The Pleasures of Spring (32 page)

‘Listen to me, and listen well. Don’t ever call her Red.’

Fox raised his hands in surrender. Andy released him and brushed the dust from his hands. The man was a sleazebag and an idiot, but that was no reason to kill him.

Fox coughed, leaning against the wall for support as he dragged several gasping breaths back into his lungs. ‘Okay, you’ve got something going on with her. I get it. I get it.’

Andy took the jacket from the hook and tossed it at him. ‘And now that I have your complete attention, there’s one last thing. You can tell your friends and anyone else she’s played with that Red has retired. She’s mine and I won’t ever be finished with her.’

Andy left Fox to catch his breath and hurried back to the house. He had left his phone on the bed and Reilly had promised to call him.

Two missed calls. One less than ten minutes ago. He punched in Reilly’s number.

‘Reilly, do you have news?’

‘Oh yeah, I have news. Niall is on the warpath because you lost a client and I sent a dozen operatives to search for a phone in a chicken truck.’

‘Roz?’ he asked hopefully.

‘Your bird flew the coop long before the driver boarded the ferry.’

Andy closed his eyes. He’d been hoping that they would find her in Scotland. He should have known better.

‘Two of the guys spoke to the driver. They said he was a nice old man. He told them that he dropped her at the ring road near Belfast. The girl he gave a lift to was pretty upset. She was crying over some guy who had broken her heart. He offered to beat some sense into him.’

She paused. ‘Want me to give him your address?’

He was almost tempted to say yes. ‘Thanks, Reilly. I owe you one. Can you run the usual checks? Hotels, car hire, credit cards?’

‘I’m already on it.’

Andy disconnected the call. He needed to think. Relief that she hadn’t been taken by Hall mingled with regret that she had chosen to walk away from him. He had spent the whole day blaming everyone else for her disappearance when it was his fault. Oh yeah, the others had helped, there was no doubt about that, but the blame was entirely his. He wanted to howl like a beast.

What had made her run? Was it the thought of Paris and the trial? Had she been afraid of what Hall might do to her? Why hadn’t she confided in him?

She didn’t get much of a chance, did she?
A nagging voice inside his head taunted him.

This was more than Roz being jealous about a stupid photograph. He had abandoned her to work on another job. His face had been plastered all over the media with Abbie Marshall and then he had used her own body against her, instead of talking to her and dealing with her uncertainties. How could he have been so blind? He had
handled her all wrong. Roz had never been able to lean on any man. Why had he imagined that she could learn to trust someone like him?

He should have talked to her, instead he had fucked her. Like every other deadbeat guy in her life. How could he make her believe that he was different? He didn’t care about her past. Roz wasn’t the only one who had done things that they were ashamed of. What mattered was the future. He was certain they belonged together, but he had to convince Roz.

And first he had to find her.

Andy grabbed the keys to the Jeep. The truck driver had dropped her off near Belfast. It was a logical place to start. Before he left, he carefully tore the page from the newspaper that contained her photograph. The first twenty-four hours after someone disappeared were critical. It was time to hit the streets.

Michael Brophy’s farm was a million miles away from Lough Darra. Roz bounced her motorbike along the rutted laneway that led to the old farmhouse. It had taken her three wrong turns to find the farm up the narrow, unmarked roads. After the motorways she had travelled getting to Tullamore, this was like a trip back in time.

The farmhouse was grey and square, with a latch door and chickens scattering when she rode her bike into the yard in front of it. Three stables lined one side of the yard, and Nagsy stuck his head out of one, greeting her with a soft whinny. Two sheepdogs barked from a few feet away but made no effort to touch her. She stayed on her bike, not sure how well her leather pants would stand up to dog teeth.

On the other side of the yard, a hayshed sheltered more chickens and in the field behind it, half a dozen horses grazed with cattle.

The door of the house opened and the owner came out. He was grey-haired but wiry and waved as he walked towards her.

She smiled at him, dismounting from her Kawasaki Ninja. ‘Hi, I believe Frankie told you I was coming?’

He smiled back, revealing several missing teeth. ‘You’re the girl who wants to buy my horse?’

She pulled off her gauntlets and patted Nagsy. ‘Yes, we became friends when he was working on the film.’

Michael pushed a bucket under the tap and let the water run. He tossed a handful of grain to the chickens who rushed up to peck at it. The bucket wasn’t full yet, so Michael led the way into the shed and stuffed hay into a net. By the time he was done, the water was an inch below the rim of the bucket. He used an elbow to open Nagsy’s door and lifted the bucket in.

Roz admired the smooth efficiency of his movements and understood how one man could run the farm.

‘Well, you see, there’s the thing,’ he said. ‘My father always told me not to sell him.’

