Boyd was a beat away from telling her he would do no such bloody thing.

  ‘Boyd, you and I are stuck in their web, whether you like it or not,’ she reminded him. ‘We’re both little insects and they would happily squash us and our families without a second thought.’

  ‘I haven’t had anything to do with them since the Nix case,’ he replied. ‘I haven’t heard a thing.’

  She closed her eyes. ‘That really doesn’t matter. The fact is they know that you know about them. About what they’ve been doing. And they know that I know…’

  ‘Laundering a shit ton of money, you mean?’ Boyd muttered.

  Hatcher winced. ‘We… are firmly on their radar. Which, frankly, is a very uncomfortable place to be. These people, Boyd, they don’t mess around. There’s a hello that basically means ‘We know where you live and if we need your help, we’ll “ask”.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And it’s more of a warning than a hello. I had mine delivered last year.’

  Boyd did too. A cardboard box with a wedge of blood-spattered money and a severed ear. He wondered what hers had contained.

  She looked at him and slowly nodded. ‘You too? I suspected as much.’

  ‘An ear,’ replied Boyd. ‘And money. In a delivered box.’

  ‘Poor Mr Nix. One ear each, then.’ She blew out a cloud of breath. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘I’ve kept mine,’ said Boyd. ‘As evidence… if it’s ever needed.’

  ‘I threw mine away.’ She laughed dryly. A little desperately. ‘I have a son. I… didn’t want…’

  ‘And I’ve got a daughter,’ Boyd said. ‘So we’re in the same fix.’

  She nodded. ‘Boyd, listen… These people do things brutally. They only “ask” once. There’s no second time – you do understand that, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m well aware of what the Salikovs are like, ma’am,’ he said.

  ‘So… you’re going to walk back up this hill to the station, go into that interview room, and tell Hammond and his solicitor that you’re sorry for wasting their time and thanks for coming in.’

  ‘The problem is, we’re pretty sure he’s…’ Boyd began.

  ‘There’s no problem – is that clear, Boyd? Just do it!’

  His hesitation pushed Hatcher further. ‘Dammit! I mean it!’ There was a brittle edge to her voice now. ‘If you piss them off, Boyd… if you… I’ll have no choice.’

  ‘No choice? What does that mean?’

  She shook her head angrily. ‘Use your bloody imagination.’ She turned away from him, collected her phone and began walking back up the hill towards the station.

  Boyd returned to the interview room to find Okeke waiting patiently on her side of the table and Hammond and his solicitor on the other. Hammond was gently stirring brown sugar sachets into his frothy coffee.

  ‘Right…’ Boyd had rehearsed what he was going to say three different ways while walking back into the station and none of them sat well with him. ‘We’re all done here,’ he said.

  Okeke straightened in her seat. ‘What?!’

  ‘We’re done,’ repeated Boyd more firmly. ‘Thanks for your time, Mr Hammond,’ he added. He was damned if he was going to apologise to the supercilious bastard, though.

  ‘Guv?’ Okeke looked totally confused.

  Karovic stood up, but Hammond remained seated. ‘Let me at least try my coffee,’ he said with a smile. He slowly lifted the coffee cup, pinkie finger stretched out for effect, pursed his lips and slurped at the froth noisily. ‘Hmmm…’ He turned to Okeke. ‘Want a bit of feedback, my lovely?’

  She glared at him.

  ‘Be a bit quicker next time,’ he said, smirking. ‘It’s tepid.’ He set the cup down noisily and got up. Karovic steered him towards the door, but Hammond stopped in front of Boyd. He leant forward. ‘Now you know exactly who I am,’ he whispered softly, ‘be a good dog and don’t ever waste my time like that again.’

  ‘This way, Mr Hammond,’ coaxed Karovic. ‘Please?’

  Hammond remained where he was, his blue-grey eyes locked on Boyd’s. ‘I’m really very good at remembering names and faces.’ He winked. ‘I’ve got yours in my head now.’

  ‘This way,’ insisted Karovic. The two men stepped past Boyd, out into the hallway and towards the swing doors at the end.

  ‘What. The. Actual. Fuck?’ complained Okeke, still sitting at the table.

