Fifth Victim by Zoe Sharp Page A

baseball cap, which would have looked great … if he’d happened to be a black teenage rap star.
    He looked up with a grin at my obvious consternation. The last person I expected to see here. Or wanted to see anywhere, for that matter.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
     
    ‘Hiya, Charlie,’ Torquil said. ‘Surprised, huh?’
    His voice was almost a taunt. I made a point of looking round very carefully before I moved in his direction. He took that as the insult it was intended to be and fidgeted with the insulated band round his coffee while I bought a cold drink from the serving window.
    ‘Yeah, I’m surprised,’ I allowed at last, taking a seat at his table without waiting to be invited and angling my chair so I could keep an eye on Dina at the same time. ‘You alone?’
    Now it was his turn to make an exaggerated show of looking around. ‘Looks that way.’ He faced me with a sly grin. ‘Why – you wanna go somewhere?’
    I sat back in my chair and took a long swig of cola straight from the can. It was cold enough for condensation to have formed on the outside already.
    ‘You normally have a two-man detail covering you twenty-four/seven,’ I said, sidestepping the question. ‘One stays with the car, but the other should be all over you like a rash. Where is he, Torquil?’
    ‘Maybe I sent them home.’ Torquil shrugged. ‘Maybe I just got fed up with having someone looking over my shoulder. All. The. Damn. Time,’ he said, the precision of his words making a lie of the apparently light tone.
    I glanced around, keeping it casual, and saw a big short-clipped man in jeans and a casual jacket that he wore unzipped. The man was loitering by the edge of one of the horse barns, alert, balanced, and watching me with slitted eyes.
    I put down my drink slowly and gave him a slight nod, letting him get a good look at my empty hands. He tensed, then nodded back, one pro recognising another. I saw him relax, but wasn’t sure if it was because he’d discarded me as a possible threat, or thought I might be prepared to lend a hand if things went bad.
    He must have known that the latter was unlikely, though. Bodyguards, by their very nature, had to be utterly single-minded about their field of responsibility, or chaos would ensue.
    Torquil, catching my nod, followed its direction and scowled at his bodyguard, shooing him away with an exaggerated flap of his hand. He was not, I surmised, the easiest principal to protect. When they were young and arrogant, they sometimes seemed determined to do half a potential kidnapper’s work for them, defying precautions and creating a perfect window of opportunity.
    Out in the arena, Dina had gathered the white horse together again, but this time the pair seemed a little less combative with each other, as if that brief flash of equine temper had cleared the air. They had a long way to go, but I thought I detected the beginnings of trust between them.
    I turned my head, realised Torquil was watching her intently with a faint frown, like he was trying to work out how a conjuring trick was done.
    ‘You ride?’ I asked.
    He took a moment to drag his gaze back to me. ‘Horses?’
    I suppressed a sigh. ‘Considering our present location, what else?’
    Torquil dipped his head to leer over his designer shades at the girl groom who was walking Geronimo round in the yard for me. She was probably fifteen or sixteen, with blond hair in a plait, and she was wearing skin-tight jodhpurs that left remarkably little to the imagination about the nature of her underwear. ‘Well, I guess I could be persuaded to … mount up.’
    ‘Thoughts in that direction will land you in gaol,’ I said dryly, but the comment provoked a weary laugh.
    ‘You think?’ He shook his head. ‘You don’t know how things work in this country, do you?’
    ‘Why don’t you enlighten me?’
    Torquil sprawled back in his chair, as if he couldn’t believe I seriously needed to ask such a dumb question.
    ‘My old man has more money