Roz looked at Michael, who had to be at least fifty, and wondered if he was joking. ‘This horse?’

‘Well, anything out of old Molly.’ He scooped some crushed oats into a basin and put it into the stable. In the next box, Roz saw two young calves licking a block of salt. ‘But you can have any of the others that you like. I’ll make you a good deal.’

‘No, I want Nagsy. What’s the problem?’

‘To be honest, I’m not exactly sure. When old Molly went in foal, he told me that I was never to sell anything out of her. Pity, because they’ve all been good and Da used to work with racers so he knew that. But a promise is a promise.’

Damn. All this work and now this? Roz couldn’t believe it. He wasn’t going to sell. She had to try again. ‘How long ago was this? He might have changed his mind.’

Michael pulled Nagsy’s ear thoughtfully. ‘True. He was a great believer in, “Better be sorry you sold than sorry you didn’t” but he refused all offers himself and made me
promise to do the same.’ He screwed up his face in thought. ‘Must be a good thirty or more years ago.’

Nagsy was five, Frankie had told her. She wasn’t an expert on horses, in spite of hours spent listening to Dougal talking about them, but she knew horses didn’t live that long. ‘It can’t have been Nagsy he meant then.’

‘That’s true. Molly was his grand dam.’

A flutter of hope was dashed when he shook his head. ‘Sorry, I can’t sell him.’

‘I’ll pay cash. Five thousand.’ From the state of the farm, she bet that was more than he usually got for his horses.

Michael looked tempted but shook his head.

‘Six.’ She took out the money from her pocket. ‘Cash in hand.’

His eyes rounded at the wad of five hundred euro notes, but his mouth firmed. ‘A promise is a promise, and he’s dead now, so I can’t ask him to change his mind.’

He backed away, as if from the temptation of her money, and bumped into her motorbike. He examined it carefully and stroked it more gently than he had Nagsy. ‘That’s a beauty you have there. Is it fast?’

‘It’s a Kawasaki Ninja, top speed of 180kph, with acceleration that would knock you backwards.’

‘Come in for a cup of tea and you can tell me all about it.’

The front door opened directly into the kitchen, a big room heated with an old-fashioned Aga. Michael pushed the kettle onto a hot spot and it hissed within seconds. He made tea in a heavy brown teapot and let it stew. She gazed
around while he poured it out and added four spoonfuls of sugar. The kitchen looked like it was from the previous century, with a rickety wooden staircase, a television that was older than she was and a calendar featuring glossy photos of motorbikes.

Roz sipped the over-sweetened tar while she chatted about the Kawasaki Ninja and an idea germinated in her head. Michael found an open packet of biscuits and gave her one. It was stale and soft and she dunked it into her tea. It was that sort of house.

Roz put down her cup. ‘You know, I think we could make a deal, one that doesn’t involve selling Nagsy.’

Michael tapped his spoon against his mug. ‘I’m listening.’

‘How about we swop? I give you my bike, and you give me the horse.’ She loved her Ninja, and this nearly killed her, but it was the only way she could see to get Nagsy.

There was silence while he considered her offer. The clock in the corner ticked away. Finally, he said, ‘Deal.’

They spent a further ten minutes haggling over the details before they emerged into the sunlight. Roz handed over her keys, helmet, gauntlets and leathers but kept the boots, and Michael got out a saddle and bridle for Nagsy.

At her request, he gave her a note saying she was now the owner of the horse and she promised to send on the logbook for the Ninja as soon as possible.

She now owned Nagsy, and the logistics were suddenly impossible. ‘How am I going to get him home?’

Michael looked at her as if she was an idiot. ‘Ride him.’

‘But I’m going to –’ She shut her mouth quickly. No point telling him any unnecessary details. ‘It’s a good twenty-five miles away.’

‘If you get on now, you’ll be there before dark.’ He tacked up Nagsy for her and gave her a leg up into the saddle. As she set off down the rutted driveway, she heard him gunning the motor of his new motorbike.

Sunday morning and it was life minus Roz, plus twenty-four hours. He had toyed with the idea of telling his parents that she had been called back to work, but he couldn’t lie to them. Instead, he admitted that they’d had an argument. Poppy was full of sympathy. Even his dad was marginally less brusque than usual.

Andy had slept in her bed, hoping that his subconscious would give him a clue to her whereabouts. Frantic about her missing sister, Sinead Moore had persuaded her husband to use every resource he had to find her. They had hit the bus station, the hire companies and every cheap hotel and B&B within a twenty-mile radius of Belfast, but their enquiries had turned up nothing.

The photograph in the newspaper had been circulated to each of the men, but so far nothing. Her flatmate in London had been traced and although she hadn’t seen her, she was a mine of information about Roz’s life there.

