Glass Houses (40 page)

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T
he sight of Kitty Fish taking a man into Theo’s house infuriated Olivia. She also wasn’t happy that Aiden’s cab had passed by and, after a brief pause, carried on.

“Please pull as close into the side of the road as you can and wait, please,” Olivia told her driver. “I am right in thinking I can’t be seen through these dark windows, aren’t I?”

“You got it, miss. You going in there, then? Could be we need to ’ave a signal or something in case you need ’elp.”

“I won’t need help,” Olivia told him, but kindly. “I’ll sit here and wait.”

“ ’Ave it your way.” He sounded disappointed.

“I do appreciate your kindness.”

His voice brightened when he said, “Think nothing of it. What ’appened to the other lot, then? Was you expecting them to go on?”

“Oh, yes.” Where could Aiden be? She needed him,
now.

Olivia could almost feel the minutes, and her money, ticking away. Not, of course, that limousines had meters. “I really
s
houldn’t keep you any longer,” she said to the driver. “To be honest, I’m sure I can’t afford to. But thank you.”

“I charges a flat fee. Same as what a taxi would run you to get ’ere and we’re ’ere now. I’ll leave when I’m sure you’re well fixed.”

There seemed nothing more to say than another “Thank you.” And then she saw a tattered fellow shamble from the direction of Heath Street. With the hood of a long, gray rain poncho pulled over his head, he kept his attention on his filthy shoes and th
e bottoms of trousers that ruck
ed over them.

The “bum” scuffed into a co
rn
er against some railings opposite 2A and slithered down to sit. He assumed an unmoving pose, but Olivia felt lighthearted just knowing Wally Loder was within hailing range.

“Look at that,” Olivia’s driver said. “Poor old geezer. Cold enough to freeze the
…
It’s a cold’un to be out there with nowhere to go. Shouldn’t ’appen when some people ’ave so much.”

“What’s your name?
”
Olivia asked.

“Nigel Harris. Nigel’s highfalutin, but me mum had big plans for me when I was bo
rn
, I suppose.”

“I’m Olivia FitzDurham. That’s highfalutin,
too, except I
think the Fitz bit has something to do with having a bastard for a relative.”

Apparently Nigel appreciated that comment enormously. He laughed until he coughed and wiped tears from his eyes. “Hey,” he said abruptly. “Where d’you suppose ’e’s goin’ then?”

“I think I know,” Olivia said, watching Aiden make his way slowly across the narrow street and toward the passageway that led to the gardens behind the houses on her side. “It would be a bad idea for him to start wondering about this car.”

“Aye, aye,” Nigel said. “Leave it to me.” He pulled a cloth from beneath his seat and hopped out. Whistling, he began polishing chrome without ever glancing toward Aiden. Aiden had seen him but apparently assumed the car and driver were waiting for one of Olivia’s neighbors.

Aiden entered the passage and passed from sight.

For ten minutes—Olivia checked her watch every few seconds—nothing happened other than Nigel’s progress around the car. She was getting colder and rubbed her hands together, chafed her thighs and knees. Surely Aiden wouldn’t go into that house when he didn’t know where Kitty and the man would be.

Another man, this one walking uphill with his hands in his pockets, veered across the road and entered the passage as if he did so every day.

The concept of someone’s heart standing still took on new meaning. Olivia got out of the car at once, taking pains to make sure her hat was still pulled well down.

“Let me pay you,” she told Nigel, desperate to be off.

“You can pay me when I see you’re safe with someone you trust,” he said.

“Please, I have to hurry.” She had slung the camera case over her shoulder again and she dug into her bag for her purse.

Nigel brought his callused hand down on hers and she looked into his wide, honest face, into his unremarkable but kind eyes. “If there’s something you’ve got to do, do it. I’m not worrying about money.”

She nodded, trotted sideways a few steps, turned and ran. She ran after Aiden—and Ryan Hill.

The back gate stood open. Peering at the wedge of garden she could see, Olivia searched for any sign of movement, but saw none. She edged inside and behind the buddleia bushes that had grown into a tangle.

Along the fence she went, holding an arm in front of her face to ward off twigs and branches.

She saw Ryan Hill first. Leaning against the trunk of a big apple tree, and hidden from anyone in the house, he wore a brown leather bomber jacket and khaki trousers and appeared faintly military, particularly with his colorless, close-cropped hair. The most riveting thing about him was the gun he held in his right hand and rested on his left forearm. He looked watchful, but at ease.