  ‘Not now,’ Boyd snapped.

  ‘Guv? Why the fu–’

  ‘I said, not now!’ he growled, heading out of the door and leaving Okeke, alone and utterly bewildered in the interview room.

  16

  ‘I don’t understand why, Jay. I really don’t.’

  He stared at the doner kebab on his work bench; his appetite had suddenly abandoned him. In fact, he actually felt sick. ‘But… that bastard did it!’ he replied. We know it was him!’

  ‘To be fair, love, we don’t really have anything solid on him,’ Okeke said. ‘We have him at CuffLinks on the same night, but that’s all.’

  ‘What about what I told you!?’ Jay snapped angrily.

  Okeke got up off the stool and reached out for him. ‘Honey…’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I didn’t mean to shout. I… I just…’

  ‘I know.’ She reached up and stroked the back of his neck. ‘Listen, there’s not a lot we can do right now to progress this,’ she said. ‘If something else turns up, some evidence that ties him in, then…’

  ‘Who is he?’ asked Jay.

  She shook her head. ‘You know I can’t.’

  ‘Is he super-fucking rich? Is that it? Did he just bribe someone?’

  She stopped stroking his neck and let her arm fall to her side. A gentle admonishment. ‘That’s not how things work, babe. Not here in Sussex. This isn’t some sort of gangster movie we’re in.’

  He moved away from her. ‘What does the guv think?’

  ‘He’s frustrated too,’ she replied. But, to be entirely honest, she had no idea what was going through Boyd’s head. Before she’d been dismissed by Hammond to fetch his coffee, Boyd had been all for questioning him – albeit gently. When he came back from wherever he’d been, he’d been unapproachable, with a face like a smacked arse, and it had remained that way for the rest of the day.

  ‘It’s just not right,’ Jay said. ‘What’s going on? Is he some chief inspector’s son or something? Or a… a… a politician’s nephew or…’

  ‘Jay, I don’t know anything. And if I did, I couldn’t tell you. Look… I know Louie thought he overheard something, but listen, it’s –’

  ‘He overheard a fucking murder being arranged!’ Jay spat.

  In their two years together, she’d heard Jay raise his voice only a handful of times. And on those occasions it had been directed at work tools or pieces of split timber. Never people. He didn’t do angry. He didn’t need to. His imposing muscular frame did most of the talking for him.

  ‘Jay, baby,’ she spoke softly. ‘Is it possible you and Louie misheard? Or misinterpreted what you heard?’

  Jay frowned. ‘No. It’s not.’ He looked at his watch and started to tidy away the tools spread out across his work bench. ‘I got to get ready for work.’

  She watched him brush the curls of wood shavings onto the floor and slot his carpentry tools into their correct pigeonholes. She wanted to share with him that everything about Hammond’s smug behaviour during interview, and the fact that he’d felt the need to bring legal counsel in with him, suggested to her that he had something to hide. But that would only add fuel to Jay’s fire.

  Jay picked up the doner kebab and held it out to her. She shook her head.

  ‘Louie and me may be doormen… but that doesn’t mean we’re complete idiots,’ he grumbled as he left the garage to get ready for work.

  Boyd opened the safe in his study; it was the kind you could buy in a B&Q for fifty quid and supposed to be secured to a wall – otherwise, it was basically just a heavy box with a ‘nick me’ flag on it. It was another odd job that he’d not got around to doing after more than a year of living in the house.

  Inside the safe he kept his and Emma’s passports – not that they’d ever been used in the last five years, and of course… his ‘gift’ from the Salikovs. He pulled the small cardboard box out, opened the flaps and stared down at the contents.

  The polystyrene packing chips were still in there, as was the bundle of blood-stained fifty-pound notes. And the scrawled note.

  Boyd

  Nix – no more. Stay away. Stay Silence.

  Nix’s severed ear was now preserved in a sealed and otherwise-empty jar of Tesco’s own-brand stuffed olives, floating in a cloudy bath of Bombay Sapphire gin. That had been the only bit of tampering Boyd had done – in a DIY bid to preserve it.

  For what? For a day like this?

