The Cover Up: A gripping crime thriller for 2018. Marnie Riches
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Название: The Cover Up: A gripping crime thriller for 2018
Автор: Marnie Riches
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Приключения: прочее
isbn: 9780008203979
isbn:
Unable to stem the flow of heartbreak, Gloria sobbed openly, stumbling across the marble floor and throwing herself onto a bar stool.
‘I’ll put the kettle on and rustle up some cheese toasties,’ Conky said, donning an apron as though he wasn’t a murdering henchman at all but rather some Northern Irish alternative to Paul Hollywood. He wasn’t wearing his hairpiece or sunglasses today. If anything, his kindness made Gloria sob harder. ‘Let you ladies talk. Don’t mind me.’ He chuckled.
Five minutes and half a kitchen roll later, the tears were replaced by hiccoughs and fatigue. Running her work-worn fingers along the gleaming granite worktop of the island, Gloria sighed heavily. Turned to Sheila. ‘I give up, Sheila. The pastor, I mean. He’s a cad. Nothing but a broken, unhappy man with bad breath and an eye for the ladies.’
Sheila’s carefully plucked brows furrowed. She squeezed Gloria’s hand in solidarity. ‘You’ll get over it. Honest.’
Conky set a coffee down before her on a coaster, leaning in to offer her the dubious wisdom and sincerity behind those bulbous thyroid eyes. ‘You’ve got to find someone new, Gloria. Someone better. Sure, I don’t know what you saw in some attention-seeking Bible-basher anyway!’
‘Man shall not live by bread alone, Conky, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God – Matthew 4:4.’ She tried to treat him to a disapproving scowl but hadn’t the energy to screw her features into the correct shape.
‘Aye. Oh, well,’ he simply said. ‘Some things just aren’t meant to be.’
Feeling her resolve weaken and her lip tremble, Gloria whispered. ‘He was the love of my life. I’ll never be able to rid myself of these feelings. I know it.’
‘Bullshit!’ Sheila said, smiling encouragingly. Glancing at the clock. Clearly, her sisterly support was on a time limit. How very Sheila. ‘You’re a fighter and a survivor, Gloria Bell. A successful entrepreneur! You’re worth more.’
Conky set a plate full of perfect golden cheese toasties onto the worktop. Fidgeting at their side, as though he were waiting to hatch some nugget of manly advice. Sure enough …
‘You have to push your feelings aside for this eejit and start again, Gloria,’ he said, waving a well-meaning spatula in her direction. ‘Don’t make a fool of yourself over a man that has the glad eye for every bit of skirt that comes his way.’
At her side, Sheila suddenly started to clap her hands like an excited seal. She encircled Gloria’s wrist in a cage made from those shellac talons. ‘You, my dear, are going speed-dating!’
‘What?’ Gloria said, biting into a triangle of toastie. Noticing Sheila’s plate remained empty.
‘You’ll be a guinea pig for our first speed-dating night!’
‘Beezer!’ Conky said, grinning. ‘Sure, you’ll find yourself a nice man that way. An emotionally available man, for a start.’
‘I am not going speed-dating!’ Gloria slapped her snack onto her plate in disgust.
‘Yes you bloody well are,’ Sheila said. All smiles. Eye on the clock. ‘Now, get your skates on with that cuppa because I’ve got a meeting with a Brummie who reckons he’s got the answer to all my problems.’
Conky
‘Whereabouts are we meeting this Nigel Bancroft?’ Conky asked, shoving his handgun further into his waistband, turning his back to the grey-faced shoppers in the Lowry Centre’s multi-storey car park so that they couldn’t see what he was about. The cold metal dug uncomfortably into the overhang of his burgeoning belly. Sheila’s cooking was too good. He prayed he wouldn’t inadvertently shoot his own testicles off.
‘Near the bridge,’ Sheila said, slamming the car door. ‘Just by the water’s edge. He didn’t want anyone earwigging.’ She examined her reflection in the Panamera’s gleaming tinted window. Smoothed the tresses of her hair. Bared her white teeth at him across the roof of the car. ‘Have I got lipstick on my teeth?’
Peering over his Ray-Bans, Conky smiled. Continually surprised that Sheila should ever question her own beauty.
‘Those cherries fairly do enclose
Of orient pearl a double row,
Which when her lovely laughter shows,
They look like rosebuds fill’d with snow.’
He finished his recital with a grin, ignoring the sniggers from two teenaged girls who passed by on their way to the lifts.
Sheila frowned at him uncertainly. Touching her incisors with her index finger. ‘What?’
‘It’s a poem from the seventeenth century.’
‘So, have I got lippy on my teeth?’
‘No, darling. You’re grand.’ He touched his own carefully arranged hair ensemble, hoping that the wind wouldn’t be blowing stiffly along the waterway. It wouldn’t do to show weakness to a man like Nigel Bancroft.
Silence in the lift with the genuine punters hoping to nab a bargain in the M&S clearance section. Conky reached out in the squash of the stuffed metal box for Sheila’s hand but was disappointed. Her stern expression was all business. She clutched her Hermès handbag, holding it against her stomach as though it provided a force field protecting her from the unwashed mortals and whatever was to come.
He noticed people staring up at him as the lift travelled downwards; turning away abruptly as they suspected they had just made eye contact with the ominous-looking wall of man, clad all in black like a funeral director. They were lucky he was wearing sunglasses. Poor wee bastards would have a heart attack if he treated them to The Eyes.
‘Come on. We’re late,’ Sheila said, dragging him through the depressing upper mall of the shopping centre, where half the units were still unoccupied, post-recession.
She took a step onto the escalator down, checking her watch again. Her shoulders were so hunched up inside her cashmere coat, Conky was tempted to reach down and smooth them out.
‘He can fuck away off. Make him wait!’ he said, catching the reflection of the two of them standing together in a shopfront window. Still disbelieving that this doll was his lover. Paddy O’Brien would be spinning in his grave. But he now knew the truth of how Paddy had treated his wife behind closed doors. Screw him, the wife-beating bastard.
‘Tell me again what you found out about this Bancroft?’ She fixed him with those cobalt blue eyes, the crow’s feet crinkling around them like an elegant, ageing frame around crisp, perfectly composed photography.
Marching past the brightly lit shops to the exit, he explained. ‘Nigel Bancroft runs Birmingham, basically. СКАЧАТЬ