The Undivided (16 page)

‘I’ll kill you if I have to, to stop this.’

Ren smiled down at the baby twin girls, dismissing the empty threat. ‘Even if you could get across this room before the deed was done, you can’t kill me without killing yourself, which would achieve precisely what I am here to prevent.’

He moved the blade a little, repositioning his grip. The candlelight danced across its engraved surface, mesmerising the baby. Ren was happy to entertain her with the pretty lights for a few moments. His mission was to kill her and her sister, afterall, not to make them suffer.

There was a drawn-out silence as he played the light across the blade. Behind him, the presence that was both his conscience and his other half remained motionless. There was no point in him trying to attack. They were two sides of the same coin. Neither man could so much as form the intent to attack without the other knowing about it.

The girls would be dead before anybody could reach the cradle to stop —

‘Chelan Aquarius Kavanaugh.’

Ren was jerked rudely from the dream. He sat up, blinking furiously, his eyes watering, trying to focus in the sudden bright light. He’d been leaning his head on the cold metal table
as he dozed. He was still cuffed and his shoulders ached from the unnatural position in which he’d been resting. ‘What?’ he mumbled.

The detective took the seat opposite Ren, dropping a file on the table. Ren had no idea what time it was, only that he’d been there long enough to doze off. There was no clock. The room was bare, but for the table, two cold metal chairs and a two-way mirror on the cream-coloured wall behind the detective. And the fluorescent light overhead.

‘Got quite a history, haven’t you, Chelan Aquarius?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The officer they’d sent to interview him was fairly young, late twenties maybe. They probably figured Ren would bond better with a younger officer than with an older one.

‘Want those cuffs off?’

Ren gritted his teeth. He hated the police who pretended to be his friend.

‘No, thanks. I quite enjoy having my shoulders forced back at an unnatural angle.’ He looked around for the video cameras and the recording equipment. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be filming this interview? Reading me my rights? Asking me if I want a lawyer?’

‘We haven’t charged you with anything yet.’

‘Then I can go home?’

The detective shrugged. ‘That depends on what you were doing in that warehouse.’

‘We weren’t doing anything wrong.’

‘Which would be why the ERU brought you in. They were just cruising the streets looking for innocent bystanders to take into custody, I suppose.’

‘Someone should do something about that, officer. That’s a waste of taxpayers’ money, isn’t it?’

The officer wasn’t amused. He opened the file and glanced
down at the charge sheet. The inside cover of the file had Ren’s unflattering mug shot stapled to it. It was the same one the tabloids delighted in blowing up and pasting on the front page of national newspapers whenever they got wind of him being in trouble. ‘Says here you’re a real smart-arse.’

Ren leaned forward with interest. ‘Does it really? I didn’t think you’d be allowed to use words like “arse” in official documents.’

‘You think you’re real funny, don’t you, Kavanaugh?’

Ren shrugged, which proved a rather stupid and painful thing to do, given his hands were still cuffed behind his back. ‘I’m not trying to be funny, officer. I’m trying to co-operate.’

‘This is your idea of co-operating?’ The officer looked back down at the file. ‘You celebrity kids are all the same. You think you’re above the law because you’re famous.’

Here we go again …

‘I’m not famous,’ Ren said patiently. ‘My mother is. That’s not actually my fault, you know.’

The cop studied his file as if Ren hadn’t spoken. ‘How long have you been involved with Dominic O’Hara?’

The question was completely unexpected. ‘Who the hell is Dominic O’Hara?’

‘The scumbag drug dealer you were acting as a lookout for today.’

Ren stared at him, dumbfounded. ‘
What?
’

‘Is he your boss?’ the officer asked. ‘Your platinum Amex not enough for you, rich boy, so you thought you’d earn a little extra cash on the side dealing coke?’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Ren asked, alarmed at the line of questioning.
Damn you, Jack O’Righin. So much for your inside information.

How could Jack have got it so wrong? What happened to Murray Symes and his sideline in amphetamines?

‘If you weren’t involved in O’Hara’s little enterprise, what was a kid from a posh suburb like yours doing in that part of town?’

Ren frowned as it occurred to him that, for the first time, he was in trouble so serious that not even his mother’s smooth-talking lawyer could negotiate his way out of it. ‘I want my lawyer.’

