The Villain’s Daughter (2 page)

‘True enough.’ He transferred the grip on the cotton wool to his left hand and held out his right. ‘The least I can do is to introduce myself properly. Guy Wilder. Nice to meet you.’

‘Iris,’ she replied, taking the hand. Noticing the grazes on his knuckles, she was careful not to shake too hard. ‘Iris O’Donnell.’

‘Irish, I take it.’

‘Historically,’ she said, ‘but I was born here.’

He smiled. ‘Irish Iris. I wouldn’t like to try repeating that too many times when I’d had a few.’

She smiled back, gazing into his eyes. They were blue, dark-lashed and curiously intense. ‘You don’t sound as if you’re from round here.’ His voice was as smooth as his appearance, not posh exactly, but . . . She searched in her mind for the right description. Seductive was the first word she came up with.

‘Well, that’s something I have to thank my mother for. “A good education, Guy, that’s what really matters.” So she paid to send me to the kind of school where you get your head shoved down the toilet until you learn to speak like everyone else. Fortunately, I’m a quick learner.’

Iris laughed and then, aware that she was still staring a little too intently into his eyes, quickly lowered her gaze. ‘Has your nose stopped bleeding yet?’

Guy Wilder took the cotton wool away, glanced down at it and nodded. ‘Just about. Thank you.’ He sat back and looked around, taking in the peeling wallpaper, the stained counter by the sink and the general run-down nature of the room. ‘I’m still trying to figure out why Terry chose this place.’

Iris stirred the tea and put the two mugs on the table. ‘Why? You think he’d have got a better deal from the Co-op?’ Suddenly aware that it was his mother’s funeral she was joking about, she felt a deep flush rise to her cheeks. ‘Oh, I didn’t . . .’

‘It’s okay. You can skip the sensitivity. Consider yourself off duty for the next five minutes.’ He paused. ‘I just expected him to go for somewhere more upmarket, more ostentatious. This is hardly the Ritz of funeral joints, is it? And Terry always likes to make an impression, even when his heart is only theoretically broken.’

Iris sat down. She couldn’t tell how much of Wilder’s cynicism was bluff and how much for real. Since coming to work at the small family firm of Tobias Grand & Sons, she had witnessed many different responses to death; not the full gamut perhaps, but enough to inform her that the big, dramatic displays of tears and hand-wringing were not necessarily a reliable indicator of those who were grieving most. She thought of the pain she would be feeling if her own mother had died. ‘It’s not so bad. Maybe he wanted somewhere local.’

‘Or cheap.’

‘Not that cheap,’ she said, recalling the expensive coffin, the flowers and all the other fancy extras the Streets had ordered.

Wilder grinned at her. ‘It will be if he doesn’t pay.’

Now that he had moved the cotton wool, Iris had the opportunity to examine his face more closely. Despite the swollen nose, he was still what she would describe as classically handsome. His cheekbones were high and he had a firm if rather stubborn mouth. It wasn’t, however, an easy face to read. ‘I take it you and Terry Street don’t get along?’

Wilder sipped his tea. His eyes suddenly narrowed. ‘If you’re asking if I hate his guts, if I think he’s got away with murder - then yes, it’s safe to say we don’t get on.’

She felt a shiver run through her. Was he suggesting what she thought he was? ‘You mean . . .?’

‘Terry’s due out in less than a month and his whore of a wife didn’t even pretend to be faithful.’

Iris flinched, partly at the description of his mother, but also at the underlying accusation. Her voice was no more than a whisper. ‘You think he . . . he murdered her?’

‘Well, bearing in mind that he was safely behind bars two weeks ago, I can’t hold him directly responsible but, as the saying goes, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.’ He put down the mug and shrugged. ‘But then again, I could be wrong. Dear old Lizzie made plenty of enemies in her life. There were times when I felt like shooting her myself.’

Iris relaxed a little. Perhaps it was only the bitterness talking. ‘And what do the cops think?’

‘That she deserved all she got - although, naturally, it’s not the official party line. That leans more towards a gangland killing. Still, I doubt if they’re putting too much effort into the investigation. No point wasting valuable resources on the likes of my mother.’

There was a short silence.

