The Insider

She squirmed and made a face. ‘I screwed up.’

Dillon frowned. ‘What happened?’

‘In my defence, they were a bunch of jerks.’ Then she thought of Jude Tiernan, and something pecked at her conscience. Maybe she’d given him an unnecessarily hard time. ‘One of them had a go at me about my father. I got a bit, well …’

‘Don’t tell me. Mouthy?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Shit, Harry, that could have been an important account. I had to pull favours to get that meeting.’

‘Hey, you’re the one who prescribed the cathartic therapy, remember?’

He sighed. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll call them, see if I can patch things up.’

Harry didn’t answer. She let her head sink back against the seat and closed her eyes again. Her neck had started to ache and she guessed her body was covered in livid bruises that would hurt like hell in the morning.

‘You shouldn’t be alone tonight,’ Dillon said. ‘You’re still in shock.’

She kept her eyes closed. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Come back to my house. I’ve got brandy, food and a change of clothes, strictly in that order.’

Harry shot him a quick look. She’d never been to his home, but, according to Imogen’s sources, he lived in a gracious mansion in the Enniskerry countryside. Her sources also had him pegged as resolutely single, so Harry wondered where the change of women’s clothes would come from.

Under other circumstances, she might have allowed her curiosity to get the better of her, but right now, all she wanted was to close her apartment door behind her and think.

‘Thanks, but I’d be bad company,’ she said. ‘I just need to sleep.’

She felt his eyes scrutinize her face.

‘You know what he meant, don’t you?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘The guy in the train station, the Sorohan money, all that stuff.’ He flicked her a look in between watching the road. ‘It means something to you, doesn’t it?’

She shook her head and forced a shrug. ‘It was just some nutter.’

He regarded her for a moment, and then snapped his attention back to the traffic. ‘Suit yourself.’

His face had shut down on her. Hell. But she couldn’t do anything about it now. There were some aspects of her life she just wasn’t ready to open up about yet. At least not until she understood them better herself.

Dillon swung right into Raglan Road. Harry’s tension began to melt as they drove down the familiar tree-lined avenue. Victorian red-bricks stood guard on either side, some of them restored to elegant family homes but most converted into apartments. You could tell which ones were rented by the cracked paint on the sash windows.

Dillon peered out at them. ‘Which one is yours?’

Harry pointed to a corner house with a canary-yellow door. She’d smartened it up herself with a fresh coat of paint the week before. One of these days she’d buy her landlord out. Her profession paid well, and she’d accumulated enough savings now to start thinking about a mortgage.

Dillon slammed to a dead stop, scuffing the kerb. Harry hauled herself up out of the car and led the way through the front door.

The building had a basement and three floors, and Harry lived in an apartment at ground level. It had once been an elegant drawing room where butlers served tea. Now it was a place where Harry ate breakfast in bed any time she felt like it.

She trudged down the hall, aware of Dillon’s presence like a stalker behind her. They reached her apartment, and Harry froze. The door was open.

She edged up to the threshold, hesitating. Dillon stood behind her, looking in over her shoulder.

‘Oh my God,’ he said.

Her apartment looked as though a pack of wild dogs had been cooped up in it for ten days. Her sofa had been slashed, the black leather ripped apart to expose chunks of yellow sponge. All her paperbacks had been swept from the shelves and lay in slippery piles on the floor.

Harry took a deep breath. She stepped inside and picked her way through the carnage in the room. It was like wandering amongst the bodies of old friends. The mirror from over the fireplace had been hurled to the floor, the glass smashed. Her only picture, a playful print of dogs playing poker, had been wrenched away from the wall, splitting the plaster where the nail had been. The print lay propped up against the mutilated sofa, its brown-paper seal gouged out at the back. Harry stared at it, her arms hugging her chest.

Dillon’s voice called out from the kitchen: ‘Take a look at this.’

She dragged herself over to join him, her shoes making a crunching sound on the flagstones. It turned out to be sugar from a bag that had been dumped upside down on the floor, along with everything else from her kitchen cupboards.

Harry gaped. The entire contents of her kitchen – tins, saucepans, jars, food from the fridge – had been piled in the centre of the floor. The cutlery drawers had been upturned and chucked on to the heap. The cupboard doors stood wide open, empty shelves exposed. It was like a crazed attack of spring-cleaning.

Harry sank back against the doorframe. Jesus, who would do this? Dillon circled the mound of food, shaking his head. She sighed and trudged back along the corridor to check her bedroom. It was in the same disarray as the rest of the apartment; drawers ransacked, clothes strewn about. She’d never wear any of them again.

The red light blinked on her bedside phone, a mute demand for attention. She noticed a familiar, well-worn book that had landed face down on her bed. It was spread open so wide that its spine had cracked, and it lay there like a broken bird. She picked it up and some of the pages fluttered out. It was a book her father had given her when she was twelve: How to Play Poker and Win. On the inside covers, front and back, was a series of annotations written in blue marker. They recorded some of the poker games she’d played with her father. It was a habit she’d learned from him. After every hand, he’d make detailed notes, jotting down the cards that had been played. He never forgot a hand, and he never got beaten by the same bluff twice.

She’d been six or seven years old when her father first started taking her to his poker games, often staying out till three or four in the morning. She’d picked up some of her best swear words at those games. Usually she’d end up asleep on a sofa, her eyes smarting from cigarette smoke. Later, as a teenager, he’d brought her to London to visit the casinos in Soho and Piccadilly. At the time it had all seemed grown-up and exciting, but in retrospect it was just bad parenting.

She turned over the flyleaf of the poker book in her hand. The inscription was still there, as she’d known it would be.

A mi queridísima Harry,

Never be predictable. Play a random game and keep ’em guessing, but always fold on a 7-2 offsuit.

Un abrazo muy fuerte,

Papá

She smoothed her thumb along the broad handwriting. Then she closed the covers and cradled the book with both hands so that the pages wouldn’t split.

Dillon poked his head round the door. ‘Your office and bathroom are both trashed.’

Harry swore. She’d seen enough. She slapped the book on her bedside locker and marched back out to the living room, ignoring her throbbing knee.

Dillon followed her. ‘I’ll call the police.’

‘It’s okay, I’ll do it.’

Dillon paced up and down the room while she phoned her local police station. She reported the details to a sympathetic sergeant who said they’d send someone round. Then she snapped the phone shut and burrowed under the pile of books on the floor till she found the Golden Pages directory.

Dillon stopped his pacing to watch her. ‘Now what?’