The detective was growing impatient. ‘You wanna hope your lawyer can help you, Kavanaugh, ’cause you sure aren’t helping yourself, right now.’

Ren hoped he was projecting an air of quiet innocence, which was no mean feat, because on the inside he was bordering on blind panic. If he couldn’t talk his way out of this mess, he’d probably die an old man in Utah.

His mother might forgive the time he was caught spraying graffiti on the windows of Harrods in London a couple of years ago. It helped that he’d been protesting seal clubbing with several of Kiva’s co-stars at the time, who were much more high profile than Ren and who got most of the resulting publicity. Criminal acts for noble causes were easier to forgive than the time he’d filled all the umbrellas on the set of
Rain Over Tuscany
with talcum powder, which shut down shooting for a whole day while they cleaned up the mess, and got Ren sent back to school in disgrace. She’d even forgiven the time he’d stolen a realistic and bloody dummy corpse with its throat punctured by bite marks from the prop van and left it in the elevator of the hotel where they were staying. But Kiva was going to take a very dim view of a front-page headline announcing her son was caught acting as a lookout for a notorious drug lord.

He took a deep breath. Maybe it would be better if he cooperated. Or at least gave the appearance of doing so. Although he’d been warned — more times than he could count — to say
nothing if he was arrested again, he decided to ignore the advice.

‘We just wanted somewhere quiet to hang out. We found the warehouse —’ he started.

‘You
broke
into the warehouse,’ the officer corrected.

‘Not us,’ Ren said, trying to look innocent. ‘Someone else must have busted that door, officer. We found it like that.’

‘Yeah … right,’ the officer said, shaking his head. ‘Why do you keep saying “we”?’

‘I meant me and Trása.’

The cop stared at him blankly. ‘Who?’

‘My friend. The girl they arrested with me.’

He looked at Ren oddly. ‘Are you on drugs, kid?’

‘No.’ Ren started to worry. ‘What happened to Trása?’

The officer shook his head. ‘There is no Trása,’ he said. ‘They picked you up alone, Kavanaugh. There was nobody else in that warehouse. Everything that happened today you did all on your lonesome.’

‘That’s not true. Trása was there …’

The officer shook his head, as if he’d heard it all before. ‘It’s a bit late to start working on your insanity plea,’ he said, ‘by inventing an imaginary friend.’

‘This is bullshit!’ Ren cried, wishing now he’d asked for the cuffs to be taken off, so he could shake some reason into this man. The police were playing games with him, he was certain. Trying to rattle his cage to get a confession out of him for something he knew nothing about.

‘There was no girl,’ the officer insisted.

‘She was there! Right beside me! She’s about five six. She’s pretty … really pretty. With incredibly long blonde hair. She was wearing jeans and a blue tank top. They put her in the other car. What have you done with her? You’d better not have hurt her!’

‘I see.’ The officer was studying him with a strange expression. ‘Who do you claim she is?’

‘Her name’s Trása,’ Ren told him, realising he didn’t even know her last name. ‘She’s Jack O’Righin’s granddaughter.’

‘Really?’ The officer leant back in his chair, smiling like he’d just won the lottery. ‘Jack
O’Righin’s
granddaughter? That crazy old terrorist-turned-media-whore who lives next door to you? Are you serious?’

‘No … I’m making it up because I think it’s cute,’ Ren snapped. ‘Of course I’m fucking serious!’

‘Watch your mouth, Kavanaugh.’

‘Then stop trying to fuck me about. What have you done with her?’

‘Jack O’Righin doesn’t have a granddaughter,’ the officer said flatly. ‘His wife and three daughters were murdered in the Troubles up north long before you and I were even born. Do your homework, smart-arse, before you go making up bullshit that won’t hold up to even the most cursory examination.’

‘I’m not making this up! Christ, the cop who took my statement after Hayley’s accident took one from her, too. She was going to bring it to the house.’

The detective consulted his file for a moment and then shook his head. ‘No mention of her here.’

Ren slumped back in his chair. He didn’t understand what was going on. He thought they were just messing with his head, but the officer genuinely seemed to believe Ren was arrested alone.

But Ren had seen Trása in cuffs. He’d watched them loading her into a patrol car.

