Aunt Eloise’s talk, talk, talking.

Nicola had read all the newspapers, curled up on her bed, staring at the grey photographs of the girl whose body had been fished up from the sea by Japanese fishermen.

Why? Why had Sean ever done it with her? What had she got, this flashy looking blonde?

He hadn’t taken Nicola to bed, had said they would wait until they were married. If he wanted to sleep with someone, why not her? Why go elsewhere for what she would have given him eagerly?

Hadn’t he ever loved her? Hadn’t he fancied her, hadn’t he wanted to sleep with her?

Bewildered, hurt, aching with frustration and wounded passion, she had needed to see him, ask him, get him to tell her . . . why? Why, why, why?

But her father and Aunt Eloise would not allow her to visit him in prison, so she had to escape and get her own way. Aunt Eloise kept proclaiming the importance of getting your own way, after all.

The press had given up hanging around. Nicola was able to slip quietly out of the front door and got a taxi right outside; pure luck. She would have walked to Hyde Park Corner, nearby, and got on a bus, if she had to, but a taxi was better. She went to Oxford Street and bought herself some inexpensive jeans and a cheap little thin white sweater, changed into them in the restroom at the Savoy, put the green Dior dress she had been wearing into a bag and left it to be collected. She could pick it up sometime before she left. After all, how could she visit a prison wearing a dress that had cost over a thousand pounds? The quality stood out a mile, just as the cost of the clothes she was wearing now were getting some sideways looks from the staff in the foyer of the Savoy.

But this was one occasion you had to dress down for. She didn’t want to stand out, or attract attention, at the prison. She had also bought a cheap anorak with a hood which she could pull forward over her head, disguising her blonde hair and hiding her face.

All the same, she got stared at by the other prisoners as she waited for Sean to come and sit opposite her.

He looked astonished as he saw her, his face going red.

‘Hello, Sean,’ she whispered shyly, not quite meeting his eyes.

‘Hello, Nicola,’ he muttered. ‘I didn’t ever think you’d visit me, in here – your father’s solicitor came, told me the engagement was over and I wasn’t to try to see you again, or write, or anything.’

‘He doesn’t know I’m here. He didn’t want me to come, but I had to see you.’

He shifted uneasily. ‘Look, I’m sorry, OK? I won’t give you excuses, there aren’t any. But I am sorry.’

‘Did you ever love me?’ The question was quiet, but even someone as selfish and dim as Sean could have heard the pain burning behind it.

He swallowed, audibly, looking at her. ‘Yes, yes, more than I realised, myself, and before you ask I never loved her. I just needed to . . . do it, right? I couldn’t with you. I knew that. I respected you too much. But I’m only human and I’m a man. And she was there, and offering. But that was all. It was just sex.’

Her small, pale, delicate fingers twisted together. She looked at him through her wet lashes. ‘I wish I could believe you.’

‘I wish you did, not that it makes much difference now, it’s too late, I know.’

She kept looking at him, tears dropping from her big blue eyes. ‘You look different. Thinner. I don’t know . . . different in other ways, too. Older. Sad. Oh, Sean, it’s all such a mess.’

He groaned softly. ‘I know. But I do love you, Nicola. I wish to God none of it had ever happened. Honestly. If I could go back . . . I got scared when she said she was going to have a baby. I must have been mad for that one minute. And now your dad will never let me marry you, even if I get out of here, if I’m not found guilty, say. Even then he wouldn’t let me marry you. It’s all over for me.’