Chapter Twenty Nine
We drove in silence through the night, the only noise the rumble of the truck’s engine and whatever was playing on the radio, words I wasn’t listening to, a tune I couldn’t focus on. What I could focus on was the coldness of her words when she met my mam, and it settled deep in my stomach. I wanted to be angry, wanted to start a fight, but we weren’t a thing. Not really. We’d had sex. I’d chased her for days. I didn’t want to let her go. The first time since my early twenties I’d ever felt that way about a woman, and back then I’d put those feelings down to young man hormones and too much alcohol.
But tonight, I was sober and worse off for it. Tonight, that rebuttal from her hurt. We were different. Very, very different. She came from money. I came from nothing, just hard-working folk trying to exist. I sighed, wishing the tension would fuck off, but nothing was shifting it and it whirled around in my stomach, battering my insides and building in pressure.
The other funeral home was in one of the better parts of Newcastle, expertly placed on the doorstep of dying rich people. No wonder the brother thought it was an opportunity to take every bit of money from them as he could. Houses overlooked the place, but even early in the night, or early for biker terms, the inhabitants would mostly be in bed. We pulled up at the side of the road. There was no carpark at this office, not where land was such a high premium. If it there had been one once, it had been sold off for housing years before.
“Keys?” I asked, holding out my hand.
“I’m going with you.”
“I know.” I couldn’t be bothered to fight her. “Just give me the keys. Let me shelter you.”
“You think there’ll be someone in there?”
“Probably not. But best to be careful.”
Heidi nodded, pulling the keys from her handbag, and handing them to me.
The office was quiet, no sign of anyone, lights flickering on in front of us as we moved through the building.
“It’s this office here,” she said from behind me, her hand resting on my back, touching me with that gentle familiarity that was more than that of two people who barely knew each other.
I forced my mind to focus. This was an evidence collecting mission, not a date, not anything other than what it was. Business.
The room lit up like the others, the sensors reacting to our movements.
“Where’s those keys?” I asked, pulling the office chair out and dropping to my hands and knees.
Heidi dropped down beside me, her arm touching mine as she reached across to a hook screwed into the wood. I pulled the little ring of keys loose.
“There’s five that look about the same. And then a little brass one. It’s the brass one that opens the safe.”
I plucked at the keys, the safe catching in the beam from my mobile phone torch, thumbing for the brass one and slotting it into the lock. The four-inch-wide door sprung open eagerly, exposing the big steel box of emptiness.
“It’s empty, Heidi.”
“No. It can’t be.”
She scooted in closer, and I pulled back enough to let her see. Her hand reached inside, patting the box on the underside of the desk. Knocking at all sides like there might be a secret door.
“Fuck! He knows I’m onto him.”
She pulled back, shuffling out from under the desk as I closed up the empty safe and hung the keys back up.
“Could he have moved them to the cabinets?” I looked across at the wall that was filled with the big metal drawers.”
“Maybe. But we’d need all night to find them. I could just go to the police. Highlight my suspicions. But without those documents, without the evidence, I doubt they’ll do anything.”
“Maybe not. But I know someone who might.”
Jacob hated me. But between me and the club could make his job in the police hell if we wanted to. We’d done it once before and I had hoped he’d learned his lesson and stayed away. He hadn’t, and now he was back.
Heidi nodded, fear and vulnerability back in those eyes.
“I’ll go see him tomorrow, but for now, we need to get you home. Back to your hotel room.”
She nodded again, a whirl of emotion darkening those eyes. Uncertainty, fear, apprehension, defeat. Just watching her made my heart heavy.
*****
The uniformed doormen in Heidi’s five-star hotel looked at me suspiciously again, their eyes sweeping over my frame, probably wondering whether I was going to go safe to safe when their guests went to bed at night. The reception was almost deserted. The only people were the doormen, a receptionist and a young man in a suit, a phone pushed to his ear. He looked up as we walked past, his eyes catching mine and then deflecting again. He picked up the briefcase and walked towards the front doors, his eyes flicking back to me once more before stepping out into the night.
“You know, I don’t think I’ve eaten anything all day,” Heidi’s voice distracted me. “You want to get some room service?”
“Don’t they stop serving it at a certain time?” I looked behind me towards the entrance, the man in the suit vanishing into the deserted street outside. No sign of the taillights of whoever picked him up, just disappeared into the night.
“They say they do. But there’s always a chef available for residents. The perks of being in one of their best suites,” she smiled, but I couldn’t muster the smile back.
I looked over my shoulder again.
“Do you get many people doing business at this time in the morning here?”
“Yeah. International trade deals, I guess. They go on all night in London. London never sleeps.”
“You miss London?” I asked, striding along beside her towards the lifts to the top floors of suites.
“Yeah. I miss my apartment. It’s not big, not much bigger than this suite, but it’s mine. Reckon my plants will all be dead when I get back.” She punched the button on the lift as the doors slid shut.
“Hope you don’t have pets, huh?”
“I’ve never had a pet. I don’t really see the point of them. Something that depends on you, and then dies after a few years, anyway.”
Heidi shrugged.
“Shit, wouldn’t like to be your boyfriend, then.”
“Don’t have one of those, either. Too tying.” She looked at me pointedly when I grinned at her. “Too much effort,” she added, as if she thought I hadn’t taken the hint.
The doors hissed, sliding open onto the corridor of luxury, our footsteps barely making a noise on the heavily cushioned carpet.
“This place must be costing you a fortune.”
Heidi shrugged, “I claim most of it back in expenses. Through my company and my father’s.”
“I didn’t know you had a company?”
“You know nothing about me, Fury.”
I spun her to face me, the door of her suite just within reach.
“I know you’re career focussed, like to be the boss. You think you’re invincible, but when shit gets real, it scares you because you’ve only ever had to deal with arseholes in the boardroom, never those people who might actually want to kill you. How am I doing?”
Heidi bit her lip.
“I know nothing about you either, Fury,” she retorted angrily. “But I didn’t think we were trying to get to know each other.”
“You think all I want is sex?”
“Well, don’t you?”
“I did. I thought that’s all I wanted. I mean, look at you.” I pushed away from her, my eyes scanning down her body, and she crossed her arms over her chest, her tits pushing up under the beige jumper that covered them. “You’re stunning. You’re perfect. But you’re more to me than just a fuck, Heidi.”
Her eyes pinned mine, and now I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. Anger, need, pain. None of the emotions warring inside her I could define.
“You are just sex, Fury. I’m only here at my father’s request. He wants to know where his money is going. It’s all he ever wants. When I’m done, I’m going home. Back to London. Back to my company, back to my life.”
I’d thought her words in the Dog on the Tyne a few hours earlier had hit hard, but these were like a hammer blow. Right to my stomach.
“Well, then. This is you, I guess,” I said, gesturing towards the door.
Heidi bit her lip again, her eyes glossing a little. Or maybe they’d just been caught in a twinkle from the overhead lights. I watched her go inside, then she turned and looked at me.
“Goodnight, Heidi.”
She nodded and closed the door.
I stood outside for a few moments, my heart thundering in my chest, descending deeper and deeper into the pit of my stomach. And then I turned, walking off down the hallway.
I hadn’t heard the door open behind me, but I glanced over my shoulder, anyway. She was there again, coming after me.
“Fury. My room….” Her voice was high-pitched. Frightened. “Someone’s been in. It’s ransacked.”
I should have told her to ring the police, let them deal with it. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I strode back towards her, the heaviness in my heart beating differently.