‘So,’ Charlie said over her glass of rosé. ‘Am I just supposed to be okay that you’re sending birthday greetings and bouquets of flowers to women I don’t know?’
Frank McCracken, who’d been distracted and preoccupied all through dinner, sipped his cognac. ‘Thought me and you had a kind of open relationship?’
‘Well, we do … but we have to draw the line somewhere. And you suddenly getting interested in old girlfriends again is a bit of a concern for me.’
To look at Charlie, one would never have expected any man in her company to have his head turned by another woman. Tonight, out for the evening, she was the ultimate blonde bombshell, platinum locks falling in snakelike curls down her back and shoulders, looks to die for, an hourglass physique wrapped to perfection in a strappy, flower-patterned, figure-hugging Versace dress, yellow Jimmy Choos with five-inch heels, which added even more lustre to her bronze, athletically toned legs.
She’d been cool with McCracken all evening, mainly because back in his spacious pad in Didsbury his housekeeper had let it slip that she’d recently arranged the delivery of flowers, balloons and a birthday card to a former flame of his in Saltbridge, Crowley. More fascinating to Charlie, though, was McCracken’s own reaction. He’d seemed unconcerned that she knew, refusing to get into one of those edgy tit-for-tat games she liked to play when trying to wheedle out some truth about his latest infidelity. In fact, throughout the evening, despite the delicious and very expensive meal they’d just eaten, his conversation had been muted, as if his thoughts were somewhere else.
‘I mean, surely it’s only a coincidence that you’ve brought me here?’ Charlie said, fixing him with that cornflower-blue gaze.
‘Uh?’ He glanced up. ‘Charlie, you’ve known for yonks that Redwood’s is my favourite eaterie. No one does steaks like they do here. And I thought you liked it too.’
‘But we’re in Crowley,’ she replied. ‘And so is Saltbridge. Is she perhaps at one of these other tables as we speak, this mysterious lady from your past? Did you bring me here so that she could check out the opposition?’
‘Christ’s sake, Charlie … grow up.’
‘I’m not angry, Frank.’ She leaned back in her chair, adjusting her eye-catching décolletage. ‘I’m just interested to know.’
‘Cora’s not here,’ he said. ‘And she couldn’t hold a candle to you in the glamour stakes, so stop worrying. Look … she was a great lass, but she’s fallen on hard times. Don’t see any harm in helping her out a little.’
‘If that was all it was, I’d agree. But flowers, balloons, a birthday card?’
‘Charlie, it doesn’t mean anything, okay? Me and Cora … we were an item thirty years ago. These days, it’s just platonic.’
‘Oh, so you have been speaking to her then?’
‘My love, just content yourself with the knowledge that it’s a small world, yeah? None of us have any clue what or who is waiting round the next corner.’
‘Very profound.’ She fanned herself with the dessert menu. ‘But my petty jealousies aside, you, Frank McCracken, ought to know better than anyone how unwise it is to get involved with a woman who’s not in the life.’
‘Oh, she’s in the life. Or rather, she used to be. But she got out of it.’
‘She got out of it?’ This was the first thing Charlie had heard about this other woman that genuinely intrigued her. ‘And how did she do that?’
McCracken shrugged. ‘One day she just upped and walked.’
It seemed politic not to mention the fact that this was because Cora had just found out that she was pregnant. Charlie didn’t know that Frank had a daughter, and as far as he was concerned, it was best if she never did.
Even so, the blonde beauty at the other side of the table was now regarding him with a doubtful expression. ‘She just upped and walked?’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think it would last, either. But it has.’
‘Except that now she’s fallen on hard times?’
‘Well … I wouldn’t say hard times as such. But maybe her life isn’t all it could be.’
‘And you want to do the right thing by her … by dragging her back into this one?’
McCracken regarded her thoughtfully. Charlie was by no means dumb.
‘That’s actually a good point,’ he said. He signalled to a waiter for the bill. ‘That’s a very good point indeed.’
It was late evening now and around them the restaurant was gradually emptying.
Redwood’s was part of Crowley Old Hall, a Tudor manor house and Grade I listed building on the border between Crowley and Salford. It had gone to ruin until ten years ago, when its transformation into a cordon bleu restaurant had brought the whole site back to life.
Even here in the dining room, it epitomised olde-worlde charm, with its low, gnarly beams, its dark oil portraits and its suits of Cromwellian armour standing sentry-like along the walls. But it was going on for 9.30 now, and, this being a Tuesday, most of the tables were being draped with fresh linen and arranged with cutlery and accoutrements for the lunchtime crowd tomorrow. It was time to go.
‘Well, Frankie,’ Charlie said, as they strolled arm in arm into the car park. ‘You’ve really shown a girl a good time tonight.’
‘You enjoyed the meal, didn’t you?’
‘The meal was great. The revelations … not so much.’
McCracken couldn’t disagree with that. Sometimes, passing fancies could prove expensive for all concerned. They crossed the tarmac to where Mick Shallicker leaned against the Bentley playing on his iPad, McCracken so lost in these thoughts that he didn’t notice the shadowy form lurking in the shrubbery on the car park’s right edge.
‘Hey, Frank!’ it called, stepping out behind them.
Everything then happened in a rush. McCracken heard the voice but was distracted by the sight of Shallicker snapping upright and dashing towards them, reaching under his jacket. He spun around, seeing a figure he recognised: moustached, with mussed grey hair over a sweat-damp face, its Burberry trenchcoat flapping open on a crumpled shirt and loosely knotted tie.
Then he realised that the figure was pointing a pistol at him, and firing.
The first shot hit McCracken high in the upper left of his body, the thudding impact spinning him like a top. The second hit Charlie in the middle of the back, knocking the wind out of her. They struck the tarmac together, dead weights. As Shallicker drew up alongside them, he’d already drawn his Colt Cobra, and now took aim at the fleeing shape, which had only managed two shots before turning and haring back into the shrubbery.
Shallicker squeezed one round off but knew that he’d missed; the figure was already out of sight. He dashed in pursuit, his huge feet pounding the floor. It was a thin belt of undergrowth, and on the other side lay a subsidiary car park, where the shooter’s vehicle, a Volkswagen Golf, waited close by. Neither the colour of the Golf nor its registration mark was clear in the dim light, and when Shallicker got there the shooter was already behind the wheel and spinning the car in a tyre-screeching semicircle. Before he could let off another round, it veered through the car park exit and vanished, its engine roar fading as it sped into the night. Shallicker sprinted back along the passage he’d torn through the shrubbery. No one had come out from the restaurant yet. The old building’s thick stone walls might have absorbed the sound of the shots, while the kitchen, where the windows were likely to be open, would be clattering with crockery.
Not that it made a lot of difference to Frank McCracken and Carlotta Powell, both of whom lay face-down in widening pools of blood.