KATE’S VOICE WAS SOFT and she glanced furtively around. “My boyfriend doesn’t know any of this and I’d rather he didn’t. Just in case he decides he’s had enough of big cities one day.”
“He won’t hear it from me. I didn’t come to cause problems, Kate.”
“I met this guy in the bar. He came on to me. Funny and outgoing, he was.” Kate shrugged. “I figured him for a one-night stand…you see? I was feeling blue and lonely, and I wanted company just for the night. Instead, next thing I know, this bloke has moved in. Not lock, stock and barrel, mind you. But he’s staying there all the time. Kind of creeped me out, but it was also kind of cool. And this guy, he was one of the best lovers I’ve ever had.”
“What is his name?”
“Rick. That’s all he give me. Just Rick.”
“Ever pick up Rick’s mobile and have a look at his address book?”
“No. Thought about it, but he slept with that thing wrapped in his fist, I swear. The only time he ever put it down was when he was holding on to me.” Kate colored a little at that. “Makes me sound bad, don’t it?”
“No. I understand. Maybe you think so right now, Kate, but you’re going to find that you’re not so very different from a lot of women your age.”
“Maybe.” Kate shrugged. Her eyes looked misty. “I heard about the shooting on the news. I was here. Working on this rubbish.”
“Have you seen Rick since yesterday?”
Kate shook her head. “Once the police let me back into my flat, it was like he’d never even been there. All his stuff, what there was of it, was gone. He traveled light. Everything he had fit in one bag.”
And you didn’t connect him to the shooting? Molly wanted to ask that but didn’t. “Did you have a number where you can reach him?”
“No. Wasn’t no sense in it. The only place I ever seen him after I met him in the pub was my flat. Coffey don’t like personal phone calls here on the job. Surprised he let you back here.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me about Rick?”
“No.” Kate’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “I knew he was a wrong one, Molly, but I didn’t let it stop me. I should’ve.”
“Kate, all of us have things in our pasts that we’d rather not admit to. It doesn’t do any good to dwell on them. So my advice to you is, don’t.”
“What should I tell my boyfriend?”
“You’ll know when the time comes. I promise.” Molly shot a glance at Coffey. “I should probably go and let you get back to your day. I’ve taken up enough of your time.”
“Sure.”
“But I appreciate you telling me this.”
“Don’t see that it helped.”
“It did. It proves that Rick had a plan. He wasn’t just a guy who happened on a good place to shoot from.”
“You think he was watching over Rohan? Waiting to shoot him?”
“Maybe. Or maybe he was waiting for Timothy Harper.”
“Either way, he was trouble and plenty of it.”
For a moment, Molly considered how things might have gone if Kate had been seen talking to the police.
“Got something for you. Be right back.” Kate walked to a bank of dented olive-green lockers, twirled the combination dial on one of them and reached inside. She took out a mobile. “Rick never let me get close to his mobile, but I had mine. Took some snaps of him while he was sleeping. Gimme your number and I’ll text them to you.”
Molly did, then watched as six pictures of a tall, dark-complexioned man with longish hair fed into her mobile. The man was ruggedly good-looking, and he didn’t appear much older than Kate. Molly could easily see why the younger woman had gone for the guy.
She also thought he looked familiar. She took just a moment to forward the pictures to Michael’s mobile, then thanked Kate again and left the garage.
“Be careful out there, Mrs. Graham.” Coffey waved to her.
She wondered what he meant by that.
“Lot of strangers in town, is all.”
“Thank you, Mr. Coffey. If you should ever decide you want to remodel the exterior of this garage, I’m sure I can get you a deal.”
Coffey grinned. “This place will fall down around my ears before I remodel it. If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. My grandfather taught me that, and his taught him that before then. And all of ’em learned it right here in this garage.”
OUTSIDE, MOLLY HEADED FOR Grandage’s Bait and Tackle again, still intent on getting a cup of coffee from somewhere. The marina held more pedestrians than earlier, and the harbor had filled up with boats.
She took a deep breath as she surveyed the sights. Blackpool was having growing pains, ones that would only continue because the little town was going to gain more tourist trade and possibly a few more residents from the outside world. She didn’t see that as a bad thing, but part of her realized she didn’t want Blackpool to change too much.
A powerboat pulled up to the pier ahead of her and the bump of contact sent a shiver through the floating dock. Raucous rap music cascaded over the boardwalk and drew ire from the onlookers. If the group in the boat didn’t settle down, the harbormaster would be along and fine them. Molly was surprised to note that one of the passengers was Lydia Crowe, Aleister Crowe’s younger sister.
Like her brother, Lydia had aristocratic features. But instead of being dark as her older brother was, she had golden blond hair. She was more than ten years younger, too. Barely twenty.
She also had a figure that instantly switched on every male radar in the vicinity. Today she wore a two-piece bikini with mismatched colors. Her top, what there was of it, was pale green and her thong bikini bottoms were electric blue. Dark-lensed sunglasses covered her blue eyes.
Only one other girl was in the powerboat. She paled in comparison to Lydia, but she seemed content to bask in her reflection. Five young men with bronzed skin and bleached hair whooped and hollered in the powerboat, high-fiving each other and cracking open beers.