  Money and an ear. If it had been just the ear in the box, he’d have felt a lot easier about things. The message could be interpreted simply as ‘keep your mouth shut or it’ll be your ear next’. But the bundle of money added an unsettling caveat.

  We may call on your services one day.

  ‘One day', it seemed, had just arrived.

  Boyd turned back to his PC and carried on reading. It seemed that Her Madge was correct. Rovshan Salikov had had a second relationship with Letitia Hammond-Bowles. Not a marriage… nothing so overt and attention-grabbing. She was his British trophy mistress, thirty years younger than him. In the mid-nineties she’d been an It Girl, stumbling out of places like Tramps alongside minor royalty, hedge-fund playboys and various face-of-the-week musicians; her tanned face had been a regular one in the ‘Who’s Been Out and About’ section of various supermarket glossies.

  She’d had a thing with the Big Man himself… and given him a son, Roland, and only recently – finally – married him. All part of the rehabilitation, the white-washing of his reputation.

  ‘Christ,’ he muttered. He topped up his glass of wine and took another long glug.

  So what the fuck was Roland Hammond doing down in Hastings? Surely, if arsing about in VIP strip clubs was his thing, there was a far wider choice of places like that up in London for him to throw his money around. And then there was what Okeke had shared with him this morning… that Louie might have overheard something he shouldn’t have. More to the point, if Hammond was innocent of Louie's stabbing, why the hell had a call been made to Hatcher to drop the case?

  ‘Oh shit,’ he whispered to Ozzie, who was stretching up to the desk to sniff the side of the small box, scenting the old, dried blood inside. A part of Boyd was tempted to open the jar, toss Ozzie a pickled snack, and burn all the money. But… a ‘gift’ like this wasn’t one you could destroy and forget about. It was a calling card.

  Jay heard the man’s voice before he saw him; it was a voice in a slightly higher register than average and the kind of accent that he associated with the experts on Antiques Roadshow – all plummy vowels and present-and-correct consonants. He turned to see the bastard approaching from the same direction as last time.

  He was on his phone again, talking business with someone as he waggled a guest-membership pass at Jay and Gary before breezing into the club.

  Jay turned to watch him stride down the lobby and through the inner doors.

  ‘What’s up, Jay?’ asked Gary. ‘Is he famous or what? Is he off Made in Chelsea?’

  Gary, ironically given Jay’s recent conversation with Sam, was a dumb doorman.

  ‘Nope,’ Jay said, heart pumping. ‘Just sounds like a bit of a twat.’

  Gary chuckled. ‘They all do, mate. They all do.’

  The conversation returned to the subject du jour – Louie’s death. Gary was canvassing Jay on whether or not it was an insensitive time to discuss a pay rise with Luigi DeSantis. If there was an actual risk of death doing this job, surely they deserved better than £13.50 an hour?

  Jay gave Gary’s grumblings the minimum of attention while his mind was focused elsewhere – on that murdering DFL bastard who’d just waltzed back into the club as if nothing had happened. It had taken every ounce of restraint not to knock that phone out of his hand and pin him up against the lobby wall.

  Then what, you big ape?

  The little head-gremlin who’d voiced that wasn’t Sam. Her advice nuggets came more tenderly and were delivered more gently. This gremlin was Karl. His younger brother.

  You just smack him? Are you really THAT stupid?

  There was a reason why Jay worked with wood and Karl worked with code. Karl was the uber-smart one. Sam had also advised restraint if the same man came back to the club. She’d reminded Jay that there was no firm evidence, despite what he and Louie thought they’d heard him say.

  Karl’s whispered voice was a little more circumspect. Seriously, bro, if you want to get even… you need to think smarter.

  Jay spent the rest of his shift pondering just that – smart ways to exercise some justice when an opportunity presented itself.

  ‘Hey, you… big man – call me a cab.’

  Jay turned round in the doorway to see the bastard emerging into the lobby, with one of the club’s escort girls clinging to his arm.

  ‘Where to?’ asked Gary, pulling out his mobile.

  ‘Sea View Apartments. Opposite the pier.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Roland Hammond,’ the man replied. Then: ‘And ask the fellow how long, would you?’

  Gary raised a finger as the call connected. He spoke briefly with the despatcher, then ended the call. ‘Five minutes, sir.’