A movement near the house had to be made by Aiden. He appeared to be on the ground near green-painted wooden doors that led to a cellar off the basement. She leaned to get a better view and saw him try the padlocked hasp that secured the cellar.

He did intend to go in alone after Kitty and that man.

Another glance at Ryan behind his thick-trunked apple tree brought Olivia close to shouting out a warning to Aiden. Ryan was no longer at ease with the gun resting on his forearm. He’d dropped to a crouch and held his weapon cocked.

Then he started forward, taking advantage of Aiden’s concentration on the hasp. A dense clump of pampas grass was his next stop, then a stand of har
dy lavatera, its pink blossoms s
till hanging on.

Da
rn
it, Olivia thought, R
yan Hill was preparing another s
neak rear attack on Aiden. This time he wouldn’t get away with it.

Olivia would have liked to choke Ryan Hill with lavatern blossoms.

Without taking his eyes from his task, Aiden reached into his pocket.

Ryan lined up his gun, ready to fire.

With a roaring noise in her ears, Olivia pushed out of her hiding place, ran at Ryan’s back, and threw herself at him. At the same instant, he hea
rd her coming and started to turn
.

On television she’d watched a self-defense program. She straightened her fingers, as she'd seen there, and when she landed on Ryan, knocking him to his back, she brought those locked fingers down and drove them into his eyes.

He screamed and kicked out at her, but he'd dropped the gun.

Olivia brought the side of one hand upward beneath his nose and had the pleasure of hearing him scream again. She’d worry about neighbors coming if she thought they’d ever risk getting involved.

Holding his head, Ryan rolled around on the ground, and Olivia snatched up his gun.

“Get back, Olivia.” Aiden had arrived, and he hauled her off Ryan. “The maniac might have killed you.”

“He was
going
to kill you,” she said, wriggling free in time to face Ryan as he got to his knees.

“Stay where you are,” Aiden told him. “It’s all over.”

“The hell it is,” Ryan said. “What are you, clairvoyant? You don’t know half of it.”

Ryan took a swing at Aiden, a swing Aiden deflected with ease.

“We don’t have time for this,” Olivia said, glancing repeatedly at the house.
“
If they hear—and he wants them to hear— if they do, we’ll be outnumbered.” With that she made a clumsy swing with the hand that held Ryan’s gun, and hit him a glancing blow behind an ear.

“Oh,” she said, staring at him. “I hardly touched him.” But Ryan had fallen as if bludgeoned with a hammer. He lay absolutely still.

Aiden pressed two fingers into the man’s neck and looked at Olivia while he concentrated. “Well you managed not to kill him. Congratulations.”

She threw down the gun. “Hateful thing,” she said. “And don’t you sound so judgmental. I was keeping you safe and stopping him from killing you.”

Aiden smiled at her and stooped to pocket Ryan’s gun. He touched her cheek. “You’re right about the time, sweetheart. We’ve got to move fast.”

“Why would they come here?” Olivia asked. “Would they be afraid I might have other copies of the photos tucked away?
”

“I think we can bet on it. And Kitty Fish isn’t likely to have noticed someone rubbed part of that top coat of paint off, is she? She wants what we’ve got—something to make comparisons with.”

Together they left the garden and rushed out to the street. “That’s Nigel Harris,” Olivia told Aiden. “A very nice limousine driver, who brought me here and says he won’t leave until he’s sure I’m all right. Hello, Nigel!”

“For God’s sake, keep it down,” Aiden muttered. “If he’s willing to keep on waiting, we’re probably going to need him.”

“Nigel,” Olivia said when they reached him. “This so-called bum is my friend.” She deliberately omitted Aiden’s name. “He’s in the same jam I’m in, but I promise you we’re completely honest people who have been dragged into something.”

Nigel wiped his hands on the rag that was still pristine. “I believe you,” he said, but looked disappointed at the arrival of a male interest in Olivia’s life.

“Can you keep on hanging around?” Aiden asked. “We’re going to need to find a place to stay when we’re through here. I’ll make it worth your while.”

Nigel glowered a bit and said, “I’ve already told Olivia I’ll be staying.”

“Thanks,” Aiden said, and Olivia sensed he knew he was being seen as a rival. “I’ve got to go into that house, but I’d like to leave Olivia with you.”

“That’s fine with me,” Nigel said. “You’ve missed the women, though. One must have been in there already. They both left and took off up to Heath Street. The fella’s still inside, though.”

Aiden looked inquiringly at Olivia.

“I don’t have a clue,” she said, then asked Nigel, “What did the other woman look like?”

