Sweet Revenge Page 18

  Cross and primed for a fight, Torbel reappeared to tell her that the shooter had escaped before he could reach him. His concern for Keiran took precedence, however, and in the end it was his decision that his friend be taken home instead of to a hospital or clinic.

  The doctor, a thin, overworked woman in her thirties, argued the matter briefly, then gave in with a dry “You’re a real pain, Torbel. I have to report this to the police, of course, but I’ve dug the bullet out and given him a shot to prevent infection. Watch him closely tonight. If the bleeding starts again, call me at once, and then it will be the hospital, like it or not.”

  Torbel didn’t like it, but he agreed to her terms without comment.

  It was approaching 4:00 a.m. by the time the furor died down. Victoria retrieved Rosie from Zoe’s flat, noted the closed bedroom door but decided not to knock. Let her sleep if she was in there. No need for all of them to be zombies tomorrow, especially when nothing more could be done for Keiran.

  Not surprisingly, Torbel had his own ideas on that subject. From Keiran’s bedroom window, between storehouse and pub, he regarded the slumbering city. A tower clock chimed in the distance, its ancient bell resonating through the predawn air.

  “We were shot at, and Keiran was hit. He could be dead.” His eyes fastened on hers across the room. “You could be dead.” His jaw hardened into a determined line she’d come to know well. “I’m going to find him, Victoria. And when I do, I’m going to kill him.”

  Rosie jingled to the window, climbed onto the chair and yipped at him.

  “She likes you,” Victoria murmured as Torbel’s preoccupied fingers fluffed the Yorkshire’s silky fur. “It says something when animals like you.”

  He regarded the dog but spoke quietly to her. “Will you stay with Keiran while I go out?”

  Her muscles tensed. “If you kill him—the person—Torbel, you’ll be the one on trial for murder.”

  “I know the law, Victoria.”

  She stood, fists balled. “But you don’t care?”

  The bitterness of her challenge was not lost on him. Somberly he said, “I care, Victoria. That’s why I’m going out.”

  Frustration welled inside her. However, instinct told her that showing it would be wrong. Possibly because she was wrong to reproach him. Pride kept her chin up and her eyes calm when she replied, “Do what you have to, Torbel. I’ll stay with Keiran.”

  It said something, she supposed, that he trusted her to watch his best friend. Closest male friend, she corrected, stubbornly resolved.

  Taking one of Keiran’s black cotton jackets, Torbel pulled it on. On his way to the door, he stopped and set his hands on her upper arms. “Trust me” was all he said. He hesitated, drew her forward, hesitated again, then kissed her.

  It wasn’t long, but she felt an element of desperation in his touch. He had to do this. Maybe one day she would understand why.

  She fingered her lips in wonder. Maybe she understood already.

  VICTORIA CAME AND WENT. The rain came and went, then came again. An eerie gray dawn light filled the flat. Typically London. Only fog hovering over the Thames was missing. And Sherlock’s brilliant powers of deduction.

  If it hadn’t been for a loud clatter of trash cans in the alley below, Zoe wouldn’t have awakened. She would have missed completely the furtive sounds of intrusion, the cautious scrape of wood as someone searched the desk drawers.

  Aided by the stealth of her former profession, she stole from her bed and across the carpeted floor. Even swathed in shadows, she recognized her twin instantly.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded in a strident voice.

  Clover stiffened, then slowly turned to face her. “I thought you’d be out.”

  Zoe cleared the roughness of sleep from her throat. “What are you looking for? Goggy’s so-called documents again? First you break in, then Fox badgers Victoria about them, now you’re back in person. What’s so special about a bunch of papers? Are they some sort of unofficial confession on old Goggy’s part? ‘Crimes and Misdemeanors I Have Condoned.’ Or is ‘whitewashed’ the politically correct term?”

  Clover’s voice was as strained as her demeanor. “He found the documents. He’d simply misplaced them. I have no idea what information they contained.”

  Zoe studied her deadpan twin. Clover was here, if not for Goggy’s “lost” documents, then for another reason.