  Hammond nodded and led the girl out onto the pavement. Jay did his best not to notice them as they waited. Did his best not to notice the man grasping at the girl’s arse, teasing her short skirt up as she wrestled it back down with a gently scolding ‘Wait!’ while he whispered what he was going to do to her in his penthouse.

  The cab arrived, Hammond bundled her quickly into the back, and then they were gone.

  Think smart, Jay reminded himself.

  17

  ‘So, let me guess. You’ve dragged me all the way out here to apologise for being so ratty with me yesterday?’ said Okeke.

  ‘Umm… not really,’ replied Boyd.

  She eyed the deserted beach. ‘Well, you’re going to have to start with that, guv, or I’m going back into the warm –’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he replied quickly.

  ‘Is that it?’

  He wasn’t in the mood to fence with her this morning. ‘Roland Hammond is Rovshan Salikov’s son,’ he said.

  He watched several stages of comprehension slide across her face until she finally settled on: ‘Oh fuck.’

  ‘He’s his only son,’ added Boyd. ‘He lost his eldest son, Revaz, five months ago. And of course we know what happened to his daughter, Zophia.’

  ‘Hold up,’ cut in Okeke. ‘How the hell is that chinless preppie, Hammond, a Russian gangster?’

  Boyd explained what he’d dug up last night about Rovshan and his blue-blooded trophy mistress from the Shires. ‘Shagging Letitia Hammond-Bowles and producing that piece of shit was either bad luck or some pretty advanced forward planning.’

  Okeke’s expression was still set on ‘oh fuck’. He was concerned a strong wind would leave her face stuck like that forever.

  ‘I suspect she and her son were part of his long-term plan to migrate to the UK,’ Boyd continued. ‘He’s after a “respectable” new start over here.’

  ‘Christ. Do you think he’ll end up buying a football team?’

  Boyd laughed. ‘Who knows.’ He bent down and scooped up a stone to throw for Ozzie to chase into the surf – and promptly dropped it, realising that Oz would be curled up on the sofa at home. ‘Force of habit,’ he explained automatically.

  Okeke was still running the information through her head. ‘So… what’s his son doing hanging around Hastings murdering people?’ she asked.

  ‘Another good question,’ he replied. ‘I was hoping he’s here for a seaside jolly, but I suspect it may be something longer term.’

  ‘Looking out for investment opportunities for Dad?’ she wondered.

  Boyd pulled a face and did air quotes with his fingers. ‘Yeah, “investment” opportunities.’

  ‘Laundering opportunities,’ Okeke clarified.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And where’s his dad? In Georgia still?’

  ‘No. Rovshan Salikov’s in London now, with Letitia Hammond-Bowles. He recently bought a big old town house in Belgravia and he’s in the process of gutting and redecorating it.’

  He’d found that little nugget in a Canary article about London property prices holding out post-Brexit. It had listed a number of ‘dubious new arrivals’: several Saudi princes ousted by King Salman, a Colombian security minister with blood money on his hands… and of course a fair number of Russian ‘businessmen’, all looking to move their fortunes to all-new, no-questions-asked Brexit Britain.

  ‘Gerald Nix was just one of many laundering routes into this country,’ he continued. ‘I think that’s become something of a cottage industry in recent years.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘Point is, it looks like Salikov’s got a significant chunk of his dirty money in and now he wants to clean it.’

  Okeke shook her head in disbelief. ‘In Hastings, though?!’

  Boyd shrugged. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. That’s a theory for why Roland Hammond’s down here. I’m open to other suggestions.’

  ‘But Hastings?’ she said again and laughed. ‘It’s not exactly Las Vegas.’ She paused for a moment, then: ‘So, about yesterday? When I went to get him his bloody coffee… something was said, right?’

  Boyd sighed. He trusted Okeke and he’d thought long and hard about what he was going to tell her.

  ‘Hatcher pulled me out of the room,’ he said carefully. ‘She actually walked me right out of the station. His legal counsel, Karovic, gave her a call on the way in and told her to drop this.’

  ‘You’re shitting me!’ Okeke shook her head, her eyes were out on stalks.