The Guilty Couple(56)

‘You’re a cleaner,’ Smithy says in a low voice, ‘and you’re going to do your job. It’s just a normal shift. All right? Get that in your head. If you don’t stop looking so shifty you’ll draw attention to yourself.’

It’s good advice. I need to stride in there confidently as though it’s something I do every day.

‘Nancy and Lee are here.’ Smithy nods in the direction of the tube exit and I spot them immediately – Nancy’s long red hair cascading over the back of her pink faux-fur jacket and Lee in a hat and long dark coat. They look like a mobster and his moll.

‘They’ll certainly attract attention,’ I say tightly.

Smithy makes an ‘uh-huh’ sound in her throat. ‘That’s exactly what you want.’

They stroll casually through the revolving doors of The Radcliffe Building and I see flashes of Nancy’s hair and Lee’s coat as they make their way into the foyer. They didn’t tell me what they were going to argue about but I can tell they’ve started from Nancy’s flailing arms.

‘All right, Liv,’ Smithy says, handing me her coffee and her phone. ‘You’re up.’

I pocket the phone, hold the coffee in one hand, take a slow deep breath and get up from the bench.





Chapter 39


DANI


Dani sits at Brenda’s kitchen table, scrolling through her phone. Her mum’s whittering on about something or other but Dani has completely zoned out. She didn’t get more than four hours’ sleep last night because her mum insisted they both stay up and wait until Casey came home. The hours ticked past as they sat side by side on the sofa watching quiz shows and nature programmes, reality TV and films. Somewhere around 4 a.m. Dani must have dropped off because she woke up with a start, and a crick in her neck, to the sound of Brenda clattering around in the kitchen a little after eight o’clock. Casey still wasn’t home and Brenda had rung in sick at work so she’d be around when she eventually returned.

‘We locked her in her room, Dan,’ Brenda said as she handed her a cup of coffee. ‘She probably hates me now.’

Dani tried to reassure her that Casey still loved her but the worry didn’t shift from her mother’s face.

‘I’ve got a bad feeling, love. You’ll spend your day off with me, won’t you? You’re not going home?’

Dani wanted to cry. She’d wasted one day off trailing Kelly Smith on a shoplifting spree and another one driving to Audley End and back. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d spent some time alone, just chilling out.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t worried about Casey – she hated to think how much of Brenda’s money her sister had drawn into her lungs in the last nine hours – but there was sod all she could do to bring her home. They’d combed through her social media the night before only to discover she hadn’t updated it for months. They had no idea who she’d been hanging out with since her split with Josh and, even if they could track down where she’d gone, what were they supposed to do – drag her out and lock her back in her room?

Dani puts down her phone and reaches for the cup of tea that Brenda’s just set in front of her. When Casey does come home, and she will return eventually, it’ll be a rerun of the other night – she’ll be too smacked up to talk and fall asleep on her feet. It’s all going to be over soon, Dani tells herself as she sips at her tea. Dominic will give her the cash he owes her in a little over forty-eight hours (he texted her earlier to tell her where and when) and Casey will be locked up in a secure rehab unit for the next six months. Over soon? a small voice says in the back of her head. What if, at 10.30 p.m. on Wednesday night, Dominic won’t be in an underground car park in London Bridge? What if he’s thirty thousand feet in the air?

She tries to push the thought away but it refuses to be silenced. He’s played you, Dan, he’s played you again.

Feeling sick, she lowers the mug to the table. The tea’s turned bitter in her mouth. What can she do? She can’t stake out his house. Her mobile bleeps with a text notification and her heart leaps when she sees the sender’s name. It has to be the Dubai info she’s been waiting for. Kelly Smith, you absolute star.

Her jubilation turns to anger as she reads the message. Olivia Sutherland has just made the biggest mistake of her life.





Chapter 40


OLIVIA


When I step through the revolving doors of The Radcliffe Building, Lee and Nancy’s argument is still in full flow. Being typically British, everyone in the foyer is pretending that they haven’t noticed that a ‘couple’ are having a full-on marital dispute but their eyes are darting back and forth like they’re watching the men’s final at Wimbledon. There are three security guards on duty: a short, broad black guy outside the doors, a bespectacled, older white guy sitting behind the X-ray machine and a tall, bearded white guy with a barrel-like torso standing near the electronic gates. I swerve around Lee at the exact moment that Nancy decides to shove him, hard, in the chest. He stumbles backwards and I do a little skip and a jump to get out of the way. Nancy’s push has attracted the attention of two of the security guards – the one from the entrance and one from the X-ray machine.

‘All right you two,’ the black guy says. ‘You’re going to have to take this outside.’