Cold Kill (44 page)

He found the kitchen and opened his champagne, then found a glass and wandered through the party, pouring for other people now and then, laughing at people who nodded and laughed back at him. It was a big enough party for there to be degrees of separation; some people knew each other
well, some a little, some not at all. He talked to a few people on topics that no one knew much about, he danced on his own or in a little group, he circled, looking for the girl in the green dress.

The black cabs had gone home early, already garaged and washed and spruced; minicabs were somewhere on the end of a phone that rang into oblivion.

Maxine Hewitt stopped by Stella's desk and said, ‘Forget it. They'll never answer. I'll give you a lift.'

‘It's out of your way.'

‘A little. What are you going to do – ski?'

Mike Sorley went through looking fit, smoking a cigar and carrying eight store bags with fancy handles. His paper was in order: Lauren Buchanan in police custody for three days, then in front of magistrates, then, for sure, on remand to Holloway. It was something. It wasn't Bloss and Kimber in adjoining cells, but it was enough for a while.

Stella and Maxine soft-footed it over the car-park ice and Maxine drove very slowly out on to the road, which had been partially cleared by the weight of traffic.

‘I'm going back-doubles,' she said; ‘the main roads are solid.'

They talked about anything but the Bloss–Kimber case because they were talked out on that. They talked about everything and nothing while Maxine inched through the rat-runs.

When they arrived, Stella said, ‘Come in and have a drink.'

‘I don't think so. It'll take me a while to get back.'

‘A coffee.'

‘No, it's okay.'

‘There might be a duty-call for tomorrow.'

‘I know, I've warned Jan. She understands.'

Stella got her keys out. She said, ‘Have a good Christmas.'

In her flat, the phone had just stopped ringing. As she crossed the street – the wind whipping her face, sirens whooping in the surrounding streets – her mobile was going off in her bag, but she couldn't hear it.

The girl in the green dress was called Dallas. Bloss said he hadn't heard an American accent. Dallas said, no, she was born in Oxford, but her mother just liked the name. Bloss said he thought it was a terrific name. He thought Dallas was terrific.

‘Except,' Dallas said, ‘for Kennedy being shot there. And the TV soap.'

They laughed about that. Dallas thought Bloss was a strange-looking guy, with his bright blue eyes and his Slavic cheekbones and his high-pitched laugh, but there was something about him that she liked. She decided that he must be powerful in some way or another, a media mogul, perhaps, or a captain of industry. She had him down as a boardroom slugger. They danced and she liked the way he snaked his hips.

He said, ‘You know them – the people giving the party.'

‘Yes. No, not really. I came with a friend. She knows them, but she had to leave. Do you know them?'

Bloss shook his head. ‘Not really.'

They stood by a window and watched the snow and sipped their drinks. Dallas was happy to get drunk; she wasn't drunk yet, not very, but she was happy to get that way.

‘I ought to be in Oxford, with my parents. There aren't any trains.'

Bloss laughed. ‘Me too. I came down from Birmingham. I'm stranded.'

‘What will you do?'

‘Find a hotel,' he said, and saw the look on her face, and knew he was home and dry.

Kimber had been dreaming. He was flying over snow-swept London with his eagle-eye, and he could see them all, Valerie Blake and Sophie Simms, Kate Reilly, Jan, Stella, and all the others, all he'd ever followed or snapped or clipped. He could walk through walls, he could find them in their rooms.

He dreamed he was in Stella's flat, lying in her bed, waiting for her to come home; he dreamed he heard the phone ringing and the call was to say she was on her way; he dreamed that he heard the front door open and close as she came in, then her voice on the telephone.

And then he was awake and it was true.

Stella sat on the sofa, her back to the bedroom door, and dialled Anne Beaumont's number. The answerphone said she was away for a few days, but Anne lifted the phone before the message had finished.

‘Not away, then,' Stella said.

‘I would have been. Look out of the window.'

‘I'm sorry to call. I shouldn't be calling. I slept with someone.'

Anne laughed. ‘Nothing like coming to the point.'

