The Pleasures of Spring (5 page)

‘Holy fuck.’ He reached out to touch the latex costume. The moulded form was soft to the touch and bounced back when he removed his finger. It was heavier than Kevlar and must have been a bitch to wear. No wonder she looked worn out.

The conniving wee Jezebel.

Up to now, this mission had been business, but it had just turned personal: she had lied to him and deceived him. Roz Spring, or O’Sullivan, or whatever the hell she was calling herself, had invited a whole heap of trouble into her life and he wasn’t going to rest until he found her.

‘So what are we going to do about your appalling love life?’ Jake asked. He pushed a pallet loaded with bags of sugar in Roz’s direction and she pulled out two from the top. The packing centre in the food bank smelled of the recent consignment of lemons.

‘There’s nothing wrong with my love life,’ she told him. ‘As long as you don’t try to mess with it.’

‘Me?’ He tried to look harmless and injured, which was hard to do when you’re six and a half foot of Polish muscle. Most people who met him assumed he was the bouncer at the food bank, not a ridiculously over-qualified manager.

‘Not my fault you didn’t like the guy I set you up with.’

‘Alexander? He never stopped talking. I couldn’t get a word in edgeways.’

Jake cut open a box of tins. ‘With you in the room? He deserves a medal.’

She stuck her tongue out at him. She didn’t talk that much.

‘What about Patrick? He’s a good listener.’

‘With bad breath and he has a tendency to grope.’ Of course, he wouldn’t make that mistake again. She disliked gropers.

‘You’re impossible to please.’

The two women helping to pack food bags were listening in and sniggered.

‘I am not. You keep sending me weirdoes,’ she told Jake. The man was a sweetheart, but since he had married Kate, he had forgotten what dating was like.

‘Okay, Roz, tell me what sort of man you would like. Is he actually human? Does he exist?’

She finished the bags she was working on and pulled over another bundle. ‘Of course he does. He’s tall, muscular, with long hair. Maybe blond. Blue eyes. Quiet, someone who listens. But who can make up his mind and take action when he needs to. Someone loyal.’

She had this description off by rote. It had been her ideal of manhood for a long time.

‘So if Thor appears, I’ll give him your address,’ Natalya assured her. ‘In the meantime, back on planet Earth, are there any men here that you do like?’

An image of a long, lean Irishman, with messy black hair and laughing dark eyes, pushed its way to the front of her mind. She had deliberately kissed him in the Savoy to throw him off-balance, but she was the one who had been dizzy ever since. Was it that he was a spectacularly good kisser? Or his sexy Irish accent? Or some secret Andy McTavish thing? The memory of him hadn’t left her for a single second since the moment of their kiss, and her libido had gone into overdrive.

She wanted to kill him.

Roz shook her head. ‘No, I know what I want. I’m not taking second best.’ She looked at Jake speculatively. ‘What colour is your hair when you don’t shave it?’

He laughed. ‘Nice try. But I will find you someone. You spend too much time alone.’

‘I’m happy that way. I haven’t met a man I wouldn’t dump for eating Hobnobs in bed.’

Of course, it wasn’t the whole truth. Roz knew her life was a mess. She was wanted by the police as a witness to a murder. At least that’s what they said. She didn’t trust them not to try to pin the murder on her. With her less-than-stellar record and her father’s criminal and prison record, it would be much easier to lock her up for the murder than go looking for the real killer – the man she had seen slitting the throat of an elderly French antique dealer.

She shuddered at the memory, and at how close she had come to death.

She had gone to pay a midnight visit to an elderly French art dealer who did a bit of jewel fencing on the side and discovered that he already had a visitor. Roz had watched from the shadows as the big blond American had fought with the old guy. She was too far away to hear all the argument, but had heard the little Frenchman threaten to tell the police something.

Roz still flinched at the memory of the speed with which the big man had produced a lethal-looking knife and stabbed the poor man in the neck. It was done so neatly and professionally that there was almost no blood splatter, but the violence of the movement had shaken her to her bones.

