The Perfect Match (32 page)

She had just put down the bottle prior to finding a litter bin to put it in, when she saw a figure carrying a briefcase coming down one of the streets that led to the park. Her first thought was that he looked totally out of place and the second that he looked like Dominic. She glanced away quickly. She didn’t want to be caught staring at a strange man. Her stupid obsessed brain meant any man even vaguely smartly dressed looked like Dominic to her now. She was going crazy.

‘Bella?’

BELLA LOOKED UP
and almost screamed. She wasn’t going mad after all, it was him! ‘Dominic! You scared me half to death! What are you doing here?’ She was so shocked she forgot to be pleased.

‘Never mind that! What are you doing here?’ He sounded surprised and not at all pleased. ‘This is not an area to be hanging around in!’

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’

‘So why are you here?’ he demanded.

‘I’ve come to see Ed Unsworth.’

‘You should have told me! That’s why I’ve come. There was no need for you to come all the way up here, especially not on your own.’

‘
You
should have told
me
!’

‘I would have done, only I lost my phone and I wasn’t near the office. But that’s no excuse. You should never have come on your own. He could be dangerous! He probably is.’

As she’d had nearly two hours to come to a very similar conclusion, she went on the offensive. ‘If it’s wrong for me, it’s wrong for you!’

‘No it’s not! I’m a man. I’m not going to get the sort of unwelcome attention that you are.’

Bella remembered the men in the body shop next to Ed’s office, and realised he had a point, but she was not going to concede it. ‘I should hope not! But don’t worry, I can take care of myself too.’

‘You don’t know that. You haven’t met him yet!’

She looked at her watch. ‘True, but I’m just about to see him – he’s due in the office around now, and I think you’ll find I come out unharmed.’

Dominic made a visible effort to calm down. ‘There’s no need for you to go now I’m here. You go back to your car and wait in it.’

‘You must be joking! I have not come all this way to “sit in my car”!’

‘Please!’ he went on, tight-lipped. ‘I’ve done research on him. I know more about him than you do. There’s no point in you coming in too. Not when it could be dangerous.’

Him knowing more about Ed Unsworth than she did was very irritating, which didn’t make her want to be sensible. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! He might be unpleasant but he won’t be dangerous. He’s a public figure; he wouldn’t dare to do anything to me. You’re overreacting.’

‘I’m not, actually.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘But if you’re absolutely determined to go through with this, we’d better go in. We don’t want him to leave again.’

In silence they walked to the offices and went in more or less together.

‘Hello,’ said the smoky-voiced secretary, giving Dominic an appreciative once-over. ‘There are two of you now, are there? I wondered if you’d meet up.’

‘Yes,’ said Dominic. ‘Is he in?’

‘He might be. What name shall I give?’ She looked from one to the other.

‘Bella Castle,’ said Bella quickly, to get in first.

‘And I’m Dominic Thane.’

‘And who are you?’ said the woman, looking at Dominic. ‘Her lawyer or her boyfriend?’

‘Both,’ he said smoothly. ‘I’m multi-purpose.’

The woman laughed and Bella regarded him, a spark of joy taking over from her anxiety and stress for a moment.

‘Go on up then,’ said the woman. ‘First door, top of the stairs.’

‘Aren’t you going to announce us?’ asked Dominic.

‘All right then.’ The woman got up from behind her desk, revealing a very short skirt, and shouted up the stairs in a voice loud enough to control crowds without the need for a megaphone. ‘Ed! People to see you!’

Bella and Dominic left the room and when they were in the hallway at the foot of the stairs, he looked at her. ‘Are you sure you won’t see sense and keep out of this?’

‘Quite sure.’ Dominic referring to himself as her boyfriend had given her the courage of a lion. Also, she didn’t want Dominic going in on his own. He might need her to cover his back.

He looked stern. ‘We’d better call a truce until after this meeting. But afterwards’ – he paused ominously – ‘I have a bone to pick with you.’

As she went up the stairs ahead of him, Bella couldn’t help smiling, in spite of what she was facing. There’d been a definite twinkle in Dominic’s eye, and all that crossness because she’d been going to confront Ed Unsworth on her own – surely that was a sign he cared about her?