He polished the glistening bonnet of the car with fresh vigor. “Nothing special. Not like the blond one.”

“Okay, I’m going in.” Aiden turned his attention on 2A and approached without attempting to be subtle. He rang the doorbell, and the pressure of his finger sent the door swinging inward.

He went in without any hesitation.

Ignoring Nigel’s protests, Olivia followed and felt the familiarity of the house settle around her the instant she entered.

The gray afternoon seeped through lace curtains and colored the atmosphere sullen. A musty smell reminded Olivia that the place had been closed up. She looked upward and saw no lights from the higher floors. The back of the house on this floor was in darkness. The door to the basement was open, and the naked yellow bulb that hung from a wire cast its glow inside the entrance to the stairs.

Olivia approached on tiptoe. She didn’t want to do anything to handicap Aiden.

There were no sounds coming from below.

She waited, growing more panicky with every breath she took until she couldn’t wait any longer.

With great caution, treading softly in the badly fitting tennis shoes, she climbed slowly down the stairs until she could see the scene below.

Drawers had been thrown open and hundreds of photographs and negatives scattered on the concrete floor. Everything that should be on her worktops was on the floor, too, including the heavy guillotine she used for cropping shots, and several cameras. Lenses were tossed into the muddle, and light meters, and rolls of unused film deliberately exposed and left in useless
coils. It all appeared to have been stamped on, or swung against walls.

What could she have done to bring about such violent destruction?

“Don’t come any nearer.”

Aiden’s voice startled her with its quiet, almost sad quality. She made him out just inside the darkroom and went resolutely down to join him.

“I told you to stay there,” he said.

“And just as you don’t need a mother, I don’t need a father. I decide what’s best for me.”

“This isn’t best for anyone.” He looked away.

On the floor beneath the table that held Olivia’s developing trays, in the eerie light that turned everything faintly blue, a man lay curled on his side in a half circle. His head rested in a puddle of fluid that Olivia feared was some of the chemicals she used in her work. There were bu
rn
s on the back of his neck.

But it wasn’t bu
rn
s that had killed him. Another pool colored the floor, this time a pool of fresh blood. Protruding from the man’s stomach were the handles of Olivia’s favorite scissors.

“The guy who met Kitty at the airport,” Aiden said.

Twenty-nine

“
M
y parents aren’t such bad sorts,” Olivia said. “You just have to know how to handle them.”

Aiden turned on the windshield wipers in her car, only to discover there was no fluid. “The windshield’s filthy,” he said. “A hazard. I’ll get off the freeway at the next gas station.”

“Motorway,” Olivia told him. “M4. And it’s petrol, not gas. The washers don’t work, but I carry a shammy. We can wipe the windows, right?”

“Right.” He liked the weird little car.

“It sticks a bit in second,” Olivia told Aiden of the yellow Mini they’d decided to take rather than involve Nigel and the limousine further.

“It won’t by the time I’ve finished with it. This vehicle is something else. We’ll ship it back to the States, and—”

“Half a tick, Aiden. My Mini is headed for the rubbish heap, if you don’t mind. Ask my mother. She’ll explain.”

“Yeah, well, that’s a topic for later. A bigger engine will have to go in.”

“Where? In the back seat? Aiden, about Mummy and Daddy—”

“We all want to apologize for our folks. I used to. Yours
were pretty decent about saying we could go to their place. They didn’t even ask a whole lot of questions.”

Olivia considered that. “True. I can’t say I understand why, since they usually tell me I’m barmy when I call about anything. My brother, Theo, is the smart, successful one. I’m the failure.
”

“Hey.” Aiden glanced at her, and she saw he was furious. “Cut it out. Don’t put yourself down that way. Just maybe you’re imagining that’s what they think about you. They were sure quick enough to welcome you home with a total stranger. We had nowhere to go where we had a chance at being safe until we hear from Vanni. I’m grateful to them.”

For a moment she studied his profile, the hard way his mouth turned down. Before they’d left Hampstead, he had picked up his suit and changed out of Wally Loder’s tramp uniform. Without the wig, the beard or mustache, and despite the single gold earring Daddy was bound to dislike, he looked— wonderful. Handsome, successful, inscrutable.

She stared out of the passenger window and beneath the bed of a lorry covered with flapping tarpaulin. The Mini was so low-slung that her view was eye-to-wheel with almost everything on the road.
“
My parents were good about it,” she agreed. “I’m surprised. Will we be able to call Chris back again? Or do we have to wait for him to call us?” They had reached Chris, who spoke to them from a delivery room at Seattle’s Swedish Hospital. Sonnie was in labor and Chris was coaching. He’d told them to
li
e low and not to go to the police about the death in Hampstead because he didn’t want to risk their being taken into custody.