She had stuffed a fist into her mouth to avoid crying out. Later, she had found teeth marks embedded in the back of her hand, but at the time she felt nothing.

The murderer ignored the dead man on the floor, picked the locked jewellery cases, conducted a lightning search and let himself out silently.

Roz felt as if she hadn’t taken a single breath until he was gone.

She crept down from her hiding place and knelt beside him. She was no medical expert, but even she could see that the glazed eyes and pale skin belonged to a corpse. There was no emergency service on earth which could help him now.

She wasn’t religious, but she breathed a silent prayer over him before leaving quietly, hoping that he was somewhere with lots of jewels and paintings and gullible punters.

Roz cursed her unruly tongue, which had let slip that she had witnessed the murder. She had been hoping to cut a deal with the police; trading information so that they wouldn’t send her to prison for stealing the jewel. One interview with Interpol later, she knew more than she wanted to about former Navy SEAL J. Darren Hall. He had been kicked out in disgrace and was now for hire to anyone who had more money than scruples.

The door of the workroom opened and, as if her thoughts had conjured him, a large blond man walked into the dimly lit space, led by Olyenka.

For a moment, terror froze her lungs. She couldn’t breathe or move. It was him. Hall had found her. Somehow he had tracked her down to the food bank, and now everyone who worked here was in danger.

‘You’ve never heard of me,’ she murmured to Jake, and slid down behind the row of packing boxes. The windows
were barred and Hall was in front of the door. But there was a tiny space at the back where the smokers indulged their addiction. She crouched low and scuttled for the back door as fast as possible.

Jake, the darling, was being all managerial and official, demanding papers from the intruder.

Roz sneaked outside into the walled-in space, took a breath and leapt for the top of the wall. It was about ten foot high, but adrenaline and desperation gave her the strength to make it. She caught the top of the wall with her fingertips and ignored the slam of her body against the bricks.

A familiar calm descended. This she knew. She swung herself up, and climbed on top of the ancient red brick wall. Once upright, she balanced herself and ran along the top, jumping over the barbed wire separating this yard from the next, then on to the next one. And there, at the end of that wall, was the pot of gold – a fire escape leading up onto the roof.

Roz sometimes felt that she was part cat. There was something about being high up that reassured her. When in trouble, her instinct was always to go for the high ground. And up on the rooftops of London, she was at home.

A quick glance behind her was enough to show her that Hall had managed to figure out where she had gone, and he was already in pursuit. She felt an unexpected flicker of guilt and prayed that he hadn’t hurt anyone. She had allowed herself to stay too long here, had made friends, and it may have cost them dearly.

Hall, damn him, was moving over the crumbling walls with amazing speed for such a large man.

She loved parkour. It had started with running away from the cops or irate marks when she was younger, but had evolved into a full-scale love affair. There was something about the freedom of the run, the unpredictability of the terrain, the adrenaline rush, the punishing workout which left her shaking afterwards. She had never been interested in doing it officially or entering competitions, but she had studied the best free runners online and learnt from their technique.

Parkour had always been an escape from her problems. Now it might save her life.

The light was fading. She hoped that would make it harder for Hall to see her in the gloom. Her jeans were dark but the multi-coloured sweater Stella had knitted for her stood out. She hated to do it, but she had no choice.

She stripped off the gorgeous jumper, leaving her in a black T-shirt. The movement cost her precious seconds, and Hall was closer. A quick glance behind revealed the soulless determination in his eyes.

Roz picked up speed. She couldn’t let him catch her. The approaching night made it harder to judge distances between buildings, and impossible to see small obstacles in her path. She had to keep a sense of where she was going.

London from the rooftops was completely different from the streets, and it was essential that she didn’t get trapped by a main road. She could leap across alleys but not a two-lane high street.