When Bella saw Ed Unsworth in the flesh she was quite glad she was not facing him alone. He wasn’t exactly frightening but he was somehow unpleasant. He was a large man with a shaved head, wearing a tracksuit. He was the sort of man Bella would move away from if she came across him in the gym. He would lift heavy weights and sweat a lot. He had a thick gold earring, a lot of gold chains and a Rolex to match. He might have had a shabby office, but he was still a blatantly rich man.

‘Sit down,’ he said and then, ignoring Dominic, turned his attention to Bella. This was not due to gentlemanly good manners or feminism or anything good, Bella suspected, but because she was obviously the weaker of the two.

‘So, what can I do for you, young lady?’

‘For a start you can stop doing dodgy property deals.’ Bella felt she sounded like a child star of the sixties in a film, gallantly facing up to the villains; she wished she’d practised what she was going to say when she had all that time on her hands.

He smiled. He had not looked after his teeth. ‘Oh?’ One of his canines was gold.

Bella deliberately made her voice lower; anything to make her sound more authoritative. ‘Yes. You’ve been buying up properties in the Cotswolds for less than they are worth. You’re not only doing the vendors out of their money, but you’re buying up affordable properties, which stops people on lower budgets being able to buy them.’’

‘And you’ve proof of this, have you?’

‘Yes,’ said Dominic.

Bella nodded. This was good. Dominic sounded very sure and he had that big briefcase. He probably did have proof. She only had some grainy stills that weren’t particularly damning.

Ed Unsworth took his time. His little eyes flicked from one to the other of them. He was obviously convinced that all his tracks were covered. ‘What kind of proof?’

‘Video,’ said Bella.

He registered this with just the tiniest flicker. ‘Really?’

Bella nodded.

‘To be frank,’ said Dominic, ‘we’ve got a whole trail of proof of your dubious practices. The video is just an extra. It pins you down when none of our other evidence is quite as specific.’

Ed Unsworth got up and walked to the window. Bella stood up so she could see what he was looking at. It was a big black car with two large men standing outside it. A tiny part of her was looking forward to telling Alice that yes, there had been ‘heavies’. Even if, she realised, they were probably perfectly innocent nightwatchmen or something. ‘Heavies’ would make the story better.

‘I don’t quite understand how you could possibly have got video footage of me doing anything more sinister than signing some forms,’ he said, still very confident.

‘Anyone can get careless,’ said Dominic.

‘Not me,’ he said.

‘So you’re admitting to the dodgy deals then?’ asked Bella, feeling braver.

‘No. I don’t admit to anything.’

‘Very wise,’ said Dominic. ‘Put that off as long as you can.’

Ed Unsworth wrinkled his brow, reminding Bella of a Shar Pei dog. ‘You say you have video of me doing something dodgy. How do you know it’s me?’

‘You have a very distinctive earring,’ said Dominic.

His relaxed attitude left him. ‘What do you want from me?’ The fact that he hadn’t asked to see any proof was almost as good as a confession. Persuading him to stop might be harder.

Bella said, ‘The undertaking that you’ll stop doing it.’

‘And what am I doing, precisely?’ He wasn’t rolling over just yet, Bella realised, suddenly more anxious.

‘We know that you’ve been damaging property to get it cheaper after the survey,’ said Dominic smoothly and very confidently. ‘You’ve been running down areas so you can buy up whole lots, generally doing everything and anything you can to build up your empire.’ As most of this was news to her, Bella realised he’d been doing a lot of research lately. If only he’d told her about it! It made the whole case so much stronger.

‘And who’s this “we”?’ Ed Unsworth looked at Bella as if she was less than a waste of space.

‘The team,’ said Dominic, not bothering to elaborate.

‘And who are they?’

Dominic’s eyebrow flicked. ‘I’m not going to give you a list of their names and addresses, but I assure you their qualifications are excellent.’ He opened his briefcase and got out a sheaf of papers and handed it across the desk. ‘You might want to cast your eye on that lot. I think you’ll find we know enough about you to cost you a lot in legal fees, if not a spell in prison.’

Ed snatched the papers and read them rapidly. ‘OK. What exactly do you want from me?’

‘We want you to sign these undertakings to cease and desist from immoral practices from this day forward,’ said Dominic.

‘And if I don’t? Not that I’m admitting anything.’

‘I don’t think you need me to tell you what could happen next,’ said Dominic. ‘You’re a man of the world.’

