Chapter 12 - The Leverage
Katherine Cross raised an eyebrow, pausing with her hand resting on the blue folders. “I beg your pardon?”
“I lived as a ghost for seven years, Agent Cross,” Clara said, her voice steady despite the pain thrumming through her face. “I scrubbed toilets in Yorkshire under a forged national insurance card while Arthur slept in my bed and spent my daughter's future. I am not running again.”
“You don't understand the reach of the Moran organization,” Cross said coldly.
“And you don't understand what Arthur kept under that floorboard,” Clara replied.
Cross frowned. “We recovered the cash box. Cashier’s checks and an audio tape.”
“Not that floorboard,” Clara said.
A flicker of surprise broke through Cross’s disciplined composure.
Clara leaned forward, keeping Lily tucked securely behind her arm. “Arthur was a coward. Cowards always keep an insurance policy against their own partners. He knew the Morans would eventually clean house once the insurance money ran out. In our house—in the cellar beneath the old coal chute—there’s a damp-proof safe cemented into the foundation wall.”
Cross didn't move. “What’s in it?”
“Every transaction Arthur handled for the Morans since 2017,” Clara said. “Bank accounts in Zurich, license numbers of the customs officers at Tilbury who took kickbacks, and the names of three senior members of the Metropolitan Police who took twenty thousand pounds a month to bury hit-and-run reports.”
Cross’s eyes hardened. “Why didn't you give this to Vance?”
“Because Vance was on that list,” Clara answered simply. “He told me himself before he died. He took Arthur’s money seven years ago to confirm my ‘suicide’ at Beachy Head. If I gave Vance that safe, I would have been in an incinerator by nightfall.”
Cross was silent for a full ten seconds. The hum of the hospital monitors seemed suddenly loud in the small room. Outside, the steady footfalls of the tactical officers paced back and forth.
“What do you want, Clara?” Cross asked quietly.
“I want complete immunity for Lily, clean titles to the family trust that Arthur couldn't touch, and a permanent protection detail outside our home until every name in that safe is in a maximum-security remand unit.”
Cross looked down at the two blue folders on the tray, then slowly slid them back into her briefcase. “And if I refuse?”
May you like
Clara reached into her paper gown pocket and pulled out a small, cracked memory card—retrieved from Arthur’s desk before the detectives arrived.
“Then this copies itself to the editor of the Guardian at midnight.”
