скачать книгу бесплатно
His eyes closed again. Jessie ventured a step nearer. He looked horribly pale and the gash on his forehead looked nasty. Oh, good grief, he was going to die. He was going to die and she’d get the blame and go to jail. That was the way it was. You read about it in the papers all the time. Burglar breaks in, burglar dies, innocent householder goes to jail.
Kevin and Faye would be sorry then…
She gasped. What on earth was she thinking of? He might have broken in, but the man clearly needed her help. She dropped the bat and paddled barefoot through the lake of cold milk to his side.
Stretched out on the kitchen floor he seemed very large, very threatening. Even unconscious he looked very dangerous. But she couldn’t just leave him there. Grabbing a clean bib from the work surface, she knelt beside him and dabbed, tentatively, at the blood oozing from the wound on his forehead, forgetting her fear in her concern.
His eyes opened with an immediacy that suggested he hadn’t been as far out of it as she’d thought, and he grabbed at her wrist. ‘Who the devil are you?’ he demanded.
‘Jessie,’ she replied instantly, not wanting to irritate him in any way. ‘My name’s Jessie. How do you feel?’ She put real warmth into her voice. She really wanted him to know that she wasn’t going to do anything bad…
‘How do I look?’ he countered.
He certainly didn’t look good. Apart from the pallor, made worse by the dark shadow of a day-old beard, there was the blood which still hadn’t stopped oozing. She put her fingers against his throat to check his pulse. It seemed the right thing to do, although she wasn’t sure why because she could see for herself that he wasn’t dead.
His skin was warm and smooth beneath her fingers, his pulse reassuringly strong. ‘Well?’ he asked after a moment. ‘Will I live?’
‘I th-th-think so.’
‘I’d be happier if you could sound a little more convincing.’
He didn’t sound like a burglar. But then, what did she know? ‘Well…’ she began. Then something about the sardonic twist of his mouth alerted her to the fact that he wasn’t being entirely serious.
‘I won’t struggle if you think I need the kiss of life,’ he said, confirming her worst suspicions.
For a moment she was tempted. He might have broken in, but if he’d been the man in black leaving a box of chocolates she had the feeling any woman would be left wearing a smile. Maybe she should offer to kiss him better…
No! For heaven’s sake, would she never learn?
And if he was well enough to joke, he was probably capable of getting up and…and maybe it would be better not to think about what he was capable of doing. Actually, she realised, as her brain stopped freewheeling and finally clicked into gear, she should stop wasting time and call the police and an ambulance. Right now.
‘What you need is a trip to the nearest A and E department,’ she said, primly, making a tentative attempt to free herself. He might be in a jokey mood, but she wasn’t prepared to risk annoying him. His fingers remained clamped about her wrist as he tried to sit up. The effort was clearly too much for him and he subsided, with a groan, releasing her as he put his hand to his head.
Her mobile. She needed her mobile. Her bag was on the work surface next to the fridge and she stood up to reach for it. That was when her burglar grabbed her ankle.
And that was when she finally stopped being controlled and sensible and did what she’d been wanting to ever since she’d realised she had an intruder. She opened her mouth and screamed blue murder.
Patrick, who had simply wanted to know what this Jessie woman was doing in his house and where Carenza had disappeared to, decided that, after all, it didn’t matter that much. Stopping her from screaming was far more important, so he tugged on her foot. Hard. The noise stopped abruptly.
Then she fell on top of him.
He muttered one brief word as the breath was knocked from him. One word was all it took to sum up his feelings. Her eyes, inches from his own, widened in shock, but before she could do or say another thing he grabbed her. ‘Don’t. Please don’t say another word. I don’t know who you are, or what you’re doing here, but I give up. You win.’
‘Win? Win?’ Even to her own ears she was beginning to sound hysterical. Well, that was fine. She had every right to be hysterical. She was lying crushed against the chest of a ruthless criminal. A man who’d broken into her home. Who, even with a nasty head wound, was more than capable of taking advantage of the situation. And the situation was that while she was wearing a mercifully long and baggy T-shirt, there was little else to cover her embarrassment. Well, actually nothing else. All he had to do was move his hand a few inches and he’d discover that for himself.
