Page 171 of Deep Blue Sea

She coughed and her whole abdomen ached.

‘Don’t make this worse than it is already, Greg.’

He looked at her, his dark eyes blazing. ‘You’re the one who made it something it doesn’t need to be,’ he said grimly. ‘Just like Madison Kopek.’

‘So you killed her too,’ she whispered, suddenly imagining Pamela Kopek surrounded by photos of her dead children.

‘She went poking her nose into places she shouldn’t,’ he sneered. ‘Must have been one hell of a good fuck to make Julian go chasing after Rheladrex.’

‘How did you know?’

‘He told me. Told me he wanted to pull the drug and I thought he’d lost his mind.’

She could feel her hands shaking behind her back. She knew her phone was in her back pocket, but she was sitting on it. Maybe if she could just reach it, she could do something, but she had to stall for time until she worked out what to do.

‘Julian was your friend,’ she said quietly. ‘All he tried to do was help you. If the Denver Chemicals deal had fallen through, there would have been others . . .’

She thought she saw a flicker of regret but then his gaze hardened into a look of venom.

‘Do you know how this business works, Rachel? How much time and effort goes into brokering deals? Weeks, months, sometimes years. Wining, dining, licking their arses. You can imagine how hard it was finding those Chinese buyers who were willing to pay such a premium. And do you know how much I would have got if it all came to nothing? Nothing. I worked my balls off to get where I am today. I came from nothing and I crawled back from nothing. I was fucked by Lehman’s, everything I had gone, vaporised, and I wasn’t going to let that happen again.’

‘Stop it,’ said Patty, putting a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged her off angrily.

‘Who was the blonde with you at the party, Greg? Where did you find her? How did she do it?’

‘Eva? Though I doubt that’s her real name. Striking girl, Kosovan. Saw some terrible things in the war, or so I’m told. It made her very hard, ruthless. That was ballsy, even for me, coming to a dinner party with a contract killer.’

‘She hid in the house, didn’t she?’ whispered Rachel.

‘No idea where. Didn’t ask for the details; I just paid her fee. I assume she hid, waited and chose her moment.’

‘And how did she leave?’ She didn’t particularly expect him to answer but Greg was in full flow now.

‘It was another waiting game. Wait till the police come, the forensics team, wait until there’s activity in the house and she could stroll out without anyone really noticing. All in a day’s work, apparently.’

‘That’s enough!’ screamed Patty.

‘What have you got to do with all this, Patty?’ growled Rachel. She was afraid, scared what would happen next. She knew that these two were cornered enough to do something rash.

Patty walked away, out of her line of vision.

‘That smart mind of yours wondering what to do next?’ said Rachel defiantly. ‘I thought you’d have both had the brains to sort all this out another way. Did you really need this deal that much, Greg? Enough to kill Julian and Madison?’

His eyes darted away from her. ‘I needed those fees,’ he said desperately. ‘The company was about to go under. Five major deals have fallen through this year. I couldn’t afford another one.’ He seemed lost in his own world. ‘Can you imagine a CEO blowing the whistle on his own company?’ he said scornfully. ‘Who does that? Willingly confesses that Rheladrex was fatally flawed? Just because some stupid little trailer-park trash was bleating about her dead brother.’

‘You got Ross beaten up too, didn’t you?’

‘I didn’t know how much he knew, so I paid two Jamaican scumbags a thousand bucks to scare him off. I regret that. Probably a little excessive, but I hear he’ll live.’

‘The only thing you regret is that it drew more attention to Julian’s suicide,’ she replied with a grimace. ‘In fact that’s it,’ she said, remembering the meeting with Greg in that fashionable City restaurant. ‘That’s why you told me about his mystery blonde in the first place. You wanted me to find Madison because you knew how it would look. Julian had a girlfriend and she was dead. You wanted us to think he killed himself because he was so cut up about it.’

‘You’re right.’ His smile was faint but there was no disguising the look of quiet triumph. ‘I guess I’m not quite the idiot you believe me to be.’

Patty had walked back into the room. She looked more composed than she had a minute earlier and had changed into jeans and a top.

‘You should take her on the boat,’ she said brusquely.

‘Why?’ he queried.