The Cover Up Page 31

  ‘Wait!’ he said, retreating to the doorway. Glancing at the orange and yellow light that flickered up the walls of the staircase. ‘Let me check it’s safe.’ Holding his T-shirt over his mouth, he sprinted to the top of the staircase. Felt the oppressive heat and smoke rising in coils to greet him like an agitated king cobra. The ground floor was engulfed.

  ‘Get to the fire escape in the attic!’ he shouted to Anjum, just as there was an explosion beneath him. Perhaps the boiler in the utility room. It shook the whole house.

  As Anjum clattered up the stairs to the suite of rooms in the attic, clutching an apoplectic Zahid under her arm and leading a weeping Shazia by the hand, Tariq ran to his father’s room.

  ‘Dad! Dad!’ he cried.

  The smoke was thick in here. Too thick. Somehow penetrating from the kitchen below. Tariq could barely breathe. Coughing, he forced his way in, the floor scorching hot beneath his bare feet. Could barely see the unconscious form of his father, lying on the floor on the far side of his bed. ‘Dad!’

  With inexorable force, the acrid black smoke clawed its way through the gaps between the old Edwardian floorboards, smothering everything it touched with its sooty, deathly embrace. Flames started to lick up, piercing the gloom with shafts of hellish light. As Tariq felt the darkness overcome him, he realised the insulation in the void between the joists had caught ablaze. Sinking to the ground beside his father, the last thing he saw before he passed out was the entire floor giving way with the screech and whine of stressed timber, collapsing into the inferno that had once been a family kitchen, engulfing the nightstand, his father’s bed and—

  When Conky arrived back at Sheila’s Bramshott mansion, he drove the Panamera into the garaging and locked the door. Walked under a full moon and a black sky studded with stars to the end of the back garden, enjoying the crunch of gravel underfoot as he traversed the path, though his limbs were stiff from his fall from the ladder. He could still smell lavender in the air, though summer was long gone. He whistled happily as he replaced the petrol canister on the dusty, cobwebby shelf in the garden shed, savouring the inimitable aroma of rotting vegetation that came from the adjacent compost heap and the bags of ericaceous compost that the gardener had stowed inside. Emptied of its contents now, the canister wouldn’t pose a threat to anybody in here. The cook’s matches he returned to the knick-knacks drawer in the utility room.

  Feeling hopeful that Sheila would be returned to him soon enough, once he had let her stew for a bit in a holding cell, Conky sat on the edge of his and Sheila’s bed. He pulled off his socks. Took down his trousers. Congratulated himself on a job well done. There was only one obstacle that remained, steadfastly blocking the path of true love.

  He sprawled across the emperor-sized bed and retrieved the offending object that had been wrapped in toilet roll and stuffed at the back of Sheila’s bedside cabinet. Took the positive pregnancy test out of its wrappings and stared dolefully at the two blue lines.

  ‘Ah, Sheila, Sheila, Sheila.’

  Perhaps she would claim the baby was his, until it popped out, decidedly darker-skinned than your average Celt and bearing none of the McFadden hallmarks of a beak of a nose and eyebrows that would scare the crows. He had never told her that he had always fired blanks.

  What would Genghis and Kublai Khan do in the face of such an obstacle? Conky picked up the fifth book in Conn Iggulden’s Conqueror series, running his calloused finger over the cover. Inhaling deeply and imagining the fabled warriors laying waste to their enemies’ kingdoms in a bid to make that land Mongolian.

  Setting the book aside, smiling, he snapped the pregnancy test in two and tossed it into the bin.

  Chapter 44

  Sheila

  ‘Please God, let me get out of this,’ Sheila muttered to the scuffed and dirty wall of the holding cell with its scratched graffiti, splattered stains from old vomit and gob-marks, where other detainees had left their desperate imprints, praying for bail and cursing the justice system. She lay on her uncomfortable bunk, curled up into a foetal position with her hand held protectively over her belly. An overnighter in custody had served as her own personal purgatory. ‘What the hell was I thinking?’