She firmly resisted her brain’s urgent prompting to tug her T-shirt down as far as it would go. That would only draw attention to her plight. Instead she forced herself to look him squarely in the face and tell him to let her go. Right now.
It was an interesting face. The kind of face that, under different circumstances, she’d like to see more of. On the thin side, but with strong bones, a lot of character, and she had the strong impression that pain was not a stranger to him. Yet his mouth promised passion. Oh, good grief. And she’d thought he was rambling!
‘In what way, exactly, do I win?’ she demanded, trying to get a grip of herself, gather her wits.
‘I surrender,’ he said. Surrender? What was he talking about? She stared at him. He had the most extraordinary eyes, she thought. Grey, but with tiny flecks of gold that seemed to be heating them up. Or was that just her imagination? ‘Just don’t scream any more. Please.’
‘Do you mean that?’ she demanded as fiercely as she could, not entirely trusting him. The wobble in her voice wouldn’t scare a mouse.
‘Oh, forget it. Give me a knife and I’ll cut my own throat. It’ll be quicker than the punishment you’re dishing out.’
‘Me!’ she squeaked. ‘I didn’t ask you to break in and fall over.’
‘Fall over?’ he shouted, then winced. ‘Is that going to be your story?’ And he flung the arm that was holding her towards the cricket bat and grasped the handle. ‘Haven’t you forgotten exhibit A?’ he said as he brandished it at her.
She scrambled to her feet and put some distance between them before he decided to beat her senseless with it. ‘Just stay there,’ she said. ‘Don’t you move. I’m going to call an ambulance.’ She backed hurriedly away, ignoring the milk dripping from her T-shirt and running down her legs.
He dropped the bat. ‘You’ll have to drag me out into the street if you want it to run me over,’ he warned her blackly.
Rambling. Definitely rambling. He needed to be in hospital, and quickly, but she moved well out of reach before she extracted her cellphone from her bag, dialled the emergency services and asked for an ambulance. They wanted details. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know who he is. He broke into my house and he’s fallen in the kitchen…’
‘It’s not your house!’ he yelled. ‘It’s mine!’
‘Head injury?’ she repeated distractedly as the ambulance dispatcher probed for details. Had he been watching the house? Had he seen Carenza leave and thought it was empty? He was regarding her angrily, but he hadn’t moved an inch. Unconvinced by this evidence of co-operation, she stepped further back into the hall, leaving a milky footprint on the carpet. More mess. More bother. ‘Oh, yes, he gashed his forehead on the corner of the kitchen unit… Yes, he’s conscious, but he seems to be a bit odd…not quite making sense… I thought maybe he was, you know, on something…’ He groaned. She ignored him. ‘Would you? And you’ll inform the police. Thank you so much.’ She hung up and returned to the kitchen, standing in the doorway, unwilling to get any nearer. One close encounter had been quite enough. ‘They’ll be here soon.’
‘Tell me,’ he asked, finally managing to heave himself into a sitting position and propping himself up against a cupboard, ‘are you mad, or is it me?’ He sounded quite serious, as if he really wanted to know.
Unwilling to say anything that might agitate him further, Jessie kept her distance, although her knees were shaking so much that if she didn’t sit down soon, she’d probably collapse in a heap right where she was. ‘Just keep still. I’m sure they’ll be here soon,’ she said, with a lot more calm conviction than she felt.
‘Are you? I hope you’re right. Tell me, where did that cat come from?’
Mao, having enjoyed the free spillage of milk and toyed with the yolk of one of the eggs, was now carefully washing his face. Jessie watched him for a moment. There was something almost hypnotic about the delicate, repetitive movements… ‘I don’t know. He belongs to the owner of the house.’ She turned to him. ‘It’s one of the reasons she was desperate for someone to move in. She needed someone to look after him. It must have been a bit of shock to discover the house wasn’t empty after all.’
‘You could say that. Especially since this is my house.’
He was worse than she thought. Much worse. Jessie glanced at her watch, wondering how long it would take the ambulance to arrive. ‘This is your house, is it?’ she asked in what sounded, even to her own ears, a patronising attempt to humour him.
