Silence was fine with me. My mind was doing cartwheels-not just because Lexie had for some reason been hanging out with the archenemy, but because Ned was clearly a taboo subject. For three weeks his name had never been mentioned, the first reference to him had fried everyone’s heads, and I couldn’t figure out why. He had lost, after all; the house was Daniel’s, both Uncle Simon and a judge had said so, Ned should have triggered nothing more serious than a laugh and a few snide comments. I would have sold a major organ to find out what the hell was going on here, but I knew a lot better than to ask.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to. Frank’s mind-and I wasn’t at all sure I liked this-had run parallel to mine, parallel and fast.
I went for my walk as early as I could. That cloud hadn’t dissipated; if anything it had got thicker, pressing in from the walls and ceilings. Dinner had been painful. Justin and Abby and I had done our best to be chatty, but Rafe had gone into a sour sulk that you could practically see, and Daniel had withdrawn into himself, answering questions in monosyllables. I needed to get out of that house and think.
Lexie had met up with Ned at least three times, and she had gone to a lot of trouble to do it. The four big Ls of motive: lust, lucre, loathing and love. The chance of lust made my gag reflex kick in; the more I heard about Ned, the more I wanted to believe that Lexie wouldn’t have touched him with someone else’s. Lucre, though… She had needed money, fast, and a rich boy like Ned would have made a way better buyer than John Naylor and his crap farm job. If she had been meeting Ned to discuss what knickknacks he might want from Whitethorn House, how much he would be willing to pay, and then something had gone wrong…
It was a very strange night: huge and dark and gusty, snaps of wind roaring across the hillsides, a million high stars and no moon. I stuffed my gun back into my girdle, climbed up my tree and spent a long time there, watching the shadowy black surge of the bushes below me, listening hard for any faint sound that didn’t belong; thinking about phoning Sam.
In the end I phoned Frank. “Naylor hasn’t shown up yet,” he said, no hello. “You keeping an eye out?”
“Yeah,” I said. “No sign of him, as far as I can tell.”
“Right.” There was an absent note to his voice that told me his mind wasn’t on Naylor either. “Good. Meanwhile, I’ve got something that might interest you. You know the way your new pals were bitching about Cousin Eddie and his executive apartments, this afternoon?”
For a second all my muscles jolted awake, till I remembered Frank didn’t know about N. “Yep,” I said. “Cousin Eddie sounds like a right little gem.”
“Oh, yeah. One hundred percent pure brain-dead yuppie fuck, never had a thought in his life that didn’t involve his dick or his wallet.”
“You think Rafe was right about him hiring Naylor?”
“Not a chance. Eddie doesn’t hobnob with the lower classes. You should’ve seen his face when he heard my accent; I think he was afraid I was going to mug him. But this afternoon reminded me. Remember how you said the Fantastic Four were weird about the house? Too attached?”
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah.” I had almost forgotten that, actually. “I think I overreacted. When you put a lot of work into a place, you do get attached to it. And it’s a nice house.”
“Oh, it is,” Frank said. There was something in his tone that set my alarm bells jingling faintly, a fierce, sardonic grin. “It is that. I was bored today-Naylor’s still in the wind and I’m getting nowhere on Lexie-May-Ruth-Princess-Anastasia-whoever, I’ve drawn a blank in about fourteen countries so far, I’m considering the possibility that she was built in a pod by mad scientists in 1997. So, just to show my homegirl Cassie that I trust her instincts, I put in a call to my mate in the Land Registry office and ask him for a rundown on Whitethorn House. Who loves you, baby?”
“You do,” I said. Frank has always had a spectacular array of mates in unlikely places: my mate down at the docks, my mate on the County Council, my mate who runs the S amp;M shop. Back when we first began this whole Lexie Madison thing, My Mate At Births Deaths and Marriages made sure she was officially registered, in case anyone got suspicious and started sniffing around, while My Mate With The Van helped me move into her bedsit. I figure I’m happier not knowing about whatever complex barter system is going on there. “You bloody well should, after all this. And?”
“And remember saying they all act like they own the place?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Your instincts hit the jackpot, babe. They do. So do you, actually.”
“Quit being cute, Frankie,” I said. My heart was pounding hard and slow and there was a strange dark shiver through the hedges: something was happening. “What are you on about?”