  She felt the tears coming. Tried to hold them back, knowing that’s exactly what Paddy had always done, presuming the hard bastard had still been capable of crying. Even at Jack’s funeral, he hadn’t shed a tear. He had always made a big thing about being emotionally invulnerable. Now, as he had been the King, she was the Queen. She had to be made of iron too. ‘Stop bloody crying, you silly cow.’ She wiped the tears away defiantly, realising that she had to keep strong for Amy, Dahlia and the baby inside her, if for no other reason.

  Briefly, she wondered how Gloria was faring in the next cell. Had Gloria killed Bancroft with that final blast from the shotgun? How the hell could they explain this away? Even if they had not been found toting the weapons and had left no prints, there would surely be CCTV footage that would say otherwise. Bancroft had an entire office suite of witnesses. They had been caught red-handed.

  ‘I’m going down,’ she said to the latrine in a small voice. ‘Jesus Christ. I don’t believe it.’

  She stood abruptly, almost knocked off her feet by the rush of blood to the opposite ends of her body. Steadied herself against the door, bashing it with her fists.

  ‘Where’s my damned solicitor? I want to see my brief. Now!’

  Hours later, after she had reluctantly eaten the carb-laden grey mush that had been offered as an excuse for lunch, the door to her cell was flung open. A stout WPC stood expectantly in the doorway, eyeing her as though she was an infestation rather than a human being.

  ‘Where’s my solicitor?’ she asked. ‘I’m pregnant. You can’t treat me like this. I’m innocent!’

  ‘That’s what they all say, love,’ the WPC said, contorting her lumpen, well-scrubbed face into a smile that was anything but benign. ‘Detective Ellis James wants to interview you. Follow me.’

  Don’t speak. Don’t give him anything, Sheila reminded herself, wondering why the hell she hadn’t heard from the outside world. Silently, she prayed that Gloria wouldn’t shoot her mouth off. No, Gloria knew better than that.

  In the interview room that stank of cleaning fluid and stale booze from its previous occupant, Sheila sat gingerly on a chair that had a dubious stain ingrained in the seat. Ellis James ran through the formalities. Set the tape running. Grinned at her, as though she were the centre of his universe and he were the most content man in the world, hopelessly in love with her. He sighed.

  ‘So, Mrs O’Brien. At last.’ He put his hands behind his head. His faded blue shirt untucked itself from his trousers, riding up over a blond hairy navel. ‘You’re a guest in Her Majesty’s halfway house and I feel confident we’ll be enjoying your company for a good while.’ He leaned forwards, pushing his smudged glasses up his nose with a grubby-looking finger. ‘Smashing up the offices of a respected businessman with a baseball bat, eh?’

  Sheila stared at the recording equipment. Focussed on James’s unshaven face. He still had a whiff of cheap car interior and egg sandwiches about him. Sergeant Stakeout. Bloody self-righteous tosser was loving every minute of this humiliation. Remember not to lash out. Keep your gob shut at all costs.

  ‘What were you doing at Bancroft’s offices with Gloria Bell?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘The armed response unit found a baseball bat, a shotgun and a handgun on the premises. Where did you get the guns, Sheila?’

  ‘No comment.’ She fixed her gaze on his florid cheeks, willing herself not to cry or lean over and punch him.

  ‘Mr Bancroft has been taken to hospital with flesh wounds.’

  Oh, so he’s not dead, Sheila thought, feeling hope surge inside her.

  ‘Oddly, he’s not pressing charges against you or Ms Bell. Why is that, given the amount of damage you wrought to his premises, Sheila?’

  Result! ‘No comment.’

  ‘We
’ll still do you for the firearms possession, though. And if the ammunition that nearly blew his head off matches your handgun or that shotgun, you’re in very deep, very hot water, whether he presses charges or not. Lucky for you, he owns the building. Shame his staff aren’t seeking damages.’ Ellis James cocked his head to one side and scrutinised her with narrowed eyes. ‘What hold have you got over Bancroft?’

  Sheila folded her arms, trying her damnedest to look as confident as possible. Feeling optimistic that he couldn’t do either of them for firearms possession, could he? He was surely bluffing on that front. But this was still uncharted territory. With her arms folded tightly across her chest, it was all she could do to stop her body from visibly quaking. She raised an eyebrow archly, as though she knew something James didn’t.

  ‘No comment.’

  She emitted a long, bored sigh. Expended every last ounce of mental energy on this show of bravado, whilst imagining the faces of her beautiful daughters. If only Dahlia were here as her legal representative. Now, more than ever, she needed somebody close to her to tell her it was going to be okay.