‘Yes, madam, it is,’ he said, sharply. ‘And you can believe me when I tell you that I hate cats. And so does my dog. So maybe you’d like to explain what you’re doing here?’ Dog? He had a dog? She glanced around nervously. That was all she needed, a burglar who modelled himself on that Dickensian prototype Bill Sykes. But there was no slavering bull-terrier waiting to tear her limb from limb and Jessie, praying fervently for the early arrival of someone to remove this madman from her home, decided that humouring him would be the safest course.
‘I’d love to—’
‘Why don’t you start by telling me—?’
Upstairs, Bertie began to cry. She could have kissed him. Would kiss him. Right now. ‘I’d love to stop and chat but I have to see to the baby.’
‘Baby?’ He looked, she thought, as if he’d been struck a second blow. ‘You’ve got a baby? Here?’
‘He’s teething, poor soul,’ she said, beating a hasty retreat, stumbling over the bag her unwelcome caller had left in the hall. It was black and expensive and clearly very heavy. He’d probably stolen it and stuffed it full of the loot at a house he’d broken into earlier. ‘Just stay put and the ambulancemen will be with you any minute.’ She turned, put the front door on the latch so that whichever of the emergency services got there first could let themselves in, and bolted upstairs.
Bertie was intermittently bawling and stuffing his fist into his mouth. Jessie threw on the first things that came to hand and then she picked him up. He needed changing. The nappies were downstairs. In the kitchen. It figured.
Baby? Patrick grabbed hold of the edge of the sink and hauled himself to his feet, doing his best to ignore the thumping pain in his head, the rush of nausea. That was the smell. Warm milk, baby cream, talc, that stuff Bella had used to sterilise bottles. That was the scent that had eluded him. How could he have forgotten it?
He’d come back after the funeral and it had seemed to fill the house. It had taken him months to get rid of it. He’d got to the point where he’d thought he’d have to move. But in the end he’d realised that the smell existed more in his head than in reality. A faint ghost of his lost family that would forever haunt him. Moving would have been pointless.
Where the hell was Carenza? He clutched onto the sink for a moment while the kitchen spun around him, determined that whatever happened he wouldn’t be sick. When he felt strong enough to risk opening his eyes, he discovered that he was being regarded suspiciously by a uniformed policeman.
‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘Officer, there’s a mad-woman in my house. She hit me with a cricket bat.’
‘Why don’t you sit down, sir? The ambulance will be here in just a moment.’ He didn’t need a second invitation to sink into the nearest chair. His trousers squelched damply beneath him. ‘Maybe, while I’m waiting we could just deal with the details? If you feel up to it. Shall we start with your name?’
‘Shouldn’t you caution me?’ he demanded.
‘Just for the record, sir.’
He let it go. ‘Dalton. Patrick Dalton.’
The man made a note. ‘And your address?’
‘Twenty-seven Cotswold Street.’
‘That’s this address, sir.’
‘That’s right. My name is Patrick Dalton and I live here,’ he said, slowly and carefully. ‘This is my home,’ he added, just to make the point.
The man made a note, then turned as the front door opened. ‘The medics have arrived. We’ll sort all this out later, sir, down at the hospital.’
Patrick recognised the calming tone of a policeman confronted with a man he thinks is crazy. A policeman covering himself with excessive politeness in case he was wrong. He considered telling the man that he was a barrister, a Queen’s Counsel, and that he’d find him listed… But his head was throbbing too much to bother. Hospital first, explanations later.
Then he’d take great pleasure in telling that woman to take her baby and her cat and get out of his house—right after she’d told him where he could find Carenza.
‘Would you like to tell me what happened, miss?’ The policeman stood by impassively while Jessie tried to change Bertie with fingers that didn’t seem capable of removing the peel-back strips from the tapes of the disposal nappy.
She’d been calm, very calm under the circumstances, but reaction was about to set in and she was nothing but jelly. The policeman, seeing her difficulty, helped her out while she explained, haltingly, what had happened.
‘Mr Dalton said you hit him with a cricket bat.’
‘That’s a lie!’ Then she flushed guiltily as she saw the cricket bat still lying on the floor where he’d dropped it. ‘Dalton? Is that his name?’
‘Patrick Dalton. So he says. He has a very nasty gash on his forehead.’
‘I know. I think he must have hit his head when he fell.’ She picked up Bertie, cuddled him. ‘From the noise, I can only assume he stepped on the cat and lost his balance, although what he hoped to find in the fridge I can’t imagine.’
