Читать книгу Someone Out There - Catherine Hunt, Catherine Hunt - Страница 12

‘Laura Maxwell, you are an evil bitch. You destroy lives. You feed off men’s misery – you take their daughters away from them. Understand how much I hate you. I think about it all the time, how to put a stop to you, how to settle the score. I’m not planning on settling in court. I have other plans for a final settlement. Better watch out.’

It was not the first time in her career that Laura had been called a bitch and threatened; in fact, she’d been called a lot worse and had had to grow a tough skin over the years. Really, she thought, the posting should not have rattled her as much as it did. But the last twenty-four hours had left her jittery.

Laura watched Joe as he read the message; saw his expression change to one of outrage. They’d been together for five years now but she never got tired of looking at him. He was distractingly handsome; tall and muscular, without being too beefy, he had thick black hair and a broad smile that brought dimples to his cheeks. His eyes, framed with long lashes, were blue and dazzling.

‘Charming. Any idea who sent it?’ he said.

‘I’m wondering if it could be this guy Harry Pelham. I’m representing his wife and he’s been sending her death threats. Maybe he’s lashing out at me too.’

They were sitting on the sofa after dinner, cosy in front of the TV, half watching a programme about the hotel industry. Joe had wanted to see it as it featured a hotel he knew further along the coast but he’d lost interest, complaining it was rubbish and only interested in negative, headline grabbing stuff. Laura took the chance to raise her own problems. She didn’t often discuss her work with Joe but tonight, just for once, she had an urgent need to spill it all out. She’d had a night and a day from hell and it had left her feeling anxious and vulnerable. She reached for the wine bottle on the table and poured herself another glass.

‘Have you talked to the police?’ he asked.

‘I got some info from them this afternoon. Harry Pelham was arrested this morning but now he’s in hospital for some reason. He’s under arrest there apparently, but I couldn’t get any more out of the duty officer and can’t speak to the guy in charge until tomorrow.’

Laura wished she had more contacts in the local police and could use the back channels to find out more details, but she hadn’t been around long enough to get to know many of the officers. The name of the man running the Pelham investigation, Detective Inspector David Barnes, meant nothing to her.

Joe picked up the remote and turned off the sound on the TV. He put his arm around Laura’s shoulders and kissed the top of her head.

‘Sounds like the crazy Mr Pelham needs locking up permanently.’

‘Fat chance. Best I’ll get is a restraining order to keep him away from his wife.’

‘If he’s threatening you too now, they need to do something.’

‘The trouble is Sam says it’s impossible to prove who posted the message. Whoever it is has hidden their tracks well.’

‘So it might not be him at all.’

‘No, it could be one of my other admiring fans.’ Laura forced a laugh and snuggled up against him, touching the cleft in his chin, then running her fingers down to his chest.

She told him about Mary Hakimi and how Morrison had behaved, and Joe called Morrison a pathetic old wanker and then did his impression of him which made her laugh for real. It was good to be able to talk to Joe about work for a change. He hardly ever asked about it and she knew he found it a difficult subject. She had had, was still having, a very successful career. He had not. Of course, he’d chosen the most precarious and unpredictable of jobs. He’d wanted to be an actor, and although he had the looks of a Hollywood leading man, he’d never made it. His biggest claim to fame had been playing, if that was the right word, a corpse in Holby City. Now he was playing second fiddle to his younger brother in the family hotel business.

Laura understood why it might bother him and never gloried in her own success. She thought it was not her success that rankled with him, he was not that petty, but his own failure, at the age of thirty-five, to have done much in the world, to have made any kind of mark. She hoped his reinvention as a businessman would change things. As a mark of faith she had invested a substantial sum of her own money in the Greene hotel chain. She loved him very much and it had been one way of showing that love.

Joe had resisted joining the business. Since his father died ten years ago, his mother had run it with the help of her younger son, Peter. Helen Greene had been an iron lady, managing the family’s four hotels with tremendous energy and sound business sense accumulated over more than thirty years. But two years ago, when she was only fifty-nine, she’d had a stroke. It had paralysed her and she’d recovered only a bit. She could talk but her mental sharpness was gone and she could walk no more than a few steps. The hotels would have to soldier on without her for Helen Greene was not coming back. Now she lived in a nursing home on the South Downs, a few miles out of Brighton.

Joe had been forced to give up his job as a director with a small experimental theatre in London and become Peter’s business partner. It had made up Laura’s mind. She was burning herself out working for a big London legal firm and beginning to wonder why. Yes, she had a big salary and a glittering CV and great prospects, but she was into her thirties now and she wanted other things in life, was keen to have a family. She had been happy to scale down, move out of the fast lane. She would aim for a partnership in the provinces and maybe become a big fish in a regional pool.

Joe had not been so happy. He loved the theatre and found it hard to knuckle down to the hotel business. He’d had a few run-ins with Peter but Laura was keeping her fingers crossed it would work out in the end.

She felt his hand massaging the back of her neck, soothing and reassuring.

‘If he did post that message, maybe he also had something to do with what happened last night?’ she said.

‘I think that was just some scumbag who thought it would be fun to scare the life out of a woman in a sports car.’

‘I guess so. Probably worrying about nothing.’

‘Of course you are, hon. You’ve had a lousy day and it’s no wonder you’re stressed out.’

He was right, she thought, and felt some of the tension leave her. She sat up, pushed her hair back behind her ears and took another large swig of the white wine, draining her glass. She picked up the bottle and frowned at it. It was empty too.

‘I think we might need one of the Greene specials.’ Joe grinned and went to get another bottle, one of the good ones he liberated from the hotel supplies. By the time she had drunk another glass or two, the cares of the day – and the night before – had slipped from her shoulders. She leaned her head on Joe’s shoulder, closed her eyes, and began to giggle.

‘What’s the joke?’ he said, laughing too.

‘I was thinking. Married couples – the awful things they do to each other.’

‘And that made you laugh?’

‘I know. Not funny. Sad. Did I ever tell you about this guy, this husband with really, really long hair who came in wanting a divorce? They’d been having problems for a while but the thing that brought it all to a crunch was when his wife told him he couldn’t have a cat. So he said, right, I shan’t cut my hair until you let me have a cat. And so it went on. No cat, no haircut, until by the time I saw him he had hair down to his waist.’

‘Sounds a bit of a shaggy cat story to me.’

Laura opened her eyes and looked at him. ‘Love you,’ she said.