‘Delaney doesn't know.'

‘But you've decided to tell him.'

‘What else can I do?'

‘Not tell him.'

Kimber got out of bed. He could hear Stella's voice but not what she was saying. He smoothed the covers and patted the shape of his head out of the pillow.

‘Would that be a good thing?'

‘Only you know that,' Anne said. ‘The point is, people don't necessarily have to know everything. Truth isn't medicine.'

‘You don't usually talk like this.'

‘I'm speaking as a friend.'

‘What would you do?'

‘You mean what have I done in the past?'

‘If you like.'

‘It depended.'

‘On what?'

‘On the likely reaction of the person in question. Good reaction, own up; bad reaction, shut up.'

‘Is that your advice?'

‘Christ, no. You asked me what I did and I told you. I never give advice.'

Kimber had slept with the Glock under the pillow. Now he lifted it out and turned towards the door, catching sight of himself in the mirror, a naked man with a gun and a sleepy smile. He was fine. He would wait for her to finish the call. There was all the time in the world. He put on his trousers and shirt because, naked, he felt at a strange disadvantage. He should see her naked first; he felt that was the right way.

‘I'm going to tell him,' Stella said.

‘Okay. Did it make a difference – being with this other person?'

‘No. Nice guy, went to bed, not sure why, testing, I think… And nothing. Well, a bit of residual guilt. But no change in the way I felt about Delaney.'

‘Sounds okay.'

‘Does it?'

‘Sounds fine. What do you think he'll do?'

‘I don't know.' And she realized that it was true: she
hadn't the first idea and wondered if she ought to know him better than that.

Anne said, ‘You know something, Stella, over too many years of listening to people talk and trying not to tell them what to do or how to behave, I think I've reached the conclusion that the best bet is to do what you want.'

‘Why?'

‘Because you're the only person who knows what that is.'

Stella had been sitting in her coat. Kimber heard her get up and walk across the room. He waited, but there was a pause he couldn't analyse. Stella was dropping her coat on to a chair, deciding whether to have a drink, try to book a cab or pack a few things immediately. In the end, she thought she would have a shower. She was unbuttoning her shirt as she walked into the bedroom.

And there he was. And there she was.

Stella could feel herself beginning to faint, her vision narrowing and edged with black, a sound in her ears like a train coming down a track. She knocked the door-frame with her hand, but didn't know how that had happened.

Her first lucid thought was,
Don't faint because if you faint you're dead
. Her second was,
You're probably dead anyway
. Kimber was pointing the gun at her, his hand trembling slightly. He stooped by bending at the knees so he wouldn't have to take his eyes off her, picked up the bag and threw it on to the bed.

‘Open it, Stella.'

She pulled the drawstring and upended the bag. He had brought some duct tape and lengths of cord, a pair of scissors and a camera.

Make him talk. Make him talk it instead of doing it
.

‘There's a way out of this.' She backed off a little, away from the bag of tricks. ‘Tell me where Leon Bloss is. Stop now, stop this now, and just tell me where Bloss is and we'll pick him up and you and I can cut a deal.'

His name is Robert Adrian Kimber. Call him by his name. Is he Robert, Bob, Bobby...?

‘That's the way, Robert. That's the way out for you.'

Kimber had brought his free hand up to cup the butt of the gun and the barrel wavered slightly. He said, ‘There's no way out, Stella. I'm sorry.'

‘Don't make things worse. Don't get any deeper. We know about Bloss but we don't know where to find him.
You do. You can tell us. Then we talk about a deal. That's the way it works.'

‘I want to get deeper.' Kimber was grinning. ‘That's the point, I want to get as deep as I possibly can. You'll see. You'll know about that.'

‘What's the point?' she asked. ‘I don't understand – what's the point of killing me?'

He looked at her, frowning slightly, as if her question had puzzled him. ‘It's not like that,' he said. ‘It's not a reason...' Then, suddenly impatient, ‘Take your clothes off now, Stella.'

