It was easier than Dempsey had thought to break into that garage, even with Richie raving on about how he knew Dempsey was bad news all along. Bad news for him, yes. Now he was going to make Richie lead him to Tony Borelli and finish this thing once and for all.
He had found an old broken washing line in a stack of boxes, using it to tie Richie to a chair.
Richie glared furious resentment at Dempsey. "Right, so I've seen this in the movies; now you're going to do what? Torture me to tell you stuff. Well then, it's going to be a messy business, 'cause, how many times do I need to tell you, I don't know anything!" Richie yelled desperately.
It was a good job that Mrs Bennett's hearing left a lot to be desired, and that there was nobody else presently staying in that guest house.
Dempsey grabbed another kitchen chair, pulled it in front of Richie, turned it around and straddled it backwards, leaning on the back of the chair with one arm, while the other hand kept the firearm pointed in Richie's direction.
"You know this thing could be over with in seconds; you just gotta answer one simple question and we're through. Just one question," he stressed.
"Damn it, if I know the answer, which I doubt… but if I do, I'll tell you…" then Richie paused for a moment, eyeing Dempsey with suspicion as a thought occurred to him "… There's only one thing I won't do; you can do or say what you like, but I won't say nothing about Harry. If this is to do with her, forget it. I'll throw anyone else to the wolves," he announced.
Dempsey was confused for a second. Why was Richie so focused on Harry? It had to be a decoy. He was messing with him.
"Good, so I got a whole pack of wolves waitin' for Tony Borelli right now. Where is he?" Dempsey replied.
Richie closed his eyes momentarily and sighed. As he had thought, he wasn't going to be able to answer Dempsey's questions. Now his only hope was to convince this lunatic that he really did know nothing about these random people he kept mentioning.
"Read my lips," he replied, slowly but surely, "I have never heard of a Tony, or a Danny, or a Bella. In case it escaped your notice, I'm not from the north, and I've never been to New York in my life."
"Wrong answer," Dempsey replied, reapplying the barrel of his gun to Richie's head before he rethought, glancing around the garage for inspiration.
There were two things that Dempsey was sure of at that point: firstly, that Richie was connected to the Borellis as he had suspected all along, and secondly, that this was Dempsey's only chance to finally get to Tony and end this torture. Besides, this was most definitely the end of the line, because now Harry was involved. This thing had to be sorted, and now, that minute… before it was too late.
Dempsey's eyes scanned the shelving units and homed in on a couple of tools hanging from the wall: a hammer, a chisel, and set of garden sheers.
XxXxXxXxXxXx
"Ed, have you seen Dempsey anywhere? He seems to have gone missing," Harry said.
Eddie was flitting from table to table, trying to clear the bottles, glasses, and litter in as quick a time as possible in order to get back to the after work party. He stilled suddenly with his back to Harry, and thought for a moment before slowly turning to face her.
This was going to be a tricky one.
Before he had chance to answer however, one of the younger staff, who enjoyed nothing more than knowing absolutely everything about other people's lives, chipped in and said,
"Did he find that woman? What a tart! Did you see what she was wearing? I thought James was going to blow a gasket when Eddie mentioned her..." she said to Harry, trailing off when she realised what she had said.
Eddie glared at the girl, who subsequently snuck away guilty.
"What woman?" Harry asked Eddie, feeling suddenly very edgy.
"Err, I'm not sure," he replied, busying himself again.
Harry could read him like a book; he was trying to cover something up. She grabbed him by the arm, forcing him to stop and look at her.
"Edward, what woman was Dempsey looking for?" she repeated sternly.
Eddie squirmed, trying to figure out how to reply.
"Well… there was some woman here from New York," he finally said.
New York? Mafia?
She frowned, her mind working overtime. "Why would you not want to tell me that?" she asked suspiciously.
Damn it, Eddie couldn't hide a thing from Harry.
"Why Eddie?" she pushed, now doubly wary from his reluctance to answer her.
He sighed, dumping all the bottles and glasses he was holding down on the table before grabbing her hand, leading her across the garden and down the hill to the wrought iron benches below; a considerably more private place to discuss what he was dreading having to tell her. Well, it would be better coming from him, than her finding out on the grapevine.
"What on earth is going on?" she asked.
"Come and sit next to me hunny," he replied, seating himself on one of the benches.
She sat next to him. "You're really worrying me now Eddie. Just spit it out."
"How have you and Richie been getting on lately sugar?" he asked.
"Not that great at the moment actually, why?" she replied.
"You know how you keep turning down his proposals? Well, that must mean that you don't see yourself with him in the long term, right?"
"Hmm, Eddie where are you going with this?" she asked, frustrated with Eddie's inability tell her what she needed to know.
"And you probably don't really like him as much as you had originally thought you were going to, right?" he went on.