  James shifted in his seat. A whiff of stale armpits as he did so. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘It will all come out in the wash. In the meantime, I’m having your house and business premises searched.’ There was a breeziness to his voice, accompanied by a yellow-toothed grin. Good on the inside. Rotten on the out. ‘Conky McFadden’s having to play coffee boy to my fellow detectives and our lovely sniffer dogs.’ He pursed his lips. Tutted and looked melodramatically to heaven. ‘And then, of course, we’ve got to round up all those landlords, club owners and restauranteurs you extort protection money from.’

  Sheila felt her neck tighten in the grip of burning, tense muscles. Her breath came quickly, though she was careful to keep as quiet as possible. How the hell did he know who owned an O’Brien pub? That had been the best kept secret for decades.

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘See, I’ve got this very handy informant …’

  She was tempted to say she didn’t believe him. Frank wouldn’t grass. Conky was her most trusted ally. Gloria would never, ever implicate herself in a crime. She was too clever and self-interested for that. And Paddy was dead … wasn’t he?

  Her insides fizzed like a bottle of cola being violently shaken. Paddy. No! Everyone had insisted that Paddy was definitely dead and that Youssuf Khan had coincidentally snapped the wrong man in the right place at a fortuitous time. How she wished at that moment that she’d had Paddy’s coffin exhumed. She now felt like a hardened smoker with a persistent cough who had opted not to have a chest X-ray. If Paddy were somehow alive, did he realise the extent of Sheila’s murderous plans?

  ‘No comment,’ she said, barely able to hear her now feeble voice above the clamour of conflicting thoughts and theories in her head.

  So wrapped up was she in her private nightmare that she almost didn’t hear Ellis James saying, ‘Ooh, terrible news about Tariq Khan, by the way.’ He tutted. Shaking his head.

  ‘What?’

  James sat in silence for too long, studying her, perhaps trying to intuit what her immediate reaction had given away.

  ‘Fatal blaze burned his house to the ground. Haven’t you heard?’

  She felt a griping pain in her abdomen. Gasped. Clutched her belly. Fatal.

  James continued, rocking back on his chair as though he were telling a bedtime story with alacrity. ‘Yes, the body they found had to be carried out in separate bags. It was like a well-roasted chicken apparently. Flesh just falling off the bone.’

  ‘No,’ Sheila said. ‘No.’

  The abdominal cramping worsened as Sheila processed the information, throwing up a wave of nausea. She felt the blood drain from her face; her lips prickling cold. Don’t puke. A fatal blaze. Surely no accident. But who had been behind it? Bancroft? Could Hank have planted a timed explosive device in Tariq’s Boddlington Park home before luring Gloria to Blackpool? Perhaps. What about Paddy?!

  A cooked body in bags.

  She was poised to ask whose body it had been. But the unwelcome sensation between her legs snatched away the intended words from the tip of her tongue. She looked down to see a vivid red bloodstain flowering quickly on the pale fabric of her skirt.

  Chapter 45

  Tariq

  ‘My God,’ Anjum said, pulling up outside what little was left of their family home. ‘Look at it.’

  Wincing with the effort of leaning forward to get a good view of the Edwardian house he’d bought with proceeds from his first big deal, some fifteen years earlier, Tariq choked back a sob. The glorious part-timbered façade of the three-storey detached gentleman’s residence had been reduced to a single-storey ruin, barely supported by the blackened skeleton of the remaining few beams that pointed to where the first floor had been. Of the roof and upper storeys, there were no traces beyond a pile of charred rubble and scattered slates.

  Anjum turned to him, tears in her eyes. She glanced back at the children. ‘I’m glad they’re asleep. I’m glad they can’t see this.’ She reached out to touch his forearm.

  He breathed in sharply, though her fingers had merely brushed his bandages. ‘Don’t. The morphine’s wearing off.’

  His voice sounded muffled to him. Examining his reflection in the mirror that was embedded into the car’s lowered sun visor, he felt like he was looking at an extra from the set of an old horror flick. Beneath the bandages, he knew his hair was gone and that he would be scarred for life. And yet, he had still fared better than his poor, poor father. He shut the sun visor quickly.