‘Is there any chance they took her somewhere else? To another station, maybe, or —’

‘For chrissakes, give it up, will you?’ the officer snapped. ‘There is no girl, there
was
no girl, and if you have any brains at all, Kavanaugh, you’ll do a deal with us to give up O’Hara’s cocaine operation tonight, so we can all get out of here before morning.’

Ren shook his head helplessly. ‘I have no idea who you’re talking about.’

The officer laughed sceptically. ‘So … you were just driving around in a stolen car with your imaginary friend, seeing how the other half live, I suppose, and Dominic O’Hara just happened to pull up with a carload of cocaine?’

‘That’s exactly what happened, officer. I even called it in. Check my phone. Better yet, check your records with the nine-nine-nine call centre. I was the one who made the call.’ Then he added as an afterthought, ‘And I didn’t steal the car. I borrowed it from my mother’s manager.’ Picking up the keys off the counter in the kitchen while Jon was in the study with his mother didn’t make it stealing, Ren reasoned. After all, he was planning to return the car.

‘Yeah,’ the officer said, glancing down at the file. ‘Funny … borrowed is not the word he used when he reported it missing.’

Bastard.

The door to the interview room opened and an older female cop walked in before he could be asked any more questions. She was accompanied by a very sleekly groomed, mid-thirtyish woman in a business suit, who Ren knew all too well. Eunice Ravenel, his mother’s lawyer — she was usually dispatched to deal with the Ren problem.

‘My client has nothing more to say,’ Eunice announced in her clipped and perfectly correct Swedish accent. She glared at Ren as she slammed her briefcase onto the metal table. Ren wasn’t sure why, but she always slammed her briefcase down. Maybe she liked the noise it made. More likely she enjoyed the idea of seeing cops — every one of whom she was certain was either corrupt or incompetent — jump.

The officer who’d been interviewing Ren looked at his boss. The inspector shrugged. ‘Sorry, Pete.’

‘Yeah, Pete,’ Ren said. ‘I’m sorry, too. We were just starting to bond, I thought.’

Eunice turned to Pete, her eyes blazing with indignation. ‘Why is this boy still in cuffs?’

Pete looked to his boss for help. ‘He said he liked them.’

‘Is this your idea of revenge? Because my client is the son of a celebrity?’ Eunice turned on the inspector, who wore a pained look that spoke of long experience with Eunice Ravenel and her righteous indignation. ‘You can be sure I’ll be lodging a formal complaint about this, Inspector Duggan. Ren is a minor. And you’ve kept him here, interrogating him like a prisoner of war, alone, without representation and chained like a common criminal. This is police brutality!’

Ren rolled his eyes, glad Eunice had her back to him and couldn’t see him doing it.
Police brutality.
For once, he sympathised with the police. Although he supposed he shouldn’t. Eunice was here to bail him out, after all.

The inspector sighed and nodded. ‘Why don’t you do that, Ms Ravenel? In fact, I can give you a form. You can fill it out while we book your client for dealing in commercial quantities of prohibited substances, breaking and entering, trespassing, arson, and maybe even murder, if the homeless man they pulled out of the warehouse your client burned down doesn’t make it through the night.’ She turned to the detective who’d been interviewing Ren. ‘Unlock the cuffs, Pete.’

What fire? What are they talking about? Homeless man? Did they mean the guy with the shopping trolley?

With a grunt of disapproval, Pete produced the keys to the cuffs and freed Ren’s wrists from the restraints. Ren eased his shoulders forward, glad to be free, but fairly certain it wasn’t because they were about to let him go.

Eunice stared at him, dumbstruck. ‘God, Ren, you tried to kill someone?’

So much for innocent until proven guilty.

‘No. I don’t know what they’re on about.’

Eunice shook her head with a heavy sigh, not believing him any more than Inspector Duggan or Detective Pete did.

‘How long before I can arrange bail?’ Eunice asked.

‘Bail?’ the inspector scoffed. ‘There won’t be any bail for your boy this time, Ms Ravenel. He’s facing serious charges.’

‘My client is not a flight risk. His mother —’

‘Hasn’t been able to stop him doing anything he wanted since he was ten years old. This kid is the very definition of a flight risk. He’s not in the slightest bit sorry, he’s facing serious time, has a valid passport, easy access to credit cards and a private jet, last I heard.’