‘I do,’ said Belle firmly. ‘And it’s the truth. Hey!’ Belle reached out, grabbed Milly’s shoulders. She shook her, hard. ‘We’re the can-do girls, right? Right?’

But Milly only cried.

147

Belle was quiet all the way back to the farm. When they were in the house, she said to Jack: ‘I never realized it got that bad.’

Jack filled the kettle and switched it on. ‘I’ve heard of these hookers called chickenheads. They’re so desperate for crack that they don’t take cash for services, only a single rock. Most of them start out saying that’s stupid, they’ll never sink that low, but they do, because crack’s so addictive.’

Belle was watching him. She shook her head. ‘Charlie and Nula Stone lived like royalty. So does Harlan. It destroys lives, what they do. And all the time, they live like princes.’

‘Yeah, but somebody stopped Charlie Stone and his wife dead in their tracks,’ said Jack.

‘Harlan. It had to be.’

Jack squinted at her. ‘His parents? That’s harsh.’

‘Not his real parents.’

‘Still.’

Belle shrugged. ‘Anyway. I’m going to stop him,’ she said.

The kettle was starting to boil. Jack got out mugs, tea bags and milk. ‘So what’s next?’ he asked her.

‘Have you picked up anything on the phone taps in the Essex house or the Tower Bridge apartment?’

The one with the black muttonchop whiskers, Jason, had bugged the landlines at both properties.

‘Yep. Stuff coming out of Santamaria and into Southampton this week. He spoke to a bloke called Javier on the house landline. He’s getting careless.’

Belle thought of Nula’s notes, what she had already read there. So much. So bloody much, and there was still more to come. ‘That’s one of the Colombian cartel’s main men. Javier Matias. I’ll make a call to Customs and Excise.’

‘And then?’

Belle nodded to the notebooks stacked on the table. ‘It’s all in here. Nula’s journals. Charlie would have gone apeshit if he’d known she was doing this. But it’s telling us so much. It’s a bloody gift.’

She picked up one of the notebooks from the pile, flicked open a page, and read.

148

This couldn’t be happening. It was not possible. Harlan was stunned and Javier’s people were furious. The week’s shipment hadn’t even left Santamaria for Rotterdam and then on to Southampton, before Customs swooped.

‘We had them in our pocket, we had everything sewn up tight, and now this?’ Javier bellowed down the phone at Harlan. ‘Suddenly they come in – new people, not the ones in our pay – and they start breaking open the scrap metal ingots and there is the cocaine, and they take it, they seize it, our product.’

‘Something must be going wrong at your end, there must be a weak link in the chain,’ said Harlan.