those noses will belong to me, of that I can assure you. What does Lucy say?”
“If Lucy was here she’d be nudging me in the ribs right now, going, ‘See? I told you so.’”
“There you go.”
“Look,” said Shelley, “I’m really grateful for the offer, you know I am. Let me just try it my own way first, see if I can make a go of it, and if I can’t, then I’ll try it your way, the Lucy way. How does that sound?”
“Can’t say fairer than that, I suppose,” said Claridge. “So, let’s get to the matter that brought us here today.”
Shelley nodded slowly, his mind returning to Emma Drake.
“Okay, before we start, there is one thing I need to get clear.” Claridge had laid his hands on the table, palms down, fingers spread. “Have you told the police everything you know?”
“You’re talking about the phone call.”
Claridge nodded.
“My phone went. I ignored the call. That’s it.”
“That’s it?” Claridge offered him an appraising look, his head cocked slightly to one side. “You’re asking me to believe that you just ‘ignored the call.’”
Shelley looked away, across the coffee shop, where moms tended to babies in strollers and gossiped with other mums, where older gentlemen sat with newspapers, looking like relics from another time. In the old days when phones had handsets, and even dials, and no little readout to tell you who was calling, you just picked the fuck up. Nowadays you got to “screen” your calls. And that was what had happened. He’d ignored her call because he was screening.
He returned his attention to Claridge. “I get the occasional cold call,” he explained. “I didn’t recognize the number so I chose not to answer. I figured if it was important—”
“Somebody wanting to hire you, for example,” pushed Claridge.
“Somebody trying to hire me,” conceded Shelley, “then they would leave a message.”
“And?”
“No message. And now I feel like shit and wish I’d taken the call. Happy?”
Claridge lowered his eyes. “My apologies. I’m being in-sensitive.”
Shelley leaned over and pretended to give Claridge a slap. “Don’t be daft. No, you’re not. Christ, people die. Even young people, sometimes. That’s the way the world is—we know that better than most. It’s just that she was a great kid. So much spirit.”
Claridge was sipping his coffee. He placed his cup to the saucer before he spoke again. “So what are you saying? You’re surprised she killed herself ?”
Shelley thought. “No, not really. People change, don’t they? Nobody can look at a ten-year-old kid and predict they’re going to kill themselves. But there’s something up about this one—something a bit more than usually off about it all. For a start, she called me, out of the blue, for no good reason I can think of. Why would she do that? Secondly, her dad’s employed security. Three guys. Three.”
“All right,” said Claridge, “I’ll tell you what I’ve got. Victim: Emma Drake, twenty-four years old. Cause of death: self-inflicted gunshot wound. But you know all this already.”
Shelley nodded. “Do we know where she got the piece?”
“No, we don’t.”
“What sort of gun was it?”
“Nine millimeter, semi-auto. Croatian Parabellum. The sort of thing you can buy in a pub, which is probably where she got it.”
“Stolen?”
“No doubt. Originally. Serial number hasn’t given us anything yet.”
“Right,” said Shelley, seeing something pass across Claridge’s face. “What?” he asked.
“Did you know that she had a history of intravenous drug use?”
Shelley screwed up his eyes in a wince. “Ah, shit. Really?”
“I’m afraid so. She was a user, Shelley, of some vintage. My apologies if that comes as a shock.”
It did. But then again it didn’t. He would have hoped that Emma, of all people, might have stayed away from hard drugs, but he knew how easy it was to fall into. He, Lucy, and Cookie had carried out operations against the cartels. He’d seen the pain and suffering drug addiction inflicted indiscriminately. It was a scourge with no respect for gender or class. It didn’t look at a bright young girl from a good and loving family and decide to walk on by. It didn’t work like that.
So no, shock wasn’t exactly what he felt.
It helped explain her taking her own life suddenly. He doubted she would have been able to go home and admit her addiction to her parents. Guy was a good father, but he was the doting, overprotective sort, and probably not nearly as approachable as he liked to think. Susie? Shelley was sure Emma would have got a good hearing there, but even