Aiden had agreed, and so they’d called Mummy and Daddy, who actually sounded thrilled at the prospect of welcoming their errant daughter and her friend into the fold.

“I guess we should be patient and wait for Chris to get back in touch with us,” Aiden said. “Sonnie isn’t very strong, so I worry about her. I’ll tell you their story when we’re in a quiet space. Did you notice Chris limps, too—not like Sonnie, but he does?”

“Now you mention it, I did, yes.”

“Accident on his Harley down in the Keys. Some woman was trying to kill him, and he got dragged by her car.”

Olivia shuddered at the thought.

“I ought to make sure you know you’ve got company in the weird family department,” Aiden told her.

Rain began to fall and the wipers made an even bigger mess of the windshield.

“My dad didn’t like being married. He liked my mom, I know that, and me, but he didn’t want to be with a wife and a kid. Every minute he wasn’t working, he was hunting or hiking or fishing. I thought he was some sort of adventurer and wanted to be like him till I figured out the only thing he gave his family was money. He provided well for us.

“Hell, I liked the guy, but he was a lousy husband and father. Dad was what happened to my hands. One time my mother tried to convince him to stick around more. She said she got scared on her own. Know what that man did? Had a seven-foot brick wall put up all around the property, then started with the barbed wire on top. I was fifteen. I went crazy and tore myself up on the wire. I already had enough explaining to do about the father who was never seen unless you were one of his patients—he was a dentist—and why my mom did everything.

“Anyway, enough of that. It’s all in the past.”

“But it comes back sometimes. Or it does for me,” Olivia said.
“
It gives you some extra baggage you’d rather not have.”

“If you let it.” Aiden’s own words surprised him. When the time was right, he would tell Olivia that she was the reason he was finally turning his back on memories he couldn’t change.

She nodded, but didn’t comment on what he’d said.
“
Eton’s nice. Pretty. The famous boy’s school is there. You see them in tails and starched collars. It’s really rather romantic, I suppose.” Aiden was concentrating on signs and on trying to put together the pieces of everything that had happened since he first horned in on Olivia’s e-mail.

“Windsor ahead,” she said, and he saw an unreal castle on top of a hill, a vast concoction of crenelated towers and
turrets with loopholes. Olivia continued, “We go through the edge of Slough. Eton’s not far from the castle. Near the Thames. Mummy and Daddy’s house has a back garden that goes right down to the river.”

She was jabbering, Aiden thought. He felt her tension. “We’re going to be okay,” he told her. “Believe that.”

Abruptly, she turned sideways in her seat and drew up her knees. She rested her cheek on ripped gray fabric. “Fats Lemon was the first dead person I’d seen that close. Now there’s this stranger in my darkroom. Both of them were murdered, and we were probably the first on the scene after each crime. We have to be in even more danger, Aiden, and the danger must still be growing. Someone wants to get us arrested, but it hasn’t worked so far. Maybe they’ll decide we know too much and decide to kill us, too.”

He couldn’t argue with her logic. He wouldn’t. “We are in danger—we have been from the outset—but you’re right, the odds against us have escalated, and it may suit some people to get rid of us. Ryan’s bound to be recovered enough from the beating you gave him to be mixing it up for us again.” He smiled at her, but she bent forward until her forehead rested on his shoulder.

“It won’t help for us to be scared. That’s what they want. Frightened people are easy targets.”

“You don’t get frightened.”

“Sure I do. It just isn’t macho for a guy to run around talking about it. Okay, the next exit is Slough, Eton, Windsor.” Despite the volume of traffic and the sprawling roads, the countryside was a collage of soft greens that managed to look inviting.

Below the castl
e, on a road that wound toward Eton, Olivia grew ever more anxious. Aiden had been sweet to share his story about his parents to try to make her feel better, but he wasn’t the one about to face those parents in front of someone he cared for.

“Now what are you thinking about?” he asked.

“You see through me. This isn’t easy, but it’s about
Mummy and Daddy. Could you please watch what you say?” She wanted to disappear.

The struggling washers had finally pushed enough rain around to clear some stripes through which Aiden peered. “Would you like to expand on that?”

“I’d hate to, but I will. Do you think you could sound British? English actually?”

“No.”

“I knew it,” she said, facing forward again and flopping back. “You’re going to get shirty. Angry.”

“I am not getting angry,” he told her. Irritable didn’t qualify.