From the sound of his footsteps, she knew that Hall was close behind her. How did he do it? Roz knew she was one of the fastest runners in the area, and he was
keeping up with her. Guess the SEALs really were supermen. She’d have to do better.

She raced across a glass roof she would usually have avoided, trusting that her lighter frame wouldn’t smash it. Hall must be close to seventeen stone, all pure muscle. She gained a couple of seconds when he went around it.

The next roof was too far away to risk a jump. She swung over the edge, using the tiny niches between the red bricks as finger and toe holds until she could grab at a balcony. A startled yelp from a lady watching television morphed into a scream, but she didn’t have time to do anything about it. She shuffled along the ledge to the next corner, where there was an easy jump to safety.

Roz scrambled across the roof, trying to keep her footing on the slippery slates. She couldn’t keep this up for much longer. Yelling for help wasn’t likely to do her much good in London; everyone thought it was someone else’s business.

The main road loomed up ahead, busy with traffic and pedestrians. A double-decker bus accelerated away from the traffic lights.

Hall was thirty yards behind her. Okay, no choice.

Roz leapt for the moving bus, and landed on its roof with a thump. She crouched, desperately, trying to absorb the shock and keep her balance, wedging her fingers into a tiny row of rivets. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to help her hold on while the bus rounded the corner and moved out of Hall’s sight.

Pedestrians nudged each other and pointed at her. She waved back as if she were supposed to be up there, but
made up her mind. She had to get off. She was attracting too much attention.

When the bus stopped at the lights, she jumped onto the top of a parked four-wheel drive, and nipped into the nearest McDonald’s. She was too stressed to eat, but ordered a large soda and tried to calm her breathing.

What was she going to do now? She didn’t dare go back to her flat. She had no idea how Hall had caught up with her, or if there was a chance he knew where she lived. She wasn’t walking into a trap.

Roz sipped her drink and considered what she could do. London was too hot. She’d been on the news after the robbery in Lewisham and now Hall had turned up at the food bank. She had a couple of cash-in-hand part time jobs, but spent most of her time helping at the food bank. She was going to have to leave.

Her passport was back in the flat, so getting on a plane was out of the question. She supposed she could get to Dover and smuggle her way onto the ferry to Calais. She knew France pretty well and had friends there, even if it was a part of her life that she had left behind. But Hall knew that too.

Where could she go?

There had been a time she would have asked her dad for advice in this sort of situation, but no longer. Even if he weren’t locked up in Pentonville, she had stopped trusting his judgment. They wanted different things, and always would.

But there was one person who had always been there for her.

She pulled out her phone and called her godfather. The
phone rang and rang, and she was afraid it would ring out. Finally he picked up.

‘Fletcher here.’

Hearing his cheerful voice made her feel better.

‘Frankie, I’m in trouble.’

‘What’s the situation?’ Straight to the point. Frankie, bless him, didn’t mess around with small talk.

‘I need to get out of London ASAP and hide up somewhere.’ Even as she spoke, she watched the crowd around her. She kept her voice quiet so that no one could overhear.

There was silence for a moment, then Frankie came through for her again. ‘I’m in Ireland right now. Get your ass over here. I have a nice little job for you, somewhere I can keep my eye on you.’

Ireland! She had never considered that. It was too close to her relatives, the ones she had spent a lifetime hating. They hated her too. But right now the choice was between the O’Sullivans and Hall.

‘What part of Ireland?’ She was good in cities. Ireland had cities big enough to disappear in.

‘Tullamore.’

She had never heard of the place. ‘Where is that?’

‘In the midlands. Head to Tullamore and ask for Charleville Castle.’

Roz blinked. ‘Why are you in a castle?’

‘Jack Winter is making a film about the Battle of Clontarf and I’m training the extras for the fight scenes. One of the stunt women has broken her arm. Think you could take over?’

Oh yeah, she could do that. The prospect of seeing
Frankie again cheered her. There were a few practicalities to sort out first. ‘Do I need a passport for Ireland? I can’t get at mine right now – any of them.’