Hot Pursuit

Since he’d arrived at the cottage he’d toyed with the idea of buying a dog. It felt wonderful to be able to walk outside again, to amble down to the shops for a paper – but frightening, too, as if at any moment something terrible might happen. For what had to be the hundred-thousandth time Nick wondered if he would ever feel truly safe again.

‘…Your call is currently in a queue…’

‘Oh for God’s sake, come on,’ Nick muttered, tapping his fingers impatiently on the windowsill.

Finally, at the far end of the line there was a man’s voice – although not Coleman’s – and with that Nick tried to explain how his brand-new life had already turned sour.

‘So,’ Nick said, after a five-minute unbroken monologue, ‘I’m in the shit really. It’s complete madness. You promised that I would be safe here, but a whole family apparently lives here already – I mean what the hell’s going on? Would it be possible for me to talk to Danny Coleman?’

‘Ummm,’ said the disembodied voice thoughtfully after a second or two’s reflection. ‘I’m afraid not, your handler isn’t on duty at the moment but I’ll see to it that he gets a full briefing regarding your current situation. It’s all a bit odd, isn’t it, eh?’ The man sounded unreasonably cheerful. ‘We don’t usually get problems this early on. Not that we get many problems at all really,’ he added hastily. ‘It does sound very strange. But don’t you worry, just leave it with me and I’ll get back to you. A.S.A.P. My advice – if the woman who owns the house is agreeable – is to stay where you are for the time being, keep a low profile, and we’ll sort something out,’ and with that the man hung up.

‘My handler?’ snapped Nick into the empty, burring line. ‘What do you mean my bloody handler? And what do you mean you’ll sort something out? What about the family whose life I’ve just walked into, for God’s sake?’ he shouted angrily. ‘Not to mention your bloody fail-safe, extremely secure, sodding…low profile my arse.’ From the bottom of the stairs the younger of Maggie’s boys watched him suspiciously from behind big blue eyes. Nick reddened under his unflinching stare and struggled to control the great rip of fury nestling in his belly. He tried out a smile; the child didn’t move a muscle.

Wafting up the stairs came the rich smell of tomatoes, peppers, onions and garlic, all simmering away. The aroma made his mouth water, a sensation that took Nick totally by surprise. He took a longer, deeper breath, savouring the smell. It seemed like a long, long time since he had been truly hungry. God, how bad was that for a man who had made his living by cooking? Had he been so lost, so far away from himself…Nick stopped and let the sensation roll through him. Over the last few months his guts had been crocheted into a tight uneasy knot, so hunger, strangely enough, felt like a good omen. Dropping the receiver back into its cradle, Nick hurried downstairs. The little boy scuttled away from him before he was even halfway down.

By the time he reached the kitchen Nick’s new ready-made family were sitting around the table and turned to look at him as one as he crossed the threshold. He stopped mid-stride, uncomfortable under the gaze of the two small boys. Nick noticed that alongside the salad and the cutlery, Ben still had Maggie’s mobile phone close to hand.

Maggie, at the sink straining the spaghetti through a huge stainless-steel colander, nodded towards the nearest chair. ‘You’d better sit down, take the weight off your alibi. How did you get on?’

‘It didn’t go quite how I imagined, if that’s what you mean.’

Maggie laughed. At least she had disposed of the baseball bat. As Nick pulled out a chair Ben’s hand hovered over the phone like a gun fighter waiting to make a quick draw.

Maggie shook her head. ‘No, love. It’s all right. Why don’t you go and get some apple juice for you and Joe?’ she said gently. Ben sniffed imperiously, eyes not leaving Nick as he went to get the glasses out of the kitchen cupboard.

Fifteen minutes later Maggie mopped up the last of the pasta sauce from her plate with a rip of french bread. Ben and Joe, hunger having finally overcome suspicion, had eaten their supper with the unbridled passion of the young and were now preparing, very reluctantly, to go to bed.

‘Right,’ said Maggie to Nick, shovelling the last remnants of supper into her mouth as she got to her feet. ‘I want it all and I want it now. The whole sordid story. You can tell me all about it while I make us some coffee.’

Nick groaned. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Maggie, but I can’t – I’m not supposed to tell anybody. Not anything. Not a word,’ he added lamely, pushing his plate away. Despite Maggie’s cavalier approach to preparation the pasta sauce had been delicious and had tasted as good as it smelt. ‘You know too much already. If you knew any more you could be at risk, too.’

Maggie snorted, stacking the dirty crockery in the dishwasher. ‘So, dropping a complete stranger into my life with my ex-husband’s name wasn’t just a little bit risky, then?’

Nick puffed out his cheeks. ‘I’ve already said that I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to say to you – and I can’t explain how this has happened because I’ve got no idea. But don’t worry, the people who brought me here know now. I’m sure it’ll all be sorted out soon. They said that they would speak to Coleman, the man who’s dealing with my case, and get back in touch. A.S.A.P.’ Nick reddened. Said aloud it all sounded pretty pathetic.

Maggie lifted an eyebrow, observing his growing discomfort. The born-again Bernie Fielding was either very naïve or very desperate, although whichever it was, it was quite endearing; he probably still believed in the tooth fairy, too. As she studied him he pushed his fringe back up over his forehead and smiled. If he was a puppy in a pound no woman on earth could have resisted him bringing him home.

Maggie sighed. Her mother always said she was a soft touch.

‘I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t look altogether convinced, Nick. What I mean is I’m not planning to hold my breath until the cavalry show up. I’ll make you up a bed in the spare room for tonight; Joe wants his bed back, and then tomorrow I’m afraid you’ll have to hit the road. Okay? Why did you 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 staff and driven me to breaking point.’ He sighed heavily. ‘The pair of them systematically destroyed everything I had built to try and stop me from taking the stand. The authorities extradited one of them to the States. The police had already decided by that time that I was at long-term risk from reprisals.’ He drained the dregs of his coffee. ‘So there we are, now you know, Maggie. That’s what I’m doing here.’

She stared at him, not quite sure, now that she had dragged the story out of him, what to say. ‘My God. So what happened to the two men?’