He put out a hand to the duct tape and the cords, and the gun gave a little wobble, as if one hand wasn't enough, and Stella realized that it wasn't nervousness or excitement that was causing the unsteadiness, but that Kimber simply wasn't used to guns: he was holding the weapon too tightly, his finger curled hard on the trigger. He shook the gun to make her hurry and she saw his knuckle was white. With that kind of pressure, the gun should have fired or, at least, he would have taken up the trigger-slack.

‘Get undressed now.'

It hasn't fired because he's got the safety on
.

‘Take your clothes off, Stella.'

You think. You hope. But you don't know for sure
.

‘Do it!'

He was one side of the bed, she was the other. It gave her two, perhaps three seconds, but she didn't make a sudden movement because that would have set off an alarm-reaction in him. She simply turned and walked out of the door, closing it behind her.

Then she ran.

He had tried to shoot, because there was certainly time for that. Maybe he realized it was the safety, maybe he
thought the Glock had jammed. Either way, he yanked on the trigger as he was moving after her and the delay gave her enough time to get to the front door and out.

Kimber crossed the room at a run, hitting the arm of the sofa and half falling; when he came up the basement steps, Stella was halfway down the street, running on the icy snow with small, unsure steps. She fell hard and took a second to get up. Kimber was loping after her, somehow keeping his balance, trying to watch Stella and look at the gun as he ran, trying to work out how to release the safety. Stella moved off the pavement and into the middle of the road, where cars had left patches of tarmac exposed. For a brief while, she found a purchase, then slipped again and fell on her back. When she got to her feet, Kimber was a pace or two behind her and there was a car coming towards her, its lights dazzling.

Delaney could see only shapes, one rising in front of the car, the other a little way back and running with a slip-sliding sort of gait. He braked and turned the wheel, drifted into the kerb, then slewed back, fast and out of control, taking one of the figures up over the bonnet and down hard on the other side; then he stopped. Stella only knew that Kimber had been hit, had got up, had run on. She sat on the road, breathless, and watched him making slow progress up the road, running with a hop and a slide as if his hip were out of joint. The Glock was spinning on the ice in the middle of the road. Stella picked it up.

She didn't know it was Delaney and he didn't know it was her, but then he helped her up and she had clear sight of him and her first thought was,
What's he doing here?
Her second was that Kimber was still running.

Turning the car was impossible. Stella simply said, ‘It's
him,' and started up towards the junction. Delaney ran with her. They got to the main road and could see Kimber on the other side, about thirty yards down, running lopsided, arms out to keep his balance.

Stella said, ‘He's going into Harefield.'

It ought to have been business as usual for Jaz. He'd been busted, but his connections had signed on a sharp lawyer and a case had been made for ‘possession for personal use'. This was only possible because of some fast chuck-and-flush action on the part of Jaz's girlfriend. It depended what you meant by personal use; some persons used more than others. Either way, a deal was going to be struck and Jaz was out on medium-to-heavy bail.

All things being equal, he would have been back to supplying half of west London, but just recently Harefield had become a cops' playground: first the visits to Kimber's flat, then Kimber's disappearance and his flat being searched, then the scene of crime cops and the forensics cops and the observation cops and the cops cruising by on patrol just in case. Now the door-to-door, the re-calls, pictures of Robert Kimber being shown; and, on top of that, the weather. That
bastard
Kimber. The
fucking
weather.

Low turnover meant that Jaz was seriously over-stocked and that made him very edgy. After the cops had left for the day, he'd made some calls. Most of his street contacts had said, ‘Another day, man. Have you been outside?
Shit!
', but a few were more desperate than that. They'd made it over to Harefield and Jaz had met them in the bull ring; he didn't want a queue of high-usage dealers standing outside his door, just in case there were still some cops somewhere on the estate – overtime cops or heavy-weather cops or non-stop cops.

He was standing in a tight circle with his customers when Kimber ran into the bull ring, hopping and sliding and crying out with pain. Jaz looked at him. For a moment, he didn't make the connection; and when he did he was too angry even to smile. He said, ‘Man, I've been waiting for
you
.'