12 #3
They agreed, and Lyssa and Freida watched them hustle off. Then Lyssa jumped a little when Freida gently placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Do you really think everyone in the building has been targeted?’ she asked her anxiously.
But Lyssa could only shrug.
And wondered just what it was that Neville Rickman did for a living that required him to keep his home locked up like a bank vault and have the specs of security systems at his fingertips.
In High Wycombe, a naked Elizabeth Grainger stretched luxuriously on her bed and then rolled over to kiss the shoulder of the man lying beside her. ‘That was nice,’ she said simply. ‘Especially as I wasn’t expecting you.’
Her lover grinned at her. ‘You know how it is. I have to keep you on your toes. Make sure I don’t have any rivals that I don’t know about.’
‘Hah! As if! Want a drink?’
‘Can’t – I’m driving. I have to be back at the studios in a couple of hours.’
‘What are you filming?’
‘Something for Netflix.’
Elizabeth reached into the top drawer of her bedside cabinet and lit a cigarette.
Seeing this activity, the man made a face and got out of bed and walked naked to the window, which he threw open, letting in the fresh air.
Elizabeth watched him, half amused, half annoyed.
She was not about to quit smoking for anyone, but she was in no mood for an argument about it.
‘So, it’s definitely on, then?’ she said instead, watching the glowing tip of the cigarette end with a thoughtful gaze.
‘Yes, it’s on,’ her lover said. ‘But I’ll have to make the pitch by the end of the month.’
‘That doesn’t give me much time,’ Elizabeth objected. ‘Can’t you string it out a bit?’
‘Not really. They might go with another proposal if I do.’
‘No – don’t let them do that,’ Elizabeth said quickly. ‘I’ll just have to hope for the best. It was always a bit of a punt anyway.’
Her lover turned from his contemplation of her tiny garden and the view across High Wycombe’s wooded valley. He smiled lazily at her. ‘Well, if things don’t turn out, at least you’ll have got a book out of it.’
Elizabeth stuck her tongue out at him and threw a pillow his way, which he caught easily. ‘Put that bloody cigarette out and I’ll come back to bed,’ he told her.
Elizabeth cheekily took another drag on it, then smiled and put it out in an already overflowing ashtray. She wriggled her fingers at him, beckoning him closer. It was easy to be nice to him, especially when he’d been so good to her.
Freida had returned to work, but within the hour Carter and Jason were back in Lyssa’s flat, with both of them reassuring her that nothing had been taken, and Carter, at least, sure that none of his things had been trifled with.
Jason, who was much messier than his better half, said he didn’t think anything of his had been touched either, but couldn’t swear to it.
‘So just what the heck is going on?’ Carter asked gently, sitting on the sofa and watching her with troubled eyes. ‘Do you really think it has something to do with the book you’re writing?’
Lyssa paced up and down, shaking her head.
From his favourite perch on top of Lyssa’s work desk, Bibbie watched her prowling, with his ears back and his own tail twitching, clearly picking up on her stress.
‘I don’t know. I can’t see how it can have – I mean, not really.
OK, we’ve sort of toyed with the idea that maybe Amelia Montrose was murdered, but that’s just pure speculation.
And even if she was, why would anyone be worried about it all these years later?
No, it’s probably just as Neville said – we’ve had a couple of chancers scoping us out, and we’ll just have to be on the alert until we get the alarms and stuff fitted. ’
She paused, then said slowly, ‘Unless . . . but no, it doesn’t make sense.’ She shook her head fretfully.
‘Come on, chicken, cough it up,’ Carter said dryly. ‘What doesn’t make sense?’
Briefly, she filled them in on the Tillman family – starting with the grandfather who’d taken the original film, down to Justin Tillman, who was trying to cash in.
‘But I can’t see any good reason why he might send someone to check me out – it’s not as if I have anything he wants. It’s the other way around.’
‘You’re right,’ Carter conceded. ‘Doesn’t sound likely he’ll have had anything to do with it.’
Jason, perhaps to make up for his joking attitude earlier, said suddenly, ‘You know, if you’re really worried, I have this mate who’s great with IT and stuff. He can check out your laptop for you – make sure nobody’s accessed it or is hacking into your emails or what have you.’
‘Isn’t that taking things a bit far?’ Lyssa asked.
‘I don’t know. Is it?’ Jason asked, his expression, for once, deadly serious.
Lyssa blinked, then felt her shoulders slump. ‘All right. As my gran always said – better safe than sorry.’
‘My gran too,’ Carter said.
‘My granny’s advice was to always bite down on the metal to make sure it was gold before buying,’ Jason said sardonically.
Lyssa couldn’t help but laugh. ‘I think I’d have liked your granny.’
‘You’d be the only one, then. Nobody else could stick the old bat.’