Whatever had been in those papers must have been fairly damning, Bella decided. The big scary man seemed to shrink a little. ‘But I won’t sign anything unless you show me the video.’

Bella took a breath and looked at the handbag at her feet that had the video on the iPad. This was her weak spot. It was so grainy and difficult to make out. Ed Unsworth might well just laugh, and then throw them out.

But Dominic moved first and opened his briefcase. ‘Here it is.’ He handed Ed Unsworth a DVD.

Ed Unsworth took a stride that brought him to the cinema-sized TV screen. He slotted in the DVD. Bella braced herself for humiliation.

But the picture that came up, while even more grainy, had been digitally enhanced. Nevil was clearer than ever, and now Ed Unsworth was unmistakeable. His increased size, his baldness and his gold earring. Bella was amazed and delighted that he was so easy to identify now.

He watched in silence and then nodded. ‘This isn’t the only copy, is it?’

‘No,’ said Dominic. ‘So if we discover – and we will – that what you’ve been doing is illegal, we’ll take steps that will land you in court.’

‘I wouldn’t have been able to do it if I hadn’t found an agent willing – very willing – to co-operate,’ Joe said.

‘I’m sure,’ said Dominic. ‘Now will you sign the paper?’

Ed shook his head. ‘Nah. But tell you what, I’m feeling generous today. I won’t do it again. I think we’ve done all we can in that area anyway. That’ll have to be enough for you.’

Dominic got up, not at all fazed by having to leave without a signature. ‘Fine,’ he said.

On his part, Ed didn’t seem remotely triumphant. They had definitely won.

Bella felt elated as they went down the stairs as fast as possible without running. As they got on to the street she stopped to look at Dominic, expecting to see the joy of victory on his face. But no, he was grim; he took her arm and marched her down the road in double time.

Bella suddenly started to see the funny side, and bit her lip. Dominic was obviously still annoyed with her for being there but really, the thought of the two of them confronting Ed Unsworth was rather ridiculous. By the time they got to the end of the street she was giggling.

‘It’s not funny!’ said Dominic, stopping at the corner, possibly trying not to laugh himself. ‘I am still very, very cross with you!’

‘It is funny,’ said Bella, laughing even more now because she didn’t want to, not really. ‘Us confronting that huge man and him backing down.’

‘It should not have been “us”! It should have been me, on my own. You went in there with no proper information, probably the same film we saw the first time, where only Nevil was identifiable – to his fiancée who presumably knows him well!’

Although she was still chuckling, Bella had to admit, to herself, if not to him, that he had a point. ‘I’m not his fiancée any more, though.’

‘No?’

‘And I don’t work there any more either.’

‘You felt you had to leave?’

Bella nodded. ‘I did. He insisted I left. With a cardboard box of my personal possessions.’

Dominic frowned. ‘He sacked you? That’s outrageous!’

Bella shrugged. ‘I can’t blame him really. I told him I knew he was up to something. He didn’t like it. I knew I’d have to leave, but I didn’t expect him to sack me.’ She sighed, thinking of other confrontations she’d had lately that hadn’t gone quite as planned. Her lunch with Celine for one. She still had to confess to Dominic about that.

Unaware of her guilty conscience, Dominic said, ‘I am sorry. I know how much you loved your job – and were good at it.’ Bella basked for a moment in the sunshine of his approval. But then his expression darkened. ‘I am still cross with you. I don’t think you know how much danger you were in just then.’

‘Only about the same amount of danger as you were in, I expect.’

He closed his eyes, apparently praying for patience. ‘If you’d gone in there alone—’

‘But I didn’t. You were there.’

‘You shouldn’t have been there too!’

‘I didn’t know you were going. I didn’t know you’d done all that research, or got the video enhanced or anything.’

He sighed deeply. ‘Well, that was my fault. I sent you that email – belatedly, I’m sorry – after I’d been hot on the trail, and then I lost my phone and my laptop battery died.’

‘That all sounds like excuses to me,’ said Bella.

He took her arm and pulled her to his side. ‘I know. It would sound like that to me, too. But these things happen. I’m all over the place at the moment. Lots of work, the decision to make the move permanently to Stroud—’

‘Oh!’ said Bella, trying to hide her delight at this news. ‘Is that so you can keep an eye on Jane?’