  From childhood, Zoe had been considered the tougher of the pair. She’d seen Goggy’s faults and Sophie’s, too, for that matter. Infidelity ran rampant in both of them. But unlike her, Clover had never really been able to accept the truth of their indiscretions. Either that or she hadn’t wanted to.

  Ostrich, Zoe thought, advancing on her. And a transparent one at that. Books the size of diaries lay atop the desk. Only those—no papers, notepads or magazines. She’d come in search of Sophie’s diary.

  “It isn’t here,” she said, closing in.

  Clover gave her credit for perceptiveness if little else. “Where, then? With the solicitor who condoned—” she emphasized the word nastily “—Robbie’s murder?”

  Zoe sighed, halting. “You won’t give up, will you? You or Goggy. Victoria had no active part in the trial. As for Robbie, yes, he was murdered, but Torbel didn’t do it, and neither did Lenny Street. And no matter what Grandfather says, I for one do not believe that Robbie changed his mind about joining up. He was too excited that night, too anxious to find Torbel. Personally, if I had bad news to pass on to the Rag Man, I wouldn’t be bursting at the seams to do it. He’s not murderous, but he’s got a streak of something in him that he takes great pains not to let out.”

  “Oh, really. And what would that be if not murderous intent?”

  “I have no idea. Something in his background. Maybe in his genes.”

  Clover scoffed. “You mean that Irish-Welsh magic stuff he supposedly inherited from his mother? It’s bollocks.”

  “Possibly. But certain traits are hereditary, aren’t they, Clover? Meanness, spite, infidelity—all the gifts we received from dear old Goggy. Poor Grandma Blanche’s gentler qualities must have died a swift death in the genetic pool. The only one of us who wasn’t totally screwed up was Robbie, and he’s gone. There’s just you and me left to pass on the honorable family blood, pure on both sides all the way back to dear Oliver Cromwell. How lucky can you get?” Her tone was sour, her knuckles white where they gripped the top of the chair. “I hate him, Clover, and all I can say is that I hope, when the end comes for him, he gets what he deserves.”

  “He deserves—”

  “To fry in the deepest part of hell,” Zoe snapped. The anger and resentment she’d held in for years now rushed to the fore. “He’s a bastard, and God alone knows how many of the same name he’s spawned over the years. Sophie was—”

  “Stop bringing her into this.”

  “Why?” Zoe made a jerky gesture of impatience. “Don’t you see? She was no different than him. How do you know that we—that any of us—are really Duffy’s children?”

  “We all have the same blood type,” Clover said through gritted teeth. “Duffy’s type.”

  “Type O, the most common of all. But that’s not the point. I want you to see, to really understand, what a monster Grandfather is. He cleaned up Fox’s record—you know he did. Why? Old Goggy doesn’t do favors out of the goodness of his heart. So why help Fox? Unless, of course, Fox—” She paused, a shadow passing over her face. “Unless,” she repeated less forcefully, “Grandfather knows something about him—some secret we’ve never been privy to.”

  Clover’s cheeks resembled chalk. “How dare you attack Grandfather in his absence.” Zoe couldn’t tell if her rasping tone was born of fear or fury. She wasn’t sure she cared. Her own train of thought disturbed her to the point where all she wanted was for her sister to disappear.

  “Go away, Clover,” she said dully. “Go home and spin your mean little plots in old Goggy’s parlor. You’ll pay for your vindicti
veness in the end. You, him, and me, too, I should think—wayward in my own fashion and unrepentant to the end.”

  “A thief,” Clover said scathingly.

  “Once upon a time,” Zoe agreed. “I wouldn’t throw stones right now if I were you, not standing there with your hands in my desk drawers. If Sophie gave away any secrets in her diary, then it’s time they were aired. By the way, has anyone bothered to investigate Sergeant Peacock’s death any further?”

  Clover’s stance was rigid. “I’m not on the case.”

  “Maybe you’re working on Boots’s disappearance, then?”

  Clover’s face turned scarlet.

  “Not that either, eh? No sense of duty to an old man, or even loyalty to your co-workers. Poor old Boots and Robert Alistair Peacock—that’s his full name, in case you never bothered to learn it. One’s as dead as a doornail, the other seems to have vanished into thin air, and all you care about is Mother’s stupid diary.”