“You mustn’t tell Daddy what you do.”

“You’re going to have to explain what all this is about. Maybe it’s a really bad idea for me to come here.”

Olivia buried her face in her hands. The odor of petrol that seeped through the bottom of the Mini made her feel sick, and dealing with this type of pressure at the same time was cruel. “It’s perfectly fine for you to come to my parents’ home. They are a little set in their ways and a bit overly English, which probably doesn’t mean anything to you.”

“Opinionated and stodgy?” Aiden suggested.

“There’s no need to be rude.”

“Oh, no, no need at all. You want to know if I can sound English, which I can’t, and you want me to pretend I’m not a detective—which I won’t.”

“It’s not what you think. Take this next right tu
rn
. If you go farther, we’ll be on the bridge. It’ll be more a lane than a road, really. Then keep on going until I tell you to make a left turn. It’s because Daddy doesn’t believe in guns or hunting or anything, and he knows American policemen carry guns. Which brings us to another point.”

“Does it?” He should be too tired to think. It might be better if he were. Then he wouldn’t be starting, despite the doom that threatened to overtake them, to get a hard-on that didn’t intend to be willed away.

Olivia put a hand on his thigh, about two inches from the
irrefutable evidence.
“
The other point is, and this is absolutely not intended as an insult, but Daddy’s a bigot.”

Aiden shifted in his seat and felt like an out-of-control teenager. He glanced sideways at Olivia, at her soft, wild hair and so-dark eyes, the way she looked at him. Deep into him, deep and intimate. “I’m going to pull over up ahead. We need to get all our facts straight before we go any farther.”

She didn’t protest. When they were well off the road, he stopped the car and switched off the engine. “Bigoted how?”

“Oh.” She pulled up her shoulders. “I don’t really know.” He liked what that did to her breasts. Their fullness was accentuated, and he enjoyed visualizing how they would be pressed together beneath the unflattering sweatshirt.

“
Wh
at color bra are you wearing?”

“Aiden!” That got her entire attention. “Why would you ask a thing like that at a moment like this?”

“Why not? You shrugged, and I could visualize your breasts. I just wanted to know what color your bra was. To bring things to living color, huh?
”
His arousal was no longer under construction.

“My father is bigoted about everything and everyone. He only likes—well, you’d better mumble or something when you talk to him. No, let me hear you sound British—English, actually.”

“I’d rather have you answer my question. What
are you wearing under there?”

“You’re oversexed.”

“And you’re not?”

“No, absolutely not.”

He rested a fingertip on the swell of her left breast and scratched his nail up and down on the thick sweatshirt fabric. “You’ve got beautiful breasts.”

“You’re embarrassing me.”

“What color.”

She turned red, and he brought his face closer to hers. “I’m not wearing one,” she said and blushed an even
deeper shade. “I didn’t think it would matter with this heavy shirt.”

“It matters a lot,” Aiden told her. “It’s of the utmost importance.” With the same fingernail, he gave his attention to a nipple. Olivia gasped and arched her back a little. Aiden smiled.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Olivia said. “This road may look deserted, but someone might come along. And we need to get settled and decide exactly what we’re going to do.” She looked at his crotch; she didn’t know what made her do so, but she had to. Aiden was a big man in every way. What she saw bulging inside his trousers was no exception.

“Doing this, as you put it, even just a little,
”
he said,
“
will make us think more clearly. Trust me on this. I read it in a very good book.”

“What good book?”

“I can’t remember. Touch me, Olivia.”

The beat of her heart was uncomfortable. Her breathing grew shallow. She kept staring into his lap, wanting to do more than touch his penis through his trousers.

Without even realizing her own intention, Olivia executed a wriggling dive into the back seat. “Come on,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
“
I never did this when I could have been forgiven for acting like a kid. Is it too late to try it now?” Looking over his shoulder at her, Aiden shook his head and actually turned pink.

“You’re embarrassed,” she said, and laughed. “Come on, Aiden. Come
on.
”

He turned up his palms and shook his head again, but his grin was so wide.

“So I’ve got to lure you? Is that it?” Wicked she was, but every woman had a right to be wicked now and again. She caught the hem of her sweatshirt with both hands and started to raise it.

Aiden moaned and said, “Don’t do that. Please. Or I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

“Promise?” Olivia pulled up her shirt to show him her breasts.

His smile disappeared, and his pupils dilated.

She drew in a deep breath and leaned against the back of the seat. Her own sexy play turned her on so fiercely, she burned. “Aiden?” she whispered.