For Your Own Protection(59)

Tyrone smiled again. ‘I don’t feel no pain, man.’

Harvey laughed off the bluster. ‘Whatever. Look, did you get me here to tell me somethin’ important, or are you wastin’ my time?’

Tyrone smiled again. ‘Oh, I’m not wastin’ your time, I promise.’

Harvey wanted to push his fist through that grin. ‘Then spill it, man, before you’re spillin’ out your teeth. You get me?’

‘Hey, cool it, Harvey,’ Tyrone soothed. ‘Calm it, man. Don’t get in no aggro like your brother.’

Harvey’s fists balled up. He took a step forward, his head cocked. ‘What you say?’

‘Hey, bruv, I didn’t come here lookin’ for no fight,’ Tyrone stated, holding up his hands. ‘I came to help you.’

‘Help me?’ Harvey sneered. ‘Why? We both know we don’t like each other, man, and I’m happy with that.’

‘I love Rochelle,’ Tyrone said.

The honesty caught Harvey off guard, and he stood down from imminent attack. ‘So?’

‘So, I wanna marry her. I wanna have a family with her, have kids, like—’

Harvey put up a hand to stop Tyrone in his tracks. ‘Stop, stop, man, you’re makin’ me sick. My lunch is on its way back.’

‘I want a truce. Between me and you.’

‘A truce?’

‘Yeah. No more fightin’, no more of that rubbish.’

‘I still don’t think you’re good enough for her,’ Harvey said.

‘Maybe I’m not. But she thinks I am.’

Harvey thought on that. ‘You’re right about that, Tyrone. And I should know – she’s told me enough times.’

‘Thanks, man.’ Tyrone’s gratitude seemed genuine.

‘You ever hurt her, and I’ll hurt you. You understand?’

‘One hundred per cent. It won’t happen.’

‘Glad to hear it. So now we’re at peace,’ Harvey said with some irony, ‘what you wanna tell me?’

Tyrone was suddenly serious. Gone was the bravado. ‘I’m here to give you answers to somethin’ you’ve been wantin’ to know for a long time. Somethin’ you’ve probably given up ever findin’ out.’

Harvey’s legs felt weak and his skin prickled in anticipation.

Tyrone could only be talking about one thing.

‘About Jason?’

Tyrone nodded. ‘Now you understand.’





CHAPTER FORTY-TWO


‘Is everything okay?’ Beth asked again.

Matt was staring down at the contents of the bag. ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he said, knowing that he probably sounded anything but.

The bag was stuffed with money – wads of banknotes, mostly in denominations of fifty.

Matt picked up one of the wads and thumbed through the individual notes. He clung on to it while thinking things through. Certainly, this amount of cash would attract anyone’s attention. But the question was, what was James doing with it, and why would he disappear – if indeed he had disappeared – and leave it behind?

‘Matt? Did you find anything?’

‘I’ll be down in a second.’ He delved into the bag, checking if there was anything else apart from the money. The main compartment was stuffed full of banknotes, but that was it. The front compartment was empty.

Beth was looking up at him as he carried the bag down to the landing.

She frowned. ‘What’s that?’

Charlie appeared at her side, gazing up. ‘Is that treasure?’ he asked excitedly.

‘Something like that,’ Matt said. He joined the two of them on the first floor, feeling constrained by Charlie’s presence. Matt held the bag down at his side, partially hidden from Charlie’s view. But his son wouldn’t give up that easily, so Matt deployed the diversion plan he had devised upstairs.

‘Here you go, Charlie,’ Matt said, handing him the wad of notes he had slid into his back pocket on the way down the stairs.

‘Wow!’ Charlie said, grasping it tightly. ‘Real treasure!’

‘Yes, real treasure.’ Matt tried to give Beth a look of reassurance.

‘Can I keep this?’ Charlie asked.

‘Let’s see,’ Matt said. ‘Would you like to go and count it in your room, while Mummy and I have a chat?’

‘Okay then,’ Charlie said. ‘You’re always chatting these days,’ he added, as he padded off to his bedroom.

Matt watched him go before turning to Beth. He lifted the bag up. ‘It’s full of notes. It was in the storage area, behind Charlie’s old toys and clothes.’

‘What?’ Beth’s mouth hung open in shock.

‘Do you have any idea where all this money might have come from? Is there anything that might explain this?’ Matt said.

Matt knew Beth was thinking about whether to say something. ‘I might have an idea,’ she said finally, ‘about where it’s from.’

‘Go on.’

‘James has been going out a lot recently – sometimes three, four times a week. It’s been causing arguments between us for months. He was always cagey about what he was doing – said it was networking with business contacts. I didn’t really believe that, but because we were focusing on Australia, I let it drop. But things came to a head about two weeks ago, when he only got back home the next morning. He said he’d decided to stay in a hotel so he wouldn’t disturb us, but I was convinced he was having an affair. I confronted him and gave him an ultimatum. I said if he didn’t give me a satisfactory explanation of where he kept going, then we were over. And that’s when he told me what he’d really been doing.’