Buried (DC Jack Warr #1) - Lynda La Plante Page 0,89

gonna be bought that easy when my girl’s not even been delivered to the mortuary yet?’

She sounded outraged, but her next words almost made Jack smile.

‘Anyway, I took the diamonds and met Jimmy in his workshop out the back of his house. He bricked them diamonds up in his workshop wall and we went our separate ways.’ Audrey became more animated. ‘The next thing – it was in all the papers – she’d only gone and shot her fucking husband! I reckon she knew she was gonna shoot him, which is why she gave me the diamonds – to hide for her coming out.’ Now Audrey was visibly shaking. ‘Can I have another coffee? And some of them biscuits I had earlier?’

Jack headed out to the corridor, where Laura was waiting. They clutched each other in excitement like a couple of kids who’d just stumbled across a hoard of buried treasure.

‘Kettle’s on,’ Laura said before Jack could even ask. ‘Why’s she spilling her guts all of a sudden?’

‘She met Susan outside the station,’ Jack explained. ‘I wasn’t close enough to hear the conversation, but she looked pretty shocked.’

‘Better get back in there while the mood’s on her,’ said Laura.

Restocked with coffee and biscuits, Audrey was ready to start talking again.

‘With Dolly in prison, I was never gonna be taken care of for the rest of me life, was I? I was never gonna be paid for helping her. Never gonna get what I was owed.’ Audrey’s face fell. ‘I was working all hours on the market, drinking too much and I had a miscarriage . . . And then one day I heard Jimmy had been arrested. I thought, Jesus Christ, he’s been done for the diamonds and they’ll be coming for me! Turns out he was nicked for kiting cheques, so that was OK. But now I was thinking about the diamonds and how no one but me knew they was even there.’

Audrey took a break from her rambling to munch on a biscuit, and Jack worried that she was about to wise up and stop talking before she incriminated herself. She didn’t.

‘I went round to Jimmy’s. I knew his missus from bingo ‒ bit simple. I took her a packet of fags and offered to make her a cuppa. From her kitchen, I went into his workshop and there was the wall. Untouched.’ She sat bolt upright. ‘I swear on my life, Mike never knew anything about any of it. Write that down! I don’t want you thinking that any of this is Mike’s fault, ’cos it ain’t. It’s mine. And seeing as Mike can’t defend himself, I have to.’

Jack dutifully wrote down that Mike knew nothing about the diamonds being stolen or hidden, or being found again by Audrey. She watched him do it. As though those words would keep her son’s memory safe.

‘Them diamonds got my Shirl murdered, so I wanted them gone. I sold ’em for a tenth of what they was worth and I built a villa in Spain. By that time, my old man had died of cancer in prison, so I told everyone it was his life insurance I was spending. But he wasn’t worth nothing.’ Audrey took a deep breath. ‘Can I have a fag break?’

Outside, Audrey didn’t light a cigarette. She stared into the blue sky and absorbed the freedom she was now feeling. Freedom from the burden of having lived with such secrets. Eventually, she grinned at Jack.

‘The next time Dolly turned up on my doorstep, it was to ask for the diamonds back. I can still see her face when I told her I’d got half a million for ’em. Do you know how much they was really worth? Three million!’

Audrey opened her mouth and emptied her lungs in one long, foul laugh, until her skin turned blue, revelling in her warped little victory.

Jack could see just how pathetic she really was. Not only did she seem oblivious to how dangerous her world and its people were, she also seemed incapable of learning. Murdered daughter, stolen diamonds, corrupt son – would nothing make her wake up and smell the coffee?

‘Dolly!’ Audrey spat. ‘I told her how the stress had killed my baby and you know what she said? “Small mercies.” She’s stood in my house and telling me my baby was better off dead. I should have killed her where she stood but, God forgive me, I didn’t. Mike would be alive now if I had. That’s when I told