  Clover appeared ready to burst. But a red light flashing on her belt pager had her snatching up the phone instead. “Do you mind?” she snapped.

  “Be my guest.”

  The call was brief. Apparently her shift had been changed from late to early.

  “Nice,” Zoe remarked with heavy sarcasm. “Now you and old Goggy can scheme till the cows come home.”

  “Right.” Clover marched for the door. Once there, she executed a smart about-face. “I’ll be off to my plotting, then. In case you’re interested, Sergeant Lewis told me about a report that came in a little over an hour ago. It seems a member of your crooked little band’s been shot.”

  Zoe’s head came up. “Torbel?”

  Clover merely smiled and opened the door. “How silly of me. I forgot to ask.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Damn!” Torbel gave the stuck door of the storehouse an irritable yank. He was soaked to the skin, frustrated and out of sorts with the world.

  The neighborhood was waking up, the oily businessmen next door skulking to work in their dark suits and homburgs. Former bankers all, now miserable loan sharks. If he survived this nightmare of notes and rhymes and midnight attacks, he’d expose them for the crooks they were. But only after the nightmare ended and he’d resolved his own complex problems.

  Smudge was sitting on the kitchen counter when he got there, calmly dipping her paw in the sauce from someone’s forgotten plate of spaghetti. By the size of the serving, Torbel guessed it was Ron’s. Whatever had called him away must have been important to make him abandon his food.

  He thought of Victoria and Keiran, swore under his breath and dropped into the nearest chair, too exhausted to put Smudge off the counter.

  Nothing. He hadn’t turned up a single bloody clue, and he’d been prowling the streets for hours. Actually he had found one lead. He hadn’t followed it up yet, but he would. As soon as he sorted out the mess in his head, he’d be on it like Smudge on Ron’s spaghetti.

  He’d been grilling Tito outside Myrtle’s when he’d seen a Cockney bum stumble through the door. Nothing remarkable about him really, until he’d looked down and seen the man’s boots. Black boots with once-shiny gold buckles—just like the ones Boots wore.

  Tito, who’d spied them at the same time, had jerked back as if kneed. He’d recovered quickly and would have steamrollered the man if Torbel hadn’t restrained him. With a motion for Tito to stay put, he’d moved in instead.

  “Sod off” had been the drunk man’s first reaction to Torbel’s question. He hadn’t been quite so rude with a forearm pressed to his windpipe and his spine plastered against the outer wall.

  “If you want to keep breathing, talk,” Torbel had said in a tone that made it clear he didn’t care which the man chose.

  Sensing that, the drunk had mumbled out an unintelligible “I found ‘em in a rubbish bin.”

  “Where?”

  “Here.”

  “At Myrtle’s or on the docks?”

  “On the docks. Near the broken pier.” He chafed under Torbel’s grip. “There wasn’t no one in ‘em, Torbel. They was way inside the bin.”

  Why did these people all seem to know him? Torbel wondered.

  He believed the man, however, and released him without another word.

  Needless to say, Tito had been hopping mad.

  “You let him go in Boots’s boots,” he accused, flailing his thin arms. “Maybe Boots was in the bin, as well.”

  But Torbel knew people well enough to omit that possibility. “If he’d been there, the guy would have given it away. He’s dead drunk—his defenses are virtually nonexistent.”

  “Where’s Boots, then?” Tito challenged. “Dead, dead?”

  “Maybe. He might have seen something he shouldn’t have. You’re no innocent, Tito. You know how life works in Dockland. People like Boots disappear all the time.”

  Tito hadn’t appreciated that answer. He went off kicking a beer can along the docks.

  A trash bin near the broken pier, Torbel reflected now. Without looking, he opened the fridge and removed a bottle of Guinness. That was where the old Pierpont Hotel stood, condemned, as he recalled, though not yet scheduled for demolition.

  He’d checked out the bin but found no sign of Boots. He’d considered checking out the old Pierpont, but it had been dawn by then and the city was stirring. He’d decided to check in with Victoria instead—by telephone, because he was no fool.

  “Keiran’s sleeping,” she’d told him in a somewhat stilted voice. Then she sighed. “Look, Torbel, why don’t you just come back here, and we’ll talk about this. I don’t think a personal crusade is the answer, do you?”