‘You’d be surprised. The fridge and freezer are favourite places to hide valuables. Unfortunately the villains know that, although the gentleman did say that he lives here.’
‘He said that to me, too. It’s not true, you know. I rented the house from a Miss Carenza Finch. I only moved in today.’ Bertie grizzled into her shoulder. ‘Maybe he has a concussion.’
‘Maybe.’ The man cleared his throat. ‘There’s no sign of a break-in, though. I hope you don’t mind me asking, but this wouldn’t be a domestic situation would it?’
‘Domestic?’
‘A lovers’ tiff that’s got a bit out of hand?’
‘Lovers’…’ Jessie stared at him open-mouthed, temporarily lost for words. ‘Officer, I’ve never met that man before in my entire life. And if I meet him again it will be too soon. I told you, I moved in here today,’ she explained. ‘The owner was going abroad for the summer and needed someone to make the place look lived in, to take care of her cat, her plants. Is this a high-crime area?’
‘Not particularly. Most people have burglar alarms. You have one yourself,’ he pointed out. ‘Was it switched on?’
‘Well, no. Actually, it wasn’t. I was tired, what with the baby… I just forgot. Maybe I forgot to lock the door, too.’ He nodded, understandingly. ‘Do you want to see the lease? It’s on the table in the hall. Oh, and that man left a bag out there, too. Evidently this wasn’t his first job tonight.’
The policeman glanced at the lease, made some notes and then picked up the bag. ‘I’ll leave you in peace, then, miss. Maybe you could come down to the station and make a statement in the morning?’
‘Yes, of course.’ More time-wasting, Jessie thought, with a groan. Why did the wretched man have to choose her house? She followed the policeman to the door. ‘What will happen to Mr Dalton? If that’s his real name.’ He glanced at the bag with its airline labels and flipped one over. It read Patrick Dalton, but there was no address.
‘Maybe he stole the bag,’ she said. ‘And the name.’ And if he hadn’t? If he was telling the truth? His eyes didn’t have the look of a man who lied. But then Graeme had eyes that promised the earth and she’d believed him. She was no judge.
‘Right, then. I’ll leave you to put the little one back to bed. Don’t forget the alarm, now,’ he reminded her as he headed down the front steps.
‘I won’t.’ There was no way she was going through that again, she thought as she closed the door and set the alarm.
But, supercharged with adrenalin, she wasn’t going to get back to sleep. She cleaned up the mess in the kitchen, trying not to think about her good-looking burglar with the honest eyes. Or the way his body had felt beneath her. It wasn’t easy and a touch desperately, she connected her computer and set to work.
‘I don’t know how much longer I can hold out, Kevin. I miss him so much.’
‘Me too. Weird, isn’t it? The quiet actually hurts my ears.’
‘Do you suppose it’s worked yet?’
‘I shouldn’t think so, sweetheart. They wouldn’t just pitch her out onto the street, would they? Not just like that?’
‘Wouldn’t they?’
‘We said we’d give it a week, Faye.’
‘I’m not sure I can hold out that long. Suppose she can’t cope? Suppose—?’
‘Jessie is the most capable woman I know, and she was brilliant with Bertie on Sunday.’
‘Yes, but I was there on Sunday.’
‘You left enough instructions to fill a baby book. And if she has any problems she’ll…’
‘She’ll what?’
‘She’ll do what she always does. She’ll call up someone on the internet. Come and have a cuddle.’
‘That’s what got us into this situation in the first place.’
It had been light for an hour when Bertie woke. Maybe she was beginning to get used to less sleep, or maybe it was just that she’d made serious headway with the project she was working on, or maybe it was just the fact that she had somewhere to live for a few weeks, but Jessie felt on top of the world as she bent over the cot and picked him up.
‘Hungry, sweetheart?’ He jammed his fist into his mouth and she laughed.
She put on the kettle, made a note to organise a replacement shelf for the fridge, then made tea for herself and a bottle for Bertie. There was a mark on the curved edge of the worktop. Was that where Patrick Dalton, if that was really his name, had banged his head? Had he hit it that hard? The thought made her feel queasy. Maybe she should visit him in hospital.