‘I’m sure they’ll find whoever did it,’ she said.

‘To be honest, Iris, I don’t really care.’

But that, she suspected, was a lie.

Wilder pushed back the chair and got to his feet. ‘Right, I’d better get going. Thanks for the tea and sympathy. You’re an angel.’ He dropped the bloodstained wad of cotton wool into the bin by the sink. ‘Perhaps I can return the compliment sometime. I run a bar on the High Street. Drop in if you’re ever passing.’

She opened her mouth intending to ask what it was called, but then changed her mind. The offer was, in all likelihood, more of a polite gesture than any firm invitation. She stood up too. ‘Wait here a moment. I just want to check that the coast is clear.’

‘Don’t worry about it. I’m not bothered about those two morons.’

She laid her hand on his arm as he went to leave. ‘No, I’m sure you’re not, but you won’t be the poor sap doing all the clearing up when it kicks off again.’

His gaze slowly slipped down to her hand before his mouth curled into a smile. ‘Iris O’Donnell,’ he said, ‘you’re a very practical woman.’

Luke Hamilton walked into the kitchen and dropped his briefcase on the floor by the table. He took off his jacket, threw it over the back of a chair and sighed. His afternoon meeting had not gone well - the client had ripped his ideas to shreds - and then there had been a problem with the trains at Liverpool Street. He had spent over an hour in the pub before finally forcing his way on to an overcrowded cattle truck.

Iris was standing by the stove, stirring one of her stews. In the past they had taken it in turns to cook but now, with him working longer hours, she usually had a meal on the table by the time he got home. This had been a novelty at first, but now he resented it. Or, more to the point, he thought that she should resent it. The old Iris, the sassy one with attitude and passion, would have told him to make his own damn dinner.

She looked over her shoulder. ‘Good day?’

‘Not especially.’

When he didn’t elaborate, she turned back to the stove. ‘Me neither. There was a punch-up just before we closed. One of the lounges took a right battering. You should have seen the state of it. I had to stay and help clean up.’

‘Really.’ Luke wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t particularly interested either and made no attempt to hide it. Opening the fridge, he grabbed a beer and flipped off the lid. He couldn’t understand why she was still working at that place. A few weeks was all it was supposed to have been, a gentle introduction, after what had happened, back into the world of employment, but three months on she was still there. How anyone could bear to be surrounded by dead bodies all day was beyond him. It gave him the creeps just thinking about it.

‘It was Lizzie Street’s family,’ she said.

Luke leaned against the counter and shook his head. The name didn’t mean anything to him.

‘You remember?’ Iris prompted. ‘It was on TV, in the papers. She was shot in her house a couple of weeks ago.’

He snorted. ‘Hardly news round here.’ The borough of Kellston, for all its aspirations, for all its fancy new apartments and shops, was still fundamentally an East End dive full of villains, tarts and junkies. Hemmed in between Bethnal Green and Shoreditch, it also wasn’t far from the gloomy streets of Whitechapel, where Jack the Ripper had gone on his murderous spree. He wondered why he’d ever agreed to move into the area, although he already knew the answer - to please Iris. This was where she’d been born, where she had last seen her father and where, somewhere in the back of her mind, she undoubtedly hoped to see him again.

‘She’s being buried tomorrow.’

‘You shouldn’t be working there,’ he said. ‘It’s not safe.’

Iris lifted her slim shoulders and smiled. ‘It was a punch-up, Luke, not a massacre. I think I can just about handle the dangers of a funeral parlour.’ She caught his eye, saw the look in it and smartly returned her attention to the pan. What he really meant, she thought, was that her job wasn’t suitable for the partner of an ‘executive’. Ever since his promotion, Luke had become increasingly pretentious. Everything now was about appearances, about money and status. He’d changed. She gazed down into the brown sludge of beef and vegetables. Or maybe she was the one who had changed.

‘You could do better,’ he said, refusing to let it drop. ‘I’ve heard there are vacancies at Cleary’s. With your experience you’ll get an interview, no problem. Why don’t you give them a call?’

Iris felt her stomach shift. The thought of returning to that cut-throat world, of working for yet another advertising firm, filled her with dismay. What did it matter what sort of tea you drank or what kind of washing powder you used? It was all so meaningless. She took a deep breath. ‘It won’t be forever. I’m only covering while their usual receptionist is away.’