  ‘I can’t believe he’s gone,’ he said. His tears stung as they seeped into the fabric dressing. ‘I loved him so much.’

  Anjum nodded, wiping her eyes on her silk dupatta. ‘I know. Me too. I’m so sorry, Tariq.’ She took hold of the fingers of his left hand – the only place free of dressings. Stroked his wedding ring finger. ‘I realise now. We’ve got to pull together.’ Her voice was small. Defeated. She looked over at Jonny’s modern mansion, diagonally opposite, where there was no sign of his business partner or his wife, Sandra, at any of the windows. ‘We’ve only got each other, haven’t we? Come on. Let’s get out of here.’

  As the car pulled away from the cul-de-sac that had held so many of his happy memories and so many of his and Jonny’s secrets, Tariq sobbed. He sent a silent prayer skywards, hoping that his father had finally found the paradise he had so desperately hankered after and that he had been reunited with Tariq’s beloved mother, after so long apart.

  Deep down, Tariq was certain that the blaze had not been down to some unfortunate electrical fault or gas leak. The investigators would surely come back with a verdict of arson. And that purest of old souls, Youssuf Khan, had been caught in the crossfire of Tariq’s reckless life. The shame of that knowledge bit even deeper than the agony of his burns. But in amongst the wreckage of his life, Tariq realised that something could yet be salvaged: his marriage.

  Locking their dalliance in the imaginary box that contained every sinful memory Tariq had, he pushed Sheila O’Brien as anything other than a business rival out of his mind for good.

  Chapter 46

  Sheila

  ‘The baby’s going to be fine,’ the obstetrician said, reading through her notes. She glanced down at the handcuffs that bound Sheila to the hospital bed. A slight curl of her lip evident before her gaze moved onto Sheila’s abdomen. ‘Your placenta’s very very low. You must take it easy.’ The furtive sideways look at the female police officer who was sitting by Sheila’s bedside said everything. ‘Difficult, given your unusual circumstances.’

  Finally their eyes met.

  Sheila felt her cheeks flush hot. ‘My daughter’s due to arrive any minute. She’s a big hotshot in a London law firm, you know. She’s going to sort all this nonsense out.’

  She rolled her eyes at her uniformed babysitter and offered the obstetrician a weak smile, belying the fact that the last twenty-four hours had been nightmarish. Con
ky had failed to organise her usual legal representation, which meant he definitely knew about Tariq and was far from happy. Gloria was no use to her either, given she was still in a holding cell at the cop shop. Her eldest daughter had reluctantly agreed to get on the next train out of London and step in. By the end of the day, Dahlia would be faced with the uncomfortable prospect of finding out how her mother really made her living. Still, it was time for the family to close ranks.

  The obstetrician replaced the clipboard of notes onto the end of the bed. She treated Sheila to a smile that looked begrudged. ‘Well, placenta praevia can be very serious indeed and you’re lucky you didn’t lose this pregnancy. We’ll have to hope the placenta moves out of the way of the cervix in time for labour, otherwise you’ll have to have a planned caesarean ahead of delivery.’ She pursed her lips. Looked again at the flint-faced copper in the day-chair. ‘Have they let you inform the father?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘I see.’

  Sheila wondered briefly what a middle-aged obstetrician, presumably with her reproductive aspirations long behind her, made of a woman like her: over the hill, up the duff and under arrest. Screw her. ‘No, you don’t see. You don’t see at all, love.’

  She swallowed a sob at the thought of Tariq. A visit to her cell from her man on the inside had revealed that her lover was still alive but badly burnt, and that his father had died in the blaze. How would Tariq react to the secondary bombshell that Sheila was carrying his child? Was there a future for them? More to the point, had Conky had anything to do with his house fire?

  Sleeping fitfully for several hours, Sheila was jolted awake by the sound of Dahlia’s voice. She looked up at her daughter, whose furrowed brow conveyed confusion at best, and irritation at worst.

  ‘Mum.’ Dahlia reached down and kissed her on the cheek. Her dark bobbed hair hung in tracts over a subtly made-up face that was end-of-the-day shiny. She smelled of faded expensive perfume and coffee. Still dressed in a skirt-suit and heels, it was clear she had come straight from work. ‘First of all, are you okay?’