Jo gave a self-deprecating laugh, but there was something in her words that struck a chord with Tom. Their investigations into Allman had revealed that his company worked with all kinds of acts, arranging roadies and transport for musicians, comedians – anyone who needed to go on tour.
‘Does she know Millie’s father – her biological father, I mean? I understand he’s in that line of business too.’
Jo stared at him, her mouth slightly open. ‘It’s possible their paths would have crossed, I suppose. Tessa knows that Millie isn’t Ash’s flesh and blood, but I’ve never mentioned Steve’s name to my friends because it wasn’t relevant.’
Was this a coincidence – two people both involved with musicians and performers? Whether it was or not, Tom didn’t want to overplay it with Jo. The poor woman was scared enough.
24
Since the call with Jo ended, Tessa hadn’t moved from where she was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs. She leaned against the balustrade and sighed deeply. What was she doing? This wasn’t going the way she wanted it to, and she was sure she had heard suspicion in Jo’s voice. How was that possible? She couldn’t know anything, but Tessa had no idea what to do.
It was the voice from upstairs that decided her.
‘You coming to bed any time soon?’
She put her phone on the hall table and trudged slowly up the stairs. Through the open door of her bedroom she could see him lying naked on the bed, the sheets thrown back in the knowledge that his body would be the first thing she saw as she walked in. And what a body.
His coffee-coloured skin glowed in the light from the open doorway, set off perfectly against the pure white sheets. She loved the fine dark hairs on his chest that narrowed to a small strip under his navel as they headed south.
She dragged her eyes from his body to his face.
‘You’re going to have to go.’
He raised himself up on his elbows and stared at her. ‘What?’
‘She knows something. Jo, I mean. I don’t know how – we’ve been so careful. We can’t blow it now. You need to get dressed and go.’
They thought they had avoided any risk of being discovered, and Tessa had done everything to put Jo off the scent, even leading poor Geoff on to believe she was his for the taking when all along she had no intention of letting him into her bed. He had been the perfect patsy, convinced that her reluctance to let him make love to her was because he was married. The poor man had become so obsessed that he’d begun to talk about leaving his wife, if that’s what it took to have Tessa. She wasn’t proud of that, but it had felt like a necessity. They’d had to disguise the truth.
‘Get up, get dressed. Please, darling.’
‘Where the hell am I going to go?’
Tessa walked over to her dressing table and pulled open a drawer. Fishing out a key, she opened the jewellery box which held her emergency fund – something she had learned to keep in a former life, one she preferred not to think about.
‘Here. Take this and check yourself into a hotel.’ She held out the money.
Finally he seemed to realise that she was serious and pushed himself up off the bed, but he wasn’t quite ready to give up.
‘There’s no way she could know, Tessa. You’re imagining things.’ He reached for his clothes.
‘I’m not. Why would she phone me this late? You know Jo better than I do – why would she do that when she didn’t really have anything to say? Unless she was checking on me?’
He grunted in response, but he knew she was right.
She kept her back to him as he dressed, avoiding the sight of him so she didn’t succumb to her desire to push him back onto the bed and remove the clothes he had so reluctantly just put on.
She felt his arms snake around her waist, and his lips found her neck.
‘I don’t want to leave you, Tess.’
She leaned back into him and felt the heat from his body warm her. ‘I know, and I don’t want you to go, but we need to stick to the plan. We need to give it a couple of weeks, and then we’ll be gone, and it will be too late for anyone to do anything.’ She turned to face him. ‘Come on. Let’s get you out of here before we do something stupid. You need to go the back way, as always.’
‘You do realise it’s peeing down, I suppose?’ He touched her cheek with one finger. ‘You stay here. Don’t watch me go; I might not be able to resist turning round and coming straight back.’
Tessa knew he was right. This was so hard, but they had managed to keep their secret for weeks now, and soon they would both leave the country – not together, of course. And no one need ever know.
Despite her promise to stay where she was, Tessa made her way into the back bedroom and watched as he climbed onto a carefully placed garden chair, then pulled himself up onto the roof of the tool shed. He placed one hand on the fence and vaulted over, dropping out of sight into the dark back garden of her deaf elderly neighbour. No one watching the street would see him go, but more to the point, Jo wouldn’t see him either.
25
As Tom strode out of the open door, Becky suggested to Jo that she try to get some rest.
‘We have a room for you. You could at least lie down.’
She looked at Becky in amazement. ‘You want me to try to sleep?’
‘I know that’s probably impossible, but for the moment there’s nothing you can do except wait. If you don’t want to go to the bedroom, you could maybe just sit back and close your eyes. If the phone rings, we’re only down the corridor, and we’ll be back in here before you have time to pick it up. We’ve got you, Jo. We won’t let you miss anything important, I promise.’
Becky apologised for leaving her, but she had to join Tom. She closed the door quietly as she left and hastened along the corridor to the incident room.
‘What’s your thinking?’ Becky asked as the door closed behind her.
Tom took a deep breath. ‘If Tessa O’Hanlon is involved in any way, even as a hostage, we could be putting lives at risk if we go charging in there. We don’t have enough intelligence to make that decision. Let’s see what we can get from telephony information – her landline and her mobile. And check she’s still at home. Can we also find out if there are any other active mobiles on the premises?’
Becky nodded. ‘We’ll get her phone records, see who she’s been calling. I’ll get Keith on to that. I presume you’re going to ask the intelligence unit to try and get an audio feed into the property, see if we can hear what’s going on in there?’
Tom nodded. ‘The surveillance team watching Jo’s house can also see Tessa’s. They would have alerted me if anyone had come in or out through either gate – one faces Jo’s and one leads on to the side street. Until we can get someone into the grounds we can’t tell if there are any other exits. We need to have a mobile team ready to act if someone does come out – we can’t take the team watching Jo’s house away.’
‘Okay, I’m on it.’
‘If it is Rajavi, I don’t like the idea that he wants to move back to Abu Dhabi. From what I can remember – and we need to check this – the United Arab Emirates haven’t yet signed the Hague Convention on child abduction. They’re more likely to uphold Ash’s rights than most countries would, I imagine. We have to consider whether this is his way of getting the child out of the UK.’