‘But you’ll think about it?’

‘Yes,’ she lied. ‘Of course I will.’

‘Good. Your talents are wasted on that place.’

With a thin smile, Iris spooned the stew out into bowls and placed them on the kitchen table. That he believed the best use of her talents lay in persuading people to buy what they didn’t really need both saddened and confused her. She had only got the job at Tobias Grand & Sons by chance, but for the moment, it suited. Concentrating on other people’s grief had proved to be a surprisingly effective way of dealing with her own.

They sat down and ate in silence for a while.

‘Perhaps we should think about moving,’ Luke said. ‘A fresh start.’

A flutter of panic rose in her throat, giving her voice a tight uneasy edge. ‘You want to move away?’

‘Not out of London, just somewhere more . . .’ He took a mouthful of food and chewed. ‘I don’t know. Somewhere safer.’

Iris raised her head and gazed out of the window. From here she could see the floodlit perimeter wall and the locked, heavy-duty security gates. Silverstone Heights resembled an inner-city prison, the only difference being that it was designed to keep the less desirable locals out rather than in. The complex of apartments was exclusive in every sense of the word. It had been Luke’s idea for them to live in this splendid isolation; she would have preferred to be out in the real world, but occasionally compromises had to be made. ‘You mean somewhere with more ferocious guard dogs?’

‘You know exactly what I mean,’ he said irritably. ‘Kellston might be up-and-coming, but it’s taking a damn long time to get there.’

And it would take even longer, Iris reckoned, if the wealthier residents continued to segregate themselves from the general population. It was an opinion, however, that she chose to keep to herself. Luke often got grouchy when he’d been on the booze and he’d clearly had a few already. His brown eyes were bright and his cheeks were growing pinker by the minute.

‘Take what happened to that woman, for example,’ he continued. ‘It’s not right. People aren’t even safe in their homes any more.’

Iris was tempted to retort that from what she’d heard about the activities of Lizzie Street, the local crime figures, were likely to go down rather than up, at least temporarily. But that would only give him an excuse to start banging on about guns and gangsters and how ‘decent people’ couldn’t sleep safely in their beds at night.

Luke shovelled the stew into his mouth, barely tasting it. He took a swig of beer. The more he thought about moving, the more attractive the idea became. He was earning good money now and could easily afford to have an address that didn’t result in the lifting of his colleagues’ eyebrows every time he mentioned it. And it would be better for Iris too. This flat, this whole area, held too many bad memories. Although he had, briefly, come to terms with the prospect of being a father, he felt a guilty relief that it wasn’t going to happen. Parenthood wasn’t what he’d planned for this stage of his life.

‘I don’t want to move,’ she said softly.

Luke didn’t reply. She wasn’t thinking straight and hadn’t been ever since the miscarriage.

Every conversation he had with her these days held undercurrents of tension; it was all about what wasn’t said rather than what was. He didn’t know how to change it and a part of him, although he wanted to be closer to her, dreaded being pulled down again into that whirlpool of emotion. How long was it supposed to take for a woman to recover? It was almost six months now and she was still a shadow of her former self.

Iris could see the frustration on his face. He had been patient at the beginning, loving and supportive, but had gradually grown more impatient as time passed by. She wished she could explain how she felt, but she couldn’t. She might only have been ten weeks’ pregnant, but the loss was so profound she was still struggling to come to terms with it.

Seeing her stricken expression, Luke felt a pang of conscience. ‘Why don’t you splash out and buy yourself something nice for Friday.’

‘It’s only a meal,’ she said. ‘I don’t think Michael’s expecting us to dress up for the occasion.’

‘Michael?’

‘His birthday.’ She paused, frowning. ‘Why, what did you mean?’

‘Oh God, not this Friday. It’s the Christmas do at Rufus Rigby.’

She groaned. ‘But it’s only November.’

‘They always hold it in November. Any later and half the clients won’t turn up. You know that.’

Iris blinked at him. She didn’t know any such thing. He had only been in the job for twelve months and this time last year they’d been too busy with the move to even think about parties. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’