‘I’ll bring it to you. It’s a spare key, it’s on Mandolin Avenue, not far. I need to go now. Need to put in an appearance at home.’
That second sentence kills Jen more than the first.
She gapes, there, her hands flat against a wall while her entire world seems to spin off around her. She’s about to charge at him, to ambush him, to yell, when he says, ‘Thanks. Thanks, Nic.’
While Jen’s lying husband emerges holding the takeaway, she collects herself. She needs to think. She wants to be sure she gains as much information as possible, rather than confronting him.
His footsteps slow when he sees her.
‘Hey?’ His smile is easy, but wary. He’s no fool. He knows she knows something.
‘What’s going on?’
He immediately understands Jen, and he knows what a warning those questions are. ‘That phone call? Nic? No …’ he says, an educated guess. ‘You don’t think …’
‘Show me your pockets.’
He looks once down the road, back at the Indian takeaway. Then at his feet. A bite of his lip, then he sets the takeaway down on the ground and does what she has asked. She walks towards him.
Two phones and the brown package containing the key tumble out into Jen’s hands.
She says nothing, merely waiting for an explanation.
‘I – this is my client’s phone, Nicola. And her car.’
‘Stop lying!’ Jen shouts. Her words echo around the street, bouncing back distorted. Kelly’s face slackens in shock. ‘You’re lying to me,’ she says with a sob that she can’t contain. For all her intentions, it has descended into the domestic she wanted to avoid. She can’t help being emotional with him.
He runs a hand through his hair then turns on the spot. He’s angry.
‘Burner phones and illegal transactions, Kelly.’
He doesn’t say anything, just bites his lip and looks at her.
‘All right – yeah. The package. It isn’t for a client’s car.’
‘Whose is it then?’
He goes silent again. Kelly often allows pauses to expand, choosing to say nothing where other people would speak. Somebody else always talks first. But, this time, Jen waits too, just looking at him across the quiet, dark street.
His eyes run across her face. He’s trying to figure out what she knows. He’s trying to work out how to play his hand. ‘The car is stolen, but it isn’t – what you think,’ he eventually says.
‘What is it then?’
‘I can’t say that.’
‘Why?’
He stops speaking again, staring down at his feet, evidently thinking.
‘What? Tell me or – we’re in trouble, Kelly.’ She holds a hand up. ‘I am not joking.’
‘I know perfectly well that you’re not joking,’ he says tightly. ‘And neither am I.’
‘Tell me what the fuck is going on, or I go.’
‘I …’ He paces again, another useless circle that seems to serve only to burn off steam. ‘Jen – I …’ His cheeks have gone red. She’s getting to him, she can tell. Her husband may be calm, but even he has a limit. Just look what he did in the police station on the night that started everything.
‘Just tell me who the key goes to. Just tell me who the guy was that you met just now.’
‘It’s … I’d tell you if I could.’
‘You don’t want to tell me what you’re mixed up in. Isn’t it as simple as that? You’re giving me a fucking no-comment interview, Kell.’
‘It isn’t even half as simple as that.’
‘I can’t just stand by and have illegal shit happen outside the house.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘Missing babies. Stolen cars.’
‘Missing babies?’ he says. His eyes flash, then meet hers, his expression changing from irritation to panic.
‘The missing baby.’
He pauses, breathing hard, then looks at her. ‘If I say something – will you trust me on it?’
Jen spreads her arms wide, right there in the street. ‘Of course.’
Kelly comes over, grasping her shoulders urgently. ‘Do not look into that baby.’
Nothing could have shocked Jen more than this sentence. ‘What?’
‘Whatever you’ve found. Stop.’
‘Who’s Joseph Jones?’
‘Do not look into Joseph Jones either,’ he says, his tone as vicious and as sharp as a snake’s.
They stand there in silence for a few seconds, Jen still in his arms.
‘Kelly – I … you’re asking me to –’
‘Just – stop. Whatever it is you’re doing. Stop.’
Jen hates this tone of his. It provokes an ancient emotion in her. Her body wants to run, she wants to escape: fear.
‘Why?’ she says, barely a whisper.
Kelly’s fuse finally reaches its end. ‘You’re in danger, Jen,’ he says. She steps back from him in shock. Her shoulders are covered in goosebumps. She begins to shiver, feeling so alone. Who can she trust?
Kelly looks at her. Behind the sorrow, she is sure she can make out an emotion on his features that she hasn’t ever seen before on him, that she can’t read.
She tells him not to come home with her if he won’t tell her anything else, and he doesn’t. He leaves. She doesn’t know where he goes, almost doesn’t care. The takeaway bag sits there, its brown sides buffeting slightly in the wind. She picks it up and takes it home, for Todd. For once, she has no appetite.
Ryan
Ryan is loitering before the emergency briefing led by the sergeant, Joanne Zamo.
Leo, Jamie and Ryan are standing along the back wall of the briefing room. ‘One for you,’ Jamie says, right before Zamo starts speaking. ‘OCG is Organized-Crime Group.’
‘Thanks,’ Ryan says. ‘I knew that.’
‘All right,’ Zamo says. She’s in a trouser suit, flat black shoes, holding a coffee in her hand. Her weight is on one leg, and she’s clearly thinking, staring at the floor but probably at nothing, her brow lowered. ‘Surveillance are feeding some stuff through to us now. Everybody ready?’
The briefing room is ablaze with adrenalin in a way it isn’t usually. A copper whose name Ryan doesn’t know is erecting a board, pinning various items on to it. Two others are on the phone, talking more and more loudly.
‘Okay,’ Zamo says. ‘Surveillance have told us that the OCG were targeting an empty house. Then they saw a BMW idling on the driveway next door, keys in the ignition, engine on. So they took it.’ She folds her lips in on themselves, dimples appearing either side of her mouth. ‘What they didn’t know is it belonged to a new mother who was intending to go on a night-time drive to get her baby daughter to sleep. She secured her in the car seat, then left her there for just a few seconds while she dashed in to get her phone …’
Something turns over in Ryan’s chest. He can see it all. The panic. The terror. The woman seeing the car begin to move. Rushing out after it. The 999 call …
‘And now it’s five hours post. The car hasn’t been sighted, but we have eyes on the port, where it was heading.’