How come he didn’t know that she volunteered at the biggest food bank in London or that she aced parkour and taught it to disadvantaged kids on Saturday afternoons?

The report from Pentonville prison revealed little – except that Peter Spring was due to be released shortly. He had been beaten up on several occasions and had
spent time on the hospital wing. He refused to speak to them about his daughter.

Andy rolled out of bed and without stopping for breakfast drove to the city again. Belfast on a Sunday morning was a ghost town. None of the shops opened before noon. Small groups of tourists dragged suitcases around the silent streets or drank coffee and stared through café windows at the rain that drizzled onto the grey streets.

Knowing she didn’t have much money, Andy checked out the cafés that offered a cheap Ulster fry that would keep you going for the day. But there was nothing, zilch, nada. Roz was good at disappearing and the trail was rapidly going cold.

The team was meeting at the Europa Hotel at noon for a video-conference call with Niall and the guy from Interpol. He wasn’t looking forward to it. Arriving half an hour before the others, he drank strong tea and doodled on a memo pad.

Think, man, think
.

She’s on the run with no money and no transport. She had few, if any, friends in Ireland and not a lot of people that she could turn to. Andy scrawled a circle with a sword driven through it.

The meeting room door opened and the rest of the team filed into the room. Every man and woman had given up their weekend to help search for her. Andy nodded to each of them in turn. At noon precisely, Niall Moore’s face filled the screen. Occasionally, he looked to his right as if someone else was in the room with him. It must be Sinead. He looked tired. Reilly had told him that Sinead
was suffering from morning sickness, morning, noon and night, and the big guy was worried about her.

She and Roz had been separated when they were barely four years old. They had met briefly when Roz had carried out a jewel robbery at the museum where Sinead worked. The twins’ relationship was fragile at best, but blood was thicker than water.

Niall glared at the video screen and said, ‘Report.’

One by one the teams spoke. The places they had searched, the leads which had come to nothing and all the scraps of information they had gathered, which didn’t amount to much – a lot of stuff about where she wasn’t but nothing about where she was.

Andy went last and he didn’t spare himself. He had failed to secure the client when he was pulled away on another job. He had allowed her to appear in public and there had been a media story about her. Hell, he might as well have erected a billboard at the entrance to Lough Darra saying
Roz Spring This Way
.

‘Stop beating yourself up,’ Niall said. ‘Guilt isn’t going to find her. So, what other leads have we got?’

Andy glanced down at his notepad. The circle had somehow become a shield and something clicked in his head. ‘Tullamore,’ Andy offered. ‘Someone got her a job on the movie set. I’ll drive down there and check that out.’

‘And she’s the registered owner of a Kawasaki Ninja motorbike,’ Reilly’s face popped onto the screen. ‘The lock-up where she stored it is empty. We think she took it to Ireland.’

‘Two reasons to go to Tullamore then,’ Niall said. ‘But
I want you to speak to our contact in the PSNI tomorrow morning, Andy. I’ll send you the details. He’s offered to keep a discreet eye in case anything turns up.’

By ‘anything’ Andy knew that Niall meant Hall.

‘Okay, that’s about it, everybody. You’re all free to go. Andy, if you could hang on for a while.’

Andy shifted in his chair as the rest of the team filed out. He was due a bollocking and Niall could deliver one better than most.

‘Inspector Prévost of Interpol is joining the call.’

Andy recognized the name. They had been supposed to meet in Paris the evening before to hand Roz over. He sat through the next few minutes stoically. He had fucked up monumentally and he knew it. Eventually, the inspector ran out of steam and left the call.

‘I don’t think there’s much I can add to that,’ Niall said. ‘Find her or Sinead will have my nuts.’

Inspector Robert Smyth of the PSNI was a dour man in his early fifties. He had seen too much trouble over the past thirty years and it showed in his waistline and the high colour on his face. He shook Andy’s hand, before settling back into a creaking office chair and waving Andy to the one opposite.

‘You haven’t found her?’

‘No,’ Andy admitted. ‘Mr Moore said you might be able to help.’

Smyth patted the piles of paper on his desk until his hand lighted on the right one and he handed a grainy CCTV shot to him – Roz walking near the motorway,
a dejected slump to her thin shoulders. The weary expression on her face was worse than a kick in the balls.

‘Anything else?’ Andy asked hopefully.

‘Nothing on CCTV, but then nobody has reported her missing.’

He was right, they couldn’t make it official, or Hall would find out and they didn’t want to tip him off. ‘There are reasons …’

‘There always are, but the truth will out. Take a certain tout of mine. He doesn’t drink much, but occasionally he likes to go out and get snattered.’