Page 17 of Return Ticket

chaptereight

Gabriella felt like a coward,but before she left work she took the staircase at headquarters to the floor above, and looked down on the road outside from the upstairs ladies’ loo—the only room on that floor that she had access to.

There was no green Jaguar parked there, but she decided to go out the back anyway.

As she ran down the steps, Liz was waiting for her at the bottom.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“I wanted to see if someone was lurking outside.” Gabriella waved toward the back exit and lifted her brows, and Liz gave a nod of acknowledgement that she was going that way, too.

“You avoiding your copper?” Liz asked, buttoning up her shiny, bright red vinyl coat as they headed for the exit.

Gabriella admired the color, but wondered if the coat would be warm enough. She had on a tweed wool one she’d found in a charity shop, and while it had a few moth holes—hopefully where no one would notice them—it was wonderfully cozy.

The weather looked like it was going to chuck down at any minute, and the sky was so dark and low, it gave her a sense of impending doom.

“I think I’ve got someone following me. I fined him a while back, and he was waiting outside yesterday. When I tried to approach the car, just to check it was him, he raced off.” She felt a quick surge of satisfaction at how quickly he’d sped off. Like he was scared of her.

It made her feel better about the situation.

But what she actually needed was a look at James’s notes from the incident. She had meant to mention it to him last night, but it had slipped her mind. She thought he might have written down the address of the row house Mr. Jaguar had come out of, and she could no longer be sure which one it was. Too much time had passed.

She wanted that information, just in case.

She had made a note of the registration number on the car yesterday as it drove away, and this morning she’d checked it against the one she’d written down in her ticket book from all those months ago. They weren’t the same, although the driver definitely was.

He had changed the plates.

“Did you tell me about him at the time?” Liz asked, pulling the back door open for them both.

“It was so long ago, I can’t remember.” She waited on the back porch for Liz to step out, and they both headed for the bus stop a few streets over. “I was working in Chelsea, and a green Jag was parked on double yellows near a corner. This toff comes boiling out of a townhouse, shouting, red-faced. He must have seen me sticking the fine on the windscreen from inside, and when I started walking away, he really went for me.”

They shared a quick look, because while there was often a lot of shouting, it rarely ever got to the point where they were afraid of physical harm.

“How’d you get away?” Liz asked.

“I started to run, I’m afraid to say. I really thought he was going to hurt me, but James was driving past and he switched on his siren and pulled up.”

“Let me guess,” Liz said, voice dry. “It was suddenly all a misunderstanding, mainly on your part.”

Gabriella laughed. “You must have been there.”

“In a way.” Liz tucked a hand through Gabriella’s arm. “Let’s go get some tea somewhere. I could murder a cuppa that isn’t that strange, iron-flavored stuff they have at HQ.”

Gabriella usually never treated herself, because money was always so tight, but she felt like sitting somewhere warm and cozy for a bit, in a brightly lit place to ward off the encroaching darkness. She ran across the road with Liz, laughing and joking until they found a teashop with fresh-looking buns, and settled into a table in the back corner.

“You haven’t been over to Dance-A-Go-Go for a while,” Liz said, rubbing her hands together to warm them, and then taking a sip from her mug of tea. She let out a sigh of satisfaction.

“I’m trying to save money,” Gabriella said. “And after what happened there . . .”

Liz nodded. “I understand. You’re friends with Melvin, right? The bouncer? I’ve gotten to know him a bit, these last few months.”

She knew Melvin through Solomon, but not well. “I see him at the Calypso Club when I take Mr. Rodney there for dinner.” She eyed her friend. “You’re interested in him?”

“Maybe.” Liz sent her a quick, saucy smile. “Maybe I think he looks fine the way he stretches out those jackets with those big shoulders.”

Gabriella grinned back. “Next time you see him, tell him I say hello.”

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