Evidently this was how the young elite handled the beach scene.
At first, Molly thought Lydia was going to walk on past her without saying a word. She was actually hoping for that. The less interaction Molly had with the Crowes at the moment, the better she liked it.
But no, Lydia stopped on a dime, hooked her sunglasses with a finger and surveyed Molly. “Mrs. Graham.”
Molly smiled. “Yes, Lydia,” she replied, as if speaking to a child.
“I thought that was you.”
“Is there something I can help you with?” Molly asked.
“Not really. It’s just that after everything that happened yesterday, I’m surprised to see you here.”
“Where else would I be?”
Lydia shrugged. “Home. Safe.”
“I think I’m safe enough here.”
“Oh.”
“You have a good day, Lydia.”
For a moment, Lydia clearly didn’t know how to take being dismissed so casually. Then she turned on her heel, put on a smile and pushed her sunglasses back into place.
Molly’s gaze drifted to a reflection in the window of Grandage’s Bait and Tackle. Only a short distance up the pier stood one of Stefan Draghici’s clan. The same long-haired gypsy Molly had seen the previous day stood in the midst of a group of tourists.
Startled, Molly dropped a hand into her purse and took out her mobile. She brought up the camera screen. Focused on the man’s reflection in the window, she placed his position in her mind and spun quickly, bringing the iPhone device up.
He was gone. Vanished like fog in a stiff wind.
“Mrs. Graham.”
The deep, rumbling voice came from behind Molly. Paranoid and feeling exposed and vulnerable, she turned around again. The gypsy stood watching her with a mocking smile.
“Excuse me.” Molly took a step back. “Do I know you?”
He smiled, but there was nothing mirthful about the expression. “No, but I thought we could make each other’s acquaintance today.”
“All right.” Molly waited, but the man seemed content to just stand there. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”
“I didn’t give it. Just think of me as the friendly sort, a man with the best interests of you and your husband at heart.”
Although the words held no threat, Molly’s warning signals went on full alert. She took a step back.
“Oh, you don’t have anything to worry about with me, Mrs. Graham.” The gypsy smiled. “If I’d meant you any harm, you’d never have seen me coming. For the moment, Stefan wants you left alone.”
“I really don’t have time to talk right now.”
“Of course you don’t. You and Mr. Graham being busy people and all. But that’s all right. No foul here. When you see Mr. Graham, though, tell him Stefan would like to have a word with him. Maybe compare notes on this little treasure hunt the two of you are on.”
“We’re not on a treasure hunt.”
The gypsy winked broadly. “Sure you aren’t. All the same, let your husband know Stefan would like to see him sometime.” He touched his head scarf and continued along the boardwalk.
Molly shivered and couldn’t help feeling as if she’d just been broadsided by a tropical storm.
“WANT TO TELL ME WHAT IT IS I’m looking at, Michael?” Paddington listened to Michael’s explanation about the puzzle box, but his expression spoke tomes about his boredom and low threshold of patience. Michael switched gears.
“Do you know what YouTube videos are, Inspector?” Michael selected one of his prechosen screens and launched it, quickly blowing it up to full screen.
“Music videos and homegrown film clips. Rubbish. Perhaps you’ve got time to spend looking at such things, but I don’t.”
On screen, footage of the shooting at Merciful Angels Hospital rolled. Michael muted the narrator, an excited male who was freaked out by the events.
“Not exactly home movies, is it, Inspector?”
Paddington growled unhappily.
“A number of law-enforcement departments are using YouTube videos of crime scenes to back up what’s captured by their own photographers.” Michael had read about that in Wired magazine and other digital sources. The knowledge had led him to his online scavenger hunt that morning, and he’d been surprised at the results.
“So? If I wanted to see video of the crime scene yesterday, all I’d have to do is bring up the archived files.”
“You’ve been over them?”
“Not yet. But I will soon.”
“Then maybe you’ll see this man.” Michael stopped the video feed at two minutes and thirty-nine seconds. He took a screen capture, then opened a picture manager, dumped the capture into it and cropped the picture to blow up the face of one particular man he’d spotted in the crowd on the other side of the yellow crime-scene tape.
The man had the sharp, pointed features of a fox, sandy hair and freckles. Aviator glasses hid his eyes. Dressed in a Sex Pistols concert shirt and in his thirties, he looked like a tourist. “Recognize him?”
Paddington pulled a file from the corner of his desk, opened it and flipped through a stack of mug shots. After a moment, he took one out and laid it on the desk. “Philip Wickersham.”
“I recognized him from the pictures you had at dinner of the gang Timothy Harper belonged to. I’m guessing he was there to verify the kill.”
Reluctantly, Paddington nodded.
“You don’t have to feel like you’re telling me any state secrets. I researched Harper on the internet and turned up some surprising results.” Michael clicked in the folder he’d dropped to the bottom of his screen and article after article scrolled open. “Wickersham works for Leland Darrow, who is—by all accounts that I found—a dangerous man. Darrow runs a crew of thugs. The newspapers and magazine articles insist that he’s the kind of man you hire when you want something lifted or someone killed.” He paused, letting the information sink in again. “What are this man and his people doing in Blackpool?”