Sweet Little Lies (Cat Kinsella #1)(101)

I wait a while, although it’s probably only seconds. ‘So Gina killed Maryanne, is that what you’re saying?’

A small twitch of his shoulders. ‘You’re the detective, you do the maths.’

Fear and love combined equals panic. ‘So does she blame you for sending Maryanne her way? Have you been threatened? Is that why you’re hiding? Jesus, Dad, couldn’t you think of somewhere better than hiding out in your own house?’

He shrugs, a hint of the old bravado. ‘I doubt Maryanne told her it was me, and I don’t know if Gina’d remember me that well, anyway. I worked for Mackie, not her. Gina just saw me as this well-paid handyman. And Mackie, well he hasn’t been seen for years. Went on the run. Could be dead for all I know.’

‘So why all this?’ I say, circling two fingers.

‘A precaution.’

‘Against what? You said you don’t think they’ll come after you.’

The door opens. I age twenty years but Dad looks more annoyed than afraid.

‘He’s protecting me, not himself.’

Saskia.

‘I came to him,’ she says, edging into the room – ‘so lay off him’ being the obvious subtext. ‘That thug turned up .?.?. threatening me – “delivering a message”, he said .?.?. I couldn’t stay there .?.?. I didn’t know where else to go.’

The ‘thug’ throws me. ‘Patrick Mackie?’

She looks to Dad, her face blanched with dread. ‘Why’s she bringing him up, Mike? You said he was long gone? Dead, with any luck.’ She turns to me. ‘I’m on about Gina’s son. Mummy’s little henchman. You know, he actually thought I was scared of him – as if I’d be scared of that little twerp – but I’m scared of that family. Fucking terrified.’

I break it to them. ‘Patrick Mackie’s not dead and he’s back in England.’ Dad jumps up, shifting the desk a few inches. ‘Relax. He’s dying, if that’s any comfort. And he’s in police custody, as is Gina Hicks. You’re safe so turn the rest of the fucking lights on!’

‘Custody,’ snarls Saskia. ‘You think the Mackies don’t still have a long reach? If they want to shut me up, they’ll find someone to do it, doesn’t matter if they’re in custody.’

‘Why do they want shut you up? Because you know about the past? Or because you know what happened to Maryanne?’

Dad gives her a nod, a resigned go-ahead. ‘Two sides of the same coin, really. I know everything.’ She slides down the wall, slumping hard to the floor, exhausted. ‘So how did you nail them? Who talked?’ Her head snaps up, eyes wide. ‘There’s no way they’ll get bail, is there? Not for this?’

I can’t lie. I mean, literally, I can’t. I don’t have one ounce of guile left in me.

‘We don’t have them for this. We’ve arrested them on other grounds for now but they aren’t exactly top-drawer. They’re locked up for tonight, that’s all I can promise you.’ So make a decision, quick. ‘We’re going to need more to hold them for longer. Can you give us more? We can protect you, Saskia, if you tell us everything you know. It’s the only way you’ll be safe in the long run.’

I say ‘we’ but my career’s surely over. It was over after the first lie. I don’t need to read the College of Policing’s ‘Standards of Professional Behaviour’ to know mine have been utterly abysmal.

Saskia looks to Dad again and something weighty passes between them. I’m not sensing a romance but something deeper. True friendship might be Disney-coating it, more a mutual kind of dependency.

She takes a deep, trembly breath, a life-changing one. ‘OK, I’ll tell you everything on one condition. You keep Mike – your dad – out of it.’

Has she always known who I am? Did she know the day I was at the King’s Cross flat?

‘He doesn’t need to be involved. He wasn’t really involved anyway, not in a big way, or in the worst way. And he took care of me that night, the night Maryanne died, when I had nowhere else to go, and I won’t see him punished for this. I won’t. He’s the only person who ever gave a shit about me and Maryanne, then and now. He looked out for us, had a laugh with us, treated us like human beings, not like prison guards and the girls like cattle. So that’s the deal. You don’t need Mike to take them down, you only need me.’

It’s a lovely spin to put on things and I nearly ask her to keep talking. To pull up a pew and tell me all about the great man I’ve missed out on, all the wonderful traits I could never see. And it’s a lifeline too. A chance to cling on to the job I love for that little bit longer – because I’m not stupid enough to think that it wouldn’t come back to bite me in the end, of course. But just a little bit longer would be nice. Long enough for me to be remembered for more than just this.

It’ll never happen though. How can it?

‘You might want to keep my dad out of it, Saskia, but when we charge Gina Hicks, she might have other ideas. And Patrick Mackie.’

She slaps me down quickly – she’s clearly thought this through. ‘That’s not the way they work. Their type don’t drag people down with them, certainly not – no offence, Mike – the small fry. What would be the point? You’re only giving someone ammunition to spill more shit about you and Mike has plenty of shit on them, stuff that goes beyond this. They wouldn’t run the risk, I know it. There’s no benefit in dragging him into this for anyone.’ A pointed look towards me. ‘Including you, I’d have thought?’