Hunted: gripping, gritty and unputdownable - the best gangland crime novel you'll read this year by Roberta Kray

Author:Roberta Kray [Kray, Roberta]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2022-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

40

It was after eleven before Lytton said goodnight and Cara waited until he’d been to the bathroom and the door to his bedroom had closed before rising from the sofa, turning off the TV and going over to the bookshelves. She pulled out a couple of her dad’s books on antiques and placed them on the table. Next, she switched on the lamp. Then she sat down, pulled her bag into her lap, unzipped it and reached inside for the silver box.

Even as she took it out, she felt her fingers shaking slightly. If those thugs had been successful this afternoon, if they’d managed to drag her into the van, she’d have been facing a desperate situation. She could have ended up like Jimmy. A sound slipped from her throat, low and anguished, quickly silenced. Dead like Jimmy. Whatever they wanted was connected to this box.

Cara gazed at it for a while and then examined it more closely, looking at it from every angle, tilting it this way and that in search of clues. Where had it come from? Who did it belong to? She was struck once again by its prettiness, by the artistry in its design, by the skilful engraving and beautifully enamelled flowers. But none of that got her any closer to understanding its importance.

There was a stamp and hallmarks on the base of the box, symbols too small to identify with the naked eye. She stood up again, retrieved her dad’s little magnifying glass from the sideboard and returned to the table. It took her fifteen minutes of searching through the books, of comparing, checking and double checking, to establish that the maker had been based in St Petersburg, that it was good-quality silver and that the date of production was 1890.

Establishing these facts did nothing to ease Cara’s troubled state of mind. She thought of the thug’s breath on the back of her neck, of the other men’s arms reaching out for her, and shivered. Was it Russian they’d been speaking? She’d heard stories about the Russian mafia, of how they’d infiltrated London’s crime scene, and the dread grew inside her. You didn’t mess with people like that, not if you wanted to wake up in the morning.

Cara returned to the books, flicking through the pages to try and discover the worth of the box. A part of her was still hoping that it was something rare, something so valuable that its owner would be prepared to go to any lengths to get it back. If that was the case, she might be able to negotiate its return and bring this nightmare to an end. But she was quickly disappointed. There was nothing to suggest that the box was anything special. The maker, although skilled, was not a famous name and similar boxes had sold for between one and two hundred quid. Not a price to be sneered at, but not high enough to kill for, either. No, her original idea had been right: it was what had been in the box that was the prize, not the box itself.

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