  Of course it bloody wasn’t, he thought snappishly. Walking, however, had cooled him down to the point where he felt back in control of his emotions. Not all of them, mind you, but the more destructive ones had finally been harnessed.

  A picture of Victoria’s exquisite Gypsy features danced in his head. Unfortunately it was tarnished by the overlying shadow of death—and by Augustus Hollyburn’s scowling, vindictive face.

  He took a contemplative sip of Guinness. How often in the past decade and a half had he seen that old face in his mind, glowering at him? Too many times to count, he decided wearily.

  Rubbing his temples with the thumb and middle finger of his hand, he tried to push the image out. But it persisted, and with it came all the words and accusations they’d traded over the years.

  Another, less palatable picture took shape, of old Goggy badgering witnesses, of tricking them, and leading them and finally coercing them into testifying in the manner he chose. In other words, he’d been out for Torbel’s blood in the past, he still was and he wouldn’t rest until he got it.

  Torbel’s mind drifted further back, to his days at Scotland Yard. It was a stretch to recall the good, but there had been moments. Unfortunately, and thanks in large part to old Goggy, the bad times overshadowed the rest.

  Old Goggy…He let his aching head fall forward. Was the judge behind this current horror? Aware of it, yes, applauding it, almost certainly, but was he also the source of it?

  Something nagged in his brain, some detail too obscure to be called up. Maybe even two details—at this point, he was too tired to do more than squint at the shelf clock across the kitchen.

  Six twenty-two a.m. He wanted to check on Keiran. He also wanted to see Victoria. Badly. So much that he found himself hesitating. He’d fallen in love with her, dammit. What if he couldn’t fall out?

  It felt real, and so undoubtedly was. But he could not, dared not, tell her that. He and his temper were infamous, to say nothing of inseparable. For the most part, he controlled it, but what of those rare occasions when he’d been unable to, when, if not restrained by Keiran, he would have ripped a man’s throat out with his bare hands?

  Boots’s voice echoed softly in his head. It spoke of the magic he’d inherited from his mother. It should have mentioned the temper that had also been her gift to him. Magic was bollocks. Fury unleashed had
deadly possibilities, supplemented in his case by another trait, a deeper, darker streak of—

  “Torbel! What are you doing here?”

  Ron’s exclamation from the doorway cut short the grim thought. Torbel kept his eyes focused on the shelf clock. “Drinking beer,” he said, emptying the bottle down his throat. “Keiran’s been shot.”

  “Aye, I heard.” The Scotsman sounded more aggravated than concerned. “Er, will he be all right? Who did it, do you know?”

  “Probably, and not yet.” Torbel tossed the bottle aside and shoved back his chair with his foot. It gave him no satisfaction to watch the other man back up a pace.

  “You look annoyed, Torbel,” Ron noted carefully. “Out for blood.”

  “I am. And I mean to have it.” Torbel’s fingers ran the length of his scar. “Slowly and not, I promise you, without pain.”

  “VICTORIA? IT’S ZOE.”

  Victoria glanced at Keiran, sleeping fitfully in his bed, then went to unlock the door. She was disappointed. She’d wanted it to be Torbel.

  “How is he?” Zoe asked at once. “Where’s Torbel? Not hunting for lunatics, I hope.”

  “I wish.” Victoria rebolted the door. Thank heaven for the hawkers in the street below. They lent a certain measure of comfort to an otherwise freakish situation.

  Zoe looked at Keiran, then, satisfied, flung herself into an armchair and released a pent-up breath. “I had another ‘visit’ from Clover early this morning. I caught her going through my desk. She was searching for Sophie’s diary. Do you still have it?”

  Victoria produced the book from her backpack. “Oswyn brought my stuff over—” she didn’t say from where “—while all the confusion was going on here.”

  Zoe started to reach for it, paused, then retracted her hand. “Never mind. You keep it. Let me know if you find anything interesting.”

  “Do you consider an affair interesting?”

  Zoe’s eyes narrowed. The hand she’d pulled back came reluctantly out again. “All right, give over. Who’s the lucky affairee?”