"Eddie, if you don't get to the point, I'm not going to like you as much as I had originally thought!"
"Okay, okay," he answered, "the woman that Dempsey was looking for was … Richie's other girlfriend from New York," he finished quickly, cringing in preparation for her reaction.
She stared at him for one moment and then to his surprise, she burst out laughing.
"Who told you that?" she asked, chuckling to herself.
"She did," he replied with a frown.
""Hmm, then she had an ulterior motive, because she is most definitely not Richie's girlfriend."
"How can you be so sure?" he asked.
"Because I know Richie, and besides, he's very particular about the women he dates. There's not a chance he would date a 'tart' from New York. Anyway, there is more to this than you know," she said, standing suddenly. "Come on Ed, I'm going to need your help."
XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx
Dempsey placed the dubious looking objects in a row on the workbench next to Richie.
Richie eyed them with terror. "Look, I'm telling you, I don't know a Tony' whatever his name is' for God sake!"
Dempsey's hand shot out and he grabbed the hammer.
"I swear, I don't know him! You want me to make something up?"
"Okay, let's talk about Jackson, your girlfriend," he stressed, laying the hammer across his lap.
"Harry's my girlfriend," he replied. "I've told you, I don't know any of these people."
Dempsey leant across and picked up the chisel.
"I swear, I don't know them, I don't know them!" Richie shouted, wracking his brains to think of a way out of this situation.
"Funny she turned up from New York today, aint it? I don't see there bein' too many of us Americans in Doug's English Country club, an' suddenly, here we all are," Dempsey commented.
Dempsey's words whizzed through Richie's head on fast forward. He paused, and rewound.
"Hold on, maybe I do know who this woman is you're talking about," he said.
"Yeah," Dempsey replied, picking up the hammer and toying with it in his hand. "Start talkin'."
"I passed a woman in the club this morning, she was American," he blurted out, "I don't know her though; I never even spoke to her. But phone the club, you can ask Hannah at reception about it because Hannah threw her out. That's it," he exclaimed in a eureka moment, "she wanted to get into the Club for some reason."
XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx
"We have to find this woman Ed. Where is she?" Harry asked, scanning the garden area after dragging Eddie back up the hill.
"Err, I can't see her," he replied, trying to catch his breath.
"Ed, I can't stress how important it is that we find her. Come on," she said, urging him forward to search through the groups of people.
"No, I can't see her," he repeated, "oh wait," he exclaimed, straining to see through the crowds, "No. Thought that might have been her," he said, pointing to a woman sitting at one of the tables. He sighed, taking a last look around. "I think she might have left. People are beginning to leave now, sorry hunny."
Harry ran a hand through her hair in frustration and slid onto a nearby chair. Eddie pulled up a chair next to her and sat also.
"Harry," Eddie began after a short silence.
"Hmm," she answered, her mind elsewhere.
"Are you and James on another case or something? Is that why he came back?"
She turned to him then. "Not exactly, but we do need to find this woman Ed."
"Sorry," he replied, feeling that he'd let her down somehow. "I can't imagine you being a cop," he said out of the blue. "I've heard people say how amazing you were. I wish I'd known you then."
She laughed. "I'm the same person you know, Ed."
"I know, but it's a big part of your life that I didn't see," he replied.
She was very tempted then to share something with him that she had kept a secret from everyone there at the Club. It wasn't as if she didn't trust him, or if she had told him, it wouldn't have been the end of the world, but something made her hesitant.
"Sorry, I'm being silly, but I think the world of you," he said emotionally, reaching out to give her a hug.
She hugged him back, feeling quite emotional in return.
It was then, when Eddie glanced over Harry's shoulder, that he spotted her.
"Harry," he said, pulling back suddenly, "she's over there, by the desert table."
Harry swung her head around to see who she knew must be the woman from New York, standing assessing a row of left over gateaux. She jumped up and headed in her direction. Eddie followed, intrigued.
"Hello there," Harry said, approaching the woman.
Bella turned guiltily.
"They look good, don't they?" Harry commented, glancing down at the deserts.
"Sure do," Bella replied. "Aint eaten all day neither. Sure could do with a drink too."
"Hmm, the problem is," she wrinkled up her nose, "some of the people here are a bit… well, sticklers for the rules. If they catch you here, they will escort you out for being a non-member."
Bella scanned the garden nervously. "But I'm Richie's girl from New York," she said.
Harry sighed and shook her head. "It makes no difference I'm afraid, non-members are non-members. I'm a friend of Richie's though so I tell you what, we are going to be moving this food back into the kitchens now, but come with us and you can have some cake and champagne in there. How does that sound?"
Bella's face lit up. "Sounds real good to me, I'm hungry as hell."
Harry picked up one of the gateaux and gestured for Eddie to do the same. He followed her lead, bewildered with what she was doing.
