Hot Pursuit. Gemma Fox

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СКАЧАТЬ sleep in Joe’s room anyway? You look more like a double-bed man to me.’ As she said it Maggie blushed and cursed the bit of her brain that let her say what she was thinking without considering the consequences.

      But it’s true, protested her brain. Worse still, Nick Lucas looked like the kind of man that she had always hankered after but never quite found. He was tall, with broad shoulders, a strong gentle face – nice eyes. Beautiful hands too, kind of good looking in a lived-in way. Under other circumstances…Maggie stopped herself from thinking the whole thought and shook her brain into submission. These were not ‘other circumstances’ and being taken for a ride by a total stranger was just the kind of thing you warned your children about. Even so, her mystery guest most definitely had the air of a man who preferred not to sleep alone if he could possibly help it, the kind of man who liked life best if there was a woman in it.

      Maggie took two mugs down off the shelf and then forced herself to concentrate on spooning coffee into the filter, hoping that he couldn’t read her mind.

      ‘What I meant to say is that as you’re quite tall, a double bed has to be more comfortable –’ Maggie continued, as smoothly as she could manage, attempting to cover her tracks. He had amazing blue eyes, the corners crosshatched with humour.

      Maggie tightened her grip on the rogue thoughts that chattered busily through her mind, reminding herself that she didn’t know a thing about Nick Lucas except what he’d told her – which wasn’t much – and that he lied very badly, and that her track record was pretty terrible when it came to men. Her first impression of the real Bernie Fielding had been that he was a really nice man, too. It was a salutary thought, as effective as a cold shower.

      Why was it exactly that Nick Lucas had turned up at her house with Bernie’s name? It wasn’t the first time that the idea had gone through her mind but it was the first time Maggie had let it settle. Why here, why now? Surely Bernie wasn’t big enough to have had a hand in this? In which case, why did every instinct tell her that this had the real Bernie Fielding’s paw-prints all over it?

      Across the table Nick Lucas said nothing, staring blankly ahead as if collecting his thoughts. Finally he turned to look at her, lifting his hands to encompass the room. ‘I’ve already said that I’m sorry about all this. I don’t know what else to say to you. It’s totally crazy.’ He looked uncomfortable, as if he’d been caught out.

      Maggie, chewing on the nub end of the French stick, said, ‘Just how crazy is that, then, Nick?’

      He continued almost as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Things like this shouldn’t happen to people like me. I used to run a great little restaurant, you know. Good food, reasonable prices, in an up-and-coming area. We were beginning to build a reputation, getting to be well-known locally. They even did a feature on us in the Evening Standard. It’s ridiculous – why did I think for a moment that this would come good?’ He sounded increasingly upset. ‘What the hell am I supposed to do now?’ As he spoke his gaze met Maggie’s, looking at her as if she might have the answers.

      Maggie stood the coffeepot down between them on the kitchen table and slapped two mugs alongside it.

      ‘You could tell me what’s going on. Maybe I could help?’ Her tone was gentle and conspiratorial. ‘After all,’ she grinned mischievously, ‘we were married.’

      Nick groaned and dropped his head into his hands.

      She pushed a mug towards him. ‘Don’t worry, I’m good in a crisis. What was it exactly that you witnessed?’

      Nick ran his fingers nervously through his hair. ‘To be honest I wish to God I knew. It seemed such a small thing really. As far as I was concerned they were just regular customers. Vegetarian lasagne, green salad, home-made game pie with vegetables of the day –’

      ‘I’m sorry?’ said Maggie, wondering if the bottle of Italian red that they’d shared over supper had confused the issue. ‘Are these the cryptic clues?’

      Nick looked up. ‘No, no, that’s what the two of them always had when they came into my restaurant. Nice safe choices. They usually came in once, sometimes twice a week.’ He looked uneasy. ‘I thought they were just the sort of clientele we wanted, you know. Respectable, regular business customers. Nice, quiet, appreciative; something off the sweet trolley, two cappuccinos and they always tipped well – no fuss, never complained. Ideal customers.’

      Maggie sniffed. ‘Whoa there. Hang on a minute. I think I’ve lost the plot here somewhere. You have been relocated, renamed, given a completely new identity, because of two nice regular respectable lunchtime diners? I don’t understand, Nick – I thought you must have seen something really – you know – awful, terrible.’ Maggie paused as the images of innumerable TV crime shows, police reconstructions and photo-fit pictures trickled through her mind in a gory slide show. ‘Messy, murderous, violent.’

      Nick, still deep in thought, glanced up. ‘Sorry?’

      ‘What I’m saying is that I thought you must have seen something, you know, really ghastly to put you in so much danger that they needed to relocate you.’

      He nodded. ‘Me, too, but it seems you don’t have to witness something messy for it to be dangerous. One morning two guys turned up at the restaurant with official-looking bits of paper and asked if I’d give my permission to have my regulars’ table bugged. I was totally amazed. My two nice tidy customers turned out to be up to their eyebrows in God knows what. The fraud squad had been on their trail for months trying to tie the pair of them together.’

      ‘So what was it?’ said Maggie leaning closer, while trying hard not to look too eager or too pleased with herself. She knew that she’d cracked it. She could tell by the look on Nick’s face that he’d made up his mind to tell her everything.

      He shook his head. ‘To be perfectly honest I still don’t have any clear idea. Something to do with stocks and shares – some sort of international computer fraud, I think.’

      Maggie stared at him, feeling totally deflated. ‘What? Is that it? But you were a witness, weren’t you?’

      Nick nodded. ‘Uh huh, I suppose so, but not in a Perry Mason big courtroom drama kind of a way. All I had to do was to identify them as the two people in question, give a few details from my bookings diary. When they’d met, how often – and of course it was me who gave permission for the bug to be planted at their table in the first place –’

      ‘And they relocated you for that?’ Maggie knew she sounded slightly incredulous.

      Nick’s face reddened. ‘Yes. The unfortunate thing was the two of them came from different sides of the tracks. One was a highly respected financier in the city of London and the other one was something very, very iffy in organised crime.’

      There was a long pause. ‘And?’ prompted Maggie. It was like pulling teeth.

      Nick sucked his bottom lip and slowly turned the coffee mug between his long fingers. ‘And after they were arrested the two of them tried to persuade me not to testify.’ His voice was low now and very controlled as he turned the mug around and around. ‘It got very nasty very quickly once they’d been picked up. They’re not the sort of people you mess with. They threatened to rearrange my anatomy so I could bear children, they firebombed my restaurant and filled my basement with raw sewage. Not them personally, of course, but their hired help.

      By the time the case came to court they’d blown up my car, ruined my business, destroyed my marriage, terrorised my СКАЧАТЬ