Instead of heading for the main kitchen, which Harry knew at that point would be full of staff ready to party, she turned away from that door and continued further down to the end of the corridor, where there was a second smaller kitchen, used when the larger kitchen was being overstretched.
They entered. Harry placed the gateaux down on the kitchen counter and invited Bella to take a seat at the small wooden table in the centre of the room.
"Eddie, would you like to do the honours?" she said. "There's some champagne in the fridge. Could you open a bottle for us?"
"Champagne," Bella smiled, "You guys are livin' the high life here, eh."
Eddie pulled out a bottle from the fridge and spent the next few minutes struggling with the cork. Harry stood tensely behind Bella.
Pop!
Finally the cork exploded out of the bottle to the cheers of Bella, closely followed by a shout of, "Hey! What's goin' on?" when she found herself unexpectedly handcuffed to the table leg.
Eddie's eyes widened and he looked up at Harry with confusion.
Harry moved around the table to stand in front of Bella and reached into her bag to pull out her badge, showing it to Bella. Eddie focused on the badge, his eyes glued to it with surprise.
Bella's face had suddenly lost all colour, a tell-tale sign in itself.
"We are currently investigating the murder of one Mr Roberto Borelli and we have reason to believe that you have information regarding this," she announced.
"I know nothin'," Bella replied immediately.
Hmm, well, it seemed unlikely that this woman herself was the murderer, as surely she wouldn't have set up Dempsey and then returned to the scene of her own crime. She clearly did know something though, from her reaction.
"We have reason to believe that you do," Harry replied. "I suggest you tell us what you know or you yourself will become a suspect."
"Are you gonna arrest me?" she asked.
"At the moment, we are just following up lines of enquiry, lines which lead us to you."
Bella shook the handcuffs, which made a loud rattling sound. "What's with these then? You can't keep me here like this."
"Look," Harry said suddenly, leaning across the table towards her, "As you can see," she gestured to her clothes, "I don't work for the Met. I am carrying out an elite unit investigation into international crime; if I want to keep you here for questioning, I have the authority to do so."
Eddie listened to Harry with mouth agape.
"Well, what if I don't say nothin', eh? If I claim the fifth? What happens then?"
Damn it, this woman was stubborn.
Harry laughed. "The fifth? Isn't that some kind of American thing Ed? You ever heard of that before?"
Eddie shook his head. "No, never."
"No, not sure what that is. You're in Great Britain now, remember. We have many, many different rules here," she stressed threateningly.
"Listen, I anit sayin' nothing; my life wouldn't be worth livin' if I did," Bella replied adamantly.
"Well, we have all the time in the world," Harry answered, glancing across to Eddie. "You hungry Ed? Fancy some extra rich, luxury chocolate gateaux, or how about a piece of the summer strawberry one?"
"Mmm, they sound divine," he replied. "Think I'll have a piece of each," he smiled, reaching into a cupboard for some plates.
"Me too," she said, joining him.
Bella's eyes followed Harry and Eddie's movements as they cut huge pieces of gateaux and proceeded to dig into them.
"Woah, this one is to die for," Eddie exclaimed, his mouth full.
"Fancy a drink too?" Harry said.
"Great idea; I forgot about the champers. It's going to go down a treat with this," he replied, placing his plate overflowing with gateaux down to reach for the champagne bottle.
Bella watched intently but remained silent.
Sometime later, as Eddie began to dig into his forth piece of gateaux, Harry put her plate down and called him for a word outside.
"You think this is working?" Eddie whispered to her once outside the kitchen door.
"Not a chance. Was worth a try though. We are going to have to let her go. But I was thinking, she must have got here in a car; if I can get her number plate, I could use it to track her down perhaps."
"Is all of that true?" he asked with interest, "what you said in there."
"About working for an elite unit, yes. About it being an international unit, and her being under investigation, no," she replied.
"But I thought you said that you and James weren't doing police work," Eddie pointed out.
"We aren't… well, not in an official capacity anyway. Between you and me only Ed, when I told everyone that I had given up the Force, I wasn't entirely telling the truth. I help out with cases every now and then when they need me," she explained. "As far as this woman is concerned, though, it is unofficial; I'm just helping Dempsey out. She doesn't have to know that though…oh and neither does Dempsey… need to know what I have just told you I mean. As far as he's concerned, I no longer do police work."
Eddie scratched his head. "Bloody Nora Harry, I can't keep up with your life at all. So you are a charity worker by day, undercover cop by night? They could write books about this!"
She laughed. "Come on, let's release her."
Before she pushed open the door again though she stopped and turned to speak to him over her shoulder.
"Is it me, or do you feel slightly nauseous Ed?" she asked.
"So nauseous!" he replied. "I never want to see another gateaux as long as I live!"
Okay, since there was no Dempsey and Harry interaction in this chapter, I will be posting another one tonight.